Thursday, December 22, 2011

Woefully, I am Letting the Woeful Go

Each Bloguscript posting follows several rules. One is the use of the word "woeful" every time. I have kept it up for three years, but, woefully, even I grow bored with this awesome inside joke. So, goodbye my friend. You may reappear again sometime, but you are off the protocol.

PS -- Maybe I will select another word to obsess over. Watch for it. Oh, and this Thursday seems like an appropriate time to recommend Thursday by Morphine; now playing on iTunes.

Sunday, December 18, 2011

Fellow Travelers

Recently, I was on a plane trip from DC to San Francisco. I am on planes a LOT now-a-days for my job. Most of the time, the trips are uneventful. But, this time I was seated next to a, how you say in America, character.

I sat in the aisle seat in the first exit row on one of those big ole 777s and for a while it looked as though I might get the two-seat side row to myself. However, a well-but-sloppily-dressed and heavy-set middle-aged fellow eventually showed up and said, "That's me there," pointing at the window seat. I started to get up to let him in but he demurred. He made it clear that he'd just do a few things first.

In order: He tossed his Jack Spade man bag across me onto his seat where upon it rocketed off and into the wall space between our row and first class. He shrugged sheepishly and next tossed his glasses onto the seat, where upon they, too, bounced off and ricocheted under the seat in front of us. He laughed awkwardly, took better aim, and proceeded to caroom his book off the seat cushion, seat back, and tray table and onto the floor. He shrugged. Then he tried to put his luggage in the overhead rack three different ways (wheels in, wheels out, sideways) before adopting the original wheels in approach. He continued to insist that I not bother getting up and just scooted by me into his seat -- like a well-heeled but unkempt bear trying to be polite in an unfamiliar social situation-- affording me a gratis close-up view of his posterior.

Once seated, he retrieved his scattered belongings with much huffing, puffing, and grunting. After take-off, he opened his glasses case to pull out a brand-new pair of reading glasses complete with price tag. He unfolded them, placed them on -- price tag still hanging Minnie Pearl style --  and started reading approximately two billion newspapers. With each, he carefully hand-tore out any article that caught his fancy, folded it into a neat square, a careful rectangle, or other geometric shape and added it to an increasingly tall stack. This process took about two full hours. The bulk of these papers, which did not merit personal rending and collection, were added to a growing rat's nest of newsprint that littered the airplane floor at his feet.

Woefully, interspersed with the paper rustling, tearing, and folding were a continuous, irregular but prolific set of burps, farts, and yawns. The yawns, in particular, deserve their Boswell. Tired, I had endeavored to catch some shut-eye so, at first, I did not realize what was happening. But, as I emerged from the disorienting fog of war that is sleeping on long-haul air travel I realized that my seatmate was making an odd series of noises that indicated enthusiastic agreement, a kind of laconic orgasm, or a successful itch scratching. The man would periodically say, "yeahyeah," with a drawn out first "YEAAAH Yeah." It took me a while to realize that he was, in fact, yawning.

Now, the odd thing is that this man was obviously quite well off. His rumpled clothing was high-end stuff. I checked the price of Jack Spade bags when I got home and they run to $400 a piece. He was perhaps the eccentric scion of some industrial age fortune? An odd but brilliant dotcom founder? A well-funded performance artist secretly videotaping my reaction for a planned MOMA installation? Who knows?

I was particularly grateful to the "flight deck" for their announcement that we would be landing soon.

PS - Naturally, as we landed I needed to go to the restroom to relieve myself of the copious amounts of water and Coke I drank on the flight. But, I was sufficiently traumatized by our time together that I deliberately let him precede me off the plane and waited until he veered into a Men's Room before I made my selection of a lavatory much further down the hall. I am as sure of this as anything I have learned in my life: I did not want to find out what peculiarities accompanied his ablutions. Oh, and while my fellow traveler was clearly well off, both Aloe Blacc and I Need a Dollar; now playing on iTunes.

Sunday, October 23, 2011

Excellent Quotes: Heat Rises

I have been watching ABC's "Castle" since it premiered and -- while it will not win any awards -- it combines puns, crime drama, romance, puns, New York City, puns, and charismatic Canadians Nathan Fillion and Stana Katic...so I am happy.

The general gist: Richard Castle is a famous mystery novelist and divorced father raising his teenage daughter along with his live-in Broadway diva mother. When a copy-cat serial killer parrots the plots of his books, he meets NYPD Detective Kate Beckett, a no-nonsense hottie struggling with the lingering loss of her mother's unsolved murder. After they work together to solve the Castle copy-cat killings, Rick Castle ("Rich Asshole?") and Kate Beckett pair up to investigate homicides in New York along with a team of engaging background players on, and off, the force.

ABC has won my heart forever by publishing three best-selling mysteries as if they were actually written by Rick Castle, complete with acknowledgements from Rick, readers' guides, and author's photos. In them, Castle chronicles the adventures of a Pulitzer prize-winning journalist, Jameson Rook, and his paramour and no-nonsense hottie, NYPD Detective Nikki Heat.

