Thursday, January 21, 2010

Goriddle Gorilla in the Midst

I referenced it in the title of last night’s post but seriously, why the hell hasn’t there been a DVD collection of Great Space Coaster episodes yet? Every other show gets a DVD collection so that I can wallow in my nostalgia for my lost youth so why doesn’t this one? True, it was one of those shows that never made sense as it involved an asteroid, singing kids, and this strange concern that the kids were off in outer space and no one really cared but it was a fun moment of my childhood. I think the most trusted newscaster of my generation really is Gary Gnu.

(Also, I think that ESPN should just show old Baseball Bunch episodes. We need more shots of Tommy LaSorda in a turban.)

Things are a little quiet on the pop culture front at the moment. Various people won Golden Globes but pretty much the only news event that came out of it was that some bloggers referred to some of the actresses as “big” in a more physical sense thus resulting in everyone finally realizing just why women have such horrible body issues. We apparently now exist in a society where Courtney Cox is fat. I’m not sure how that is even possible. Also, is anyone excited for the Oscars this year? I seriously can’t think of any performances or movies that make me want to pay attention before the nominations are announced. No, I haven’t seen Avatar but I watched the Smurfs enough as a kid to have a general sense of what the movie is about.

Also, on the list of things I saw in line at the grocery store that I wish I could unsee, the Octomom did a bikini shoot. Somewhere in this world a man purchased that magazine just to see those photos. I feel very, very sorry for that man.

But really that is basically it. We have had basically a two week ban on pop culture coverage in the media to address the Haiti situation. By the end of next week that story will have fallen off the radar and in a month it will be an afterthought. How 200,000 people dead and 2 million homeless from one momentary event can be an afterthought is shocking but that is the way modern society works. It doesn’t mean we have to think that way though. Try not to be like the news media on this one.

2nd Best Album of the Decade: Gillian Welch “Time (The Revelator)” (2001): Some albums are just born perfect. Every note, every line is the epitome of what the artist can do in that style of music. Sometimes an album is made even more poignant by an event that was not even in the mind of the artist when she created it. This album fits both criteria. Gillian put out a disc that is just sonically perfect and is the epitome of the rebirth of old timey music. But what struck me more is that this album was released in September 2001 and after the events of 9/11 I continued to go back to it as it seemed to put the events of that day in perspective. It wasn’t written for that purpose but that sense of loss and bewilderment and the idea of being wrapped up in events larger than yourself all take hold in these songs. This album is not for everyone, you can’t dance to it but I’ll be damned if there was an album that touched me as much as this one did over the past ten years.

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