It is fascinating to find out that Penny and Leonard from The Big Bang Theory were actually dating in real life. Not in the sense that two people on the same show would date; that seems rather common and hell, if I was Johnny Galecki I’d date her in a second. More in the sense that for a real life couple they never really had very good chemistry when they were portraying a couple that was dating. You never could quite believe that they would actually be dating. Which means that acting real life is somehow more difficult than living real life thus explaining how the people on Jersey Shore still have the semblance of a career.
Not much else to write about tonight as all I did was watch Project Runway (Mondo wins again, Gretchen pouts, April acts tough and Michael apparently has a son.) They did hit on the reality show cliché in which everyone gets to see their family without any prior warning and they all break into tears. This has always bothered me a little on every show. No matter what the show the contestants always break down in tears. Even on a show like The Mole, where the game was essentially an extended European vacation, everyone acted as though they had not seen each other for two years. I wish shows would stop doing this.
Otherwise I think I am going to call it a week. It’s been nice to actually get a chance to sit down and write consistently. I’m going to try to keep up the pace. Have to do something now that the jigsaw puzzle is complete.
Thursday, September 30, 2010
Wednesday, September 29, 2010
Songs to make a grown man cry
Your Biggest Loser Update: Lindsay Lohan has checked back into rehab. Oh wait, I meant the show The Biggest Loser update. In that case, two of the contestants who were eliminated last week (in the classic “Let’s make the chronically obese run a mile in order to win the right to be on a reality show” event) were chosen by the trainers to compete on the show. Bob chose Aaron because he was the heaviest contestant and wanted to lose weight for his son. Jillian chose Eliza because she passed out in her competition, which showed grit and determination in the fact that she didn’t die. I’m sorry, but I really hate Jillian’s “work out until you pass out” philosophy because that is a wonderful way to injure yourself. I really wish they wouldn’t promote it.
Anyway, this week’s episode was your typical first week show where everyone struggles with the workouts but loses immense amounts of weight because a) they kind of fudge the number of weeks they’ve been working out and b) when you go from doing nothing to four hours plus of heavy exercise your body goes into crisis mode. Again, I still don’t consider it the healthiest way to lose weight but it is impressive to see someone drop ten percent of their body weight.
Switching gears, some music mag (PRS for Music, whatever the hell that is) put together a list of “The Top 10 Songs Most Likely to Make a Guy Cry.” Let’s break down the list, shall we?
10: Robbie Williams “Angels”: No clue what this song is. Robbie Williams is one of those British dance pop people whose career started when they were a teenager and has never ended. Think Kylie Minogue without the talent or charisma. On second thought, just think Kylie Minogue.
9: Todd Duncan “Unchained Melody”: This is the original version of the song from “Ghost”. It might make me vaguely bleary eyed but it won’t start me crying. Thinking about Demi Moore hooking up with Ashton Kutcher is a different story.
8: Bruce Springsteen “Streets of Philadelphia”: I always felt that this song was dark but not one that would lend itself to tears. I always felt that the beat gave it a bit of defiance to it. Not sure why this is on the list.
7: Elton John “Candle in the Wind”: Ok, this one I can get behind. References Marilyn Monroe and has over time been connected with alternately victims of AIDS and Princess Diana. The song has become more depressing due to these connections and the fact that you’ve probably heard it during a funeral at some point in your life.
6: The Verve “The Drugs Don’t Work”: Don’t know this one either. Sorry. I’m still not sure if The Verve and The Verve Pipe are the same band or not.
5: U2 “With or Without You”: Ok, I’m lost on this one. I have listened to this song probably a thousand times in my life and I have never been tempted to cry. In fact, as a kid I always assumed that it was a rather romantic song. I can guarantee you that people have used it as a wedding song. If anyone can explain to me why this would make a guy cry please let me know.
4: Sinead O’Connor “Nothing Compares 2 U”: Interesting choice if nothing else. I’m not sure if I would say that it would make me cry. More like it causes me to sit there in stunned silence. The song is absolutely brilliant and raw and strikes at your soul. Ok, watching Sinead shed that one single tear in the video will make you cry. That is a given.
3: Leonard Cohen “Hallelujah”: Sigh. I have listened to at least a dozen different versions of this song. I don’t even want to guess how many times I have listened to Jeff Buckley’s version (or the fact that I have maybe ten different recordings of Jeff singing it in my collection.) But amongst all that, despite the fact that it is about love gone wrong, it’s never made me cry or think about crying. Hell, k.d. lang sang it after they lit the torch in the Opening Ceremonies. Doesn’t belong on the list at all.
2: Eric Clapton “Tears in Heaven”: Ok, this one belongs on the list. I’m not even going to try writing about it because I will mist up and this is given the fact that I hate Eric Clapton with every fiber of my being.
1: R.E.M. “Everybody Hurts”: If you had me try to choose the most depressing song of all time this might make the cut. The video is as dark as dark can be but again, the song itself really doesn’t drive one to tears. That is really the problem with this list. While music has been an emotional touchstone in my life I really can’t say that it causes crying. Even when you listen to sad songs it is more of a comfort than anything else. At least you know that someone else has walked the same path as you have.
Wednesday Night Music Club: I got this list from The Onion’s AV Club and in the comments someone made the point that some songs bring you to tears not because they are sad but because they are transcendent. The example everyone used was Arcade Fire’s “Wake Up”. I really can’t disagree with the reasoning.
Anyway, this week’s episode was your typical first week show where everyone struggles with the workouts but loses immense amounts of weight because a) they kind of fudge the number of weeks they’ve been working out and b) when you go from doing nothing to four hours plus of heavy exercise your body goes into crisis mode. Again, I still don’t consider it the healthiest way to lose weight but it is impressive to see someone drop ten percent of their body weight.
Switching gears, some music mag (PRS for Music, whatever the hell that is) put together a list of “The Top 10 Songs Most Likely to Make a Guy Cry.” Let’s break down the list, shall we?
10: Robbie Williams “Angels”: No clue what this song is. Robbie Williams is one of those British dance pop people whose career started when they were a teenager and has never ended. Think Kylie Minogue without the talent or charisma. On second thought, just think Kylie Minogue.
9: Todd Duncan “Unchained Melody”: This is the original version of the song from “Ghost”. It might make me vaguely bleary eyed but it won’t start me crying. Thinking about Demi Moore hooking up with Ashton Kutcher is a different story.
8: Bruce Springsteen “Streets of Philadelphia”: I always felt that this song was dark but not one that would lend itself to tears. I always felt that the beat gave it a bit of defiance to it. Not sure why this is on the list.
7: Elton John “Candle in the Wind”: Ok, this one I can get behind. References Marilyn Monroe and has over time been connected with alternately victims of AIDS and Princess Diana. The song has become more depressing due to these connections and the fact that you’ve probably heard it during a funeral at some point in your life.
6: The Verve “The Drugs Don’t Work”: Don’t know this one either. Sorry. I’m still not sure if The Verve and The Verve Pipe are the same band or not.
5: U2 “With or Without You”: Ok, I’m lost on this one. I have listened to this song probably a thousand times in my life and I have never been tempted to cry. In fact, as a kid I always assumed that it was a rather romantic song. I can guarantee you that people have used it as a wedding song. If anyone can explain to me why this would make a guy cry please let me know.
4: Sinead O’Connor “Nothing Compares 2 U”: Interesting choice if nothing else. I’m not sure if I would say that it would make me cry. More like it causes me to sit there in stunned silence. The song is absolutely brilliant and raw and strikes at your soul. Ok, watching Sinead shed that one single tear in the video will make you cry. That is a given.
3: Leonard Cohen “Hallelujah”: Sigh. I have listened to at least a dozen different versions of this song. I don’t even want to guess how many times I have listened to Jeff Buckley’s version (or the fact that I have maybe ten different recordings of Jeff singing it in my collection.) But amongst all that, despite the fact that it is about love gone wrong, it’s never made me cry or think about crying. Hell, k.d. lang sang it after they lit the torch in the Opening Ceremonies. Doesn’t belong on the list at all.
2: Eric Clapton “Tears in Heaven”: Ok, this one belongs on the list. I’m not even going to try writing about it because I will mist up and this is given the fact that I hate Eric Clapton with every fiber of my being.
1: R.E.M. “Everybody Hurts”: If you had me try to choose the most depressing song of all time this might make the cut. The video is as dark as dark can be but again, the song itself really doesn’t drive one to tears. That is really the problem with this list. While music has been an emotional touchstone in my life I really can’t say that it causes crying. Even when you listen to sad songs it is more of a comfort than anything else. At least you know that someone else has walked the same path as you have.
Wednesday Night Music Club: I got this list from The Onion’s AV Club and in the comments someone made the point that some songs bring you to tears not because they are sad but because they are transcendent. The example everyone used was Arcade Fire’s “Wake Up”. I really can’t disagree with the reasoning.
Tuesday, September 28, 2010
Jigsaw Puzzles and the Legacy of Terry Fox
After four months, countless hours, several beers and an almost immeasurable amount of frustration I have finally finished my masterpiece. Yes, as the picture clearly shows I have singlehandedly completed a 3,000 piece jigsaw puzzle. For those of you who want a sense of scale the puzzle is 32 inches by 48 inches and is sitting on a poster board that is meant to be used to create a 3 panel grade school science fair presentation. The reason it is on a board on the floor of my apartment is because the dimensions of the puzzle are technically larger than the dimensions of my dining room table. I’m not kidding when I say that this thing is intense.
This is easily the toughest jigsaw puzzle that I’ve ever built. As you can kind of see this is based off of a painting and consists mainly of sea and sky. To be honest, the sea and the sky were the easy parts. The boats were just hell to complete as everything was just one mass of brown. I probably worked on this a little bit every day that I was home and there were nights where just finding a few pieces that fit were a victory.
