July 2010 Archives

I've been planning for a couple of weeks to post a clip of Harry Chapin performing "Taxi," a lengthy ballad about disappointment and thwarted childhood ambitions, but you know what? Screw that. I'm not in the mood to dwell on my dissatisfaction right now. It's a hot, muggy summer night in the SLC, the kind of night when young people go out on the prowl, and we middle-aged types reminisce about the crap we somehow managed to get away with, back in our own prowling days. So instead of that downer '70s tune, I'm going back to the genre I turn to when I need a pick-me-up, the dumb and lustful pop-metal that I absorbed like oxygen in my late teens and early 20s. Here's a song I can't begin to justify liking, but I do, and I won't apologize for it. It's by Lita Ford, another former member of The Runaways who had a few solo hits in the late '80s, including a pretty big duet she performed with Ozzy Osbourne. The song is "Kiss Me Deadly," and no, it has nothing to do with Mickey Spillane:

I don't have any specific memories associated with this song, other than liking it a lot when it was first out. I still have a 45 of it down in the Archives somewhere that features a rather fetching photo of Ms. Ford on the sleeve -- she's naked except for her guitar, which is naturally positioned just so to hide everything. I think it was that flavor of blunt sexuality that drew me to this song, actually... the line about getting laid and the one about knowing what she likes... I don't think I'd ever heard a woman sing about sex in such frank, almost masculine terms before. Certainly it was a far cry from the fragile romanticism and opaque metaphors of Stevie Nicks. And I thought it was pretty hot.

Hot just like this miserable night. Going to be a long one, I think...

When I was seven years old, my parents and I embarked on that great American ordeal -- um, that is tradition -- that figures so prominently in the lore of many families, the California Road Trip. Naturally, given my age at the time, I was utterly preoccupied by the mystical siren-song of Disneyland, but we also hit a lot of other attractions along the way, some well-known, some not so much, and a few that were masterpieces of good old-fashioned roadside kitsch. In the latter category, I'm thinking of the Roy Rogers and Dale Evans Museum, located on the legendary Mother Road, Route 66, in Victorville, CA. Not that I knew what Route 66 was back in those days. I didn't know what kitsch was either, and I certainly didn't know who Roy Rogers and Dale Evans were. But my parents did -- Roy and Dale were as much a part of my mom and dad's childhoods as Captain Kirk and Spock were to mine -- and they were as giddy as kids themselves when we pulled our 1970 T-Bird into an empty parking lot in what seemed to me like the hottest, most desolate place in the world. (This was years before I visited Phoenix!)

The museum didn't look like much from the outside, merely a plain, warehouse-style building with a tremendous statue of a prancing horse out front. I would soon learn that the statue was of Roy's famous pal Trigger, and its pose mirrored the one exhibit I still clearly remember from our visit to that place: the taxidermied remains of the real Trigger, standing on display like a life-size action figure on a collector's shelf. There were other mounted animals there as well -- Roy's dog Bullet, and Dale's horse Buttermilk -- but it was Trigger that commanded all the attention in the room, even from an ignorant kid like myself.

To the spammer who hit Simple Tricks hard in the wee hours this morning:

Telling me that my blog "sucks big black ass" over and over and over again is not an effective way to get me onboard with your ill-conceived marketing scheme. Not that I'd do it anyhow, but there's no way I'm going to publish your offensive and most likely virus-ridden little URL after being repeatedly insulted.

I'm just sayin'.

Now kindly go screw yourself while I delete your 200 pointless wastes of bandwidth.

That is all.

J-

News today that a "contemporized adaptation" of the Arnold Schwarzenegger-on-Mars flick Total Recall is in the works. Never mind the question of whether the world is clamoring for yet another version of yet another story that's already been told, or whether this particular story might benefit from being told again.* No, the thing that bugs me here is this obnoxious piece of jargon, "contemporized adaptation." That, my friends, sounds to me like a marketing department trying to find some clever new way of saying "remake" without using the prefix "re-." Because, I suppose, market research indicates that words beginning with "re-" too clearly state the obvious. "Reimagining," "relaunch," "reboot" -- they all stink of a trip back to the same well, don't they? So instead of using one of those words, dripping with all the negative connotations of creative bankruptcy, somebody sat around a conference table for hours to come up with this all-new term for the same old crap.

