What is it about certain events that so lodge in your mind that you can instantly recall everything about that moment for decades later? Not the traumatic events, like losing a loved one, or the spectacular events, like watching your college team win a national championship. I mean otherwise completely forgettable events that your brain decides to indelibly etch on your cortex?
I've always been a music nut, so I've heard approximately eleventy-brazilian songs in my life. (Estimate obtained by painstaking guesswork; margin of error = plus/minus .5 eleventy.) Why, back in the eighties, I must have logged 100,000 listens of Foreigner's "Juke Box Hero" alone, thanks to the people who WOULD. NOT. QUIT. PLAYING. IT. in the Enterprise State Junior College student center juke box. To this day, when I heard that opening guitar riff, my left eye starts twitching.
And the vast majority of those song listenings has been as forgotten as "Pink Lady and Jeff" or Coy and Vance, the scab Dukes on "Dukes of Hazzard." But last night, while working on scanning up some retro badness for TOB (The Other Blog), my computer served up the MP3 of Tom Petty's "Refugee" in my wireless headphones. Instantly, I was reminded of the Thursday night I stayed home from band practice (whether it was during Mr. Pinyan's or Mr. Bolich's reign as band director at Samson High School, I can't rightly recall). No excuses, just flat-out played band hooky, which was odd, considering how much I loved band, but sometimes, you've just got to be a rebel, I reckon. I watched "Buck Rogers" on NBC--oh, what Erin Gray did to my flaming adolescent hormones, then went outside to...I don't know, really. It's not like there was a lot to do on the family farm in Hacoda, Alabama, on a Thursday night, or any other time, for that matter.
But for some reason, I ended up outside, rocking the $20 speakers and FM converter in my '74 LTD to Petty's "Refugee." And that's an event that my brain decided needed to be filed between "tying your shoelaces" and "not biting your tongue when you eat." I suspect that when I'm old and gray (yesterday, in other words), I'll still be able to recall that night.
The PC jukebox also served up "Blue Collar Man," by Styx. (That's where the Tommy Shaw part of the post title comes in, in case you didn't know. The news that Styx is playing Birmingham's City Stages music festival, without a single original member, is particularly disgusting for me, a longtime Styxphile.) Even though "Pieces of Eight," the LP that contained "Blue Collar Man," wasn't that great an album, I vividly remember buying the LP in the record shop (my son, in a few years: "What's a 'record shop,' Daddy?") located in the underground section of Northside Mall in Dothan, then staring at that album for what seemed like hours while my mother shopped. And the woman on the album was middle-aged, so it's not like I was ogling Erin Gray.
Also, if I never again hear "Renegade," from that album, I'll die a happier man.
Finally, I'll never hear Thomas Dolby's "She Blinded Me with Science" without thinking of the time I helped (kinda; Robin was a technical genius on such matters, so I pretty much just stood around) my friend Robin Powell install some new, supremely bad Bose speakers in his classic Camaro, then shook the south Alabama ground with "Science," from the cassette "The Golden Age of Wireless." I recently linked up with Robin on Facebook after too many years of non-contact, and he tells me that he remembers that day, too. He also says that his daughters looked at him like he was growing an antler out of his forehead when he told them what a cool song that was. Is. Cool song that is, dangit.
Jacob's only 10 months old, so I doubt he's formed any kind of musical memories like that, but I'm sure they'll come. You can already tell that he likes some Dr. Seuss books better than others, however. "Mr. Brown Can Moo, Can You?" is good, but "Green Eggs and Ham" and "Hop On Pop" really tickle his innards. "Ham" is even better when Daddy gets to emote to the heavens while reading it, and also reads certain sections like John Moschitta. (In case you missed it, I coined a new word yesterday: Seussphonia. The inability to speak in anything but rhymes after prolonged periods of reading Dr. Seuss aloud.)
So he's already formed some opinions, and his tastes are being shaped. I just hope when he's my age and reminiscing on his blog, he doesn't post, "I remember the first time I heard 'Poker Face' and 'Right Round.'"
Forgot to add this: Here's "Refugee," in memory of that long-ago Thursday night.
Monday, March 30, 2009
Grits pie: Don't knock it 'till you've tried it
I know it sounds bad, even to my Southern ears, but lemme tell you. Grits pie is really good, especially if you take a blowtorch and melt a layer of sugar on top, like the fancy cooks do with creme brulees. Which is what I did last night. "Any time you can combine cooking with the use of a miniature flamethrower, take it" has always been one of my guiding principles of life. Recipe for the grits pie, which is like an egg custard but with a little more body, courtesy of Paula "More butter on that butter, please" Deen, bless her heart. You'll have to purchase a blowtorch and experiment with melting the sugar on top of it, if you want to "Dunnify" it.
I actually purchased the blowtorch to insta-roast some barbecued marshmallows, which is something else you shouldn't knock until you've tried. The sugar coating on the pie was just gravy. So to speak.
Moving on.
For quite a while, The Lovely Missus and Mama Dunn have been saying that Jacob is growing up so fast you can see it. But I couldn't see it. If I looked at older pictures of him, ("People say, 'This is a picture of me when I was younger.' Every picture is a picture of you when you were younger." The late, great Mitch Hedberg), I could see that he'd grown in girth and length, and that his head is in better proportion to his body now, but I didn't get that, "Holy Moses, what happened overnight?!" feeling. Until this weekend. TLM took Jacob to visit her folks and some friends Friday night, then returned yesterday afternoon. This morning, I got him out of bed, and I started to check for birthmarks to make sure he was mine. Whence comest this gargantuan baby, who's aged from 10-month-old to post-adolescent in a weekend's span?
Honestly, he acts suddenly and disproportionatly older, and looks suddenly and disproportionately older. I'm accustomed to looking in the mirror and shrieking because my visage has been surreptitiously replaced by that of a much older, much less hirsute, much wrinklier man. I'm not accustomed to my infant boy looking like he's about to say, "So, what about that stimulus package, Father? Is it a crucial boost to the economy, or just FDR-esque floundering that will only worsen and already untenable situation, vis-a-vis the dollar?"
Did he enjoy the weekend?
Yeah. A little.
I actually purchased the blowtorch to insta-roast some barbecued marshmallows, which is something else you shouldn't knock until you've tried. The sugar coating on the pie was just gravy. So to speak.
Moving on.
For quite a while, The Lovely Missus and Mama Dunn have been saying that Jacob is growing up so fast you can see it. But I couldn't see it. If I looked at older pictures of him, ("People say, 'This is a picture of me when I was younger.' Every picture is a picture of you when you were younger." The late, great Mitch Hedberg), I could see that he'd grown in girth and length, and that his head is in better proportion to his body now, but I didn't get that, "Holy Moses, what happened overnight?!" feeling. Until this weekend. TLM took Jacob to visit her folks and some friends Friday night, then returned yesterday afternoon. This morning, I got him out of bed, and I started to check for birthmarks to make sure he was mine. Whence comest this gargantuan baby, who's aged from 10-month-old to post-adolescent in a weekend's span?
Honestly, he acts suddenly and disproportionatly older, and looks suddenly and disproportionately older. I'm accustomed to looking in the mirror and shrieking because my visage has been surreptitiously replaced by that of a much older, much less hirsute, much wrinklier man. I'm not accustomed to my infant boy looking like he's about to say, "So, what about that stimulus package, Father? Is it a crucial boost to the economy, or just FDR-esque floundering that will only worsen and already untenable situation, vis-a-vis the dollar?"
Did he enjoy the weekend?
Yeah. A little.
Thursday, March 26, 2009
It's Friday somewhere
No, no. Not gonna turn this into a "Weeee-hooooo, it's party time post." I'm just saying that, owing to the vicissitudes of time zone distribution, it's already Friday not more than an hour or so east of me. Ergo, I'm posting some stuff for Friday.
As noted in Thursday's post, I have the bad teeth in the marriage, a fact that I consider so very much unfair. The Lovely Missus has white, sparkling teeth. Mine are tetracycline-stained, and make me look, shall we say, exotic. The kind of exotic where people have gray teeth, if there is such a place. Of course, The Lovely Missus never gets cavities.
Furthermore, The Lovely Missus has great gums, even though she wields her toothbrush with a pulsing vengeance while I caress my gums with the loving touch of a Swiss watchmaker. She has excellent gums, and of course mine are racing my hairline to see who dies first.
Life ain't fair, I reckon.
Where do you look, when you're being "spreeeeeeeeeened" and "graunnnnnnnnnnched" and "slurrrrrrrrrrrrrppppppppppppppped" in the dentail chair? If you do as I do, and pick a point in the room that prevents you from having to look the dentist and hygienist in the eye, then you get a lot of, "You doing okay?", as if they're worried you're catatonic with pain. And if Ilook them in the eye, I get the feeling that I'm disconcerting them, perhaps to the point of anger and dentyn destruction.
I had a root canal about a year ago, and those people knew who to throw a dental pulp throwdown, lemme tell you. I sat back in the chair, settled in, and what to my painful eyes should appear but a television in the ceiling! Hallelujah! While the endodontist did his palliatory work, I sat back and watched some Discovery show on sharks. Happy? I could have died.
Side note to those who hear "root canal" and feel its worse than death: I've had two, and neither of them was hard at all. Plus, they give you that sweet, sweet release from the pain. Pain caused, by the way, by the necrotic tissue in your tooth releasing gasses, which push against the nerve tissue. Now, run along and eat your cream of wheat.
Getting back to the dental work I had done, it was on the bottom front teeth, which mean that my bottom lip wouldn't have passed a blood-alcohol test in Moscow. I could barely keep from drooling on myself, and I couldn't say some words very well. Take a look.
Jacob is dealing better with the fact that I sometimes come and go with, to his thinking, no rhyme or reason. Of course, I still have to stop and pick him up sometimes, even if it's just for a minute or two. And, once things are slowed down for the evening, I get in the floor with him and my three four-legged children for a free-for-all. Jacob mostly sits back, watches the fur fly, and squeals with glee. More and more personality emerging, too, like the sly smile he knows can get him out of anything. Here's the bad news--I think he's gonna be like his dad and be a few bubbles off plumb when it comes to humor. Pray for my wife.
Finally, Friday ain't Friday without some weirdness, so here are Karen and Richard Carpenter attempting to communicate with aliens. Seriously. It's "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft," also known as "The Recognized Anthem of World Contact Day." (Had you deduced that this was from the seventies?) You can read about it here, and listen to it here.
As noted in Thursday's post, I have the bad teeth in the marriage, a fact that I consider so very much unfair. The Lovely Missus has white, sparkling teeth. Mine are tetracycline-stained, and make me look, shall we say, exotic. The kind of exotic where people have gray teeth, if there is such a place. Of course, The Lovely Missus never gets cavities.
Furthermore, The Lovely Missus has great gums, even though she wields her toothbrush with a pulsing vengeance while I caress my gums with the loving touch of a Swiss watchmaker. She has excellent gums, and of course mine are racing my hairline to see who dies first.
Life ain't fair, I reckon.
Where do you look, when you're being "spreeeeeeeeeened" and "graunnnnnnnnnnched" and "slurrrrrrrrrrrrrppppppppppppppped" in the dentail chair? If you do as I do, and pick a point in the room that prevents you from having to look the dentist and hygienist in the eye, then you get a lot of, "You doing okay?", as if they're worried you're catatonic with pain. And if Ilook them in the eye, I get the feeling that I'm disconcerting them, perhaps to the point of anger and dentyn destruction.
I had a root canal about a year ago, and those people knew who to throw a dental pulp throwdown, lemme tell you. I sat back in the chair, settled in, and what to my painful eyes should appear but a television in the ceiling! Hallelujah! While the endodontist did his palliatory work, I sat back and watched some Discovery show on sharks. Happy? I could have died.
Side note to those who hear "root canal" and feel its worse than death: I've had two, and neither of them was hard at all. Plus, they give you that sweet, sweet release from the pain. Pain caused, by the way, by the necrotic tissue in your tooth releasing gasses, which push against the nerve tissue. Now, run along and eat your cream of wheat.
Getting back to the dental work I had done, it was on the bottom front teeth, which mean that my bottom lip wouldn't have passed a blood-alcohol test in Moscow. I could barely keep from drooling on myself, and I couldn't say some words very well. Take a look.