The big question here is why in the world would I do such a thing? Given that there is so much going on in my life why would I focus on a jigsaw puzzle of all things? Well, that answer is a lot more complicated, a lot more meaningful and hopefully a lot more interesting than you would think.
For one thing doing this was one of my New Year’s Resolutions and has been a goal of mine for a rather long while. So in a sense I did this because I had set a goal for myself and wanted to achieve it. That doesn’t explain why I did it over the summer though. That is because I have really been using this puzzle as a kind of therapy. As some people know I suffered a great loss this spring and needed to do something to occupy my mind as I worked through everything. It is strange in how my mind works in that sometimes the best way for me to analyze a situation or to handle a stressful event is to do something with complete focus that has nothing to do with the issue at hand. Somehow by doing so my subconscious gets to put its full energy on the problem. And I have to say that I felt a weight lifted from me when I completed the puzzle. The first thing that came to my head when I put in the last piece was Jeff saying “I did it!” when he finished a puzzle we worked on together. That seemed to make much of the past few months make much more sense.
There is one more reason behind it and to do so I am going to have to make a really odd connection here in the sense that my jigsaw puzzle abilities pale in comparison to the following. Tonight ESPN is doing a story on Terry Fox, one of my heroes, as part of their 30 for 30 series. Outside of Canada most people don’t know who he was but I remember as a kid watching the HBO movie on his life story. When Terry Fox was 17 years old he lost part of his right leg to cancer. When he was 20 he set off to run across Canada in order to raise money for cancer research. This was in 1980 so his prosthetic leg was primitive by today’s standards. It was more of a hobble and a lurch than a run. But he ran, into the wind, for 26 miles every day. Each day was a marathon on one leg, each day was his personal challenge, each day was his hope that this would help others to succeed against the disease that had put him through absolute hell. In the 143 days that he ran he completed 3,339 miles until he was forced to stop as the cancer had spread to his lungs. Nine months later the cancer took his life.
I’ve never forgotten his story. I was so happy when I watched the opening ceremonies of the Olympics this year and his mom was chosen to be one of flagbearers for the Olympic Flag. People were inspired by his bravery and his desire to raise money in the hopes that others would benefit. What has always inspired me is the fact that he took on a challenge that was so beyond comprehension, so difficult, that completion was not even required. It was simply having the will to see it through to the very end.
One of the things that I have struggled with my entire life is being paralyzed by fear. The unknown is the scariest thing in the world to me and I have built my life so that everything is structured. But I need to break out of that and challenge myself to try something without knowing that I can succeed. A jigsaw puzzle is a simple thing but it is still a challenge of will. Do you have the patience and the dedication to see it through? When I finished last night I felt like I could take on the world. So much of that fear dropped away because I had taken on a challenge and won. It is nothing compared to what Terry Fox did. But I hope that this helps me to act a little more like him, to go and look out into that unknown, to know that you are on a path where success is not guaranteed and to take step after step after step.
This is easily the toughest jigsaw puzzle that I’ve ever built. As you can kind of see this is based off of a painting and consists mainly of sea and sky. To be honest, the sea and the sky were the easy parts. The boats were just hell to complete as everything was just one mass of brown. I probably worked on this a little bit every day that I was home and there were nights where just finding a few pieces that fit were a victory.
The big question here is why in the world would I do such a thing? Given that there is so much going on in my life why would I focus on a jigsaw puzzle of all things? Well, that answer is a lot more complicated, a lot more meaningful and hopefully a lot more interesting than you would think.
For one thing doing this was one of my New Year’s Resolutions and has been a goal of mine for a rather long while. So in a sense I did this because I had set a goal for myself and wanted to achieve it. That doesn’t explain why I did it over the summer though. That is because I have really been using this puzzle as a kind of therapy. As some people know I suffered a great loss this spring and needed to do something to occupy my mind as I worked through everything. It is strange in how my mind works in that sometimes the best way for me to analyze a situation or to handle a stressful event is to do something with complete focus that has nothing to do with the issue at hand. Somehow by doing so my subconscious gets to put its full energy on the problem. And I have to say that I felt a weight lifted from me when I completed the puzzle. The first thing that came to my head when I put in the last piece was Jeff saying “I did it!” when he finished a puzzle we worked on together. That seemed to make much of the past few months make much more sense.
There is one more reason behind it and to do so I am going to have to make a really odd connection here in the sense that my jigsaw puzzle abilities pale in comparison to the following. Tonight ESPN is doing a story on Terry Fox, one of my heroes, as part of their 30 for 30 series. Outside of Canada most people don’t know who he was but I remember as a kid watching the HBO movie on his life story. When Terry Fox was 17 years old he lost part of his right leg to cancer. When he was 20 he set off to run across Canada in order to raise money for cancer research. This was in 1980 so his prosthetic leg was primitive by today’s standards. It was more of a hobble and a lurch than a run. But he ran, into the wind, for 26 miles every day. Each day was a marathon on one leg, each day was his personal challenge, each day was his hope that this would help others to succeed against the disease that had put him through absolute hell. In the 143 days that he ran he completed 3,339 miles until he was forced to stop as the cancer had spread to his lungs. Nine months later the cancer took his life.
I’ve never forgotten his story. I was so happy when I watched the opening ceremonies of the Olympics this year and his mom was chosen to be one of flagbearers for the Olympic Flag. People were inspired by his bravery and his desire to raise money in the hopes that others would benefit. What has always inspired me is the fact that he took on a challenge that was so beyond comprehension, so difficult, that completion was not even required. It was simply having the will to see it through to the very end.
One of the things that I have struggled with my entire life is being paralyzed by fear. The unknown is the scariest thing in the world to me and I have built my life so that everything is structured. But I need to break out of that and challenge myself to try something without knowing that I can succeed. A jigsaw puzzle is a simple thing but it is still a challenge of will. Do you have the patience and the dedication to see it through? When I finished last night I felt like I could take on the world. So much of that fear dropped away because I had taken on a challenge and won. It is nothing compared to what Terry Fox did. But I hope that this helps me to act a little more like him, to go and look out into that unknown, to know that you are on a path where success is not guaranteed and to take step after step after step.
Monday, September 27, 2010
Frightening Childhood Memories: Volume One
There are a couple of memories from our childhood that we try to repress. Not in the sense of cruel acts that scar you for the rest of your life but rather aspects of pop culture that are presented to kids with the thought that they will be entertaining or enlightening but in the end scare the shit out of you causing incredible fear and phobias even as an adult. I’m talking the boat scene in Willy Wonka (or the Oompa Loompas in general) here. Today, while simply perusing the internet I came across a reference to something that sent a shiver down my spine. It was a reference to what has to be the scariest thing that my seven year old brain ever saw and that is: Slim Goodbody.
For those of you who are unaware of Slim Goodbody, and those who were able to read on after seeing the initial picture and screaming “Oh dear God, not him!”, he was a popular attraction on television shows and PBS in the late 70’s and early 80’s in which he would come on and talk about health and nutrition and the importance of exercise. It was Slim Goodbody’s goal that we remain fit and slim and given the rise in childhood obesity since he left the airwaves you have to say that he did a damn good job. However, he accomplished it by scaring kids like me to the point where we were afraid to eat.
Look at that picture and imagine what it was like for a seven year old to see that on television in 1980. We have a man with a perm in a nude colored bodysuit that makes it look like his organs are coming out. I really didn’t need to know what my intestines looked like when I was seven. I could barely deal with the concept of blood when I was cut and now I was being shown by this really hyper guy (very similar to Richard Simmons) the locations of all of my major arteries. Look at his thigh muscle. That thing can give you nightmares now; how in the world was my childhood brain supposed to interpret that that is what I am really like inside.
I’m telling you the absolute truth here. For years growing up whenever I saw Slim Goodbody on television I had to rush over and change the channel because he just freaked me out. Given that this was before remote control I’ll have to grant him the fact that he did get me off the couch and moving. It wasn’t because I had a great desire to be fit, more like I was greatly concerned that if I continued to watch his liver would fall to the floor with a resounding splat. I’m pretty sure that most of my siblings had the exact same feeling (though the older ones were a bit more ok with it.)
Children’s television and entertainment, especially back when I was younger, is a strange thing in that we treat children as one big group when the difference between a 7 year old and a 10 year old is massive. A 10 year old could be fascinated by Slim Goodbody and how the body works and focus on their health and be inspired to become a doctor. His 7 year old younger brother could be watching the same show and be completely frightened by this man who seemingly has no skin yet for some reason has a perm. I don’t want to have this post sound like the guy behind Slim Goodbody was focused on scaring children. He was so gung ho about being healthy that it was amazing. You literally would think he was the same guy as Richard Simmons. But for those of us who saw him at a certain age, an age at which reality and costume were still not concretely defined, the guy was nightmare inducing.
For those of you who are unaware of Slim Goodbody, and those who were able to read on after seeing the initial picture and screaming “Oh dear God, not him!”, he was a popular attraction on television shows and PBS in the late 70’s and early 80’s in which he would come on and talk about health and nutrition and the importance of exercise. It was Slim Goodbody’s goal that we remain fit and slim and given the rise in childhood obesity since he left the airwaves you have to say that he did a damn good job. However, he accomplished it by scaring kids like me to the point where we were afraid to eat.
Look at that picture and imagine what it was like for a seven year old to see that on television in 1980. We have a man with a perm in a nude colored bodysuit that makes it look like his organs are coming out. I really didn’t need to know what my intestines looked like when I was seven. I could barely deal with the concept of blood when I was cut and now I was being shown by this really hyper guy (very similar to Richard Simmons) the locations of all of my major arteries. Look at his thigh muscle. That thing can give you nightmares now; how in the world was my childhood brain supposed to interpret that that is what I am really like inside.
I’m telling you the absolute truth here. For years growing up whenever I saw Slim Goodbody on television I had to rush over and change the channel because he just freaked me out. Given that this was before remote control I’ll have to grant him the fact that he did get me off the couch and moving. It wasn’t because I had a great desire to be fit, more like I was greatly concerned that if I continued to watch his liver would fall to the floor with a resounding splat. I’m pretty sure that most of my siblings had the exact same feeling (though the older ones were a bit more ok with it.)