I can just imagine the pitch meeting for Total Recall, Take Two: A guy in a 5,000-dollar suit listens for a minute, then says with a slight, vaguely reptilian grin, "Wait a minute, this is just another bloody remake, right? We've done dozens of those in the last decade, why should I greenlight another one? Can't you give me something original?" And he's answered with, "No, no, it's not a remake... it's a contemporized adaptation." And then, since Studio Suits are so easily dazzled by multisyllabic words, the first guy nods and says, "Oh, well, then, that sounds swell. Here's a blank check."

Guys, let me tell you something: it doesn't matter how you say it. It doesn't matter how you justify it. The fact is, you're out of ideas. You're lazy, you're overly cautious, and you care more about extending brands than telling stories. And every one of these "contemporized adaptations" you keep cranking out just further proves my point. You know what? At this point, just remake it all, every movie from the last 50 years, and the sooner the better, because then maybe when it's all been done over with sparkly CG effects and processed into murky 3D for maximum gimmick-appeal, we can get back to actually, you know, making movies, the kind you don't have to make up words to describe.

Remakes. Grrr.

* For the record, I'm not really that big a fan of Total Recall. In fact, I outright loathed it when it was first released back in my old working-at-the-multiplex days. I don't much enjoy "mind-f**k" movies anyhow, the ones that want to leave you guessing about what's really happening to the characters and what's only in their heads, and Recall was a pretty clumsy example of that genre. It was also ridiculously, cartoonishly violent (or so it seemed to me at the time; I've since seen worse), and it was just plain stupid in a lot of places. I could buy the alien instant-atmosphere-making machine, but Arnold and Rachel Ticotin looking completely unscathed in the final scene after having their eyes bugged four inches out of their skulls and then getting explosively recompressed? Uh, no. And don't tell me this is proof that the whole movie was Arnold's dream/memory implant. I already told you, I don't like that mind-f**k crap. (I also dislike novels with unreliable narrators; I don't like the feeling of some writer somewhere having a laugh at my expense.)

The biggest problem with Recall, though, is that it has no third act. Following a reasonably good set-up and middle portion, the writers obviously couldn't figure out how to end it, so they just have Arnold shoot a bunch of people. Even though I hate remakes on general terms, you can actually make a pretty good argument in favor of remaking this one, assuming someone has come up with a solution to the problem of the third act. But of course, I don't believe anyone has. Because most screenplays these days aren't even as good as the dumb popcorn movies of the late '80s and early '90s.

And you know, now that I think about it, my attitude toward Total Recall has softened a lot in the last 20 years. Memories of it are bound up with memories of a good time in my life. And, as stupid as it was, it was still more entertaining than something like The Dark Knight. I'm really tired of all the Darkness with a capital D being sold as artistic significance in movies these days...

Briefly noted, I've culled a bunch of the links I previously had in the right-hand sidebar. They no longer served much use for me, and I imagine most of my Loyal Readers are getting their bloggage through an aggregator these days anyhow. If there was something over there that anybody used regularly, just let me know and I'll put it back.

Sharp-eyed readers may notice some new links among the ones that I kept. "My Flickr photostream" and "My Amazon.com listings" ought to be self-explanatory.

Stashmatic is a database site for cataloging one's collectibles. I actually signed up with the service several years ago, around the same time I discovered LibraryThing, but I've never found the time to do much more than play with it a little. Which means the "stash" I'm linking to represents only a tiny, tiny sliver of the fabulous Bennion Archives, and not the comprehensive accounting I dream of someday having. Even so, I thought what's there might still be of interest to someone.

"My DVD Collection" remains dead, as I still haven't found a suitable substitute for DVDSpot.com, the late, lamented movie-cataloging service I enjoyed for only about a year before the Internet gods pulled one of their capricious tricks and shut the thing down. One of these days, somebody will build me a decent alternative. In the meantime, I'm keeping the placeholder.

