Local Trivia: In case you're looking for these things:

In an NPR written piece about the future(s) of books:

"Hardbound and paperback books may never totally disappear, but they could become scary scarce — like eight-track tapes, typewriters and wooden tennis rackets."

NPR obviously has never been to my local Goodwill, which has a surplus of all of these things -- an almost hilarious surplus of eight-track tapes, actually. I would also add "business textbooks from the 60s, exercise bikes, VHS tapes (and VCRs), countless novelty and business-logo'ed mugs, and at least one piece of every china pattern ever made."

These things are not scarce at all. In fact, they're all concentrated in almost overwhelming abundance in Salvation Army stores and Goodwills across the nation. Just ask the guys who collect Jerry Maguire video tapes.

Those guys know what's out there.

The religion of women...perhaps.

I read a well-selected article posted on FB by one of my FB friends who frequently selects articles well -- this one was from The Atlantic, a magazine I've decided I love after years of subscription, and so was already heavily weighted to be a good one -- about women's cinema...or I suppose what might be called women's cinema if such a thing were acknowledged to exist.

The author said this:

The Sex and the City and Twilight franchises may have less cosmic implications [than Eat, Pray, Love, which gives women permission to treat break-ups as a big deal], but they too allow women to self-mythologize and assign importance to matters of sex, dating, and intimate conflict—whether they're offering a fantasy of single life as a marvelous, celebratory adventure or a fantasy of literally undying, all-consuming love, what they're offering women is a chance to see their own most personal concerns dramatized and given focus. To see themselves, and their feelings, as important.

I've already diatribed about women being compelled to care about "lesser" things like fashion and hairstyles where men are less compelled, so that's not where I'm going with this.

What strikes me about this quote and this idea is that there is elitism in liking literary fiction over romance genre fiction. And it's justified elitism, to some extent, (I'd like to think) because romance fiction is repetitive and almost automatic, like porn. The point is not the content, but the chemical reaction it triggers in the brain.

These somewhat more sophisticated iterations of "romantic themes" of "sex, dating, and intimate conflict," though, aren't really only triggering chemical reactions, are they? The idea is that because we have to learn to read literary fiction, and properly, it rises above the baser instincts in us to become "art," where women's concerns (always earthy) don't rise above women's baser instincts to relate and emote, and so are not art.

But doesn't romantic fiction "teach" us to read it? We're not born knowing red roses are "romantic," are we?

The heroic epic can be said (Freud certainly would have agreed) to focus and dramatize men's insecurities and struggles, and eventual victories over those turmoils. Maybe Twilight is the equivalent of the classic epic.

I wonder these things not so much as a critic, but as a writer. I find my own fiction to rely very much on "tell, don't show" sensibilities; it explains every intimate detail of the characters in question, reasons out their actions before they even take them, and otherwise commits all the sins of genre fiction that "show, don't tell"-ers grieve over. It's solipsistic to the extreme. Even my plots involve mind-reading and getting lost in one's own inner workings...and some of my fiction couldn't be said to even HAVE a plot.

I mean, this is why I don't write fiction anymore.

But what if these inward-leaning ways of writing aren't inferior, just misused? Maybe there's a way to turn the world of an intimate relationship into the whole world, without going all What Dreams May Come on everyone and externalizing the drama.

I should probably read some more Virginia Woolf. But I suspect I'd probably better read some more LJ Smith, who I loved as a pre-teen, and who probably understood more about hero tropes (for girls) than most of the other authors I've read since.

Local Trivia, Accusations edition: Stupid Ap-man*

*I've deleted a key letter from this person's trail name, in case he ever Googles himself...because I suspect that that's the kind of person he is.

There's a fellow letterboxer who started before me who cannot spell; this is important because the way to find clues to the box you're looking for is to read them online. He often capitalizes random words in the middle of sentences and believes that every time an 's' ends a word, an apostrophe should come before it.

He sometimes writes clues on how to get to the letterbox "in character"...which is one case is "as a caveman," i.e. "Ooh, ooh, ooh, wood, walk, walk, wood, ooh, ooh, ooh, what's this hard thing?"...which could mean you're supposed to walk over a wooden walkway, then walk for awhile, then find a large stone behind which is the letterbox, but how would one know that? How??

One of his clues says to "go diagonal from the brown building." This is not a direction -- "diagonal" is not north, south, east, west, left or right, up or down; you can't "go" it.

That is not a clue, Ap-man.

Add to these offenses that Ap-man often puts his letterboxes nearby other letterboxers' letterboxes, which is taboo and considered very rude.

He sometimes plants store-bought stamps instead of homemade ones, which is considered kind of low-class unless you're a four-year-old.

Add to that that he has planted over 100 boxes, and all radiating out from Local Town, where I live, so that I almost can't go on a letterboxing hunt without attempting to find at least one of his ill-clued boxes, and you'll begin to see why I can't help ranting about this guy. He's terrible, and inescapable.

Every area has a Goofus for letterboxing Gallants to deal with. I guess as a neurotic, OCD-tending, poison-ivy-phobic, fastidious and nerdy letterboxer, I just wish he didn't seem so carefree and optimistic, assuming he wasn't stepping on anyone's toes, assuming everyone would be glad to find his hidden treasures, scattering boxes wherever he goes like a Johnny Appleseed for rubber stamps.

Happy Tonsilitis.

I'm pre-dating this post to my actual birthday, aka, The Day The Tonsilitis Started Getting Serious.

