Illinois facts

As always on the last day of the month, I've just spent the past hour and a half writing my monthly email report so I'll probably be brief tonight. First, today's sign of the downfall of western civilization comes from where I spent two years of my life: Indiana. Where a statuary store is being forced to remove its statues of Venus De Milo and Michaelangelo's Dave (to be less formal) because they are displaying nudity in a public place. I'm not kidding, there is an actual law banning any public displays of nudity within so many feet of the road. The local government had received two complaints so they've been forced to act. My only question: who in the world is complaining about statues? Trust me, there are a lot bigger things to be worrying about. Priorities people, priorities.

Ok, I thought that in preparation for Saturday's game I'd provide everyone some quick facts about the University of Illinois. Use them to impress your friends while watching the game.

• U of I is mentioned in two classic movies. First, the HAL 9000 was born at the university during my freshman year of college according to the film 2001. Actually, I should probably list that on my resume. The second classic quote is from Risky Business, where when Tom Cruise blows his interview with Princeton he puts on his shades, smiles and goes, "Well, then I guess I'm going to the University of Illinois."
• The undergraduate library is underground, even though that wasn't the original plan. It was moved underground when it was determined that the original plan would destroy the oldest experimental cornfield in the U.S. Thus, this is quite possibly the only campus with a cornfield in the middle of the main quad.
• In addition, to Hugh Hefner, we also have famous alumni like Roger Ebert and Dick Butkus. And probably some others. Like all the dudes that founded Netscape, who were in my physics classes and became millionaires while I decided that comnputer programming wasn't going to offer a lot of opportunities in the future. I'm going to build a time machine just so I can go back and slap myself for that one.
• There are two campuses: the engineering campus and everything else. The alma mater statue is located directly across from the electrical engineering building (my home during my years there). The statue looks at the engineering campus with open arms, welcoming everyone fleeing engineering to go major in the liberal arts.
• True story: during engineering orientation you are placed in an auditorium with your fellow classmates and the Dean goes "Look to your left, look to your right, those people won't be here when you graduate"
• You can enter bars in Champaign at 19. You have to be 21 to drink though. Or that is the theory, at least.
• The Chief is a symbol and not a mascot. This is a very important, though controversial, point.
• No matter what happens this weekend, its always important to remember that we're better than Northwestern.

Have a good weekend everybody. Go Illini.

Apartment living

I’ve got a fun little story about apartment living from last night. At around 1:30 in the morning, someone in the hallway of my apartment complex just started banging on a door. I mean just a desperate, “Please let me in, I’m drunk” pounding. I couldn’t tell whose door it was or if it was mine since sound travels really well in this place (which is something that I wish that the neighbors whose bedroom shares a common wall with mine would be aware of). I’m of course in that great half asleep state going, “What’s going on, am I ok, who is pounding on the wall?” I get up to look outside and suddenly realize that that might not be the brightest idea. So, I sit up, wait for the noise to stop and go back to sleep. Somehow I have a feeling that I won’t have these issues when I finally break down and buy a house.

Yeah, one of these days I will decide to settle down and buy a place. That would mean that I’ve become an adult and I am really dreading that moment. The tax breaks would be nice but right now I just don’t see much of a benefit to it. I’ll take the noise and the randomness that comes with living in an apartment before having to really face up to the fact that I am an adult now.

We’re beginning to get the first adds for the summer tours that will be making their way to town and it’s not an impressive list. Or maybe I’m just a little too old for this stuff. The usual Sum 41, Good Charlotte, Slipknot and a bunch of other bands that you couldn’t pay me to watch. The Dave Matthews Band is coming to town, so we should probably warn the barges on the Missouri River to, well, not look up. It’s strange that I go to all of these shows but if it is a big name act I can almost guarantee you that I won’t go. Sarah McLachlan is coming to town in a few weeks and even though I used to be a really big fan (and man, is that embarrassing to post on the internet) I just can’t see myself paying big money to watch her sing in a basketball arena. It’s not like I would expect an incredible stage show. If it was at a smaller venue I’d be there in an instant but being stuck in an arena just really turns me off. The concert that I am still on the fence for getting tickets to is Moby. I just think it might be interesting to go see what a Moby show is like. Does he just hit enter on a keyboard and leave the stage?

Really not much else going on. I’ll dig through the news tomorrow so I’ll have something to rant about. Later.

Robot Chicken

To last night’s comment. One of the coolest CDs that I own is called “Saturday Morning Cartoon Classics”, which consists entirely of alternative rock bands playing cartoon theme songs. Like The Ramones doing the Spider Man song. Matthew Sweet singing Scooby Doo. Liz Phair singing the theme to the Banana Splits and becoming the only person on the planet to make the line, “Four bananas make a bunch and so do many more” sound incredibly erotic. And to top it all off is Frente singing “Open up your heart and let the sun shine in” from the Flintstones in a such an upbeat and happy manner that even a cynical bastard like me smiles. That’s what I miss about modern music, I don’t know where bands like Frente or the Sundays are anymore.

(Oh, and I still don't get the reason for Dyngus Day. But it sure has been fun to celebrate...)

Anyway, not much to write about tonight so I’m going to steal from a great show on the Cartoon Network called Robot Chicken. (You need to watch Adult Swim, its cartoons for stoners and those of us who decided to never grow up) The show is created by Seth Green, who shot up the coolness list by having his phone number listed in Paris Hilton’s hacked Sidekick. Actually, of all the numbers that I saw his was the one I was probably most likely to call. I mean, Lindsey Lohan would swear at you, hang up, and call the cops. Seth would probably just go “Dude, what’s up?”

Back on the subject, there were two inspired bits on Sunday night’s show (which is basically stop motion animation using action figures. It’s low grade production values but high grade writing). The first bit was where they revealed the surprise endings for movies to save you money. The Crying Game: It’s really a guy. The Village: yeah, we all saw that one coming from a mile away. But the next one beat them all

Luke Sywalker: “You killed my father.”
Darth Vader: “No Luke, I am your father.”
Luke: “That can’t be! That’s impossible.”
Darth: “And Princess Leia is your sister!”
Luke: “That’s… that’s really improbable.”
Darth: “And in a few years, the empire will be conquered by Ewoks.”
Luke: “That doesn’t make any sense at all…”
Darth: “And as a small child, I built C-3PO!”
Luke: “Are you just making stuff up now?”
Darth: “And the force? It’s all just a bunch of bacteria called mini-chlorians.”
Luke: “Look, you’re not even trying anymore.”

Then a few minutes later they had the greatest take off on Peanuts that I’ve ever seen. Let’s just say that it involved Linus invoking the Great Pumpkin, a murderous rampage, and ended with the line, “Meet the kite eating tree you sick son of a bitch.” If you ever wonder what a teen slasher movie would have been like if Snoopy would have been included, this would have been it. Ok, maybe it’s just a sign of my rather warped sense of humor but I found it hilarious.

That’s about it for a Tuesday night. Good to see that the brothers survived in the Amazing Race. They are way too fun of a team to watch to see them get eliminated this early. Not much else to write about so I’ll stop littering cyberspace with my musings for the night.

Happy Dyngus Day

You know, there are lots of things that I miss about South Bend. Dyngus Day is one of them. I still have no idea about what it actually means but any excuse to drink on a Monday is good in my book. So for those of you who are still in the Bend, hope you’ve had a good one. Just a couple of random observations tonight.

