This Man's World

A new home

2011-09-07T08:26:00.001-05:00

That's right folks - I'm pulling up stakes and relocating to Wordpress. All the posts here have been moved to the new Wordpress blog. All further updates will be there. This blog will remain open indefinitely but all operations will cease and you need but follow this link to continue to follow along.

http://dancpharmd.wordpress.com

Hope to see everyone there. Now that Blogger has made itself look more like Wordpress, the time just seems right. Plus I'm no longer a stats whore and am not nearly as annoyed by the fact that Wordpress won't let me put a third-party counter in.

See you at Wordpress.

An impressive instant - ten years on

2011-08-29T21:15:00.009-05:00

Ten years ago tonight, at the time I'm writing this very blog post, I had my first audience with The Queen, otherwise known as her Madgesty, Madonna. August 29th, 2001 was the night I attended the Drowned World Tour at the United Center in Chicago. I went with my good friend and accomplice in all things Madonna related, Jeff. Heidi went along too, but she didn't go to the concert. At the time, she was almost 7 months pregnant and, on the advice of our doctor, she sat the concert out.

I remember it like it was yesterday. We started calling in to Ticketmaster (who the hell does that anymore?) about 30 minutes prior to the on sale time. You hoped and prayed that you remained on hold until after the tickets went on sale, but not too long so that you didn't miss your shot at good seats. Heidi was on our cell phone, I was on our landline, and Jeff, living in Williamsburg at the time was on his phone. We all were trying to get tickets and the instant that someone got through, the others were to stop trying. The fact that I was the one that ultimately got through to Ticketmaster (after having connected 5 freaking minutes before the on sale time...back to the queue for me) was fortunate because I'm not sure how Jeff, who lived alone at the time, would have been able to call us and stay on the phone with Ticketmaster. In any event, I got through and amazingly, I got tickets.

We got seats in section 332. I don't remember the row number, but here's a map of the arena, which I amazingly and not surprisingly still have saved on my computer. Here it is.

Check out the prices of those seats! I remember blanching at the thought of spending $85 for a concert ticket and could not even fathom spending $250 even if I could have gotten one of those rock-star floor seats. Clearly, I didn't remember that 5 years later when I spent $265 for my Confessions Tour ticket in Las Vegas.

I took a couple days off work and we drove to Chicago. Since Heidi wasn't going to the concert, she got to pick the hotel. She chose the downtown Marriott. It ended up being okay because it was a pretty quick cab ride from there to the United Center. I had been regaled with stories of what a terrible part of town the United Center is in (it is kind of a scary part of town, as I was reminded in 2009 when we saw Sticky & Sweet there) The show had been broadcast on HBO the a couple of nights before and Jeff had taped it but not watched it. I was on total tour blackout - I knew next to nothing about it, not even the opening number. It was fairly easy in those days to avoid tour spoilers. Nowadays, I've totally given up and do just about everything but watch crappy fan shot video of tour and download audience recordings before seeing the show myself. Anyway, Jeff had brought the VHS tape of the tour with him and the idea was that Heidi would watch the show while we were at it. Only problem was the room didn't have a VCR. We walked all over downtown Chicago trying to rent a VCR, only to end up in a slightly frightening part of town, at which point we gave up. I don't think Heidi cared enough for us to have gone to all that effort, but she was a good sport, especially as she walked around downtown Chicago on a hot late summer day, pregnant and uncomfortable.

We hit Pizzeria Uno prior to the concert. I found these pictures which really blew my mind when I saw them. We were babies!!

Me, squinting into the sun or something with apparently rimless glasses.

Heidi is the only one drinking pop.

Jeff doing what he does best - being Jeff.

Heidi rode with us in the cab down to the show and dropped us off, then headed back to the hotel. We found our seats and, as I'm so fond of saying when I tell this story, there was nothing above us but ceiling. Seriously, we were as far away as you can get from the stage without being behind it. No matter though, we were in the arena!! We sat next to a nice couple from Chicago that were not real huge Madonna fans but the fact that she hadn't toured in so long drew them both in. They hadn't purchased the last couple albums but knew enough that they thought they'd enjoy it.

I bet they left wishing they'd have purchased those albums. The Drowned World Tour was many things. A hit parade it was not. There were only two bona-fide 80s hits performed on that tour - "Holiday" and "La Isla Bonita." The rest were primarily tracks from Ray of Light and Music. And many MANY album tracks at that. This was not a show for the casual fan, at least from a song selection standpoint. Sure we got some great recent hits - notably "Frozen," "Ray of Light," and, to my great delight, "Secret." But we also got the self-indulgent Madonna track "Mer Girl" not once but twice and the autotune mess of "Nobody's Perfect." She was also a bit cold with the audience, as if she was annoyed to be performing. None of that bothered us at the time because we were finally at a Madonna concert!

The crowd really came to live when the familiar keyboards of "Holiday" started. It's still my favorite performance of this old warhorse of a song. I love Donna's introduction - "you know they try to imitate her but they just can't duplicate her!" And the "I say pimp! You say ho! Pimp! Ho! Pimp! Ho!"

In the end, it was a good thing that Heidi didn't come with us. When we left the show, there wasn't a taxi to be found so we really had no way back to the hotel. So no problem, we called her at the hotel and she came down to the United Center in a cab to pick us up. This is notable because the cabbie, upon hearing that her husband was at a Madonna concert with his male friend, was apparently convinced that I had to work through my unacknowledged homosexuality, since obviously that's the only reason I would go to a Madonna concert with another guy. Whatever. We all got a good laugh out of it and it was just another in a long list of hilarious things that have happened on trips to see Madonna. That said, the gay guy contingent at every Madonna concert is, as you might expect, very heavy but not nearly as heavy as at the Kylie show. That show took the gay cake.

I would be remiss if I didn't mention our little trip to the Museum of Science & Industry the next day, where we re-enacted scenes from Superman II.

Heidi as Ursa and Jeff as the hapless astronaut. "I tore it like paper!"

Me doing my best General Zod.

We've seen Madonna three other times since - The Re-Invention Tour which found us jetting to Washington D.C., The Confessions Tour for which we traveled to Las Vegas and back in less than 24 hours (never again.) For the Sticky & Sweet Tour, we were back at the United Center in much better seats. We waved at the people in our Drowned World seats which were probably twice the price by the time Sticky & Sweet rolled around. And you can bet I'll be there with bells on again. Her live shows are never disappointing. Like pizza and sex, even when they're not so great, they're still better than most things.

And to the 10 years that have passed, why in the hell have you gone so damn quickly?

State Fair Janet

2011-08-22T09:37:00.010-05:00

Let's get this much out of the way - there was no wardrobe malfunction.

Really, there were no malfunctions of any sort at the Janet Jackson concert last night. Even though I was there, I'm still kind of incredulous that she played the Iowa State Fair, but hey, who am I to complain. I got to scratch another name off my must-see-live bucket list and got to be in the company of some of my nearest and dearest friends. I also got to participate in the unique experience of the Iowa State Fair (unique, even though it's pretty much the same thing year after year) in a very small dose, which is about all I can handle of it. We ate all the crappy fair food, including red velvet funnel cake, breaded green peppers, polish sausage with everything on it and, of course, corn dogs. We even snapped a couple pictures of us going all Michelle Bachmann on the corn dogs, but those will never see the light of day on any social media EVER. We did, however, pass on the fried butter. Just thinking about it makes me want to hurl.

In all honesty, for as much mileage as I have gotten out of "Janet Jackson's playing the State Fair? How the mighty have fallen!" over the last few months, I was very glad to see her in a setting like this. The Grandstand has about a 10,000 seat capacity and I'd say that a good chunk of those were filled last night, although the show was not sold out. The older I get, the less I like spending tons of cash on arena shows where the performer is so far away from me you can barely make them out. And stadium shows? Forget it. Obviously, Madonna is a huge exception to this blanket statement. The day she plays the state fair will probably be the day I fall over dead.

We had pretty decent seats, although there was a pole next to us. Still, I think most everyone had a pretty decent view of the stage.

Another goddamn unnecessary apostrophe!

Despite the proclamations on Twitter of the local Top 40 radio station saying she would start promptly at 8pm, she didn't actually take the stage until around 8:30. Even with that late start, she was still earlier than Madonna ever is. This, of course, did not stop my friend Jeff and me from making a joke about how Janet had to quick run to the local Walgreens that we could see from our seats. That joke has its origins in a 1991 Whitney Houston concert that he and I attended in which we said "Whitney had to quick run to Target to get some Lee Press Ons."

Jeff (right) and me giving Janet some pre-show tips.

As for the concert itself? Well, it was a bit of a mixed bag for me. Overall, I really enjoyed it. Janet looks good and she's one of those people that's been off the pop music radar for so long that you really do forget how many bonafide hits she's had. Rhythm Nation alone had something like seven top 10 hits. And even though I didn't care much for it at the time, Janet spun off many hits as well. It wasn't until about 2003-2004 (the time of the infamous Super Bowl wardrobe malfunction) that her hit-making luck seemed to run out. She did not cheat us either on the hits. Pulling songs only from her 2-disc greatest hits record, Number Ones, she played all the fan favorites. Most of these songs were not in their full versions, but rather medleys of hits. On the surface, this might seem like a bad idea or kind of a cheat way of cramming a ton of songs into a concert. However, it really worked well and served as a bit of a sampler of the 25 years of songs she has to choose from. The only real bone I had to pick with the song selection was that there was no "Black Cat" and the shitty "Feedback" was included ("something heavy like my first day period." SERIOUSLY.)

I took about 12 pictures and only about 3 actually came out! This is the best one.

She was in good physical form and, as I said, looked good and had a lot of energy. That said, I couldn't help but notice the presence of a VERY significant backing track during the concert. This isn't surprising in shows like this. But the thing is, the backing track should be there to support the live vocals, not to be the substitute for live vocals. It was hard to pin down whether or not she was singing live of lip syncing in many places, but I would say that at least half the songs were primarily lip synced or the live vocals were drowned out by the backing track. Normally, this would bother me - it bugs me when Madonna does it, but with her, you can usually hear her very live vocals over the backing track. With Janet, she's always had kind of a paper thin voice and I've heard stories of her previous tours being primarily lip synced so I wasn't terribly surprised. Still, I wouldn't have cared if the dancing had been toned down a little bit to provide for a little bit more of a live experience. (For the record, the second part of the show, which featured several of her ballads, was very much performed live. She has some vocal chops, but I just don't think that she can dance and sing well at the same time.)

The show had a fun energy, even though the video interludes threatened to bring the show's forward momentum to a screeching halt. For someone who's been in the touring business for so long, that amateurish move surprised me. And usually those interludes provide a chance for a outfit change. Not this time - Janet never changed her clothes once. If this had been a Cher show and there were no costume changes, as Cher herself has said, drag queens everywhere would think she'd lost the will to live.

She ended with a great version of a song I had forgotten about - "Together Again" which wrapped up with pictures of her and Michael. The song has clearly taken on a new meaning for her and you could tell by her enthusiasm in performing it.

While the show was fun, let me take a minute to talk a bit about the venue. I don't know that I'll go to another Grandstand show. For one, the chance that your view is going to be obscured by a pole is just too high. Also, the seats SUCK. As Heidi mentioned, since it's an outdoor arena, the seats have to be at least a little bit industrial, but they could still be comfortable! All in all, we'd have rather sat on benches.

It's one of the first concerts I've been to that I feel I slightly overpaid for, but still. It was fun to sing along with all those songs that were a huge part of my high school and college soundtrack. I was also glad that Heidi went along with me even though Janet was only sort of her thing. She and I usually don't go to concerts together, and now we've hit two this year.

In the end, I was just glad to finally get the answer to the question posed by Janet. "Who's that eating that nasty food?" Without a doubt, it's State Fair attendees. I'm going to have to do double time at the gym this week.

Cut the cord

2011-08-20T17:41:00.006-05:00

So for all my bitching about how I hate yardwork and don't want to do it, I finally relented and between last night and early this afternoon, I got the yard completely mowed. Although I was sweating from every pore when I was done, it is done and now I can get off my case about it. Because here's the thing. I had a real "come to Jesus" moment today when it comes to the yard.

My name is Dan. My backyard looks like holy hell. AND I DON'T CARE.

There, I said it. I remember how owning the story of eating alone in college really helped me feel better about it, like I was finally able to get rid of the shame that was dogging me about it even twenty years later. I thought that perhaps, if I write a little bit here about my relationship with yardwork, something similar might happen.

I say I don't care about how the yard looks, and that's only half true. I do care, but I also don't. I fight a losing battle with it every summer, so much so that I'm sure people are sick of me complaining about it. Yardwork seldom gets done because I am constantly tired or working weird shifts or *insert excuse here*. I have this imaginary, mildly paranoid scenario that plays in my head that involves everyone in the neighborhood saying "dear God, WHEN is he going to mow?" When I do pick a day to do it, invariably, the weather sucks or I feel like crap because I'm in my day-off funk and then it doesn't get done. Again. I'm embarrassed by the overgrowth and don't want to have people over or anything because I hate how the backyard looks and what it says about me (BAD HOMEOWNER). So then I proceed to beat myself up over it and feel bad about it, which only causes me to be in even more of a funk that then makes me less likely to have the energy to go out and do it. It's not unlike the vicious cycle that seems to crop up in a lot of areas of my life over the last nearly 4 decades.

Well, I want to be done with that shit. Yes, the backyard was starting to look like the forest moon of Endor, but there is only so much I can do. In the grand scheme of things, it's much more important that I take care of myself than the yard. When it comes to a choice between those two things, I'm going to stop sacrificing my own mental and physical health for the sake of something I honestly don't even care that much about. I think a lot of this has to do with being male. Men are supposed to care about how their yards look. For Christ's sake, I should be out there making diagonal rows and spraying pesticide all over it so that it looks like Teletubby land with nary a weed in sight. A guy that doesn't go out and mow every weekend is someone that maybe you shouldn't trust. Or at least that's what my brain tells me.

I think part of the reason I have so spectacularly burned out this summer is because I haven't been taking very good care of myself, either physically or mentally. Oh sure, I've been going to the gym and that's going pretty well. I've fallen off the wagon a time or two, but sometimes I swear the point of the wagon is to be there to fall off of. My weight is holding its own and I feel like cardiovascular-wise, I'm in much better shape than I was a few months ago. But I'm not sleeping well. And I'm doubling back at work and working long stretches. All this would be fine if I were taking care of myself, but I'm not. Mentally, I haven't been giving myself the time that I really need to recharge. This is what happens when I don't do that. I end up obsessing about something (the yard) that I really don't give one iota of shit about. I have plans to get to the bottom of this constant fatigue crap, but that's another post altogether.

In the end, I am happy that I got some of the yardwork done today. It does have to be done, but it doesn't have to rule my life. I managed to cut down most of the forest moon of Endor this afternoon (no Ewoks though) and this is what I was left with.

No, it still doesn't look great. The pavement cracks are teeming with life and I missed a few spots in the yard. I would have done more, but as per usual, I managed to slice through my extension cord with the hedge clippers.

The lack of an extension cord meant I couldn't get the weed whip out so nothing else got done. But hey, it's more than I thought I'd get done and now that I've helped (with the help of someone with the initials H and C) free myself from the guilt and shame of the yard, I'm not even that upset that I wasn't able to finish.

(Dad, can you fix my extension cord when you get back from Arizona??)

The cheese-ball is back

2011-08-20T09:38:00.005-05:00

Anna started school on Thursday and somehow, the planets aligned and the first day of school coincided with my day off. So not only did I get to see her off to school in the morning, but I also got to spend time being a layabout around the house, in control of the TV for what seems like the first time in forever.

I had seen that Phantasm II had been added to Netflix Streaming recently. I've always enjoyed the original Phantasm, even though it's absolutely nuts and incomprehensible on so many levels. A creepy tall man undertaker that is robbing graves to turn into midgets so that he can send them back as slaves to his planet (or is it another dimension) is just too strange for words. His secret is safe until small town kid catches a glimpse of The Tall Man picking up a casket all by himself. From that point on, it's an at time creepy, other times cheesy thrill ride that works with its obviously small budget. While not as overtly dreamlike as the Nightmare on Elm Street movies, I think that part of the appeal of Phantasm is its mystery - the "what the hell is actually going on here?" quality makes it worth sitting through 90 minutes of pretty bad acting (except for The Tall Man, of course) and very bad late 70s hair.

Fast forward 10 years and Phantasm finally got the sequel that fans were clamoring for. I remember watching parts of this movie on HBO as a teenager - or maybe it was home video, I really can't recall. But at the time I watched it, I had not seen the original film, so I was interested in it from a horror movie fan standpoint, but not so much as a fan of the original movie. So how does it stack up against the original? Well, in many ways it's a bit of a remake of the original movie, only with a bigger budget while also serving as a sequel. It picks up right where the original left off. Some of the original cast is back, but the actor who played Mike in the original was not back. But obviously, Angus Scrimm had to return as The Tall Man. Just as there is no Blondie without Debbie Harry, there is no Phantasm without Angus Scrimm.

I tweeted the title of this post when I was about half way through the movie - the tag line really should have been "the cheese-ball is back." All the excesses of 80s horror cheesiness are on full display. The women all have hair that has been Aqua-Netted within an inch of its life, there are more "gotcha" moments than you can shake a stick at, and the acting, while passable, is still pretty bad. But all is saved by The Tall Man. All Angus Scrimm has to do is walk on the screen and all is forgiven. Naturally, he has the best lines of the film which is saying something because he really doesn't talk that much. My favorite line was when he was holding the Catholic priest up by his inverted crucifix necklace and he says with patented Tall Man menace "You think that when you die you go to Heaven...you come to US!" Apparently Angus Scrimm, who is still alive and kicking, has embraced his role as The Tall Man and appears at horror cons across the country. If I played the Tall Man, I totally would. *sigh* If only Faye Dunaway would embrace her role as Joan Crawfod in the same way.

The spheres are also given an 80s update. They're capable of much worse than they were in 1979. One sphere digs its way through a guy's back, spinal column and up through his internal organs, only to get stuck on its way out his mouth. I had a hard time with this - not because of the gore, but seriously, anything capable of boring through the bones of the spinal column would certainly not get stuck at something like a jaw. But I'm sure that it was so they could show the goriness that resulted from the ball getting stuck, with blades continuing to turn as it shreds more facial flesh.

Even though it was cheesy, I really enjoyed watching it again, and naturally, the end set up for another sequel. Phantasm 3: Lord of the Dead and Phantasm 4: Oblivion are already out there, but sadly, not available on Netflix Streaming (DAMN YOU SALAZAR!) and apparently, there's a fifth one on the way.

Phantasm II is a fun and cheesy 80s take on a classic 70s horror film. It's well worth your hour and 39 minutes. Long live Angus Scrimm! (even though he's assured immortality already.)

Saying "uncle"

2011-08-18T21:42:00.005-05:00

Folks, I'm going to just go ahead and call August a wash. It is kicking my ass. Nothing specific, but just like the way the little expenses add up to one hell of a lot of money, the collective crap has finally broken me.

As I said in a previous post, the fact that I took my summer vacation in May is really starting to hurt. I am taking a 6 day vacation around Labor Day for the price of only two vacation days so there's that to look forward to. But that's September. And right now, September seems so far away.

There's Janet Jackson at the Iowa State Fair to look forward to on Sunday - as well as artery hardening foods that you can only eat once a year (and probably should eat less than once a year, but what the hell?) And I'm officially going to Blondie on Labor Day with my friend Kyl.

Apart from that, I'll be over here waiting for Mercury to turn the hell around and for life to straighten out a little bit. I think that after the summer I've had, I'd deserve a September that's a little bit easier to take.

A report from the Janet concert will be here next week. That is, if I don't have an acute coronary syndrome from fair food.

Happy 53rd, Madgedonna!

2011-08-16T06:34:00.004-05:00

Today is Madonna's 53rd birthday. There's something surreal about saying that. It doesn't seem possible that she should be nearly mid-way through her fifties. Alas, she has been entertaining (and periodically aggravating) me for 26 years now so I guess it is possible.

I'm fond of saying that my Madonna fandom has worked its way into my DNA. No matter what she does, I will always be a fan until the day I shuffle off this mortal coil. I also don't have anything particularly profound to say about Madonna this morning as my blog is littered with many many posts about her, her music and her career in general. Everyone, it seems, knows what Madonna should do next and in the age of the internet, that kind of armchair analysis has finally been given a voice.

I honestly don't want to think about the person I would be today without the effect that following her career and being a fan has had on me. I still shock people a little bit when they find out I am such a die hard Madonna fan. It honestly doesn't fit in well with my Midwestern sensibility. But then what Madonna has done with herself definitely involved, if not breaking, at least re-inventing the Midwestern sensibility mold. I may not always love what she's doing, but I will always be a fan and I'll always feel like the 14 year old giddily holding the True Blue album in my hand at Sernett's department store every time she has a new release.

Happy Birthday Madgedonna. May you always create the kind of pop music that I can feel in my bones.

For a more inspired post than this - go here. Fans, you will eat this up with a spoon.

Then Everything Changed

2011-08-12T06:40:00.003-05:00

I like and don't like "alternate history." On the one hand, I find it interesting to contemplate what might have happened had certain events happened or not happened. But more often than not, alternate history fiction is handled very clumsily and is usually reduced to "what would happen if someone showed up at the US Civil War with automatic weapons?" THAT kind of alternate history doesn't intrigue me in the slightest and honestly, that's probably more science fiction than anything else. But as is pointed out in Jeff Greenfield's Then Everything Changed, history is made up of series of events that, had things gone just slightly differently, we might be living in a world that is very bears little resemblance to the one we know now.

Or would we?

That's the crux of this book that takes three late 20th century events - an unsuccessful attempt on President-elect John Kennedy's life in 1960, the assassination of Robert Kennedy in 1968 and the 1976 election between Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter - and turns them on their head. In these alternate histories, there is never a President John F. Kennedy, never a President Richard Nixon and never a President Jimmy Carter (or Ronald Reagan for that matter.) The three alternate histories are interesting to me as someone who laps up late 20th century history like a cat at a bowl of milk. Crucial events of the last 50 years play out very differently with just the slightest of change. With LBJ as President, the Cuban Missile Crisis ends dramatically differently. RFK surviving his assassination attempt spares the country the agonies of Watergate - maybe. And when Ford recovers from his debate fumble of "there is no Soviet domination of Eastern Europe and there never will be under a Ford administration" and wins the 1976 election, the economic troubles attributed to Jimmy Carter are instead, blamed on a failed Republican presidency, opening the doors to a Democratic win in 1980.

These are not spoilers - most of this is detailed in the product description of the book. The book succeeds amazingly with details, names and faces and semi-imaginary quotes. I was riveted and, at times, had to remind myself that I wasn't reading actual history - that's how convincing the writing is. The only fault I could really find was that Greenfield tended to go for the cutesy ha-ha moments a few too many times. For example, in the 1976 election, Ford wins the electoral college and Carter wins the popular vote. This leads freshman Congressman Albert Gore, Jr. to champion a bill stating that the presidency would go to the winner of the popular vote. There's an even better one, but I wouldn't dream of spoiling it and depriving you of the "ugh" moment I had.

I recommend this book wholeheartedly for political junkies and anyone who loves 20th century American history. The last part of the book, which I admittedly skimmed, gives information as to how Greenfield constructed quotes and gives evidence of things that actually happened to support his version of events. A fascinating read.

Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde

2011-08-11T08:06:00.003-05:00

I'm not sure what possessed me to read Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde. I remember reading it when I was in high school (not for a class) but I remembered next to nothing about it save the details that everyone already knows. Even then, I found that I knew less about the novella than I thought I did. The story that everyone knows is that Dr. Jekyll IS Mr. Hyde or rather, Mr. Hyde is the nefarious, evil side of the good doctor which is unleashed by a potion that Dr. Jekyll creates in his lab. Under the guise of Mr. Hyde, Jekyll is able to explore his evil side, only to find himself horrified by it.

I was intrigued by the exploration of the dual nature of man - how even an upstanding man of science with all the right friends can have another side that no one sees. This isn't surprising as this kind of thing is right up my Gemini alley. No one does dual nature quite like Geminis although they usually aren't as tortured by it as Jekyll was by his. What was most interesting to me is how Jekyll was fascinated with Hyde but after a fashion, he almost became a prisoner to him. Is this a cautionary tale about indulging in your less respectable side, that the chances of being completely consumed by it are simply too great? Is it true that once that genie is out of the bottle, it's impossible to contain it? I think it's much more subtle than that, although the broad strokes that Stevenson used in Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde make it easy to relate to and enhance the story.

I think it's not uncommon for people to experience the kind of thing that Jekyll was experiencing, to become obsessed with the side of them that doesn't follow the rules, that spits on polite society. I think it's important to have a relationship with that part of yourself, much like it's important to be in touch with all parts of yourself. I don't think that means you have to indulge in debauchery, but it's important to acknowledge and respect the part of you that doesn't want to be hemmed in by what you should do, no matter how much you might ultimately play by the rules.

The story took me about two and a half minutes to read - it was only about 70 pages long, but it was steeped in a lot of the 19th century turns of phrase that can make reading books of this type a challenge for modern audiences. Still, it was an easy read and worth the time. Also, I couldn't help but think of this song while I was reading it.

Loneliness is a cloak you wear

2011-08-09T22:43:00.003-05:00

As I was doing dishes tonight, I was listening to my iPod and a Cher song I had completely forgotten about played. Taken from what is probably my favorite Cher album, It's A Man's World, "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore" is one of those Cher songs that, when you think about it, is perfect for Cher. Made famous in 1966 by The Walker Brothers, it's a melancholy song that makes great use Cher's lower register. It was used to great effect in The X-Files episode "The Post-Modern Prometheus," an episode in which Cher (as well as Roseanne Barr) was asked to appear, but she declined. Cher later regretted that decision, although probably not as much as she regretted the Lori Davis informercials.

