Famous people I know I would be good friends with if we ever got to know each other:
–Werner Herzog
–Kiefer Sutherland
–Anderson Cooper
–Emily Wells
–Dave Eggers
–Joaquin Phoenix
–Rachel Maddow
–Adam Savage
Oh hey, Karla and I were in line at a store last week. We were next to be rung out. We were standing kind of arm-in-arm. We looked at each other and gave each other two or three quick, successive peck kisses. The man behind the register threw his arms up in the air and bellowed, “FOLKS! There’s other people here,” at which point he motioned to the other people in line behind us. Then he said something along the lines of “Stop that” although I can’t remember his exact wording there. We were flabbergasted!! We hadn’t even been close to making out or kissing in any excessive way–whatever that would be! It’s fair to say my anger was intense. Karla pointedly asked the man behind us, “Were you offended?” and he said “I’m too tired to be offended.” We were silent while he rang up our items. As we walked out I said a very mean thing to him, which I do not feel bad about.
Oh hey, watch this video of Kay Ryan reading her poem “The Turtle”. I mean wow. “Her only levity is patience,/ the sport of truly chastened things.”
It’s not something you really wanna think about very much, but what songs would you want played at your funeral? I actually used to think about this a lot, back when I was much more sad all the time, but even now the topic will cross my mind every few months. Naturally my selections have varied wildly as time goes on and my tastes changed. For many years I held tightly onto “Light Years” by Pearl Jam being one of the songs played, but that finally slid off the list a few years ago. And thank goodness–in retrospect I can see that would have been gratuitously sad. Just way TOO SAD. Currently I am going with “A Three-Legged Workhorse” by This Will Destroy You, “I’ve Been Asleep For a Long, Long Time” by Hey Rosetta!, and “Brian and Robert” by Phish. I recommend trying this exercise yourself. I think you’ll find it is quite revealing, not just about your musical tastes, but about the entirety of your life.
Here is a (partial) list of things I would try to get good at if I had unlimited time on this Earth:
–playing the guitar
–hiking/camping/climbing
–painting
–the yo yo
–acting
–ice skating
Oh hey, I’m reading a book about the earliest art to depict the polar regions after human exploration had begun there. It’s a truly intriguing topic and some of this art is just spectacular. Somewhat realistic based off the descriptions of the men who’d been there but also rather exaggerated and mystical as the place was still one of imagination and perceived danger and death. Check out “Sea of Ice” by Caspar David Friedrich:
Very soon, our household will no longer have cable TV. To me (although not to my love, Karla), this seemed almost unfathomable until recently. Not that I am SUPER into television; I usually have a show or two that I am keeping up with at any given moment, but other than a select few, I’m never really passionate about them. I don’t typically turn on television and just watch whatever is on—I turn it on at appointed times to watch something specific. Karla has almost never been that way, so this won’t be a huge change for her.
While I don’t really *watch* a whole lot of TV, I do turn it on sometimes just to feel connected to the outside world. If I’m all alone in the house, I have often simply turned on the TV to feel less lonely—and I’ve always been quite aware that was my motivation for doing so. In recent years, as I’ve become more aware of this opiate-type usage of TV, I have tried to curtail it and now will read with music on more often than with TV. Silence, however, is still somewhat rare for me. But I’m a work in progress.
The good (?) news is, we have so many streaming and DVD options, we still have more to watch than we could properly accomplish in a lifetime. Our household alone has Netflix as well as Amazon Prime, so even those two services alone offer more than we need. Factor in free streaming services like Crackle and a dozen or so other channels we have loaded on our Roku and the approximately 500 DVDs we own—including numerous seasons of TV shows–continuing to pay for cable seemed silly and wasteful.
Yes, there are a few shows (at this point, really just The Walking Dead) that I still HAVE to see. Luckily, each episode is available to rent for 2.99 the day after it airs via Amazon. Pricey? Perhaps—but much cheaper than our cable bill. I will just be avoiding Facebook on Sunday evenings for awhile :)
I hear you: BUT SETH! What about live TV?? News?? Sports???
Yes. This is the only part that hurts. First, we will be keeping the cable through the election. Once that whole fracas seems settled, we’ll cut the cord. Yes, I will miss sports. However, I already gave up football. But I will surely miss seeing my Phillies, 76ers, and Flyers play. I will certainly follow their seasons via print and internet media. I imagine in the vanishingly rare event that one of my teams would be having an amazing year and look headed to the playoffs, I might cave and get the cable again, but for just a limited time. I will very much miss special events like the Oscars—but a local theater here shows it on the big screen every year—so maybe there’s an opportunity for a new tradition. Or, maybe, it will become one more item in the growing list of things I used to care about, but now, maybe not so much.
I can’t claim that this change is occurring because we don’t watch filmed, scripted entertainment. We do, and we don’t feel ashamed of it. It’s just that there’s filmed, scripted entertainment coming out of our ears, and we pay more for all of it than we do for our electric and gas bills. This seemed askew to us. In addition, we get an actual newspaper delivered, as well as about ten magazine subscriptions, and I am kind of addicted to fivethirtyeight.com and The New York Times online—so as much as I love CNN and MSNBC, we don’t really get our information from the television. The fact of the matter is, getting rid of cable stands to change our lives very little—a realization that made it seem truly ludicrous for us to keep it.
1. Weather! During the last month or so, as the average temperature was dipping into the teens and single digits, I found my weight harder to manage (this phenomenon is far from unheard-of). I found it harder to motivate myself to work out, was often craving more food and worse food, and often couldn’t even ride my bike to work like I normally do. My goal weight is 150–which I have achieved and am currently staying at, but for a few weeks I lingered in the 155 area as the temperatures made life almost impossible. Now this week we get a warm-up into the 50s and 60s and within days I’m back to waking up at 149. Isn’t that wild??? The weather and temperature affects everything. Oftentimes, even as these things are occurring to us and affecting us, we don’t truly realize the size of the impact they have. I’m excited to be escaping the winter with my weight loss intact; I feel as though I almost lost my grip on it there for a minute (and for the record, I’m at my goal weight but not my goal body; the plan being to keep adding muscle mass while losing more fat–almost all belly, now–while staying at about 150. Yeah, it’s kind of a bold plan, but it’s the only plan I have).
2. I just heard that some “Breaking Bad” fans are frequently throwing pizzas on the roof of the house the show was filmed at. And apparently an elderly couple lives in the house, and they have lived there for 30 years. I know none of them are going to read this, but still: you gotta stop that.
3. Today my mother and I planned on going up into the observation tower that is atop City Hall here in Philadelphia. However, when we arrived at the office to purchase tickets, we were told the observation tower was closed that day, due to flooding! Now, I grant you, it had rained quite a bit the night before, but how in the world does an observation tower, which is one of the highest points in the city, get flooded?! Now sure, I can think of some plausible explanations, but still. Annoying. But here is a nice picture we managed to take during a perfect leisurely stroll on a gorgeous afternoon near Rittenhouse Square:
I sure do like blue skies, clear wide-open blue skies and the wind on my face. Getting tan. Getting tan is like taking the outside world into yourself and then shooting it back out. And all those vitamins and good vibes. Also I like movies. I like watching movies in air conditioned rooms while sweat dries on my skin. I like rice with salt on it, and dogs who smile.
I’ve been watching a lot of cable news lately, but I don’t necessarily think it’s good for me. I’ve just become addicted to it, as I’ve been known to become addicted to just about anything from time to time. I suppose it must just be cable news’ turn. I mean, there is plenty that I like about it. It really does inform you, and depending on what you’re watching, you usually learn about stuff you might not otherwise be following, like that shit in Iraq. CNN is the way to go. Typically they’re gonna tell you about the stuff that’s important, not just the tabloid stuff. But regardless, most of it is rot. You’re better off reading newspapers. Please read newspapers. They need you, and it’s still the best thing going.
I’ve recently come across two different poems about turtles that really floored me. It makes sense that turtles would make such rich poetic subjects: ugly, slow, and capable of withdrawing entirely into themselves. They’re just begging for the poetic treatment. The first is “Turtle” by Kay Ryan. Watch her read it here, and the text of the poem is here. The other is “To a Box Turtle” by John Updike. Watch me read it to you! Right here:
To a Box Turtle
by John Updike
Size of a small skull, and like a skull segmented,
of pentagons healed and varnished to form a dome,
you almost went unnoticed in the meadow,
among its tall grasses and serrated strawberry leaves
your mottle of amber and umber effective camouflage.
You were making your way through grave distances,
your forefeet just barely extended and as dainty as dried
coelacanth fins, as miniature sea-fans, your black nails
decadent like a Chinese empress’s, and your head
a triangular snake-head, eyes ringed with dull gold.
I pick you up. Your imperious head withdraws.
Your bottom plate, hinged once, presents a No
with its courteous waxed surface, a marquetry
of inlaid squares, fine-grained and tinted
tobacco-brown and the yellow of a pipe smoker’s teeth.
What are you thinking, thus sealed inside yourself?
My hand must have a Smell, a killer’s warmth.
It holds you upside down, aloft, undignified,
your leathery person amazed in the floating dark.
How much pure fear can your wrinkled brain contain?
I put you down. Your tentative, stalk-bending walk
resumes. The manifold jewel of you melts into grass.
Power mowers have been cruel to your race, and creatures
less ornate and unlikely have long gone extinct;
but nature’s tumults pool to form a giant peace.
You may have noticed, on various and sundry platforms of social media, that I am losing weight (again!). There will, of course, be a larger blog entry devoted to the subject once I hit a certain milestone, but I wanted to stop officially ignoring it on the blog. So yes, I am once again losing weight. If you’re a long-time reader, you may recall we’ve been down this road once before. I’ll stop short of saying I’m a chronic “weight bouncer”—I’ve only done the up and down once, now going on twice—and I do think I’m going to be able to maintain it this time, seeing as how I actually do enjoy the “lifestyle” one must switch to in order to stop gaining the weight back. I don’t want to go into too much detail, as the first of the “milestone” blogs on the topic should be coming soon. But if you’ve noticed that I’m a little more energetic, happy as an idiot, and generally manic lately—this is the main cause.
