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Aug082009

In Memoriam: John Hughes

Dear Mr. Vernon,

 

We accept the fact that we had to sacrifice a whole Saturday in detention for whatever it was we did wrong. But we think you’re crazy to make use write an essay telling you who we think we are. You see us as you want to see us, in the simplest terms and the most convenient definitions. But what we found out is that each one of us is a brain… and an athlete… and a basket case… a princess… and a criminal. Does that answer your question?

 

Sincerely yours,
The Breakfast Club

To those of us who were teenagers in the 1980s, John Hughes was a spiritual big brother. Not a father figure with the accompanying implications of authority, because fatherhood was usually represented in his movies as benign indifference, if not outright absenteeism, and authority figures in general were foolish and petty. No, he was our buddy, the cool grown-up guy who was still close enough to us in sensibility, if not actual age, to talk to us about things that mattered without bullshitting us. In a decade filled with dumb movies populated by ersatz teens who were some corporate cigar-chomper’s idea of what we were like, Hughes’ flicks stood out because he knew what teens were really like. Sure, Sixteen Candles is a farcical cartoon, and Sam, Farmer Ted, and Jake Ryan are broad caricatures intended to represent different high school cliques, but they all have a spark of authenticity at their core. They’re all volatile mixtures of bravado and vulnerability. Everyone in the movie is desperate to avoid saying or doing the wrong thing. Even the cool kid, Jake, is unsure of his place within his particular clique, and he’s tired of the games he’s forced to play by the cultural stratum in which he exists. They’re all striving to fit in, to gain approval and validation, to experience something genuine instead of just going through the motions. I knew kids just like them; I was a kid just like them. We all were.

Continue Reading…

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Aug042009

The Conservatism of Cola

Even though I’m frequently chagrined by reminders that I was born and bred and still live in the most right-wing state in the union, I’ve realized in recent years that I do, in fact, have some conservative tendencies. Definitely not in political or cultural terms, but at least in the sense of not liking change for the sake of change, and of valuing things and aesthetics that many folks would happily scrap in the name of “progress.” In that spirit, here’s a flavor of conservatism that I can actually bring myself to support:

Continue Reading…

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Aug042009

Presented Without Comment

Just something Lileks said this morning that struck me:

The worst thing about Depression isn’t the sense that you’re ac-centuating the negative, it’s that you’re seeing things the way they really are, stripped of the illusions you use every day to divert yourself from the Yawning Maw of Futility. It’s the wind that blows off the snow and reveals the stone.

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Aug012009

AARP?! You Gotta Be Kidding Me…

I think I mentioned recently that I’m coming up on my fortieth birthday in a few weeks. (If I didn’t, hey, kids, guess what? I’m turning 40 soon!) I’m not real happy about it. In fact, I’m trying my damnedest not to drive everyone within earshot crazy by having a stereotypical breakdown and mid-life crisis — there are few things as disheartening as realizing you’re acting like a total cliche — but I have to tell you that it’s pretty tough maintaining an air of cool, collected indifference toward your advancing age when you start receiving junk mail from the AARP. That’s the American Association of Retired Persons for you young people who may not know of it.

Now, I do occasionally receive mail that’s intended for my father. We share the same first name and we did share the same address for a very long time. So my first thought when I spotted the AARP’s logo on the business-size envelope in my hand was that it must be something for him. But no, it was plainly addressed to “Mr. Jason Bennion.” Which would be me. No room for error there.

Compelled by morbid curiosity, I slit it open… and discovered within an official membership card emblazoned with the same pre-printed “Mr. Jason Bennion.” The accompanying letter instructed me how to register my membership and described the fabulous benefits I can receive by doing so today.

But I’m only 40, for god’s sake! You know, the new 30? Isn’t that what all the magazines have been calling it lately? Or was that just a passing fad and they’ve decided 40 is over the hill after all? Whatever will make us insecure enough to buy this month’s issue, right? Right?

Ah, geez… I suddenly feel the need to slip into a cardigan and pop a Geritol.

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Jul312009

Well, That’s a Switch…

Century-old commercial illustration is apparently too hot for your average Southerner.

Usually when I hear that some bluenose bureaucrat is getting all uptight over something the average grown-up wouldn’t even notice, it’s happening right here in my own backyard. So imagine my surprise to learn that it isn’t Utah’s state liquor board that’s banned a particular brand of wine because its label features an image of a naked woman and a bicycle. No, it is in fact Alabama that has a problem with a century-old Art Nouveau illustration of a curiously nippleless nymph. The winemaker is naturally developing an ad campaign based on the ban, and I suspect that more people have seen the “offensive” label in the last 24 hours — because of the news coverage and blogs like mine — than would have in months or even years if the prudes had just kept their tut-tutting to themselves. The sorts who worry about this sort of thing never, ever learn the lesson that making a fuss only attracts more attention to the thing they don’t want people to see.

