I'm still here...

...just not blogging. Haven't felt much like blogging, even though there sure has been a lot to blog about. I guess I'm just not feeling the best right now. Never fear, I'll try to write more later.

Fall is in the air

Not just in the air, I guess. It's pretty much everywhere. The maple tree on the side of the house, which is always the last to turn and lose its leaves did so seemingly overnight. The leaves are coming down in droves now. It's a gorgeous bright yellow. One day I'd love to get one of those maples that turn red. Maybe when we cut down the dying ash in our backyard. Whenever that might happen.

I swear, fall would be my favorite time of the year if it weren't for SAD. It makes it so I barely even notice fall anymore. That and the fact that "fall weather" is such a non-descript term. I mean, it's November 1st here in Iowa, and it's going to be 70 degrees before it's all said and done. Craziness. The day Anna was born (mid-November) it was 80+ degrees! So who knows. To be honest though, fall probably is my favorite time of the year though, in spite of SAD.

But like I've been saying, it's been the best fall ever for music, so in that respect, it's been great. And then I find out that Casey Stratton is going to be releasing 100+ songs for digital download on his web site! How great is that? All those CDs of his that go for astronomical prices on eBay are now available to regular Joes like me who don't have unlimited funds. It's really exciting. I just hope he tours close to here when he goes out on the road again. It was so fun seeing him at the M-shop last April. I'd love another shot at seeing him live. So new Casey, plus his latest CD Divide is shipping next week as well. I'm in heaven.

Well, it's getting close to time to go to work. I'm a bit on the sick side today, so we'll see how it goes. I'm sure I'll make it through.

The Amityville Horror

In addition to taking Anna trick-or-treating, Wendy and I watched the 2005 remake of The Amityville Horror. The Amityville Horror was one of the first grown-up books I remember reading. I read it in the 3rd grade--I begged my mom to let me check it out from the library even though I knew it would probably scare me. It goes a long way toward explaining my obsession with things scary. She caved, and sure enough the first night I was too scared to sleep. My friend Kelly remembers me reading it very vividly--she says it's one of her first memories of me--me reading that book and all the flies on it.

While the story was billed as a "true story" at the time, it's pretty much common knowledge that the whole thing was a hoax, a money making scheme by George & Kathy Lutz, the owners of the house for those 28 days. As near as I can tell, the only thing that's true is that Ronald DeFeo, Jr. did kill his family in the house. Everything beyond that, pure fiction. Well, that fiction still scared the hell out of me as a kid. It was made into a movie in 1979 with James Brolin (a/k/a Mr. Barbra Streisand) and Margot Kidder. It wasn't very good, and, to be honest neither is this one, but it was still freaky and had more than a few good scares.

To say that this remake is based on a true story is akin to saying that the movie was based on my life. Even if you take the novel as gospel truth, this film takes a lot of liberties with its source material. First thing, it demonizes George Lutz much more than the house. In the novel, the house is the evil thing. And while it affects all the members of the family, at no point does George go as far over the deep end as he does in this movie. Another disappointment, NO RED ROOM!! Yeah, there's other stuff, but I was really wanting to see the red room again. And it left out all the black gunk in the toilets, the marching band in the living room, the hooded figure that tried to keep them from escaping that final night.

For all the liberties it took with the story, I was shocked to see how well-shot the movie was. It was atmospheric and very "horror-movie-ish" so that worked in it's favor. We enjoyed it enough--not enough for us to wish we had our hour and 29 minutes back, but I'm not sure I ever need to watch it again.

I'll stick to the book. In the meantime, I wonder if Jim and Babs watched the original on Halloween, or if they dug out his other horror flick--The Car.

