Signifying nothing

Middlebrow is over and we're going to watch Sleepy E's The Way of the Puck . (Watch for it coming to a theater near you soon.) We would have started earlier, but the weather is nice and the porch is inviting. It is neighborhood cleanup time and we've finally thrown some things out, including the now deceased Speed Queen (q.v.). Two guys in a robins egg blue 1976 F150 have picked her up and hauled her away. She wasn't even out there for 2 hours. What they will do with her, an utterly destroyed 1972 washing machine, God only knows. Perhaps art.

Found it: Nick Hornby's A Long Way Down . It is a narration by 4 different people, all of whom either have or will commit suicide. It is very good so far.

So I had the pleasure of leaving work early today to make up for a couple of late nights this week, and I'm having what LisaB has come to characterize as an "urban experience." (Pardon me, Lisa, if I got the term wrong.) Rather than go get my haircut as I had planned, I decided to take the train to have curry and find a new book at Sam Weller's . SW now has complimentary wireless, so I got a short americano and sat down at their funktastic tables with a view of patrons and of people on the street: Outside down by an Italian ice cart a woman sits at a table sobbing. She looks homeless and no one around her pays her any attention. Over in the corner, two business men are in the corner negotiating some contract. They are arguing the finer points. A homeless guy in a trucker hat and torn jeans asks for a cup of hot water. They accomodate him. A pair of teens in matching stoner clothes (one with rasta hat, one with wanna-be dredlocks) order cheese danishes an...

Dr. Write got me thinking of The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou again. Like Dr. Write and SleepyE , I found the movie, to be blunt, not good. Like a lot of things I read, hear, or see, being good or bad hasn't stopped my wondering about and analyzing certain things in it. This, therefore, makes me reconsider my value judgment of it. "Not good" does not mean "uninteresting." Ultimately it means that I would prefer not to watch it as entertainment, but it doesn't mean I'm not going to watch it for study or for edification. For example, if I were to throw a Wes Anderson fest or teach a Wes Anderson class, I would not exclude this film, and would, perhaps make use of it to explore tropes that exist in his other films. With that bit of wind-baggery out of the way, here is my ill-formed response to Dr. Write's post on Life Aquatic : I am not really sure what I thought of Life Aquatic . The obscure construction of fatherhood in it didn't make any sen...

Faux Claritin[TM] allergy pills have given me back my super power of being able to get only a few hours sleep and show no ill effects. I know it is a fake super power, since when I stop taking said 24 hour quasi crystal meth (it is mostly pseudafedrine, after all), I will crash and have a nice good window rattling snooze (yes, indeed, I snore loud enough to wake the cows.) I am quite uncertain why they make these pills last for 24 hours, since they have the tendency to keep you on top of your game for all of those 24 hours (aside from some light sleep), particularly at 3 am when one is jolted awake by the pill kicking in again. Ah well, during this time I've been able to listen to The Growing Pains of Adrian Mole on BBC7 . This is a radio rendition of the books by Sue Townsend . Mole is an interesting character: hugely over dramatic like kids are at that age, but not unbelievable. At first he is a perfectly naive narrator, unable to really comprehend what is going on aroun...

Apparently my on-the-cheap remixing of the cranky caller has a fan: I'm emailing you because you linked (back in April?) to a story on Boinboing.net about a woman's cranky voice mail - complaining to the theater company about not posting the time of TWELFTH NIGHT. You also remixed it in Garageband, which was funny, and which inspired me. http://homepage.mac.com/shaindlin/getwithit/FileSharing42.html The original is there, plus a binhexed copy of my remix. I don't have a blog, so I'm just leaving it on my web page - if you want to link to my file sharing page, that would be good. If not, it's no big deal. Thanks! AS

Middlebrow and High Touch Mega Store have been discussing whether poetry is valued by people these days. I've weighed in at Middlebrow's by referring to an essay that was published back in December in The Sun . I inaccurately called it "The Penis That Killed Johson County" but that was wrong. It is entitled " The Penis That Killed Jeffrey City ." (The link is to a PDF file of the essay.) Basically the essay is about the experiences that its author David Romtvedt had teaching poetry in rural Wyoming. Although he does not address libaB's question directly, I believe that it does connect to the notion of poetic value, since he describes a situation that throws poetry right into the real world--a small hardscrable Westen ranch town: The residency had not gone well so far. The students seemed worn out or beaten down and hadn't expressed interest in poetry of any kind, cowboy or otherwise. Even the sky over Jeffrey City looked depressed, as if it were h...

There is probably nothing more boring than reading about the woe and intrigue of blogging templates, but what the hell! Heregoes: This morning I woke to find that for whatever reason the Blogger was now not liking my template. Bascially it was putting the latest entry's title in the proper spot and then putting the entry itself way down the page just below the side bar box. I didn't really want to dig into the style sheet for the page and I could see nothing wrong in the HTML code for the template, so I just decided to bag that craptastic, thrown-together template, and go for something new. (I also temporarily replaced the template with Blogger's most simple one, as Cordelia noted, since that white space annoyed me so. Apparantly the font size on that one was really big for the sight impared.) At first I looked around the web for ready-made templates (my how lazy I have become), but seeing nothing I liked and feeling shame at the thought of using someone else's st...

