Just a quick one tonight, met up with an old friend I hadn't seen in forever to have dinner and catch up. Always nice to do that, I must say. I've been spending a lot of time with either co-workers or family, so to remember, however briefly, that I have a life beyond the demands of my family or the confines of my workspace is always welcome.
Anyway, HIMYM ended its season last night, and "New Girl" did so last week, as well as "The Office" (yeah, I still watch). That means that, with the finale of "Community" just around the corner, I'm all set for Rerun City when it comes to TV (i.e. lots of Travel channel or just spending more time with the TV off, reading).
I checked out a book about the Civil War recently, before remembering that I just finished Shelby Foote's massive trilogy and thus have no desire to read about the Civil War for the time being. Such is life...
Over and out
Tuesday, May 15, 2012
Tuesday, May 8, 2012
Where the Wild Things Be At
We lost another talented famous person (as opposed to just a famous person; don't expect me to mourn any of the Jersey Shore cast if and when they shake off this mortal coil, though I'll feel bad for their relatives). Maurice Sendak died this morning at 83.
What with Adam Yauch and George "Goober" Lindsay, it seems like a bad time to be a celebrity who has actual talent (My favorite thing about Lindsay was when he appeared on Newsradio to give testimony that a skull purporting to be his own was a fake. He handled the skull, paused to look at it, and answered "no"). It's the rule of three.
I only read Where the Wild Things Are a few years ago, when I was working at the local library, and I had ten minutes to kill. It's a quick read, from an adult perspective, but the real part of the book that sticks with you is the imagery, which is amazing. Having harbored aspirations of artistic talent (not really borne out by my drawings, though I think they're charming renderings of the Hindenburg in flames or a Sopwith Camel mid-pursuit of the Red Baron), I can appreciate good art. I love album covers that aren't just "this is the band, standing on a pier" or "hey, look, the band is making a pillow fort." My mom has a good eye for art, and underneath the picture I've seen of my dad, it says that he was an art major. Go figure.
Anyway, that's my view on the whole subject. Be sure to check out Paste Magazine online for my review of Levon Helm's book (I had a link to copy and paste, but I copy and pasted something else and I'm too lazy to go back and get it...or am I?)
http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2012/05/this-wheels-on-fire-levon-helm-and-the-story-of-th.html
It turns out I am more industrious than I thought today.
What with Adam Yauch and George "Goober" Lindsay, it seems like a bad time to be a celebrity who has actual talent (My favorite thing about Lindsay was when he appeared on Newsradio to give testimony that a skull purporting to be his own was a fake. He handled the skull, paused to look at it, and answered "no"). It's the rule of three.
I only read Where the Wild Things Are a few years ago, when I was working at the local library, and I had ten minutes to kill. It's a quick read, from an adult perspective, but the real part of the book that sticks with you is the imagery, which is amazing. Having harbored aspirations of artistic talent (not really borne out by my drawings, though I think they're charming renderings of the Hindenburg in flames or a Sopwith Camel mid-pursuit of the Red Baron), I can appreciate good art. I love album covers that aren't just "this is the band, standing on a pier" or "hey, look, the band is making a pillow fort." My mom has a good eye for art, and underneath the picture I've seen of my dad, it says that he was an art major. Go figure.
Anyway, that's my view on the whole subject. Be sure to check out Paste Magazine online for my review of Levon Helm's book (I had a link to copy and paste, but I copy and pasted something else and I'm too lazy to go back and get it...or am I?)
http://www.pastemagazine.com/articles/2012/05/this-wheels-on-fire-levon-helm-and-the-story-of-th.html
It turns out I am more industrious than I thought today.
Friday, May 4, 2012
To MCA, I wanna offer my love and respect to the end
I know it's unusual for me to write so much on here (I am not the most attendent blogger), but I feel like the passing of Adam Yauch merits a few words.
When I was a kid, rap music was the unknown, sounds emanating from an urban landscape that I and my friends in rural South Carolina couldn't begin to imagine. What's more, it was made by black people, and you didn't just listen to black people music in the South at that time, unless you did it while no one was paying attention, because it was odd.
