Willie's Off-Brand Web Journal

How to steal fancy clothes.

Wed, 08 Jul 2009 02:06:52 GMT

I've had a nice week or so. You are going to sit there and hear about it.

Thanks to Juli's generosity, Jess and I got free tickets to see Dean & Britta at The Power Center last Thursday, performing songs to accompany 13 of Andy Warhol's "Screen Tests." I'll copy the summary from the evening's program: "Andy Warhol's Screen Tests, which number approximately 500, are revealing portraits of hundreds of different individuals, shot between 1964 and 1966. The subjects--both famous and anonymous--were visitors to his studio, The Factory. They were asked to pose, lit with a strong keylight, and filmed by Warhol with his stationary 16mm Bolex camera on silent, black and white, 100-foot rolls of film. Each screen test lasted only as long as the roll of film. The resulting 2 3/4-minute films were projected in slow motion so that each lasted four minutes."

The films themselves were interesting studies of the human face, projected huge and flat on a screen, with a tone that varied according to the subjects' attitude. Ann Buchanan defiantly refused to blink for the entire 2:45 film, even as tears rolled down cheeks pulled taut over a determinedly clenched jaw. Only half of 17-year-old model International Velvet's face was lit, with an additional quarter of it hidden behind a daunting curtain of dark bangs beneath which one eye stared transfixingly forward. Dennis Hopper, on the other hand, had clearly never attempted to sit still for as long as the length of 100 feet of film in his entire life, and was jittery even at 16 frames per second. I wasn't always entirely sure what Warhol would have me take from the individual films--am I seeing proto-punk antiestablishment playfulness from Ingrid Superstar or merely the effects of cocaine?--but I also suspect that I wasn't supposed to quite put my finger on it in the first place. Sometimes it's a deep criticism of the superficiality of celebrity, and sometimes it's just fun to watch a young Lou Reed being a mannered smartass by swigging from a bottle that he takes pains to display is labeled "COKE."

The four-minute songs Dean & Britta (accompanied by Matt Sumrow, of the Comas' touring band, and Lee Waters, who's toured with Camera Obscura and The Essex Green) performed on the stage below these films were pretty thoroughly gorgeous. They ran the gamut from minimal electronic drones to firebrand Velvet Underground noise to, as Jess suggested, pop that could have easily segued (but mercifully did not) into "Walking on Sunshine," but they all sustained a vibe of heady, contemplative cool. As far as I can tell, the studio versions of their songs are available only on the DVD of the Warhol Screen Tests and haven't been released in CD or MP3 form. It's kind of a bummer, because some of those songs beg to be on night-driving mixes in cars zipping all across the land. It was a fantastic show.

On some songs, Britta Phillips was playing a MicroKorg of the sort I'd been attempting to win on eBay for the past month. Luckily, I finally procured one on Friday, so it's probably for the best that I didn't bum-rush the stage and take hers.

On Friday, Sarah Palin gave me the best early birthday gift a boy could ask for: a public meltdown that has all the indications of stretching on for quite some time. Now, during election season, I naturally found Palin completely infuriating because of the very real possibility that this dangerously stupid hypocrite and liar could be what some commentator (probably Ken Layne, though I can't find the quote) described as "one Ambien overdose away from the presidency." Ever since this nation sidestepped that landmine, though, I've found Ms. Palin's public antics increasingly hilarious, as a personification of the GOP's sorely deserved implosion. I can't get enough of her nonsense. So her babbly resignation speech--clearly hastily slapped together, in a manner that even hardline Republicans like Ed Rollins described as weird, and with even her sympathetically deranged attack dog Meg Stapleton thousands of miles away--put a spring in my step that will last through winter.

The past few days have seen plenty of commentary (or, you know, the journalistic equivalent of Dana Carvey's John McLaughlin impression) attempting to unravel what the hell happened there, with sporadic interjections from Palin herself that serve only to dig her hole deeper, so I'm not going to try to rehash what others have more astutely said. However, there was one bit of her dazed rambling that struck me as such a weird leap of logic that it made my head spin, and yet I haven't seen anyone mention it in their analyses. Check out the following paragraph from her speech (copied verbatim from the official Alaska Governor's Office transcript, so all creative punctuation is hers):

And so as I thought about this announcement that I wouldn't run for re-election and what it means for Alaska, I thought about how much fun some governors have as lame ducks... travel around the state, to the Lower 48 (maybe), overseas on international trade - as so many politicians do. And then I thought - that's what's wrong - many just accept that lame duck status, hit the road, draw the paycheck, and "milk it". I'm not putting Alaska through that - I promised efficiencies and effectiveness! ? That's not how I am wired.

Maybe no one has specifically pointed this out because it's so obvious and there are plenty of other monkeyfuck crazy things in that speech to discuss at length, but... it sounds to me like she has never considered that "milking it" is not the only road that's available to a lame duck official. Myself, I'd think it would be a blessing for a dedicated elected official with nearly half a term ahead of her to be free from the distractions and worries of a reelection campaign, as she could then use that time to focus exclusively on racking up those "efficiencies and effectiveness!?" that she'd promised. But that's not how she's wired.

Let's look at it this way. First off, I think everyone agrees that she is certainly within her rights not to seek reelection if she chooses not to for any reason whatsoever. Now, if, as she asks us to do, we take her at her word--or those bits of her word that are intelligible and not demonstrably false--for argument's sake, and assume that she's not bailing (a) as part of some truly incomprehensible strategy that she thinks will better position her for a 2012 presidential run, (b) in the hopes of landing a FOX News gig that will feed her addiction to the spotlight and let her run her mouth unfettered by cumbersome requirements of "knowledge" or backing her words up with action, or (c) in preemptory anticipation of some imminent scandal (or as a condition for someone keeping mum on said scandal) that she would have us think she could legally gag us from speculating upon, I think that leaves one conclusion: her resignation is a tacit admission that popularity--and attendant electoral victory--is her only motivation for attempting to accomplish anything.

Whatever else you'd care to say about her--and you could say lots of mean things and I would cackle along with you--she is a fighter. There was nary a point made against her during the 2008 campaign that did not prompt her to come out swinging and claiming those points were invalid, whether she was claiming media sexism, condescension on the part of Katie Couric, below-the-belt attacks on the children she was toting along as props, whatever. She's not brainy, but she's a scrapper. And she's continued to evince that ill-considered lust for battle long after the "real America" that she claimed to represent issued her a resounding "NO" last November. For instance, she recently won something of a Pyrrhic victory against David Letterman in that she got an apology out of him even though it only ratcheted up her reputation as someone who is either an embarrassing, shrill opportunist or a genuinely dense lunatic. (Or both.) She loves the feeling that she's conquered something, even if that means something as unsportsmanlike--not to mention pathologically cruel--as shooting wolves from planes.

So if the pull of another 18 months in office, during which she could push whatever agenda or effect whatever change she believed in her ostensibly divinely-guided heart was right, without fear of reprisal from a potentially disillusioned electorate who may not Get It, wasn't enough to convince her to finish the term of office she'd committed to when she ran for it without a gun to her head... clearly her motivation for action lies solely in the thought that it might lead to some personal victory. Some check mark for the "W" column, that doesn't signify accomplishments, but says, "I defeated Thus-and-So." Absent that chance to raise her arms triumphantly above her head [tasteless McCain joke redacted] as they slip a medal 'round her neck as the 2010 gubernatorial champion, she couldn't care less about what she does or doesn't accomplish in the remainder of her term. Lame duck status holds no trophy in it for her, regardless of what other opportunities it may present. So may as well opt out of it.

Personally, I'm holding out hope for a scandal because my schadenfreude knows no bounds, but if she's breaking with tradition and telling the truth, that's my reading. You?

Anyway, my actual birthday was Sunday, and my dad took me to see Moon, starring Sam Rockwell and directed by Duncan Jones (David Bowie's kid!), at the Main Art Theatre in Royal Oak. Rockwell plays Sam Bell, the sole worker on a lunar mining base who, coming up on the end of his three-year contract, starts hallucinating in a way that causes himself injury, which in turn causes far bigger problems of identity for him. I really liked it a lot. (THE VAGUEST OF SPOILER-ISH MATERIAL AHEAD) I agree with some of the criticism I've read that says the third act would've benefitted from some sort of a tense setpiece as opposed to the existing linear wrap-up that, though emotionally satisfying and well earned, feels somewhat anticlimactic. But part of what impressed me most about Moon was that it didn't overreach. It's a small film with a very small and talented cast (the only notable non-Sam Bell character in the film is Gerty, a computer voiced by Kevin Spacey whose smiley-face palliatives suggest a Malibu Stacey take on HAL 9000), confined mostly to a small set, with small narrative ambitions that Jones knows he can knock out of the park. I'd much rather watch a film like Moon, which is certainly not stingy with clever revelations but which wisely limits its scope to twists it knows it can sustain, than something like, say, Arlington Road, which throws in implausible left turns in the hopes that the audience's adrenaline rush will cover the plot holes. I suppose it's ultimately a little safer than it could've been, but it still feels like a complete film, and there's a certain backward audaciousness in an indie film like this refusing to go off the rails in a way that would negate the world it spent 90 minutes building. I definitely recommend it.

On the ride home, Dad and I discussed the movie and filled in holes in each other's theories about what we were supposed to infer from certain scenes. I was actually very proud of Dad, because there are moments in the film that are fairly jarring--not in a shock-cut way, but in a disorienting way where you're clearly missing vital pieces of the puzzle. And Dad has, over the years, developed a deserved reputation for interrupting movies with questions about what's happening, in the Homer Simpson style of "Who's that guy? What'd that guy say when I said, 'Who's that guy?'" I vividly remember having to pause The Brady Bunch Movie as Mom, T-Bone, and I attempted to explain the plot intricacies to Dad.

So the fact that Dad not only followed along with Moon, patiently awaiting answers that he realized would be forthcoming but not immediately, but spent chunks of the film angrily muttering, "Just be patient!" under his breath at the women sitting behind us who were asking each other about each successive shot, made me feel very pleased that I'd finally prevailed upon the old man not to demand instant, straightforward gratification from his movies. That was also a fine birthday present.

So basically, this most recent checkpoint on my inexorable march towards the grave was pretty boss. Thanks to all who participated.

CURRENT MUSIC: Ambivalence Avenue by Bibio.
CURRENT MOOD: Pretty okay!
CURRENT FAVORITE PUBLISHER'S DESCRIPTION OF A BOOK: Zone Press, on Arvin Short's Reckoning: "For three young boys, an innocent campout at some caves is disrupted by an escaped murderer hiding out in their favorite summer getaway!." (Hat tip to Kerri.)

Let us speak of things.

Mon, 22 Jun 2009 22:49:17 GMT

Progressive just mailed Bev a new insurance card for me to keep in my car. So Bev, in turn, mailed it to me, buried amid a package of other goodies. The rest of the contents were as follows:

·One (1) blue baseball shirt that she and I both like, so we take turns wearing it. Guess it's my turn!

·One (1) Biscoff brand cookie-style food treat which is emblazoned with the Delta Airlines logo. [UPDATE: I asked Bev about this, and she giggled and triumphantly exclaimed, "Isn't it disappointing?!"]

·One (1) Ziploc bag containing a Mr. Potato Head-style SpongeBob SquarePants osteology and assorted whimsical ornaments that can be crammed into his various holes.

·A length of wallpaper border depicting adorable cartoon ducklings, frogs, and fish that apparently is no longer tacked up to serve as a decorative dado rail in our house's hallway.

·Two (2) pairs of socks with penguins on them.

·One (1) toy ice cream cone with a release lever built into the side that will, when pressed, send the foam scoop rocketing off into someone's nose.

·An article clipped from the May issue of the Working Waterfront entitled "Maine granite graces Yankee Stadium." At first I thought she sent this to me because the article is written by Kris Osgood, and she thought it was funny to imagine the Red Wings' homophonically named goalie as a journalist for a tiny Maine paper. Then I realized that the article focuses on events taking place on Maine's tiny (tee hee) Crotch Island, and it was just my delicate bride's sophisticated sense of humor at play.

·One (1) quasi-educational pamphlet entitled "Always Changing: Puberty and Stuff" published by Proctor & Gamble as part of their "About You Fifth Grade School Program" for irresponsibly lazy school districts. The pamphlet is overflowing (tee hee) with Always and Tampax branding, along with questionable definitions like "Puberty means when you get older and you start finding out more about your body and how it's changing."

·One (1) package of Shock-a-Lots brand chocolate-covered coffee beans, which will be consumed in a single mouthful tomorrow morning.

·Five (5) photos taken on our recent trip to Florida: two (2) of a chair in our Homosassa Springs hotel room, one (1) of me convalescing in that same hotel room, and two (2) that appear to be of our rental car's window.

·One (1) wallet-sized booklet of 146 Easter-themed stickers.

·One (1) "original Du-Rag with long-tie" hair kerchief, distributed by Nu Golden Products, whose website is still under construction. The particular style Bev sent me is dubbed "The Challenger," which put me in mind of the hilarious model names from the old Cock Ring Warehouse commercial.

·One (1) piece of looseleaf paper on which is written (in pen), "Hey Michelle, guess who sat at your desk?? I think you need to sharpen your pencil pretty soon! Have a great Tuesday--Pay attention! Love you, Mom." On the reverse is a drawing of a spider and some math problems.

·One (1) awesome Burger King kid's meal toy. It's Gary from SpongeBob! And if you roll him backwards to rev him up, he will quickly scuttle across your desk or floor!

·The May 2009 issue of Bev's employee newsletter. I haven't a clue why Bev sent me this, but it's amusing. The banner headline reads, "Board of directors holds April meeting," and is underlaid with ominous clip art of a suit-clad Reservoir Dogs silhouette using a pen to point at an outlying spike in an otherwise downtrending line graph. There's also a random fact box that purports to be full of lawnmower safety tips but which hews closer to rhetorical, Oblique Strategies-style questions like, "Do you want to vary the cutting height of the grass during the growing season? Consider the ease with which you can adjust the height."

·One (1) large plastic egg full of tiny woodcarvings of cheerful woodland pals.

CURRENT MUSIC: Happy Birthday! by Modeselektor.
CURRENT MOOD: In love with my weird, weird wife.
CURRENT FAVORITE ABSURD FACTOID FROM IRAN: The Guardian notes, "Kamran Daneshjou, the head of the ministry's election commission, has attributed the reported 141% [voter] participation in the town of Taft to the good weather in Yazd province, where the town is situated."

Ugh, a superficial and ignorant parroting of articles I halfway understand.

Wed, 17 Jun 2009 12:49:05 GMT

(I wrote this last night but was too tired to post it. Some parts may already be out of date, for all I know, but I hardly think anyone is relying on me for hot-off-the-presses Middle Eastern news. Also, I wrote most of it while watching the synapse-numbing reality show Hitched or Ditched, so I do not warrant the accuracy of anything that follows.)

I have quickly become a bloodshot-eyed obsessive over the popular uprising in Iran following the questionable (to say the least) official results of last Friday's election, which declared controversial Holocaust-denier Mahmoud Ahmadinejad the winner by a large margin, and which were suspiciously certified by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei far in advance of when election rules dictated they could/should be. What's particularly noteworthy is that the hundreds of thousands of Iranian people who have taken to the streets in defiance of the regime's commands are doing so not because they're mad that their candidate lost or that a candidate they dislike had won, but because they want the election to be won or lost democratically, with a simple counting of the votes, and that was denied them in favor of what has been described essentially as a coup. One which the people are rightly and fervently rejecting, instead demanding a new election. Khamenei's forces have been attempting to quell the protests via propaganda, force, and a flimsy attempt at mollification which held out the unappetizing pledge of a partial recount (to be performed by Khamenei's own far-from-neutral Guardian Council, no less), and all thus far have failed, as a groundswell of support for the democratic rights of the Iranians has poured in seemingly from all corners of the globe and, here in America, across the political spectrum.

The big story-within-the-story, and one on which I feel marginally less thoroughly unqualified to offer my thoughts than I am on international politics themselves (since, in the absence of any firsthand geopolitical expertise, my reactions tend to be as much to news stories as to events themselves, and as such aren't going to be particularly nuanced or original), is the way the online community--and soundbite mechanism Twitter in particular--has become the clearinghouse for information within the Iranian people's ranks. Simultaneously, Twitter has become many Americans' primary source of information on this topic following a period of irresponsible silence or understatement from traditional media outlets, television news bureaus being the worst offenders. (While obviously, no one expected or indeed ever expects anything substantial from FOX News, CNN has, by all accounts, been largely ignoring the uprising in favor of lavishing more attention on Sarah Palin and her pretend revulsion with David Letterman. Though Larry King, via his predictably lunatic Twitter account, pledges "tonight we'll talk Iran," he has spent the last few days largely concerned with the Jonas Brothers.)

