How to Deal with Other People in All Situations

Did I ever tell you this?

I think the world is so much easier to deal with if you just pretend that everyone else is an alien. I mean, when you go to a restaurant, instead of deluding yourself that you have anything in common with the other patrons, just imagine that you're basically at the Mos Eisley Cantina in Star Wars.

The regular nightly crowd at the neighborhood Chili's.

It works! I often get frustrated with other patrons. Like, I stare at them and wonder who taught them that it was cool to go out in public in a ratty old Corona tank-top, the kind that show off the rib-cage. You know you love them. Right. Completely. So sexy to see that arm-pit hair. 

Or my favorite is when conversation is impossible due to the nearby table of drunken women talking at the top of their lungs and laughing obscenely at EVERYthing.

But when I pretend the loud strangers next to me are from the planet Skaro, suddenly they're no longer a nuisance. I just laugh and all is well.

 Skaro: Home of the Daleks AND the offensively loud aliens at the neighboring table.

This method not only works for eating at restaurants (where I first learned this Jedi-method), but almost anywhere in public. It's particularly fitting at Wal-Mart, the only place I'll currently buy groceries because of the astronomical savings. What I DON'T love about Wal-Mart is the creeping sense that I'm the only one there from planet Earth.

When I apply my everyone-is-an-alien coping mechanism, I really AM the only one from earth. And suddenly, it all makes sense. This is actually the ONLY time the crowds at Wal-Mart make sense, in fact. They're all aliens. So it's totally normal for people to swipe their carts at you and make snide remarks when you park your cart in front of the apples....because, you're getting apples....and of course they're annoyed. They're Klingons. They get pissed about EVERYTHING.

"No, I will not battle you for twenty Gala apples, there's more over there. It's cool. There's more apples. Put away that bat'leth, please," I find myself saying quite often, and not just about apples, mind you.

I only wish that I'd learned this life-saving trick back when I was going to indie-band shows and other very crowded venues. I would have been so much cheerier, especially when I finally got a view of the stage and some tall dude suddenly positioned himself in front of me. Rather than cursing him out beneath my breath, I would have just laughed and said, "This always happens when Wookiees come to shows," and found another spot.

 And then Han said to me, "You wanna get out of here?" And I said, "Yeah." And he punched the Wookiee in the face and we left. We ended up at a nice little coffee shop where there weren't any Wookiees blocking my view. All in all, it turned out to be a good night because I'd met this gorgeous smuggler. Well, I didn't know he was a smuggler at the time. All I knew was that he looked good in knee-high boots and in those pants with a stripe on the side. And he had this smirk. You know the kind. The kind you want to kiss. All this happened because a Wookiee was blocking my view at the Minus the Bear show. Life is crazy like that. And perfect. Han and I are still together, if you want to know.*

This is gold, this method. Use it. Use it well. And remember, all of us really are from completely different universes.


*"How My Life Was Turned Upside Down by a Wookiee" by Nicole Grotepas

Torgo

Is it wrong to laugh at the MST3K version of "Manos": The Hands of Fate?  

For me it's serious quandary. I would have glided through the experience just fine if the friend who lent me the movie hadn't mentioned in passing that the man who played Torgo killed himself just a few months after the premier back in the 60s.  

The Wikipedia entry states that his suicide had nothing to do with the failure of the film, that Torgo had no social life and a non-existent relationship with his father:  

"John Reynolds (Torgo) committed suicide by shooting himself in the head with a shotgun on October 16, 1966, although the incident reportedly has no relation with Manos. He had a depressing social life as well as being a drug addict and had almost no connection with his father."

One thing that strikes me here is the rationale that the incident had no connection with the failure of his BIG CHANCE. Finally, something is going right in his life. Here's his chance at success. His ship has come in. He's going to be in a film. He'll get some recognition. Directors will be lining up outside his door. Torgo was just the beginning.  

But no. Manos was a flop. His dreams went down the drain. What's left?  

What I find alarming is his capacity to kill himself with a shotgun. Is that common? Seems like it would be very difficult, and I know it's macabre of me to bring it up, but honestly, I just can't picture that. Not that I want to. But I just can't begin to imagine how someone could hold a shotgun up to their head and reach the trigger, though I'm not one to go around putting guns of any sort up to my head.  

So it seems to me that they WERE RELATED. It's like saying the rampant growth of the tomato plants in my garden has nothing to do with the soil, rain, or water. They just grow independent of those things.  

Poor Torgo.  

OH. AND BY THE WAY. That thing about the drugs and Torgo, did I neglect to mention his drug abuse was related to his role in the film? Oh, yeah. Right. Well, according to the Wikipedia entry, during shooting, Torgo wore this metal rigging to make him look like a satyr (ohhhhhhhh, he's supposed to be a satyr!), BUT he wore it backwards. And no one told him. It damaged his kneecaps permanently and it was, apparently, really painful. He self-medicated with drugs until his death.

Anyway, it's funny how those two facts are so far apart on the Wikipedia entry. Not that I'm accusing Wikipedia of some conspiracy to cover up the truth about Torgo or something. It's just interesting.

And sad.  And it made me feel incredibly guilty to laugh at everything Torgo did, particularly the "itsy bitsy spider" part, where he's trying to seduce the unconvincing actress who played Mike's wife.  The "itsy bitsy spider" scene is one of the best.  Well, pretty much everything with Torgo is hilarious, from the Torgo-music to the wives molesting-him-to-death scene.  

But how can I laugh when I know that Torgo killed himself due to the film's failure? I just can. Call me cold-hearted. Call me evil. But maybe Torgo would be really happy to know that his film has achieved cult-status. That they're making a sequel. And a production company in Nashville redubbed the audio track last year and I guess there's a documentary on the director in the works. 

Someone should also make a documentary about Torgo, because I sense a good story there.  

So I guess it's not entirely sad. It's just rough to know that it was someone's failure and they got depressed enough about it to die. You know?   

