Month: May 2008

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Ye Olde Quizze Masterre

Two quizzes from SamuraiFrog, here and here. The first looks familiar, but I’ve been doing these for so long, I’ve probably already done it at some point. Maybe I’ll seek that out and, if I did do it, compare answers. Or not.

1.Name: Real name, Kelly; Internet handle, “Jaquandor”

2. Nicknames: None, really.

3. Feet size: 11, although that can vacillate a bit depending on the brand of shoe in question.

4. Do you have a crush: Sela Ward, as always; and I have the feeling that my long-dormant crush on Gillian Anderson’s about to come back in a BIG way.

5. Girlfriend/Boyfriend: Wife.

6. Age you act: Twelve, probably. That’s the true Golden Age of Science Fiction.

7. Where Do You Live: Orchard Park, NY, which is a suburb of Buffalo.

8. Where you want to live: Anyplace in Southern Erie County. I love this whole region so damn much.

9. Birthplace: Pittsburgh, PA

10. Favorite Salad Dressing: Extra-virgin olive oil and balsamic vinegar.

11. Ever gone skinny dipping? Heavens, no. Swimming clothed, yes, but in the buff? Believe me, nobody wants that.

12. What are you watching? PBS, because I’m that friggin’ cultured. (OK, fine, I’m not watching PBS. I’m sitting at my desk writing this; The Wife is watching Deal or No Deal.)

13. Last person you talked to: Either The Wife or The Daughter, within the last fifteen minutes or so. Or maybe one of the cats. I don’t remember the last thing I said.

14. Favorite movie: Star Wars, duh!

15. Favorite Book: The Lord of the Rings or The Lions of Al-Rassan.

16. Favorite Type of music: Classical, film music, and Celtic.

17. Favorite types of cars: The ones we haven’t invented yet that don’t run on gasoline because even though we’ve known for decades that we’d eventually reach this point we decided to be lazy about it all.

18. Favorite Saying: I say “We can only hope” a lot. My best friend likes to poke fun at me for saying that.

19. Favorite Fast Food: A jumbo all-beef from Ted’s Hot Dogs or a Super Mighty from Mighty Taco. (I don’t consider pizza a fast food.)

20. Favorite Ice Cream: Coffee Haagen-Dasz, although I haven’t had it in many moons.

21. Favorite Alcoholic Drink: Just one? I can’t pick. Big fan of rum, Southern Comfort, red wine, and various beers.

22. When Do You Go To Sleep: Generally between 11 and midnight.

23. Most Embarrassing Moment: It’s so hard to pick just one, sadly. There was this time I…no, never mind.

24. Stupidest Person you know: “Myself,” he answered, displaying his famous diplomatic aplomb.

25. Funniest Person you know: The Daughter is always good for a laugh or two.

27. Favorite Food: Pizza, I suppose.

28. Favorite Song: I couldn’t possibly name a single favorite, but it would probably be a Lerner-and-Loewe song if I could. So picking one at random, oh, “Wouldn’t It Be Loverly” from My Fair Lady.

29. Favorite Television Show: The Office, Grey’s Anatomy, Hell’s Kitchen.

30. Favorite Radio Station: WNED, Buffalo’s classical station.

31. Favorite junk food: Savory: burgers. Sweet: chocolate chip cookies.

32. Favorite sappy love song: For some reason, I really like “Inside Your Heaven”, sung by Carrie Underwood. It was her first single after winning American Idol.

33. Favorite Drink: Water.

34. Favorite article of clothing: You’re kidding, right?

35. Favorite Animal: The orca.

36. School: Went to a few.

37. How Many Kids You Want: The one I have, and the ones I lost.

38. What Kind Of Job: Maintenance.

39. Wedding song: “Unchained Melody”. I would have preferred “Reflections of Passion” by Yanni, but there’s nothing wrong with the Righteous Brothers. (Yes, I said Yanni. Shut up.)

40. Pets: Two dumb cats and one cat that’s marginally smarter.

41. 5 years from now? Published?

42. 10 years from now? Published, happy, healthy.

Have You Ever…?

1. Done Drugs: Only by prescription. Illegal stuff, no.

2. Run Away From Home: No. I had no idea where I’d go.

3. Hit A Girl: No. I don’t see anything more inherently wrong with hitting a woman than hitting a man; I just think that hitting people is generally a bad thing.

4. Lied: Sure. Not proud of any of them, but sometimes you have to and sometimes you don’t.

5. Stolen Anything: In my idiotic youth, yes. Since then, just the occasional marker or pack of post-its from the office supply room.

6. Broken A Bone: I broke my collar bone in seventh grade when a local bully pushed me off my bike. Should I ever meet him again, I plan to break both of his collar bones, among some other less essential parts of him.

7. Cheated On A Test: Yeah, once or twice. Not terribly proud of that, either.

8. Cheated On A girlfriend/boyfriend: Never, not once.

9. Gotten Drunk: Yup. Not in a long time. I used to enjoy the occasional drunkenness, but last time I got good and plowed, I decided that I just didn’t like the feeling anymore.

10. Been With Two guys/girls At Once: Huh?! What?! I’ve gotta be honest here: I find the whole menage a trois notion pretty repellent.

11. Been In The Hospital: For myself? No, except a couple of trips to the emergency room as a kid to have a broken bone set and another time when I needed tetanus shots after an unfortunate encounter involving my kayak and a barbed wire fence. (No, I’m not making that up.)

12. Let a friend cry on your shoulder: This is what shoulders are for.

13. Fell asleep in the shower/bath: No, but I’ve nodded off in the hot tub before. (My parents’ hot tub, actually. As if we own a hot tub.)

14. Gone to Church: Yes, on most Sundays.

15. Never slept during a night: Does this mean, pulling an all-nighter? Aside from a couple of cross-country drives during the college years, only once, and that had nothing to do with studying.