I thought 29 was going to be a rough year, because hey, it's one less than 30, but considering the improvement from day 1, it seems this year is on an upward trend that cannot be topped by any other year's.

First, my tonsilitis wasn't mono, which was a major, major plus.

Then it started getting better thanks to antibiotics, which is in its own way an equally major plus.

Soon I'll be rid of this cough and able to taste foods again, and if I'm not 30 by then, I'll be on the way to a year that will probably only improve from there.

Yay for me.

PSA: Friend Becca gets married.

Becca is married, to friend Brad!

Three cheers for a beautifully simple and beautifully coordinated wedding -- because coordination might not be what you want to think about at a wedding, but that's exactly why it's so necessary in the months and weeks before one. Nicely done.

And two and a half cheers also (because no one should get more than the bride on her wedding day) for Debbie and Jeff letting us out-of-towners stay over, and taking us to Asheville and generally being awesome.

Local Trivia: Letterboxing

I'm not sure if I'm supposed to post this on my blog, since I'm pretty sure this kind of thing spreads by word of mouth, and I'm not sure this blog counts as a mouth...but since it's been taking up the majority of my non-work (and some of my work) time lately, I'm blogging about it anyway. We'll see if I'm thrown out on my tail for violating the unstated but possible Fight-Club-ian first rule of letterboxing, which is that you do not talk about letterboxing.

Look it up. I won't explain the whole thing here, except that it involves stamps, and making them yourself, and it's fun -- particularly if you're a person who played Castlevania III: Simon's Quest on NES as though it were a game about collecting the most "hearts" instead of actually questing/progressing through the frames and levels to the end. I heart collecting things, particularly non-corporeal ideas of things, and I also heart crafts. It's as though letterboxing was created by a parallel universe version of me.

Like most of the things I like, it tends toward the obsessive and caters to obsessive people, which means it will probably get tiring sooner or later. But it also can be left behind for years without maintenance and then picked back up again (like all of the crafts I do). And whenever you go somewhere new, there's probably a letterbox or two waiting for you to discover it -- and discover places you may never have seen otherwise.

As a carver/planter, my first and current theme is "They Might Be Giants." I carved the particle mans out of erasers with a box cutter and nail file, as well as the birdhouse in your soul and the purple toupee.

But last night I started using the professional materials and copied this creepy James Ensor painting, and it came out pretty well. I'd say I was hooked, but that's a rug-making joke, and this is way better than that.

I'll try not to make this into a letterboxing blog, but seriously -- look into it.

Local Trivia: Vermont edition

While in VT with P.C. and his (and my) friends on the 4th of July weekend, I went on something the kids these days call an "alpine slide." Here's a video I found on youtube of the exact slide I went on -- well, not precisely exact, as I was on the "beginner's" slide, and the video is of the "advanced." They're identical, except on the beginner's slide you might get stuck behind a mom with a two year old...or me.

I had never heard of alpine sliding before this. It's like the summer's answer to sledding and the ski resort's answer to roller coasters -- but without the tedious hill-climbing or the upside-down loops. The scariest part was, as always, riding up in the ski lift and having to jump off and run to the side when we arrived at the top. The most annoying part was getting a bum sled my first time down that almost wouldn't continue through a flat area. The fun part was, as one would expect, sliding through the trees and down the mountain to the end.

Overall, in other words, it was pretty fun, and punctuated by seeing a friend on the "advanced" track fall off his slide, just a bit, and then by a mini-golf game in which I cared very little and subsequently achieved a hole in one. (Go apathy.)

In Defense of Poppery: Inception

Inceptinated!

This defense of poppery won't include a score or a reasoning for my opinion on the recent "summer blockbuster" Inception, starring Leonardo DiCaprio, Ellen Page, a bunch of other guys who did a really decent job, and Joseph Gordin-Leavitt, who finally seemed to come into his own as the possible-next-Heath-Ledger I've always felt he could be. (Go find a DVD of Manic, people, and tell me how it ends; my Chinese copy never included the last chapter. That movie also includes the awesome Don Cheadle. It's as far from Third Rock from the Sun as that third rock is...uh...from the sun.)

Instead, I will use this first defense in a long while to knock down a straw man: the idea that movies (or stories of any kind) should have morals to them, and as a bonus, the idea that they could possibly be "without morals."

I'm responding, in short, to this comment posted at the NYTimes review of Inception:

"What exactly is the moral of this overly-complicated tale? The essential question of the ethics and morality of invading and manipulating the dreams of others is simply ignored, and we are left with the moral relativism of pure empty spectacle.
— TM, New York, NY"

That first question I think is a well-stated version of what I sometimes wonder about life itself. Unfortunately, I don't think it's as aptly applied to the question of what the "moral" is in movies.

When people refer to "the moral of the story," they usually mean they want to be told outright what the writers/actors/directors believe about a certain topic (Revolutionary Road's abortion, The Beach's drug lording, Inception's dream-stealing), so that we can agree with them and love the movie or disagree with them and hate it.

Any film critic will tell you this adherence to a didactic morality that determines likes and dislikes will only impede the "true" experience of the movie/story. I'm not going to go that far, since I suppose people who limit their likes and dislikes in reference to a moral compass have every right to do so -- like people who read books to see how many times the word "the" is used -- but I will say that they're doing something different than people who watch for other purposes, aesthetic, emotional, or intellectual.

