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Thu, 15 Mar 2012
Best Buds I don't remember my first Walkman. I'm pretty sure that it came after my first boombox, which I received as a Christmas present in 1984 along with a copy of Michael Jackson's Thriller on cassette. I remember blasting this enormous ghetto blaster, as we were wont to do in the 80s, propping it against my pillows or bringing it outside for the whole neighborhood to hear. I'm sure I walked around with it on my shoulder, facetiously of course, but still I'm sure it happened. I can't remember if I got my console stereo before or after that. It was a cheapo Sounddesign unit that had a plasticky turntable and AM/FM radio, but most importantly it had a dual-cassette deck. This was essential for making mixtapes, especially when most of your music was recorded off of the radio. But I don't remember when I got my first Walkman, or what the circumstances were. I remember that the headphones were covered in red foam. I remember that these broke and my replacement headphones had blue foam. But I don't really remember listening to it, unlike the other systems. Here's a odd fact about the Walkman: Skeptics thought it wouldn't take off, because listening to music on headphones was considered rude back then. I think of all the movies and music videos from my childhood: a kid in his room rocking out and shaking the whole house. His dad bursts in the room, screaming, "Turn that crap off!" It's always pretty much the same, with the variable being, "crap" or "noise" or the vaguely racist "jungle music." I think my dad once called it "chainsaw music," so I give him props for that. The solution is so simple. Headphones. But no, headphones are rude. Today, people wear headphones all the time. And yet, I still encounter people who think that wearing them is rude. I understand that in certain situations it actually is rude. It would probably be bad-mannered to wear them on a date to a restaurant. But in most cases, it's far preferable to the alternative. I've noticed a trend among the people who hate headphones. Most of the time, they are the worst violators of public space. The co-worker who plays The Bob & Tom Show in her cubicle. The guy who sings along to radio commercials. The person who interrupts your reading on an airplane to tell you about the growth on their foot. The man who obliviously uses the middle urinal. Related: There is a guy who works at a store where I shop, who, if he sees you looking at your phone, will walk up to you and wave his hand in your face and say, "Hello!" Dude, that is the opposite of friendly. The first Walkman had a "hotline" button, which activated a microphone so that when someone came up to you and started talking, you could hear what they were saying without removing your headphones or pressing stop on Dexy's Midnight Runners. That feature was quickly discontinued, and even with today's devices thirty years later, you still have to rip out your earbuds or tear off your cans or fumble around to pause the music whenever someone sticks their face in yours and says something, which inevitably turns out to be something like, "workin' hard or hardly workin'?" Boundaries, people. Boundaries.
[filepath: /assessment]
Wed, 01 Feb 2012
A Steel-Town Girl on a Saturday Night A few nights ago, I saw Flashdance for the first time ever, a mere 30 years behind the rest of the world. When it started (thank you, TiVo!) I pretty much assumed that I had seen it before, since it's an 80s standard. I figured that even if I hadn't seen it, I must have seen enough snippets here and there to be able to claim to have seen the whole thing. I was wrong. I'd seen the classic "Maniac" workout scene of course, and somehow I'd seen the climactic dance audition at the end. Other than that, it was all fresh to me. The movie is basically Rocky with dancing instead of boxing, and with twice as many inspiring musical montages, which is a lot when you consider how many inspiring musical montages are in Rocky. Jennifer Beals is an 18-year-old wannabe ballet dancer who has no formal training. By day she works as a welder in a Pittsburg steel mill. By night she is a ... I want to say "stripper," but that isn't quite right because she doesn't take off her clothes. You might say, "burlesque dancer" but that would give the wrong image, too. She works in a dive bar full of blue-collar steelworkers that serves huge pastrami sandwiches and has entertainment that includes both stand-up comedy and clothed sexy dancing involving elaborate choreography, costumes, strobe lights, mime makeup, and stunts. The dancers take off some of their clothes, but they're never naked. The focus is more on the costumes and choreography, which the steel mill guys eat up, even though they never tip. There doesn't seem to be any kind of tipping system for the dancers whatsoever. They just come out, dance, maybe take off their jacket or something, and leave to thunderous applause from exhausted dudes in coveralls eating fried foods. You assume that the bar must pay them generously out of the pastrami-sandwich profits. Jennifer Beals does all this because she wants to earn enough money to study at a fancy dance academy. She lives by herself in a warehouse loft, and you never see her parents because they live in Altoona, which is practically another planet. We never learn how long she has been a welder/burlequish dancer, but she must have been living on her own for years because we do learn that she's saved enough money to pay for the school and all of her expenses. All she has to do now is get up the guts to apply for an audition. This movie really made me think, not about dancing or about pursuing your dreams (okay ... a little bit about dancing and pursuing your dreams) but about 80s movies in general and how they stand out in the history of cinema. Some thoughts: It seems like it's been a really long time since I've seen a new movie that was shot on location in a city like Pittsburg, with lots of street scenes and unfamiliar cityscapes. I haven't thought this out very thoroughly, but it seems like movies now focus on LA and New York, with occasional movies set in of some sort of unmentioned, anonymous no-man's land in between. Attempting to document the majority of the American experience with specific settings just doesn't happen. You don't see movies set in Indianapolis or Boise or Cleveland. Movies in the 80s had a lot of crap in the interior scenery. Maybe again in this is instance, it's due to it being shot on location. The old lady's house in Flashdance is jammed full of junk, like a lot of old ladies' houses really are. Years and years of accumulation. Likewise, the strippers' dressing room was filled with detritus. Maybe it's that they used real-life locations. Maybe it's that the 80s in general were extremely overaccessorized. There's a really weird, subtle style of humor in 80s movies. It's innocent and charming, and like the set design, it's all about details. At one point, one of the strippers is backstage eating a