In Heat Rises (a better title, suggested by his editor, Castle admits, than his woefully bad original Heat Heat Heat), our heroes are investigating the seemingly tawdry death of a Catholic priest. Events lead them to interrogate an attractive and single member of the priest's flock, whith whom he has been working to fund a potentially shady human rights group. Killer puns abound. To wit:

"Emma Carroll was quite attractive in what some would call a cougarish way, but the skin was swollen around her eyes, which had a dullness from medication or despondency, or both. 'I'm still reeling,' she told them as soon as they sat. 'Father Gerry was a great priest and a great man.'

'Were you close?' Heat surveyed her, wondering if there was any forbidden romance lurking, but she couldn't tell, which usually meant there wasn't any. Nikki prided herself on having finely tuned lay-dar."

- Heat Rises. Castle, Richard. New York (NY): Hyperion, 2011. P. 69 of 451.

Ahh, puns. Yay.

PS - You can read Heat Wave and Naked Heat, too, if you like. I did. Oh, and "Night Train" by James Brown is hot, hot, hot; now playing on iTunes.

Saturday, October 8, 2011

Do It: Watch the Muppet Show Theme Song

Sometime in, say, 2000, I went to a concert at the Black Cat in Washington, DC. Back then, the neighborhood was woefully sketchy -- not the kind of place you might be hoping to start a cool bookstore or buy a condo. When you went, you brought plenty of people with you, moved swiftly, and exuded a sense of purpose. My purpose was to see a young straight-ahead rock and roll band named OK Go.

They were good. Not earth-shattering, but fun. So I signed up for their email list when I left. I have been getting posts from them ever since and it has been interesting to watch their meteoric rise as they harnessed the power of kooky videos in a viral age.

Anyhoo, they have been tapped to perform the new Muppet Show movie theme song, and--as per usual--the video is a blast.

So do it: Watch the Muppet Movie theme song, which recapitulates the past OK Go videos.

PS - Arghhhhhhhhh! Man, we most posolutely can NOT close this blog entry without recommending the video that really put the boys on the map: "Here It Goes Again" by OK Go, now playing on iTunes.

Monday, August 8, 2011

Return of the iMac

When my iMac woefully died a brutal, total head-crashing hard drive death after just 5 months of service, I was sorely disappointed. So I packed it up and went to the Genius Bar and they replaced the drive. Fortunately, I had been backing everything up onto a G-Drive Mini. I reloaded all my bad poetry and poorly-recorded acoustic guitar songs as well as my carefully collected iTunes library and all was right with the world again.

But it would have really, really sucked not to have a back up copy of everything. If you are not taking similar steps, do so immediately.

PS - While it is kind of a rip-off, get the AppleCare protection plan, too. Oh, and "Return of the Mack" by Mark Morrison is smoother than a Steve Jobs pitch; now playing on iTunes.

Sunday, August 7, 2011

Excellent Quotes: Our Kind of Traitor

John le Carre (nee David Cornwell) has gotten more play from a five year stint in the British Foreign Service than anyone has a right to. He is also in an odd situation: he is both a past master of the novel and a struggling new writer. As a student of the Cold War and the author of the "Karla trilogy" and its predecessors, le Carre is an odds on favourite (as he might spell it) for the best genre writer of his generation worldwide. In Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy, The Honourable Schoolboy, and Smiley's People, he transcended his niche into full-on social critique, narrative mastery, and stylistic genius. No one has gotten it so right for so many pages since -- and many have put forward admirable efforts. Yet, the woefully troubling slide into the post Cold War era that saw le Carre put out such subsequent books as The Night Manager, The Tailor of Panama (Graham Greene needs a cover band about as much as The Beatles did), and Single & Single, revealed nothing so much as a precocious young writer trying -- and failing -- to hit his stride.

I am pleased, therefore, to announce that -- although I swore at one point to never buy a le Carre again -- his recent Our Kind of Traitor hints at a return to form. All the basic framing is there: British spies, class warfare conducted through trade craft even more occult than that of the Secret Service at its height, exotic and depressing locales, spare tension leeched through laconic and detached men who ghost through their lives and careers as unacclaimed soloists, and -- ta duh! -- Russians. All this solid bone structure lets le Carre's book look pretty on the runway no matter what today's mode. The student of the Cold War has returned to teach us that everything old is new again.

A case in point taken from the scene where long-serving intelligence maven Hector Meredith is recruiting career washout Luke Weaver to join his newest division, the Counterclaim Focus Group:

"'What's the most dire, fucking awful thing you've ever seen in your life? Anywhere? Apart from the business-end of a drug lord's Uzi staring you in the face. Pot-bellied starving kids in the Congo with their hands chopped off, barking mad with hunger, too tired to cry? Fathers castrated, cocks stuffed in their mouths, eyeholes full of flies? Women with bayonets stuck up their fannies?'

Luke had never served in the Congo, so he had to assume Hector was describing an experience of his own.

'We did have our equivalents,' he said.

'Such as what? Name a couple.'