(Of course, black music, be it jazz or R&B or blues or early rock and roll, was integral to any Southerners' soundtrack in the old days, but my perception of that time is that black music, especially rap, was not to be listened to).
The Beastie Boys were white, but playing rap. And they were good at it. And after all these years, my childhood enthusiasm for them remains. Paul's Boutique was my soundtrack when I went to work at Anderson at five in the morning, cooking food for tourists staying at a hotel who wanted breakfast. Yauch had been battling cancer for a few years now, but it was still a shock to learn that he passed today. He will be missed.
When I was a kid, rap music was the unknown, sounds emanating from an urban landscape that I and my friends in rural South Carolina couldn't begin to imagine. What's more, it was made by black people, and you didn't just listen to black people music in the South at that time, unless you did it while no one was paying attention, because it was odd.
(Of course, black music, be it jazz or R&B or blues or early rock and roll, was integral to any Southerners' soundtrack in the old days, but my perception of that time is that black music, especially rap, was not to be listened to).
The Beastie Boys were white, but playing rap. And they were good at it. And after all these years, my childhood enthusiasm for them remains. Paul's Boutique was my soundtrack when I went to work at Anderson at five in the morning, cooking food for tourists staying at a hotel who wanted breakfast. Yauch had been battling cancer for a few years now, but it was still a shock to learn that he passed today. He will be missed.
Thursday, May 3, 2012
Living Blue In a Gray State of Mind
Last night, I achieved a milestone, of sorts. I finished the third volume of Shelby Foote's massive (like, a thousand pages per volume) history of the Civil War (or as it was taught to me by the finest educators Oconee County had to offer, the War of Northern Aggression). I consider it an achievement, especially as I read the previous two volumes, beginning this time last year when the 150th anniversary of the war's beginnings came around (what do you get for the War that has everything?).
I knew of Foote from Ken Burns' epic documentary about the Civil War, which aired when I was a kid and helped facilitate a lifelong interest in the War Between the States. He was the kindly grandfather figure, with a slow drawl, who waxed nostalgic about the war and how it affected everyone, North and South. His writing, as it turns out, is in keeping with this kindly grandfather storytelling, though Foote was a younger man when he began the endeavor (the books were published in 1958, 1963, and 1974 respectively). I started out being skeptical that I could keep to such a protracted project of my own devising, even though all it meant was setting aside time to read about the war (I had read thousand-page books before, but I don't make a habit of it). Nonetheless, a year after I started with the first page of the first volume, I finished the last pages on my front porch.
I feel like this deserves some notice.
Anyway, in the year that it took me to read all three books (I took a break inbetween volumes, to cleanse my pallate of all such 1861-1865-related materials in my brain, before embarking on the next), a lot of things happened. I got a niece earlier last year, for one thing. She has been a pretty big part of my life since then. I also got gallstones, though I didn't know it at the time (I will always associate Roy Blount's book about the Steelers, About Three Bricks Shy of a Load, with my first serious gallstone attacks). I went through ups and downs, then again and on repeat. And I discovered that Shelby Foote was a pretty damn good writer, if you could invest the time in reading his massive life's work.
Though written by a Southerner, the books are evenhanded, and I challenge anyone to find a better portrait of Abraham Lincoln in anyone else's writing. It's well worth all the time I spent in slogging through some of the less-interesting stuff to get to the things I found interesting. I might very well have saved the volumes at my local library from being deleted from the stacks, because I'm pretty sure I'm the first person in forever to check all three out at any time (and read them all the way through, to add to that).
I am awesome in my reading skills, then ;-)
Anyway, as a pallate cleanser (or is it "palate?" Spelling has never been my forte), I'm gonna read a Lewis Grizzard book.
