Good lord… I’m offline for a few days and Bea Arthur dies, the news media does its best to convince everyone that Captain Trips has broken out and we’re all doomed, some bonehead decides it’d be really cool to photograph Air Force One over New York City without bothering to tell everyone not to panic when they see a low-flying jumbo jet being pursued by an F-16, and Arlen Specter switches parties.
You know, sometimes it’s a good thing to be uninformed about what’s going on in the world…
(Incidentally, my weekend road trip was grand. There was naturally a huge backlog waiting for me at the office this morning, but I’ll try to find the time to jot down some travel stories in the next little while…)
Just to give my loyal readers a taste of how entertaining a Rick concert really is, here’s a recent performance of one of his playlist standards, “I Get Excited,” including his regular schtick of inviting a bunch of female admirers on stage and getting up close and personal with one lucky lady in particular:
I’ve seen him do this same routine six or seven times now, and it still cracks me up. And incidentally, despite how this looks, there are plenty of male Rick Springfield fans, too…
Here in the clean light of a new morning, I realized the previous entry makes it appear that I’m in a really bad mental space. Well, I was for a couple of days, but let me assure any concerned loyal readers out there that I’m all right. I started recovering as soon as it became apparent the insurance companies weren’t going to give me any hassles, and I mostly unclenched once the car went into the shop and it felt like some progress was being made. I’m still unhappy the accident happened at all, of course, and that my formerly “like-new” car isn’t so much anymore. I get very attached to my things and I have a really hard time when something happens to them. But the worst of my emotional storm has passed. I just got wound up as I writing last night.
As I mentioned, the wreck was basically the final cue for a major case of the blues that’s been lurking in the wings for a while. A lot of shit has been getting under my skin lately: anxiety over my job and how secure it may or may not be, irritation with all the hysterical political nonsense that’s been going around (honestly, right-wing gun-lovers, no one is coming to take your Preciouses away, not even those nasty hobbitses, er, Democrats), disgust at the growing plague of panhandlers and scummy-looking kids that hang around the train platform near my office (I’ve got a lot of sympathy for the homeless, but enough is freakin’ enough, people!). Disgust with a lot of things, really… the reinvigorated culture wars, willful ignorance and intractable bigotry, ubiquitous marketing, almost-as-ubiquitous graffiti, the lack of consideration people have for their fellow citizens, traffic, road construction that makes traffic worse, the fact that I can no longer find a radio station I really, honestly like, and a host of other complaints both large and small. I’ve been tired and cranky and fed up and feeling like everything went really wrong somewhere. I’ve been feeling, in fact, something like this:
Fortunately, I’m about to get my moment alone, and I don’t even have to shoot anyone, no matter how tempting that might be. Well, alone plus one. The Girlfriend and I are setting off on a little road trip tomorrow, an exploration of southern Utah with a stop in Zion National Park, a detour to Vegas to check in with some friends we’ve not seen in a while, and finally, an outdoor concert starring my main man, Rick Springfield. Yes, I am a dork. No, worse, since I’m traveling over 100 miles to see him… I’m a groupie.
First, however, I’ve got a very important dinner date with the two people who made all this possible. Today is my parents’ 45th wedding anniversary. I’m sure I am no less amazed at how long that seems than they are…
Want to know how to ruin a beautiful springtime Sunday afternoon? How about having someone back into your Mustang and bugger up pretty much the entire passenger side? Yeah, that’ll do it…
It has come to my attention that B.B. King’s latest album is called One Kind Favor, not One Small Favor as I previously said. Just in case anyone is keeping track…
So did anybody catch this week’s CSI? The murder-victim-of-the-week was an arrogant guy who’d produced a new version of a beloved 40-year-old science fiction TV show called Astro Quest (any resemblance to an actual beloved 40-year-old science fiction TV show with a similar name is purely intentional). Seems there were a lot of potential suspects because this guy’s “redux” was so poorly received by the fans of the original. Where the original had been “antiseptic,” “brightly lighted,” and populated by noble characters that “ordinary people couldn’t possibly live up to,” AQ Redux turned out to be dark and grungy-looking, with angsty, sweaty, deeply flawed, and horribly unlikable characters. The producer justified this as “more realistic,” but the fans who saw his preview reel in a convention setting responded by rioting.