Children’s television and entertainment, especially back when I was younger, is a strange thing in that we treat children as one big group when the difference between a 7 year old and a 10 year old is massive. A 10 year old could be fascinated by Slim Goodbody and how the body works and focus on their health and be inspired to become a doctor. His 7 year old younger brother could be watching the same show and be completely frightened by this man who seemingly has no skin yet for some reason has a perm. I don’t want to have this post sound like the guy behind Slim Goodbody was focused on scaring children. He was so gung ho about being healthy that it was amazing. You literally would think he was the same guy as Richard Simmons. But for those of us who saw him at a certain age, an age at which reality and costume were still not concretely defined, the guy was nightmare inducing.
Sunday, September 26, 2010
In Soviet Russia Blog Writes You
Do you know how tough it is to raise 300,000 in bail money on a moment’s notice? As a result of my neverending devotion to Lindsay Lohan I now know the answer to that question. I also now know that having a slightly successful Disney film when you are ten will guarantee that you will never go to jail no matter how many times you violate your probation. As my good friend Yakov Smirnoff used to tell me, “America, what a country.” That was before we deported him for having a lapsed visa of course.
(Here is my favorite Yakov Smirnoff story. Back when I lived in Kansas City I would occasionally turn on the television only to be met by a commercial advertising Yakov Smirnoff’s show in Branson. This led me to realize that a) I lived close enough to Branson that I could do it as a day trip and b) I was now considered to be part of Yakov Smirnoff’s target audience. I must admit it, that second part caused a little bit of me to die that day. Well, that and living in Kansas City in general.)
I don’t have much to report on this weekend. As much as I make fun of my time in KC at least the weekend would produce one good bar story. Now I just spend my weekend nights in Delaware at home because, well, I’m not sure that nightlife technically exists in Delaware. While it is nice to have a bar where everyone knows your name Delaware is a state where everyone knows your name. I think there are only three dozen people here; thus explaining why it might be possible that we will become the first state to elect a practicing witch to the senate. I’d write more about the election but then I remember that my blogging during the Funkhouser campaign (best known for my proposed slogan of “Bringing the Funk back to Kansas City) resulted in my actually receiving emails in which I was described as an “influential blogger”. Yeah, I have no clue how that happened.
Anyway, I did put four and a half miles in on the treadmill while watching the Notre Dame game on Saturday. I figured that given that I knew that watching the game was going to be painful I might as well make it a total body pain experience. I have gotten back into workout mode though my weight has plateaued at just over 200 pounds. It’s been good though as I have my cardio up to a nice level and I have actually started to, gasp, lift weights. It is a bit weird that I would rather hit the treadmill than lift weights but I’ve been so concerned about my bad shoulder that I’ve avoided lifting for years. But I’ve taken it nice and easy and am pretty happy with the results so far. Maybe one day I will actually have something that might be considered muscles. I am at least hoping to be in better shape when I am forty than I was when I was twenty. The scary thing is that is entirely possible.
Best of 120 Minutes (9/26/1993): We could use some more Echo and the Bunnymen in our life. Not sure why, but we just could.
The five random CDs for the week:
1) The Polyphonic Spree “The Fragile Army”
2) Iris Dement “The Way I Should”
3) My Morning Jacket “Okonokos”
4) Old 97’s “Alive and Wired”
5) Kelly Willis “One More Time”
(Here is my favorite Yakov Smirnoff story. Back when I lived in Kansas City I would occasionally turn on the television only to be met by a commercial advertising Yakov Smirnoff’s show in Branson. This led me to realize that a) I lived close enough to Branson that I could do it as a day trip and b) I was now considered to be part of Yakov Smirnoff’s target audience. I must admit it, that second part caused a little bit of me to die that day. Well, that and living in Kansas City in general.)
I don’t have much to report on this weekend. As much as I make fun of my time in KC at least the weekend would produce one good bar story. Now I just spend my weekend nights in Delaware at home because, well, I’m not sure that nightlife technically exists in Delaware. While it is nice to have a bar where everyone knows your name Delaware is a state where everyone knows your name. I think there are only three dozen people here; thus explaining why it might be possible that we will become the first state to elect a practicing witch to the senate. I’d write more about the election but then I remember that my blogging during the Funkhouser campaign (best known for my proposed slogan of “Bringing the Funk back to Kansas City) resulted in my actually receiving emails in which I was described as an “influential blogger”. Yeah, I have no clue how that happened.
Anyway, I did put four and a half miles in on the treadmill while watching the Notre Dame game on Saturday. I figured that given that I knew that watching the game was going to be painful I might as well make it a total body pain experience. I have gotten back into workout mode though my weight has plateaued at just over 200 pounds. It’s been good though as I have my cardio up to a nice level and I have actually started to, gasp, lift weights. It is a bit weird that I would rather hit the treadmill than lift weights but I’ve been so concerned about my bad shoulder that I’ve avoided lifting for years. But I’ve taken it nice and easy and am pretty happy with the results so far. Maybe one day I will actually have something that might be considered muscles. I am at least hoping to be in better shape when I am forty than I was when I was twenty. The scary thing is that is entirely possible.
Best of 120 Minutes (9/26/1993): We could use some more Echo and the Bunnymen in our life. Not sure why, but we just could.
The five random CDs for the week:
1) The Polyphonic Spree “The Fragile Army”
2) Iris Dement “The Way I Should”
3) My Morning Jacket “Okonokos”
4) Old 97’s “Alive and Wired”
5) Kelly Willis “One More Time”
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Mallory, on the other hand, is a hedge fund wiz
Like most people in finance I sit in an office where CNBC is always visible and always on mute. It is an apparent law of workplace design that we must always have the ability to track the activity of the market even though a) we can do so quite easily using our computers and b) this means that whenever you glance up you are confronted with either a stack of numbers, Jim Cramer’s giant head or, if you’re lucky, a glimpse of that one cute anchor. However, what I find more interesting are the commercials.
The first is the ever present invest in gold commercials, which for some bizarre reason often seem to feature Meredith Baxter Birney as the spokesperson. I am not quite sure why I should be taking my investment advice from Alex Keaton’s mom as opposed to Alex Keaton or, I don’t know, Skippy but apparently she tests well with gold investors. And gold investors are an odd bunch as most of these advertisements are not to purchase gold tracking funds or mining companies but rather to actually purchase physical gold.
Now I try not to give financial advice in this blog mainly because I am surprisingly bad at it. But while gold is a wonderful currency hedge and can be a part of a well managed portfolio owning physical gold bars is actually pretty silly. The main idea of having the physical bars is that when the world goes to hell you will have your gold. Which is wonderful except for the fact that when the world goes to hell your gold becomes pretty much worthless. It is one thing if the dollar becomes worthless and then you try to convert your bars to Euros or Thai Baht or whatever currency the Klingons used. There might be value there but you could just have bought that currency in the first place and saved yourself the transaction. The main argument they make is that in case of disaster gold will maintain its value. But think of it this way. If you were in New Orleans two days after Katrina what was worth more to you: a bar of gold or a bottle of water? If the worst case scenario really does occur then gold becomes nothing more than a piece of metal.
The other commercial is even odder as it features an actress portraying a college girl dressed in the manner that I assume college girls sleep in. It is an ad for an online university and one of her pitches is that you can go to class looking like you just got out of bed. I don’t know about you but most college students go to class looking like they just got out of bed.
Anyway, my issue with this commercial is who is their target audience? If you are watching CNBC at ten in the morning you probably already have a degree and are working. Like I said before, other than people in offices no one watches CNBC. Even MBA students don’t watch CNBC during the day; we’d much rather be watching The Price is Right or Jersey Shore reruns. I can’t see a huge percentage of people who are studying the every twist and turn of the market and then going, “You know what, I should try to get a college degree from an online program that isn’t even the University of Phoenix.” Just bizarre.
Have a good weekend everyone.
The first is the ever present invest in gold commercials, which for some bizarre reason often seem to feature Meredith Baxter Birney as the spokesperson. I am not quite sure why I should be taking my investment advice from Alex Keaton’s mom as opposed to Alex Keaton or, I don’t know, Skippy but apparently she tests well with gold investors. And gold investors are an odd bunch as most of these advertisements are not to purchase gold tracking funds or mining companies but rather to actually purchase physical gold.
Now I try not to give financial advice in this blog mainly because I am surprisingly bad at it. But while gold is a wonderful currency hedge and can be a part of a well managed portfolio owning physical gold bars is actually pretty silly. The main idea of having the physical bars is that when the world goes to hell you will have your gold. Which is wonderful except for the fact that when the world goes to hell your gold becomes pretty much worthless. It is one thing if the dollar becomes worthless and then you try to convert your bars to Euros or Thai Baht or whatever currency the Klingons used. There might be value there but you could just have bought that currency in the first place and saved yourself the transaction. The main argument they make is that in case of disaster gold will maintain its value. But think of it this way. If you were in New Orleans two days after Katrina what was worth more to you: a bar of gold or a bottle of water? If the worst case scenario really does occur then gold becomes nothing more than a piece of metal.
The other commercial is even odder as it features an actress portraying a college girl dressed in the manner that I assume college girls sleep in. It is an ad for an online university and one of her pitches is that you can go to class looking like you just got out of bed. I don’t know about you but most college students go to class looking like they just got out of bed.
Anyway, my issue with this commercial is who is their target audience? If you are watching CNBC at ten in the morning you probably already have a degree and are working. Like I said before, other than people in offices no one watches CNBC. Even MBA students don’t watch CNBC during the day; we’d much rather be watching The Price is Right or Jersey Shore reruns. I can’t see a huge percentage of people who are studying the every twist and turn of the market and then going, “You know what, I should try to get a college degree from an online program that isn’t even the University of Phoenix.” Just bizarre.