I put a new front end on the site. The angry sun particularly pleases me, and I don't really know why. For the only reason that I hate to keep searching for the danged links to the fetching movies, I have also put links to them up, goll! (Sorry, I am in a particularly Utonic mood this morning). You will also note a new composition at the top: "A Year and a Day." It is a video composition this time and consists of all the pictures that were on my PowerBook accompanied by a driving The Arcade Fire song. The PowerBook is a year old now and has quite a few pictures in it. I was fiddling with iMovie again, and wondered what would happen if I used stop motion timing to mostly non-stop motion pictures. The results are interesting. The "slide show" plays backwards and forwards--going forward halfway and then backwards. What I find interesting is that it seems to be a different set of pictures backwards. Fetching A!

"Do you have children?" I was asked at a friend's Summer party last night. Such questions in Utah are often signifiers for "are you LDS" but the person I was talking to (based on her previous statements was not LDS and not a native Utahanitian) wasn't probing my religious bent, but, as my quick-wits told me, my relationship status. There were many children present as many of the folks there have children and this was a civilized, kid-friendly party . I read the question, therefore, as a flirtation since I had been flirting with her by mentioning that we had met at a previous party. "No," I said nonchalauntly, dodging a 5 year old who was headed for my plate of hors d'oerves and mug of wine. "I don't see how people can have children. They are so demanding and self-centered. And look what they have to look forward too!" She then proceeded to launch into a diatribe wondering how people could have children in our day and age what wit...

The camping weekend did excluded any work on Sleepy E's "Wookie Pimp" movie suggestion (I have spent 10 seconds working on the script, however, so it is sure to be twice the films of the others, and just as spectacular as the Space Wars adventures since their scripts took just about as much thought). To satisfy your movie needs, however, I did finally manage to finish the final edit of "The Mummy's Revenge." Some of you have seen pre-release edits of this Dr. Zhivagian-like epic (it has a 10 minute running time!) Rest assured I paid close attention to your reactions and ignored every one of them. So, without further ado, here is the official release of The Mummy's Revenge . (Sorry it is a huge file, but I'm pretty dense about proper compression of Quick Time movies, apparently.) Here's the tag line: A movie inspired by Christmas and sure enough to cost its creators 10,000 years in hell.

Ah, camping. Ah the Wasatch in June: all green and in flower, and cold enough at night to render any thoughts of reproduction in the future impossible. Think brass monkey, or a well digger's hind quarters, or the breast of a witch. It was, however, still spectacular, even if folks lost their keys and a squirrel decided the peanuts were his and his alone (only the round ones mind you, not the oddly shaped ones.) And when we got home out in front of the house was the street light from over the street neatly placed on the parking strip. Across the street were the remnants of the pole: it was snapped in 3 places. With the light part on our side was a branch. At first we thought it was from our tree, but on further inspection we saw that it was from the tree nearest to where the light stood. A few moments of CSI and we determined the the light pole had been taken out by someone who was very drunk late last night (the branch had just slightly begun to wilt.) It must have been a spectacu...

I had a friend ask me a baffling question yesterday. He was trying to decide what to get his dad for the upcoming father's day. "In theory, what would you get your dad for father's day," he said after he told me what he was thinking of getting. I was taken aback by the question. I think it was the "in theory" thing that stunned me most. I mean I know he has been dead for 25 years now, but I he did exist and not "in theory." I wasn't going to quible the word, since I know what my friend meant, and that lead to the next depressing thought: I wouldn't even know what to get. I had a clear image of my Dad in my mind at that point, sitting on the tractor in his work shirt. When I was little, maybe 7 or 8, I took a picture of that moment, so the image persists in my head. I immediately thought that I would buy him gloves. Strong leather work gloves. Gloves like he wore back then. "I don't know," I responded wanting to mov...

No Thirsty Thursday this week as the Stingers will be out of town battling it out with the notorious Colorado Sky Sox . (Middlebrow had a commentary on mascots, and I think we've found a really idiotic one in the Sky Sox. What exactly is a sky sox?) In the mean time you can submit your name suggestion for the kinder and gentler Stinger mascot . I was thinking of sending them Hooty MacBoob, but that is a Simpson's rip-off and makes about as much sense as "Sky Sox." Stinger McSting. He needs to have "Mc" or "Mac" in his name I think. If you had a mascot what would it be and what would you name him? What would you name yon Stinger's beast? I think my mascot would be a vicious panther and his name would be Q.T. McWhiskers. (And you thought I was going to say a wookie, didn't you?)