I knew of Foote from Ken Burns' epic documentary about the Civil War, which aired when I was a kid and helped facilitate a lifelong interest in the War Between the States. He was the kindly grandfather figure, with a slow drawl, who waxed nostalgic about the war and how it affected everyone, North and South. His writing, as it turns out, is in keeping with this kindly grandfather storytelling, though Foote was a younger man when he began the endeavor (the books were published in 1958, 1963, and 1974 respectively). I started out being skeptical that I could keep to such a protracted project of my own devising, even though all it meant was setting aside time to read about the war (I had read thousand-page books before, but I don't make a habit of it). Nonetheless, a year after I started with the first page of the first volume, I finished the last pages on my front porch.
I feel like this deserves some notice.
Anyway, in the year that it took me to read all three books (I took a break inbetween volumes, to cleanse my pallate of all such 1861-1865-related materials in my brain, before embarking on the next), a lot of things happened. I got a niece earlier last year, for one thing. She has been a pretty big part of my life since then. I also got gallstones, though I didn't know it at the time (I will always associate Roy Blount's book about the Steelers, About Three Bricks Shy of a Load, with my first serious gallstone attacks). I went through ups and downs, then again and on repeat. And I discovered that Shelby Foote was a pretty damn good writer, if you could invest the time in reading his massive life's work.
Though written by a Southerner, the books are evenhanded, and I challenge anyone to find a better portrait of Abraham Lincoln in anyone else's writing. It's well worth all the time I spent in slogging through some of the less-interesting stuff to get to the things I found interesting. I might very well have saved the volumes at my local library from being deleted from the stacks, because I'm pretty sure I'm the first person in forever to check all three out at any time (and read them all the way through, to add to that).
I am awesome in my reading skills, then ;-)
Anyway, as a pallate cleanser (or is it "palate?" Spelling has never been my forte), I'm gonna read a Lewis Grizzard book.
Tuesday, May 1, 2012
Mormon Is the New Black
Some random observations about the upcoming election: it seems pretty much a certainty that President Obama will be facing a pretty tough opponent, one that will keep him up nights worrying about their next move, how to counter it, and what the American people will think.
I am speaking, of course, about Fox News. Mitt Romney? Can you say "four more years"?
But ole Mitt is more than just your cartoonishly out-of-touch rich guy; he's a religious out of touch rich guy, a Mormon, to be precise.
And that is causing some stir in the left-of-center blogosphere, of which I truck with even though I'm not gung-ho about Obama Version 2.0 myself (hey, he got Bin Laden, one year ago. What more do you want?).
It seems that Mitt is becoming the new JFK, by which I mean his religion is an issue (not his out-of-touch rich guyness, which I keep harping on because it's true. He has no idea how you or I live, fellow low-income holder). I won't pretend to know much about Mormons, other than that they own Utah, they can't have sugar or booze, and they seem awful smart (Ken Jennings is among the flock). I personally have nothing against Mormons because I don't know that I've ever come across much in the way of anti-me bias in Mormon theology (I'm a white male, I mean, of no deviant sexual practices do I partake, though there was that one time in Vegas...nevermind).
Mormonism is the punching bag in a lot of the "South Park" guys' work, I do know that. But they poke fun at anything and everything.
To me, what's important is not Mitt's Mormonism, it's his out-of-touch-rich-white-guyness. Is America ready for four years of that (again)?
I am speaking, of course, about Fox News. Mitt Romney? Can you say "four more years"?
But ole Mitt is more than just your cartoonishly out-of-touch rich guy; he's a religious out of touch rich guy, a Mormon, to be precise.
And that is causing some stir in the left-of-center blogosphere, of which I truck with even though I'm not gung-ho about Obama Version 2.0 myself (hey, he got Bin Laden, one year ago. What more do you want?).
It seems that Mitt is becoming the new JFK, by which I mean his religion is an issue (not his out-of-touch rich guyness, which I keep harping on because it's true. He has no idea how you or I live, fellow low-income holder). I won't pretend to know much about Mormons, other than that they own Utah, they can't have sugar or booze, and they seem awful smart (Ken Jennings is among the flock). I personally have nothing against Mormons because I don't know that I've ever come across much in the way of anti-me bias in Mormon theology (I'm a white male, I mean, of no deviant sexual practices do I partake, though there was that one time in Vegas...nevermind).