As I said, the song has a melancholy streak a half a mile wide, and it is very autumnal. As my friend Steve said, I am over this summer shit. I want cold bones and moods and rain. This song fits in very well alongside other such autumnal hits of Dan like October Project and Madonna's Erotica album. The first line alone gets me "Loneliness is a cloak you wear/A deep shade of blue is always there." Let's have a listen. This version is clearly not live, which is a shame because Cher really can sing live.

Not one to forget where her bread is buttered, Cher also commissioned a couple of dance remixes for the clubs. I have a few remixes of this song in my iTunes library, but I don't know that any of them are official remixes. They are a bit hit and miss, which is par for the course with Cher remixes. For every "Believe (Almighty Definitive Mix)" you get at least two completely unlistenable remixes. These aren't bad, but they kind of wreck the melancholy of the song, even though sometimes melancholy mixed with a driving dance beat works much better than you might imagine.

While I was listening to this song, I got to thinking about all the other people that have recorded it. Of course, you have the Walker Brothers original. Another worthy version is by Keane, who usually can nail melodic melancholy pop. They do a pretty good job on this one.

It's not quite Cher, but really, what can be? The only other version of this song I have "The Sun Ain't Gonna Shine Anymore" is the high-nrg version by Quantize from the Gay Classics series which puts together a bunch of songs that really don't go all that well together if you think about it . Anyway, I'm pretty sure I snagged this song off of Audioscrobbler back in the day. I'm not sure this works any better than Cher's attempts to rework this for the gay clubs, but you certainly can't fault them for trying. And besides, I have kind of a soft spot for those high-nrg covers of popular songs by unknown artists.

Still, for my money, Cher has the best version. Why? Because, as is pointed out on Twitter nearly daily, she's fucking Cher.

Related posts: Cher's It's A Man's World album revisited, as well as my post on "The Post-Modern Prometheus" episode of The X-Files.

People who eat people

2011-08-08T22:28:00.004-05:00

Having survived 9 straight days of work, I came home tonight holding my brain in my hand. What I need beyond words is a day off during which nothing is planned. Sadly, that's not tomorrow as I promised to take Anna to Body Worlds at the Des Moines Science Center. It'll be fun and I'm looking forward to being with her tomorrow. We've been anticipating this all summer and since she starts school in a scant 10 days, time is running low.

So to say I was tired and a bit on the cranky side was pretty darn accurate. But it all got better when I saw what the postman delivered for me today.

That's right - hot on the heels of saying how I really needed Streisand's People album on vinyl, I went to Amazon and found a used copy for sale. $4.75 including ths shipping. It is probably my favorite of her early albums (although Simply Streisand is a close second) and having getting it on vinyl was just a matter of time. When we were on the last leg of our trip back from Texas in May, I was crabby and wanting to be home and Heidi** put on People and suddenly, I was transformed into a better mood. I think it had something to do with Barbra's diction - that always makes me so happy. There's no "chewing the yous" when it comes to Barbra. And really, the song selection is so good.

I could have spent more for a copy in better condition, but this one works just fine. The vinyl is a little more scratchy and poppy than the ones I've been listening to, but on an album this old, the crystal clear quality of the CD has always seemed a little bit wrong.

I was trying to think of my favorite moments on People, and surprisingly, it's not the song "People." Although I will always remember being in Chicago with Heidi and Jeff, trying to find our hotel and Heidi and I were getting kind of short with each other. Suddenly, from the backseat, Jeff begins to sing "People/people who need people" which then morphed into "People/people who eat people" and then, inexplicably, "Kooka/Kooka kooka maaka/Kooka maaka, kooka maaka/Kooka mo." But really, the Italian spoken part in "When In Rome (I Do As The Romans Do)", the mournful saxophone in "Suppertime" and the wicked vibes at the beginning of "I'm All Smiles" all outshine Barbra's signature song in my book.

But the song that I have the most fondness for is "How Does The Wine Taste?" Again, Barbra's incredible diction is on display as the final "t" in "taste" is accentuated more than it might be by a lesser singer. There are also timpanis and little clicky things. Well, here's a video of it from her TV special My Name Is Barbra. Heidi and I are prone to saying "How does the wine taste?" and then the other will say "Does it sting your lips?" Yes, we are made for each other.

I've been listening to this album while I typed this blog post, and now that "People" is on, I know the album is almost over. I think it's barely 35 minutes - imagine how ripped off we'd feel if an album clocked in at under 40 minutes in this day and age. I guess the trade off was that she released albums practically every year during the 60s.

Now, if only I could get my hands on THIS.

**I should point out that People is one of the only Barbra Streisand albums that Heidi can stomach. She says anything from the late 70s on sounds like someone's grandmother.

The best dancer with the worst reputation

2011-08-05T09:31:00.003-05:00

I was saddened to read that Annette Charles passed away yesterday at age 63 of complications from cancer. Annette Charles, for those of you that don't know, is perhaps best known for her portrayal of bad girl Cha Cha DiGregorio in the film adaptation of Grease.

I think you need scientific notation to most succinctly express how many times I watched Grease as a kid. It was on HBO every other day and I swear I watched it every time it was on. Most of that was due to my intense love of Olivia Newton-John during that time, but I also loved the music and the melodrama that the movie version of Grease delivers. I've owned the soundtrack on just about every possible format and I know for a fact that we had multiple copies of the record album growing up. Simply put, it was a very influential movie for me even though now it is kind of dismissed as lightweight and "girly." WTFE.

The thing that always gets me about the movie is how watching it now, you realize that all the leads (and, to be honest, pretty much all the actors playing high schoolers) were too old for these roles. Rather than being high school students at the dance, they look like they should be chaperones for the dance. I never really noticed that during any of my umpteen viewings of Grease until I got older. I remember being a kid and wondering what my high school years would be like and if they would be anything like those in Grease. Let me assure you that they were most decidedly NOT. No one every spontaneously broke into song in my lunchroom.

The most surprising thing I read in hearing about Annette Charles' death is that she became a speech professor at California State University, Northridge. I'm always fascinated when celebrities return to the real world so-to-speak. I wonder how many of her students knew that she was Cha Cha to so many of our generation. I can't imagine that she broadcast that information. She certainly didn't need to be ashamed of it though. We loved to hate her in that role.

RIP Cha Cha. Because of that small role in a major movie musical, you will never be forgotten by anyone in my generation.

Absent minded me

2011-08-04T11:20:00.002-05:00

For someone who can focus so intensely on life-and-death things on a day-to-day basis, I swear somedays if my head was not attached to my body, I would lose track of it. My wife always calls me her "absent-minded professor." And it's true. It's the little things in life that will ultimately trip me up. I am eternally looking for my keys, my work badge, my shoes, my headphones. The only thing I manage to keep a pretty good eye on is my phone, but that's mostly because it doesn't really leave my side. I never thought I'd become the kind of person whose cell phone is an extension of their arm, but sadly, I have. I said the other day to Anna, while I was frantically looking for my car keys as I was getting ready to walk out the door to work, "Anna, guess what I'm looking for?" Her reply was "Your keys? That's not that hard of a question, Dad."

Yeah, I'm perfectly willing to admit that I am absent-minded. The older I get, the more I'm trying to just embrace who I am, flaws and all. And believe me, there are plenty of them. A perfect example of my absent-mindedness was last night's Search For The iPod.

After work, I got all the way down to my truck before I realized that I'd left my iPod in my work mailbox. Too tired and lazy to go back up then, I went home without it and figured I'd run back later and get it as I was going to be out and about. I went back to get it when I went to pick Anna up from a friend's house because I knew I was going to take her to her horse lesson and I didn't want to be without it. As it turned out, I slept pretty much the entire time I was there - 4 hours of sleep the night before and busy day at work had completely fried my brain. I got home, zonked out on the couch some more. We ate dinner and then I assumed my normal spot in the kitchen to do the dishes. I went to look for my iPod, which I thought was in the pants I wore to work. It wasn't there. It wasn't in any of the usual spots either (the island in the kitchen, the dining room table, my desk.) I became focused on the fact that it must have fallen out of my pocket while I slept at Anna's horse lesson and dropped down into the couch cushions. In my defense, my glasses had done just that - I had to pull the couch cushions up to find them before we left.

So I drove the almost 5 miles out to the horse barn and looked all through the couch. Not there. I tried to Zen myself out about it, saying that the more likely scenario was that I'd taken it out of my pocket, set it down absentmindedly in some strange spot (helped not one bit by my dubious consciousness) and now I just couldn't remember where I'd put it down. And that's exactly what I did. I found it on my dresser - approximately 5 feet from where I'd changed into shorts after work.

When things like this happen, I've adopted the strategy of using the line from The Wizard of Oz that the Tin Man says to the Scarecrow after he's been torn apart by Flying Monkeys in the Haunted Forest - "that's you all over!" I maintain that my absentmindedness stems from the fact that I am so focused in my job. The consequences of absentmindedness in my job are severe and when I leave it, my brain disengages just enough to keep it from being in a constantly fried. This means that I can't keep track of keys and badges and yes, sometimes iPods. I get mad at myself when I do that, but I've kind of come to the conclusion that pretty much all I can do is aspire to a state of "less absentmindedness." It is as much a part of me as my ~~brown~~ brownish-gray hair and my height. I can make noise about how I'm going to always put my badge where I can find it so I don't have to spend the last 5 minutes frantically trying to figure out where it is, but there's really only so much I can do.

I am who I am, I am my own special creation. Absentmindedness and all.

Balloons and beavers and record players

2011-07-31T22:57:00.011-05:00

I have a fondness for old vinyl album covers - there's just something about them that a CD cover or (God forbid) an mp3 album artwork file cannot capture. I'm usually not one for "holding the music in my hand" but I will admit to loving the feel of a 12" record album in my hand. Perhaps it's because I had so many of them when I was growing up. I bought vinyl long after it was on it's way out - the last vinyl album I bought new was Bananarama's The Greatest Hits Collection in late 1988 - and even then, I'd gone almost exclusively to cassette tapes. Christmas of 1988 saw the arrival of the CD player so who in the hell needed vinyl?

I've turned a lot of the vinyl albums I have into artwork in my home office (see the post "Vinyl trim") but that's left me with a lot of vinyl albums that I can't play. Usually this is no big whoop as most everything I have on vinyl I have on iTunes. But for some reason, I've really had a hankering recently to get a record player and play some of those vinyl albums. I haven't had a record player in 20 years and although vinyl's making a comeback, I just could never justify the expense of buying a turntable to be able to play records again.

Yesterday we went down to Indianola where our friend Jeff was hosting a party for the National Balloon Classic. He has a front row seat to the Mass Ascension of the balloons. The whole thing sounds vaguely religious to me, but trust me, with the company we were keeping, it was as irreverent as ever. Last year was highlighted by the presence of the Beaver Balloon.

Attack of the killer beaver!!

This year, the Beaver Balloon was back, but it turned it's back on us. You can see it in this photo - it's the lowest balloon about 2/3rds of the way across the picture.

That's right, we were snubbed by the beaver (ironically enough, also the title of my college memoirs.) As we said, if there are any beaver jokes that are not inappropriate, we're not interested in knowing them.

But more than that, Jeff was having a garage sale of sorts - selling stuff he had painted as well as some of his personal belongings. One of those was a complete stereo system WITH TURNTABLE (and speakers) for a lousy 20 bucks. I hemmed and hawed as per my usual and then ultimately purchased it after he assured me that the turntable still worked. I set it up today and have not turned on iTunes all night. Here I sit with 21,000 songs in iTunes and I'm happy as a clam to be sitting listening to record albums, just like I did 30 years ago. No, the sound isn't like it is from a CD or an mp3, but there's just something about it.

Click to make it bigger! It's Stevie Nicks!

I've also listened to Barbra Streisand's Stoney End and it's just made me more determined then ever to get more Barbra vinyl. If nothing else, I need to get the People album and probably Simply Streisand which are both albums I had on CD in college, in addition to Stoney End. Jeez, having had all those albums in college, it's not surprising no girls wanted to date me! (not really true, but boy I sure couldn't see through the fog of self-doubt and low self-esteem enough to see it.) It's truly amazing my wife said yes when I asked her to marry me.

Barbra crimped her hair and went down the stoney end. She never wanted to go down the stoney end!

There's something about vinyl, especially the really old albums, that just seems so right. The acquisition of the turntable for the rock bottom price of twenty bucks makes me want to head to ZZZ Records in Des Moines and see if I can score some Joni Mitchell vinyl, or Laura Nyro's Eli & The Thirteenth Confession. As I've said before, if there's an album that begs to be played on vinyl, it's that one.

So everything old is new again. The only thing I wish it did is keep track of play counts. I guess you can't win 'em all. Now if you'll excuse me, I think I'll listen to some Bananarama. ON VINYL.

Doing something right

2011-07-30T11:02:00.004-05:00

Those of you in my most intimate circle may (or may not) know that the last couple weeks have completely kicked my ass. Work's been stressful, there was the whole tire debacle, and then there's other shiz going on that I'm not going to go in here. But when you combine it all with the fact I'm just starting to burn out after having taken my summer vacation in May, there's no denying that I've been going through a bit of a rough patch. The other night when Heidi and Anna came out to have supper with me at work, Heidi must have really noticed it and I told her that I'd "talk to her when I got home." Her eyebrow arched and she wondered if something specific had happened and I assured her no but that I just "wasn't feeling very good about myself."

Anna must have heard me say this because this is what I found when I came home from work that night, exhausted and spent.

As Heidi pointed out, I shouldn't feel bad about myself because I had a hand in helping mold this child who knows enough at age nine the thing that I still frequently forget at age 39 - always like yourself! Much of that for me is an old pattern that I'm working on changing, but still, I'm glad that I've helped arm her with that kind of internal monologue.

So here's to a reboot today. We're going down to Indianola for the National Balloon Classic and good times with friends and may-as-well-be-family. I slept till 10:30 and skipped my cardio because clearly, I needed the unconsciousness more than the aerobic workout. There's always tomorrow.

The Book of Awesome

2011-07-28T10:11:00.004-05:00

I don't even know where to start with The Book of Awesome. I guess the best place to start is how I acquired this book. My friend Mary sent it to me in the mail last week, thinking I might like it. This isn't the first time that Mary has recommended a book to me, but it is the first time she's ever given me the book she was recommending, with the instructions to pass it on to someone else that might enjoy it when I was done with it.

I can see why you'd want to pass it on after reading it. It's not really rereadable - once you've read through Neil Pasricha's list of awesome things, you really don't need to go back and read them again. My understanding of how this book came to be is that it grew out of the blog 1000 Awesome Things which Pasricha started in order to chronicle the little awesome things in life that often get taken for granted but are, nonetheless, pretty fantastic. When I started the book, I rolled with it and enjoyed it, but he started to lose me about 20 pages in when I realized that every single entry is going to end with the the one word sentence (in all caps, no less) - AWESOME!! And it wasn't long before his writing style started to irritate the hell out of me. You can tell that these things are lifted from a blog as you can pretty much hear Pasricha talking when you read the various items. It was as if the words just poured out of him without so much as a second read through to make sure that his writing didn't sound douchey. Actually, I take that back because he must have gone through it a second time so that he could put in random bold face type that made little to no sense.

I think that's my biggest trouble with this book. Even though I have never met the author and who knows, if we did meet or we had a history together or something, I might feel differently, but this book made me feel like there's no way on God's green Earth I could handle being in his presence. I got this image of him sitting at his computer, rubbing his hands together and laughing uproariously at his latest play on words, made up word (gasholenorememberitis is one that springs to mind), or appropriating of dude culture in his writing. By the end, I was seriously skimming because I just couldn't handle him being not as funny nor as clever as he thought he was being.

*sigh* I kind of feel like an asshole for not liking a book that is all about celebrating the little things in life that are great. There's no doubt that many of the things he mentioned are awesome. I love the cool side of the pillow, finding old mix tapes and let me tell you how I watched The Price Is Right religiously every time I was home sick. However, to be frank, if I hear anyone use the word "awesome" for a while, I may start twitching. I stand behind my assertion that it's the writing style of the author that turned me off to the book. That, and the fact that all these entries are still posted on his blog so you could read them for free on the internet and not content with 36 million blog hits, he cashed in on his free material by putting it in book form. I can't say that I blame him, but it still kind of pisses me off.

Maybe I'm just being cranky. I have to admit that I'm mildly intrigued by the parody The Book of Awful, but even I'm not that cynical. Plus it might be written in a style to approximate his and really, I can't handle that!

(Sorry Mary - if it hadn't been for his writing style, I would have totally eaten this book up!)

Seven songs from my summer (so far)

2011-07-26T10:34:00.002-05:00

The one good thing about having a computer crash that requires you to completely reinstall everything is that, even though you lose your iTunes play counts *sob*, you find yourself in the unique position of totally shaking up the Top 25 Most Played playlist. Some of the most interesting songs are in mine right now - the top song has a mere seven plays. So I thought, what the hell, let's do another seven songs post. They're always fun and if you aren't careful, some of you might find a present in your inbox. Here we go.

1) Carrie Newcomer / Before & After
Very much in the vein of Mary Chapin Carpenter, this is so much more a fall song than a summer song. If you listen closely, you'll even hear MC squared on harmony vocals.
Choice lyric: I've lived on fumes and religious corn flakes.

2) Madonna /Run
If the "Broken" demo didn't exist, it'd be the hands down best Madonna demo out there. A nice mix of William Orbit blips and bleeps with a very rocky guitar. Straight forward vocals by Madonna make this better than anything on Hard Candy. I read somewhere once that Madonna's voice is remarkable only in its familiarity and I feel like that's so true here.
Choice lyric: Don't ask me to slow down/I don't wanna go down/You won't catch me lookin' back/Coz people like me don't live like that.

3) Annie / Me Plus One
Probably my favorite song that spells (which is a post all its own), I've never cared much for most of Annie's other stuff, but this is perfection.
Choice lyric: Mrs. D, Mrs. I, Mrs. F-F-I, Mrs. C, Mrs. U-L-T. If ever there's a girl that could rock your world/Then that girl sure is me.

4) Blondie / Love Doesn't Frighten Me
My favorite song on Blondie's fanfuckingtastic new album (I like it 100 times more than No Exit and The Curse of Blondie combined), I still can't get over how little Debbie Harry's voice has aged.
Choice lyric: All this nothing is real something/It's time spent.

5) Duran Duran / (Reach Up For The) Sunrise
I have gone on record in several places that Astronaut is my favorite DD album - heresy in DD circles, I'm sure. But there simply isn't a bad song on that album and the first single is very indicative of the album as a whole.
Choice lyric: You can touch the sunrise/Feel the new day enter your life.

6) Erick Macek / Aries Man
I have my friend Bess to thank for introducing me to Erick Macek. He's kind of a cross between Jason Mraz and Eric Hutchinson and although that's kind of the last thing this world needs, his stuff really works for me. I downloaded this on a whim because of the astrology reference. Now if someone would just do a song called "Gemini Man."
Choice lyric: You gotta learn to be patient/And feel the pride/Cuz I'm an Aries Man inside.

7) Chesney Hawkes / The One & Only
Total soft spot for this song. It feels like an 80s song even though technically it's 90s. We never heard from Chesney Hawkes again, but this was enough for me. I always love a song that makes you feel good and this one does it for me. I remember listening to it during my darkest moments trying desperately to make myself believe it. And what do you know? It finally worked.
Choice lyric: No one can be myself like I can/For this job, I'm the best man.

Flat tires update

2011-07-25T22:06:00.003-05:00

A quick follow-up to last night's car shenanigans.

The car is fixed. 443 dollars, two new tires and an alignment later, it's like the nothing never was. Funny thing is I just got a bonus at work and although it's not poetic and exactly 443 dollars, it does put a serious dent in it so it proves the adage "easy come easy go" quite nicely.

In any event, it's done. As my father says, "don't get money ahead, because a kid will get sick." Or you'll run your car into a median and trash two tires.

Double flat

2011-07-24T23:49:00.004-05:00

I have to be up at 5AM tomorrow but this story must be told - partially because it's too good not to tell and partially because I have to own it in order to stop the negative monologue that is trying like crazy to go at full bore.

The short version is that I went to Hy-Vee tonight to pick up some milk and coffee. I added some Diet Rite Zero to the list as well, then swung by Hy-Vee Gas and got my 8 cent per gallon discount. After that, I headed northbound on Grand Avenue and that's where the fun started.

Somehow, some way, I ended up hitting the median right by the Ames Veterans Memorial and flattened both my driver's side tires. Like most car accidents, looking back on it is like looking through etched glass into a foggy night. I can't, for the life of me, figure out HOW I did it. Clearly, I was driving too close to the median (you think?) but I hit it and the next thing I know, I'm pulled off to the side of the road with two flat tires. I'm lucky I didn't hit a sign, or careen into oncoming traffic. This, of course, makes me sound like someone who routinely drives recklessly which, let me assure you, I am not. The worst part was that I was mere blocks from home, but far enough that I can't make it without doing more serious damage to my car.

So I get my car off Grand Avenue and pull it onto 5th Street. At this point, there's no doubt that I'm going to need a tow. Finally, AAA is worth more than just hotel discounts. They send me a guy from the local Amoco who takes nearly an hour to arrive. He puts the donut on and tows me to CarX which is who does all our car work. Once we get there, I ask him if he can give me a ride home and he either couldn't or wouldn't - I can't figure out which. He said he had another call to go to and acted like driving me a couple miles back home was like driving me from the south side of Chicago to the northern outskirts. WTFE, I walked from CarX. He was kind of a jerk, but a jerk that towed my car so he gets points for that.

It was at about this point that my evil twin really started in on me. He started with the old reliable "stupid" and then moved on to "klutzy" and "absent-minded" and "you just don't pay attention!" For him, it's like the word "accident" doesn't exist. I did it deliberately and because I was an idiot. At other times in my life, this evil twin, who really is a shithead to me, would have won the argument. I would have felt terrible and awful and beat myself up for something that was clearly accidental. Yes, it's a big deal, but no, I didn't do it on purpose and just because I had an accident does NOT make me "stupid." Nice try. Moron.

Anyway, the best part of the story is that I was texting Heidi this whole time. As I started to walk home, she tried to get someone on Twitter to give me a ride home since Anna was already in bed. By the time I noticed this, I was nearly half way home, so I texted her to let her know this. I must not have turned my phone off before I slipped it back in my pocket because the next text I got from her was "??" As it turns out, I had pocket-texted her and as random pocket texts go, this one was a doozy. Of all the possible letter combinations, the text I sent her was "Fu" which made her think I was saying "f*** you." We had a good laugh about that.

So yeah, it sucks. But it could be worse. At least I didn't get hurt. At least I didn't hurt someone else. At least there wasn't any more damage to the car. It probably won't be cheap, but as I always say about money, easy come, easy go. My dad always says you don't want to be the richest guy in the graveyard and at the rate I'm going I'm sure that will be no problem. I did, however, get the great joy of drinking Diet Rite Zero right out of the 2 liter bottle while sitting at the Ames Veterans Memorial. I know - classy.

A losing game

2011-07-23T19:39:00.006-05:00

As a friend of mine said on Facebook today, "Today I learned that the internet is only for insensitive assholes. That's nice." While that's a bit of an overstatement, I have to say that I agree with the sentiment.

As we all know, Amy Winehouse met an untimely end at the age of 27 this afternoon. I was at the gym when I found out - actually I was in the locker room sweating from every pore in my body. While I had been on the treadmill, my Twitterfeed exploded with news of her death. There were tweets galore, many expressed sadness combined with a lack of surprise - understandable considering her very public struggles with substance abuse. But it didn't take long for the jokes about rehab to start and the judgmental "why should I feel sympathy for her" tweets and posts to start to pile up. Many people, rather than understanding that a 27 year old woman with family and loved ones - someone's daughter for Pete's sake - had died this afternoon, insisted on providing a snarky commentary based on their own presumptions and the version of her story that they created in their head. Perhaps their version of events may ultimately prove to be true. But at the time, it was completely inappropriate.

I was sickened by the jokes and snarky comments people made, by people's selfish behavior and refusal to understand that while Winehouse's death was certainly not surprising, it is no less tragic than if it had come as a complete surprise. A tremendous talent (admittedly, one that I didn't appreciate completely) was silenced and, as I said before, a woman not even 30 has had her life cut short.

I'll admit that back in 1994, when Kurt Cobain met a similar end, I was probably among the snarky ones. It didn't help that I was certainly no fan of Nirvana and I'm sure my take on it was "he was a junkie that deserved it." Well, I was 21 then, and with the benefit of 18 years, I'm ashamed of my behavior then, just like I'm sickened by those implying Winehouse "deserved" her fate or that somehow Winehouse's drug use made her death worth less or not worth mourning. To those people, I only have to remember the internet mantra..."too many anonymous internet assholes, not enough time." Only this time, they weren't so anonymous.

The world is full of pain and shit happens on a daily basis. Life is full of tragedies, large and small. It's how we deal with them that defines us. But more than that, it's how we feel for other people's tragedies, even if they don't seem that big to us that make us human. As I so frequently say, we just need to treat each other a little nicer. I wish I could say that in death, Amy Winehouse has received that respect that the dead deserve. Instead, it's been mostly vitriol and jokes that are simply, way too soon.

Her music will live on forever and there will certainly be a spike in interest. She won't be the first artist more celebrated after her death than while she was alive. Her short and tragic life is a reminder of the destructive effects of addiction and how, even though it shouldn't be, sometimes the addiction is stronger than the addict.

Solo Blondie?

2011-07-19T22:15:00.004-05:00

There are only a few artists left on my bucket list of people I really want to see live before I die. I'll have checked at least two off the list by the time the year's out (Kylie and Janet Jackson) and between those two concerts and Lady Gaga earlier this year, I figured I had already spent beyond my concert budget for the year. But when I found out that Blondie was going to be playing at Harrah's Council Bluffs (I always kind of laugh a little bit when I say that), I was seriously tempted.

Technically, I've seen Debbie Harry perform live once and that was at the True Colors concert in Chicago. However, she was a bit disappointing as she played no Blondie hits at all and most of the solo songs she did perform were from her at-that-time unreleased new album. Talk about a prescription for a disastrous set! She didn't even play "I Want That Man" which would have gone over like gangbusters! Plus, she had a very unfortunate hairstyle and, as Heidi so classically put it, looked like "Anne Murray gone hard."

