Life Among the Natives

A New Home

2009-02-25T18:43:00.002-06:00

I'm not sure there's anyone left even checking this thing. Probably not, considering how long it's been since I've published here.

For anyone left on board, I'm writing for Associated Content these days because they pay me. Not much, but they do pay me. I'll post the links to all my articles here and will try to remember to post periodically with updates. Come check me out if you're so inclined. I could use the money.

Top Ten Christmas Songs for People Who Hate Christmas

Ten Lessons Iron Chef America Could Take From Its Predecessor

Atkins-Friendly Hot Spinach Dip

Low Carb Spicy Thousand Island Dressing

Eight Bands Who Are Perfect for Bonnaroo Late Night

Smoky and Spicy Slow Cooker BBQ

Top Ten Albums of 2008

Go Sweet and Spicy with This Banana Fried Rice

Review: Trans-Siberian Orchestra in Nashville

5 Non-Fantasy Massive Multiplayer Games

The Ultimate Anti-Valentine's Day Playlist

How to Live Well in a Recession

Trim Your Budget With These Free and Reduced Cost Items

The Stig Unmasked

The Best Super Bowl Commercials

2009 Bonnaroo Lineup Announced

Perfect Songs for Any St. Patrick's Day Party

Restaurant Review: I Love Sushi in Huntsville

Things You Learn While Buying a House

2007-10-21T20:08:00.000-05:00

I know I've been uncharacteristically quiet even for me lately. Lots of reasons for that. Work's been insane and I've been traveling all over the state off and on. Having no laptop, this leaves me with no net access during those times. I've been playing Lord of the Rings: Shadows of Angmar and Sam & Max Season One way more than I probably should. But the main reason why I've been an absentee blogger is that Joan and I were in the middle of trying to buy a house. That drama, for the most part, is finally over as we moved into our new place on Saturday. I'll put in pictures once we figure out what box the digital camera ended up in.

So, for my inaugural blog from the new home, I present "Things I Learned While Buying a House."

1. I will never do it again: Seriously. This is it. I don't like stress or drama and buying a house is a big steaming pile of both. I'm in this house for life.

2. Haunted Houses should hire mortgage brokers: Haunted houses always have Freddy, Jason, Michael Meyers, etc. If they really wanted to scare people, they'd have someone dress in a suit and tie, carry around a 6 inch stack of papers, and have participants sign contracts for 3 hours stating that they will be indebted for the next 30 years. It's certainly the scariest thing I've ever done...

3. Side by Side refrigerators are heavier than their regular counterparts: I have never been able to afford anything but the standard "freezer-on-top" model fridge for $350 at Home Depot. But Joan and I got a good deal on a used side-by-side with ice and water in the door and grabbed it. My friend Rusty and I moved it from the owner's home to mine on Saturday. There I learned that side-by-side fridges are the heaviest things in the universe. Scientists can talk about the intense gravity on Jupiter and how it makes everything heavier but nothing on Jupiter, hell the planet Jupiter itself, has any candle on a side-by-side fridge. This thing was pulling small objects into orbit around it... Which brings me to...

4. Muscle Pain Cream is as necessary a part of the moving package as boxes, tape, and bubble wrap: To say I hurt today is the same as saying Richard Simmons is "a little gay." I have aches in places where I didn't even know muscles existed. They say labor is the worst pain a human can feel and, while I've never experienced labor, I doubt it's got much on the aftermath of moving a fridge roughly the weight of the Eiffel Tower.

5. You have no idea how much crap you own until you pack it: Where did all of this stuff come from? We didn't buy all of this stuff! Our things have bred and multiplied like something out of a cheesy Sci-Fi channel original movie.

6. You are a filthy pig and you have no idea how much until you move: "Oh, is THAT the color our carpet is supposed to be?" we exclaimed after pulling up the computer chair mats.

7. Gas grilling is different than charcoal grilling: To any of my friends reading this who visited last night, thank you for eating the horrible black hamburgers, grinning through the soot, and trying to distract me from my failure to successfully cook with fire. I promise I'll be better next time you come.

8. If you have an item in your home that you haven't used in a couple of years and you feel like you should, pack it and tape it. Within two days you will find a task that must be done and can't without that particular tool. Guaranteed.

Kate, Kelly, come see our place anytime. You're always welcome when you're on this side of the continent. Just call first, lest you subject y0urself to the horror of me answering your knock in my underpants...