16. Ever been on a motorcycle or motorbike: No. They look fun, but I think I’d be terrified in one.

17. Been to a camp: Yup, the Bristol Hills Music Camp. Two years as a camper, two as a counselor. What a great time.

18. Sat in a restaurant w/o ordering: No.

19. Seen someone die: Nope, I missed that fine honor by about an hour.

20. Gone a week w/out shaving: Well, I’ve had a beard since a month or two after I started working at The Store, so yeah.

21. Didn’t wash your hair for a week: Ewwww!

22. Broken something valuable: I don’t offhand recall ever breaking anything valuable, but I’ve broken things that were of enormous sentimental value to me.

23. Thought you were in love: As opposed to actually being in love? That’s kind of a weird distinction, isn’t it? Anyway, I’m always in love.

24. Streaked the streets: No. And there’s a reason for that.

25. Screamed at someone for no reason: Doesn’t everybody?

26. Said I love you and meant it: Otherwise it’s just words, isn’t it?

27. Been hurt by a guy/girl you loved: Those are the hurts that hurt the most.

28. Stayed up till 4 am on the phone: No, since I generally don’t like talking on the phone. But I’m open to the possibility.

29. Pulled a prank: Yes, but I’m pretty much of a low-grade pranker, and when I prank someone, I usually stand there grinning like an idiot until they discover the prank, and then I take full credit for it. I’m not the type for obscure or mean pranks left unidentified.

Which Is Better…?

1. Coke Or Pepsi: I have no real preference between the two, to be honest. By default we get Pepsi more than Coke because The Wife strongly prefers Pepsi, but I don’t much care.

2. Cats Or Dogs: Cats. Duh. But a nice, big dog would be nice someday. Like Murray in Mad About You; he was a fun dog. No stupid little dogs for me, though: if the sound your dog makes can be honestly represented by the word “yip”, then it’s not a dog. You’ve got yourself a rodent. (Actually, I’d probably get a dog and then be horribly disappointed when he turns out to not actually be Satchel from Get Fuzzy.)

3. DVDs or VHS: Is this an option anymore? I love the DVDs, and I’m annoyed that now Blu-Ray is getting pushed down our throat.

4. Deaf Or Blind: If I had to pick one? I guess I’d rather be blind than deaf, because I never want to lose the ability to hear music. But to never again see the faces of certain people? That would also crush my heart like a walnut.

5. Pools Or Hot Tubs: I enjoy swimming. I also enjoy soaking in hot tubs.

6. Television Or Radio: Two different things for two different places, really. I like both.

7. CDs Or mp3: MP3s have lots of advantages for convenience, and I have to admit that it’s the way of the future. But I’m still not entirely happy with the idea of divorcing content from the physical storage medium. Hard drives aren’t as rigorous as CDs, and that’s that.

8. Apples or oranges: Honestly, I love both. I eat an orange nearly every day at work with lunch, and I tend to eat several apples a week. My apple consumption goes up toward the fall when the fresh harvest starts rolling in. (BTW, who out there actually likes the Red Delicious apple? I’ve never yet met a person who claims that as their preferred apple.)

9. Strawberries or Blueberries: I adore strawberries, but I couldn’t live without blueberries.

10. Gold or silver: Gold.

11. Vanilla or chocolate: Chocolate. Rich, dark chocolate. With nuts, or without nuts. With mint filling, without. Or with peanut butter. Or with no filling at all, that 72% cacao stuff that is so dark and chocolatey it’s as if the gods of chocolate have bestowed their favor upon you for one brief second. (But you know what? For all my deep dear love of chocolate, I also think that vanilla is a very underrated flavor of its own. There are few pleasures in the hottest summertime better than a bowl of good vanilla bean ice cream with some fresh blueberries on top.)

12. Video or Movie: Depends, but usually it’s a DVD at home.

13. Park or Beach: Parks these days, but I’d love to go to a beach again and feel the sand between my toes. We used to go to the beach frequently as a kid, during the years when we lived near Portland, OR. There are beaches on Lake Erie, but for some reason we never much get to them. I’m not sure why. I do love the seashore, though; there’s something elemental when I’m standing on the edge of the ocean, something that calls to me. (I think it’s the kraken.)

14. Hot or Cold weather: Given a choice between heat and cold, I take cold. I don’t like heat. But who knows? Maybe as I get smaller, that will change.

15. Sunset or Sunrise: Sunset.

When is the Last Time You…?

1. Took a shower: About three hours ago.

2. Cried: It’s been a few days, oddly enough. I’m probably due.

3. Watched a Disney movie: Hmmm. Been a few days on that, too.

4. Given/gotten a hug: When The Wife got home from work.

5. Been to the movies: Now that has been a while – Enchanted, maybe? We don’t get to the movies much at the theater, because it’s just too expensive to do regularly anymore. That seems to me a pity, since I love sitting in a theater and watching a movie.

6. Danced: I only dance when I’m alone, because I’m very, very bad at it. I think. I’d love to learn Irish step dancing, though, as a project for some unspecified time in the future when my chest more resembles Michael Flatly’s than Tom Arnold’s.

7. Did a survey like this: Sometimes I think that surveys like this are the only reason this blog exists!

What Is…?

1. Your Fondest Memory Of This Year: Tom Brady’s slumped shoulders after the Super Bowl.

2. Your Most Prized Possession: I suppose the laptop.

3. The Thing That Makes You The Happiest: When I try to make someone smile, and it works.

4. Your Favorite Food For Breakfast: On a normal day, frosted shredded wheat with blueberries on top, with OJ. On a spectacular day, pancakes or waffles.

5. Your Favorite Food For Dinner: If they could invent a pill to counteract all its ill effects, I could probably eat pizza every night. But I also love Chinese. And burgers. And salads topped with chicken or tuna. Or black bean stew. Or chili. Or macaroni and cheese, the way I make it homemade with shell pasta and pork sausage.