1) Two more comments on the Illinois game. First of all, it is great to see that we have gained our official fan in Bill Murray. Still not sure if that matches up to Ashley Judd at Kentucky but it is a great start. Add in Hugh Hefner (who lived in the same dorm that I did) and we start to gain a respectable fan base. Second, I was certain that that game was going to mark the first time that fans stormed the court at a neutral site. Seriously, I would have been charging the court after the game.
2) One of the neat things about having 500 cable channels is that there appears to be channels dedicated to the narrowest segment. Such as G4 TV, the network for guys addicted to Playstation and Xbox. Or, in other words, me. I watch this channel way too much. Morgan Webb, the host of X Play, is rapidly climbing the Perfect Mate list. I don’t know, I just find a girl talking about playing Grand Theft Auto incredibly attractive.
3) I am still complaining about the lack of MTV Classic. VH1 Classic throws me a bone every once in a while. Last night I was stunned to come across the video for the Sundays “Here’s Where the Story Ends.” I knew that I wouldn’t be changing the channel for a good half hour after that. Please tell me how a channel that just featured reruns of 120 Minutes would not be attractive to advertisers.
4) I know that most people probably haven’t heard of the Sundays but search them out. They were just this great band out of England in the early 90’s that never really broke the way that they should have. I can guarantee that you have heard them, their cover of Wild Horses was used in Budweiser commercials for years. Trust me, find one of their old CDs, it is worth the effort. Harriet Wheeler has a voice that can’t be explained.
5) Completely different subject. I made the effort to go clothes shopping tonight but came up completely empty. Apparently, to find anything that will fit me I will either need to a) shrink or b) get fatter. I guess if you need to understand the current weight problem with America you only need to go to the mall.
6) Oh, and I want to explain my comment on the random CDs last night. I really like John Hiatt, its just that the same disc has come up twice in the past three weeks and the entire idea of the random discs is that they will be, well, random. I mean, I’ve got a ton of Beth Orton discs I would love to listen to but no, I have to listen to Sheryl Crow. I knew I should have sold that disc.
7) Oh, and a note for Super Dave. I’ve got tickets to see the Shins in May. Hanging out with the college kids at this show is going to rock.

On last night's game...

I’m going to try to explain what I felt while watching the Illinois game last night. I’m not sure if I’ll be able to put it in perspective or explain what it means to me. Let’s just say that outside of Duke-Kentucky, that was the best game that I’ve ever seen.

You see, even though I wear my Notre Dame t-shirts and my Duke sweatshirts I am still an Illinois fan. It’s my alma mater, it’s my school, and I spent many a day wandering the cornfields of its hallowed campus. And if there is one thing that I’ve learned, it’s that when we’re down 15 with four minutes to play we are not going to find a way to win.

See, when I went to Illinois it was a few years after their final four berth, where they missed making the championship game because no one bothered to box out Sean Higgins. And I was there during the probation years where I got to watch in awe players like Tommy Michael, who was a dead eye three point shooter as long as no one was in front of him and he didn’t have to dribble. And the legendary Andy Kaufmann, who one a game would grab a rebound drive the length of the court, running over defenders, neglecting three open teammates, and miss an uncontested layup. In my four years at the school we made the tournament twice and got past the first round once.

In the following years the teams got better and we gained more and more faith in them. We picked up the entire Illinois high school champion Peoria Manuel team and they became the starting lineup (Frank Williams, Sergio McClain and a host of others). You had the fighting Scotsman Robert Archibald, possibly the best basketball player ever to come out of Scotland. And you had Lucas Johnson, who shaved his head bald and specialized in starting fights. That squad made the elite eight only to lose to Arizona, in a game that made me hate every member of the Walton family.

That’s what makes last night’s game so special. That is a game that Illinois is supposed to lose. We don’t pull off miracle comebacks. We lose to the Governors of Austin Peay. It’s a school made up of Cubs and White Sox fans. We know how the story ends. That’s why last night watching these guys show so much heart and determination and just not giving up is astounding. I was watching the game at home with my family and it really turned into one of those special moments. There’s just something special about watching your school pull off the miracle comeback to win the game and have your four year old niece running around saying “We won! We won!” It just gives you the feeling that nothing is impossible.

I can’t wait until Saturday night when we get our shot at Louisville. This is going to be a great Final Four.

The five random CDs for the week:
1) Joe Ely “Live at Antones”
2) John Hiatt “The Best of John Hiatt” (Microsoft, please fix your random number generator. I’m begging you)
3) Sheryl Crow “Tuesday Night Music Club”
4) C.J. Chenier “Hot Rod”
5) Neko Case “Furnace Room Lullaby”

Ending the week...

Lots of random thoughts to close out the week…

1) Got to wish a happy birthday to Allison Hannigan, who is probably somewhere around 14th on my perfect mate list. It is fun to discover that the band camp girl from American Pie is the same age as you are. It makes you feel a little younger knowing that there is still a possibility that you could portray a college student in a movie.

2) Props to Illinois on making the Elite 8. Did read something in Sports Illustrated today that upset me. They want refs to start calling technicals on guys who are popping their jerseys (which is when you grab the jersey and point to the school name). This might just be the sign that SI has lost all relevance. When I first saw Dee Brown do this I really began to like this Illinois team. It might be a taunt but it isn’t an “I’m better than you taunt.” It is “This is who we are, you better understand who you are dealing with here.” And as an Illinois fan, to see my team take the court with that swagger, to go out and say “We are Illinois and you better recognize”, man, does that make me feel proud. I have a hard time wanting to T someone up for being proud of his team.

3) I mean, follow the logic. Is the “We are ND” chant a horrible taunt? It is the same idea at the end of the day.

4) If you ever get the chance, check out Jack Ingram in concert. The guy is just a lot of fun to see live. Plus, he is just so happy to be on stage and actually making a living doing something he loves. He also gets to rip on pop country, which is awesome. You got to dig a guy who will go “I don’t know anyone who thinks a tractor is sexy” and finished his set with a defiant “My name is Jack Ingram and I play country music.” Just a great time.

5) Of course, the Grand Emporium is still charging me five bucks for a beer. I can’t imagine that there is anywhere on this planet that I should have to pay five bucks for a beer. Much less in a music club. They’ve got my cover charge, the bands here, there’s nothing to do but drink, and I actually drink less because of what they charge. And it’s the only place where I don’t tip, just out of principal. These guys have no business sense.

6) That’s it for the week. I’m basically brain dead right now. Ok, that’s not much different than the way I normally am but I’m really in need of a nap. Have a happy Easter everybody.

Continuation on the theme...

I apparently struck a chord with last night’s post, as it resulted in a record number of comments including one that is more intelligent and cogent than anything that I have posted in the past month. And it was written at a time of day when I’m typically stumbling around my office desperately trying to find coffee. So, whoever posted it, thanks for the interesting insight. But, I will at least attempt to clarify my idea from last night.

I certainly will never point to the 80’s as some enlightened time. It definitely wasn’t Camelot. I mean, Atari was cool and I still think that the Commodore 64 was the best designed machine of the 20th century but those pretty much are the highlights. Was it easier or tougher than what any other generation had to face? That’s all based on your perspective. There’s no abject reality on questions like this, it’s all based on your experiences.