'Columbian government having a field day. With American assistance, naturally. Villages torched. Inhabitants gang-raped, tortured, hacked to bits. Everybody dead except the one survivor left to tell the tale.'

'Yes. Well. We've both seen a bit of the world then,' Hector conceded. 'Not wanking around.'

'No.'

'And the dirty money sloshing about, the profits of pain, we've seen that too. In Columbia alone, billions. You've seen that. Christ know what your man was worth.' He didn't wait for the answer. 'In the Congo, billions. In Afghanistan, billions. An eighth of the world's fucking economy: black as your hat. We know about it.'

'Yes. We do.'

'Blood money. That's all it is.'

'Yes.'

'Doesn't matter where. It can be in a box under a warlord's bed in Somalia or in a City of London bank next to the vintage port. It doesn't change colour. It's still blood money.'

'I suppose it is.'

'No glamour, no pretty excuses. The profits of extortion, drug dealing, murder, intimidation, mass rape, slavery. Blood money. Tell me if I'm overstating my case.'

'I'm sure you're not.'

'Only four ways to stop it. One: you go for the chaps who are doing it. Capture 'em, kill 'em or bang 'em up. If you can. Two: you go for the product. Intercept it before it reaches the street or the marketplace. If you can. Three: collar the profits, put the bastards out of business.'

A worrying pause while Hector seemed to reflect on matters far above Luke's pay grade. Was he thinking of the heroin dealers who had turned his son into a goalbird and addict? Or the vulture capitalists who had tried to put his family firm out of business, and sixty-five of the best men and women in England on the rubbish heap?

'Then there's the fourth way,' Hector was saying. 'The really bad way. The best tried, easiest, the most convenient, the most common, and the least fuss. Bugger the people who've been starved, raped, tortured, died of addiction. To hell with the human cost. Money's got no smell as long as there's enough of it and it's ours. Above all, think big. Catch the minnows, but leave the sharks in the water. A chap's laundering a couple of million? He's a bloody crook. Call in the regulators, put him in irons. But a few billion? Now you're talking. Billions are a statistic.'"

- Our Kind of Traitor. le Carre, John. New York (NY): Viking, 2010. p. 131-2.

Today's new normal apparently requires the same old skill sets, it's just that now the expenditures need annual budget justifications. But once the op is approved, the men and women who execute it still sweat it out in safe houses, stumble through opaque ethical murk, and cobble together teams of odd personalities with fringy skills. And John le Carre has always had a pretty good feel for that kind of thing. Welcome back, Kotter.

PS - Hector's my kind of guy. Oh, and "Tightrope" by Janelle Monae is my kind of song; now playing on iTunes.

Saturday, July 9, 2011

The No. 3 Pencil

I am completely flummoxed by the No. 3 pencil. I have one -- goodness knows how it even found its way into my life -- sitting in the pretty, orange Fiesta juice cup I bought at an antique store to hold pens and pencils on my desk.

It is a FaberCastell "Mongol" 482. Aside from its vaguely mysterious ethnic and historic ambiance--did Genghis use this pencil line to efficiently tick off the names of the towns his horde would next destroy-- it has a cool ferrule. But it is a hard, scratchy bastard in actual use and produces a super-light graphite mark on the page. Why would I want that? I am not an engineer. I am not a draftsman. I am not an 18th century Italian artist. I want a pencil that shows up. I want a pencil that is far less likely to be brandished as a defensive weapon. I want a No. 2 pencil. Full stop.

My idea of a stunning No. 2 pencil, should you be wondering, is the gorgeous and effective Koh-I-Noor "Mephisto" 465. Ahhhh. This is the pencil of choice for National Geographic Board meetings. This is a pencil deserving of the allusion to a diamond of great worth. It is a devilishly good tool. I have a cherished box of twelve (only 10 remain!) given to me with appropriate solemnity by a colleague at the Society as a bequeath upon his departure. I felt honored and genuinely touched and a little geeky that the gift mattered so much, not just personally but acquisitively -- I wanted my own stash. (I am not sure Koh-I-Noor even makes the Mephisto any longer except as a mechanical pencil.)

In conclusion, the No. 3 pencil: why? Just woeful. I'll keep the FaberCastell just in case Damien Hirst needs it, but I doubt I'll ever use the damn thing. That is all.

PS - If you are very good, sometime later I will bore you with my feelings that the Cristal clear Bic ballpoint pen -- blue ink cartridge -- is the supreme writing instrument and one of the pinacles of Western civilization. A man needs two items to write, period: the classic Bic pen and the Koh-I-Noor pencil. Oh, and another indispensable thing is "You I Want" by Tegan-and-Sara-sounding Jesse Thomas; now playing on iTunes.

Wednesday, July 6, 2011

Excellent Quotes: Ender's Game

My new doctor randomly recommended to me that I read Ender's Game by Orson Scott Card, famous adoptive son of Greensboro, NC. It wasn't quite as random as, "Stay off that foot, read Ender's Game, and call me in the morning," but we got to her interest in SciFi pretty quickly. To be fully transparent, I was probably carting around The Windup Girl at the time (you know, on the off chance that I would sit for just a brief minute in the Kaiser Permanente waiting room).