6. Your Favorite Slow Song: Sam Cooke, “Wonderful World”. The Platters, “Smoke Gets In Your Eyes”. Blackmore’s Night, “The Village Lanterne”. Van Halen, “Love Walks In”. Ben E. King, “Stand By Me”. I could go on.

7. Your Ideal BF/GF: One who’s smart, caring, strong, fun to talk to, one who encourages my good insanities and discourages my bad ones, one who thinks I’m not ugly. I lucked out.

What Do You Feel About…?

1. Bill Clinton: I miss his Presidency, but the current campaign isn’t doing his image any favors.

2. Love at First Sight: Yes. And no. A sight can point to a possibility, I think, but not actually the real thing. For that, you need interaction.

3. Abortion: The ugly truth is that unless medical technology gets to the point where we can literally gestate fetuses in artificial wombs all the way from conception, and unless that technology is freely available to all women, we’re always going to have abortion. Thus, I think it should be legal and safe.

4. Smoking: One of the nastier things we’ve invented for ourselves, and I really don’t have much sympathy for the smokers who complain about cigarette taxes and that they can’t smoke in bars anymore. If you don’t like the expense, then quit.

5. Death: Not a big fan.

6. Rap: I don’t think it’s artless noise, but it’s not my cup of tea, either. I’m a bit dismayed by the violent nature of the rap “culture”, though.

7. Marilyn Manson: I don’t know anything about him, but my general impression is that he’s pretty lame.

8. Premarital Sex: See, this is one of those things that depends on the situation. I’ve never understood the “casual hookup” kind of thing that happens between two people who literally met three hours before at some bar. But otherwise…I don’t really care what consenting adults do.

9. Suicide: I’m reminded of Hannibal Lecter’s line about a patient of his who met a grisly demise: “Best thing for him, really. His therapy was going nowhere.” Suicide can sometimes seem like a cowardly thing to do, for those of us on the outside of the suicidal person’s head, and that’s the problem, isn’t it: courage, bravery, and cowardice are internal qualities. None of us knows what’s in another’s head and heart, so it’s awfully hard to pass judgment on those whose lives have taken them to a place where the only option they can find for themselves is to embrace death. Suicide, to me, represents the ultimate in mental illnesses, when the very part of us that craves life has been overridden.

And yes, I do believe there are times when death can, and should, be among one’s options.

Wow, that got pretty heavy there at the end, didn’t it? So, in the interests of lightening the mood, here’s that old bunny with the pancake on its head!

Hee hee, bunny with the pancake on its head. That’s comedy gold!

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Well, if you insist….

A good friend sent me this picture in e-mail earlier. I don’t know if it’s real, but if it is…well, with tactics like this, I can’t believe the whole “Temperence” and Prohibition things never worked out!

Well, that would certainly convince me to give up the sauce.

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Ten Classical Music “Warhorses” I Could Do Without

Every genre’s got ’em: works that are familiar to just about everybody who knows anything about that genre. These are the “Warhorses”. A list of warhorses doesn’t necessarily comprise a list of the very greatest works, but a list of works that a person with an average level of familiarity with the genre will have heard at least once. Science fiction’s warhorses might include 2001: A Space Odyssey, The Moon is a Harsh Mistress, and Neuromancer. A classic rock radio station’s warhorses will include “Stairway to Heaven”, “Hotel California”, and the like.

Warhorse pieces, though, can lead to a bit of cynicism on the part of performer and listener alike. For the sophisticated listener, the warhorses can be a bit annoying, taking up program space that might otherwise be used for music that isn’t played all that often. Want to hear one of Glazunov’s symphonies live? Good luck. But you’re never more than a few months away from being able to hear the Eroica again. That’s because the Eroica is a warhorse piece: one of those that appeals to people who “love classical music” as long as the classical music they’re hearing is classical music they’ve already heard.

Musicians, on the other hand, can get downright cynical about the warhorses. In my orchestral days in college, nothing made the hearts of the trumpet section sag harder than the appearance of a Beethoven symphony or concerto on the program. Why? It’s absolutely glorious music if you’re on the listening end, but if you’re sitting in the trumpet section, it’s music that makes you wish for the sweet embrace of death, so boring is it to play. You sit there for what feels like hours, counting out measures of rests that number on the hundreds before you make your entrance, in which you play the tonic or dominant on the beat. And then it’s back to counting rests. Likewise, with the warhorses, familiarity can really breed contempt, especially when you’re a lifetime orchestra member and you’re about to play the Tchaikovsky Sixth for the thirtieth time in your career.

But anyhow, works become warhorses for various reasons. Some even become warhorses despite their fate of not being terribly interesting works at all. Here are ten of those works from classical music that, for all their “warhorse” status, I just don’t like and could happily live the rest of my days never hearing again.

10. Maurice Ravel: Bolero.

God in Heaven, I hate this piece so! And Ravel himself wasn’t too fond of it, saying that it contains “very little music”. And he’s right: it’s a terrible, dreadful bore of a piece, droning on endlessly, piling on one repeat of that not-terribly-interesting melody after another. Sure, it’s full of stunning orchestral detail. It’s also full of dung. (And why is this work always cited for its sensual, sexy qualities? If Bolero is sex, it’s the brute force sex of a guy who’s going to get his money’s worth at the Mustang Ranch, by God!)

(If you must hear Bolero, look for the one conducted by Jean Martinon on the Angel label. He brings forth the orchestral details with amazing clarity.)

9. Antonio Vivaldi: The Four Seasons.

Remember that line in Sleepless in Seattle about the statistic that isn’t true but yet it feels true? Same thing about the oft-repeated jibe about Vivaldi that he wrote the same concerto five hundred times. No, he didn’t; that’s not true. But it feels true. For me, listening to different pieces by Vivaldi is like driving down two different street on Buffalo’s East Side. Sure, the houses are different, but hey, the rust is all still rust-colored. (Although, again in my college days, we played some Vivaldi piece that included a female chorus. I have no recollection of what the piece was, but my trumpet part was a blast. I still hated the piece, but man, that part was fun to play.)

