Like most of you, I am hugely disappointed by the fact that Scarlett Johansen is not going to be portraying Jenna Jameson in the biopic based on her bestseller as was rumored. I am also rather saddened at the state of modern society when a) Jenna Jameson could write (ok, talk to someone who was writing) a bestseller and b) they would decide to make a movie from it. Isn’t a movie kind of redundant? I’m pretty sure her entire life is available on VHS or DVD as it is.
Switching topics, I read an article in USA Today on the movie Stardust. (Hey, someone left the paper in the cafeteria, it’s not like I bought a copy.) Anyway, Stardust is one of those films that I am pulling for to be successful this summer as it is based on a graphic novel by one of my favorite writers, Neil Gaiman. Anything that makes more people aware of his writing is a good thing. One of the points that he made was that he intentionally set the story in Victorian England because he wanted that conflict between the mystical middle ages and the scientific age. And that made me once again think of Harry Potter, or more accurately how there could not be an American version of Harry Potter.
Ever think about that? It seems so natural that the books are set in England. Magical trains taking young wizards and witches off to a castle that serves as a boarding school seems perfectly sensible in that setting. You couldn’t write that same story in Pennsylvania or New York or at least not without making it a lot darker. Characters can learn magic in the states but it would be in back alleys and darkened rooms. Someone could conceivably learn to be a wizard in New Orleans but you wouldn’t want to send a twelve year old there.
(Did I tell the story of the parents pushing their baby stroller down Bourbon Street at ten in the evening yet? Saw that when I was down there last month. Damndest thing I ever saw.)
It’s a very interesting point, England still has a natural connection to its magic while in America it is long gone. It’s been paved over for a strip mall whereas in England you tend to uncover large stones standing in a field for no reason or a hill that may or may not exist. Part of that is the nature of history. America is a young country (ok, not really but we made the mistake of running all of the people with history off the land) and as a result it doesn’t really have a past. I’ve always used that as a reason to explain why sports are so important in our culture. We don’t have a mythology, there are no stories of King Arthur or St. George and the Dragon, so instead we needed to create a Babe Ruth and a Muhammed Ali. We need archetypes and where they don’t exist we will create them.
That’s probably why I’m drawn to England in a lot of ways. There is something about having history, especially a history where myth and fact are intertwined, that fascinates me. It’s probably why I like New Orleans so much, it is the only place in this country that I’ve found where you feel that you are truly in a place and not a movie set or a collection of buildings called a town. But mainly I think I like the fact that it is a place where you can place the magical and have it seem commonplace. It’s nice to know that some of those places have made it to the present day.
Tuesday, July 31, 2007
Monday, July 30, 2007
Surviving the reality landscape
Well, at least the light posts are now affirming my existence. Is it a good sign when inanimate objects are the most positive thing that you encounter all day? Or that you pay enough attention to them that you are drawn to break out the camera phone on a daily basis?
Anyway, there is big news in the reality television world or as I like to put it, the only world that actually matters. It deals with the Discovery Channel, which is currently celebrating Shark Week though I do encourage everyone to live every week as if it is Shark Week. Truer words have never been spoken. Aside aside, the controversy is that, gasp, Man vs, Wild may not be entirely realistic and the host Bear Grylls may have during filming slept in a hotel.
(Some background for those of you who don’t watch the show, which is one of the shows that I catch while flipping channels and can never seem to get past. Bear, a former British Special Ops soldier, parachutes into some incredibly harsh climate and he spends several days surviving based on his wits, strength and survival skill until he finds a way back to civilization. It’s a rather enthralling program as you get to see a guy eat bugs, start fires and take on various animals in hand to hand combat.)
There are a couple of parts to this story. The first of all is that it is clear to anyone who ever watched the show that it was at least partly fake due to the fact that he had a several person camera crew with him at all times. He’s not holding the camera, there’s a couple of guys with him doing all of the filming. This takes away some of the loneliness of the situation and also shows that things aren’t quite as deadly as they make it out to be. When Bear crosses a river through some death defying method you have to realize that his crew also crosses the same river and probably without all of the unnecessary heroics. In fact, part of the show is Bear showing off survival techniques that he actually doesn’t need to do so it isn’t just a “Let’s see if I can survive in the Outback by myself.”
Now with that said, if he is actually sleeping in a hotel you have to wonder about the show. Now in some places that had to be impossible, such as in a rain forest or when he was in the middle of Iceland. But, he was also in the Scottish Highlands and the Everglades and in either of those situations you aren’t that far from a warm bed. And while viewers will accept the conceit that this isn’t entirely realistic we don’t want the guy to have an easy time of it either. It’s a strange tradeoff, we feel cheated if Bear isn’t legitimately near death. Otherwise, where’s the entertainment?
That is the strange thing about reality television, it is pretty much a given that nothing is real. Contestants are cast not for skill but for whether they match a character archetype and look good on camera. Competitions are made less to show who is best and more who can meet the goals of the show. Lia lost in Top Chef because she was a French chef made to cook Latin and it didn’t work, which really doesn’t indicate if her skills didn’t match up with the others. Still, we all watch it as a competition than we act as if this false reality is real. That said, we do that every day in the real world as well.
So will I stop watching Man vs. Wild if it isn’t truly real? Nope, it’s still a good way to spend an hour on a lazy Sunday afternoon. I’m not even sure if it will hinder my enjoyment of the show. I’ll just reminded that very little of what is on television is real. Everyone has an agenda, whether it is entertainment or fame or a deeper message. Well, except for American Gladiators reruns. That was when television was pure.
Anyway, there is big news in the reality television world or as I like to put it, the only world that actually matters. It deals with the Discovery Channel, which is currently celebrating Shark Week though I do encourage everyone to live every week as if it is Shark Week. Truer words have never been spoken. Aside aside, the controversy is that, gasp, Man vs, Wild may not be entirely realistic and the host Bear Grylls may have during filming slept in a hotel.
(Some background for those of you who don’t watch the show, which is one of the shows that I catch while flipping channels and can never seem to get past. Bear, a former British Special Ops soldier, parachutes into some incredibly harsh climate and he spends several days surviving based on his wits, strength and survival skill until he finds a way back to civilization. It’s a rather enthralling program as you get to see a guy eat bugs, start fires and take on various animals in hand to hand combat.)
There are a couple of parts to this story. The first of all is that it is clear to anyone who ever watched the show that it was at least partly fake due to the fact that he had a several person camera crew with him at all times. He’s not holding the camera, there’s a couple of guys with him doing all of the filming. This takes away some of the loneliness of the situation and also shows that things aren’t quite as deadly as they make it out to be. When Bear crosses a river through some death defying method you have to realize that his crew also crosses the same river and probably without all of the unnecessary heroics. In fact, part of the show is Bear showing off survival techniques that he actually doesn’t need to do so it isn’t just a “Let’s see if I can survive in the Outback by myself.”
Now with that said, if he is actually sleeping in a hotel you have to wonder about the show. Now in some places that had to be impossible, such as in a rain forest or when he was in the middle of Iceland. But, he was also in the Scottish Highlands and the Everglades and in either of those situations you aren’t that far from a warm bed. And while viewers will accept the conceit that this isn’t entirely realistic we don’t want the guy to have an easy time of it either. It’s a strange tradeoff, we feel cheated if Bear isn’t legitimately near death. Otherwise, where’s the entertainment?
That is the strange thing about reality television, it is pretty much a given that nothing is real. Contestants are cast not for skill but for whether they match a character archetype and look good on camera. Competitions are made less to show who is best and more who can meet the goals of the show. Lia lost in Top Chef because she was a French chef made to cook Latin and it didn’t work, which really doesn’t indicate if her skills didn’t match up with the others. Still, we all watch it as a competition than we act as if this false reality is real. That said, we do that every day in the real world as well.
So will I stop watching Man vs. Wild if it isn’t truly real? Nope, it’s still a good way to spend an hour on a lazy Sunday afternoon. I’m not even sure if it will hinder my enjoyment of the show. I’ll just reminded that very little of what is on television is real. Everyone has an agenda, whether it is entertainment or fame or a deeper message. Well, except for American Gladiators reruns. That was when television was pure.
Sunday, July 29, 2007
Could've used more Quidditch
Ok, I’ll be nice and just write SPOILER ALERT in really big letters here. If you haven’t finished Harry Potter yet you should probably skip this post. Actually, if you’ve had the book for a week and a half and haven’t finished it there is probably something wrong with you. This isn’t something you purchased just to have it on the bookshelf. If you think it is sad that a 33 year old guy is about to propose a master’s thesis on a children’s book I suggest that you just scroll to the end of the post, check out the five random CDs for the week and then come back later in the week when I post my top 20 Simpsons episodes of all time as well as another in a series of in-depth analysis of Generation X. Not sure if either of those are more interesting or relevant than Harry Potter but at least it’s something different.
It’s rather difficult to put any sort of critical measurement next to the Harry Potter series. It was never meant to be literature so arguing that it is not great art misses the point. It is meant to be more of a children’s book so most of the framework that I have in order to call something a good book or not just doesn’t apply here. I’m the wrong age group and the fact that I’ve followed the series might speak more to the quality of the books (and to a lesser extent, the marketing campaign) than anything.
To that extent I can’t call Deathly Hallows a bad book. It is not the best book of the series as that is Azkaban, which was the best marriage of Hogwarts and character advancement along with the introduction of the best character that Rowling ever created in Sirius Black. I wasn’t disappointed in the latest book as most of its flaws are due to the fact that it is the last entry in an epic series and that means that much of the book is spent tying up loose ends. You have to get every character on stage, hold the big battle and explain everything that has ever happened and that tends to make for an unwieldy book. Rowling does a pretty good job at keeping everything moving.
Not to say that there are no flaws. About 150 pages in the middle of the book consist entirely of Harry, Ron and Hermione hanging out in a tent in a forest with nothing happening. A few people are brought up and then disappear. Am I the only one who wonders what happened to Luna’s dad? We never hear him mentioned again, even by Luna. In fact, none of the characters bring up the fact that a) Luna’s dad tried to sell them out and b) they blew up their friend’s house in the escape. You’d think this would be a point of discussion, especially when they meet up with her. There is also Rowling’s unnerving tendency to have the plot revealed by having characters read newspapers aloud. It’s a rather lazy way of writing, much in the same way as you have to wonder why Voldemort would call a cease fire in the battle for the seemingly sole purpose of having Harry run off by himself and look into the pensieve while no one noticed that the Chosen One has disappeared in the middle of a battle.
Of course, that scene does lead into one of the best scenes that Rowling ever wrote, which is Harry walking to his death joined by the ghosts of his parents and Sirius and Lupin, who was apparently killed off to add a fourth to the party. (It was apparently going to be either him or Mr. Weasley.) Now that is a great moment, Harry entering the forest knowing that he is going to die with his parents appearing to tell him how proud they are. And when Harry walked into the camp unarmed I thought that he was really going to die.
Which he kind of did, or didn’t, depending on how you read the next chapter. My view is this, Harry and Voldermort are both killed and their souls go this sort of eternal waiting room where Dumbeldore nicely tries to explain everything. It still is unclear as to why Harry lives, something about his blood running through Voldemort’s veins which doesn’t make sense as to why he can then kill Voldemort later on. Or why we had to stop everything once again to have a metaphysical discussion but that’s the only way to get to the last duel and the happy ending.
There’s bloodshed along the way, of course. You can’t have a huge battle without deaths. I believe that Fred Weasley was killed simply due to the fact that given the sheer number of Weasleys one of them had to die so it was pick a twin. It was sad to have Lupin and Tonks die but it did create symmetry as their newborn son Teddy would now be an orphan with Harry as the godfather. I’m happy that Hagrid didn’t die though it was mainly to have him carry Harry’s lifeless body to Hogwarts. And I am stunned and overjoyed that Neville both survived and got to be a hero. He was probably my favorite minor character.
(But seriously, pulling a sword out of a hat? Even I don’t write anything that bad.)
Would I have killed Harry? That’s a real question. From my point of view, it would have been better from a literary point of view for him to make the ultimate sacrifice to prevent evil from taking over the world. But that is looking at it from an adult’s world view where noble sacrifice ends in death. At the end of the day, this is a children’s book and the hero has to live to see the end.
And the end might be the one part I question. The epilogue is written simply to show that everyone has lived happily ever after. Ron and Hermione are married with kids (and I assume that Ron spends most of his nights at the pub with Hagrid trying to avoid Hermione’s incessant nagging. Imagine that for the rest of your life.) Harry and Ginny get married and have their little kids. All of them go off to Hogwarts and are happy. It’s nice to know that everyone lived happily ever after but it does kill any sense of drama or progress. You know nothing other than they have turned into these thirtysomething couples who are now battling lower back pain. I’m not sure if it made the story any better. But it’s a fairy tale and you need to have “All was well” as the last words.
In the end, Rowling has done something that places her in the same realm as C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkein. First of all, no one can remember her first name, only her initials. But more importantly, she has created her own mythology that struck a chord in the public and it is more than just a fad. There is a real power to the work and it can vary between being touching and funny and invigorating. Not bad for a children’s book.
(Still, if you need to read more about wizards I cannot recommend enough Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. Several times I came back from England with several copies of his books because they just weren’t printed in the states yet. Just a great series of books.)
The five random CDs for the week:
1) Iris DeMent “Lifeline”
2) The Handsome Family “In The Air”
3) The Iguanas “Plastic Silver 9 Volt Heart”
4) Peter, Bjorn and John “Writer’s Block”
5) Bruce Robison, Charlie Robison and Jack Ingram “Unleashed Live”
It’s rather difficult to put any sort of critical measurement next to the Harry Potter series. It was never meant to be literature so arguing that it is not great art misses the point. It is meant to be more of a children’s book so most of the framework that I have in order to call something a good book or not just doesn’t apply here. I’m the wrong age group and the fact that I’ve followed the series might speak more to the quality of the books (and to a lesser extent, the marketing campaign) than anything.
To that extent I can’t call Deathly Hallows a bad book. It is not the best book of the series as that is Azkaban, which was the best marriage of Hogwarts and character advancement along with the introduction of the best character that Rowling ever created in Sirius Black. I wasn’t disappointed in the latest book as most of its flaws are due to the fact that it is the last entry in an epic series and that means that much of the book is spent tying up loose ends. You have to get every character on stage, hold the big battle and explain everything that has ever happened and that tends to make for an unwieldy book. Rowling does a pretty good job at keeping everything moving.
Not to say that there are no flaws. About 150 pages in the middle of the book consist entirely of Harry, Ron and Hermione hanging out in a tent in a forest with nothing happening. A few people are brought up and then disappear. Am I the only one who wonders what happened to Luna’s dad? We never hear him mentioned again, even by Luna. In fact, none of the characters bring up the fact that a) Luna’s dad tried to sell them out and b) they blew up their friend’s house in the escape. You’d think this would be a point of discussion, especially when they meet up with her. There is also Rowling’s unnerving tendency to have the plot revealed by having characters read newspapers aloud. It’s a rather lazy way of writing, much in the same way as you have to wonder why Voldemort would call a cease fire in the battle for the seemingly sole purpose of having Harry run off by himself and look into the pensieve while no one noticed that the Chosen One has disappeared in the middle of a battle.
Of course, that scene does lead into one of the best scenes that Rowling ever wrote, which is Harry walking to his death joined by the ghosts of his parents and Sirius and Lupin, who was apparently killed off to add a fourth to the party. (It was apparently going to be either him or Mr. Weasley.) Now that is a great moment, Harry entering the forest knowing that he is going to die with his parents appearing to tell him how proud they are. And when Harry walked into the camp unarmed I thought that he was really going to die.
Which he kind of did, or didn’t, depending on how you read the next chapter. My view is this, Harry and Voldermort are both killed and their souls go this sort of eternal waiting room where Dumbeldore nicely tries to explain everything. It still is unclear as to why Harry lives, something about his blood running through Voldemort’s veins which doesn’t make sense as to why he can then kill Voldemort later on. Or why we had to stop everything once again to have a metaphysical discussion but that’s the only way to get to the last duel and the happy ending.
There’s bloodshed along the way, of course. You can’t have a huge battle without deaths. I believe that Fred Weasley was killed simply due to the fact that given the sheer number of Weasleys one of them had to die so it was pick a twin. It was sad to have Lupin and Tonks die but it did create symmetry as their newborn son Teddy would now be an orphan with Harry as the godfather. I’m happy that Hagrid didn’t die though it was mainly to have him carry Harry’s lifeless body to Hogwarts. And I am stunned and overjoyed that Neville both survived and got to be a hero. He was probably my favorite minor character.
(But seriously, pulling a sword out of a hat? Even I don’t write anything that bad.)
Would I have killed Harry? That’s a real question. From my point of view, it would have been better from a literary point of view for him to make the ultimate sacrifice to prevent evil from taking over the world. But that is looking at it from an adult’s world view where noble sacrifice ends in death. At the end of the day, this is a children’s book and the hero has to live to see the end.
And the end might be the one part I question. The epilogue is written simply to show that everyone has lived happily ever after. Ron and Hermione are married with kids (and I assume that Ron spends most of his nights at the pub with Hagrid trying to avoid Hermione’s incessant nagging. Imagine that for the rest of your life.) Harry and Ginny get married and have their little kids. All of them go off to Hogwarts and are happy. It’s nice to know that everyone lived happily ever after but it does kill any sense of drama or progress. You know nothing other than they have turned into these thirtysomething couples who are now battling lower back pain. I’m not sure if it made the story any better. But it’s a fairy tale and you need to have “All was well” as the last words.