banana. She isn't eating it in a sexually suggestive way. She's just eating it because she is hungry, which is really funny for some reason. The question I have is whether this is funny to me because it's actually funny, or whether it's funny because it's so typically 80s. While I watched the movie and attempted to suspend my disbelief so I could enjoy it, I ran into a few points that might be troubling for younger viewers, who might find them odd or unbelievable. Could this girl really afford such a sweet loft apartment? The answer, kiddo is yes. Loft apartments in the 80s weren't "sweet." They were gross and cheap and kind of awful. This place was literally an abandoned warehouse right before she moved in, which means she was living in an abandoned warehouse with a toilet in it somewhere. I'm sure there's no air conditioning. Obviously none of the windows are sealed against the cold. It probably smells bad and the roof probably leaks. But it's cheap and there's a lot of room to practice your art, which is why starving artists lived in these places before developers realized they could fix them up and charge, as we said in the 80s, "megabucks" in rent. Is it realistic that when she goes to the dance school and has her audition, all the judges sit down and light up cigarettes and cigars? Yes. That was pretty much standard when I was a kid. The Clean Indoor Air Act happened in the mid-70s, but in the 80s, you could still pretty much smoke anywhere you wanted except for hospitals and in designated non-smoking sections of public places. People still smoked everywhere, and a lot of people smoked. Certainly no one ever went outside to smoke. Everything reeked like tobacco all the time. It is weird that this older dude is after her, making no attempt to hide his skeeviness at all? Hm. Yes and no. Sure, guys are skeevy now, but skeeviness was expected and accepted even more back then. Plus, even though she's only 18, I think that age was considered more adult than it is now. Fewer people went to college. There wasn't really an extended adolescence that lasts well into a person's 30s like there is now. That's kind of a Gen X invention. None of this is to say that it wasn't skeevy, though, because it was. So anyway, sorry this was so long. If it's any consolation to you, I also recently saw Girls Just Wanna Have Fun for the first time, and I decided to keep my opinions on that movie to myself.
[filepath: /assessment/film]
Wed, 18 Jan 2012
Make This
First, I just want to talk about how much I hate the word "make" when artists and crafters use it as an intransitive verb, as in, "I spent the afternoon making." I always ignore this, but inside I'm screaming, when used in this way, "making" means taking a shit! I wonder if these people are aware of that and are just trying to "take the word back" or if they're ignorant to its primary connotation. I'll never know because I don't want to have that conversation. It's one of my goals not to come across as the kind of guy who interrupts your story about scrapbooking to talk about defecation slang, even though I am exactly that kind of guy. I also hate it because it's lazy and unclear, and because it is obviously some kind of setup for the question, "What did you make?" Well, I'm not falling for it crafters! I demand an object for that verb. Any object will do. It isn't that difficult. That said, I have a few ideas for some technological things I'd like to make, and by "I'd like to make" I actually mean, "I'd like to see someone else make," by which I mean I wouldn't actually care one way or the other whether someone else made them, because I'm not going to make them or even use them. I just want to write about them succinctly and fluently, as I am doing right now. One is an idea that I call "Facebook for Narcissists," which seems redundant at first, but isn't. The normal Facebook is fine for entry-level narcissists, but if you're extremely narcissistic, you're going to need something more. This is a Facebook client that allows you to post status updates, post photos, view and respond to comments on your status updates and photos, and approve friend requests. Basically, it lets you do anything that relates directly to you. What it doesn't do is allow you to look at anyone else's activity. It's a completely self-centered Facebook experience where you can simply pretend that no one else is interested in anything except for your life. The second is in the same vein, but relates more directly to my actual tastes. I kind of miss link blogs. I know there are still a few superstar link blogs out there, and that there are massive community link blogs like Reddit and Metafilter. But I miss the small, eclectic linkers. There used to be people who threw a couple of links in at the end of their blog posts, or wrote entire posts about the weird junk they found online. It was really fun. Some people still do this now and then, but not very much. Some people only link on social networks, where the links tend to drown in the sea of everything else. Plus, a lot of other people post links on those networks that are either boring or politically ridiculous. What I want is a new, link-based community blog or social network, where the membership is made up of the 10-15 people whose links I'm actually interested in following, because right now they're scattered all over the place. I want them all in the same place, doing a special monkey dance just for me. Google+ would be a great place for all of this to happen, and I suppose that's the whole idea behind it, but it just hasn't come together yet. Maybe I should start practicing what I preach over there. Yeah, I guess I should.
[filepath: /assessment]
Tue, 10 Jan 2012
Teen Caffeine I don't want to out myself as someone who watches ABC Family, so let's just say that I happened to slip and fall on the remote control, which fatefully switched the TV to channel 54. No, wait, let's say channel 732, because this scenario looks a lot better in high definition. Here's something I've noticed: All of the teenagers on ABC Family are constantly drinking coffee. Actually, they never seem to literally drink coffee, but they are always pouring themselves a cup of coffee as they talk to their moms about the heavily organized day ahead of them. At other times, they walk around casually gripping a thermal travel mug (usually color coordinated to match their outfit) or a basic white to-go cup from a coffee shop. Is this real? Something tells me this isn't real. I don't know a lot of teenagers, but the ones I do know never drink coffee. When I was a teenager, no one drank coffee except for the special-needs girl who drank it at room temperature out of a mayonnaise jar, punched out windows, and swore at passersby in French. Coffee was an adult beverage, and if you tried to sneak some, you'd be reprimanded about how it would stunt your growth and destroy your nerves. The gallons of Jolt Cola I drank until I was a quivering mess, however, was just fine apparently. There are several possible explanations that I can imagine.