I couldn't help but wonder how different her performance would have been had she been there with the rest of Blondie and because I've been listening to Blondie's music for 22 years now, I really gave it some thought. Then I found out that it was general admission. Strike one. And that it was at an outdoor venue. Strike two. I am too freaking old for general admission shows. I just don't have the energy to fight people for 1 sqaure foot spot of property to stand all night. The National, who we saw at First Avenue in Minneapolis, would have been million times better had it not been general admission. Kylie's first U.S. tour was general admission at the Chicago date, which was one of the biggest reason we didn't go. And my experience with outdoor venues has been decidedly mixed. Most of the time, the weather works out great, but the times it doesn't, it's miserable. But the ticket prices were appropriately adjusted - 30 bucks and some change. Still, I decided against it.

This last week though, I really got it in my head that I wanted to go. At 65, how much longer is Debbie Harry going to want to tour with Blondie? And seriously, Blondie with no Debbie Harry is no Blondie at all. They're not one of those bands that can just replace their lead singer and go on touring a la Journey. During Blondie's heyday, the common catchpharse was "Blondie is the name of the band" so that people took in the whole package vs. just Debbie, but I think there is definitely something to her being the frontwoman of the band.

So I set about trying to find someone to go with. I was pretty sure that Heidi wouldn't want to go, so I asked my friend Matt who pleaded not being a big enough fan. Fair enough, I can get behind that. Then I asked my sister, who has always been a bit of a Blondie fan, but she texted me back this morning saying that she wasn't sure she'd be around that weekend so had to pass. Again, fair enough. My friend Kyl had been the one that alerted me to Blondie's Iowa presence, and I still haven't heard back from him, but I'm starting to think I'll have to go to this concert alone. That is, if I go at all.

I would have no problem going alone if it weren't a general admission show. I do not want to awkwardly hang around the venue for two hours (at least) from when the doors open and the show starts. And also, it's more fun to do stuff like this with a friend. So who knows what will happen. I may ultimately decide against it. I'm still not sold on this general admission shit.

Still, it's Blondie. They're no spring chickens, but Debbie's voice has magically not aged a bit.

Madonna...at her most underrated

2011-07-17T17:14:00.007-05:00

I have been a VERY bad blogger this summer. Too much to do, no time to do it in. However, hopefully what I'm about to offer makes up for it just a little bit.

You might remember back in March of 2010, my friend and stalwart Madonna fan Jeff and I did a podcast about what our most memorable Madonna moments were in our lives. We were clearly amateurs at it, but we had a good time and the plus side was we got to spend an hour plus talking about one of our favorite mutual interests. That podcast is still up and available so if you weren't around then and are so inclined, feel free to download it.

Last week I got a wild hair to do another podcast with Jeff. This time, I decided that the topic would be the most underrated or underappreciated Madonna songs. I split it into three categories - songs that we thought were underrated by Madonna, songs that are underrated by Madonna fans, and songs that are underrated by each other. As I say in the podcast, so much of the time, when there is substantial discussion about Madonna, it is not about her music but rather about her image and her controversy. This, I believe, does a disservice to the mammoth amount of work that she's managed to put out over the course of nearly *gulp* 30 years now.

So if you have an hour and some change to kill, I'd say definitely give us a listen. I even got all professional and added some song clips so hopefully Madonna doesn't send me a cease and desist letter (and if she does, I hope she hand signs it.) If you are a fan, you'll probably enjoy it. If you know one or (better yet) both of us, you need to download it and listen. This is what happens when you talk Madonna with someone for 25 years.

Here's the link - get to listening! I would love to hear what you think, even if it's negative. I thought about doing solo podcasts in the future, but I have no idea what I'd talk about and honestly, it's easier to play off Jeff.

Download the madness that is Jeff and me here.

Papa, can you hear me now?

2011-07-07T11:13:00.005-05:00

I don't know what made me do it, but last night while doing dishes, I got a huge yen to listen to the soundtrack from the 1983 Barbra Streisand film Yentl. When I was a kid, Yentl was the butt of a thousand jokes, none of which really progressed much past "Barbra Streisand is playing a man!!" Whether or not she pulled it off successfully is up for debate, but there's certainly no doubt that Streisand OWNS that movie. I never saw the movie during the 80s but when I started listening to Streisand's music in earnest in the early 90s, I found myself really wanting to see it. I can't remember which came first - buying the soundtrack or watching the movie. It really doesn't matter in the final analysis because I took no end of grief from my brother and sister (mostly my brother) for buying the soundtrack.

The funny thing is, when you think about Streisand's bazillion albums, Yentl is probably one of her finest. Granted, it's not the folky fun of Stoney End or even the cheesy bombast of Guilty. It is, however, what I feel to be Streisand at her vocal peak. Simply put, she sounds great on this album. Heidi always prefers Streisand's 1960s albums, saying that anything much past the early 80s sounds like someone's grandmother singing, albeit someone's exceptionally vocally gifted grandmother. I don't really agree with her assessment - the grandmotherly voice wouldn't arrive until the early 2000s and I would argue it's more of a change in the timbre of her voice but whatever. One listen to Yentl and you can hear just what a gifted vocalist Streisand really is. An actress who sings? Who is she kidding?

So yeah, I puchased the Yentl CD on winter break in 1993 and I listened to it like crazy during January of that year. I think it's pretty safe to say that I was the only straight 20 year-old male college student listening to the Yentl soundtrack in his dorm room at the University of Iowa, although at that point I had not made the connection between Streisand and her legion of gay male fans of a certain age. It was music that spoke to my soul and, much like I do now, whenever I find that, I hang on tight to it. The cool thing about the CD is that listening to it, you almost don't need to watch the film. Why watch the 2+ hour film when you can get the Cliffs Notes version in ~40 minutes on the CD. Thanks to the liner notes, a lot of the gaps are filled in and now, looking back, the CD must have come first because I remember learning the story of Yentl via those liner notes.

The story, for those that don't know it takes place in late 19th century Poland. Yentl is the only daughter of a rabbi who is teaching Yentl the Talmud and other religious teachings, despite the fact that women are not allowed to do so. When her father dies, she disguises herself as a man, takes the name Anshel, and enrolls in a yeshiva to continue her studies. She meets Avigdor at the school, who is engaged to marry Hadass. As Anshel, she gets to know both of them, but falls in love with Avigdor. When the engagement between Avigdor and Hadass falls apart (a silly reason that could only happen in the late 19th century), Hadass's parents conspire to get Anshel and Hadass together. During the time, however, Yentl has fallen in love with Avigdor. Oy vey!

As you might imagine, Hollywood didn't exactly jump on this idea. I remember reading in a Streisand biography that after she finished filming Funny Girl in 1968, she brought the idea for Yentl to her agent or somebody and said "I've found my second film role." Their response was "you just got done playing a Jewish girl, now you want to play a Jewish boy?" The film was in development hell for 25 years, but eventually Streisand got it filmed, starring Streisand, co-produced by Streisand, co-written by Streisand and directed by Streisand. It's starting to sound a little bit like Lindsay Buckingham credits on a Fleetwood Mac album. I'm pretty sure that the movie got turned into a musical at the insistence of studio heads. I can't imagine that they would be willing to take a chance on this kind of material without Streisand music to push.

Thankfully she agreed, because, as I've said, the story is told so well through the songs by Michel LeGrand and Marilyn & Alan Bergman. In many ways, it's like a Broadway libretto, with themes that recur throughout and, most importantly, lyrics that push the plot forward and are not simply musical interludes to endure. The best known of the songs is probably "Papa Can You Hear Me?" which was exposed to a whole new generation when it was used on Glee last season. And like the best music, you can take your own meaning from the lyrics that tell the story of Yentl/Anshel, Avigdor and Hadass. Without that universality, it wouldn't have the appeal to me that it does.

You can take a lot out of this story and its music. I think the most obvious one, listening to the lyrics, is that the entire story could serve as an allegory for a "coming out" experience. When Yentl becomes Anshel and falls in love with Avigdor, her feelings for him (as a female pretending to be a male) that are expressed in the songs are what I could imagine a young gay man (or woman, for that matter) would think. The song "The Way He Makes Me Feel" is a good example of this - with lyrics like "Why is it that every time I close my eyes, he's there/The water shining on his skin/The sunlight in his hair/And all the while I'm thinking things that I can never share with him." "Tomorrow Night," in which Yentl describes her feelings as she's about to wed Hadass screams to me how a man marrying a woman might feel if his heart was not really in it, so-to-speak. And the song "No Matter What Happens" plays like the best song of self-assurance after the eventual coming out occurs. I've always felt like this story of a "repressed love" speaks to that kind of situation. But maybe it's just me because a quick and dirty Google search turned up only a few message board results that agree with my assessment.

For me, the song that always got me in my early 20s was "Will Someone Ever Look At Me That Way." My story of being a lonely early 20-something who felt like he had nothing in common with most men and no qualities that would make members of the opposite sex want to date me is well documented in this space. In hindsight, which is always 20/20, I had many friends and actually, there were more than a few women that liked me and were probably waiting for me to make the first move - some of whom I actually had crushes on or whatever. The fact that my self-image was in the ashcan and I struggled with undiagnosed depression is probably why I saw my life through the lens that I did. When you don't even like yourself, it's really easy to concoct a narrative in your head that no one else does either. Even now, at nearly 40 years of age, on my worst days I can see vestiges of that. In any event, the line in "Will Someone Ever Look At Me That Way" that always resonated to dateless Dan was "Even though it's crazy, still I can't help wondering if I'll ever live to see the day/When by some miracle of miracles/You'll turn around and look at me that way." As I saw everyone pairing up, especially late in my college years, I felt like that would never happen and wondered what I was missing that everyone else had. As it turned out, I just hadn't met the right person yet. Fortunately, in November of 1995, I did just that.

Anyway, I will always view the Yentl soundtrack with a little bit more fondness than most guys at my age and station in life might. Maybe this post helps explain that. Maybe it just confirms your suspicion that I was REALLY weird. Whatever. This is who I am. Like it or not. Never gonna stop.

And honestly, every time I hear the Lady Gaga song "Paparazzi" I wait for her to sing "I'm your biggest fan/I'll follow you until you love me/Papa-papa-papa can you hear me?"

Red white and bluegrass

2011-07-01T09:45:00.003-05:00

Well, for most everyone else, it's a three day weekend. The weather here in Iowa is going to be hotter than blue blazes but that will be a welcome change from the last few years of rain and 60 degree highs. Although our strategy of walking down the street to watch fireworks has seemed less and less smart since they moved the fireworks just slightly further away, we'll probably still do that as we don't want to fight traffic even if it IS just Ames traffic.

I said it's a three day weekend, but not for me. I work both Saturday and Sunday, but at least I have the 4th off, having worked Memorial Day this year. With the rate I've been blogging these days, it's likely I'll let the 4th go by with no fanfare here at all. To be honest, it's not my favorite holiday. I'm not one for standing out on the sidewalk in 95 degree heat while a parade full of uber-patriotic stuff passes by. There's usually a block party on our street that's pretty fun, but most of the time I don't like forced socialization and would rather do it on my own terms. And naturally, this weekend is going to be colored by Bingley's imminent death from lung cancer. So really, I'm not looking forward to the weekend very much.

I have been listening to the new Dolly Parton album Better Day which is full of positive messages for these not-so-great times (speaking generally, not specifically.) Overall, it's a much better album than Backwoods Barbie, and that album was no slouch either. The problem with it was that it felt so forced in so many places, like Dolly was consciously trying to figure out a way to get back on country radio. She may try to look like a 30 year old, but there's no denying that Dolly's 65 and there's no way that she is going to get played on country radio. This album blends the great success she found on her bluegrass albums with her attempt at a more mainstream country sound.

The combination of that and the upcoming 4th of July made me think of the only Dolly album I have never purchased - For God and Country, Dolly's response to the 9/11 attacks. It was an album full of traditional patriotic songs along with a few Dolly originals. By the time she got around to releasing it in 2003, the flag had been co-opted by the Bush administration and the radical right (although the radical right of that time looks damn tame compared to the radical right of today.) Anyway, I never bought it because it seemed like the soundtrack to the Republican National Convention, which I'm sure was not Dolly's intent. She never publicly speaks about her politics - she prefers to say she's "not political but very patriotic." However, I always assert that you can't have as big of a gay fan base as Dolly does and be too conservative. Anyway, even though I never bought it, I always did kind of like one song on it - "Red, White & Bluegrass."

Of course, there's a lot of things to that the U.S. does that are not things to be proud of, but I sometimes think that on the 4th of July, even someone as jaded as I am can be a little bit proud.

Happy three-day weekend everyone. I hope it's a good one. And buy the Dolly album - it's her best since probably Little Sparrow. When Dolly dies, I'll probably have to call in sick to work.

Long time gone

2011-06-28T19:01:00.004-05:00

It's been a little bit quiet in these parts recently. It was not a deliberate decision but now, trying to get back into it seems hard without acknowledging the 10 days of silence that have elapsed. Truth be told, I haven't felt much like writing. It's kind of as simple as that - nothing dramatic. It really was a simple case of I wasn't in the mood to write. I don't know that I am in the mood now, but here I am anyway.

A quick update to those of you that kept stopping by and/or wondered why their RSS feed had not been bold for so long.

1) I've met twice with a personal trainer at the gym. She's very good and a good fit for me. She's given me three different cardio workouts to do and it's really important that I get in each one at least once a week. We've been doing a lot of work with strength training (which was what I really needed her help on) and today, she worked me hard. But I feel like I'm getting a good handle on what I need to do. It's interesting to match the exercise with the muscle group, even though I famously got a D on the muscle test in my college anatomy class so it's amazing I know anything at all about muscles. It feels good to be active again and to be doing something positive for my physical health. I spend a lot of time trying to be mentally healthy because my past struggles with anxiety and depression have always seemed to be more important. Taking time out to work on my physical health has been just as rewarding and also helps with the other stuff too. I'm not naive enough to think that I'll always love to go exercise or go to the gym, but hey, it's a start.

2) I'm up to 27 books so far in my 2011 book challenge. I am not trying to read a set number of books, although my current goal on Goodreads is 40. I upped it from 30 when it became quite clear that I was going to blow past 30 around midyear. That said, it's really important that the next book I read be a good one. I've read two dogs in a row now and reading bad books makes me feel like I'm back in high school trying to read The Grapes of Wrath in May. I'm currently beta-reading Heidi's latest book and it's definitely breaking the bad book run - I'm always amazed by the fact that the woman I married has such a way with the written word. I'm always kind of like "wow - you wrote this?" even though duh, yeah, she did. I'll be blogging about my latest disappointing book (Robopocalypse) probably sometime this week.

3) I got the yard mowed tonight but what made tonight extra special was I got out my brand new weed whacker that I got for my birthday this year. There are parts of the yard that I just can't reach with the mower and, finally tired of just ignoring it, I asked my dad if he would buy me one for my birthday. Never one to pass up an opportunity to bequeath home improvement items, he found one that he liked and sure enough, I got it for my birthday. So after a little bit of work tonight, the yard looks better than it has since last October when, oddly enough, my dad was here to help me with the yard. I've also found that since I've been exercising, mowing the yard isn't nearly as big of a deal as it used to be. Positive effects all around.

It's not a terribly exciting life I lead, but exciting is overrated. Thank you to those who stopped by looking for updates, only to find none. I will try not to repeat that, but I'm not promising anything.

For now, let's have some Dixie Chicks.

It didn't make a sound

2011-06-17T10:36:00.005-05:00

We had a doozy of a storm blow through on Monday around noon. Because I work in a windowless room, I had no idea that it even happened until it was over. Heidi was out and about with Marie Sexton during it, but when I asked her about it, she didn't really remember anything spectacular. Anna was at her two-week long class at the middle school (NOT summer school, I'm sure she would point out.) So no one was home.

The other night, our neighbor came by and mentioned to us that it must have been a heck of a storm. I asked her if she lost anything and her reply was no, nothing but the branch on your maple tree. WHAT? I followed her out to her back yard and, sure enough, this was the scene that greeted me.

While we marveled at the fact that it miraculously missed her house, I was faced with the fact that yes, it was my responsibility to clean it up. I cannot be trusted with a chain saw, so I did what I always do. I called my dad. So in a few hours, he'll be on his way over with a chain saw and we'll get that sucker chopped up.

I'm still kind of amazed that it took someone pointing out to me that we'd just lost a major chunk of tree. I chalk it up to life being so busy that I (naturally) haven't mowed the yard in about 10 days and so I've really had no reason to go out back. Also, between her yard and ours is a large row of bushes about 6-8 feet tall, so our view of her backyard is blocked.

A little bit embarrassing, but hey, what's life without something to shock you out of your complacency every now and then. But clearly, if a branch falls in my yard and no one's around, it doesn't make a sound.

A few more pictures - my dad asked me on the phone the other night if I could drag it out of her yard. Um, not without the help of a superhero.

Bones of the Earth

2011-06-15T20:59:00.004-05:00

When I picked up Michael Swanwick's novel Bones of the Earth from the library, my wife asked me what it was about. I said "it's about time travel! and dinosaurs!" To this, her reply was "...And? What's the hook?" She didn't seem to get that time travel and dinosaurs WAS the hook. What else do you need? You have time travel granted to scientists so that they can go back in time to the Mesozoic and see real living and breathing dinosaurs. This, by itself, is a can't-fail set up. Throw in a dash of atheism vs. creationism and you're off and running. Seriously, you can't screw this up.

Somehow, Swanwick screwed it up. Not just a little, but a LOT.

There are a lot of things wrong with this book. There are too many characters that aren't fleshed out well enough to differentiate them from other characters. There's the constant appearing of characters "future selves" in the present to mess with your head. The amazing resistance to the idea of "keep it simple, stupid" just astounded me. An event that could be told in a straight forward manner was always told as if there were sixteen different angles from which to approach it. Sure, there's some cool dinosaur stuff, especially in the last third of the book and for that I'm thankful that I persevered even after the "throw the book across the room" moment that was the orgy.

Yeah, they lost me at the orgy. A Maastrichtian Age orgy - with people, not dinosaurs just in case you were confused, which I was through quite a bit of this book. Plot lines are started and then forgotten, only to be quickly wrapped up as if Swanwick suddenly remembered that he had started an arc way back on page 78 and now here we are 10 pages from the end of the book and it's still unresolved. The characters are not particularly likeable, especially Gertrude Salley, a conniving and ruthless paleontologist who seems to enjoy deliberately messing with the time-space continuum, to the detriment of her fellow scientists. The fact that I could not see her as anything other than Sue Sylvester from Glee made her character simultaneously more disturbing and more comical.

The book is decidedly less-than-kind to religious fundamentalists generally and creationists specifically. A crucial event that would have lent credence to creationists' theories of the origin of the species is dangled in front of us early in the book and then never mentioned again. A plot involving domestic terrorism on the part of the creationists dominates the first half of the novel and forces the events of the second half - including the orgy.

As I mentioned, the dinosaurs they see are pretty cool. Despite its cheesiness, I do love the Jurassic Park trilogy of movies. Again, it's lifelike dinosaurs on the screen, how can you go completely wrong? Maybe it's just me, but hot dinosaur action does not translate as well in the written word as it does in CGI on the movie screen. Still, they posit some interesting theories on dino communication and behavior. Not being a paleontologist, I have no idea if any of it holds any water.

But back to this orgy thing. Stranded in the Maastrichtian Age by the creationist-inspired act of terrorism, the group of scientists and graduate students initially split into two camps. Much infighting and bickering ensues. What brings them back together? Spontaneous group sex. Yep, believe it. I know when I was reading it, I really couldn't believe it. It's not that I'm prudish and can't stand reading sex (far from it) but it seemed so out of place and very much like we were indulging the author's personal fantasies rather than furthering the plot of the book. And if there's any one thing I've learned from reading Heidi's m/m books, the sex always has to further the plot.

I can't really recommend Bones of the Earth- it's probably about a 2 and a half star book. Despite a promising start and a strong premise, the material was wasted and the story really didn't do it for me. I'd say you'd be better off reading Jurassic Park again or, better yet, go watch Jurassic Park 3. It's the best movie in the series because it's the one with the least to lose, had flying dinosaurs and most importantly did not star Jeff Goldblum.

Thermodynamics and fitness

2011-06-07T11:17:00.003-05:00

It's no secret that I've been trying to increase my activity over the last few weeks. Before we left on vacation in May, we joined a gym here in town (see the post where I complained about the showers) and I've been pretty good about going. I know that I'm still in the honeymoon phase of it and at some point - read: any minute now - the bloom should fall off the rose and I'll find some excuse to not do it any longer. I'm pushing past that and I think that's as much of a success as anything.

When we joined, you got one free session with a personal trainer which Heidi and I both signed up for. She went yesterday morning and I went yesterday afternoon. In many ways, it was a bit of a let down because it felt a lot more like a sales pitch than anything else. I get that they have to make money - as I say, I don't work for free and neither should anyone else. But it was hard for me to believe that the person I talked to would be as interested in my personal fitness if they weren't trying to sell me a pack of personal training sessions costing in the hundreds of dollars. Still, she was very nice and listened and answered some of my nagging questions about the equipment, like how accurate are the heart rate monitors on the treadmills (quite accurate) and do you really burn more calories on an elliptical than a treadmill (no, the calories burned on an elliptical is not based on any type of formula and is more of a guess.)

Still, I can't shake the feeling that it really is something I should do, sales pitch or no sales pitch. There's so much I don't know about getting active, and there are so many things that I need to learn how to do to make sure that what I'm doing is what I need to be doing. Additionally, there's so many things that you can do that if you do wrong, you can end up really hurting yourself. I'm thinking mostly about strength training. My dad's showed me over and over again, but for some reason, it never sinks in. And I HAVE hurt myself using free weights in the past. Not terribly, mind you, but I really don't want to experience that again. It put me off any kind of physical activity for a year and it hurt like a motherfucker.

So for my birthday this year, I'm getting three sessions to start. The first thing I do will be to take a cardiovascular fitness test to see where I am right now. I know that I regularly get myself to maximum heart rate for my age and weight without much trouble - it's good to know I could pass a stress test if I took one - but I want to know what my baseline is. I know there are all sorts of ways to do cardio and that there's really no wrong way, but I really need help knowing what's best for me so that when I go on my own, I know what I'm doing and that I'm doing it right. The same thing goes double for weight training which I know I need to add in as well but am very nervous to do so. I am such a weakling! I'm very glad there's no sand in the gym for someone to come kick in my face.

But with the help of the personal trainer, at least to get started, I think I can really figure out what it is I need to do to maximize my cardiovascular fitness as well as throw off some of this pesky extra weight I've managed to put on since my metabolism downshifted somewhere in my mid 30s. I was at the pool the other day and as usual, was very self conscious about how I looked. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror in the locker room and decided that for a guy pushing 40 that is just now starting to get active, I don't look too bad. And just think of what I can do if I actually start working at it.

It reminds me of the thermodynamics and every systems tendency toward entropy and disorder unless energy is used to counteract it. And since I can tie fitness to thermodynamics, my geek cred is still intact.

Three worthy albums

2011-06-05T20:25:00.007-05:00

Let me just say that 2011 has NOT been the year for new music that 2010 was. Don't get me wrong, there's still plenty out there worth listening to, but as far as album releases go, I haven't been all that inspired. Granted, last summer was a tough act to follow. The one-two punch of new Scissor Sisters and Kylie Minogue - and the fact that they actually delivered - started things off right. A handful of great singles from Marina & The Diamonds, Keane and Goldfrapp (among others) rounded out the edges.

I suppose it didn't help that the Stevie Nicks album was so anticlimactic. I keep thinking I'll go back to it and give it another try, but in so many places, it just doesn't sound like Stevie. Thankfully, there have been some album releases that have caught my attention. Here are three that are in heavy rotation right now.

Sophie Ellis-Bextor / Make A Scene
Let's get one thing out of the way - Sophie is not much of an album artist. Like Bananarama, I think of her more for memorable songs rather than albums. Yes, pretty much everything on Make A Scene sounds the same. Even though I've listened to it many times, I still have a hard time knowing what the song is without looking at my iPod. This, however, is not a bad thing when you make dance-pop music with as much reckless abandon as Sophie Ellis-Bextor. Even though she's one of those people that, when I'm listening to her, I find myself wondering "exactly HOW are you famous?" I don't really care.

This album doesn't deviate terribly from the formula that made Trip The Light Fantastic a damn fun listen back in 2006. Again, if it isn't broken, why fix it? I think the thing that endears me most to Sophie is her very pronounced British accent in her singing. It's not "Heartbreak Make Me A Dancer", it's "Heartbreak Make Me A DAHNCER." Any "-ance" word you can think of Sophie turns into an "-ahnce" word. Highlights for me are the previously mentioned "Heartbreak Make Me A Dancer", "Homewrecker", "Off & On", and "Not Giving Up On Love." She won't win any awards for variety, but for pure pop dance fun, you can't go wrong with Sophie.

Lady Gaga / Born This Way
The year's most hyped album was bound to disappoint, right? Well, it depends on your expectations. If you were expecting a masterpiece and piece of Very Important Work from Born This Way, then yes, you were probably disappointed. It's not your fault entirely though, because that's how Lady Gaga has been billing it since February. But if, instead, you were just expecting a very solid pop album, then your prayers were answered. Yes, the Gaga album is solid, with only a few throwaway tracks - and even some of those are growing on me. I initially liked the ubiquitous title track, and then really didn't like it very much. I've always kind of felt that the problem with "Born This Way" the song is its production. Too clunky, not sleek enough. It kind of broke under its own self-importance. Some of the remixes, the Grum remix in particular, took care of this little problem. "Judas" was kind of a misfire, but works better as the album track it probably should have stayed. But there are so many great pop songs on Born This Way. I'm not going to review it - many have done so much better than I ever could - but for me, the standout song is "Electric Chapel" in which Gaga channels Debbie Harry, the woman to whom all the female divas owe at least a small debt of gratitude. Other favorites include "Hair", "The Edge of Glory" (thumbs down from Heidi, though), and "Government Hooker." Even though Lady Gaga wanted it to change the world, it won't. But it is a great summer record.