Another Halloween behind us

So last night was Halloween and I took Anna out trick or treating--actually I did the first part and Heidi did the second part. After much discussion and changing of minds about what she was going to dress as this year (first it was Cher, then it was Wonder Woman) she finally settled on Sleeping Beauty. Although the wig is very Sandy from Grease. Maybe we'll keep the wig around and let her go as that some year. *hehe*

She had a lot of fun--we're lucky because we live in a neighborhood where you can still go door-to-door without fear. People in the neighborhood know each other so it's a real fun time for both kids and parents. Anna was still scared of a lot of the scary costumes, which doesn't surprise me. She's still pretty nervous around scary things--at least things that are scary to her. The most tense moment came when we went to a house where the guy giving out candy was wearing one of those headless costumes. That really freaked her out. So to Anna, guys wearing a headless costume are scary, alien chestburster not so much. She's even named my plush chestburster Durtle and refers to it as her sister. Crazy stuff.

So she got the expected haul of candy and now we'll have enough chocolate in the house to kill a small horse for weeks to come. I'm already sugar overloaded--I think it's pretty much an inevitability come Halloween. I remember so many Halloweens as kids where I ate so much candy that I was sick, but not as bad as the Easters where I ate so much candy prior to the 6AM church service I wanted to be sick. That's put me off Easter candy to this day (except for jellybeans which are still yummy.)

One more picture--here's Anna with her loot. She's looking a little more disheveled here and was about 15 minutes from unconsciousness.

Not sure what to think of this...

It's one of those "spit the coffee across the keyboard" mornings thanks to Post Secret...

What's that all about???

God, I love Post Secret. Even though half the time I wonder if the secrets are made up.

A CD lives up to its title

I've been fond of saying that this is the best fall ever for new music. There's been something new released just about every week in the last couple months that I've been interested in--and it's going to get capped off with Confessions On A Dance Floor on November 15th. But one of the CDs that's been getting all sorts of play on my iPod this fall is Barbra Streisand's new CD, Guilty Pleasures. I was a bit leary of this CD, as she really hasn't released an album that I've liked since 1994's The Concert, and that wasn't even new material! I mean, let's see, we've got 1997's Higher Ground (yawn!), 1999's A Love Like Ours (even more yawns!), 2000's Timeless: The Concert (a pale imitation of 1994's The Concert), 2001's Christmas Memories, and 2003's The Movie Album (how about singing some songs from some movies some of us have actually heard of, Babs?) So needless to say, it's been a rough 11 years for me as far as Barbra's music. Say what you will about her politics, she's definitely got the voice.

And the voice is what shines through on Guilty Pleasures. It's the most successful attempt she's had at a solid pop album since, well, Guilty. The biggest problem with most of Barbra's latter day albums have been all the songs sound the damn same, and while there's a few songs on here that get dangerously close to that, I feel like even the ballads are distinct enough that they don't just blend into one long insipid cheesefest. She clearly benefits from Barry Gibb's songwriting, and even though the production is a little bit to clean and pristine, it's okay because the songs are interesting in and of themselves.

The highlights for me are definitely "Stranger In A Strange Land" and the disco number "Night of My Life." I had given up on ever hearing Barbra cut loos like that again, and even though some argue that the track is a train wreck and that Barbra can't sustain a disco track, she does a pretty good job. Gibb's harmony vocals give her support and she seems to be having fun recording for the first time in forever.

Her perfectionism and pristine production aside, it's a very capable record that definitely exceeded expectations considering her pretty dismal track record over the last 11 years for me.

First impressions on "Hung Up"--since I know you're all waiting with bated breath.

1) A great sample. It's a perfect example of how a sample should be used--it's there just enough and it's not like it's just Madonna singing over ABBA.
2) A wonderful return to pop music by Madonna--and pop is something she does so effortlessly. Say what you will about American Life, but that album was decidedly not effortless. It's an album that I end up having to make more excuses for than anything else. I think this is going to be decidedly different.
3) I love the throwback to the Prince duet from Like A Prayer--"Time goes by so slowly for those who wait and those who run seem to have all the fun."
4) I think it's going to be huge in the clubs. I still can't quite decide whether radio will pick up on this or not. For her sake, I hope they do. She can't really afford another commercial failure.
5) And I agree with what someone posted on a Madonna message board--"Hung Up" did the impossible--it made "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme!" even gayer than it already was. *hehe*

It's been played 5 times on my iPod and 8 times on iTunes. And I'm sure it'll get played a lot more in the weeks to come.