[filepath: /assessment/television]
Mon, 09 Jan 2012
Preferences
I don't understand other people's tastes in media. It's taken years, but I think I've finally learned to stop asking people on the internet for advice about what to watch, listen to, and read. Trent Reznor said about Spotify, "I don't care what my friends are listening to. Because I'm cooler than they are." Well, I'm definitely not cooler than anyone else, but I have to agree to disagree about almost everything media-related. I think a lot of people define their own tastes by associating a certain type of person with a certain type of music or film or book, and then deciding whether they want to align themselves with or against that type of person. I don't agree with this tactic, but I get it, and I'm certainly not immune to it. For example, I really don't want to be the kind of person who recites TV catch phrases to their friends and co-workers. You'll never see me elbow someone, raise my eyebrows and cackle, "That's what she said!" Never. Consequently, I generally dislike catch-phrase-based sitcoms. The further a sitcoms sinks into that kind of pedestrian humor, the more I'll hate it, largely because I can't watch it without picturing the doofus with a "World's Greatest Boss" coffee mug cutting it up at the water cooler with last night's prime-time greatest hits rundown. As I said, though, this is generally not a good thing, and I like to think that I only do it in extreme cases. The thing is, when other people express their prejudices, I generally don't understand them or share them. For example, if you don't want to be the type of person who listens to Florence and the Machine, well, I don't know what type of person that is. Heck you probably can't put it into words, either. Or maybe you could if you thought about it, but you never really have. Other times, I do understand those prejudices perfectly, but I don't feel the same way about them that you do. Once when I was a kid, my sister tried to tell me why she didn't like John Cougar Mellencamp. She said he played music for guys who drink beer and play frisbee with dogs that have bandanas tied around their necks. Let me tell you, that is a spot-on assessment. The thing is, it made me like John Cougar Mellencamp. That whole scene sounded like a good time. Lately, I've been trying to figure out what makes me love or hate certain types of books. It's really difficult. The only consistent thing I can come up with is that I seem to enjoy books that juxtapose two vastly different sets of characters. I also seem to enjoy magic realism sometimes, but strictly on a case-by-case basis. I like witty writing where the author uses totally original imagery and wordplay. I tend to hate books that are emotionally manipulative and books whose structure is so obvious that I can easily see the author's outline as I read along. I do know this: Nine times out of ten, when someone recommends something to me and says, "You will love this," that just means that they loved it. I probably won't love it. I probably won't even like it. I might see its merits, but I'll probably spend a lot of time wondering what it is that the person recommending it loved so much. That's a losing situation. I can't even figure out why I like what I like, let alone how someone else justifies their opinions. I think the perfect situation is when you come to something fresh, without any preconceived ideas about what you're getting into. I love watching movies I know nothing about beforehand. When I listen to music, I'd rather not know where the band is from and I certainly would rather not know what they look like. In the year 2012, the world wants the opposite experience for you. The world wants you to wear all of your media as if it is a fashion statement. The world wants to cram every funny joke into a movie trailer and show them to you hundreds of times before you pay $10 to sit and listen to the same jokes in a different venue. The world wants you to read a book because the author is a celebrity. The world wants you to like a song because you like the brands of clothes that the band wears. The world wants to craft a TV character and persuade you to identify with that character for the sole purpose of showing that character driving a Ford Explorer. Meanwhile, the world is full of extremely talented people, and I want to hear what they have to say. However, if I don't understand other people's tastes, and if I can't even define my own tastes, and if I can't trust the marketeers, it's a difficult journey.
[filepath: /assessment]
Sun, 18 Sep 2011
Things Learned From Watching TV at 4am People are deathly ill. Like seriously ill. If you watch TV at noon, the commercials will make you think that everyone on earth has a cold. But at 4am, everyone has stage 4 cancer. People eat horrendous junk. During primetime, you normally don't see so many commercials for Long John Silvers, is what I'm saying. People have no shame. At 4am, you'll see a lot of commercials for bizarre clothing items, most of which resemble large, zippered sacks made out of polar fleece. Pajama Jeans are a favorite, but last night I learned about Forever Lazy. I'd recommend watching the video on that website. People want something for nothing. There are a lot of products and devices that allow you to exercise without really exercising or diet without really dieting. Basically what people want is to get the results they desire without having to put in any of the effort. They want to make money without working and to get their degree without going to school. People are litigious. When all else fails, sue. There are lots of people on TV at 4am willing to help you squeeze blood from a turnip. But you get the idea that all the promises they're making to people who suffered terrible side-effects from a medication or slipped and fell in front of a Starbucks don't really ring true. It's just another way of wanting something for nothing. Someone is going to get rich off of this, but the thing is, it's not going to be the victim.