Jacob is dealing better with the fact that I sometimes come and go with, to his thinking, no rhyme or reason. Of course, I still have to stop and pick him up sometimes, even if it's just for a minute or two. And, once things are slowed down for the evening, I get in the floor with him and my three four-legged children for a free-for-all. Jacob mostly sits back, watches the fur fly, and squeals with glee. More and more personality emerging, too, like the sly smile he knows can get him out of anything. Here's the bad news--I think he's gonna be like his dad and be a few bubbles off plumb when it comes to humor. Pray for my wife.
Finally, Friday ain't Friday without some weirdness, so here are Karen and Richard Carpenter attempting to communicate with aliens. Seriously. It's "Calling Occupants of Interplanetary Craft," also known as "The Recognized Anthem of World Contact Day." (Had you deduced that this was from the seventies?) You can read about it here, and listen to it here.
Multitasking
Speak not to me of multitasking if you're just running spreadsheet calculations, a browser, Twittering up a storm, poking somebody on Facebook, and stirring your coffee with an earlobe. Multitasking is blogging at 6:30 a.m. with a 10-month-old (exactly, today) climbing up your leg trying to get to the laptop. Especially when that 10-month-old is alternating screeching at me with bouncing his face on the couch cushion while going "da-da-da-da-da-da-da." That, my friends, is multitasking.
Dentist appointment this morning to fill some cavities, which is so wrong. I floss like I'm getting paid for it. The Lovely Missus flosses when she thinks about it. I brush my teeth with the delicate precision of a stagecoach mohel. The Lovely Missus brushes like she's removing grout. So who has the cavities and receding gumline? Me, of course.
The appointment is messing up my blogging schedule, so I might do a real post this afternoon. Have a good Thursday, Sam-I-Am. (Yes, he's in the Seuss Zone. Even the dogs have taken to barking in rhyme.)
Dentist appointment this morning to fill some cavities, which is so wrong. I floss like I'm getting paid for it. The Lovely Missus flosses when she thinks about it. I brush my teeth with the delicate precision of a stagecoach mohel. The Lovely Missus brushes like she's removing grout. So who has the cavities and receding gumline? Me, of course.
The appointment is messing up my blogging schedule, so I might do a real post this afternoon. Have a good Thursday, Sam-I-Am. (Yes, he's in the Seuss Zone. Even the dogs have taken to barking in rhyme.)
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
My eyes are all red (ba dah duh dum DOMP)
My nerves are all jumpy (ba dah duh dum DOMP)
I didn't get no rest (ba dah duh dum DOMP)
Today's gonna be bumpy (ba dah duh dum DOMP)
I got dem lowdown, throwdown, slowdown, blowed-down, baby wouldn't sleep last night blues.
Thankyew. Thank yewverrrrmuch. Y'all can come see me in Clarksdale, Mississippi, all week.
I had trouble getting to sleep, while the progeny had trouble staying asleep, so I'm typing behind eyes that feel grainier than a 110-film picture. I still have some of those old pictures, and one of these days, when Jacob is complaining that his satellite-TV-equipped, nuclear-powered BlackBerry just hosed one of the pictures he shot with its badillion-pixel camera, I'm going to show those pictures to him. Then I'm going to tell him how we used to think it was downright spiffy that you took pictures from a fixed-focus camera with less resolution than the Middle East, illuminated by a flash cube that usually operated correctly about as often as Washington does, then you sent off your pictures somewhere, and waited a few days for them to get back. Then he'll just laugh and say he doesn't care, and he'll just shake his head and go back to looking at nursing home brochures.
An aside to Pres. Obama, who I'm sure reads this blog every morning: Seriously, I counted 336 "uh"s in last night's press conference. Work on that.
I emailed a friend of mine that maybe you could compare the Facebook/MySpace/Twitter craze to the CB radio craze of the seventies, good buddy. He 10-4'ed me, then said he'd catch me on the flip side, to keep the peanut butter out of my ears and watch out for Smokey, come back. Which is to say that you have to wonder if all this isn't going to flame out at some point. Or at least suffer some burnback to where we're not all online, all the time.
That conversation reminded me of this picture. Let me hasten to add that I'm one of those being mocked in this photo, so it's not a case of me jesting at scars when I've never felt a wound (he typed, in his first and most likely last Shakesperean reference). I just think it's hilarious. And I have no idea where it came from, so if I'm trifling with somebody's reproduction rights, let me know and I'll take it down like a yokozuna sumo wrestler on Emo Phillips.
Speaking of sumo, anybody who wants to buy me this table will earn a friend for life.
I should caution, however, that in addition to my becoming your friend for life, you'll also become the target of a designing vendetta from The Lovely Missus, who will track you down and garrote you in your sleep, so weigh both effects before adding that thing to your shopping cart.
Since I thought about the CB radio days, here's the trucker's national anthem. It's Bill Fries, bka C.W. McCall, (kinda) singing "Convoy."
Please check out my other blog, follow my Tweets if you'd like, and, if the mood strikes you, drop a penny or two in the tip jar on the other blog. I'd appreciate all three.
I didn't get no rest (ba dah duh dum DOMP)
Today's gonna be bumpy (ba dah duh dum DOMP)
I got dem lowdown, throwdown, slowdown, blowed-down, baby wouldn't sleep last night blues.
Thankyew. Thank yewverrrrmuch. Y'all can come see me in Clarksdale, Mississippi, all week.
I had trouble getting to sleep, while the progeny had trouble staying asleep, so I'm typing behind eyes that feel grainier than a 110-film picture. I still have some of those old pictures, and one of these days, when Jacob is complaining that his satellite-TV-equipped, nuclear-powered BlackBerry just hosed one of the pictures he shot with its badillion-pixel camera, I'm going to show those pictures to him. Then I'm going to tell him how we used to think it was downright spiffy that you took pictures from a fixed-focus camera with less resolution than the Middle East, illuminated by a flash cube that usually operated correctly about as often as Washington does, then you sent off your pictures somewhere, and waited a few days for them to get back. Then he'll just laugh and say he doesn't care, and he'll just shake his head and go back to looking at nursing home brochures.
An aside to Pres. Obama, who I'm sure reads this blog every morning: Seriously, I counted 336 "uh"s in last night's press conference. Work on that.
I emailed a friend of mine that maybe you could compare the Facebook/MySpace/Twitter craze to the CB radio craze of the seventies, good buddy. He 10-4'ed me, then said he'd catch me on the flip side, to keep the peanut butter out of my ears and watch out for Smokey, come back. Which is to say that you have to wonder if all this isn't going to flame out at some point. Or at least suffer some burnback to where we're not all online, all the time.
That conversation reminded me of this picture. Let me hasten to add that I'm one of those being mocked in this photo, so it's not a case of me jesting at scars when I've never felt a wound (he typed, in his first and most likely last Shakesperean reference). I just think it's hilarious. And I have no idea where it came from, so if I'm trifling with somebody's reproduction rights, let me know and I'll take it down like a yokozuna sumo wrestler on Emo Phillips.
Speaking of sumo, anybody who wants to buy me this table will earn a friend for life.
I should caution, however, that in addition to my becoming your friend for life, you'll also become the target of a designing vendetta from The Lovely Missus, who will track you down and garrote you in your sleep, so weigh both effects before adding that thing to your shopping cart.Since I thought about the CB radio days, here's the trucker's national anthem. It's Bill Fries, bka C.W. McCall, (kinda) singing "Convoy."
Please check out my other blog, follow my Tweets if you'd like, and, if the mood strikes you, drop a penny or two in the tip jar on the other blog. I'd appreciate all three.
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Yep, I'm late
I've been running in molasses all morning. Metaphorical, mental molasses, I mean, not literal molasses, since that stuff can kill you under the right circumstances. (In Mississippi and in Boston. Goodness knows I'm not making fun of the fact that people died from molasses, but you've got to admit that it's comical to contemplate people refusing syrup the rest of their lives because "That's made of the stuff that killed Daddy.")
Just can't get going, is what I'm saying.
But I press on, nonetheless. Never have I let the lack of mental acuity or capability prevent me from broadcasting my fevered thoughts, so I'm not going to start now.
The labors of the 21st-century home office organizer: Rip all your unripped CDs so you can never be more than a few mouse clicks from mountains of music gigabytes, then try to decide which books you can donate to charity, which ones you can try to sell on Amazon or eBay, and which ones you just can't part with. I'm not overly romantic about books, but I will admit to having trouble parting with any I've accumulated, even if I've never read more than a few pages. I doubt I'll ever again be faced with a test from Geology 101, but can I take the chance and dispense with that textbook?
And what about that box of cables that continues to breed and expand? Every time I buy a new electronic doohickey, it comes with cables both proprietary and universal, and I'm paralyzed by the thought of throwing any of them away, lest I one day find that I can't use my USB-powered coffee stirrer to its full potential. (I'm kidding with that coffee-stirrer remark, of course. My coffee-stirrer runs off the 220 outlet I had specially wired into my computer desk.)
It's interesting to watch the two views of housekeeping The Lovely Missus and I have. I've almost never met an artifact I didn't think I'd need to keep, sometimes to the detriment of living space and to the benefit of dust collection. The Lovely Missus, on the other hand, never met an artifact she didn't approach with the same disregard "Star Trek" directors had for red-shirted crewmembers. They know they're gonna get whacked. It's just a matter of time.
Luckily, each of us has grown to moderate the other's excesses. I still glom onto and hoard things longer than I should, and she still goes "Take no prisoners, give no quarter" on things we end up needing later, but the end result is shaping up to be a rather healthy, middle-of-the-road approach to housekeeping. Except for the t-shirts. Nobody touches the t-shirts. You wouldn't like me when you touch the t-shirts.
As my longsuffering wife will tell you, I'm kind of obsessive about my t-shirts, even though I'm now old enough that there are a few I'll only wear around the house. Sometimes, you just age out of the t-shirt demographic, and I don't want to be "that guy."
Jacob is almost walking now, two days shy of his turning 10 months old. He has a plastic lawnmower that he inherited from his cousin Victoria, and if he holds onto it, he can walk a few steps. I've yet to shoot video, but of course you know that it's coming. Oh, and I'm pretty sure he's already figured out he can get away with epic levels of murder as long as he flashes that smile. We're in for a long childhood.
Please check out my other blog, follow my Tweets if you'd like, and, if the mood strikes you, drop a penny or two in the tip jar on the other blog. I'd appreciate all three.
Just can't get going, is what I'm saying.
But I press on, nonetheless. Never have I let the lack of mental acuity or capability prevent me from broadcasting my fevered thoughts, so I'm not going to start now.
The labors of the 21st-century home office organizer: Rip all your unripped CDs so you can never be more than a few mouse clicks from mountains of music gigabytes, then try to decide which books you can donate to charity, which ones you can try to sell on Amazon or eBay, and which ones you just can't part with. I'm not overly romantic about books, but I will admit to having trouble parting with any I've accumulated, even if I've never read more than a few pages. I doubt I'll ever again be faced with a test from Geology 101, but can I take the chance and dispense with that textbook?
And what about that box of cables that continues to breed and expand? Every time I buy a new electronic doohickey, it comes with cables both proprietary and universal, and I'm paralyzed by the thought of throwing any of them away, lest I one day find that I can't use my USB-powered coffee stirrer to its full potential. (I'm kidding with that coffee-stirrer remark, of course. My coffee-stirrer runs off the 220 outlet I had specially wired into my computer desk.)
It's interesting to watch the two views of housekeeping The Lovely Missus and I have. I've almost never met an artifact I didn't think I'd need to keep, sometimes to the detriment of living space and to the benefit of dust collection. The Lovely Missus, on the other hand, never met an artifact she didn't approach with the same disregard "Star Trek" directors had for red-shirted crewmembers. They know they're gonna get whacked. It's just a matter of time.
Luckily, each of us has grown to moderate the other's excesses. I still glom onto and hoard things longer than I should, and she still goes "Take no prisoners, give no quarter" on things we end up needing later, but the end result is shaping up to be a rather healthy, middle-of-the-road approach to housekeeping. Except for the t-shirts. Nobody touches the t-shirts. You wouldn't like me when you touch the t-shirts.
As my longsuffering wife will tell you, I'm kind of obsessive about my t-shirts, even though I'm now old enough that there are a few I'll only wear around the house. Sometimes, you just age out of the t-shirt demographic, and I don't want to be "that guy."Jacob is almost walking now, two days shy of his turning 10 months old. He has a plastic lawnmower that he inherited from his cousin Victoria, and if he holds onto it, he can walk a few steps. I've yet to shoot video, but of course you know that it's coming. Oh, and I'm pretty sure he's already figured out he can get away with epic levels of murder as long as he flashes that smile. We're in for a long childhood.