Who knew insanity and murder could be so dang happy?

This is pretty good, and yeah, it's a lame blog post since it's probably on everyone's blog now, but it's still funny.

The Shining Redux

I especially like the use of "Solsbury Hill."

(via Cynical-C Blog)

Chester

Here's Anna playing one of her new favorite games--chester (or even better, sometimes it's just "chest.") It's too funny to correct and I figure, what the hell, she'll figure out it's called chess soon enough. My m-i-l took this picture the last time she was visiting us. We taught her the names of the pieces which she mostly remembers--"look Daddy, this is the pawn--pawn starts with 'p'!!" And the way you play, the black pieces have to go on the black and the white pieces go on the red. Hey whatever works.

Have you seen my civil liberties lately?

I finally got my hands on the Disappearing Civil Liberties Mug this weekend in Iowa City. I purchased it on Friday when we were all hanging out downtown, but I put it down somewhere and apparently forgot to pick it back up again. So I went and bought it again on Saturday on our way back home.



The mug has the Bill of Rights on it, and when you fill it up with a hot liquid, portions of them disappear--thanks to the Patriot Act, so the box says.

And I wonder why...

...some people might think I'm gay, even though I'm not. This is the image from the back window of our car a couple days ago.

Not posed or anything--just how the books happened to be situated as I buckled Anna into her car seat.

Farm Boys

Just finished probably one of the best books I've read in a while--Farm Boys by Will Fellows. My wife had read it as part of her research for a novel she's working on in which one of the characters is a gay man farming his dad's land. She couldn't put it down and told me after she finished it that I really had to read it. And she was right. It was one of those books that once you start, you can't put down until you've finished it--or at least you don't want to.

Fellows put ads in gay papers in large cities throughout the Midwest in order to get the subjects for his book. He interviewed around 75 gay men who had grown up on farms in the rural Midwest. What follows are narratives describing their experiences growing up gay on farms where it is usually not the best environment for being different in any way, let alone homosexual. The stories range from a couple pages to long, drawn out descriptions of rural life. The men were anywhere between 30s to 84. It's an exceptional read.

I couldn't get over the similarity of the stories--isolation and loneliness figured prominently for many of them. Some moved to large cities after high school, others either stayed on the farm or moved back, unable to get the farm completely out of the boy. At times, it's heartbreaking--I'm thinking specifically of the stories involving the man who died of AIDS and the man who committed suicide shortly after his interview after battling a lifelong clinical depression. Other times, you just want to stand up and cheer the bravery of some of these men.

I would encourage everyone to read this--you don't have to have a rural background to follow it, and you certainly don't have to be gay to enjoy it. The voices of these men really resonate--I think that everyone who is unsupportive of gay rights or homophobic or whatever you want to call it should read this book. It put a very human face on what to many people in the rural Midwest is still a foreign and threatening concept.

Read it. Today.

Sea monsters

Holy Squid! Photos offer first glimpse of live deep-sea giant.



Pretty cool, eh?

(via Metafilter and Do You Feel Loved?)

Divide

This is the first of the promotional shots from Casey Stratton's new CD Divide due in October. I pretty much can't wait for this CD--his music is some of the most beautiful music I've ever heard. And the unfortunate thing is that he doesn't have tons of music available as he was an indie, then got signed to Sony, then parted ways with Sony to be indie again--so what music he does have is not readily available. According to his blog, he's going to be making a lot of old stuff available on iTunes, so that'll be cool.

Casey's music is, to me, much like what Mary Chapin Carpenter's music was to me in college. I always said that Mary Chapin Carpenter could have been singing about my life, only she was female. Casey's music is a lot like that--he's not afraid to put real feeling into his music. And I think that's what drew me to his music.