In any case, as the loyal reader knows, if I read it, woefully for you, I inflict it on you. So, prepare yourself for a quote from the Hugo and Nebula Award-winning novella cum novel:

"It was a hot summer afternoon in Florida when they landed. Ender had been so long without sunlight that the light nearly blinded him. He squinted and sneezed and wanted to get back indoors. Everything was far away and flat; the ground, lacking the upward curve of the Battle School floors, seemed instead to fall away, so that on level ground Ender felt as though he were on a pinnacle. The pull of real gravity felt different and he scuffed his feet when he walked. He hated it. He wanted to go back home, back to the Battle School, the only place in the universe where he belonged."

- Card, Orson Scott. Ender's Game. New York (NY): Tor (Tom Doherty Associates), 1991. P. 158.

PS - I read the 1991 "Author's Definitive Edition" complete with a very engaging introduction that acknowledged its obvious debt to Asimov and explicated some of its intent and meaning for Card and for some young readers. Plus it scored points for self-deprecating humor: "It makes me a little uncomfortable, writing an introduction to Ender's Game. After all, the book has been in print for six years now, and in all that time, nobody has ever written me to say, 'You know, Ender's Game was a pretty good book, but you know what it really needs? An introduction!'" Oh, and speaking of science fiction, Ron Glass (playing space preacher Shepherd Book) is the unusual black man with a pony tail. And rapper Freedom Williams was a black man with a pony tail. And his '90s hit with C+C Music Factory, "Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)" deserves its own authors' definitive edition; now playing on iTunes.

Monday, July 4, 2011

Excellent Quotes: The Bourne Supremacy

Okay, I had spaced on the fact that all Robert Ludlum books--including The Bourne Supremacy--are woefully deficient in almost every category I look for in a novel. The movies, however, are so awesome that one tends to forget the defects of the source material. And since I spend a LOT of time on planes these days in desperation at a used book store I snagged Supremacy out of a discount bin and began what I can only refer to as a sort of personal literary Bataan death march. (I have real trouble stopping a book--I need to get over that grad school era commitment.)

In any case, and woefully for you, having read the damn thing and having survived it I am posting an illustrative if execrable quote:

"'This is Bourne. Put my wife on the line.'

'As you wish.'

'David?'

'Are you all right?' shouted Webb on the edge of hysteria.

'Yes, just tired, that's all, my darling. Are you all right--'

'Have they hurt you--have they touched you?'

'No, David, they've been quite kind, actually. But you know how tired I get sometimes. Remember that week in Zurich when you wanted to see the Fraumunster and the museums and go out sailing on the Limmat, and I said I just wasn't up to it?'

There'd been no week in Zurich. Only the nightmare of a single night when both of them nearly lost their lives. He running the gauntlet of his would-be executioners in the Steppdeckstrasse, she nearly raped, sentenced to death on a deserted riverfront in the Guisan Quai. What was she trying to tell him?

'Yes, I remember.'"

-Ludlum, Robert. The Bourne Supremacy. New York (NY): Bantam Dell, 1987. P. 145.

Can you feel the pain? Oh, the horror. The horror. Six hundred and forty-six pages of inappropriate italic emphases in the wrong places and for inner monologues. The monologues! He had forgotten the monologues. The visions of them came back to him in a half-remembered rushing blur. The book. The book, sucked.

PS - I want my $4.50 back. Oh, but while Ludlum is a best-left-behind relic of the '80s, you will still enjoy this thing called rap when you rock out to "The Power" by German uber-group Snap; now playing on iTunes.

Sunday, May 15, 2011

Do It: Le Clown Triste de la Vie

What could be better than Star Wars? Star Wars co-written by George Lucas and Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre, perhaps?

Could there have been a collaboration? Well, the movie was released in 1977 and the famous existentialist did not die until 1980. So it is possible. And the Internet is nothing if not a haven for the possible; naturally, someone out there has tried to give us a glimpse of the imaginary.

Do it: Watch The Existential Star Wars.

PS - If the sad, nihilistic, nauseating live death of existentialism had a soundtrack it might include a song by Bjork. Oh, and her "Army of Me" is like a woeful requiem knitting together the dreams of the troubled sleep of a respectful prostitute; now playing on iTunes.

Saturday, May 14, 2011

Excellent Quotes: To Hate Like This

I am reading Will Blythe's classic sports memoir, To Hate Like This is to Be Happy Forever, about the Tar Heel-Blue Devils basketball rivalry, on the iPad. It is recursively Southern storytelling and filled with references to games and places I recall in various states of clarity. It is sad and wistful. It is reflective and thoughtful. It is about more than basketball. It is also quite often plain old funny as all get out. Witness this exchange between the author and his girlfriend's nine-year-old son, Harry, in NYC:

"Harry, who had been watching me watch the game, asked, 'Why do you get so mad?' Normally, he would have delighted in an adult's swearing. But now he was edging backward across the room, the way people will when you have a gun pointed at them. His eyes were wide.

