I love movies, books, music, TV, good food, my wife, my cats, and my dog. (Not necessarily in that order.) I write about whatever's on my mind. For more, go here.
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Over at the Willamette Week, I examine "Generation Kill" and its emotional similarities to "The Wire."
P.S. I'm only in the third second season of "The Wire," so if anyone posts spoilers about later seasons they will be hunted down and thoroughly beaten. And I will whistle "Farmer in the Dell" all the while.
P.P.S. But it's great to see Ziggy again.
"Is She Really Going Out With Him?", Joe Jackson — I bought it just so I can wind up dating a beautiful woman, have her leave me, and then set this as the ringtone for whenever she wants to call and talk about the problems she's having with her new boyfriend.
"He'll Have to Go," Jim Reeves — This is a song that's been in my head since I was a kid, thanks to my dad. It's a sad drunk calling his girl from the bar and asking her to pretend they're still in love, and to send her new man away for just a minute so they can talk. It's great.
"Confessions, Pt. II," Usher — Hey, this time it's the guy that cheated! This song will always take me back to senior year of college, mainly/especially because a buddy threw it on a mix tape he made me for my journey to SoCal.
"Way Down in the Hole," The Blind Boys of Alabama — I bought the soundtrack to "The Wire" a couple days later at Amoeba, but I wanted this track just so I could set it as The Sis' ringtone, since she's one of the many who encouraged me to watch the show, and she's the one who bought me the first season. (And I'm not done with the show yet, so no spoilers.)
"Suds in the Bucket," Sara Evans — This is totally dumb, really slick pop-country, and I bought it because my roommate and I got hooked on the song when we realized we could watch the music video on demand via Time Warner, which we did for like three straight days. Plus she's cute.
When the Summers Lasted Long, Jon Nolan — I liked the guy when I heard him on my Old 97's Pandora channel, and the album was worth the $8 or whatever it shook out to be.
What do you know, it was a letdown. I don't know if anyone will ever do it better than Paul Feig.
Turning Japanese
[Willamette Week]
"Generation Kill"
[Willamette Week]
Juvenile, sophomoric, and completely hilarious.
me: the parttime erotica paginator just defended george lucas' computer-enhanced versions of the original Star Wars trilogy, saying they were "gorgeous" and full of things he couldn't do in 1977
i hate her so hard
Sis: oh wow
punch her
punch her now!
me: OK
i did it
she got upset
but i said you made me
Sis: ok
man, no person should ever defend those edits, or the prequels
me: exactly
EXACTLY
Jonathan Grubbs is making T-shirts.
I mean, I could give you the whole runaround about how struggling artists need support, and how he's got a kid on the way, and he's got that shrapnel from Nam — all true — but really, they're just fun shirts.
Just relentlessly great.
Also, The Sis sent me this earlier. She's great:
Over at the Willamette Week, I look at the number of game shows being remade from Japanese formats. This sketch, both in content and tone, turned out to be weirdly prophetic:
• He made his money in dirigibles.
• He wants to win by stirring up still-potent Southern anger over losing the Civil War.
• He has his suits hand-made by "the last trustworthy Indian."
• He won his wife in a poker game with Doc Holliday.
• He plans to publish his autobiography in serialized installments in the Saturday Evening Post.
• He will make purchases with gold bars, but would prefer to use bags of salt or livestock.
• He keeps trying to help Barack Obama escape to freedom on the Underground Railroad.
Thanks to Safari's damning habit of saving information entered into forms, specifically Google, I came across something pretty interesting at work recently: the complete Google searches of a former coworker, whose workstation I occasionally use because of recent expansions in my job description. The below list is an excerpt of those search records, namely the women he searched for at one time or another. If you cross-reference the different letters of the alphabet, you can see how the same searched item popped up several times with altered spellings. It's like a treasure map, only for softcore skin sites.
Anyway, three quick points and the lesson is yours:
(1) If you're gonna Google chicks, wait to do it at home.
(2) If you must Google chicks at work, at least clear the history and search forms in your browser.
(3) If you Google chicks at work and don't do step (2), you're pretty much asking for trouble, especially if a guy like me uses your computer next. What can I say, I'm kind of a dick every now and then. (However, I have no plans to out him, here or anywhere, now or ever. So don't bother asking who it was. What can I say, I'm also lenient.)
The list is after the jump.
Continue reading "I Hope He Had One Of Those Wrist-Wrests In Front Of His Keyboard" »
Where did you go?
My friends tell me that summer
started long ago. But it hasn't.
You and I both know that
summer doesn't begin until you decide to
return to our pool.
Sure, when I say "our," I mean
"belonging to the entire apartment complex, even the old ladies who shouldn't go swimming that often or wear sleeveless T-shirts, which is just unsettling."
But my backdoor opens onto a small worthless patio
that then opens onto the pool
and that's where you always used to be:
Laying out on summer afternoons,
swimming in the valley's own heat,
wearing that purple two-piece forged from
God's own designs.
Where did you go?
We — my roommate and I — we think you used to live
with Jorge, this guy we knew through a friend.
We're pretty sure you two were roommates in a
nonsexual way. Or at least that's what we told ourselves.
Not that it mattered.
But you were still part and parcel of the summers here,
a young and pleasing sign of the changing seasons,
a memory from our first real days here.
We haven't seen you all year, and we realize that
you probably moved out.
But baby, you can always come back home.
Old 97's gave an in-store concert at Amoeba Records a couple weeks ago. This is easily the in-store that's been most up my alley, which is why it hurts even more that I had to miss it. (On the night in question, I was getting bombed and exploring Manhattan.) But a friend of mine attended the show and got the band to sign a consolation prize for me. I've never gotten something so cool for not showing up:
Because the sun is shining and summer is made for power pop:
"We're the Same," Matthew Sweet:
"Mexican Wine," Fountains of Wayne:
"The critic is the only independent source of information. The rest is advertising."
— Pauline Kael
"Film lovers are sick people."
— Francois Truffaut
"Let others praise ancient times, I am glad I was born in these."
— Ovid