In the end, Rowling has done something that places her in the same realm as C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkein. First of all, no one can remember her first name, only her initials. But more importantly, she has created her own mythology that struck a chord in the public and it is more than just a fad. There is a real power to the work and it can vary between being touching and funny and invigorating. Not bad for a children’s book.
(Still, if you need to read more about wizards I cannot recommend enough Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series. Several times I came back from England with several copies of his books because they just weren’t printed in the states yet. Just a great series of books.)
The five random CDs for the week:
1) Iris DeMent “Lifeline”
2) The Handsome Family “In The Air”
3) The Iguanas “Plastic Silver 9 Volt Heart”
4) Peter, Bjorn and John “Writer’s Block”
5) Bruce Robison, Charlie Robison and Jack Ingram “Unleashed Live”
Thursday, July 26, 2007
Could've used more Barney...
(See, that is exactly what I am talking about. Gryffendors are always going “Look at me, I’m so brave and strong.” They’re a bunch of arrogant twats, that’s what they are. As my fellow Ravenclaw (and former Princeton basketball coach) Pete Carrill once put it, “The strong take from the weak. The smart take from the strong.”)
I’m one of those people who just seems to collect nicknames. In B-School I was alternately known as either EC (short for Engineer Chris) or Red Dragon (in reference to the movie, which is not something I’m entirely proud of though the nickname is awesome.) Along with everyone else in my family, I’ve had the nickname of Nickel or some variation on that theme at numerous points in my life. And for a reason that would take me two pages to explain, I was given the nickname of Bart in high school back in those fun filled days of 1988. That last one wouldn’t be too memorable except that when Bart Simpson became an icon in 1990 I suddenly found myself well ahead of the coolness curve. I was a fan out of necessity.
So with that in mind I just came back from a sneak preview of the Simpsons movie. Got tickets thanks to my trivia knowledge as I have not yet been able to consistently claim that my blogging makes me press. Given that this event was hosted by noted Kansas City film reviewer Shawn Edwards I can’t see that being given a press pass to be all that difficult. (Seriously, ever film that Shawn sees gets a 4 out of 5). I was hyped to see the movie, concerned because I had to go north of the river to see it and completely flummoxed by the fact that I am almost certain that a girl I went out with a few times was seated about five seats down from me. So maybe this review isn’t being written from the right mindset…
But I’ll start with the good news, the movie doesn’t suck. That was a big fear going into it as the past few seasons have been rather dreadful. On terms of expansions of existing franchises it was better than Hitchhiker’s Guide but doesn’t touch the thrill of the original Spider-Man. There were a couple of just brilliant jokes that I won’t spoil but were true laugh out loud moments. It’s definitely not the best.movie.ever but far from the worst.movie.ever. Plus, it is nice to see what the Simpsons would look like if they every actually put some money into animating it.
The plot, well, that suffers the same affliction as most of the episodes of the past decade. It’s Homer as Captain Wacky dooming the town and the family. It’s Marge talking about relationships. It’s Bart joining up with the Flanderses (Flanderi?) though that goes against everything in Bart’s character. And it’s Lisa…Lisa…it’s giving Lisa a stupid sub-plot to get her off-screen for a while. At times it looks like certain plot points were added in with a staple gun.
But that’s not really the point, is it? The entire point of the movie is to see all of these characters on a huge screen. It’s to see nearly every character in the history of the show make an appearance at one point or another. There are more in jokes and references than you could ever imagine. It’s the type of movie where you should probably order the DVD now because it’s going to take viewing after viewing to get all of the jokes. If you are a fan of the show, if you use the word “cromulent” in a sentence on a weekly basis, and if, like me, you are just about to make your way to the good old flower shop, you really need to see this movie.
Just try not to sit five seats away from someone you used to date when you do. Seriously, how the hell does this always happen to me?
I’m one of those people who just seems to collect nicknames. In B-School I was alternately known as either EC (short for Engineer Chris) or Red Dragon (in reference to the movie, which is not something I’m entirely proud of though the nickname is awesome.) Along with everyone else in my family, I’ve had the nickname of Nickel or some variation on that theme at numerous points in my life. And for a reason that would take me two pages to explain, I was given the nickname of Bart in high school back in those fun filled days of 1988. That last one wouldn’t be too memorable except that when Bart Simpson became an icon in 1990 I suddenly found myself well ahead of the coolness curve. I was a fan out of necessity.
So with that in mind I just came back from a sneak preview of the Simpsons movie. Got tickets thanks to my trivia knowledge as I have not yet been able to consistently claim that my blogging makes me press. Given that this event was hosted by noted Kansas City film reviewer Shawn Edwards I can’t see that being given a press pass to be all that difficult. (Seriously, ever film that Shawn sees gets a 4 out of 5). I was hyped to see the movie, concerned because I had to go north of the river to see it and completely flummoxed by the fact that I am almost certain that a girl I went out with a few times was seated about five seats down from me. So maybe this review isn’t being written from the right mindset…
But I’ll start with the good news, the movie doesn’t suck. That was a big fear going into it as the past few seasons have been rather dreadful. On terms of expansions of existing franchises it was better than Hitchhiker’s Guide but doesn’t touch the thrill of the original Spider-Man. There were a couple of just brilliant jokes that I won’t spoil but were true laugh out loud moments. It’s definitely not the best.movie.ever but far from the worst.movie.ever. Plus, it is nice to see what the Simpsons would look like if they every actually put some money into animating it.
The plot, well, that suffers the same affliction as most of the episodes of the past decade. It’s Homer as Captain Wacky dooming the town and the family. It’s Marge talking about relationships. It’s Bart joining up with the Flanderses (Flanderi?) though that goes against everything in Bart’s character. And it’s Lisa…Lisa…it’s giving Lisa a stupid sub-plot to get her off-screen for a while. At times it looks like certain plot points were added in with a staple gun.
But that’s not really the point, is it? The entire point of the movie is to see all of these characters on a huge screen. It’s to see nearly every character in the history of the show make an appearance at one point or another. There are more in jokes and references than you could ever imagine. It’s the type of movie where you should probably order the DVD now because it’s going to take viewing after viewing to get all of the jokes. If you are a fan of the show, if you use the word “cromulent” in a sentence on a weekly basis, and if, like me, you are just about to make your way to the good old flower shop, you really need to see this movie.
Just try not to sit five seats away from someone you used to date when you do. Seriously, how the hell does this always happen to me?
Wednesday, July 25, 2007
I suddenly yearn for the calming influence of Courtney Love
Well, after a couple of very late nights I did finish the Harry Potter book last night. I’ll wait a couple of more days to discuss it to ensure that everyone will have a chance to finish it. Then this blog will essentially turn into spoiler theater as I dissect the book, the ending and which characters I would have killed off if I was the writer. There were some interesting choices to be made there. And I’ll give my usual rant that as a Ravenclaw my house always get short thrift in these books. Freaking Griffendors think the world revolves around them.
Give Rowling credit, there aren’t that many books that will make me try to race through 800 pages as quickly as I possibly can. Of course, it is written at the level of a 12 year old so it’s not like when I plowed through Ulysses but it is still a lot of words to digest. It might not be great literature but it does turn out to be a great story.
Anyway, I saw this question posed online today and I think it makes a very valid point. Can Lindsay ask for a refund from the rehab clinic? I mean, she didn’t even last two weeks after finishing treatment. Isn’t there like a thirty day money back guarantee on those things? Hopefully she at least charged it on her American Express and they’ll refund her the money. Clearly it is the rehab center’s fault and not my beloved Lindsay’s. We all know that she can do nothing wrong.
Ok, since I’m low on topics I guess I’ll write about the Britney Spears Ok! Magazine shoot disaster. If you haven’t heard about this one, trust me it puts Lindsay to shame. So, Brit agrees to do this magazine cover story and interview to help jump start her career. Given that it is with a magazine that uses an exclamation point in its title we are not talking about hard hitting journalism here. It’s basically show up, take a few nice pictures and leave. Except that none of that happened.
So here is the reports that I have read about what happened. Brit doesn’t want to use their hair and make-up people so she brings her own whom the magazine editors, and this is basically an exact quote, described as “pretty skanky looking”. She had chicken for lunch and as opposed to using a napkin wiped her hands on her several thousand dollar dress. For some reason she brought her dog with her (I don’t know, maybe it was bring your pet to work day) and being a dog surrounded by bright lights, loud noises and strange people it had an accident. Which Brit and her people would not clean up until ordered to at which point they used a Chanel dress to clean it up. Ok, that’s pretty bad. Then Brit was freaking out thinking that the ceiling was going to fall on her. To cap everything, Brit would make numerous trips to the bathroom, sometimes closing the stall door and othertimes not, and was often walking around the set, how can I put this mildly, acting as if she was a really, really big fan of The Divinyls? As if the song spoke to her in a certain way? Yeah, that’s what I read.
(Thanks to Defamer for all of this info by the way. Definitely not your standard report.)
Basically the only response to this is “Wow, what the hell was she on?” This isn’t rational behavior or even delusional behavior. This is I’m on everything but skates behavior. You know it is bad when the magazine decides to not run the pictures because they “aren’t up to their standards”. They still go with the meltdown story as that actually is the biggest news of all. It’s even words when you remember that Brit is the mother of two very small children. That’s even sadder than Lindsay. So far, Lindsay has only hurt herself. Brit is taking a couple of innocent people out with her. Who would have thought that K-Fed would be the sensible one in that relationship?
Give Rowling credit, there aren’t that many books that will make me try to race through 800 pages as quickly as I possibly can. Of course, it is written at the level of a 12 year old so it’s not like when I plowed through Ulysses but it is still a lot of words to digest. It might not be great literature but it does turn out to be a great story.
Anyway, I saw this question posed online today and I think it makes a very valid point. Can Lindsay ask for a refund from the rehab clinic? I mean, she didn’t even last two weeks after finishing treatment. Isn’t there like a thirty day money back guarantee on those things? Hopefully she at least charged it on her American Express and they’ll refund her the money. Clearly it is the rehab center’s fault and not my beloved Lindsay’s. We all know that she can do nothing wrong.
Ok, since I’m low on topics I guess I’ll write about the Britney Spears Ok! Magazine shoot disaster. If you haven’t heard about this one, trust me it puts Lindsay to shame. So, Brit agrees to do this magazine cover story and interview to help jump start her career. Given that it is with a magazine that uses an exclamation point in its title we are not talking about hard hitting journalism here. It’s basically show up, take a few nice pictures and leave. Except that none of that happened.
So here is the reports that I have read about what happened. Brit doesn’t want to use their hair and make-up people so she brings her own whom the magazine editors, and this is basically an exact quote, described as “pretty skanky looking”. She had chicken for lunch and as opposed to using a napkin wiped her hands on her several thousand dollar dress. For some reason she brought her dog with her (I don’t know, maybe it was bring your pet to work day) and being a dog surrounded by bright lights, loud noises and strange people it had an accident. Which Brit and her people would not clean up until ordered to at which point they used a Chanel dress to clean it up. Ok, that’s pretty bad. Then Brit was freaking out thinking that the ceiling was going to fall on her. To cap everything, Brit would make numerous trips to the bathroom, sometimes closing the stall door and othertimes not, and was often walking around the set, how can I put this mildly, acting as if she was a really, really big fan of The Divinyls? As if the song spoke to her in a certain way? Yeah, that’s what I read.
(Thanks to Defamer for all of this info by the way. Definitely not your standard report.)
Basically the only response to this is “Wow, what the hell was she on?” This isn’t rational behavior or even delusional behavior. This is I’m on everything but skates behavior. You know it is bad when the magazine decides to not run the pictures because they “aren’t up to their standards”. They still go with the meltdown story as that actually is the biggest news of all. It’s even words when you remember that Brit is the mother of two very small children. That’s even sadder than Lindsay. So far, Lindsay has only hurt herself. Brit is taking a couple of innocent people out with her. Who would have thought that K-Fed would be the sensible one in that relationship?
Tuesday, July 24, 2007
Here we go again...
Sigh.If I told her once I told her a thousand times. Move to Kansas City. I’ve got a spare bedroom in my place where she could crash. There isn’t a single paparazzi within 500 miles of this town and I don’t even think that the Kansas City Star has reporters. You can walk to the bars here, no need to drive. We could just hang out, play trivia and just relax for a little bit. But did she take my advice? No, of course not.
Instead my beloved Lindsay Lohan was arrested for drunk driving less than a week after surrendering herself to the police on a separate drunk driving charge. Actually, it was less of her being pulled over for drunk driving and more her chasing down the mother of her former assistant causing the woman to fear for her life and call the cops. While it might not be true, the best rumor I heard is that the mom pulled into a police station, Lindsay followed her and the cops just arrested her in the parking lot. That would be awesome. Oh, and she did all this while having coke on her, just in case the blowing a .12 after leaving rehab a week earlier wasn’t good enough.
In the news world, this is what is called a story. It trumps the NBA ref betting on games and Michael Vick slamming a dog to the ground until it died due to it not showing fighting spirit. It’s been a strange week, made even stranger by the fact that the Weekly World News will cease publication next month. Apparently they took one look at reality and went, “Why even bother?”
I’m kind of thinking that this is going to be the end of the drama surrounding our (ok my) beloved Lindsay. This isn’t one of those things that you plead out of, you’re going to have to either serve time or as Steve Earle once put it, “go to state sponsored rehab.” After that if she has any brains about her or one intelligent person whispering in her ear she would disappear for a while. Get out of LA, find someplace in Montana where she could just sit around, watch tv, and let time pass. In a year you make a triumphant comeback where you discuss how you battled your demons and are now ready to get back to work, first with a couple of low budget indie films and then maybe something bigger. If that fails, there is always the Playboy shoot, tastefully done of course. But the only, and I mean only, way to get back on track is to have no one hear from you for about a year. Heck, I think it took Rob Lowe five years to get back to where he could show his face on television again. That’s the time frame that we are talking about here.
It has been the year of the downfall of the celebutante. While no one cried for Paris Hilton, someone who is famous for having been born to people who were rich if not famous, and Brittney Spears downfall was more comical than tragic (and oh man, read defamer.com for the latest meltdown story about her) I’m still bummed about Lindsay. Because compared to the other two she actually had talent and a unique look. She was a redhead with real curves who could also act. Maybe not in the Natalie Portman sense but at least in the Kirsten Dunst sense. There were possibilities there. Or maybe that is just me. Given that I probably now rank in the top ten of guys willing to date Lindsay Lohan I am probably not the most impartial of judges.
But you know who I blame most of all for this? Herbie the Love Bug. If he would have just driven himself none of this would ever have been an issue.
Monday, July 23, 2007
Yes, and my Patronus is a Red Dragon
This is a rather strange sensation. I have absolutely no clue what I should be writing about right now. Maybe that isn’t that surprising, I bet most people reading this wonder if I am just randomly hitting keys using the infinite monkeys principle. Or more likely, that I’ve filled my spare bedroom with a large number of monkeys, a laptop and old tapes of Nick at Nite and I choose the best work each night. But in reality I typically have a few topics I want to talk about each week and usually run out of ideas around Thursday, which is why those posts can range from brilliant to dreadful so frequently. In all honesty, all I want to do is go back to my living room and get back to reading Harry Potter.
So I guess I’ll write about that…
According to my booklist, I read my first Harry Potter book in 2000. 11/16/2000 to 11/23/2000 to be exact. (See, since 1998 I’ve kept track of every book I’ve read including how long it took me to read it. Yes, it’s part of my documenting my life project and it actually pre-dates my writer’s journal by a few months. Trust me, my future biographers have already thanked me for this.) I guess I read it to see what all the fuss was about. I had heard the buzz and was actually in Ireland when Goblet of Fire came out that summer so I was well aware of how big an event it was in the British Isles. Sure, it was a kid’s book but I read C.S. Lewis growing up so I figured this wouldn’t be too bad.
I’ll always say that I’ve been impressed by the world that J.K. Rowling imagined. She created a fully formed mythology with great detail and very seldom did she seem to be lecturing you just so she could get all of the information that was in her notebooks crammed into the novel. Heck, in the first few books the best parts were just finding out more about the history of the place. You never knew quite what was going on but then again, neither did Harry. It’s what made the first Star Wars movie so successful. We followed Luke who was just a farm boy suddenly thrust into this intergalactic conflict and we were happy when he asked “Who the hell are these guys?”
There were problems with the books as well. She does tend to provide plot by having a character read from a book or a newspaper. There is also the fact that she tends to have chapters that seem to serve no other purpose than being fun to write. Those aren’t huge flaws and they are mainly a beginning writer’s flaws. I know I have my own, especially given that most of the characters in my short stories drink solely because I figure that a guy who has been drinking really requires no internal motivation to do anything. Of course, I can’t even get 8 million people to read my blog, much less buy my novel.
Of course, I still haven’t said why I read the books or why I didn’t read the second book until 2003.
Like about every other important thing in my life, it’s all because of a girl. In fact, it was the same girl who got me to start smoking when I was 30 because she thought it would make me look cool. (Actually, a lot of people thought that and we were all sadly mistaken.) Anyway, she was a fan of the books because she had the same birthday as Harry Potter so I read them in, well I can’t say that I was trying to impress her. More like it was something I thought would be cool to do. Then we broke up and I was addicted to the books and now end up at bookstores at midnight wearing a picture frame so I can grab the latest copy. Well, I guess it is at least cheaper than Nicoderm.