Accu-Pain in my Ass

2007-07-12T20:31:00.000-05:00

You know, I never knew that getting well could be more painful than getting sick... Until now.

I've been seeing a dermatologist recently about some breaking out on my hands and feet. After several visits and a biopsy that has left a nice divot in my wrist, they've finally decided that I have Lichen Planus, which sounds to me like tree growth on a peanut, but which is apparently doctor-speak for "your immune system has decided it doesn't like your skin and is attacking it."

Unfortunately, Lichen Planus is not only rare, but apparently very difficult to treat. I'm now on enough steroids to ensure I will never achieve my dream of being in the Olympics. I'm also on Prednisone, an immunosuppressant that left me sick as a dog the entire time I was on it the first time around.

And finally, the real prize, Accutane. And that's where the pain comes in...

You see, you can't just get a prescription for Accutane, take it to your pharmacy, and get it filled. No, no. It is much easier to get yellow cake uranium than it is to get Accutane. All throughout my ordeal I kept saying "I've got to blog this. This should be saved for posterity.

So here you are. The Ballad of Obtaining Accutane.

First comes the 20 minute lecture from the doctor. Don't take Accutane if I'm pregnant (not really a problem), don't get pregnant (also not much of a problem), don't give blood, oh by the way, your liver might fail, you might have a heart attack from the cholesterol spike, you might not be able to have sex, your hair might fall out, you might get the squirts, you might die.

Then you have to read a booklet that gives even more dire warnings. Did you know people kill themselves taking Accutane. Please do not kill yourself. You might become irritable (already there, according to the wife), etc.

You then have to initial 14 statements swearing that you will not give blood, will not get depressed, that you will call your doctor before offing yourself (not sure how they're going to enforce that one).

You then have to sign the statements. The doctor has to sign the statement. The nurse has to witness the doctor signing the statement.

You have to have blood drawn and analyzed once every 5 weeks so they can make sure your liver doesn't shut down.

Oh, but then it gets weird...

They give you an ID card with a number that has to be entered into a government database. Great, I'm on a government watch list. And only two days after I added Ron Paul to my Myspace friends. Coincidence? I think not!

Anyway, the nurse enters your prescription into the database. She also enters that blood has been drawn.

You then take that card to the pharmacy, who also has to log into your database.

No major problem, right? Well...

I go to the pharmacy. They have no clue how to log this in. They say they've never had one of these scrips before. Great. The largest pharmacy chain in America, and they haven't ever dispensed my meds. Like I said, it's easier to get uranium.

So the night pharmacist gets with the pharmacy manager. She has some clue, but discovers that they have none in stock. Come back Wednesday. Ok...

Come back Wednesday. They've got the meds, but they can't get the government database to work. Apparently that Ron Paul thing really threw them for a loop. They tell me to come back Thursday.

Come back today. They've finally gotten the meds, which come in a gigantic box with dire warnings, biohazard symbols, and I think I saw a skull and crossbones flag on the side. Joy.

So anyway. Assuming I don't die, I'll update you on my condition as my treatment goes on. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go tell the President of Iran that I had to sign something saying I wouldn't give him my medicine to use in his nuclear weapons program.

Whither Reason, Mr. Gore?

2007-05-29T19:56:00.000-05:00

I've watched with interest recently as Al Gore has been promoting his new book, "The Assault on Reason." I have listened with interest to Gore's appearances on the talk show circuit, bemoaning the loss of reasonable discourse in today's political landscape.

I've watched this with such interest because, much like the elephant, I don't forget....

I am not wowed by Al Gore's new Hollywood persona. I do not have stars in my eyes because he has a successful movie or an Oscar. I am not impressed with his Global Warming arguments, no matter how true I think his cause is.

I am not impressed by these things because Al Gore, to me, will always be the Senator who trumped up a congressional investigation committee because his mentally disturbed wife got her underwear in a knot about the music her kids were listening to.

So, for all you Al Gore sycophants out there. For all of you who laud him as the savior of the planet and the man who strives to bring reason back into the world of politics, I give you a young Senator Gore, a man so in love with "reason" that he tries in the following text to argue with a songwriter about the meaning of a song that he, the songwriter, wrote...

"The CHAIRMAN. Senator Gore.

Senator GORE. Thank you very much, Mr. Chairman.

Mr. SNIDER. Excuse me. Are you going to tell me you are a big fan of my music as well?