I don’t like, any more than you do, the way that things in our culture seem to have gotten so divisive. Everything appears to be very “black and white” or “us vs. them”…either you agree with me, or I hate you. All issues divided into two sides—usually liberal and conservative—so that most critical thought is now not required; you just have to know what team you’re on. I don’t like it any more than you do.
But there seems to be, to most people, a thought that this is a terrible deviation from some Golden Era of American discourse. That, not long ago now, everyone just kind of got along and accepted divergent opinions and engaged in a spirited and lively debate of the issues, before saying, ah, forget it! and heading out back for a barbeque. This fever dream is made possible by the fact that nobody actually knows anything about our own history, and is cursed with the widely-held human belief that all things have just recently been much better than they are now.
Things have, of course, never been like that. We’ve always been a country at one-another’s throats. That’s because the issues that we disagree about are pretty fucking important and are not trifles. If the biggest debate in America was chocolate vs. vanilla, I’d say some of us might be overreacting, but we debate about matters of deepest morality, life and death, and core philosophy. If you’re not passionate about these things, get out of the ring.
The division seems more pronounced now that we’re on the internet all the time. The biggest factor that plays into that is that we routinely interact with many people who we would previously not have been interacting with. Before the internet, we just naturally and gradually gravitated to people of like-mind. Now, we, in small ways, interact with dozens of people “on the other side” daily, which can cause little internet skirmishes which then, in turn, feel larger and more intense than real-world interactions, because we can’t gauge how the other is talking, as well as these skirmishes taking place in front of our 300 or so “friends” and remaining to view long after the words have been said.
The ease with which these divisive interactions can occur has given rise to something even worse than the “cultural division” itself: the everything is hunky-dorey crowd. This “crowd” includes just about everybody. We’re all so tired of having these online skirmishes with people with opposing views, almost nobody engages the argument anymore. Nobody wants to appear “divisive”. Everyone wants to make sure they are “accepting of other people’s views”.
The bottom line I’m trying to get to is this: I keep an open mind about things like calamari, the official naming of snow storms, and the future of the designated hitter in professional baseball. But I’m an adult now, and I’ve thought a lot about my core beliefs, and I don’t have an open mind about abortion, gay rights, gun control, or even—yes, even the existence of a higher power. I know what I think about these things. Not only that, but having an open mind about these things would make me a man of feeble constitution.
If you know me (and I think you do) you know that, obviously, I am a man with a ton of opinions. Well, one of those opinions is that these things that pop up on social media as “photo challenges” are some of the stupidest things I’ve ever seen. If you’re not familiar with them: they propose to be “30 day photo challenges” that list a thing you’re supposed to take a picture of once a day for thirty days. First off, if you need a “challenge” to take interesting pictures of the world around you, you’re not interesting. Period. Secondly, the items in these challenges are never even remotely challenging or creative. It’s like, “Day 1: Selfie. Day 2: Food. Day 3: Car”. Really? You spent time creating this, anonymous internet user? How dreadful.
So, I thought I’d make an interesting one! Some things here are interpretable, whch, again, makes it interesting. For instance, “Birth” wouldn’t necessarily be looking for a picture of something being born. You decide what it means. If anyone actually wants to give this a spin, let me know, I’ll put it into a dedicated blog entry so it’s easier to reference.
Actually Interesting Photo Challenge
Day 1: An animal that you want to take home
Day 2: Gum
Day 3: Something Upside-Down
Day 4: Paint
Day 5: How you’d like to be perceived
Day 6: How you feel inside
Day 7: Something you hate
Day 8: Birth
Day 9: A chair
Day 10: The passage of time
Day 11: Something you love but can’t have
Day 12: Space, area, void
Day 13: Underneath
Day 14: Scar
Day 15: Home
Day 16: Your bathtub.
Day 17: Work
Day 18: The ground
Day 19: The sky
Day 20: Between the ground and the sky
Day 21: What you believe
Day 22: Utensils
Day 23: Lights
Day 24: Transportation
Day 25: Idealized
Day 26: Action!
Day 27: Water
Day 28: Unattainable
Day 29: Before you were born
Day 30: Celebrate
Life, and all that stuff, is sometimes too interesting to bear. What I mean is, it can be very cyclical, or circular, or appear to be laden with damned meaning. See, I’m a man who doesn’t believe in much. I mean, I believe in science, and form and order amidst the chaos, but not in any Fate or creator or grand design. Just rules and laws that govern the movements and the heat of things, basically. So when life seems to have plans, folks like me sit up and take notice. Not because it’s changing the way I think—I have thrown away my open mind—but because coincidence or happenstance on any large sort of scale is just so unlikely.
Take, for instance, a story from my life. When I first got sober, I was 25 years old. This was a little over eleven years ago. I went to live with my mother and her husband in a small town in New Jersey. This was the first time I’d lived anywhere outside of Central Pennsylvania. This small town in New Jersey was relatively close to Philadelphia…maybe an hour, I think? At any rate, it was certainly the closest I’d ever lived to a big city.
Eleven years may not seem like that long ago, but I was inhabiting a very different world back then, and I was also a very different version of me. I drove a 1983 Ford Escort, named Earl Grey. This car was a bona fide piece of shit, and it broke down with an alarming regularity (chronic fuel pump issues). I had no cell phone. No GPS. When I wanted to go somewhere I’d never been, I printed out MapQuest directions and read them as I drove. If I needed to call someone, I found a payphone and retrieved my list of phone numbers, hand-written on a sheet of paper inside my wallet. It was interesting. It wasn’t as bad as it sounds. I drank a lot of Red Bull and wrote poetry almost every waking moment and listened to Pearl Jam like it was my job.
I had a very close friend who I’d been through the addiction wringer with. She had a similar problem as I did, and we’d gone to the same rehab, and really just been to Hell and back together. She had landed in a Recovery House in Harrisburg, PA. After the tumult of the end of our addictions, we now felt very far apart. Recovery Houses don’t allow you much leeway with visitors and phone calls. Remember, this is also before everyone was texting and Facebooking (it’s even before MySpace). I missed her very much.
She did manage to e-mail on occasion, and, ill-advisedly, we planned for her to sneak out one night. We would meet in Philadelphia. We were going to walk South Street.
I drove old rickety Earl Grey the hour to South Street, paging through my MapQuest directions. I drove right past South Street at one point and just decided to park as soon as I could. I found a spot and hopped out of my car. As I walked away, I realized I might later have no idea where I had parked. I got back into the car and grabbed my journal, the sacred notebook where I wrote all my poetry. I looked around for a landmark and wrote it down, and put the journal in my backpack.
I met up with her and it was glorious. I treasured being in her company, if only for a night. I don’t remember what we did on South Street. I don’t remember what we did at all. But it stands as one of the more significant nights of my life, on my long road to becoming the current version of me.
A week or so ago, I decided to go back through some of my old journals and see if I had missed anything of value, any pieces of writing I could turn into something good. I never did get around to it, but I threw the two oldest ones into my backpack, planning to look at them the next time I came to rest in some park. I promptly forgot about it.
This evening, I was riding my bike through what is now one of my favorite sections of Old City (technically, the neighborhood known as Society Hill). I love this section for it’s old houses, churches with expansive, historic graveyards, and shade-dappled side alleys. I came to one of the more significant landmarks to me, the house that Thaddeus Kosciuszko lived in when he lived in Philadelphia. Kosciuszko is my favorite revolutionary. I feel deeply connected to him across the vast gulf of time. The version of me from eleven years ago wasn’t yet even interested in history. He would have had zero interest in this Polish freedom fighter’s house. But I certainly do now.
I recalled, tonight, how the last time I was in the house, the park ranger had told me the woman who owned it and rented it to Kosciuszko was buried in the cemetery across the street. I have spent some time in that cemetery before (American painter Charles Wilson Peale is buried there, and so is George Dallas, who was Vice President under James K. Polk), but I thought I’d wander through again and look for her grave.
It didn’t take me long in there before I had to face the fact that I couldn’t remember her name, and my iPhone’s power was getting too low to make Googling a wise choice, so I decided to leave and ride my bike elsewhere. But as I stepped onto the sidewalk, the shade of sense memory hit me. I’d been here many times these past six months, but perhaps never at this time of evening, in this kind of mid-summer air. Suddenly I wondered it I’d been here before, long before.
I sat my backpack on the ground an hurriedly opened it, finding the oldest journal. I looked at many pages before I found it, scrawled in my own unmistakable hand:
4th St., across from St. Peters Church
I craned my neck at the cemetery gate above me, and sure enough: St. Peters.
Sure, maybe no big deal. So what, this is where I parked that night? If I moved to the city, it stands to reason I would pass by the place I parked that night, eleven years ago.
But the way that it came to me out of the blue, the way I had that journal on me, which was extraordinarily unlikely, the way I’d never noticed before that this was the place. It has been long ago enough now that it’s starting to feel like deep past; I felt my younger self there. I felt her younger self there. I saw me getting out of my Escort, completely oblivious to Thad Kosciuszko’s house a half block away, not caring, not caring, not caring. And life is crammed full of these bizarre cycles, these glances-back, these cosmic happenstances. Like combination locks clicking into place. But then the lock, it just keeps on spinning.
I sure do like blue skies, clear wide-open blue skies and the wind on my face. Getting tan. Getting tan is like taking the outside world into yourself and then shooting it back out. And all those vitamins and good vibes. Also I like movies. I like watching movies in air conditioned rooms while sweat dries on my skin. I like rice with salt on it, and dogs who smile.
I sure am happy right now. I’m going through an extended period of inner peace, tranquility, and contentment. It rules! I’m not trying to get all new-agey, or brag about my emotional state. The fact is, I’m often pretty content, at least moreso than most people (with, as I have noted at length on my blog, a steady undercurrent of fear of death and general despair that has been with me always and always shall remain…but it’s usually a little out of sight…my main operating mode is usually “happy”). I just note this extended happy period here because it seems so very unusual for most of humanity. This is only based on my very unscientific casual observations. But even folks who most would describe as happy are, frankly, pretty unhappy. Or at least uncomfortable, or full of worry or self-doubt or fear. Isn’t it strange how difficult it can be for us to be happy? Oy vey. I got tempted to go super-deep on the subject there, but I’ll resist it. I think it is impossible to go deep on this subject without sounding like a douchebag. I just want to note that I’m super happy. Tranquil is an even better word. I’m under no impression that my life is always going to be easy or that things will stay like they are now, but I’m tranquil with that notion.