Ok, time to get back to the book. Hopefully I’ll have a better topic tomorrow.
So I guess I’ll write about that…
According to my booklist, I read my first Harry Potter book in 2000. 11/16/2000 to 11/23/2000 to be exact. (See, since 1998 I’ve kept track of every book I’ve read including how long it took me to read it. Yes, it’s part of my documenting my life project and it actually pre-dates my writer’s journal by a few months. Trust me, my future biographers have already thanked me for this.) I guess I read it to see what all the fuss was about. I had heard the buzz and was actually in Ireland when Goblet of Fire came out that summer so I was well aware of how big an event it was in the British Isles. Sure, it was a kid’s book but I read C.S. Lewis growing up so I figured this wouldn’t be too bad.
I’ll always say that I’ve been impressed by the world that J.K. Rowling imagined. She created a fully formed mythology with great detail and very seldom did she seem to be lecturing you just so she could get all of the information that was in her notebooks crammed into the novel. Heck, in the first few books the best parts were just finding out more about the history of the place. You never knew quite what was going on but then again, neither did Harry. It’s what made the first Star Wars movie so successful. We followed Luke who was just a farm boy suddenly thrust into this intergalactic conflict and we were happy when he asked “Who the hell are these guys?”
There were problems with the books as well. She does tend to provide plot by having a character read from a book or a newspaper. There is also the fact that she tends to have chapters that seem to serve no other purpose than being fun to write. Those aren’t huge flaws and they are mainly a beginning writer’s flaws. I know I have my own, especially given that most of the characters in my short stories drink solely because I figure that a guy who has been drinking really requires no internal motivation to do anything. Of course, I can’t even get 8 million people to read my blog, much less buy my novel.
Of course, I still haven’t said why I read the books or why I didn’t read the second book until 2003.
Like about every other important thing in my life, it’s all because of a girl. In fact, it was the same girl who got me to start smoking when I was 30 because she thought it would make me look cool. (Actually, a lot of people thought that and we were all sadly mistaken.) Anyway, she was a fan of the books because she had the same birthday as Harry Potter so I read them in, well I can’t say that I was trying to impress her. More like it was something I thought would be cool to do. Then we broke up and I was addicted to the books and now end up at bookstores at midnight wearing a picture frame so I can grab the latest copy. Well, I guess it is at least cheaper than Nicoderm.
Ok, time to get back to the book. Hopefully I’ll have a better topic tomorrow.
Sunday, July 22, 2007
No spoliers yet, please
So I was sitting on my porch Saturday night reading Harry Potter when I heard a clopping noise coming from the street. My first thought, “Wow, this book is so realistic that I can actually hear the spectral horses.” My second thought was to actually look towards the street where I was able to watch a cop on horseback just trot his way down the street lacking only a cowboy hat for that true period feel. It makes you wonder about your neighborhood when they need horses to patrol it. I always used to make fun of the cops on mountain bikes but that’s slightly more respectful than needing to call upon Corporal Flicka.
Speaking of Harry Potter, I can’t believe that they revealed that Darth Vader was really Harry Potter’s father. And that as a boy Dumbledore built C-3PO. Or at least that’s what I think I read…it was a rather late night last night.
To be honest, I’m about halfway through the book (and I’ve been good and have not immediately turned to the last chapter to see what happens). I won’t give a full review until I finish it but I have to say that I am rather impressed. While I’ve read the books I haven’t always been a fan of J.K. Rowling. I still feel that she borrowed a few too many ideas from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series (a definite must-read, especially as they are much more adult and satirical than Harry Potter) and that at times you could tell that she was a beginning author. Or more accurately, an author who grew more powerful than her editors at a point where her skill still required editing. That’s why some of the books in the middle are about one hundred pages too long. It’s cool info but just not always required for the story. Still, I haven’t felt that way at all about this book and that is a very good sign. I’ll know more when I finish it.
(Of course, I also just finished reading “Soon I Will Be Invincible”, a novel about super-heroes and the angst that arises when you try to take over the world. Clearly a book that hits close to home for me. Do you realize how difficult it is to design a robot army? How challenging it is to get all the parts shipped and you know they always forget to include the screws in package? And don’t even talk to me about finding good henchmen nowadays…)
One other story from the weekend. So I went out to the bars on Saturday night (after promising myself “I’ll read one more chapter and then I’ll go out”) and when I got there I just took my random seat at the bar like I always do. One day I’ll find a bar owner who will let me buy a personal bar stool license but until then it’s whatever is open at the bar. Well, turns out I sit down next to this guy and am somehow brought into a discussion about socialist and anarchistic politics. That’s not something you typically discuss at a bar unless of course you’re at a bar where everyone is wearing berets and talking about the downfall of the bourgeoisie. I’ll give the guy credit for his passion, less so for his knowledge of markets and human behavior. Still, a much different bar conversation than I usually find myself in.
The five random CDs for the week:
1) Caitlin Cary “I’m Staying Out”
2) Dave Matthews Band “Live at Red Rocks: 8.15.95”
3) Martin Zellar & the Hardways “The Many Moods of Martin Zellar”
4) R.E.M. “Eponymous”
5) The V-Roys “All About Town”
Speaking of Harry Potter, I can’t believe that they revealed that Darth Vader was really Harry Potter’s father. And that as a boy Dumbledore built C-3PO. Or at least that’s what I think I read…it was a rather late night last night.
To be honest, I’m about halfway through the book (and I’ve been good and have not immediately turned to the last chapter to see what happens). I won’t give a full review until I finish it but I have to say that I am rather impressed. While I’ve read the books I haven’t always been a fan of J.K. Rowling. I still feel that she borrowed a few too many ideas from Terry Pratchett’s Discworld series (a definite must-read, especially as they are much more adult and satirical than Harry Potter) and that at times you could tell that she was a beginning author. Or more accurately, an author who grew more powerful than her editors at a point where her skill still required editing. That’s why some of the books in the middle are about one hundred pages too long. It’s cool info but just not always required for the story. Still, I haven’t felt that way at all about this book and that is a very good sign. I’ll know more when I finish it.
(Of course, I also just finished reading “Soon I Will Be Invincible”, a novel about super-heroes and the angst that arises when you try to take over the world. Clearly a book that hits close to home for me. Do you realize how difficult it is to design a robot army? How challenging it is to get all the parts shipped and you know they always forget to include the screws in package? And don’t even talk to me about finding good henchmen nowadays…)
One other story from the weekend. So I went out to the bars on Saturday night (after promising myself “I’ll read one more chapter and then I’ll go out”) and when I got there I just took my random seat at the bar like I always do. One day I’ll find a bar owner who will let me buy a personal bar stool license but until then it’s whatever is open at the bar. Well, turns out I sit down next to this guy and am somehow brought into a discussion about socialist and anarchistic politics. That’s not something you typically discuss at a bar unless of course you’re at a bar where everyone is wearing berets and talking about the downfall of the bourgeoisie. I’ll give the guy credit for his passion, less so for his knowledge of markets and human behavior. Still, a much different bar conversation than I usually find myself in.
The five random CDs for the week:
1) Caitlin Cary “I’m Staying Out”
2) Dave Matthews Band “Live at Red Rocks: 8.15.95”
3) Martin Zellar & the Hardways “The Many Moods of Martin Zellar”
4) R.E.M. “Eponymous”
5) The V-Roys “All About Town”
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Just like the good old days
Another story in the wonderful adventure that is my life…
So after winning sneak preview tickets to the Simpsons movie at trivia last night I came home, wrote the blog, surfed the net a little and went to bed around midnight. I didn’t even watch my tape of Top Chef, which is good because if I knew that Lia had been eliminated I would have been so pissed I wouldn’t have been able to go to sleep. Wouldn’t you know it, the second I write about a contestant being cute and talented and someone I want to watch she immediately gets eliminated. So much for the universe rearranging itself to meet my desires. The Secret my ass. Anyway, after a long day I finally went to bed at midnight.
And a little after one in the morning I was woken up by a noise. Given that I was at that fun moment in the first hour of sleep where upon waking nothing makes sense my thought process was a little hazy. Here is my best recollection of my internal dialogue between my waking mind and my surprisingly cognitive rational mind.
“What…what…what’s going on? Who am I again?”
“You’re EC.”
“Ok, I can get behind that. Is this place my apartment?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Good. Where the hell is that anyway?”
“Kansas City.”
“Seriously? You’re kidding me, right?”
“Nope, you’re in Kansas City.”
“Damn.”
“I know, tell me about it.”
“Ok, I can’t deal with that now but what the hell is this noise?”
“Well, it’s not the alarm clock next to the bed that makes a buzzing sound. It’s not the alarm clock on the dresser as that one goes “Beep, Beep” like the roadrunner. Whatever it is sounds vaguely like music but it can’t be good music.”
“I know, it just sounds awful. I can’t even make out any words and it seems to be coming from the next room.”
“Yeah and whoever it is…wait a minute, that’s Social Distortion, isn’t it?”
“Sounds like Ball and Chain.”
“God damnit, it’s my phone.”
And with that I stumble out of bed and into my living room just in time to turn off the phone and see who in the world is calling me. I had two missed calls. One from the dreaded “Unknown” and the other from, well, it looked like a phone number. Except that there were more numbers than there should be and I think there was a Q in there somewhere. Anyway, I didn’t have a voice mail so I just shrugged it off and went back to bed.
Which meant that thirty minutes later my phone rang again and again I stumble out of bed, this time I’m just able to get there when it beeps that I have a voice mail. I listen and all I hear is bar noise so whoever is calling me is having an extremely good time. I can only make out about half of what is being said and what I get is “Chris! Where the hell are you? We’re all out at the bar, getting drunk” and then it just slurs off into something incomprehensible. I’m still at a loss as to who this is. I’m running through my mental database of people who would call me from a bar who aren’t in my phonebook. By the time I finish that voice mail I see that I have another one. Listen to that one and I hear, very clearly and directly “Hey Chris it’s Gabriel.” And then it suddenly dawns on me
“Oh yeah, the Mexican Mafia we’re having a reunion in Mexico City this week. That explains everything.”
Yep, it was a bunch of my buddies from b-school who decided to call me from the bar very late at night and encourage me to join them despite the fact that I was technically in another country. I still can’t figure out if the first one was from Nato or Yuyo (which is scary) and the second was Gabriel sounding like, well, I can put this one of two ways. In one sense he sounded as if he wanted to set up an appointment to discuss reallocating the assets in my stock portfolio. But more accurately, it sounded like those nights at the Backer where he would act as my life coach and instill the wisdom of the ages to me. Man, just hearing the message made me miss that so much.
So that’s why I’ve been tired and out of sorts all day. Didn’t sleep because of drunken phone calls. That’s not too unusual, it’s just that for most people it isn’t an international call. And to be honest, it was one of the coolest things to happen to me in a while. Thanks for calling guys.
Ok, I’m off to camp out in front of Barnes and Noble. I swear to God if anyone posts Harry Potter spoilers I am going to unleash havoc. I’ve waited two years to find out if Snape is good or evil. And to see if Ron gets stuck dating Hermione for the rest of his life. Later.
So after winning sneak preview tickets to the Simpsons movie at trivia last night I came home, wrote the blog, surfed the net a little and went to bed around midnight. I didn’t even watch my tape of Top Chef, which is good because if I knew that Lia had been eliminated I would have been so pissed I wouldn’t have been able to go to sleep. Wouldn’t you know it, the second I write about a contestant being cute and talented and someone I want to watch she immediately gets eliminated. So much for the universe rearranging itself to meet my desires. The Secret my ass. Anyway, after a long day I finally went to bed at midnight.
And a little after one in the morning I was woken up by a noise. Given that I was at that fun moment in the first hour of sleep where upon waking nothing makes sense my thought process was a little hazy. Here is my best recollection of my internal dialogue between my waking mind and my surprisingly cognitive rational mind.
“What…what…what’s going on? Who am I again?”
“You’re EC.”
“Ok, I can get behind that. Is this place my apartment?”
“Yes.”
“Good. Good. Where the hell is that anyway?”
“Kansas City.”
“Seriously? You’re kidding me, right?”
“Nope, you’re in Kansas City.”
“Damn.”
“I know, tell me about it.”
“Ok, I can’t deal with that now but what the hell is this noise?”
“Well, it’s not the alarm clock next to the bed that makes a buzzing sound. It’s not the alarm clock on the dresser as that one goes “Beep, Beep” like the roadrunner. Whatever it is sounds vaguely like music but it can’t be good music.”
“I know, it just sounds awful. I can’t even make out any words and it seems to be coming from the next room.”
“Yeah and whoever it is…wait a minute, that’s Social Distortion, isn’t it?”
“Sounds like Ball and Chain.”
“God damnit, it’s my phone.”
And with that I stumble out of bed and into my living room just in time to turn off the phone and see who in the world is calling me. I had two missed calls. One from the dreaded “Unknown” and the other from, well, it looked like a phone number. Except that there were more numbers than there should be and I think there was a Q in there somewhere. Anyway, I didn’t have a voice mail so I just shrugged it off and went back to bed.
Which meant that thirty minutes later my phone rang again and again I stumble out of bed, this time I’m just able to get there when it beeps that I have a voice mail. I listen and all I hear is bar noise so whoever is calling me is having an extremely good time. I can only make out about half of what is being said and what I get is “Chris! Where the hell are you? We’re all out at the bar, getting drunk” and then it just slurs off into something incomprehensible. I’m still at a loss as to who this is. I’m running through my mental database of people who would call me from a bar who aren’t in my phonebook. By the time I finish that voice mail I see that I have another one. Listen to that one and I hear, very clearly and directly “Hey Chris it’s Gabriel.” And then it suddenly dawns on me
“Oh yeah, the Mexican Mafia we’re having a reunion in Mexico City this week. That explains everything.”
Yep, it was a bunch of my buddies from b-school who decided to call me from the bar very late at night and encourage me to join them despite the fact that I was technically in another country. I still can’t figure out if the first one was from Nato or Yuyo (which is scary) and the second was Gabriel sounding like, well, I can put this one of two ways. In one sense he sounded as if he wanted to set up an appointment to discuss reallocating the assets in my stock portfolio. But more accurately, it sounded like those nights at the Backer where he would act as my life coach and instill the wisdom of the ages to me. Man, just hearing the message made me miss that so much.
So that’s why I’ve been tired and out of sorts all day. Didn’t sleep because of drunken phone calls. That’s not too unusual, it’s just that for most people it isn’t an international call. And to be honest, it was one of the coolest things to happen to me in a while. Thanks for calling guys.
Ok, I’m off to camp out in front of Barnes and Noble. I swear to God if anyone posts Harry Potter spoilers I am going to unleash havoc. I’ve waited two years to find out if Snape is good or evil. And to see if Ron gets stuck dating Hermione for the rest of his life. Later.
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
My (true) hometown
“People often ask me how much of my short stories are true and I usually answer ‘About 75 percent.’ Now I’ve written a non-fiction book and people ask me how much of it is true and I answer ‘About 75 percent.’” Pam Houston (paraphrased)
One of the few parts of writing that I consider to be a tenet is that occasionally you have to bend the truth in order to make a better story. Maybe it’s a writer thing, maybe it’s an Irish thing, but I never let something as pedestrian as the truth get in the way of something interesting. As I told a girl from Australia once (who wondered what stories I was going to tell my friends about her) “I’ll tell the truth. It’s just sometimes there are alternate pasts.” I bring this up because for the over two and a half years that I’ve been keeping this blog I’ve technically been lying.
I’m not actually from Chicago.
By that I mean that I have never had my home address in the city itself. I worked in the city, had an office phone with a 312 area code, I even had a home phone with that before they hoisted the 708 on us and then I moved saddling me with a 630. But I’ve never been a true Chicagoan. I grew up in Berwyn, about six miles from the city limits, close enough that I could hop on the El from my town as well as see the Sears Tower from my bedroom window. Basically, I didn’t live in the city but it was as close as it can be.
This is important because there are very few famous things to come out of Berwyn. We had the dude who founded The Ides of March and Survivor, who I think my dad knew when he was just a baby. We have the Son of Svengoolie, who technically wasn’t from Berwyn but made fun of the town a lot. There’s me of course, though I’m not as famous as I could be. And then there is the Spindle. The glorious, glorious Spindle.
You know it from Wayne’s World. You probably thought it was just some movie prop. No, it’s real. Standing tall in a strip mall parking lot maybe three miles from my house were, well, a bunch of cars impaled on a spike. There never was much of an explanation for it, or even a meaning. Across from a bunch of stores that always seemed a little sketchier than you would like was this huge structure exploding out of the parking lot for no apparent reason. Actually, the reason was that the owner of the strip mall had a very strange taste in art and this essentially replaced the garbage structure. That one was this huge, twenty feet tall amalgamation of garbage and concrete that looked either like the United States, a pork chop or a pile of garbage depending on how inebriated you were at the time. Why this would inspire anyone to shop at Walgreen’s or Coconuts records is beyond me.
Thus I was shocked to read online a week or two ago that they might be taking down the Spindle. Apparently they are renovating the strip mall, which is good because it has been decrepit since I was at least ten years old, and they are going to move a Walgreens to where the Spindle currently stands. Given the size of the structure it might be too expensive to move so they are thinking about tearing it down. This has led to at least a mild case of uproar.
