Sunday, August 13, 2006

Reaching for the green light...

Sometimes you just have to give credit where credit is due. The cast of Celebrity Fit Club did an incredible job of losing weight, putting my measly pound and a half lost to shame. I mean, Goth Tina Yothers dropped like eleven pounds, which is something that I would like to accomplish over two months. Admittedly, they are all taking advantage of special diets while I tend to just try to institute portion control and cut down on my snacking. I’m sorry but I don’t go for the detox diet where I can only eats fruits and vegetables because, well, this is America and I get to eat steak.

I saw another really interesting show tonight. On Ovation (the arts channel, also known as channel 387), they had this BBC special from 2000 on The Great Gatsby. Obviously, this is something that keeps me glued to the television for an hour as Gatsby is the greatest American novel and what inspires me to keep writing in the hope that I will one day write something that is a tenth as good as that novel. What is interesting (and rather chilling in retrospect) is the discussion on American culture and how much the 2000 culture resembled Gatsby. Internet millionaires being created by the minute, wealth and excess everywhere, and just this sense that nothing could go wrong and this will last forever. On the show Hunter S. Thompson said, “I fear what will happen when this all collapses.”

Can you even remember what life was like back in 2000? It seems almost like another world to me. The biggest fear was Y2K and when that didn’t happen we all laughed and thought the world was ours for the taking. I remember flying to Europe that year with my biggest fear being how to deal with jet lag. Now I’m concerned about even the concept of getting on a plane without having everyone screened and rescreened a dozen times before getting onboard. Maybe that is the best analogy for what we are living in right now, it’s the Great Depression in more ways than one. We question our government, we question our leaders and there are times when you really wonder if there is light at the end of the tunnel. Just a thought that has been spinning in my head.

Otherwise this has been a bit of a blah weekend for me. As in I spent part of Saturday night doing laundry and cleaning my apartment, which is not something I imagine that Fitzgerald was doing when he was my age. I did get the liner notes done (finally) so expect the CDs to be in the mail this week. But it has just simply been too hot to really do anything. It seems like every day this past month has been 100 degrees and muggy and you don’t even want to step outside to pick up the mail. You’d rather just sit inside and watch preseason football because of the absolute joy that one receives by watching a fourth string running back who you’ll never hear of again. Still better than watching the Royals give up 11 runs in the first inning, though.

The five random CDs for the week (and it’s an alt-country quintuple play)
1) The Jayhawks “Hollywood Town Hall”
2) Jack Ingram “Jack Ingram’s Acoustic Motel”
3) Gear Daddies “Billy’s Live Bait”
4) Nickel Creek “Nickel Creek”
5) Whiskeytown “Strangers Almanac”

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