When, on the day before the election, the Khamenei regime brought the hammer down on all non-official methods of communication in Iran--jamming non-state-run news stations like BBC Persia, shutting down mobile phone services, and blocking access to websites through which it was thought opponents might try to coordinate or disseminate information--determined and tech-savvy protesters turned to Twitter. Their access has been spotty over the last few days, but due to clever exploitation of whatever blessed loophole there seems to be in the Iranian government's control of the networks, firsthand messages from opposition supporters have been getting through. To one another and to us. Many of the Ayatollah's opponents used Twitter to spread the word amongst themselves about imminent marches and demonstrations, as well as to issue warnings about potential danger spots. Some uploaded photos and videos of what they were seeing, events both inspirational and harrowing, for the world to see. Some dissidents asked the world to form a united front and help them crash the Iranian government's propaganda websites through widespread denial-of-service attacks.

{Remarks on the latter: Some have expressed concern about the perceived hypocrisy of decrying the Iranian government's media blackout while working to silence its communications, which is a point of view I understand and respect. While I'm generally not an "eye for an eye" or "two wrongs make a right" type of guy, I personally feel, however, that it's a legitimate form of nonviolent protest to retaliate in kind against those who stifle the voices of those who disagree with them, until the oppressing party relents. I admittedly couldn't make a cogent logical case for it, but I feel in my gut that it's okay for individuals worldwide to peacefully yet forcefully give a corrupt government a taste of its own medicine as far as freedom of speech is concerned. This isn't a great analogy, but if you had a son who hid his younger sibling's favorite toy just to be a dick, you'd be well within your rights as the caretaker for both of them to forbid the older kid from playing with his favorite toy until the hidden item is returned. I guess you could accuse such a parent of hypocrisy, but in my view, that parent would be bringing pressure to bear not just to pragmatically right a wrong, but to make this a teaching moment and both instill in the older child that there are consequences for being a crappy kid and maybe a bit to show him how it feels to have something he likes taken away. Not for revenge, but to help develop empathy. And to overextend that metaphor, we should all be each other's caretakers on this ridiculous planet, and even though we should always act from a place of love and compassion, sometimes it's necessary to use our collective might to push back against someone who is behaving as they shouldn't.

{That's just my opinion, and furthermore, it's a moot point because you shouldn't participate in the denial-of-service attacks anyway due to the danger that they might further limit what little bandwidth the Iranian people have available to them. And if you do participate in the attacks before you realize that you could be harming those you intend to help, you run the risk of singlehandedly disrupting Internet access for the entire Math Reviews building and you will arrive at work the following morning to discover an irritated e-mail from the systems guy telling you not to do that again. I AM SPEAKING ENTIRELY HYPOTHETICALLY.}

At any rate, the flurry of information on Twitter has prompted more than one observer to declare that the Web 2.0 model has finally transcended not only the need for the mainstream/traditional media, but for any sort of journalist middlemen selectively framing information for us. ("The revolution will be Tweeted" is an unfortunate phrase I've seen quite a few times, which is a single rung up on the Headline Wit Ladder from "Iran, Iran so far away.") This strikes me as kind of dumb. Twitter's accessibility and ease of use have certainly revealed an unexpected utility in the midst of a crisis, but once proper channels of communication are restored in Iran, Twitter will resume being an amusingly silly social networking site and a delivery service for Meghan McCain's bellicose sense of entitlement. (As I write this, three of the top ten discussion topics on Twitter are indeed about the Iran situation, but two others are about the iPhone, one is a meme entitled "#haveyouever," and much discussion is apparently being devoted to Weird Al and "SOulja Boy" [sic].) As it stands, Twitter's vaunted and briefly indispensable #IranElection feed has, in the space of a day, become all but unreadable not because of Iranian government intervention but due to the white noise of well-meaning individuals who crowd out important new information with reposts of stories that broke hours ago and pointless pleas for Google to change its homepage colors to green in solidarity. There's no quality control.

Thankfully, some actual reporters who know how to do actual reporting and savvily synthesize information caught onto the story early, were thus able to identify the credible Tweesters, and have broadcast these eyewitness accounts far and wide while supplementing the 140-character missives with original research to make sense of it all. Both The Guardian and The New York Times have been doing an excellent job pulling together new facts and analysis as each becomes available. For those who are understandably more desperate for quantity of information than for pieces that can necessarily be assembled into a logical whole, but who still understand the necessity for some sort of contextual filter, Andrew Sullivan has been mightily impressive (even if his clear personal concern with these events has led him to be overly credulous) with the sheer volume of work he's done over the last couple days. I've also been very interested in Spencer Ackerman's posts, which focus largely on well-thought-out explanations of the line America--Obama, in particular--has had to walk in official reaction to the uprising (and why outright condemning the election results would be disastrous for those we'd ostensibly be supporting).

Of course the important thing right now is that peaceful stability returns to Iran in a way that is dictated by the will of its people. What the larger ramifications of a new elected (or even re-elected, unsavory as the thought might be to us) leadership might be, for Iran and the world, can be figured out, debated, and dealt with in time. The sustainability of social networking sites as tools for news distribution and political organization is of zero significance. At the moment, all that matters is that there is a nation full of people hungry for the democracy they were promised and, increasingly, for the reform of a system whose pretense to their common good is rapidly disintegrating. I don't feel like there's any meaningful way I can offer my support to them--this entire post may as well read, "Boy, Persepolis really made me think," for all the practical good it does--but I hope the fact that this information was able to get to me at all, in spite of the Ayatollah's best efforts, is somehow indicative of a tide that is turning in favor of human rights.

CURRENT MOOD: Populist and most likely naive.

There is Nothing Wrong with Hating Rock Critics

Sun, 14 Jun 2009 21:04:47 GMT

Once again I have failed to update for ludicrous amounts of time, so it's another accursed catch-all post that covers a month and a half.

In early May, Bev came to visit for a long weekend, and though I'm sure you don't need a complete rundown of all the TV we watched, I do want to note for posterity that we watched a fabulous episode of A&E's Paranormal State in which psychic Chip Coffey wore ping-pong ball halves on his eyes while channeling a violent spirit from a previous episode who was spoiling for a rematch. Sweeps month, you are a sarcophagus of riches delivered to my living room thrice yearly.

The night before Bev had to leave, Toad the Wet Sprocket were playing a nostalgia show at The Ark that we attended. It was fun! At one point, the band asked whether anyone present knew the female spoken-word part from "Butterflies" who could accompany them during that song. Bev totally has that song memorized but felt too shy to take the stage, and deferred to some chick who completely fucked up all the words, and whose performance was uncharitably critiqued into my ear for the entire song, as Bev recited the correct lyrics.

Shortly thereafter, Glen Phillips noted that the concert was being held on the fortieth anniversary of the Kent State Massacre: "Not that that's rad, obviously, but we'll give a free T-shirt to anyone who can answer the following: What is the connecting thread between the Kent State Massacre, the Heavy Metal movie soundtrack, and the Rugrats theme song?"

"Mark Mothersbaugh!" I immediately yelled because my every blood cell is capped with a Devo Energy Dome.

However, my yelly voice is evidently still too quiet to be heard in a silent indie-folk club, because the prize was awarded to some schmoe who answered about ten seconds after me, while I explained the history of Devo to some guy sitting next to me. I am timid.

So basically, between the two of us, my wife and I had two opportunities to make the Toad the Wet Sprocket show personally meaningful that we blew. Luckily, it was a great concert regardless. The band was fully enthusiastic while running through early-'90s singles like "Whatever I Fear" and "Something's Always Wrong," just as they were pulling out fan favorites like "Nightengale Song" and "Windmills." They seemed to feel freed by the fact that they didn't have any new material to promote, but were rather just having a good time running through the songs they knew we were there to hear, even though they themselves have played them hundreds of times. Just an evening of casual fun for all involved.

We returned home and watched some special on A&E in which psychic Chip Coffey helped child psychics to confront the spirits that were bothering them. Remember when A&E used to be the fancypants highbrow cable channel?

The next morning, a few hours before her flight home, Bev prevailed upon me to go see the new Hugh Jackman film, Xtreme Heroes: The Birth of a Wolverine. Evidently, when Adam Baldwin isn't around, Hugh Jackman's prominently displayed arms will do nicely for Bev's purposes, and that's pretty much the only front on which Wolverine doesn't disappoint. It's an abysmal film. Granted, I generally dislike superhero movies to begin with, but this one establishes a new low bar for goofy ineptitude, from a "comic relief" boxing scene in which Jackman gets pounded by a man wearing a fat suit that makes Mike Myers's Fat Bastard character look like a dry bon mot to a nonsensical finale whose apparent inclusion in the movie's highly publicized series of reshoots (evidenced onscreen by Jackman's suddenly-far-shorter hair) did nothing to stop the story from flailing to a wholly unsatisfying non-ending.

Hopefully I will get at least one more Bev fix before I return to Maine in August. She energizes me.

* * * * *

A week or two after that, I drove to Toronto for a night, as Amanda and Sean had invited me to go see The Tragically Hip at Massey Hall. The ride itself was nice, and Jess had given me some CDs for the journey (featuring such international-traveling classics as Charmer's "Mesozoic Mind" and The Pointer Sisters' "Pinball Counting Song"), so I felt like I got to Sean and Amanda's apartment in no time. There was a poster for the DVD release of Jim Carrey's Yes Man hanging in the window of their building's downstairs convenience store. It was from that poster that I learned that the French translation of Yes Man is Monsieur Oui. I like that much better.

Amanda and Sean had just returned from a vacation to Zanzibar, and they had lots of fun stories and goodies to share, while we all worked on assembling an IKEA DVD rack. Sean showed me the bootleg DVD of Lost's third season that they'd purchased on their trip, packaged in a wonderful plastic slipcase that featured a fractured-English bluff of a copyright notice (which fearsomely prohibited not only "selling and relling" but "pubic performance") as well as an advertisement for another DVD entitled People & Animals: The Crazy Story.

We geared up for the show with dinner and grin-inducingly inexpensive drinks at Fran's Restaurant, and then buzzily toddled around a nearby Indigo bookstore. Amanda laughingly told me the only thing I believe I will ever need to know about Twilight, which is that the vampires, when exposed to sunlight, sparkle. They sparkle like a slumber party invitation written in glitter pen! You know, I wouldn't have thought that the stock "woe is me" vampire character could get more annoyingly asinine and teen-girl-fantasy-ish than when Boreanaz irritated the hell out of me on Buffy, but there you go, I guess.

Massey Hall is a gorgeous old theater right downtown, and it was completely packed for the concert. I'd been warned that there would be large fratboy contingent, but they were relatively polite Canadian fratboys whose harmless rowdiness contributed to the otherwise-diverse crowd's buoyant energy, with everyone unified in devotion to these quintessential Canadian musicians. I've commented to friends that it felt the way I'd imagine seeing Bruce Springsteen in New Jersey would feel: everyone seemed spellbound by an artist who had the ability to bring them together--not in Beatlemania-style one-way hero-worship, but in mutual respect for their common identity and humanity. It was very cool. Any time the band left the stage or even lingered momentarily between songs, the audience would fanatically begin chanting, "HIP! HIP! HIP!" (During the lengthy wait for an encore, I thought it would've been funny if the crowd's inflection changed en masse to a plaintive "HIP? HIP? HIP?" It didn't.)

I'm not hugely familiar with The Tragically Hip, though I've liked most of their stuff that I've heard. My hosts played the Yer Favourites compilation for me as a primer beforehand, but during the show, I think I recognized "Poets" and... that may have been it. That was okay, though, because the music was anthemic, propulsive, and loud enough to be satisfying regardless of whether I could predict the hooks. Gordon Downie pranced and stomped around the stage throughout the night, combining Michael Stipe's campy swagger with Peter Garrett's militaristic bravado, to compare Downie to two other iconic, bald frontmen. His schtick--at least for this evening--was to demand a handkerchief from a bottomless backstage supply, wave it imperiously around for awhile, mop the sweat from his glistening dome, and then toss it to some lucky fan before repeating the process. Kind of icky, but pretty funny too. And a wonderful show all around, for which I must thank Amanda and Sean to the best of my shriveled heart's ability.

As is always the case whenever I leave Toronto, I wish I'd had more time to spend in Toronto. (Particularly after reentering the United States, where I spent most of the ride back to Ann Arbor grumbling arguably indefensible comparisons like, "What does Canada have? Awesome street artists. What do we have? Smug little border guard turds who detain me for two hours while they search my car for no reason. Canada has Guy Maddin and single-payer health care. The United States has a dumbass credit card company who'll apparently suspend my account because it doesn't seem reasonable to them that someone who's spent the past 24 years living in border states might use his card at a gas station in Ontario...")

* * * * *

Chief among several things I've recently developed a curious fascination with (or a very close second to the hilarious, deluded tenacity of the Obama Birthers) are "let's play" videos on YouTube. They're pointless clips in which you watch guys--and invariably, they are guys--play old video games and provide audio commentary as they go. The players aren't attempting to complete the games in record time, or even necessarily all that competently, but if I need something to distract me while eating dinner, there can be a comforting familiarity in watching someone muddle his way through Metroid while complaining about his work schedule.

I have no idea whether it would be fun for anyone else I know to passively watch people play video games as opposed to playing the games themselves (or, say, going outdoors), but when T-Bone and I were growing up, that was pretty much the dynamic. Not long after our acquisition of an NES, which T-Bone instantly mastered, I accepted my comedically poor reflexes and fell into the role of "coach," watching him play from the couch, offering strategic assistance when applicable or merely making encouraging noises to assert some sort of participation in the process. I doubt I actually contributed anything to his impressive catalogue of conquered cartridges, but I think he at least enjoyed having an audience. By college, that arrangement had come to feel so becalming that I would frequently find it easier to study if I were sitting in the room while T-Bone was yelling at his Madden roster. I generally don't care about video games at all, but being near someone playing titles with which I'm familiar still has the same relaxing, vaguely soporific effect on me as placing a ticking clock next to a newborn puppy. Sadly, I have yet to come across a "let's play" video that's funny or insightful enough to live up to the format's potential, so I suspect my attraction to these things will quickly pass. However, I was completely charmed by purplegoomba64's Super Mario Bros. 3 series, in which two brothers--who sweetly refer to each other as "Mario" and "Luigi" throughout--share an evening collaborating to complete every stage of the game, with much amiable fraternal teasing and refreshingly innocent chatting with the characters themselves.

* * * * *

Finally, I'd like to note that, plus or minus a month or two, this is the tenth anniversary of The Disclaimer Music Review Archive. Traditionally speaking, this means you are to send me gifts made of tin or aluminum. (I would like to note that a MicroKorg likely has some tin or aluminum components, per my malleable understanding of chemistry-or-whatever.) I'm feeling nostalgic and self-indulgent enough to want to talk about it for a little bit.

Though I haven't written a record review since last November, and the updates were sporadic for a few years before that, I by no means consider the DMRA defunct. For one thing, it's still there for anyone who wants to look at it, and I'd like to think that the reviews themselves don't go out of date. My opinions on certain albums do change, to the point where I cringe to discover that I at some point apparently thought U2's Pop deserved an A-, but it's at least an honest snapshot of what I once thought, and those reviews which are decently written (not all of them, but hopefully at least a majority) might still be of use to someone who's curious about, say, Mouse on Mars and would like to know more about their discography. On top of that, I don't see the point in making a to-do about officially "retiring," which strikes me as the sort of attention-seeking noisemaking that can only serve to make one look foolish if you change your mind.

Right now, I like knowing that the site is there and being proud of (most of) what's on display, but no longer feeling obligated to it. I do like to think that, in the near future, I'll feel the urge to write up an album or two that has really impressed me (most likely The Handsome Family's Honey Moon or Fever Ray's debut), but I don't have to. It's a particular relief that I no longer feel like I am required to repeatedly subject myself to, for example, the new Dirty Projectors album until I figure it out and am able to form an opinion that's worth 300 words even though I strongly suspect the disc will frustrate rather than reward my efforts to unfold it. The site didn't begin as anything more than a hobby and it has perhaps regrettably returned to something less than a hobby--the aspiring rock critic's equivalent of a closet full of hockey gear that can be dusted off and donned in the event of a pickup game, but which it must be admitted holds more sentimental value than utility--but at its most active point, it played a crucial role in my life.

Now, there was a period early this decade when a handful of us independent record review siters, who haunted the Music Babble message board and called ourselves the Web Reviewing Community (actually, sadly enough, going so far as to refer to ourselves as "The WRC" because we were so hardcore), were naively convinced that we were going to be the next wave of music journalism. Yes that did not happen. Not at all. It was certainly nice to fantasize that we, as individuals, would as a whole comprise an incisive, conversational, iconoclastic, and attractive antidote to the rapidly dwindling relevance of Rolling Stone, NME, and SPIN's embarrassing, corporate bandwagon-jumping--and I'm pretty sure these delusions were in no small part fed by Jann Wenner's infamously risible deification of Mick Jagger's Goddess in the Doorway, an event of extreme silliness which made it clear to one and all that there was a sizeable void to be filled in the world of rock journalism. But there was never any way that a webring of leisurely-updated and unevenly readable personal record review sites, focusing to a disproportionate degree on old (some would say "classic" and I am not among them) prog-rock and modern oddities like Ween and Robert Pollard, was going to make a dent even in that subset of the mainstream consciousness that is attuned to rock criticism. Especially not in the shadow of well-staffed, savvily-run, and pleasantly-designed sites like Pitchfork, Tiny Mix Tapes, and PopMatters that quickly picked up the torch. (Not to mention The A.V. Club, which has become my go-to source for pretty much all things nonpolitical.) I guess there's nothing wrong with thinking you can succeed on gumption alone, but I do feel appropriately sheepish about the scope of our ambitions in retrospect.