Look, I’m not entirely proud of the fact that the only thing that I can say about my hometown is “Remember those cars on the spike in Wayne’s World? That’s my hometown.” But, I’ve had dinner with people from every continent and have been able to use that reference and had people nodding their heads in understanding. It’s not the best example in the world but it works. And tackiness aside, maybe that means something. It’s what made the town unique. Every time I go back home I end up driving past it. I can’t say I look at it with civic pride but I accept it. That’s the way I grew up. We see a parking lot and decide to put a bunch of cars on a spike and call it art. It’s blue collar and quirky and inane but persistent and impressive as well.
Like I said, I’m not from Chicago exactly. But I’m not from one of the fancy suburbs either. I really hope they find a way to keep the Spindle. It might be art, it might not be. It certainly isn’t good art. Sometimes you just need to be memorable and when you look at that thing you go, “I sure won’t forget it.”
One of the few parts of writing that I consider to be a tenet is that occasionally you have to bend the truth in order to make a better story. Maybe it’s a writer thing, maybe it’s an Irish thing, but I never let something as pedestrian as the truth get in the way of something interesting. As I told a girl from Australia once (who wondered what stories I was going to tell my friends about her) “I’ll tell the truth. It’s just sometimes there are alternate pasts.” I bring this up because for the over two and a half years that I’ve been keeping this blog I’ve technically been lying.
I’m not actually from Chicago.
By that I mean that I have never had my home address in the city itself. I worked in the city, had an office phone with a 312 area code, I even had a home phone with that before they hoisted the 708 on us and then I moved saddling me with a 630. But I’ve never been a true Chicagoan. I grew up in Berwyn, about six miles from the city limits, close enough that I could hop on the El from my town as well as see the Sears Tower from my bedroom window. Basically, I didn’t live in the city but it was as close as it can be.
This is important because there are very few famous things to come out of Berwyn. We had the dude who founded The Ides of March and Survivor, who I think my dad knew when he was just a baby. We have the Son of Svengoolie, who technically wasn’t from Berwyn but made fun of the town a lot. There’s me of course, though I’m not as famous as I could be. And then there is the Spindle. The glorious, glorious Spindle.
You know it from Wayne’s World. You probably thought it was just some movie prop. No, it’s real. Standing tall in a strip mall parking lot maybe three miles from my house were, well, a bunch of cars impaled on a spike. There never was much of an explanation for it, or even a meaning. Across from a bunch of stores that always seemed a little sketchier than you would like was this huge structure exploding out of the parking lot for no apparent reason. Actually, the reason was that the owner of the strip mall had a very strange taste in art and this essentially replaced the garbage structure. That one was this huge, twenty feet tall amalgamation of garbage and concrete that looked either like the United States, a pork chop or a pile of garbage depending on how inebriated you were at the time. Why this would inspire anyone to shop at Walgreen’s or Coconuts records is beyond me.
Thus I was shocked to read online a week or two ago that they might be taking down the Spindle. Apparently they are renovating the strip mall, which is good because it has been decrepit since I was at least ten years old, and they are going to move a Walgreens to where the Spindle currently stands. Given the size of the structure it might be too expensive to move so they are thinking about tearing it down. This has led to at least a mild case of uproar.
Look, I’m not entirely proud of the fact that the only thing that I can say about my hometown is “Remember those cars on the spike in Wayne’s World? That’s my hometown.” But, I’ve had dinner with people from every continent and have been able to use that reference and had people nodding their heads in understanding. It’s not the best example in the world but it works. And tackiness aside, maybe that means something. It’s what made the town unique. Every time I go back home I end up driving past it. I can’t say I look at it with civic pride but I accept it. That’s the way I grew up. We see a parking lot and decide to put a bunch of cars on a spike and call it art. It’s blue collar and quirky and inane but persistent and impressive as well.
Like I said, I’m not from Chicago exactly. But I’m not from one of the fancy suburbs either. I really hope they find a way to keep the Spindle. It might be art, it might not be. It certainly isn’t good art. Sometimes you just need to be memorable and when you look at that thing you go, “I sure won’t forget it.”
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
Now I've lost the plot, I'm not the hero I could be...
Given that I seem to have lost the plot in my own life, it shouldn’t be a surprise that I’m reduced to talking in bullet points. Has anyone seen a protagonist around here? There used to be one. The female lead has been missing for a while as well but I think she made her way to a better story. Hell, could I at least borrow some Cliff Notes so I could figure out what I should have known by now?
Topic # 1: Thanks to the wonders of Tivo, I now just record 120 Minutes on VH-1 Classic every week and watch it whenever there is no good reality television on. It’s a much nicer way of doing it as I don’t have to stay up until one in the morning on Sundays anymore and I get to fast forward past the really bad, early era Depeche Mode videos. They really did not age well. I do wonder who is programming this show as the same videos seem to be shown week after week. Either they are literally just showing the same videos every week or the guy who programs it is a really, really big fan of Fishbone. I’ve seen more Fishbone videos in the past month than I saw in my entire MTV viewing life.
(Oh, and could I apply for the job of 120 Minutes programmer for VH-1 Classic? That has to be up there with my old dream of getting paid to sit around and watch ESPN Classic all day, which sadly now features poker, rodeo and bowling and not even American Gladiators can make up for that. Sure, I’ll be forced to play U2 and R.E.M. videos for popularity’s sake and The Smiths for people who wear black all the time but imagine what my playlist would be like. Hell, I just want to see Jawbox, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin and Poster Children back on the air.)
Topic # 2: After looking in the mirror recently and deciding “Wow, I am seriously, seriously out of shape” I’ve restarted my exercise program. What that means is that after day one of a really tame workout every single part of my body aches. That’s how out of shape I am, just doing simple squats and lunges makes moving the next day a challenge. The good news is that my bad arm isn’t hurting from lifting. The bad news is that my good arm is, which makes life slightly more challenging. The good news is that it is all good pain, in that my muscles are sore, and since I start from such a low point I get to see progress quickly. Like just finishing a workout as a victory.
(Yeah, I should just buy a Wii and consider that to be exercise. Not playing it, mind you, just going to the store to purchase it will be enough challenge for me. Eh, I’ll just buy it on Amazon…)
Topic # 3: I’ve finally started watching Big Brother, which is my usual summer guilty pleasure. I skipped the first week, when there tends to be a lot of people who I don’t know talking, and moved straight to the point where we have alliances and heroes and villains. On the latter, dear God is Jen the most annoying reality contestant in recent memory. She’s dumb, cruel and thinks that she is hot stuff when she really isn’t that attractive. She won’t last unless she lands in an alliance that keeps control. At least I hope they get rid of her, she makes me want to throw things at my tv.
My other initial thought is that we have another potential showmance starting between Danielle and that bulky dude with the bad tattoo. This is one of those interesting storylines that always seem to arise on reality shows. Put people in a house for two weeks and inevitably you have one guy professing his undying love to someone he had never met before. This says something about the male psyche, mainly that it just doesn’t work properly. It’s always nice to watch the girl nod politely while slowly backing away, signaling to the camera crew to get ready to tackle the guy. As always, one must employ the Tao in relationships. It’s really the only proven way to success.
(Or, as I once answered the question on when do you call the girl back: wait until you feel that if you don’t call her now your head will explode and then give it another twenty four hours. It is a surprisingly successful, and much less embarrassing, tactic.)
Topic # 1: Thanks to the wonders of Tivo, I now just record 120 Minutes on VH-1 Classic every week and watch it whenever there is no good reality television on. It’s a much nicer way of doing it as I don’t have to stay up until one in the morning on Sundays anymore and I get to fast forward past the really bad, early era Depeche Mode videos. They really did not age well. I do wonder who is programming this show as the same videos seem to be shown week after week. Either they are literally just showing the same videos every week or the guy who programs it is a really, really big fan of Fishbone. I’ve seen more Fishbone videos in the past month than I saw in my entire MTV viewing life.
(Oh, and could I apply for the job of 120 Minutes programmer for VH-1 Classic? That has to be up there with my old dream of getting paid to sit around and watch ESPN Classic all day, which sadly now features poker, rodeo and bowling and not even American Gladiators can make up for that. Sure, I’ll be forced to play U2 and R.E.M. videos for popularity’s sake and The Smiths for people who wear black all the time but imagine what my playlist would be like. Hell, I just want to see Jawbox, Ned’s Atomic Dustbin and Poster Children back on the air.)
Topic # 2: After looking in the mirror recently and deciding “Wow, I am seriously, seriously out of shape” I’ve restarted my exercise program. What that means is that after day one of a really tame workout every single part of my body aches. That’s how out of shape I am, just doing simple squats and lunges makes moving the next day a challenge. The good news is that my bad arm isn’t hurting from lifting. The bad news is that my good arm is, which makes life slightly more challenging. The good news is that it is all good pain, in that my muscles are sore, and since I start from such a low point I get to see progress quickly. Like just finishing a workout as a victory.
(Yeah, I should just buy a Wii and consider that to be exercise. Not playing it, mind you, just going to the store to purchase it will be enough challenge for me. Eh, I’ll just buy it on Amazon…)
Topic # 3: I’ve finally started watching Big Brother, which is my usual summer guilty pleasure. I skipped the first week, when there tends to be a lot of people who I don’t know talking, and moved straight to the point where we have alliances and heroes and villains. On the latter, dear God is Jen the most annoying reality contestant in recent memory. She’s dumb, cruel and thinks that she is hot stuff when she really isn’t that attractive. She won’t last unless she lands in an alliance that keeps control. At least I hope they get rid of her, she makes me want to throw things at my tv.
My other initial thought is that we have another potential showmance starting between Danielle and that bulky dude with the bad tattoo. This is one of those interesting storylines that always seem to arise on reality shows. Put people in a house for two weeks and inevitably you have one guy professing his undying love to someone he had never met before. This says something about the male psyche, mainly that it just doesn’t work properly. It’s always nice to watch the girl nod politely while slowly backing away, signaling to the camera crew to get ready to tackle the guy. As always, one must employ the Tao in relationships. It’s really the only proven way to success.
(Or, as I once answered the question on when do you call the girl back: wait until you feel that if you don’t call her now your head will explode and then give it another twenty four hours. It is a surprisingly successful, and much less embarrassing, tactic.)
Monday, July 16, 2007
Better living through technology
Sometimes you have to love modern technology. I went out and bought a new printer this weekend. Not because I had an issue with my old one, which was a ten year old HP that simply would never fail. I’ll still hold on to it just because it is such a workhorse. No, what happened is that my new laptop for some reason doesn’t have a parallel port so I literally could not connect my old printer to my new laptop. So I went out and bought a new HP printer (which also doubles as a copier and a scanner) and when I went to hook it up yesterday I discovered that HP in its infinite wisdom decided to sell it without a USB cable. Which means that I replaced one printer that I couldn’t connect with my laptop with another printer that I couldn’t attach to my laptop. Would it be that much of a challenge to include the cable in the packaging?
Oh well, one trip to Best Buy later and it is up and running. I’m looking forward to actually having a scanner. This means that I can post all of these pictures of myself from back in the days before digital cameras. Not sure if that would be a good thing or not. Plus, I could probably break down and just scan the magazine articles that I like and not have half of my closets filled with back issues. Seriously, I found copies of Writer’s Digest from 1993 last night during another ill-fated attempt to organize my life.
In other news, I found out the results of the Notre Dame ticket lottery and as opposed to last year I actually won tickets to a game. Of the five games I asked for I only one ticket for one, which is the Duke-Notre Dame game. Because when I think of epic football rivalries I think of Duke-Notre Dame. Plus, it’s the last home game of the season so I’ll get to relive the experience of freezing my ass off during the Rutgers game while wondering why several of my classmates had disappeared.
To be honest, the Duke-Notre Dame game is going to be a rather awkward experience for me. I’ve never been to a Duke game where I wasn’t cheering for Duke. Not even during a Duke-Illinois game when I was technically an Illinois senior. Everyone knows that I did not take a single exam at ND without wearing something that said Duke on it, often several layers if I felt that I needed some additional luck. But that said, those bastards have rejected me from every school up to and including the college of divinity so I hope ND crushes them. Not that it should be a major challenge.
(Note to the usual suspects: as always I have two tickets and there is only one of me so if anyone wants to join me at the game, or the Backer, which is probably more likely, let me know.)
One last note for the night. In this month’s issue of Esquire, featuring a cover story on John Edwards and a rather sub-par essay by Chuck Klosterman, Julie Delpy is featured with a piece on 8 Things You Do Not Know About Women. This makes me happy for two very different reasons. The first is that I consider her to be the most beautiful and amazing woman in the world and she still tops my list of Perfect Mates so anything that brings her more publicity is a good thing. The other reason is her 2nd point in her essay “We only want to date guys who can troubleshoot computers. The broken laptop is the leaky faucet of the twenty-first century.” This means that I have a skill that Julie Delpy finds attractive. I might just have a chance after all.
(Ok three reasons. It gives me a chance to post a picture of her to my blog. It classes the place up a little.)
Oh well, one trip to Best Buy later and it is up and running. I’m looking forward to actually having a scanner. This means that I can post all of these pictures of myself from back in the days before digital cameras. Not sure if that would be a good thing or not. Plus, I could probably break down and just scan the magazine articles that I like and not have half of my closets filled with back issues. Seriously, I found copies of Writer’s Digest from 1993 last night during another ill-fated attempt to organize my life.
In other news, I found out the results of the Notre Dame ticket lottery and as opposed to last year I actually won tickets to a game. Of the five games I asked for I only one ticket for one, which is the Duke-Notre Dame game. Because when I think of epic football rivalries I think of Duke-Notre Dame. Plus, it’s the last home game of the season so I’ll get to relive the experience of freezing my ass off during the Rutgers game while wondering why several of my classmates had disappeared.
To be honest, the Duke-Notre Dame game is going to be a rather awkward experience for me. I’ve never been to a Duke game where I wasn’t cheering for Duke. Not even during a Duke-Illinois game when I was technically an Illinois senior. Everyone knows that I did not take a single exam at ND without wearing something that said Duke on it, often several layers if I felt that I needed some additional luck. But that said, those bastards have rejected me from every school up to and including the college of divinity so I hope ND crushes them. Not that it should be a major challenge.
(Note to the usual suspects: as always I have two tickets and there is only one of me so if anyone wants to join me at the game, or the Backer, which is probably more likely, let me know.)
One last note for the night. In this month’s issue of Esquire, featuring a cover story on John Edwards and a rather sub-par essay by Chuck Klosterman, Julie Delpy is featured with a piece on 8 Things You Do Not Know About Women. This makes me happy for two very different reasons. The first is that I consider her to be the most beautiful and amazing woman in the world and she still tops my list of Perfect Mates so anything that brings her more publicity is a good thing. The other reason is her 2nd point in her essay “We only want to date guys who can troubleshoot computers. The broken laptop is the leaky faucet of the twenty-first century.” This means that I have a skill that Julie Delpy finds attractive. I might just have a chance after all.
(Ok three reasons. It gives me a chance to post a picture of her to my blog. It classes the place up a little.)
Sunday, July 15, 2007
Bleeding fingers and broken guitar strings
As most people know, I have a rule about not writing about work in the blog. Mainly because I’ve discovered that my company does not exactly posses a sense of humor when it comes to many issues but also due to the fact that spreadsheets don’t interest people the same way they do me. (But, come on, is there anything cooler than writing a macro?) However, for those people out there who know me in real life, remind me to tell you a story from last week. It might be up there with the time at my old job when I had the mayor of Chicago refer to me as an idiot during a press conference.
(Technically, he didn’t single me out specifically. He just called all of ComEd’s engineers “a bunch of idiots.” That is really uplifting to hear on the news as you’re leaving the office.)
So I went out on Saturday night to see Lucinda Williams in concert. As usual, just getting there was an adventure for me as I didn’t decide to go until literally an hour before the show and then went there wondering a) would I get a ticket and b) where the hell would I park? See, this is a new venue in town behind Grinders (a sandwich shop downtown) and I drove around wondering where to park until it just dawned on me to park in front of the Brick like I always do when I play trivia. It was a two block walk and worst case scenario I’d just hang out at the Brick. Did get a ticket to the show, though it was a pretty packed scene.
The venue itself is really cool. It’s just this big, open air lot behind this restaurant/bar and it looks and feels a lot like the venues in Austin. Like you wouldn’t be surprised to find that this was the furthest north venue for South by Southwest. Sound was decent but could have been better and the beer was not horribly expensive, which is a huge plus. While standing on mulch is slightly better on my legs than standing on concrete standing on uneven mulch on the edge of a slope for four hours without moving results in my legs screaming at me for several hours.
Charlie Louvin opened and he is just a legend in country music. I think every other song you hear on classic country radio is written by the Louvin brothers. He took the stage right as a storm front came through and it is rather interesting to hear the song “Atomic Power” sung while a 30 mph wind gust hits the stage. They had to stop the show for a while because the wind threatened to turn the stage into a kite. Show did get back on track with only a few drops of rain in between and Charlie’s set was cool. Not the greatest sound in the world, which isn’t surprising given the guy is in his seventies at least, but a memorable set.