Hoarding in the 21st Century

My grandma lived through the Depression. So, as you would expect, she became a pack-rat. When I was fifteen or so, we went through her little tin shed and as a service to her, threw a ton of crap away. Then we raided the old dog house (the city's former jail) and threw out everything she'd squirreled away in there, too. Most of the stuff she collected was small scraps of cloth she accumulated from working as a seamstress at a nearby factory.

We wore surgical masks, which was good, since one of the treasures we unearthed in the mounds of cloth was a mummified cat. It still had skin and everything. Poor cat. What a horrible way to die--buried beneath towers of fabric.

The coolest feature on my grandma's property, next to the very dangerous run down barn with the rickety hayloft I was so fond of, was the former jail. It's made from the white rock (limestone? probably) that's really prevalent in central Utah. The walls are inscribed with lots of weird stuff--creepy drawings and your run-of-the-mill scrawls counting the days till freedom. My uncle's St. Bernard once lived there as well, but lacking an opposable thumb never contributed to the graffiti. He was probably more literate than the former prisoners, however.

All this work to say, I'm getting rid of my 500+ albums on CD. I'll keep the information, but sell the actual albums (if anyone will buy them haha). My Grandma had a good reason for keeping everything. After all, if you've got fabric, you can sew a blanket, a patchwork cloak, or a fancy pair of patchwork trousers. What can I piece together from a bunch of plastic discs? I suppose some clever genius can come up with a way to construct raiment from discarded CDs, but I'd rather wear a towel as a loincloth before donning a pair of pants made from plastic.

There's no excuse for me to be a hoarder. Is there? It did its work, the CD collection, that is. It was around to convince Stoker that I'm cool. That I have excellent taste and a sufficient amount of aplomb to own Survivor's Greatest Hits ("I Can't Hold Back" anyone? The only reason to own the album--this was before you could buy a song one at a time), Asia: Then and Now, ABBA, and the Bee Gees, in addition to the obvious cool bands like Ani Difranco, Pink Floyd, and Miles Davis.

I'm keeping the LP's, though. And just for the sake of one-upmanship, I was buying LPs before you were (unless you were buying them in the 80s).

The horseshoe above Spring City, Utah. It watches over all the city's residents. If you look closely, I think you can see the gods within the pattern of the snow.

Ye olde school house down the street from my Grandma's. It's haunted.

Signs Your Company Doesn't Have Its Priorities Straight

1) During a general downward trend in the market, rather than giving employees cost of living raises, they instead choose to remodel the lobby.  This fact can be exacerbated by the addition of weird architectural features, such as an unnaturally loud outdoor fountain, Buddha statues, gargoyles, stained-glass windows, enormous pillars, or flying buttresses.  In the case of the fountain, if your company harvests wishes to pay for upper management's "company" cars, you may be in more trouble than you think.  

2) The lobby has been remodeled, but your bathroom hasn't been updated since the Cold War.  In some cases, this sin can be more grievous depending on the ratio of bathroom users to bathroom.  For instance, if you work on a floor with 50 women and 5 men, and the sole bathroom for women only has three working stalls, then your company is violating the Geneva Conventions.  Can be compounded when compared to the bathrooms on floors housing upper management if they have been updated or given facelifts recently.

3) Correspondence from the CEO features chilling metaphors relating company operations to Dancing with the Stars, Celebrity Apprentice, The Amazing Race, Lost, or any other popular television show--matters may be worse the further the CEO must stretch the metaphor to make it fit, i.e. "Just like an island caught in a time-warp, our company and the services we provide lend a sense of completion to our clients, filling the void in their existence and giving them something to look forward to."  Missive length can be a good measuring device for how misdirected the company's priorities are.  For example, a very long, meandering, confusing, and poorly structured letter is the sign of a CEO with nothing better to do except torture employees.  A short, quick, brief letter with detailed bullet points that give pertinent information about company procedures or corporate direction relates that the CEO is informed and competent.  

4) Your company emphasizes continually that its goal is to be on the forefront of technological advancements--they want to change as the market changes to stay relevant.  Thus they create a Web site, but then dissolve the market research division and lay-off the web development team.  To make matters worse, your company gives the Web site reins to one person.  One. Person.  The magnitude of this crime is in direct proportion to the size of your company and the purpose of your Web site.  To illustrate: if your company is a small advertising firm, this is a pebble in a lake.  If your company is Amazon.com or Overstock.com, this is Mt. Kilimanjaro in a pond. 

5) Rather than moving to a smaller building after the size of your company has gone from 2,000 to 500, your company continues to inhabit its current premise, which is replete with archaic features such as a cafeteria that no one uses, a Soviet-influenced locker-room, lead pipes, an empty warehouse, and asbestos tiles everywhere.  The more empty space your building has, the greater the offense.    

At some point I might make this into a quiz.  Wouldn't that be fun?  

Filling in the Missing (College) Years: Joss Whedon and Firefly

I just finished watching the "Firefly" TV series.  On DVD of course.  

I liked it alright, but I'm kind of baffled at how much I thought was lame about it.  Apparently I'm more like the network that canceled it and less like the countless fans who adore it.  

What I liked:

1) Most of the characters had something to love about them and things I thought were crap.  Which is something to like.  Weird, I know.  But there's nothing more obnoxious than an impossibly perfect character. In Joss Whedon's universe, however, morals are completely mucked up, so it's hard to gauge their morals based on their universe.  I'm going to be a jerk and base them on my universe, where prostitution is still illegal in most states and even if it weren't illegal, I'd still call it deplorable.  Just because Joss Whedon thought it'd be fun to make prostitutes/geishas into a respectable class, doesn't mean they're Good.  This is somewhat reflected in Malcolm's reactions to Inara's profession, but we never really know if that's because he's in love with her or if he thinks the profession is all around Terrible.  