The Disclaimer site did lead me to brief freelance writing gigs at No Ripcord and Detroit's Metro Times, but of all the schlubs in our group of friends, only Mark Prindle, who's been at it longest and hardest (to put it in terms I think he'd appreciate), has achieved any sort of prominence. For rock criticism, that is. Outside that niche, that same group has spawned a lot of success stories: Dave Weigel has become my honest-to-goodness favorite journalist with his writing for the Washington Independent, and he also penned that piece on the Birthers that I linked to above (though I should note that he does not want you to see this information). Jon Walter is slated to be featured in The Atlantic Monthly's 2009 fiction issue. Rich Bunnell does fine design work for the San Francisco Examiner. Mike DeFabio, under the name The Other Leading Brand, recorded the sample-based electronic opus Milkshake x Infinity, which is seriously one of my top ten albums of the decade. Adam Smith has developed a genuine (and deserved) cult following as the frontman of smartass Scottish rockers The Plimptons. Marco Ursi is now the editor of Masthead. I am both honored and humbled to have the friendship of everyone above (along with that of Cole, Oleg, Norville, and others who are no less important to me for my not really knowing enough about their personal lives to include them in this paragraph), which I wouldn't have without my little website.

Furthermore, in response to my reviews themselves, I've received soul-boostingly positive communiques from The Jazz Butcher, Seven Morris of Touch Me Zoo, and Gregg Turkington. My longtime indie heroine Barbara Manning not only sent me greetings, but went so far as to mail me a personal two-CD set of her favorite songs she's recorded, and played one of my own recordings on her radio show. And I think I could go so far as to describe Spats Ransom of The Virgin-Whore Complex as a friend.

(I also received somewhat less supportive notes from members of The Jickets and The Men They Couldn't Hang.)

Beyond those mentioned above, a few of my best friendships ever have been forged through my site. Ben Marlin--whose playfully brilliant record review site has sadly returned to the cyber-loam but whose hilarious and literate Shakespeare reviews you can still get into on the ground floor--was one of the first people to ever e-mail me with genuine words of encouragement for the site and if he weren't someone I would trust with my life in the first place, I would be even more ludicrously jealous of his writing talent than I am. Goldmine alum Scott Floman was another early supporter who initially e-mailed me with the idea of trading some albums on the ancient medium of cassette, but who has become another evergreen friend whose enthusiasm for rock and music in general is invariably enough to counter sad-sack e-mails I send him to the effect of, "Grizzly Bear's new album is the most boring damn thing I've ever heard why do I care about music I give up address all further correspondence to will@hermit.tree." Amanda, described above, is someone else I met through the WRC with whom I know I can share anything and from whom I know I will receive a perfectly, puckishly smart reply. And for this summer, at least, the boundlessly intelligent and humane Steve Knowlton and I are alternating bass and keyboard roles in a rootsy band provisionally called Hawkeye State Line (we'll be at the Heidelberg on July 16) (performing, not just petulantly drinking).

Best of all, The Disclaimer Music Review Archive netted me a spouse. On January 5, 2004, Bev replied to my review of Mike Doughty's live masterpiece Smofe + Smang: Live in Mpls. to ask whether I had any idea where she could obtain a copy, as it had fallen out of print. To compress the events of the subsequent months and years for dramatic effect, I responded that I would make her an illicit copy of the album if she would agree to marry me and let me move into her house in Maine, where we could adopt a puppy and several birds. She apparently thought the deal was worth it. (It was; Smofe + Smang cannot be overpraised.) Any rock critic will tell you that it's the polar opposite of a medium you enter with the intention of picking up girls, so I'm pretty sure that the fact that my inane reviews brought me true love now makes me someone who can offer false hope to the rest of the industry. Which feels guilt-inducingly amazing.

But yeah, I'm under no illusions that the site is of any cultural significance or importance whatsoever. I'd like to think more people have gotten amusement out of it than been infuriated by it, but its demonstrable benefit to the world goes no further than my own life. But that benefit is substantial. Many of my current favorite parts of my life would not have been possible without these 380 MB of nonsense, so for whatever it's worth, I honestly and profusely thank anyone who legitimizes my writing by reading it, anyone who has taken the time to comment on anything I've had to say, and Jen, whose idea this sorry enterprise was in the first place. May The Disclaimer Music Review Archive languish in obscurity for another 10 frivolous years!

CURRENT MUSIC: Dark Night of the Soul, the mysteriously unreleasable Danger Mouse/Sparklehorse collaboration. It sort of lives or dies on the talents of the individual guest singers, but The Flaming Lips, Vic Chesnutt, and Gruff Rhys in particular make it worth a download.
CURRENT MOOD: Completely through with humans, far more concerned with animals, thank you very much.
FAVORITE ENTRY IN A BOOK OF FUNNY NEWS TYPOS THAT BEV GAVE ME: "To Mr. and Mrs. Ben Mendez, a son, 7 lbs. 12 oz. more t com more more more mor."

You're no longer leaving footprints, you left your wallet on the bus.

Sat, 25 Apr 2009 15:10:57 GMT

My many dedicated fans--LaimerHeads, they call themselves--will remember my longstanding vow never to return to Wisconsin after a miserable family vacation in 1996 (which consisted of a week in Green Bay during which my dad and my brother T-Bone spent every day at Packers training camp while my mom and I wandered various identical malls, went to see Kingpin, and watched the Olympics in the hotel room while praying for Bela Karolyi to spirit us away to a more interesting life) and a road trip to see Radiohead in 2003 in which my soul and Jess's soul were devoured by penniless Milwaukee hippies. Well, T-Bone and his girlfriend LeAnne moved to Madison, and since I love them both lots and it's not a horribly long drive from Ann Arbor--and my favorite non-Yo La Tengo band, The Handsome Family, happened to be playing there--I went against my every instinct last Friday and drove out there.

An hour outside of Ann Arbor, I noticed that my hood wasn't quite shut from when I'd added coolant earlier, so I pulled over to slam it. Getting back into the car proved a problem, as I'd locked the keys inside. AAA was helpfully prompt.

Then I got lost in Illinois, because the Mapquest directions to [NAME OF HIGHWAY REDACTED BECAUSE T-BONE WANTS TO KEEP HIS SHORTCUT A SECRET] were hopelessly confusing. I wound up on the wrong interstate and spent much of the evening making my way from Milwaukee to Madison, grinding my teeth and shouting, "Dammit, Wisconsin!" from beneath the neck of my shirt, which I had by that point pulled over my nose as a result of the fact that I was evidently driving through the state's Manure Belt.

I noshed on a bagel when I got to LeAnne and T-Bone's fabulous new condo, re-introduced myself to their laid-back cat Petey, and met their new kitten Mika, whose goal in life is to clumsily torment Petey. (T-Bone writes: "Today Petey was hanging out in the living room minding his own business and Mika decided to jump off one of the dining room chairs, hurdle the box next to the chair, and land juuuuust on the other side of Petey. It scared the crap out of Petey so he took off running, then Mika tried to change directions to chase after him, but of course she can't dig in to our hardwood floors, so she slammed into the couch instead.") After I got the grand tour and LeAnne and I bored my brother by talking about Harry Potter for awhile, T-Bone and I went to the satisfyingly cozy High Noon Saloon for the Handsome Family show.

The Handsome Family are currently touring behind their beautiful new album Honey Moon, which is a record that Brett and Rennie Sparks recorded as a 20th-anniversary gift to one another. It's an album of love songs, which rules out the dark, occasionally supernatural story songs they've proffered on albums like the idiosyncratic alt-folk masterpieces Through the Trees and Singing Bones... but doesn't rule out much else, since The Handsome Family's definition of "love song" extends to tales of cannibalistic insects ("Darling, My Darling"), crippling loneliness (the stunning "The Petrified Forest"), and the feeling you get, to quote Rennie's stage banter, "when you see a paper cup rolling down the street and you think, 'Man, that paper cup's got it made!'" ("Little Sparrows").

The stage banter was a hugely entertaining component of their show last Friday, too. As documented on their fine live album Live at Schuba's Tavern, Brett and Rennie spend a good amount of time between songs joking and bickering as only two people in deep love can. For instance, when introducing the cheeky murder ballad "Arlene," Rennie said, "We wrote this song back when we lived in Chicago. I was really depressed at the time, and at first I'd thought, 'Well, maybe I'll try growing tomato plants in the apartment. That might cheer me up!' So I tried growing these tomato plants inside but they died and I was still really depressed, so I thought it might help to paint the walls happy colors, so I tried that..."

At which point Brett interjected, "She painted the walls--I walked out of the shower one day and was confronted with this, and thought, 'What the fuck--that is the color of madness!' The walls were the color of, like, Van Gogh's sunflowers." [He paused to hold up a beer bottle with a violently orange label.] "This is the color our walls were!"

"It was summery!" Rennie maintained. "So anyway, the plants didn't cheer me up and the walls didn't cheer me up, so I thought, 'Well, maybe it will cheer me up to write a song about a girl who gets kidnapped and dragged into the woods.' And whaddaya know!"

Of course, the musical performances were great as well. Brett did seem occasionally aggravated by a malfunctioning guitar pedal (which drew indulgent smiles from Rennie that were as adorable as any expression you'd see shooting between Pam and Jim on The Office), but that was the only minor asterisk I'd put alongside a completely solid set. Judging from the live recordings I'd heard, I assumed Brett and Rennie would be touring with a prerecorded rhythm section confined to minidiscs, but they had two human accomplices (whose names I don't have handy since I loaned Honey Moon to Bert for the weekend), one flailing on half a drum kit and one violinist/second guitarist, both of whom added surprising and effective spontaneity to favorites like "My Sister's Tiny Hands."

Thanks to an e-mail I'd fired off before driving to Madison, they played a gorgeous rendition of "Whitehaven," which is both Bev's and my favorite Handsome song. As soon as Rennie said, "We got an e-mail this morning asking us to play this," I called Bev and she was able to listen to it, however murkily the transmission came through. (I was briefly awestruck by the ability to send an e-mail from Michigan that would result in a band playing a specific song that night in Wisconsin, which I could broadcast to my sweetie in Maine. Technology!) They also made room for T-Bone's favorite song, "All the Time in Airports," which performance you can watch here. (Thanks to that same YouTube user, you can also watch the Madison performances of "So Much Wine" and "Weightless Again.") The Handsome Family have been the number-one entry on my "bands to see live" list for, like, three years at this point, and I am happy to report that the wait was worth it and then some.

On the way back to the condo, T-Bone pointed out some hot tub showroom and said, "Yeah, that's one of those sketch 'Come get into our hot tub!' places," which completely cracked me up. My brother frequently has the sharpest comic delivery of anyone I'm aware of this side of Patton Oswalt.

The following morning, I was awoken by Mika cheerfully purring and rubbing all over me, and T-Bone discovered that the pack of bagels from which I'd eaten the previous evening was growing fuzzy things. He and LeAnne took me to the weekly farmers' market that's held on the square surrounding the Wisconsin State Capitol. Though it was crowded, being a lovely day and the first farmers' market of the season, I had a great deal of fun. I bought a bag of fresh cheese curds from this guy's booth. They were pretty great! Just irregularly-shaped hunks of soft cheese the color of circus peanuts, still moist with whey and squeaky between one's teeth (if you were feeling grumpy, I suppose you could imagine the little curdlets were actually shrieking as you gobbled them alive), but full of salty deliciousness! Madison strikes me as a very nice city.

They then took me on a tour of the amazing Epic Systems campus where they work: 350+ acres of eco-friendly, artful, hilariously detailed whimsy that's actually living the "Where ideas can hang out and do whatever!" dream that so many shortsighted '90s startups smothered in the crib. I'd been meaning to brag for awhile about getting invited to lunch at Google's fancypants Ann Arbor digs, but Epic makes Google's building look like some sort of half-finished Peace Corps sewer project. Epic's got waterfalls, kitschy themed boardrooms, and lots of nerd humor. For instance, the buildings have been named alphabetically, after astronomical phenomena (Andromeda, Betelgeuse-or-something-that-starts-with-B, Cassiopeia, etc.), but they jump abruptly from D to F. This is because the campus contains a treehouse-themed outbuilding... named Endor. Also, the observation deck of their gigantic, helix-shaped conference building is called "The Bridge," and overlooks a huge gathering room whose blocky carpet design, from above, is revealed to be a Space Invaders tableau.

And for those of us who've built much of our personality around actively disliking the Lucas/Roddenberry/Spielberg/Abrams sci-fi quadrant, there were still plenty of hipster Easter eggs. Hard copies of The Onion and Simpsons chess sets were strewn on tables in common areas. A test-your-strength machine sits randomly in a hallway. A vestibule designed to resemble a mid-20th-century NYC newsstand was furnished with time-specific periodicals, including a mid-1950s issue of Seventeen, in case Epic employees are curious about what Ann Shoket was up to back when she was a spry and naive 45-year-old.

There's also a 5,000-seat theater, about which T-Bone told me: "On Inauguration Day, they figured that everyone was going to be streaming the ceremony at their computers and they didn't want the network to completely crash, so they projected a feed onto the big screen in the theater and let us all watch the inauguration in here. One thing I noticed, though, was that throughout the entire ceremony, there was a sports ticker crawling along the bottom of the screen, with piddly little stories like 'Papelbon Gets Record Deal From Red Sox' that seemed really odd during a pretty important event. Well, apparently, they chose to stream the inauguration ceremony from MLB.com for some reason."

I had a blast there.

We ate lunch at Adler's House of Deep-Fried Yummies and returned to the condo to amuse the kitties and watch various Detroit sports playoff games on T-Bone's Slingbox. Then the three of us spent the night drinking champagne and playing Mario Party 5. Despite much encouraging profanity, we all lost to the computer player even though we had the skill level set to "learning disability." It was a really great night.

I had to leave in the morning, although I wish I would've had a few more days to hang out and explore the city. Getting into my car proved a problem, as I had again locked my keys inside. AAA was helpfully prompt.

So while I'm certainly not ready to approve Wisconsin as a whole (though maybe as "a hole," which I originally typed)... Madison gets a reprieve until I can investigate further.

CURRENT MUSIC: Camper Van Beethoven live at the State Theater on 1/8/09, a pristinely recorded and inspiringly performed concert I should've directed you to long ago.
CURRENT MOOD: Already sick of the heat, mourning the spring we never received.
CURRENT BEST THING EVER: Auto-Tune the News, which I've watched several dozen times in a row and have giggled at each time. It's hilarious, indefensibly catchy, and the only time any of these bozos has been useful.

Mm-hmm.

Wed, 08 Apr 2009 21:46:56 GMT

Just in case you missed it, here's Billy Bob Thornton being an unbelievable dick (and badmouthing Canada) on CBC Radio. (I discovered this through Scott Tobias on Twitter, but it's also on the newswire at The A.V. Club.)

At first I thought Billy Bob was having some sort of psychotic break and was genuinely concerned about him, but don't worry--he's just being a petulant 8-year-old. It all becomes clear as the interview goes on.

It's really super-hilarious.

See America Right.

Sat, 28 Mar 2009 23:57:19 GMT

Bev and her mom are in Maine. Bev's sister, Audrey, is in Cleveland. I am in Ann Arbor. These are some of the chillier regions of the country. So it was that we met up in Ben's old stomping ground, Florida, for a week, to hang out at the trailer Bev's dad maintains in Cedar Key. Her dad's been down there since January, befriending his neighbors, fixing up his plane, and developing a scorching hatred of Simon Cowell, as FOX is the only station his television receives with his new, government-provided digital converter box.

On the plane, crunched into half of my seat by the contortions of the camo-clad minotaur beside me who'd decided to spend the flight twisted sideways, the better to mack on his fiancee, I read the Best American Comics 2008 anthology, which contained depressingly little that made an impression on me for a book edited by Lynda Barry. (The only real standouts were the familiar gems from Chris Ware and Alison Bechdel, a sophomorically hilarious skit from Evan Larson, and creepy historical true crime from Rick Geary.) I also started Then We Came to the End by Joshua Ferris, which I wound up liking pretty well. It's a breezy, anecdote-driven workplace novel that's set in a turn-of-the-century ad agency, and that owes an enormous debt to Douglas Coupland's Microserfs (my favorite book). Despite its occasional over-clever strain to replicate Coupland's pop-spiritual electro-navel-gazing analyses, it's frequently very funny, and the way Ferris wields workplace layoffs with gleefully unpredictable Ten Little Indians fatalism certainly makes the book a better Microserfs for the Dubya decade than Coupland's own rancid JPod.