Please check out my other blog, follow my Tweets if you'd like, and, if the mood strikes you, drop a penny or two in the tip jar on the other blog. I'd appreciate all three.
Sunday, March 22, 2009
Sunday night Monday blogging
Got a passel of deadlines that are all hitting tomorrow, and an interview that I'm actually conducting in person (really looking forward to that; the interviewee is great), so Monday morning isn't going to be very conducive to blogging. Hence the late hour, which I hope doesn't interfere with the usual stellar, life-changing quality 30-of my posts. (Snort.)
Last week, over on TOB (The Other Blog), I mentioned Jack Palance, who before he was Jack was Walter Palance. A loyal reader pointed out that originally, he was Volodymyr Palahniuk, which, if Americans could pronounce, would be an even better tough guy name. But Jack/Walter/Volodymyr had another, more introspective, musical side, a side that you can hear here, ya' hear? If the thought of Jack Palance singing, kinda, "The Green, Green Grass of Home" and "My Elusive Dreams" doesn't make you click, you have no soul.
In other news, I Twittered that my Facebook was now blogging emails to my Myspace, then taking pictures and posting it to Flickr, and I think I broke the Internets. Sorry.
Had an ox in the ditch today, biblically speaking, so I spent darn near all the day in front of this keyboard. Finished one article, after much mailing and mashing of teeth. (It's no typo. I send a lot of emails and I take my thumb and push on my upper incisors when I'm nervous.) The only problem is that the article dealt with Carolina cuisine, and now I'm craving she-crab soup and a dessert from Kaminsky's in Charleston. Or a red velvet cake with cream cheese icing from Kudzu Bakery in Georgetown.
New favorite activity: Not shaving for a day or two, and then tickling Jacob's feet with my whiskers. He wails with glee. He's also figured out that he can grab hold of the dogs' hair if he pretends to not be interested, then fires out his hand like a cobra. A little, cute, smooth-skinned cobra, but a cobra, nonetheless. It's like he's the snake, and he's surrounded by three mongooses. Mongeese. However you say it. Do I look like a mongooseologist?
Still working on branding myself. I'm gonna make this thing work, I tells you. What I don't tells you is that sometimes, it's hard to keep this branding thing from looking as ill-advised an adventure as a Jonas Brothers klezmer album. But I'm still in there plugging, picking up the lunchbox of hope and clocking in at the foundry of the future to stamp out the galvanized sloth of ennui. Or something. It's late.
As always, you can follow me on Twitter, and check out my other blog, where you can even drop a tuppence or farthing or drachma in the tip jar. I'll appreciate all three.
Last week, over on TOB (The Other Blog), I mentioned Jack Palance, who before he was Jack was Walter Palance. A loyal reader pointed out that originally, he was Volodymyr Palahniuk, which, if Americans could pronounce, would be an even better tough guy name. But Jack/Walter/Volodymyr had another, more introspective, musical side, a side that you can hear here, ya' hear? If the thought of Jack Palance singing, kinda, "The Green, Green Grass of Home" and "My Elusive Dreams" doesn't make you click, you have no soul.
In other news, I Twittered that my Facebook was now blogging emails to my Myspace, then taking pictures and posting it to Flickr, and I think I broke the Internets. Sorry.
Had an ox in the ditch today, biblically speaking, so I spent darn near all the day in front of this keyboard. Finished one article, after much mailing and mashing of teeth. (It's no typo. I send a lot of emails and I take my thumb and push on my upper incisors when I'm nervous.) The only problem is that the article dealt with Carolina cuisine, and now I'm craving she-crab soup and a dessert from Kaminsky's in Charleston. Or a red velvet cake with cream cheese icing from Kudzu Bakery in Georgetown.
New favorite activity: Not shaving for a day or two, and then tickling Jacob's feet with my whiskers. He wails with glee. He's also figured out that he can grab hold of the dogs' hair if he pretends to not be interested, then fires out his hand like a cobra. A little, cute, smooth-skinned cobra, but a cobra, nonetheless. It's like he's the snake, and he's surrounded by three mongooses. Mongeese. However you say it. Do I look like a mongooseologist?
Still working on branding myself. I'm gonna make this thing work, I tells you. What I don't tells you is that sometimes, it's hard to keep this branding thing from looking as ill-advised an adventure as a Jonas Brothers klezmer album. But I'm still in there plugging, picking up the lunchbox of hope and clocking in at the foundry of the future to stamp out the galvanized sloth of ennui. Or something. It's late.
As always, you can follow me on Twitter, and check out my other blog, where you can even drop a tuppence or farthing or drachma in the tip jar. I'll appreciate all three.
Thursday, March 19, 2009
Bleary-eyed Friday Posting
My brain hates my body. My brain continually slaps my body around, asking it, "Who's your cortex?! Who's your CORTEX?!" and putting cigarettes out on my body's forehead. The worst bullying comes at night, when, for no reason at all, my bullying brain decides that two or three hours of sleep is plenty for him, and if it's good enough for him, why should he have to sit in the dark while that goldbricking body attempts to recharge? So at 1:30 a.m. or so, my brain becomes the Sergeant Carter to my body's Gomer Pyle. "Up and at 'em, ladies! Moveitmoveitmoveit! We're burning darkness!"
If my body asks for mercy, this is how my brain responds.
Lying in bed trying to go back to sleep doesn't help. That just makes my brain madder and jumpier. So I'm on Facebook at 1 a.m. this morning taking tests to see what "Andy Griffith Show" character I am (Andy), what kind of performer I am in bed (fabulous), and what my IQ is (over 140, if you believe an online test with typographical errors. The same kind of test that calculated what 80s band I was, and concluded that I was the soft rock Beach Boys. Because the Beach Boys were really the quintessential 80s band, and because the neverending stream of Drive-by Truckers, Wrinkle Neck Mules, Webb Wilder, Dan Baird, etc. is a sure sign of a soft rock addict).
I said all that to say that I'm still groggy, and this post will most likely set new records for lameness. I'm fully prepared to refund the full admission price, if you'll just send me a copy of your ticket.
Gonna set new records for randomness, too, because I'm going from my insomnia to an inverted swastika on an old comic book. (No, I don't have a segue, either.) I've been following Golden Age Comic Book Stories in my Google Reader for the last couple of months, and I love it more than peas, to steal a line from a friend of mine. Lots and lots of creepy, interesting, lurid comic book covers, and sometimes whole comic books, as well as other goodness. And while it's never a dull scan, this picture from yesterday made mandible meet hardwood when I saw it.
Not the picture itself, which is retro-cool but not shocking. Check out the insignia just below the title. Yep, that's a swastika, aka, "The Symbol of Good Magazine Reading."
Now, I'm aware that Hitler didn't invent the swastika, and I'm also aware that the swastika on this comic is laid out differently than the Nazi's swastika was. But I never knew that a swastika was a symbol of good magazine reading. Anybody out there have any insight into this?
Until Monday, here's hoping your life is just one long Saturday night, as BR5-49 put it.
If my body asks for mercy, this is how my brain responds.
Lying in bed trying to go back to sleep doesn't help. That just makes my brain madder and jumpier. So I'm on Facebook at 1 a.m. this morning taking tests to see what "Andy Griffith Show" character I am (Andy), what kind of performer I am in bed (fabulous), and what my IQ is (over 140, if you believe an online test with typographical errors. The same kind of test that calculated what 80s band I was, and concluded that I was the soft rock Beach Boys. Because the Beach Boys were really the quintessential 80s band, and because the neverending stream of Drive-by Truckers, Wrinkle Neck Mules, Webb Wilder, Dan Baird, etc. is a sure sign of a soft rock addict).
I said all that to say that I'm still groggy, and this post will most likely set new records for lameness. I'm fully prepared to refund the full admission price, if you'll just send me a copy of your ticket.
Gonna set new records for randomness, too, because I'm going from my insomnia to an inverted swastika on an old comic book. (No, I don't have a segue, either.) I've been following Golden Age Comic Book Stories in my Google Reader for the last couple of months, and I love it more than peas, to steal a line from a friend of mine. Lots and lots of creepy, interesting, lurid comic book covers, and sometimes whole comic books, as well as other goodness. And while it's never a dull scan, this picture from yesterday made mandible meet hardwood when I saw it.
Not the picture itself, which is retro-cool but not shocking. Check out the insignia just below the title. Yep, that's a swastika, aka, "The Symbol of Good Magazine Reading."
Now, I'm aware that Hitler didn't invent the swastika, and I'm also aware that the swastika on this comic is laid out differently than the Nazi's swastika was. But I never knew that a swastika was a symbol of good magazine reading. Anybody out there have any insight into this?
Until Monday, here's hoping your life is just one long Saturday night, as BR5-49 put it.
Remember that time he was funny? Me neither
Evidently, Sacha Baron Cohen/Borat/Bruno has returned to my home state to film more of his hilarious antics. You know, those gut-busting creative works of delicate genius where he takes advantage of the kindness of strangers by making them as uncomfortable as possible and filming it? And everybody laughs and says that if you don't laugh, then it means that you don't have a sense of humor, when in fact it's precisely a sense of humor that prevents your laughing, because this is nothing resembling humor?
Look, I'm a big boy. I can take hits on Alabama. That's both the state and the state university, which I attended. Want to make fun of our football obsession? Bring it on. We're psycho for it. Slag on us for our rural areas? Wait for me, and I'll take you coon-hunting. Think it's hilarious that the Crimson Tide could be in trouble with the NCAA AGAIN? Hit me. I'm braced.
But what Cohen does isn't making fun of Alabama, it's making fun of innocent people. And not ripe targets for satire, either, even though the state doesn't lack for targets. Birmingham's mayor wants to build a ginormous sports dome, an aquarium that's as big as the world's biggest in Atlanta, and bring the Olympics to the city in 2020, all while the county is circling the drain in terms of bankruptcy and he's under indictment for alleged corruption. That's a whole Michael Moore pseodu-documentary right there, and I'll volunteer to pull cables while somebody films it.
Of course, really good satire requires a deft touch and intelligence, and Cohen--why do I need to know this clown's middle name?--has exhibited neither. His "humor" consists of pretending to be a homosexual, or a foreigner, or a foreign homosexual, then going to functions and being foreign or homosexual. In other words, he makes a "Gilligan's Island" script look as original as a previously undiscovered Mark Twain novel.
And he's hung around with Will Ferrell too long, too, because he's even recycling title themes. He's following up his "Borat: Cultural Leanings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan" with "Bruno: Delicious Journeys Through America for the Purpose of Making Heterosexual Males Visibly Uncomfortable in the Presence of a Gay Foreigner in a Mesh T-Shirt." Actually, that's not fair to Will Ferrell, who at least pretends to be playing a different overgrown kid character in his movies. Adam Sandler even tried to do drama, for crying out loud. (Completely true fact: Just as I typed that, Dan Baird and the Yayhoos' "For Cryin' Out Loud" began playing on my computer. Coincidence? Yeah, pretty much, but it's still interesting. To me, at least.) And Johnny Knoxville has the common decency to literally smash his or his minions' gonads, not figuratively do it to strangers. That's right, people, I just made a comparison between Johnny Knoxville and Cohen, and Cohen lost.
Of course, the movie will make multiple millions, and the cognoscenti will say he's a genius, and I'll shake my head a few more times in disgust. Then I'll pull out some of my "Andy Griffith Show" DVDs so I can show Jacob that it is possible to write humor, not just mine fake humor out of others' misfortunes.
On a lighter note, Clarence "Frogman" Henry turns 72 today. Here's his "Ain't Got No Home," which I can never hear often enough. And yes, I'm aware that you'll be singing "Woo, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, oo-ooh" all day. Yer welcome.
Look, I'm a big boy. I can take hits on Alabama. That's both the state and the state university, which I attended. Want to make fun of our football obsession? Bring it on. We're psycho for it. Slag on us for our rural areas? Wait for me, and I'll take you coon-hunting. Think it's hilarious that the Crimson Tide could be in trouble with the NCAA AGAIN? Hit me. I'm braced.
