February 2009 Archives

So, I met with my tax preparer this morning, and, well, the results weren't pretty. Let's just say that if I ever try to offer you financial advice, you'd be wise to simply smile, pat me on the head, and back away slowly.

Afterward, as if I hadn't been demoralized enough by getting a thorough bitch-slapping from Uncle Sam, I headed over to Fashion Place Mall to buy a belt. I wasn't looking for anything fancy or wanting to make a statement, I just needed something to hold up my pants. Should've been a snap, in and out in ten minutes, right? One would think so. One would be quite wrong.

For anyone who was annoyed with the way the "in memoriam" montage was handled on this year's Oscar broadcast, here it is as it should've been done on TV, with no annoying cutaways or zooms:

I thought it was nice they included Vampira, who was hardly a big star outside of cult-film circles but was beloved by those who like that sort of thing.

Have you ever come slightly awake early in the morning -- not fully conscious, just somewhat aware of your surroundings -- and known that everything is just perfect: The sheets are smooth and soft beneath you, not tangled for a change, the room temperature and ambient light levels are optimal, and you don't even have the urge to pee. After a moment, you begin to sink back into a deeper layer of sleep, like a U-boat that's popped up for a look around and is now submerging into the cool, quiet darkness, and you can sense that you're experiencing the most restful, contented sleep you've had in weeks...

And then the bloody alarm clock goes off and sends your heartrate into the stratosphere.

Yeah, that was how I started today. I've had a headache ever since.

Sigh.

An acquaintance of mine told me a few days ago that he had no interest in watching the Academy Awards because it was always the same old thing. Or, as he more colorfully described it, "Guy in tux wins something, gives awkward speech; next actor and actress come up and awkwardly recite some boilerplate stuff before announcing next winner. Lather, rinse, repeat." Another guy I know boycotted the show this year because the nominees "never reflect the tastes of real people." (He was pissed that The Dark Knight wasn't up for Best Picture. Little tip for the uninitiated: The Return of the King notwithstanding, science fiction, fantasy, superhero, and horror flicks have no chance of ever winning in the "major" categories. They're just not taken seriously enough by enough people. I suspect the reason ROTK won was less a recognition of its quality than of the sheer massive effort that went into filming the entire Lord of the Rings trilogy. And of course I'll never forget or forgive tedious and unfunny Annie Hall beating Star Wars back in '77. Grr.)

Personally, I like the Oscars, even in those years when I haven't seen many of the nominated films. Actually, I think I might enjoy them a little more when I don't have a horse in the race, so to speak, because then I'm not feeling competitive and I'm free to simply enjoy the self-indulgent spectacle. That doesn't mean, of course, that I like every year's show equally. Some years, they just don't work very well...

Really, the melding of pose, composition, lighting, and caption is just sublime:

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I've never seen a Jim Jarmusch film, and frankly his stuff doesn't sound like anything I would enjoy -- I never have developed much taste for artsy independent cinema that "breaks many conventions of traditional Hollywood filmmaking"; I happen to like traditional Hollywood conventions, thank you -- but I did find the following Jarmusch quote interesting:

Nothing is original. Steal from anywhere that resonates with inspiration or fuels your imagination. Devour old films, new films, books, paintings, photographs, poems, dreams, random conversations, architecture, bridges, street signs, trees, clouds, bodies of water, light and shadows. Select only things to steal from that speak directly to your soul. If you do this, your work (and theft) will be authentic. Authenticity is invaluable; originality is non-existent. And don’t bother concealing your thievery — celebrate it if you feel like it. In any case always remember what Jean-Luc Godard said: "It’s not where you take things from — it’s where you take them to."

Authenticity as opposed to originality. Makes sense to me. I knew at an early age that much of Star Wars was ripped off from Flash Gordon serials, Dune, and Isaac Asimov's Foundation stories, and yet somehow those elements recombined into something wholly new and, at least before it became a brand instead of merely a movie, terribly exciting and pleasing.

This quote was happily yoinked from Roberson's Interminable Ramble... which handily proves the point, if you think about it.

One of Utah's best-known and best-loved public figures, the businessman Larry H. Miller, died yesterday afternoon at the age of 64. He'd been in poor health for some time and had recently had both legs amputated at the knees due to complications from his Type II diabetes.

I imagine by now you've probably heard about the latest outrageous remarks spewing from the pie-hole of Utah state senator Chris Buttars, and you may be thinking to yourself, "what the hell is with that place anyhow?" Well, I live in this place, and I don't get it either.

