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of the perfect storm that is: getting older, needing the euphemistic "progressive" lenses in my glasses, having an outdated lens prescription that is making me crazy, and physically breaking my glasses frames.

So, my current glasses lens prescription is woefully out of date.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.

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.

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.

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.