'Because I hate Duke,' I explained.

'Why do you hate them?' he asked.

Here I hesitated. A young boy had asked me a guileless question, and he needed an adult response.

'Well, that's an interesting question,' I told him, channeling Mister Rogers, 'and it deserves an honest answer.' I paused for a moment, as I had seen his mother do when addressing an earnest inquiry by her son. Children are our future. We must teach them well, even when it is hard.

'The truth is they are terrible people,' I told him."

-Blythe, Will. To Hate Like This is to be Happy Forever: A Thoroughly Obsessive, Intermittently Uplifting, and Occasionally Unbiased Account of the Duke-North Carolina Basketball Rivalry. New York (NY): Harper Collins e-books, 2006. P. 33 of 684.

PS - Woefully, I worked at Duke briefly, although I rarely admit it. Living in D.C. after graduate school and desperate for a job--I was temping at law firms and sleeping on a single bed that had been stuffed into a glorified walk-in closet in a group house with my best friends who all had solid employment--I was offered a position at Duke THREE times before I accepted my fate. The job was not even really a Duke job; it was just affiliated with the University and Coach K had nothing to do with it. Yet, I was deeply conflicted. That was when I knew that basketball might be creeping too far into my world view. Oh, and "Down By The Water" by The Decembrists is something else to be obsessive about; now playing on iTunes.

Friday, March 18, 2011

5-4-Fri: Kickstarter

My pal, Jean, is a Jim Bianco friend and fan. So she recommended to me that I help Jimbo bootstrap his next album. Huh?

Turns out there is a site called Kickstarter. It bills itself as "a new way to fund and follow creativity." According to the site:

Kickstarter is the largest funding platform for creative projects in the world. Every month, tens of thousands of amazing people pledge millions of dollars to projects from the worlds of music, film, art, technology, design, food, publishing and other creative fields.

Herz how it works. I went onto Kickstarter and, lo and behold, Jim Bianco was indeed asking for money from average folks like me to produce his new album. He'd retain all rights and, in exchange, I'd get a copy of the album. If I gave more, he'd give me bonus songs, a personal note, a phone call, a private concert, officiate at my wedding, etc. I decided that--as awesome as a houseparty after my wedding featuring Jim and the band would be--I should stick to the somewhat less stratospheric $35 contribution. Even if I had not already planned to give money to support Jean's support of a new social media tool for supporting art, the hee-larious launch video would have absolutely compelled me to give.

Well, today a package arrived from Team Bianco with five things packed into it along with a bunch of gold glitter:

1. Loudmouth - the new album. Nice work, all. I am glad that my reward for contributing was a good CD and not just a good feeling. I'll load it onto iTunes, where it will keep Jim's "Well Within Reason" digital company.

2. Free Download of Bonus Song - This didn't really work and the song, which I was to download from Jim's Web site, only made it halfway to my computer.

3. Live at the Hotel Cafe - a live version of the album plus some other tunes. A welcome addition.

4. Sticker - In case I want to be one of those guys with more than one bumper sticker on their car. It's a nice sticker, but it's no producer credit, knowwhatImsayinJim?

5. "Sinner" Button - For me to wear to church during Lent. Nice touch.

All this came with a personal note from Jim that said, and I quote, "Dear iClipse--You rock. Hard." Whch shows you how nice Jim is. And how little he actually knows about my own chubby middle manager, mid-life crisis, singer song-writer, indie-style music or the decidedly unrocking (2 Acoustic Guitars + a Bass) = (WALL OF FOLK) formula produced by my band, B-minus.

In the end Jim raised $31,500 from 346 people. Kind of amazing. I am really glad I did it. (But I could have done without the glitter, which is taking forever to clean up.)

PS - Jim sometimes has a kind of Tom Waits growl. He also wears hats. But, I like this album more than some of Tom's. Oh, and you'll like "But I Still Want You" by Jim Bianco; now playing on iTunes.

Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Excellent Quotes: Anthony Bourdain

I read Entertainment Weekly weekly. Don't judge. A fellow needs his vices. I busted a gut reading a welcome but unexpected brand bashing in last week's edition. EW asked celebrity chef Anthony Bourdain about "the five most terrifying meals he's ever encountered." After naming rotten shark and three-day-old warthog, he winds up, reaches back, and - POW! - completely beyotch-slaps Olive Garden:

"Anybody who makes fake Italian food--I become so angry. Italian food to me is such a beautiful, simple thing that most Italian grandmothers can make at least well, and any American with a few dollars and five minutes in the supermarket can make in 20 minutes. I'm apoplectic when I see pasta or Mexican food abused."

-- Anthony Bourdain. "Seriously Scary Meals." Interview with Archana Ram. Entertainment Weekly #1145 (March 11, 2011): p. 68.

Oh, no, he didn't!