My flight arrived at the Orlando Sanford Airport (to the obsequious applause of my fellow passengers--do people generally do that?) about 10 hours before Bev and her mom's, so I retrieved the rental car and checked into the hotel (getting lost in-between, natch) so I could relax, read, eat a supper of Fritos, and watch The Amazing Race instead of stewing at the airport.

The space shuttle Discovery was being launched from Kennedy Space Center that evening, and I decided to toddle outside to see whether I could see anything from the Days Inn parking lot. There were maybe a dozen others standing outside when I'd arrived--mostly seniors, mostly folks who'd already witnessed a shuttle launch or two, I gathered. I'm not sure how far Sanford is from the launch site, but the liftoff did provide an impressive spectacle. A searingly white, oblong magnesium glow rose into the sky, leaving behind a ruffled vapor trail that burned orange to yellow to lavender, and hung in the air like a psychedelic jellyfish tendril. I leaned against a palm tree, listening to the hoots of my fellow spectators and the approving croaks of the frogs in the ditch beside me, and watched with something cheesily close to awe as the boosters-or-whatever fell away and the shuttle passed out of view behind an Outback Steakhouse billboard.

Without attempting to sound profound or as though this was some sort of mind-altering experience--I'm not and it wasn't--my chosen life situation isn't going to often afford me the opportunity to watch a rocket launch while reclining against a palm tree, so it was a nifty, novel moment, marred only by the uncomfortable sneers directed at me by those other spectators who happened to glance my way.

I then realized that, after taking a shower in the hotel room earlier, I'd blindly donned my Dinosaur Comics T-shirt that boasts a picture of an astronaut and the phrase, "Not all dreams can come true."

So I was the contrarian dick who apparently crashed an impromptu NASA party in a hotel parking lot while silently wearing some sort of inscrutably bilious anti-space program protest garb to mock everyone's elation.

Bev and her mom didn't have much nice to say about their long-delayed flight by the time I fetched them from the airport and we wended our way through the air compressors powering the cleaning crew's nightly rounds. In our room, Bev and I fell asleep in front of some crappy CBS procedural where Graham Chase from My So-Called Life took a bunch of hostages.

On Monday, Bev, her mom, and I drove from Sanford to Cedar Key, where Bev's dad, Audrey, and Audrey's kid were waiting. Bev's dad's trailer down there is surprisingly roomy and comfortable, decorated with dozens of whimsical tchotchkes that match his admirably upbeat personality. The trailer's wood paneling reminded me of the trailer from Raising Arizona, and I spent much of my stay wondering whether there was a subtle way I could scrawl the word "FART" on the wall. I also spent much of my stay seeing how few words I could get away with saying to Audrey's kid (technically my "nephew"). The highlight was when he stood up in front of the television, in better-door-than-a-window fashion, and I wordlessly jabbed a cushion at the back of his knees until he sat down on it and got out of our way.

I did have to say "thank you" to him, though, when he plopped a half-eaten hush puppy in my lap, as I wasn't sure how else to react.

Around 1:00 a.m. on Tuesday, I awoke with my every muscle pounded into cube steak by the flu and could not get back to sleep, which was just absolute horseshit. I had a feverish reverie in which the United States government privatized sleep and I was lying in an insomniac stupor because I hadn't purchased sufficient sleep credits from my local slumber distributor (or accumulated enough promotional SiestaPoints from Jose Cuervo, which were also accepted). When she awoke, Bev fed me lots of medicine and I spent the day convalescing.

Once I got on my feet, at around 6:00 p.m., Bev, Audrey, and I went to retrieve pizza from the Blue Desert Cafe, which took an hour and a half for some reason. Bev busied herself by organizing the Trivial Pursuit cards that were sitting on the bar, while I busied myself by unintentionally Robotripping and staring blankly at the tabloid newsmagazines flickering on the cafe's muted television. ("What I'm taking from Entertainment Tonight is that the octuplets got kicked off Dancing with the Stars," Aud remarked at one point.)

We returned home, watched a Seinfeld rerun ("The Millennium") which made me wonder why I ever watched Seinfeld, and then Beverly Hills Chihuahua, which made me pine for Seinfeld.

On Thursday morning, Bev and I took the rented Sebring down to Silver Springs, which is essentially a zoo with theme park prices. It was alright. We fed graham crackers to some friendly giraffes, saw amusing fish from a glass-bottom boat, and giggled at a Kodiak bear who was merrily pile-driving a bucket, but the whole experience was still kind of a downer. The animals weren't neglected by any means, but neither did they seem as well taken care of as I would've liked. They seemed lethargic and vaguely sad. The experience was pretty well embodied by the ibis whose foot was hobbled by some sort of packaging material, pathetically limping around the food court to the accompaniment of a gung-ho MC who was distributing awards at an Amway banquet across the park. At any rate, Bev and I agreed that we weren't sorry we went, but the day hadn't left us particularly happy either.

We spent the night at the Riverside Resort in Homosassa Springs, which maintains a tiny, floating playground for monkeys called "Monkey Island." (Not related to the fabulous LucasArts game series, but cool nonetheless.)

In the morning, Bev and I hit the Homosassa Springs Wildlife State Park. That one was great, particularly since we arrived just in time to watch the manatees eat breakfast. Manatees are amazing. We didn't see a single one that wasn't sporting a horrifying propeller injury that had been spackled over, but they all seemed perfectly, adorably content to gobble down entire heads of iceberg lettuce as they bobbed lazily in the water. We also saw a wonderful presentation by a volunteer who struggled to educate us about the burrow owl while wrangling an especially antsy example of the species. I blurted, "I love them!" at just about every exhibit Bev and I passed by. (Exception: the bobcat who violently snatched a squirrel from the tree in its pen. I think I booed while Bev chided me, "It's nature!")

Upon our return, Bev, her parents, and I ate at a restaurant called Seabreeze, which was pretty awesome. We sat by a window overlooking the gulf, spotting the occasional leaping dolphin, and observing the dock behind the restaurant which has evidently been ceded to a hilarious gang of pelicans. None of the animals I saw on this trip were as lovely as Cora, of course, but there were still dozens who stole my heart.

On our last day in Florida, Bev's dad took us to a yard sale at the Cedar Key Historical Society Museum, where Bev found a comforter and some mud flaps. I picked up a couple VHS tapes whose labels suggested they were someone's home movies, but which turned out to be a bunch of shows taped off Bangor's NBC affiliate in the early '90s. (Kind of a disappointment, but I did enjoy Cured! Secrets of Alternative Healing, hosted by Olympia Dukakis, of Too Many Grandmas fame.)

On the way back to Michigan, the Allegiant Air flight attendants blared into the loudspeaker for nearly a half-hour straight while hosting an in-flight 50/50 raffle. Very classy.

My dad met me at the airport and immediately thrust a folder into my hands, containing the latest in my grandpa's posthumous legal battles (this time against a property management company who claims that Grandpa defaulted on his lease by dying). Ah, life.

CURRENT MUSIC: Discography by Pet Shop Boys.
CURRENT MOOD: Sketchy.
CURRENT SONG I WISH I'D WRITTEN: "Fade Into You" by Mazzy Star.

YOU GUYS! YOU GUYS!

Sun, 08 Mar 2009 23:19:15 GMT

You're never gonna believe it, you guys! Life doesn't suck so bad after all!

Yo La Tengo's garage-rock alter egos The Condo Fucks (who were born as part of a hilarious fake Matador catalog stuck in initial pressings of YLT's I Can Hear the Heart Beating as One) are releasing a covers album called Fuckbook either this Tuesday or March 24, depending on whether you believe the Matador website or the YLT mailing list communique that I just received, respectively. [Edit: Matador's website now confirms that it will be released on the 24th.] It is sure to be completely awesome in every way. Pitchfork probably already reported this somewhere but it's the first I've heard of it and I am seriously so happy that I just did a lunatic jumping dance all around my apartment.

YOU GUYS!

Tarragon Spill in Curdled Waters: The Best I've Heard of 2008

Sun, 01 Mar 2009 23:59:37 GMT

Alright, here's the deal, man. The total deal. I haven't written in this journal or on the Disclaimer site in almost three months because December was full of stressful holiday nonsense (and stressful holiday television specials), January was spent being sullen and solitary (and watching crappy mid-season replacements like Lie to Me and 13: Fear is Real), and February was full of personal tragedy, including the death of my grandpa and the serious injury and hospitalization of a close friend (and awaiting the most shocking "After the Final Rose" ceremony in The Bachelor history, which will air tomorrow night, hooray!). March, I can only assume, will bring fender benders, fire ants, unwanted ball gags, and the continued presence of "Coach" on Survivor.

I decided early on that 2009 was going to be a "rebuilding year," to use a pro-sports euphemism that's employed when teams sink to hilarious levels of ineptitude, because I am determined that this year will end better than 2008 did, but in spite of my uncharacteristic optimism, I've simply been too preoccupied to write anything substantial--even smartass three-sentence rebuttals to Scott's MP3 picks. In my personal resolve not to be (as much of) a downer this year, I have written nothing. This must change.

So here are a few things that have made me happy lately:

--Daisy Owl.
--A 12-year-old who rode his bike across my path the other day while loudly and unself-consciously singing "I Know What Boys Like" by The Waitresses. Coolest 12-year-old ever.
--The Carolina Chocolate Drops performing "Hit 'Em Up Style" at the Ann Arbor Folk Festival.
--A testimonial excerpt from the 1916 Michigan Supreme Court case Rohmer v. Labo that Tim e-mailed me, which contains the following sentence: "Just as I got back on the sidewalk, or very near to the sidewalk, I felt something strike me in the leg, and I says, 'Possibly I am shot.'"
--Man on Wire.
--Sandra Lee's online recipe for "King Cake" (best read with no context whatsoever, so I shan't provide any).
--The use of Soul Coughing's "$300" on an episode of House centering on the title character's methadone treatments.
--This particular video from Jandrew Edits, even though I ordinarily cannot stomach anything Star Trek-related.

Also friends, family, etc.

Furthermore, even though it's embarrassingly late in 2009 for "best of 2008" anything, here's the tracklist for my year-end mix Tarragon Spill in Curdled Waters: The Best I've Heard of 2008, which has sat on my hard drive unpublished for goodness knows how long. I usually attempt to describe the individual songs in some pithy way, but I continue not to have the energy, and yet I want to get the list posted and out of the way so it's not hanging over my head any longer. (My sincere apologies to Mike from Quetzalcoatlus, whose song and album both deserve a proper--and positive--review that I am too burned out to provide at this time.) So here's that:

1. Pierce Brosnan: "S.O.S." (3:21)

Wait, wait.

1. Mike Doughty- "Fort Hood" (3:13) From Golden Delicious.
2. Lykke Li- "I'm Good, I'm Gone" (3:09) From Youth Novels.
3. Magnetic Fields- "California Girls" (3:00) From Distortion.
4. Aliens- "I Am the Unknown" (5:28) From Astronomy for Dogs.
5. R.E.M.- "Houston" (2:05) From Accelerate.
6. Shearwater- "Rooks" (3:21) From Rook.
7. M83- "Kim & Jessie" (5:23) From Saturdays = Youth.
8. Matmos- "Polychords" (3:31) From Supreme Balloon.
9. Emiliana Torrini- "Jungle Drum" (2:13) From my favorite album of the year, Me and Armini.
10. Electric Six- "Watching Evil Empires Fall Apart" (3:58) From Flashy.
11. Ladytron- "I'm Not Scared" (3:58) From Velocifero.
12. Minotaur Shock- "Bats" (3:47) From Amateur Dramatics.
13. Of Montreal- "For Our Elegant Caste" (2:35) From Skeletal Lamping.
14. Katie Herzig- "Forevermore" (2:13) From Apple Tree.
15. Jim White- "Jailbird" (5:45) From Transnormal Skiperoo.
16. Bon Iver- "Skinny Love" (3:59) From For Emma, Forever Ago.
17. Flying Lotus (feat. Dolly)- "RobertaFlack" [sic] (3:08) From Los Angeles.
18. Beck- "Walls" (2:22) From Modern Guilt.
19. School of Seven Bells- "Prince of Peace" (3:06) From Alpinisms.
20. Fleet Foxes- "White Winter Hymnal" (2:27) From Fleet Foxes.
21. Quetzalcoatlus- "Donda Hadda Farn" (4:56) From Beats + Noise.
22. Liam Finn- "Gather to the Chapel" (3:21) From I'll Be Lightning.
23. Music Tapes- "Freeing Song for Reindeer" (2:59) From Music Tapes for Clouds and Tornadoes.

I hope to send out copies of this CD soon to those who've requested it, but the impatient may prefer to make their own. If anyone else wants one, e-mail me with your address.

More in awhile, hopefully.

CURRENT MUSIC: The sound of German hip-hop in my head.
CURRENT MOOD: Stomach-knotted.
CURRENT FAVORITE TEXT MESSAGE FROM BEV: "Still at walmart. Watched kid sneeze on stuff, then bonk self on head w/ball."

They seem to be in power so you kick back and get farther behind.

Sat, 06 Dec 2008 20:48:32 GMT

Bad Religion's Suffer is my favorite punk album of all time. My heart naturally belongs to the Ramones and the Dead Milkmen, because they were instrumental in shaping my identity back in middle school, but neither of them recorded an album as taut, melodic, literate, and pissed as Suffer.

I have Jon to thank for introducing me to Suffer back in the Barnes & Noble days. My Bad Religion knowledge stretched back only to the Generator era--which was plenty good--but while we received and dumped box after box of books, alternating CDs from our collections on the receiving room stereo, Jon introduced me to a whole world of hardcore that I would otherwise probably never have bothered to investigate.

Of course, every time we listened to Suffer, Jon would complain when its best song, "What Can You Do?" came on. "Ugh, it's too slow!" he would gripe, even though "What Can You Do?" is one of the catchiest songs ever written, not to mention pretty speedy: its entirety could still fit between two notes of a Low song.

So, for Jon, I spent this morning recording a cover of "What Can You Do?" that is actually way too slow and timid. Kind of Christmasy, even, now that I listen to it. Ick. I hope it makes him appreciate the Bad Religion version.

Disclaimer: "What Can You Do?" (Right-click to download.) (Guest vocals by Gormley and Goldklang.)

CURRENT MUSIC: Sing to God by The Cardiacs.
CURRENT MOOD: Smartassy.
TODAY'S MAIL: Something from my credit union and an Entertainment Weekly from three weeks ago.

A woman-eating monster with a suitcase full of fire.

Sun, 30 Nov 2008 21:57:13 GMT

I just finished reading The Devil in the White City by Erik Larson, which is fantastic. It's a justly-lauded book that manages to effortlessly conflate two topics: the design and construction of the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago and the grisly acts of H. H. Holmes, who is by some estimates America's most prolific serial killer (and whose busiest period took place at his own World's Fair Hotel in Chicago). Looking at that description, it might be easy to guess which of the two tales is the more action-packed, but although Larson displays a sharp eye for narrative cliffhangers, his wit, storytelling acumen, and respect for the reader's intelligence will have you turning the pages on the Fair--and, say, its landscape shrubbery--just as quickly as the parts on Holmes.

Furthermore, although I generally dislike the entire genre of true crime for its rubbernecking over the details of other people's misery, Larson knows how to keep things tasteful without sacrificing excitement, and adopts a sympathetic (rather than leering) tone when the specifics are unavoidable. That's a big selling point for me, at any rate.

Here's my favorite passage: "As always, [Fair director Daniel Burnham] longed for Margaret. She was out of the city but due back for the opening. 'I will be on the look out for you, my dear girl,' he wrote. 'You must expect to give yourself up when you come.' For this buttoned-up age, for Burnham, it was a letter that could have steamed itself open." Ha!

And of course, for companion reading, Chris Ware's peerless (yet peerlessly sad and eyestrain-inducing) graphic novel Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Kid on Earth is partially set against the backdrop of the fair's construction.

* * *

Tim, a bunch of Tim's friends, and I went to see the Electric Six in Detroit last night at St. Andrew's Hall. (Juli was there somewhere as well, but I couldn't locate her.) The sound was messy as fuck and we had to sit through grunge-era leftovers Local H slinging their godawful mishegoss for about a week before the Six took the stage, but once they did, all was well. After a couple quick opening numbers (in which Dick Valentine one-upped James Brown by dramatically twirling and shedding two spangly capes, one reading "Flashy" and one reading "Showtime"), the band fell into a satisfying assortment of rock singalongs from all five of their records. None of the songs sounded particularly different from the studio versions, but on highlights like "Gay Bar," "I Buy the Drugs," and "Germans in Mexico," the band plowed along with admirable enthusiasm to match the crowd's. Valentine's stage presence especially is every bit as hilarious as his lyrics, whether he was delivering an absurdly lengthy apology for playing "Rock and Roll Evacuation" (with its classically stupid anti-Bush sentiment, "Mr. President, I don't like you/You don't know how to rock!") at this time in history or simply striking a series of goofy, grinning catalog poses during the songs' instrumental parts.