2) Kaylee.  I really liked the way Kaylee's character unfolded.  The innocence about her was endearing and it warmed me up to Malcolm and some of the other characters who were protective of her.  She's sweet and naive--of course, this was totally exploited by the writers of the show who thought it would be real fun, later on in the series, to show us that Kaylee first met Malcolm while being a skank with the original engineer on Serenity.  Yay.  I get it.  I know I'm going against what I just said in the point number one, but they really sullied Kaylee by doing that.  Who wrote that episode?  Some slash-fiction creep?  But again, I get it that we're in a universe where Good equals people who don't rape you to death and rip your skin off while you're still alive and Bad equals people who do those sorts of things. Really airtight definition, that.  Thanks Joss et. al. 

3) The music.  At first it was really awesome.  This always happens when you watch a series on DVD.  It's too easy to watch the next episode right away.  Soon the motifs and any repeatable feature of the show becomes sickeningly obvious and obnoxious. So after a while the music started to bug me.  But I don't hold that against the show.  That's really a flaw of the continuous play feature.

4) Jayne.  He's great.  I mean, he's obviously supposed to be kind of a jerk.  But the things he liked and did were totally in character.  His guns.  Women.  Money.  It fit him, and his stupidity softened the questionable aspects of his character, so you end up loving him because he kind of doesn't know any better.  Perhaps this was what bugged me about Kaylee being a slut in the flash-back episode where Malcolm stays behind with the ship--Kaylee isn't a slut. Nothing about her before that episode EVER suggested that she's loose.  Suddenly she's banging a guy in the engine room of the ship--well, it just seemed like a mean trick.  And sorry, but when they tried to explain that away by saying she has a fetish for machines . . . well, once again, doesn't really fit.  

5) The universe itself.  Sometimes I thought it was really ridiculous and unformed, while other times I thought it clever and fun.  So I'm going to go with it being mostly good.  I thought it intriguing (word of the day) how they created a future where the Asian cultures had sort of merged with the American west.  Pretty cool.  Although the swearing in Chinese was often lame and instead of helping, it hindered the believability of the universe.  For me.  And I laughed, and felt embarrassed for watching the show.  

What I didn't like:

1) Inara.  She was the weakest link.  They should have let her die in the first episode. She was a Deanna Troi character, to me: completely unnecessary, tossed in to titillate.  Most of her lines were stupid, especially when she waxed philosophic about her job as a prostitute.  Though I get what the writers were doing, yes, I know, dude, it was like a western meets Asian culture, man, it was like the final frontier, like space is the old west and there are guns and outlaws and whores, only they've like elevated women who sleep with men for money to the status of like, Ambassadors (that was my frat-boy impression, although I don't imagine many frat-boys were watching this show). Blah blah blah.  She was stupid.  And the tension between her and Malcolm always felt forced.  Sadly. Because love is such a strong reason for why we do things.  His love interest could have been a better impetus for why he did dangerous missions or made bold moves, instead for me it always seemed like the authorial hand was in there manipulating Inara and Malcolm.  Oh well.  Perhaps this is why the show was canceled?  Inara?  It could be. Ha ha.  

2) River.  I know the show wasn't around long enough to flesh this storyline out, so I can forgive them for it.  But my initial impressions of it weren't positive.  In her favor, she did create some tense moments that made the story interesting, but for the most part I never wanted her onscreen.  

I get the impression that lots of people are disappointed the show was canceled.  I have to say I can see why it was canceled.  Yeah, it would be great if it had lasted, but by the time I got to the final episodes, I could see they were running out of steam.  Did I mention that I really liked Malcolm?  I did.  And sometimes the writing was truly brilliant, and by writing I mean the dialogue.  There were moments where the characters said surprising and witty things.  I loved it for that.  I'm going to try out some of the Buffy stuff.  I was in college during its heyday and completely missed it.  

Classics: App Heaven

So far, the best app (I feel like such a dork when I say that) I've downloaded is the Classics app. When I bought it, it was .99 cents. What a bargain. Like ten books for .99 cents! They're classics, so, I mean if you found copies of them at a used book store you could probably get some of them for that much, but I'm talking about portability here.

My favorite author just did a review of the Kindle on his website, and it tempted me. But really there's no contest now. I have an Ipod Touch and I can put books on there! Smaller, more portable, and it makes a cool page turny sound when you turn the page BY TOUCHING THE SCREEN. And you turn back the page by swiping your screen in the other direction!

I am still in love with the magic of the touch screen, yes. It's very enthralling. I'm sorry, but that's the truth of it.

When you're done reading and you press the home button, it puts in a bookmark and then you go back to your bookshelf and there's your book, with a little red bookmark in it. It's beautiful.

I know it's weird to get excited about a virtual bookshelf and a program that disconnects me from the actual textures and sense of reading a book, because I'm very into the reality of books. But it's fun. It's different. And I have real copies of most of the books. But think of it. I'm on a long flight and I don't want to tote around ten books. Oh, look here, in my Ipod I have twelve books!

And I think they add more, and the additions are FREE once you've bought the app. I'm in heaven.

Agency Wars. M16 Agent #78930. Shaken, Not Stirred.

Stoker told me last week he'd gotten a little something for my birthday and asked me to not look at the bank account. I thought, Ok, he's gotten me a book, or a video game, or tickets to the soccer game. Because it was a little something.

So the little something he gave me last Friday turned out to be an Ipod Touch. Excellent present and I haven't been able to stop caressing it and downloading apps and playing games on it. We're Verizon users and will never switch to AT&T and thus the Iphone is useless to me. But the Touch works for us. Stoker has one as well.

I'm addicted to Agency Wars.

It's a role playing game where you pick an agency, CIA, M16, KGB or one from a variety of others that I'd never heard of until yesterday, and then you go on missions for the agency. You earn money and buy weapons and sell weapons to other real life players. If you have the Iphone, you can apparently go to real time locations for missions--I assume it's all legal and whatnot ha ha ha. I played it for too many hours yesterday and I'm embarrassed about it, and all I have to show for it is that I'm a level 13.

One of the first things I did was try to attack Jungmaster, a level twenty million or something. As you can probably imagine, there was really no contest. He had some outrageous gun and I think I only had a measly handgun or something (in the game guns are one-offs, like a WaltheN PPK). Jungmaster won the fight and then of course he had to turn around and teach me a lesson by actually KILLING me. And it did teach me a lesson. Thereafter I only attacked other agents who were a level or two below me. Unfair, but I need the money and experience in order to rise in the ranks (new goal, reach level 30 million and kill Jungmaster).

