Music

I love The Nerves. This was one of their best.

This song by The Zippers, "You're So Strange" (1977) is very good, too.

The Cell

This is a pretty funny sequence. I am amused, because I've run into that a number of times when working on horror stories -- only I never do pat "no signal" kind of stuff, but come up with other ways that a person can't call their way out of a jam. But it is amusing, because it really does come up as an issue in the era of cell phones everywhere! A related issue is the increased presence of surveillance cameras, at least in urban areas (although not exclusively there, anymore).

Ow.

I think I might've gotten a stress fracture on the outside edge of my left foot. I nailed it the other day, and it hurts like hell when there's any pressure on it. Nothing to be done for it, if it is a stress fracture, since they just have to mend. Just hope there's not a zombie apocalypse over the next few weeks, because I won't be able to run very far. I haven't had one of those since college (stress fracture, not zombie apocalypse), during Tae Kwon Do.

ANTM Roundup: Jessica

So, doe-eyed, babyfaced Jessica finally went down in flames on ANTM. I'm not surprised, really -- she was really pretty, but didn't seem fully able to bring it in the fashion photography. Of course, Tyra et al. can game the results by picking the shittiest pictures for a given model and then critiquing it, which I'm sure they do (since we don't get to see the prospective pictures, we only get to see what they claim was "their best shot.")

Angelea, this season's villainess, coasted through to the final four (as I knew she would), although surely she should've been on the bottom, if they were actually judging on the photographs. Giant-eyebrowed Raina (kind of like Denise Richards on 'roids and prone to saying the annoying "Oh, my lanta!" Which seems like a Diablo Cody witticism, there) was also on the chopping block, but made it through. Krista, the black, man-faced (even by fashion model standards) anorexic, once again sailed through the competition, which seems to have gone right to her head. The other one, Theresa (? I can't remember her name), the so-called "plus-sized" model (what is she, a size 6?) is the other strong contender for the win -- she and Krista appeared to be Heathering the other contestants a bit.

The stand-out moment in last night's episode had Jessica making tacos (?) by, uh, placing the taco shells atop a toaster -- not sure what she had in mind with that. The taco shells promptly caught fire, and she was at a near-total loss of how to tend to it, eventually half-assedly tossed a wet rag on the flaming tacos. After this, I'm thinking of using "tacos on a toaster" in the same way that people used "snakes on a plane" the other year. Just feels right.

The other contestants gave Jessica grief for that, saying "You're a mom, right? Don't you cook?" and she admitted the her husband did most of the cooking. One of the others asked her "Wait, you're a stay-at-home mom who doesn't cook? What DO you do?" I had flashbacks!

There was a photo shoot at the still-there set of Hobbiton, in New Zealand, which I guess they kept hobbitified in the wake of Lord of the Rings. Weirdly, Angelea was like "All the other girls know what this is, am I like the only person in the world who doesn't?" And I'm thinking "Uh, yeah?"

Anyway, next week is the two-hour finale already, so that's that. My dose of trash television!

Lost In Translation

Okay, I tuned out LOST somewhere in the second season, but this list on SLATE amused me. I still maintain that LOST is the biggest flim-flam perpetuated by television writers and producers on an audience in television history. I thought that when I tuned out, and I think it all the more so these days. Maybe they'll brilliantly pull a rabbit out of their hats, but at this point, they'll need to have a big pile of rabbits to do the trick, is my guess. I imagine them pacing around and brainstorming gimmickry to get them out of the the jams they wrote themselves into.

Also, I'm worried about IRON MAN 2 -- so much cross-marketing has been going on with it, so many ads. I see ads for Audi, for Dr. Pepper, for fast food, ads on bus kiosks, ads on the sides of buses. My rule of thumb is usually when so much attention is paid to marketing, it usually means Hollywood's got a clunker on their hands, and they're busy trying to generate a pre-premiere buzz through mass-marketing. The original IRON MAN was an unexpected hit, and didn't have nearly the marketing, of course. That they're doing so much with this one, I dunno. And having Scarlett Johansson in it seems like a risky move. I've always considered her fairly leaden in any role she plays, and having her as the Black Widow seems like a miscasting to me. Maybe it'll be alright, but I am skeptical. We'll see after opening weekend, whether the turnout nosedives, as it usually does if it's based purely on marketing.

Huh.

I saw a coworker crouching in their workstation today. Literally crouching, chair pushed aside. First was a kind of Prince Valiant pose, like a classic lunge position. The other was a crouch.

Chase Seen

Saw an odd thing the other day, while waiting curbside for my bus home: I saw a car chase! There were two vehicles: one was a convertible red BMW driven by two middle-aged men, and their pursuer was in a white Mini Cooper Turbo.

They caught my eye when I saw them sloppy-driving down 60th Street, weaving and zig-zagging. Then the BMW took a hard left (all skidding tires and what-not) and waited at the stop sign, with the Cooper hot on their tail.

