Did not know this!

I never knew that James Taylor's treacly 70's panty-dropper "Handy Man" was a cover! True!

Probably also a good time to mention that, on listening to The Beatles in its entirety the other day, I realized that I can't enjoy "Blackbird" because I cannot sandblast from my mind the idea of summer camp counselors the world over learning to play this, then playing it at campfires, their sparse beards suffused with an amber glow of twilight. Can't!

Griz!

Acclimating!

How I suffer

What the? How I Won the War isn't available on DVD except in some whatever-zone Australian formatting?

I went through this with Let's Get Lost.

Next they'll tell me that they're not reissuing Uncle Buck in HD.

First degree misdemeanor: Using uncooked ramen for a toupee

How to ruin a tv show/movie franchise

I've not seen any of season 4 of Big Love, though even Chloe Sevigny said it was bad. But I can tell you where the seeds of destruction were sown: some earlier episode where Seyfried and gang are at the compound, and Alby's PoliceStormTrooperTeam start swooping over and the fleeing teens are shown running down a hill. IT LOOKS CHEAP showing characters running down hills. Always. Very Bionic Woman.

Similarly, the Star Trek movie where they blend Kirk and Patrick Stewart generations - I've only seen about ten minutes of this, but there was some sort of supposed-to-be-climactic-yet-so-not bunch of explosions and Picard is trying to get down some stairs on the side of a hill. Lame.

If you want continued success in your chosen entertainment field, avoid HILLS and RUNNING DOWN THEM.

Bands, however, DO look better running:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PHhox4_SeHQ

or

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NwDLpFqyxz8

Inconspicuous!

Three movie plots

I came up with a new one this weekend, so here are my three movie plots I should sell to Spike Jonze or someone.

1.) Peter Scolari becomes famous from Bosom Buddies instead of Tom Hanks. In a world where this happens, there is no internet; instead, people send notes to and fro via model trains that run from house to house and along the skyline. Write a note, pop it in the little coal car or the caboose and off it goes to its destination. There can be some sort of James Ellroy-style murder mystery going on as well, that's not my department. Still, Terry Gilliam can do this one. Imagine the climax of the the story taking place at the Hub where all the trains go in and out, with, I dunno, Steve Buscemi as the Hubmaster guy, and a scene where Peter Scolari is accepting an Oscar on a TV on someone's police station office desk. Tom Hanks (who can also executive produce) makes a comical cameo, groveling to PS in thanks for a, um, cameo. GOLD!

2.) Another mystery: this is like Rear Window, only it's about Francois Truffaut in California in the 70's shooting his scenes for Close Encounters of the Third Kind. One night he hears a brief eldritch shriek and a thud from the next room! More "clues" appear (I don't have time for all these details!), all the while during the day FT continues to shoot his scenes for Spielberg, which call for full-scale replicas of the ship in the desert, the trip to India, all that stuff, with EXACT costumes, etc. Needless to say (?), the whole thing ends with a shootout/chase scene across the alien landing set-piece at Devil's Tower. Again, all this crap needs to be rebuilt to such as exactitude that even the most strict sci-fi geek is dumbstruck. Maybe Henry Winkler can play Truffaut. Spike, get on it!

3.) This is the simplest and could be done by Merchant/Ivory: the 21-year-old Sarah Palin, loopy with anticipation, and her activities the day before Prince's Around the World in a Day comes out. She's a huge fan! Movie can close with her walking up to her local RecordShack as the store opens. "A revelation!" - Rex Reed.

Another day in Southwest Ohio

Man at scene of fire said he was cooking meth, then said it was beans - DDN

This is amazing, natch. Did he actually go "It was meth...er - beans! I meant to say beans!"?

Even better would be an English-style stiff retort, as in "that's a crock of/you're full of":

Officer: "We know you were cooking meth up in here!"

Suspect: (defiantly): "BEANS!"

Weekend!

Image dump!

Let's!:

MS Paint New Yorker Cartoon

"Well, at least we got to hear the new Sade."

