balding angrily

I got a very nice note from Frank aka Lynch, the man behind Crackspotting telling me he checks the site regularly.  So, hello Frank!  He assured me that people are reading, and that I ought to install some sort of tracker to find out who’s coming to the site.  If I ever learn how to code for myself, that’s something I’ll try and perhaps maybe think about implementing a plan-of-action for sometime in the future.  I like the idea of peeking back at those who are peeking at me.

In the meantime, J & I are packing and moving, so I don’t have a whole lot of time to think of creative things to say.

So I’ll leave you with this product catalog of a lighting/camera mounting pole that suctions to the floor and ceiling.  I thought it was super-cool when I saw it in Storehouse Furniture, and we intend on installing a screen in our new loft using it.

For anyone reading this who doesn’t know, I’m a moderator over at the Filmspotting boards. We discuss movies and our favorite podcasters, AdamandSam. A while back, they gave their “So Bad They’re Good” Top 5 list. Xanadu was on someone’s list, and I’ve been mulling this over for the months since that podcast. In general I can’t get into camp, but I have some exceptions; Romy and Michelle’s High School Reunion is one.

I’m not a vinyl collector, but I appreciate them. I found my original Like A Virgin album that my brother and sister gave to me on my 14th birthday in the attic this past weekend. Let’s hope I’m not holding on to my old vinyl for nothing. Hopefully Jerry’s nieces will pull these out of our space-age, space-saving device when we’re dead and have a good laugh.

A couple of years ago I was looking through some vinyl bins at a garage sale, and I saw the soundtrack to Dirty Dancing. I made an audible sex noise, like I just had a mini-rubdown. I was moments from pulling out my wallet to buy it when a guy standing behind me said, “Believe me; you don’t want that. I went through my ironic phase also…you don’t want that.” I looked him up and down, saw that he was hipper than me, and put the album back in the bin. When I think back on that exchange, I realize that I wasn’t being ironic. I really, truly would love to have that soundtrack right now. I know this because I’m also sitting here listening to the soundtrack to Xanadu. I don’t like Xanadu because I’m trying to be ironic. I don’t think that Xanadu is so bad it’s good, or so bad it’s bad; I think that Xanadu is so good it’s awesome.

Granted I haven’t seen the movie in years. But when I was young I used to wish that I could fly into the sky powered by a Nagel-esque neon outline surrounding me. I also used to turn around with my arms out hoping that I would turn into Wonder Woman via an exploding belly button.

Clay Aiken’s in the blogosphere today.  Defamer found this.  Words fail me.

People don’t grow up.  People get to about junior-high school or high school age and then stop growing up.  Maybe our vocabularies get larger and some people can solve complex quadratic equations or find a cure for small pox, but for the most part we just stop growing.  It was the end of the evening, and I looked at the dance floor and noticed that all the girls were whooping it up, dancing to Justin Timberlake bringin’ sexy back, throwing their fake pearls in their girlfriend’s faces, lifting their glasses in the air, spilling sugary alcohol on their sequined dresses, laughing with large “o” mouths filled with chicklet-sized teeth in the center while the men awkwardly stepped from foot to foot on the outside.  I’m not being snarky at the expense of straighty; I’m one of those guys that looked around me for any excuse to get off the dance floor.  I pretended like I saw my partner’s brother-in-law waving me over just so I could stop the flop-sweat dripping down my face burning with embarrassment.  It made me think of my first junior high school dance where the theme of the party was “beach day” and we were supposed to wear our bathing suits to school.  On the dance floor was the same scene I just described if you replaced the 30 to 50 year-olds with 12 to 14 year-olds and replaced the submerged flower arrangements and clusters of candle-filled hurricanes with paper streamers and cardboard cutout seashells.  All the girls danced in the center while their boyfriends swayed like metronomes looking up at the fluorescent lights wishing they could be playing Pac Man on their Atari 2600s.  I stood next to two guys that went in a different direction when they saw that my bathing suit was two sizes too small, showing my religion to everyone.