Blondie / Panic of Girls
This was the most unexpected fantastic album so far this year. Panic of Girls has been gestating for over a year now. The cover art came out LAST summer. I figured that anything in the can that long has overcooked and won't be any good. It also doesn't help that I have only sort of liked the last two Blondie albums. No Exit was mostly good but befouled by a few really bad songs and I disliked more of The Curse of Blondie than I liked. Debbie's solo work has been equally uneven - 2007's Necessary Evil had some high points but was only okay in the end. So I was more than a little worried about Panic of Girls.

My worry was for nothing. Panic of Girls is easily Blondie's tightest and most focused record in ages. It's accessible pop but also has a touch of light reggae in it. Debbie, who is 66 freaking years old in a month, sounds just like she did in the late 70s and early 80s. Much like Dolly Parton, her voice has not aged a single bit. The first six songs are among Blondie's finest latter day work and for my money, there isn't really a dud track on the album. Not surprisingly, my favorite tracks on the album come from those first 6 tracks, with the best song on the album being "Love Doesn't Frighten Me." It's so fantastic when a band can come together and deliver an album like this, especially after so many missteps. It's especially reassuring because with Blondie and Debbie Harry (and so many of the artists that I like who are getting a bit long in the tooth), you never know when an album might be their last.

What we really need now is a new Madonna album. It's time for her to come roaring back and show everyone how it's done. But until then, I'm sure these three albums will get plenty of play this summer.

A Land of Ash/Grants Pass

2011-06-02T10:18:00.005-05:00

While I was on vacation last month, I finished off a couple of post-apocalyptic fiction anthologies. Even though it seems counterintuitive, post-apocalyptic fiction is really great fun to read when it's done right. I loved Stephen King's The Stand, but did not care one bit for Cormac McCarthy's The Road (the apocalypse was never so boring.) The two anthologies I read were A Land of Ash, which consists of stories told by survivors of the eruption of the Yellowstone Caldera and Grants Pass, which found those immune to three super-plagues trying to figure out how to get to Grants Pass, Oregon based on the blog entry of a young girl who wrote "When the end of the world comes, meet me at Grants Pass."

The tag line for A Land of Ash reads: The Yellowstone Caldera has erupted once every 600,000 years. We’re 40,000 years overdue. It was famously (and expensively) done in Roland Emmerich's 2012, but if you believe the stories in this anthology, the movie would have been over after the eruption. All but one of the stories take place in the United States, which sees massive devastation from the ash-cloud that results from the eruption. As with most anthologies, the quality of the stories varies wildly, but there are some real keepers in there. "Shelter" tells a heartbreaking story of a father and daughter who survived the eruption inside their house. He has sealed up his house against the ash-cloud, only to see his defenses gradually breached. And in "Toward the Storm" a woman travels west toward Yellowstone, in contrast to the thousands who traveled toward the East coast of the U.S. to escape it. Her faith in God is what sustains her although that faith is about to be tested.

A Land of Ash was an incredibly quick read, and it's one I could see myself reading again. There were only a couple of dud stories and I find myself intrigued by the fact that these were all stories of regular people and how they would behave in the days and months after a massive volcanic eruption in North America.

Grants Pass was mentioned in several of the Goodreads reviews of A Land of Ash so I picked it up from the B&N Nook store for $4.95. As I mentioned previously, Grants Pass is the place in Oregon that everyone is trying to get to after a combination of Ebola, superflu and bubonic plague wipe out 99.99% of the human population. To add insult to injury, "the big one" finally hits southern California - as if global epidemics weren't bad enough. In stark contrast to A Land of Ash, most of the stories in Grants Pass were international. This gave the anthology a bit of a different flavor. It really did feel like a global apocalypse. The eruption of Yellowstone would have global ramifications, but it would have nothing on the bioterrorism that wiped out the world in Grants Pass. On the whole, I didn't enjoy this as much as A Land of Ash. In many ways, it reminded me of the Choose-Your-Own-Adventure books without any of the choosing. Many were chilling and scary - the scariest ones accenting the isolation that an end of the world scenario such as this would bring. But overall, I kind of felt like I was always waiting for "how are they going to work Grants Pass into this?" Sometimes it was convincing, other times it felt very shoehorned in. It also suffered from more proofreading errors than A Land of Ash which is always a pet peeve of mine. So it was a little bit more of a mixed bag than A Land of Ash. Still, it was worth the read because it too was a really fast read.

I think one of my favorite things about the rise of ebooks is that books like these are starting to see the light when they wouldn't have otherwise. I can't see established publishing houses taking chances on books like these, but they still deserve to be out there. I recommend them both to fans of PAF, but I definitely enjoyed A Land of Ash more.

A Land of Ash is FREE in the Kindle store, 99 cents in the B&N store.

Cher shirt

2011-06-01T10:55:00.004-05:00

My mom and dad came over yesterday to help us get some belated spring cleaning done. We got the picnic table moved off the porch, the deck furniture down from the garage attic and various other odds and ends that have kind of needed doing for a while but we just haven't been able to muster up the ambition to do them. Every time my mom comes over, she always brings a bit of my past with her, and yesterday was certainly no exception.

In 1990, she, my brother and I all went to see Cher's Heart of Stone tour in Ames. I remember my dad was going to go but he had to teach night class or something, so that's how my brother got in on it. If you know anything about that tour at all, you'll know that it was a little bit of a let down. It was a concert full of cover songs with just a few of Cher's current songs, despite have two full albums to pull songs from. Sure she sang an Eagles song and a Gregg Allman song and a Doobie Brothers song, but why didn't she sing more CHER songs? Isn't that what we paid money for? Clearly, she learned her lesson as the Believe tour was very hit heavy and the only cover was a kick-ass version of U2's "I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For." It was so kick-ass she did it again on the Farewell Tour.

At any rate, my mom found this shirt that we must have bought at the show 21 years ago, and naturally, she brought it to me.

I'm not entirely sure what I'm going to do with a shirt with a 24" image of Cher on it (wear it to bed? Give it to Anna to use as a nightgown?) and then I decided, much like the Sticky & Sweet Tour shirt, if I can't wear a Cher tour shirt to Des Moines Pride, where the hell else can I wear it?

So if you stop by Heidi and Marie's booth the weekend of June 11th and 12th in downtown Des Moines, chances are you'll see me with a 2 foot image of Cher on my chest.

Oh Danny boy

2011-05-30T10:19:00.007-05:00

Because my brain works this way, I had a song from the movie version of the musical Hello, Dolly! stuck in my head the other night. It was the opening number and not "I Put My Hand In" which is the opening song in the show and only hinted at in the movie version. Rather, it was a song written for the movie (and, let's be honest, probably for Barbra Streisand) "Just Leave Everything To Me." I don't know how it got stuck in my head, although my suspicion is that someone at work said "leave everything to me" and well, there you go. Instant earworm if you live with my brain.

20 years ago, I had a brief love affair with the movie Hello, Dolly! One spring break, while the rest of my classmates were probably on South Padre Island or somewhere warm, I was back at home inverting my biological clock by staying up all night working on schoolwork and watching movies. I had made it a goal to watch as many of Streisand's movies as I could. I had read stories about how Hello, Dolly! effectively killed off the big budget Hollywood musical and was eager to see whether I agreed with this assessment. I wasn't really very familiar with much of the story despite having seen a community theater production of it when I was in high school. Naturally, I knew the title song (who the hell doesn't?) but beyond that nothing. Truth be told, it's not a horrible film, but it is a bit of a lumbering dinosaur. There are a lot of things wrong with it, not the least of which is that Streisand, who was 27 at the time, was WAY too young for the role of Dolly Levi. Sure, she sings the hell out of the songs, but she's supposed to be a widow - and an Irish widow at that! But even so, the songs are definitely old-school musical - very cheesy and complete with elaborate choreography and larger than life sets. Witness:

Anyway, having "Just Leave Everything To Me" stuck in my head prompted me to go read the Wikipedia article on the film, as I recall from other things I've read that Barbra Streisand and Walter Matthau fought like cats and dogs during the shoot. Because it's the nature of the beast, I clicked on links for other members of the cast. Besides Streisand and Matthau, there's a pre-Phantom of the Opera Michael Crawford as Cornelius Hackl and Danny Lockin as Barnaby Tucker - two employees of Walter Matthau's Horace Vandergelder who get wrapped up into Dolly's scheming. As I mentioned, I knew that Michael Crawford went on to better things, but what about his counterpart, Danny Lockin? I clicked on his Wikipedia article and found it to be rather brief. And then, I read the final sentence. Lockin was tortured and murdered by Charles Hopkins on August 21, 1977 in Westminster, California. I'll be honest, my heart sank a little bit.

A little bit of investigation (ok, a lot of investigation) brought out the details, but at the same time, many of the details are left out. As it turns out, after appearing on The Gong Show in August of 1977, Lockin stopped at a bar on the way home and left with Charles Hopkins. According to this site, Hopkins called the police later that night to report a robbery. When the police arrived, they found Lockin's body, complete with 100 stab wounds. They also found what was likely the weapon used and a sex/torture magazine as well. Hopkins was charged with first degree murder. However, due to the fact that this evidence was found without a search warrant, none of it was admissible into the trial. Ultimately, Hopkins was found guilty of manslaughter and served four years, which if he did indeed do it with premeditation (and all signs point to yes), justice was NOT served in that case.

The unspoken subtext here is what is gets me. Clearly, the implication is that Lockin was gay, was leaving a gay bar and that this was a one night stand gone horribly wrong. Whether that's true or not, we may never truly know. Lockin was married and had a son, but as we all know, many married men eventually come out of the closet. This was especially common pre-Stonewall. For some reason, in my mind, the fact that this could be related to sexual orientation makes it even worse and more gut-wrenching. What gets me is that 34 years later, we still see this kind of thing happening, despite all our progress on gay rights and increasing acceptance of homosexuality in our society as a whole. A world with craigslist killers and hate-motivated crimes seems not all that different from the world in 1977. Watching Lockin's performances in Hello, Dolly!, he seemed like a very gentle person whose life was tragically cut short because of either idiot prejudice or self-loathing or something so fucked up we'll never know what the real motivation was.

So on a day when we memorialize people that have gone before us, I'd like to take this time to memorialize Lockin - although many people have done it much better than I ever could. It ripped at my gut to find out the fate he suffered. May this never happen again.

The rush is neverending

2011-05-26T17:20:00.006-05:00

It's been a long time in coming, but our date with Kylie Minogue finally arrived last Wednesday night at the Verizon Theater in Grand Prairie, TX. It's not the farthest I've traveled to see a concert - that honor goes to the Madonna's Confessions Tour in Las Vegas - but it's definitely the farthest I've ever driven to see a concert. The fact that Kylie pretty much skipped the Midwest was what caused us to resort to such measures. It was a long way to drive for a concert and the real question is - was it worth it?

In a word, YES.

For the American leg of the tour, Kylie had to tone the tour down a bit. Gone are the fountains and the flying dancers from the European dates . But even without them, the stage was amazing and the costumes as over the top as you would expect. Cher's tour may have been the Cherest show on Earth, but Heidi summed it up well when she tweeted half way through the concert, "this is seriously the gayest, most fabulous show on earth." My friend Steve who had seen the show a couple weeks prior warned me it would be the gayest night of my life and he was right.

This is the first concert I've gone to where the men so vastly outnumbered the women it wasn't even funny. There were probably 9 men there for every one woman. For probably the first time in recorded history, there was a line for the men's restroom but not the women's. And I think there were about 300 gay men there for every one straight man. But really, it stands to reason. Kylie's following among gay men is no secret and I can think of no better people with whom to see a Kylie show. The energy in the theater (which was surprisingly small - 6000-some seats) was amazing and really, the best of any live show I've ever seen. Even Madonna, but more on that later.

Kylie was fashionably late at 8:45 PM but once she started, she didn't stop once. Emerging from a clam shell at center stage like the Venus de Milo, she rolled through a solid two hours of classic hits, album cuts and pretty much all of the Aphrodite album. Only "Closer" and "Too Much" were not performed. What was most pleasant is that, despite the very obvious presence of a backing track, it was also two hours of live singing that I didn't have to apologize for the quality or cringe through the off key parts. Like Madonna, but more on that later.

But like any good artist who's been around for 20+ years, she sang a lot of crowd pleasers as well. The usual suspects like "Can't Get You Out of My Head", "Spinning Around", and "Confide In Me" got their time in the spotlight, but lesser known album cuts also showed up. One of my favorites was "In My Arms" from X, which featured a many tentacled Kylie on the projection screens behind her. Some familiar songs were reinterpreted. "Slow" became a flashy cabaret number until finally becoming the thumping club anthem it always should have been. "Love At First Sight" was mashed up with "Can't Beat The Feeling" and really, it didn't work for me. Both songs were worthy of being performed individually, the mash-up felt forced and in the end, it seemed to me like both songs got the shaft. They deserved better, especially "Love At First Sight" which is a huge crowd pleaser. Clearly, Kylie was not afraid to dig into her back catalog. Unlike Madonna, but more on that later.

Our seats were about 33 rows back, but really, there wasn't a bad seat in the house. Because of the size of the theater and the quality of our seats, I managed to get some excellent photos. The best of the best are below. Those of you who are friends with me on Facebook can see the rest there.

This concert had the distinction of being Anna's first real concert - sorry, the Wiggles don't count. We brought cotton for her ears as I knew it would be loud. Truth be told, I used cotton too. I have walked out of too many concerts in my life with my ears ringing so bad that I could literally feel the hair cells dying. I'm not interested in losing any more hearing than I already have and it doesn't diminish one's enjoyment of the show one bit. Call me old, but hey, at least I'll be able to hear in 25 years. Even with cotton, the show was too loud for Anna. One of the ushers found real silicone ear plugs for her and then she was set. She danced in the aisle. She sang along. She's a lot more familiar with the Aphrodite stuff than she is with Kylie's immense back catalog, but she had a good time. I hope she remembers it and it doesn't become a blur to her. Concerts always seem like a dream to me when I'm in them. The fact that I got good pictures of the concert will help it seem more real when it inevitably feels dreamlike.

It's impossible to go to a show like this and not think of the queen of this kind of show - Madonna. No one puts on as elaborate of a show as she does. For American audiences, Kylie doesn't have near the back catalog or immediate name recognition as Madonna. And Madonna never never NEVER does a tour half-assed. I've enjoyed every Madonna show I've seen, but I couldn't help but notice the big differences between the two. The most obvious one was pointed out by my friend Robbie (aka ChartRigger) at the end of the show. There are just absolutely no diva airs about Kylie at all. She's always so "oh, I'm so glad you like it!" She interacted with the audience, taking a request which ended up being "Your Disco Needs You" which she NAILED. This is a far cry from Madonna whose shows are so intricately choreographed that there is no room for spontaneity at all. Madonna shows are in a league all their own, but sometimes the lack or spontaneity really shows, especially compared to a show like Kylie's which was just as tightly choreographed. For some reason, it was different.

The other thing that made it better than a Madonna show was Kylie's willingness to dig into her back catalog. Madonna always seems to do so a bit begrudgingly, as if someone is holding her at gunpoint. Stevie Nicks points out that when people come see you live, they don't want to hear new songs. Rather, they want to hear the stuff they know. While I don't think I'd go as far as to say that, you do have to have a liberal sprinkling of well known songs to please the non diehards that attend concerts. This applies less to Kylie as I don't know that there is such a thing as a non-diehard Kylie fan in the U.S. But with Madonna, there are many casual fans that may not know her most recent work. I will always feel bad for the casual fans that went to The Drowned World Tour in 2001 expecting a hit parade and instead, got a bunch of album tracks and two 80s hits.

And finally, it cannot be overstated that Kylie can actually sing the songs that she records. I always make a big deal about how being able to appreciate Madonna's live vocals is what separates the men from the boys as far as Madonna fans go. But let's be honest, she's had some moments that are positively cringeworthy. I usually chalk that up to nerves and the fact that her voice is mostly just passable. I also sometimes think that Madonna tries to sing things that are out of her league vocally and the studio magic can wipe away most of the blemishes. Not so in a live show. Why else would the DVDs of her concerts feature so obviously sweetened vocals?

But there's room enough for all the divas in my life. Seriously, how could I go on without them? I'm so glad that I got to see Kylie live. If the Rapture really had come the following Saturday, I would have gone into the tribulation a happy man. I've been to many concerts in my day, but hers will always stand out. It was worth the trip to Texas. When I was debating buying tickets and spending the money on the trip, my friend Matt said something along the lines of "I highly doubt you'll look back and say 'damn, I wish I hadn't gone to Kylie.'" As it turns out, he was right. And I would go again in a second.

(thanks to xolondon for the inspiration behind the title of this post)

Not dead yet

2011-05-26T09:09:00.002-05:00

I have great intentions to blog, but the brain power is lacking. We are back from our trip. Kylie was amazing. I will do a whole post on the concert - hopefully today.

More soon.

Undead reading

2011-05-13T14:20:00.000-05:00

Well, so far this year, I've managed to read 20 books out of a goal of 30. Of course, my co-worker who started keeping track of the books she's read this year (actually since January 11) is at almost 60. At the rate I'm going, I'll have to increase my goal and get comfortable with the fact that I won't catch up with my co-worker. In the last few months, I read a couple of books dealing with the undead - the first being my beloved zombies and the other being one of the original vampire novels.

The Walking Dead: Compendium One was a gift I bought for my friend Matt last Christmas this year based upon the fact that I joined him and his wife almost every Sunday night last fall to watch AMC's adaptation of Robert Kirkman's graphic novel. After he finished it, he offered it to me to read. At 1,088 pages, the compendium collates the first 48 issues and provided a good companion to the TV series. I found it entertaining to compare and contrast the two. Not only is the graphic novel much darker than the series, it takes no prisoners and makes no promises as far as the survival or lack thereof of major characters. There are many MANY scenes that I hope end up in the series. Their side trip through the suburban development and the Governor storyline all seem like they would translate well. What it boils down to is whether or not AMC has the cojones to go that dark. Matt and I are not convinced that they are, but they surprised me a couple times last year in the 6 episodes that comprised the first season of The Walking Dead.

The book took me a long time to read. I'll admit, I started with great fervor and then put it down for several months. My Goodreads progress on the book tells me that I started it on January 29th and finally finished it on April 28th. It was not a book that I found I could read in little bits. I either consumed it or didn't touch it. Once I got to about the half-way point, there was really no other option than to consume it. I'm not a big reader of graphic novels, but based on this one, I'm eager for the second compendium to come out.

The Heretics & Spirituality group, fresh from having read Mary Shelley's Frankenstein decided to dive into another classic of Gothic horror - Bram Stoker's Dracula. It was a free, preloaded book on my Nook Color, so I was more than happy to go along with it. I had started to read Dracula in college, but I never finished it. I remember getting to right about the point where Lucy is transformed into a vampire by the Count and then, for whatever reason, I abandoned it. The story is told in the form of letters and journal entries, starting with Jonathan Harker's trip to Transylvania and Castle Dracula to help the vampiric Count acquire property in England. These opening pages are riveting and well told. Stoker sets up a sense of place rather adeptly as well as a definite sense of foreboding. When the action shifts to England, the plot slows down substantially and I felt contributed to the middle of the book dragging a lot. It's no wonder I gave up on it in 1990.

I was also bogged down by the language used in the writing of the book, which is certainly not the fault of Stoker as he was just writing in the way that people wrote in the 1800s. Many of the characters all kind of blended together in my brain and the protracted climax of the book left me a bit unsatisfied, as if all the action built to an event that was followed by 1 page of wrap up.

And although I already knew it, the Francis Ford Coppola directed Bram Stoker's Dracula really should have had the tag line "loosely inspired by Bram Stoker's novel." a la Demi Moore's film version of The Scarlet Letter.

Not so Dreamy

2011-05-09T20:48:00.006-05:00

To paraphrase a bit from Evita, it is my sad duty to inform you that, while I like Stevie Nicks' new album, In Your Dreams, I don't love it. As a long time Stevie fan, this is hard to admit but it really is true. And because I don't love it, it is ultimately disappointing because it has been 10 years since her last solo album, Trouble In Shangri-La. It doesn't seem like In Your Dreams was worth the wait.

That said, it's about 65% a good album, 25% so-so and 10% pure awful. I really love "Secret Love" and it's gotten a lot of plays on my iPod. The fact that it's from the vault helps its cause. This was back when Stevie could write down practically anything and turn it into a song. I'm not so sure that happens like it used to. I can see the wheels turning on some of the newer songs. The bloom seems to be off the songwriting rose. Still, newer songs like "For What It's Worth" (not written by Stevie), "New Orleans" and the title track really do appeal to the Stevie fan in me. "Annabel Lee" may not be "Planets of the Universe", but it's still a very strong song. Even the song inspired by the Twilight series is pretty strong - you just have to forget the fact that it's inspired by the Twilight series. In fact, the first 7 songs are so strong, I think if Stevie had stopped there and called it an EP, she would have had something at least as good as The Wild Heart. (Sorry, nothing touches Bella Donna.)

But then there's track 8 - "Soldier's Angel" - which is so amazingly bad I am still trying to figure out what went wrong. Lindsey Buckingham is on guitar and background vocals, but the lyrics are so bad and the production so sparse that it grates from the first note to the last. How could the combination that cranked out some of the most memorable pop hits of the 70s produce something so dreary and unlistenable? The world may never know. What makes its substandardness even harder to swallow is that Stevie is apparently in love with it.

"It’s very Buckingham Nicks and I think that it’s going to be a very serious and important song to the world and I think it’s a very serious and important song for Lindsey Buckingham and Stevie Nicks because it sounds like Buckingham Nicks. Because it is."

Even the worst track on BuckinghamNicks is better than this song.

The album has a few more high points - "Ghosts Are Gone" gets points for recycling "ghost through a fog" which is one of my favorite recurring Stevie-isms and "Italian Summer" is worthy as well, even though it took a while to grow on me. The rest is not bad, it's just not very memorable which I think, is really bad if you're a Stevie Nicks song.

I think the biggest culprit for this album's lack of spark and life lies solely with the production. As my friend and fellow Stevie-phile Steve Sears says, Dave Stewart and Glen Ballard produced a version of Stevie that will appeal to a wide and older audience, and in so doing, they lost the craziness that makes Nicks so appealing to long term fans. I miss the quirks that have made even bad Stevie albums endearing. For as much as I can barely stomach Street Angel, it still contains the eccentricities that make Stevie Stevie. It's almost as if Stewart and Ballard took sandpaper to Stevie's rough edges and smoothed them over for mass consumption that I don't think is likely to happen anyway.

I think that ultimately, it's hard when your producing any piece of art. It's hard to predict what people want - will they want something new or will they want the same old thing all wrapped up in a new package? Waiting 10 years between releasing new material ups the ante significantly. I also think that part of it is me - the music is good but it's not really where my mood is right now. Perhaps I will warm to it when the leaves change color and the temperatures turn cooler, versus now when summer is just getting underway and we're 10 days away from seeing Kylie Minogue.

It is still new music from Stevie Nicks who was one of my original music loves and for that, I will be grateful, even if it's not quite what I wanted.

Thanks to Steve for providing a lot of the most intelligent things said in this post.

Shower inequality

2011-05-06T21:54:00.005-05:00

In part as a response to this post and because Heidi is really feeling the need to get moving as well, we coughed up the cash for Ames Racquet & Fitness - probably the most popular of several gym/fitness center type places here in Ames. There are three locations in town - one of which being a 24 hour place - and I get a pretty decent discount through work, plus they reimburse me 9 bucks a month if I go 8 times in a month. So it's win-win, right? Although all I can think of is the time when Chandler wanted to quit the gym on Friends, I feel like it'll be a net positive, right?

I've gone a couple times now and it's all still shiny and new but what I'm really trying to do is establish the habit and pattern. I've established the habit and pattern before, only to smash it to pieces, but life is a series of successes and failures. As the old standard goes, you pick yourself up, dust yourself off and start all over again.

Heidi is all about showering at the gym, but in the couple times I've been there, I've come home and showered. Why, you ask? Because there's no damn privacy at the gym, that's why! Heidi was dumbstruck tonight when I explained to her that in the men's locker room, there is a small room with nozzles sticking out of the wall vs. the stalls with privacy curtains for the showers in the women's locker room. Why is there this inequity? I don't understand it? The shower heads are not even separated enough to keep you from standing in a total stranger's personal space!

I have never understood this, even though it has been a common occurrence throughout my life. It was that way in elementary, junior high and high school gym class. It was that way (most scarringly) my first couple years of college in my dorm. I remember showering at the weirdest times of the day so I didn't have to be in there with other people. It was such a shock that one time Jeff and his girlfriend at the time came over and Jeff, upon seeing the shocking lack of privacy in the showers, forced his girlfriend to come into the men's room to see. When I transferred to Iowa, I was lucky enough to live in a dorm where the showers had stalls - walls and curtains and the whole nine yards. Yeah, sometimes you had to wait for them, but you didn't have to stand there, naked as a jaybird in the middle of the restroom, waiting for a shower to open up, only to have to go stand next to someone that you might see at lunch later in the day. It was just all kinds of awkward.

What blows my mind is that the privacy is reserved for women who have so much more of a communal bathroom experience than men do. Guys know what I'm talking about - we all know the guy that doesn't know the rules of men's room etiquette. From what Heidi's told me, women talk to each other from inside stalls. What a completely foreign experience that must be.

I can't decide if the problem is with society or with me. I'll be the first to admit that even now, I have a terrible body image. I look in the mirror sometimes and wonder when I'll stop going through my awkward phase. The thing I guess I need to tell myself is that no one is looking and no one - no one that matters anyway - is judging.

It still is not fair though, but as Joan Crawford says, nobody ever said that life was fair, Tina.

Who's playing at my nasty grandstand?