But what Cohen does isn't making fun of Alabama, it's making fun of innocent people. And not ripe targets for satire, either, even though the state doesn't lack for targets. Birmingham's mayor wants to build a ginormous sports dome, an aquarium that's as big as the world's biggest in Atlanta, and bring the Olympics to the city in 2020, all while the county is circling the drain in terms of bankruptcy and he's under indictment for alleged corruption. That's a whole Michael Moore pseodu-documentary right there, and I'll volunteer to pull cables while somebody films it.
Of course, really good satire requires a deft touch and intelligence, and Cohen--why do I need to know this clown's middle name?--has exhibited neither. His "humor" consists of pretending to be a homosexual, or a foreigner, or a foreign homosexual, then going to functions and being foreign or homosexual. In other words, he makes a "Gilligan's Island" script look as original as a previously undiscovered Mark Twain novel.
And he's hung around with Will Ferrell too long, too, because he's even recycling title themes. He's following up his "Borat: Cultural Leanings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan" with "Bruno: Delicious Journeys Through America for the Purpose of Making Heterosexual Males Visibly Uncomfortable in the Presence of a Gay Foreigner in a Mesh T-Shirt." Actually, that's not fair to Will Ferrell, who at least pretends to be playing a different overgrown kid character in his movies. Adam Sandler even tried to do drama, for crying out loud. (Completely true fact: Just as I typed that, Dan Baird and the Yayhoos' "For Cryin' Out Loud" began playing on my computer. Coincidence? Yeah, pretty much, but it's still interesting. To me, at least.) And Johnny Knoxville has the common decency to literally smash his or his minions' gonads, not figuratively do it to strangers. That's right, people, I just made a comparison between Johnny Knoxville and Cohen, and Cohen lost.
Of course, the movie will make multiple millions, and the cognoscenti will say he's a genius, and I'll shake my head a few more times in disgust. Then I'll pull out some of my "Andy Griffith Show" DVDs so I can show Jacob that it is possible to write humor, not just mine fake humor out of others' misfortunes.
On a lighter note, Clarence "Frogman" Henry turns 72 today. Here's his "Ain't Got No Home," which I can never hear often enough. And yes, I'm aware that you'll be singing "Woo, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, oo-ooh" all day. Yer welcome.
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
Wombats! In my town!
And not just any old, run-of-the-mill wombat. Nosirree, these are hairy-nosed wombats, which, as any wombatologist will tell you, are the best kind.
I assure you that picture is completely Photoshop-free. They really look like that. Also, I think that any job that allows you to cuddle wombats pretty much stomps a mudhole in any other job. Unless another job lets you cuddle binturongs. Binturongs are deadly cute, and they smell like popcorn. Why hasn't there been more research into domesticating these animals? Can't Pres. Obama take some of that free time he's using to go on Leno and fill out an NCAA bracket and call for more wombat and binturong domesticating?
Jacob hasn't been to the Birmingham Zoo, because, you know, he can't quite drive and we haven't taken him. But it's close enough to Spring that I'm calling it that (I got the morning paper this morning in shorts!), so we may rectify that shortcoming this weekend. I doubt he'll understand all that much about the zoo, but I want to indoctrinate him into a love for animals at an early age. He's well on his way when it comes to dogs, although our three hairy Pekingeses would appreciate it if he'd hurry up and learn the difference between "pet" and "grab." They're learned to skirt around him when he's sitting on the floor, lest they lose a tiny handful of fur when he latches on like a human cocklebur.
If we do make the zoo trip, you can bet there will be a blizzard of pictures. Digital cameras for the win, as they say. And digital memory, too. If I can shoot roughly 1,000 pictures on a 2-gig memory card, and you can snag a one-TERABYTE hard drive for roughly $125, then you might as well glue the shutter button down and shoot from daylight to dark. It's not like I have to take film down to the processor and pay for each picture.
Getting the morning paper and taking film to the processor. Two things that my son will look on the same way I looked on keying Morse into a telegraph. "People really used to do that?" The digital storm takes no prisoners.
Non sequitur thought of the morning: I use wireless headphones when I have to write and need a little help blocking out background noise. When I do that, I'm always amazed at the little auditory frills, fills, furbelows, and such that I pick up with headphones (real headphones, not earbuds), even on songs that I've heard twelveteen-zillion times. And I'm a music nerd, so I listen to songs really closely. (The Lovely Missus gets justifiably frustrated when I rewind a section of a song and ask, "Do you hear that Hammond organ?") So I pay much closer attention than the average bear. And if I'm just now hearing those things for the first time, it's fair to think that the average listener never notices them. Yet the musicians and producers work hard putting them onto a record--I mean, into a digital file; there's another technology Jacob will never become familiar with. So here's to you, Mr. Work Hard to Get that Pedal Steel Flourish Just Right, Even Though It's Only a Second Long and Most People Will Never Notice It Guy!
I assure you that picture is completely Photoshop-free. They really look like that. Also, I think that any job that allows you to cuddle wombats pretty much stomps a mudhole in any other job. Unless another job lets you cuddle binturongs. Binturongs are deadly cute, and they smell like popcorn. Why hasn't there been more research into domesticating these animals? Can't Pres. Obama take some of that free time he's using to go on Leno and fill out an NCAA bracket and call for more wombat and binturong domesticating?Jacob hasn't been to the Birmingham Zoo, because, you know, he can't quite drive and we haven't taken him. But it's close enough to Spring that I'm calling it that (I got the morning paper this morning in shorts!), so we may rectify that shortcoming this weekend. I doubt he'll understand all that much about the zoo, but I want to indoctrinate him into a love for animals at an early age. He's well on his way when it comes to dogs, although our three hairy Pekingeses would appreciate it if he'd hurry up and learn the difference between "pet" and "grab." They're learned to skirt around him when he's sitting on the floor, lest they lose a tiny handful of fur when he latches on like a human cocklebur.
If we do make the zoo trip, you can bet there will be a blizzard of pictures. Digital cameras for the win, as they say. And digital memory, too. If I can shoot roughly 1,000 pictures on a 2-gig memory card, and you can snag a one-TERABYTE hard drive for roughly $125, then you might as well glue the shutter button down and shoot from daylight to dark. It's not like I have to take film down to the processor and pay for each picture.
Getting the morning paper and taking film to the processor. Two things that my son will look on the same way I looked on keying Morse into a telegraph. "People really used to do that?" The digital storm takes no prisoners.
Non sequitur thought of the morning: I use wireless headphones when I have to write and need a little help blocking out background noise. When I do that, I'm always amazed at the little auditory frills, fills, furbelows, and such that I pick up with headphones (real headphones, not earbuds), even on songs that I've heard twelveteen-zillion times. And I'm a music nerd, so I listen to songs really closely. (The Lovely Missus gets justifiably frustrated when I rewind a section of a song and ask, "Do you hear that Hammond organ?") So I pay much closer attention than the average bear. And if I'm just now hearing those things for the first time, it's fair to think that the average listener never notices them. Yet the musicians and producers work hard putting them onto a record--I mean, into a digital file; there's another technology Jacob will never become familiar with. So here's to you, Mr. Work Hard to Get that Pedal Steel Flourish Just Right, Even Though It's Only a Second Long and Most People Will Never Notice It Guy!
Doesn't feel much like an Irish morning
Jacob slept until 7:25 this morning, which both comforted me and had me on edge. He's usually up by 5, or at most 5:30, and he went to bed at the usual time last night, so that was quite a departure for him. I know he was okay, because I'd gone in and checked on him, plus we've got the video baby monitor, even though I consider the use of it a form of wiretapping. (Joke shamelessly stolen from Steven Wright.) So, while I enjoyed the extra quiet time, I was also jumpier than Sylvester in "Scaredy Cat," wondering if every coo or grunt was indicative of impending consciousness.
I'm not one that gets all het up over St. Patrick's Day, but I couldn't resist the opportunity to combine my progeny with a plastic, green derby.
Which brings me to today's post, which I've recycled and reworked a couple of times. If you've already read it, I apologize for the repetition, and I'll also point out that I've added a few things, so maybe it'll be worth your time. Years ago, for some completely unknown but in retrospect prescient reason, I attempted to set down on paper, or at least pixels, the wisdom I’ve accumulated in my years on Earth. Don’t laugh. I haven't made it this many years without learning a few things. Not many, I’ll grant you that. But some odds and sods have managed to cling to my neurons and synapses, although they had quite a battle, what with having to fight off all those idiotic bits of useless arcana like the words to “The Andy Griffith Show” theme song, verbatim Dennis Miller quips, and the “Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start” Nintendo cheat code. (That's the old Nintendo, not this newfangled Wii thing. In my day, we had blocky graphics and clunky controllers and limited action and when you changed the view in your golf game it took an hour to re-render the scene and we loved it! We couldn't get enough of it!)
One quick caveat: These are just some tidbits that have the teensiest scintilla of value. It’s not like I make decisions solely on them. Other people, much smarter than I, have already written down my real playbook. Now, onward, in no particular order.
Hollywood isn’t real. Whatever you see, hear, or read about that comes from Hollywood, you should view it as coming from a mental institution, and I say that meaning no disrespect to mental institutions, which actually serve a purpose. Sure, there will be a few tidbits worth paying attention to, but for the most part, you should just watch from a distance and be glad you’re not in there.
Anybody who’ll gossip around you will gossip about you.
Look over your shoulder. There’s nobody watching, so it’s okay to fail.
Nobody has to like you. Do what's right and they will like you, but that's an offshoot, not the goal.
In the same vein, happiness isn't the goal of life, it's a byproduct.
Crunchy, not creamy, peanut butter. Coke, not Pepsi. And “unsweet tea” is an oxymoron.
Baser things are no more “real” than higher things. Violence and foul language might be applauded as being “real,” but that’s because it’s easier to write them into a script or song than love or loyalty.
Dogs soften life. Keep them around you. Pet them often.
Things are rarely as bad, or as good, as they seem. So patience is precious to have, painstaking to learn, indispensable in maintaining your sanity, and goes hand-in-hand with perspective.
Never go to a movie labeled “critically acclaimed.” What this means is that some self-important pseudo-intellectuals got together and decided that we peons would have our lives brightened by seeing something that’s not funny, not moving, not understandable, and not interesting. If we could go back in time and whomp the guy who first called abstract art “critically acclaimed,” we’d still have paintings that actually looked like something.
For all intents and purposes, Honda cars last forever. Change the oil and rotate the tires semi-regularly, and they’ll never desert you. (Not really that literary, I know, but it’s the truth.)
Any time you hear the phrase, “It’s not the money, it’s the principle,” it’s the money.
Anything or anyone described in ads as “wacky” or “zany” isn’t either. Certain qualities should just stand out. For instance, we don’t have to say “Crazy” Charles Manson.
The Beatles broke more ground, The Rolling Stones were a better band, but Lynyrd Skynyrd could blow both them off the stage.
An actor/singer usually isn't much of either.
Every single generation believes that their music is better than the next generation’s. Unfortunately, around 1990 or so, this belief became real. Sorry, but except for some standouts that you won’t find on regular radio, good music went underground about then. You’re gonna need to dig to find the good stuff. I’ll help.
Creative types (and your male parental unit is one of them) are vociferous in their defense of their work because they don’t want to work a real job. They may talk about the sanctity of their art, their poetry or prose, or-—this is the worst-—their “craft,” but what they’re really saying is, “Keep believing this fiction. I really don’t want to go back to working at Wal-Mart.”
There’s nothing wrong with working at Wal-Mart.
Practice makes perfect, like it or not. In other words, what you do over and over will become easier and easier, whether that thing is good or bad.
We’re all one stupid mistake from ruining our lives. Don’t let that scare you, because you’re going to mess up, and you’ll learn from those mistakes. Just know that nobody who ever lost a job, or a marriage, or anything else good, started out with the intention of suffering that loss. Nobody ever thinks, “Hey, I know. I’ll linger too long on Youtube and get fired over it.”
If your self-esteem is elevated or lowered one iota because of a sporting event, you’re doing it wrong. As Jerry Seinfeld once said, when fans leaving a game say, “We won!” what they really mean is, “They won!” All the fans did was watch. If you are too high or low after a game, find the nearest children’s hospital and visit it. Five minutes of introspection in those halls and you won’t be able to remember the score of the game, much less the quarterback’s game-losing fumble.
The last item shouldn’t dissuade you from enjoying sports. Just keep them in perspective. And while you’re keeping them in perspective, remember that college football is the only important sport. Everything else is just a game. Especially golf.