D_____, as was

My boss sent me this:

http://www.daytonhistorybooks.com/imagesofdayton.html

From whence I got this:

(Smithville and Watervliet)

And this:

These two images pretty much sum it up, I think.

"It's so lonely on a limb..."

Been reading Simon Goddard's Mozipedia. For about two weeks, off and on. Five hundred pages of Morrissey factoids! Every song dissected...all the crappy UK movies he loved, etc.

Now, I would guess that I may sometimes come off as a twit who is insanely devoted to my obsessions, and that I likely go from dusk to dawn listening only to arcane 80's "classics." Not so! And I would guess, with the advent of the internet (have you heard about this?), I listen to more and more varied music than I ever had! I'm a well-informed sexagenarian! That Lester Bangs thing, about how his greatest dream was to have a house with catacombs underneath, containing every record ever released? It's called the internet!

Like Mr Baker in U & I, I would guess that the works Messrs Morrissey and Marr far fairly low on my list of obsessions. Wait - here is a list (to the chagrin of the Bride, who's already had her eyes glaze over and gone back to that Garance chick or Wonkette):

1. garlic/hot sauce

2. Pet Shop Boys/Smiths/New Order

3. Lester Bangs

4. cats (probably number one, really)

5. Franny and Zooey/fussy italicization

6. Nabokov

7. Bruce Weber

8. counting loose change

9. U & I

10. green zebra tomatoes

So, yeah, Smiths are, like, in a three-way tie for #2!

ANYway, this is a long way of saying that I have been sort of obsessively listening to The Queen is Dead.

Do I need this?:

Overheard

"We don't have any good White-out, do we?"

Rooney? Really?

Like anyone else in 2002-2003, I was pretty indifferent to Rooney. Didn't they have Jason Schwartzman's cousin or Roman Coppola's niece or Talia Shire's valet or something therein? So, other than the single "Blue Side," I ignored them and listened to the Streets ("knock down your aerial," indeed!), prolly.

Well, in swapping files with Gabe last month, I just grabbed the first Rooney record because he had it.

I'm here to say it's great. Certain vocal moments are Weezer-y to an uncomfortable extreme, but when one takes a deep breath and realizes it's better than Weezer, then all is well in the valley again. Super-nifty arrangements, great guitar sounds...pretty surprising. I see they have other records, which I may investigate.

My lunch - sorry!

Being busy taking care of old and failing parents has put a crimp in service, I know. Did I really intend to become one of those outlets that simply posts useless drivel like what I had for lunch?

I would say that I didn't intend that, but suck it:

Snowhenge!

Mucking about

Garden progress pics, as promised:

Basic layout - still to be modified. The dark patch was my inaugural tossing-in of a clump of compost to christen the shiznit. The stones that have fallen over - that was due to gravity, not, as one might think, to some neo-fascist skinheads who saw me perusing a book and wanted to kick some shit in. I THINK???

Some compost-to-be! Mulchy goodness. I even went to Harbor Freight for a tarp, like some sort of non-sweater-wearing-nancy-boy!

Gardening can be fun - even for grotesque, obese late-period Morrissey lookalikes!

No place like loam! Oof!

And this one was NO HELP AT ALL, although we won't have to buy ANY topsoil, just scrape the daily accretions of crud from her filthy peepers:

Daisy!

Here's our friend Cindy's dog Daisy! She goes everywhere and is a very good egg!

Remaking "Mask" now?

Carving shit on rice

Tried to find a picture of this phenomenon, have not as yet - but remember like in, I dunno, a 1978 National Geographic, where there would be some crazy Russian who had carved a picture of, say, the Kremlin on a single grain of rice? Or maybe a wolf or some crazy shit?



Are they still doing this?



If they are, it's likely by some sort of computer-aided laser "etching" or something, which is BULLSHIT!



Here is Gene Simmons painted on a grain of rice, which is not what is under discussion here, but is goofy nevertheless:

The absolute nadir of this blog/the internet/everything

CHAVATAR!

Lucky 13

In my imagination, many folks have written to say what they would have changed about my 12-song New Order comp of some weeks back. In reality, no one has.