[filepath: /assessment/television]
Tue, 16 Aug 2011
Unlike I can't even remember how long ago it was (maybe three weeks? a month?) but I recently deactivated my Facebook account. This both looks and sounds a lot more permanent than it really is. "Deactivate" sounds like "quit forever," and that's really what it seems like to the outside observer. I'm no longer there. At all. My girlfriend's relationship status has changed from "in a domestic partnership with Barrett Chase," to simply, "in a domestic partnership," which makes it sound like she bats for the other team which is priceless. The thing is, you can't really quit Facebook entirely. Well, you probably can somehow, but it's difficult. They don't want to let you go. Clicking "deactivate" and then answering yes to "are you sure you want to deactivate" and then answering yes to "no seriously are you really certain you want to deactivate" just means you're going on a temporary hiatus. Simply enter your username and password (already stored in your browser!) and login again, and there you go — everything's just as it was before. When I did all this, I said I was only quitting for a month or so, and then I was coming back. But now that I'm out, I really really want to be out for good. Not being on Facebook is awesome. Facebook is Orwellian in many ways, but the thing that always irritated me was how it took nice people that I actually liked in real life, ground them up and spit them out in this disgusting-yet-boring ooze of humanity that I absolutely loathed. It's kind of like everyone you ever met in your entire life suddenly became a telemarketer or a creepy magazine salesperson and then came barging into your life in a constant stream. Both painfully boring and irritating at the same time. This all sounds really misanthropic, but I'll say again that these are people that I like in person. I don't exempt myself from it either. I was a part of that ooze of humanity too, and I'm sure my boneheaded opinions and weak stabs at humor annoyed more than one of my online friends. The moment I deactivated, I felt exactly how I feel when I clean off the kitchen counter, do the dishes and put everything away in its place. It's a feeling of tidiness. There's nothing in the back of my mind, waiting to be attended upon. Around the same time, I quit Goodreads, a social networking site that keeps track of the books you read and lets you see what your friends have been reading. Theoretically, it's a good idea, and the way some people use it I can see how it would be really useful. I rarely updated it, however, and I never looked at anyone else's books or reviews. Still, there it was on my phone and on my browser's toolbar, constantly waiting and radiating disappointment. I deleted it completely. No more loose ends. Once again, that great feeling like I've changed my oil and vacuumed out the interior of my car. This made me realize something crucial in all this: I don't want to share everything I do. I don't want a system that lists every song I listen to for all my friends to see in real time as I'm listening to them. I don't want to post every book I read and every movie I watch. I don't want to post the results of every online game I play. And I don't want to see these things from other people either. I do want to know real things that are actually happening to my friends and in my community. It should be more like running into people real life. "I just got into an accident!" is crucial. "Look at this photo I took of a guy walking an ostrich," is awesome. "I just had a great meal at the Thai place down the street," is just fine. "I just put up a fence on my virtual farm" is incredibly boring and not something you need to tell another person let alone everyone you've ever met. Lately, I've been enjoying Google+, although not many people use it and those who do seem to use it infrequently. I think it has potential to solve a lot of Facebook's problems. Its core strength is that it allows you to direct certain types of content only toward the people you think will appreciate it, which I like. Although, today Google+ added a games feature, with such Facebook-style games like Angry Birds and Bejeweled Blitz. This is one of the worst, most annoying features of Facebook and I'm sad that Google+ is going in this direction. Social networks can learn a lot from Twitter, which does nothing more than what it should do, and consequently makes you enjoy the people you follow and meet there. And yes, you can follow people you don't know and gradually come to know them over time. This is the "networking" part of social networking. I don't want to quit social networking entirely. I want to be able to know what's going on in the lives of my friends and family, and to read witty and interesting blurbs from people I don't know or only know slightly. The problem is, most of it is all wrapped up in this marketing and data-collection machine that tramples not only on your actual wants but on your rights as well. Can't we just build our own?
[filepath: /assessment]
Mon, 13 Jun 2011
Kids These Days "There's no TV. Have you seen a TV, Mike? I haven't seen a TV. Do you know what it means when there's no TV? No MTV." — Corey Haim, The Lost Boys Last week, we watched the MTV Movie Awards. I'm not sure why exactly, since watching award-show TV or really any kind of TV as it is airing is not something that is typically done in this household. But it ended up shining its flashy images in front of us and sucked us in and I guess that's how these things happen. MTV is extremely good at what it does. I don't know how they do it, but I think it involves hiring unsuspecting suburban 18-year-olds as guinea pigs, making them sign a contract they can't be bothered to read, then chaining them up in a warehouse somewhere and flashing provocative images in front of them while measuring their vitals. They're kept alive exclusively on Adderall and Monster. They get paid less than minimum wage, but they earn a semester of credits from the University of Phoenix. Plus the room smells awesome. But anyway, the movie awards. I can't recall if I'd ever seen this particular award show before, but holy shit was it a mindfuck. As you might expect, every person accepting an award was under 25, or at least it seemed that way. As you might not expect, many, many of the people presenting awards were much older. It was incredibly embarrassing. Standing at the front of a room full of beautiful young people with hair and abs ... Jim Carrey? Seriously? Twisting his neck and making a funny face and doing a funny voice and oh god it's like your dad just came down to chaperone the make-out party. Not only is it embarrassing, but it's embarrassing that it's embarrassing. I mean, Jim Carrey isn't even 50. Of course it might have something to do with how he was never actually funny, but that's not entirely it either. Reese Witherspoon won the "Generation Award" which I guess is something akin to a lifetime achievement award? Jesus. Reese Witherspoon is 35. I'm not exactly sure who this award show is made for. I guess you can get some insight by realizing that the awards are all people's choice style, and that Twilight and its cast pretty much won every single award for which it was nominated. So ... 12-year-old girls and their moms? That's the audience? Lupe Fiasco performed his song, "The Show Goes On", which bears a striking resemblance to Modest Mouse's "Float On." I'm not sure about the business end of things like this, how things like this happen. Of course sampling has been around forever, but this isn't really sampling. It's more like sampling/remixing/parody. Basically, it's taking a song that already exists, changing the lyrics so that they're (let's face it) dumber, and putting more of a hip-hop/pop spin on it. All of which is fine, because obviously Modest Mouse or whoever owns the rights to the original song signed off on it and just wants to make money off it, but what gets me is that the fans singing along and taking cell-phone photos of the performance are completely oblivious. Speaking of which, after the award show, MTV showed its latest remake, a TV version of Teen Wolf. Of course, this has pretty much no relationship to the 80s movie starring Michael J. Fox. The rebooted Teen Wolf is handsome, ripped, broody, and completely humorless. Even his sidekick, Stiles, is humorless, and Stiles was originally the comic relief within a comedic movie. That's how it rolled in the 80s. Today, everything gets the Twilight treatment. I mean would it have killed them to at least refer in some way to Stiles' awesome "what are you looking at dicknose" T-shirt? Nah. Just give Styles a graphic tee with a target on it from Urban Outfitters. That's good enough. He isn't traditionally handsome, which I guess is what passes for funny now in and of itself. Kind of like in the 1950s how a character was considered funny merely by being Chinese. I wonder about this. I mean, I know a handful of 18-year-olds, and they seem to have a sense of humor. But none of their mass media recognizes that. They also don't seem to be all that interested in their mass media. It doesn't carry much weight for them. When they want to laugh they go to YouTube and watch people get kicked in the nuts. During Teen Wolf there was a trailer for the upcoming remake, Fright Night, which is also based on an 80s comedy/horror movie. They even used the original font for the title. And likewise, all of the humor seems to have been drained away. Abs, hair, and despondency. Oh, Twilight. You've ruined an entire generation. And their moms.