That being said, this winter sure does suck. I know I know, someone wants to tell me It’s winter, what do you expect??? Well you see, here’s the thing: winter is uncomfortable. Physically. I do not like the sensation it creates upon my general physical being. So yes, although I am certainly aware that winter is coming, and I know what it is going to be like, that foreknowledge does not lessen it’s wretched impact upon me. I mean seriously, why does it keep snowing??? What kind of winter thinks it needs to snow this much?? Or be this consistently cold? It’s all pretty lame. Oh hey, also, look at this painting, “Chilly Observation”, by Charles Sidney Raleigh:
Another note on my happiness (and again, I’m not trying to get all zen on you here, I’m just thinking out loud. Except not literally out loud. I guess I’m thinking publicly), I’ve noticed lately I’m getting much less satisfaction from the acquisition of material goods. Despite all my cultural philosophizing, I don’t think I’ve ever denied that I derive a lot of pleasure from buying or acquiring things. Not big-ticket items, usually. Most of my life I’ve just loved getting more and more books and music and movies and things like that. And just random consumer goods. Hats. Backscratchers. Wall art. Random shit like that. Well anyway, lately, I’m getting less and less pleasure from acquisition. I suspect part of this is because of my natural tranquility right now, so I don’t have to supplement my happiness with the artificial high of stuff. but I also think that I might just kind of have enough stuff, finally. For one man, I have ALOT of books, records, DVDs, and the massive amount of random crapola that life in America will allow you to encircle yourself with. I have so much stuff (note that I am passionate about most of it and find it delightful; I’m not knocking my actual stuff) that I can’t begin to properly enjoy most of it. So I might need to chill on acquisition for a bit and start really paying attention to what I already have.
(although take note, I still really need some books by Neil DeGrasse Tyson, a vinyl copy of Neil Young’s “Mirrorball”, one of these, a really nice digital camera, the complete series of “Fraggle Rock” on DVD [I aint joking about that, and it’s getting pretty affordable], Alfred Hitchcock’s “Rope” on Blu-Ray, that really nice hardbound version of the collected “Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” books that Barnes and Noble sells, an Ilya Bryzgalov Philadelphia Flyers jersey [even though he doesn’t play for the team anymore…oh and size Large], early editions of the individual collections of Philip Larkin’s poetry [specifically, I’m thinking about “The Whitsun Weddings” and “The North Ship”…first editions only, really, anything else is useless], a year-long membership to the Barnes Gallery…oh I guess there is still some stuff I need…)
My neighbors are obsessed with shoveling snow. Every time it snows more than an inch, there is continual shoveling going on on my street, in the immediate vicinity of my house, for approximately 36 hours straight. I am talking about perhaps my ten closest neighbors. The shoveling NEVER. STOPS. Shoveling, scraping, pounding of ice in cracks. It’s like they need to dust for some fingerprints on the concrete. And listen, each one of these houses has approximately a three-foot-wide sidewalk that stretches the length of their house…maybe 20 feet. Every time it snows, I shovel my sidewalk, as completely as would be necessary on a street upon which nobody travels, in about five minutes as soon as I get home from work. After working ten hours. And riding my bike two miles. I’m saying: it’s not hard to do. Now, don’t get me wrong here. I’m not “complaining” about this. I know I’ve got a reputation for “complaining” about things (I interpret it as “having opinions”, which comes from “being super fucking intelligent and awake to the machinations of the wider world and structure of reality”, but whatever, if you think I’m a complainer, I’m a complainer), so I don’t want to be seen as particularly complaining about this. It’s whatever. You want to shovel your sidewalk ten times after it snows, go for it. More than anything I just find it peculiar. Are they just bored? Or is it a situation of trying to out-do the Joneses? Plus it is SO COLD right now. You KNOW I’m a trooper with weather but no way would I be going out repeatedly into that cold just to get my sidewalk–which in all likelihood only the mailman and my own family will walk on—perfect.
I know we don’t live in a world anymore—if ever we did—in which a significant amount of people care about the performances of musicians on late night talk shows. For quite a few years (as should surprise almost nobody) I was such a person, one who actually paid attention to that world. I knew the performance lineup from all the shows, almost every week, for about 4 years, I stayed on top of that. Although lately that world has faded from my attention. But last week, a band called The Orwells (I can only assume named after author George Orwell)
I hate to seem like a bumpkin, but this is a picture from my very first (solo and sober) cab ride yesterday…I think I’m finally a city boy.
performed their new song “Who Needs You” on the David Letterman show and it was a pretty authentic, impassioned performance, which made some waves big enough that it made its way to my attention. Now, there was nothing especially outrageous about this performance (other than the lyrics to the song, which nobody seems to have noticed, which include lines like “You better burn that flag/ Cause it aint against the law”…and for the record everybody…it isn’t against the law), except it wasn’t a cookie-cutter, “Let’s nail this!” performance. It was just a little quirky, a lot impassioned, and fairly off-key. I like it, but they’re probably not going to become a favorite band of mine (although I have put their album on my “to-buy” list). Although I don’t want to take too much away from the legitimacy of their performance; it WAS reminiscent of the early days of some great bands (who would later, inevitably, lose steam and passion) like the Rolling Stones, Pearl Jam, or The Doors before Morrison died (take note: I hate The Doors). The more pertinent point of discussion, for me, is: what kind of artistic culture have we fostered where a band simply playing with a bit of abandon on a talk show makes the front page of Rolling Stone‘s website? How neutered has our art become? How boring are we? Watch the performance here, and make sure you stay all the way to the end to see how unexpected Dave and Paul found the performance:
It occurs to me with no lack of regularity that, because of my persistent status as single and childless, that I have significantly fewer opportunities to receive presents as the rest of you romantic and procreating beasts. And hey, listen, I’m gonna admit something most people avoid saying out loud: I would like more presents!
So recently, I was thinking, maybe it’s not just the lack of Valentines, Father’s Day, and anniversary (as well as the extra gifts one gets at Christmas and birthdays etc, from your significant other and children) that are preventing me from getting a significant amount of free goods. Perhaps part of the problem is, when gifting times roll around, many of you potential gifters think my interests are limited to just a few things, like pompous music, post-1930s American and British poetry, and the films of Alfred Hitchcock, and you just don’t know how to buy presents for a guy like that! And, while it is true that I really love those things, the fact of the matter is, I have literally hundreds of interests, and with the advent of the internet, there is nearly no shortage of ways you can spend money on me! And the internet also means it is very easy for me to re-sell something you may accidentally get me that I already have!
So, in case you have just been hankering to buy a gift for a guy but don’t know who the hell Philip Larkin is, I will here lay out for you a massive list of interests I rarely talk about, but I assure you I am just crazy for!
20. Any DVD that says it is part of the “Criterion Collection”…you can buy me that.
21. I am a big fan of motorized inclined planes, or “funiculars“.
22. I love backscratchers. It is not possible for me to own too many of them.
23. Books or materials about early American filmmaking are always great (post 1910 and D.W. Griffiths only, I have no interest in Edison’s important but dreadfully boring experiments).
24. Dr. Strange is my favorite comic book character. I have plenty of stuff but feel free to take a leap of faith, there’s a lot out there. Statues, figures, and busts are especially desired.
25. The easiest thing on the list: I love all Philadelphia sports teams.
26. I have an interest in Quantum Physics. There are tons of books and DVDs on the subject. I will read and watch them all.
27. John Sloan, the painter. That man painted my soul.
29. Post-Revolution, my favorite historical figure is Aaron Burr.
30. I could always use a new (good) digital camera.
31. I have an interest in but have not read much about behavioral psychologist BF Skinner.
32. I am a major evangelist for Dr. Pepper, and even more specifically Diet Dr. Pepper, and I will, without irony, wear, brandish, or otherwise use merchandise imprinted with this soda’s logo.
33. I have always been smitten with now-deceased scientist Carl Sagan, and any of his books are welcome. Likewise, his television series, “Cosmos”, and any materials related to it, are high on my love list.
39. I have an odd interest in the history of the Mormon religion, specifically the handcart disaster, the Mountain Meadows massacre, and the early life and “visions” of founder Joseph Smith.
42. If I hit the lottery tomorrow, two of the first purchases I’d make would be the complete series of “The Fraggles” and “24” on DVD. Don’t judge me.
43. My favorite living poet is Billy Collins. I have all his books. See what else you can do.
44. I love riding my bike. But I’m not a serious biker, like, wearing spandex, etc. I do it just to cruise around. But I could use a new lock, gel seat cover, or other biking stuff you might think of. I could also use a new bike, but if you want to go that far, we should probably collaborate on that.
45. Anything relating to the old TV shows “Northern Exposure“, “Twin Peaks“, or “Picket Fences“. I own the entire series of “Northern Exposure”, but other than that, it’s open season.
46. I find the Donner party very interesting. I have read this book on it, but nothing else.
47. I like to use caramel coffee syrup in my coffee and oatmeal. I can never have too much of it.
48. I love newspapers, but it’s not easy to find merchandise regarding them, such as hats, shirts, etc. My favorite newspapers are The New York Times, The Philadelphia Inquirer, and USA Today.
49. Museum memberships. Any kind of museum. Art, history, whatever. I can’t imagine a gift I would love much more than a membership to just about any museum. Currently, I am a member of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, but no other museums.
50. Old coinage, pre-1900, from early America or other countries. Confederate money would be very cool.
There are five cats here, but two of them are skittish, so I never see them. Still. Three cats. Not bad.
It’s been so hot. Hot all the time, everywhere. I like the heat but nobody else does, so I just feel like a creep.
I haven’t been home to see anybody yet. I swear I’m coming soon.
There are lots of airplanes in the sky all the time. I know this comes from being so close to Philadelphia. But still. I’ve never quite grown up in this regard. Airplanes are amazing.