Lucinda is still Lucinda. She exudes cool. Just this complete “seen it all, done it all, stayed true to myself the entire time” attitude that you can sense from the moment she walks on stage. One part of her show that does bother me a little is that she has a music stand with presumably the words and music to her songs on it and she has someone flip to the next song after every song. Now I have two issues with this. First of all, I wouldn’t think that it would be that difficult to memorize your own songs especially when you are touring behind them. On certain songs you could actually see her looking down at the next line and that just seems odd. I’ve seen people do that on songs they weren’t familiar with but not on songs that they actually wrote. The other part is why in the world does she need to have one of the sound techs walk on stage and flip to the page in the book where the next song is going to be? Is that an incredibly difficult task? Lucinda is incredibly talented as a writer, I’m pretty sure she could figure out alphabetical order.
All in all it was a pretty good night. Show was good, not the best I’ve seen but Lucinda always plays great music. Venue was cool enough that I’ll probably try to go see The Polyphonic Spree there in a few weeks, though I honestly don’t think the entire band can fit on that stage. If anything I at least got out in the fresh air for a little bit. Yes, the fact that I actually got outside over the weekend is sometimes cause for celebration. I’ll admit, I live a strange, fluorescent filled life.
The five random CDs for the week:
1) Pieta Brown “I Never Told”
2) Lyle Lovett “The Road to Ensenada”
3) Jay Farrar “Terroir Blues”
4) Bruce Springsteen “Lucky Town”
5) Kelly Willis “One More Time: The MCA Recordings”
(Technically, he didn’t single me out specifically. He just called all of ComEd’s engineers “a bunch of idiots.” That is really uplifting to hear on the news as you’re leaving the office.)
So I went out on Saturday night to see Lucinda Williams in concert. As usual, just getting there was an adventure for me as I didn’t decide to go until literally an hour before the show and then went there wondering a) would I get a ticket and b) where the hell would I park? See, this is a new venue in town behind Grinders (a sandwich shop downtown) and I drove around wondering where to park until it just dawned on me to park in front of the Brick like I always do when I play trivia. It was a two block walk and worst case scenario I’d just hang out at the Brick. Did get a ticket to the show, though it was a pretty packed scene.
The venue itself is really cool. It’s just this big, open air lot behind this restaurant/bar and it looks and feels a lot like the venues in Austin. Like you wouldn’t be surprised to find that this was the furthest north venue for South by Southwest. Sound was decent but could have been better and the beer was not horribly expensive, which is a huge plus. While standing on mulch is slightly better on my legs than standing on concrete standing on uneven mulch on the edge of a slope for four hours without moving results in my legs screaming at me for several hours.
Charlie Louvin opened and he is just a legend in country music. I think every other song you hear on classic country radio is written by the Louvin brothers. He took the stage right as a storm front came through and it is rather interesting to hear the song “Atomic Power” sung while a 30 mph wind gust hits the stage. They had to stop the show for a while because the wind threatened to turn the stage into a kite. Show did get back on track with only a few drops of rain in between and Charlie’s set was cool. Not the greatest sound in the world, which isn’t surprising given the guy is in his seventies at least, but a memorable set.
Lucinda is still Lucinda. She exudes cool. Just this complete “seen it all, done it all, stayed true to myself the entire time” attitude that you can sense from the moment she walks on stage. One part of her show that does bother me a little is that she has a music stand with presumably the words and music to her songs on it and she has someone flip to the next song after every song. Now I have two issues with this. First of all, I wouldn’t think that it would be that difficult to memorize your own songs especially when you are touring behind them. On certain songs you could actually see her looking down at the next line and that just seems odd. I’ve seen people do that on songs they weren’t familiar with but not on songs that they actually wrote. The other part is why in the world does she need to have one of the sound techs walk on stage and flip to the page in the book where the next song is going to be? Is that an incredibly difficult task? Lucinda is incredibly talented as a writer, I’m pretty sure she could figure out alphabetical order.
All in all it was a pretty good night. Show was good, not the best I’ve seen but Lucinda always plays great music. Venue was cool enough that I’ll probably try to go see The Polyphonic Spree there in a few weeks, though I honestly don’t think the entire band can fit on that stage. If anything I at least got out in the fresh air for a little bit. Yes, the fact that I actually got outside over the weekend is sometimes cause for celebration. I’ll admit, I live a strange, fluorescent filled life.
The five random CDs for the week:
1) Pieta Brown “I Never Told”
2) Lyle Lovett “The Road to Ensenada”
3) Jay Farrar “Terroir Blues”
4) Bruce Springsteen “Lucky Town”
5) Kelly Willis “One More Time: The MCA Recordings”
Thursday, July 12, 2007
Reality is best viewed through a camera
Let’s see, I’ve had high speed internet for 27 hours and I’ve slept…ok, I haven’t slept yet. I told you I had a reason why I hadn’t done this by now. You can’t let me watch the video for Belly’s “Feed the Tree” whenever the hell I feel like it. I’ll just put it on an infinite loop and sit there until my eyes bleed. Of course it is cool that as I write this I have an Arcade Fire concert playing in one window. I never get to do that when I listen to it at work.
Good news, we actually won at trivia tonight for the first time that I can remember in a while. Even better was that it was just a three person team and we had to earn a victory by knowing where Scottie Pippen went to college and that they executed Oliver Cromwell after he had already died and been buried. Oh, and knowing that yak’s milk is pink. That’s the type of knowledge that is just stored in the back corners of my brain.
Oh, I’ve only watched a bit of the World Series of Pop Culture, mainly getting pissed at people who miss easy questions. For crying out loud, one team couldn’t identify “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” or “Rock the Casbah” from the song lyrics. If you can’t do that you really shouldn’t be on a trivia game show. I do vaguely know one of the teams (it’s the guys who run the Trivia Smackdown game at the Bottleneck) and a few of my friends tried out but mainly I’m sitting this reality show out. Have to prepare for the “Scott Baio is 45 and Single” masterpiece.
I’m not kidding about that last one. It is the new show on VH-1 and I am really looking forward to it. For those who don’t know the story, Scott Baio grew to fame as Chachi and continued his career with such classics as Charles in Charge and Zapped, the latter being possibly the greatest movie a twelve year old boy could sneak past an unsuspecting video store clerk in the mid 80’s. In the process Scott Baio dated/had affairs with/loved them and left them with practically every single hot starlet in the world. This guy hooked up with everyone. I mean, you think Wilmer Valderamma has serious game, he is a geeky kid compared to Scott Baio. He’s a hero to many as epitomized by The Man Show making him the second inductee into the Man Show Hall of fame, second only to Andre the Giant.
But today Scott is a little fatter, a little grayer and the wrinkles are starting to show. He is in a relationship but isn’t committing and he brings in a life coach (and the VH-1 camera crew) to help him address his fear of commitment. Which includes him visiting all of his ex-girlfriends. This might just be the best premise ever. Former teen idol meeting former hot starlets and discussing relationships with cameras rolling. This has the potential for brilliance.
One last reality tv note before I call it a night. I’d like to celebrate Lea’s victory in the elimination challenge on Top Chef last night. Not that I think that she is the best chef on the show (Tre, Hung and CJ seem to be the best) but I just find her to be really cute and I want her to stay on the show for a while. That’s one of those secrets of successful reality shows, there has to be one cute, nice person to cheer for just because you like her and wouldn’t mind dating her. Hell, it ended up giving Elisabeth Hasselbeck a career for the past 6 years. Plus, Top Chef is a rather cool show, even if it is difficult to judge who is the best chef when you are not actually tasting the food.
Ok, one more Liz Phair video and I’ll go to bed…
Good news, we actually won at trivia tonight for the first time that I can remember in a while. Even better was that it was just a three person team and we had to earn a victory by knowing where Scottie Pippen went to college and that they executed Oliver Cromwell after he had already died and been buried. Oh, and knowing that yak’s milk is pink. That’s the type of knowledge that is just stored in the back corners of my brain.
Oh, I’ve only watched a bit of the World Series of Pop Culture, mainly getting pissed at people who miss easy questions. For crying out loud, one team couldn’t identify “Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic” or “Rock the Casbah” from the song lyrics. If you can’t do that you really shouldn’t be on a trivia game show. I do vaguely know one of the teams (it’s the guys who run the Trivia Smackdown game at the Bottleneck) and a few of my friends tried out but mainly I’m sitting this reality show out. Have to prepare for the “Scott Baio is 45 and Single” masterpiece.
I’m not kidding about that last one. It is the new show on VH-1 and I am really looking forward to it. For those who don’t know the story, Scott Baio grew to fame as Chachi and continued his career with such classics as Charles in Charge and Zapped, the latter being possibly the greatest movie a twelve year old boy could sneak past an unsuspecting video store clerk in the mid 80’s. In the process Scott Baio dated/had affairs with/loved them and left them with practically every single hot starlet in the world. This guy hooked up with everyone. I mean, you think Wilmer Valderamma has serious game, he is a geeky kid compared to Scott Baio. He’s a hero to many as epitomized by The Man Show making him the second inductee into the Man Show Hall of fame, second only to Andre the Giant.
But today Scott is a little fatter, a little grayer and the wrinkles are starting to show. He is in a relationship but isn’t committing and he brings in a life coach (and the VH-1 camera crew) to help him address his fear of commitment. Which includes him visiting all of his ex-girlfriends. This might just be the best premise ever. Former teen idol meeting former hot starlets and discussing relationships with cameras rolling. This has the potential for brilliance.
One last reality tv note before I call it a night. I’d like to celebrate Lea’s victory in the elimination challenge on Top Chef last night. Not that I think that she is the best chef on the show (Tre, Hung and CJ seem to be the best) but I just find her to be really cute and I want her to stay on the show for a while. That’s one of those secrets of successful reality shows, there has to be one cute, nice person to cheer for just because you like her and wouldn’t mind dating her. Hell, it ended up giving Elisabeth Hasselbeck a career for the past 6 years. Plus, Top Chef is a rather cool show, even if it is difficult to judge who is the best chef when you are not actually tasting the food.
Ok, one more Liz Phair video and I’ll go to bed…
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Nothing will ever beat 2600 baud
I hope that everyone enjoyed their free slurpee today. Personally, I am so pissed that I don’t have a Kwik-E-Mart within 500 miles of my current location. I’d have to drive through three Springfields in order to find one.
Anyway, today marks a momentous day here at the Battling the Current Media Compound. After years of speculation and complaints I have finally broken down and installed broadband internet on my computer. Yes, I am no longer using dial up. It’s a sad day for all of us to be sure.
I’m not kidding here, I’ve always used a dial-up modem despite the fact that this year marks my fourteenth year online. Hell, this is despite the fact that I knew the guys who founded Netscape. Even with that I still remained adamant about staying as low speed as possible. My official reason is that I used my high speed connection at work to do a lot of my intense web browsing and at home all I needed was a connection for email. That of course, was an out and out lie.
The real reason is one that makes sense to me and no one else. Here it is in a nutshell. I’m naturally a pretty quiet guy who tends towards interactions with the digital representations of people as opposed to their analog counterparts. So when I moved here I thought about getting broadband but I quickly realized that this would mean that I would have absolutely no reason to ever leave my apartment. I could just spend every night online and feeling as if I had a social life even if it mainly consisted of my interaction with pixels. Thus, out of a feeling of self preservation I decided that by not having broadband I would be forced to go out and meet people. Which I did, though the vast majority of those people happen to be bartenders. Funny how life works out sometimes.
But the lure of YouTube all the time has proven to be too strong so I now have a real internet hookup. The good news for everyone reading this is that it means that I’ll finally will be able to make all of the format changes and updates that I’ve been wanting to do but can’t without wasting an entire day. So hopefully I’ll be able to embed YouTube posts soon, I’ll see if I can clean the format for the first time in years and who knows, maybe I’ll start podcasting. Though given that I’m usually amazed that people want to read what I have to say I can’t imagine them actually wanting to listen to me.
So it’s an end of an era. No more modem noise every night. No more pages that don’t even bother to load. It’s kind of sad in a way. I don’t like changing things and this always made it feel like I was back in my dorm room discovering the wonders of internet newsgroups back in the days before the web didn’t really exist. When you would tell people, “Dude you’ve got to check out the alt.tv.animaniacs board”. Well, at least that is what we would tell each other. Life was rather strange in the early 90’s.
It’ll be nice joining the 21st century. Only took me six years. Next thing you know I’ll have to start watching that show 24. I heard it’s pretty good.
Anyway, today marks a momentous day here at the Battling the Current Media Compound. After years of speculation and complaints I have finally broken down and installed broadband internet on my computer. Yes, I am no longer using dial up. It’s a sad day for all of us to be sure.
I’m not kidding here, I’ve always used a dial-up modem despite the fact that this year marks my fourteenth year online. Hell, this is despite the fact that I knew the guys who founded Netscape. Even with that I still remained adamant about staying as low speed as possible. My official reason is that I used my high speed connection at work to do a lot of my intense web browsing and at home all I needed was a connection for email. That of course, was an out and out lie.
The real reason is one that makes sense to me and no one else. Here it is in a nutshell. I’m naturally a pretty quiet guy who tends towards interactions with the digital representations of people as opposed to their analog counterparts. So when I moved here I thought about getting broadband but I quickly realized that this would mean that I would have absolutely no reason to ever leave my apartment. I could just spend every night online and feeling as if I had a social life even if it mainly consisted of my interaction with pixels. Thus, out of a feeling of self preservation I decided that by not having broadband I would be forced to go out and meet people. Which I did, though the vast majority of those people happen to be bartenders. Funny how life works out sometimes.
But the lure of YouTube all the time has proven to be too strong so I now have a real internet hookup. The good news for everyone reading this is that it means that I’ll finally will be able to make all of the format changes and updates that I’ve been wanting to do but can’t without wasting an entire day. So hopefully I’ll be able to embed YouTube posts soon, I’ll see if I can clean the format for the first time in years and who knows, maybe I’ll start podcasting. Though given that I’m usually amazed that people want to read what I have to say I can’t imagine them actually wanting to listen to me.
So it’s an end of an era. No more modem noise every night. No more pages that don’t even bother to load. It’s kind of sad in a way. I don’t like changing things and this always made it feel like I was back in my dorm room discovering the wonders of internet newsgroups back in the days before the web didn’t really exist. When you would tell people, “Dude you’ve got to check out the alt.tv.animaniacs board”. Well, at least that is what we would tell each other. Life was rather strange in the early 90’s.
It’ll be nice joining the 21st century. Only took me six years. Next thing you know I’ll have to start watching that show 24. I heard it’s pretty good.
Tuesday, July 10, 2007
Let others do the writing...
(On the comment, I’d have to go with Lynn from Alf. Mainly because she did a guest spot on Married With Children and looked incredible in a slutty sort of way. That said, I did have a thing for Tracey Gold, pre-anorexia at least.)
“To myself, these reminders: Don’t think that you can do any good. Don’t tell people things. Don’t try to get them to be you. For instance, don’t make them tapes of songs that they have never heard. All you are doing is trying to impress them and make them more like you by getting them to like the same things you do. You want the company of others as long as they are like you. If they are different, you try to make them into you. This might be the reason you lost the nice girl.” Henry Rollins
Now that I have had my new laptop and MP3 player operational for a while I’ve been delving into playlists. The following one came out of one of my monthly reports. It’s my ultimate cover song mix for those moments when you don’t exactly crave originality. Or at least not original originality. Anyway, it’s a great mix and I wanted to share it. For those who would like to experience it in a more temporal sense let me know and we will work out an exchange of media. Or just go and buy all the songs, just as easy.
Here’s the playlist:
The Gourds “Gin and Juice” (originally by Snoop Dogg): No better way to start off the playlist than with maybe the greatest cover song ever. You have to admire any band that listens to Snoop Dogg and goes “You know what this song is missing? A mandolin solo!” Has to be heard to be believed.
Liz Phair (with Material Issue) “Turning Japanese” (originally by The Vapors): Like I’ve said before, I have a soft spot in my heart for Liz Phair. She was just a few years older than me and lived in Chicago. We should have crossed paths at some point. It also means that I was listening to this song on the radio at the exact same time she was. That’s cool in my book.
Whiskeytown “Nervous Breakdown” (originally by Black Flag): When I discuss alternative country I usually try to explain it as a bunch of kids who grew up on punk rock and then started to play country music. Which somehow turns into covering punk songs and turning them into country songs. Hey, at least it is Ryan Adams before he turned himself into a total wreck.
Jeff Buckley “Kick Out the Jams” (originally by The MC5): Wasn’t my original choice. I’m a big fan of Jeff’s version of “If You See Her, Say Hello” except the copy that I have of it starts with two minutes of Jeff tuning his guitar. I find it interesting, anyone else would think otherwise. Anyway, for those who ever wondered what was going through my headphones right before I took a test here is your answer.
Kathleen Edwards “Money Talks” (originally by AC/DC): The entire reason I came up with this playlist is so I could tell people about this song. It just blows me away. Typically, female singer songwriters do not cover AC/DC. They sure as hell shouldn’t do a good job of it. She gives the song a completely different twist and I just love it. I’m telling you, everyone should have at least one Kathleen Edwards CD in their collection.
U2 “Springhill Mining Disaster” (originally by Peggy Seeger): I’m very proud of being a Chicagoan. Not just because we have great food and art and the best architecture around. No, it’s also because we don’t care who you are, if we want to cut you down to size we will. This is best evidenced by this insanely rare live track from the Rosemont Horizon in 1987 where the Chicago crowd drives St. Bono to yell at them to shut up. This is my favorite concert moment ever and I wasn’t even there. Song doesn’t really matter, just that one exchange is worth the track.