If you’re back is hairy enough to poke out over your t-shirt collar, you can never go shirtless.
Don’t ever look down on anybody’s accent, including your own. A Southern accent is no more indicative of a low intellect than a Brooklyn one, and Southern colloquialisms are just as valid as Northern ones. Say “y’all” with pride. As Jason Isbell put it, "Don't worry about losing your accent. A Southern man tells better jokes."
That being said, there is no R in “Washington.”
When you're tempted to lose your cool over something, apply Dunn's Third-World Rule, which states: "You're not allowed to get torqued about a situation unless a third-world resident would." Here are some examples of DTWR in use:
I'm not one that gets all het up over St. Patrick's Day, but I couldn't resist the opportunity to combine my progeny with a plastic, green derby.
Which brings me to today's post, which I've recycled and reworked a couple of times. If you've already read it, I apologize for the repetition, and I'll also point out that I've added a few things, so maybe it'll be worth your time. Years ago, for some completely unknown but in retrospect prescient reason, I attempted to set down on paper, or at least pixels, the wisdom I’ve accumulated in my years on Earth. Don’t laugh. I haven't made it this many years without learning a few things. Not many, I’ll grant you that. But some odds and sods have managed to cling to my neurons and synapses, although they had quite a battle, what with having to fight off all those idiotic bits of useless arcana like the words to “The Andy Griffith Show” theme song, verbatim Dennis Miller quips, and the “Up, Up, Down, Down, Left, Right, Left, Right, B, A, Start” Nintendo cheat code. (That's the old Nintendo, not this newfangled Wii thing. In my day, we had blocky graphics and clunky controllers and limited action and when you changed the view in your golf game it took an hour to re-render the scene and we loved it! We couldn't get enough of it!)One quick caveat: These are just some tidbits that have the teensiest scintilla of value. It’s not like I make decisions solely on them. Other people, much smarter than I, have already written down my real playbook. Now, onward, in no particular order.
Hollywood isn’t real. Whatever you see, hear, or read about that comes from Hollywood, you should view it as coming from a mental institution, and I say that meaning no disrespect to mental institutions, which actually serve a purpose. Sure, there will be a few tidbits worth paying attention to, but for the most part, you should just watch from a distance and be glad you’re not in there.
Anybody who’ll gossip around you will gossip about you.
Look over your shoulder. There’s nobody watching, so it’s okay to fail.
Nobody has to like you. Do what's right and they will like you, but that's an offshoot, not the goal.
In the same vein, happiness isn't the goal of life, it's a byproduct.
Crunchy, not creamy, peanut butter. Coke, not Pepsi. And “unsweet tea” is an oxymoron.
Baser things are no more “real” than higher things. Violence and foul language might be applauded as being “real,” but that’s because it’s easier to write them into a script or song than love or loyalty.
Dogs soften life. Keep them around you. Pet them often.
Things are rarely as bad, or as good, as they seem. So patience is precious to have, painstaking to learn, indispensable in maintaining your sanity, and goes hand-in-hand with perspective.
Never go to a movie labeled “critically acclaimed.” What this means is that some self-important pseudo-intellectuals got together and decided that we peons would have our lives brightened by seeing something that’s not funny, not moving, not understandable, and not interesting. If we could go back in time and whomp the guy who first called abstract art “critically acclaimed,” we’d still have paintings that actually looked like something.
For all intents and purposes, Honda cars last forever. Change the oil and rotate the tires semi-regularly, and they’ll never desert you. (Not really that literary, I know, but it’s the truth.)
Any time you hear the phrase, “It’s not the money, it’s the principle,” it’s the money.
Anything or anyone described in ads as “wacky” or “zany” isn’t either. Certain qualities should just stand out. For instance, we don’t have to say “Crazy” Charles Manson.
The Beatles broke more ground, The Rolling Stones were a better band, but Lynyrd Skynyrd could blow both them off the stage.
An actor/singer usually isn't much of either.
Every single generation believes that their music is better than the next generation’s. Unfortunately, around 1990 or so, this belief became real. Sorry, but except for some standouts that you won’t find on regular radio, good music went underground about then. You’re gonna need to dig to find the good stuff. I’ll help.
Creative types (and your male parental unit is one of them) are vociferous in their defense of their work because they don’t want to work a real job. They may talk about the sanctity of their art, their poetry or prose, or-—this is the worst-—their “craft,” but what they’re really saying is, “Keep believing this fiction. I really don’t want to go back to working at Wal-Mart.”
There’s nothing wrong with working at Wal-Mart.
Practice makes perfect, like it or not. In other words, what you do over and over will become easier and easier, whether that thing is good or bad.
We’re all one stupid mistake from ruining our lives. Don’t let that scare you, because you’re going to mess up, and you’ll learn from those mistakes. Just know that nobody who ever lost a job, or a marriage, or anything else good, started out with the intention of suffering that loss. Nobody ever thinks, “Hey, I know. I’ll linger too long on Youtube and get fired over it.”
If your self-esteem is elevated or lowered one iota because of a sporting event, you’re doing it wrong. As Jerry Seinfeld once said, when fans leaving a game say, “We won!” what they really mean is, “They won!” All the fans did was watch. If you are too high or low after a game, find the nearest children’s hospital and visit it. Five minutes of introspection in those halls and you won’t be able to remember the score of the game, much less the quarterback’s game-losing fumble.
The last item shouldn’t dissuade you from enjoying sports. Just keep them in perspective. And while you’re keeping them in perspective, remember that college football is the only important sport. Everything else is just a game. Especially golf.
If you’re back is hairy enough to poke out over your t-shirt collar, you can never go shirtless.
Don’t ever look down on anybody’s accent, including your own. A Southern accent is no more indicative of a low intellect than a Brooklyn one, and Southern colloquialisms are just as valid as Northern ones. Say “y’all” with pride. As Jason Isbell put it, "Don't worry about losing your accent. A Southern man tells better jokes."
That being said, there is no R in “Washington.”
When you're tempted to lose your cool over something, apply Dunn's Third-World Rule, which states: "You're not allowed to get torqued about a situation unless a third-world resident would." Here are some examples of DTWR in use:
Your Internet connection just winked out in the middle of your posting something to Facebook. You're mad enough to stomp bunnies, but if the same thing happened to Djibouti's version of Joe Citizen, he'd be deliriously happy that he had a computer, electricity, literacy, non-leprous fingers to type, and a lack of dysentery that allowed him to sit in one place and opine on how much he loved crispy-edged pancakes. Ergo, you must remain cool.And finally, everybody you meet on the highway is an idiot.
On the other hand, if your child is sick, or you see grave injustice being perpetrated, Djibouti's Joe Citizen would be upset right along with you, and upset clearance has been granted.
Monday, March 16, 2009
In which Jim freaks out over deadlines and such
My brain is a dichotomy right now. Part of it is Kevin Bacon's Chip Diller character in "Animal House," saying, "Remain calm. All is well." The other part of it is the crowd that Diller is saying his own little serenity prayer to, which is having a mass screaming hissy.
I've got a deadline this afternoon, I'm trying to pick up another assignment that if I do manage to snag will have an extremely short deadline, I had a dentist's appointment this morning, and my office still resembles a flea market after an F5 tornado strike. And I'm working on just a few hours of sleep, since once again, my brain decided to show my body who's boss and refuse to shut down last night.
So pray please forgive me the late post, and the brevity, inanity, and randomness of this post. Worse, it's gonna be one of those lame Larry King-esque "three-dotter" ripoffs. Here's what I mean.
When it comes to screaming female rock lead singers, Linda Perry of 4 Non Blondes was the tops in my book...Why didn't Led Zeppelin ever get around to correcting the misspelled word in their name? I have the same question for the Beatles...I don't know who the fellow was who first picked, dried, steeped, and drank tea was, but he's a stand-up guy, if you ask me...Curly got all the acclaim, but nothing would have worked with Larry's understated eloquence...Why are there no successful British food franchises? Somebody smart could corner the spotted dick and toad-in-the-hole market...People say this Internet thing is here to stay, but it'll get my business when you can take it with you to the bathroom in the morning. Am I right, people?...Dexter's in Phoenix has the best fried spam. Ask to have it "knurled and throttled." Horace will know what you mean...I don't care what everybody else says, I'll never refer to a remote control as a "clicker." That cheapens the majesty of the thing...More tiki, less crime. I'm just saying...Nothing braces me like a mid-morning Listerine gargle...People say that NASCAR drivers only turn left, but I could say the same thing about baseball players. Think about it...All I need to know I learned from "Schoolhouse Rock" and that Timer character...Black coffee? Might as well call it "naked coffee," as far as I'm concerned. I have to have powdered creamer and two of those pink sweetener packets...I changed horses once in the middle of a stream. Don't see what the big deal is..."Mission: Impossible" was the last great television show to have a colon in the title.
Told you it was lame. Until tomorrow.
I've got a deadline this afternoon, I'm trying to pick up another assignment that if I do manage to snag will have an extremely short deadline, I had a dentist's appointment this morning, and my office still resembles a flea market after an F5 tornado strike. And I'm working on just a few hours of sleep, since once again, my brain decided to show my body who's boss and refuse to shut down last night.
So pray please forgive me the late post, and the brevity, inanity, and randomness of this post. Worse, it's gonna be one of those lame Larry King-esque "three-dotter" ripoffs. Here's what I mean.
When it comes to screaming female rock lead singers, Linda Perry of 4 Non Blondes was the tops in my book...Why didn't Led Zeppelin ever get around to correcting the misspelled word in their name? I have the same question for the Beatles...I don't know who the fellow was who first picked, dried, steeped, and drank tea was, but he's a stand-up guy, if you ask me...Curly got all the acclaim, but nothing would have worked with Larry's understated eloquence...Why are there no successful British food franchises? Somebody smart could corner the spotted dick and toad-in-the-hole market...People say this Internet thing is here to stay, but it'll get my business when you can take it with you to the bathroom in the morning. Am I right, people?...Dexter's in Phoenix has the best fried spam. Ask to have it "knurled and throttled." Horace will know what you mean...I don't care what everybody else says, I'll never refer to a remote control as a "clicker." That cheapens the majesty of the thing...More tiki, less crime. I'm just saying...Nothing braces me like a mid-morning Listerine gargle...People say that NASCAR drivers only turn left, but I could say the same thing about baseball players. Think about it...All I need to know I learned from "Schoolhouse Rock" and that Timer character...Black coffee? Might as well call it "naked coffee," as far as I'm concerned. I have to have powdered creamer and two of those pink sweetener packets...I changed horses once in the middle of a stream. Don't see what the big deal is..."Mission: Impossible" was the last great television show to have a colon in the title.
Told you it was lame. Until tomorrow.
Saturday, March 14, 2009
I love that new Kremlin Regiment album!
Dude, you are soooooo a loser if you haven't already bought Kremlin Regiment's "Make Them Happy, Not Gold." Here's the cover.
Only there's no such band as Kremlin Regiment. What you're looking at is "my" album cover, generated via the latest Internet meme I'm aware of. Here's whatcha do.
Only there's no such band as Kremlin Regiment. What you're looking at is "my" album cover, generated via the latest Internet meme I'm aware of. Here's whatcha do.1 - Go to Wikipedia. Hit “random” or click http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random The first random Wikipedia article you get is the name of your band.
2 - Go to “Random quotations” or click http://www.quotationspage.com/random.php3 The last four or five words of the very last quote of the page is the title of your first album.
3 - Go to Flickr and click on “explore the last seven days” or click http://www.flickr.com/explore/interesting/7days Third picture, no matter what it is, will be your album cover.
4 - Use GIMP, Photoshop or similar to put it all together.
And there you have it. I'll admit that it's not easy to read, but Kremlin Regiment have always been about the music, man. Don't you see? Reading is a manmade invention, dude, but music is universal and eternal, and other adjectives that might get me a girl.
It's a departure for this blog, but I'm gonna do it anyway: anybody who makes an album cover and sends it to me gets it posted here. That way, literally ones of people can see it, worldwide.
Make yours today!