My mom and I watch a lot of MSNBC, and Philadelphia Phillies games.
We also eat a lot of turkey burgers cooked outside on the grill.
And chicken burgers, too.
I’ve only gone to one movie since I moved here. I don’t really miss the movie theater, despite having gone about once a week for the past 5 years. There have been plenty of movies released that I have interest in, too. And there have been times I could have gone. I just…don’t feel like it.
I also haven’t been reading as much. I’m not sure what I have been doing, but it seems a bit more fun or interesting than movies and books right now. Who knows. Things change. Then they change back. Then they change again. Such is life.
What do I have an unquenchable desire to spend all my money on? Philadelphia Phillies merchandise. I didn’t see that one coming two years ago.
My nephews are becoming real people. It’s cool, but also scary as hell.
New Jersey has 1% less sales tax than Pennsylvania. I just found this out today. Just sayin’.
Bryan Cranston’s performance as Walter White on the television show Breaking Bad is by far the most impressive, sustained creative effort I’ve ever borne witness to. The universe in general has certainly taken notice of it. The stars and planets probably know about it.
I sometimes eat lunch, on my breaks during work, at a Whole Foods. I’d never been to a Whole Foods before. That shit is good.
Click here to read about this list, or click here to see all previous entries.
…and my 75th favorite song of all-time is:
“Twin Peaks Theme” by Angelo Badalamenti
“Twin Peaks” the television show set the tone for and pretty much defined my summer of 2011. I spent much of the summer secretly thinking I was dying of breast cancer (really) and in a funk (to put it mildly) that essentially ruined my favorite season. In the midst of this, I discovered “Twin Peaks” was streaming on Netflix, and spent a good portion of most nights in my darkened living room, swaddled in blankets, watching this decidedly morose, twisted town work through it’s existential issues. Central to the tone of the show and the summer was the music of Angelo Badalamente. Not just this opening number, but the whole tenor of the show would not be the same without the creeping, synth-goth-classical ponderous score. I even went so far as to order the soundtrack CD off Amazon (it is still, somehow, in print) and listened to it on repeat everywhere I went (which did not help my omigod-I’m-dying dpression). Below you’ll find the opening title sequence of the show, and below that, a video I made last summer of a free concert in the park, with the Theme playing over the images. I find it one of my more interesting juxtaposition videos.
I struggle with knowing myself. I try to be a very self-aware human being, understanding any changes I am going through, my motivations, the way I treat other people. For most of my adult life (or at least my P.S. life [Post-Sobriety]) I have thought I was pretty good at it. But lately it’s become more and more clear that that was a foolish, illusory notion. I have only a glancing understanding of what powers me. The only thing I am sure of is that I am complicated–not simple–and that my motivations and desires are a shifting, fluid grab-bag. Go figure.
Dear NFL: I am a somewhat new convert to enjoying your game and your league. I can still be won over for life, or lost. I understand your reasons behind your complicated system for which games get televised in which markets. I get it and I approve; however, I think sometimes you need to just televise the really desired games. This season, you’ve got a fantastic story in Tim Tebow. The drama and storybook quality of it has helped reel me in to your league even more this year, but I’ve only been able to follow it via highlight reels, newspapers, and talk radio. Not a single Denver Broncos game has been broadcast in my area (unless there was a Monday or Thursday game, in which case, I had to work, but still…not a single Sunday game). Now today, they are playing the Patriots in a game I would very much like to see. When you’ve got a golden soap-opera opportunity like this one, you should capitalize on it, not make me watch Bengals vs. Rams. A glance at the games being televised in my area today reveals nary a single game of interest, either nationally or locally. I understand you want me to GO to the game, but shouldn’t you, secondarily, at least want me to watch?
I note often (in conversation at least, perhaps not online) how surprised I constantly am by how drastically my likes and dislikes are changing over time, as this strange process of aging continues. There are obvious things such as my taste in music and movies (which is changing more than my public persona admits to; probably my favorite discovery this year has been this). But even bigger things are changing; nothing like my basic philosophical outlooks, but here’s a big one: this year, I don’t really hate winter. Previously, hating winter has been a large part of the public image I present to the world, and much like any time these large blocks change, I’ve been hesitant to admit to it publicly (people like keeping you the same in their minds), but I can’t deny it any longer. I am kind of enjoying the frigid darkness. I’m curious to see if it lasts.
The title of this entry is just a line from a Pearl Jam song that I was listening to today. It has no significance.
My hometown (OK, my second hometown) of Carlisle, PA is home to something known as the Carlisle Indian School. In Carlisle, there is a sense of pride concerning our place in history, as the Indian School is indeed more than a footnote in our national history. It is just recently that I’ve begun to fully comprehend the vile, evil nature of what our nation did with the Carlisle school and other “Indian schools” that came after it. So I just want to put it out there, now, that I am no longer proud of the Carlisle Indian School.
When I’m really attracted to a woman, I can be viscerally affected by even her handwriting.
on the couch a few days ago, not doing much, maybe reading, half-dozing, maybe muttering to myself, was suddenly aware of the Cheers theme song on the television, and despite having heard it dozens of times over the past few years I suddenly remembered a connection I had to it, or it had to me, in the dark smoky years of my fire, during the bed-ridden gin-soaked sorrow, however, I cannot fully remember this connection, it remains submerged in the narrow ether, in the marrow of moments; perhaps, paralyzed on a couch in Shippensburg, during some of the darkest days, with my back turned to the television while my rommates did homework and I was dropped out of school and just drinking drinking drinking and masturbating, perhaps paralyzed on that couch the Cheers theme song came on and it with it’s positivity-laden lyrics but somehow melancholy tune it cemented for me an absolute feeling that existence is definitely worth experiencing while also being utter shit; I can have no way of knowing if that is the connection I am recalling but it is a likely one and certainly not much different than whatever the truth is. And while I was on my current couch pondering this connection it became clear to me through some back alley memory loophole that the Cheers theme song had been a source for and symbol of my extreme melancholy for quite a few of the hazy barely-formed years of my most earnest absentia; while I was off tra-la-la-ing in the Land of Drinkers Who’d Rather Be Dead, there seems to have been a lot of syndicated television on in backgrounds (in basements, bars, and bedrooms) and this everybody-knows-your-name trope became something of a razor to my wrist, whatever that means, and what I am now stuck figuring out is how in the world I know this, if I can’t remember any instance of hearing it during those years, and how I forgot this connection in the intervening years and succesfully watched Cheers without remembering that sadness. None of this has anything to do with Cheers, of course, but instead I am concerned with the terrifying part of our lives which happens without our noticing it; without our ability to notice it if we tried; this submerged, bottom-of-the-iceberg life we all live (whether you drank yourself to death or not, whether you watch boorish sitcoms or not) that transpires below the waterline of our minds. Suddenly out of nowhere you realize a part of you is dead that you forgot ever existed and then you forget your realization and go on with your day eating a Snickers, riding an escalator, with no idea that hidden parts of you are orbiting. Suddenly you remember you used to be a different person, with different habits, with different thoughts, and for a moment you hold that image of your former self perfectly in your mind like a microscope snapshot of a snowflake but then just as quickly as it came the structure vanishes and you remember nothing except that you had been remembering something. Life becomes reduced to shadow structures; edifices with no interiors. You spend all day trying to figure out what your vivid dream from the night before meant, and then suddenly, at 6 in the afternoon when you go to think about it some more, you cannnot remember what happened in the dream (despite having thought about it all day). How can this be? What chased it away? Where did it go? Where does it live now? Surely it lives. Or you had a dream when you were eight years old that you have remembered your whole life; you go back to pondering it from time-to-time in your waking life. But suddenly in your mid-twenties you start to think that maybe half of it was real; that your grandma really did take you to that park to see those geese, and that the only part that was a dream was when you rode a goose into the sky, but you never do ask your grandma if it was real and then she dies and now you’re not sure at all. And then maybe one day you’re 40 years old and you ponder the dream again and you think, maybe the part where I rode the goose was a day-dream; yes, that’s right, I day-dreamed it sitting in school; so half of it was real, and half imagined, but none of it dreamt. But it probably was dreamt. How can one not know these things? Where do we live, in the shadows, in the light? In the great underneath? I had a dream a few nights ago that involved a lot of driving, a friend of mine I almost never see, and somehow my old high school parking lot, and I was happy, happy, and I kept on living in that dream world for as long as I could in the minutes after I woke up, until the logic and sense of that universe faded; even now I can remember almost none of it, but I lived there, I tell you; it was me living there just as sure as it’s me typing this. The dream-me, and the typing-me, and the Cheers-sadness me…I wonder if they are the same. Or if I am many. Perhaps it is like viewing something through a crystal, and there are many different versions of the same thing, but existing all at once. But is the Cheers me, the Fire me, still here, or do I simply hear his echoes (maybe him and dream-me are in cahoots), see his footprints, feel the slouch-pangs of his sinister urges? In the deepest moments of latest night these are the questions I have when I become convinced I am more than alive
I can’t sleep. This happens often because of my ever-changing work shifts. Usually, I have tricks to jolt myself into sleeping when I need to. But sometimes they don’t work.
Everyone seems to have a strong opinion about this Osama Bin Laden thing. Everyone wanted him dead when he was alive, and now that he’s dead, a lot of people seem to have suddenly come across the notion that killing people is bad. It’s odd. I really don’t know what to make of it; mostly because I’ve been avoiding doing much thinking on the topic. Some things just seem too confusing at the outset for me to approach them more closely. I will say that I am certainly not sad he’s dead. But also, certainly, killing people always sucks. It seems to me that, for the most part, nothing major has really happened except an interesting news cycle. The military/ industrial complex chugs on and Glenn Beck is still a vampire. Really.
It’s more difficult in the spring and summer, because the birds start chirping around 5am, and sometimes, that is exactly when I want to fall asleep. I’ve no idea why birds chirping should keep one awake; after all, train whistles and thunderstorms put me to sleep. Is this an ingrained but learned reaction, from years of hearing birds in the morning? Or is it something even further inside us, a pattern stitched onto our DNA, a swatch of our instinctual fabric? Who the fuck knows.
PBS sure has a great lineup of shows coming up on Wednesday night. First there’s an episode of “Secrets of the Dead” that’s all about that wicked crazy army of statues that were created for some Chinese emperor dude like a bajillion years ago. I learn about that army of statues about once every five years. Then I forget all about it and am all too happy to learn about it again later. Then after that there’s an episode of “NOVA” all about Machu Picchu. Most of it focuses on whether or not I spelled it correctly without utilizing Google, which is right beside me and which I could have easily used, but did not. But the rest—about how they built it and such—seems pretty interesting, as well. Then after that, there’s another interesting thing, but I forgot what it was.
It will forever be a mystery to me whether or not thinking about sex as I lay in bed keeps me awake or helps me to sleep. I have tried this technique every single night of my life since I was 14, with what could only be called a mixed bag of results.
Every time I’m in a checkout line recently, I am taunted by TIME’s special edition on the Civil War. It’s one of these mega-big, laminated and bound almost-book things that TIME puts out like 4 times a year and you don’t get them if you’re a subscriber. Basically they are books. And I mean this Civil War edition just looks badass. It’s got all these pictures from the era (Civil War photographs are mind boggling) and what appear to be some killer articles. But it’s freaking 13 bucks. Now don’t get me wrong. Thirteen bucks, the bank does not break. But it’s right there in the impulse aisle, right beside copies of “Us Weekly”, chapstick, and 5 Hour Energy. I can never seem to talk myself into adding thirteen dollars to my total bill when I am already at the register. What an odd price point, $13. I’d probably buy it for ten. Fucking psychology.
Thank you for allowing me to type myself to sleep. I shall now go lay down and see if the birds will let me sleep. If I can stop thinking about sex long enough. Or should I think about it more? I can never figure that one out.
I’m going to once again sing the praises of the New York Times. It really does make a difference what newspaper you read. The NYT treats it’s articles like small pieces of literature. I was just reading their review of the current season of “American Idol” (the article is written by Jon Caramanica) when I was blown away by this description of Steven Tyler—a description other media outlets would not have even bothered to attempt:
“Mr. Tyler’s face alone is worthy of a weekly show, loose skin slippery over a distant skeleton. He’s a Claymation figure come to life, all elasticity and wrinkle. He dresses like a shaman, a time-traveling dandy or a runaway hippie teen. His grin is wide, like the Joker’s, and when he’s laughing, really he’s braying.”
Seriously, television was not much better, ever, than the final moments of Conan O’Brien’s short run on The Tonight Show. His final speech is amazing. Literally amazing. He;s clearly on the verge of tears the whole time. And then there’s this:
“I encounter people on the street now who just give me sorta a sad look…I have had more good fortune than anybody I know. And if our next gig is doing a show in a 7-11 parking lot, we will find a way to make it fun. We really will. I have no problems. And finally, I have something to say to our fans: this massive outpouring of support and passion from so many people has been overwhelming for me. The rallies, the signs, all this goofy outrageous creativity on the internet…the fact that people have travelled long distances and camped out all night in the pouring rain. It’s pouring! It’s been pouring for days! And they’re camping out to be in our audience. Here’s what all of you have done: you’ve made a sad situation joyous and inspirational. So to all the people watching, I can never ever thank you enough for the kindness to me. I’ll think about it for the rest of my life. And all I ask is one thing, and I ask this particularly of young people that watch: please do not be cynical. I hate cynicism. For the record, it’s my least favorite quality. It doesn’t lead anywhere. Nobody in life gets exactly what they thought they were going to get. But if you work really hard and you’re kind, amazing things will happen. I’m telling you, amazing things will happen.”
Watch the video here. I still haven’t figured out why YouTube videos look like crap on my blog lately, but the sound is just fine:
Then, immediately following this speech, Conan played guitar on a clebrity-laden version of Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Freebird”. Among the band for the performance is Will Ferrell on vocals, Ferrell’s real-life wife, Viveca Paulin, Beck, Ben Harper, and ZZ Top guitarist, Billy Gibbons. Once again, the video sucks, but here it is (or just go to YouTube and search “Conan O’Brien Freebird”). This was just breathtaking television:
Due to the severe limitations of “top ten lists”, as well as the sheer amount of crap I love each year, I’ve decided to institute this general list of 50 things I plain-old loved in 2010. Most will be things that did not appear on my music or movies list, as well as things created, released, or performed in 2010, but I’m not going to limit myself with actual ground rules. Here are, quite simply, in no particular order, 50 things I loved in 2010:
50. The New York Times
Hear hear for a newspaper that still dares to have sections devoted to important things like science, business, and art. I’ve found it difficult to spend less than two hours on a copy—even on a day like Tuesday.
49. Red Bull Cola
It will probably be a short-lived experiment, but the delicious and almost-natural cola from Red Bull was a tasty shot of adrenaline (even if it was overpriced).
48. Dwayne Johnson and Samuel L. Jackson in “The Other Guys”.
The movie itself may have been lacking, but these two good sports’ 5 minutes of screen time made the enterprise worth the price of admission.
47. “Dancing with the Stars”
For awhile, I hated myself for this guilty pleasure, until I realized it was actually genuinely compelling television. Cynical hipster naysayers need to actually watch a season (I should know–I am a cynical hipster naysayer)
46. The segment on NPR’s “Whad’Ya Know? with Michael Feldman” where they listed fake WikiLeaks
Far and away the most I’ve ever laughed at the radio.
45. The new Ansel Adams photographs
Whether or not they are actually Ansel Adams’ is still in dispute—but they’re terrific photographs anyway
The documentary that reveals (gasp!) how Prop 8 was engineered by the institution of the Mormon church. Enraging, and engaging.
42. VEVO on YouTube
Sure, this music channel on YouTube is 100% a corporate whore, but my year has been exponentially enhanced by concert footage of my favorite bands not shot by a drunk frat boy with a first generation iPhone.
41. James Franco’s “Palo Alto”
Franco’s collection of short stories is good—real good.
40. James Franco on “General Hospital”
Yeah, it’s on before I leave for work, so sue me if I watch it every now and then! Franco’s performance as–ahem–Franco was an over-the-top piece of performance art so nuanced (with nods to the real-world oddity of James Franco being on a soap opera) that I often found myself stunned something so lovely and sophisticated was happening on American daytime television.
39. James Franco in “127 Hours”
Portraying a not-so-likeable man within a bare-bones script who also has to cut off his own arm, Franco manages to make us like him, and makes us want to be better people, too.
38. James Franco’s art opening in New York
James Franco opened a gallery exhibit of his art in New York this year, and although not all of it is great, some of it is incredible, and it’s all very valid. To imagine a Hollywood star opening an art show he says–out loud–is about the “sexual confusion of adolescence” makes me think we may be living in a culture with, well…culture. See some of the art here.
37. James Franco in “Howl”
So, the movie kinda stinks, but Franco hits an underappreciated home run as the poet Allen Ginsburg, an unlikeable, grizzly gay man with so many conflicting character traits, it’s an amazing juggling act Franco had to do–and a bona fide joy to see. Also, John Hamm is in the movie, too!
36. Salvation Army Stores
Thanks to this discovery, the visual palette that is me (it seems absurd to call what I have a “fashion sense”) is evolving for the first time in a decade. (read: more sweaters)
35. Joel Stein’s column in TIME magazine
The most self-absorbed man in the newsmagazine business continues to get funnier, even as his subjects get more serious. Every week, I’m sure he’ll be arrested.
34. The Mac Wrap at McDonalds
I seem to be the only human alive not disgusted by this, either literally, morally, or some other, more etheral way. But I’m not disgusted. I’m delighted.
33. “Gimme Shelter” performed at the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame induction ceremony by U2, Mick Jagger, and Fergie.
Rock and roll heaven. An absolute orgasm. And I don’t even like U2!
32. The repeal of Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell
Because even republicans want to get into Heaven.
31. Jonathan Franzen’s “Freedom”
Franzen is this generation’s Hemingway. And “Freedom” is his “A Farewell to Arms”. Read it. Just do it.
30. The March to Restore Sanity
I wasn’t there, and I didn’t see a lot of it, but I love it anyway.
29. The “LOST” finale
It’s much debated, but I was never an “I need answers to X, Y, and Z, and I need them freaking spelled out for me” kinda guy. I didn’t have LOST theories. I work more by “feel”. And the finale certainly felt right. I still cry, every time.
28. The “twist” ending of “Remember Me”
Everybody hates it. I love it. What’s new?
27. The Chilean miners
Seriously? This story was too good to be true. If they made this movie and it was fictional, you’d be all like “No way this would happen like this.” Just an unbelievable story. The rare event of real news being real entertaining–and then uplifting.
26. John Updike’s “Endpoint”
Sadly, this posthumous collection is the last poetry that will ever be released by Mr. Updike. Luckily, it’s amazing (but, also, terribly terribly sad.)
25. “The Good Wife” on CBS
I’ve just discovered it, so I have to get caught up, but it is tickling me.
24. Seeing Art Speigelman give a talk at Dickinson University
Seeing the legendary literary graphic novelist give a highly entertaining and informative talk was one of the live event highlights of my year, and nobody had a guitar.
23. My super-secret crush, The View‘s Sherri Shepard.
I will do unspeakble things to this woman. In the good way.
22. Mila Kunis and–yes–James Franco in “Date Night”
See #48 and substitute these actor’s names.
21. The comeback of The Atlantic
One of the oldest and most respected magazines in the world revamps itself and somehow does not end up sucking. In fact, it’s now better than ever, and just announced a profit for the first time in a decade. And thankfully, it is somehow still completely pompous.
20. Michael Vick
I sure know when to get back into Philadelphia sports, don’t I??? I simply love this real-life tale of redemption; if I didn’t believe in second chances, my own life would probably look a little bit different.
The Netflix-like service provides you with rotating art prints (and a neato frame). Sure, they don’t do much but hang there, but it’s a great way to explore what you like and don’t like about art. It’s interesting to find how your relationship with a piece of art changes as it hangs in your home; much different than seeing it for 5 minutes in a gallery.
17. Dogs
Still the best thing going.