It's not personal, it's business.

Others have attacked me and some of them have won. But I add them to my hitlist and if I ever surpass them in weaponry or by leveling, I get my revenge. Oh yes, I get revenge, my friend.

The interface of the game resembles one of those blue screen type programs you always see in detective/FBI/24 type shows. I doubt the real-life databases look like that (who knows?), but it lends an air of sophistication to the game despite reality, and in some ridiculous, romantic part of your brain, you feel like you COULD be a government spy engaging in espionage and other James Bond tom-foolery without actually being in danger. So you get all the good part of the fantasy sans the threat of death or torture. In short, I feel that the game rocks.

Yes. All morning I've been devising a way to get to a free WiFi location so I can check on my status. It seems that while offline, others can attack your agent and steal your money (JERKS!). What comes around goes around. Anyone who messes with me will be dealt with, I assure you.

On a different note, my main criticism is that their server kicks me off quite often. I could forgive this if the game was free (like Guild Wars), but since the full game is not free, I can't forgive it. Another improvement would be to enhance the in-game selling feature. To sell to other players, you simply list your price then the item disappears from your inventory. If the item is ever sold, the amount appears in your account. But you never hear for sure, and since you're constantly making money, it's hard to be certain if you've ever sold the item.

Anyway, as you can see the game is quite enthralling. For me anyway.

Add me (other agents know what that means. If you're not already an agent, become one and add me)*.




*What it means is that in the game, to do certain harder missions, you have to have a number of contacts. It's hard to make contacts because for some ridiculous reason, you can only add them with the agent number (or some other intrusive way like with an email address). Basically you have to go online and advertise your agent number in some way. So get the game and add me. And then we can do joint missions. Cassi, this means you.

Recent Aquisition: The Selected Letters of Wallace Stegner

I picked up Stegner's Selected Letters yesterday. It was an urgent thing, because while this book has been in my Amazon shopping cart since l became aware it was out, I never felt rushed to get it until I saw that some doofus had left a ONE STAR REVIEW of it on Amazon.com recently. What kind of moron . . . . ? His reason is that he realized his fictional* college students are RIGHT, Stegner is an elitist snob. And then the doofus goes on to crack a joke, I guess, and mention that he supposes he should read Elizabeth Lynn-Cook's book Why I Can't Read Wallace Stegner: A Tribal Voice**.

Obviously I am forced to quickly come to his defense, not that he needs it. His work speaks for itself. He IS not an elitist snob. What is going on is that colleges are now swarming with students who think that being politically correct is proper and that no one should actually speak their mind if it goes against the fashionable current of thought. If a writer uses a word these students haven't heard on Prison Break or American Idol, that writer is clearly not interested in being understood. While I think it's true that some contemporary writers reach for the thesaurus too often and pick the obscure WRONG word rather than the right common word, this is just not the case for Stegner. His writing IS accessible and he is as clear as day. His writing is careful and thoughtful and he creates characters who are real and flawed, though ultimately good.

So far I have read his personal letters, the letters to his girlfriend before Mary Page and the letters to Mary Page (who he would marry). Some good lines from it:

"I am afraid you are a romantic, my love. I am afraid you live in the clouds, and in the future—an impossible future, and I am afraid you are one of these essentially skinless creatures whom every blowing cinder hurts. So am I, or was I. Then I developed a suit of armor, and then you came and undressed me again. I’m not sure that I mind, even on principle. I know that at present I love it, but I’m afraid when I think that both of us are going to get hurt" (p. 21).

And I read this in a letter to biographer Jackson Benson regarding his request to do a biography of Stegner:

"There is the further fact that I have led a very quiet life. I have no marital upheavals, spectacular alcoholism, sexual deviations, madcap adventures, or attempted suicides to report. You might find that even if I told you to go ahead, you would have little to write about. Actually, what I have meant, to myself and I hope to others, is an individual attempt to understand and come to terms with a dynamic, forming, and unstable society, that of the American West" (p. 75).

I like it that he regards his life as quiet and that he is humble about it. He's not thirsting to have someone write about him because he was modest. He recognized that having written novels put him in a kind of spotlight, and so he was something of a public figure, but he wasn't the kind of public figure that relished the limelight.

His son Page writes this about him:

"His letters were not notes dashed off in the rapid-fire, shorthand fashion of today's email. Virtually without exception they were thoughtful, articulate, and carefully crafted, with attention to minutia (spelling, punctuation, syntax); they employed simile, metaphor, poetic imagery, deliberation of voice, and, above all, attention to the melody of language. . . . Like the company accountant in Conrad's Heart of Darkness, he would have been embarrassed to be found wandering about dressed in anything but an immaculate white suit, no matter how remote the exposure to posterity or the likely indifference of his audience" (ix).

The reviewer on Amazon.com who got me all fired up, whose thoughtless review compelled me to rush out and buy the book, wondered why he cared about Stegner after reading half the book. I guess he didn't get it, but I do. Stegner wasn't an elitist snob. Rather, he cared about his words and how he used them. His writing was his way of making sense of the world, of trying to understand and be understood, but in composing his work he wasn't immodest. He had Victorian values to a degree and recognized that one doesn't have to confess every impropriety to be transparent***, and I think this is evident in Angle of Repose when the narrator discusses his disgust about the loose values and hedonism of the 1960s.

Anyway, I know I'm going to give it five stars when I'm done. Stegner was right about his life, he wasn't some spineless, self-absorbed writer whose biographies would reveal a string of affairs and a drug-riddled past interlaced with deviant behavior. He has always struck me as humble, but willing to do hard work and get done what had to be done. And in that way, because these qualities show up in it, his work has always been refreshing and beautiful.