Waco Brothers “Baba O’Riley” (originally by The Who): Somehow in composing the song Pete Townsend completely forgot to include a mandolin and a pedal steel. The Wacos make up for it with their usual style, panache, inability to stay on key, and overall drunkenness. Still one of my favorite live bands even though I haven’t seen them for years.
Mary Lou Lord “Sugar, Sugar” (originally by The Archies): This is pretty much the definition of bubblegum pop. First of all, the song is actually about candy. On top of that, it started off on a cartoon (and I got this copy from a disc of artists covering cartoon theme songs). The thing is, this is just a really good song. I actually understand why the original was a hit. It just has this incredibly good hook. I enjoy this song much more than I should admit.
Gear Daddies “Little Red Corvette” (originally by Prince): There is a logic to this cover as Prince is the king of Minneapolis and the Gear Daddies are the kings of Austin, Minnesota. That’s not an entirely difficult accomplishment as Austin, Minnesota is otherwise known as being the home of Spam. (Well, that and being the home of my first girlfriend but for some reason I haven’t been able to get that added to the tourism brochures yet.) Martin Zellar, one of the coolest and nicest musicians I’ve ever met, is at his best here.
Kelly Willis “They’re Blind” (originally by The Replacements): Always hand it to Kelly for her choice here. After getting kicked out of Nashville and down to her last shot at making it in music she covers a song that is basically about telling the major labels to go screw themselves. There’s a wonderful freedom you get when you really have nothing left to lose.
Aimee Mann “One” (originally by Harry Nilsson): Not entirely sure why I included this song. Mainly I just wanted an excuse to include an Aimee Mann song. It doesn’t take much for me to find a way.
Uncle Tupelo “No Depression” (originally by The Carter Family): From a music history perspective, this is probably the most important song on the playlist. This cover result in the name of a) Uncle Tupelo’s first album, b) a magazine covering the alternative country scene and c) the shorthand name for an entire genre of music. It might not fit with the other songs but as I’ve said before, every playlist that I will ever build will have Jay Farrar singing on it at some point.
Neko Case “Buckets of Rain” (originally by Bob Dylan): I still remember the first time I heard Neko do this song live. I had to pick my jaw up off the floor after she was done singing. I’m not even a big Dylan fan but this is just an incredible cover. It’s simple and cool and shows off why I am such a big fan of Neko’s. One of those songs everyone needs to listen to at some point.
Cat Power “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” (originally by The Rolling Stones): Despite what you’ll think when you hear this song it actually is a cover version. You won’t believe it because a) Chan Marshall slowed the song down by about a factor of twenty and b) she doesn’t sing the chorus. The second part is the problem because if I asked you to sing the song right now all you would do is sing the chorus. I doubt anyone could actually recite one of the verses or even remember if they exist. I somehow have a feeling that Mick didn’t have this in mind at the time.
The Sundays “Wild Horses” (originally by The Rolling Stones): You’ve heard this song before, if only because Budweiser used it for years in their commercials. While usually I hate commercialism this song is so perfect I really don’t care. I could listen to this song for years. I’m pretty sure this is what Gram Parsons had in mind for the song with this eerie quality that just hangs in the background. Thinking about it, if you told me I could have one band get together and record one more album I would probably chose The Sundays. I don’t know if I miss any band more than I miss them.
R.E.M. “Love is All Around” (originally by The Troggs): From an MTV Unplugged performance that I probably watched a thousand times. Sung by Mike Mills, who as I get older I have started to look more and more like. Which is sad because I’d much rather turn into Peter Buck. My luck that I’ll just end up looking like a bass player.
Alejandro Escovedo “I Wanna Be Your Dog” (originally by The Stooges): We’ll end it with the only version of an Iggy Pop classic that includes a cello solo. When you hear it you wonder why every version didn’t include a cello. Sadly, in concert it doesn’t end with them shattering the cello on stage, which would be awesome.
“To myself, these reminders: Don’t think that you can do any good. Don’t tell people things. Don’t try to get them to be you. For instance, don’t make them tapes of songs that they have never heard. All you are doing is trying to impress them and make them more like you by getting them to like the same things you do. You want the company of others as long as they are like you. If they are different, you try to make them into you. This might be the reason you lost the nice girl.” Henry Rollins
Now that I have had my new laptop and MP3 player operational for a while I’ve been delving into playlists. The following one came out of one of my monthly reports. It’s my ultimate cover song mix for those moments when you don’t exactly crave originality. Or at least not original originality. Anyway, it’s a great mix and I wanted to share it. For those who would like to experience it in a more temporal sense let me know and we will work out an exchange of media. Or just go and buy all the songs, just as easy.
Here’s the playlist:
The Gourds “Gin and Juice” (originally by Snoop Dogg): No better way to start off the playlist than with maybe the greatest cover song ever. You have to admire any band that listens to Snoop Dogg and goes “You know what this song is missing? A mandolin solo!” Has to be heard to be believed.
Liz Phair (with Material Issue) “Turning Japanese” (originally by The Vapors): Like I’ve said before, I have a soft spot in my heart for Liz Phair. She was just a few years older than me and lived in Chicago. We should have crossed paths at some point. It also means that I was listening to this song on the radio at the exact same time she was. That’s cool in my book.
Whiskeytown “Nervous Breakdown” (originally by Black Flag): When I discuss alternative country I usually try to explain it as a bunch of kids who grew up on punk rock and then started to play country music. Which somehow turns into covering punk songs and turning them into country songs. Hey, at least it is Ryan Adams before he turned himself into a total wreck.
Jeff Buckley “Kick Out the Jams” (originally by The MC5): Wasn’t my original choice. I’m a big fan of Jeff’s version of “If You See Her, Say Hello” except the copy that I have of it starts with two minutes of Jeff tuning his guitar. I find it interesting, anyone else would think otherwise. Anyway, for those who ever wondered what was going through my headphones right before I took a test here is your answer.
Kathleen Edwards “Money Talks” (originally by AC/DC): The entire reason I came up with this playlist is so I could tell people about this song. It just blows me away. Typically, female singer songwriters do not cover AC/DC. They sure as hell shouldn’t do a good job of it. She gives the song a completely different twist and I just love it. I’m telling you, everyone should have at least one Kathleen Edwards CD in their collection.
U2 “Springhill Mining Disaster” (originally by Peggy Seeger): I’m very proud of being a Chicagoan. Not just because we have great food and art and the best architecture around. No, it’s also because we don’t care who you are, if we want to cut you down to size we will. This is best evidenced by this insanely rare live track from the Rosemont Horizon in 1987 where the Chicago crowd drives St. Bono to yell at them to shut up. This is my favorite concert moment ever and I wasn’t even there. Song doesn’t really matter, just that one exchange is worth the track.
Waco Brothers “Baba O’Riley” (originally by The Who): Somehow in composing the song Pete Townsend completely forgot to include a mandolin and a pedal steel. The Wacos make up for it with their usual style, panache, inability to stay on key, and overall drunkenness. Still one of my favorite live bands even though I haven’t seen them for years.
Mary Lou Lord “Sugar, Sugar” (originally by The Archies): This is pretty much the definition of bubblegum pop. First of all, the song is actually about candy. On top of that, it started off on a cartoon (and I got this copy from a disc of artists covering cartoon theme songs). The thing is, this is just a really good song. I actually understand why the original was a hit. It just has this incredibly good hook. I enjoy this song much more than I should admit.
Gear Daddies “Little Red Corvette” (originally by Prince): There is a logic to this cover as Prince is the king of Minneapolis and the Gear Daddies are the kings of Austin, Minnesota. That’s not an entirely difficult accomplishment as Austin, Minnesota is otherwise known as being the home of Spam. (Well, that and being the home of my first girlfriend but for some reason I haven’t been able to get that added to the tourism brochures yet.) Martin Zellar, one of the coolest and nicest musicians I’ve ever met, is at his best here.
Kelly Willis “They’re Blind” (originally by The Replacements): Always hand it to Kelly for her choice here. After getting kicked out of Nashville and down to her last shot at making it in music she covers a song that is basically about telling the major labels to go screw themselves. There’s a wonderful freedom you get when you really have nothing left to lose.
Aimee Mann “One” (originally by Harry Nilsson): Not entirely sure why I included this song. Mainly I just wanted an excuse to include an Aimee Mann song. It doesn’t take much for me to find a way.
Uncle Tupelo “No Depression” (originally by The Carter Family): From a music history perspective, this is probably the most important song on the playlist. This cover result in the name of a) Uncle Tupelo’s first album, b) a magazine covering the alternative country scene and c) the shorthand name for an entire genre of music. It might not fit with the other songs but as I’ve said before, every playlist that I will ever build will have Jay Farrar singing on it at some point.
Neko Case “Buckets of Rain” (originally by Bob Dylan): I still remember the first time I heard Neko do this song live. I had to pick my jaw up off the floor after she was done singing. I’m not even a big Dylan fan but this is just an incredible cover. It’s simple and cool and shows off why I am such a big fan of Neko’s. One of those songs everyone needs to listen to at some point.
Cat Power “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” (originally by The Rolling Stones): Despite what you’ll think when you hear this song it actually is a cover version. You won’t believe it because a) Chan Marshall slowed the song down by about a factor of twenty and b) she doesn’t sing the chorus. The second part is the problem because if I asked you to sing the song right now all you would do is sing the chorus. I doubt anyone could actually recite one of the verses or even remember if they exist. I somehow have a feeling that Mick didn’t have this in mind at the time.
The Sundays “Wild Horses” (originally by The Rolling Stones): You’ve heard this song before, if only because Budweiser used it for years in their commercials. While usually I hate commercialism this song is so perfect I really don’t care. I could listen to this song for years. I’m pretty sure this is what Gram Parsons had in mind for the song with this eerie quality that just hangs in the background. Thinking about it, if you told me I could have one band get together and record one more album I would probably chose The Sundays. I don’t know if I miss any band more than I miss them.
R.E.M. “Love is All Around” (originally by The Troggs): From an MTV Unplugged performance that I probably watched a thousand times. Sung by Mike Mills, who as I get older I have started to look more and more like. Which is sad because I’d much rather turn into Peter Buck. My luck that I’ll just end up looking like a bass player.
Alejandro Escovedo “I Wanna Be Your Dog” (originally by The Stooges): We’ll end it with the only version of an Iggy Pop classic that includes a cello solo. When you hear it you wonder why every version didn’t include a cello. Sadly, in concert it doesn’t end with them shattering the cello on stage, which would be awesome.
Monday, July 09, 2007
Gazoo never happened
(I know that people complain about the band being artificially happy and potentially a cult but I just have to say that listening to The Polyphonic Spree while driving to work on a Monday morning is like drinking coffee for your soul. On a day when no right thinking person would be looking forward to spending eight hours in a windowless box those songs made me think that today was going to be a good day. Not bad for a guy who is best known for leading Tripping Daisy, the band that wasn’t the Flaming Lips or Ween.)
(Oh, and first day experiment results: no tv does make me get up. Because now I have to walk to turn on a tv set. Hopefully this just doesn’t result in my just sleeping on the couch from here on out.)
Ok, I should have known on Thursday night that when I mentioned my top ten 80’s sitcoms featuring aliens that I would have to list them out. Do people want to talk about my idols? Of course not. Let’s focus on the fun topics. Here they are, in order of course.
#10: Out of this World: You just cannot discount the directorial vision of Scott Baio. In the pantheon of directors the list is basically Wells, Kubrick and Chachi. I am so looking forward to the VH-1 show starting this week in which Scott Baio asks the question why is he 45 and single. Sadly, it’s because I’m asking myself the same damn question.
#9: The Muppet Show: As was revealed in Muppets from Space, Gonzo is technically an alien. Plus they had the entire Pigs in Space sketch, which may have been one of my favorite pieces of recurring comedy as a kid. Oh and Mark Hamill even did a guest spot as Luke Skywalker. So it was sci-fi and the source of most of my taste in comedy until I grew old enough to watch Monty Python and The Young Ones.
#8: Mr. Smith: Ok, there were technically no aliens in this show. But for crying out loud, it had a talking orangutan as the dramatic lead! You can’t get much more alien than that. And people think a sitcom about cavemen is dumb.
#7: Soap: There was a plot at one point about Richard Mulligan getting abducted by aliens. This was well after the Billy Crystal years and Benson had already left for his own show (with the dude who would end up playing an alien on Deep Space Nine). I’m very upset that when people talk about the greatest sitcoms of all time they don’t mention Soap. Groundbreaking in terms of topics, insanely funny and sorely missed.
#6: The Tomorrow People: The best use of Nickelodeon outside of You Can’t Do That On Television. Vaguely British and Australian children who have superpowers, see the Loch Ness monster, and have visits from aliens from the future. Not your typical afterschool fare to be sure. Oh and it was a sitcom. Go back and look at the special effects. Funny as hell when you look at it now.
#5: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Can’t really match up to the book. Or the radio series. It’s probably on par with the movie, though. As a rule, when one character is said to have two heads and three arms you should probably have technology to make that look at all realistic. As opposed to, I don’t know, sticking a mannequin’s head on an actor’s shoulder and calling it a day. Still, about half of my favorite quotes of all time are taken from this series.
#4: Alf: Surprisingly not as funny as you recollect. It is amazing how much of a cultural phenomenon this show was. It went beyond the typical posters and lunch boxes and became a cultural icon because of…of…I’m not sure why. Maybe it was because Alf always wanted to eat the family cat. There is probably an undercurrent of hatred towards cats in this country. Either that or the fact that the daughter in the show was vaguely attractive. That’s usually worth a few Neilsen points right there.
#3: Red Dwarf: Ok, unless you watch PBS you may never have heard of this show. Either that or spent a lot of time in England. However, this is easily one of the funniest television shows ever made. It’s about a guy trapped in a spaceship, millions of years in the future, discovering that he is the last human being and all he has for company is a cleaning robot, a talking toaster, a senile computer, a hologram of his annoying roommate, and a cat who after millions of years of evolution had effectively turned into James Brown. It’s even funnier than it sounds. Basically this is what you always figured Star Trek was really like. Pick up the DVDs.
#2: Perfect Strangers: No way in hell Balki had a green card. Dude probably swam into the country or something. All he did was take jobs away from hard working Americans. That’s if he had a job, I don’t remember. Hell, the fact that Bronson Pinchot had a job is disturbing enough.
#1: Mork and Mindy: Not even an argument. Sure the show lost a little when they added Jonathan Winters, mainly because they lost focus given that he was an incredible talent, but it was such an awesome show. It’s strange because as a kid I could watch this show and appreciate the life lessons that Mork would give at the end of the show. They weren’t corny, they were actually touching to an 8 year old EC. Today I notice how freaking cool everyone is and wonder where I can meet someone like Pam Dawber. Plus, it’s good to remember when Robin Williams was incredibly funny as opposed to today where I wonder if even he knows what he is doing anymore. Other than working on a script for Patch Adams 2.
(Oh, and first day experiment results: no tv does make me get up. Because now I have to walk to turn on a tv set. Hopefully this just doesn’t result in my just sleeping on the couch from here on out.)
Ok, I should have known on Thursday night that when I mentioned my top ten 80’s sitcoms featuring aliens that I would have to list them out. Do people want to talk about my idols? Of course not. Let’s focus on the fun topics. Here they are, in order of course.
#10: Out of this World: You just cannot discount the directorial vision of Scott Baio. In the pantheon of directors the list is basically Wells, Kubrick and Chachi. I am so looking forward to the VH-1 show starting this week in which Scott Baio asks the question why is he 45 and single. Sadly, it’s because I’m asking myself the same damn question.
#9: The Muppet Show: As was revealed in Muppets from Space, Gonzo is technically an alien. Plus they had the entire Pigs in Space sketch, which may have been one of my favorite pieces of recurring comedy as a kid. Oh and Mark Hamill even did a guest spot as Luke Skywalker. So it was sci-fi and the source of most of my taste in comedy until I grew old enough to watch Monty Python and The Young Ones.
#8: Mr. Smith: Ok, there were technically no aliens in this show. But for crying out loud, it had a talking orangutan as the dramatic lead! You can’t get much more alien than that. And people think a sitcom about cavemen is dumb.
#7: Soap: There was a plot at one point about Richard Mulligan getting abducted by aliens. This was well after the Billy Crystal years and Benson had already left for his own show (with the dude who would end up playing an alien on Deep Space Nine). I’m very upset that when people talk about the greatest sitcoms of all time they don’t mention Soap. Groundbreaking in terms of topics, insanely funny and sorely missed.
#6: The Tomorrow People: The best use of Nickelodeon outside of You Can’t Do That On Television. Vaguely British and Australian children who have superpowers, see the Loch Ness monster, and have visits from aliens from the future. Not your typical afterschool fare to be sure. Oh and it was a sitcom. Go back and look at the special effects. Funny as hell when you look at it now.
#5: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Can’t really match up to the book. Or the radio series. It’s probably on par with the movie, though. As a rule, when one character is said to have two heads and three arms you should probably have technology to make that look at all realistic. As opposed to, I don’t know, sticking a mannequin’s head on an actor’s shoulder and calling it a day. Still, about half of my favorite quotes of all time are taken from this series.