What has been bugging me the past few months (and again, this could just be my perspective) is that I really feel that there has been a closing of the American Mind. And maybe it was always closed and it’s just now that these people have their own television shows and I’m bombarded with the viewpoint day after day. I’m a believer in the idea of progress and just can’t believe that this would be considered progress. I’ve talked about the effort in Johnson County to get some books banned from the high school reading list before. What really strikes me about it is that this is one of the richest counties in the country, which should imply a well educated group dedicated to learning and advancement and I just don’t see it. And this really frightens me. It’s the exact opposite of my view of the world and let’s face it, I’m not someone who readily believes that he can be wrong about anything.

I don’t consider the Internet and free information to be a problem because it should end up as the solution. The problem is no one understands how to organize and filter all this information. You’ll always have a signal to noise ratio to worry about and the more data you have, the more static that will appear. And add to this the fact that information and entertainment have become intertwined and suddenly I’m yearning for the days before 24 hour news networks. But it doesn’t have to be this way. I don’t have a solution, Jon Stewart (who had this same argument on Crossfire in December) doesn’t have an answer, but it is one that needs to be found.

We are a trivial and materialistic society that tends to ignore its problems. I once had a conversation with a guy from the Netherlands on the way Americans view the world. He gave me one of the best lines ever, “Whenever Americans see someone in another country doing something that appears foreign to them they immediately go, ‘That’s wrong.’ It’s not wrong, it’s different.” To me, that’s always been the heart of the problem, we’re too bull headed to admit that we might be wrong. And you can’t fix problems that you won’t open your eyes to see.

At the end of the day, sometimes all you can do is try to clean up your little corner of the world, raise your voice and see if you can get anyone’s attention. We all know in our hearts that the problems are out there, there are solutions (though some might mean we, you know, might want to stop driving SUVs for a while), and it comes down to a matter of resolve. To quote Woody Allen “More than any other time in history, mankind faces a crossroads. One path leads to despair and hopelessness. The other, to total extinction. Let us pray we have the wisdom to choose correctly.”


(Ok, I wrote the previous part about three hours ago. Since then I’ve seen Jack Ingram in concert and I’ve regained some of my faith in humanity. If you ever wonder what keeps me going, it’s knowing that I can go and see a guy who only has a couple of stories, a few songs and a guitar and come back believing that there is art and meaning out there in this world. As long as a guy like Jack can make a living doing something that he would gladly do for free I feel like there just might be hope for our species after all.

Thanks again for all the comments everyone. It makes my day knowing that people are actually reading this and thinking about it.)

Red State Redux

Today’s sign of the apocalypse. Read online yesterday that several IMAX movies are facing protests in the south. It appears that they discuss evolution in the film (which isn’t surprising given that one of the films is called Galapagos) and that has caused a huge uproar in certain communities. Because I mean, who wants to see evolution discussed in a science museum? Don’t we all know that evolution has no place in science? Sigh. The article mentioned that this might impact future films as it will be tough for producers to move forward if they know that they will not be allowed to show their film in a tenth of the theaters before they even shoot their first shot.

I don’t have a problem with what people believe. Believe in evolution, believe in creationism, believe that the earth is flat and is carried on the back of four elephants that are standing on a turtle that is swimming through space. Everyone is entitled to their own belief. But don’t try to ban another person’s belief. Especially a scientific theory being presented in a museum. I can’t even imagine the way some people think.

I know that I’ve mentioned it before that I feel more and more out of touch with America. Let’s face it, I am a victim of the culture war. People protesting IMAX films, protesting the movie Kinsey, getting up in arms over a sketch on Monday Night Football, this isn’t the country that I remember. This isn’t anything close to it and I grew up in some pretty rough times. When VH-1 shows I Love the 80’s they always try to gloss over the early 80’s. Because who wants to hear about unemployment and inflation and assassination attempts and the film The Day After. But that was my childhood and the thing is, people were more open minded when we were dealing with that crap on a daily basis. Now we have the wonders of the InterWeb and all this information at our fingertips and it feels like the country is just trying to close its mind.

Oh well, at least I have music to fall back on. Got to see fellow Chicagoan Nora O’Connor in concert tonight. Huge props to anyone who covers The Handsome Family’s “Drunk by Noon”. [Check out The Handsome Family. How can you not like people who write lyrics like, “If my life lasted only one day, I’d still be drunk by noon.”] I think that this was a concert that I needed to go to. There were maybe two dozen of us in the audience and it just felt right sitting down on a Tuesday night and listening to good music without any of the concert scene posing. No one was there to impress anyone else, no one was the friend who was dragged along to the concert. It was just a crowd of people who really wanted to hear Nora and get away from the world for a moment. Which is what I really needed to do.

Way to go Damien

Just some random thoughts tonight…

1) Ok, for those of you who looked at the blog between Friday morning and Sunday night, an explanation is warranted. Between AOL, Blogger and the fact that I had spent much of the day in various bars I somehow posted the same thing four times in a row. Honestly, I only recall two of those postings so I am at a loss as to how it occurred. And since I don’t actually look at the blog very often I didn’t notice the problem until Sunday when I had to go in and delete the postings. I’ll try to post sober more often.

2) Yeah, my bracket is destroyed for the year. I think that I’ve picked Wake Forest to make the Final Four every year for the past decade and they just kill me every time. And I don’t even know why I picked Connecticut since I hate the school and the team. The good news is Illinois gets to play Bruce Pearl (who is directly responsible for Illinois basketball being on probation during my tenure there) and hopefully destroy him. Plus, Duke is still in it even though Sean Dockery is playing on crutches. Seriously, the dude tore his MCL and he’s back on the court. I have no idea how this team is doing it.

3) I was at Kelly’s for the Kansas game. It was nice to hear such a loud cheer when they lost to Bucknell. KU just played bad the entire game. Bucknell played strong but they were still very beatable. KU even got the best shot they could hope for at the end and still couldn’t put it away. I know, it’s schadenfreude but right now I’m going to take whatever I can get.

4) On a completely different note, I found out last week that Damien Rice is dating Renee Zelwigger. First off, congrats to Damien who pulled this off without even having a hit song to his name. Second, man, I really need to learn how to play the guitar. Apparently that is the missing link.

5) Here’s the highlight of my year so far. Was in my local record store on Friday afternoon just browsing around. Picked up a Henry Rollins spoken word DVD and was on my way to the register when I decided to flip through the used Country CD section. No idea why I did this, just decided to flip through. Get to the W’s and see a Kelly Willis disc. Well Traveled Love to be exact. Her debut album. Now, I’ve been listening to Kelly for going on seven years now. I’ve never seen a copy of this album. I’ve never even heard of anyone with a copy of it. Let’s just say I grabbed that thing as fast as I could. This is probably the only time I’ll ever feel justified in paying 25 bucks for a used CD. Now all I have to do is find this four song EP of hers that was only released in Texas and I will have everything she has ever recorded.

6) That’s not the only collection I’ve been completing as of late. I picked up Jonathan Carroll’s “Voice of our Shadow” last week. Well, not exactly picked up. More like I had it shipped to me from a bookstore in Sweden. See, Jonathan is one of my favorite writers but he is horribly unknown in the U.S. Which means I have to go to a number of the darker places on the InterWeb to find his stuff. He still writes the best first two thirds of a novel that I’ve ever seen. Can’t finish a story to save his life but man does he know how to start one.