*My assumption. I don't know if they really ARE fictional, but the idiot struck me as too moronic to actually be a college professor. Perhaps they're stocking the colleges with morons these days.
**Both Kirkus Reviews and Publisher's Weekly slam this collection of essays. First of all, Ms. Lynn-Cook truly has NEVER read Stegner. She uses his name to simultaneously capitalize on his success and bludgeon him in one breath. What a girl.
***Contemporary style is to confess everything, resulting in graphic depictions of sex, violence, drug-use and every other kind of depravity that does not necessarily move the plot forward or lead to a deeper understanding of character.

Where I Stand Right This Very Minute on Music: Pierce Brosnan, Babs and "Evergreen," and Celine

Is it so wrong to think that the best song on the new Mamma Mia! movie is the one Pierce Brosnan sings all by himself? I mean, I know that he's no Pavarotti or Bono or Miley Cyrus, and I know that, as Stoker mentioned, his song seems to have had the most digital editing done to it, but still . . . I love it. Why? Why do I love it?

I have no idea. How can I explain it? I can't. But let me say, there's something to be said about the virginal voice. And by virginal voice I mean the young, untrained sound. There's still the capacity for emotion and that's what I must be hearing. And there's the unique phrasing and emphasis that comes from someone who is NOT a singer first and foremost.

And since his days as the one and only Remington Steele, I have been a fan of Pierce Brosnan. And Streep does a great job harmonizing with him. It sounds good. That's all I can say.

And is it so wrong to sometimes just crave some old Barbara Streisand song ("Ahhhh ahhh, ahhhh ahh, loooove soft as an easy chair . . .")? Or some Celine Dion favorite, "A whisper in the moonlight . . ."? No, no, it's not. Occasionally a person just gets tired of all the new crap and the onslaught of new bands and the next fly-by-night sensation and they just want to hear Babs singing, "Like a rose, under the April snow, IIIIIII was always certain love would grow," and stuff. Because it's SO good. You can't deny it. You must relent, Babs' voice is butter and "Evergreen" makes you want to fall in love. It does. Even the most hard-hearted, Harley-riding, hard fightin', hard fartin' man's man's man wants to swoon and fall for someone when he hears Babs belt out the melody of that song.

When Cassi came to visit during the fourth, I was really into listening to these old easy-listening favorites. And I thought it would be really hilarious to have that song or maybe a Conway Twitty song playing when she got into the car at the airport. Stoker agreed. So I had it all cued up on the old Ipod (Stoker: "What I want to know is what the hell these songs are doing on your Ipod?"), and Cas was in the car, trapped in the backseat and as we're exiting the airport, the strains of "Evergreen" come lilting out of the car speakers, "Ahhhh ahh ahhhhh ahhh ahh loooooove soft as an easy chair . . ." Two seconds later, she hadn't even finished the first line, Cassi says, "What the hell are you guys listening to? Is this the radio?"

And I kept a straight face.

"Noooo, it's what we're listening to."
"What?" And what she meant here was something more like, "What's happened to you, Nik? You've gotten OLD or something."

So then we put on Conway Twitty "You've Never Been This Far Before," and we tried to tell her that EVERYONE listens to that kind of music in Nashville. Duh. She didn't buy it. But oh man, we got a kick out of it. Playing up being old (Stoker's only 25) and listening to what she would deem crap, because see, she's at that age where you MUST listen to cool music and go to lots of shows and wear band t-shirts and go to music festivals and your cool capital comes from WHAT you like, not what YOU'RE like.

Personally I think my cool capital comes from being so cool that I don't give a shit if someone thinks I'm cool or not, having the breadth to listen to Conway Twitty and Charlie Rich and Dolly and Porter and Babs, in addition to indie favorites like Devotchka, makes me the coolest. Ha ha ha.

Julius Caesar: Impostor or Emperor-Incarnate?

So, recently some divers in France found this, the oldest known bust of Julius Caesar at the bottom of the River Rhone in southern France. But what really happened was, my friend Mike posed for someone during his brief stint in the art program at Utah State, and the student—in a fit of rage because he couldn't get the nose right— flew to France and . . . . dropped it . . . . in the river. Is anyone buying this?

That's really what happened.

The Golden Age of Film

This weekend I realized the truth about movies, again. That’s how life is, I believe, learning the same lessons over and over again until you die, and by that time, hopefully you understand everything that you should.

The truth about movies is that modern films suck. Old films have it all.

Just ask Stoker. Finally, after all these years, I sat down and watched Cool Hand Luke. Stoker watched it with me, but I said “I” in that last sentence because I have known that I ought to watch this film for a long time. At least since my first years in college, but I put it off and put if off, since I’m not a huge Paul Newman fan. I’ve got my Cary Grant, Gregory Peck, and from time to time Rock Hudson and Robert Mitchum (I’ve heard tell that Gary Cooper should be in there somewhere, but I’ve never indulged in a Gary Cooper film). So anyway, I should have known. I should have known better, should have seen Cool Hand Luke a long time ago.

Anyway, Stoker, bless his insight, pointed out that the Coen brothers’ style isn’t really a style at all, it’s a rip off of the techniques from old films. And I mean, the day before we watched Cool Hand Luke (I was very sick this past weekend) I watched (again) North By Northwest and had noticed the same thing. Recently Stoker and I rented and viewed that let down film, No Country for Old Men, and what we loved about it (didn’t make up for what we loathed about it) was the absence of a film score. Older films didn’t have overproduced sounds. Many of them DID have film scores, but there is a distinct absence of, say, a microphone right next to the actor’s mouths, so we don’t have to listen to the suction and sloppy noises of a kiss. C’mon! Who wants to hear the details of a kiss!? No one. It doesn’t ADD to the moment, it’s a distraction!

Anyway, though I love many of the Coen brothers’ movies, I have to say, what I realized this weekend is that I don’t need to overdo it. My first love was correct and true. My first love, which bloomed in junior high and high school, was old films. There was a short period during graduate school when I watched an old Cary Grant show and felt a little embarrassed at its innocence, and I swore I’d never go back. I was cynical and bitter, I thought my eyes had been opened to the real world and that I finally knew what great art was. But I was naïve to assume so much.