16. “Late Night with Jimmy Fallon”
Fallon has really hit a stride that is pure magic. Sure, he’s not breaking new ground like his competition Craig Ferguson (who’s got a bit of briliiance working, as well), but Fallon’s show works miracles within a formula. Delicious.
15. The Fusco Brothers
The smartest, funniest comic strip in (or probably NOT in) your local newspaper just keeps getting funnier. And smarter. And harder to find.
14. BuyBack$
A store that is just cheap, used DVDs, CDs, and Blu-Rays? Yeah. I’m kinda all over that.
13. The re-release of new-age symhony In C.
Composer Terry Riley’s experimental, semi-electronic classical piece In C was re-released on CD this year, and it is just as addictive as when I first owned it back in high school. Shades of just about all my current favorite artists can be heard in this breakthrough work.
12. Cherry Crush
Because it’s fucking delicious.
11. “What Up With That?” sketches on Saturday Night Live
This is by far the most enjoyable recurring sketch on SNL I’ve seen in years. It has a concrete element of the absurd, and a perfect setting for uproarious celebrity cameos. And Keenan Thompson is a genius, I don’t care what you say! Click here for a selection of this year’s What Up With That’s on Hulu.
10. Roles For Women
There’s still not nearly enough meaty roles for women in movies—Hollywood, indie, or otherwise—but this year saw a few choicer roles than before, thanks to dandy’s like “The Kids Are All Right”, “Please Give”, and “Secretariat”.
9. Dan Simmons’ “The Terror”
One of the most interesting, and also more difficult, novels I’ve ever read. Simmons’ explorers-trapped-in-icelocked-ships-being-terrorized-by-unseen-monsters-yet-also-slightly-based-on-historical-fact-of-Franklin’s-lost-expedition has got to be the world’s first historical fiction gothic horror novel. And it scared the shit out of me.
8. Cleveland
It really does rock.
7. slate.com
The one-time almost-sad story of an great website gone bad is now a must-read internet newsmagazine. I have it set as my homepage.
6. Blu-Ray discs in Reboxes
Hey thanks.
5. The first fight scene in “The Book of Eli”, where Denzel cuts that dude’s hand off.
OK, so the rest of the movie is kinda hum-drum, but that knife scene by the underpass with above-mentioned amputation is pure badass movie magic.
4. Free concerts in the square in downtown Buffalo
I got a free front-row Ed Kowalczyk show, courtesy of the city of Buffalo, in a very attractive, quaint little square with a big statue of some dude (Mr. Buffalo?) in the center. Can’t wait to see next year’s schedule!
3. Katie Couric doing CBS’s Evening News
I just plain trust her. A throwback to old-school news.
2. The poster for The National’s album “High Violet”.
Good art and good music, all affordable? Sign me up. Check out the poster here.
1. “The Expendables”
The movie was pretty bad, but I’d watch these guys pop popcorn.
OK, now, I am NOT a grammar/ language/ usage Nazi, or however you want to say it. I don’t go around correcting people all the time or generally being that kind of prick (I’m a prick; just not that kind). I’m actually a proponent of language being elastic and I think that generally, those folks who are too strict about language rules have forgotten how absolutely amazing language is. But if there’s something I can’t abide, it is words being used in the arts or media by paid professionals in a simply wrong way; not for artistic, ironic, or even spiteful purposes–just wrong. And some of you may have heard my recently-formed rant about people using the word literally when they mean the exact opposite of literally. To expound: literally means “Take every word I’m about to say at face value; I am not exaggerating, using hyperbole, analogies, irony, sarcasm, or any other linguistic device. When I say I have ball cancer, I do not mean my tennis game is off; rather, I mean the cells in my nuts are metasticizing, because I literally mean I have ball cancer. [note: I do not personally have ball cancer]”
The opposite of literally is figuratively. There are a lot of different forms of figurative language, but they all have something in common: they are not literal. Something about them does NOT mean what the actual words are saying; they are NOT to be taken at face value. For instance, if I said to a guy with a horrible pimple, “Nice pimple”, I mean that figuratively. Remember, the pimple is horrible. It is not nice. In fact, there are very few nice pimples. I think a pimple may need a diamond growing in the end of it in order to be a nice pimple. In that fashion, if I were to say to the guy, “Nice pimple–literally” and there was not a diamond in it, I either:
A) Have no idea what “literally” means or
B) Am using the word “literally” ironically, which is way too post-modern and meta to be doing in normal, every day conversation.
I suspect it’s usually A.
Now, the reason I’m writing this at this point is because I love the show Dexter. And the actor who plays the titular character, Michael C. Hall (not to be confused with the equally talented Anthony Michael Hall—his most recent series, The Dead Zone. was way underated) is a superb actor whose presence in the movie “Gamer” actually got me to rent (with MONEY) that steaming turd of a film. Then recently, he started doing car commercials, and it was interesting to hear his voice in that context. NOW, I must plead with all of you—contact your local politicians to get this ad pulled!!!! Listen ad wizards: if a VAN were to LITERALLY give birth to another van, that VAN would need to have a uterus, a vagina, and all the other things that go along with GIVING BIRTH. Can you imagine a van giving birth? What’s that gestation period look like? How do they mate, are there interesting rituals???? It’s just waaaaaayyyyy annoying because it is THE POLAR OPPOSITE of literal.. I can’t even think about it anymore. Here, watch the commercial, it makes me sick:
We all know I have a habit of writing a preparatory blog about artists I am about to see in concert a few days before I see them; I do this because most of the bands I like are completely unheard-of, and maybe partly because I’ve run out of truly interesting things to write about, but whatever, you’re here, and that’s all that counts. I’ll try to keep it short.
Band of Horses is one of those indie bands that is super, super hip inside the indie rock community but will probably never break through to the mainstream, as their music is simply not commercial (though they do have a song, “The Funeral”, that has been used in a few car commercials). Although, they are quite reminiscent of My Morning Jacket, a band that, despite never having a song on the radio, now plays to sold-out stadiums, so I suppose there’s hope for a large audience for Band of Horses.
They’re actually a fairly new band. I’m too lazy to look it up but I wanna say they’ve been around since 2005. A little over a year ago, I put them at #80 on my list of 100 Favorite Bands. Now, after a third album has been released, I’m sure they’d enter my top 30.
Here’s their only moderately “famous” song, “The Funeral”. Lyrics are on the video:
They’re a difficult band to amply describe. Like My Morning Jacket, they seem to draw equal influence from country, rock, and seventies standards, melding all the sounds into something so cool it’s almost corny, or so corny it’s almost cool. (“The Funeral” is much more “rock-y” than their typical song). Witness this song, “Factory”, which seems to meld Big Band, Americana (think The Band or Gov’t Mule) and freak-era Bowie.
Band of Horses also contains one of the more interesting figures in Indie Rock–Ben Bridwell, lead singer/songwriter. Much in the way The Lemonheads were not a very famous band, but their lead singer Evan Dando was a major spokesman for the music of their time, Bridwell fronts a laregly ignored band but is one of the more interesting figures in indie rock at the current time. Couple that with the fact that the band doesn’t tour very much and their tours are very brief, and it does in fact feel very special that I’ll be seeing them next week.
Also, opening for them is a band called Brad. I do not know Brad’s music very much, but I do know that Brad is a side project of a man named Stone Gossard. Stone is the rhythm guitarist for Pearl Jam!!! He’s also my third favorite member of Pearl Jam and my favorite guy named Stone, as well as my favorite guy to ever wear an all-orange outfit! So even though I don’t know the band’s music very well, it’ll be awesome to see Stone up close and see him playing music in a small venue.
Back to Band of Horses: this is my favorite song of theirs. I simply cannot get enough of it!
1. I bet, if you are falsely accused of a highly publicized crime (and I mean actually falsely accused), I bet every time a news commentator says something like “Well, these are still alleged charges, there hasn’t been a trial yet”, you think to yourself, That news commentator knows I’m innocent, whereas that news commentator’s remark makes the rest of us think you are guilty. I don’t know what made me think that.
2. An odd thing that’s happened to me since moving to Erie: I’ve become a regular at a Bob Evans. Before moving here I’d only been to a Bob Evans about 5 times. I’m not even a huge fan of it there. I really have no idea how it happened. I mean, I do love their breakfasts but the atmosphere is so not me. And yet.
3. Haha Matt Lauer just referred to David Fincher as “Hollywood”. And speaking of the Today show, I’m gonna need you to take less breaks for me to get my local weather. Seriously, it’s like every 15 minutes. It starts to feel like a cheat, like you just don’t have enough programming of your own. Sometimes I can watch the Today show for 20 minutes and not actually see any Today show.
4. You know I’m not a sports guy, though obviously my hard-line anti-sports stance has relaxed in the past year or two as I dabble in mildly following a few things (though I stand strong behind my feeling that sports are about 800% over-reported in our “news” and that our culture simply cares TOO MUCH about NFL football, but I no longer feel as though caring about sports at all is shameful). With that caveat out of the way, as I have started paying attention to sports again over the past year, I am struck by the idea that there are a few teams in every major league sport that I just cannot understand anyone liking. It’s like they were made to be disliked. These teams are:
–Dallas Cowboys
–Los Angeles Dodgers
–Boston Celtics
–Pittsburgh Penguins (sorry!)
–Toronto Blue Jays
–New York Yankees
–New England Patriots
–Boston Bruins
–New York Knicks
Do you like any of these teams?? If so…how????
5. Watch this, but not if you’re a prude:
6. If, like me, you listen to a lot of talk radio, have you noticed that women seem to have trouble swallowing silently, whereas I never hear a man swallow? (please please people, I’m not bitching about a gender here, this is a harmless observation). I am constantly hearing female broadcasters swallowing between sentences. (it’s a tad off-putting) Do you think there can be a physical explanation for this observation? If you’ve never noticed it, start paying attention to it! (Tell Me More‘s Michel Martin or Fresh Air‘s Terry Gross are good starting points).