To be fair, TM isn't necessarily eschewing an aesthetic reading of the movie in deference to a moral one. But TM does use the buzzwords "moral relativism" in a way that enforces the idea that TM expects the movie to offer a "moral."

(It's particularly odd to me that this is TM's criticism, as Inception seems to go out of its way to establish that meddling with other people's minds is very dangerous, criminal, and ultimately self-defeating...but then, this isn't actually a review of Inception, but a review of expectations and viewing habits.)

What TM wants, somehow, is an Aesopian statement at the end of the film, insisting that "it's not good to meddle with other people's minds." Which TM already knows, and which is otherwise peppered throughout the film in more subtle ways. So what TM is asking for, what TM needs to feel safe experiencing this "empty spectacle," is reassurance that Christopher Nolan (who directed Memento, you'll recall) believes the same thing TM believes.

Movies, like the Bible, are not designed for reassurance of preconceived notions. They're challenging, like all the stories we tell -- even the ones with interpretive "moral" statements at the end. Only "Christian fiction" "art" or similarly didactic genres fall into the trap of trapping the subjects absolutely, so that the good always ultimately win and the bad are appropriately punished.

Those genres are about a specific fantasy, and I would like to use this opportunity to suggest that no matter what the subject matter ("romantic," "tragic," or otherwise -- Christian fiction rarely delves into comedy, which usually works by irreverently upsetting the status quo), they should be grouped together under one generic umbrella. Some attempt at this has been made by designations of "family films," though this is not satisfactory to everyone.

Creating this genre would mean the end of statements like "where's the moral of this story?" It's not that the movie is "bad"; it's that you went to the wrong kind of film. I don't expect my romantic comedies to all have shoot-em-up scenes in them; it's inappropriate to the genre. So let morality mongers stick to their own genre, too, and stop complaining when they don't get what they're looking for from other films.

From now on, those who look for other things should be free to reply "you should have gone to the "moral films" section and rented something from there."

PSA: Sense and Sensibility also morphs into battle royale.

Here's a brilliant web video pointed out by friend Carl.

Watch it with the understanding that yes, linking to stuff on my blog instead of writing incisive (or any) commentary on it IS a cop-out -- and I know that -- but honestly, I think this one speaks for itself.

And in semi-Victorian English no less.

PSA: SYD morphs into Battle Royale

For the third week in a row, a dancer has been injured on So You Think You Can Dance, seriously enough that he can't perform.

On the one hand, it's kind of weird that so many people are getting hurt on SYD this season. On the other hand, if guys would keep getting kicked off for hurting tendons and knees, maybe the only girl left will make it to the end.

Still, I agree with the complaint that the show will quickly become meaningless, vote-wise, if people keep getting kicked off by their own injuries...meaningless, that is, unless you enjoy a battle royale.

PSA: Congress should extend unemployment benefits.

Not extending the relatively small, but hugely impactful (if that were a word) fee associated with extending unemployment benefits would be like paying very, very expensive dental insurance (the stimulus and bail-outs) and then balking at the co-pay when you had a real emergency ("$40?!? No THANK you!").

This is a stupid debate. If we wanted to be annoyed at paying way too much money for stuff that might not work, we should have done it earlier (and most of us did) like reasonable people. THIS money is actually directly accomplishing something, and it's WAY LESS than what we went into debt for two years ago.

This kind of thing is what taxes are for. Nobody who is not an anarchist or hardcore libertarian should be complaining.

Anarchists and libertarians, carry on. Everyone else shut up.

PSA: When I was looking up why Sharona left Monk...

I found this in the advertisements.

Just in case you wanted to become a monk instead of watching one.

PSA: Five years too late, I get pissed off about Monk.

I own the first three seasons of Monk, which it turns out, serendipitously, are the only ones I care to own. Midway through season three, as everyone but me must have known five years ago, Sharona (played by Bitty Schram) leaves the show suddenly and unexpectedly, with the sort of precipitous, badly thought-out narrative excuses that stink of contract disputes (sudden remarriage, moved back to NJ, etc). Sure, it's funny when it happens to Tasha Yar, but this departure ended up being, itself, a "skin of evil." San Francisco was better off with a little of Sharona's East Coast inflection, even if it was New Jersey, and anyone who calls her replacement Natalie "milquetoast" will receive a hearty "hear, hear!" from me.

I guess there was a contract dispute, and Sharona reappeared in one episode in the final, eighth season.

But I'm glad I don't own any of the later seasons.

Local Trivia, NYC: Little dudes atop buildings

When P.C. and I went to visit friend Carl in the N.Y.C., I began noticing little dudes on top of buildings.

In fact, it was around one park in particular -- Madison Square Park -- and the dudes weren't real people, they were metal statues. Art, in other words.

It was cool seeing the guys standing up there, though, and it made me look at the tops of buildings from then on in the most stressless trip to NYC I've been on. I have a tendency to look at the tops of buildings, anyway, and it was nice to have a reason to do it.

Here are some pictures -- see if you can see the dudes standing on the tops.

Quantifiable Living: Country song - patheticness

Social state of being: Patheticness, or the amount of pathos associated with a person involved in a social situation including or requiring a lost pet (i.e. dog), lost romantic partner (i.e. wife), lost or "beat up" pick-up truck, or any other item deemed "pathetic" by dominant culture.

Unit of measure: Country songs (Cs)

How it works: A long established link between country-western music and pathetic social situations -- one which long predates the unusually embarassing practice of collective country line dancing -- makes this scale almost intuitive, and easy to manage and use. Both the amount of social embarassment experienced by someone involved in the patheticness-incurring situation and the amount of perceived embarassment perceived as accruing to that or those individual(s) by those outside the situation may be measured by this scale.

Examples: Your credit card gets declines while you're attempting to buy feminine products: .3 Cs (for women); .6 Cs (for men)

The person who agreed to go on a date with you called out sick, but is seen later that night at the local Shake Shack with someone more attractive than you: 1 Cs

Your dog runs away with your romantic partner in your trusty beat-up pick-up truck: 5 Cs

Limits: This scale only measures the amount of patheticness involved in a social situation, not personal embarassment experienced in a non-social situation (i.e., when alone) nor any other emotion associated with the same situation. For truly accurate measures of emotionally complex scenarios, several scales must be used.

The scale also only refers to country-western songs that themselves describe pathetic situations, homogenized into the unit Cs. Garth Brooks is, in general, not involved in this scale; nor are any current or prior American Idol contestants, though the scale may itself be used in describing their rise to fame.

Confessions XLV

I instantly start resenting tour guides whose voices I deem "plastic."

I get sick of listening to the male client I work with talk about how often he goes to the gym and volunteer to tell me how much he weighs, enough that I often ignore him pointedly when he continues to do so.

I hate the overemphatic, crying-so-hard-I'm-choking-on-my-rage screaming that very young kids do...so much so that I think it may be dangerous for me to be the primary caregiver for any kids I might have in the future -- and I'm not planning on having any.

Local Trivia: In which Gene puts his eye out.

Last Saturday, after having had Gene in for a PCV valve-area cleaning (because it turns out Gene doesn't have or need a PCV valve) and suturing a new door onto his crushed passenger side (from a previous owner's collision), I drove Gene to work.

On the way, he spit out his left front blinker light onto the highway and promptly ran over it.

We're not talking lightbulb here; we're talking the entire signal light assembly. Three little wires protrude from his gaping socket now, and my turn signal clicker clicks madly whenever I need to turn left, reminding me always of what he's done.

If before I felt like the Cranstonator was a crotchety old war veteran in need of some rehabilitative attention, now I'm beginning to wonder whether he's just plain crotchety. Putting out your own eye, for spite? That seems extreme and alarming. These bids for attention are not generally what Volvos are known for; they're supposed to be safe even in dangerous scenarios, like a shark cage you can drive around in. That implies dependability to me, and things like keeping all your parts in where they should be.

On the other hand, G.C.'s radio, an after-market add with a CD player, seems to get a better signal than Betty's or than my indoor CD player/radio, so if he insists on being a curmudgeon, well, at least I'll have an extremely safe place to stretch out and listen to NPR.

Local Trivia: Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeewww.

Billboard on the side of I-84 East, near Hartford, CT:

[Two white women, one older, standing and smiling, arms on each other's shoulders]
"Not Your Mother's Hysterectomy!"

The billboard advertises "minimally invasive robotic assisted surgery." Too bad no one told them how gross it is to think about, let alone compare your own to, your mom's hysterectomy. It would have saved them a lot of money, and traffic-jammers a lot of cringing.

PSA: Double-u standard?

Well, the Washington Post has fired a reporter/blogger/op-ed contributor guy, David Wiegel, for writing in a private listserve email, among other things, "a joke about how the world would be a better place if Matt Drudge 'set himself on fire'."

This seems a bit like exiling the little boy who pointed out the Emporer was naked. I'm kind of disappointed he didn't put it on the official blog.

Technically, Wiegel resigned, and technically, the Post accepted the resignation after it was also revealed he'd said something about Rush Limbaugh dying and conservatives trying to "violently, angrily divide America." And technically, the Post declared that they weren't against opinions, per se, just against "the perception that people are conflicted or bring a bias to their work."

So...only the completely unconflicted are allowed to offer their opinions to the Post...which explains why they rushed to defend Drudge, actually.

The fact that these amount to a firing based on offering opinions in a non-public forum by a guy they hired partly to express his opinions (on conservative issues, no less) doesn't seem to bother the people at the Post who fired him. And I understand: the Post competes with the Washington Times for conservative readers, and this is a savvy business decision to help the Post seem less like the demonic liberal media Times readers probably feel it is. But let's not pretend it's not a choice of business savvy over free speech, because that's definitely what it is. And let's not ignore that defending Matt Drudge's freedom to say whatever damn stupid thing he wants by firing a guy who only said extreme things in private email rather than ranting them in public, is definitely a sign of conflict in the Post's business plan.

Perhaps people shouldn't be allowed to say, in any context, what seems obviously to be the truth (that the world would probably be better off without firebrand conservatives yelling at people without any solutions to the problems they're pointing out or compassion for the people they would affect), if they're working in journalism.

But it seems obvious instead that Fox News is winning here, and making the Washington Post into Switzerland won't help the paper survive. Kowtowing to conservatives who reserve the right to be jerks in public only for themselves will help the paper fade into the background, bird-cage-liner it seems to want to be, instead.

And heck -- like Wiegel with the conservatives he denigrated in email -- I'm saying this as a fan of the Post.

Imagine what Matt Drudge would say.

PSA: SYD complain-o-rama

So those of you who may be So You Think You Can Dance fans (SYD for short) have already noticed the changes this season: instead of the top 20, we've got the top 10 (well, top 11, it turns out), dancing with "champions" from past seasons -- none of the winners, mind you, but some memorable dancers -- in weird combinations, starting this week.

I respect the need to shake it up a bit after six seasons, but this is too much, SYD. I love the old champion dancers, which makes it tough to love the newbies. Is this more like Dancing with the Stars, which I've never seen? Why these changes?

At least Mia Michaels appears to be a permajudge this season, replacing Mary Murphy. I'd complain that no one will know now whether they're on the "hot tamale train" or not, but with all the changes this season, it's probably best to leave the train behind, too.

PSA: EEEEli Stone

The first three Es in my version of the spelling of the ABC-truncated show Eli Stone (which joined other shows like Daybreak, Samantha Who?, Dirty Sexy Money and a dozen other shows cut short in mid-seasons) stand for "every engagement ends," since with one end-of-the-run exception (which we don't get to see play out), every single engagement in this series (and there are a lot for such a short-running show) gets broken off. There are three broken engagements, I think, between six different characters, and in another case, a divorce.

But other than that, it's a pretty good show. Similar to Wonderfalls and, I imagine (since I've still never seen it), Joan of Arcadia, Eli Stone was a cute show that surprises you with stabs at significance. I always love Victor Garber (who doesn't?), and in Eli Stone he eventually gets to be the dad you always wish he was in Alias. Loretta "the Chief's wife from Grey's Anatomy" Devine has the constant supporting role she deserves (and several very, very respectable singing cameos) as Eli's assistant, and the rest of the cast grows on you. The lead actor from the ill-fated, years-ago show Ed, about a guy who owns a bowling alley (also seen as JD's older brother on Scrubs ), plays Eli's (dead) dad.

The second season cancellation desperation shows, and throws the show for a series of loops that can't really be justified, even with the impending doom of its end. But every show can't be Arrested Development with its brilliant use of desperate measures, nor Daybreak, with its meticulously plotted series finale. And while most of Eli Stone's plot twists feel twisty, it's almost untwisted just by the detritus of broken engagements littering the set stages: when Katie Holmes does a guest appearance (weird weird weird to see post-Cruise Katie on TV), it's clear that they leave room for her reappearance and leave Eli longing for her to return from Kenya -- though she never does -- and when the second-fiddle female lead character Eli's obviously in love with says she's over him, it's never sure whether we can believe her...The effect of so many relationships being mostly but not quite over is that every possibility remains open, always open, and so every possibility remains viable. These characters have choices, not an implacable, descend-on-you fate.

Perhaps that's the real tragedy of this show getting cut short: it's ultimately a show about process, and becoming a better person step by weird step, and it's a pity and an irony that something like that has to end. I'd like to see it unfurl over the years, ignoring character consistency and back-story and staying true instead to people's tendency to change, and change their beliefs about themselves, over time. That's a show I think 20-somethings could use nowadays.

Then again, we all die eventually, so maybe the cancellation and the end to process it represents is also true to life.

I still blame ABC.

PSA: If not the dive, the long-shot works.

Drosselmeyer, a 13-1 longshot in the Belmont Stakes (the third leg of the Triple Crown), pulled out a beautiful first-place finish, making starry-eyed, long-shot-betting OTB'ers happy this week and ensuring they can afford the inevitable benders to follow.

I guess horse racing will survive another year.

Mix: Chill Outz 3

In honor of Bryan Gaynor's dancing, here's a third "Fireflies"-inspired Chill Outz mix. There are repeats from past mixes and, yes, incredibly sappy songs on this list. And yes, there should be more Postal Service and Snow Patrol on a mix like this, but I can't get iTunes to recognize my .wma formats. If you would like all of the Chill Outz mixes, send your address to my email.

"Fireflies" -- Owl City
"Moth's Wings" -- Passion Pit
"No More Running Away" -- Air Traffic
"Kyrie" -- Mr. Mister
"Days Are Numbers (The Traveler)" -- Alan Parsons Project
"Scientist Studies" -- Death Cab For Cutie
"Save Tonight" -- Eagle Eye Cherry
"The Lamentation of David" -- Antony Pitts from Naxos Early Music
"Weighed Down" -- Jars of Clay
"Snowbirds and Townies" -- Further Seems Forever
"The Blower's Daughter" -- Damien Rice
"The Space Between" -- Dave Matthews Band
"Tiny Dancer" -- Elton John
"God Only Knows" -- Beach Boys
"Entertaining Angels" -- Newsboys
"Death And All His Friends" -- Coldplay

Local Trivia: Overheard after intro in which friend Kevin, very drunk, was explaining a dream in which he and Ben tried to move to a haunted house.

Kevin: "Long story short, needless to say, Ben and I did not get the lease."

[Because, Kevin explained later, they had not stayed the entire night as required by the owner. Pure genius horror film reasoning, there.]

PSA: SYD begins with a ROBOT.

I love love love this dancer; Bryan Gaynor (aka "Chibi"/Chibotics) from the season 3 SYD auditions has come back for season 7 auditions, to show us all (and the SYD judges) what he's been doing since we saw him on the season 3 finale performing his unique and humorous version of Christina Aguilera's "Ain't No Other Man."

Where his previous SYD performance showed (as I repeatedly pointed out, semi-gushing, to an eternally patient Prince Certainpersonio) the self-aware humor of the (potential) humanness of robots, Bryan's performance in this week's auditions showed exactly what robot-filled sci fi movies based on hardcore golden age science fiction writers like Asimov and Bova (think Bicentennial Man and A.I.) strive to show but often fall short of (though I'm told Iron Giant is awesome, and I suspect in just this way): the necessary, often telling differences between the "robot" and the "human."