2011-04-30T20:55:00.008-05:00

Add one more concert to this year's list. First it was Lady Gaga in March. May brings Kylie Minogue in Dallas. And today, we scored tickets to Janet Jackson performing at...believe it or not...the Iowa State Fair.

As has been the common refrain around here in response to the news that Janet Jackson would be playing the State Fair - how the mighty have fallen. Heidi and I were talking about it tonight and she said "I always feel bad for people that have to play the State Fair because that kind of means they're over." I pointed out a couple of other acts that were playing the State Fair - both country acts - and she said "yeah, well country is kind of its own thing." It is true though. Most of the time when someone's playing the Iowa State Fair Grandstand, they are way WAY past their prime. Jeff and I always used to say that we would only see Madonna when she was playing the State Fair, a prediction that decidedly did not come true. And yes, I haven't been interested in much of anything Janet has done in probably 10 years (2001's All For You was the last Janet album I bought) but when I found out she was coming to the State Fair at a fairly reasonable price, I couldn't resist.

Back before she was the punchline in a wardrobe malfunction joke, Janet had an amazingly good run. Between 1986 and 1996, she had hit single after hit single and, despite having a less-than-stellar voice, she made many memorable songs and a few classic albums. Arguably, her high point was 1993's janet. from which the photo that accompanies this post has its origins. I was always a little bit ho-hum on that album. I found it to be a bit too dependent on samples but over time, I've come to recognize it as being a good album with a few misses. Her best album, for my money, is still Janet Jackson's Rhythm Nation 1814, or as we always called it Janet Jackson's Urination 1814. That album and Control were part of the soundtrack of my high school years and, in the case of Rhythm Nation, the first part of my college years as well. What do you expect when you spin 7 (or 8) singles off of an album? Talk about something that would never happen now.

The last few albums have not been my cup of tea, mostly because she has been releasing more or less the same stuff over and over again. I did like the song "Rock With U" from the Discipline album a couple years back, but mostly, I haven't been that interested. Judging from the set list from her most recent concert, it doesn't sound like familiarity with the newer songs will be essential. It looks more like a hit parade.

Since I had to work today, it fell to Heidi to get the tickets. We're going with Jeff, Caryle, Mary and Mike. Six tickets ended up costing $427, which is the price of one HELL of a Madonna ticket. Apparently, Ticketmaster was being its normal bitchy self, but Heidi managed to not only score us tickets, but she scored EIGHTH ROW seats. They are seriously rock star seats. Now why can't I get tickets like that for Madonna? (Answer: Fan club presale.)

So it'll be a fun show. And in the spirit of xolondon, here's my Top Ten (plus 1) Janet songs.

1) Love Will Never Do (Without You)
2) Because Of Love
3) When I Think of You
4) What Have You Done For Me Lately?
5) If (Brothers In Rhythm House Mix) - the original I can take or leave.
6) Nasty
7) Free Xone
8) Escapade
9) You Can Be Mine
10) Come Back To Me

+1 = Throb (I can't help it. Hearing her mutter "DJ make me wet" just cracks me up. Every. Single. Time.)

Moby Duck

2011-04-27T22:17:00.002-05:00

Last night I wrote about Moby Dick, tonight it's Moby Duck's turn.

I can safely say that this is the first book that I read thanks to QRANK, the trivia game for your iPhone or iPad. Moby Duck was the subject of one of the 1,000 point questions and after hearing about its subject matter, I knew I had to read it. I have always been a sucker for everyday things that spill out of trucks or trains or, in this case, boats. I can trace that back to one April 1st when I was in college and reading in The Daily Iowan about a train derailment over the Iowa River in the middle of campus that left the river filled with rubber duckies. I remember thinking, "I need to walk down past the river today to see that." And then I remembered the date. April Fools' Day. There were no rubber duckies in the Iowa River. And I was the fool.

But there were rubber ducks - and beavers, frogs and turtles - in the North Pacific in 1992 when a freighter transporting them from China to the U.S. hit rough weather and they went overboard. 28,800 of them, to be precise. And this got the attention of Donovan Hohn, who went on the adventure that became the book Moby Duck. He went beachcombing in Alaska, sailed through the Garbage Patch of the Pacific, toured a toy factory in China's Pearl River Delta and then travels on an icebreaker through Northwest Territories. It's truly an out-of-this-world, once in a lifetime adventure.

If only it were more interesting. But alas, it really wasn't.

I wanted to like this book - believe me, I really did. And there were parts of it that I did enjoy. But as a whole, the entire thing rubbed me the wrong way. Maybe it was because Hohn was running of to have what basically amounted to a juvenile "find-myself" adventure while his wife was pregnant and then at home with a newborn baby. This seemed to weigh on his mind, but let me tell you, there's no way I would have missed the early days of my daughter's life no matter how sleep deprived and crazy making it was. In addition to this, there was something very inauthentic about the adventure. The best books like this are written based on adventures that happen to turn out to be good enough to turn into books. In this case, it felt very much like he went on the adventure with the book in fully in mind. So in addition to being navel-gazing and self-indulgent, it all felt like a conversation that someone sat at home in front of the mirror before they went out and actually had the conversation.

But perhaps the worst offense was making this book out to be about the toys that had gone overboard. They were the ploy to get you in, but really, they were nothing more than that. They got mentioned every now and then, when it had been long enough since the last mention that he felt like they should be mentioned again. I just didn't buy into the adventure at all and really, I wanted more spilled toys.

That's not to say that it was all bad. The one thing that I've learned is that I really do enjoy stories that involve people being on a boat. Those were the best parts of the books - when Hohn was on a boat. Between this and In The Heart of the Sea, it makes me want to take a crack at more books that involve sea voyages.

So I guess I did get something out of Moby Duck, but I was expecting so much more - maybe at least a scratch and dent rubber duck sale.

Enjoy The Silence

2011-04-27T13:33:00.008-05:00

Doctor Who's new monster, The Silence, looked oddly familiar to me when they made their debut appearance in The Impossible Astronaut on Easter weekend. It got me to thinking that really, if the Silence were the answer to a math problem, it'd probably look something like this.

One part Cantina Band members

...times 2 parts The Gentlemen from Buffy...

...plus 1.5 Voldemort...

...equals The Silence.

Regardless, they are kickass.

Now what was I talking about again? (geeky Doctor Who reference.)

Thar, she blows

2011-04-26T22:50:00.004-05:00

My family hit the sack early tonight and I don't work tomorrow so I decided to stay up and watch a little TV. I had seen that Netflix had added 2010: Moby Dick to the instant line-up a couple weeks back and despite the hideous reviews on the web site and the cheesiness of the trailer, I knew that it was only a matter of time before I watched it. Tonight was the night. I was totally in the mood for an unstoppable 500 foot whale wreaking general havoc.

I have a mixed history with Moby Dick. I have tried to read it several times - twice in high school and twice as an adult - and have failed on every attempt. I have always been intrigued by the story of the white whale Moby Dick and how Captain Ahab relentlessly and insanely pursues him aboard the whaling ship Pequod. I read the plot synopsis on Wikipedia just a little bit ago and it made me think that I needed to give it another try. No frickin' way. The book is held up as a classic but in my mind it is, at best, a slog and at worst, completely unreadable. If I go to my grave not having read that book, I won't care one whit.

That's why I'm so grateful for movies like 2010: Moby Dick. Trust me, it helps to not be romantically attached to the source material. Don't get me wrong, this movie is not good. The special effects are incredibly cheesy, the performances by the C-list cast (save Barry Bostwick who is the only person that I even remotely recognize) forgettable and the dialogue completely throwaway. In many ways, it was kind of a waste of an hour and a half. But for some reason, even though I wouldn't call this movie good, I kind of ended up liking it in spite of myself. As is my common refrain for films like this, it was so much better than any movie named 2010: Moby Dick had any business being. I also realize that's also not saying much.

The movie is surprisingly faithful to the book, only instead of being a 19th century whaling vessel, the Pequod is now a nuclear submarine. The captain is still Ahab, but Ishmael is now Michelle Herman (she even says to her friend prior to the Pequod's arrival "Call me Michelle." UGH), a marine biologist who specializes in "talking to whales." Captain Ahab is still missing a leg thanks to Moby Dick after an attack he attacked the submarine he was on in 1969. Since then, he has hunted the whale without stopping. Moby Dick has been on a global rampage and since the Pequod has been in hot pursuit, the brass at the Navy think that Ahab has gone rogue and is sinking all these ships that have actually run afoul of Moby Dick. From the amount of boats (and even planes!) that Moby Dick has ingested over the years, it's amazing that he hasn't succumbed to heavy metal poisoning.

I'm not going to give away much else, although I will note that I was glad to see one of the submarines named Essex (presumably after the whale ship Essex that really WAS rammed by a whale.) Yes, everything about this movie is pure sliced Velveeta and no, it wasn't very good. Moby Dick himself was pretty passable, but even he had moments where his CG was showing. On one hand, I like that CG effects have gotten so cheap that pretty much anyone can do them now, but I also don't like how cheap CG still looks like cheap CG. Granted, sometimes even expensive CG looks bad (see I Am Legend, for example) so I sometimes give movies like this a pass when it comes to that.

For all its faults, this is the kind of movie that we would have watched on Saturday afternoon cable as kids a million times. And for that, even though it wasn't very good, it gets points. Yes it sucks, but in that good way. Cut from the same cloth as last year's Piranha remake only not as scary or bloody, it's brainless entertainment and a fun way to view a complete dirge of a book through the eyes of modern day sci-fi.

Where the subconscious meets the conscious

2011-04-23T18:48:00.003-05:00

I woke up before 7AM this morning and because it was Saturday, I REALLY wanted to go back to sleep. I knew it wouldn't be hard. Anna's old enough now that she just gets up and watches TV or whatever till we get up. Still, I was afraid I wouldn't be able to fall back to sleep so I grabbed my iPod from my bedside table and decided to put something on. Only trouble is, I don't have many playlists that are suited for sleeping. It really doesn't matter - I've gone to sleep with the sound of 90s Eurodance pumping into my ears, but this morning I put on my playlist based on the little known Dolly Parton song "Livin' A Lie" from her film Straight Talk. It plays out like a list of the who's-who-of-90s-female-country (with a couple of exceptions.) You'll have to click on the image to be able to read it.

I kinda like how Genius picked the Almighty Definitive dance mix of Faith Hill's "This Kiss" instead of the original.

One of my favorite things to happen when I listen to music as I sleep is when the songs I'm listening to end up in my dreams. This morning was one of those mornings. Here I was listening to this playlist while I slept in the early morning hours and I had this dream that I was a pharmacist at a nursing home and was walking around with a nurse who was making sure that the residents were all in bed. We went in this large circle through the hallways of the facility and as we came around to the front, a little old lady was escaping out the front door. As she ran away, she was singing Shania Twain's "Any Man Of Mine." The juxtaposition of this little old lady and sexy Shania is still kind of cracking me up.

For the record, I really never got into Shania Twain apart from her hits. I was also put off by her overuse of exclamation marks in song titles. If you doubt me, just look at the track listing for her album Up!

I remember several other songs in various dreams I had this morning - I must not have been sleeping very soundly. The Dolly song "Thought I Couldn't Dance" was in a dream where I was driving a car in Carroll and was driving so fast that the car took off and was flying over bumps in the road. Very strange. The subconscious mind can be a very confusing place.

Celebrity eggs

2011-04-23T11:29:00.006-05:00

We colored eggs this morning which, for the record, I don't really like doing a terrible lot. I dislike most of the stuff associated with Easter. Easter candy kind of annoys me. I've never been one for egg hunts or anything like that - probably because I was always too old for them at our church growing up while my younger brother and sister were not. I'm kind of dreading having to fill plastic eggs after Anna goes to sleep tonight because yes, Virginia, she still believes in the Easter Bunny and who am I to crush that? After a bit of obligatory bitching, I kind of got into the spirit of it though. It was kind of fun to blow out the eggs yolks (every time we try to hard boil them, they crack plus no one here eats hard boiled eggs) and I got to go around annoyingly saying the word "PAAS" over and over again until my wife and daughter were ready to hit me with a brick.

It got me to thinking about the time when I was probably in the 5th grade and for whatever reason, we decorated eggs in my Lutheran Sunday School class. We didn't do the dyes as that would have been far too messy for our Sunday best. Instead, there were crayons and markers and little bits of discarded fabric and other crafty items that we could glue onto our eggs.

Amidst all the crap that they had for us to decorate our eggs with was a small scrap of fabric that was a golden band with a little fringe on the edge. To me, it looked just like a sweat band, with hair going over the top of it. Those of you who know me well know where this is going. Yep, that's right...

...it was OLIVIA NEWTON-EGG.

I remember drawing the face on it and putting a little cartoon balloon down by the mouth and it was saying "Let's Get Physical." Oh my God, I took so much grief from my Sunday School classmates. And oddly, I had almost completely forgotten about it until this morning. That's how deeply buried in my subconscious it was.

Of course, I told this story to Heidi and she laughed uproariously. And, as is her standard retort when I tell stories like this, she said "And yet, somehow, you turned out straight." She added "Seriously, Dan, that's the type of story a gay man of our age would tell!" followed by "I fucking love you SO MUCH." It worked out best for everybody involved that I did turn out straight - especially Anna who wouldn't be here otherwise. I chalk it up to having only one functioning copy of the gay gene. It gets to the part where it codes for the sexual orientation bit and it just spits out a nonsense protein. And if that is not geeky humor, I don't know what is.

Now that I've completely humiliated myself, I think I'll just leave everyone with a Happy Easter if you are celebrating it. May you not eat your weight in chocolate eggs.

Admit One

2011-04-21T12:45:00.001-05:00

About a year ago, I remember Heidi telling me that I simply HAD to read Admit One by Jenna Hilary Sinclair. She wrote a pretty glowing review of it on Goodreads but for one reason or another, it slipped off my radar. I hadn't read any m/m fiction for awhile, having gotten too busy with my real life to do any kind of proofing for Dreamspinner and when I remembered this book, I thought why not? It turned out to be one of the best m/m books I've ever read.

Tom Smith is a high school history teacher in a small town in west Texas. He is gay but closeted to everyone around him. He chooses to live a largely asexual life, mostly, he feels, out of necessity. His only break from this comes from weekend trips to Dallas where he engages in a series of one-night stands before heading back to his self-inflicted prison. On one of these weekends, he meets Kevin Bannerman who he sleeps with and tosses off like all his other encounters. But unlike his other encounters, he can't seem to forget about Kevin.

Kevin reappears in his life a bit improbably but why not as the parent of one of the cast members in the high school's production of Rent, of which Tom is serving as the assistant director. Feelings rush back but their relationship is complicated not only by the narrow mindedness of the small town in which Tom lives, but also by Tom's own fears. He's afraid to be so much as seen with Kevin in town for fear that their fledgling relationship will be questioned. He is a classic case of "he doth protest too much." And as if that wasn't bad enough, the parents and the surrounding community start complaining about the subject matter of Rent - specifically the drug use and the homosexuality therein.

I think I enjoyed this book so much because the plot lent itself so well to comparison to the plot of Rent. It was cleverly done but not heavy-handedly so which could have been a real temptation that I'm glad Sinclair avoided. As the finale of Rent says, "no day but today." That's something that I think Tom grows to realize over the course of the novel. Sure all the standard plot points are there but Sinclair manages to make them fresh and it helps that I really cared about the characters, rather than wanting to slug them because they were TSTL (too stupid to live.)

The reason I read these books isn't for the sexual content. It's also not just because my wife writes them - although I'll admit that probably is a factor. I've said before in other posts I've done on m/m books that what lures me in is the emotional porn. I'm always there for the relationship - to see how two people wind up together against all odds. I've also said before that referring to it as "emotional porn" tragically oversimplifies it. Sometimes I wish we lived in a world where homosexuality was so accepted and "normal" that two platonic male friends together didn't automatically arouse the suspicion that they must be lovers, and if they aren't, they will be eventually. Men don't really have the freedom to feel truly connected to each other like women do. We feel the need to take every meaningful social interaction we might have and do the equivalent of popping the balloon and making it funny, lest it be misinterpreted. This is done to our detriment. Carefully chosen books like these are one of the few places you can see it, although I suppose the presence of the sex argues against my point. In any event, men in our society are screwed over when it comes to that, especially after marriage. We can't have close female friends because, well that's awkward and what would our wives say and we can't have close male friends because that's been socialized out of us. What's left to do?

Tell the world to screw off, that's what.

Oh, and read Admit One. It's a keeper.

The sun is bursting right out of a Paper Bag

2011-04-20T20:49:00.006-05:00

Madonna covers are such a mixed bag as I've discussed before. Part of the trouble is that Madonna really OWNS her songs - especially her biggest hits - and anyone else trying to sing them usually comes off as bad celebrity karaoke. So I was equal parts intrigued and worried when I heard about the Paper Bag Records release of a True Blue covers album in celebration of their 8th anniversary and True Blue's *gulp* TWENTY FIFTH anniversary. While True Blue is no Like A Prayer or Ray of Light in terms of being beyond criticism, the 1986 album is home to some of her biggest hits of the 80s. Over half the album was released as singles, and three of the five singles hit number one. So some of the songs they were going to attempt to cover were going to be tough to do.

This is certainly not the first attempt at a Madonna covers album. There are the dreadful Virgin Voices albums and the better but still underwhelming Through The Wilderness. No one could really separate Madonna from her songs. Up until now, no one has attempted to cover a whole album a la Camper Van Beethoven's cover of Fleetwood Mac's Tusk album. Much like on that album, the results of covering True Blue are mixed, but overall a worthwhile endeavor.

I listened to the whole thing today and imagine my surprise when there is really only one God-awful unlistenable track on the whole thing - that being PS I Love You's cover of "Where's The Party?" (or as it's known around our house, "Where's The Potty?") "Where's The Party?" kind of falls in between the cracks with Madonna songs - it's fairly well known, but since it was not a single, it's been largely forgotten. It really deserved to be a single and would have done well, but this version should be buried deep within the earth.

But getting 8 out of 9 tracks mostly right is pretty impressive. Many blog posts have been singling out Woodhands' version of "Papa Don't Preach" as a misfire. Apart from having the honor of being a cover of a huge Madonna hit that has arguably aged the least gracefully, I enjoyed their take on it. The more straight forward tactic taken on songs like "La Isla Bonita" and "Live To Tell" were less impressive. In my book, there are two rules to a successful cover - 1) put your own stamp on it and 2) be respectful to the original. "LIB" and "LTT" got the second part right, almost to a fault, while ignoring the first rule. Oddly enough, the cover of "Open Your Heart" which, by rights, should not work, ends up working out better than most of the tracks.

But my far and away favorite of all the songs is Born Ruffians' version of the much maligned Madonna album track "Jimmy Jimmy." Poor "Jimmy Jimmy." All it ever did was be produced in the 80s. It's Madonna fluff, to be sure. But as is the case with most of Madonna's fluff during that time period, it was pretty awesome fluff. Hear for yourself.

Well, Born Ruffians took all the 80s production out of it and I don't know how to describe it, but really you have to hear it. It's all dressed up for a new generation. Listen here - it's track #8. Although I have to say that I was ticked that they did not include the "oop shoo boop oop boop shoo la la la" part (about 3:17 in the above video) that made the original so endearing as well as ridiculous. It's like if they decided to cover Madonna's "Stay" and left out the "then we can scoop scoop scoop scoodlye bee bop." Blasphemy. Oh well, nothing's perfect.

The best part is you can download the whole shootin' match for free at Paper Bag Records web site. If this bunch of Madonna covers gets my stamp of approval, you know it must be worthy.

Now excuse me while I go shake my head in disbelief at True Blue being 25 this year.

Thank you

2011-04-19T21:58:00.003-05:00

I just wanted to take a minute to express my gratitude for all the comments and messages here on this blog, on Facebook and Twitter and in private e-mail that I have received from people in the wake of Blair's death. Support of family and friends makes things like this easier. Life is slowly returning to normal around here and while his absence is still rather acute, I know for a fact that Heidi and Anna are going to the Story County Animal Shelter tomorrow to look at kittens - just to LOOK. We can't and won't get anything until after Kylie (which is in 29 days!!) and after the three remaining cats have been to the vet and are all updated on their shots and what not.

Thanks again to family and friends both near and far.

Black cat, nine lives

2011-04-18T21:30:00.001-05:00

I'm going to try to write this even though I am completely wiped. Putting it off a day seems wrong. Today was the day that the end came for our cat Blair, the second of our cats to be diagnosed with terminal cancer last year and the second to shuffle off the mortal coil.

This was a lot harder for me on so many more levels than when we had to let Mia go last November. The biggest reason for this is because Blair was really my baby boy cat. From the minute I heard him meowing in a neighbor's flower garden across a busy street in Washington, IA, I knew that he and I were going to have a special relationship. Up until that time, I had not really been a cat person. I became a pseudo-cat person mostly because I realized that if I wanted to spend my life with Heidi, that was going to involve cats. Blair (who was named after The Blair Witch Project, which was a popular movie that summer) really got to me though. He was the first cat of ours that I bonded with as a kitten and in many ways, we tricked him into thinking I was his mother. In the first days that we had him, he would get in bed with me every morning and would always fall for the "moving finger under the blanket" trick. He pounced every time. He would nip at you and bite which led to his early nickname of "Black Bite-y."

He was hell on wheels - I'd never seen a kitten get into so much trouble. He crawled up in the arms of the couch, pulled an entire box of Stove-Top stuffing out of a cupboard and walked around with it in his mouth. He hijacked a package of English muffins and squirreled them away in our bedroom closet, where we uncovered them six months later, moldy and gross. Even though we had two other cats in the house, we knew it was him. No one else would have taken the time or the effort. As he grew, he got into more trouble, jumping from the floor to the top of the refrigerator and even ending up inside the refrigerator once after sneaking in there all stealth-like when we had opened it. Only his meowing led us to find him, sitting on the second shelf as if he belonged there.

He grew quickly - a friend of ours always asked me if we were feeding him Miracle-Gro. He was always a handsome cat and I swear that he had to have had Siamese in him. He grew fond of crawling up on my chest in the morning before I woke up. When you wake up with a 14 pound cat on your chest, it becomes difficult to differentiate between that and "the big one." When he wasn't sitting on my chest, he was crawling under the blanket and laying next to me all stretched out like a human would. None of our cats before or since have done that. He kind of grew out of that for a while, but in the last 6 months, he started doing that again. It was almost as if he knew that his time was limited and wanted to remind me of what it was like before he was sick.

The thing about Blair was that he had neuroses that had neuroses. We first noticed this when we discovered that he was losing all the hair on his legs - a consequence of over-grooming, a nervous habit among cats who are stressed out. We tried to medicate him for this, but it proved nearly impossible without getting an arm taken off. We managed it as best we could, but when we moved and Sidney showed up on our back deck and became the 5th cat in our house (never again), his anxiety went into the stratosphere. He started peeing outside of the litter box - his favorite places being on the front door and on the floor in Heidi's office closet. Because of this, we spent $600 on a full work-up on him to make sure that there wasn't something physically wrong with him that was causing him to pee all over the place or if it truly was just a behavioral problem. As I suspected, there wasn't anything wrong with him physically. The stress brought on by Sidney basically pushed him over the edge.

My dad built a cage for him so that we could isolate him and basically retrain him to use the litter box. It worked for the most part, although he still had his lapses. We started him on Prozac which we would rub on his ear and that also seemed to help some. His peeing continued and we just kept on cleaning it up. I sanded down the wood floors where he had peed and resealed them. There were points during that time that I'm not proud of. I was so tired of cleaning up pee, with him wrecking floors and not knowing what was wrong with him that I seriously entertained the notion of euthanizing him then. After euthanizing him today, I know now that I was all talk. There was no way on God's green earth that I could have killed him for his behavior.

When he was diagnosed with multiple myeloma last fall, he had wasted away and had hardly any fat on him. The vet said that his prognosis was quite poor. He was so sick with a respiratory tract infection last fall when Heidi was gone to Texas to visit her sister that my only goal was to keep him alive until she got back. He rallied like no one's business, kicked his infection and started gaining weight once we put him on steroids and antibiotics. His mouth, which had been full of sores, healed up. He was on the mend and he lulled us into a false sense of security. Maybe the diagnosis had been wrong...maybe he was going to be around for years to come.

The honeymoon was short-lived. He went through countless rounds of antibiotics. He knew the sound of me grinding the tablet in the mortar and pestle I bought so that we could more easily administer it to him - when he heard it, he would hide. Last week, we found a lump on his belly. Thinking it was a sign of his cancer advancing, we took him to the vet. They aspirated it and found it to be only a cyst, but to keep an eye on it. Three days later, he was sneezing and wheezing and not responding to the antibiotic. We switched antibiotics and despite the fact that it should have killed just about everything, he still got no better. Over the weekend, he stopped eating and drinking. The last time we know that he peed was Friday. He was vomiting up snot and phlegm and despite my attempts to keep him clean, the snot crusted on his nose and face. Yesterday, sensing that his end was near, I went up and sat with him in Heidi's office. He laid down next to me and snuggled up to my leg. By the evening hours, he had curled up into a ball under Heidi's desk, and got all quiet and still. I was sure that I would be gone this morning. He was still alive, but miserable.

In many ways, I felt bonded to Blair because of our similar struggles with anxiety. I always felt a little bit like giving up on him was giving up on me. That was why it was so hard to make the call this morning which was his death sentence. I hated the responsibility of saying "you die now." Once we had the appointment set up, I kept thinking "Blair only has x amount of time to live." He was a little more alert at the time than I would have liked, although he was calm because of the sedative we gave him at home. He twitched his tail and growled one last time at the vet while she found the vein. He laid his head down and was twitching his tail. After the injection was about half done, his tail stopped twitching. I like to think that he fell asleep and didn't feel the pain anymore, because not long after, he was gone. It's not cool to say so, but I was heartbroken. My little black cat was no more and I haven't been that sad in a long time.

Cancer won, like it so often does despite our best efforts. But he didn't have to suffer. That's the gift we can give to our pets. As he died, Madonna's "Crazy For You" played on the radio. It seemed appropriate.