(I don’t recommend owning a recording of The Four Seasons. Nothing good can come of it.)

8. Pachelbel: Canon in D.

What’s the most thankless task in classical music? I would guess that it would either be playing the snare drum part in Bolero, or playing the ground bass in Pachelbel’s Canon in D. Sure, it’s the most famous of all themes-and-variations. It’s also as worn out as that box of Arm-and-Hammer baking soda in the back of your fridge, second shelf, behind the jar of wheat germ you bought during your big Health Foods Kick of 2003.

(The only version of the Canon I can listen to anymore is the Canadian Brass version, which isn’t, well, canonical anyway. Ha! A pun!)

7. Tchaikovsky, 1812 Overture.

OK, you got me: sometimes I like to listen to the last three or four minutes, that last descent from the highest voices to the lowest before that big chorale tune kicks in, each phrase punctuated by some kind of rising bell figure, and then the famous final “Can Can” eruption. The problem with 1812 is that the piece lasts fifteen minutes, most of which consist of repetitions of material already heard six minutes ago. And how about that coda, which goes on and on and on and on and on, never letting the piece out of its cold, dead fingers? Nah. We’re almost two hundred years past 1812. Time to get over it.

(Just find one that’s really loud, with digital cannons. This isn’t a piece that displays the difference between a great conductor or an average one.)

6. Barber, “Adagio for Strings”

It’s actually a pretty amazing piece of music by itself, when heard for what it is: a piece of music. Unfortunately, years of use in movies and TV shows as underscore to serious scenes of portentous doom have taken their toll on this work. I’m now at the point where I can’t even listen to the thing anymore without thinking of all the various pop-cultural references that the work has accrued. Oh well.

(Leonard Bernstein conducts the LA Philharmonic in an excellent recording of the Adagio, coupled with a scintillating performance of Copland’s Appalachian Spring and Bernstein’s own Overture to Candide. That’s the one to get.)

5. Grofe, “Grand Canyon Suite”

This gets played an awful lot on the classical station in these parts, and it drives me crazy each time. I hate the main motif of the entire work, I hate the hokey Western stuff that sounds like what would happen if some kind of mutant child of Richard Strauss and Aaron Copland were made into a composer. Ugh.

(I don’t own a recording of this and I have no intentions of acquiring one, either.)

4. Mozart, “Eine Kleine Nachtmusik”

Yes, it’s Mozart. But it’s this piece’s opening bars – which are pretty much known by everybody on Earth, even if they can’t name the piece – are the main reason, I think, why so many casual music listeners tend to look down on Mozart as a genial composer of snuff-box music that is mainly nice but dull. Ask the random person on the street to hum some Mozart, and if they know any Mozart at all, this is what they’ll hum. That’s a shame.

(I do own this on disc, but I can’t remember who the performers are. I want to say that it’s the Cleveland Orchestra conducted by Christoph von Dohnanyi, but I’m not sure.)

3. Beethoven, “Pathetique Sonata”

I don’t dislike this piece at all; it’s just that this is the traditional First Beethoven Sonata of all piano students, so if one takes piano lessons as a kid and attends a couple of recitals each year, then one is guaranteed to sit through this sonata – or at least its first movement – at least ten times by the time one is eighteen. The work can be discovered anew when one listens to a great pianist doing it, say, Alfred Brendel, but it’s so oft-used as a training piece for students that listening to it anew requires substantial effort on my part.

(Brendel’s the ticket here. He’s recorded this more than once, I wager.)

2. Wagner, “Ride of the Valkyries”

I cannot listen to this outside of its original context, in the opera Die Walkure. This is another great bit of music that’s been beaten into the ground by years and years of pop-culture. I should note that I have no problem with pop culture, nor do I view the lines between pop culture and “real” culture to be eternally fixed and immutable. In fact, I’m not even sure those lines exist. But pop culture can ruin things on occasion, and for me, “Ride of the Valkyries” is one of those things. And I don’t even like the smell of napalm in the morning!

(I strongly recommend Wagner Without Words, the Cleveland Orchestra conducted by George Szell, by way of a Wagner excerpts compilation. The performances are great, and the selections are chosen and conducted with great care by Szell. The Ride doesn’t suffer as much under his hands, especially in the context of the entire program he creates on the recording.)

1. Holst, “The Planets”

Like everybody, I had my fixation with this piece when I was younger. But I tired of it fairly quickly, and now, it’s been over ten years since I listened to the whole thing in one go. Maybe I should try re-evaluating it one of these days, but here’s another problem with the local classical station: they tend to do a lot of playing single movements of multi-movement works, at least on their morning program, and “Jupiter” from The Planets is a very common selection. Each time I sit through “Jupiter” while driving to work, I end up saying to myself, “Yeah, I don’t need to hear that piece any time soon after all.” Yes, it’s dramatic music with superb orchestration; yes, it’s one of the most influential works for much film music of the twentieth century; yes, it’s incredibly popular. But it almost always bores me.

(Get Charles Dutoit conducting the Montreal Symphony, if you like this piece. That’s the recording of it that I have.)

So, what classical music could you all live a perfectly happy life never hearing again?

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“I’ve recently spent a spell of time being dead.”

I don’t remember where I first saw The Rule of Death linked, so thanks to whomever, but I’m hooked. It’s a web-comic that’s a Western about a man named Pete who, having died, decides that he’d just as soon not be dead after all. It’s got a wonderfully creepy tone to it, along with acerbic dialogue that reminds me of the kind of thing Joss Whedon writes (such as when the town Doc, meeting Pete after Pete’s returned from the dead, says, “You may not realize this, Pete, but yes, accurate identification of life or death is still considered a pretty fundamental ability in my profession.”). There aren’t too many installments yet, but the comic is apparently updated every Friday.

Read the first installment here.