Friday, March 13, 2009
And so it begins
Jacob is about 9.5 months old, and except for family and the occasional short visit, we really haven't entertained anybody since he was born. Actually, now that I think about it, that entertainment embargo began a couple of months before he was born, since The Lovely Missus wasn't in the best of health in the latter stages of her pregnancy. But we're biting the bullet and having some ridiculously friendly and nice neighbors over tonight. I've fully warned them that Jacob is actually a tiny superhero, and can turn from babbling, diabetic-coma-causing cutesy baby into The Vomit Volcano in a nanosecond. (The backstory is that his home planet, Pukeulus, was in danger of collapsing in on itself and becoming a black hole because of the accumulated mass of vomit, so his real parents put him on a teeny rocket that landed outside the IHOP near our house. I'd just finished off a Rooty Tooty, Fresh & Fruity breakfast and was waddling to the car, so I brought him home, unaware of the clothes destruction he was capable of causing. I'm the Mindy to his Mork. On the plus side, our three dogs always follow him around, hoping they'll have something interesting to eat off the floor. A paper towel can't hold a candle to three Pekingese tongues when it comes to cleaning regurgitated gack out of a hardwood floor slat.)
Not only are the neighbors ridiculously friendly and nice, but they're also the owners of a French Bulldog that'll make you want to reach through your monitor and pinch him.
Look at that nose, people. Seriously, shouldn't it be illegal for anything on this earth to be that cute? Shouldn't he have to wear a mask, so that you could be warned that the face you're about to see could kill you dead of cuteness? And he's as lovable as he is cute, too.
So tonight, we're going to have friends over for the first time since a few months BB (before baby), and we're going to have Bogey, Penelope, Brutus, and Humphrey all together in the same house. Go big or go home, I always say. Rip that Band-Aid off. Jump in the icy river. Overuse weak metaphors.
I'm cooking gumbo, since the only recipe I have makes enough for a lumberjack convention, and I hate halving recipes to make just enough for the familial unit. I'm pretty much a slapdash kind of dude (our family crest says "Ut Bonus Satis," Latin for "Eh, that's good enough") except for a few things, and recipes are one of them. I loves me some Paula Deen, mainly because she believes a pound of butter needs more butter, but she makes my facial tic act up when she says to "add a little flour" or "stir in just enough cinnamon" or some such. And, while the wannabe-engineer in me says that halving or quartering a recipe is perfectly acceptable, I still have trouble doing it.
The gumbo recipe is pretty killer stuff, if I do say so myself. Plus, I get to use a honkin' big, heavy, cast-iron Dutch oven, which I love. Makes me feel like a rugged outdoorsman, although real rugged outdoorsmen don't get all squicky when their Internet connection winks out, and I'm fairly sure they eschew microwave caramel popcorn, too.
Don't forget that you can follow all my madcap escapades on Twitter now. And a special thanks to the two new followers! Yee-haw!
Until Monday, this is Les Nesman saying good day, and may the good news be yours.
Not only are the neighbors ridiculously friendly and nice, but they're also the owners of a French Bulldog that'll make you want to reach through your monitor and pinch him.
Look at that nose, people. Seriously, shouldn't it be illegal for anything on this earth to be that cute? Shouldn't he have to wear a mask, so that you could be warned that the face you're about to see could kill you dead of cuteness? And he's as lovable as he is cute, too.So tonight, we're going to have friends over for the first time since a few months BB (before baby), and we're going to have Bogey, Penelope, Brutus, and Humphrey all together in the same house. Go big or go home, I always say. Rip that Band-Aid off. Jump in the icy river. Overuse weak metaphors.
I'm cooking gumbo, since the only recipe I have makes enough for a lumberjack convention, and I hate halving recipes to make just enough for the familial unit. I'm pretty much a slapdash kind of dude (our family crest says "Ut Bonus Satis," Latin for "Eh, that's good enough") except for a few things, and recipes are one of them. I loves me some Paula Deen, mainly because she believes a pound of butter needs more butter, but she makes my facial tic act up when she says to "add a little flour" or "stir in just enough cinnamon" or some such. And, while the wannabe-engineer in me says that halving or quartering a recipe is perfectly acceptable, I still have trouble doing it.
The gumbo recipe is pretty killer stuff, if I do say so myself. Plus, I get to use a honkin' big, heavy, cast-iron Dutch oven, which I love. Makes me feel like a rugged outdoorsman, although real rugged outdoorsmen don't get all squicky when their Internet connection winks out, and I'm fairly sure they eschew microwave caramel popcorn, too.
Don't forget that you can follow all my madcap escapades on Twitter now. And a special thanks to the two new followers! Yee-haw!
Until Monday, this is Les Nesman saying good day, and may the good news be yours.
Thursday, March 12, 2009
Yes, you do in fact alter quotes
Here's a confession you won't hear many writers/reporters make: We alter quotes all the time. All the time. And any writer/reporter who denies that is either a liar or has a terrible memory.
Don't get me wrong. I've never knowingly misrepresented anything anyone said at any time, and I never will. (I've also never been accused of doing so.) I've never convoluted a source's words to mean something he didn't, never cast a quote as leaning toward the opposite pole of what the speaker originally said. But I've spoken with captains of industry, academic minds of towering stature, political and civic leaders, public figures accustomed to speaking to reporters, and sources of every other stripe, and I've probably altered quotes from every one of them. I've taken out "er" and "um" and "uh, uh, uh, you know, uh" and every other kind of verbal hitch. I've corrected subject-verb agreements, run-on sentences, unclear antecedents, slang, everything. And I've done this for people from every walk of life, of every intelligence and academic level.
Everybody makes mistakes while speaking. Everybody. Everybody. Unless it's truly pertinent to the situation (you're writing a scathing column about how the local teacher's union president doesn't speak proper English, for example), you clean up those missteps. I used to cover high school sports. Why should I directly quote a 16-year-old football player's hyperanimated remarks made in the glow of a state championship win, and embarrass him and his family? And believe me, I've heard plenty of cringe-inducing statements in that kind of environment. I've also heard off-the-cuff remarks that could have ended more than one career if they had been published, and that I was not told to keep off the record, that I just let slide by my typing fingers. If I'd been writing absolutely verbatim quotes, I'd have included them.
So there's no need for Mobile Press-Register reporter Robert McClendon to write that one of the witnesses to the mass killings in my hometown said, "He wasn't in no hurry." I've seen other direct quotes from Samson residents that had similar grammar. I don't doubt that those are direct quotes. I just think that, considering how a witness to mass murder is telling how he somehow escaped being another victim to that murder, maybe you cut the guy a little slack. Maybe change "no" to "any," just because he'd literally stared down the barrel of a gun, and he'd seen his daughter rush to pick up a four-month-old covered in her mother's and sister's blood, a four-month-old who'd also been shot, and it's just possible that's the kind of thing you don't get over by drinking a cold Coke and resting on the couch for a few minutes. Maybe.
Of all the sad news coming out of Samson, I think what chilled me the most was the quote from Geneva County Sheriff's Deputy Josh Myers, who had been involved in the effort to stop the maniac and only found out later that his wife and 18-month-old daughter were killed, and his four-month-old injured. Myers said, "I feel like I should be able to walk in the house and my wife would be there, my baby girl climbing on me." The night I first read that comment, I went around hugging everybody in my family who wasn't already in bed, and that includes my three dogs.
On a lighter note, my mother took Jacob out for a stroll yesterday. Just like his daddy, he never goes perambulating without his shades.
Don't get me wrong. I've never knowingly misrepresented anything anyone said at any time, and I never will. (I've also never been accused of doing so.) I've never convoluted a source's words to mean something he didn't, never cast a quote as leaning toward the opposite pole of what the speaker originally said. But I've spoken with captains of industry, academic minds of towering stature, political and civic leaders, public figures accustomed to speaking to reporters, and sources of every other stripe, and I've probably altered quotes from every one of them. I've taken out "er" and "um" and "uh, uh, uh, you know, uh" and every other kind of verbal hitch. I've corrected subject-verb agreements, run-on sentences, unclear antecedents, slang, everything. And I've done this for people from every walk of life, of every intelligence and academic level.
Everybody makes mistakes while speaking. Everybody. Everybody. Unless it's truly pertinent to the situation (you're writing a scathing column about how the local teacher's union president doesn't speak proper English, for example), you clean up those missteps. I used to cover high school sports. Why should I directly quote a 16-year-old football player's hyperanimated remarks made in the glow of a state championship win, and embarrass him and his family? And believe me, I've heard plenty of cringe-inducing statements in that kind of environment. I've also heard off-the-cuff remarks that could have ended more than one career if they had been published, and that I was not told to keep off the record, that I just let slide by my typing fingers. If I'd been writing absolutely verbatim quotes, I'd have included them.
So there's no need for Mobile Press-Register reporter Robert McClendon to write that one of the witnesses to the mass killings in my hometown said, "He wasn't in no hurry." I've seen other direct quotes from Samson residents that had similar grammar. I don't doubt that those are direct quotes. I just think that, considering how a witness to mass murder is telling how he somehow escaped being another victim to that murder, maybe you cut the guy a little slack. Maybe change "no" to "any," just because he'd literally stared down the barrel of a gun, and he'd seen his daughter rush to pick up a four-month-old covered in her mother's and sister's blood, a four-month-old who'd also been shot, and it's just possible that's the kind of thing you don't get over by drinking a cold Coke and resting on the couch for a few minutes. Maybe.
Of all the sad news coming out of Samson, I think what chilled me the most was the quote from Geneva County Sheriff's Deputy Josh Myers, who had been involved in the effort to stop the maniac and only found out later that his wife and 18-month-old daughter were killed, and his four-month-old injured. Myers said, "I feel like I should be able to walk in the house and my wife would be there, my baby girl climbing on me." The night I first read that comment, I went around hugging everybody in my family who wasn't already in bed, and that includes my three dogs.
On a lighter note, my mother took Jacob out for a stroll yesterday. Just like his daddy, he never goes perambulating without his shades.
Wednesday, March 11, 2009
Mass murders in your hometown
My hometown is Samson, Alabama, a small city in the southeast part of the state known as the Wiregrass (pronounced "Wargrass" if you're a native), just a few miles from the Florida line. I actually grew up on a family farm about 10 miles from that, but went to school in Samson, and we did most of our business in the town. The population is roughly 2,000, give or take a few. It used to have three red lights, but a few years ago, the central red light was made a caution light. It's a Mayberry of a town. Not that it's perfect, like the fictional home of Andy Taylor, but everybody knows everybody else, everybody is related to everybody else, and nothing much happens other than raising kids, farming, going to football games, and church. Put it this way: Samson is located in Geneva County, which is still dry. If you want to buy alcohol, you go south to cross the Florida line.
I never thought my hometown would make international news, unless some real-life Jed Clampett struck oil or something, and I was fine with that. I now live just south of Jefferson County, Alabama, which has about 1.5 million residents in the metro Birmingham area, and which was in line to become the largest civic bankruptcy in U.S. history until bankruptcies became the hot new fad. The mayor has been justifiably lampooned for acts I'd call buffoonish if that weren't so unfair to perfectly reasonable buffoons everywhere. So international recognition isn't always a good thing.
But my hometown is all over the news for the events of the past afternoon. A 28-year-old resident of the town began a killing rampage in neighboring Kinston (which, at roughly 600 residents, is even tinier than Samson), where he killed his mother, his girlfriend, and his mother's four dogs for good measure, then set fire to the house. Then he drove to Samson, where he killed nine more. Four members of his family were his first targets, then others became targets of opportunity. One woman, whom I marched with in the Samson Tiger Band many years ago, was shot dead when she stepped out of a convenience store there. (Update: Evidently, this isn't the case. The victim had the same name as the woman I knew, but was not the woman I knew.)
(Update: Evidently the news that the victim was too young to be the woman I knew was incorrect. She was in fact the woman I knew. Sorry for the confusion, but as you can imagine, information is still being solidified, so corrections are inevitable.)
The maniac then left Samson and continued on Highway 52 to Geneva, the county seat. According to reports, he was sufficiently armed to kill many more at Reliable Metal Products, a company he had once worked for, but law enforcement officials intervened, and the maniac took his own life without killing anyone else.
One of the law enforcement officials involved in stopping the maniac found out later that his wife and 18-month-old daughter were killed by the maniac, and that his four-month-old had been shot but is expected to live. You can read one of hundreds of full writeups here.
I'm not trying to make dramatic hay out of this tragedy. It's not like I lost close family members or lifelong friends or anything like that. But 11 people murdered in two towns with a total population of 2,600 is just unfathomable. Highway 52 is also Samson's Main Street, and it was shut down yesterday for all the crime scenes. How do the residents deal with that? I once had a car wreck at an intersection near my house, and from that time until the time I moved away, I couldn't drive through that intersection without flinching. How can Samson residents drive down Main Street without remembering what happened there? I graduated with the mayor of the town, who I'm sure never dreamed he'd have to handle a situation like this when he ran for office.