But as someone said to me, whenever we lose anyone, it's not the ending but the time before that matters. Sure I'm sad. Sure I'll miss him. I was eating supper tonight and swore that I saw his little black head walk by, only to realize that wasn't possible. But I will remember all the times, good and bad, that we gave him and that he gave us. We gave him a good life. So many people would have given up on Blair but we didn't. And we loved him through it all, even at the worst. Even when I was talking crazy about euthanizing him for peeing, I still loved that cat. In many ways, he was the bitchiest cat that ever lived, but we saw the side of him that so few saw. Whatever the cat version of love is, he had it for us. He snuggled up on my lap almost without fail every time I sat down to watch TV. He hung out with Heidi in her office during the day. He very frequently laid on Anna's bed while she fell asleep. He left pieces of himself around - and not just the bits of hair we shaved from his body today. When Anna was an infant, he inadvertently scratched her head and eyelid, leaving a faint scar that is mostly hidden by her hairline. She said to me last night "Dad, I'm glad Blair scratched me, because now I have a piece of him forever." Way to make lemonade out of lemons, kid.

What a difference a week makes!

He was a good cat, even when he was a shit cat, because he was MY cat. He was my baby boy cat and now he's gone. He's not hurting anymore, but I sure do miss him.

One Christmas, we made CDs for people - one for each of the four cats we had at the time. Blair's contribution was "Blair's Bad-Ass Tunes." And naturally, the last track was Janet Jackson's "Black Cat." If any cat really had nine lives, it was Blair. He lived way past his prognosis, but it still wasn't easy to let him go.

RIP, buddy. This one's for you. If she sings it at the State Fair, you know I'll think of you and smile.

It opened up my eyes

2011-04-17T10:07:00.005-05:00

For no particular reason, Ace of Base's "The Sign" has been showing up more and more in my listening habits. I think it's because it is on the genius playlist that I mentioned in my last post. On my way back from taking a friend out to dinner for his birthday on Friday night, it shuffled up and listening to it got me to thinking about how well it holds up, nearly 20 years after its initial release.

I bought The Sign (the album) based on the strength of the initial single "All That She Wants." It was inescapable on the radio in the fall of 1993. Looking back now, it was kind of an anomaly amongst what was getting played on the radio back then. I had all but abandoned most Hot 100 fare for country-pop as the Nirvana/Pearl Jam/grunge that was played ad nauseum back then was just not my thing. I certainly wasn't expecting Swedish pop to take hold again. I mean, this was NOT Roxette or ABBA and this was the early 90s. But to no one's surprise, I lapped up the sound of "All That She Wants." My sister, who was in junior high at the time, also got into the song, buying the cassingle if memory serves.

However, the purchase of The Sign was a bit of a let down. It just didn't click with me. Some of that might have been because the instant I bought it, my sister commandeered it and I barely got to listen to it all of Christmas break. In any event, I was resigned to Ace of Base being a one-hit wonder. I heard of the impending release of "The Sign" as a single and figured it would peak at #83 and that would be the end of it. I couldn't have been more wrong. "The Sign" spent 6 weeks at #1 and was the freaking best selling single of 1994! The Sign sold 9 million copies (many of which, no doubt, as in used CD stores.) I still own mine, having warmed up to it substantially. Once I got back to school after Christmas break, I couldn't stop listening to it.

So here's my question - which single holds up better? "All That She Wants" or "The Sign"? My money is on "The Sign" if for no other reason than it contains my oft-quoted line "life is demanding, without understanding."

The case against reflexive Gaga hating

2011-04-16T13:59:00.003-05:00

The blogosphere is abuzz this morning with everyone and their pet rock weighing in on the relative worth (or lack thereof) of Lady Gaga's new single "Judas" and her recently unveiled cover for her album forthcoming album Born This Way. Maybe it's just me, but could people be any more negative?

I get where they're coming from. I, too, was once a reflexive Gaga hater. I don't know what made me dislike and resist her, but I did. I found her persona simple and her music lacking and I felt very much that she was nothing more than a Madonna rip-off - another in a long line of pretenders to the throne of her Madgesty. I think that, as a long time Madonna fan, I felt that giving in to Gaga would be akin to cheating on the icon I've followed for decades. But eventually, I gave in. I can't quite pinpoint where I started to come around to Gaga. It might have been in the San Rio store in L.A. in 2009 when I finally paid attention to "Poker Face." It might have been when Heidi used a lot of Gaga on her story soundtrack for Double Blind. Or maybe it was with "Bad Romance" and The Fame Monster - a point at which she really did "level up" a la Madonna with True Blue. Whatever it was, it happened. As my sister pointed out to me, it was only a matter of time.

Even though I know where they're coming from, I really don't understand it now and frankly, it's starting to really piss me off. Everything that Gaga does now is somehow dismissed out of hand by most people that should, by rights, be giving her the biggest chance. Instead, they seem to be steering clear of her almost out of some principle, dismissing every new song or look or piece of artwork out of hand and not giving it any sort of chance. I don't know that Gaga cares much, but I think that hating something on principle is not all that different (or misguided) than the opposite reaction - declaring a blinding love for when an artist really does turn out shit.

In many ways, this is where the Madonna comparison is most apt. The reflexive hatred of Madonna in the 80s and 90s is legendary. So little of it had to do with the music - most of it was based on perception and image. Admittedly, Madonna courted the controversy in much the same way that Gaga is. I think what bothers me the most about Gaga hatred is I feel like, in hating on Gaga, we're all turning into the worst version of our parents. You know what I'm talking about - the "would you turn that noise down?" and the "back in my day, there was REAL music." I was lucky in the fact that my folks really didn't do that too much - they're worst version of that was disliking remakes of 60s songs - but I feel like the sentiment against Gaga really seems to stem from that source a lot, especially amongst people my age. I feel like if we react like that, we're no better than the Madonna haters of yesteryear.

The thing is, good pop music is in short supply these days. I was listening to a genius playlist that I made based off of Belinda Carlisle's "Heaven Is A Place On Earth" and on that 50 song playlist were so many classic pop songs from the late 80s and even from the 90s. I feel like pop fell out of favor with the advent of grunge and while it had a bit of a renaissance with Britney Spears and the boy bands of the late 90s, it has never made a true and full comeback.

I was reading the Billboard Hot 100 the other day and, as has been true for nearly a decade now, every other song was "featuring" some rapper. Yes, we have Britney and Katy Perry charting in the upper echelons. But is anyone turning out pop music in its truest form like Gaga is? Is it a crime for something new to have something borrowed as well? So quickly we forget how Madonna co-opted other parts of the pop culture and brazenly made them her own. Sure, she might have been better and subtler about it than Gaga, but every time someone accuses Gaga of stealing something I just can't help but think that. With Gaga, I feel like there's a future for pure pop music. I don't feel like the future of pop music is in the hands of Britney Spears of Katy Perry. Each Britney album feels more and more forced and Katy Perry still has to prove herself to me. I'm man enough to admit that I like songs by both Spears and Perry and I'm also man enough to admit that Gaga is the one carrying the torch forward.

I'm used to the music I love being put down and hated on by most people - specifically, most men in our society. That doesn't bother me nearly as much as it used to. What does bother me is hating something on principle when, by rights, it's filling the void left by a Madonna that doesn't care about music anymore or a Whitney Houston whose voice has been trashed by drugs. Insert any other example you like, but for me, the fact remains that Gaga is making music that remains true to that which I have loved my whole life. She doesn't always succeed, but she comes closer than most.

The one point I will concede to the Gaga haters is that she is dreadfully overexposed at this point, and I do feel like she's bungling this album release a bit. But who really knows? The rules for releasing an album and singles are as clear as mud these days, so perhaps she really knows what she's doing? What she does need to do is disappear for a while, a la Madonna in 1988 and release NOTHING so that we don't gorge ourselves on Gaga and then puke it all back up.

I know this is not a popular opinion and I fully expect to be skewered for it. However, I stand by it. Gaga is imperfect and flawed. She's been controversial for controversy's sake, pushed buttons and stood up for herself and others that can't or that society has marginalized. She's also produced some amazing music. In these respects I find the comparison to Madonna to be most valid and why I feel like there's room enough for both in my life.

Perhaps Tori Amos is right when she said “She’s what I call a meteor — singers who entertain people for a while. Hey, there’s nothing wrong with that… She wants to entertain people. Right now, half the world is depressed and they need to be entertained. So her timing’s perfect.” Maybe Gaga will flame out in a year, but I will guarantee you that when I'm in the nursing home, they'll be asking me to turn her music down.

Pants and plans

2011-04-14T11:44:00.004-05:00

I gave in this morning and bought four new pairs of pants. It mostly makes me feel like a failure, but oddly enough, it also feels like a call to arms.

Over the last few weeks, I've noticed that my pants had not been fitting as well as I would like them to. Mornings have been a struggle because the combination of my pants not fitting and having the worst case of closet malaise in recent memory usually had me getting out at least five different things to wear, only to reject them all and wind up wearing what I started with. But that hasn't changed the fact that they have been uncomfortable to wear.

This is frustrating on many levels as I really have been eating better this year. French fries are an infrequent treat and I do try to watch how much I'm eating. It's hard at work where the selections are not the healthiest but you can always eat off the salad bar. But the fact remains that I have gained some weight this year - probably not so much that you can notice it unless you're invading my personal space - but I notice it, primarily because of my previously mentioned ill fitting pants. I also battle a less-than-desirable blood lipid profile that is at least 60% genetic. Whenever I vocalize that I would like to lose weight, I'm usually met with a chorus of WHAT??? I may not look it, but alas, according to the highly-flawed-but-still-best-measure-we-have BMI, I am overweight.

I know that the key component that I'm missing is exercise. I used to walk to work all the time, but this, that or the other thing always comes up at the last minute and half the time, I end up driving. I always feel like there's no time in my already packed life for exercise when clearly, it's something I just need to make time for. Part of my trouble is that I'm constantly tired and trying to muster up the ambition to do anything that's remotely like exercise seems like it takes a Herculean amount of energy. I had grand plans earlier this year when I vowed to make some small changes slowly over time so as to lessen the impact. While my attempts at eating better have been mostly a success, I have still caved to emotional eating on many occasions (especially recently) and my efforts to work even mild activity in have met with complete failure.

The purchasing of new pants was met with a lot of resistance. As I said, I equated it with failure. When I was out with Heidi buying them this morning I said "I don't want to buy many because I'll be back in my old pants soon." Who knows if that'll happen or not. I'm realistic enough to know that unless I change careers and become a male escort, I have to have pants to wear to work.

A lot of people I know are trying to increase their activity. I'm still not sure how I'm going to do it, but I do know that it'll involve baby steps. I am not going to announce a bold new initiative to create a new me that runs a marathon daily because for me that's just an invitation to failure. But hopefully I can find something that holds my feet to the fire a little bit better than an interventional cardiac cath procedure. Ultimately, fitness is a solitary journey and I'm not usually the best when left to my own devices. We shall see.

(Note: the pants pictured are NOT the pants I bought.)

The Savage City

2011-04-13T06:45:00.002-05:00

A couple weeks back, Heidi and I were watching The Daily Show and the guest that night was author T.J. English. I had never heard of him and figured it would probably be a forgettable Daily Show interview. But then he and Jon Stewart started talking about his new book and they mentioned New York City in the 1960s. Heidi looked over at me and was amazed that I wasn't already looking it up on the internet. If there was ever a book with my name on it, it's T.J. English's The Savage City.

I consume late 20th century history. I have read so many books on the 70s that you would think there's nothing left for me to read. Yet amazingly, there always seems to be angle or nuance that I hadn't thought of before and I take it in like a starving man at a banquet table. I don't know what it is about that time period that's so interesting to me - I've postulated that it is a time period that I grew up in yet was kind of "unaware of" as well. Regardless of the reason, there seems to be an infinite number of stories to tell.

The Savage City tells the story of New York City between the years of 1963 and 1973. During the time, New York was about as far from the relatively safe tourist destination we know today. This is the New York of Travis Bickle and Taxi Driver. Crime was rampant, race relations were reaching a boiling point, and those who had pledged to serve and protect - the NYPD - were mired in what basically came down to institutionalized corruption. This is a big story to tell, and English smartly chooses to tell it from the vantage point of three different people who lived through the period. These people are:

George Whitmore - a young black man who was confessed to three different crimes, including a double murder. Only trouble was he didn't actually commit any of those crimes.
Bill Phillips - a cop on the take who eventually exposed the corruption within the NYPD
Dhoruba bin Wahad - a former gang member who became the voice of the New York Black Panther Party.

English very adeptly tells these individual stories as well as not scrimping on details of the larger picture. Familiar events of the time period are mentioned and put in context of the events occurring in NYC, but I also learned a ton by reading this book. I knew virtually nothing about the Black Panther Party and had no idea how the it virtually imploded due to the efforts of the FBI and the CIA, as well as philosophical differences between those on the East coast and West coast.

Despite its length, the book was a pretty quick read. Only rarely did it get mired down in minute details. As I approached the end of the book, I was so invested in the three characters we had gotten to know over the course of 400 pages. English writes in a highly readable style and I enjoyed it so much that I want to pick up his book about the Mafia in Cuba, Havana Nocturne.

The Savage City tells a story of a New York City that has pretty much disappeared. However, I couldn't help but wonder how much of it is still there, hidden by a cleaned-up Times Square.

Frozen Nazi zombies

2011-04-11T13:50:00.005-05:00

Is it possible to make zombies even less sympathetic than they already are? Well, by golly, the makers of the Norwegian horror film Dead Snow found a way - turn them into undead Nazis. If the Indiana Jones films taught us nothing else, it's that Nazis are the perfect bad guys. I mean, how can you sympathize with them? It's not possible. So with zombie Nazis, you have what is quite possible a beyond perfect bad guy.

The set up of Dead Snow is one horror fans have seen a million times before. College students, a secluded cabin (this time on the Norwegian fjord), hormones in overdrive and no cell phone service. One of the characters even mentions "how many movies start out with friends going to a cabin in the woods with no cell phone service?" At least what's about to happen doesn't take them by complete surprise.

Soon, a mysterious stranger shows up to infodump the back story. The area where they are staying was, during WWII, occupied by a particularly nasty group of Nazis. They tortured and stole from the villagers until one night, toward the end of the war, the Nazis and their leader were chased into the woods, never to be seen again. An evil lurks in these mountains, the stranger says, and you won't like it when you're holding your own intestines.

It doesn't take long for zombie mayhem to ensue, although I will say that for about the first half, until the first really good zombie attack, the movie felt more like a slasher film. I chalk that up to the fact that we don't get a good look at the zombies - they hide in the trees and under the cover of darkness. But once they attack a la Night of the Living Dead, with zombie hands coming through the windows, it feels every little bit like a zombie movie.

These are fast zombies and don't seem to subscribe to the "kill the brain, kill the ghoul" law of zombies, but the movie more than makes up for it. I didn't find it so much scary as I did gory and as I so frequently say, the scariness of the movie for me is so often inversely proportional to the amount of gore. There are some pretty gruesome deaths, one of which was followed by a line that made me laugh out loud.

This movie owes a huge debt to other movies, most specifically Evil Dead. Apart from the obvious cabin in the woods, there's even a chainsaw and an amputation. But more than that, it pays homage to zombie movies that came before it, mostly a little bit tongue in cheek. There's even a cockamamie secondary storyline that wasn't really referenced all that much until toward the end that seemed lifted straight out of Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl.

One final note about this movie - it contains the least likely sex scene I have ever witnessed in all my years of watching movies. It took place in an outhouse, on the seat, after the guy had just taken care of business. The woman came in all hot and horny and even though he hadn't even wiped, he was ready to go. I'm sorry, if that were me, I don't care how good looking you are. No. OUTHOUSES STINK and are decidedly unsexy.

Dead Snow is cheesy and gory and was a very enjoyable way to spend 90 minutes on my day off. Beware - it is the first zombie movie that I have ever seen that had subtitles. It did not detract from the experience so don't let it deter you from watching..

Any old music will do

2011-04-09T21:14:00.007-05:00

I blew the virtual dust off of Tina Turner's 1984 comeback album Private Dancer this week. Private Dancer was the first of three albums Tina released in the 80s that I really love - the others being Break Every Rule - my sentimental favorite of the three - and Foreign Affair, which is noticeably inferior but still contains some kick-ass songs. What blew me away listening to to the album almost 30 (!) years is how on this album, they really captured lightning in a bottle. Bucking the trend at the time - and now, for that matter - that women over 40 couldn't have a chart hit, Turner knocked everyone's socks off and then some.

Private Dancer came into my life in much the same way it might have come into many people's lives in the mid 80s - via the Columbia House Record Club. Who in their right mind could resist 12 albums for one lousy penny? It was not one of our initial 12 albums. Rather, we were well into the bait-and-switch portion of the agreement, where you pay twice as much for an album than you would at the store. And who could forget all the selections-of-the-month that you would get that you didn't want because you forgot to return the card declining it? I recall a MAD Magazine article that referred to them as slightly more difficult to get out of than an Iranian jail. I think I was still a member of some form of Columbia House or BMG club well into the 90s. The other notable thing about Private Dancer is that it arrived from Columbia House in the same shipment as Madonna's debut album. Yes, Virginia, there was a time I didn't own everything that woman had produced.

Tina's gravelly voice is not for everybody, but it really did it for me. I didn't care much for "What's Love Got To Do With It" and Tina's mountain of hair. But in the summer of 86 I really dove into the pop music pool, and at the end of that summer, Tina put out her first single from the Break Every Rule album, "Typical Male," and I was very fond of that song. So retroactively, I ordered Private Dancer. Turner's voice is so well suited for the material. The amazing thing about the album is that it is a pop album that is also an R&B album AND a rock album. Turner was not about to be confined by genre. The album was a huge smash hit and spun off a shitload of singles and also fueled other Tina songs on other people's albums and soundtracks.

The song I love most on Private Dancer is "I Might Have Been Queen" - one of the few that was not a single. It's a perfect amalgam of pop and rock and I was glad when it was resurrected for the Tina Turner biopic What's Love Got To Do With It.

Like Stevie Nicks' "Stand Back" it has this energy that comes out of nowhere and just propels the song forward.

The last Tina Turner album I bought was the soundtrack to the previously mentioned What's Love Got To Do With It which featured re-recordings of the old Ike & Tina hits as well as a few new songs. After that, I really kind of tuned out. Even her attempt to Believe herself a la Cher really didn't interest me all that much, although I liked the single "When The Heartache Is Over." I admire the fact that Tina is still out there performing, even though she likely doesn't have to. But for me, I'm happy to remember Tina from the 10 year period in which I really enjoyed her music.

The mention of MAD Magazine made me think of this Tina related item from MAD. I believe the title of the article was "Badly Needed Warning Labels For Rock Albums."

Butts, farts and bad days: a report from the front lines of parenting

2011-04-07T23:24:00.001-05:00

I've had some interesting discussions with my daughter over the last few days. Well, discussions might be the wrong word. Judge for yourself.

1) I have recently taught Anna about the hilarity that ensues by replacing the last word of any song title with the word "ass." (except in her case, I chose the more kid-friendly "butt") She, of course, finds it boundlessly funny. One of her favorites is a song from Kate Bush's Aerial album "The Architect's Dream" which becomes, naturally, "The Architect's Butt." She's probably the only 9 year-old that knows ANY Kate Bush song. Anyway, on the way to her piano lesson the other night, she was applying 9 year-old logic to the game - that is, changing the last word of EVERY song to "butt" whether it made sense or not. I was about to bring this up when she said to me "Dad, everything is just a little bit funnier when you add the word 'butt.' It doesn't even have to make sense!" Now, who am I to argue with that?

2) On that same trip to her piano lesson, we carried on a long Cullinan tradition of changing the words of songs and making them about something gross, funny or both. Our victim this time was Madonna's "Sorry" from Confessions on a Dance Floor. The chorus of the song went from "I don't wanna hear/I don't wanna know/Please don't say you're sorry." to "I don't wanna smell/Your stinky farts/You'd better say you're sorry." It's not Shakespeare, but we sure laughed our ~~asses~~ butts off.

3) On a more serious note, Anna and I have a saying between the two of us that goes something like "don't let one bad thing ruin your whole day." We certainly didn't come up with it, but since we both deal with varying degrees of anxiety, it's a helpful thing to remember when the turkeys try to get you down. On the way to school this morning, she said "Dad, remember that 'don't let one bad thing ruin your whole day' thing we say? Well, I think I figured out what it means. It means that there's going to be bad things every day and you shouldn't let them ruin your life." Indeed. Sometimes you're the windshield, sometimes you're the bug.

I swear I won the kid lottery.

Glasses or bust

2011-04-03T12:01:00.002-05:00

Yesterday started out on rather a bad note. I picked up my glasses from my bedside table and the left temple completely and utterly fell off. You would have thought that I had thrown them across the room - honestly, all I did was pick them up! I am notoriously hell on glasses, and these frames, having been a little more of the wiry type than I had been accustomed to had suffered unduly. As I held the broken glasses in my hands, trying to put them back together again which is no small feat when you can't see, Heidi woke up and wondered what I was cussing at. "My glasses just broke!" I said. Ever the resourceful one, she pulled out the iPad and looked up Lenscrafters and saw they had 50% off lenses. Plus we had our AAA discount which would buy us 30% off - whichever was the better deal. We had already been planning on heading down to Ankeny to go eat at IHOP just for the fun of it, so we decided to head down to Des Moines as well. So I found my old glasses from 2 years ago and off we went. It was around 9AM.

After getting sufficiently full on pancakes we set out for Merle Hay Mall. Merle Hay Mall was the site of many after-Christmas mall trips for my family when I was in college so we could spend our Christmas cash. It is, like many malls, a shadow of its former self, but it's trying hard in the changing economy. We arrived at Lenscrafters and it didn't take me long to pick out a frame that I really liked. I had always been partial to my Dr. Who glasses that I wore from 2006-2009 and the only reason I gave them up is because they were so broken that I couldn't repair them anymore. Not surprisingly, I picked out a frame that looked a lot like them but was yet new and exciting at the same time. They were Ray Ban 5169 2383 frames, black plastic frames with a hint of green as well. All I had to do was have them get my prescription from Pearle in Ames and we'd be set to go.

Only Pearle couldn't find my prescription. And when they did, it was expired. At first, I thought, well, why can't they just use it anyway? And then I thought about it in terms of a prescription I might get in my work. There's no way on God's green Earth I would take a 2 year old prescription. Not only is it not in the best interest of the patient as people's health can and does change over the course of 2 years, it's also illegal. So I set about trying to figure out how to remedy this. The easiest option would be to just get an eye exam right there. The only trouble was, they were double booked. So was the Valley West Mall location and the Jordan Creek location. Heidi pulled up "Des Moines optometrists" on her Palm Pre and started calling around while I headed down to the Merle Hay Mall Pearle Vision. They had no one on site that day AND it just so happened that the Iowa Optometric Association was holding their spring meeting that day, so not many doctors would be around. Just my luck. I need an eye doctor and they're all at a meeting! They did, however, call out to the Pearle Vision Express at Southridge Mall and they did have an opening. So we piled in the car again and headed across town to the south side of Des Moines. By now, it was about 1PM, and my appointment was for 2:15PM.

The exam was uneventful and pretty much like every other eye exam I've had in the past. When I got there, I was immediately taken aback by all the Christian imagery - they had the Ten Commandments posted at the reception desk. I wondered if I qualified to be seen since I'm a heathen, gay-people loving, barely-church-going kind of guy, but I must have looked the part. The office staff was very nice and the doctor pleasant and competent. They even took my insurance which was nice. A $25 copay and an hour later, we were out the door and headed back to Merle Hay Mall so they could get started on my glasses. Heidi was going to wait for me in the car but came in because Anna was getting crabby and complaining about the lack of internet in the parking lot. Privileged child. Time at the tone: around 4:30PM.

We went to supper at Applebee's and had supper. After supper, I go back to Lenscrafters. It's now 5:45 PM and I'm told that one of the lenses was made wrong, so they had to redo it, which added another 30 minutes to our wait. At this point, everyone's edges were fraying so we just sat at the play lot while Anna, the tallest kid there, tore around and burned off all the energy that Heidi and I both seemed to be lacking. At 6:30, I headed back in and, at long last, my new glasses were on my face.

We stopped in Ankeny on the way home at a park (we had promised to take Anna to a park in Des Moines but it just never worked out.) While we were there, Heidi snapped this picture of me with my phone.

So I'm back to looking like a NASA scientist in the 60s, but hey, I really like it. And again, there's something Whovian about them.

Lenscrafters. Glasses in about an hour. Or eight.

Postscript: Even though we blew the whole day getting me glasses, my only regret of the day is patronizing an establishment that felt the need to shove its Christianity down my throat. For all the screaming of the right wing and how the "liberal agenda" is being forced on them (especially the nefarious "gay agenda"), I really felt like this was as bad as what they complain about. No, they never mentioned God once, but for all the Christian imagery and literature in the office, they might as well have. The doctor did ask me if I listened to Jan Mickelson in the morning. Mickelson, for those that don't know, is our own sort of homegrown Rush Limbaugh and is virulently homophobic. Also, checking out the office's web site, I noticed that they link to Exodus International, the famous "pray the gay away" group. In the light of day today, I find myself thinking, what if I had been a gay man, there with my partner and this had been my only avenue in a day long effort to be able to see? I find it unlikely that the office would have refused to see me, but would I have been able to swallow it and be seen - which I did yesterday and only to be left with a bitter aftertaste. The fact that my money might be going to further this kind of homophobic bullshit sickens me, but I'm going to count this as balancing out his karma and to never forget that this stuff is out there. It doesn't affect me directly, but man, there are so many people I know and love that it does affect. So to them, I am sorry. But I really really needed to see.

His and hers blogging?

2011-04-01T21:10:00.002-05:00

When I was doing NaBloPoMo back in November, I added a column to Tweetdeck that searched for the hashtag #NaBloPoMo. I did this because I wondered how many other people out there were participating in some semi-official capacity. I figured, if nothing else, it would be kind of fun to see the other types of blogs out there as finding quality blogs seems to be getting harder and harder these days. But what has really stood out like a sore thumb to me is how nearly all of the blogs that I found in that search were written by women. This led me to ponder - are women more likely to blog than men?