As far as I'm concerned, Senator Buttars is an ignorant, hateful old son-of-a-bitch who oozes contempt for anyone who isn't just like him, i.e., white, male, heterosexual, Republican, Mormon,* and dressed by Mr. Mac. I have no doubt that in another time and another place, he would've been proud to stand alongside Governor Wallace on the steps of that elementary school. He is an embarrassment to this state and he ought to be an embarrassment to his church, as well, although I know there are quite a few people in both who agree with his opinions but are too polite to phrase them in terms as inflammatory as he likes to use. There's got to be or else he wouldn't keep getting elected.

When you've spent your entire life in Utah, as I have, nearly 40 years now, it is impossible -- or at least highly dishonest -- to deny that there's a deep, ugly wellspring of bigotry flowing beneath this state. It's directed at many types of people for all kinds of reasons, all of which basically boil down to someone being "different." But not everyone who calls Utah home drinks from that spring. Not everyone here is afraid of people who don't look like they were pressed out of some kind of biological cookie-cutter, or who don't believe the things we do or behave and think in exactly the way we do. It disgusts me that this big-mouthed, belligerent, obstinate asshole keeps drawing national attention to himself and making it look as if his bad attitude is representative of what Utah is all about, even as he tries to portray himself as a misunderstood victim of a liberal press and "mean" special-interest groups. Mean, Buttars? Seems to me that's a classic case of the pot talking to the proverbial kettle.

This isn't about the political football issue he's discussing in the interview that started this brouhaha, gay rights, not really. It's about a nasty-spirited, awful man who likes to try and hurt people he doesn't like. You can see it in the video excerpts of that interview, the glitter in his eye when he starts throwing around nasty terms like "pig sex" -- a term I've never heard before the righteous Mr. Buttars introduced it to me, by the way, and I fancy myself a reasonably worldly guy -- he's itching for a fight, and he's being deliberately provocative in hopes of getting it. He's a bully and an ass, as bigots usually are.

Buttars makes me ashamed of my home state, ashamed that this is a place where enough people agree with his thinking to keep voting him into office. But I have to say again, and keep saying it as loudly as I can, that not everyone from Utah is like him.

* Disclaimer: I've got nothing against Mormons. As I've said before, most of my friends and family are Mormon and they're good people whom I love, even when I occasionally disagree with them. But a lot of Buttars' bile is fueled by, or at least informed by, his religious beliefs. I don't suggest he's a bigot because he's Mormon -- you can find fearful, close-minded bastards in any particular group -- but Mormonism gives shape to his bigotry, and membership in the church is very obviously one of the criteria he uses to judge others, so I consider it fair to mention it here.

Nothing to say, really, I just thought this was a cool picture. You can find more mermaids and other interesting stuff at the photographer's blog.

I kinda hate to admit this, but a while back I finally bowed to the inevitable and allowed myself to assimilated into the Facebook collective -- feel free to look me up over there if you're into that scene.

If you've never played there, Facebook has its own version of the memes that drift around the blogosphere, and over the past few weeks I've been tagged approximately 432,000 times for one called "25 Random Things About Me." I'm cross-posting the list I came up with here, for anyone who may be interested. (Long-time readers may already know some of this stuff; it's not easy to come up with entirely original material all the time...)

Anyhow, meme-age below the fold:

And now for the cinematic/video portion of tonight's program:

Vimeo Tribute: Star Wars from Casey D on Vimeo.

Seriously, would you feel comfortable geeking around in the office with toy machine guns and a video camera these days? As fun as this looks, I'd be terrified of ending up on the lay-off list. These guys obviously don't have enough work to do...

Incidentally, may I just mention that I hate all the gleepity sounds that were laid over the insert shots of the Falcon's targeting computers in the Not-So-Special Editions? I've read that F-4 Phantom pilots in Vietnam started turning off the alarms and various audio systems in their cockpits because they got to be too distracting; I can't help but think that'd be Han Solo's philosophy as well. A former fighter pilot and motorhead like him would be listening to every little murmur in the engines, every creak and groan of the ship's skeleton, and you can't do that with electronic felgercarb going gleepity-gloop all the time.

Continuing on with my literary ramblings, for those who may be interested...

I felt like I had a pretty good reading year in '08, even though I actually completed two fewer books than in 2007 (only 22 versus 24 last year). I blame the discrepancy on the length of a couple of them, more than anything; I never have a moment when I'm not in the middle of something. Anyhow, the book lists are below the fold.