Have a good weekend everyone.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Even I can be too cynical
In addition to the dead deer on the side of the road that is required viewing on apparently every trip in Pennsylvania I saw the following on my drive home from work. I was behind a pretty beat up Toyota truck. The paint on the Toyota logo on the tailgate was fading to nonexistent, there was a ton of wear and tear on the vehicle and just in general you could tell that the truck had seen better days. However, the truck had a bumper sticker on it; one that appeared to be out of focus even when you were stopped as if even the bumper sticker had been bought out of a discount bin. The bumper sticker simply read…
This truck is an answered prayer
As I have often admitted I am a cynical bastard and as a result part of me wants to take the combination of the bumper sticker and the truck and make a reference to praying harder. I feel horrible that that is really one of the thoughts that pops into my head. In reality, this bumper sticker is probably more honest than anything that I have written in the past six years. For that driver this truck could possibly be the best thing that ever happened to them and they are proud to give thanks for it. It might not be the most beautiful vehicle on the road but it is theirs and they are grateful for it.
I do wonder why I am a bit (ok more than a bit) of an ass when I see things like that. I guess more than anything I am a bit of a classist. That is odd given that I grew up in a pretty blue collar town and will never view myself as being upper class. But I think that the work I have done and the crowds that I find myself in has taken me away from my roots. As I have often said I am anything but average and sometimes I can lose that connection. Not that I am better than anyone else, lord knows that isn’t true, but my life is so different than even what I imagined it to be as a kid that I have to remind myself that being a cynical bastard is a horrible way to go through life.
Though I must say the cynical bastard in me always enjoys the first episode of the Biggest Loser. The early episodes are always the best as a) the contestants are in much worse shape than I am and b) they eliminate people who desperately need to be on the show or else they might die. I will always say that there is no crueler show than The Biggest Loser and this season is no exception. They went to 8 cities and weighed in three contestants. Then in each city the three contestants had to compete against each other (like run a mile) and whoever came in last didn’t make the show. Thus by definition the person most in need of assistance will not be on the show.
What happens when you have extremely unfit people run a mile with a reality show on the line? What you would expect: people collapsing, mental breakdowns and one trip to the hospital. Just incredibly cruel especially after you are introduced to each potential contestant and every single one of them has a sob story to tell. No one is overweight because they are lazy and ate too much. Each one has a personal tragedy that just hits you in the gut and that makes their eliminations all the more painful. I watched all two hours and while I learned nothing about how to lose weight I did learn that life sucks for a lot of people. Maybe I should just be grateful for what I have.
Wednesday Night Music Club: I mentioned the lost art of making a mixtape last week. As luck would have it longtime friend of the blog Tift Merritt released a song on that very subject on her latest release. Figured it would be a nice way to end the night.
This truck is an answered prayer
As I have often admitted I am a cynical bastard and as a result part of me wants to take the combination of the bumper sticker and the truck and make a reference to praying harder. I feel horrible that that is really one of the thoughts that pops into my head. In reality, this bumper sticker is probably more honest than anything that I have written in the past six years. For that driver this truck could possibly be the best thing that ever happened to them and they are proud to give thanks for it. It might not be the most beautiful vehicle on the road but it is theirs and they are grateful for it.
I do wonder why I am a bit (ok more than a bit) of an ass when I see things like that. I guess more than anything I am a bit of a classist. That is odd given that I grew up in a pretty blue collar town and will never view myself as being upper class. But I think that the work I have done and the crowds that I find myself in has taken me away from my roots. As I have often said I am anything but average and sometimes I can lose that connection. Not that I am better than anyone else, lord knows that isn’t true, but my life is so different than even what I imagined it to be as a kid that I have to remind myself that being a cynical bastard is a horrible way to go through life.
Though I must say the cynical bastard in me always enjoys the first episode of the Biggest Loser. The early episodes are always the best as a) the contestants are in much worse shape than I am and b) they eliminate people who desperately need to be on the show or else they might die. I will always say that there is no crueler show than The Biggest Loser and this season is no exception. They went to 8 cities and weighed in three contestants. Then in each city the three contestants had to compete against each other (like run a mile) and whoever came in last didn’t make the show. Thus by definition the person most in need of assistance will not be on the show.
What happens when you have extremely unfit people run a mile with a reality show on the line? What you would expect: people collapsing, mental breakdowns and one trip to the hospital. Just incredibly cruel especially after you are introduced to each potential contestant and every single one of them has a sob story to tell. No one is overweight because they are lazy and ate too much. Each one has a personal tragedy that just hits you in the gut and that makes their eliminations all the more painful. I watched all two hours and while I learned nothing about how to lose weight I did learn that life sucks for a lot of people. Maybe I should just be grateful for what I have.
Wednesday Night Music Club: I mentioned the lost art of making a mixtape last week. As luck would have it longtime friend of the blog Tift Merritt released a song on that very subject on her latest release. Figured it would be a nice way to end the night.
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
The triumphant return of How I Met Your Mother
It’s fall so that means it is our favorite season: TV season. I watched the new episode of How I Met Your Mother as I continue to watch the show until I find out who the mother is. If it turns out to be that cupcake girl from the first season, who was such a perfect match for Ted it wasn’t even funny, I will be so pissed because they would have wasted my time with like five years of plot.
Before I get started though I must say that I am very upset at the breakup of my HIMYM / Big Bang Theory Monday night blowout. Those two shows worked great on the same night even when they weren’t next to each other. They seemed to have very similar audiences. Now the Big Bang Theory is on Thursday and has been replaced by a show whose main plot point is that the couple is fat. If I wanted to watch that I would just watch The Biggest Loser (which I DVRd tonight so don’t tell me what happened.)
Anyway, tonight’s episode was a classic in the sense that it follows many of the classic patterns of HIMYM. Ted is trying to gather the courage to hit on a girl, Barney is claiming dibs, Robin is distraught and scummy after breaking up with her boyfriend and Lily and Marshall are having relationship issues over having children. This all takes place in the bar, which I love as that is pretty much how real life works. In the end we find out that we are 28 minutes closer to finding out who the damn mother is, Lily and Marshall are still the perfect couple and we are all waiting for Barney and Robin to run off and get married like they should have done last season.
What interests me more though is that having watched every episode of this show from the beginning who I identify with has begun to change. I started not only identifying with Ted but claiming that entire episodes were being taken from my life. (I mean, Red Dragon shots? How could that not be about me.) Here was a guy out on his own trying to find the woman of his dreams just like I was in Kansas City (though you have to stretch to imagine that KC is like NYC. They’re totally alike except for things like culture and people and pretty much everything you can imagine except barbecue sauce.)
But I’ve been with Kim for over a year and a half now, beating my previous record for relationships by a good eighteen months, and I’m beginning to feel more and more like Marshall. I’ve found my Lily and am working on what it means to be an us. Pretty fascinating how a show can be a barometer for your real life.
Oh and why I might not be a Barney (Super Dave, that is still your role) I will be suiting up on October 13th for International Suit Up Day. Yes, it is real and it will be spectacular.
The five random CDs for the week (better late than never):
1) Cat Power “You Are Free”
2) Damien Rice “B Sides”
3) Various Artists “Preservation”
4) Waco Brothers “Do You Think About Me?”
5) Cowboy Mouth “All You Need Is Live”
Before I get started though I must say that I am very upset at the breakup of my HIMYM / Big Bang Theory Monday night blowout. Those two shows worked great on the same night even when they weren’t next to each other. They seemed to have very similar audiences. Now the Big Bang Theory is on Thursday and has been replaced by a show whose main plot point is that the couple is fat. If I wanted to watch that I would just watch The Biggest Loser (which I DVRd tonight so don’t tell me what happened.)
Anyway, tonight’s episode was a classic in the sense that it follows many of the classic patterns of HIMYM. Ted is trying to gather the courage to hit on a girl, Barney is claiming dibs, Robin is distraught and scummy after breaking up with her boyfriend and Lily and Marshall are having relationship issues over having children. This all takes place in the bar, which I love as that is pretty much how real life works. In the end we find out that we are 28 minutes closer to finding out who the damn mother is, Lily and Marshall are still the perfect couple and we are all waiting for Barney and Robin to run off and get married like they should have done last season.
What interests me more though is that having watched every episode of this show from the beginning who I identify with has begun to change. I started not only identifying with Ted but claiming that entire episodes were being taken from my life. (I mean, Red Dragon shots? How could that not be about me.) Here was a guy out on his own trying to find the woman of his dreams just like I was in Kansas City (though you have to stretch to imagine that KC is like NYC. They’re totally alike except for things like culture and people and pretty much everything you can imagine except barbecue sauce.)
But I’ve been with Kim for over a year and a half now, beating my previous record for relationships by a good eighteen months, and I’m beginning to feel more and more like Marshall. I’ve found my Lily and am working on what it means to be an us. Pretty fascinating how a show can be a barometer for your real life.
Oh and why I might not be a Barney (Super Dave, that is still your role) I will be suiting up on October 13th for International Suit Up Day. Yes, it is real and it will be spectacular.
The five random CDs for the week (better late than never):
1) Cat Power “You Are Free”
2) Damien Rice “B Sides”
3) Various Artists “Preservation”
4) Waco Brothers “Do You Think About Me?”
5) Cowboy Mouth “All You Need Is Live”
Monday, September 20, 2010
Lindsay's Still Innocent in my Book
I posed my theoretical time travel question to Kim over the weekend thinking that it would score me big points. I mean, not only would I be talking about time travel but my response would be urbane and educated as I would want to travel to Elizabethan England to see Shakespeare’s plays as opposed to, say, St. Louis in 1993 where I could catch a ton of Uncle Tupelo shows. Her response however just knocked me off my feet.
“You know that question is pretty much meaningless to me because outside of the last fifty years or so I couldn’t travel anywhere in time as a single woman without losing all of my rights.”