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One Hundred Things That Bug Me

SamuraiFrog did this, and I suppose it looks a little fun, so I thought I’d give it a try. It’s one hundred things that bug me, annoy me, or fill me with rage. (Well, not so much rage.) And yes, as he did, I’ll follow it up in a few days with 100 Things I Love. This is just a bunch of low-grade rants.

1. The notion that we need a whole new format for home video already. DVD is fine!

2. Potato salad that lacks flavor. It’s not hard to make potato salad that’s tangy and wonderful, so why make potato salad that tastes like nothing at all?

3. Non-winning lottery tickets. Not that I play the lottery, because I don’t, but for some reason, lots of lottery-playing folks decide that their tickets, whether for the big drawings or the scratch-off ones, are so useless once they turn out to be non-winners that their owners don’t even bother to throw them out, leaving me to do it. I find piles of those things at The Store on a regular basis.

4. Scrawny chicken wings. Not so much a problem in Buffalo, of course, but try ordering Buffalo wings outside of this area, and the wings may well turn out to be very scrawny. (Or they’ll leave the tips on the wing section!)

5. Dust. The crap gets everywhere.

6. That Dyson vacuum cleaner guy. I know, I’ve complained about him before, but this is a new list, so here he is, too. If this guy’s as smart as he acts in his commercials, you’d think he’d cure cancer or create world peace or figure out how to revitalize Buffalo or something.

7. The Fauxhawk hairstyle. It makes guys look like they have some kind of Star Trekesque ridge growing down the middle of their skulls.

8. Once and Again‘s third season is still not available on DVD.

9. That ability all cats have to summon up a bowel movement for the ages within minutes of the litter box being freshly changed.

10. Cigarette butts. A few months ago I had to put out a fire in one of the garbage cans outside the front door of The Store, because someone tossed a butt in there. They did this despite the presence of a receptacle for cigarette butts just five feet away. That, and the fact that the smokers just toss the spent butts everywhere, indiscriminately, bugs the hell out of me. If we’re not supposed to toss drink cups or burger wrappers or whatever else randomly onto the ground, what makes tossing cigarette butts everywhere acceptable?

11. People who make a big deal about passing me on the road, only to turn off the road within a quarter mile of passing me.

12. Wouldn’t it be refreshing to see somebody on Antiques Roadshow admit straight-up that they’re going to sell the ugly gewgaw, inherited from Granpa Willard, that’s just been appraised at $5000 as soon as they can get to a dealer willing to buy it? They always say “No, I’m keeping it forever out of respect to my Aunt Ginny.” Nobody ever says, “Yowza, now I can afford that hot-tub!”

13. The guys at the gym who slam the weights around, grunt a lot, and who sit on the machines for upwards of three minutes between sets. Come on, guys.

14. When I buy a favorite food item…and then forget about it until it’s gone moldy and nasty. That bugs me.

15. Plastic “clamshell” packaging. Mr. Utility Knife makes quick work of this stuff, but it’s still a pain in the arse, especially when one can study the edges of the package and note that it would seem to be designed to open easily, before it’s heat-sealed shut.

16. Wal-Mart wants to build a store near Casa Jaquandor, across the street from a gigantic new shopping center that already has a Target, a Borders, a Kohl’s, a big furniture store, a PetCo, three full-service restaurants, and an eighteen-screen movie theater. Like we need another Wal-Mart, especially at that intersection, which is one of the busier intersections in the Southtowns. And recently Wal-Mart sent out in the mail little brochures encouraging people to step up their civic activism in order to get the Wal-Mart built! This brochure comes with a return-mail card where you can check items you’re willing to do to help Wal-Mart out: Write a letter in support! Attend a meeting in support! Become involved in local Wal-Mart efforts! I found this whole thing a bit creepy.

17. People who buy sleek-looking sports cars, and then move into the fast lane and proceed to drive their snazzy sports cars, which are almost always bright red, as though they are, in reality, white Oldsmobiles.

18. That little pool of spittle that’s on my pillow when I wake up, once in a while. That really makes me cringe.

19. Film music shibboleths: The main theme from Star Wars is lifted from Korngold’s King’s Row! Rudy is a great filmscore! And the assorted tut-tuting that comes from “old-school” film music lovers whenever anyone praises a score that’s less than ten years old: “Well, back in the day, we had real music written by giants like Miklos Rozsa and Max Steiner!” Yeah, so what?

20. The annoyingly persistent belief, out there in the world, that writing is a skill that most everybody has in equal amount, and that the only real difference between a published writer and someone else is that the published writer somehow “found” time to write something, and of course, if only we could free up some time, we’d turn out something so much better than what gets published. (And yes, I include myself in this, to a certain extent.)

21. Shouldn’t the fat guy on LOST have dropped quite a bit of weight by now? Or did they find some hidden stash of high-calorie food somewhere when I wasn’t watching? (I don’t like the show, so….)

22. My freezer. It’s small and awkward, so every attempt to reach in there and grab a single item results in a process akin to that “Jenga” game, but with frozen food that hurts when it falls on my foot or splashes water all over the place when it lands in the cats’ water dish.

23. From my restaurant days: Basted eggs. I hated cooking those things. I couldn’t do it without cheating an using a little oil.

24. I’m always disturbed by the fact that one of our cats just loves the smell of our feet when we return from a shift at work.

25. Marshmallow Peeps. Oh, how horrible.

26. All you want is a medium coffee, and all you have to do is pay for it and get your cup, at which point you’ll go fill the cup yourself from the bank of vacuum pots across the way. From the time you begin your transaction, thirty seconds will elapse, at most, between that time and when you’re taking your first sip of sweet, sweet coffee. So, of course the person just ahead of you in line is ordering some kind of super drink with four shots of espresso, three shots of flavoring, steamed milk, freshly grated nutmeg, and whipped cream on top.

27. If you want to be a Chicago Cubs fan, fine; every team’s gotta have some fans. But do we really have to persist in this notion that somehow the whole experience of Cubs baseball represents some kind of Platonic ideal of everything that baseball should be? Yeesh.