The truth is, old films are pure and untouched by the dirty hands of modernity. What directors like Hitchcock couldn’t say outright, they said through implication and innuendo, they crafted a story around what could not be explained and in doing so, shed light on the dark corners of the human psyche. They created meaningful dialogue through what was said as much as what was UNSAID. Their sparse sets and stark images, such as those in North By Northwest (i.e. the scene outside the United Nations), say as much in the positive space as they do in the negative spaces. The color in North By Northwest is gorgeous. Tell me, have you ever seen anything like it?

In any case, I have always known that Stoker is a genius. He understands things and he has ideas about things. I’m an idea-lover. I can’t help it. And when I hear his ideas, I realize I’m madly in love with him all over again. Tonight or tomorrow night, I’ll finally see a Steve McQueen movie. I had this mentor a long time ago who raved about Steve McQueen. All this time I’ve never seen a Steve McQueen film. Can you believe it? It’s nice to still have things to do even though I’ve lived such a long life.

Beautiful Comb-Over. Or Is that a Wig?

I surprised myself last night and watched Celebrity Apprentice. I was bored, eating my salad by myself, and the cats weren't in the mood for conversation, so I turned on the TV. We don't have cable or channel two, ABC. I don't even know what shows run on that channel. At least, I think it's ABC. ABC is channel two in Nashville, right? I don't know. I know I get the nightly news with Katie Couric and the channel with Brian Williams, so whatever that's worth. Guess you have to know your channels and the shows to know what I'm talking about.

Anyway, my favorite thing about the show was watching Donald Trump. I know nothing about this man aside from the fact that he's extremely, embarrassingly wealthy, he was married to a woman name Ivana, and he doesn't care what you think, he's going to comb his hair like that! So I've heard he's an ass on the regular Apprentice and maybe last night diverged from his typical behavior, but I thought he seemed very humane when he fired Stephen Baldwin.

Maybe I'm easily impressed, because I was also impressed by Stephen Baldwin, the way he took the bad news and all that. I would have been in tears and the night would have ended with me screaming obscenities at the Donald and at the camera and at Trace for being such a perfect country gentleman. I guess that's why I do what I do, I can't handle the truth. I'd never make it in a real dog-eat-dog world. Everything would end with me screaming obscenities at everyone.

So Donald. He's real interesting. To his secretary, "GET me the final four in here right NOW!" What a man. A man of action.

This weekend: chicks from the Feed/Co-op whatever it's called. A coop. A rain barrel.

The Great Eva Miller: American Idol in Atlanta

It's no secret that I occasionally give in to my weakness and watch American Idol. I don't like laughing at people who are embarrassing themselves, but hey, you put yourself out there, you're fair game. If you were smart, like the rest of us, you'd know implicitly that you suck. We stay home because we know. But I guess some of us need to be told we bite. This is what happens when you end up with a whole generation of kids who've been told they're great. You can do anything! Just put your mind to it.




Ok. I swear it was a bet. I swear her friends put her up to this. I can't believe she pulled it off. Anyway, it was horrifying at first. But then I just let my inhibitions go and I laughed. Next stop: Jerry Springer.

New Addiction: Guild Wars

The ol' younger sister, Cassi, gave me Guild Wars for Christmas. She gave it to the two of us, Stoker and me, but let's be honest. She really meant it for me. She lives in Omaha and I live in Nashville, and yet we can play the game together. I'm a child of the 80s, so I'm used to the computer, virtual world (remember VR.5? That was a cool show. I wish it had lasted), but still, WHAT the hell?

I'm probably the only one still reeling from the fact that Cas and I can meet up in a completely virtual game world and chat and adventure together. I log in, my guy is standing there (my first character, a ranger, Kail Pinefox -- yeah, I made that up. Stupid? Probably), I check to see if Cas is online, she is, I whisper to her something like, "Hey," and the next thing I know, her mesmer (a character, like a ranger) is running up to me with his little mask and guild cape on. It KILLS me. Then we talk and the conversation floats above our heads in balloons.

"What should we do?"

"I don't know, whatever."

It's just like real life.

"Well, I still need some more ranger skills before we advance out of Ascalon city."

"Ok. Let's go find some. I know where to go."

Of course she does. She's been playing for 8 months.

Anyway, I'm still in love with Morrowind. And I'm also in love with those (ridiculous) books about the vampires, Twilight and New Moon, etc. I admit it. I'm a fool for pop culture these days.

Mainlining Elder Scrolls III: Morrowind

I've made a huge mistake. I bought myself a copy of Morrowind and now I can't stop playing it. If you need me, I'll be in Balmora, pawning dishes, goblets, and vases so I can increase my alchemy skill and maybe afford some spells.

Two days ago I got lost on my way to Mt. Zand. I ran across an escaped Argonian slave and decided to have mercy on the fool (he really is a fool: he says weird things. But maybe that's just the language barrier. And maybe it's because he was emotionally abused as a slave and I'm just an insensitive jerk). Now the two of us are on our way to Ebonheart.

I can't tell if I contracted a disease while in the creepy mountains, but for some reason my character kept wanting to ask the Ashlanders (mountain elves) about disturbing dreams. A bit later I read in a book about vampires (in the game) that people who are becoming vampires report having disturbing dreams. To be on the safe side, I drank a cure disease potion. I don't want to become a vampire. Maybe another time.

If I sound like I have no idea what's going on in the game, it's because I don't. But I love it just the same. Don't try to talk to me when I'm playing. I'm a zombie. Don't even come around once I move on to Oblivion (Elder Scrolls IV). I'm behind the times, but I predict that I'll find its name perfectly descriptive. Stoker will feel like he no longer exists to me once I begin playing it. I'm disgusting. Don't look at me. Yes, that's drool. I forgot to swallow, so sue me.

Has Anyone Seen My Aereogramme Album?

I lost it. How? I don't know. I probably listened to it a billion times and put it in a case with another cd. Then again, I have a sneaking suspicion that Stoker took it to the studio, listened to it in the control room while he did a set up, and then left it there*. Or perhaps someone took it. One of the session players, maybe.