Whether the reference is purposeful or not, when Bryan lays down at the end of the routine, I can't help but recall the image of Haley Joel Osment laying down next to his mother at the end of A.I. The difference is that this is real life, Bryan is a real person much like many of the people I know, and his taking on the (dance) persona of a robot is strangely fitting, and poignant as a result. Even in the few actual clips we get of Bryan Gaynor dancing to Owl City's "Fireflies," a song I'm sure he's made a lot of money for by now, we can imagine a completely different world watching the isolation and terrible, innocent hope of his robot on display. His dance is a meditation on what makes us different, not (just) from robots, but from each other, and how we might cope with that.

And unlike the more recent robotic sci-fi, it doesn't leave us all screaming piles of wreckage in the wake of software gone bad. Chibotics follows the three laws.

It's possible that only a 7-season veteran of SYD would obsess this much over a really awesome version of the robot -- or that only a candidate for an upper-level degree in "cultural production" would. But see for yourself. Go watch it. The picture isn't perfect, and they show way too much of the SYD judges reacting to his dance (we know, it's awesome, and touching! Now SHOW US WHAT HE'S DOING SO WE CAN REACT, TOO), but what you see is, I think, enough to understand what I'm talking about.

Don't watch it on a bad or jerky connection, though, as you won't know when he's being an awesome robot vs. when your computer is being stupid.

Also, keep in mind that I feel really attached to this performance, in which I see vulnerability and strength, which are rarely so obviously displayed and which are usually crushed by cynical comments -- so if you hate it or want to say sarcastic things about it, go to some random person's blog and post a comment there. That other blogger will probably be pleased and benignly weirded out, and I will be saved from a small bit of soul-death. This is a just-in-case suggestion.

The hundred suitors and the axe head: Cranstonated.

Gene Cranston has finally been registered. I've discovered in this process that I never received Betty's official CT title in the mail three years ago when I got her, but they didn't need that to finally allow me to drive the Cranstonation for realz.

Huzzah. P.C. and I have driven to his parents' house in semi-celebration, and except for G.C.'s left headlight, which fell out of its socket on the highway and must have looked to other cars like a skeleton's dangling eyeball, it all went fine.

Still -- huzzah for my one-eyed car.

Local Trivia: Tree butchery

I just watched a perfectly good, cute, decorative tree get chainsawed down by a two-man crew with a wood chopper.

I thought they were just pruning it to begin with, though I thought "that's a stupid way to prune a tree," which I know thanks to my grandma's penchant for gardening and farm-work. Then they continued past the point of pruning, and I realized what they were really doing.

It felt a bit like what I imagine watching an amputation would feel like -- though with the addition that the amputation would continue, shockingly, to every limb, and then end with decapitation.

Gene Cranston came to that.

So in the continuing saga of Gene Cranston's road-worthiness, it turned out that the check-engine-light lighting that happened post-transmission-flush was what my Ron had feared it would be: the catalytic converter.

It also turns out that because Gene is a 1994 and not 1996 or later, there needed to be a special-order converter. The O2 sensor that would normally be somewhere on a catalytic converter is actually inside a Volvo 1994's catalytic converter. This meant that changing it cost over 150% what a normal cat would cost. I got it done at P.C.'s Ron's shop because they're exhaust experts and I was tired of my Ron rolling his eyes at Gene. (Though that had stopped when he'd had a chance to spend a little time with Gene, my Ron also simply buys dealer parts for Volvos, which are three times as expensive as they should be.)

So Gene got his converter converted last Thursday. They ran him through emissions right there at P.C.'s Ron's, and he passed in training. Then they ran him again and he failed worse than ever.

When I say "worse than ever," I mean that Gene had failed by about 200 ppm in the Nox category the first time, putting out 1700-something instead of the 1522 he should have. The second test, he got worse, putting out over 2000 ppm, and this second post-training-run run, he scored over 2500. This was after the catalytic converter was put in, and after the trips to Less-local City and Far-Away City.

Friday morning, I brought Gene in for a final retest, to have them test him cold, and he passed, with only 308 ppm. Go figure.

So Gene was roadworthy on Friday, the day I had to drive him to (and for) work.

I actually took my girl to the DMV on Friday afternoon, hoping to get a number for the line (CT DMV works like a deli counter), drop the girl off half an hour away and make it back before my number was called. Friday was the last day Gene Cranston could legally drive with the temporary registration; Friday was the day he had finally passed the emissions test to get a real registration; and Friday was the day the DMV shut early for the holiday weekend.

I don't mean early-early. I mean 20 minutes before I arrived with my girl, the DMV had shut its doors to further customers. It wasn't even closed yet at 12:53 p.m. But it was closed to me and the ten other cars that arrived and turned around in its lot while I was there.

So today, today, I'm going back, and I hope to finally end the saga (and the various payments) -- but at this point I hold out little hope that Gene, abused by previous owners and reluctant to change (gears -- the transmission is still a bit sticky), will ever be the happy-go-lucky little car-that-could that Betty has been. Or at least not legally.

But maybe I'm wrong -- maybe this is less fairy-tale and more epic, and all I have left to do is slay the hundred suitors and shoot my arrow through an axe head or something. After Circe and the cyclops, that should be a cinch.