28. John McCain. He’s no more a “straight-talker” than anyone else, he thinks that the problems the world faces right now are to maintain the same policies from the previous eight years that enabled, exacerbated, or outright created those problems, and it strikes me as odd that people whose distaste for Hillary Clinton includes the notion that she’s essentially been running for President since 2000 don’t notice that McCain’s been at it even longer.

29. I didn’t come up with any kind of meaningful post for Shakespeare’s birthday. I suck.

30. Gigi would be a really really really great movie, if not for Leslie Caron, whom I’ve never liked all that much.

31. All those idiots at the movie theaters when each Star Wars prequel came out. Look, if you decided that George Lucas sucked and that you hated him and his work, fine, but that doesn’t excuse trying to turn a movie theater into your own personal MST3K forum. If you don’t like a movie, shut up. If you like a movie, shut up. Just shut up.

32. Prediction: anything judged bad in Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull will be held by geekdom to be the fault of George Lucas, and anything good about it will be credited to anyone else they can find.

33. There’s a wonderful municipal soccer complex in West Seneca, NY. What’s great about it is that it has something like twelve soccer fields (of varying size, I think, for different leagues and age-groups), and the whole place is ringed by a paved walking path that’s about one mile in circumference. It’s a great place to roller-blade – unless there’s a big soccer tournament going on, in which case lots of stupid people will unfold their folding chairs and set up camp as spectators right on the walking path, despite the presence of lots of nice green grass on either side. And then, when I come roller-blading through, they give me scowls and skunk-eyes.

34. The Royal ‘We’. A single person, referring to themselves in the plural? That’s just pretentious, and We wish you’d all stop. We, that is, meaning Me.

35. Buffalo’s persistent lack of a good Dim sum restaurant continues to grate on my nerves. I know there’s a place in Rochester, but I don’t drive there very often, and anyway, I want the real Dim sum experience, where you’re not ordering at a counter but just picking stuff off the carts when it comes ’round. You have to go to Toronto for that.

36. Oh, and thanks a lot, you Homeland Security nitwits, for making it more annoying for us to go to Toronto. I’m sure that tons of stuff that would have been blown up by terrorists otherwise is still standing because you’re all vigilantly giving people like me the skunk-eye when we try to come home.

37. Continuing with that theme, thanks a lot, you Homeland Security nitwits, for making flying even more of a complete pain in the ass than it already is, because there may be some flying in my future at some point. I can’t wait. (Maybe Amtrak will be cheaper.)

38. When people use the saying “It’s not rocket science!” a lot, and then get mad at NASA when they lose a probe or something, thus forgetting the fact that these guys actually are doing rocket science, and it’s pretty hard stuff. So come on, folks.

39. But really, the space shuttle needs to go. And the International Space Station is just goofy. What are we trying to accomplish with this, again? Because we’re seven years past 2001, and I don’t see any base in Clavius yet. I’m just sayin’.

40. Another item I’ve complained about in the past, but here it is again: New York City pizza freaks. Everybody’s got their favorite pizza and that’s fine, but these people insist that theirs is the one true pizza because it’s closest to what some city in Italy makes, that city having taken it upon themselves to pronounce themselves the birthplace of pizza. (They’re not.)

41. I love showing my ID at the pharmacy counter and signing an official form every time I get sick and need to buy some Mucinex, and I’m sure this is turning around the crucial battle on the meth-heads.

42. I’m as skeptical as they come, but it bugs me that they haven’t put Tom Brady on the cover of Madden, because if there is a curse, then….

43. This doesn’t irritate me, actually, but it always makes me wonder: people who go to the gym and work out in jeans. How can that be comfortable for working out?

44. Political pie throwing. This is just lame, folks, and a waste of good pie, as the throwers rarely have good aim and they’ve been waiting so long that the pie’s a melted, gooey mess anyway.

45. Shaving cream pies. If you’re going to get someone messy against their will (or even with their consent), the thing should at least be edible, not sting the eyes, and not taste like soap because it is soap.

46. Film music fans who are incapable of processing the notion that maybe, just maybe, Jerry Goldsmith wrote a few scores that weren’t that good. (And he did.)

47. People who think that the mere act of saying the words “Excuse me” confers upon them the right to just barrel through wherever they happen to be, without waiting for response or acknowledgment or for the people in front of them to just plain move.

48. It still bugs me that I was so wrong about the Dursleys being important to the plot of the last Harry Potter book. Maybe I should sue JK Rowling.

49. Driving pet peeve: I know I’ve mentioned this before, but it bears repeating that the act of stopping behind a vehicle that is itself stopping at a Stop sign does not count as you stopping at the stop sign.

50. It annoys the hell out of me that Michael Kamen and Basil Poledouris both died while they should still have had years of music in them to come out. Stupid Grim Reaper.

51. About once a month I get cocky with the rechargeable batteries in my personal CD player and don’t change them when I know that I should, and thus, at the gym, when I’m halfway through my treadmill or recumbent bike workout, and when I’m in the middle of a song I like a lot, the CD player dies.

52. And about once every other month I change the batteries, but forget to put the #&$*%!! CD in the player, so when I get to the Y, I’ve got an empty CD player with me. This invariably happens when I’m using the treadmill or recumbent bike whose nearest TV is tuned to FOX News.

53. Why is Survivor still on teevee? Why? Why why why?!

54. Why is Grey’s Anatomy so compelling, when so many of its characters and ongoing storylines annoy me? Is it that I have a weak character or something?

55. I hate it when I’m cooking steak and I suddenly get this moment of self-doubt as to my instincts on when to take the meat off the grill, so I end up with overcooked steak. (I never use meat thermometers on steak. I hate piercing them and letting the juices run out all over the place. But I prefer my steak on the rare side of medium, which requires timing and self-trust.)

56. Several times I’ve purchased on eBay what was listed as a pair of Men’s overalls, and had them turn out to be Women’s overalls. This isn’t hard, folks: if they have a fake fly, they’re for Women.

57. Where the $&#^!! is my Wonder Woman movie!!!

58. Look, folks, of course it should have been left so that Greedo shot first. But the notion that this change somehow completely emasculates the Han Solo character is just silly. Get over it.

59. For years, the touring production of Les Miserables would make almost an annual stop in Buffalo, but I never went, because the timing and money never lined up right. Well, two or three years ago I promised myself that this wouldn’t happen again: next time, I was taking The Wife, because I’ve desperately wanted to see that show for years now. Just listening to the music can bring me to tears, and I’ve always wondered if “One More Day” is as overwhelming a show-stopper as I’ve always suspected. So a few weeks ago I learned that the touring production of Les Miz closed a couple of years ago, right about the same time that I made that promise to myself. Ugh! Ugh ugh ugh.

60. Guy Gavriel Kay just doesn’t write fast enough. He’s got to learn to step up the pace a bit.

61. The movie Dinosaur had a stunning opening sequence, tracking the improbable journey of a single dinosaur egg through many perils. But everything after that sequence was generically dull stuff.

62. I could, many times, do without red lights.

63. I could also do without that periodic article that someone writes every so often about blogging clichés. If I want to use the interjection “Oy”, or, citing an example of something that bugs me, write “I’m looking at you, Bill Belichick”, I’ll do just that, thank you very much. Heh indeed.

64. The only way that boiling is an acceptable means of cooking a hot dog is if you’re a street vendor of the things. And really, I’d be happier if they didn’t have to do it, either.

65. Extreme Makeover Home Edition. I enjoyed watching this show when it at least partially focused on construction stuff, but then it morphed into sappy human interest, Sears commercial, and generally annoying thing. I still want to see what happens two years later when the eight year old kid who loved monkeys at the time doesn’t so much care about ’em anymore, and yet still has to live in the damned monkey bedroom.

66. And if the Extreme Makeover Home Edition people can take one week to build a house the size of a small Wal-Mart, why is Buffalo’s Walden Galleria mall taking over a year to build a friggin’ Barnes&Noble?

67. My sixth-grade English teacher, who was very nice and very well meaning, nevertheless gave me an awful piece of writing advice that it took me years to realize was full of crap. Referring to verbs of dialogue attribution, she sagely told us: “Said is dead.” GAHHH! (he said.)

68. I’ve complained about this before too, but telling a kid of high school age that “These are the best years of your life” constitutes an act of nearly criminal nature.

69. Not enough places offer free WiFi.

70. I’ve become the kind of person who complains about places that don’t offer free WiFi.

71. When people my age fail to recognize a quote from The Breakfast Club, I feel just a little more that the world has lost its way.

72. I can’t stop reading For Better or For Worse, even though it’s a massive bowl of suckitude now. Someone, please stage an intervention. (For me.)

73. Why is instant butterscotch pudding so hard to find in this area?!

74. I really shouldn’t complain about WNED, Buffalo’s classical music station, because they provide a fine service. But in the mornings, they play way too much Baroque music and classical guitar, neither of which trip my trigger.

75. Oh, there’s something: I hate the phrase “trip my trigger”. It doesn’t ring my bell.

76. A few weeks ago I had a few extra pennies so I checked out the Graphic Novels section at Borders, and suffered my usual reaction of intense sticker shock. If comics really wants to become successfully mainstream as a medium, they’ve just got to start pricing their product in ways that make exploration feasible for people looking to get something to read.

77. Insert my usual rant about people who refuse to use their local library here. Reading! For free! Why wouldn’t you do this?!

78. No more Don Pablo’s in Buffalo. That, putting it frankly, sucks.

79. The NFL draft was just held, and while the Bills seem to have nabbed some talent at positions where they have needs, they yet again refused to do anything to upgrade their offensive line (unless you count drafting a single lineman in the seventh round, which is where you draft guys who will be lucky to make the roster at all and then will only do so either as special teamers or as “projects” as an upgrade). That will be my final complaint about that.

80. When does all the brilliant stuff happen on LOST? Because whenever I try watching that show, I only see a bunch of not-terribly-interesting people wandering around an island and brooding a lot.

81. Baseball caps worn off-center. What is that about?!

82. In fact, baseball caps in general. I think that our headgear these days leaves a lot to be desired. People used to wear cool hats, like three-cornered hats, those ones with the giant feathers that they wore in The Three Musketeers, even the simple fedora. Now we have baseball caps. (Although they’re OK for women. I love a woman with long, thick hair, pulled through the back of a baseball cap. But generally, I’m not a big fan of ball caps.)

83. It doesn’t help the cause of shopping for a copy of The Bible when so many of them are shrinkwrapped. It’s not like the book is going to spoil, folks. I can see why “gift Bibles”, the kind you give a child at confirmation or whatever, is skrinkwrapped, since you want to keep the book beautiful until the giving, but when I was looking for a decent study Bible, I was shocked that lots of them are shrinkwrapped.

84. I don’t like it when the rum bottle goes empty three days before payday.

85. Iceberg lettuce. Why do we still cultivate this stuff? It serves no useful purpose whatsoever. It’s not particularly vitamin-filled, it’s lacking in flavor, it’s just plain icky.

86. The Family Guy. An occasional laugh, but for the most part, the show isn’t funny.

87. Countries that still insist on whaling.

88. Is it just me, or does Cracker Jack not taste at all as good as it used to, when I was a kid?

89. I still don’t own Spirited Away on DVD. I have no good reason for this.

90. High fructose corn syrup. Destroying us from within, this stuff is the Satan of foodstuffs.

91. I’ve found a certain law of nature at any gym I’ve ever been a member of. I’ve always found that it’s pretty much impossible to do a complete circuit of a given exercise program in a specific order each time out, because there will be other people present who are using the machines and equipment too, so I have to hop around from station to station. This is really not a problem at all; in fact, I like it in that I try to rotate the machines I use first so that I’m not consistently getting to a particular machine when the muscles that machine works are pretty tired from the entire preceding workout. So what’s the law of nature, then? Simply that no matter which machine you save for last, that machine will be occupied when you reach that last exercise, no matter how sparse the population of the gym happens to be on that particular day.