#4: Alf: Surprisingly not as funny as you recollect. It is amazing how much of a cultural phenomenon this show was. It went beyond the typical posters and lunch boxes and became a cultural icon because of…of…I’m not sure why. Maybe it was because Alf always wanted to eat the family cat. There is probably an undercurrent of hatred towards cats in this country. Either that or the fact that the daughter in the show was vaguely attractive. That’s usually worth a few Neilsen points right there.
#3: Red Dwarf: Ok, unless you watch PBS you may never have heard of this show. Either that or spent a lot of time in England. However, this is easily one of the funniest television shows ever made. It’s about a guy trapped in a spaceship, millions of years in the future, discovering that he is the last human being and all he has for company is a cleaning robot, a talking toaster, a senile computer, a hologram of his annoying roommate, and a cat who after millions of years of evolution had effectively turned into James Brown. It’s even funnier than it sounds. Basically this is what you always figured Star Trek was really like. Pick up the DVDs.
#2: Perfect Strangers: No way in hell Balki had a green card. Dude probably swam into the country or something. All he did was take jobs away from hard working Americans. That’s if he had a job, I don’t remember. Hell, the fact that Bronson Pinchot had a job is disturbing enough.
#1: Mork and Mindy: Not even an argument. Sure the show lost a little when they added Jonathan Winters, mainly because they lost focus given that he was an incredible talent, but it was such an awesome show. It’s strange because as a kid I could watch this show and appreciate the life lessons that Mork would give at the end of the show. They weren’t corny, they were actually touching to an 8 year old EC. Today I notice how freaking cool everyone is and wonder where I can meet someone like Pam Dawber. Plus, it’s good to remember when Robin Williams was incredibly funny as opposed to today where I wonder if even he knows what he is doing anymore. Other than working on a script for Patch Adams 2.
Let me know if I missed any. I almost want to add Small Wonder even if she was just a robot.
Sunday, July 08, 2007
A double blind life
Note to people who have to deal with me in the real world on a regular basis: I am undertaking a personal experiment this week and I am not sure what the results shall be. I have finally broken down and taken the television set out of my bedroom. Theoretically, this should help remove the clutter from my life, make it easier for me to sleep and force me to wake up earlier as I will no longer be able to lie in bed listening to the news every morning. That’s the theory anyway. There is a real possibility that I simply will not get out of bed and/or even be more bitter and grumpy than normal. Just saying, you might want to give me some space this week.
This isn’t the first personal experiment that I’ve undertaken and hopefully it won’t have similar results to the fabled “Optimal Level of Drunkeness” experiment, which I believe is still discussed in hushed tones at bars around the country. The idea was brilliant though. I’m a naturally quiet and serious guy and while I have a good sense of humor it takes a while for me to show it to people. (Computer screens are a much nicer audience). But there is a point on a Saturday night where after enough beverages I become a very witty and relaxed guy who is really fun to have around. The experiment, and yes this was done with rigor and numerous witnesses, was to pinpoint that exact moment and to time it to coincide with when this girl I really liked was going to join us at the bar. The protocol was top-notch going into the night.
Sadly, the protocols did not anticipate people ordering shots of tequila. As I said later, “I saw the optimal level and decided to run right past it.” Didn’t get the girl and ended up watching old tapes of Beavis and Butthead at my apartment later that night. This is why I warn people when I undertake these experiments.
Anyway, a few other notes from the weekend. Sadly, I did not attend the Redneck Games that the Kansas City T-Bones were holding this weekend. The promotion’s goal, and this is an exact quote, was to “find the biggest redneck in Wyandotte County.” Personally, this doesn’t seem like something you could achieve in a weekend. I’m guessing this would require at least six months, a double-elimination bracket, and several monster trucks. Sometimes I really don’t have to look very far to find humor in this town.
I did make my way to the Lyle Lovett and K.D. Lang show on Friday. I’ll say this about KC, the nice thing about a town that doesn’t believe in culture (or evolution, or filling in potholes) is that I can end up with sixth row seats for Lyle Lovett without any effort. K.D. was fine, given that I didn’t quite know what to expect. Basically I can’t complain about anyone who does a version of Leonard Cohen’s “Halleluiah” to end her set. (If I ever decided to go for a master’s in the history of music my thesis would be on that song and its evolution through cover versions by John Cale, Jeff Buckley and Rufus Wainwright among others.) Lyle was awesome as always. He played a lot of new material as he should have a new album out relatively soon. He’s messing around with bluegrass again, more as a concept than a full blown, old-time sound. Still a good show except with two venue complaints.
First, during a few songs they completely lost Lyle’s vocals in the mix. To the point that you could barely hear him sing. I’ve gone to a lot of shows and losing the vocals is not common. This is the second show in a row at Starlight that this has happened and it makes me wonder who is running their sound board. The other point is that it is very odd to put a rather nice, open air theater right next to the zoo. Because this means that on a warm summer night you sit down to watch a band and the cooling breeze brings with it a smell that is almost, but not quite, like having an elephant sitting next to you. It just adds a bit of surrealness to a night that should be pretty straightforward.
The five random CDs for the week:
1) Cowboy Junkies “Early 21st Century Blues”
2) Toad the Wet Sprocket “Dulcinea”
3) Lyle Lovett “Lyle Lovett”
4) Carbon Leaf “Love Loss Hope Repeat”
5) The Polyphonic Spree “Together We’re Heavy”
This isn’t the first personal experiment that I’ve undertaken and hopefully it won’t have similar results to the fabled “Optimal Level of Drunkeness” experiment, which I believe is still discussed in hushed tones at bars around the country. The idea was brilliant though. I’m a naturally quiet and serious guy and while I have a good sense of humor it takes a while for me to show it to people. (Computer screens are a much nicer audience). But there is a point on a Saturday night where after enough beverages I become a very witty and relaxed guy who is really fun to have around. The experiment, and yes this was done with rigor and numerous witnesses, was to pinpoint that exact moment and to time it to coincide with when this girl I really liked was going to join us at the bar. The protocol was top-notch going into the night.
Sadly, the protocols did not anticipate people ordering shots of tequila. As I said later, “I saw the optimal level and decided to run right past it.” Didn’t get the girl and ended up watching old tapes of Beavis and Butthead at my apartment later that night. This is why I warn people when I undertake these experiments.
Anyway, a few other notes from the weekend. Sadly, I did not attend the Redneck Games that the Kansas City T-Bones were holding this weekend. The promotion’s goal, and this is an exact quote, was to “find the biggest redneck in Wyandotte County.” Personally, this doesn’t seem like something you could achieve in a weekend. I’m guessing this would require at least six months, a double-elimination bracket, and several monster trucks. Sometimes I really don’t have to look very far to find humor in this town.
I did make my way to the Lyle Lovett and K.D. Lang show on Friday. I’ll say this about KC, the nice thing about a town that doesn’t believe in culture (or evolution, or filling in potholes) is that I can end up with sixth row seats for Lyle Lovett without any effort. K.D. was fine, given that I didn’t quite know what to expect. Basically I can’t complain about anyone who does a version of Leonard Cohen’s “Halleluiah” to end her set. (If I ever decided to go for a master’s in the history of music my thesis would be on that song and its evolution through cover versions by John Cale, Jeff Buckley and Rufus Wainwright among others.) Lyle was awesome as always. He played a lot of new material as he should have a new album out relatively soon. He’s messing around with bluegrass again, more as a concept than a full blown, old-time sound. Still a good show except with two venue complaints.
First, during a few songs they completely lost Lyle’s vocals in the mix. To the point that you could barely hear him sing. I’ve gone to a lot of shows and losing the vocals is not common. This is the second show in a row at Starlight that this has happened and it makes me wonder who is running their sound board. The other point is that it is very odd to put a rather nice, open air theater right next to the zoo. Because this means that on a warm summer night you sit down to watch a band and the cooling breeze brings with it a smell that is almost, but not quite, like having an elephant sitting next to you. It just adds a bit of surrealness to a night that should be pretty straightforward.
The five random CDs for the week:
1) Cowboy Junkies “Early 21st Century Blues”
2) Toad the Wet Sprocket “Dulcinea”
3) Lyle Lovett “Lyle Lovett”
4) Carbon Leaf “Love Loss Hope Repeat”
5) The Polyphonic Spree “Together We’re Heavy”
Thursday, July 05, 2007
More Infrequently Asked Questions...
Haven’t broken out the iFAQ’s for a while. Let’s dip into the old mailbag…
Question: What’s wrong with putting ketchup on a hot dog?
Answer: Putting ketchup on a hot dog goes against all that is good and pure of this great nation of ours. It is an affront to the American way of life and is a sign of moral weakness. The downfall of Pax Americana will be inexorably linked to people who somehow feel that it is ok to put ketchup on a hot dog.
Obviously, I have very strong emotions on this subject.
Basically, it is a Chicago thing. You don’t put ketchup on a hot dog because it overpowers the entire flavor of a Vienna Beef hot dog. The palate just tastes ketchup and you could be eating sawdust for all you know. It’s a trick you use when you’re feeding little kids, they’ll eat pretty much anything if ketchup is on it. To truly experience a hot dog it must include mustard, onions, sweet relish, a pickle spear, tomatoes and potentially sport peppers. You can do some mix and matching but that is your condiment list. Placing anything else on a hot dog is akin to putting mayonnaise on French fries. It’s not having different tastes, it’s just plain wrong.
Question: What is the proper name for a combination of a horse and a zerbra?
Answer: Officially, it is a zebrula, which beat out the more obvious choices of hebra and zorse. Personally, I feel that we should make a concerted effort to rename this animal the horbra just because it will make going to the zoo a lot more fun. I’d be much more willing to go if I knew that I would get to hear little kids plead “Mommy, mommy, can we go see the horbras?” Or civic leaders making grand claims like “Kansas City has the greatest collection of horbras in the United States.” Plus, much like you have a gaggle of geese and a crash of rhinos I think a skank of horbras would be fitting, if you know what I mean.
Question: Hey, whatever happened to Tawdry Amusements at Hourly Rates? Is it ever going to be written?
Answer: Uh, yeah, I meant to be working on that. For those that don’t remember, that is the name of the collection of the best pieces from the blog that I was working on collecting, rewriting and then self-publishing. As opposed to every other writing project I have ever taken on, this one is not suffering from a case of writer’s block. It’s more like I am suffering from a writer’s flood. See, I’ve written 100,000 words in this blog this year alone and I’m pretty sure I’ve broken half a million words since I started up the blog. To try to figure out what is good in that mix and then fix it so that it at least borders on proper grammar is a lot more challenging than I originally anticipated. It’s still on my list of things to do and if I can figure out a schedule I might give it a shot still this summer.
If anything, I need to figure out how to build time in my calendar for a writing project or November will become the worst month ever for me. I promised myself that I would write my novel before I turn 35 so this is really going to be my last chance. If you see me without sleep and muttering about characters named Brian and…shoot, I don’t think I ever came up with a name for the female lead yet. That might be a problem. Oh well, I have a few months to figure it out.
Question: Based on the Chris Benoit posts, who are the people that you idolize/admire?
Answer: This should be an easy question to answer but it is surprisingly challenging, mainly because this isn’t one of those things that I tend to make into lists. Top ten sitcoms from the 80’s that involved aliens? Can answer that one in five seconds. Who are my heroes? That’s a lot tougher.
The first name that popped into my head is Henry Rollins, not as much because I agree with everything he says but more because I admire his style. He just puts himself out there in everything he does and makes it his point to give everything he has. Plus, he isn’t content to be just one thing. He’s not just a guy in a punk band, he’s also a writer and a poet and a performer. It’s his writing that gets me. It takes a lot of courage to publish your journals, especially when you pour your heart out the way he does. He’s someone I try to emulate, though admittedly without the tattoos.
There’s also the people I met in New Orleans who were volunteering for a year or more gutting houses and working towards the rebuilding of the city. That’s work that I wish I could do (or even have the courage to give up so much of my life to attempt). It’s physically tough working, tearing down moldy walls in the heat and humidity of the city. But more than anything it is mentally draining. Every day you go and rip apart a person’s dreams and take everything they own and toss it into the street. It’s not done out of malice and it is done with care and concern but it is still rough. But, it is the only way for that city to come back to what it once was and I applaud anyone working towards that cause.
On the science side I’d have to say that one of my heroes is the late John Bardeen, to my knowledge the only person to ever win two Nobel Prizes in the same field. He was involved in the invention of the transistor and the supercomputer and he just happened to also be an Illini. He might be one of the most important people of the twentieth century and he is pretty much unknown except for us science geeks out there. But can you imagine life without the transistor? It powers everything, it might be the most important invention since the wheel. And after Bardeen (along with Schokley and the third guy whose name I always forget) finished with that project he designed the supercomputer for an encore. That’s what I call making your impact on society.
That’s it off of the top of my head. Oh, and “Nature Boy” Ric Flair. Look, anyone who can look into a camera and say “If you want to be the best you’ve got to beat the best” will always rank high in my book.
Have a fun weekend everyone.
Question: What’s wrong with putting ketchup on a hot dog?
Answer: Putting ketchup on a hot dog goes against all that is good and pure of this great nation of ours. It is an affront to the American way of life and is a sign of moral weakness. The downfall of Pax Americana will be inexorably linked to people who somehow feel that it is ok to put ketchup on a hot dog.
Obviously, I have very strong emotions on this subject.
Basically, it is a Chicago thing. You don’t put ketchup on a hot dog because it overpowers the entire flavor of a Vienna Beef hot dog. The palate just tastes ketchup and you could be eating sawdust for all you know. It’s a trick you use when you’re feeding little kids, they’ll eat pretty much anything if ketchup is on it. To truly experience a hot dog it must include mustard, onions, sweet relish, a pickle spear, tomatoes and potentially sport peppers. You can do some mix and matching but that is your condiment list. Placing anything else on a hot dog is akin to putting mayonnaise on French fries. It’s not having different tastes, it’s just plain wrong.
Question: What is the proper name for a combination of a horse and a zerbra?
Answer: Officially, it is a zebrula, which beat out the more obvious choices of hebra and zorse. Personally, I feel that we should make a concerted effort to rename this animal the horbra just because it will make going to the zoo a lot more fun. I’d be much more willing to go if I knew that I would get to hear little kids plead “Mommy, mommy, can we go see the horbras?” Or civic leaders making grand claims like “Kansas City has the greatest collection of horbras in the United States.” Plus, much like you have a gaggle of geese and a crash of rhinos I think a skank of horbras would be fitting, if you know what I mean.
Question: Hey, whatever happened to Tawdry Amusements at Hourly Rates? Is it ever going to be written?
Answer: Uh, yeah, I meant to be working on that. For those that don’t remember, that is the name of the collection of the best pieces from the blog that I was working on collecting, rewriting and then self-publishing. As opposed to every other writing project I have ever taken on, this one is not suffering from a case of writer’s block. It’s more like I am suffering from a writer’s flood. See, I’ve written 100,000 words in this blog this year alone and I’m pretty sure I’ve broken half a million words since I started up the blog. To try to figure out what is good in that mix and then fix it so that it at least borders on proper grammar is a lot more challenging than I originally anticipated. It’s still on my list of things to do and if I can figure out a schedule I might give it a shot still this summer.
If anything, I need to figure out how to build time in my calendar for a writing project or November will become the worst month ever for me. I promised myself that I would write my novel before I turn 35 so this is really going to be my last chance. If you see me without sleep and muttering about characters named Brian and…shoot, I don’t think I ever came up with a name for the female lead yet. That might be a problem. Oh well, I have a few months to figure it out.
Question: Based on the Chris Benoit posts, who are the people that you idolize/admire?
Answer: This should be an easy question to answer but it is surprisingly challenging, mainly because this isn’t one of those things that I tend to make into lists. Top ten sitcoms from the 80’s that involved aliens? Can answer that one in five seconds. Who are my heroes? That’s a lot tougher.
The first name that popped into my head is Henry Rollins, not as much because I agree with everything he says but more because I admire his style. He just puts himself out there in everything he does and makes it his point to give everything he has. Plus, he isn’t content to be just one thing. He’s not just a guy in a punk band, he’s also a writer and a poet and a performer. It’s his writing that gets me. It takes a lot of courage to publish your journals, especially when you pour your heart out the way he does. He’s someone I try to emulate, though admittedly without the tattoos.
There’s also the people I met in New Orleans who were volunteering for a year or more gutting houses and working towards the rebuilding of the city. That’s work that I wish I could do (or even have the courage to give up so much of my life to attempt). It’s physically tough working, tearing down moldy walls in the heat and humidity of the city. But more than anything it is mentally draining. Every day you go and rip apart a person’s dreams and take everything they own and toss it into the street. It’s not done out of malice and it is done with care and concern but it is still rough. But, it is the only way for that city to come back to what it once was and I applaud anyone working towards that cause.
On the science side I’d have to say that one of my heroes is the late John Bardeen, to my knowledge the only person to ever win two Nobel Prizes in the same field. He was involved in the invention of the transistor and the supercomputer and he just happened to also be an Illini. He might be one of the most important people of the twentieth century and he is pretty much unknown except for us science geeks out there. But can you imagine life without the transistor? It powers everything, it might be the most important invention since the wheel. And after Bardeen (along with Schokley and the third guy whose name I always forget) finished with that project he designed the supercomputer for an encore. That’s what I call making your impact on society.
That’s it off of the top of my head. Oh, and “Nature Boy” Ric Flair. Look, anyone who can look into a camera and say “If you want to be the best you’ve got to beat the best” will always rank high in my book.
Have a fun weekend everyone.