I'm sure this is something that doesn't have an easy answer. I was recently told that blogging is "ancient history" and I'm sure, for most of the upcoming generation, it really is. Why write something with paragraphs when you can abuse the English language in a tweet or post a TMI Facebook status update? I have my own personal reasons for soldiering on, as I'm sure many people that still blog do. As I've said before, as much as I enjoy Twitter and its immediate nature, 140 characters is just not enough for me. But is there something inherent in blogging that would make it more attractive to women than to men? I really don't know.

I would be interested in knowing what the gender distribution amongst active blogs out there is right now. Perhaps the gender disparity isn't as predominant as I'm suspecting it is. Take my blogroll, for instance. I link to 17 different blogs and of those, only 4 of them are written by women. All of these women are women with whom I am acquainted in the so-called "real world" - one of them is my spouse. All of these women write personal blogs with a variety of posts as opposed to being focused on a single topic (politics, music, books, whatever.) The remaining 13 are all written by men, a large number of which are "subject" blogs (mostly music blogs) which are updated rather frequently. The more personal blogs seem to not be updated as often.

With 13 blogs by men and only four by women in my blogroll, my assertion that blogging feels like a more female-oriented activity seems to not hold much water. But when I was following the NaBloPoMo hashtag, it was overwhelming female. And then, just this last week, I got a spam e-mail from the NaBloPoMo web site saying that it will be "slowly merged" with the BlogHer site. BlogHer is what the name implies - a blogging site for women. It just solidifies in my brain that women are more likely to take blogging seriously, although there are certainly exceptions to that rule. For certain, there is no equivalent site for male bloggers.

Perhaps what I'm actually observing is the idea that women are more likely to keep a blog that is a "personal journal" of sorts, whereas men are less inclined to do so. While one of my rules of blogging is "Blogging is blogging and journaling is journaling -- know the difference" I will admit that I probably delve more into personal topics than a lot of other guys that keep blogs out there. Again, there are some notable exceptions to the rule and honestly, those are some of my favorite blogs. I always admire men that aren't afraid to tell stories from their lives - even and especially the ones that might make them mildly vulnerable. I also really enjoy getting to know a person a little bit through their blog. It's as if you're being given little pieces slowly over time vs. being able to go look at all their pictures on a Facebook page. I sometimes feel strange when I refer to someone I know via blogging as a friend beings I chances are good that I haven't met them, but the world is what it is and yeah, I will say that I've made some pretty good friends through blogging, even though I have not actually met upwards of 90% of them.

In the end, it's more idle curiosity that got me to wondering about the gender spread in blogging. I have massive amounts of respect for anyone - male or female - that can write in such a way that keeps me coming back day after day, regardless of how frequently the content is actually updated. The blogosphere is littered with blogs that have been abandoned and that's ok - it's certainly not for everyone. It takes a certain dedication that many people just simply don't have time for. But those that continue to do it, even in the face of decreasing relevance, have my admiration.

The poster below kind of sums up my feelings on blogging - even my own blog.

But that certainly doesn't mean I'll stop. Nor should anyone else if they're enjoying it. Perhaps I need to think about it less and just sit back and enjoy the ride - words that could apply to many many situations.

Fandom gone wrong

2011-03-31T21:10:00.001-05:00

In an attempt to make folding laundry a little bit more palatable, I put on a documentary on Netflix Streaming called I Think We're Alone Now. This documentary had been recommended to me by my friend Rachel. When I realized that it was about a couple of very mentally disturbed people who were obsessed with late 80s teen pop star Tiffany, I immediately thought of the documentary For the Love of Dolly (see my post on that movie here.) At only 64 minutes long, I figured it was at least worth a shot.

The stars of the movie are Jeff Turner and Kelly McCormick. Turner is a 50-something year old man from Santa Cruz, CA with Asperger's syndrome and his obsession with Tiffany resulted in her getting a three-year restraining order on him in 1989. In my mind, that restraining order needs an extension. He gleefully shows off clippings of the incident and talks about how Tiffany is his "life-long friend." He goes to her concerts, writes her letters (many of which he shows have "refused - return to sender" written across them) and remembers the time when he kissed Tiffany. Inside his small apartment are countless bits of Tiffany memorabilia along with large amounts of other junk that looks makes it look like he just barely missed qualifying for Hoarders. Perhaps most bizarre amongst all this is a retro-fitted bicycle helmet he calls a "radionics machine" that he wears to "be in touch with Tiffany." Kelly McCormick of Denver, CO, an intersexed person who identifies as female, serves as an intense counterpoint to Turner's almost child-like glee when discussing their idol. Eventually the two meet in Las Vegas for a Tiffany concert.

As I was watching this film, I must say that I didn't have very many positive emotions. I was uncomfortable and at times, angry, but mostly, I was sad. Although both of these people would have me backing slowly away or trying to find the quickest escape route, I couldn't help but notice the absolute loneliness that both of them must feel. To be so isolated in our modern society must be very difficult to handle - it's no wonder they've channeled a lot of this negative emotion into an obsession with a former teen star. I don't think that either Turner or McCormick would hurt a fly, but I found their obsession a bit disturbing and it made me wonder why no one is helping them when clearly, they need some sort of help.

That said, I don't agree with many reviews of the film that take the filmmakers to task for exploiting Turner and McCormick. I think that they deliberately tried to portray them in the best possible light. I was sympathetic to their situation, although I didn't condone their behavior that came out of it. If anyone came out looking bad in this movie, it's Tiffany herself who, despite the late 80s restraining order on Turner, continues to feed his obsession by meeting for a few minutes after shows and at various conventions - the most surprising of which was Glamourcon which featured adult film stars and Playboy playmates (Tiffany is there because she posed for Playboy) It also featured the hilariously blurred out faces of other convention attendees. Has Tiffany come to terms with her stalker and decided that further attempts to restrain him would only serve to invigorate his attempts or does this kind of thing feed her ego? It's hard to tell.

Fan is short for fanatic, so I guess that it might be hard for some to know when they've crossed the line between fandom and psychotic obsessions. For me, I was never much of a Tiffany fan - I did like "I Think We're Alone Now" and "Could've Been" but I always liked Debbie Gibson. And now, they're together in Mega Python vs. Gatoroid which is, sadly, not streaming on Netflix.

I Think We're Alone Now is worth the 64 minutes it took to watch it. It's like that train wreck that you can't look away from.

How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming

2011-03-25T06:37:00.004-05:00

Pluto's 2006 loss of planetary status was not easy for many of us to take. I remember being conflicted by the International Astronomical Union's decision to relegate Pluto to "dwarf planet" status. Reading Mike Brown's How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming not only sealed it in my mind that Pluto doesn't deserve to be a planet but it was also a hell of a fun read from the man who, had Pluto remained a planet, would have been the discoverer of the tenth planet.

Brown is an astronomer based out of Caltech in Pasadena, California who spent the early part of his career scanning the Kuiper belt - a collection of bodies out past the orbit of Neptune widely believed to be the frozen equivalent of the asteroid belt that exists between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. In his quest to discover the tenth planet, he and his telescope scanned the whole sky looking for objects 55 times further from the sun than the Earth is. Like looking for the proverbial needle in a haystack, finding a planet involved comparing photos taken on sequential nights and looking for the "thing that moved." As you might imagine, it's no easy task and reminded me that being an astronomer is far more tedious and much less sexy than it might seem. Like being a researcher in any science, you really gotta LOVE it.

Brown eventually discovered not just one but several Kuiper belt objects and, in so doing, turned our popular perception of the Solar System on its ear. His discovery of these Pluto-like objects led the IAU in 2006 to take up the topic of the "definition of a planet." The more he thought about it, the more he felt that none of the KBOs deserved planetary status. He based his argument in an over hundred year old debate when hundreds of newly discovered asteroids in the asteroid belt were being named as planets. Eventually, this nonsense was called off and the asteroids, while named were rightfully removed from the list of planets. In discovering these KBOs and the who-knows-how-many-more there were, the bodies were starting to resemble asteroids rather than planets with discrete orbits. In other words, they didn't deserve to be called planets. There were simply too many of them in the same general vicinity in space.

In the end, I completely agree with this distinction, despite the fact that seeing Pluto go was hard and completely destroyed "Interplanet Janet" on Schoolhouse Rock. And hearing Brown's impassioned endorsement of the IAU's decision when he would have been the only living discoverer of a planet and, therefore, had the most to gain or lose based on the decision, lends an air of credence to the decision. If the man whose discovery was disqualified as a planet based on his own argument isn't qualified to speak on the subject, who is? It ultimately showed that in hard science, there is no room for emotion. Just like there's no crying in baseball, there's no emotion in research science. However, that doesn't translate well to non-scientists, especially when we're talking about things as ingrained as "how many planets are there in the Solar System" and even more so when it looks like we're picking on a puny planet that can't defend itself.

A lot of reviews of this book take issue with Brown's insertion of his personal life in the narrative - he married and had his first child during all this. I would argue that the inclusion of this information only enhanced the story. It's kind of similar to how I look at album reviews. Anyone can write a half-assed review or tell a story, but if you can insert your own life and somehow put a spin on it that no one else can, well then you're a step ahead of the game.

How I Killed Pluto and Why It Had It Coming is an engaging read that is accessible to everyone, not just science heads like me. Like I said at the beginning of the post, he convinced me that Pluto doesn't belong in the planets. Perhaps he can convince you as well.

Why shouldn't we

2011-03-24T23:06:00.005-05:00

I was walking home from work tonight in the dark and cold. It was 28 degrees outside and I didn't bring either a hat or a pair of gloves. I hadn't walked to work in quite a while and it's something I'm trying to remedy but it's proving more difficult to get back on the wagon than I thought it would be. I've been annoyingly sick for over a week now - you know, that kind of sick that never really graduates to a full-on sickness, but still makes you periodically feel like shit. My iPod was on shuffle and oddly enough it pulled two old Barbra Streisand songs in a row. With 10,000 songs on my iPod, what are the chances?

The Mary Chapin Carpenter song "Why Shouldn't We" also played on the way home. I had kind of forgotten about it, but I always thought that it would make a good addition to the UU song book. With a line like "God is all around/Buddha's at the gate/Allah hears your prayers/It's not too late" is espouses a lot of the religious tolerance that UU really is all about. But more than that, it also talked about how it really is human to, as Fox Mulder would say, want to believe.

Belief is a tough nut and certainly a topic that I can't even scratch the surface of at 11:20PM after working a full shift. But what struck me in that song is the first line - "we believe in things we cannot see/why shouldn't we?" I think that for me personally, I have a strong desire to believe in something bigger than myself, but as an ex-Lutheran, I can't bring myself to go running back to the Christian god. There are many times that even I find my lack of faith ot be disturbing, but I'm not sure what the answer is. Once upon a time, I took great comfort in religion which looking back I don't even think I'd recognize that person now. Maybe it's why I love stories of ghosts and UFOs and aliens. Maybe it's why I was pissed that there was nothing in Wikileaks about alien life forms. I don't really believe it, but boy wouldn't it be cool?

But I still believe...or I want to believe. I believe in a lot of stuff that I can't prove or that time and again I've seen proven false because I just feel it so strongly. So maybe my faith isn't as lacking as I think, it's just that, like the things I believe, it's not easily quantifiable.

But as usual, Mary Chapin Carpenter says it better than I ever could. So I sign off with her. Can't you just hear this at a UU service?

We believe in things that we cannot see
Why shouldn't we, why shouldn't we
Hands that heal can set a chained man free
Why shouldn't we, why shouldn't we

We believe in peace within every heart
Why shouldn't we, why shouldn't we
Burning brightly, brightly in the dark
Why shouldn't we, why shouldn't we

So come on darling feel your spirits rise
Come on children open up your eyes
God is all around
Buddha's at the gate
Allah hears your prayers
It's not too late

And we believe in things that will give us hope
Why shouldn't we, why shouldn't we
Let your voice be heard, celebrate your vote
Why shouldn't we, why shouldn't we

We believe in things that make us all the same
Why shouldn't we, why shouldn't we
Love belongs to all in deed and name
Why shouldn't we, why shouldn't we

And we believe in things that can't be done
Why shouldn't we, why shouldn't we
Lift up your heart, put down your gun
Why shouldn't we, why shouldn't we

We believe in things
We're told that we cannot change
Why shouldn't we
We had heroes once, and we will again
Why shouldn't we

So come on darling
Come on children
God is all around, Buddha's at the gate
Allah hears our prayers
It's not too late

Why shouldn't we
Why shouldn't we
Why shouldn't we
Why shouldn't we
Why shouldn't we

Ramona and Beezus and Dan and Anna

2011-03-22T21:07:00.007-05:00

As a kid, I enjoyed but didn't love Beverly Cleary's Ramona books. I think had I been a girl, I might have related more to young Ramona who was either a pest, brave or age 8, depending on the book. A few years ago, Heidi and I read all of them out loud to Anna at before bed, a chapter or two at a time and she loved them and, honestly, so did I. There was so much I had forgotten. They are clever and well-written and they deserve their status as modern day classic childrens' books. Most hilarious is how each book is contemporary, even though Ramona ages a year at a time through the series. Ramona may be four in 1955, but it's 1999 when she's in 4th grade.

So it was with great anticipation that Anna and I finally sat down and watched the movie Ramona & Beezus. We had planned to see it at the dollar theater but it must have been there for two and a half minutes (as is common for movies at the dollar theater) because I never saw it show up there. Heidi was working on her rejuvenated iMac (thanks to yours truly) so we decided tonight was the night. There might have been tornadoes and other severe weather in the forecast, bu watch it we did.

I expected to be amused by it. I did not expect to be completely won over by it.

The movie smartly draws plot points from all the Ramona books. All the classic Ramona moments are in there - the toothpaste in the sink, the burr crown, the demise of Picky-Picky the cat, Ramona's dad losing his job, the raw egg vs. the hard-boiled one - and they are all blended effortlessly together in a contemporary telling of the story. The cast is attractive and while it veered occasionally into mushy, I didn't much care because everyone was just so darn cute. A part of me hopes that Joey King (the actress that plays Ramona) fades into obscurity so as not to suffer a Lindsay Lohanesque fate.

I think the fact that I watched this with my own daughter played a huge role in my fondness for the movie. Ramona's dad is played by John Corbett who was vaguely familiar to me until I realized that he was Aiden in Sex & The City - yes, I had to look it up. I am a huge sentimental sucker for stories about dads and their daughters and while it wasn't entirely about that, all the dad-daughter moments hit me squarely in that spot underneath my breastbone. Watching it and anticipating all the previously mentioned classic Ramona moments with Anna, who frequently remembered what was going to happen from the books before I did, was just perfect.

I always kind of semi-joke that sometimes I feel like an absent father - between work and other things, I sometimes feel like I am not home as much as I should be and that I'm missing out on my own daughter's growing up. This would be the point at which Heidi looks at me sternly over her glasses and says "you are NOT an absent father." Watching this movie made me want to get out the longest stretch of blank newsprint ever and fill it up with color, just like Ramona and her dad did in the movie. Towards the end of the movie at the wedding dance between Ramona's Aunt Bea and Howie's uncle Hobart, Ramona's dad gives her a goofy look and does a funny dance as he walks toward her saying it was "time for the father-daughter dance." Upon seeing that, Anna looks at me and says "that's just like you do to me."

With that, I knew I was doing something right.

I am unapologetically sentimental when it comes to my daughter - give me a break, she's the only one I have. It will so be worth the trouble tomorrow morning getting her out of bed because I let her stay up a half hour past her bedtime to finish the movie.

Totally recommended. It even caused me to have a passing fondness for that hideously awful Bangles song "Eternal Flame."

I'm over that now. But I would totally watch that movie again.

(Beverly Cleary is NINETY-FOUR and still writing. All I can say is wow. Heaven help me if I'm still working when I'm in my nineties.)

Three books

2011-03-22T13:41:00.008-05:00

Amidst everything else going on this spring, I'm proud to say that I really am keeping up on my reading. Sadly, I'm not keeping up on blogging my progress. I set myself a private goal of reading 30 books this year and I just finished #14 yesterday. At the rate I'm going, I shouldn't have any trouble hitting that goal by the end of June. We'll see though. So consider this a catch up blog post for three books I just finished reading.

Going Postal / Terry Pratchett
My wife is a huge Pratchett fan. I'm pretty sure she's read everything the man has written and she's been on my case to read Going Postal for quite some time now. And to be honest, I needed something light-hearted. After books like Insignificant Others and Thirteen Reasons Why, I was ready to leave the Debbie Downer books behind and read something funny. Heidi says that Going Postal is not only her favorite Pratchett, it's also her favorite book.

Moist von Lipwig has gone to the gallows for his petty crimes and fraud. But rather than die after his hanging, he ends up being offered a job by Lord Veternari running Ankh-Morpork's post office. The post office had long since been abandoned with the Grand Trunk Company's clacks towers (think: telephone/video chat) taking over all message delivery in Discworld, despite the fact that the towers fail frequently. As it turns out, a shyster like Moist is just the man for the job of Postmaster as Grand Trunk is run by the unscrupulous Reacher Gilt. Shenanigans ensue which result in unlikely triumphs for the post office.

I liked Going Postal quite a bit. I don't love Pratchett as much as Heidi, but I do appreciate his writing. This one was easy to follow and Moist was a fun anti-hero. I also liked the group of men that made up "The Smoking Gnu", former clacks workers that now made it their life's work to hack into the towers. I couldn't help but see Byers, Frohike and Langly from The Lone Gunmen and X-Files fame. Demerits for Death not making an appearance though.

Frankenstein / Mary Shelley
Next up is Mary Shelley's classic tale of gothic horror, Frankenstein. I read this with fellow members of the Heretics & Sprituality group that I belong to at the UU fellowship we attend. It's a good group and we always have great discussions about whatever we happen to be reading. I had read Frankenstein when I was a senior in high school (for fun, no less) and I remembered really liking it. I was also kind of amazed at how accessible it was for being written so long ago. Having been forced to read nearly unreadable classics like Moby Dick and A Tale of Two Cities, it was a pleasure to read something of that era that wasn't so thick you had no hope of ever really getting into it.

The narrative of Frankenstein is both familiar and not-so-much. When comparing the book to the famous Boris Karloff incarnation of the monster, the two stories couldn't be more different. Instead, Frankenstein serves as a cautionary tale as well as weighing in on the nature of being human. Who is more human - the man who gave life to a creature so hideous that he turned his back on it or the monster that just wants, as Queen would say, somebody to love?

And I'll never get over how the monster, that we're so used to hearing speak in grunts, is so damn eloquent in the book. He is one fast learner.

The Q Guide to The Golden Girls / Jim Colucci
I borrowed this book from Jeff when we were all over at his house a few weekends ago for a Golden Girls marathon that inexplicably also included a complete viewing of the movie Supergirl. As you might expect, this is an incredibly easy and enjoyable read, especially for fans of the TV show. And really, if you're not a fan of the TV show 1) what are you doing reading this book and 2) why the hell are you NOT a fan?

My friend Mary famously says that during high school, while everyone else was out on Saturday night getting laid, she was at home watching The Golden Girls. The same thought applies to a lot of my high school career as well, but we both seem to have turned out okay. Let's face it, The Golden Girls is comedy, well, gold. I think I've seen every episode multiple times and yet, we still go back for more. Not many shows hold up that well, although I think Roseanne does a pretty good job for at least the first 75% of the show's run. The Q Guide to The Golden Girls is written from the point of view of The Golden Girls' legion of gay male fans. It tells the story of how the show got started, including the original ideas ("Miami Nice") and the casting of all the lead parts. It devotes a whole chapter as to why so many gay guys gravitate toward that show and another to highlighting episodes that addressed LGBT issues (Lesbian? Lesbian? Lesbian!). It also tells a hilarious story about how at certain New York gay bars during the show's original run, the thump of dance music would stop at 9PM and all eyes would be on The Golden Girls. I love it.

This is a featherweight of a book (not a bad thing) and I skimmed toward the end, but I would recommend it to anyone who really likes the show. It'll take you two and a half minutes to read.

(The Lady Gaga/Scissor Sisters post is coming. Life has not slowed down for a single minute since the concert so sit tight.)

Bound for Gaga

2011-03-16T20:02:00.002-05:00

Through a massive trade of days off and shifts (and the graciousness of one of my co-workers), I managed to get time off during Spring Break week to head to see Lady Gaga in Omaha tomorrow night. Heidi's staying home and I'm going with my friends Kyl, Jess and Brandt. The seats don't appear to be the best seats in the house, but they were affordable and from the sounds of it, we were lucky to just get into the arena. Regardless, it promises to be a good time even though I'm not feeling wildly good tonight. I think an early bedtime is in my future so that I can be at my best tomorrow.

Even now, a full two years since I finally succumbed to Lady Gaga's "Just Dance" at the first daddy-daughter dance I attended with Anna, I'm not fully sold on Lady Gaga. I am not convinced that she is the next Madonna, but what I do know is that she's the closest that anyone's come for me personally. Whether she will have the longevity that Madonna has had remains to be seen, but I do admire her moxie. Her songs are light, inoffensive dance/pop songs that don't really aspire for anything greater ("Born This Way" not withstanding) but you know, it doesn't all have to be Shakespeare in order for it to be worthy. As I so frequently say, the music makes me feel good and well, a lot of times, that's enough for me.

I'm sure she'll put on a great show and with Scissor Sisters as her opening act, it's hard to imagine this being a disappointment. I did listen to The Fame in its entirety today - something I had not done until today. I've always liked the singles but most of the album tracks left me a little bit cold. I snuck a peak at the set-list and there were some songs from The Fame that I didn't know so I figured I better educate myself. But I was glad to see that most of The Fame Monster made the set-list. Honestly, that EP is just heads and shoulders above The Fame. It makes me very eager for her new album in May which I predict will be one of two things - pop brilliance or overbaked and overthought drivel. Not likely to fall anywhere in the middle.

No matter what though, whenever I hear her sing "Papa-papa-paparazzi" I will always expect her to take a page out of Yentl's playbook and sing "Papa-papa-papa can you hear me?"

Iowa City, 1992-1993: The Music

2011-03-13T14:10:00.004-05:00

People who know me well know that I love my iTunes playlists. I have been making a more concerted effort to listen to more full albums these days - and let me tell you how I will NOT be blogging that endeavor as I certainly can't blog an album a day - but I still love grouping seemingly unrelated songs into a playlist that results in a cohesive whole, if only in my own head. One of my very favorite playlists is one crafted from the music I listened to during my first year at U of Iowa, creatively titled "U of I 1992-1993." You'll have to click it to make it readable, and I had to put two screen captures together to get all the songs on there, but damn it, I did it!

I think what I love most about this playlist is its variety. I have similar playlists from each year of high school, but when I was compiling those, I only allowed songs that were released during that time to make the cut. When I got to my college playlists, I was a little more liberal because my sophomore year of high school playlist has not one little bit of Stevie Nicks on it. That's a pretty glaring omission and because of that, I decided that allowing songs of any time period on to the list - just as long as I was actively listening to them at that time - was allowable.

I'm not going to comment on every song, although I will pick out a few, but allow me to make a few comments about the list as whole and the time period it represents. As I have mentioned before, that year was my third year of college, but my first at U of Iowa and my first year of pharmacy school. I had uprooted my life and moved it across the state - not that I was leaving terrible much because I was ready for a change after two years at Iowa State. Most of the music that I remember listening to was listened to in relative solitude, not that that was a bad thing. In hindsight, it was pretty important that I have that year in a single room on a floor full of guys, 99% of whom I shared not one single thing in common (although admittedly, my effort left something to be desired.) Eventually, I would make good friends in my pharmacy classes and would move out of the dorms for good at the end of the year. I specifically remember the spring of the year feeling like real living - friends and experiences and, well, life. The songs on this playlist provided a worthy soundtrack to that time period.

And now for some specifics...

The songs from The Bodyguard soundtrack were inescapable during that time. While my favorite Bodyguard song is not represented on this list (the screaming-meemie "Queen of the Night") I always think about how that album was selling a million copies per week at Christmas 1992 and remember how much the record industry has changed since then. That, and how Billboard described "I Will Always Love You" as "beautifully undersung." Were we listening to the same song?
Rick Astley's "Be With You" is on there because it applied to a girl in my class that I was enamored with. As shy as I was, it was not to be and looking back, it was a good thing.
There is one Olivia Newton-John song on there - "Crying, Laughing, Loving, Lying." I bought the Come On Over/Clearly Love Two-on-One CD at Camelot Music. The guy working behind the counter was so excited that I was buying that that he dug out some other ONJ CDs that were not on display. I bought those as well.
You'll notice three songs from Deborah Harry's solo CD Def, Dumb and Blonde. This CD was purchased out of the cut-out bin at Camelot. I have said on multiple occasions that this was the best $3.88 I have ever spent on a CD. The last song on the playlist, "End of the Run", is the last song on the album and takes me back to those days instantly. Between this album and Erotica, I am hard-pressed to come up with what album provided more background music for me in the fall of 1992.
Speaking of Erotica, the fall of 1992 would have been a different animal altogether had it not been for Madonna's triple threat of Erotica, Sex, and Body of Evidence. It forced my Madonna fandom out of the closet so-to-speak amongst those that I was getting to know. At our 10 year reunion several years back, more than one person told me that whenever they heard a Madonna song, they couldn't help but think of me. Mission accomplished.
Simply Streisand (also another Camelot Music purchase) is an indelible part of that fall, as detailed already in this post. Plus that post discusses Babs, pussy AND the Beastie Boys. Top that.
The sole Spandau Ballet song on the playlist, "Round and Round", is there because I HAD to have a copy of the song "True" on CD. Today, I would head over to iTunes and download it. In 1993, I bought Spandau Ballet's greatest hits CD. What a surprise to find that I liked (almost) every song on the album. Wouldn't have happened today.
I first heard "Walking on Broken Glass" while studying for a test at the Iowa City Public Library, but I'll let this post speak for it. For as much as it was played on the radio, I'm still surprised it wasn't a top 10 hit.
My flirtation with Eurodance started here as evidenced by the presence of "Rhythm Is A Dancer" and "Mr. Vain" - the latter being of particular importance as we had a TA whose name was "Mr. Fain." Hilarity ensued.