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Jul302009

A Conundrum

I’ve been pondering something tonight… I like to alphabetize my music collection, but some bands make that difficult for me by naming themselves after the lead singer plus the backup group, e.g., Tommy James and the Shondells, Diana Ross and the Supremes, etc. So, should “singer + backup” names like Huey Lewis and the News go under “H” (treating the entire band name as a single unit) or “L,” as in “Lewis and the News, Huey,” which I believe is how the Library of Congress would probably do it?

Any of my Loyal Readers have any thoughts on this?

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Jul302009

Only with Less Smoking

Hey, kids… sorry for the long silence, for which I was thoroughly excoriated in an email from one of you netcrap-cravin’ Loyal Readers earlier today. To explain, I was out of town for a couple of days this weekend. Before that, I was preparing to go out of town. After that, I was recovering from being out of town. You get the idea.

I’m afraid I still don’t have too much to offer my poor audience this afternoon, but since some of you are apparently feeling abandoned — again, my apologies — here’s a neat-o self-portrait of what I would’ve looked like if I’d been an agency proofreader about 45 years ago:

Not too different, really, although I haven’t worn a tie in years. If I had to wear a tie to work, though, a skinny vintage one with a cool diamond design would be just the ticket.

I built this little amusement at MadMenYourself.com, a promotional site for the AMC television series Mad Men. I don’t have cable myself, so I’ve been unable to follow the show on any kind of regular basis, but I have caught a few episodes and, I have to admit, my day job is frighteningly similar to what you see on this series, just with less smoking and lunchtime drinking. Well, less smoking anyhow…

I found the link to the MadMen-izer via my friend Karen. If you go over there, make sure you have your speakers or headphones on so you can soak in the lounge-tastic background music…

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Jul202009

Well, It Was the Sixties After All…

Via Wil Wheaton, a little tidbit that ought to be of interest to some of my Loyal Readers, particularly Cranky Robert:
It seems that the prog-rock band Pink Floyd performed live instrumental music during the BBC’s coverage of the Apollo 11 landing, something I’d never heard before. David Gilmour refers to it as a “jam session” in his remembrance today in the Guardian newspaper. The piece was called “Moonhead,” and, if I’m understanding correctly, they played it during cutaways when the NASA action slowed down. The entire 12-minute piece was played uninterrupted later in the broadcast. You can hear it on YouTube, naturally; according to the notes on the video clip, it’s never been officially recorded but has turned up on a couple of bootlegs.

Those must’ve been strange times indeed…

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Jul202009

Forty Years

Here men from the planet Earth first set foot upon the moon
July 1969 A.D.
We came in peace for all mankind

(The Lunar Module Eagle touched down at 14:17:40 MST on July 20, 1969, if you didn’t get the significance of the time code on this entry. The text above comes from a plaque mounted to one of the Eagle‘s landing legs. It’s still there at Tranquility Base, along with the descent stage Armstrong and Aldrin left behind. The photo is, of course, Buzz Aldrin, as photographed by Neil Armstrong. If you look closely, you can see Neil and part of the LM reflected in Buzz’s visor.)

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Jul202009

Look at What We Did!

apollo-11_landing-site_first-image_LROC_labeled.jpg

The image above is something I meant to comment on Friday, when it was first released, but obviously I didn’t get around to it. What you’re looking at there, if you haven’t already seen and heard about it, is a photo recently taken by a spacecraft called the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, which is currently circling the moon. Similar to the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter that took that awesome photo of the Martian rover a couple years ago, the LRO is a mapping probe equipped with a powerful camera. When the probe’s system check-out is complete and it has entered the proper mapping orbit, it’s going to start photographing the entire surface of the moon at a high resolution, theoretically as preparation for the return of humans to our nearest neighbor. Regardless of whether that actually happens in our lifetimes, though, the LRO promises to send back some astoundingly detailed images of the lunar landscape… and naturally some of the first pictures it’s taken during this check-out phase are of places we’ve already been, namely five of the six Apollo landing sites.

They all show exactly what you’d expect to see, the squarish, reflective, obviously artificial shapes of the descent stages that were left behind when the astronauts returned to their Command Modules. And yet these fuzzy low-rez photos — the LRO’s camera isn’t operating at its full capabilities yet; better-quality photos of the Apollo sites are promised for later on, after the calibrations are complete — raise the hair on my arms and fill me with pride. Those shiny little objects were made by human hands and sent across a void of a quarter-million miles — think about that, a quarter-million miles — and they’re still there, untouched in the vacuum of space, silent testimony to the inventiveness and determination of the silly hairless apes swarming across the face of the blue planet next door. They’re still waiting for us to come back, you know, those abandoned artifacts.

You can see the rest of the LRO Apollo photos here. The image of the Apollo 14 site is especially fascinating; on that one, the lighting conditions were such that you can see the foot trail left by the astronauts who carried a scientific package out away from their Lunar Module. I can’t wait to see the full-rez shots.

In the meantime, if you haven’t been listening to that time-capsule audio stream of the Apollo 11 transmissions, now is the time to tune in. The Eagle has just cast off from Columbia, and Armstrong and Aldrin are getting ready for their descent… exciting stuff, even if I already know how the story turns out!

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