But if they took it, that's OK. It's one of the best albums to have come out in months (probably years) and the more exposure I can get for Craig B (we're old buddies) the better.

OK, so that's not entirely true, that bit about us being old buddies. It's less true than that. It's hardly true. Once at a show in Salt Lake, I hung out with them for five minutes during the "intermission" and I told a horrible story (my forte). After I finished it Craig told me it wasn't a very good anecdote.

He actually said anecdote, a very unpopular word. His use of the word anecdote impressed me, though I'm not sure why -- he clearly has an excellent grasp of the language, as evidenced by the fact that he WRITES SONGS**. And besides, he's from the United Kingdom, and as we all know, people from the other side of the pond have always been able to wield the language more elegantly.

Or maybe it's just the accent.

I'm able to say I've quite nearly been with Aereogramme from the very beginning (yes, thanks to you, Bryan. No really, thanks). So when they finally become immensely popular I'll be able to claim that "I knew them when they had only put out one album and I've been telling you people for years that they rule." And I'll secretly fume that they're no longer "my band." But they deserve to be great and widely listened to and adored, and so I'm willing to make that sacrifice.

So I'm willing to have my Aereogramme albums stolen by new worshippers, but only if it leads to more album sales and more tour dates. Otherwise, if you've found yourself in "accidental" possession of my Aereogramme My Heart Has a Wish that You Would Not Go album, please give it back. If you haven't heard this album, I highly recommend it. Pay special attention to the songs "Living Backwards," "Conscious Life," "Trenches," and "You're Always Welcome." I'm in love with every song on it, but obviously I had to narrow it down for the uninitiated. You understand of course.


*Is it so wrong to blame Stoker for everything?

**Not that writing songs requires an adept wordsmith or anything, as we've seen with songs like "Love Me Do" and "Do Wah Diddy Diddy."

The Simpsons. Tonight!

We're going to see the Simpsons movie tonight. Stoker wanted to go to a midnight showing, but since I had to work today (he did not), I thought that would be unwise. I guess I'm at the age where I think things like, "that would be unwise." Three years ago I would have thought it more important to be one of the first to see the new Simpsons movie. And I would have done anything to hang out with a hottie like Stoker. And then after the movie I would have stayed up until 3 a.m. talking to him, and then risen at 7:45 the next morning to make it to work at 8.

Oh wait, I'm doing that now. I guess I should have just gone to the midnight showing.

It still irks me that Springfield, Tennessee didn't get the world premier. Vermont? C'mon! It doesn't even make any sense, unless their criteria wasn't based on a feasible location for where the Simspons' Springfield is. I'm not sure what their criteria was based on, some homemade video contest or something. But think of all the episodes where they almost reveal where Springfield is. It's the midwest! (Or even midsouth, as in Tennessee.) Vermont?

Remember the episode where Bart's class goes on a field trip to a Civil War site? It's the episode where the PTA disbands. Were ANY Civil War battles fought in Vermont? I'm not one hundred percent sure, but I'm going to have to say, NO.

Remember the episode where Bart, Milhouse, Nelson, and Martin rent a car and go to Knoxville to see the World's Fair? Ok, how long would it take to drive to Knoxville from Vermont? Fifteen hours! Can you imagine four little kids driving for fifteen hours straight, and that's not counting all their stops -- don' t they stop in Branson to see Andy Williams? That's an additional ten hours! A total trip of 1614 miles! I mean, you have to work up to those kinds of distances . . . you don't just drive 26 hours straight the first time you get behind the wheel.

Springfield, Tennessee to Knoxville, Tennessee is about three hours. AND, we have a Shelbyville! FYI, Vermont doesn't have a Shelbyville.

Anyway, Springfield, Tennessee may not have been the BIG, WORLD PREMIER spot, but they had a premier. Or two. I don't know, I didn't really pay attention. I looked into getting tickets, but you had to go up to Springfield last Monday to get them. You couldn't buy them, as far as I know. So, we'll be seeing it tonight.

And unlike SOME people who couldn't help but SPOIL the big Harry Potter surprise (Terry, I mean you), I won't accidentally explain the entire Simpsons movie in detail on my blog. I won't assume that everyone has already seen it, just because I happen to be one of the first to read it. I mean see it. But I will mention whether it's good, crappy, or life-altering. I'm expecting life-altering. Is that too much to hope for?

Kenny Rogers to Foreigner: How Does that Happen?

Right now I have a Foreigner song stuck in my head. It started out as the Kenny Rogers song "Lady," but around the part where he sings, "Lady, I'm your knight in shining armor and I love you," it turned into, "In my life there's been heartache and pain / I don't know if I can face it again / Can't stop now, I've traveled so far / to change this lonely life!" Yeah! "I wanna know what love is! / I want you to show me / I wanna feel what love is! / I know you can show me."

And because I know the Foreigner song better than the Kenny Rogers song, I just kept going with it. It's so sultry. So emotional. But if you really think about it, oh man, does he REALLY want to know what love is? I guess that depends on your definition of love. I, for one, don't think it's something that you're in, it's something that you do.

This morning Stoker started singing "Yesterday" while we were getting ready and I begged him to stop. He wanted to know why I wanted him to stop and I told him because I didn't want the song to get stuck in my head. That song, "Yesterday," ALWAYS gets stuck in my head. And it's such a ridiculous song to begin with. Most songs are ridiculous, you know. But "Yesterday" is more ridiculous than most. All those silly rhymes, so pathetic I won't even mention them. Great, now the song is stuck in my head.

Other crap that gets stuck in my head: the horsey horsey song ("I like to take a horse and buggy / I like to travel through the town") that I learned in third grade, and the donut song too, ("there's a hole in the donut I can see right through"); the AT&T commerical song ("all around the world," or something), which then turns into, "If you wanna change the world shut your mouth and start this minute," from the Cracker song. Very irritating. I'm sure there are about a million others, but I can't remember them right now. That's a good thing.