Mormonism is the punching bag in a lot of the "South Park" guys' work, I do know that. But they poke fun at anything and everything.
To me, what's important is not Mitt's Mormonism, it's his out-of-touch-rich-white-guyness. Is America ready for four years of that (again)?
Saturday, April 28, 2012
The Tears Or Otherwise Unpleasant Feelings of a Clown
Even I get sick of myself sometimes, I have to admit. Not in the sense of "I hate Trevor Seigler," but just in the sense that I tend to joke around...a lot. I mean, if there's an opportunity for a crack, I'll make it. If it comes at someone else's expense, I might feel bad about it afterwards (and often do), but in the moment, I'm rolling with it, never letting it stand in the way of a good punchline.
That being said, I can be a dick.
It all started as a defense mechanism, this cutting up and not taking things seriously. Mostly it was a way to offset the obvious scorn and ridicule that came from my peers during that period of developmental hell known as "adolescence," when even lifelong friends come asunder on the shores of Peer Pressure Cliffs and Popular Crowd Aspiration Raceways (my metaphors are clumsy, like my attempts to woo the ladies, but I mean well). It just so happens, if I don't mind bragging a bit, that I have a gift for the witty rejoinder (even if it's not all that witty if you're unaware of nineteenth-century British prime ministers, for instance), and this is, like alcoholism or depression, something that runs in my family.
Many of my family members when I was growing up traded in moments where they could let their guard down and be emotionally honest for the opportunity to make a fart joke, often at my expense. As a sensitive child (no, really; I can't stand perfume, which made accompanying my grandmother to Belk's for a new pair of slacks its own special version of Hell. Headaches galore), I was coarsened enough by such treatment to eventually get my own back, and I'm afraid that the joke had often replaced the heartfelt statement in my everyday interactions with people, be them close friends with whom I have a deep bond or casual acquaintances that will never see me again.
Lately, I've been working through the fact that, for all intents and purposes, my jokes sometimes aren't funny, and sometimes they're even cruel, and sometimes, dare I say it, I say them at times when really, it would be better to be nice and just let the moment pass without a comment by myself. It is true about comedians having dark souls full of inner turmoil (I've read enough biographies to confirm this fact), and unhappiness is often the root cause of great art. For me, though, it's usually the root of a joke that doesn't land, or lands too well, and leaves the other person thinking that I'm kind of an asshole.
But on the other hand, joking around is a way to beat back the three-headed monster that encircles my family and myself, and many other people in the world suffering from the lack of a good laugh to take their minds off what ails them. When I say something funny and it's not cruel, not at someone's expense, and it makes the other person laugh, that's a pretty good feeling. It helps to remind people that drama is alright, but not all the time. In fact, of the television shows I watch with regularity that are still airing new episodes, very few if any are "dramas." Even a show like Anthony Bourdain's has to make allowances for humor, albeit of the sarcastic side that I am almost prenaturally good at and can appreciate.
It's a complicated thing, to be eager to be funny while acknowledging that a certain meanness in you joke might go off wrong.
Anyway, did I tell you the one about Newt Gingrich at a sex club?....
That being said, I can be a dick.
It all started as a defense mechanism, this cutting up and not taking things seriously. Mostly it was a way to offset the obvious scorn and ridicule that came from my peers during that period of developmental hell known as "adolescence," when even lifelong friends come asunder on the shores of Peer Pressure Cliffs and Popular Crowd Aspiration Raceways (my metaphors are clumsy, like my attempts to woo the ladies, but I mean well). It just so happens, if I don't mind bragging a bit, that I have a gift for the witty rejoinder (even if it's not all that witty if you're unaware of nineteenth-century British prime ministers, for instance), and this is, like alcoholism or depression, something that runs in my family.