I swear I did not see that answer coming. I took this question from The Onion’s AV Club and in the two pages of answers that people responded only one vaguely referenced the idea that as a man I could pretty much go back to any time in history and be perfectly fine while a woman on her own would be discriminated against at pretty much every twist and turn. The fact that Kim immediately thought this, and the fact that it was a complete blind spot for me, is one of the reasons I love being with her.
(Well that and the fact that she allows me to discuss time travel in her presence.)
In a news story that is obviously a fabrication of the liberal media Lindsay Lohan had her probation revoked after testing positive for cocaine. Gasp! Not Lindsay! But she seemed so pure and elegant! I mean, it’s not like she was photographed with white powder coming from her shoes or anything…
On the other hand, Paris Hilton will not have to go to jail for having cocaine fall out of a purse that was in her hand, that she had twittered about buying, and that had her driver’s license in it but was obviously not her purse. You know, with all the money that we spend on the war on drugs don’t you think that we could use a little of it to take Paris off the streets? I think that we would all appreciate it.
Best of 120 Minutes (9/19/1993): I honestly don’t remember this one. Evan Dando and the Lemonheads covering Suzanne Vega’s “Luka”. Gives a completely different take on the song as I don’t recall the original one ending with a wail of feedback.
“You know that question is pretty much meaningless to me because outside of the last fifty years or so I couldn’t travel anywhere in time as a single woman without losing all of my rights.”
I swear I did not see that answer coming. I took this question from The Onion’s AV Club and in the two pages of answers that people responded only one vaguely referenced the idea that as a man I could pretty much go back to any time in history and be perfectly fine while a woman on her own would be discriminated against at pretty much every twist and turn. The fact that Kim immediately thought this, and the fact that it was a complete blind spot for me, is one of the reasons I love being with her.
(Well that and the fact that she allows me to discuss time travel in her presence.)
In a news story that is obviously a fabrication of the liberal media Lindsay Lohan had her probation revoked after testing positive for cocaine. Gasp! Not Lindsay! But she seemed so pure and elegant! I mean, it’s not like she was photographed with white powder coming from her shoes or anything…
On the other hand, Paris Hilton will not have to go to jail for having cocaine fall out of a purse that was in her hand, that she had twittered about buying, and that had her driver’s license in it but was obviously not her purse. You know, with all the money that we spend on the war on drugs don’t you think that we could use a little of it to take Paris off the streets? I think that we would all appreciate it.
Best of 120 Minutes (9/19/1993): I honestly don’t remember this one. Evan Dando and the Lemonheads covering Suzanne Vega’s “Luka”. Gives a completely different take on the song as I don’t recall the original one ending with a wail of feedback.
Wednesday, September 15, 2010
A quantum leap if you will
I saw this theoretical question posed recently and it is one of the more interesting ones that I have read. Here it goes: “You are given a time machine and can go to any point in human history. However, wherever you choose to go you must stay within a five mile radius of that location for the next five years. You will be given food, shelter, medical care and everything that you need to be comfortable and not have to work. Where and when will you travel to?”
What an awesome question. It takes away some of the easy time machine answers like wanting to be on the grassy knoll in Dallas when JFK is assassinated to see if there was a second gunman because you would be stuck in Dallas for five years. Not being able to travel (or even guarantee you will be in the exact spot where history occurs) will make things interesting. Here are some of my thoughts…
1) Elizabethan London centering around 1600: Being in the center of London would put me near both the Tower of London and the Globe Theater. I can be a part of the glory of the Elizabethan era, which is probably my favorite part of British history, while getting to see all of Shakespeare’s plays in their original form. Hell, I’d be able to seek him out and have a few beers with him. The food might not be the best at times but it would be a wonderful view of history.
2) London (Picaddilly Circus) from 1968 to 1972: I would like to know what the sixties were actually like having only experienced them through the nostalgic lens of baby boomers. A few reasons why I choose London again for this experience. 1) I never really liked the San Francisco hippy scene and London seemed cooler. 2) London is such a dense city that a five mile radius would give me an immense amount of experiences. 3) Austin Powers era bachelor pad. And most importantly 4) this is when Monty Python was first broadcast and I could conceivably hang out with the guys and feed them all of the lines for when they make Holy Grail. Food would still suck though.
3) Rome at the end of the Republic and the start of the Empire: One of the things I’ve always wondered about the ancient world is how did everything actually look. All we see are these ancient statues where weathering has taken away all of the coloring. I’d like a sense of how day to day life actually progressed. Capturing the end of Julius Cesar’s reign, the start of Augustus’, and if I time it right, a glimpse of Cleopatra would make for a fun five years. Plus, what would be better than bread and circuses.
4) Prague (anytime in the 1700s): We all wonder about our family history but no one really knows what it was truly like back then. Part of me thinks it would be amazing for me to go back in time and meet my relatives and see how they lived and if any of their traits survived in what I see as myself. I’m not sure of the exact date offhand but I know that I can trace my family’s history to when we purchased a plot of land around Prague that is still in the family. That is what I want to see. Not sure what that would mean for five years but it is a piece of family history that you would otherwise never get to find.
Thoughts from the blogosphere?
Wednesday Night Music Club: You have to love Garfunkel and Oates. Not only do they have the best name ever but they consist of a) the girl from Scrubs who played the ukulele and b) the girl from the McGriddles commercial who almost inspired me to start eating McGriddles because of a mistaken belief that by eating McGriddles that would somehow make her magically start dating me. The male mind is a wonderful thing.
What an awesome question. It takes away some of the easy time machine answers like wanting to be on the grassy knoll in Dallas when JFK is assassinated to see if there was a second gunman because you would be stuck in Dallas for five years. Not being able to travel (or even guarantee you will be in the exact spot where history occurs) will make things interesting. Here are some of my thoughts…
1) Elizabethan London centering around 1600: Being in the center of London would put me near both the Tower of London and the Globe Theater. I can be a part of the glory of the Elizabethan era, which is probably my favorite part of British history, while getting to see all of Shakespeare’s plays in their original form. Hell, I’d be able to seek him out and have a few beers with him. The food might not be the best at times but it would be a wonderful view of history.
2) London (Picaddilly Circus) from 1968 to 1972: I would like to know what the sixties were actually like having only experienced them through the nostalgic lens of baby boomers. A few reasons why I choose London again for this experience. 1) I never really liked the San Francisco hippy scene and London seemed cooler. 2) London is such a dense city that a five mile radius would give me an immense amount of experiences. 3) Austin Powers era bachelor pad. And most importantly 4) this is when Monty Python was first broadcast and I could conceivably hang out with the guys and feed them all of the lines for when they make Holy Grail. Food would still suck though.
3) Rome at the end of the Republic and the start of the Empire: One of the things I’ve always wondered about the ancient world is how did everything actually look. All we see are these ancient statues where weathering has taken away all of the coloring. I’d like a sense of how day to day life actually progressed. Capturing the end of Julius Cesar’s reign, the start of Augustus’, and if I time it right, a glimpse of Cleopatra would make for a fun five years. Plus, what would be better than bread and circuses.
4) Prague (anytime in the 1700s): We all wonder about our family history but no one really knows what it was truly like back then. Part of me thinks it would be amazing for me to go back in time and meet my relatives and see how they lived and if any of their traits survived in what I see as myself. I’m not sure of the exact date offhand but I know that I can trace my family’s history to when we purchased a plot of land around Prague that is still in the family. That is what I want to see. Not sure what that would mean for five years but it is a piece of family history that you would otherwise never get to find.
Thoughts from the blogosphere?
Wednesday Night Music Club: You have to love Garfunkel and Oates. Not only do they have the best name ever but they consist of a) the girl from Scrubs who played the ukulele and b) the girl from the McGriddles commercial who almost inspired me to start eating McGriddles because of a mistaken belief that by eating McGriddles that would somehow make her magically start dating me. The male mind is a wonderful thing.
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Who was the boss anyway?
I found myself watching the Hoarders marathon on A and E last night. It’s not that surprising; I dare anyone to tune in to one episode and not stay there spellbound for hours. The show simultaneously makes you a) unbelievably happy as to how clean your house is and b) makes you feel an unstoppable urge to clean and organize every possession that you have. While watching I saw a commercial for a new show that may be one of the most interesting concepts ever. Which is: Teach: Tony Danza.
Here is the concept. Tony Danza spent the last year teaching high school English in Philadelphia and they filmed it for a reality show. He does have a degree in history education so there is some legitimacy to his teaching. I have no idea how this show is going to turn out but it could be brilliant.
One reason is that none of the students are going to have any clue who Tony Danza is. Let’s be honest he is famous for his roles in Taxi and Who’s the Boss where he happened to play characters named Tony. The only other pop culture reference I can think of is the constant joke of mishearing Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” as “Tony Danza”. A sixteen year old high school student was born in 1993. Outside of the small possibility of watching Who’s the Boss reruns to see Alyssa Milano there is no reason for any of the students to know just who this guy is. To them, it’s not a celebrity teaching a class. It’s just some old guy with a New York accent.
Another thing that I want to see is just how realistic and unvarnished they show life in a modern high school. Television still puts on that high level of gloss that made me believe that high school would be just like it was in Head of the Class. (Let’s face it I was Arvid in real life.) But I know that isn’t the case and my friends who are teachers tell me their daily horror stories. I really wonder if that is going to be shown. It would be wonderful for a program to indicate just how challenging it is to be a good teacher and capture the interests of a teenager.
But most of all this might be the first reality show where I am interested in seeing how the main character is effected by the show. While I joke about Tony Danza always playing characters named Tony he has always seemed to be a really genuine guy. I can’t imagine that he would view this as an easy gig or a way to relaunch his television career. It’s not a cash grab like a stint on Celebrity Rehab. I think he legitimately wanted to see what it would be like to be a teacher. I can’t think of many reality shows where there isn’t some sort of stunt or smoke and mirrors involved. If this was done right it might be incredible. If done wrong, well maybe we can hope for an Alyssa Milano sighting. We can only hope.