*crickets chirping*

Sorry faithful reader(s), it's been forever since I've updated this thing. For whatever reason, I haven't felt moved to blog so much in the last couple weeks. Probably had something to do with coming down with both otitis media and otitis externa last week (ouch, now I know why babies bawl their heads off.)

Here's some things I've been up to that hopefully I'll blog about in more detail later.

1) Bought the new Barbra Streisand album. It's awesome.
2) Hurled Morgan Spurlock's Don't Eat This Book across the room. I liked it better the first time when it was Fast Food Nation.
3) My sister and I are going to go to see Olivia Newton-John at the Paramount Theater in Cedar Rapids. A childhood dream come true!!

Leaving The Saints

I just finished reading this book--Leaving The Saints by Martha Beck. While I wouldn't say that it was life-altering or anything like that, it was definitely an interesting read. Beck left the Latter-Day Saints a/k/a the Mormon Church in the mid-90s. She also claims to have been sexually abused by her father--a guy who is rather high and mighty in the Mormon Church. The book chronicles her search for the spiritual in her life, a journey that started with her return to Utah after several years of living on the east coast and ended with her being virtually completely cut off by her immediate family.

Books like these are always to be taken with a grain of salt. As a friend of mine says (who is a member of the Reorganized LDS church) "This person left the church, so they're obviously not going to be kind to it." I kept that in mind while I was reading it and every time it got a little bit sensational, I remembered that she is an ex-Mormon and well, that kind of speaks for itself.

But the interesting thing is that she isn't universally damning of Mormon culture. She praises it's inclusion, love, friendship and celebrates this. She does not shirk on the details of how her ward members immediately treated her as persona non grata once her husband resigned his membership which (rightly so) saddened her. I was amazed to hear stories of how her daughters Mormon classmates bullied her and ignored her (her oldest daughter was the only child truly affected by their resignation of membership)--I guess childhood cruelty really doesn't discriminate.

I've always been slightly puzzled by Mormon doctrine--not that I claim to be an expert on it or anything. My Lutheran pastor stepfather-in-law refers to it derisively as "Christianity gone to seed." I'm not a Mormon, but I have a good friend who is one and so I've learned a lot more about it than I might have otherwise having been friends with him. I have a healthy respect for it as being a good choice for a lot of people, but just not for me. Still, I'm always a little bit perplexed when I read things about a Mormon masterplanet, the Heavenly Mother and how good Mormon men will become gods of their own planet. I'm tempted to think "How can educated people believe this kind of stuff?" But the flipside to that is "How can educated people believe that a man died on a cross and then CAME BACK TO LIFE?"--a belief that I have and I consider myself to be an educated person.

I guess religion is all what you make it--Mormonism works for some people, not everyone and certainly not for Beck. Christianity may work for some, but not for everyone. Probably my favorite part of the book was it's dedication which went something like this. "They say that religion is for people who are afraid of going to hell and spirituality is for people who have already been through it. This book is dedicated to the latter." I'd have to say that my religion is starting to resemble spirituality much more than traditional Lutheranism. We haven't been to church in forever, but I don't feel separated from my God at all. I do despise how the fundamentalist Christians in this country have hijacked the concept of God, so much so that you can hardly mention that you consider yourself a Christian without having to back pedal and say that you're not a homophobic cretin who believes that the Earth is 10,000 years old more concerned with saving cells in a Petri dish than actual living and breathing humans in New Orleans right now. OK, probably an overstatement, but you get the picture.

A good book, definitely worth the read--obviously I was much more interested in her spiritual journey than I was in her allegations of sexual abuse. The spiritual journey was the part of the book that spoke to me.

The boys' club

I took Anna to the park on Friday night after work (and after I'd napped--going into work at 6AM always stretches me to my limit consciousness-wise.) It's a fun park to go to--just around the block from our house and there's almost always neighborhood kids there for Anna to play with. Well, on Friday night, it must have been "Dads take their kids to the park night" because that's all that were there--fathers taking their kids to the park. And initially, it was kind of cool, but ultimately, it made me feel sad.