Finally, let me call your attention to a new arrival in the "Pimpin' My Friends" category (formerly "Miscellaneous Coolness"): Pretty Little Pixel is the portfolio and business site for a terrific graphic designer of my acquaintance, Stephanie Swift. We both share a fondness for old-fashioned signage, and she does this neat-o thing where she transforms ordinary photographs of old signs into striking works of art. I'm proud to say she's given the treatment to some of my own photos, and I have my eye on a couple of her pieces that'll be perfect for my kitchen, when I finally get around to remodeling it. Hop on over and check out her work. It'll add some nostalgic color to just about any setting!

Today marks 100 days since the Deepwater Horizon drilling rig exploded in the Gulf of Mexico and touched off an environmental catastrophe. The last I heard, the cap over the broken wellhead was still holding, and BP expects its relief well will intercept the original hole within two weeks and then they'll hopefully be able to plug the damn thing for good. But millions of gallons of brown goo are still sloshing around in the Gulf or settling into the sediments at the bottom, and it's going to be there for years, if not decades or centuries, to come. So this seems like an especially appropriate and poignant time to post the following music video. It's a clip from the free concert Jimmy Buffett gave in Gulf Shores, Alabama, on July 11, which was broadcast live without commercial interruption on the CMT network and which I finally got around to watching just last weekend. (Thanks to The Girlfriend for recording it for me, since I am one of those Luddites who only watches the TV channels I can pull out of the airwaves for free.)

This is the finale of the show, a reworking of Jimmy's 24-year-old ballad "When the Coast Is Clear." It was always a melancholy song -- originally it was about the end of summer and the self-reflection brought on by the change of season -- but these new lyrics are downright heartbreaking. Watch for the pretty girl at about 2:10 who looks like she's fighting back tears. I was, too, and I've never been anywhere near the Gulf Coast...

I know we need the oil, and I'm a far cry from a treehugging environmentalist -- anyone who reads this blog knows how much I love driving my cars -- but there's going to come a day when people will realize just how damn shortsighted and clumsy our civilization has been, how much damage we've caused to ourselves and everything around us. After Deepwater Horizon, I think maybe that day is close. I just hope we can live with the regret.

...here's a nice photo I recently ran across of the delectable Jane Seymour, circa 1978:

I believe this was taken on the set of Sinbad and the Eye of the Tiger, which starred John Wayne's son Patrick as the swashbuckling hero of the Arabian Nights. I don't think I've seen that movie since middle school, probably, but I found Jane's appearance in that one, ahem, memorable. I've always liked her.

Anyhow, I finally got myself a day off -- I think perhaps the Work Apocalypse is easing up at last -- so I'm puttering around the house today, catching up on various chores I haven't managed to take care of for the last several weeks. I'll be back later with an entry or maybe even two. In the meantime, Jane will keep you company... be a gentleman (or a girlfriend) and buy her a drink or something, won't you?

So, after traipsing this weekend with The Girlfriend and her 17-year-old niece through every clothing store in two malls that are oriented to young, pretty people, I have scientifically determined that Hollister Co. has the best music, kind of a quasi-retro surf-rock thing. They also have exactly the leather easy chair and ottoman I want for my living room, cunningly distressed to look like something found at random in an antique store... except that the same exact chair turned up in two different Hollister stores. Go figure.

As you may have gathered from recent entries, I've been really busy at work lately. Really damn busy. So busy that my coworkers and I have been referring to the situation as "The Apocalypse." I just reached my five-year anniversary with my current employer -- this job has now officially become the longest-running one I've ever had, and I hope I'm not jinxing myself by mentioning it -- and in all that time, I've never seen it this crazy. Late nights every night for two solid weeks, sometimes very late nights, and a six-inch stack of paper in my inbox that never seems to get any shorter, no matter how many hours I put in. Just call me Sisyphus, I guess.

I was even planning to go in last weekend to try and get on top of some of it, but my rebellious body had plans of its own, which consisted mainly of vomiting so hard I could feel my stomach itself clenching. Not the muscles and flab that the world sees in the vicinity of my waistband, but the actual internal organ. The visual image that came to mind once everything finally relaxed was the nurses on M*A*S*H squeezing one of those black respirator bags shut, and the way it slowly refilled after it was released. I initially thought I had food poisoning, but I've since decided it was very possibly a reaction to the stress I've been under recently.