Back to the wedding and turn the camera away from the dance floor to other parts of the party, and you will see two of my best friends.  They’re a couple that from outside appearances are successful, well spoken, culturally sophisticated, and personable.  I expected them to be gregarious and the toast of the party.  Instead I saw they were sitting by themselves on a desert oasis-inspired hammock away from the crowd.  I was struck by their shyness.  They didn’t know many people outside of the wedding party, so they sat by themselves.  I’m a socially awkward wallflower, so when I saw someone else being more reclusive than me, I realized that we’re all little boys and girls sitting on the outskirts of the dance floor simultaneously hoping that someone does and doesn’t ask us to dance.

Rian Johnson in his interviews to promote Brick talked about how high school is a bubble with its own specific social hierarchy, cut off from the larger culture.  It’s my belief that we are very happy to stay there if we can every so often just change the faces and costumes.

David Rakoff is a frequent contributor to This American Life. I read Don’t Get Too Comfortable a couple of months ago, and my reaction to it was mixed. I love how he puts together a sentence. If ever I can put together a sentence half as well as he can, I will be happy. The downside is that sometimes his bitterness stops being funny and starts getting unpleasant. This may be his intention or it may not be. He is like I am a card-carrying liberal, and God bless him for it. However, his rants are sometimes too vehement for even my tastes. Because I want the last sentence of this mini-review to be a positive one, this book had me in stitches more than once.

I wanted to share the best sentence in the whole book, and possibly the best sentence I’ve ever read in my life. In this excerpt David is covering the couture collections in Paris. I’m not sure if it is the fashion week, and I’m too lazy to re-read the whole chapter to find out. Just assume it is.

All of the designers I have met up to this point have been very nice, although upon being introduced to Karl Lagerfeld, he looks me up and down and dismisses me with the not super-kind, “What can you write that hasn’t been written already?”

He’s absolutely right, I have no idea. I can but try. The only thing I can come up with at that moment is that Lagerfeld’s powdered white ponytail has dusted the shoulders of his suit with what looks like dandruff but isn’t.

And here it is.

Also, not yet having undergone his alarming weight loss, and seated on a tiny velvet chair, with his large doughy rump dominating the miniature piece of furniture like a loose, flabby, ass-flavored muffin overrisen from its pan, he resembles a Daumier caricature of some corpulent, inhumane oligarch drawn sitting on a commode, stuffing his greedy throat with the corpses of dead children, while from his other end he shits out huge, malodorous piles of tainted money. How’s that for new and groundbreaking, Mr. L?

The price I paid for the book was worth it just for being able to read that sentence. If it inspires you to buy the book, please do. My partner has another couple of favorite phrases or sentences, but this is mine.

Brendan Higgins is a himbo.  If you follow the wikipedia definition, it’s no surprise that a local news anchor is an “attractive but vacuous man.”  That was the whole premise of Anchorman.

What’s a surprise to me is that I just figured it out this morning.  Every school-day I wake up, scratch my chest and ass, stand in front of the mirror for about ten minutes trying to determine if I can see my ribs better, pinch my love handles trying to determine if they’ve gotten smaller overnight, take a shower, feeling my other parts that might have grown or shrunk, and pour myself a bowl of cereal.  Then I turn on Channel 5 News, watch Brendan and Deborah and chew fiber goodness intending to make my stool nice and loose.  Maybe it’s the cereal or the news, but it works like a charm every day.

This morning Brendan and Deborah had to vamp before it went to weather.  I expect my news to be relatively free of chatter.  I don’t want to know that he went to the game last night right after hearing a story about a person who died in a flash flood.  It’s my thought that Brendan ended up an anchor unwittingly.  He really wants to be the sports guy.  I’m thinking this as I watch Deborah react to his dopey smiley comments with a straight face.  She encourages him.  She thinks his blather is fine for a morning news program.  I said to myself, “what an idiot…but he’s cute.”  And I loves me some dumb, cute guys: Ashton Kutcher, Sean William Scott, Johnny Knoxville: I loves ‘em.  That’s when I realized that Brendan Higgins is a himbo; I like him like I like Joey Tribbiani.

I feel I’ve grown since I’ve had this moment of self-realization.

Also, I love a good person-gets-caught-in-their-car-in-a-flash-flood news story.  I love pictures of cars sinking into water with people standing on top of them.