It was so cool but so disheartening the way that the other dads just casually drifted into conversation with each other, while I remained on the sidelines. I've never had very much luck bonding with other dads in social situations but this experience just solidified it in my mind. This stems primarily from my complete and utter inability to talk about sports. It's not that I'm just not that into it, I just don't give a shit about it. The only sports event that even remotely piques my interest is the Iowa-Iowa State football game (which was this last weekend) and that's mostly from living 33 years in Iowa.

As I followed followed Anna around the playground, sticking closely to the perimeter so as not to affect her interaction with the kids, I overheard the conversation that two of the dads were having--and sure enough, it had to do with sports (talk of rugby in England) and beer. I sighed a little bit because it was as I had expected. And it's not that I think I'm all holier-than-thou and above all that conversation. I'm not even expecting "deep and meaningful" conversation. I just wish that masculinity was defined by sports and alcohol--something I refer to as "the boys' club."

The boys' club is one of the reasons I'm so glad I work with women by and large. I'm not expected to know the score of the latest game and macho posturing is kept largely to a minimum. And this exclusive club has its roots clear back in high school--I realized a few years ago that I'd been trying (in vain) to fit in with something that I simply cannot.

That realization is freeing, but it's also a little bit sad and a little bit frustrating. But mostly, it frees me to be who I am with no apologies.

WTF is wrong with me?

OK, I've been listening to the Garth Brooks song "Callin' Baton Rouge" way more than is reasonable. It doesn't seem to matter that I don't even really like Garth Brooks all that much -- probably because I remember hearing "Friends In Low Places" way too many times at bars while I was in pharmacy school and plus I've never really liked male country stars either (way too twangy.)

Plus now, Garth Brooks is only going to sell his CDs at that bastion of the devil Wal-Mart. Even more reason to not like him or his music. Let's hope Trisha Yearwood can talk some sense into him.

I'm hanging up on you...

I found a 30 second sample of the new Madonna single "Hung Up" this morning and I'm peeing my pants. It even has an ABBA sample! (the flutes from "Gimme! Gimme! Gimme! (A Man After Midnight)") If this is any indication as to what her new album is going to sound like, I'm so there.

Like there was ever any doubt.

(link via Mod Fab)

Criminally negligent

I have tried to stay silent in my blog about the tragedy that has befallen New Orleans this week, but the events of the last few days have forced me out of my silence. And before anyone labels me a left wing nut-case, trust me that if it were a Democratic administration presiding over this complete clusterfuck of a disaster response, I'd be just as livid as I am now.

People are dying in New Orleans, living in squalor and filth. Babies are sick and dying. The poorest among us are being ignored and neglected by our government. This is appalling and anyone who does not think that it is appalling must be a little bit less than human. These are our countrymen, and we can't figure out how to help them. We have our bumbling idiot of a president "looking forward" to making the trip to New Orleans--what a jackass. And then he thinks that rolling up his sleeves and taking off his tie is response enough from him. What a freaking loser.

The response to this disaster is a national tragedy. We should be ashamed of our government and it's lack of timely response to helping people in need. Our government should be ashamed of itself and should say so to America. It owes us that much. It owes every last person sitting in the Superdome (a/k/a Helldome, Shitdome, etc.) an apology for not giving a shit and letting this go on for 6 days after the hurricane hit. And it's not like we didn't know that it was coming. We had ample warning. Of course, since Bush doesn't read newspapers, he probably didn't know. But there are plenty of people that should have known better.

The true heroes of this disaster and the ordinary everyday citizens that jumped in their cars and went down to Louisiana, Mississippi and Alabama to help--no questions asked.

And if our God-fearing leader really thinks that these are "expendable" people, he would do well to remember the words of the Bible "how you treat the least of my children is how you treat me."

For shame. I'm off my soapbox.