As I'm sure I've mentioned before, I am not easily moved to dance, but last night was different because you must obey the Dance Commander. I wished Bev had been there to dance with. I specifically wished she'd taken the place of the guy whose version of "dancing" consisted solely of pelvic thrusts. Even when there was no music playing.

CURRENT MUSIC: The Boring World of Niels Bohr, a mix Tim made me.
CURRENT MOOD: Amused beyond all reason at destroyalltacos' "Photos of TV Ripoff" series. (He just takes photos of things his television tells him to look at, and it's fascinating. It's based on Mike Sacks doing the same thing, but is more discerning, to my eye.)
CURRENT FAVORITE LINE FROM THE WATCHMEN: "I don't want to be Devo!" Oh Nite Owl, we're all Devo!

I can't find Noodles McIntyre!

Sun, 23 Nov 2008 14:17:38 GMT

Outside Noodles & Company on State Street, a girl passing out flyers asked, "Are you going to Noodles?"

I've decided that "going to noodles" is a pretty apt description of how it feels when your brain is deteriorating beneath strata of contradictory emotions, stress, and regret. As Lisa pointed out, "going to pieces" still suggests a certain orderliness; individual shards with sharp, defined edges. The suggestion is that you could glue everything back together again, given time. "Going to noodles," on the other hand, removes the possibility of reassembly, if only because it's practically impossible to tell where one ends and the next begins when you're staring at a plate of pasta.

Sometimes you get lucky and it results in an unduplicable Lady and the Tramp moment that you could never have predicted.

Sometimes you wind up chasing that last slippery noodle around your plate with a fork and you ultimately throw it away rather than having to spend an inordinate amount of time trying to pin it down with your tines.

CURRENT MUSIC: The Concussive Caress, or Casey Caught Her Mom Singing Along with the Vacuum by The Blow.
CURRENT MOOD: Ordinary.
DAD'S CURRENT PRONUNCIATION OF LAURA LINNEY'S NAME: "Lana Landry."

Transatlanticism.

Sun, 16 Nov 2008 22:19:51 GMT

I'm living in Ann Arbor again, working for Math Reviews, this time for the forseeable future. It's taken me awhile to get around to this post because I really don't have the words to get into all that went into my decision when Tracy offered me a permanent copy editing job, and although I love and trust everyone who reads this thing, there are still some details I don't feel comfortable posting for consumption by the paparazzi and G-men who scrutinize my every move. So I'm going to gloss over it except to say that Bev has been a total saint about me moving back. This isn't a separation in the "we're on a break" sense; it's merely a geographic one. And although it's terribly painful to be away from her right now, I am confident that this is where I need to be for the time being, and that this will make us stronger in the long run. For the past three years, Bev has worked tirelessly to make a beautiful, comfortable home for me in Bangor, and she succeeded. I wish I could have picked up our house and Cora and my sweetie and moved them all with me, but Bev feels that she belongs in Maine every bit as strongly as I feel that I belong in Michigan right now. We will make it work, because love transcends distance and because Tim Gunn's advice is always correct.

I've sublet an apartment from a girl named Kristen, who works for Google and is transferring to Chicago. She is one of the nicest people I've ever encountered, and she and her boyfriend, Patrick, did literally everything they could have to make this a nice new place for me, from helping me move a sofa to extending an open invitation to Google's free employee luncheons. I also like my building. The hallways are dark and Barton Fink-like, which suits me just fine, and apart from the odd whiff of microwaved fish, there would seem to be an awful lot of interesting and adventurous chefs on my floor. Lots of nice smells.

For my part, I was initially concerned that I was going to irritate the hell out of my new neighbors with the chirping and tweeting of Novi the cockatiel and Gormley and Goldklang the parakeets, who accompanied me on my trip. By hilarious coincidence, though, the apartment directly next to mine is occupied by Violeta the Math Reviews copy editor, who works right across the room from me! Upon making this discovery, she immediately asked me, "Do you have birds?" Thankfully, she finds them musical and not stress-inducing.

The drive from Maine to Michigan was an exhausting slog through New York state; areas in which it wasn't even possible to absorb local color through the magic of AM radio. I wound up scanning the FM dial for the first time in years, bypassing cautious midtempo single after cautious midtempo single, trying to catch snippets of culture from NPR, which unfortunately wound up meaning the stuffy witlessness of The Prairie Home Companion and a reading of Elizabeth Crane's "Ad" on Selected Shorts that was so determined not to let any trace of humor escape its leaden delivery that it reminded me of my high school forensics club. I'd never before listened to Selected Shorts, though if "Ad"'s unsubtle monologuing is typical of the program, I thought it would be really funny if NPR started taking advantage of the safe harbor hours to broadcast an erotica-based spinoff, featuring starched-shirt recitations from the Penthouse Forum by, say, Cady Huffman or Miguel Ferrer.

I have already had to turn one couch cushion upside-down thanks to spilling food on it. (Not my fault; leaky bowl.)

Noa, my new friend Ann (who works downstairs with Noa), and I went to see Rachel Getting Married yesterday. The more I think about it, the better I think it was, and it is a movie you'll think about afterward, if only to discern the meaning of certain shots or characters' actions. For my taste, it's Jonathan Demme's best film since Stop Making Sense, and easily his best narrative one. The story is simple: Anne Hathaway gets out of rehab, only to be thrown into the agonizing, sprinting sensory overload of the run-up to her sister's wedding, and we follow her closely as she attempts to deal with it all. The characters frequently speak in allusions to events only from their shared frame of reference, and Demme and screenwriter Jenny Lumet dole out the explanations deliberately and conservatively, when they arrive at all. Sometimes, instead of explanations, you simply get sequences of tertiary characters interacting, making toasts, or dancing. And if you take the time to connect the dots of the story's ellipses, the film is a portrait of familial love and drama that runs far deeper than anything you get in the pat quirkiness of, say, Little Miss Sunshine.

The wedding itself is a pick-and-choose multicultural fantasy; the family seemingly has unlimited resources with which to host the big day, and rather than splurging on a People magazine orgy of bigger and fancier things, Demme envisions a more communal experience in which the attendees can participate in an all-hands-in cutting of a beautiful, blue, Indian-inspired cake, belly dance at the reception, or enjoy a command performance by indie-psychedelic genius Robyn Hitchcock. Ann was put off by what she saw as self-congratulatory and superficial co-opting of meaningful cultural touchstones, which I think is a fair interpretation, but I personally saw it as a sweet celebration of all the forms love takes around our globe. Despite its many, many intense moments of squirmy familial discomfort, Rachel Getting Married never lets you believe the Buchmans are fractured beyond repair. Very sweet film.

After the movie and some yummy Thai food, I left Ann and Noa to go to Jess's birthday paty that her coworkers had organized. It was being held at Melange, a wretched wine-based club that Jess described as a post-grad hookup bar. You can imagine how pleasant it was. Jess danced and Tim and I pressed ourselves against the wall and talked about Nintendo games as best we were able while the DJ continued playing from his hip-hop compilation Songs That Should Not Be. Jess obviously couldn't leave because it was her party, but Tim could, so after about an hour, he and I took off to the Old Town Brewery, where things were far quieter (even if the absence of thumping Puff Daddy tracks meant we had to listen to a litany of Jackie Martling-level Sarah Palin jokes from the tiresome, "proudly politically incorrect" pseudo-iconoclast next to me). After awhile, I took off and Tim had to go back to the club. Shortly thereafter, he sent me a text message reading, "Oh God! It burns!" It's always nice to see Tim and Jess, in any circumstance, so I'm not sorry I went. I'm just sorry Melange exists.

I think that catches you up!

CURRENT MUSIC: Eugene von Beethoven's 69th Sin Funny by Camper Van Chadbourne. Way to make one of my favorite bands completely unlistenable, there, Eugene Chadbourne.
CURRENT MOOD: Lack. But in the Ikea sense.
CURRENT FAVORITE SPIRITUAL QUOTATION: "The point is not the communication of truth, but truth itself. No one should ever say, 'Come hear this speaker,' but rather, 'There is nothing you can do to make God stop loving you.' Or not saying anything at all and loving someone." --John Campbell, Pictures for Sad Children

Wherever I lay my phone, that's my home.

Sat, 18 Oct 2008 13:08:17 GMT

Say, most of you likely have cell phones!

Does anyone know of a good, cheap cell phone plan that gives you unlimited nights and weekends and decent reception? That's really all I need. I don't need a phone that has a built-in paddleball game, or will tell me my BMI if I step on it, or will hover cartoonishly next to either my right or left shoulder depending on whether I set it to "good" or "evil." I just need a basic mobile phone that has buttons and speakers for both "sound in" and "sound out."

Anyone offering advice will be entered in a drawing for a reluctant "thank you" muttered under my breath.

Real update in the coming days, hopefully. Big news.

I'm worried about the baggage retrieval system they've got at Heathrow.

Thu, 16 Oct 2008 17:30:35 GMT

Good news, everyone! I discovered something new to be self-conscious about!

Restaurant servers who don't write down your order.

It's an impressive skill, but every time I encounter such a server from now on, I am going to worry that some mnemonic device requires her to unflatteringly picture my head as a cartoon veggie burger with eyes. Like Mayor McCheese. With Weird Al hair.

CURRENT MUSIC: Saturdays = Youth by M83.
CURRENT MOOD: Tiny.
CURRENT FAVORITE DRUNKEN SANDRA LEE MISPRONUNCIATION: [During Cocktail Time] "Try saying that five times fast after you've had a corrrrcghktail!"

When I get back to my small flat, I want to hear somebody bark.

Thu, 09 Oct 2008 19:11:07 GMT

Cora's Corner (feat. Bubba):

Cora and Bubba are big fans of the Pet Shop Boys.

CURRENT MUSIC: Tusk by Camper Van Beethoven.
CURRENT MOOD: I just stubbed my toe, so full of swears.
CURRENT FAVORITE NON-DINOSAUR COMICS WEBCOMIC: The Non-Adventures of Wonderella. (Which, er, I learned about through Dinosaur Comics.)

After the voting, suck away the sugar coating, now they've had you and they're gloating.

Wed, 08 Oct 2008 01:38:08 GMT

Last night, I dreamt I was living in a 12 Monkeys-style dystopia in which the virus that was wiping out humanity wasn't an act of one terrorist, but of all the multibillionaire corporate plutocrats having engineered a disease to infect and kill anyone whose income was below a certain level, so they could reconstruct the Earth as their private playland for silver luxury cars and fancypants iPhone apps and bottle service lounges, with none of us proles annoyingly trying to revive their consciences. The Globochem Planet would resemble the postapocalyptic Earth of the Twilight Zone episode "Time Enough At Last," only instead of getting to read all the books they pleased, the survivors would simply be able to wander into bank vaults and smell all the money. I woke up as I died in the dream, having become ill with the virus, and I remember my last slumbering thought being, "Well, at least that's over," followed by, "Rats!" (in the voice of Mr. Garrison--yes, that's how my inner monologue sounds) upon waking.

This most likely was a result of the fact that I've been volunteering at my local Democratic Party outpost for the past couple of weeks, putting in two-hour shifts of data entry because that's the sort of thing I am good at. (I don't think I'll be returning, since yesterday's shift involved putting up with a shrieking crotchloaf named Parker, who, whenever I got out of my chair to ask a question, would hop onto my computer to play Minesweeper.) Specifically, I'd been barcoding and tallying responses to phone surveys about which presidential and congressional candidates our county's voters are leaning towards. The majority of those polled who said they were likely to vote claimed to be undecided. Less than a month before the election, they're undecided. Between Barack Obama and John McCain.

Now, Mainers do play their cards annoyingly close to the vest on lots of things. The survey response "refused to answer" probably earned more hash marks than Obama, McCain, and "undecided" combined, so it may well be that a great deal of the "undecided"s were simply polite versions of "refused to answer." I understand that some older generations--which is all we have in Maine--were raised to believe that your ballot is private in the sense that discussing it is unseemly, so that might play into these results. Fine. But suppose they're genuine. What could either candidate say at this point to change their minds? And what happens if neither candidate says those magic words? Do they still plan to vote? I'm honestly asking. Because it's not like we're choosing between two basically identical people like Justin Long and Zachary Levi. Either you're a fan of hatred and bloodshed, in which case you vote McCain, or you like humanity, in which case you vote Obama and cross your fingers and say a rosary if you're into that. If you're undecided at this point, as far as I'm concerned, you're not paying attention and you make me sad.

(And this is saying nothing of the survey respondent who evidently started shouting at the poor volunteer that Barack and Michelle Obama "need to go back to Africa," while I was there.)

I just feel entirely disillusioned by this process. Beyond my lack of trust in the electorate itself, I don't trust any elected official higher than maybe the municipal level to actually take action that is in my best interest or that of my fellow citizens. I realize I'm not saying anything particularly trenchant by being all, "Politicians are untrustworthy!" but I've only recently realized how deep my cynicism on the subject goes. I can't think of a single issue I care about, whether real or hypothetical, on which I feel confident that a single person in a position to effect change for the betterment of humanity could be counted on to do so. Following politics is a lot like watching Survivor and realizing that there's a brilliant-yet-obvious strategic move that should be made to overthrow whichever guy is Probst's favorite power player of the season, only to see the fourth woman in a row get voted out on the flimsy rationale of "keeping the tribe strong."

I'll still vote. I'm not sure why. I guess just because it was branded upon my brain at such a young age that voting is something you do no matter what. But I don't believe my vote matters at all. The only real difference I believe my act of voting will make would require some sort of butterfly effect in which my driving to the polls somehow keeps someone on the other side of the world from becoming grievously injured (or, more likely given the history of my effect on humanity, causes someone on the other side of the world to become grievously injured/get waterboarded/get cockblocked/etc.).

A couple months ago, I was out shopping with Mom, and she stopped at an ATM. I noted that the ATM was manufactured by sketchy voting machine conglomerate Diebold, and made some hacky "Har har, it won't work right" joke before we noticed that the only thing that appeared on its screen, regardless of whether her card was inserted, was the message, "Do you want more time? Y/N." Finally, Mom exasperatedly sighed, "Who doesn't?" pushed "Yes," and drove away. You see my point.

* * *

Just so this entry doesn't end on a total downer note, I serendipitously discovered the best method for chasing the blues away that I've found in some time, while driving to pick up our weekly veggie share: Say you're cruising along, listening to some trashy European house music--in this case, "One More Time" by Daft Punk--and you turn onto a road lined with a high school boys' cross-country team, shirtlessly jogging along as part of their afternoon training. The best thing you can possibly do in this situation? Roll down your windows, turn that music up loud, and slow your car down to the runners' pace, so all they can do is jog alongside you to the tune of your disposable club music. For about 20 seconds. Then you speed off, and laugh for the rest of the day. (Even funnier, by the way, if they're jogging next to a cow pasture.)

CURRENT MUSIC: The Cactus Album by 3rd Bass.
CURRENT MOOD: I haven't got it in me anymore.
CURRENT FAVORITE DRUNKEN SANDRA LEE MISPRONUNCIATION Referring to a fork as a "flork."

"Priority Retcon (Previous Statements Embargoed)"

Mon, 06 Oct 2008 17:38:40 GMT

I usually don't bother posting lyrics to new songs I've written, but I'm pretty proud of these and they may in fact be my favorite that I've assembled. So I thought I'd share, not to fish for compliments but just because I like them and thought it would be satisfying to see them typed. And because who isn't aching for another damn political song?

"Priority Retcon (Previous Statements Embargoed)"

Jimmy the hood, stick a split-shot sinker on the accelerator cable.
Fast wins the race. Fast has always won the race.
You'd better re-read your fable.
Shriek as loud as you can in the anechoic chamber until your throat is raw.
Hope you like yanking the pendulum over and over from the same stupid lion's paw.

Careful what you aspirate when a slogan cuts the smoke:
"Fuck those felled by friendly fire if they can't take a joke!"
We've said that all along.
Priority Retcon.

All the ladybugs are melted onto streetlights
And the orange glow's dismissed as deception
While dispatch is deluged with calls about spiders ballooning mistaken for weapons.

Tears erode your eyes to the point you can't see anything at all.

Careful with the aspartame when the press room cuts the Coke.
Contort to leap your rising gorge if you don't want to choke.
You must have heard us wrong.
Priority Retcon.

Previous statements are embargoed under intellectual property law.
These uncorrected proofs have been superseded.
Quotations must be withdrawn.
They'll methodically smash your piggybanks--the ones you named--
And then gesture at the mess, saying, "You should be ashamed."

CURRENT MOOD: Proud-ish.
CURRENT FAVORITE BLOG: Intimidating Uncle. Some guy makes fun of kids' photos like the most disinterested, impatient jerk of an uncle they could possibly have. You will laugh.