7. I recently cancelled my subscription to the Erie Times-News. Not because it’s not a great newspaper (it is) and not because I don’t love newspapers (I do), but becausde, time-wise, I find I really only have the proper amount of time to peruse a newspaper 2 days a week, and I have discovered there are many newspaper machines very close to where I live. Hence, I have developed quite a nice little ritual out of walking to the newspaper machines on my days off, in the wee, still-dark hours of the morning. If this is anything remotely like something you can do, may I heartily recommend it. (nevermind the fact that I’ll probably have to re-subscribe in a month or two when the weather gets bad enough)
8. I’m reading this book called “Freakonomincs” by Steven D. Levitt. It’s pretty famous so I won’t bother telling you about it. I’m almost done with it, and I still can’t tell you if I love it or hate it. Some of the chapters I read and think, I could have written that. That is fucking common. Like the dude who thinks he’s really funny saying to you, “Hey, why do we drive on parkways and park on driveways?” as though that wasn’t only NOT a joke, but practically a cliche. Well, some of the chapters are like that. And then out of the blue, he also amazes me, usually just as I am about to give up and stop reading the book. Here is a passage where he is trying to figure out what exactly is true when it comes to the various myths about the safety of driving vs. flying. I’m not sure if anything is even actually discussed here, but this kind of passage dazzles me for some reason:
So which should we actually fear more, flying or driving?
It might first help to ask a more basic question: what, exactly, are we afraid of? Death, presumably. But the fear of death needs to be narrowed down. Of course we all know that we are bound to die, and we might worry about it casually. But if you are told that you have a ten percent chance of dying within the next year, you might worry a lot more, perhaps even choosing to live your life differently. And if you are told you have a 10% chance of dying within the next minute, you’ll probably panic. So it’s the imminent possibility of death that drives the fear–which means that the most sensible way to calculate fear of death would be to think about it on a per-hour basis.
If you are taking a trip and have the choice of driving or flying, you might wish to consider the per-hour death rate of driving versus flying. (Hey, Seth again. You can imagine that the next few paragraphs are incredibly interesting.)
9. I sure wouldn’t want to be one of those Chilean miners.
10. It’s amazing what I will go out in public looking like when I know there is an absolute zero percent chance of running into anyone I know. I mean, this is beyond sweats. We’re talking really, really ugly t-shirts, old, ripped PJ pants, super-generic velcro’d sneakers, no socks, no underwear, not shaved, not showered. Now, I don’t go do anything of substance like this, but I find myself frequently leaving the house to do minor errands like shopping, gas, post office, etc, in this shameful state. And guess what? It’s pretty damn liberating.
Spending, perhaps, the last few hours on this couch in this apartment with my BFF Mary. Oh, the great times we’ve had in this living room! Am sad for maybe the first time. Though I won’t miss her making me watch “Medium” and Cartoon Network. It’s dawning on me that someday soon, this will actually be someone else’s apartment. That’s effed up.
How many minutes of fame does all this stuff add up to?
(before you call me an arrogant idiot…this is meant quite ironically. Though it is all true.)
1. My mother was photographed riding a bicycle with a very young me in a basket on the front of the bike, and my sister behind her on the bike. This photograph appeared in a parenting magazine in the early 80s.
2. Around age 14, I was on the local news, cheering at a game of Harrisburg’s minor league soccer team. It was a close-up.
3. I had a letter printed in an issue of the short-lived Marvel comic book DOOM 2099.
4. I appeared on the cover of my company’s newsletter, The Smile, beside the company president. We were both wearing sombreros.
5. Although miniscule, my picture has appeared in Entertainment Weekly.
6. An issue of the Shippensburg University literary magazine was dedicated to me.
7. After a “multi-cultural” day at my high school, my photo appeared in the Carlisle Sentinel. I was once again wearing a sombrero. I was eating tacos. It was a close-up.
8. I once sold a dozen cookies to Earl David Reed, host of 105.7 the X’s “morning zoo” show here in Harrisburg.
9. In college, I was on a terrible, terrible radio show called “The Worst Show in Radio”. Really, that’s what we called it. It was on one day a week at 3am.
10. My dad was the announcer and then coach of the Newville Cardinals for a few years. That aint nothing to sneeze at.
What do you think? I’m saying I’ve got maybe 4 minutes in.
May I present to you the first of several year-end wrap-up blogs I will post to attempt to convince myself you all care about my opinions. First up: television! Feel free to yell at me in the comments (you will anyway, I may as well invite it). Notice I’ve finally caved to the pressure and am going to be calling these my “favorites”, not the “best” of 2009. I hope you’re happy!
#10: Mythbusters
The seventh season of Mythbusters (still in progress) has seen our guys Jamie and Adam quite revitalized, after an admittedly lackluster season 6. The myths no longer seem forced, and we’ve gotten back into–dare I say it?–good science. Especially exciting were the YouTube special and the duct tape episode. My favorite Discovery channel show might just have a longer shelf life than I’d thought!
#9: How I Met Your Mother
Let me address something right up front here that some of you are going to get at me for: I have not included any of the uber-hip “one camera” sitcoms on my list (The Office, 30 Rock, Parks and Recreation). I DO love these shows. These shows are very funny and expertly crafted. But I’ve never felt…I don’t know…close to these shows. They are hilarious, but their method of filming leaves me a bit cold, at arm’s length, sort of. And one of the things I need in my comedy is a feeling of comfort laced with a devious amount of “edginess” (asking a lot, I know), and this year, that is what How I Met Your Mother finally managed to do. HIMYM has always been edgy for a two-camera sitcom, with its over-arching mystery (who is the mother?), its multi-dimensional characters, and its occasionally intellectual jokes. But season 4 ratcheted it up a notch, giving
stock charcter Barney–the token sleazeball–something of a heart, a subplot that never got old, and paid dividends all season long. And I know I’m not very original when I say this, but Neil Patrick Harris is absolutely amazing, and is one of the best things on television.
#8: Eureka
This little-seen SyFy network show just keeps getting better. A quaint but exciting cross between Northern Exposure and The X-Files, season 3 saw Sheriff Carter taking on an interesting, different role in the community, as well as more imaginative, dramatic and–yes–believable phenomena taking place within the town. Oh, and Carter’s daughter, Zoe? Yeah–season three practically belongs to her. And that could never be a bad thing, could it?
#7: History Detectives
Long the most underrated show on PBS (and hence one of the most underrated on all of television), History Detectives continues, in its seventh season, to be entertaining, informative, and, sometimes, awe-inspiring. Check it out some time.
#6: 24
Sure, the premise has gotten shaky over the years. Sure, they’ve really pushed the limits of believability and sometimes even respectability. But 24 remains a vital show to television, because–if you haven’t watched it–its a lot more than what you think it is, and it’s even a lot more than what is has to be.
24 is not just some serialized action series. If it were that, I certainly wouldn’t watch it and evangelize it so much. 24 explores current, important, hot-button political issues–without even telling you it’s doing it. But more impressively than that, 24 explores vital philosophical questions. In fact, I have seen no better exploration of Utilitarianism in all of popular American culture, ever. 24 has been exploring Utilitarianism for 7 seasons now, and I dare say, has had more to say about it than John Stuart Mill ever did.
Season seven was certainly not the best season, but it was far from the worst, and featured one of the most exciting (though too-brief) set-pieces of the whole series: a terrorist invasion of the White House (which is incredibly exciting when viewed on the surface level, yet also has alot of say when viewed symbolically or allegorically). Here’s some of the White House hostage crisis:
#5: Heroes
Yeah yeah yeah, it had a real crappy Season 2. And Season 3 started off shaky–in fact, it didn’t even gain its footing till halfway through, when the season changed titles from “Villains” to “Fugitives”. The “fugitives” half of the season was spellbinding, and finally seemed as though the half-thought crap we’d sat through for a year and a half had all been adding up to this, and all this wayward character development finally had a point. Consider me impressed.
#4: Big Love
HBO’s Mormon polygamist drama found some serious legs in Season 3, and those legs have a name: Harry Dean Stanton. How this show ever scored the elusive, reclusive, least-famous legendary actor we currently have alive is beyond me, but he’s been the main driving factor behind my continuing to watch this show. Sure, Bill Paxton’s marital woes as the head of an illegal four-way marriage is interesting and at times spellbinding (and I’m in love with wife #3, Ginnifer Goodwin) and would make for a show to check out occasionally, but it’s Stanton’s creepy, Godfather-esque Roman Grant who makes this show must-watch, and has kept it that way for three seasons now.
#3: FlashForward
OK, so it’s only aired 5 episodes so far, but it has come out of the gates just swingin’ away. This show is just utterly captivating and frustrating and dramatic and mind-boggling and emotional and plain-ol’-neat wrapped up into one, and I give big kudos to any show that could do all those things all within 5 episodes, all while making me care about almost all the characters (I could do with less of John Cho’s Agent Noh, who is, in a word, unappealing). Not only is every episode expertly written and acted, but they feature something rarely found on television: careful and thoughtful use of music. I can’t wait to see where FlashForward takes us, and even if it derails, I daresay these first 5 episodes are good enough to land it in my #3 spot.
#2: Dexter
In all honesty, the full breadth of Dexter is, at times, flimsy. It can run into cliches and predictibility fairly often, and at times seems to throw a twist at you just for the sake of doing it; more than anything, it suffers from not knowing which reality to reside in: the hyper-real reality the show’s viewers live in, or the somewhat unrealistic world the show has created for itself. It often flip-flops between these realities on an almost whimsical basis. And, really, Showtime can’t cough up any more money for the Police Department set? It looks like Who’s the Boss in there!
So why, you ask, do I love it so damn much? In a word, Dexter. The character of Dexter Morgan is so complex, sometimes you wonder if he’s not actually simple. So simple he’s complex. Ug. To try to know or understand Dexter (even as a viewer) is like trying to know smoke and mirrors, and that’s why it’s so amazing that the writers of Dexter have managed to make him so likeable, interesting, and watchable. With every episode, we see a Herculean writing task pulled off, but we don’t feel it as a writing task, we feel we’re getting a little closer to our quirky friend Dexter.
Season three got even more exciting, however, as we watched our friends at Dexter try to change their main character without ruining the premise of the show (which pretty much requires Dexter to remain static), and we watched in awe as they somehow managed to change Dexter in a way which showed he was…unchangeable. Huh? I’m still not sure what happened. I only know it was television magic.