[filepath: /assessment/television]
Wed, 01 Jun 2011
A Nod to Bob Last week, the town I live in, Duluth, Minnesota, celebrated the 70th birthday of its most famous native-born one-time resident, Bob Dylan. I didn't attend any of the festivities. But that doesn't mean I don't like Bob Dylan. I really do. Duluthians have two major attitudes toward Dylan, and both of them are embarrassing. The first attitude is the one that's officially sanctioned by the city government, all the community leaders, and most residents. This is: Bob Dylan We Love You And We Need You To Come Home. Please. We are begging. Literally begging. We'll do anything for you. Anything. You are the best thing that has ever happened to our little community and oh my god we are dying financially and culturally please help us please help please please please. Toward this end, the city installed two commemorative manhole covers along Bob Dylan Way, which is not actually called Bob Dylan Way, but they put some signs up a few years ago indicating that a string of streets running through the tourist district may be called Bob Dylan Way if you are so inclined, even though the official street signs and names remain unchanged. There is no evidence to suggest that Bobby noticed. The other attitude is one perpetuated by Duluth's hipsters and philistines, which goes something like this: Pfft. Bob Dylan. So overrated. Can't sing. Pfft. Not so special. Anyway, like I said, Duluth did its thing last week, in the style that Duluth is good at, which is to install some public art, trot out a handful of our 86,000 musicians, prop them up on stage, pass a jar of smelling salts under their noses, hand them a Dylan song book and then pour cheap beer down everyone's throats until it's fun. Oh yeah, there was also a train ride during which all of these same things happened combined with the danger of everyone trying to publicly urinate off of said train, which is reportedly especially fun to watch when the public urinator is female. No one died, surprisingly, even though the event was titled "Blood on the Tracks," which is kind of like asking for tragedy to strike. But like I said, I didn't go to any of this, which doesn't really matter because I grew up here and I could more or less script it without even having to change out of my sweatpants. The first time I ever heard and loved Bob Dylan I was in 7th grade, watching Weird Al Yankovic as guest VJ on MTV (or AL-TV, as those segments were called). Al played the video for "Subterranean Homesick Blues," the one where Bob holds up all those homemade signs while Alan Ginsberg wanders around in the background. I can't realy say why, at age 13, I found this video to be so totally mint, except for the fact that it actually is totally mint. The only reason I don't think of it as totally mint at this point in time is that I've seen it so many times, and know it to be a culutural staple. And I guess back then, my mind was a cleaner slate, and I was experiencing it for the first time ever. A few years later, INXS came out with their "Need You Tonight/Mediate" video which uses the same concept, and I got it. Anyway, after I saw that video, I became somewhat of a Dylan fan, and set about gathering his albums over the years. Is there anything more insufferable than a young boy discovering Dylan for the first time? Listening to "Blowin' in the Wind" with fresh ears? Ugh. It's like reading The Catcher in the Rye or On the Road. Embarrassingly cliché. But unlike fricken Kerouac, I still like and listen to Bob Dylan, probably because he has been so prolific over the years. There's still plenty of Dylan I've never heard. And it's still totally mint.
[filepath: /assessment/music]
Wed, 18 May 2011
Quotes from Recent Reading, pt.1 "Life is, to some extent, an extended dialogue with your future self about how exactly you are going to let yourself down over the coming years." "In my experience, the thing about girls is — you never know. No, you never do. Even if you actually catch them, redhanded — bent triple upside down in mid-air over the headboard, say, and brushing their teeth with your best friend's dick — you never know. She'll deny it, indignantly. She'll believe it, too. She'll hold the dick there, like a mike, and tell you that it isn't so."
— Charles Yu, How to Live Safely in a Science Fictional Universe
— Martin Amis, Money
[filepath: /assessment/reading]
Fri, 29 Apr 2011
Work in Progress I suppose now that Christa has gone and spilled the beans, I should probably explain how and why I changed my mind about e-readers enough to actually go out and buy one. That's right, friends. The big bad Amazon corporation finally wore me down and convinced me to buy a Kindle. This is all very embarrassing to me because a mere month ago I admitted my belief that people only buy e-readers because they feel guilty about not reading. Then a mere week after that, I admitted that I personally have not been reading much lately. So now when I say that I just actually bought an e-reader ... ugh. Don't think I'm not aware of my own hypocrisies. Don't think I'm above hating and ridiculing a person for the simple reason that I'm exactly like that person. Apparently. But this isn't true. Not exactly. I love reading and I don't believe I need help to force myself to do it. I was just skeptical of the e-reader, while at the same time being pretty damn curious about it. I didn't want to like the e-reader, and I had a list of reasons why I didn't need to explore that particular branch of technology. But most of my problems with e-readers had to do with comparing them to mp3 players. While the mp3 player does solve a problem -- how do I make my music portable -- the e-reader is not built to address this problem. Obviously, unless you are a student, you probably don't need to take your library with you everywhere you go the way you do with your music library. My problems with e-readers, having never used one, were as follows: One by one, I've investigated or at least thought about these issues, and have managed to debunk all of them: Here's what I like about the Kindle thus far: Here's what I don't like so much: So there you go. I bought a Kindle. It's been fun so far. I'll still read paper books. But I'll probably end up reading more old stuff on the Kindle. Or maybe just huge hardcovers with garish feminine covers. Valley of the Dolls, here I come.