The music starts, the video screen reads, "A Total Eclipse of the Heart"

Mon, 08 Sep 2008 23:08:24 GMT

This is a post about the multiple opportunities for musical and artistic expression I was afforded while in Ann Arbor. No, not recording in my apartment. No, not the ubiquitous drum circles. I am referring to the one sure-fire way back into a woman's heart and parts beyond. I speak, of course, of karaoke.

The MR staff had a karaoke night the Thursday after I started work. We went to Circus, a carnival-themed bar next to the Blind Pig. It took me about 15 minutes to walk there from my apartment (probably much longer on the way back, as I was not the steadiest on my feet). Loads of fun. Though each song request does go along to a karaoke backing track, there's also a live band onstage providing keyboards, guitars, backing vocals, or anything necessary to make you sound a lot better than the tinny little MIDI arrangement would.

I was sitting at a table in Circus, watching 10,000 B.C. on the closed-captioned television ("[sounds of footsteps]," "[exhausted sigh]," "[sounds of footsteps]"), when Tracy and Lisa mercifully showed up. Lisa carried a bag with two feather boas in it in case we needed props. The three of us took turns buying rounds of drinks for each other throughout the evening. Later, copy editor Julie showed up with her sister, and copy editor Violetta and her friend Adam joined us for a bit.

For about half the evening, Lisa and I convivially pawed through the book of available karaoke numbers, commenting on the songs and bemoaning the absence of songs we wished were there. She came up with the idea that, on a subsequent karaoke night, we should all hand in our requests at once in the hopes of going onstage back-to-back-to-back, and pick the biggest downer songs we could think of, just to bum out everyone in attendance. I said it would be funny for me to request "I Got You Babe" and perform it by myself, silently standing there and looking heartbroken as Cher's part of the song wordlessly flowed by, at which point Lisa emitted one of the heartiest laughs I've wrung from my friends in some time. Booze helped, surely, but Lisa's is a very satisfying laugh to prompt.

Tracy performed a really terrific version of Peggy Lee's "Fever." At its conclusion, she returned to our table and said to me, "I hope that wasn't too sultry. My friend who I babysat when he was an infant is here..."

Some of the other performances were interesting. My very favorite was a guy who donned disdainful Britpop shades and performed a hilariously literal, obscene version of Pulp's "This is Hardcore," going so far as to walk into the crowd and make the fratboys in the front uncomfortable with his pansexual banter. Julie and her sister were completely horrified, and Adam and I tried to explain that the guy was doing an incredibly awesome Jarvis Cocker impression. I admired that guy beyond words.

Julie performed a funny, rednecky version of the Beatles' "Don't Pass Me By," complete with suspender-stretchin' hoedown dancing. Her sister did a very good Sheryl Crow impression. And I was pretty proud of my Elvis Costello on "Radio, Radio." Elvis isn't the most difficult to sing, of course (Davids Bowie and Byrne are equal friends to karaokists in that regard), but I know that song inside and out, so I felt confident and people seemed to enjoy it. The Jarvis Cocker guy made his way to the front of the stage and was whooping and egging me on, and shook my hand afterwards, which actually made me feel very nice.

Lisa dithered over which song to perform until Tracy reminded her that we'd reached a point where she had to submit something if she hoped to take the stage before 3 AM, so the two of them decided to do "Midnight At the Oasis" together, which they had lots of fun with. I can't hear that song without thinking of Fred Willard and Catherine O'Hara in Waiting for Guffman, but I think I'll think of Tracy and Lisa twirling their boas around as well whenever I hear it from now on.

Thereafter, the evening becomes a bit of a blur. Many gin and tonics (gins and tonic?) were consumed, to the point where my hands smelled like lime all day Friday. I remember trying to convince anyone who'd listen to perform Prince's "Erotic City," in a manner that I thought was funny but was probably tremendously icky.

Several weeks later, another karaoke night was planned, but we hadn't counted on Ann Arbor being invaded by Hollywood, with its traffic-frustrating roadblocks and puffy directing pants. Michael Cera and Steve Buscemi were in town to make a movie, and although that pairing might sound entirely too awesome to be contained by mere celluloid, the film already has three strikes against it: (1) It is named Youth in Revolt, which is an atrocious title. (2) It is directed by Miguel Arteta, who directed the atrocious Chuck & Buck and The Good Girl. (3) Next to Circus, the filmmakers constructed a storefront for a hotdog stand (which--strike 3.5--I believe was called Ghetto Dog), and it was then demolished using more pyrotechnics than can be a good sign for a studio comedy that is not a Tropic Thunder- or Team America-style parody.

Circus itself, on that evening, was crammed with the Youth in Revolt crew, who were having their wrap party, and the wall-to-wall people would not have made for a good, casual evening. It didn't stop me from quickly guzzling a gin and tonic before anyone else showed up, but once Noa arrived, we sat outside and waited for Tracy, Lisa, and Julie to show so we could make new plans. Some guy asked us to keep an eye on his bike so it didn't get stolen. The bike quickly vanished when we weren't paying attention, so I hope that guy had returned.

After some confusion, we all decided to walk a bunch of blocks to the Heidelberg, a pub that supposedly also offered karaoke. Unfortunately, it was "ladies and ladies only" night at the Heidelberg, so my genitals once again ruined things for everyone. (Noa suggested I pose as her seeing-eye man, but we would likely have giggled far too much to pull that off.) Thereafter, we walked a bunch more blocks to sportsbar The Arena. This prompted an interesting e-mail conversation the following morning with my hilarious friends and fellow copy editors Kerri and Alex, who'd asked me how the karaoke went:

Kerri:
i have always somehow known never to go in the arena.

Alex:
i don't even know what that is.

Me:
My brother took me in The Arena once before, but it was on a deserted weekday afternoon, so it was tolerable then. (They offered something that purported to be "deep-fried pizza" that I was eager to try. It was okay.) Last night, we were confronted with two fratboys standing in the middle of the room bellowing what I believe was an Eagles song while cheered on by a ring of like-mindless sportsbar regulars, and I immediately went into a position that my therapist used to describe as "cocooning," and sought refuge on the pavement outside.

Kerri:
deep fried pizza sounds delicious.

you should work in anti-pr. is that a field?

Me:
I believe anti-PR is called "LiveJournal."

Alex:
where is this place? i was picturing a colisseum!

Me:
(I shouldn't imply that everyone who frequents sportsbars is mindless. That was an overgeneralization. I was merely speaking of the vibe given off at The Arena last night, which was the frattiest of the fratty. It felt like an East Lansing bar.)

Kerri:
thank god cuz dissing sportsbars full of frat boys is the quickest way to piss off a lesbian.

Alex:
i've got to say i have always been anti-frat boys and bought into all the generalizations. This lasted up until my brother joined a frat at State. Sure he might like DMB and be a huge stoner, but he's also really smart and into science and reads tons of books and had a great heart. Am I biased? Sure. However, I enjoy when sterotypes that I hold become fractured. And he did it for me with the frat sterotype.

Kerri:
i think this just means your brother's not the typical frat boy.

Me:
I think it's on Washington and Fourth? Somewhere on Fourth. It's just a big sportsbar. I think the presence of deep-fried pizza is about the only remarkable thing I could tell you about it. (I'm not sad I ate the deep-fried pizza or anything. I was just expecting something incredibly revelatory, and it was merely good.)

I understand what you mean about painting all fratboys with the same brush. I know it's dangerous to lump people into stereotypical groups like that, and I shouldn't use "fratboy" as shorthand for That Guy, because I know it doesn't always apply... "Loud Vince Vaughn-wannabe macho misogynist homophobic asshole" just doesn't trip off the tongue in the same way, though. I'll have to think of a better term.

Alex:
i wanna f*ck vince vaughn

Me:
I actually mostly like Vince Vaughn. I reserve my contempt for guys who've at some point been told that they resemble/act like/are as funny as him and take it as a license to approximate his top-of-the-lungs motormouthed arrogance from Swingers without any of the charm.

Alex:
it's ok chris. we *believe* that you mostly like vince vaughn types and fratboys

Kerri:
he'd probably like your brother. so would i probably. but i also like my stereotypes, especially ones i'm attached to like "the typical fratboy" and "the typical ann arborite" etc.

Alex:
what about the typical lesbian?

Kerri:
another useful one! the typical lesbian refers to "fratboys" a lot.

Alex:
do frat boys wear Merrel shoes?

Kerri:
i don't think so. that's your queer ass.

Me:
You're right, though. I do apologize for overgeneralizing. I shouldn't do that. My social anxieties aren't their fault or their problem, so I shouldn't toss around words like "mindless." Even if they were singing The Eagles.

Alex:
o my god. chris you are too funny. if you thought i was calling you out on some level, i really wasn't.

i'm sure your description was right on. i mean, dude, who sings Eagles for karaoke?

Kerri:
see chris--with alex, never be sorry. you'll be sorry!

Me:
No, I didn't take it like you were angry or anything. You're just correct; if I want to practice whatever "love and kindness" thing that I profess to believe in, I shouldn't do that. (Unless it's really, really funny to do so. But this wasn't quite funny enough to justify it.)

This is what it's like in my brain! Only noisier, with more cartoon devils with pitchforks whooping and hopping around.

Last time we were at Circus, incidentally, someone did "Hotel California." All 20 damn minutes of it.

Alex:
that's just brutal

oh and the karaoke song too

ha. joking.

Kerri:
i feel love and kindness and making fun of fratboys are not incommensurate. they don't seem to be one of the more systematically marginalized and misrepresented groups. therefore, even not funny comments make sense to me, if for no other reason than insecure self-defense.

Me:
"Insecure self-defense"?! That's where I'm a Viking! :)

I see what you're saying too. I just don't like thinking that I'd offend a perfectly cool person like Alex's brother while making fun of people who may really deserve to be made fun of. I certainly don't think that fratboys as a group are marginalized in any way, of course. I just always appreciate when someone points out to me that I should be more thoughtful and precise with how I phrase things...

I dunno. As long as I can still use the word "douchesack" a lot, I think I'll be happy, because I am very fond of that word.

[End of e-mails]

After further hesitation about where to go, Julie finally started walking across the street and called to us, "Phil! I'm standing!" in the voice of Karla Tamburrelli in City Slickers, which made me laugh. We finally wound up at a downstairs club called Babs (there may be an apostrophe somewhere in there). No karaoke and the most truly repellent techno music ever made, but it was a cozy little lounge, and we all got some good conversing and drinking accomplished.

A karaoke do-over was arranged for the Tuesday before I had to head back to Maine, this time at Conor O'Neill's pub. Noa and I got there an hour or two early to eat dinner, since it's important to carbo-load before karaoke. We ate boxty, a yummy Irish potato pancake/veggie thingy. (From Wikipedia's entry on boxty: "Boxty was seen as so much a part of the local culture in the areas in which it was made, that the following poem was written: 'Boxty on the griddle/Boxty in the pan/If you can't make boxty/You'll never get a man.'" This article does not cite any references or sources.) We lingered over our dinner and drinks and had a very nice talk of the sort that made me wish Noa and I had grown up together as friends.

Shortly thereafter, Tracy arrived with her sister, whose name I have shamefully forgotten. Lisa brought along this nifty LED spinning top she'd acquired, which captivated her easily-hypnotized coworkers (me). Julie, her friend Simone, and Julie's sister whose name I have ignominiously forgotten also arrived. Juli showed up last and was very excited that she'd walked past a house party that was blaring "Electric Demons in Love" by The Electric Six off a balcony. At some point, we were joined by a guy who was most likely named Jeremy, and who spent quite a bit of time hitting on Tracy and then her sister, both times leading off creepily by talking about his court-ordered alcohol counseling.

The karaoke set-up at Conor O'Neill's was quite a departure from Circus's, in that it wasn't so much designed to give you Jackpot-esque delusions of stardom as to keep your off-key caterwauling corralled in a way that would not interfere with the TV-watchin' and conversations of the pub's other patrons. A mike and a monitor were placed in an out-of-the-way corner, beneath a giant-screen TV. For most of the night, the TV was broadcasting NBC's Olympics coverage, and if you were willing to cede a little rhythmic precision, you could pretend that the gymnasts' floor exercises were dances to supplement whatever song was being belted out below, like in the Chemical Brothers' "Electrobank" video, so it actually made an entertaining visual accompaniment.

Julie and Simone sang that song by The Darkness whose name I've never bothered to learn. Tracy, having decided that Bowie's "Space Oddity" would necessitate the uncomfortable straddling of several octaves, wrestled with an Olivia Newton-John number that thankfully had nothing to do with Grease (yes, we had to sit through somebody doing "Summer Nights"; if you go to karaoke night, you will have to deal with that and "Love Shack"). Lisa sang "Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm Mmmm" by the Crash Test Dummies and could fairly be accused of not taking the song seriously. Simone did a counterintuitively sexy, Nouvelle Vague-style version of Talking Heads' "Psycho Killer." Noa and Tracy's sister giggled their way through Bill Withers's "Ain't No Sunshine" (it's very difficult to get through all those "I know"s with a straight face).

Noa blew everyone away by taking on "It's Oh So Quiet" by Bjork. Julie joined her to dance and do the "Shh! Shh!" bits, which added the sort of absurdity that the song requires, but Noa managed an unthinkably perfect imitation of Bjork, right down to the accent and every loonball vocal tremor. I pratically expected her to attack a photojournalist on the way back to our table, so uncannily did she embody Iceland's pixie lunatic.

I sang "Punk Rock Girl" by The Dead Milkmen, largely out of loyalty to one of my favorite bands ever, but also because I still aspire to sing with the same snotty, tuneful, endearing nerdiness that makes Joe Jack Talcum's voice my very favorite in rock history.

Someone discovered that the karaoke book had a section for songs marked "specialty," which turned out to mean something entirely different from when that label is applied in video stores. It turns out this was a section for traditional songs and hymns. The comedy possibilities were endless, but Lisa, Simone, and Tracy's sister finally settled on a raucous singalong rendition of "Home on the Range." I think some guy threw them some money.

Noa and I thought about dueting on The Postal Service's "Nothing Better," but no Postal Service songs were available. However, during a break between performances, the guy running the equipment used "Such Great Heights" as a filler track, so Noa and I quietly sang along with it while each holding other conversations. It was a fun little moment. Eventually, we sang "Don't Dream It's Over," and I accidentally took the first verse even though Noa said she wanted to sing whichever verse had the line "You can catch the deluge in a paper cup," because she likes Neil Finn's accent on the word deluge. I am a horrible friend to one and all.

Late in the evening, Lisa took this photo of Noa and me with her phone:

I like how we look like we're up to mischief. Combined with the staticky picture quality, it makes me think of a WarGames-style prank gone too far, like we were joking around about beaming our image onto The Big Board at NORAD and accidentally did it for real. This picture makes me happy.

As did the entire evening. I had so much fun with everybody and there was such an unusually comfortable level of camaraderie that my heart breaks a little every time I think back on it. I could never explain exactly why, but it was one of those nights where no one thing happened that you could point to as being especially revelatory, but scores of individual moments of silliness, emotion, conversation, and insight all added up to the sort of unpredictably rich experience from which ineffably strong bonds are forged between friends. At least, that was how I came away feeling, and I'm very grateful for it.

And on a completely unrelated note, here's why Bev cracks me up:

[I am staring listlessly at our cable guide, looking for anything that will be less dull than Unbreakable, which we are currently watching.]
BEV: Turn it to World's Sexiest Men. Let's see who the world's sexiest men are.
[I turn it to the channel on which World's Sexiest Men is airing.]
COMMERCIAL ANNOUNCER: ... Kellogg's Smart Start.
BEV: Disagree!

CURRENT MUSIC: Palo Santo by Shearwater.
CURRENT MOOD: Vexed beyond all reason by Henry Roth, the ersatz Tim Gunn who is constantly barging into the sewing room on Project Runway Australia. Obviously, only Tim Gunn is Tim Gunn, but the last thing I need is a smug hybrid of Greg Proops and Admiral Stockdale taking that role.
CURRENT MOST BIZARRE PARAGRAPH I'VE EVER READ ABOUT FILMMAKING TROUBLES: Regarding Deepa Mehta's first, aborted attempt to make her film Water: "After two takes into the first shot of the movie, government authorities hustled their way onto the set. Law and order was at risk, they declared, and filming must stop immediately. We were forced to evacuate the location. One key protester had taken a boat out into the middle of the Ganges, consumed poison, tied a rock around his waist, and jumped into the water, yelling that Deepa Mehta and her film were his reason for attempting suicide. Days later the press revealed that the man, who was rushed to the hospital and survived, was a professional suicide attempter, employed by various political parties to attempt his own execution for various political reasons. This had been his sixth suicide attempt, and this was the reason given for closing the film down. Law and order was in jeopardy."

A plug for a friend.

Thu, 04 Sep 2008 22:33:36 GMT

I hope to post something substantial soon-ish, but in the meantime, I thought I'd mention that my buddy Dave Weigel (with whom I went to that Camper Van Beethoven show in Chicago several years back) made the front page of Wonkette:

They link to an editorial he wrote for Reason about (one aspect of) Sarah Palin's ludicrousness, and their comment is: "Question: Why is Dave Weigel such a terrible sexist?" I adore Wonkette.