PS - I feel exactly like Bourdain whenever fate steers me to that woeful excuse for a restaurant, Don Pablo's. Who can do that to Mexican, I ask you? Turns out that the once iconic South Austin Grill can, that's who. SAG used to be my favorite restaurant ever, but I have had to change my mind and leave behind a once-a-week commitment that stretches back for more than a decade. More on this soon. Oh, and "If I Can't Change Your Mind" by Sugar is anything but tasteless; now playing on iTunes.

Friday, March 11, 2011

5-4-Fri: Philip K. Dick

My boy, Philip K. Dick was a short story writer whose gifts keep on giving. Although he lived the low-income cliche lifestyle of a sci fi writer, his ideas have spawned some great multi-million dollar movies (and also, truth be told, some high-budget but not-so-great flicks; but the ideas are still captivating). Check out the legacy of a man who practiced the long-lost art of the inspiring short story:

1. Blade Runner - One of my favorite films EVER. With or without Harrison Ford's voice-over narration -- "They don't advertise for killers in the newspaper. That was my profession" -- the movie is an engrossing exploration of future dystopia, ethics, and that noir classic: love. Eighties mood-setter, Vangelis contributed a famously dreamy sound track and then-mega-stars Daryl Hannah and Rutger Hauer walked through the perpetually rainy streets of 2019 killing everything in their way. Based on Dick's "Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?"

2. Total Recall - Overblown and Arnoldized, this adaptation of "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale" prefigured the Matrix. It showcases the great idea that your memories may not be your own. If you can look past the three-breasted aliens and stylized studio set violence, it is a great ride.

3. The Adjustment Bureau - Last weekend I saw this, the latest of the Dick adaptations. It is only at the end of the movie, really, that the limitations of streeeetching a short story into a full-length feature show. The rest is a pretty compelling series of awakenings by star Matt Damon and a futuristic flight-for-life from the shadowy powers-that-be with his lady love that would do J. J. Abrams proud. Based on the closely titled "Adjustment Team."

4. Minority Report - Once again, Tom Cruise's character is better. Than. Everyone. Else. in this creepy police thriller. Based on "The Minority Report," the action centers on a cop who pre-judges people for crimes they have not yet committed but will. Sure enough, it turns out that HE will need to be arrested, too. Break out a can of "Logan's Run" individualism and add in some screamingly insightful critiques of consumerist culture and you got yourself a film. Still, would rather have seen almost anyone other than the woefully-stylized Cruise in the lead role.

5. Paycheck - Such a great idea. Such a bad film. For my money, Ben Affleck owed us "The Town" solely as payback for this stinker. Based on the short story of the same title, our Jennifer-loving hero plays a reverse engineer who routinely has his memory erased after big jobs and wakes up one day to find himself persona non grata after what was to be The Big Job. So what does he do? Takes on the Man and action ensues. Pair this appetizer with a big Pino Noir and an entre of Christopher Nolan's frosh effort, "Memento" and enjoy a lovely evening.

PS - So many noir jewel lines in Blade Runner. "'Sushi,' that's what my ex-wife calls me: cold fish." "I didn't really need a translator. I knew the lingo, every good cop did. But I wasn't going to make it easier for him." "I didn't know how long we'd have together. Who does?" Oh, and "Watusi Rodeo" by Guadalcanal Diary is also gem from the '80s; now playing on iTunes.

Thursday, March 3, 2011

Excellent Quotes: The Windup Girl

I just finished a book that reminded me of the quality of Frank Herbert's Dune. It is set in a futuristic Thailand in the aftermath of brutal bio-terrorist plagues that were developed by large agribusinesses as ways to undermine one another's profits. The resulting out-of-control genetic drift destroyed the planet's natural foods and, as the back cover says, "forces mankind to the cusp of post-human evolution." Very creepy and plausible stuff and a great read:

"The sun peers over the rim of the earth, casting its blaze across Bangkok. It rushes molten over the wrecked tower bones of the old Expansion and the gold-sheathed chedi of the city's temples, engulfing them in light and heat. It ignites the sharp high roofs of the Grand Palace where the Child Queen lives cloistered with her attendants, and flames from the filigreed ornamentation of the City Pillar Shrine where monks chant 24-7 on behalf of the city's seawalls and dikes. The blood warm ocean flickers with blue mirror waves as the sun moves on, burning."

-Bacigalupi, Paolo. The Windup Girl. San Francisco (CA): Night Shade Books, 2010. P. 60.

PS - The book features lots of great Thai ambiance, decrepit old scientists, lady-boys, and megodonts -- huge genetically engineered elephants used to power factories in a Brazil-like high tech/low tech dystopia. Oh, and, speaking of great quotes, Elvis Costello is a genius and "Almost Blue" proves it; now playing on iTunes.

Wednesday, March 2, 2011

Do It: Watch "Firefly"

Heads up: the Joss Whedon cult show, Firefly, is coming to cable, where you can see it all over agin.

So do it: catch you some Firefly on the ole home entertainment system.