[filepath: /assessment/reading]
Wed, 06 Apr 2011
I Just Can't After writing that blog post yesterday about how I haven't been reading much this year, I decided to pick up The Pale King and burn through a serious chunk of it. Um. Yeah. I can't read this book. I love David Foster Wallace's writing and I consider myself a pretty big fan. Infinite Jest was -- I'll go ahead and say it -- the best reading experience of my life. I've read a lot of his essays and I've never been sorry that I did. I listened to The Broom of the System audiobook, which was a mistake, but the problem was not at all the book but the format I chose to experience it in. The thing about DFW (especially in the long form) is that you have to trust him implicitly in order to make his writing worthwhile. Reading Infinite Jest, you get at least 150 pages in before there's any inkling of a point, and even then it's only a minor inkling. The story doesn't really begin to coalesce until about halfway through the book. I like to think of it like jumping out of a plane and trusting that the parachute will, eventually, open. But at first, you have this panicky free-fall where all of your instincts scream at you that what is happening right now is the worst thing ever. It takes a lot of courage to ignore those instincts, enjoy the fall, and admit that what you're experiencing is actually fantastic. But The Pale King is an unfinished novel. How can you trust an unfinished novel? I can't, that's for sure. I think if the book was as funny and entertaining as Infinite Jest, I would still enjoy the read. And even though I'm only about one-fifth of the way into the book, I'm pretty sure this is going relatively nowhere. Consider this line from a review of the book in Esquire magazine:
You don't have to read it in a couple days or even a couple months. I'm not sure you even need to read it in any particular order. It's not that kind of book.
Hm. It's a rave review. All the reviews I've read are rave reviews. Who wants to be the only person to diss a long-awaited posthumously published book by one of the greatest American writers of all time?
Then there's this quote from the book's Editor's Note by Michael Pietsch:
The pages of the manuscript were edited only lightly. One goal was to make characters' names consistent (David invented new names constantly) and to make place names, job titles, and other factual matters match up throughout the book. Another was to correct obvious grammatical errors and word repetitions. Some chapters of the manuscript were designated "Zero drafts" or "freewriting," David's terms for first tries, and included notes such as "Cut by 50% in next draft." I made occasional cuts for sense or pace, or to find an end point for a chapter that trailed off unfinished.
Yeah, that doesn't inspire confidence. Sure, the book might be pretty good, but I can't imagine that it's anywhere near the book we would have seen if DFW had lived to finish it.
I'll keep it around of course and most likely I'll pick it up now and then, maybe reading portions of it as if they are short stories when I'm in the mood for that kind of thing. There is one character I encountered that I'd like to learn more about.
But right now, no way. Sorry, DFW. I just can't.
[filepath: /assessment/reading]
Tue, 05 Apr 2011
Keeping Track
BOOKS & MOVIES Just for fun, I started working on a text file that lists all the movies I've watched and books I've read in 2011. The idea came to me when I realized that I frequently forget certain types of movies I've seen. Sure, I remember the biggies. And I remember anything I've discussed with anyone. But I watch a lot of movies alone in the middle of the night. These films are usually pretty bad, and pretty forgettable. It would be fun, I thought, to keep track of them and post them here at the end of the year, and while I'm at it, why not keep track of books, too. Oy. At the end of 2010, I think I read a decent number of books. But guess how many I've read so far in 2011? Four. That's right. Four. I am mortified. It gets worse. Two of those four books were graphic novels, and one of those had hardly any words in it. Basically, I read two novels while flying to and from LA at the beginning of March, and those were the first novels I'd read since December. When I think about it, I'm weird when it comes to reading. I absolutely love it. Hell, I have a degree in it. But for some reason, it's easy for me to fall out of the habit, and once I'm out of the habit, it doesn't even occur to me to pick it back up again. On the other hand, when I do get into a book or even a chain of books, I don't want to do anything but read. I sink into those other worlds. I dream about them. I daydream about them. A few days ago, I was struggling to fall asleep when I heard a noise on the porch. I had ordered a new case for my camera, so rather than lay there and think about it, I decided to head down and bring my parcel inside. But there were two parcels, and the second one turned out to be David Foster Wallace's new posthumously published novel, The Pale King, which I'd pre-ordered months ago and wasn't expecting for another two weeks. I had to start digging into it, of course, even though I was dead tired and up way too late. I burned through about 50 pages, and haven't picked it up since. This is partially because: 1) It's an unfinished novel and it shows, and 2) One of the major themes of the book seems to be boredom. This is maybe not a great book to choose to break myself out of this literature-resistant phase I seem to be going through. TELEVISION When I had the idea for that text file I mentioned, I thought about making another one to keep track of all the TV I watch. Of course, I wouldn't be able to fill it in retroactively as I did with the book and movie lists. If I did this, I wouldn't include shows that I watched in marathon form on DVD. I'd only include shows I'd seen as they aired, or on TiVo soon after they aired. I seriously considered this for about 20 seconds before shame made me put the idea on the back burner. Such a list wouldn't be much fun for me to look at. I think it would just be embarrassing and stressful, like looking at a list of all the food I eat, or a list of all the money I spend. Sure it might be useful for persuading myself to watch less TV and/or better TV, but what fun is that? I have no desire to go on a TV diet. And any personal blog is bad enough when it comes to assholes looking at your life and judging you for sport. I don't need to give these people itemized lists of detailing how many hours of Jersey Shore I've watched in the past year. (Okay, I've watched every second of it, if you must know.) MUSIC Speaking of TV and lists and Jersey Shore, I've really been getting into MTV lately. Well, "really getting into" is a bit of a stretch, but it feels like it to me. What I should say is that I've been getting into watching music videos on MTV.com. My technique is to start out watching actual MTV in the wee hours of the morning, when they still shows videos. I wait for a decent video, which mainly happens during their show Subterranean, which is the new name for the show that used to be called Alternative Nation and before that 120 Minutes. When I see something I halfway like, I go to MTV.com, find that video, and then watch related videos. If I find something I really like, or even kind of like, I go to Amazon and find that song. Then I look for related songs on Amazon until I find songs that are free, and then I download the free songs. (Why is it I haven't been reading, again?) I've thought about making a text file listing all the songs I've downloaded, but once again shame dissuades me. I think the stuff I've been listening to is decent. I mean, I like it. But music fans are so damn judgmental. I have to keep some things to myself.