Before Sunrise and Sunset

(I originally wrote this on 1/26 in a coffee shop. At the time I was hesitant to post it because I felt it got a little too personal near the end. Thanks to some editing (and the fact that I’m posting whatever I feel like nowadays) I’ve decided to finally present it. These are two movies that you must see.)



Generation X does not deal well with romance. It is an emotion that few of us have in our personal toolbox. Maybe it is because of our growing up in a post-Watergate, post-Disco, cold war world. It’s difficult to have a passion for anything much less anyone when the world around you is gray. Or maybe it is the oft-quoted 50% divorce rate. Odds are one side of the relationship grew up with a first hand knowledge of what happens in real relationships. So, on the whole we do not do romance. More out of the fear of the unknown than anything.

That is why the films Before Sunrise and Before Sunset are such a wonder. Richard Linklatter has created the romantic movies for Generation X. And these films are definitely aimed at a certain audience. The characters are of a particular time and a particular age (which ties to mine exactly) and they are real characters in a way that makes you want to meet them in a coffee shop someday.

But I’m getting ahead of myself here. First, a brief plot synopsis. College student Jesse (played adequately by Ethan Hawke) is on a train to Vienna, preparing to fly back to the States the next day. On the train he strikes up a conversation with Celine (played by the ethereal Julie Delpy). As the train reaches Vienna he convinces Celine to get off the train and spend the rest of the day with him wandering the town. The film consists of the two characters walking and talking and connecting and falling for each other. The movie ends with Celine getting back on the train and both promising to meet on the same platform six months later. Before Sunset moves us nine years in the future as Jesse is in Paris on a book tour and meets Celine.

Very simple and very basic but it stays with you. I mean, we have all had chance encounters, started talking to someone and felt an immediate connection. I don’t care how cynical you are, there is someone in your past that you knew for too brief of a time and would give anything to meet again and that is what these movies are about. That meeting, that connection and that aftermath.

The movies are almost entirely dialogue (except for two vital scenes in each movie, which I’ll touch upon later.) There’s a tendency to think that this could turn into talking for talking sakes, like in a Kevin Smith movie. But the conversations are real. I’ve had these conversations. I’ve talked about relationships and finding meaning in the world and wanting to change it. Hell, that’s 90% of the blog (along with ripping on KC).

But even though these thoughts may be universal, the way they talk about it is entirely Gen X. Only we are introspective enough to have chance meetings turn into philosophical discussions. We’re the group who looks beyond the surface. Maybe not always acting on it, but the concern is there.

At the end of the day, the movies are about relationships and how they change as you get older. When you’re young you think that you can always meet someone else, that there are thousands of connections to be made. But when you get older you realize how few of those connections exist.

While Before Sunrise can be viewed as a romantic fantasy, Before Sunset is real. The characters have aged, visibly and otherwise. Jesse’s married (unhappily) with a child. Celine has bounced from bad relationship to bad relationship. Both would be considered successful but neither is living the life they dreamed of nine years ago when they walked through Vienna. Life is messy and unsatisfying at times. I’m not sure that you’d find too many people who would disagree with that sentiment. And the film does an amazing job of showing the characters moving from their fantasized view of each other to reality.

But there are really two reasons why I am such a fan of these two movies (and Before Sunset in particular). The first is my fandom of Julie Delpy, which has been well noted. It really is a shame that she isn’t better known since she’s incredibly talented. In Celine, she portrays an intelligent, independent woman who is plagued by doubts. An introspective and neurotic person who is more in tune with what is important in life than everyone around her. She hits all the small nuances of the character. There is a brilliant scene in Sunset where she reaches out to Jesse but pulls back at the last second. That motion is more powerful than the hour of dialogue that proceeded it. In this one film, Julie presents a character who is everything I am looking for in life: intelligent, funny, somewhat neurotic, caring, stunningly beautiful, and she just happens to play guitar. And that’s more than enough to make me love the movie.

But that’s not the only reason…

Like I said earlier, everyone has had these random encounters and as I was watching Ethan Hawke in Sunset it was as if I was watching scenes that I have played in my mind for years suddenly appearing on screen. As I’ve mentioned before, when I was 16 I promised a girl that I would dedicate my first novel to her. A girl who by my estimate I spent a grand total of 17 days with. Someone who I swear that if we ran into each other on the street tomorrow we would act as if the past decade had not occurred. So, here is Jesse on a book tour having written a novel based on his night in Vienna. And as he says “I think I wrote the book hoping that you would read it and meet me.” And it worked.

That’s why I write. Ok, it’s not the only reason, but it’s in the top five. There is still a part of me that hopes that somehow, someday, she’ll find my book in some neglected corner of a bookstore and recognize the name. Sure, it’s a silly, romantic notion. It’s a million to one shot. But million to one shots happen six thousand times a day on this planet.

So the movie Before Sunset is my dream come to life. And it ends with you wondering what happens next. Is there a better metaphor?



The five random CDs for the week (oh, and Microsoft, random number generator my ass. I’ve got two of the same artists as last week)
1) Loreena McKennitt “The Mask and the Mirror”
2) Old 97’s “Early Tracks”
3) The Smithereens “11”
4) The Saw Doctors “Sing a Powerful Song”
5) Tiny Town “Tiny Town”

Happy St. Patrick's Day!

(Great, I'm in no condition to type and Blogger just ate my last post. Here we go again...)

Courtesy of The Onion, my source for posts when I'm a long way from sobriety

America's Favorite Zoo Exhibits

• Snakes: Somewhere in this room!
• The fascinating world of dead capybras
• Why sloths and chimps can't have babies
• Anacondo
• You deal with this sick rhino
• Kanga-Roofied
• Inside the digestive tract of the mighty boa constrictor
• Nature's videos we rented
• Feed twizzlers to the African waterbuck
• Watch the zookeeper mauling polar bear get euthanized
• Polaroids of koalas
• Peacocks and turkeys: nature's unlikeliest best buddies
• Suddenly there's bears!
• Mr. Hippo loves Mrs. Hippo very much
• Hamm's Bear Cardboard Stand-Ups Behind Bars

Hamm's the beer refreshing, Hamm's the beer refreshing. Hamm's!

(My favorite commercial from childhood. You can't go wrong with a beer that has a cartoon for a mascot).

One win down for the Illini. Have a good weekend everyone.

Damn you, Bono

Here is an example of what my music situation is like out here. I checked out the U2 tour schedule. They are playing like six dates in Chicago, back in the old homestead. In the fall they are doing a show in St. Louis. Where are they playing the night before? Omaha. Yes, Bono has decided that Omaha (Current tourism slogan: A Decade of Plumbing) is a better town to play than Kansas City. This is just another instance of Bono deciding to intentionally screw me over.

(Yes, I still blame Bono personally for costing me a date in college. And I’ve never forgiven the band for that. Well that, and the absolutely awful Pop album. It’s tough to regain any sense of respect after that monstrosity.)

