Waiting for Bigfoot

There are a certain minority of people in this country, a small but very vocal group, who continue to believe in something long after the rest of us have come around on the issue and see that, whatever our beliefs, times are changing. I'm speaking, of course, of the people who believe in Bigfoot (or Sasquatch, as the Native Americans never called him).

Last night, after a great HIMYM, I was bereft of tv-viewing options so I thought I'd check out Finding Bigfoot, which of course is all about not finding Bigfoot, no matter how hard you try. And these people that were trying were really putting their hearts into it. You have Matt Moneymaker (not sure if that's an alias), Bobo (pretty sure that is an alias), and a couple of other people who have devoted their lives to searching for an elusive creature whose proof of life has never been found. Let me say that again: they're looking for something that doesn't exist. Like unicorn enthusiasts or Obama-is-destroying-this-country conservatives, however, they persist in their way of belief.

I mock them, yes, but deep down I understand the appeal. As a young child weaned on Unsolved Mysteries and other "searching for stuff" TV shows, I have an enquiring mind, no matter how skeptical it can be when confronted with hard evidence. And there's nothing saying that, ten or twenty years from now, a Sasquatch or Loch Ness monster will be found alive (though the fact that we've never found fossils of either, and that the cited photographic evidence for both has been debunked). Stranger things have happened, and continue to happen. But somewhere beyond the border of believing and knowing, facts can get lost. And along with facts, your mind. These people left their minds behind some time ago.

But I have to admire their zeal, even if I question the pursuit to which they devote so much of their energy. It's the ultimate scientific find, if it ever comes to pass that Bigfoot does exist but just really, really values his privacy. It's like alien life being found on Mars, or a Republican who can win back Latino voters after all the anti-immigration talk of the past few election cycles. It will make news if it ever turns out that the Bigfoot hunters were right all along.

I envy people that love their jobs, that love what they do. I love to write, though I haven't gotten paid for it in a while (and even then, it wasn't much to live off of). So in that sense, I can't be too harsh on the Finding Bigfoot crew, no matter how much I snicker at the actions they undertake to find him, or the precise scientific jargon they employ to describe what is essentially a figment of their imagination. Sometimes the nuts are right...just probably not in this case.

So I guess, if this whole writing-for-a-living thing never quite pans out, I can set out for the areas of the country with the highest percentage of Sasquatch activity and track them down in the name of science. Though I do wonder if the cast of Finding Bigfoot aren't having a little fun at our expense...now there may be evidence of that, for sure. I mean, what grown man encourages people to refer to him as "Bobo"?

Whatever else, Finding Bigfoot is more plausible than any of those ghost-hunting shows. Granted, there could very well be supernatural things out there, I just don't think they'll respond to guys who dress like roadies for Justin Bieber...

She & Him, "Home"/Regina Spektor, "Us"

Oh yes it's ladies' night, and the feeling's right...

I think I first noticed Zooey Deschanel in the big-screen adaptation of Douglas Adams' Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, which a lot of true-blue Adams fans hated because it dramatically reinterpreted the whole premise of the radio show/novels upon which it was based (namely that it allowed for a love interest, as played by Deschanel). I was not truly aware of Hitchhiker's before the film, at least not enough to be offended. Besides, I got lost in Miss Deschanel's blue, blue eyes.

As it turns out, she's also a singer, and not in the way that most actresses "can also sing"; she actually sounds great when she's singing, and her band She & Him (a duo project with M. Ward) is credible in indie- and alternative-rock circles. At least they were the last time I worried about such things (maybe two or three years ago. I'm telling you, once you hit your thirties, indie-rock just passes you by. It's like the episode of South Park where each generation's favorite music sounds literally like shit to the previous or succeeding generation). I have so far acquired both of She & Him's albums (Volumes One and Two, helpfully titled) and look forward to any third entry in the discography as it becomes available.

What makes Zooey credible and fun to listen to is the fact that...well, I'm not sure what, but she's just so much into it that you can't help but get sucked in, even if you think her country leanings are a little cornball or that after a while, songs don't really resemble one another as visit the same territory sonically and lyrically. It's a matter of taste, however, and one of the songs I come back to is "Home," from their second album. It's a lyrically weird but ultimately satisfying song about that most elusive of human emotions, the need to love and be loved. The line about "I wanna be where your heart is home" is my favorite, I'm a sappy romantic at heart (my inability to actually make a relationship work with a real, living and breathing and complicated female nonwithstanding).