As long as I'm here, here are a few entertaining Sarah Palin links I've come across in the past week, mostly from Wonkette, and mostly of the gossipy rather than intellectually weighty variety:

I saw a hilariously inexplicable bumper sticker the other day that said, "Contraception, is this ONAN-ISM?" and I naturally thought of Bristol Palin, Sarah's knocked-up daughter. I feel sorry for the kid on a personal level--especially the way her mom is parading her about--but it does provide a handy illustration of why the abstinence-only programs supported by the Palin matriarch don't work.

(Thomas Schaller, at Salon, nicely summarizes the hypocrisy of it all: "What's galling is this: When the subject is a pregnancy to an unwed, minority teenage mother growing up in some (presumably Democratic) urban area, that pregnancy becomes fodder for lectures from conservatives about bad parenting, the perils of welfare spending and so on. But when the subject is a pregnancy to an unwed, white teenager from some small town in a Republican state, that pregnancy is...a celebration of the wonders of God's magnificence--and choosing life!")

The posts on Daily Kos that initially started the maelstrom, about whether Trig Palin was actually Bristol's son and Sarah's grandson, have been removed from their site. It's too bad, because regardless of the truth of the rumors, the posts gave a very detailed timeline of the official story of Trig Palin's birth. Namely, Sarah Palin claims that her water broke a month before her due date, then she gave a speech, then she got on a plane and flew eight hours from Texas to Alaska, then drove past several hospitals that have better prenatal care facilities until she finally got to a hospital where she squeezed the kid out. It kind of screams "poor judgement" to me. Kind of like forcing--or allowing, for that matter--your 17-year-old kid to marry. (Here's a brief summary of the rumor from 23/6.)

[LATE NOTE: I guess she actually admitted to "leaking amniotic fluid," which may not be the same thing; see Anderyn's comments below. Either way, this particularly cynical article from Icky People suggests that this was an incredibly dangerous decision for her to have made.]

Furthermore, this blog has an interesting analysis of how Bristol's 2007 "baby bump" was retconned.

And also, Sarah thinks "the founding fathers" wrote (or at least were in the habit of reciting) the Pledge of Allegiance, complete with the words "under God," which were added in 1954.

[ANOTHER LATE NOTE: This blog reprints a letter from someone who claims to have lived in Wasilla, Alaska, during Palin's tenure as mayor. She goes into a lot of detail about the things Palin did while racking up all that "executive experience." I obviously have no way to fact-check any of this, but here it is nonetheless because I am a member of the angry left.]

And once again, I fully expect to be a complete basket case by the time November rolls around. I have grown to loathe election years, even if they do hold the possibility of someone useful getting into office, because my mental health seriously cannot sustain this sort of thing week after week.

I am a poor wayfaring stranger.

Wed, 20 Aug 2008 03:23:46 GMT

As I mentioned, I spent the middle of June through last Friday living in Ann Arbor, putting in another two months at Mathematical Reviews, as is my calling. I had an unequivocally spectacular summer out there, and specific topic-based entries will follow. For now, however, enjoy the following excerpts from the journal I kept while away.

* * *

The trip to Michigan from Maine was surprisingly stress-free. I downloaded about 40 hours' worth of unreleased Scharpling & Wurster calls, so I had plenty of entertainment for the journey. My favorite bit came in the middle of a call in which Jon Wurster plays a brusque, sleazy convention magnate, responsible for fan conventions such as CerealCon and AssassinCon '92 (which featured Sirhan Sirhan's nephew as a guest speaker):

WURSTER: At NirvanaCon '98, we've got Spencer, the baby from the cover of Nevermind, who'll be signing autographs.
SCHARPLING: Oh yeah? How old is he now?
WURSTER: Tommy, can I say the F word?
SCHARPLING: What? No!
WURSTER: Okay. He's seven or eight.

Those kind of left-field interjections are my favorite parts of Scharpling & Wurster calls.

So yeah, apart from my car getting disassembled and reassembled by Quebecois customs agents, the drive through Canada was pretty pleasant. I stopped in Toronto for dinner with Amanda and Sean, who were, naturally, tremendously gracious and friendly. We ate white pizza, drank Keith's IPA (which Amanda described as her "gateway beer" because it's the first beer she's ever tried that she has enjoyed), and chatted, accompanied by the friendly mutterings of their parakeets and the beautiful view of Toronto's financial district (I think?) through their living room window. Amanda played the Alison Krauss/Robert Plant album as we sat, and it really was as good as she's always saying.

One interesting tidbit we learned as we chatted: Sean and I were both at the Radiohead show in Barrie, Ontario, on the Amnesiac tour. As Sean was apparently a denizen of George Starostin's Music Babble message board (along with me and Amanda) long before he or Amanda had ever met, it's interesting to discover that our paths had previously crossed in another way.

I got lost on the way out of their apartment building. Turns out it wasn't entirely my fault; the fire doors had closed on the way to the elevator.

* * *

The family that lives behind my parents isn't outwardly fond of their children. The mom especially, apparently, punctuates her dialogue with shrieks that make the neighbors pop out of their houses in the fear that someone has been murdered.

DAD: She's such a bitch!
MOM: Yeah, it really doesn't seem like the son can do anything right in her opinion.
DAD: She's a bitch.
MOM: Jeffrey, we get it. You don't have to keep saying it.
DAD: [sotto voce] She's got chubby legs.

* * *

I made a new friend at Math Reviews, Noa. I'm pretty sure that we'd been introduced during my previous MR stint, but only briefly. Noa now works in the bibliographic services department, and has great taste in music. Oddly enough, she was also at the Radiohead show in Barrie that Sean and I attended. Seems that Radiohead show was the Woodstock of our generation. (Or, in my particular case, the Altamont.) I haven't made a new friend in so long that I'd forgotten how invigorating it can be; just to get an e-mail from someone and think, "Yes! Someone who thinks like I do; i.e., correctly!"

* * *

I copy edited a review today from a guy named Christian Wieners. I e-mailed Bev with the suggestions, "A snack to accompany your sacramental wine at the tent revival? A chat room for gay fundamentalists?"

* * *

Helped Tim and Jess move yesterday. ... After everything was safely inside their new apartment (which is gorgeous), Tim and Aaron went to take the U-Haul back and Jess and John went to procure us pizza and beer. Before everyone took off, Jess asked what kind of beer we wanted, and there was a moment of silence as each of us contemplated what kind of beer we could even choke down in our sweaty, dehydrated state. Aaron, with perfect timing, said, "Get us a nice, thick stout. A winter oatmeal stout!" Best laugh of the day, I think.

Aaron's wife Emily, Tim and Jess's friends Chris and Dave, and I sat in exhausted silence for a couple minutes, and then Emily and I reassembled the futon so we'd have someplace to sit besides the floor. I hope the stench of my sweaty ass doesn't linger on that futon for too long.

Chris was poking around through Tim and Jess's stuff, before proclaiming, "Nope; doesn't look like they have any games we could play."

Emily indicated a box of Corningware on the coffee table and deadpanned, "We could play Corningware. It's great."

CHRIS: How do you play?
EMILY: We each close our eyes and pick a piece of Corningware out of the box, and whoever gets the biggest piece... wins?
CHRIS: Nah, it takes forever to set up.

After everyone returned, we all sat around eating, drinking, and talking for a little while. Jess brought up the two high school charity car washes we'd passed in the caravan from their old apartment to their new one. Both were staffed with depressing high school bikini girls.

EMILY: Did you notice that the first car wash had, like, only two bikini girls outside but then the second one had seven or eight? I bet if we kept going along Ford Road, it would've kept getting exponentially greater.
JESS: The first car wash also had a SpongeBob bounce hut.
TIM: That would be the one to go to.
ME: Definitely.
JOHN: Yes.
AARON: Mm-hm.
EMILY: So SpongeBob trumps bikini girls, huh?
JESS: Did you see how many belly rings there were?
ME: Yep, a shimmering sea of them.
TIM: One of them did a kick for Aaron.
EMILY: Of course.
JESS: So did you pull the U-Haul in for a wash?
ME: "Make sure you get up on top."
TIM: "There's a lot of bird shit up there."

* * *

I find myself walking on tiptoes occasionally just because I found Summer Glau's barefoot prancing on Firefly so graceful that part of me hopes to come away with a bit of elegance myself.

* * *

I visited the 'rents tonight and watched the Tigers game with them. During one of the commercial breaks, FSN aired a PSA from something called the "Foundation for a Better Life" (whose website insists that it's a nonprofit organization not affiliated with any particular religion--or cult--but I nevertheless have my suspicions) in which a lone kid on a baseball field shouts, "I'm the greatest batter in the world!" before tossing the ball in the air, swinging at it, and whiffing enough times to strike out. In the commercial, he looks dejected for a moment, brightens, and shouts, "I'm the greatest pitcher in the world!" and the tagline is "Optimism: Pass it on." I commented that the PSA should've ended with the kid sadly trudging off the field, bat dragging in the dirt, and the slogan, "Not all dreams can come true." (Which I stole from Dinosaur Comics.) I don't think Mom or Dad thought it was nearly as funny as I did.

After the game, Tigers manager Jim Leyland was interviewed, and took what seemed to me a bizarrely disinterested attitude toward the very exciting and ultimately unjust game that had just taken place. (The top of the 10th inning began with one of the Tigers being called out at home even though even a cursory replay shows that there is at least half a foot between the catcher's mitt and the sliding Tiger as he crosses home.) Mom said, "I keep trying to think of the perfect adjective to describe Jim Leyland and I can't quite come up with it."

"Laissez-faire?" I suggested.

"Not quite," she said.

"Fatalistic?"

"Um... maybe, but no."

"Insouciant?"

I like my conversations with Mom because we get to use lots of words.

* * *

Yesterday was just work. Robin is really cute in her support of Obama. I know that, like me, she would prefer it if he were rather further to the left on a lot of issues, but she knows she's going to vote for him anyhow, so she is throwing herself wholeheartedly behind him. She e-mailed me a YouTube clip of Barack effortlessly throwing a three-pointer on some basketball court at which he was speaking to some military folks, with a note that said something like, "Is there anything he can't do? How cool is he?" So I e-mailed her back with a note that said, "Sure, the liberal media will spread this around, but do you see any coverage of McCain's amazing back-to-back ringers in his outstanding 'Casual Game of Horseshoes for Our Troops'?" Robin thought that was funny.

* * *

Robin and Alex invited me to go on a walk with them around 1:00, and we wandered around the Math Reviews neighborhood. It was a very nice day and there were lots of dogs about.

I saw a campaign sign that said, "Bobrin: Democrat for Drain Commissioner!" I think I've found the line where I stop caring about people's party affiliations.

Robin got into mom mode and started giving me guff about the fact that my shirts are always wrinkled and I look like I sleep in a hamper. Fair enough, since my clothes have gone immediately from my parents' dryer into my duffel bag, where they remain until they are deployed. "It only takes a minute to fold them!" Robin started to lecture, and Alex and I laughed at her for being Mom. Robin is a trip.

* * *

After work, Noa and I spent the evening hanging out downtown. She bought me supper at NYPD Pizza (big, greasy slices, like when Sbarro's used to be good) and then took me to the kids' section at the library, where they have a great aquarium with many beautiful, multicolored tropical fish. We were there to see Porky, the big puffer fish, who was swimming determinedly in circles around the tank, looking like the very happiest fish in the entire world. He has a very expressive face; his mouth always hangs open, but there's either a tongue or some sort of flap inside that he moves up and down, so he looks like he's trying to communicate. I think he recognized Noa, because he swam right up to her and, just judging from the way his mouth flap moved, he actually looked like he was mouthing, "Hi!" I love him.

There was also a little puffer fish in the tank who was very speedy and adorable. He wouldn't stop for anything; just kept swimming 'round and 'round the tank. Noa said he was kind of sketchy looking. He does have kind of a shifty look about him, but I suspect it comes from self-consciousness about his size. There was a very pretty clownfish who kept hanging out by the filter, which I guess was breathing very soothing bubbles onto his scales. The informative laminated cards taped to the top of the tank claimed that the Naso Tang fish likes to eat zucchini and broccoli. So maybe someone accidentally spilled their salad in the tank at some point? Because how would you find that out, really?

After that, we went to the Dawn Treader bookshop looking for those Helen Cresswell books I've been hunting. No luck, but I bought Noa a used copy of Mark Leyner's My Cousin, My Gastrointerologist (she said she would buy it herself, but I insisted because there's a possibility she'll flat-out hate it, and if that's the case, she'll be able to console herself with the knowledge that she didn't spend any money on it). When I brought it to the cash register, the kind, older-middle-aged man behind the counter smiled at me and quoted, "You've got a car bomb." I told him that's the first piece that always comes to my mind too, and giggled. As we left the store, he started reciting the rest of the short story "The Suggestiveness Of One Stray Hair In An Otherwise Perfect Coiffure" to his coworker.

We went into a comic book store and I was good and just bought Bev a copy of the first volume of The Firefly Companion (we have only been able to find the second one around Bangor). Down in the basement, we had to be very quiet because there were some nerds playing some nerd game, but Noa was pleased to see that they had a replica of Buffy's gravestone from the end of season five. ("She saved the world a lot.") Then we had to wait in line behind someone who kept asking questions about some sort of, I don't know, role-playing accessory, and the clerk kept talking about all the available special powers and it was very silly and took forever. I flipped through the Firefly book to make sure there was a big cheesecake picture of Adam Baldwin for Bev's... needs, and Noa said, "I can't believe Bev has a crush on him. He's the third... fourth most attractive man on the show."

"Really? You're into Badger?" I replied.

"Shut up," she said.

When she dropped me at my car, there was a friendly tabby cat in the playground next to where I parked. I scratched his ears and he closed his eyes and affectionately pressed his head against my hand the way cats do, and then he bolted.

* * *

I helped Lisa feed some cats she'd been taking care of while Bert and one of her other neighbors were out of town. She thought it was funny that I instinctively said, "It was nice meeting you," to the cats as we left each house. She told me a story about one of her friends who would always deputize one cat as being "in charge" when the humans were leaving the house, and the cat in charge would rotate each time, so no one felt left out. I sheepishly admitted to doing the same thing, except the rotation includes stuffed animals as well.

* * *

At work, I discovered that tonight was the last night that My Winnipeg would be playing at the Michigan Theater--Guy Maddin's new film, about which I've been excited for awhile, and thus the sort of film that Bangor repels as though they're two positively charged ions--so I asked Noa if she felt like going. We got pizza again because we are both pizza fiends, and she wasted one of her Michigan Theater passes on the likes of me.

The film was excellent and damn near indescribable. It's presented as a stagy post-Michael Moore first-person documentary in which the character of Guy Maddin threatens to escape the city in which he's lived his entire life, and in the process gives a history of Winnipeg told through real stock footage, entirely fabricated silliness, and narration that's delivered with such obnoxious art-student gravitas that it's simultaneously impossible to take seriously and credibly forceful. At the same time, Maddin has sublet his childhood home for a month, coaxed his mother there to live with him (played, in My Winnipeg, by silent film actress Ann Savage), and hired actors to play his siblings as part of an ostensible "experiment" to see if any revelations will arise to explain his attachment to the city.

The "experiment" portion of the film is flat-out hilarious as a parody of gimmicky documentarians like Morgan Spurlock and Kirby Dick (whose name I initially typed as "Toby Keith," which would've made the rest of this review extra-inscrutable), who have a tendency to insert themselves into their studies to no discernible end. There is clearly nothing to be learned from the fictional Maddin's re-creations of, say, the daily attempts to straighten a hallway runner that refuses to be straightened, or from sitting in front of the TV watching the same local programming his family used to watch (a creation too funny to give away, but one that's also completely of a piece with the Winnipeg Maddin imagines), but his fake family goes through the motions for him anyway.

(There's a particularly mean--and funny--swipe at Moore, too, as Maddin high-mindedly decries the media's coverage of striking workers as "Bolskevik rapists" when, in fact, that's exactly what they're revealed to be.)

What's disarming, though, is how Maddin manages to paint a portrait of this goofy, straw-man Winnipeg as a city full of folly and corruption without ever truly seeming less than fond of it. My Winnipeg doesn't turn on its titular city with both barrels the way South Park does. I believe Maddin shared his fellow citizens' outrage at the demolition of the old hockey arena, just as I thought it was funny when his documentarian character gravely went into the condemned building for one last piss in the urinal trough. I believe he finds something genuinely inspiring in the First Nations legend of magnetic underground rivers that cross exactly beneath the fork of Winnipeg's two major rivers, just as I admired his incessant repetition of "the forks beneath the forks" for its bullseye imitation of the cheapo documentary tactic of repeating narrated words ad infinitum in the hopes of thus somehow imbuing them with meaning. He employs a light touch with the people of Winnipeg and their daily ironies, real or imagined.