PS - The Geekverse is freaking out that Nathan Fillion has indicated that he'd shed his Castle garb and play the shiny role of space captain Mal again. Oh, and "Little Lion Man" by Mumford and Sons is worth freaking out about; now playing on iTunes.

Friday, February 25, 2011

5-4-Fri: Glasses

Lately, I have been choking on the spindrift of the perfect storm that is: getting older, needing the euphemistic "progressive" lenses in my glasses, having an outdated lens prescription that is making me crazy, and physically breaking my glasses frames.

So, my current glasses lens prescription is woefully out of date. I am squinting fiercely at everything father than 5 feet away. Not that I am any better close up since my flowering presbyopia makes me look like Geppetto trying to carve Pinnocchio's nose whenever I read a menu, text message, or anything, really, that is closer than the newspaper on the lap of the person next to me on the plane. To top it all off, last weekend my highfalutin "Ray-Ban" designer glasses frames broke because I looked at them wrong. As Patton Oswalt might say, "Oh, Ray-Ban, why is your beauty so fragile?" Looking ahead at the prospect of buying new and expensive bifocals that let me see clearly but don't make me look like grandpa I am oddly uncomforted by Wikipedia's reassurance that presbyopia is simply caused by the "natural course of aging."

Looking backward on my past spectacles as I try to select a new pair that are hip-but-not-hipster has been instructive:

1. George Bush Glasses. When I hit puberty, it hit back. Nestled in the cornucopia of hormonal changes brought to me by adolescence--right in there with head-gear braces, body odor, shaving, acute self-consciousness, and an all-pervading onanistic obsession with the opposite sex--was the sudden need for glasses. I couldn't see the blackboard. I couldn't see the Tee Vee. I was guessing at street signs. My father determined that I needed My. First. Pair. Of. Glasses. I went forth to the mall and selected a pair of depucelating frames made famous by George Bush the First: truly humongous, square plastic lenses tied into silver half-frames with fishing line. I marched into the middle-to-high-school transition looking like I was ready to be spoofed by Dana Carvey. Still, I will never forget the ride home in the car when I realized that one could see the leaves all the way up on top of the trees. The magic of optics! These bad boys stuck with me through a series of upgraded lenses and until I graduated from college.

2. Paper Chase Glasses. Naturally, by the time I was matriculating into graduate school I was a wiser and more stylish man. I needed new glasses big time--and not just because my eyesight was noticeably worse. I needed to get into something less repugnantly Republican and into something a serious Liberal Arts Man might proudly sport. Enter the equally huge but suave and deboner tortoise shell glasses. I always think of these as the type made famous by actors like James Stephenson in shows like "The Paper Chase." I felt fondly toward these glasses but recently saw a picture of myself from the era--not joking--in a button down oxford dress shirt, sweater vest, and these frames. Even I want to kick sand in my face.

3. Armani Glasses. Once I left academe and started toiling for the man in paid employ, I had the money to travel. And it was on a trip to Manhattan to visit my pal Alison that the tortoise shell frames went the way of the Dodo. In fact, one Saturday she forced me against my will to actually leave my glasses behind in her girl ghetto apartment on the upper East Side and, blind like Lear, stagger around the Big Apple with her to shop for new ones. Her exact words, I believe, were, "Leave them right here; in an hour you will never be wearing those damn things ever again." And so I got a pair of beyond-hip, matte black, ovoid frames from style-maker Giorgio Armani. I must say that people admired them and--like a member of an expecting couple asking if they could also moniker their kid with the cool name you and your spouse thought of first--a colleague at work asked after the exact account number of the frames and indicated that he wanted a pair, too. These were great glasses and died a spectacular death worthy of their virtuoso Italian progenitor: they split cleanly in half across the bridge while I was waving them to make a profound point to impress a hot date over wallet-breaking martinis in the lounge at the Mayflower hotel.

4. Ray-Ban Glasses. Which led me to buy my current pair of Ray-Ban frames in a desperate suburban 24-hour search for substitutes to Giorgio's masterpieces. Times, and styles, had changed since that fateful day in New York and I found myself in a narrow, rectangular frame of brushed silver that makes me feel as though I should really speak with a German accent. I have never actually liked them, though, and so I do not bemoan their demise. But I am not happy about the expense and trouble of searching for replacements. The task involves, among other things, standing in front of mirrors all day trying to ignore the fact that since I tried on my first pair, I have gained 75 pounds, grown an additional chin, and now need to make sure the frames match my greying hair as well as my lab-rat pink complexion.

5. Woody Allen Glasses. I am thinking of going toward the new retro-geek Woody Allen style lenses that are popular now. That way I can pretend that I am a scientist and/or a British spy from the '60s. Also, the bigger lenses give the optician room to fit in three different gradations of power. My Dad wore specs like these pretty continuously from the time he left boot camp until he was in his late 50s. I worry, though, that what seems cool at first blush in the style-permeated hot-house atmosphere of the store might end up in practice making me look like a drag version of my Aunt Alice at the beach from those old, square, color Kodak prints in the family photo album. In any case, I have to move on a decision swiftly since my broken and ill-patched frames are leaving me in a perpetual state of lightly nauseated disorientation.