Wednesday, July 04, 2007
A verse, then a verse, and refrain
“Today’s the fourth of July / Another June has gone by / And when they light up our town I just think what a waste of gunpowder and sky.” Aimee Mann
This is a strange holiday for me and not for any of the usual reasons. This isn’t going to be a post about patriotism or how any product can be sold better by incorporating a picture of Abraham Lincoln or even how somehow celebrating freedom has become equated to getting drunk and blowing stuff up. Heck, I can’t even say that I did any celebrating today. I spent all day doing laundry, cleaning my apartment and basically getting my life in order. And there is a reason why I did that over any other possibilities today.
See, as of today I am two months away from turning thirty four. That doesn’t sound like much as thirty four isn’t one of those momentous birthdays. Heck, when I was in New Orleans a few weeks ago someone asked me my age and I instinctively answered thirty four even though I knew it was wrong. I feel that old. When each haircut is met by more and more gray hairs on the floor you begin to realize that you are of a certain age. And that is why I’ve been sitting around doing some serious pondering the past few weeks.
A few people know about this but others don’t but if you searched my wallet hidden amongst my business cards and insurance cards and student ID’s for schools I haven’t attended in a decade you’ll find three note cards. Four years ago I wrote all of my goals on these cards and put them in my wallet so I would know that if I ever needed to figure out what I was meant to be doing all I would have to do is look. Some goals I’ve accomplished, others are at least planned (I’ll write my novel in November as part of National Novel Writers Month) but there is one that is just sitting there and hanging over everything. And that’s the goal to be married by the time I turn 35.
Barring a major change of events that is not going to happen. I mean, it is still possible and thanks to Vegas it probably is not an impossibility until roughly 11:53 P.M. the night before my birthday but let’s face it, the odds are not in my favor. Now part of me doesn’t want to make a big deal about this. I like being single and being able to do whatever it is that I want to do. I’m beholden to no one and live the life that I find suits me. But the thing is, recently I’ve been really longing for a life that includes a wife, a house and a dog.
(Technically, I could just buy a house and get a dog but stay with me here. Hell, thanks to mail order and eBay I could probably accomplish all three using PayPal but I’d like to do a few things the old fashioned way.)
A few years ago I was pretty adamant about not wanting the house, the wife and the dog. It’s why I live where I live. If I lived by my office it was almost as if I was admitting that I was settled into middle age and I was nowhere near that point. I still don’t think I’m at that point but recently things have been changing. I’ve slowly gotten sick of renting or at least sick of having neighbors who really enjoy testing the bass on their stereo system. The concept of a yard has gone from something that is completely frivolous to something that I think I would possibly enjoy even if it meant paying a neighbor kid to mow it. And you know, part of me is just saying that maybe it is just time to start settling down. Life can’t always consist of Voltron DVDs.
What does all of this mean? I’m really not sure. I’m not the first person to get old or the first person to wake up and wonder just what in the world is he supposed to be doing with his life. It’s just that I am so used to setting five year goals and reaching them effortlessly that the thought of missing one leaves me flummoxed. Life isn’t going entirely according to plan anymore. That’s probably normal to everyone else but to me it’s shocking especially given that I was certain that my equations were correct.
So that’s why I spent the day cleaning and organizing my apartment as opposed to going out and celebrating or doing whatever it is that people do today. Because the only way I can go forward is by making sure that I have everything together before I start. It might not make sense but it’s the way that I work. A clean apartment means that my life is together and everything will fall into place. I’m pretty sure my life is looking at some major changes soon. Growing old and changing all at the same time. It’s a recipe for brilliance or disaster but definitely a novel.
This is a strange holiday for me and not for any of the usual reasons. This isn’t going to be a post about patriotism or how any product can be sold better by incorporating a picture of Abraham Lincoln or even how somehow celebrating freedom has become equated to getting drunk and blowing stuff up. Heck, I can’t even say that I did any celebrating today. I spent all day doing laundry, cleaning my apartment and basically getting my life in order. And there is a reason why I did that over any other possibilities today.
See, as of today I am two months away from turning thirty four. That doesn’t sound like much as thirty four isn’t one of those momentous birthdays. Heck, when I was in New Orleans a few weeks ago someone asked me my age and I instinctively answered thirty four even though I knew it was wrong. I feel that old. When each haircut is met by more and more gray hairs on the floor you begin to realize that you are of a certain age. And that is why I’ve been sitting around doing some serious pondering the past few weeks.
A few people know about this but others don’t but if you searched my wallet hidden amongst my business cards and insurance cards and student ID’s for schools I haven’t attended in a decade you’ll find three note cards. Four years ago I wrote all of my goals on these cards and put them in my wallet so I would know that if I ever needed to figure out what I was meant to be doing all I would have to do is look. Some goals I’ve accomplished, others are at least planned (I’ll write my novel in November as part of National Novel Writers Month) but there is one that is just sitting there and hanging over everything. And that’s the goal to be married by the time I turn 35.
Barring a major change of events that is not going to happen. I mean, it is still possible and thanks to Vegas it probably is not an impossibility until roughly 11:53 P.M. the night before my birthday but let’s face it, the odds are not in my favor. Now part of me doesn’t want to make a big deal about this. I like being single and being able to do whatever it is that I want to do. I’m beholden to no one and live the life that I find suits me. But the thing is, recently I’ve been really longing for a life that includes a wife, a house and a dog.
(Technically, I could just buy a house and get a dog but stay with me here. Hell, thanks to mail order and eBay I could probably accomplish all three using PayPal but I’d like to do a few things the old fashioned way.)
A few years ago I was pretty adamant about not wanting the house, the wife and the dog. It’s why I live where I live. If I lived by my office it was almost as if I was admitting that I was settled into middle age and I was nowhere near that point. I still don’t think I’m at that point but recently things have been changing. I’ve slowly gotten sick of renting or at least sick of having neighbors who really enjoy testing the bass on their stereo system. The concept of a yard has gone from something that is completely frivolous to something that I think I would possibly enjoy even if it meant paying a neighbor kid to mow it. And you know, part of me is just saying that maybe it is just time to start settling down. Life can’t always consist of Voltron DVDs.
What does all of this mean? I’m really not sure. I’m not the first person to get old or the first person to wake up and wonder just what in the world is he supposed to be doing with his life. It’s just that I am so used to setting five year goals and reaching them effortlessly that the thought of missing one leaves me flummoxed. Life isn’t going entirely according to plan anymore. That’s probably normal to everyone else but to me it’s shocking especially given that I was certain that my equations were correct.
So that’s why I spent the day cleaning and organizing my apartment as opposed to going out and celebrating or doing whatever it is that people do today. Because the only way I can go forward is by making sure that I have everything together before I start. It might not make sense but it’s the way that I work. A clean apartment means that my life is together and everything will fall into place. I’m pretty sure my life is looking at some major changes soon. Growing old and changing all at the same time. It’s a recipe for brilliance or disaster but definitely a novel.
Tuesday, July 03, 2007
Take me out to the Royals game as long as it's free
(Picture of Paul Konerko seconds before he takes the Royals yard.)
A few weeks ago I won tickets to a Royals game at trivia. Typically this is equivalent to winning a jar filled of pennies as a prize. Sure you know that it technically has some value but the amount of work that you have to perform (as well as the sheer embarrassment of it) makes you wonder if it is even worth the effort. But I was lucky in that the tickets were for the Royals playing my beloved White Sox so I was actually looking forward to the game.
(And yes, Lindsay is not my only beloved. Though Lindsay in a White Sox jersey….excuse me, I need to step away from the laptop for a moment.)
Anyway, I decided to not be a completely obnoxious White Sox fan and show up in my Konerko jersey, especially given that I was sitting in box seats behind home plate. Instead I went with the more subdued 2005 World Series Champions t-shirt just to remind people what a world series trophy looks like. Got there a few minutes before game time and it was salute to the Negro Leagues day with the teams wearing throwback jerseys and several former players being honored before the game including Minnie Minoso throwing out the first pitch. Yes, my first Royals game of the year and I got to see Minnie f’n Minoso. Super cool.
(If I remember correctly, the first Sox game I ever attended was one in which they were honoring Minnie. He was a classic Sox player in that he was incredibly talented but would a) choke in big series and b) be good for one concussion a year due to running into the outfield wall. In Chicago, this results in you becoming a folk hero.)
Now people can get on me for cheering the Sox at a Royals game but I’m sorry that is where my loyalties lie. I’ve been cheering the Sox since birth while I grew up viewing the Royals as the team in the powder blue uniforms who for some reason had fountains in their outfield where any logical human being would have put bleachers. Plus, I don’t feel bad about cheering Konerko and Thome who are legitimately good guys. The fact that I cheer A. J. Perszynski is probably an indication that at my core I am pure evil though.
However, while I was able to cheer my Sox to a 3-1 victory it may have been one of the most boring games that I have ever seen. It took three and a half hours with minimal excitement. It seemed like every count went to 3-1 or 3-2 and no one could seem to drive runners in. Also, one of my favorite players, Scott Podensik, pulled a rib muscle in the first inning and was out for the rest of the game. (Crede was out as well, which sucked and explains the horrible season.) It was interesting being that close to the field as I haven’t been that close to home plate in ages. What really struck me was the sound of a broken bat, which was just this massive crack ripping through the air that made you instinctively want to duck. Otherwise it was a fun day out of the apartment that had me out in the fresh air for a full afternoon. Sadly, that just means I am now suffering from sunburn. Maybe we can just replace the sun with a fluorescent light bulb.
(Oh, and relish won the hot dog race. What the hell is up with that? Only morons pick relish. And I’m sickened by the fact that they even allow ketchup to run in the hot dog race. That is an affront to all that is good and true about this great nation of ours. Ketchup on a hot dog. You know who puts ketchup on hot dogs? Commies, that’s who.)
A few weeks ago I won tickets to a Royals game at trivia. Typically this is equivalent to winning a jar filled of pennies as a prize. Sure you know that it technically has some value but the amount of work that you have to perform (as well as the sheer embarrassment of it) makes you wonder if it is even worth the effort. But I was lucky in that the tickets were for the Royals playing my beloved White Sox so I was actually looking forward to the game.
(And yes, Lindsay is not my only beloved. Though Lindsay in a White Sox jersey….excuse me, I need to step away from the laptop for a moment.)
Anyway, I decided to not be a completely obnoxious White Sox fan and show up in my Konerko jersey, especially given that I was sitting in box seats behind home plate. Instead I went with the more subdued 2005 World Series Champions t-shirt just to remind people what a world series trophy looks like. Got there a few minutes before game time and it was salute to the Negro Leagues day with the teams wearing throwback jerseys and several former players being honored before the game including Minnie Minoso throwing out the first pitch. Yes, my first Royals game of the year and I got to see Minnie f’n Minoso. Super cool.
(If I remember correctly, the first Sox game I ever attended was one in which they were honoring Minnie. He was a classic Sox player in that he was incredibly talented but would a) choke in big series and b) be good for one concussion a year due to running into the outfield wall. In Chicago, this results in you becoming a folk hero.)
Now people can get on me for cheering the Sox at a Royals game but I’m sorry that is where my loyalties lie. I’ve been cheering the Sox since birth while I grew up viewing the Royals as the team in the powder blue uniforms who for some reason had fountains in their outfield where any logical human being would have put bleachers. Plus, I don’t feel bad about cheering Konerko and Thome who are legitimately good guys. The fact that I cheer A. J. Perszynski is probably an indication that at my core I am pure evil though.
However, while I was able to cheer my Sox to a 3-1 victory it may have been one of the most boring games that I have ever seen. It took three and a half hours with minimal excitement. It seemed like every count went to 3-1 or 3-2 and no one could seem to drive runners in. Also, one of my favorite players, Scott Podensik, pulled a rib muscle in the first inning and was out for the rest of the game. (Crede was out as well, which sucked and explains the horrible season.) It was interesting being that close to the field as I haven’t been that close to home plate in ages. What really struck me was the sound of a broken bat, which was just this massive crack ripping through the air that made you instinctively want to duck. Otherwise it was a fun day out of the apartment that had me out in the fresh air for a full afternoon. Sadly, that just means I am now suffering from sunburn. Maybe we can just replace the sun with a fluorescent light bulb.
(Oh, and relish won the hot dog race. What the hell is up with that? Only morons pick relish. And I’m sickened by the fact that they even allow ketchup to run in the hot dog race. That is an affront to all that is good and true about this great nation of ours. Ketchup on a hot dog. You know who puts ketchup on hot dogs? Commies, that’s who.)
Monday, July 02, 2007
That's it for this planet...
So this weekend was a grocery shopping weekend for me. I’ve ranted about this before but I’m not someone who is very fond of grocery shopping. It is one of the tasks that I would most like to outsource (I’ve had an offshoring offer but the shipping costs from Bangalore are pretty harsh). It’s not as if I’m morally opposed to grocery shopping, more in that it is an hour of my life where I can’t multi-task even though I’ve been buying the exact same things every two weeks for several years.
So, while stumbling through the aisles on Saturday I came across the following and just stopped dead in my tracks. Just stared at it for minutes until I finally decided that I had to take a picture of it, as if to prove that it is not just a figment of my imagination. And yes, there it is, when someone asks me what marked the downfall of Western Civilization I’ll have an answer for them…
They’ve started to sell hot dogs in hot dog buns at the grocery store.
Think about this for a minute. Is the concept of a hot dog that challenging? Is the need to purchase both hot dogs and hot dog buns so confusing that they need to be combined? Maybe people just can’t figure out that they need to go to two separate parts of the store. Or, maybe the entire construction aspect of the hot dog is so mind-boggingly complex. I mean, the instruction manual basically reads Step 1: Take hot dog, Step 2: Place hot dog in bun. That’s obviously one step too many.
Seriously, I’ve never felt so ashamed to be a part of the human species. Apes would have the sense not to prepackage things like this. I know you could make the argument that this is for kids but if a kid can’t figure out how to put a hot dog in a bun he probably shouldn’t be allowed to operate a microwave. Hell, if you have to buy this stuff prepackaged would you even assume that you would have to cook them? I bet you eighty percent of the people who buy this eat it straight out of the package. If you can’t be bothered to take the effort to open a hot dog bun would you even wait the minute for it to heat up in the microwave?
Is there a better symbol for how soft we have gotten as a country than this? We’ve reached a point where even the simplest task has to be prepackaged for us. We can’t act for ourselves and we definitely can’t think for ourselves. Everything has to be pre-portioned into hermetically sealed bite sized packets. There’s no uniqueness anymore because uniqueness would require effort and that is just too tiring. We’ll just go off to the enormoplex to see our movies and the mega mart for our food and having the exact same life experience as everyone else while making the minimum amount of effort possible. If you see anyone buying these things in a grocery store just tell them to stop and look at themselves for five seconds. Encourage people to rejoin the human race.
Ok, I know that I promised that I’d talk about the Royals game as well but we must keep in mind that tonight is the 21st birthday of My Beloved Lindsay Lohan. So I’m off to the bar to celebrate as we must all raise a glass in honor of the greatest actress, nay the epitome of style, of her generation. Appletinis for everyone!
(And just think, now when I meet her we’ll be able to go to the bars without her needing a fake ID.)
So, while stumbling through the aisles on Saturday I came across the following and just stopped dead in my tracks. Just stared at it for minutes until I finally decided that I had to take a picture of it, as if to prove that it is not just a figment of my imagination. And yes, there it is, when someone asks me what marked the downfall of Western Civilization I’ll have an answer for them…
They’ve started to sell hot dogs in hot dog buns at the grocery store.
Think about this for a minute. Is the concept of a hot dog that challenging? Is the need to purchase both hot dogs and hot dog buns so confusing that they need to be combined? Maybe people just can’t figure out that they need to go to two separate parts of the store. Or, maybe the entire construction aspect of the hot dog is so mind-boggingly complex. I mean, the instruction manual basically reads Step 1: Take hot dog, Step 2: Place hot dog in bun. That’s obviously one step too many.
Seriously, I’ve never felt so ashamed to be a part of the human species. Apes would have the sense not to prepackage things like this. I know you could make the argument that this is for kids but if a kid can’t figure out how to put a hot dog in a bun he probably shouldn’t be allowed to operate a microwave. Hell, if you have to buy this stuff prepackaged would you even assume that you would have to cook them? I bet you eighty percent of the people who buy this eat it straight out of the package. If you can’t be bothered to take the effort to open a hot dog bun would you even wait the minute for it to heat up in the microwave?
Is there a better symbol for how soft we have gotten as a country than this? We’ve reached a point where even the simplest task has to be prepackaged for us. We can’t act for ourselves and we definitely can’t think for ourselves. Everything has to be pre-portioned into hermetically sealed bite sized packets. There’s no uniqueness anymore because uniqueness would require effort and that is just too tiring. We’ll just go off to the enormoplex to see our movies and the mega mart for our food and having the exact same life experience as everyone else while making the minimum amount of effort possible. If you see anyone buying these things in a grocery store just tell them to stop and look at themselves for five seconds. Encourage people to rejoin the human race.
Ok, I know that I promised that I’d talk about the Royals game as well but we must keep in mind that tonight is the 21st birthday of My Beloved Lindsay Lohan. So I’m off to the bar to celebrate as we must all raise a glass in honor of the greatest actress, nay the epitome of style, of her generation. Appletinis for everyone!
(And just think, now when I meet her we’ll be able to go to the bars without her needing a fake ID.)
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)