We'll start with what my fifth-grade teacher used to call the "true" stuff:

I don't know if 2008 was actually more eventful than other recent years, but '08 certainly felt more... I don't know... frenetic? That's not quite the right word, but it's in the neighborhood. Certainly '08 was more exhausting than other twelve-month blocks of time. I recall experiencing more moments of feeling utterly drained and used up in the last year than in the entire decade preceding it. Of course, that could be simply of my inexorable trudge toward middle age. I am 39 years old now, and I'm finding, to my horror, that I just don't absorb the hits as well as I used to. Or it could be that the hits lately have been more intense...

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What does it say about me that I could go with either interpretation?

(Actually what it says is simply that I am part of the unfortunate demographic group labeled Generation X. Neither Boomer nor Millennial, we enjoyed a brief but superficial flirtation with the marketers and journalists back in the early '90s, but we soon lost our sparkle when those damn all-digital kids who are going to inherit the 21st Century started doing... whatever it is that they do. The folks my age are trapped between The Summer of Love and Hannah Montana, doomed to see our influence limited by dint of the overwhelming numbers of those who preceded us and those who follow.

But maybe I'm just feeling testy at the news that yet another classic film from my younger days, Predator, has been added to the remake/reboot/reimagine/screw-you-Gen-X-kids-because-your-stuff-wasn't-as-cool-as-you-always-thought list. Bastards.)

Following up on something in the previous entry, the Don McLean song that gave us the expression "the day the music died" is, of course, "American Pie," an eight-minute-long anthem that debuted in 1971 and has been a staple of rock radio ever since. It's a beautiful piece of songwriting, simple, catchy, and haunting, in no small part because the lyrics are so bloody mysterious. I have no doubt that generations of college freshmen sat up half the night trying to decode this song. I didn't have to myself, because right around the time I was in my oldies fandom phase, I started hearing a version of "American Pie" where some guy's voice had been dubbed over the top of the song, explaining what all of the symbolic lines were actually supposed to be referring to. I don't know the provenance of this version, or how much the explanations actually jibe with Don McLean's intentions, but based on what I know of the historical and musical milestones of the 1960s, it all seemed plausible.

Here's a video clip that repeats much of the information from "American Pie: The Overdub" (or whatever it was called) in visual form. Again, I make no claim on the accuracy of any of this. But it is interesting, and you get to see some great vintage pictures of Buddy Holly, among others, and hear one of the enduring classics of the rock era:

You wouldn't know it based on the type of music I usually talk about around this place, but I went through a phase in my late-high-school/early-college years when I was simply mad for the stuff that's usually categorized under the catch-all term "oldies," i.e., the early rock-n-roll artists of the 1950s, the girl groups of the mid-1960s, and the Motown sound and blues-influenced hard rock of the later '60s. For a while, it was like I was trying to make myself into an honorary Baby Boomer or something.

Oldies music was somewhat resurgent at the time, turning up in popular movies like Back to the Future and Dirty Dancing, and on television shows such as The Wonder Years and some others you probably don't remember, and of course it was used in all kinds of commercials that were cynically targeted to our nostalgic parents (just like the commercials of the last decade have been leveraging the Awesome '80s to lure we thirtysomethings into Burger King or whatever). But for me, the appeal of this genre was the same things that drew some of my peers to punk or obscure college-radio alternative bands: it was refreshingly different from the stagnating pop scene of the late '80s, and it was sufficiently esoteric that liking it was an easy way of declaring my individuality. It was also a vast, unknown territory with an intricate and interconnected history that I could explore and lose myself in and become insufferably opinionated about, which are, of course, the fundamental elements of any fannish concern. It didn't hurt that my old Ford Galaxie, my beloved Cruising Vessel, had a stock, AM-only radio and oldies were about the only kind of music you could find with that thing. And of course a lot of that music is just plain good. There's a reason why songs by The Four Tops and Roy Orbison are still heard in movie soundtracks 40 years after they were recorded, and it's the same reason why certain tunes by Sinatra and the Glenn Miller Band live on, too. Because they managed to express something so perfectly that they continue to work for us, despite the passage of time. I hope we never change so much as a culture or a species that they cease working.

Anyway, there were a lot of artists I enjoyed and admired during my oldies fanboy phase -- Sam Cooke, Fats Domino, The Supremes, The Platters, The Drifters, Chuck Berry, the aforementioned Orbison -- but my favorite was a guy who's possibly more famous for his untimely death than for anything he did while he was living, which is one of the great shames of music history. I'm talking about a skinny kid from Texas named Buddy Holly, who died in a plane crash 50 years ago today.