Really not much on tap right now. I’m getting ready to head out for the night, as it is the night before night. I’ve got a four day weekend, thanks to the fact that I have to use up some vacation days before the end of the quarter. So I’ve decided to take the guy’s holidays (first days of the tournament and St. Patrick’s Day) and turn them into my vacation. It’s so fun to have people at work ask what are you planning to do and be perfectly honest in a response of “sleep, watch basketball and drink beer. I’ll probably never get in my car the next four days.” Heck, I used to take these days off when I was in high school and literally watch every minute of basketball. Those were the days.

Of course, I still have to do things like clean my apartment. At some point I’m just going to break down and outsource that function. I don’t mind doing laundry since that requires minimal effort. (I have an iron somewhere in my apartment but it takes too much effort to find, much less use). It’s the clean the counters, vacuum, through all the paperwork that has piled up over the past week into the guest room on the off chance that the filing fairy will appear in the middle of the night and take care of it for me, and all of those things that bore me to tears. It’s better than my grad school apartment, which I believe has since been condemned, but it still needs to work. Heck, I’m looking at outsourcing my social life, I might as well consider outsourcing all the other aspects as well. I’ll subcontract my job to someone if anyone is willing.

I’ll have a holiday and basketball update tomorrow. My Final Four is Illinois, Duke, U Conn and Wake Forest with Illinois over Duke (naturally). Go Illini. (Oh, if you’ve read the article about the lawsuit on the Chief mascot for Illinois I want to make one thing clear. They quote one of the claimants as being from the University of Illinois at Chicago who was upset by the mascot. The University of Illinois at Chicago is the Flames. They are not the University of Illinois. Never have been, never will be. Don’t even dare compare the two schools.)

I missed Pi Day!

I can't believe that I forgot that yesterday was Pi day. It's 3.14 get it? And you're supposed to do a shot at 1:59:27. Look, math geeks don't have much to look forward to. Actually, we have nothing to look forward to. So give us this.

(During a high school math contest, I sat down with a buddy of mine and made up the math geek pick up lines. Here they are, fifteen years later

1) Hey baby, want to see my perpindicular bisector?
2) I bet I know where your critical points are.
3) Want to go back to my place and find our points of intersection?
4) Want to see my twelve inch slide rule?

Yeah, I didn't date much in high school)

Well, I bewared (bewore?) the Ides of March and it appears that I have made it through the day unscathed. Knock on wood, or at least the woodlike substance that this desk is made out of. This has been the epitome of a quiet day. Not much happening at work, all I did at home was finish my laundry and other than that I really don’t have much to write about. Which should make for a very interesting post.

I am continuing to see bad vanity plates throughout the metro region. The two latest offenders: THINK and MRWEIRD. While I appreciate the intent behind the first, I somehow have a feeling that your license plate is not the best place in the world to make your stand in a fight against ignorance. And the second one was on a mini-van, which is just frightening. At some point I’ll start writing about bumper stickers as well. Yes, four months into this project and I am already trolling the comedy depths.

Let’s face it, this is the week of lost productivity. You’ve got the first round of the NCAA tournament, which is everyone’s focus at work and causes me to take two days off. Add to that St. Patrick’s Day, which is a great celebration for a number of us. It’s a huge deal in KC, with the third largest parade in the country (a fact I still don’t quite believe), and you’ve got people gearing up for that. And it is springtime, with the weather finally warming up and no one wanting to spend hours in a cramped office when they can go outside without a coat for the first time in months. This would be a great time for the president to declare the week off so everybody could get their shit together (concept courtesy of The Onion).

Of course, I still have that interview matter hanging over me. I’m looking for ways to ditch it, more out of a fear that I would actually spend the money more than anything. It’s just that feeling that once you do something like this you are declaring for the world that you are desperate and I just don’t feel that way. Anxious, yes. In a hurry, definitely. But there is still some time on the clock and I figure that I could pass the ball around a little and still get off a good shot. Sure, I need to get the ball inbounds first but that is only a slight matter. (Yes, I really do think that everything can be explained using a sports metaphor)

That’s about it. Have a good Wednesday everyone. And knock ‘em dead Maggie.

Jager and Diet?

A lot of people wonder what my life is actually like on the weekends. Here are some fun stories, all of which are true.

Friday night I went out with a buddy of mine to Lawrence to see the guy who used to be in Archers of Loaf. Good show with some weird opening act that had a guy playing an accordion, a chick playing a tuba, and a drummer who played the trumpet. It was one of those bands that you watch and go, “I’m going to applaud these guys because I have no idea how you even get the inspiration to try something like this.” But had a really good time and it of course turned into a very late night for me.

So I decide to not set my alarm on Saturday morning and just sleep in. Or until 7:30 when I suddenly hear music. And someone talking over a loudspeaker that is apparently pointed directly at my apartment. Stumble to my window and wonder “Why are all these people walking past my apartment?” Apparently a 10 K had broken out outside without warning so I got to spend the hours I intended to sleep listening to random music and someone trying to encourage runners to move faster.

Incredibly, I actually accomplished some errands on Saturday afternoon and having watched enough basketball during the day, headed out to the bars. It was supposed to be a quick night, just a couple of drinks and then back home. I somehow ended up talking to this woman from Des Moines and before I knew it I was suddenly helping to close the bar. Ever have one of those bar conversations that last three hours and at the end of it you can’t remember a single bit? Or the girl’s name? It was one of those. All I remember is buying her a Jager and Diet (hey, she requested it.) Actually, props to anyone who can drink one of those and be in any way functional.

Which I certainly wasn’t on Sunday. My original plan was to take care of a lot of errands in my apartment while watching basketball. That soon changed to just watching basketball. Then to lying on my couch and watching basketball. And finally changed to lying on my couch, listening to the game and occasionally turning towards the television to ensure that I could still read the score. Yeah, Saturday night went a little longer than I anticipated. And as a result I’m writing this while doing laundry, which I could have done yesterday and still slept on my couch at the same time.

Ok, an update on yesterday’s post. As the comment stated, it is a pretty high price tag. Too high for my taste. I mean, that is the same price and with a laptop I’d get a warranty and I’d know the pre-loaded software and could probably test a floor model at the store. Not the case here. Wouldn’t even get a chance to see the potentials beforehand. Just seems to be a poor investment choice. True, the return on investment could be great in certain circumstances but the risk/reward equation seems to be off (wow, the b-school training is really paying off).

One other alternative on the idea of joining a conference is to finally get on emode/eharmony and put together my entry. Obviously I have no problem with sharing information on myself on the web (and a shout out to my readers in Singapore). The biggest challenges are a) my laziness and b) the fact that I don’t have a digital picture of myself where I am not either a) drinking or b) wearing a wrestling mask (long story). I’m not sure if it will be more effective but it would have to be more cost effective. Keep the ideas coming.

Audience participation time...

I’ll start off with props to two of my schools, Illinois and Duke, for getting number one seeds and winning the Big Ten and ACC. Illinois has a pretty good bracket (I’m a bit worried about Oklahoma State) and with the “no need to get on a plane” setup they might make their first final four in sixteen years. Duke is going to have a bit of a challenge but given that I thought that they would be a four seed I’m just happy that they’ve won the ACC. I’m still pissed that Notre Dame and DePaul are in the NIT. I really wanted more out of them. Oh well, next couple of weeks should be interesting.