[filepath: /assessment]
Sat, 19 Mar 2011
Idiocy Like everyone else on this planet, I've spent my entire life listening to people who are older than me talking about the negative effects of aging. And the whole time, I've truly had the belief that none of it will ever apply to me. That's right -- all these things that have literally happened to every single person in the history of the human race? That's about other people. I'm special. If you share this belief (and I'm assuming that you do on some level, since nothing this stupid can be all that original) you'll start to make a lot of excuses as you notice the normal process of aging begin to work its way with your body. Whoa, whoa, whoa. This lethargy? I must not be getting enough B12. These wrinkles? Antioxidants! I've been slacking when it comes to antioxidants! And that is part of a larger problem that Americans have, which is the equally stupid belief that whenever anything negative happens to someone, it's because on some level, they deserve it. Americans think bad things happen to people only because of some mistake they made. People are poor because they are lazy. People have heart attacks solely because of dietary choices (or, ironically, because they worried too much about their own health and got too stressed out). The reason behind this is simple: If bad things only happen because of poor choices, it's possible to have only good things happen to you if you figure out the appropriate choices and stick to them. Unfortunately, no one has actually had a worry-free life yet. Ever. Because the entire reasoning behind this idea is idiotic and selfish. Shit happens. Bad shit happens. For reasons completely beyond your control. All the time. I'm not saying that your choices have no impact on your life or the lives of others. Obviously people eat, drink, and smoke themselves to death every day. People build factories that unleash chemicals and give cancer to entire neighborhoods. But just you watch from now on. Whenever someone delivers any kind of bad news, the listeners immediately start asking questions, the point of which is to figure out just how exactly the victim is to blame for what happened. The subtext of the questions is, "Is this going to happen to me? No, no, it isn't. I don't wear those kinds of clothes in that neighborhood." I don't live where earthquakes happen. I don't eat simple carbohydrates. I went to college and majored in a practical field. I practice the only true religion. I'm going to live a happy life, forever.
[filepath: /assessment]
Tue, 22 Feb 2011
Worthless Up until a few days ago, I'd never in my life read the comic strip Mary Worth. I guess it's for a combination of reasons, the first and foremost being that the strip has never run in the local paper, and that shaped most of my pre-internet comic reading habits. The second is that I've never been able to get into the "soap opera" style of comics. I think I ironically read Rex Morgan, MD for a few months back in the early 1990s, and I checked out Gil Thorpe fairly recently when it made reference to a local high school, but other than that, I've generally stayed away from the serious serials. The current storyline in Mary Worth, however, kept creeping its way into my online reading. It seemed like the universe was telling me I needed to check it out, so I did. Here's the skinny: Mary's friend Wilbur is concerned, because his daughter appears to be addicted to the internet! She walks around like a zombie, barely listening to him as he prattles on and on. As he scrambles for her attention, just speaks in monosyllables, not even glancing up from her smartphone. "Maybe I should follow you on Twitter so we can relate better," Wilbur says. Wilbur confides in his problem to Mary, who admitted knows nothing of this strange online world that Wilbur's daughter semi-inhabits. And in one of those most inadvertantly hilarious sequences I've read in the comics in a long time, Wilbur invites Mary over for a quick primer on current cyberculture. All of this comes off a sub-storyline setup where Mary is confronted with the idea of e-readers. And here, my friends, is where things get personally embarrassing for yours truly. I read that sub-storyline and hissed the word "SHIT," while squeezing my phone to keep myself from throwing it at the wall in disgust. I say these things. I say these things about e-readers that MARY FUCKING WORTH is saying in these fucking panels. Is it possible for a man in his 30s to check himself into a retirement home? I don't understand e-readers. I used to say "the e-reader is the Segway of reading," but then I amended that to "the e-reader is the Nordic Track of reading." Americans are always feeling guilty about the things they don't do, and, being Americans, think that the only way to assuage that guilt and to fix their lives is to buy something expensive. This gagdet will solve all my problems and make me a better person, they tell themselves. So they empty their bank accounts, bring the object home, and let it collect dust in the closet while they watch episode after episode of Minute to Win It. But I could be completely wrong about the e-reader. It might be an awesome piece of technology that I would use all the time. I'm often wrong about a lot of things. Mary Worth says, "I like looking at the books lined up on my shelf," and "I like reading something that doesn't rely on batteries or electricity." While I do really enjoy listening to mp3s, I can't help but think of how many of them I've lost over the years to technical failure. I have mine backed up pretty well nowadays, but still, the issue of DRM comes up all the time. I flat-out own most of my music collection, but there are some that I am merely renting. Enthusiasts of the Nook were excited a few months ago when users of that platform acquired the ability to lend books to a friend for like two weeks or something ridiculous like that. I HATE that. When I buy something, I want it to be mine. I should be able to lend it to whoever I want for as long as they need. Yeah, I understand. Copyright. File sharing. All of that. I'm not stupid. But still. Advances in electronic technology tend to be really good at improving existing electronic technology. What I mean is that the iPod is better than the Walkman. TiVo is better than the VCR. But it's hard for current technology to truly replace ancient technology. The automobile is better than the horse. But Pop Tarts aren't better than pie. Are e-readers better than books? I can't quite bring myself to believe it. I would like to borrow one for awhile, though.