But first and foremost, Zooey is an actress, and a good one; in (500) Days of Summer, you can't stay mad at her even as she breaks Joseph Gordon-Levitt's heart. Who wouldn't fall in love with the character she plays (or the one that she plays on New Girl, her show on Fox)? Regina Spektor's beautiful "Us" is the opening-song credits, after a narrator has already warned us that "this is not a love story" (though the part that sticks with me is the line about sad British pop music and misreading The Graduate, both of which describe me in my early adulthood. I even have a Joy Division shirt like the one JGL wears later in the movie, of the "Love Will Tear Us Apart" sleeve). It captures perfectly the ecstasy of love, though with its placement in a film that is essentially about two people who find love but not with each other, it does seem like an odd choice. Perhaps "Love Stinks" would be more accurate in the sense of what happens in the film, but it wouldn't work with the sentiment that is conveyed: you have to risk getting hurt. That's a lesson I think we all shy away from time to time, letting ourselves think that someone else wouldn't see that about us which makes us lovable if we were vulnerable enough to show it. Hell, I still catch myself thinking like this sometimes, but I'm working on it.

Until I find my own Summer Finn or Jessica Day, I can always listen to the two songs here, or watch anything that Miss Deschanel is in (she's kind of my celebrity crush at the moment; we'd bond over the Smiths and bad Eighties romantic comedies, I think). Maybe then I'll find someone into whose heart I can make my home. Here's hoping...

Now I Can Afford Things

Last weekend, I was as giddy as a schoolgirl. This was brought on by a very important change in my fortunes: my tax money came due. Brother, I was gonna go through that like Elvis at a banana. peanut-butter, and bread stand.

Not really, of course: I got bills to pay, every month, and even after I pay them for one month, it's almost time for the next month's payments. I'd been living paycheck-to-paycheck since at least the end of January, when all sorts of things came due in addition to my usual bills. February was not a particularly good month for me.

But it ended on a couple of positive notes: my friend Sara found a job (awesome), and I got my tax money back without having to immediately spend it on car- or health-related stuff.

For now...

But I'm pretty good right now, I have to say, for the first time in a long time, at least in terms of finances. Yes, I know that I didn't get back a whole lot compared to other people (I doubt Donald Trump would wipe his nose with the amount of tax money I got back), but that's his problem, not mine. As these past couple of months have proven, having too little money can cause pain and misery. But having too much of it can also do so.

Before you accuse me of free-market socialism (if that's even a thing), let me explain: I know that the rich, for all that they can buy (private islands, presidential elections, yes-men who won't look askance at your bright orange spray-tan), can't buy happiness, at least not without the assistance of a needle, some coke spoons, or the silence of a hotel staff when the idea of inviting hookers to your room turns out to be a very bad idea. There are as many miserable rich people as there are poor, though their miserableness comes in better-fitting clothing. Envy of the rich can be as much a dead-end as devoting your life to doing as much meth as you can. The rich aren't any better than us, they can just afford to hide it better.

So I don't want to be rich, but I've had a pretty good taste of being poor and that's not appealing either. Basically, my philosophy is this: have enough to take care of bills and myself, but with some left over for shit that I don't need but want. How to go about achieving that? I haven't figured that out yet. Damn you, philosophy!

But I do know a few things: first, I want to get a laptop. Not a tablet, not a smartphone, but a laptop. I want to be able to write long pieces again for publication by reputable websites and magazines. I also want a laptop so that I can surf the internet at the local lib (they have free Wi-Fi). And I'd like to re-start my iTunes account, either with all the stuff I had (assuming it's not lost) or afresh with newer stuff (I've bought a few CDs since last June, there's a nice collection there waiting to assault my earbuds). That's it...oh, and any car issues that may come up, I want something in the bank so that I can handle it.

But otherwise I'm good. I realize that things will come up, and I will likely have to spend some of that tax money more than I might perhaps like. But keeping things in perspective, this allows me to pay my bills as close to time as possible (I still might try to stretch out some things here and there, depending on what comes up) and perhaps even have a life besides work and home (maybe, anyway. Fingers crossed). More than anything, for the first time in a long time I think I can handle shit-storms that may come my way, at least for now.

That is, until the Great Dragon Apocalypse of 2014...

Yeats Rolls

Sometimes, God gives you a wink...I was at a local Chinese buffet place Saturday, pretty good selection (it's telling that many such buffets offer a lot of stuff besides your usual Chinese-buffet mainstays like fried rice and General Tso's chicken; they're having to expand their range to accomodate all us foodies out here), when I looked at a sign for one of the items, yeast rolls. Only the way it was spelled was "yeats rolls."