The BMW guys were fairly serious in demeanor, weren't laughing it up or anything -- one of them looked like he was huffing and puffing, like he was scared. Not sure WHAT the deal was.

When the traffic let them, the BMW took off, with the Cooper right on them, honking and racing after them. I lost sight of them as they shot off toward Lake Shore Drive. No idea what it was all about.

This older woman was waiting there with me at the stop, and she said "Huh. I thought Mini Cooper drivers were supposed to be all mellow and stuff." and I said "I don't know; I think maybe they're secretly cauldrons of rage or something."

No idea what the heck was going on, but I wish I'd had a camcorder handy to record the weirdness, the stop-go car chase.

Love it

This is funny.

Awake. For now.

I'm wide awake right now, in the mournful moments of the night, right before bedtime. Some days, I feel like fragging Facebook (FB) and just being done with it. While I like seeing people I know doing their things, at other moments, it drives me bananas. The virtuality of it all is troubling and irritating -- people trying to outdo one another with pert status updates, or being all cryptic, that kind of thing. And people being BORING.

My God, yes. So fucking boring. I've fragged something like 17 people from my FB "friends" roster for various Crimes Against Dave. Hah! Some were never around, some were annoying, a few were hurtful, a few were irrelevant, a few made big mistakes with me. Auf. Auf. Auf. Auf. Those were the motivated Aufings. But now, I sometimes feel like just randomly Aufing people, just to mix things up a little. Not that I will, because I don't want to do that to anybody just out of caprice, don't want to be rude -- I'm far likelier to just vanish from the FB and be gone for awhile. Just because it's boring the hell out of me. I'd rather concentrate on where I'm at here and now than maintain a virtual presence. Not to be all curmudgeonly, but seriously. Yawnsville. I think I'm entertaining myself more on this blog these days, anyway.

I think a lot about "Impression Management" when I think about the FB, and how some people work very hard to portray themselves in a certain way. I just post stuff that interests me, that I think others might enjoy. Sometimes I get slagged for it, sometimes people like those things. For me, the FB is a communicative medium more than anything else -- but part of that means there needs to be a good signal-to-noise ratio, and I feel like there's precious little signal out there, just flatlines.

*BWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE*

Like a bunch of people crammed in a room without having very much to say. Don't be boring. Please, please don't be boring. You don't want to do that, because I'll just disappear. And your world will be about 28% less fun than it was when I was in it. As I often say, I BRING the fun. I enjoy life, living, being, seeing, feeling -- all that stuff. I can find the fun almost anywhere. But if I'm the only one banging his cymbals together, well, that's less fun.

I miss my friends. Even friends of old, we maintain an ersatz association through the FB, but we're not really there. So, it's more like a bunch of ghosts crammed in a room, still without having very much to say. We hardly talk, anymore. There's just enough information trickling in that there's the feeling of being informed, without necessarily the need for active engagement.

Boring.

*BWEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE*

I want fun, fucking frolic, and fire, Friend!

Music: Swervedriver, "Flawed"

I just stumbled on a Swervedriver song I'd never heard before. It's "Flawed" from 1991, part of an EP I never had.

It's a good tune, has all the stuff I need from Swervie -- namely, a nice, chunky wash of electric guitars. I saw them play their reunion tour in 2008 at Metro, and it was so worth it. They're not dynamic onstage, but they play fully rocking music that just envelopes you. I really hope their reunion tour brought them enough $ucce$$ that they can sling out a new album. Since they never got their due in the 90s, my hope is that they can perhaps bring their own brand of rock to the 21st century, where they properly belong.

Also, as a bonus, here's a studio recording of "She's Beside Herself." Just glow and flow! Awoooooooo!

And one more, a trippy one for my favorite planet, "Mars."

Drink: Thank You Kindly

Another one from the back of my brain. I can't vouch for it fully, as it's been years. I may need to conduct retesting of these, for mixological rigor...

Thank You Kindly

1 shot Cointreau
1 shot Campari
1 shot Amaretto
2 dashes of Bitters
1 slice of lemon

Pour into a Collins glass and serve over ice and stir a bit and garnish with a slice of lemon.

Drink: Stinking Vicar

The Stinking Vicar was a drink recipe I made from around 2005, maybe 2006, in my first bloggy-blog, one of a half-dozen or more recipes I had there. Sadly, the original formulas are lost to time and space, since I immolated that blog in '06, but here is my rough memory of this one -- keep in mind that I'm drawing from memory, here...

Stinking Vicar

1 shot Cointreau
1 shot Triple Sec
1 bottle Chinotto
3 dashes Bitters
1 maraschino cherry

Pour Cointreau and Triple Sec in a Collins glass over ice. Then pour a bottle of Chinotto over it, and add Bitters. Gently stir. Garnish with a red maraschino cherry.

Feet Under Me

I got my feet under me again, after the blues this afternoon. I sorted out a writing problem that I'd been wrestling with (that always leaves me feeling frustrated and talentless), so that improved my mood immeasurably.

Kick-splash, kick-splash.