So there's no pithy closer, no flippant remark, no "the rest of the story" to today's blogging. Just pray for the people of Geneva County.
I never thought my hometown would make international news, unless some real-life Jed Clampett struck oil or something, and I was fine with that. I now live just south of Jefferson County, Alabama, which has about 1.5 million residents in the metro Birmingham area, and which was in line to become the largest civic bankruptcy in U.S. history until bankruptcies became the hot new fad. The mayor has been justifiably lampooned for acts I'd call buffoonish if that weren't so unfair to perfectly reasonable buffoons everywhere. So international recognition isn't always a good thing.
But my hometown is all over the news for the events of the past afternoon. A 28-year-old resident of the town began a killing rampage in neighboring Kinston (which, at roughly 600 residents, is even tinier than Samson), where he killed his mother, his girlfriend, and his mother's four dogs for good measure, then set fire to the house. Then he drove to Samson, where he killed nine more. Four members of his family were his first targets, then others became targets of opportunity. One woman, whom I marched with in the Samson Tiger Band many years ago, was shot dead when she stepped out of a convenience store there. (Update: Evidently, this isn't the case. The victim had the same name as the woman I knew, but was not the woman I knew.)
(Update: Evidently the news that the victim was too young to be the woman I knew was incorrect. She was in fact the woman I knew. Sorry for the confusion, but as you can imagine, information is still being solidified, so corrections are inevitable.)
The maniac then left Samson and continued on Highway 52 to Geneva, the county seat. According to reports, he was sufficiently armed to kill many more at Reliable Metal Products, a company he had once worked for, but law enforcement officials intervened, and the maniac took his own life without killing anyone else.
One of the law enforcement officials involved in stopping the maniac found out later that his wife and 18-month-old daughter were killed by the maniac, and that his four-month-old had been shot but is expected to live. You can read one of hundreds of full writeups here.
I'm not trying to make dramatic hay out of this tragedy. It's not like I lost close family members or lifelong friends or anything like that. But 11 people murdered in two towns with a total population of 2,600 is just unfathomable. Highway 52 is also Samson's Main Street, and it was shut down yesterday for all the crime scenes. How do the residents deal with that? I once had a car wreck at an intersection near my house, and from that time until the time I moved away, I couldn't drive through that intersection without flinching. How can Samson residents drive down Main Street without remembering what happened there? I graduated with the mayor of the town, who I'm sure never dreamed he'd have to handle a situation like this when he ran for office.
So there's no pithy closer, no flippant remark, no "the rest of the story" to today's blogging. Just pray for the people of Geneva County.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
I have a follower!
Does this mean I can start a cult now? Although, on second thought, maybe the cult angle isn't the way to go. As comedian Tim Wilson says, one of the hazards of being a cult leader is that every time you get a good crop of followers, the government comes along and wants to kill them. So forget that.
But I--more accurately, this blog--haz a follower. I don't know if you're supposed to keep the identity of such things secret or not, so I'll just say that AL is the first follower, which I appreciate. As I've said, I'm trying to leverage this whole Internet thing into relevance, career-wise, so every click, follow, or RSS subscription helps. Thanks muchly, AL.
You know what's stupid to do, when you've already got twelveteen dozen unfinished projects? Starting another project that will take hours and hours and hours to complete. So of course that's exactly what I did. I've begun scanning all the pictures I and The Lovely Missus have accumulated over the years so that a) we can share them with friends much more efficiently than driving to each friend's house like we had to do previously; b) so that I can burn a DVD or 50 of them, then store those DVDs in a fireproof box for posterity (because succeeding generations need to see pictures of that one time it snowed in March in Alabama, not to mention that party we had in college where everybody pigged out on Bama-Bino Pizza, may it rest in peace); and c) so that I can upload those pictures to my online file backup site. Why yes, I am kinda mental about that kind of thing. Thanks for noticing.
On the plus side, I've got a decently fast scanner, and I'm already learning how to hack it as far as going ahead and stuffing the next picture in while it's still processing. (By the way, that impatient gene has evidently been passed down to my progeny. If things he's interested in don't progress quickly enough for his liking, Jacob starts fidgeting his hands and feet like the Skipper used to when he got frustrated at Gilligan.) So I should be able to finish this by the time I'm 90.
On the negative side, by looking at these pictures, I'm reminded of a hazy yesteryear, where a much more hirsute, much less bloaty Jim roamed the earth, which is funny-sad. And I've found forgotten pictures of people who have died, which is sad-sad. (And now I'm singing the Drive-by Truckers' version of Jim Carroll's "People Who Died." Great. I just earwigged myself.)
Changes a-coming to this blog. Instead of just one epic, life-changing post a day (snort), I'm going to post a few more times a day. Nothing that huge or anything, just the standard-issue Internet detritus. Some of that will include scanned representations of my old incarnation, so if nothing else, it'll give y'all something laugh about.
Forecast high for World Blogging HQ today: 82. Yee-haw!
But I--more accurately, this blog--haz a follower. I don't know if you're supposed to keep the identity of such things secret or not, so I'll just say that AL is the first follower, which I appreciate. As I've said, I'm trying to leverage this whole Internet thing into relevance, career-wise, so every click, follow, or RSS subscription helps. Thanks muchly, AL.
You know what's stupid to do, when you've already got twelveteen dozen unfinished projects? Starting another project that will take hours and hours and hours to complete. So of course that's exactly what I did. I've begun scanning all the pictures I and The Lovely Missus have accumulated over the years so that a) we can share them with friends much more efficiently than driving to each friend's house like we had to do previously; b) so that I can burn a DVD or 50 of them, then store those DVDs in a fireproof box for posterity (because succeeding generations need to see pictures of that one time it snowed in March in Alabama, not to mention that party we had in college where everybody pigged out on Bama-Bino Pizza, may it rest in peace); and c) so that I can upload those pictures to my online file backup site. Why yes, I am kinda mental about that kind of thing. Thanks for noticing.
On the plus side, I've got a decently fast scanner, and I'm already learning how to hack it as far as going ahead and stuffing the next picture in while it's still processing. (By the way, that impatient gene has evidently been passed down to my progeny. If things he's interested in don't progress quickly enough for his liking, Jacob starts fidgeting his hands and feet like the Skipper used to when he got frustrated at Gilligan.) So I should be able to finish this by the time I'm 90.
On the negative side, by looking at these pictures, I'm reminded of a hazy yesteryear, where a much more hirsute, much less bloaty Jim roamed the earth, which is funny-sad. And I've found forgotten pictures of people who have died, which is sad-sad. (And now I'm singing the Drive-by Truckers' version of Jim Carroll's "People Who Died." Great. I just earwigged myself.)
Changes a-coming to this blog. Instead of just one epic, life-changing post a day (snort), I'm going to post a few more times a day. Nothing that huge or anything, just the standard-issue Internet detritus. Some of that will include scanned representations of my old incarnation, so if nothing else, it'll give y'all something laugh about.
Forecast high for World Blogging HQ today: 82. Yee-haw!
Monday, March 9, 2009
I've blogged on clouds from both sides now
Friday night was a first. I've reviewed some 150+ acts for The Birmingham News over the last few years, in every genre from rock to rap to uilleann pipes and bodhran-playing Irish legends the Chieftains. (The Chieftains, by the way, received just the fourth five-star rating I've ever given. The others were Alison Krauss and Union Station, one particularly excellent Drive-by Truckers concert, and Toby Keith. Yep, I said Toby Keith. I'm not going to run out and buy his collected works, but there wasn't a weak spot in the whole night. The man puts on a show.) The reason upper-class stuff hasn't been my bailiwick is that the News' fine arts critic Michael Huebner is the Tiger Woods of upper-class music, and I'm the Carl Spackler of same.
But for whatever reasons, I was asked to review Judy Collins' performance with the Alabama Symphony. While I don't think my review will go down in history as the "Pet Sounds" or "Citizen Kane" of reviewdom, I don't think I completely whiffed. Here's a link, if you're interested.
Collins isn't my cup of musical tea, especially "The Blizzard (The Colorado Song)," which isn't a song as much as it is a free-verse, rambling assemblage of words with some really pretty music playing around it. She could just as easily have made it "The Thesaurus (The Bunch of Words Song)." But I do have some history with her music. In the seventies, when I played trombone for the Samson High School Tiger Band, we played a version of Collins' "Send in the Clowns." (I know it was written by Sondheim, but here I'm giving credit to the person who made it famous, not the composer.) I'd never heard the lyrics, but the darn thing was pretty moving, and Mr. Bolich, the band director, had come up with an excellent arrangement of the song.
I'm deathly allergic to show tunes, so, except for an occasional brush with "Clowns" on a soft rock station (which somebody else was listening to!) or some such, I'd pretty much forgotten it until Friday night when Collins sang it. And boy, am I glad that I never learned the lyrics back when I was a grinning Beavis. For one thing, I think that even back then, I'd have viewed the lyrics as a little pretentious. I mean, it's not like it was "Play That Funky Music, White Boy" or "Chevy Van," or even the greatest song written for a Beach Boy's dead Irish Setter but thought by everybody to be about a girl, "Shannon" by Henry Gross.
But the main reason I'm glad I remained blissfully ignorant of the "Clowns" lyric is the line "Don't you love farce?" Not for one pico-second would that last word have remained "farce" in my juvenile brain. I know that, because not for one pico-second did it remain "farce" in my way-past-juvenile brain Friday night. "Farce" is just too close to "farts." It's comedy gold, and I'm sure that back in my teen years, "Don't you love farts?" would have become an enduring catchphrase. It might still become one. The chance to use "farts" would even have completely obliterated another rich vein of juvenile humor, the "Isn't it queer?" line.
Jacob went to Memphis this weekend to visit his Grandpa Hayes, so there's not a lot to tell on the critter front. However, I do have a picture of him that is the epitome of "Life is good"ness.
My kingdom to live 10 minutes that satisfied with life.
'Til Tuesday.
But for whatever reasons, I was asked to review Judy Collins' performance with the Alabama Symphony. While I don't think my review will go down in history as the "Pet Sounds" or "Citizen Kane" of reviewdom, I don't think I completely whiffed. Here's a link, if you're interested.
Collins isn't my cup of musical tea, especially "The Blizzard (The Colorado Song)," which isn't a song as much as it is a free-verse, rambling assemblage of words with some really pretty music playing around it. She could just as easily have made it "The Thesaurus (The Bunch of Words Song)." But I do have some history with her music. In the seventies, when I played trombone for the Samson High School Tiger Band, we played a version of Collins' "Send in the Clowns." (I know it was written by Sondheim, but here I'm giving credit to the person who made it famous, not the composer.) I'd never heard the lyrics, but the darn thing was pretty moving, and Mr. Bolich, the band director, had come up with an excellent arrangement of the song.
I'm deathly allergic to show tunes, so, except for an occasional brush with "Clowns" on a soft rock station (which somebody else was listening to!) or some such, I'd pretty much forgotten it until Friday night when Collins sang it. And boy, am I glad that I never learned the lyrics back when I was a grinning Beavis. For one thing, I think that even back then, I'd have viewed the lyrics as a little pretentious. I mean, it's not like it was "Play That Funky Music, White Boy" or "Chevy Van," or even the greatest song written for a Beach Boy's dead Irish Setter but thought by everybody to be about a girl, "Shannon" by Henry Gross.
But the main reason I'm glad I remained blissfully ignorant of the "Clowns" lyric is the line "Don't you love farce?" Not for one pico-second would that last word have remained "farce" in my juvenile brain. I know that, because not for one pico-second did it remain "farce" in my way-past-juvenile brain Friday night. "Farce" is just too close to "farts." It's comedy gold, and I'm sure that back in my teen years, "Don't you love farts?" would have become an enduring catchphrase. It might still become one. The chance to use "farts" would even have completely obliterated another rich vein of juvenile humor, the "Isn't it queer?" line.
Jacob went to Memphis this weekend to visit his Grandpa Hayes, so there's not a lot to tell on the critter front. However, I do have a picture of him that is the epitome of "Life is good"ness.
My kingdom to live 10 minutes that satisfied with life.'Til Tuesday.