Now for what I’ve been wanting to write about for the past few days. In a conversation with one of my long time drinking buddies the topic of my social life (or lack of it) came up. And I came up with one of my great lines, “Much like Notre Dame, this independent schedule is killing me. I really need to join a conference.” Meaning that I’ve got to do something a bit more organized than going to the same bars every night. And one of the things that he suggested (or more accurately, dared) that I do was talk to one of those dating services places. You know the ones where they set you up for dinner with random people and you see what happens.

Given the fact that I’ve seen Ani Difranco on a dare, calling up this place seemed to be perfectly reasonable. I figured that there were two possibilities A) either this is going to be really useful and interesting or b) it’s going to be so funny that it will make a great blog posting. I’m still not sure which one is currently in effect.

See, I called the place last week and got information. Well, first I talked to an incredibly peppy woman who was so happy I called and was really excited to hear from me. That’s probably my first concern, as I am dealing with someone who is more upbeat than I would be after about six tabs of ecstasy. So, I got the details: they’ve set up over 4,000 meetings over the last year, they’ve got a clientele in their 20s and 30s and 40s, almost all are college grads and a large number have advanced degrees, I’d be guaranteed 16 dates in the next year, and it would cost me fifteen hundred bucks.

Yes, that last number is correct.

No, I still don’t believe that figure. It raises the following questions:

1) Is the market rate for a finder fee for setting me up on a date really $100?
2) More accurately, is anyone reading this willing to submit a lower bid?
3) While I’ll always agree with the statement that desperate times call for desperate measures, this seems to conjure up images of going mosquito hunting with a bazooka.
4) I’m trying to think of just what else I could do with $1500 that would be more enjoyable. Hell, that’s a vacation in New Orleans for me. Or I could revamp my entire wardrobe. Or pay for the liposuction and get those pec implants that I’ve always had my eyes on. (That last one is a joke. I mean, pec implants do exist but it’s just not my style)
5) What kind of person throws down that type of change for a service like this? I mean, it does guarantee a pretty high level of clientele but I’m really at a loss.

(Fun fact # 1: while talking to the incredibly peppy woman she asked me to tell a bit of my story. Gave her my quick spiel: from Chicago, went to B-School, got a job out here, and am having a hell of a time meeting people. Her response: “You’re from Chicago? Oh, you must feel like you’re in a different world out here.” You know, when the dating service goes, “You’re completely screwed” it’s just not a good sign.)

So here is where we currently stand. I have not spent any money on this. But I do have an appointment scheduled later this week to meet with them and talk about the situation some more. Given when I scheduled it, there is an incredibly high possibility that I will show up for this interview hungover, unshaven and wearing a Speed Racer t-shirt. And that’s if I decide to go through with it. And that is where you, my faithful reader(s) come in.

I need advice and I need it rapidly. Does this sound like a good idea? Or should I just give the money to charity, claim the good karma, and just go out and try harder? If I do it and write about it in the blog, does it qualify as a tax writeoff? So I’m looking for ideas. Anyone who wants to chime in, throw out a better option, donate to the cause, whatever, post your comments. Trust me, all ideas are welcome right about now. I have a feeling that the comedy potential of this is out of sight but this might be a bit too much to do just for a laugh.

The five random CDs for the week:
1) Loreena McKennit “Live in Paris and Toronto”
2) John Wesley Harding “Awake”
3) Old 97’s “Fight Songs”
4) Various Artists “Emerald Rock” (A rather fitting entry for the week)
5) The subdues “Miracle Mule”

The Cobain Diaries

(Insanely late right now. I'm just stealing something verbatim from the Onion)

Journals, a book culled from the various journal entries of Kurt Cobain, recently hit bookstores. Among the revelations

• Admitted he had all of Sonic Youth's albums only so people would think he was cool
• Smoked pot once at summer camp
• Got to sixth base with Courtney Love
• Margins filled with drawings of monster trucks
• Thought racism, sexism was wrong
• Was upset Husker Du never wrote back
• Aug. 8, 1987: "The cackling vampires dance on our graves."
• Aug. 9, 1987: "Note to self: tequila and mushrooms don't mix"
• Sometimes kinda wondered if maybe Love was a power hungry, attention craving bitch with violent tendencies and no discernible talent who was riding his coattails to a major record deal and would eventually drive him to an early grave
• Despite all the problems they had together, always maintained a deep, abiding love for heroin.

Have a good weekend everybody. Go Illini.

The Cobain Diaries

(Insanely late right now. I'm just stealing something verbatim from the Onion)

Journals, a book culled from the various journal entries of Kurt Cobain, recently hit bookstores. Among the revelations

• Admitted he had all of Sonic Youth's albums only so people would think he was cool
• Smoked pot once at summer camp
• Got to sixth base with Courtney Love
• Margins filled with drawings of monster trucks
• Thought racism, sexism was wrong
• Was upset Husker Du never wrote back
• Aug. 8, 1987: "The cackling vampires dance on our graves."
• Aug. 9, 1987: "Note to self: tequila and mushrooms don't mix"
• Sometimes kinda wondered if maybe Love was a power hungry, attention craving bitch with violent tendencies and no discernible talent who was riding his coattails to a major record deal and would eventually drive him to an early grave
• Despite all the problems they had together, always maintained a deep, abiding love for heroin.

Have a good weekend everybody. Go Illini.

Still searching for a coherent thought

Very random thoughts…

1) In what is probably the best news that I’ve heard all year, both Katie Holmes and Shannon Elizabeth are back on the market. I’m leaning towards Katie here and if you’ve seen the film The Gift, you’ll understand why.
2) Probably the most amazing fact is that Shannon Elizabeth is my age. Which means she was playing a high school student while in her late twenties. There is some Faustian bargain going on there that really needs to be examined. But I’ll have to admit, she looks really good for her age. I doubt any of my classmates look like that. I sure don’t look that good.
3) In looking at the concert listings I can get tickets for the Dave Matthews Tribute Band. Not the Dave Matthews Band but an incredibly lifelike simulation. And this show is at one of the biggest clubs in town. They are playing at a venue that is bigger than the one where I saw Social Distortion, Big Head Todd and the Monsters and Ani Difranco. While I will usually claim that there is a decent music scene in this town it’s at times like this that I really begin to think that the people here are insane.
4) We’ve got the Big 12 tournament in town this week so I’ve been seeing all the bars put up banners inviting fans of various schools. Not like they are using big words or anything, this is the Big 12 after all. The funnier thing is that they have put out this big LCD board in Westport that I can see from my dining room. I’m having dinner and out of the corner of my eye I see, “Welcome to Kansas City”, “March Madness” and random Big 12 logos. It’s tough to concentrate on eating when all you see is the Texas Tech logo.
5) I really think that there should be definite rules as to what can be on the communal television set in a workout room. For a long time the regular crew that is there when I work out had agreed that the only thing that could be shown was either Friends, Seinfeld, or a major sporting event (ESPN only, no curling championships on ESPN2). Apparently everyone has forgotten the rules. Today I worked out to Everybody Loves Raymond. Not exactly the most inspiring show in the world. Definitely doesn’t make time go faster. Still not the worst thing that I’ve been forced to watch, which was Oprah After the Show on the Oxygen network. If you ever want a forty minute workout to seem like it lasted for three days watch that show.
6) For the music fans out there, check out the Wakarusa line up (Wakarusa is a music festival held in Lawrence in June). Wilco, Son Volt, North Mississippi All Stars, Little Feat, Old Crow Medicine Show, my hopefully future wife Neko Case and many more. Yes, Wilco and Son Volt on the same bill. This might be the first chance in a long time for even the possibility of an Uncle Tupelo reunion. If you find yourself in Kansas, it might not be a bad option to end up at the show.