Here is the concept. Tony Danza spent the last year teaching high school English in Philadelphia and they filmed it for a reality show. He does have a degree in history education so there is some legitimacy to his teaching. I have no idea how this show is going to turn out but it could be brilliant.
One reason is that none of the students are going to have any clue who Tony Danza is. Let’s be honest he is famous for his roles in Taxi and Who’s the Boss where he happened to play characters named Tony. The only other pop culture reference I can think of is the constant joke of mishearing Elton John’s “Tiny Dancer” as “Tony Danza”. A sixteen year old high school student was born in 1993. Outside of the small possibility of watching Who’s the Boss reruns to see Alyssa Milano there is no reason for any of the students to know just who this guy is. To them, it’s not a celebrity teaching a class. It’s just some old guy with a New York accent.
Another thing that I want to see is just how realistic and unvarnished they show life in a modern high school. Television still puts on that high level of gloss that made me believe that high school would be just like it was in Head of the Class. (Let’s face it I was Arvid in real life.) But I know that isn’t the case and my friends who are teachers tell me their daily horror stories. I really wonder if that is going to be shown. It would be wonderful for a program to indicate just how challenging it is to be a good teacher and capture the interests of a teenager.
But most of all this might be the first reality show where I am interested in seeing how the main character is effected by the show. While I joke about Tony Danza always playing characters named Tony he has always seemed to be a really genuine guy. I can’t imagine that he would view this as an easy gig or a way to relaunch his television career. It’s not a cash grab like a stint on Celebrity Rehab. I think he legitimately wanted to see what it would be like to be a teacher. I can’t think of many reality shows where there isn’t some sort of stunt or smoke and mirrors involved. If this was done right it might be incredible. If done wrong, well maybe we can hope for an Alyssa Milano sighting. We can only hope.
Monday, September 13, 2010
Obsolete skills
Because of my birthday I’ve been thinking a lot about growing old and the changes to society that I have seen in my lifetime. I’ve realized that I have already had a number of skills that I have acquired become completely useless due to changes in technology. A simple example is understanding how to roll down a car window. When was the last time you saw a manual car window? Here are a few of the big ones that I thought of over the weekend.
Being able to read the financial pages of the newspaper: When I was around ten I started getting interested in how the stock market worked. My dad to his infinite credit took this as an opportunity to teach me about finance. I may have not been able to throw a spiral but he taught me how to read stock quotes in the newspaper. What were a mystical list of acronyms and numbers became clear to me and a few trips to the Board of Trade made me understand how markets worked. For years this is how I kept track of the market, checking quotes in the morning paper. Now I can’t even recall the last time I looked at that info if the papers even print it. You can just go on Yahoo and pull up the quote in real time. Imagine having to wait until the next morning to see how your stock did.
Use a card catalog: I was a master at using the card catalog and the Dewey Decimal System for finding material in the library. If a book on a subject existed I could find it in that mass of cards and then quickly scour the stacks for it. I doubt libraries even have the physical card catalogs anymore, except as a relic of a bygone era. Everything is done through computer databases and while it is quicker and more efficient it loses some of the obscure glory of having to go on a treasure hunt just to find a book.
Ability to program a config.sys or autoexec.bat file: A few weeks ago was the fifteenth anniversary of the launch of Windows 95. I remember how big of a deal it was mainly because it freed us from the world of DOS. However, that meant that all of the DOS commands that I had learned over the years had become useless knowledge most of all the ability to create DOS boot disks in order to play video games. Basically prior to Windows 95 it was nearly impossible to run any good game in Windows and you had to set up these boot disks to put your computer in a special state just to run the game and god help you in trying to set up the soundblaster configuration. Windows 95 turned out to be a mixed blessing. Using a computer became much easier but I lost that innate knowledge of how it worked because I no longer had to spend hours figuring out every aspect of the operating system in order to get NHL 93 to boot up.
Communicate for months via letters: I’ve mentioned before that the first girl I ever fell for happened to live in Minnesota, which was a slight issue given that I lived in Chicago. Given that this was before the days of cheap long distance phone calls at least part of our relationship had to be managed through hand written letters. No one today writes an actual letter. Long distance is essentially free, emails are instantaneous and I assume that everyone’s handwriting is now atrocious. But when I was in high school I would sit down, put on a U2 cassette, pour my heart out on a piece of paper and then walk down to the mailbox to send it on its way. It’s kind of sad that I am going to go down as the last person who actually did that. Takes all the fun out of courtly love if you can just have a Skype video call.
Make a mixtape: Not a burned CD, not a playlist, but a proper mixtape. Meaning a cassette tape. The work involved in such a task, beyond just picking songs, was just unimaginable. First, you had to get the timing right so that you maximized the amount of music on each side without cutting off a song halfway through. Then you had to sit there and CD by CD (or even tape by tape or record by record) carefully set up the recording leaving just enough blank space for a smooth transition. Then you had to write out the songs in the little cassette booklet so that the intended party would know just what they had on their hands. It was backbreaking labor. Now it takes about three seconds on iTunes. Apple takes the fun out of everything.
Best of 120 Minutes (9/13/1993): I may have posted it before but who cares; it is Bob Mould in his Sugar era. Plus, Bob Mould went to Macalester College in Minnesota, which also happened to be where the girl from Minnesota went to school. Pretty fitting connection if I must say so.
Being able to read the financial pages of the newspaper: When I was around ten I started getting interested in how the stock market worked. My dad to his infinite credit took this as an opportunity to teach me about finance. I may have not been able to throw a spiral but he taught me how to read stock quotes in the newspaper. What were a mystical list of acronyms and numbers became clear to me and a few trips to the Board of Trade made me understand how markets worked. For years this is how I kept track of the market, checking quotes in the morning paper. Now I can’t even recall the last time I looked at that info if the papers even print it. You can just go on Yahoo and pull up the quote in real time. Imagine having to wait until the next morning to see how your stock did.
Use a card catalog: I was a master at using the card catalog and the Dewey Decimal System for finding material in the library. If a book on a subject existed I could find it in that mass of cards and then quickly scour the stacks for it. I doubt libraries even have the physical card catalogs anymore, except as a relic of a bygone era. Everything is done through computer databases and while it is quicker and more efficient it loses some of the obscure glory of having to go on a treasure hunt just to find a book.
Ability to program a config.sys or autoexec.bat file: A few weeks ago was the fifteenth anniversary of the launch of Windows 95. I remember how big of a deal it was mainly because it freed us from the world of DOS. However, that meant that all of the DOS commands that I had learned over the years had become useless knowledge most of all the ability to create DOS boot disks in order to play video games. Basically prior to Windows 95 it was nearly impossible to run any good game in Windows and you had to set up these boot disks to put your computer in a special state just to run the game and god help you in trying to set up the soundblaster configuration. Windows 95 turned out to be a mixed blessing. Using a computer became much easier but I lost that innate knowledge of how it worked because I no longer had to spend hours figuring out every aspect of the operating system in order to get NHL 93 to boot up.
Communicate for months via letters: I’ve mentioned before that the first girl I ever fell for happened to live in Minnesota, which was a slight issue given that I lived in Chicago. Given that this was before the days of cheap long distance phone calls at least part of our relationship had to be managed through hand written letters. No one today writes an actual letter. Long distance is essentially free, emails are instantaneous and I assume that everyone’s handwriting is now atrocious. But when I was in high school I would sit down, put on a U2 cassette, pour my heart out on a piece of paper and then walk down to the mailbox to send it on its way. It’s kind of sad that I am going to go down as the last person who actually did that. Takes all the fun out of courtly love if you can just have a Skype video call.
Make a mixtape: Not a burned CD, not a playlist, but a proper mixtape. Meaning a cassette tape. The work involved in such a task, beyond just picking songs, was just unimaginable. First, you had to get the timing right so that you maximized the amount of music on each side without cutting off a song halfway through. Then you had to sit there and CD by CD (or even tape by tape or record by record) carefully set up the recording leaving just enough blank space for a smooth transition. Then you had to write out the songs in the little cassette booklet so that the intended party would know just what they had on their hands. It was backbreaking labor. Now it takes about three seconds on iTunes. Apple takes the fun out of everything.
Best of 120 Minutes (9/13/1993): I may have posted it before but who cares; it is Bob Mould in his Sugar era. Plus, Bob Mould went to Macalester College in Minnesota, which also happened to be where the girl from Minnesota went to school. Pretty fitting connection if I must say so.
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Nine years of memories
It is rather difficult to comprehend that 9/11 was nine years ago. In some ways the moments are fresh in my mind and I can explain where I was when I heard the news, when I watched the second plane hit the tower and when the towers fell. In other ways the events have dulled. Time dilutes memories and nine years is a long time. That day may seem like only yesterday but for me at least it is literally a quarter of a lifetime ago.
That might explain why I was so fascinated by what MSNBC and the History Channel showed yesterday. Fascinated isn’t the right word. That would imply some sense of joy or excitement and the exact opposite is true. My mood was somber reflection the entire time. What I watched on MSNBC was the original live NBC coverage of the event. I turned it on yesterday at the point after the towers came down and it forced me to remember those moments in the morning where we all seemed to be trying to get a grip on what was happening. There was a sense that the attack had ended but that no one had a clue as to the number of lives lost or what to do next. Watching it though you see immediately that Osama Bin Laden was mentioned as the main suspect and the Afghanistan region mentioned as an area of focus. In some ways the initial analysis, despite the epic confusion, was spot on.
What the History Channel showed could only be called sobering and brutal and maybe the most important program that I have watched in years. It was a collection, roughly in real time, of footage from people in New York of the events that morning. No narration, no explanation, just the footage from regular citizens who woke up that morning to hell. It may have been the most telling proof of the brutality of that day that I have ever seen.