Many of my family members when I was growing up traded in moments where they could let their guard down and be emotionally honest for the opportunity to make a fart joke, often at my expense. As a sensitive child (no, really; I can't stand perfume, which made accompanying my grandmother to Belk's for a new pair of slacks its own special version of Hell. Headaches galore), I was coarsened enough by such treatment to eventually get my own back, and I'm afraid that the joke had often replaced the heartfelt statement in my everyday interactions with people, be them close friends with whom I have a deep bond or casual acquaintances that will never see me again.
Lately, I've been working through the fact that, for all intents and purposes, my jokes sometimes aren't funny, and sometimes they're even cruel, and sometimes, dare I say it, I say them at times when really, it would be better to be nice and just let the moment pass without a comment by myself. It is true about comedians having dark souls full of inner turmoil (I've read enough biographies to confirm this fact), and unhappiness is often the root cause of great art. For me, though, it's usually the root of a joke that doesn't land, or lands too well, and leaves the other person thinking that I'm kind of an asshole.
But on the other hand, joking around is a way to beat back the three-headed monster that encircles my family and myself, and many other people in the world suffering from the lack of a good laugh to take their minds off what ails them. When I say something funny and it's not cruel, not at someone's expense, and it makes the other person laugh, that's a pretty good feeling. It helps to remind people that drama is alright, but not all the time. In fact, of the television shows I watch with regularity that are still airing new episodes, very few if any are "dramas." Even a show like Anthony Bourdain's has to make allowances for humor, albeit of the sarcastic side that I am almost prenaturally good at and can appreciate.
It's a complicated thing, to be eager to be funny while acknowledging that a certain meanness in you joke might go off wrong.
Anyway, did I tell you the one about Newt Gingrich at a sex club?....
Saturday, April 21, 2012
The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down
I would say some words about the passing of Levon Helm, the drummer and most compelling vocal presence in The Band, but I'm saving those for a review I'm doing of his memoir from 1993, for Paste Magazine.
So there...
Blogger has a new look, apparently (not that I can tell it from looking at my blog, thankfully, but I can tell it now, as I'm trying to write this without cringing at the new layout too much). Change is the only constant, but sometimes websites seem to change just for the hell of it. I'm just saying, do we really need all the fancy bells and whistles?
I expect my account to be deleted without my knowledge in a fortnight...
This week (well, last weekend, as it were) marked the 100th anniversary of the sinking of Man's Ultimate Gift to Irony, the Titanic. This was an opportunity for James Cameron to re-release his film of the same name in 3-D, a trend that I'm not privy to because of my near-sightedness. Oh sure, you say to me, they make googles now that can accomodate glass-wearers. You might as well tell me to go ahead and get contacts, to be like everyone else. I don't wanna be like everyone else.
Plus, I'm clumsy...who's to say I start putting in a contact and gouge my eyeball out with an overly long fingernail?
Hyperbolic? Yes. Too bizarre to actually occur? I don't want to find out.
Anyway, getting used to this new layout as I type, maybe it's not so bad after all.
So there...
Blogger has a new look, apparently (not that I can tell it from looking at my blog, thankfully, but I can tell it now, as I'm trying to write this without cringing at the new layout too much). Change is the only constant, but sometimes websites seem to change just for the hell of it. I'm just saying, do we really need all the fancy bells and whistles?
I expect my account to be deleted without my knowledge in a fortnight...
This week (well, last weekend, as it were) marked the 100th anniversary of the sinking of Man's Ultimate Gift to Irony, the Titanic. This was an opportunity for James Cameron to re-release his film of the same name in 3-D, a trend that I'm not privy to because of my near-sightedness. Oh sure, you say to me, they make googles now that can accomodate glass-wearers. You might as well tell me to go ahead and get contacts, to be like everyone else. I don't wanna be like everyone else.
Plus, I'm clumsy...who's to say I start putting in a contact and gouge my eyeball out with an overly long fingernail?
Hyperbolic? Yes. Too bizarre to actually occur? I don't want to find out.
Anyway, getting used to this new layout as I type, maybe it's not so bad after all.
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