[filepath: /assessment]
Tue, 08 Feb 2011
Conspiracy Nerd (with spoilers) It all started when somehow I wound up on the Wikipedia page, "List of The X-Files episodes." I can't remember how I ended up there. Maybe I read an article or a blog post about the show, or maybe I happened to catch a rerun on TV and decided to look it up myself. What excited me was how there are asterisks after certain episode titles, indicating that those episodes collectively make up The X-Files ongoing mythology. The so-called X-Files "Mytharc" relates the story of how the planet Earth is on the cusp of an alien invasion, and how conspirators within the US government are simultaneously covering up the impending invasion, are helping the aliens subdue the human population in exchange for key positions after the invasion, and are secretly developing weapons to fight the invasion if the chance should arise. I was a big fan of the show when it was on TV in the late 90s. I watched it on TV, but also rented the videotapes as they came out so that I could re-watch and study the conspiracy. I had an extremely worn copy of Entertainment magazine that listed an episode guide for the first several seasons. The problem was, whether on TV or on videotape, watching the show chronologically meant watching not only the Mytharc episodes, but also the much more common "Monster-of-the-Week" episodes, which are fun but tend to drag you out of the Mytharc and make you forget key details of the conspiracy. Staring at the Wikipedia page, I realized that since I now had this all-encompassing guide, and since every episode of the show was available on Netflix Instant, I could finally watch the entire Mytharc in one long stream. Also, I could finally figure out why, if I loved the show so much, I stopped watching it long before the series reached its last season. Tonight, after several months of viewing, I watched the series finale. The first few seasons were familiar territory. Somewhere along the line, there had been a weekend-long marathon. And even though I didn't have cable at the time, I commandeered a VCR at my parents' house and recorded the whole thing. These were also the seasons explained in that copy of Entertainment magazine. I'd often watch them when I was sick or when I had insomnia or after coming home from the bars. They were good, but a little worn out in my mind. Seasons 3-5, on the other hand, were much less familiar and were utterly, utterly awesome. Even if you've never seen the show before, I think if you watched it for the first time you'd have to agree that this is where the show is most on-point. The character development in particular is incredible, but also every episode is funny and suspenseful, not to mention creepy. Next came Fight the Future, which is the feature film that came out in theaters. It's okay. I'd give it 3/5 stars. But it's kind of soured in my mind, because it's also the beginning of the end. I think a big reason why the series was so good had to do with David Duchovny, and likewise, I blame most of the show's downfall on him as well. Here's why. Up through season five, the show was filmed in Vancouver. This really affected the show's aesthetic. Everything was green and lush and, consequently, shadowy. The forests of British Columbia made it easy to believe that you were watching events unfold all across the country: in Michigan, in Maine, in West Virginia, or in the forests of New Jersey. In season six, Duchovny stipulated that if he was going to remain with the show, shooting would have to be done in Los Angeles. The entire aesthetic changed, and while there were some good scenes set in the desert, for the most part, The X-Files began to look like every other show on TV. Speaking of which, this was also the time when other unique aspects began to melt away in favor of cliche, as the show attempted to appeal to a broader audience. The solidly platonic relationship between Mulder and Scully, I always thought, was its strongest aspect. This isn't supposed to be a romance. Despite Duchovny's looks, you're supposed to believe that Mulder is an obsessed geek so deep within his own thoughts that he barely has time to feed his pet fish. Scully is a careerist and a scientist thrust into an adversarial relationship with Mulder. I'm not saying the romance that eventually develops in implausible (implausible would be either one of them falling for a third party), I'm saying that it was refreshing to see a show that resisted romantic cliches. Another problem with the later seasons is the introduction of several less-interesting characters, who almost completely take over the series not to mention the actual X-files. By the time seasons eight and nine roll around, Fox Mulder is barely even in the picture anymore, frequently getting kidnapped or in hiding, even imprisoned. Two other agents, John Doggett and Monica Reyes, take over the X-files office, while Dana Scully goes about the business of gestating yet another alien baby. Practically every one of Scully's scenes post-birth involve her placing the baby in its crib or taking it out of the crib. Some critics say that the show ultimately failed because the conspiracy became too elaborate. This might be the case, but only because of the often weeks-long lapses between Mytharc episodes when they originally aired. Consumed the way I just did, the story is baroque, but certainly manageable. I also read somewhere that some blame 9/11 for the show's demise, citing a 1/3 loss in viewership after the terrorist attacks. Well, it might be that viewers stopped watching because they were suddenly too patriotic to watch a show about government conspiracies, but I'd wager it had a lot more to do with the fact that one of the show's main characters was unseen for months on end while the other was suspended in a seemly infinite loop of lifting a baby out of a crib and putting it back again. Personally, I stopped watching because while the show's creators and stars were trying to keep all the balls in the air at the same time -- the story, their careers, their egos -- they lost track of what made the show great in the first place: the characters.
[filepath: /assessment]
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