Beneath all the sharply observed genre parody, and just as in The Saddest Music in the World, there's a great deal of imagination, subtly innovative camerawork, and, at unexpected intervals, sequences of completely counterintuitive emotion. It's a very funny film, but it's not a film in which the laughs rise homogenously throughout the theater; rather, an individual shot or turn of a phrase might prompt guffaws from one or two people in the room, and the next shot will tickle two different people. The laughs proceed thusly like a Whack-a-Mole game, and there comes a point where you're never really sure which lines are the laugh lines and which aren't, as the whole movie eventually blooms into a believable, dreamlike reality. I doubt there's a single verifiable fact about Winnipeg in the entire film, but I also fully believe that it's as emotionally true to the city's atmosphere as any straight documentary could be.

* * *

Lisa had returned from vacation just today, so I caught her up on some gossip and sent her an e-card that said, "Sorry your post-vacation workload has completely negated any benefits of your vacation." She said that she really enjoyed the mix I made for her to take on her trip and that her stay in NYC was short enough that she could still appreciate the very particular sort of filth that signifies, "Wow, I'm on a NYC subway!" rather than "Wow, this subway is filthy!"

* * *

T-Bone said that the first thing he's going to buy when he gets the job [as a technical services worker at a place called Epic] is a set of illegal Jarts. The lawn dart game with the heavy, stabby end that enables the darts to stick in the ground--or the skulls of passersby, which is why they've been outlawed. (Infinitely superior, honestly, to the "safe" version whose ends are rounded and full of sand. Without the metal point, the darts bounce and slide a little bit on the ground, which is annoying for everyone, but I suspect it's particularly vexing for a sporting purist like T-Bone.) They've been banned for some time, but he found a place online where he can get a set for $50.

T-Bone also told me that he'd gone to see Matthew Ryan at a local bar a week or two ago, and most of the audience wasn't really interested in the concert but was just there to drink (which is odd, since there was a $15 cover), and Ryan himself was pretty drunk, so the show was a little sloppy. However, for the first encore, Ryan grabbed his acoustic guitar, told everyone who was interested to gather 'round at the front of the stage, and he climbed down there and sang to a crowd of about 20, un-miked and unplugged, for 20 minutes or so, performing requests from anyone who'd care to call one out. T-Bone requested a song that required a harmonica, and Ryan told him, "It's just cruel to make a man who's this drunk play two instruments at once," but he did it, stopping in the middle to exclaim to T-Bone, "You know, this is the saddest song in the world!" That sounds like it was really cool.

Apparently, T-Bone has gotten into a new author called John Nance, who writes "aviation thrillers." Commercial aviation thrillers, from the way he described it. Thrillers that are set on commercial airplanes. It's a pretty specific niche to write in, it seems to me, but I suppose it does have the advantage of a built-in ticking clock (fuel) and a tense, claustrophobic setting. T-Bone and I don't like the same kinds of books.

Another book he read recently was something called Nightfall (or thereabouts) by Nelson DeMille. T-Bone said, "For the first 560 pages, it was the best book I'd ever read and I was ready to run out and buy all the other books by this guy. The book is 562 pages long. The ending is the biggest piece-of-shit cop-out I've ever read and it convinced me to never read another book by this chump."

I really love listening to T-Bone talk. Whether he's enthusiastic about something or upset about something, he's completely wholehearted about it. In my family, we still talk about the time he was watching a NASCAR race, rooting for Bryan Herta, and all I heard from the other room was this, without him taking a breath: "HERTA'S GONNA WIN! ONE LAP TO GO, HE'S IN THE LEAD! HE'S GOING TO WIN HIS FIRST CHAMPIONSHIP! GO! GO! GO! NO! ZANARDI, YOU STUPID ITALIAN! WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING? NO!" (Alex Zanardi had somehow crashed into Herta or something.) It doesn't come through in text, but literally in the same breath, he went from bellowing from the heights of utter euphoria to bellowing out of complete dejection. It was remarkable.

He also directed me to a photo he got featured on passiveaggressivenotes.com.

Very sleepy. It's 7:50, so I should probably attempt to stay awake for a couple more hours...

* * *

Adrienne and I went to see Mamma Mia! in the middle of the afternoon, because we'd seen the stage version in Toronto and liked it. The film was just ludicrous. On the stage, the fact that there's a bare minimum of plot and character development doesn't matter because the entire thing has an affable, "Hey gang, let's put on a play as an excuse to sing a bunch of ABBA songs!" vibe. On screen, however, with fancy Mediterranean locations and recognizable nonsinger leads Meryl Streep and Pierce Brosnan, the whole multimillion-dollar endeavor seems so slight that I kept giggling out of sheer astonishment that it even counted as a film. (I can't even say the story seems contrived because that implies some effort.)

That said, I didn't hate it or anything. It's impossible to hate a movie that's sweetly misguided enough to spontaneously present "Dancing Queen" as an anthem of female empowerment, and as disasters go, it's hard to imagine another one with so much of its running time devoted to such indelibly enjoyable music. Streep can't sing, and Brosnan appeared to be completely confused by the fact that he was singing ("The director was having me do the oddest thing with my voice: it wasn't quite yelling, but it wasn't quite talking either..."), but everyone was clearly having fun. Colin Firth managed to emerge unscathed, actually. He has a nice, Davy Jones-style singing voice and managed to give a likably lightweight performance without appearing to phone it in.

* * *

Tuesday night, I went over to Steve and Jessica Knowlton's place for supper, and then Steve, his buddy Derek, and I (along with Derek's supernaturally patient girlfriend, Hannah) drove to this great old church in Ypsilanti to get some recording done. We set up on a stage on the top floor of the church, where the acoustics were marvelous. I played a keyboard part that I'd written for some of Steve's lyrics on Tim's MicroKorg, and both Steve and Derek seemed to enjoy it, so we managed to cobble together a song on Steve's four-track. While recording percussion, Derek came up with the idea of sitting an open snare drum on the stage and stomping his foot next to it, which had the effect of making it sound like the snare and bass drum were being hit simultaneously. It had a nice, lo-fi drum effect that reminded me of Jefferson Airplane's "White Rabbit" for some reason.

We recorded the keyboard and percussion at the same time (me managing to play through the keyboard bit without a single flubbed note, which never happens), and then Steve added a bass part and Derek added a guitar part that sounded a lot like Dean Ween's spacier work on quebec. As much of a control-freak ProTools knob-twiddling overdubber as I am, the evening reminded me of the romance of being in a rock band: Steve and Derek's respective parts were very clever and also nothing that I could ever have come up with, and the song was much better for the contributions of three people than it would've been if I'd tried to build it up myself in my dank little apartment.

Hannah napped on a bench for most of the session until a bat flew in through the open window. From that point on, she sat in the corner of the stage and kept brushing her fingers through her hair to make sure the bat hadn't lit on her head.

* * *

I crashed with Amanda and Sean on Saturday night, on my trip back to Maine. Once again, loads of fun.

Sean did some searching for videos online and showed us a hilarious dramatization of the 1917 Halifax explosion that was one of a series of Canadian pride PSAs that aired on CBC when we were growing up, as well as a remarkable confrontation between Canada's then-Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau and a slow-on-the-draw reporter during the October Crisis of 1970. The latter struck me as kind of shocking, as I am not used to lengthy, uninterrupted, unsupervised, and combative dialogue between world leaders and reporters, let alone an unbroken six minutes of fairly frank discussion. Trudeau comes across as kind of spooky in his detached determination, but he's a quick-witted son of a bitch.

Sean is a fount of knowledge about Canadian history and government, and it's very interesting to hear him explain things. For someone who grew up, what, 20 miles from the Canadian border, I know embarrassingly little about the country. I didn't realize, for instance, that in 1999, Canada introduced a new territory called Nunavut until last year, when T-Bone called to say that he'd discovered it on his geography-themed shower curtain, and wanted to know whether I'd heard of it either.

CURRENT MUSIC: The Fountain soundtrack. Just as pretty as the film, but a thousand percent less tedious.
CURRENT MOOD: On the road to Drinkytown!
CURRENT DANNY MCBRIDE SATURATION LEVEL: The very high end of acceptable.

Ann Arbor Interlude #1: Tim and I are nerds.

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 15:20:25 GMT

I will be meeting Tim and Jess at their new apartment tonight, from where we will proceed to our usual haunt, Little Tree Sushi. As I could not remember how to get to their new place, Tim and I had the following e-mail exchange which explains why we are friends with each other. (Hint: no one else would be.)

Hey Tim,
I cannot remember how to get to your new apartment. That seems like it will be a vital part of meeting you there for Little Tree food journey tonight. So let's play a boring little poorly-translated text-based adventure game:

>You are Chris Willie Williams. Your are driving a car EAST on M-14 highway. A road sign approaches.
>look

>You are Chris Willie Williams. Your are driving a car EAST on M-14 highway. A road sign approaches.
>look sign

>The road sign tells you "I 275 junction. Obvious exits NORTH FLINT, SOUTH TOLEDO".
>inv

>Your inventory contents a CELL PHONE, SUPER MARIO WALLET, REGRET
>get off M-14

>You cannot get that.

Finish this sequence and save the damsels!!!
-Chris

Tim replies:

Tim's Ultimate Strategy Guide to the Little Tree Text-Based Adventure Game:

Answers:

From M-14 EAST

>Exit SOUTH TOLEDO on I-275
>Exit ANN ARBOR ROAD
>Turn LEFT onto ANN ARBOR ROAD
>Turn LEFT at BURGER KING onto TRANGLER ROAD
>Turn LEFT at FLEEP ROAD
>Turn RIGHT at the third STOP LIGHT to enter STONE RIDGE

ProTip: Once you get to BUILDING 74, call JESS or TIM, as the buzzer system does not seem to be functional.
ProTip: At Little Tree, when you receive the item YAKI UDON, enter the command "rapidly consume" to get a health bonus.

See you tonight, brave adventurer!

Willie's Off-Brand Web Journal on hiatus through August.

Thu, 19 Jun 2008 20:39:20 GMT

Replacement apartment acquired! Moving to commence tomorrow!

I won't have Internet in my apartment in Michigan, so I probably won't really be updating this journal or the review site through the end of August. I'll try my best to still respond to e-mails and keep up to date on my friends list, though. Have a great summer, both of you reading this!

Horns down. If we go quiet, it won't be permanent.

The room has changed today. I have no place to stay. I'm thinkin' about the subway.

Mon, 16 Jun 2008 14:38:57 GMT

20 years ago or so, television dealt me one of many images that would completely fuck me up.

I have since forgiven television, mostly. But here's the story:

I was seven. My family stopped at an Ohio Red Roof Inn on one of our pre-Thanksgiving drives down to Louisville. After whatever shows we'd wanted to watch had finished and we'd gone to bed, Dad continued to flip through channels long after he thought everyone was asleep. Never a quick sleeper, I silently watched through half-open eyelids. At one point, he lit upon a film sequence in which a ponytailed assassin strapped on a rifle and scaled a tree for a vantage point from which to watch a young girl and her father exit their abode. The viewer then observed through the gunman's scope as he shot the girl in the throat. The girl gasped horribly and clutched her neck as my dad then changed the channel.

Though I never mentioned to my parents that I'd been traumatized by the clip, I was terrified to go outside for at least a few months, and would anxiously glance up in all nearby trees when I was forced to do so. Slowly, it migrated to the back of my brain, lying dormant along with any number of other inexplicably cruel images that comprise the baggage I carry around.

Back to present day: the other night, Bev and I watched Firestarter. Turns out the image that haunted me as a kid was Academy Award renouncer and Man Getting Hit by Football star George C. Scott shooting Drew Barrymore with a tranq dart. Drew turned out okay. In fact, she wound up killing Scott with her pyrokinetic powers. And when she did, it unshackled ages-old demons that then bolted from my mind like malnourished fireflies from a shattered mason jar.

Then Bev and I watched X-Men. I now have different baggage. The kind that comes from sitting through X-Men.

* * *

I no longer have a place to live when I move to Ann Arbor. Yesterday, Marianne left a voicemail telling me that her job or housing or whatever fell through, so she's going to have to remain in her apartment and not sublet it to me. She was very apologetic--she must have said, "I feel horrible" five times in her two-minute voicemail--and I can't be upset with her, really, since it sounds like her plans are lying in 10-car road wrecks too, but it's not a happy development. And I feel stupid for not predicting that something like this would happen.

I'm pretty sure Paul Erdős ruined the possibility of crashing in the Math Reviews offices for everyone, too.

CURRENT MUSIC: Diamond Hoo Ha by Supergrass.
CURRENT MOOD: Feeling sorry for myself/panic mode.
CURRENT MOST RECENT ANIMAL I'VE SEEN IN PERSON THAT I'D NEVER SEEN BEFORE: A porpoise. Saw one on an oceanside picnic with Bev and her parents yesterday. It was nice.

Every time I think I'm out they let me back in!

Thu, 12 Jun 2008 20:32:31 GMT

A few weeks ago, my friend Tracy, copy editing supervisor from Mathematical Reviews, contacted me, asking whether I'd be interested in moving back to Michigan for the summer to help my former colleagues copy edit their way through a bit of a backlog. After much thought, discussion with Bev, excited chair-dancing, and weaseling out of my Maine AIRS duties, my answer was an enthusiastic "Yes, please get me out of Maine!" So come June 23, I'll be digging out my old "Copy editors do it till your participles are no longer dangling" novelty T-shirt and reliving my glory days at my all-time favorite job for two months, with all my much-missed Math Reviews friends! And I hope to be able to get in lots of visiting with Adrienne, Tim, Jess, Steve Knowlton, whichever independent record stores still exist around there and, time permitting, my family.

My ambitious plan is to pack my car only with the essential toiletries, clothing, and my musical instruments and recording equipment. Not allowing myself the distractions of cable TV or Internet, the theory goes, will force me to direct my energy into recording, which I've unconscionably neglected since I finished The Airbag's Lipstick Kiss five years ago. I have a lot of half-songs and snippets recorded, but I'm hoping to be able to bang out a full new album over the two months in Michigan.

However, this necessitated finding a private, one-bedroom or studio apartment in Ann Arbor (i.e., not merely a room in a larger suite or house). For one thing, even if I weren't planning on becoming a studio recluse, I would not feel comfortable sharing an apartment with a stranger for any length of time, let alone being the 28-year-old weirdo in a house full of undergrads. But on top of that, a shared living space would both make me feel self-conscious about singing into my computer and be kind of inconsiderate to a roommate who may just want some peace and quiet. Not that I'm necessarily planning to fill the night air with Yamatsuka Eye-esque squealing, but my clumsy attempts at playing even a quiet guitar riff 80 times in a row until I get it right all the way through could quickly become annoying to anyone in close proximity. But mostly, I just need my own personal space to feel at ease. Not unlike Francis from Stripes.

Luckily, long after I'd resigned myself to complete failure and a summer of huddling for warmth in some dank, overlooked corner of the Borders parking deck because a couple renters hadn't acknowledged my responses to their Craigslist ads, Bev found a charming little efficiency that was up for grabs (and, more importantly, that had been posted only 15 minutes earlier, so I had a good shot at calling dibs), and encouraged me to try for it. "What the hell. E-mail's free and I won't have access to it while I'm homeless," I thought, and fired off a "please house me" e-mail. A couple hours later, I got a phone call from a friendly girl named Marianne who agreed to sublet the place to me! I think I'll make her a mix CD as a thank-you. My recall of Ann Arbor's geography has faded, so I can't quite picture the intersection where my new place is located, but Adrienne tells me, "It's right in the student district, but since there aren't any students, it will be great."

I called T-Bone to tell him, and as we spoke, we each pulled up the Google street view of the building. We giggled at some guy on the sidewalk who happened to be caught by the Google cameras in the middle of a particularly unflattering, John Cleese-esque silly walk. T-Bone told me about the street view of some Chicago locale where some kid is pulling a gat on some other kid in the picture. Then T-Bone sent me this clip of a sloshed Mike Ilitch at the Red Wings' Stanley Cup victory parade: "I don't want somebody to forget. I don't want North America, I don't want Canada, America, South America, Europe, the whole world to recognize, because there was a little bit of this and that going on, we are the Hockeytown! BLARGGH!" T-Bone is an excellent Internet resource.

(Also, while I'm on this tack, Jess sent me this great clip of some old New Testament epic, featuring an unsmiling, aloof-looking Jesus, that has been hilariously redubbed, What's Up, Tiger Lily?-style, to depict a savior who is alternately completely petty and completely exasperated with everyone He has to deal with. The best line, as Jesus is running down a list of everything His disciples have done wrong lately: "John, you drank too much wine the other night. Not way too much; just enough to make me angry.")

So yeah, actual news from here, amid a flurry of activity! I'm going to miss Bev, the birds, and Cora mightily, but I'm predicting a fun and productive couple of months, which I don't often do!

CURRENT MUSIC: Skylarking by XTC and Velocifero by Ladytron. One old favorite, one brand-new favorite.
CURRENT MOOD: Excited.
CURRENT MYSTERY ODOR: Something around here smells like a Reese's NutRageous bar.