Now, I love good puns based on the names of long-dead Anglo-Irish poets because I grew up loving Monty Python (once described as "a terrible waste of an OxBridge [Oxford and Cambridge, the two universities where most of the troupe went to college] education"). MP excelled at taking people you'd only hear about in history or literature classes and turning them into punchlines for their bizarre, absurdist humor. So when I saw "yeats rolls," I went to W.B. Yeats, the Irish poet whose work I'm passingly familiar with (I read some of his stuff in a poetry class I took at Clemson, where the professor was trying to tell us about all the rules in poetry. I don't like rules when I'm writing, so needless to say I won't be challenging Dylan Thomas' status as a poet anytime soon). Yeats exists in my mind as a slightly befuddled-looking old schoolteacher type, based on the photographs of him on collections of his works. Apparently he was a baker as well (not really, but come on...English majors, back me up on how funny this is! No, just me?).

If W.B. Yeats was responsible for the rolls, I wondered, did that mean that Lord Byron was the brains behind shrimp fried rice? Was John Keats too busy perfecting sesame chicken to take his TB medication? Did I have too much time on my hands to ponder these irrelevant and uttler baseless ideas?

Yes indeed, but give me credit: I didn't point out to the staff the error of their sign. I'm simply snickering about it now behind their backs (and not revealing the name of the place, as I'd like to go back. Did I mention how good their Yeats rolls are?).

Trevor Seigler's Day Off

Cue Ferris Bueller theme...

That's right, bitches, I'm taking a day off from my place of employment (name withheld because I remember what happened the last time I wrote about work online and, well, that doesn't merit a repeat performance, does it?). Why? Because I can.

The urge to take a day off during the work week has been building for a few weeks now, simply because (like laying out of school one day during your teen years) there are just so many things that you can do on a weekday other than be inside (albeit being paid to be inside, when you're talking employment). Without (again) revealing anything about where I work (though it is on my Facebook profile...so yeah), I can say that this time of year is really the optimal time to take a vacation day or two (though of course, the weather outside suggests usually that it's actually the worst time to take a vacation day. I mean, who wants to swim on the beach in February? Other than old people, and Jackie Mason. I have no idea if Mr. Mason does or not, I'm just glad to be free for a day and giddy and over-typing like a madman!). It's safe to say that I am not the only person who has taken advantage of said lean-time availability of days off, though I have no pressing concern that demands my presence. I simply wanted a day off.

With pay, of course.

Ideally, this day would be devoted to doing a lot of the things that I do on weekends: riding around and wasting gas because I need to get out of the house once in a while. Alas, my funds are low at this point in the week (bills, bills, and more bills) and while I'm waiting for my tax refund ship to come in, I'm trying to be better about my spending habits (such as "not having them"). So this is strictly a cheap-ass affair today, nothing that I can justify spending more than ten bucks on (this includes lunch. I hope for a home-cooked dinner as a favorite aunt of mine is back in town for the week, but such things are not preordained).

So why the day off, with low funds and no real "legit" reason? Because, barring holidays where I wasn't allowed to work (because we weren't open) I really haven't had a day off during the week since I went to New Orleans in August, and I felt like just one day out of the week would suffice to take me out of the cocoon that is everyday working week experience. I caught Ferris Bueller's Day Off on Comedy Central a few weeks back and (other than marveling at the damage age and marriage to Sarah Jessica Parker has done to Matthew Broderick over the years) I felt like dammit, I also deserve the chance to drive around Chicago on a bright summer day with Mia Sara and Alan Ruck. Or some reasonable facsimile thereof.

Because like the man says, sometimes you gotta take time to appreciate the things around you.

I just hope Ed Rooney is nowhere around, trying to buzzkill me.

Notorious B.I.G., "Big Poppa"

It's Valentine's Day today, and starting since about the time I walked from my car to work this morning, "Big Poppa" has been on-and-off stuck in my head today. I'm not sure why that is.

When Notorious BIG died in 1997, I can't say that I was a fan. It wasn't that I was actively against him; I just didn't really have any feelings towards him or his music. Much in the same way with Tupac Shakur (who preceded Biggie in death by about six months and is inexorably linked to him because of the identical ways they left this planet), I was shocked by the murder but not outwardly affected. I knew of him, of course, but it would take Puff Daddy (as he was known back then) to make Biggie's legacy apparent to me...by sampling the Police and putting out his own requiem for a friend.

"Big Poppa" really didn't come into my life until I caught a basic-cable screening of the Keanu Reeves vehicle Hard Ball, from 2001. You may be familiar with Reeves' constant ability to get work in big pictures even though he has the charisma of a wet piece of cardboard, but he's surprisingly good when you lower your expectations, and Hard Ball worked for me. I could believe that he was a white gambler who, in order to pay off some very bad men, took a job as coach for an inner-city baseball team of youngsters and learn something about himself in the process. Also, it was a slow afternoon, so I gave it a shot. All in all, I'd recommend it.