In any event, this Apocalypse thing has made me rather grouchy -- possibly you've noticed? -- for all kinds of reasons, not least of which is the effect it's had on my blogging. I know that sounds stupid and superficial and some of you are probably thinking I have messed-up priorities, but the fact is I derive a lot of personal fulfillment from this particular hobby, and I keenly feel its absence when I'm unable to do it. Blogging reassures me that I haven't completely surrendered my writing ambitions and allowed whatever gifts I may have to wither away, that I am still, somewhere deep down inside, the brash, romantic twentysomething that I think I liked far more than my 40-year-old self. Blogging is also a necessary escape from the mundane demands of what I do for a living, my own little fiefdom in which I don't have to satisfy account managers or clients or legal departments or the faceless editors of the Chicago Manual of Style. Here, I am in charge, and all I have to do here is satisfy myself. And hopefully my Three Loyal Readers, assuming you're still out there.

During times when the scope of my life spirals inward to the point where I can't even manage to keep up on this, let alone anything more important... well, then I feel entirely justified to gripe about not having much of a life. Don't misunderstand. I enjoy what I do for a living, I really do. But I'm not the type who can survive for long doing nothing more than working, commuting, and sleeping. Some people may love their jobs that much, but I am convinced they are an extremely lucky minority to which I do not belong.

All of which is a needlessly long explanation for what you're about to encounter below the fold, assuming you haven't already clicked away to greener online pastures. Yes, kids, it's a meme! Not as worthwhile as a coherent essay about an actual topic perhaps, but it's something I can putter at for two minutes here and there during my busy-busy-busy days over the course of a week or two. Which is exactly what I've been doing with this particular meme throughout the Apocalypse.

For the record, I snagged this one from SamuraiFrog a couple months back but I'm just now getting around to using it. I've said that entirely too much lately.

So... are we ready? Okay, then, let's begin...

I heard tonight's selection while driving home from The Girlfriend's, the first time I've seen her all week. It was after dark and traffic was sparse, one of those times when the road seems to belong to you and you alone. The car responds like a horse that's been penned up all winter, the windows are down and the draft whipping through them carries a sullen ghost of the 100-degree day that lived and died without your notice while you were at work. And then... a song that seems to perfectly encapsulate everything you're currently feeling, and everything you've experienced over the past couple weeks:

To any of my Loyal Readers who're still awake out there in the darkness, good night... and pleasant dreams...

In yet another bit of inspired silliness, Improv Everywhere, that group of merry pranksters who inspired an annual tradition of pantsless public transit rides in New York and other cities around the world (including, surprisingly enough, my own Salt Lake City), strikes again -- or should I say "strikes back?" -- with a Star Wars-themed subway stunt:

I dig the dude who tries to figure out what the princess is reading, then has a hearty chuckle over it. And of course all the tiny handheld cameras that suddenly appear when the stormtroopers and Vader arrive. Funny how I didn't see that coming when I used to imagine as a kid what the 21st century would be like...

This video has popped up in a lot of places recently; I got it from Sullivan's Daily Dish.

My friend Karen posted this cartoon the other day. I was amused.

It's probably just as well we no longer live in the culture depicted here, though. The way things have been going at the office the past couple of weeks, my ashtray would be overflowing, my bottom desk-drawer full of empties, and my vision blurry from drink. It's blurry now, but that would be from working until 10:30 last night and coming back in first thing this morning. Alas.

Yeah, I can relate to this at the moment...

UPDATE: Hm. My sidebar appears to chop off the right side of the comic strip. Sorry about that; I figured it would float over the sidebar like video clips often do. If you just click on the cartoon, you'll be taken to the Official Dilbert Site, where you can read it in all its glory.

A number of my regular blog-reads have been playing this week with a little doodad that analyzes a sample of your writing and determines which famous writer your style most resembles. Or something. (I cynically suspect it just grabs well-known names at random from a list. But maybe not. What do I know?)

Anyhow, I can't resist trying these things out for myself, so I plugged in my angry "Synchcronicity II" blog entry from a couple weeks ago and this is what I got:

I write like
Stephen King

I Write Like by Mémoires, Mac journal software. Analyze your writing!