Confessions XLIV

Last night I ate honey roasted peanuts for dinner. Later I regretted it.

I also spent most of the waking hours of my shift watching Parks and Recreation, 30 Rock and Better Off Ted on hulu -- though this is allowed at my job, and so doesn't constitute as big a confession as you might think.

This morning, possibly thanks to my dietary and moral weakness, I woke up with an entire leg asleep. An entire leg. The weakness didn't go away with pins and needles; instead, it seems to have spread to my entire body, giving me even worse posture than usual. Because of a Parks and Rec episode I watched ("why would anyone eat anything other than breakfast food?" "People are stupid, Leslie"), I believe that a Belgian waffle with berries and whipped cream would cure this.

Hello again, Gene Cranston

It's hard to believe I've only officially owned Gene for 11 days now, as I've had about two years worth of maintenance trouble with him so far -- but that's in Betty-years, which are unfair to apply to another car, and heck, I knew anything I got for $1000 was going to need about that much more done in maintenance.

P.C. and I picked him up from my Ron at the last minute Monday, and Ron told me to drive and drive and drive -- and put good gasoline in -- and drive and drive some more. Since the transmission was sticky and my Ron hadn't flushed it yet, we drove and drove to a Thai restaurant (where I had the second best panang curry I've had in the States) in Less-local City, CT, and then retired Gene once again to P.C.'s Ron for a transmission flush yesterday. P.C. agreed to drop me off at work last night and drive and drive to see his friend in Far Away City, CT, and then pick me up again this morning before the re-test.

The trouble is I'm pretty sure Gene doesn't get infinite chances on retesting, and in order to get a waiver, I have to spend $660 trying to fix the problem. I've got about $400 to go on the exhaust troubles, if it comes to that.

I'll let you know if it comes to that. Gene has two more days to get registered for realz before his temporary reg expires.

PSA: Un-satirizable events have again occurred.

So I thought the Apocalypse was nigh after our former V.P. shot his friend in the face (and didn't tell us about it for awhile, and the news outlets thought the cover-up was the problem) -- but when the world didn't end, or at least didn't end quickly, I let down my guard and thought "well, at least there aren't any other news stories that can't possibly be made sillier by Jon-Stewart-types."

Until recently, when, in a stroke of genius that sounds like it came straight out of Stargate (the movie, not the series), BP announced that it was going to lower a cement dome over the oil leak.

It turns out that this plan was less silly than it sounded, since the dome would have sucked up much of the oil through a pipe rather than just clamping it down, but it worked just about as well as you'd expect that plan to work, not knowing the highly technical details involved.

Can't they submit these plans to some kind of eight-year-old test? That is, to first ask an eight-year-old whether it sounds like a good plan or a silly one? In my experience, eight year olds are excellent judges of various shades of silliness, and at a minimum could help BP figure out how to spin this thing in the news properly.

Just off the top of my head, for instance, if the leak never stops, the company could present itself as philanthropic: most of the people in the South are poor, and here comes BP, providing them all with free oil. Now all they have to do is go pick it up and figure out how to refine it. In the meantime, the prices will go up for all the northern rich people.

Their new slogan could be "BP: Like Robin Hood for gasoline -- delivering crude oil to the Gulf Coast for free since 2010."

New word: Blehthargy

n. that combination of boredom and slow-moving laziness that comes from an immediately preceding feeling of boredom and laziness; complex, compounded boredom leading to unexplained tiredness; boredom that has folded in on itself, as a samurai sword is folded for greater strength.

Local Trivia: Roomie Reunion 2010

This weekend marks the earliest RR ever, after last year's latest ever. It was a good weekend, only made more epic by The Three Plagues, as Debbie called them -- of the neverending hike, the unkillable ticks and the overflowing toilet waters.

Long live the roomies.

PSA: Take a dive, dammit.

Well, Lookin' at Lucky won the Preakness, making it another year without a Triple Crown. A few years ago, a commentator commentated that if we don't have another Triple Crown winner soon, horse racing will lose all its fans and fail to gain new ones -- and I agree.

With War Admiral turned into dog food after an unfortunate leg-breaking incident, and no one outside the OTB able to remember any horse that's come after, I say it's time to go "Quiz Show" on this sport and get us a winner -- and if we can't get an attractive, come-from-behind horse to win legally, let's get one to win illegally.

Of course this would piss off the inveterate gamblers, who seem to be the base of fans this sport retains, but it would also shake up the numbers for awhile and get people back in Derby seats with their hats and juleps, regular (rich) fans who make this sport more like fox-hunting (socially acceptable because white British men do it) and less like dog-fighting (so socially unacceptable it can send a black man to jail -- not that that's any feat in itself).

Not that those hat-wearing, julep-sipping Derby fans aren't out there, but that I used to want to be one, and now I don't.

Give us a Triple Crown, guys, come on. Take one for the team.

PSA: Maaaad Men

If you haven't been watching Mad Men -- though if you're white, you may have already thrown a themed party in its honor -- you should start now.

The end of season 3 is more promising a beginning than I've seen for most shows out there (when they actually are beginning). I won't give anything away (so this will be a short post), but the energy and momentum in "Shut the Door, Have a Seat" is better than almost anything I've seen since the Aaron-Sorkin seasons of West Wing and more balanced than regular-cliffhanger series like Alias.

PSA: "You'll always learn something when we meet you at the school"

"Too cool for school" 21 Jump Street has been on my mind and in my DVD player a lot lately, thanks to my newfound freedom from writing 20-page final papers. Today I finished season one.

