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.
Showing posts with label tift merritt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label tift merritt. Show all posts
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
Wednesday, July 07, 2010
Hunger Strike? Storm the Bastille?
Sorry for the lack of posts. I had been sitting novena outside of the LA County Courthouse the past few days and was so distraught over the imprisonment of My Beloved Lindsay (a term I should have trademarked a few years ago) that I just could not bring myself to write last night. Right now I am working feverishly to get Amnesty International to support my cause that Ms. Lohan is being held illegally as a prisoner of conscience and, barring that, gathering various supplies like rope, bolt cutters, and celebratory bottles of Stoli in order to pull off the greatest prison escape ever. It will be just like the Great Muppet Caper except that we will be trying to break someone out of jail and there will be no Muppets. Ok, maybe it won’t be like the Great Muppet Caper after all.
DJ asked on Facebook just where in God’s name did this Lindsay Lohan fascination come from. Based on my blog tags I’ve been calling her My Beloved Lindsay since at least June 2007 and I really think I did it before hand. Truth be told, I’m pretty sure that the phrase came out of a joke at trivia that I made for no one’s benefit but my own. See, Maygun would always have a trivia category called “News of the Starz”, which was celebrity gossip and always seemed to include one Lindsay Lohan reference. I decided that it would be fun if I started to refer to her as my beloved, pretend that I had an insane crush on her, and defend my belief that as long as I continually professed my devotion to her at some point I would be her best dating option left. I thought it was funny though it certainly seemed to get out of hand.
My real reason is a bit more detailed than that as I have followed her career for a long time. I remember The Parent Trap, though I never actually watched the movie, and thought that she was a child star with promise. Mean Girls, which I also never watched, also seemed to indicate that. The thing is after that movie she became the it girl in Hollywood with one amazing difference. Sure, there had been a lot of 18 year olds who were given a ton of press with little to back it up but they all seemed to come out of the same cookie cutter mold. Blonde, innocent looking, often having had a career in Disney films (Brittney and Miley are the same in this regard.) But Lindsay was a redhead with freckles and real curves. Her look was completely different than the rest of the starlets and she did have legitimate talent. You had some hopes for her. She wasn’t going to turn into Natalie Portman but you figured that she had better career prospects than Tara Reid.
Sadly we were wrong. Paris Hilton got a hold of her and suddenly Lindsay lost a ton of weight to the point that I started the “Buy Lindsay a Sandwich!” fan club. She dyed her hair blonde and ended up looking like every other actress in Hollywood. And worst of all, the partying and the booze and the drugs took away her talent. Once while flying back from Europe I saw that Just My Luck was the in flight movie and tried to watch it. I lasted all of five minutes before I decided that I would rather listen to the crying infant two rows behind me than to try to watch her act. Her career has been over for a good five years now and the only reason she makes the news is that we are all drawn to a car wreck. It is the worst part of our voyeuristic nature.
So she is going to jail. And writing F You to the judge on her fingernails. Maybe she’ll get clean and sober and have a career comeback. I’m not betting on it. I think we all know where this story is going to end. People have probably already written their pieces on how we could let someone destroy themselves in front of our very eyes and are just waiting for the news story so they can hit publish. We should probably hope for better. And figure out how the hell Paris Hilton seems to be immune to all of this.
Wednesday Night Music Club: I’ve been listening to this song for a few weeks now and this is the only version of it that I can find online. It is from one of my favorite performers Tift Merritt and just seems to be one of the most beautiful songs that I have ever heard. No one has a voice quite like Tift’s.
DJ asked on Facebook just where in God’s name did this Lindsay Lohan fascination come from. Based on my blog tags I’ve been calling her My Beloved Lindsay since at least June 2007 and I really think I did it before hand. Truth be told, I’m pretty sure that the phrase came out of a joke at trivia that I made for no one’s benefit but my own. See, Maygun would always have a trivia category called “News of the Starz”, which was celebrity gossip and always seemed to include one Lindsay Lohan reference. I decided that it would be fun if I started to refer to her as my beloved, pretend that I had an insane crush on her, and defend my belief that as long as I continually professed my devotion to her at some point I would be her best dating option left. I thought it was funny though it certainly seemed to get out of hand.
My real reason is a bit more detailed than that as I have followed her career for a long time. I remember The Parent Trap, though I never actually watched the movie, and thought that she was a child star with promise. Mean Girls, which I also never watched, also seemed to indicate that. The thing is after that movie she became the it girl in Hollywood with one amazing difference. Sure, there had been a lot of 18 year olds who were given a ton of press with little to back it up but they all seemed to come out of the same cookie cutter mold. Blonde, innocent looking, often having had a career in Disney films (Brittney and Miley are the same in this regard.) But Lindsay was a redhead with freckles and real curves. Her look was completely different than the rest of the starlets and she did have legitimate talent. You had some hopes for her. She wasn’t going to turn into Natalie Portman but you figured that she had better career prospects than Tara Reid.
Sadly we were wrong. Paris Hilton got a hold of her and suddenly Lindsay lost a ton of weight to the point that I started the “Buy Lindsay a Sandwich!” fan club. She dyed her hair blonde and ended up looking like every other actress in Hollywood. And worst of all, the partying and the booze and the drugs took away her talent. Once while flying back from Europe I saw that Just My Luck was the in flight movie and tried to watch it. I lasted all of five minutes before I decided that I would rather listen to the crying infant two rows behind me than to try to watch her act. Her career has been over for a good five years now and the only reason she makes the news is that we are all drawn to a car wreck. It is the worst part of our voyeuristic nature.