PS - I am in the midst of borrowing and testing out my work's iPad in anticipation of buying one myself but I cannot tell if I am not liking its small size or if my miserable duck-taped glasses are prejudicing me against a blameless technology. Oh, and the 70s-style ballad "Belinda" by Ben Folds and Nick Hornby is a one-hit wonder unto itself; now playing on iTunes.

Friday, February 18, 2011

5-4-Fri: Television Shows

Behold! Five Tee Vee shows I am currently enjoying:

1. Daily Show with Jon Stewart. Who misses Craig Kilborn? Not me. Mr. Leibowitz is making The Tribe proud with his superb writing and clear-eyed riffs on the newz. You have probably stopped watching it as much as you used to. Correct that.

2. Human Target. Started strong. Drifted. Back on track. Good, solid adventure television. Wish they would get back to fantastical stunts a bit more but recommend it to you.

3. Hawaii Five-O. Sure it SEEMS like it is simply a venue for seeing Grace Park in a bikini, but it is so much more. Bad acting. Tired plots. Filler shots of the Islands. Embedded advertising. Yet, somehow it all comes off as fun to watch.

4. Walking Dead. I must admit that I have left a few episodes languishing in the TiVo queue, but this is an ambitious and entertaining modern-day zombie show. Give it a shot. In the head. Shoot twice. You don't want it getting back up and eating you.

5. Top Gear. Duuude. One word: Top Gear. British humor. Cars, cars, cars. And they make celebrities drive a race course and then rank them against one another. Must see TV.

PS - I am excited about the new Wonder Woman show set to debut in the new season. Is this because--as my TiVo first thought about me--I am really a black teenage girl? Is it because I got so excited about Joss Whedon maybe doing a WW film that I am foolishly positive haloing the whole TV thing even though he is not doing it? Is it because I want another good series to watch? Who knows? What I do know is that Mindy Smith's "Out Loud" is awesome; now playing on iTunes.

Saturday, February 5, 2011

What Is Going On? (Music Mentioned in the Post Script)

As dedicated readers, fresh from--essentially--a year off of reading, will note, this blog has a few "Departments." One is the meta What is Going On?

As a service to you and anyone using the Series of Tubes, I list each song referenced in the blog postings. (Each post has a post script -- get it? "Post" script. Har! -- in which I link to a song I have been listening to.

I had hoped to never repeat a band in a PS, but, woefully, after four years of admittedly intermittent writing, I recently had to cite R.E.M. for a second time. So, all bets are off, mein freunds. Forewarned is forearmed.

That is all.

PS - Florence and the Machine has a compelling song in "Heavy in Your Arms;" now playing on iTunes.

Friday, February 4, 2011

5-4-Fri: Muzak

Herz the drill: I have been listening to some new music. Perhaps you will likie, perhaps not. Please to be enjoying the recommendations.

1. Lonely Avenue by Ben Folds and Nick Hornby. This 11 song collaboration is awesome. Ben is claimed by Chapel Hill as a favorite son for his eponymous + Five band and Nick wrote 2003's excellent set of music criticism essays, Songbook, among many other things. Any album with a song written from the perspective of Alaska's Billy Carter, Levi Johnston, is okay by me.

2. Collapse Into Now by the remnants of R.E.M. The beauty of the Interwebs is that you can hear the new R.E.M. album almost in its entirety well before its Spring release date. This successor to the return-to-form Accelerate seems like a bit of a retread -- one song with classic backing vocals and use of the the word "Honey," one song with the sing-song cadence memorialized by "hey...kids...rock and roll," one song written like a Dadaist poem, etc., etc. Still, dude, R.E.M. Gotta get it.

3. National Ransom by Elvis Costello. Not everyone knows that Elvis has a huge country streak in him, but the man has some serious Nashville-type cred. Produced by none less than T Bone Burnett, the newest album by Spike is woefully long and, somehow, not as compelling as you'd expect the formula Elvis + Leon Russell + country/folk x bluegrass to be.

4. Twilight Saga, Eclipse Soundtrack. I am ashamed to have purchased this album -- but NPR recommended it so highly and, while it is not entirely the bomb, I will say that I am loving--as I always do--Metric's contribution ("Eclipse") and really enjoy The Bravery's "Ours" and Florence and the Machine's "Heavy in Your Arms." Judge if you must, but it is a solid soundtrack.

5. Sigh No More by Mumford and Sons. So good they could be Irish. The hit single from this London folk band debut album is the infectious and radio-edited "Little Lion Man." Here's a recap for all the studio execs out there: serious talent self-finances to avoid your deadening grasp, earns a reputation from live gigs, gets screaming endorsements from influential DJs, and then hits gold from a distribution deal. Fear the future, people.

PS - I anticipate new R.E.M. albums with mixed emotions these days. Accelerate was so good. Collapse Into Now promises to be little more than listenable. Oh, and "Mine Smell Like Honey" by Buck, Mills and Stipe is looking to be the US single; now playing on iTunes.