That said - if I were to have to add a thirteenth baker's dozen track on, I would add "Dracula's Castle" off Waiting for the Siren's Call.

Stop the hate!

Too much to do today for my inane nattering

Ta!

The recession's most important victims

A co-worker told me yesterday that our local garlic festival has been discontinued, likely because of the costs involved in this unstable economy.

I would say that the shafted attendees of this event are the people most cruelly effected by these trying times, not kids or the unemployed or people who claim to "suffer."

Great World

I'm as shocked as anyone that Let the Great World Spin is the best thing I've read in ages. Reviews want to compare it to Bonfire of the Vanities, but really it's like a more charitable DeLillo. The descriptions of the actual wire-walking (let's see: a 210 ft span, on a 7/8" cable, while carrying a 55 lb pole) made me sweat. Or will continue to (I hope there aren't any more). I'm more than halfway through and I sort of doubt the author will blow it. So - highly recommended!

I could live on this stuff

The hot onion relish/chutney stuff that you are supposed to smear on your naan? I COULD LIVE ON IT.

Posters, again

...and it's a good thing they did, because otherwise I would have had to search out THIS weird thing, with FIVE Smiths, that old Waterman brought back from somewhere and duly adorned one of our college dorm rooms with, and put IT up over the mantle:


















Such a strange picture! Moz in a tie, Craig Gannon looking like he won a contest (second prize in a Have Bon Jovi Come to Your House thing on MTV Europe), and Mr Marr looks like an asthmatic pre-teen, awkwardly awaiting being picked last for kickball.

Still, the jacket-and-tie-with-tie-tucked-into-501's look - TOUGH.

"...ties the room together..."

Our friends gave us this SICK poster!

Coco wept

On the back of the new VF there is a Chanel ad that fairly blew my mind:

I understand the innate edginess of a neck tattoo on a glorious, rich ModelLady, I really do. But the Powers That Be need to think about others. While a neck tat that says Float is indeed daring and maybe dreamy to the Reals, it is a pander which exploits the citizenry of a place like D_____, where such flesh adornments are not only the style, they are Mandatory.

Where were YOU while Popsicle invented Ash, Supergrass, et al?

Or where was I, for that matter?

Look, I really don't know Thing One about these Swedes and the causation of their 1992 album Lacquer. Can't even remember where I read about it, and it all happened fairly recently. But it is a stellar little rock LP where the blueprint for good Ash songs is fairly delineated and the singer (there may be more than one) sounds like Gaz Coombes a lot of the time. So, yeah, go find. Their wiki page is in Swedish or some other Norse lingo, so I have no info.

Doesn't matter!

Mashitty!

The concise Marina and the Diamonds

Marina and the Diamonds, who should be bigger than this Lady Gaga person, actually write nice pop songs that will never make it here because they are good songs (see also: Noisettes). Oh, well!

What's nice, though, is that all the thirteen songs (bar one) on their album are between 3:00 - 4:00 in length! Very odd to see on a playlist. No 1:02 breathy "atmosphere" track, no six-minute power ballad in the manner of Bonnie Tyler only fresher for today...just three minute pop songs! With her classy-yet-chick-from-the-Motels diction all over. Good!

This puts me in mind of something that had made me nuts for sixteen years: the way the British press was complicit in putting forth a myth that Oasis wrote "perfect three minute songs." I must have read this, what?, at least five times in the nineties. Well, no, even from the very beginning Oasis were given to bloat and letting all their songs roll on far too long. This Orwellian "give them a big enough lie and they will swallow it" posturing by the UK press is something for which we all must pay and which will continue to make us all suffer.

Join the Perforce Force!

Gonna try to remember to use the word "perforce" more, because it is awesome.

You do it, too, and we can compare and contrast our experiences with the confused, scared gruntings of our so-encountered fellows!

"I'm in...Mississippi...I think...?"

My 87 year old pop had a root canal yesterday (!), and the dentist gave him some vicodin.

WHAT COULD POSSIBLY GO WRONG?

If he plows his Volvo into you and kills you today, I'm sorry.

Seen: