Wherever you are!
Ideas that didn’t need to happen
From above….
Looking down on myself…whoa! I took this with my cell phone, just holding it up over my head with my left hand whilst sitting in my arm chair using the Interweb to distract myself from the awful football being put on display by the Buffalo Bills. Hey, I gotta have fun some way, don’t I?
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Something for Thursday
Amongst my many musical discoveries during my college years was the German electronica band Tangerine Dream, which has been around in one form or another — always fronted by synthesizer genius Edgar Froese — for over 40 years. That’s quite a long time, and TD has been through many shifts in its musical style in that period. Many fans seem to think that the early to mid 1990s represent a low-water mark for TD, but that’s the TD music I knew first, and I still return to it fairly often. This lovely track finishes up their album Melrose.
Here’s “Cool At Heart”.
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A Random Wednesday Conversation Starter
Everybody tells me that poetry is a dying art. Is it? What does it even mean for something to be a “dying art”? People still read and write poetry, and I think they always will, as long as language exists. Maybe poetry won’t have as strong a command on the cultural landscape ever again that it once did, but is that the same thing as saying an art is “dying”?
Are there any arts that are truly dead?
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Teevee Notes
So, how’s the new season of teevee shaping up?
:: New show I like: Hawaii Five-0. I’ve said this before, but I do like the chemistry amongst the leads and the cantankerous relationship between Garrett and Danno. I just wish the show’s production design wasn’t exactly like CSI:Miami. Of course, Grace Park goes a long way.
:: I kind of liked the pilot episode of Outlaw, the new Jimmy Smits show, but I didn’t like it enough to not forget about the show for two weeks afterwards. I’m a big fan of Jimmy Smits (The Wife is an even bigger fan of his!), but my favorite show of his was Cane, the soap opera he starred in a few years back in which he was the head of a family whose fortune is made in making rum in Florida. Unfortunately, that show didn’t last long.
:: Shows I like that I haven’t started watching yet this year: Grey’s Anatomy (wow — it’s been a fave of mine ever since Season One), 30Rock, and House.
:: Shows I’m not liking as much as I used to: The Office, CSI:Miami. Both have, in their own way, become just too farcical to take even remotely seriously.
:: Reality: The new season of Hell’s Kitchen is just OK. Maybe it’s too soon after the most recent season, or maybe this go-round’s competitors are lacking, but the show seems to be amping up the lunacy and taking the focus off the cooking as much as possible. This disappoints me. I know that the show’s main selling point is watching Gordon Ramsay blow a gasket every week, but it gets a bit old.
I’ve noticed, by the way, that Ramsay’s favorite adjective is “amazing”. As in, “Today you will cooking with the most amazing fresh salmon!” “You’re to prepare a dish using the most amazing Kobe beef!” “My wife and I just had the most amazing….”
Survivor‘s Wednesday timeslot blows. Haven’t seen it yet this year, except for the first one.
The Amazing Race is off to a good start. The Race looks pretty demanding this year. Typically they’d spend several episodes in Europe before moving on to another continent, but this time, they were in England for one episode, and then BAM! They’re off to Ghana. Wow!
The Apprentice is also in bad-timeslot hell for me. Oh well.
:: I still like The Mentalist, but I wish more and more that Patrick Jane would be wrong once in a while, and that they’d either ramp up the “Red John” storyline to a conclusion soon or just forget the whole thing. Endlessly dragging on the tale of the “superkiller who continues to elude the hero” gets old after not as long a while as many teevee writers seem to think. (Witness the wonderful NBC show from the 90s, Profiler, which dragged its own “superkiller after the heroine” mytharc thing for so long that by the time it was resolved, it had pretty much lost all of its steam.)
:: I need to watch at least one episode of CSI:NY, just because I want to see Sela Ward again.
:; The prospect of a new Wonder Woman teevee series would make me happy, if it wasn’t being developed by David E. Kelley, whose work I have always hated. Ugh. To know that there’s a Joss Whedon script out there for a Wonder Woman movie that will never be produced is bad enough, but David E. Kelley? That would be like announcing the filming of a new Star Wars trilogy, to be written and directed by Michael Bay.
:: I’d like to see the new J.J. Abrams spy show on NBC, but I don’t think I’m gonna get time for it.
That’s about all for right now in Teevee Land!
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The “Three Things” Quiz
I guess I’m feeling kind of “quizzy”, because here’s one from Monday Mayhem.
3 Places I Would Pack My Travel Bag For
Disney World
Pittsburgh, PA
Portland, OR (even though I haven’t been there in 30 years)
3 On-Screen Characters I Love To Watch
Han Solo
Rick Blaine
Chef Gordon Ramsay
3 Moods That Describe Me The Best
Hungry
Sardonic
Curious
3 Things I Always Think Of Doing On A Weekend
Sleeping
Reading
Writing
3 Things From My Childhood That I Can’t Forget
This kid named E.J., from first grade. He was a really good friend, but he moved away halfway through the year.
The first girl I had a crush on. Her name was Beth. She hated me. Oh well!
This movie that my sister really wanted to see, and I got dragged along for the ride. The movie? Star Wars.
3 Things I Would Never Say No To
Free pizza
Coconut cream pie
A trip to a used bookstore
3 Things I Can’t Live Without
The Internet
Ice Cream
My family!
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Time Traveling
I’m stealing this from Sunday Stealing. It’s been a while since I stole from them, but I liked the way this one looked.
The rules:
1. Depending on your age, go back 10, 15, 20, or even more years.
2. Tell us how many years back you have traveled and why.
3. Pretend you have met yourself during that era, and tell us where you are.
4. You only have one “date” with this former self.
5. Answer these questions.
Okay, as we start, what year is it and how old are you?
I’ve gone back 22 years, to myself at age 17 as I’m entering college.
1. Would your younger self (YYS, from here) recognize you when you first meet?
I greatly doubt it. He might think there’s something vaguely familiar about this guy, though.
2. Would YYS be surprised to discover what you are doing job wise?
Extremely! He’d be shocked to learn that I ended up in retail, instead of in music; he’d be stunned, in fact, to learn that he wouldn’t even finish getting his degree in music but switch to Philosophy. He’d be shocked to learn that years from now, he’ll develop a fascination with tools (both hand and power) and find a desire to take up woodworking as a hobby. I don’t think he’d be surprised at all to learn that the desire to write is still there.
3. What piece of fashion advice would you give YYS?
“Look, son,” says I, “at this point in your life, that hairstyle you’ve got going in is utterly Godawful. You’re fascinated by the idea of having long hair, right? Well, clearly you gave in, so you might as well go ahead and give in now.”
His eyes are wide. “Wow!” he says. “And I can grow a beard, too?”
“Well…eventually. For whatever reason, it takes a few more years past the college age before any beard you grow won’t look Amish because your mustache refuses to come in. It’ll get there.”
“OK, I’ll wait on the mustache. What about all these shirts and stuff?”
“Burn them.”
“Well…all right….”
“You got something else to ask?”
“Yeah. Are those overalls in style in 22 years?”
“Not really. But you’ll realize that you don’t care.”
“Oh, cool.”
4. What do you think YYS is most going to want to know?
“Am I ever going to have a girlfriend?”
5. How would you answer YYS’s question?
“Yup. But first, stop doing that ‘creepy stalker’ thing. They hate that.”
“Wow! Is she really pretty?”
“Yes, she is. And the best thing is, she’ll get prettier every year you know her. Oh, and she’ll wear overalls too.”
“Wow….”
6. What would probably be the best thing to tell YYS?
“You will live to see a black President. And he won’t be a Republican.”
7. What is something that you probably wouldn’t tell YYS?
“How about kids?” he asks. “Because right now I don’t think I want kids.”
“Yeah, well…there are gonna be some curveballs there. Best you find those out on your own.”
8. What do you think will most surprise YYS about you?
That real love isn’t as distant as he thinks.
9. What do you think will least surprise YYS?
That he will live in Buffalo.
10. At this point in your life, would YYS like to run into “you” from the future?
Maybe not. I think that on some levels he’ll be disappointed, but that’s because of things he doesn’t know yet.
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Sentential Links, deferred
It's me…Bayified!
So, what could possibly be going on here? Why would I be walking toward an orange sports car with Shia LaBeouf sitting in the passenger’s seat, with explosions behind me, a fighter jet bearing down, a bomb on the ground, and a gun hanging in the hammer loop of my overalls?
What on Earth could be happening here? It’s like I was cast in…a Michael bay movie!