Harleys and Pool-Whores

Let it be said that loud motorcycles bug the hell out of me. I don't know what happened. There was a time when I thought, "Oooh, cool Harley." But now that everyone has one and now that there isn't a two year waiting list to get a Harley and now that every city great or small has a Harley dealership (my word even the small Valley of Cache has one. I'm just teasing, mixing up the words to give you a hard time, it's really Cache Valley), I think they suck. What sucks about them isn't the motorcycle itself because some of them are still cool. It's the choppers. The ones that go "thwup thwup thwup thwup" all up and down the street. It's the ones that disturb my peaceful reverie at the side café as they roar by.

My question for the riders is, "Who do you think you are?" I guess you think you're the bomb because you can drive around a loud-ass bike. Do you consider yourself different? Do you think you're part of a counterculture? I'm just asking because you don't look cool to me. You're not interesting. You're loud and obnoxious. And just to enlighten you, you look creepy with all those tattoos, the shaved head, and the wife-beater. I don't have time to get to know you, so this will never be proven otherwise.

I guess what happened to me is that I got older. My tolerance for noise and crowds and traffic has gotten lower, probably because I've had to be around those things for so long now. When I was a kid everything was a new experience and I was really into feeling things and seeing things. But now I would like a bit of peace and quiet, a glass of lemonade by the pool with a few other quiet, unassuming types like myself, people who are also drinking ice cold lemonade—or, I'd even allow that they're drinking iced tea—and who are not smoking or wearing bikinis that barely cover their flesh; who are not tanned to a crisp, leathery complexion; who are not sporting a big butt-crack tattoo (you know the kind, the kind that span the cheeks like an arch—yeah, I like to call them butt-crack tattoos just for the hell of it, maybe because for the tattoo to be showing, a butt-crack is almost peeking out too). I realize that some might consider me crass, even as I pontificate against crassness. But let it be said I am not crass just because I say ass and hell. If I am crass, it's for other reasons.

When I think about the annoying people at my apartment pool (whose tiny bikinis barely cover their withered and sagging flesh—it's withered from the sun, not because they're old—and who bring a cooler full of beer and who chain smoke while laying out), I realize they bear the same mentality as the guys with the loud Harleys. They are rooted in materialism. And frankly, I am not a material girl*.


*To a degree. I have my weaknesses. I enjoy a few material pleasures, such as books. I love a new book and will buy one just for the sheer pleasure of finding the book, smelling the new ink and paper, and feeling the weight of it in my hands, and then I won't read it for years. Eventually I do. But the thrill is in the experience of buying it.

Melinda Doolittle Voted Off

Wha- wha- what? I caught the tail end of the results show last night and missed the entire show on Tuesday. But I know three things:

1) Jordin Sparks is annoying and she would have got to me with her obnoxious simpering, cutsey girl cheekey eyelash-batting faces. And that's why she shouldn't have made it this far. In my book her modus operandi is not so different from Sanjaya's. It's true that Jordin can sing better than Sanjaya, and she attempts to come across as bubbly and happy and I'm-so-cute-look-at-me, hee hee, mmm-wah, mmm-wah (those are kisses), vote for me, vote for me; but I see right through her. And I don't like it when someone is transparent. That's why I like Melinda.

2) Paula would have annoyed me with her stupid remarks, while I would have loved Simon's critiques. The only reason to have Randy and Paula on the show is to provide contrast for Simon. No one cares too much about what Randy and Paula say because they say the same thing over and over again. Especially Paula. Of course, it's always a shock when Paula says something not-so-nice and I do love those moments. I'm not a veteran American Idol viewer so I can't say for sure, but it seems like Paula's mean moments are rare, which is precisely why I value them so much. So, maybe I do appreciate Paula after all. Maybe the real reason she bothers me is because it seems like she just copies Randy. For once, just once, I'd really like Paula to go first. Then we'll know for sure. Except then I'd just expect her to confer with Randy before she was on camera.

Has anyone ever found out the reason behind the judges order?

3) Melinda probably ruled on Tuesday night. I don't get it. Wait no, I get it. It's because Blake and Jordin are somehow more attractive, isn't it? When it comes right down to it, girls are judged mainly by their looks, and men . . . well obviously not because Sanjaya got the boot a while ago. It's the whole package, right? America wants a female singer they can feel like making love to. The male voter wants a woman who can really belt a great vocal line, but also who they can wrap their sexual fantasies around. Is that it, do you think? Because honestly -- and we have to be honest about it, now, because these contestants are chattel, not people with feelings -- Melinda isn't as gorgeous and voluptuous as Jordin. And hell! Jordin's only seventeen. Guys love a younger woman, nay, a woman who's really just a girl (except Stoker, who really digs the older woman thing -- God bless Stoker and men who love older women).

It bothers me, because I don't think justice was done last night. All this time I've been really impressed and surprised by the American Idol voters because it has been clear that Melinda is/was the best contestant, and I couldn't believe people would keep voting for her, despite the fact that she is not the best looking. She's got her own beauty and she's got class, something Jordin hasn't got (class, grace, all those things acquired with age and experience).

Jordin makes me feel like I'm watching a Shredded Wheat commercial, the one where the kid has on adult clothes, except it's reversed because Jordin's trying to be all grown up -- like she really loves Shredded Wheat for healthy reasons, not the frosted side -- but she doesn’t know what it means to be grown up. So she nods her head all the time and acts like she's listening and smiles as if she understands, but somehow I don't feel like she does. There's nothing wrong with Jordin being young, except that her mannerisms bug the hell out me. But I've always been one who's irritated by anything I feel is fake -- like fake happiness. I go back and forth because of course I understand that half the time you just have to fake it, because life can be really shitty. So then I fake it myself. But then I get depressed because I'm faking it.

Anyway, in the long run this whole American Idol thing doesn't matter. It's just a nice distraction for me. Tomorrow I will have forgotten today's outrage. And America will probably end up forgetting Jordin Sparks, Melinda Doolittle, and Blake what's-his-name. See, I've forgotten him already.