When I look at this list, I think that had anyone listened to what was coming out of my headphones at the time they would have probably had me committed. Maybe I needed to be. That's what I love about music. I can still see the nearly 40 year-old guy in the stuff the 20 year-old was listening to. The minute that stops, I need to throw in the towel.

Is it the most manly stuff in the world? Hell no. Do I care? Double hell no. Do I sometimes get teased for it. Yeah, sure. But it's all in good fun and if you can't laugh at yourself, you might as well just forget it. I didn't know that then, but I sure do now.

The only song missing from this list is REM's "Nightswimming." And because it's a playlist, well, I can just go add it because it's just that easy.

Peanut days

2011-03-12T09:54:00.007-06:00

A couple weeks back, Heidi and Anna were, for reasons known only to them, at Theisen's. Being a kind of a store for farmers, you can imagine it's not a place that we frequent all that often. When they were there, Heidi told Anna stories about how going to Theisen's reminded her of her girlhood. She and her father would go often and she would go look at the one aisle of toys while her father shopped for whatever it was he was looking for. She also talked about Peanut Days - the time during which the store provided free peanuts and you dropped the shells on the floor which in turn oiled the floor. I vaguely recall doing this at some point in my life, but for the life of me, I can't remember where or when.

As it turns out, Peanut Days is alive and well. We thought that it was going to be March 1st, so we headed out to Theisen's after work, only to be disappointed by the lack of free peanuts. Apparently, we got bad information and the Peanut Days Sale actually started on March 9th. This was not to be missed.

To be honest, I was expecting more peanut shells on the floor, but as Heidi pointed out is WAS only the first day of Peanut Days which lasts a whole week. I imagine if I trekked out to Theisen's today, we'd find a different situation altogether.

Walking into a store like Theisen's is like taking a trip back in time - at least for people like Heidi and me that have relatively rural backgrounds. In comparison to Heidi, I was a city boy growing up, but this is only because she actually lived on a farm for the first decade of her life, until it was lost in the 1980s farm crisis. I grew up in a town of 10,000 people that had it's own version of Theisen's (S & S Store, now closed) and while I didn't have as agrarian of an upbringing as Heidi did, there were definitely more rural aspects than Anna is getting growing up in a college town. But it doesn't stop her from enjoying this kind of stuff. She can't resist mugging for the camera, which makes getting a candid shot of her all that much more difficult.

To my great shock, little-Miss-Picky actually liked peanuts out of the shell.

And if you're looking for wildlife printed long underwear, Theisen's is apparently your one-stop long-underwear shop.

You know I was this close to buying them (not.)

Witchy woman

2011-03-09T05:47:00.009-06:00

The interval between Stevie Nicks albums just keeps getting longer, so now's the time to celebrate the release of the album artwork for her new album, In Your Dreams, which is due on May 3rd.

I had two thoughts when I saw this album cover. My first thought was how well it fit in with a long line of classic album covers from Stevie. As my friend Matt said, they really nailed the Stevie vibe. My second thought was "Whoa! Stevie! Lay off the Photoshop!" The woman on the cover of this album doesn't look like a woman in her 60s. My armchair psychological assessment is that Stevie probably doesn't have a problem with growing old, it's looking old that she takes issue with.

This album cover vaguely recalls the cover of Heart's Little Queen - perhaps Stevie has just left a Renaissance fair, absconding with the white horse on the back cover of this album?

And at least it's better than Street Angel's cover, which I swear to God looks like it was done at the color copy machine at Kinko's.

In any event, new Stevie is always a cause for great excitement. I just hope that nine songs is enough to keep me satisfied for another 10 years. Viva la Stevie! The woman has been such an integral part of my musical development and I really wish more pop fans appreciated her. But I do recognize that she's an acquired taste and not for everyone. But for me, she's been a perfect fit.

For another great take on the album cover, visit The Middle Eight.

Little Girl Blue

2011-03-06T21:32:00.001-06:00

The minute I heard about it, I knew that I would like Little Girl Blue: The Life of Karen Carpenter. What I didn't expect was to tear through it in less than a week nor did I expect it to keep me up well past my bedtime several nights last week. My exposure to the Carpenters is about like you'd expect - I know of them, their biggest hits and of Karen Carpenter's battle with anorexia nervosa. I own none of their studio albums and would not classify myself as a Carpenters "fan" by any stretch of the imagination. What I will say though is that reading this book has caused me to listen to more Carpenters music than I have in forever and the book itself is the best book I've read all year.

Little Girl Blue is written as a music biography, but it reads like the best pager-turner of a novel that you can imagine. It follows the path that most music bios do, starting with the childhood of musical genius Richard Carpenter and his kid sister Karen. Long before Karen was the voice of the Carpenters, she was also a drummer, playing in the high school marching band. In order to maximize the chances of Richard's career taking off, Harold and Agnes Carpenter moved their family to southern California when Karen was in ninth grade. One connection led to another and then another and before you know it, Karen and Richard are signed to Herb Alpert's A&M records. The hit singles followed. We all know them. "Close To You," "We've Only Just Begun," "Superstar," "Rainy Days & Mondays," and "Top of the World." They toured relentlessly and were hugely popular even though their music and image seemed white bread and out of step with the acid rock music of the same time period.

Author Randy Schmidt does an exceptional job of respecting the memory of Karen Carpenter and recognizing her amazing talent, but he also pulls no punches when it comes to her struggles. Perhaps because there was no cooperation from the Carpenter family, which has famously whitewashed everything surrounding Karen's death in an attempt to keep the Carpenters' legacy intact, I feel like this book comes the closest to giving us the real story of Karen Carpenter. Whether it was dealing with a mother that always loved Richard more and gave Karen precious little validation or getting married to a man that ended up living up to all her worst expectations, it seems to me that all Karen ever wanted was to be loved. This all came to a head when Agnes Carpenter forced her daughter to go through with a wedding to a man when the marriage was already over because "People Magazine will be there!"

Another example came after she recorded a solo album with Phil Ramone in New York while Richard was hospitalized for quaalude addiction. After taking the better part of a year to make the album, it was trashed by A&M executives when the album was played for them. But Richard's reaction was probably the worst. This quote from the book sticks with me:

"He told her it was shit," Frenda [Karen's best friend] says. "All Karen ever wanted was his approval. It could have turned everything in her life around, but it wasn't there. What's sad is that he has to live with that, and I don't think it even fazes him. I do think he should be excused to some extent because he had his own problems, but God Almighty, what does it take to just be kind? They could see she was melting away like a snowman in front of their faces, but they couldn't do it. It was brutal."

The album was shelved, but eventually released in 1996 in its original form.

Behind all this relationship drama was Karen's very real battle with anorexia nervosa, complications of which would ultimately claim her life in February of 1983. She was so dishonest with everyone when it came to her anorexia. When asked point blank about it, she was incredulous and in denial. This interview was referenced in the book, and I am still kind of shocked by the forwardness of the interviewer's question.

Karen would bottom out at 78 pounds just before seeking treatment. Trouble is, our knowledge of how to treat anorexia was in its infancy in the early 80s and much of what was done then was not much of a treatment at all. Move this story forward a decade and I think Karen might have survived. Her death brought anoxeria out of the closet and worked wonders for raising awareness of the disorder. In that respect, I feel like her early death had at least some meaning and was not completely senseless.

I was extremely moved by Karen's story - I've been telling Heidi anecdotes from the book all week long. Like I said, I have none of the Carpenters' studio albums but I do have the greatest hits album Singles: 1969-1973. My parents had that 8-track when I was a kid and I purchased it on CD my freshman year of college, thus destroying what little musical credibility I had with other 18 year-old males at that time in my life. Needless to say, it's gotten quite a bit of play this week. I've also broken down and purchased a few songs off of Karen's solo album and will undoubtedly purchase the rest of it once my eMusic account recharges sometime next week. It's better than you think, if rather dated early-80s music is your cup of tea.

But for most people, it will be the music that she made with her brother during the 70s that they will remember. For my money, my favorite is still "Top of the World." I do love a little 70s country-pop, and that song fits the bill quite nicely.

Little Girl Blue is highly recommended and I guarantee you will want to listen to Carpenters music after you read it.

Your zombies are in my classic literature

2011-03-06T09:15:00.003-06:00

I'm going to say right here and right now that I'm officially DONE with books that take a classic piece of literature and suppose that the simple insertion of hot zombie action will somehow generate something worth reading. I say this after an ill-advised attempt to read Alice in Zombieland. As one reviewer on Amazon put it, Alice in Plagiarism Land would be a more appropriate description.

The funny thing is that this book has pretty much everything that would make for a quick, fun, undead read. It's only 130ish pages, and not only does Alice meet all sorts of undead characters after she follows the Black Rat into a seemingly bottomless grave into zombieland, but Alice herself starts turning into a zombie. You can't go wrong, right?

WRONG. Heidi and I were talking about this and clearly, Alice's Adventures in Wonderland is in the public domain now so rubbish like this can be made without any repercussions. All this book did was take Lewis Carroll's original text and change words. At least Pride & Prejudice & Zombies (which I didn't much care for either) had the decency to write some new parts and change things - i.e. instead of telling Mr. Darcy off after his marriage proposal, Elizabeth Bennet kicks his ass and basically leaves him for dead. This kind of stuff you see in Alice in Zombieland is just plain and simple lazy writing. It's almost a Mad Libs way of writing except I've read Mad Libs that make more sense and are more entertaining than this book.

So I'm doing the e-book equivalent of throwing the book across the room. And I won't ever fall for this genre again - it's going to have to work really hard to make me interested again. This is kind of sad because as someone who consumes pretty much any and all zombie content, I feel like turning my back on it just seems wrong. Plus it'll mean I never get to read this, but it looks like it's by the same publisher that put out the dreck that is Alice in Zombieland, so perhaps it's for the best.

And of course, all this talk about Alice in Zombieland just made me think about Alice in Pornoland which I wanted to link to but didn't because I couldn't find a SFW link. This is still a family friendly blog!

A good pancake

2011-03-05T21:43:00.004-06:00

We went to Cedar Rapids today for Heidi's grandfather's 90th birthday party. Relatives from all over converged on their relatively small house to celebrate 10 years shy of a century. Anna and I were goofing around making videos of each other and when we tired of that, we went back and watched the videos that were already on there. I had completely forgotten about this insanity, which was recorded on February 12th, 2011. It was the day of the Oscar movie marathon with Caryle and Jeff and what better way to start out than with a hearty breakfast at IHOP?

Why am I posting this kind of embarrassing video of myself? Because when I watched it, I smiled and laughed at my ridiculousness. That needs to happen more often. And it proves, yet again, that any situation in life can be satisfied with a quote from 9 to 5.

Between a Heart and a Rock Place

2011-03-03T08:50:00.005-06:00

As pretty much everyone knows, I'm a sucker for a celebrity biography, especially a celebrity autobiography. When I was in the 9th grade, I checked Joan Collins' memoir, Past Imperfect, out of the library and that basically started me down that road and there's been no looking back. So last summer when both Belinda Carlisle AND Pat Benatar released memoirs, I figured I must have died and gone to heaven. Two of the 80s leading female singers telling their stories of navigating the music business during the time of my adolescence was too hard to resist. Being a bigger Belinda Carlisle fan than I am a Pat Benatar fan, I read Belinda's book last year. After having read Benatar's memoir, Between a Heart and a Rock Place, I have to say that while I'm a bigger fan of Belinda's music, I have about a thousand percent more respect for Benatar.

Pat Benatar's - which, if you can believe it, is her actual name (Benatar is the last name of her first husband) - hit making career is bookended neatly by the 80s. While she's had output since the dawn of the 90s, none of it has approached the success that she had during the dawning days of MTV. Benatar tells a great story, starting with her days back at Catch a Rising Star in Manhattan to getting signed by Chrysalis Records and spinning out hit after hit for them throughout the 80s. She was truly one of the hardest working people in the music business, and so much of it was not by choice. Her contract with Chrysalis pretty much had her in indentured servitude. Due to a clause in her contract, the record company could demand a new album whenever they wanted and if she didn't comply, they had the right to withhold all payment to her until she did. Because of this, throughout the 80s, she was either in the studio or on tour.

She put out eight albums (and one live album) in nine years and it wasn't until the release of 1988's Wide Awake in Dreamland that her luck started to turn. The crowds weren't showing up and the album was not promoted well, mostly due to the disintegration of the label. Ironically enough, Wide Awake in Dreamland is the only of Benatar's studio albums that I actually own. I don't care what you say, "All Fired Up" is a classic Pat Benatar song.

I said to Heidi that it was kind of amazing that Benatar was able to craft such an engaging book from her life, beings that most celebrity memoirs rest on multiple trips to rehab and partying late into the night. She did none of this. No drugs, no trips to rehab, no affairs or any of that stuff. She has been happily married to her husband, Neil Giraldo, for 31 years now which is such a rarity in the world of celebrity. Now in her late 50s, Benatar seems grounded and well adjusted and happy with life. See, celebrities really are not all that different from us after all.

This book is also notable because it's the first book that I finished on my brand spanking new NOOK Color that Heidi bought for me out of her 1st quarter royalty check. I guess all those years of turning a blind eye to iTunes purchases finally paid off! We were in the market for an e-reader because we are always fighting over the iPad and while the Kindle and NOOK apps for my Droid are nice, I am not crazy about reading on such a small device. What tipped the scales in favor of the NOOK is that our local library checks out e-books that are compatible with NOOKs but not Kindles. This apparently is a huge draw as the Best Buy here in town can't keep NOOKs in stock. Between a Heart and a Rock Place was not only the first book I finished on the NOOK, but also the first e-book I checked out of the library. So YAY for firsts.

(Sidenote: The celebrity memoir I'm really looking forward to is Deborah Harry's. Come on Debbie!)

More than you know

2011-02-28T20:43:00.005-06:00

I figure that today's a day that a large percentage of the blogosphere will be blogging about Lady Gaga's new video, which I find to be a classic spectacle video in the grand Madonna tradition. But I decided that rather than blog about Gaga, I'd blog about Martika instead.

I don't know what reminded me of Martika today. Actually, scratch that - yes I do. Last night at the Oscars fete we hosted, we were listening to my Genius playlist based on Regina's "Baby Love" and Martika's "More Than You Know" was on that playlist. Martika's one of those late 80s artists that many mistake for a one-hit wonder. Her song "Toy Soldiers" was inescapable in the summer of 1989. In all honesty, I was never terribly fond of that song and it's "step by step, heart to heart" refrain.

I actually owned Martika's debut album for a while before it was sold off in one of many many attempts to streamline my CD collection. True to form, a few months after I sold it, I found myself wishing I hadn't because when it comes to late 80s pop songs, you don't get much better than "More Than You Know." It was the first of Martika's songs that I ever heard even though it took until the third single release (a cover of Carole King's "I Feel The Earth Move") to convince me to buy the album, one listen to it and you'll recognize exactly why it connected to me. It practically screams Dan.

I remember searching like CRAZY for "More Than You Know" back in the Napster days, but it proved so elusive that I almost gave up. I eventually did find it as well as "Toy Soldiers" and "I Feel The Earth Move." I even came across a "remix" (more like an extended version) of "More Than You Know." Really, it was all the Martika I figured I needed.

So why have I spent tonight blowing the last of my eMusic credit finishing out the album? Well, it is pretty solid late 80s pop. Only a couple songs are cringe-worthy - I'm still holding out on "It's Not What Your Doing" and "See If I Care" but yeah, the rest of the album is in my iTunes now. The production, while dated, still somehow manages to sound good and even though Martika's voice is wafer-thin, it's certainly better than Paula Abdul who was churning out #1 hit after #1 hit at that time.

Martika has kind of fallen off the face of the Earth - as a lot of those artists did - but she did make a follow up album that contains the Prince-penned song "Love...Thy Will Be Done" which I know almost completely due to Casey Stratton's cover of it. This video is only a partial, but he nails it.

Saying so makes me sound old, but sometimes I really miss music like this. It was music that made you feel good. When it comes to music, I'm kind of of the opinion if it doesn't feel good, don't do it. Now how many things in life do we really get to say that about?

Portrait of the blogger as a young boy

2011-02-24T23:25:00.004-06:00

I've been going through all these old photo albums that my mom has, slowly but surely scanning the pictures in so that they have a little more permanence. One of the albums that she has was from my grandmother's house and has a lot of pictures that I had not seen before. Anyway, this was one of them.

When I think of myself as a young boy, this is how I remember myself. I had a school desk that I would sit at and do math workbooks, if you can believe it! Funny thing is I see a lot of Anna in that photo. I can't imagine getting my child to do something like that, although she does manage to spend a lot of time at her computer (although she's spent more time with the Wii since she got Zelda for Christmas.)

That's the part of ourselves we have to take care of because those of you that know me well probably recognize him in the adult me. I know I sure do.

Decade old Oscar mix

2011-02-24T09:51:00.004-06:00

Oscar weekend is nearly upon us. As I mentioned in a previous post, we have seen 60% of the Best Picture nominees which is a sight better than last year when the only Best Picture nominee we had seen was Up. The Oscars are kind of a Big Thing around here. It's probably less about the awards and more about the company and camaraderie that have come to characterize every year's Oscars. I enjoy the core group of people that we always get together with - they truly are family. We are always open to more people coming in (if they dare) because honestly, the more the merrier. I work this weekend but it's day shifts so it should be okay, plus I have Monday off so I won't have to worry about having to get to bed at a decent hour.

All the talk of Oscars got me to thinking about the year that we made an Oscar mix CD for everyone. I don't think we've done that in years, and let me tell you how it's NOT happening this year as I haven't the time to put something together like that. Anyway, I dug through my big old CD wallet that houses all my burned CDs from the early 2000s. I kind of quit burning CDs en masse when I got an iPod, and it's kind of fun sometimes to look through them as they all have cover art thanks to Microsoft Publisher. It didn't take me long to find the Oscar mix CD which was creatively titled "Oscar Mix 2001."

If that is not a motley mix, I don't know what is. A few points:

The video mix of "What It Feels Like For A Girl" was undoubtedly a Napster of Audiogalaxy acquisition. A full mix of it was released on the CD maxi-single, but the edit is still unreleased on CD.
The themes from Mommie Dearest and Supergirl are nods to movies that had been viewed at previous Oscar parties as it was our tradition to watch a movie that had been "snubbed" by Oscar.
Two mash-ups in a row and four Madonna songs? My mixing skills have improved in ten years - that would never happen now.
Any CD with "Pump Up The Jam" and "The Bad Touch" (do it like they do on the Discovery Channel) can't be all bad, right?
I still kinda love that Samantha Mumba song.
It kind of blows my mind that Heidi was probably very very early in her pregnancy with Anna when we made this CD.

I think I might have to make this into a playlist for my iPod. But first, I have to get my tax shit together. I'm not remotely ready for our tax appointment tomorrow.

In the Heart of the Sea

2011-02-22T20:53:00.005-06:00

Wow, what a difference a month makes. While I read seven books in January, I'll be lucky if I make even half that this month. So far, I've actually finished ONE book, but I am reading four right now, so there might be hope. I'm giving myself the excuse that February is the shortest month of the year, so in addition to screwing up my budgeting by being only 28 days, bringing next month's bills into this paycheck, it also makes it impossible to live up to January's impressive book consumption.

The book that I managed to finish this month is Nathaniel Philbrick's In The Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex. My biggest challenge I had with this book was not referring to it by the name of the blue diamond from Titanic and calling it In the Heart of the Ocean because, as everyone knows, it all goes back to Titanic. As is mentioned in many reviews, the story of how the Nantucket whaleship Essex runs afoul of a angry sperm whale in the middle of the Pacific Ocean is like an 19th century Titanic story, only without the Celine Dion bombast and nifty CG.

I wasn't sure I would like this book because I was afraid I would drown in a litany of unfamiliar sea-faring terms, indistinguishable characters and dry prose. I should have known better - it did win the National Book Award after all. Any book that can inspire a story like Moby Dick (no matter how impossible Moby Dick is to actually read) can't be all bad. What I got was a story that grabbed you instantly and really didn't let go of you at all. You learn a lot about whaling in the 1800s, the social system that existed on whaleships, as well as life back on Nantucket - which apparently consisted of plaster dildos since the men were gone to sea for sometimes as long as two years. (If you don't believe me about the plaster dildo, believe me, it's in there. Found hidden in a chimney of a 200 year old house on Nantucket. Truth is truly stranger than fiction, folks.)

The thing I really took away from this book is that no matter how bad you think your job is, being on a whaleship in the 1800s was worse. As if keeping a wooden sailing ship seaworthy wasn't hard enough, the killing of the whales really took the cake. I always thought that the harpoon killed the whale. Heck NO. Once harpooned, the whale had to be stabbed repeatedly, close to a cluster of arteries near the lung. Once these blood vessels were pierced, the blood would start blowing out the spout (referred to by whalers as "the chimney's on fire"), covering the crews in the small whaling boats that pursued the aquatic mammals. Harvesting the blubber and oil from the whale was enough to make your stomach turn.

But what really is at the heart of this book (pardon the pun) is the story of survival - or lack thereof - after the Essex is sunk by the whale. With the crew divided into two small whaling boats, they sailed some 3,000 miles around the south Pacific, with precious little food or water. I will always remember The Perfect Storm's gut-wrenching description of death by drowning, and in many ways, the descriptions of starvation and dehydration matched that in terms of detail. Throw in descriptions of the inevitable cannibalism on top of it and, really, how can you go wrong?

This was one of those books that I picked up on a whim and I sure am glad I did. If you're trying to decide between this and Moby Dick, trust me, Philbrick's book may not be as famous, but it's infinitely better. The only thing it was missing was Celine.

Orbits, suns and planets

2011-02-20T20:25:00.004-06:00

Winter's Bone was on last night's agenda. It was the last of the Oscar movies we had a prayer of seeing, which would have left us with only Black Swan, The Fighter and 127 Hours unseen (as far as Best Picture nominees go) as we head into next weekend's Oscar show. We bailed and watched last Monday's House instead. Honestly, I think it was a better choice because I'm just not in the mood for depressing movies. Real life, it seems, is depressing enough as it is without actively seeking it out.

The other reason it was a good choice was because it fit into what seems to be an overriding theme of the week. As House gets a bit long in the tooth, the medical mystery of the week is less and less intriguing and I'm more frequently drawn in by the secondary storylines of the episodes. As Heidi pointed out, putting House and Cuddy together really should have ruined the show, but for some reason, it works better than ever. This week's episode was really all about loneliness. The patient, who could inexplicably remember every single memory since puberty had isolated herself due to her inability to forgive anyone for indiscretions. Wilson, still burning from his breakup with Sam, gets a cat rather than jump out into the dating fray again. Taub has failed a pathology certification exam and is sentenced to having Foreman as a tutor, only to realize that, when Foreman extends the offer for him to stay at his place, living by himself in a fleabag motel in the wake of his separation was not the most ideal thing in the world.

A song played at the end of the episode that I had to go and search for the minute the credits rolled. It took a little bit of Googling, but eventually I figured out it was Wilco's "How To Fight Loneliness." I liked it because it was of the indie ilk that seems to always make the unofficial House soundtracks but don't frequently make my own personal soundtracks. I also liked how it could be interpreted in more than one way - the most obvious being that fighting loneliness is all about faking it, putting on a veneer for the world to see while inside you feel exactly the opposite. However, I think the more accurate interpretation (at least for me) is that if you smile all the time, laugh at every joke and fill your heart with smoke, you may actually end up attracting the very things that counter it, bringing more people into your orbit and taking the edge off the lonely feelings that seem to affect many of us, whether we admit to them or not. I think things like Facebook and Twitter, while helping us to connect with each other have, oddly enough, left us feeling more lonely and more out of touch. I can say for myself that there are many times I've thought about taking a week off of both FB and Twitter, just to see how I felt. Maybe I'd focus more on other things? Or would I be pushing away the things that "How to Fight Loneliness" urges you to attract?

Whatever the answer, I'm not convinced that's entirely right either. Really, the best commentary on this sort of thing comes from Stevie Nicks...like that should surprise anyone. It's another song that has been in heavy rotation recently - "Planets of the Universe." It's one of my favorite Stevie Nicks songs, one that has been around forever but finally found a home on Trouble in Shangri-La. It is angry and biting and, naturally, mostly about Lindsey Buckingham. Not having been in a relationship with LB, it has broader meaning for me. When I am at my loneliest, when it feels like the world has shut off just when I'm wanting interaction and there's just no having it, I take an incredible amount of solace in this song. Because here's what Stevie says:

And the planets of the universe
Go their way
Not astounded by the sun or the moon
Or by the day
You and I will simply disappear
Out of sight
But I'm afraid soon there'll be
No light

What it says to me is that we are all just like those planets. Sometimes our orbits cross or approach each other, but in the end, we are all on our own path. The best that we can hope for is to share a sun and that we stay in each other's sight, because ultimately, we have to do it on our own. I think it's really easy to fall into the trap of believing that others will fill that gap that almost everyone feels. Maybe for some, it does. But I think for the vast majority of us, the other people are really like the other planets - in their own orbits. I think the best marriages are made of two people whose orbits intersect but remain their own, bouncing off an energy that encourages them to live their lives while still keeping the other in sight.

In last week's episode of House, House says to the patient who is looking at certain death without a kidney transplant, "it's ok, everyone dies alone anyway." Of course, he stole this from Cher who famously sang "sooner or later, we all sleep alone." I'm not sure if he's right or not, but I don't know if that's the point. I think the best we can do is make peace with it and welcome those that enter our orbits, no matter for how little time it might actually be. I don't think I'm there yet, but maybe someday I will be.

(I double dare anyone to find a blog post that mentions Wilco, Stevie Nicks AND Cher.)