I think I too hastily wrote about my response to yesterday's visit by the OGF. Something compelled me to write about it. It was such an intense emotional response, I think, mixed (not for the first time) with misplaced anger. These emotional things are interesting: nothing is ever straightforward with them. You have all sorts of feelings at once, and suddenly feel like a confused adolescent all over again. Those two sentences sound awfully naive, or at least obvious: an unorignal assessment of the human condition. Conventional prose really fails in situations like this, mostly because what one writes will never catch the situation properly, or will come off as seeming inane at best, and out-right idiotic at worst. It never quite catches the gut churning, throat tightening, eye-bulging, heart pounding desperation of such overwhelming emotional moments. Words lay like wet blankets, smothering the fire. I felt compelled to write about the incident. As I mentioned in the entry itself, ...

I'm am usually never conflicted about writing about things one would deem personal here. The rule is that I tend to avoid doing it since the purpose of this thing (if there is one) is not about the personal save what odd little thoughts rove through my mind. In other words, this is not a confessional/person sort of journal that I exhibit to the public in a most exhibitionist manner. No that is not my nature and even though I won't judge those who have such public journals, I do question their motives. Hell I barely talk about personal things with people I know and I sure as hell am not going to go spilling my guts all over the page. Now following that bad cliche, I must bring another one: the old girlfriend surprise visit shaking my tree story. The visit just happened moments ago, and I was friendly and inquisitive and happy to see her, as she was me, but now I just feel unsettled, distracted and am thinking far too much about what could have been etc. etc. etc, and wha...

Sleepy E's comment about a new possible wookie production got me poking around iTunes on this rainy SLC morning. I had heard a couple of Bobby Byrd's tunes before, and recalled "Hot Pants" when I heared it (its riff has been sampled many times in various hip hop ventures). Byrd, however, doesn't have any albums on iTunes, but instead is in a compilation of James Brown assoctiates called James Brown's Funky People (in two parts.) In this album, however, I found someone more interesting than Bobby Byrd (or even Maceo Parker, who I know a lot more about): Myra Barnes . Barnes was in Brown's troup and had two hit songs "Super Good" (a direct response to Brown's "Super Bad") and "The Message from the Soul Sisters" which has the funkiest piano riff I've heard in a long time. I know it has been sampled somewhere, but I just can't place it.

I'm not exactly sure why, but I was amused by the idea of cubicle workers making weapons out of office supplies . Maybe it is just the idea of seeing Joe the systems guy having to defend the office block with his 60 second shiv or Betty the lead tech writer holding her position at the water cooler with the office bow of death . There is a movie is this.

Assertively Unhip and Middlebrow fear the Stinger. See other pictures at you know where .

The wincing levels at the new Space Wars adventure (which has entirely too few wookies in it) are pretty high: about 20 minutes into the block buster, Darth Anakin of the Frankensteinian performances chops the hands off of Count Fuckyoo (Christopher Lee, poor guy) with his light saber. And what is his next line to the gratefully over-the-top Chancellor Palpatate/Count Serious? "It is against the Jedi code to kill an unarmed man!" Wait three beats. Rim shot.

Sorry that this Wookie production is so large (13 MB) and probably won't play on PCs, but I've been slouchish with my distributions all along, so what's the difference, eh? If there is demand for it, I'll be happy to convert it and upload it. I'm thinking that it is the last of the Wookie saga (one short of a sextology). Don't worry! The True Hollywood story of Wookie Rage will be out sooner later.

The aforementioned Wookie movie has dragged me kicking in screaming into confronting love ballads. I chose the great Buddy Holly "True Love Ways" somewhat because Buddy Holly kind of sounds like a wookie (that's not a bad thing) and mostly because I have gushy feelings for that song and its complex view of the world where one can learn "true love ways" (whatever the hell those are.) What, you say? Complex? Isn't this just a simple little love song that (like all love songs) intention is to stir the emotions of a potential mate for either either emotional or sexual purposes? (I won't go into the pantheon of love songs here, but think of "Put your Head on my Shoulders" or "Eternal Flame" and you'll get the idea of what I am talking about.) The melody of "True Love Ways," of course, quite pretty and yearning yet peaceful (like all love songs), so let's look at some of the words: Just you know why why you and I will ...

And you thought I fogot about the wookie: trueloveways.mov (video/quicktime Object) (5.8 MB Qucktime movie).

Ah, wonderful, Utah is going to take up the evolution issue . So, is Mr. Buttars going to push for a revised history curriculum that promotes the belief that Native Americans arrived in the Americas via a boat from Jerusalem?

Brenda said to her son, "It's not true that I wanted a daughter instead of you. Now shut up and put on your ______." UPDATE: We have a winner! With her answer of "training bra" Lisa (sorry not Lisa B.) successfully matched our extra-special super guest star Gary Burghoff and wins a lifetime's supply of Turtle Wax * [TM]! For those who didn't win, we have a fabulous consolation prize ! *That's exactly one can.