The Tao of Steve

(We’re going to continue in the “It worked two years ago, it sure has hell better work now” vein and discuss the movie The Tao of Steve. Seriously, I am reliving Spring Break 2003. Checking my old writer’s journals I wrote about this movie exactly two years ago this week.)

Anyway, The Tao of Steve featuring Donal Logue (who you know from Fox’s Grounded for Life and every other comment on VH-1’s I Love the [Insert Decade Here]). I’ll readily admit to stealing quoted from a number of movies and passing them off as my own. It’s one of the benefits of watching indie films, you get to appear smart with a lot less legwork. The Tao of Steve is different, since I borrow an entire philosophy from this one.

It’s a very simple idea, you must become a Steve as opposed to a Stu. See, Steve’s are cool. You’ve got Steve Austin (in both Six Million Dollar Man and Stone Cold forms). You’ve got take no prisoners pitcher Steve Carlton. And you’ve got Steve McQueen, who was cool and got the girls without even lifting a finger. That is what you are to emulate if you want to be successful in the social arena. And all you need to do is follow three simple steps: Be Desireless, Be Excellent, and Be Gone.

The first part is pure Taoism. You must empty yourself of all desire and learn to want without wanting, seek without seeking and pursuer without pursuing. I know, I know, wax on and wax off and all of that crap. But trust me, if you can cleanse your mind of desire it greatly increases your opportunities.

The other two parts are much more straightforward. Be excellent in the other’s presence. Basically just prove your worth, show that you are worth their oxygen. (Actually, that’s a basic rule of life, always provide evidence that you are doing more for the planet than just sucking oxygen and expelling greenhouse gases.) And the last rule, as someone once yelled at me, is “Stop hovering”.

Why am I writing about this? Or more accurately, why did I watch the movie again tonight? Well, it is first of all a really good movie. Nothing fancy but it is worth checking out just from a cinematic perspective. But really it is because the philosophy works and I’ve forgotten it over the past year or so. And it isn’t a trick about becoming someone who you are not, it’s about becoming the best person you can possibly be. Just three simple rules and some intelligence and you can succeed. So, I think it is time to give the Tao another try. And this time I’m going to follow through until completion.

Next movie review: High Fidelity, also known as “The book I should have written first” and “Who in their right mind cast Lisa Bonet in that role?”

The New Guy

I can’t believe that I forgot to bring this up last night. My short term memory must have completely disappeared over the past few years. You can keep the binge drinking comments to yourself, thank you very much. Anyway, the Simpsons did a great effort Sunday night to make me rethink my claim that they have jumped the shark. One, they had a great bit about restraining orders and the guy who remembers that his father taught him that winners never quit and never say die. Trust me, any guy who has tried to pull off the Say Anything move, which means every guy, knows that bit is funny.

What almost made me roll off the couch laughing was the following. Otto can barely control the bus on an icy hill so they break out the chains. As in the kids are dragging the bus up the hill. Uter: “This reminds me of Fitzcarraldo.” Nelson (punching him): “That movie was flawed.” Now there are only two groups of people who get that joke 1) fans of German film director Werner Herzog and 2) fans of the band The Frames who have an entire song based on the movie. I’m in the latter category along with maybe five thousand other people. It’s jokes like that that make the Simpsons cool.

Ok, so I watched The New Guy again tonight. Which if I’m not mistaken I also watched exactly two years ago. My future biographers along with those of you who have been part of the EC experience will know why this is important. Lots of good things in the movie. First of all, any movie with Lyle Lovett in it, including Lyle going “You’re never too old to change” is going to be a good movie. Also, there are enough cameos in the movie to make it a better parody of teen movies than Not Another Teen Movie. I mean you’ve got Vanilla Ice, Kool Moe Dee, Henry Rollins, Tony Hawk, David fuckin Hasselhoff, what else can you ask for? There is even a cameo that wasn’t a cameo then but is now, as Jai from Queer Eye is in the movie. Wow, I guess he really was an actor.

(Oh yeah, and Eliza Dushku. ‘Nuff said.)

Of course, the entire reason why I watched the movie was for inspiration. I’ve somehow found myself in the same situation as I was in two years ago, with a great need to reinvent myself and take control. Which is what the movie is about, in a weird teen comedy sort of way. I know that I am little too old to be taking my cues from movies about high school but if I’ve found one thing out these past few months is that real life is still like high school. You can still feel like an outcast, still feel picked on, still hate the jocks, all the cliques still exist. The fun thing is now you actually know how to change things and take control. All I know is that I watched the flick and now I feel like taking on the world. And hey, ending up with Eliza Dushku (or Zooey Deschanel for that matter) wouldn’t be a bad way to finish things up.

Tomorrow, quite possibly the best film of the decade, The Tao of Steve. The only film that has become its own philosophy. Well, besides The Matrix and Road House. Later.

Wrestling over tiny matters

I don’t have a coherent thought in my head right now. Ok, not like that is anything new but I just felt that it needed to be stated. On the plus side, I have a ton of random thoughts rattling around my brain so I figure that this is going to be one of those all over the board posts…

1) Had my windows open today, since it was in the seventies and I needed fresh air to counteract my latest cooking experiments. (Like most single guys, I’m not proud of the fact that anything that I cook tastes good. I’m proud of the fact that I can cook for myself and the majority of the time not burn down my apartment. Come on, I’ve only set off the smoke detector once in the past year). Anyway, I saw a warning sticker on the window that stated “Warning: Open windows may be hazardous.” You know, if you paid attention to the warning labels you would never leave the house.

2) When people ask me what my social circle is like, this story is going to come up. Went to see the North Mississippi All Stars on Friday night. So, who do I run into there? Someone from work? From church? From my apartment? No, of course not. I run into a bartender I know. I really have no idea what this says about me.

3) This was a crappy weekend for me basketball wise. Notre Dame lost, Duke blew a lead at North Carolina and Illinois lost its perfect season. For someone who does turn to sports when he is stressed out and takes comfort in his team winning this really was what I didn’t need right about now. On the other hand, Kansas lost so at least I have a little schadenfreude to fall back on.

4) Didn’t go out last night but that resulted in a very interesting discovery. For the first time probably since I moved here I was a) awake at 8 on a Sunday and b) not hungover. So, I decided to take advantage of the situation and go grocery shopping in a completely empty store. Probably because everyone else was either a) at church or b) hungover and in some cases c) both. I doubt that I’d be able to keep this schedule consistently but it is a nice thing to know.

5) To whoever posted the rather helpful comment on Saturday. A) It’s rather tough finding someone older than me at an Ani concert in Lawrence, B) I did actually meet several righteous babes at the show, C) it is quite possible that one was hitting on me, and D) if I had the skills to pick up a girl at an Ani show I’d probably be complaining a lot less about my life right now. But thanks for the comment, I really should have tried something.