#1: Lost
For the past 5 years, there has not been a better show on television than Lost. There has not been one year in the last 5 years in which I have not thought that. It has everything good dramatic entertainment and art needs. I won’t go on and on, or say much more: there’s certainly enough being said about Lost all around us all the time, you don’t need me to fill you in. If you’ve never seen any, every episode is available streaming, for free, right here.
Honorable mentions:
Season 2 of Californication–Duchovny at his smarmy best
Season2/3 of The Big Bang Theory–More 2-camera sitcom ground-breaking
Season 1/2 of Dollhouse–best parts for females on television since…well, maybe ever, but at least since Roseanne or thirtysomething.
Kings, the four episodes it existed for: incredibly ambitious, engaging, epic. Too big for television, I’m afraid.
Full disclosure (shows the critics love which I haven’t seen):
Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Fringe, Weeds, Damages, Monk, In Treatment, Brothers and Sisters, The Closer, Ugly Betty
Over the past 18 hours, movies and television have taken me to extremes of three very different kinds of human emotions. I am about to just lay down and die! but rather than lay down and die, I thought maybe I’d blog about it.
First, I was laying down to sleep last night in the wee-early morning hours and I was flipping through the channels looking for something to fall asleep to. I came upon a show on MTV2 called “Silent Library”. Have any of you seen/heard of this? I don’t often pay attention to what’s going on on MTV, VH1, etc etc, so this could be old news for all I know. But if you don’t know, here’s the short version: this is a game show where a team of six (young, college-aged males, from the three episodes I watched) people endure humiliating things in a fake library, and get points if they are, as a team, able to endure these things in complete silence. It doesn’t sound like much (and it certainly won’t be hilarious to everybody), but to me, it was pretty much the funniest thing ever. It’s so simple, but so complex. Often, the humilations are funny, but more often than not the funniest thing is watching these guys try not to laugh. I can’t explain it much more than that. Seriously, I am not exaggerating: I laughed harder and longer at the three episodes I watched than any television program I have ever seen.
Please watch this clip. It is so strange! And this one isn’t all that funny, but there’s not alot of “Silent Library” available for streaming and embedding. The funniest part is by far the guys trying not to laugh or make noise…I could watch it all day!
Then, this morning, I went to an early screening of “Where the Wild Things Are”. I don’t want to go on and on about it. I’ll amost certainly be writing and saying much about it in the months to come. But I am fairly certain, after one viewing, it is my favorite movie of all time. That’s right, it is bumping “Magnolia” from its long-held top spot. This movie fucked. me. up. I was a damn mess. Every scene, every frame of this movie, every snippet of dialogue (save for one stupid line uttered by Mark Ruffalo) is dripping with genuine emotion, drenched with a simultaneous joy and sorrow without pretense or pomp. It exists naturally, organically, and it is pure of heart and not without genius. I spent 75% of the movie on the verge of tears, and when they finally came, I absolutely lost my shit. Please, please, do yourself a favor and see this movie in the theater. And forget that you “loved the book when you were a kid”–we all did, OK? The book is twelve sentences. This movie is pretty much a seperate, new piece of work. Please, I implore you, click on this link (embedding was disabled) and watch this short clip of the film.
Then, a few short hours later, I was back at the same theater for “Paranormal Activity”. This is one of the few horror movies that, for me, has survived being over-hyped and lived up to all the press. Even after everything I’ve read about it, and all the scares I already knew about, I found myself utterly engrossed, completely enmeshed in the world of this boyfriend and girlfriend who are experiencing “a haunting”. Now, this is very much in the vein of “Blair Witch”, so if you weren’t into “Blair Witch”, you might not be into “Paranormal Activity”. It is presented as being “real” footage. Hence, there is no music, no fancy editing, etc etc. But if you let yourself be pulled into this reality…holy crap. Trust me, you haven’t seen everything in the commercials and trailers. There are a few really good scares and creepy moments that they have saved for the theatrical experience. I’m pretty sure, as the final scene unfolded, I yelled out “Holy shit!”, but I can’t be sure, because the 20 or so other people I saw it with all yelled something as well. There are no clips available from the movie, but here is the trailer:
So, I’m kinda exhausted and emotionally spent. I never expected any of these three things to be so incredibly effective, but it’s been a great 18 hours! (I did lots of other stuff besides watch things, I swear!)
The Emmys were last night, and though I didn’t get to watch them and I don’t watch most of the major winners, but a few of my horses were in the race, and thought I’d just bounce some feelings off my blog here:
“30 Rock” is still deserving of the Comedy Series win, but I can’t wait until “How I Met Your Mother” starts getting some golden statues. It’s the best 3-camera sitcom in a decade.
Three of my favorite shows were nom’d for drama–“Lost”, “Big Love”, and “Dexter”, as well as one of Mary’s favorite shows, “Damages”, only to be trumped once again by “Mad Men”. I think this just means I should probably watch “Mad Men”.
Huzzah for “Grey Garden”‘s two wins! This made-for-television movie was outstanding and I would probably be on a plane to somewhere to hurt someone if it hadn’t been recognized. However–and this is a big however–FUCK them Emmy voters for giving the acting statue to Jessica Lange instead of Drew Barrymore. Barrymore had a much harder job in “Grey Gardens” and actually did her job better than Lange. Guess people still want to go with the safe vote.
It would have been nice to see Jim Parsons win for “The Big Bang Theory”. Alec Baldwin has won enough shit in his lifetime.
Call me crazy, but I still root for Julia Louis-Dreyfus every time I’m able, and not just because of Seinfeld. Have you seen “The New Adventures of Old Christine”? It’s a good show!! And has anyone ever even seen this “Untied States of Tara” show that Toni Collette won for?
Fuck the Lead Actress in a Drama category entirely, since not a single of the amazing women from “Lost” were even nominated.
JON CRYER wins for “Two and a Half Men”, are you fuckign kidding me?????!! EVERYONE knows that show is an unfunny piece of douche written for the lowest common denominator (and acted that way, too). And Cryer wins over Neil Patrick Harris from “How I Met Your Mother”, two worthy “30 Rock”ers, and Rainn Wilson from “The Office”???? Poo-poo!
Michael Emerson wins for “Lost”!!!!! Thank goodness someone’s still paying attention to how good this show is! And especially Emerson–it’s nice to see the exact actor who deserved it more than the rest to actually get it.
The Supporting Actress in a Drama Series: I only watch one of the shows nominated, and it won, and it was “24”, the show that awards have forgotten! Yay for Cherry Jones, who just does a passable job of playing the nation’s first female president on the show, but I’m thrilled she won anyway!
I wish Jeanne Tripplehorn would have won her supporting statue for “Grey Gardens”, even though she’s barely in it, but you know she’s never going to nominated for “Big Love”! However, Shohreh Aghdashloo did win it for some movie I’ve never heard of, but she used to be in “24”, so it’s all good!
Of all years, how did “Saturday Night Live” not win the variety category this year? I love Jon Stewart as much as anyone else, but c’mon! SNL was swingin’ this year!! They influenced public thought more than any other non-news show, in my opinion.
“Intervention” wins over “Mythbusters” and “Antiques Road Show”=just plainly ridiculous.
1. I’m watching “The Early Show”. I always do when I am in a position to watch a morning newsmagazine show. Why, you ask, would I watch the perenially third place, oft-forgotten CBS morning dud? because I feel bad for it, that’s why. Timely side-note: I was watching “The Early Show” during 9/11.
2. True or false: the phrase is “first come, first serve” not “first come, first served”. Your tenses need to match. If you say “served”, you would have needed to say “came”. Your comments on this issue are desired.
3. I was in a book store the other day and saw a “Search Engines for Dummies” book. Really????
4. I try to not engage in Republican bashing. I try to be first a thinking person, second a liberal, third a democrat. I do not like to engage in the acrimonious nature of our current partisan politics, because it’s getting really bad. But these Republicans are getting out of hand. The GOP talking heads on TV and the radio are ten times more mean, unreasonable and vindictive than the Democratic talking heads, to the point that they are actually whipping up hate. And now last night a Congressman calls President Obama a liar during his address to Congress? Shameful. Shameful. Shameful.
5. I watched the “Woodstock” documentary last night for the first time in my life. I like most of the artists who played at Woodstock and have always wanted to see the doc. So…why does it suck so much, and why don’t more people know it sucks? Why does director and cameraman Michael Wadleigh spend so much time on uncomfortable, unnecessary, practically silly close-ups? Why did Wadleigh and editor Martin Scorcese elect to present most of the musical segments out of the order they happened in? (remember, a documentary purports to represent reality) Why does Wadliegh ask people so many questions, instead of just showing us the natural drama as it unfolds–thereby taking an active role in shaping events himself? Why are there no scenes of any songs from Creedence Clearwater Revival, The Grateful Dead, The Band, or Blood, Sweat and Tears, while we see multiple performances from The Who, Joan Baez, Country Joe and the Fish, and Richie Havens? And I know these really famous artists have great songs that not everyone knows, and I’m all for being exposed to them, but when I’m watching “Woodstock”, I don’t want to see a deep track–I want to see Janis Joplin’s rendition of “Piece of My Heart”, Jefferson Airplane’s “White Rabbit”, The Who’s “My Generation” (some of their more famous songs weren’t written yet at this point), Crosby, Stills, and Nash’s “Almost Cut My Hair”, and Arlo Guthrie’s rendition of “Amazing Grace”, not all these songs I never heard before. Why did I have to watch Jimi Hendrix literally noodle on his guitar for ten minutes when that time could have been spent showing us “Foxy Lady” (though we do get to see smokin’ versions of “Voodoo Chile” and “Purple Haze”), and why does Wadliegh shy away from panning the audience during Hendrix, so we could see that most of the crowd had left by then? That’s called manipulating reality, and I was fully insulted.
6. The wound on my foot from my biopsy ripped open last night. I guess we took the stitches out too early. it’s not bad enough to need stitches again, but it sure is ugly.
7. I am seriously worried that vaccine phobia (caused by people refusing to believe that vaccines DO NOT cause autism, even though they’ve proved they DON’T) is going to start causing a very serious problem.
Notes From the Fire 