And you know what? That's fine by me. In fact, it's awesome. I've never felt like I had a "favorite author" the way many people espouse, no one whom I've felt compelled to study and memorize and read every single work by that person, but if I'm forced to pick someone, King is usually my answer. He's vulgar, yes, and frequently self-indulgent, and when he's off his game, he really stinks up the place. But when he's good -- and he is good more often than his detractors would have you believe -- he's brutally effective in taking readers where he wants them to go. I admire his plain-spoken prose style, his grasp of real-life detail, his ability to make the most outlandish threats seem immediate and real (at least as long as you're under his spell), and of course his deep understanding of and empathy for lower-middle-class and working-class Americans, a demographic that's rarely handled with a fair hand, in my opinion.

No other author makes me want to write fiction of my own the way I do after I read something of King's (although my recent discovery Charlaine Harris comes close).

Just a note from your curmudgeonly neighborhood proofreader: the words "breathe" and "breath" are not interchangeable, and the one is not an archaic or European spelling of the other. They both have their purpose.

"Breathe" is a verb. You breathe deeply. You breathe more clearly after taking a decongestant.

"Breath" is a noun. You take a breath when you breathe. We say something is a breath of fresh air. You curse pedantic, pain-in-the-butt proofreaders under your breath.

Got it? Good.

I'm glad we had this little chat. Carry on, now.

Yes, I am still at the office at 8:23 PM. For the third time this week. With more yet to come. Grrrrr.

Anyhow, the big air-conditioning unit that's mounted above my cubicle just shut down for the night. While the silence is a blessed change from the constant white noise, there's also something deeply sad about it. The suddenly unmoving air seems to somehow absorb the sensation of life and activity that usually permeates the old cube farm, and it starts to feel like we're nearing the inevitable end. Like when the Titanic's lights went out just before everything really went to hell.

Or maybe it's just sad that I'm here late enough to witness the energy-saving protocols going into effect. As I said earlier, grrrr.

Yeah, I know, another damn music video. I haven't had the time for anything more substantive, I'm afraid. Lots of late nights at the office this week, and the way things are going, I'll be lucky if I don't have to work over the holiday weekend, too, and possibly the following weekend as well, and all thanks to some overzealous middle-management dumbass who made an impossible promise that I and my fellow bottom-of-the-ladder production people -- the people who do the actual work around this place -- now have to try and fulfill. My Loyal Readers can probably guess how I feel about that. Call me lazy if that's how you see it, but I personally think the American-style protestant work ethic (i.e., the "thank you, sir, may I have another" mindset) is bullshit, and I resent the hell out of every additional second The Man shaves off the already too-small "life" portion of my work/life balance.

So, in that vein, here's one for every middle-aged, white-collar cubicle monkey out there who spends his days wondering which of the reasonable, responsible choices he made in his youth led him to this bleak plateau where he feels like a coyote that's thinking about gnawing off his own leg in order to escape the merciless steel jaws. It's a little primal-scream therapy from Sting and The Police, and while the Road Warrior-inspired, post-apocalypse trappings of this video are as 1980s as it gets, the meaning of the lyrics and the bubbling rage at the grinding inhumanity of modern life remain as applicable -- sadly -- as ever.

And on that note, I hope that everyone reading this does, in fact, get to enjoy their holiday weekends. Think of me while you're barbecuing and looking for a good spot to watch the parade...

If you're fortunate enough to live in an area where the glow of urban lighting hasn't completely washed out the nighttime sky, you may have spotted the International Space Station zooming overhead. I've seen it several times myself, a golden spark flashing across the Salt Lake Valley at breakneck speed. On one memorable occasion, it had a companion spark, one of the space shuttles running alongside just after undocking to come home. (I don't remember which shuttle it was... I really should make notes about that sort of thing). Anyhow, you may have wondered just exactly how big the station is to be visible to the naked eye like that. And if you're like me, the usual description -- that it's the size of a football field, the largest object we've ever put into space -- doesn't really help much. (I can't help it if I'm not sports-minded!)

Earlier this evening, my friend Jeff Farr posted the following chart on Facebook:

And now I have no trouble visualizing it at all. Why didn't somebody just say it was nearly as wide as the Enterprise's saucer section... sheesh!

The origin page for this nifty graphic has some more information about the station, its systems, and how long it's going to be up there, if you're interested...