So she is going to jail. And writing F You to the judge on her fingernails. Maybe she’ll get clean and sober and have a career comeback. I’m not betting on it. I think we all know where this story is going to end. People have probably already written their pieces on how we could let someone destroy themselves in front of our very eyes and are just waiting for the news story so they can hit publish. We should probably hope for better. And figure out how the hell Paris Hilton seems to be immune to all of this.
Wednesday Night Music Club: I’ve been listening to this song for a few weeks now and this is the only version of it that I can find online. It is from one of my favorite performers Tift Merritt and just seems to be one of the most beautiful songs that I have ever heard. No one has a voice quite like Tift’s.
Sunday, December 27, 2009
The Oughts: The near greats
Continuing with my look back at a decade that for the most part we all would rather forget ever happened I will now spend my time on the subject that touches me most dearly: music. Over the next few days I will reveal my top 15 albums of the decade (because I just can’t bring myself to narrow the list down to ten.) To start however I will focus on a few that did not make the cut for one reason or another but deserve a special mention.
Chris Mills “Kiss It Goodbye” (2000): I guess if we have to call this the decade of anything we will have to call it the decade of emo, which is rather sad mainly for fashion purposes. Someone needs to tell teenage boys that having uneven bangs that fall into your face and wearing makeup doesn’t look nearly as cool a decade later as all of my friends who were really into the Cure had to discover. But the idea of emo, that style of emotionally raw songwriting, isn’t bad at all. It is just a bit too much teenage angst. Chris Mills isn’t emo but I never saw anyone perform lyrics that were so raw. No one wrote about screwing up relationships and being a complete fuck up quite like Chris Mills and outside of Chicago no one ever heard of him, which is an utter shame.
Neko Case “Blacklisted” (2003): If I had to name a female artist of the decade it would be Neko Case. She would probably be my artist of the decade as well because I can’t think of anyone else who was so consistently brilliant and who grew as an artist over that time. But for some reason none of her solo stuff made my top 15 though they would probably be 16-20. Her discs always seem a little incomplete though I love them and listen to them constantly. It’s also nice to know that Neko has gained popularity without selling out who she is. Here is one of my favorites of her.
The Ditty Bops “The Ditty Bops” (2004): This is still the most unlikely duo I came across in music this decade. Not only is this the only band I have ever seen that features a former fashion model but their musical style can only be described as part country, part girl group, part vaudeville and part circus sideshow. I’ve seen them perform dressed as characters from the Wizard of Oz, in clothing made from plastic bags from Target and with a guy on stilts behind them. Listening to their music forces you to smile. Oh, and perform a cross country tour by going from city to city on bicycle. Abby and Amanda are the coolest people ever.
Fleet Foxes “Fleet Foxes” (2008): This is my choice for video of the decade. Bar none. Forget the dancing on treadmills. This is pure brilliance. Also, Fleet Foxes epitomize the nice trend of bands trying to do everything possible to sound as though they are not in the 21st century. They sound like they are from 17th century England and that is a great thing. Dark, mysterious and totally awesome.
Tift Merritt “Another Country” (2008): Sometimes music just hits you at the right time. 2008 started with me in the emergency room and quitting my job, two events that were not really unrelated. I was pretty much lost in life when I picked up Tift’s latest which was entirely about her being lost in life and having to go to Paris to find herself. I had to go to Delaware but I can’t complain about where that took me. This album, and this song in particular, pulled me through a hell of a lot that year.
Chris Mills “Kiss It Goodbye” (2000): I guess if we have to call this the decade of anything we will have to call it the decade of emo, which is rather sad mainly for fashion purposes. Someone needs to tell teenage boys that having uneven bangs that fall into your face and wearing makeup doesn’t look nearly as cool a decade later as all of my friends who were really into the Cure had to discover. But the idea of emo, that style of emotionally raw songwriting, isn’t bad at all. It is just a bit too much teenage angst. Chris Mills isn’t emo but I never saw anyone perform lyrics that were so raw. No one wrote about screwing up relationships and being a complete fuck up quite like Chris Mills and outside of Chicago no one ever heard of him, which is an utter shame.
Neko Case “Blacklisted” (2003): If I had to name a female artist of the decade it would be Neko Case. She would probably be my artist of the decade as well because I can’t think of anyone else who was so consistently brilliant and who grew as an artist over that time. But for some reason none of her solo stuff made my top 15 though they would probably be 16-20. Her discs always seem a little incomplete though I love them and listen to them constantly. It’s also nice to know that Neko has gained popularity without selling out who she is. Here is one of my favorites of her.
The Ditty Bops “The Ditty Bops” (2004): This is still the most unlikely duo I came across in music this decade. Not only is this the only band I have ever seen that features a former fashion model but their musical style can only be described as part country, part girl group, part vaudeville and part circus sideshow. I’ve seen them perform dressed as characters from the Wizard of Oz, in clothing made from plastic bags from Target and with a guy on stilts behind them. Listening to their music forces you to smile. Oh, and perform a cross country tour by going from city to city on bicycle. Abby and Amanda are the coolest people ever.
Fleet Foxes “Fleet Foxes” (2008): This is my choice for video of the decade. Bar none. Forget the dancing on treadmills. This is pure brilliance. Also, Fleet Foxes epitomize the nice trend of bands trying to do everything possible to sound as though they are not in the 21st century. They sound like they are from 17th century England and that is a great thing. Dark, mysterious and totally awesome.
Tift Merritt “Another Country” (2008): Sometimes music just hits you at the right time. 2008 started with me in the emergency room and quitting my job, two events that were not really unrelated. I was pretty much lost in life when I picked up Tift’s latest which was entirely about her being lost in life and having to go to Paris to find herself. I had to go to Delaware but I can’t complain about where that took me. This album, and this song in particular, pulled me through a hell of a lot that year.
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