Friday, March 6, 2009
Of car seats, "Mission: Impossible," and pediatricians
Judy Collins is almost 70. Who knew? She's performing in Birmingham tonight with the Alabama Symphony. "Alabama Symphony? Isn't that a contradiction in terms?" See what I did there? I pre-emptively defused any gratuitous slams on my home state. It's blogging judo, is what it is. Besides, the Alabama Symphony is a fine organization. Its banjo section has been honored at Merlefest, and the washtub basses will send chills up your spine.
Yes! That is twice I've verbally zigged after setting you up for a zagging. My misdirection skills. Let me show you them.
The Jakester's last pediatrician appointment was a week ago, so we took him to see the baby doctor (who looked so precious in his "Chicks dig me" onesie [rimshot]). Pediatricians in general deserve instant sainthood status, but our doc is beyond perfect. But let me just complain about one thing. Baby Doc (not that Baby Doc) has a brand-new office. There's a spacious main waiting room, complete with saltwater fish tank so all the kids can play "Spot the Nemo." There's also a couple of tables with the built-in game things so that kids can amuse themselves without running away with the toys. In the main waiting room, there are two flat-screen TVs playing kiddie fare all day, and there's another in the well waiting room. It's all just wonderfully comforting. And that's what has me torqued.
When I was growing up, long about the Martin van Buren administration, folks didn't take their kids to the pediatrician, they took them to the doctor. That's what he was, "the doctor," and he treated everything from colic to freak barnyard amputations. The nurses wore white hose, nurses shoes, and those beyond-useless pillbox hats. The doctor's office smelled like the Lucky Strikes that were still smoldering in one of the ashtrays and alcohol. It was as sterile and discomforting as a DMV office, and we loved it! We couldn't get enough of it!
But I digress. The pediatrician told us that we needed to bump Jacob up to the next size of car seat, since he had gotten big enough for it. We still needed to keep him rear-facing, though, which was okay with me. I want my son to experience that "Rear-facing seat of the Country Squire station wagon, looking at the back side of road signs" feeling I had growing up. Modern cars have this LATCH system, which makes it tres easy to install a car seat. A couple of clicks, and the child is set for transport. Unfortunately, Cosco, the manufacturer of the car seat we had bought for Jacob, decided to
a) make the instructions--which I was reading!--as obtuse as possible
b) make the illustrations--which I was consulting!--as obtuse as the instructions
c) make the prescribed way of threading the LATCH system as difficult as humanly possible. If the instructions difficulty was X, and the illustrations difficulty Y, then the threading difficulty was XY to the power of infinity.
And it's not like you can take any shortcuts. This is not new sheetrock for the garage, it's the system for securing your offspring in the event of a crash. So I persevered to the end. As a payoff, the seat puts Jacob higher up than the previous one, so he has a Louis XIV, "King of all I survey" viewpoint now, which he likes.
I still couldn't get the cupholder to stay on, though.
Your Friday weirdness comes from Dr. Forrest's Cheeze Factory. It's "Mission: Impossible"'s Barney Collier, Greg Morris, singing numbers like "For Once in My Life," "The Twelfth of Never," and "The Look of Love." Bonus cool points for the cover photo of Greg exhaling Pall Mall smoke through his nostrils. Extra-bonus cool points for faithful readers if they knew that Greg is the father of Phil Morris, aka Jackie Chiles on "Seinfeld." If you didn't know that, it's egregious, outrageous, irresponsible.
See you Monday.
Update: Until just a minute ago, I had no idea that "Pall Mall" was pronounced "Pell Mell." At least it was according to this ad, which you've got to see, if for no other reason that the over-the-top expression of the woman who puffs on a Pall Mall at the end.
Yes! That is twice I've verbally zigged after setting you up for a zagging. My misdirection skills. Let me show you them.
The Jakester's last pediatrician appointment was a week ago, so we took him to see the baby doctor (who looked so precious in his "Chicks dig me" onesie [rimshot]). Pediatricians in general deserve instant sainthood status, but our doc is beyond perfect. But let me just complain about one thing. Baby Doc (not that Baby Doc) has a brand-new office. There's a spacious main waiting room, complete with saltwater fish tank so all the kids can play "Spot the Nemo." There's also a couple of tables with the built-in game things so that kids can amuse themselves without running away with the toys. In the main waiting room, there are two flat-screen TVs playing kiddie fare all day, and there's another in the well waiting room. It's all just wonderfully comforting. And that's what has me torqued.
When I was growing up, long about the Martin van Buren administration, folks didn't take their kids to the pediatrician, they took them to the doctor. That's what he was, "the doctor," and he treated everything from colic to freak barnyard amputations. The nurses wore white hose, nurses shoes, and those beyond-useless pillbox hats. The doctor's office smelled like the Lucky Strikes that were still smoldering in one of the ashtrays and alcohol. It was as sterile and discomforting as a DMV office, and we loved it! We couldn't get enough of it!
But I digress. The pediatrician told us that we needed to bump Jacob up to the next size of car seat, since he had gotten big enough for it. We still needed to keep him rear-facing, though, which was okay with me. I want my son to experience that "Rear-facing seat of the Country Squire station wagon, looking at the back side of road signs" feeling I had growing up. Modern cars have this LATCH system, which makes it tres easy to install a car seat. A couple of clicks, and the child is set for transport. Unfortunately, Cosco, the manufacturer of the car seat we had bought for Jacob, decided to
a) make the instructions--which I was reading!--as obtuse as possible
b) make the illustrations--which I was consulting!--as obtuse as the instructions
c) make the prescribed way of threading the LATCH system as difficult as humanly possible. If the instructions difficulty was X, and the illustrations difficulty Y, then the threading difficulty was XY to the power of infinity.
And it's not like you can take any shortcuts. This is not new sheetrock for the garage, it's the system for securing your offspring in the event of a crash. So I persevered to the end. As a payoff, the seat puts Jacob higher up than the previous one, so he has a Louis XIV, "King of all I survey" viewpoint now, which he likes.
I still couldn't get the cupholder to stay on, though.
Your Friday weirdness comes from Dr. Forrest's Cheeze Factory. It's "Mission: Impossible"'s Barney Collier, Greg Morris, singing numbers like "For Once in My Life," "The Twelfth of Never," and "The Look of Love." Bonus cool points for the cover photo of Greg exhaling Pall Mall smoke through his nostrils. Extra-bonus cool points for faithful readers if they knew that Greg is the father of Phil Morris, aka Jackie Chiles on "Seinfeld." If you didn't know that, it's egregious, outrageous, irresponsible.
See you Monday.
Update: Until just a minute ago, I had no idea that "Pall Mall" was pronounced "Pell Mell." At least it was according to this ad, which you've got to see, if for no other reason that the over-the-top expression of the woman who puffs on a Pall Mall at the end.
Thursday, March 5, 2009
Post the first
Been meaning to start this thing since Jacob was born. He's only nine months old now, so this is actually ahead of my usual procrastination-laden speed. But that's not why you called. Let's commence blogging.
First, an explanation. While, as the title of the blog would indicate, a lot of this will revolve around the raising of my son, Jacob, it's not a baby blog. It's more of a general, life-observing, hopefully interesting blog. Think maybe Charles Kuralt, only not as alcoholic-y and definitely without a second wife.
To catch you up to speed, I'm a new dad who's also an old dad. Which is to say, my aforementioned son is indeed just nine months old, but I passed that mark 44 years and three months ago. I was born the day John F. Kennedy was shot, meaning that two tragic events took place that day. (Actually, three. C.S. Lewis died, too. Aldous Huxley, too, but I don't consider that a tragedy, since I've never spent hours poring over anything Huxley wrote, while Clive Staples has occupied and edified me for years.) Jacob is my first (and unless the urologist had unsteady hands, my only) child. I write for a living, so I figured I'd go ahead and start a blog about my life as a work-from-home, new/old dad.
Here's the toddler. He's the most handsome child ever. I have papers.
My wife, aka The Lovely Missus, helps a little with his raising, as does Grandma Dunn, who lives with us.
He's had a run of ear infections, so we had tubes put in his ears a few weeks ago. If you've ever seen them, "tubes" is a bit of a stretch, since they're minuscule little things, like grommets for a lilliputian tarp. (In the spirit of Dave Barry, I have to point out that "Lilliputian Tarp" would be a good name for a rock band.)
On the way home from the tube inspection, we got some good news of a more rodential nature. A few years ago, we started noticing that a (or some; it's not like they're easy to differentiate) groundhog/s was/were living near the road to our house. Groundhogs, at least in my experience, aren't that common in Alabama, and I loves me some animals, so I was tickled to see the little varmint. While The Lovely Missus was great with child, I resolved to snap some pictures of the 'hog so that my son could peruse them when he was older. I jump in my car, head to Groundhog Hollow, and just as I top the hill, I see a dark mass in the road. Yep, it was a deceased groundhog. All I could do was go back home, grab my shovel, then bury his still-warm body. It's not exaggeration to say that my heart sank. Jacob wouldn't get to see him now, and he wouldn't be brightening up our commutes, either.
Then, last fall, I spied the deceased groundhog's descendant, or maybe a cousin or friend of the family. Whatever he was, he was in the same spot where the dear departed used to roam. You'd have thought I'd seen Bigfoot, so fast did I grab my phone to call The Lovely Missus. Groundhog Hollow had been saved! Quick, get the Pixar people on the phone. I have an idea for a killer story.
But that was the last sighting of any 'hogs. Until today. Jacob was grumbling so he didn't notice, but the 'hog was there on the side of the road, as clear a harbinger of spring as any drab old robin. I'm seriously tempted to put up a "Slow! Groundhog Crossing" sign now.
So there's my initial post on Raising Jacobzona. Welcome. Stop by any time.
First, an explanation. While, as the title of the blog would indicate, a lot of this will revolve around the raising of my son, Jacob, it's not a baby blog. It's more of a general, life-observing, hopefully interesting blog. Think maybe Charles Kuralt, only not as alcoholic-y and definitely without a second wife.
To catch you up to speed, I'm a new dad who's also an old dad. Which is to say, my aforementioned son is indeed just nine months old, but I passed that mark 44 years and three months ago. I was born the day John F. Kennedy was shot, meaning that two tragic events took place that day. (Actually, three. C.S. Lewis died, too. Aldous Huxley, too, but I don't consider that a tragedy, since I've never spent hours poring over anything Huxley wrote, while Clive Staples has occupied and edified me for years.) Jacob is my first (and unless the urologist had unsteady hands, my only) child. I write for a living, so I figured I'd go ahead and start a blog about my life as a work-from-home, new/old dad.
Here's the toddler. He's the most handsome child ever. I have papers.
My wife, aka The Lovely Missus, helps a little with his raising, as does Grandma Dunn, who lives with us.
He's had a run of ear infections, so we had tubes put in his ears a few weeks ago. If you've ever seen them, "tubes" is a bit of a stretch, since they're minuscule little things, like grommets for a lilliputian tarp. (In the spirit of Dave Barry, I have to point out that "Lilliputian Tarp" would be a good name for a rock band.)
On the way home from the tube inspection, we got some good news of a more rodential nature. A few years ago, we started noticing that a (or some; it's not like they're easy to differentiate) groundhog/s was/were living near the road to our house. Groundhogs, at least in my experience, aren't that common in Alabama, and I loves me some animals, so I was tickled to see the little varmint. While The Lovely Missus was great with child, I resolved to snap some pictures of the 'hog so that my son could peruse them when he was older. I jump in my car, head to Groundhog Hollow, and just as I top the hill, I see a dark mass in the road. Yep, it was a deceased groundhog. All I could do was go back home, grab my shovel, then bury his still-warm body. It's not exaggeration to say that my heart sank. Jacob wouldn't get to see him now, and he wouldn't be brightening up our commutes, either.
Then, last fall, I spied the deceased groundhog's descendant, or maybe a cousin or friend of the family. Whatever he was, he was in the same spot where the dear departed used to roam. You'd have thought I'd seen Bigfoot, so fast did I grab my phone to call The Lovely Missus. Groundhog Hollow had been saved! Quick, get the Pixar people on the phone. I have an idea for a killer story.
But that was the last sighting of any 'hogs. Until today. Jacob was grumbling so he didn't notice, but the 'hog was there on the side of the road, as clear a harbinger of spring as any drab old robin. I'm seriously tempted to put up a "Slow! Groundhog Crossing" sign now.
So there's my initial post on Raising Jacobzona. Welcome. Stop by any time.
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