The pitcher for the team, a young kid with a fastball, only has confidence when he's got his headphones on and blasting Biggie's iconic song, the one he's probably most known for amongst non-rap fans. At first, I wondered about a kid that age listening to a profanity-laced track like "Big Poppa," but then I remembered that he lives in the projects of Chicago, where profanity is the least of his worries. I grew up in the rural area where Deliverance was filmed, so I can't speak to inner-city problems that I've never experienced (though I will say you don't want to be roaming the streets of Walhalla after seven...because everything but the gas stations is closed). As it turns out, gang violence inevitably spills over onto the team, and in a way that, as a casual viewer, had me close to weeping like a baby. Spoiler alert: the most adorable of the young teammates meets a tragic end.

So I went back to "Big Poppa," eventually getting it off iTunes, and it's something that I respond to far more than I'd have thought when it first came out. I can kinda see now, considering Biggie's personal history as a drug dealer who wanted to escape the very violence he chronicled and perhaps contributed to, that this "party anthem" is a desire for a life that is more than what he's known, and that the "grams I had to measure" represented the only way out for a long time. Guess what, kids? Not a lot of opportunities for inner-city youth that don't involve selling drugs or acting hard whenever someone from another neighborhood encroaches on your territory. Or so I've learned from rap songs and movies about the inner-city; I spent two days in New York in 1997, three in New Orleans last year, and I've been to Washington, DC twice during the Clinton adminstration. My experience sans art about the inner city is limited.

But the point I'd like to make (and I had one when I started, at least) is that, in the song, Biggie is trying to do something we'd all like to do this Valentine's day: get it on with a lovely lady. In that sense, there's nothing original there (personally, I leave it to the masters when I want "get it on" music: Marvin Gaye and Al Green). But there's a swagger that, while inherited from soul and the machismo of pre-feminism rock music, is made all Biggie's own. He's a smooth operator, saying all the things that the lady wants to hear, but he's also up-front that basically what he's looking for is a blow-job, more or less. If he weren't a big man (less a teddy bear than a grizzly at rest), it wouldn't work, or perhaps it would work too well (who can honestly listen to Chris Brown talk sweet nothings after his fists ran into Rihanna's face?). But laid down with a seductive groove, this paen to the material desires of the hip-hop entrepeneur (carnal and otherwise) is pretty damn good.

I think I've said it before, but a lot of the hip-hop that I respond to is from my past, the stuff that first broke the rap thing open in the late Eighties and early Nineties. I can enjoy songs from later on and even current songs (that one about the guy shopping at the thrift store? Priceless), but my love for the hip-hop I grew up with seems to be the winner. But I would throw "Big Poppa" up against any other song anyone else could suggest as something awesome that rewards multiple listens. Because no one else could pull off the following line: "If you got a gun up in your waist, please don't shoot up this place/Why?/'Cause I see some ladies tonight that should be having my baby, baby."

Poetry...

Colbert for Pope!

Just kidding...or am I?

February is my least-favorite month, because 1.) it's short, 2.) it comes right after January, which means that I'm still trying to catch up with that month's bills because I have additional things I have to pay, and usually work is a little slow this time of year, and 3.) it's the month that has my least favorite holiday...

President's Day.

Actually, Valentine's is the day I speak of, a mass-marketed, Hallmark-approved holiday in which one is supposed to go all out in the pursuit of some token that will let a special someone know that one is "in love" with them. And in my case, the offered token has never really led to the promised land of "Valentine's Day nookie" that I have often sought.

But I'm cool with that because (allow me to get sappy here) every day should be Valentine's Day. Not the cookie-cutter greeting-card romantic-comedy-starring-Jennifer-Aniston kind of holiday (I am firmly of Patton Oswalt's view that every romantic comedy should be called Who is Jennifer Anniston Gonna F*&K This Week?), but just set aside time every day to let people know that you care. Even if you have to fake it because you're related to them.

Anyway, I watched most of the Grammys for the first time since...well, since Arcade Fire won album of the year (2011?). It was nice to see CBS not screw up a major live event one week after the Fradulent Bowl in New Orleans got a thirty-minute delay due to someone not paying the Superdome's power bills. I think the 49ers got robbed, and I'm a Giants fan for pete's sake.

While I appreciate the clip of Adam Yauch in the "In Memoriam" roll, I do wish they'd taken a moment to dedicate a musical performance to the Beasties. He and Levon Helm were musical pioneers in their different fields, so it was nice to see the tribute to Levon from all those folks.

Anyway, February is almost over, my tax refund is in the mail, and barring a major health scare (you can only find out you have gallstones once) or car issues, I hope I can hold on to more of it than I have to spend for said issues (because something always comes up). And I hope my friend Sara finds a job soon. She's pretty awesome, potential employers who might be reading this.

And I hope you all have a magical Thanksgiving...Ramadan...whatever the hell holiday it is tomorrow.