6) Oh, and for those of you who have been having to deal with me in the real world, I probably owe a few apologies. I’ve been spending a little too much time in that dark place inside my soul, which leaves me sitting around bitching about my life and hating everything and never bothering to think about the fact that if you hate something it might be nice to try to do something to fix it for a change instead of complaining about it. So, I’ll be focusing on fixing things over the next few months, which should result in either some great revelations or some high comedy. At this point, I’ll take either transcendence or farce.

The five random CDs for the week
1) Zachary Richard “Women in the Room”
2) Chris Mills “Kiss It Goodbye”
3) Cowboy Junkies “One Soul Now” (So much for Excel’s random number generator. Third Cowboy Junkies disc in two weeks)
4) John Hiatt “The Best of John Hiatt”
5) Sarah McLachlan “Touch” (As always, thanks to the Canadian girlfriend for having me listen to this one on my commute. Sheesh.)

More tv memories

Ok, quick comment on yesterday's post. If you really want to waste a portion of your day, check out www.ycdtotv.com the website dedicated to You Can't Do That on Television. There are times when I wonder if spending fifteen minutes or a half hour of my life writing about a tv show I watched as a kid is a good use of my time. Then I come across a site like this and I realize that they are people way more intense about this stuff than I am. I mean, I'm not chasing down former cast members for interviews.

Oh, and Alaistar did kick all kinds of ass. And I completely forgot about the water gag and the torture room sketches. Talk about a show that would have no chance of making it on the air today. But I would give so much money to have the old episodes on DVD. Whoever in Canada is sitting on the rights to these things has the ability to just print money. Come on, if you saw this at Best Buy wouldn't you buy it? I almost bought the full season of The Greatest American Hero and the most memorable thing about that show was the theme song.

(Believe it or not I'm walking on air. I never thought I could feel so free...)

Some people have figured out the easy windfall in the DVD market. They've started to release the ABC afternoon specials, which is jsut a brilliant move. And they've put out some of the cool old shows, like Mork and Mindy, which almost merit viewing (because man was Pam Dawber hot back during the day. This is one of those top 10 Gen X shows that Gen Y will never understand). I mean, I know it is just manufactured nostalgia but there is something cool about getting to revisit the shows of your youth. Even with my 400 channel cable system, I still don't get to watch all of the cool reruns. (Speaking of that, they've released What's Happening, which was also required channel 32 viewing as a kid).

Now what I really want them to release is Emergency, which I would watch every day in the summer since they showed it at 10 in the morning in Chicago. An hour drama on firefighters and ambulence crews. The show wasn't very good but man, anytime when you can guarantee a nine year old kid that he'd get to see fire trucks and hear alarms you knew it was going to be a good day. See, things really were better back in the day.

Have a good weekend everyone.

Forgotten television shows: volume two

As promised, we here at Battling the Current will continue in our retrospective of the forgotten television shows that changed our lives. Today’s entry…

You Can’t Do That On Television

(Otherwise known as proof that Canadians are funny.)

If you were a kid growing up with cable in the mid-80’s this was required daily viewing. I mean, if you ask anyone who grew up in Chicago in that time frame and asked them what they watched growing up here would be the answer. “I watched Bozo in the morning before going to school and then watched G.I. Joe, Transformers, He-Man and You Can’t Do That On Television after school.” It was just a rule. Everyone turned on Nickelodeon every afternoon and watched. Didn’t matter that you were seeing the same episode for the hundredth time, you watched.

Everyone remembers the green slime. If at any point in the show one of the actors answered a question with the words “I don’t know” they had green slime poured over their head. And there was always the one smarmy kid who reveled in the fact that he could always trick everyone else into saying it. This would go on for weeks at a time and when he finally got hit you actually cheered.

But man, there were so many inspired comedy bits on that show. You had the locker gags. The set was just a row of lockers and the actors would just pop out of them and tell really bad jokes for like five minutes. It was like the cool junior high that you didn’t attend. Then there was the firing squad bit. It was never quite explained why a twelve year old would be standing in front of a firing squad in some Banana Republic (the nation, not the store) but they would always figure out a way to make the last request joke funny with the fat commandant always getting shot in the end. And the diner! Running jokes about rats in the food! Now that was comedy.

I’m serious in saying that I probably picked up most of my sense of humor and a lot of my writing style from this show. There was a lot of slapstick and bizarre sketch comedy but a lot of emphasis on being clever and witty. It was noncomformist, no plot, no overall purpose to the show. They broke down the fourth wall. You knew they were all actors, they would show the backstage and talk about their pay but you also knew that it was a show. It was post modernism for ten year olds. It was that first step you took in learning about the absurdities of the world and that the only way to deal with them was to learn to laugh about it. Monty Python for kids, that was the show in a nutshell.

Here is the amazing thing. I’m sitting here with my hair slowly turning gray and I can recite entire sketches from a show that I watched more than half a lifetime ago. I can tell you that the major cast members were Christine, Lisa, Kevin, Alison, and of course Alanis (who went on to become much more famous talking about a guy (Dave Couler actually) and a theater but that’s another story). There are entire years of my life that don’t contain as many memories as I have of this show.

Most people probably never knew this show existed. But for a few of us out there, this is where we learned what comedy was all about.

Coming up in our next installment: Night Court, otherwise known as the comedic genius that is Richard Moll.

Vanity Plates

I'm actually getting to write this a little earlier in the night than I previously thought. Went to the Keller Williams show this evening but left early due to an implementation of the Deadhead Rule. The Deadhead Rule states that if I am at a show where the crowd consists mainly of Deadheads I can leave at any time without feeling bad because doing nothing is probably a better option than hanging out with Deadheads. I'm serious, my dislike for having to be around nineteen year olds (who unless they were going to shows when they were nine never saw the band) trying to act quasi-hippie is off the charts. Plus, I don't think I could get high enough to ever think that wearing a tye-died shirt that says "Jim Morrison An American Poet" is a good idea. Jim Morrison, the most overrated person in the history of the planet.

Changing topics. One of the things that I noticed when I moved out here is that there is an abundance of vanity license plates. And not just vanity plates, really bad plates. Ones that make you question the intelligence of the driver. So in order to share what I've seen I've actually kept track of the plates that I've seen driving around town. And I swear, I am not making any of these up.

• MYHOOPT
• 5REARS
• FAT DADY
• HONKER
• LUV IT
• RCKCHLK
• LA NENA
• RAHEL (Looking at the driver, I believe she was either a) unable or b) too cheap to spell Rachel)
• KNG TUT
• 2CUTE4U
• RASTA (On a car driven by a white guy, naturally)
• PHAT VW (my winner for oxymoron of the year)
• HOLLA (I swear, this was on a car that had a University of Nebraska alumi license plate frame. I believe that just by attending the University of Nebraska that you should never be allowed to use the word "Holla" in a sentence, much less place it on your car.)
• OOHLALA
• COCHISE (Actually, this one is pretty cool)
• SASYMMA (I'm happy I didn't see the driver of this car)
• DOS WHO
• MY PRIUS
• WERLOVD
• VIR2US (Ok, show of hands. How many people think that the driver of this car has to be an insufferable prick? I thought so.)
• WHOOPI
• ORALE
• GUZZLER (on the biggest SUV you've ever seen)
• WHAT (which is cool in a post-modern sort of way)

Again, for those of you who wonder why I'm always ragging on Kansas, well, here is your proof.