As Americans we have seemed to have made a conscious choice to not reflect on the sheer horror of that day. We do not replay the footage without editing and in many ways have turned it into a historical event in the distant past. There is a good reason for this as we have sympathy for the families of the victims and do not wish for them to be confronted by the images that constantly haunt them. However, by not seeing these images we become numb to the events and our reaction to that day become filtered through politics.
That is what makes the raw footage so sombering and unforgettable. There is the terror of the day: the screams as the planes hit and the towers fell, the reaction to those who saw people jump from the buildings. But there is also the fact that as you watch it you see an entire city gather together to help one another. There are the firefighters charging into a building knowing that they might not make it back out. There are people handing over cell phones so that someone can call a loved one or handing water to those who were outside when the buildings collapsed. The images of the emptying of Lower Manhattan are not one of panic. It is one of people of every color and creed moving away from danger and helping each other in the process. There was no politics in that moment. It was simply humanity.
I hope to never have to witness anything like I saw on that day, even if all I saw were images on a television set as I sat comfortably in Indiana. I hope that we are able to stop all extremists who harm innocent civilians in the misguided belief that it will promote their cause. But most of all I wish that we can remember who we were as a nation that afternoon. A nation united outside of politics, outside of divisions. Because while we witnessed that morning was terror what we witnessed that afternoon was unity.
The five random CDs for the week:
1) U2 “War”
2) Paul Simon “Graceland”
3) Lyle Lovett “My Baby Don’t Tolerate”
4) The Ditty Bops “Pack Rat”
5) Various Artists “Garden State”
That might explain why I was so fascinated by what MSNBC and the History Channel showed yesterday. Fascinated isn’t the right word. That would imply some sense of joy or excitement and the exact opposite is true. My mood was somber reflection the entire time. What I watched on MSNBC was the original live NBC coverage of the event. I turned it on yesterday at the point after the towers came down and it forced me to remember those moments in the morning where we all seemed to be trying to get a grip on what was happening. There was a sense that the attack had ended but that no one had a clue as to the number of lives lost or what to do next. Watching it though you see immediately that Osama Bin Laden was mentioned as the main suspect and the Afghanistan region mentioned as an area of focus. In some ways the initial analysis, despite the epic confusion, was spot on.
What the History Channel showed could only be called sobering and brutal and maybe the most important program that I have watched in years. It was a collection, roughly in real time, of footage from people in New York of the events that morning. No narration, no explanation, just the footage from regular citizens who woke up that morning to hell. It may have been the most telling proof of the brutality of that day that I have ever seen.
As Americans we have seemed to have made a conscious choice to not reflect on the sheer horror of that day. We do not replay the footage without editing and in many ways have turned it into a historical event in the distant past. There is a good reason for this as we have sympathy for the families of the victims and do not wish for them to be confronted by the images that constantly haunt them. However, by not seeing these images we become numb to the events and our reaction to that day become filtered through politics.
That is what makes the raw footage so sombering and unforgettable. There is the terror of the day: the screams as the planes hit and the towers fell, the reaction to those who saw people jump from the buildings. But there is also the fact that as you watch it you see an entire city gather together to help one another. There are the firefighters charging into a building knowing that they might not make it back out. There are people handing over cell phones so that someone can call a loved one or handing water to those who were outside when the buildings collapsed. The images of the emptying of Lower Manhattan are not one of panic. It is one of people of every color and creed moving away from danger and helping each other in the process. There was no politics in that moment. It was simply humanity.
I hope to never have to witness anything like I saw on that day, even if all I saw were images on a television set as I sat comfortably in Indiana. I hope that we are able to stop all extremists who harm innocent civilians in the misguided belief that it will promote their cause. But most of all I wish that we can remember who we were as a nation that afternoon. A nation united outside of politics, outside of divisions. Because while we witnessed that morning was terror what we witnessed that afternoon was unity.
The five random CDs for the week:
1) U2 “War”
2) Paul Simon “Graceland”
3) Lyle Lovett “My Baby Don’t Tolerate”
4) The Ditty Bops “Pack Rat”
5) Various Artists “Garden State”
Thursday, September 09, 2010
Award time
It’s September and that means that it is time for the MTV Video Music Awards which raises such pertinent questions as “Who will win Video of the Year?”, “Were there enough videos made last year to actually fill a Video of the Year category?” and “Isn’t it ironic (in the Alanis Morisette sense of the word) that a channel that does not technically show music videos presents a music video award show?” However, instead of doing my rant on how horrible MTV is, Katy Perry’s bad skin and trying to figure out just who the hell this Justin Bieber is I’ve decided to list some of my favorite VMA moments. Because at one point in time this was the show to watch.
Nirvana’s performance of “Lithium”: Three things that I will never forget from this performance. 1) The band starting off by playing the opening to “Rape Me” just to upset the MTV executives. 2) Krist Novosellic throwing his bass guitar up in the air and having it smash straight into his head, giving him a concussion and causing him to stumble offstage. And 3) Dave Grohl getting out from behind the drums while Kurt Cobain is destroying everything in sight, coming up to the microphone and saying “Hi Axl!” over and over again. One of the best trainwreck performances ever.
Christian Slater hosting the 1993 awards: I have no idea why he was the host. I don’t think he even knew why he was the host. This was a few years after Heathers and Pump Up the Volume. I’m guessing that Arsenio Hall wasn’t available that night. Though by 1993 Arsenio should have been taking any gig that he could find.
Pearl Jam and Neil Young closing the show with “Rocking in the Free World”:
This is why I don’t think I will ever be able to get into what is the best selling music today. I don’t think that we’ll ever reach a point where this type of music is so popular that it is the closing of a mainstream award show. Or that anyone would allow Neil Young on stage with those sideburns ever again. I just can’t think of anything that is out now in the mainstream that could ever touch this. Outside of MC Hammer reprising “U Can’t Touch This” of course.
Michael Stipe wearing numerous t-shirts for R.E.M.’s wins for “Losing My Religion”: Every time they won he would take the stage in a shirt with a different slogan. When they won the final one he literally went through five shirts while giving his speech. That said, the song and video really haven’t aged well. When I first saw it I thought it was one of the most amazing things ever. Now it is more of a meh moment. Contrast to Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy”, which is still four minutes of pure artistic brilliance.
Garth from Wayne’s World playing drums with U2: I have this on a U2 bootleg CD somewhere in my collection. Kind of surprising that 15 years later that U2 would still be popular but Dana Carvey is, oh I don’t know, probably sleeping beneath an underpass somewhere.
Surprisingly good Best New Artists: Here are some of the acts that won over the years: Eurythmics, Guns N’ Roses, Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots, Counting Crows, Alanis Morissette, Fiona Apple, Eminem… I mean while you can make fun of a-ha winning that might be the worst on the list. Ok, Michael Penn and Til Tuesday may not be popular but he did marry Aimee Mann so at least the entire household has awards.
Any others out there?
Nirvana’s performance of “Lithium”: Three things that I will never forget from this performance. 1) The band starting off by playing the opening to “Rape Me” just to upset the MTV executives. 2) Krist Novosellic throwing his bass guitar up in the air and having it smash straight into his head, giving him a concussion and causing him to stumble offstage. And 3) Dave Grohl getting out from behind the drums while Kurt Cobain is destroying everything in sight, coming up to the microphone and saying “Hi Axl!” over and over again. One of the best trainwreck performances ever.
Christian Slater hosting the 1993 awards: I have no idea why he was the host. I don’t think he even knew why he was the host. This was a few years after Heathers and Pump Up the Volume. I’m guessing that Arsenio Hall wasn’t available that night. Though by 1993 Arsenio should have been taking any gig that he could find.
Pearl Jam and Neil Young closing the show with “Rocking in the Free World”:
This is why I don’t think I will ever be able to get into what is the best selling music today. I don’t think that we’ll ever reach a point where this type of music is so popular that it is the closing of a mainstream award show. Or that anyone would allow Neil Young on stage with those sideburns ever again. I just can’t think of anything that is out now in the mainstream that could ever touch this. Outside of MC Hammer reprising “U Can’t Touch This” of course.
Michael Stipe wearing numerous t-shirts for R.E.M.’s wins for “Losing My Religion”: Every time they won he would take the stage in a shirt with a different slogan. When they won the final one he literally went through five shirts while giving his speech. That said, the song and video really haven’t aged well. When I first saw it I thought it was one of the most amazing things ever. Now it is more of a meh moment. Contrast to Pearl Jam’s “Jeremy”, which is still four minutes of pure artistic brilliance.
Garth from Wayne’s World playing drums with U2: I have this on a U2 bootleg CD somewhere in my collection. Kind of surprising that 15 years later that U2 would still be popular but Dana Carvey is, oh I don’t know, probably sleeping beneath an underpass somewhere.
Surprisingly good Best New Artists: Here are some of the acts that won over the years: Eurythmics, Guns N’ Roses, Nirvana, Stone Temple Pilots, Counting Crows, Alanis Morissette, Fiona Apple, Eminem… I mean while you can make fun of a-ha winning that might be the worst on the list. Ok, Michael Penn and Til Tuesday may not be popular but he did marry Aimee Mann so at least the entire household has awards.
Any others out there?
Wednesday, September 08, 2010
Activate shields
Yahoo headline of the day: Asteroids barely avoid colliding with earth.
You know what, I don’t ask much of my president. Sure I would like an economy that doesn’t suck, a foreign policy with some semblance of direction and a belief that one day we will be able to say the word politician without using a tone of disgust but those aren’t really requirements. All I ask is that the president prevent an asteroid from slamming into the earth. And for crying out loud, Obama almost screwed that one up too. Seriously, shouldn’t we at least keep Bruce Willis on call for these situations?
Anyway, since it was my birthday last week I might as well give my annual post on what it feels like to get older and older. I’m 37 now, an age that it many ways fits me but still makes me feel damn old. I think I’ve been telling people that I’m 37 for two years now but I would at least like to think that I am in my early thirties. I really hate the fact that mid-life is approaching rapidly especially from a statistical perspective.