92. Help me out, readers: is it a bad thing that I’m starting to genuinely like the BeeGees? “Stayin’ Alive” is a fun song, and damned if I don’t think that “How Deep Is Your Love” is just a really good song. Stupid Saturday Night Fever; I knew I shouldn’t have watched that movie a while back.

93. Waking up in the morning, stumbling to the kitchen, turning on the light to start breakfast prep – and only then discovering that I’d never put the previous night’s leftovers away. Even when food was a lot cheaper than it is now, I hated having to throw out half a tuna noodle casserole because I forgot to put the thing in the fridge.

94. My habit of staring at people I think I know when I see them outside of the context in which I know them. I have a bad feeling I can seem pretty creepy when I’m trying to figure out just where I know someone from. Especially when the person is a woman. This tends to happen to me a lot.

95. As a Democrat, it will forever disturb me that in 2004, John Kerry was the best we could come up with.

96. Does this happen in every city nowadays, or is it just a Buffalo thing: when a store someplace is going out of business, they’ll actually station people at various busy intersections in the general vicinity of that store to hold up placards notifying motorists of the store’s impending demise. Are these folks employees of the store who are given this duty as one last hurrah before their jobs disappear? Or are they actually hired for the express purpose of holding up the “Going out of business” sign? And if the latter, are they on official payroll, or is this under-the-table kind of stuff?

97. The US Postal Service’s online package tracking thingie could use a little help. Last week I mailed two packages on the same day. While one was tracked nicely on its journey from Orchard Park to a town in Florida, the other was reported as having left the shipping center in Warrendale, PA for six days, until the notice online was finally changed to reflect that the package had been delivered at its destination address in Texas. Am I really to believe that there were zero intermediary steps between PA and TX?

98. I’ve got a stack of computer games here that I haven’t played yet, because I’ve been waiting until we upgrade our computer chair and table so it’s actually comfortable to sit there for the duration of a gaming session. We’ve been saying we were going to do this for six months. So far, it’s the same crappy table and chair. Ugh. And Galactic Civilizations really looks fun, too.

99. McMansions annoy me, especially when they’re packed so closely together. I’m no hermit, but why on Earth would you want to live within twenty feet of the people next door if you didn’t have to?

100. I must be getting soft. It took me more than a week to come up with all these.

OK, so there are one hundred things that annoy me. Soon I’ll do the opposite: one hundred things that make me happy. (No tagging, here. If you’re inclined, have at it.)

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It’s his gift…it’s his curse.

Becca points out that it’s Lance Henriksen’s birthday. Happy birthday, Frank Black! It really is too bad that Chris Carter never really figured out what he wanted to do with Millennium, but wow, those first two seasons are some brilliant teevee.

At her post, Becca provides five fascinating factoids about Henriksen. Here’s a sixth: he’s a master potter. He used to actually have a site where you could buy his pottery, but that seems to be gone for now. I’d love to sip tea from a Lance Henriksen mug, though!

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Sentential Links #139

Linking the linkable since 2005:

:: I do so love the new feature in Blogger. (Me too!)

:: You’re a Democrat because you want to see certain things get done and unfortunately you need politicians to get them done and politicians are just people, often significantly flawed people. Saints become nurses and doctors and teachers and missionaries. They don’t go into politics. This is what I’ve learned on the blogosphere. The difference between Democrats and a lot of self-styled Progressives is Democrats want certain things to get done; Progressives want a lot of the same things to get done but they want a certain type of person to be the one to get them done. (That’s a nice distinction. I almost always vote Democrat because I’d rather have a scoundrel working to get the things done that I want to get done than a choir boy working to get done stuff that I don’t.)

:: Before you are a partner, a parent, a teacher, an [insert occupation here], you are simply you.

:: But it remains VERY clear about what is truly important: love some and laugh some and work some and rest some. Learn some and teach some and live some and die some.

:: Next time: We kidnap the President. (OK, I’m hooked. This blog found via Blue Girl.)

:: “We have about 20 browsers open right now. I think we need to close a couple before we move on.”

:: Say what you want about Michael Moore, and “Bowling for Columbine” might have been mean to poor old Charlie Heston, but he hit on a very important truth in that movie, and hardly anyone talked about it: Americans are constantly spoon-fed a diet of Fear, and it shows in the decisions they make, including how they raise their kids.

:: Even as young as I am I claim the right to be a curmudgeon and to talk about how we did things back in the day and to say we were right, because we were. I know; I was there. I claim the right to be a know-it-all and to give unsolicited advice because I do know more than most folks. One of the benefits of being 50, you see. (Oh, I claim that right too, and I’m only 36. It amuses me to watch Sleepless in Seattle and see that all the phones have cords and that the kid has a record player. It amuses me to watch a Season One episode of Once and Again, which aired in 2000, and during a scene in which the kids are using the Internet, hear one of them say, “Well, sometimes I use Google, but mostly I like HotBot.” Heh!)

And on the note of that last link, a happy belated birthday to Lynn, whose blog never fails to fascinate, elucidate, or paginate. Or something like that. (By the way, her blog’s masthead image is a landscape of Oklahoma. It shows just how little I know of that whole part of this country that I had no idea the region was that mountainous.)

More next week!

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Unidentified Earth 37

As I suspected, last week’s entry was nailed within hours of posting; it’s the lighthouse on Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. One thousand Quatloos to each correct guesser. However, UI 35 is still Unidentified! If any of you ever visit this place, make sure you beware of coyotes or alligators in the sewers. But not elves or leprechauns.

Anyhow, time for the new entry:

Where are we? Rot-13 your guesses, folks!

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