In addition to the theme song instantly getting stuck in my head, the first thing I noticed was how racist a show it is/was. The very first scene in the very first episode features a nice, suburban (white) family sitting around the dinner table beginning to discuss their days, the precocious teenage daughter acting up just a little for realism -- until the scene is shattered by two black men jumping through the window near the dinner table brandishing automatic weapons and Michael-Jackson-like hairdos and clothing.

Not racist enough, you say? Well, in a later episode, a local high school gets taken over by a gang full (I mean 100%) of "ethnic" kids -- black, hispanic, asian -- who hold a bunch of middle-class white people hostage. They're also kind of bumbling as criminals, clearly not having thought through the master plan (the way I'm sure a white villain would have), and the main (black) leader's weakness for beautiful women and inability to think rationally is highlighted several times. They also have the Asian cop, Ioki (whose real-life family name is Nguyen [Vietnamese], but who was cast as Japanese), run up the outside of the building like a ninja. Then he beats up the other Asian in the episode.

All this makes it less of a shock when they suddenly kill off the (white) hippie captain midway through the season and substitute a hard-working black captain in his place. Obviously some other people thought the show was racist, too.

Episodes feature the guy who plays that alien who idolizes Alan Rickman's character in Galaxy Quest, and dies; Jason Priestley as a squatter-punk kid; and later, Shannon Doherty and Brad Pitt. Also, Holly Robinson-Peete, who is currently best known for her advocacy of autism research on Celebrity Apprentice, but who you also probably saw at some point as Vanessa on Hangin' With Mr. Cooper on ABC's TGIF lineup.

One of the things that's great about the show -- besides Johnny Depp's debut and seeing him trying on 80's-punk outfits that would later be dwarfed by all his Tim Burton projects and even Captain-Jack garb -- is seeing 80's culture in action. In one episode, the (black) captain's son comes to visit and is a Rastafarian, something totally foreign to me now (though even I knew the captain shouldn't eat those brownies); the captain slowly learns tolerance of his son's new ways. The season closer also features an 80's punk-anarchy scene that seems thoroughly entrenched in its time -- basically good kids getting mixed up with punk-rock and getting a second chance, rather than getting detained as potential domestic terrorists and feared by all in the community.

It's definitely a pre-9/11, pre-Berlin-wall-fall, pre-Lost world. Even though I lived in it, it's fascinating to watch now.

You can get seasons 1-2 and 3-4 in bundle packs from Target right now for $15 apiece. Millstone Entertainment (which produced 21 Jump Street and also put out Daybreak and the old-tyme spy-show sampler "Spies and Lies," which includes 6 Dangerous Assignment episodes) is becoming one of my companies to watch.

Hello Gene Cranston.

I've purchased a new old car, the '94 Volvo wagon (teal) I blogged about lo these many days ago. P.C. suggested after our first viewing that it could be named "Gene," a suggestion I took under advisement and finally agreed to after adding "Cranston," a 30 Rock reference that I love.

("Cranston, why won't Kenneth call me back?...Cranston, why are you crying?")

This doesn't mean I've given up the ghost on Betty, who I'd keep in my grandmother's military-issue footlocker heirloom trunk if I could. I'm going to have her towed to my mom's driveway and consider my options from there. While a used transmission with installation might run me $800-900, the rental car I'm getting for this weekend and next just while Gene gets his wheels (and CT registration) under him -- and for traveling to RR '10 -- will cost about a third of that, and from what I hear, Gene may spend more time in the shop than Betty when he needs fixing, as my mechanic says Volvos are harder to diagnose.

Good old Betty. Always knew what was wrong, always got her fixed without trouble.

In an ideal world, Betty and Gene would last me into the next decade. We'll see what the fallen world will get me.

Also, P.C. says he's willing to paint Gene orange if I want. We'll see how he runs first, but that seems pretty promising.

Local Trivia: Friend Liz describes the sound P.C.'s car's back wheel is making

Liz: "It was like an acorn fell on the roof. But then there weren't any trees, and the acorn would have had to be made out of a brick."

Bye Bye Betty?

Well, last week, on the last trip down to CT from Waltham, Betty gave out.

She crossed the border into Connecticut, but didn't make it much farther before what mechanics tell me is her transmission began to make clanking and grinding sounds. She rolls, but it sounds like parts have come loose and are rattling around inside.

So now I've had a week to decide what to do -- get her a new trans or get a new car. Either one is a risk, and my mechanic isn't in favor of ANYthing I can do within my budget ("I wouldn't recommend putting that money into a car that old"; "I wouldn't get a European car, they cost twice as much to maintain"; "no, you're NOT going to find a car with low miles on it for that price").

Betty's blue book value is less than $700, though her value in my heart is much higher. (AWWWW.) A trans rebuild would run about $1800. But her engine is Toyota from her year (1990), which is a great engine in general, and she's only got 130K on her, 60K of which I put on her over the past three years.

I also went to look at a Volvo wagon this morning, which looked pretty spectacular as far as caralities* go. But it had two leaks, making it a risky deal. Buying it would be less than bringing Betty back, but the maintenance might add up to even.

Course, then I'd have two risky cars to choose from...and possibly two broken ones.

Also, this is finals week.

*car personalities

PSA: Another reason not to waste your time in Times Square

Wow. Car bomb, eh?

I take this as yet another sign that driving probably shouldn't be allowed in NYC.