Obviously, the writers of this episode have been thinking about the upcoming remake of Star Trek, but, in an in-joke I’m sure they thought was terribly clever, the fan who starts the riot by shouting “You suck!” was none other than Ron Moore, the executive producer and primary creative force behind the reimagined Battlestar Galactica. In other words, a guy who did in real life exactly what the fictional producer in the CSI episode had done. It was a cute moment for those in the know, but I find myself trying to decide just what was being said here. In other words, at whose expense was this joke made? Is Moore (or at least the writers of CSI) acknowledging that fans of older properties are justified in being unhappy with “gritty” remakes? Or were they slamming grumbly old-school types like myself as buffoons?
Honestly, I think you could make either argument. The episode does include a scene in which one of the regular characters explains to another why fans get upset when people tamper with the things that matter to them, but that same scene also features some dismissive remarks about that behavior. The episode itself closes on a rather sweet note, with an homage to a well-remembered scene from Star Trek, er, Astro Quest, and the CSI crew planning a marathon viewing of the classic show. So I guess you could see it as trying to present an even-handed view of the whole phenomenon, at least as far as is necessary to tell the weekly procedural story. But, while I acknowledge I’m probably too touchy about these things, I can’t help but feel like, yet again, the people like me — who prefer the “cheesy” and “campy” (god, I hate those adjectives!) originals to the slick-but-depressing modern versions — are being dissed.
You damn kids can keep your edgy shit. I assure you it will one day seem as archaic as the stuff where Starbuck is a guy and the captain’s shirt is weak around the shoulder seams. In the meantime, I think it’s really just a matter of taste. As far as I’m concerned, real life is edgy, gritty, and angsty enough. I prefer heroes I can aspire to over tragic, uncertain trainwrecks…
The Girlfriend and I have seen the legendary blues guitarist B.B. King perform live several times, and every time we do, we seem to end up discussing the possibility that this might be the last time. That may sound ghoulish, but consider the facts: The man is 83 years old, and a plus-size diabetic to boot. Surely we can’t have that many more opportunities to see him in concert, as sad as that is to contemplate.
I am working on something a bit more substantive, but for now I couldn’t resist grabbing the “Alphabet of Obscure Science Fiction Classics” Meme from SF Signal. Here are the rules:
“You know the drill. Copy the list and make titles for movies you’ve seen appear in bold.”
And now for the list, with my boldings and a few comments:
If you listen much to National Public Radio, one of the things you notice is how the names of all the hosts don’t sound much like, say, your name. There’s a lot of ethnic diversity in NPR’s ranks, for one thing — on any given broadcast, you’re likely to hear the voices of Lakshmi Singh, Lourdes Garcia-Navarro, or Sylvia Poggioli, for example — but even the more “regular” names just have a certain ring to them: Neal Conan (any name from the Hyborian Age is guaranteed cool, right?), Jason Beaubien, Salt Lake’s own Howard Berkes, Noah Adams, Steve Inskeep… these simply aren’t names you’re likely to encounter in the real world. I’ve long lusted after a cool name, the sort of name that invites respect and conjures images of exotic lands, daring deeds, and arcane knowledge. An NPR name.
Now, thanks to the link my buddy MikeG sent me this afternoon, I can have such a moniker. The formula is surprisingly simple:
Here’s how it works: You take your middle initial and insert it somewhere into your first name. Then you add on the smallest foreign town you’ve ever visited.
And just like that my name becomes — are you ready? — Regjinald St. Goar.
Regjinald St. Goar, named for a delightful little village on the Rhine River in Germany. I like it! So what’s yours?
What follows is without a doubt the most obscure LOLcat I’ve ever posted here at Simple Tricks… possibly the most obscure one I’ve ever seen, for that matter. I think I have maybe two readers who will get this one (no need to stand or anything, you know who you are). But I get it, and I think it’s pretty damn funny:
This came from our old friend, The Bad Astronomer. I believe he created it, too, the clever fellow.
(Note: If you don’t get it, I doubt an explanation will make it seem any funnier, but you can always try. Go here and here for the necessary context.)