What I find interesting is that even with my age things like high school and college still hold some pretty major significance for me even though those events took place fifteen or twenty years ago. Think about that; we are talking decades plural here if I want to think about being a geek in my freshmen year of high school. No one remembers those events but me yet they still weigh on decisions that I make now. I doubt that I am the only one who thinks like this but it is pretty fascinating.
That said, I am finally acting more like an adult. I’m engaged to the woman of my dreams and want nothing more than to marry her and spend the rest of our lives together. My days of being the last one out of the bar are behind me and I am happy for that. The stories are great but I am glad to have avoided becoming that old guy at the end of the bar. I’m doing well at my job and I’m close with my family and while this past year has had some of the toughest moments of my life I can’t in anyway complain about the hand that life has dealt me.
I’m still working at becoming a better me. If being with Kim has taught me anything it is that I am in no way as perfect as I imagine myself to be. I seemed to have become oblivious to the fact that I can be arrogant or obnoxious or selfish or for a lack of a better term, a complete asshole. Those aren’t my main personality traits but they are there and for years I simply ignored them or hid them under my cynical veneer. I’m trying to change that part of me because it is not who I want to be. That might be one of the main reasons why I am with Kim: she makes me want to be the best version of myself I can possibly be.
It’s tough realizing you are getting old. Even staying up until 11 to write is a challenge now. Various body parts hurt much more than they should and I really need to get my cholesterol checked. But I look back at 37 years on this planet and I’m pretty damn proud at what I have done with my time and I think I am just getting started.
You know what, I don’t ask much of my president. Sure I would like an economy that doesn’t suck, a foreign policy with some semblance of direction and a belief that one day we will be able to say the word politician without using a tone of disgust but those aren’t really requirements. All I ask is that the president prevent an asteroid from slamming into the earth. And for crying out loud, Obama almost screwed that one up too. Seriously, shouldn’t we at least keep Bruce Willis on call for these situations?
Anyway, since it was my birthday last week I might as well give my annual post on what it feels like to get older and older. I’m 37 now, an age that it many ways fits me but still makes me feel damn old. I think I’ve been telling people that I’m 37 for two years now but I would at least like to think that I am in my early thirties. I really hate the fact that mid-life is approaching rapidly especially from a statistical perspective.
What I find interesting is that even with my age things like high school and college still hold some pretty major significance for me even though those events took place fifteen or twenty years ago. Think about that; we are talking decades plural here if I want to think about being a geek in my freshmen year of high school. No one remembers those events but me yet they still weigh on decisions that I make now. I doubt that I am the only one who thinks like this but it is pretty fascinating.
That said, I am finally acting more like an adult. I’m engaged to the woman of my dreams and want nothing more than to marry her and spend the rest of our lives together. My days of being the last one out of the bar are behind me and I am happy for that. The stories are great but I am glad to have avoided becoming that old guy at the end of the bar. I’m doing well at my job and I’m close with my family and while this past year has had some of the toughest moments of my life I can’t in anyway complain about the hand that life has dealt me.
I’m still working at becoming a better me. If being with Kim has taught me anything it is that I am in no way as perfect as I imagine myself to be. I seemed to have become oblivious to the fact that I can be arrogant or obnoxious or selfish or for a lack of a better term, a complete asshole. Those aren’t my main personality traits but they are there and for years I simply ignored them or hid them under my cynical veneer. I’m trying to change that part of me because it is not who I want to be. That might be one of the main reasons why I am with Kim: she makes me want to be the best version of myself I can possibly be.
It’s tough realizing you are getting old. Even staying up until 11 to write is a challenge now. Various body parts hurt much more than they should and I really need to get my cholesterol checked. But I look back at 37 years on this planet and I’m pretty damn proud at what I have done with my time and I think I am just getting started.
Tuesday, September 07, 2010
Returning to Blogging Duty
So it has been a few weeks since I last wrote. Three if my math is right, which would make this by far the longest break I’ve taken from blogging and writing in general in five years. First off, thanks to those who got in touch with me to check that everything is ok. I know that for some people my blog has been the best way to keep up with what I am doing and it has become so routine that not writing has been a signal that something has gone wrong. That wasn’t the case this time.
It’s weird to say that my life has gotten busy but in a way that is the best way to put it. I just have more on my plate now between time with Kim and taking care of things for work and all of the other aspects of life. I’ve also been traveling a ton and it has just taken a toll on me. The last few weeks all I wanted to do when I got home was maybe do a little reading, a little work on the jigsaw puzzle and sleep. I’m sorry for the lack of posts but my body and mind needed some time away from writing about Lindsay Lohan hitting a baby with her car.
(I think we’ve reached the point where we can use the term “Menace to Society” with regards to her.)
Anyway, I’ve been thinking about this idea for the past few days and figured that it would be a good first topic back. Kim makes fun of me for the amount of time that I spend on Facebook and I have to admit that it is a rather strange obsession of mine. Now to be honest I don’t really do much on Facebook and I do significantly less than I did a year or two ago. I don’t update my status unless I can think of a really good pun, I haven’t uploaded pictures in years and I accept friend requests whenever I am bored enough to deal with it. Really all I do is login and look at everyone else’s status updates.
When you think of it that is a really odd, voyeuristic thing to do. Like most people, my Facebook friends are not my friends at all. Or at least a significant portion of them are not. Sure, they may have been friends at one point in my life but in some cases that was decades ago. In some cases I can’t even say that we ever were friends; we just happen to have some shared experiences based mainly on geography. Yet every day I check to see what they are doing. I know their jobs, the names of their children, and where they went on vacation. I know all of this despite the fact that for all intensive purposes these people are complete strangers to me.
What is more unusual and disconcerting is this is the same for all of us. Essentially everyone is on Facebook now and your life is on display for the world to see. We have reached a point where there is almost no such thing as private information anymore. We’ve listed everything in our profile and by detailing the minutiae of our life in status updates and Twitter posts and Flickr feeds people who don’t know us know everything about us. It’s a rather frightening thought. We have all become infinitely more social without actually talking to anyone.
This is probably strange coming from someone who in two months will be celebrating the six year anniversary of this blog. I can’t say that it wasn’t a factor in taking a little break from writing. Putting yourself out there every day for the world to see is a rather daunting thought. What does it really mean to know that in the last year someone from Iran has read my blog or that I have a relatively large number of visitors from Norway? Is it a loss of privacy or a way, as minor as it may be, to put my voice out there in the world?
I have a feeling that will be one of the subjects I will be grappling with over the next year. I’m going to keep writing because I feel better when I write and if I write I might as well blog. But I’m not sure what direction this is going to take. The days of writing about bar stories are behind me. Now I just have to figure out what is in front of me.
The five random CDs for the week (which had also been on a bit of a vacation):
1) Aimee Mann “I’m With Stupid”
2) R.E.M. “Murmur:
3) The Iguanas “Plastic Silver Nine Volt Heart”
4) Alejandro Escovedo “Thirteen Years”
5) Jay Bennett “Bigger than Blue”
It’s weird to say that my life has gotten busy but in a way that is the best way to put it. I just have more on my plate now between time with Kim and taking care of things for work and all of the other aspects of life. I’ve also been traveling a ton and it has just taken a toll on me. The last few weeks all I wanted to do when I got home was maybe do a little reading, a little work on the jigsaw puzzle and sleep. I’m sorry for the lack of posts but my body and mind needed some time away from writing about Lindsay Lohan hitting a baby with her car.
(I think we’ve reached the point where we can use the term “Menace to Society” with regards to her.)
Anyway, I’ve been thinking about this idea for the past few days and figured that it would be a good first topic back. Kim makes fun of me for the amount of time that I spend on Facebook and I have to admit that it is a rather strange obsession of mine. Now to be honest I don’t really do much on Facebook and I do significantly less than I did a year or two ago. I don’t update my status unless I can think of a really good pun, I haven’t uploaded pictures in years and I accept friend requests whenever I am bored enough to deal with it. Really all I do is login and look at everyone else’s status updates.
When you think of it that is a really odd, voyeuristic thing to do. Like most people, my Facebook friends are not my friends at all. Or at least a significant portion of them are not. Sure, they may have been friends at one point in my life but in some cases that was decades ago. In some cases I can’t even say that we ever were friends; we just happen to have some shared experiences based mainly on geography. Yet every day I check to see what they are doing. I know their jobs, the names of their children, and where they went on vacation. I know all of this despite the fact that for all intensive purposes these people are complete strangers to me.
What is more unusual and disconcerting is this is the same for all of us. Essentially everyone is on Facebook now and your life is on display for the world to see. We have reached a point where there is almost no such thing as private information anymore. We’ve listed everything in our profile and by detailing the minutiae of our life in status updates and Twitter posts and Flickr feeds people who don’t know us know everything about us. It’s a rather frightening thought. We have all become infinitely more social without actually talking to anyone.
This is probably strange coming from someone who in two months will be celebrating the six year anniversary of this blog. I can’t say that it wasn’t a factor in taking a little break from writing. Putting yourself out there every day for the world to see is a rather daunting thought. What does it really mean to know that in the last year someone from Iran has read my blog or that I have a relatively large number of visitors from Norway? Is it a loss of privacy or a way, as minor as it may be, to put my voice out there in the world?
I have a feeling that will be one of the subjects I will be grappling with over the next year. I’m going to keep writing because I feel better when I write and if I write I might as well blog. But I’m not sure what direction this is going to take. The days of writing about bar stories are behind me. Now I just have to figure out what is in front of me.
The five random CDs for the week (which had also been on a bit of a vacation):
1) Aimee Mann “I’m With Stupid”
2) R.E.M. “Murmur:
3) The Iguanas “Plastic Silver Nine Volt Heart”
4) Alejandro Escovedo “Thirteen Years”
5) Jay Bennett “Bigger than Blue”
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