Senator GORE. No, I am not a fan of your music. I am aware that Frank Zappa and John Denver cover quite a spectrum, and I do enjoy them both. I am not, however, a fan of Twisted Sister and I will readily say that.

Mr. Snider, what is the name of your fan club?

Mr. SNIDER. The fan club is called the SMF Fans of Twisted Sister.

Senator GORE. And what does "SMF" stand for when it is spelled out?

Mr. SNIDER. It stands for the Sick Mother Fucking Fans of Twisted Sister.

Senator GORE. Is this also a Christian group?

Mr. SNIDER. I do not believe profanity has anything to do with Christianity, thank you.

Senator GORE. It is just an interesting choice. I was getting the impression from your presentation that you were a very wholesome kind of performer, and that is an interesting title for your fan club.

You say your song "Under the Blade" is about surgery. Have you ever had surgery with your hands tied and your legs strapped?

Mr. SNIDER. The song was written about my guitar player, Eddie Ojeda. He was having polyps removed from his throat and he was very fearful of this operation. And I said: Eddie, while you are in the hospital I am going to write a song for you.

I said it was about the fear of operations. I think people imagine being helpless on a table, the bright light in their face, the blade coming down on them, and being totally afraid that they may wake up, who knows, dead, handicapped. There is a certain fear of hospitals. That is what, in my imagination, what I see the hospitals like.

Senator GORE. Is there a reference to the hospital in the song?

Mr. SNIDER. No, there is not. But there is not a reference to a woman, sado-masochism, or -- well, bondage, yes.

Senator GORE. There is just a reference to someone whose hands are tied down and whose legs are strapped down, and he is going under the blade to be cut.

Mr. SNIDER. Yes, there is.

Senator GORE. So it is not really a wild leap of the imagination to jump to the conclusion that the song is about something other than surgery or hospitals, neither of which are mentioned in the song?

Mr. SNIDER. No, it is not a wild jump. And I think what I said at one part was that songs allow a person to put their own imagination, experiences, and dreams into the lyrics. People can interpret it in many ways.

Ms. Gore was looking for sado-masochism and bondage and she found it. Someone looking for surgical references would have found that as well.

Senator GORE. Why do you think there is so much sado-masochism and bondage in some of these new songs?

Mr. SNIDER. I cannot speak for the other artists. I am really only here to defend myself, and hopefully by speaking for myself as one person, songwriter in a band that I feel has been unjustly dumped on, that will just warn us of the dangers of what we are trying to do here. I really cannot speak for the other bands.

Senator GORE. Now, you made reference to a comment about T-shirts. I would simply note for the record that the word "T-shirts" was in plural, and one of them referred to Twisted Sister and the other referred to a woman in handcuffs. And it was not intended, as I understand it, to say that you appear with a woman in handcuffs.

There are a lot of different T-shirts and advertisements around today. I have noticed from some of the fan magazines particularly featuring heavy metal music that little sado-masochistic outfits are advertised, with the fingerless gloves and spikes and studs on them, and that these little S&M outfits are marketed to teens and preteens. Is that correct?

Mr. SNIDER. Well, they are marketed. Who buys them I am not sure.

I would just like to say, in reference to the comment about T-shirts, I have with me a taped cassette of the exact --

Senator GORE. No, I am reading from your transcript of it in your statement.

Mr. SNIDER. I will have to check the transcript, but when it was said there was no question she was referring to a Twisted Sister T-shirt. There was no question if I played the tape for anybody.

Senator GORE. Well, in your own transcript it is in plural, "T-shirts," and two examples are cited. But I do not want to belabor that point.

Now, you said that you can look at the titles of albums and look at the covers and tell what kind of material is inside. Does the title "Purple Rain" give you an indication that the material is about masturbation?

Mr. SNIDER. You mean the album title "Purple Rain"? No, it does not. I did not say in all cases. I believe I covered that there are occasional albums that are a bit misleading. I said I do not think a store would refuse a parent who came in and said, "I do not like what is on this record. I would like my money back."

Senator GORE. So the choice the parent has, then, is to sit down and listen to every song on the album; right?

Mr. SNIDER. Or read the lyrics if they are on the record.

Senator GORE. I think that is pretty general agreement that if the lyrics are printed that is one possible solution for this.

Let us suppose the lyrics are not printed. Then what choice does a parent have? To sit down and listen to every song on the album?

Mr. SNIDER. Well, if they are really concerned about it I think that they have to.

Senator GORE. Do you think it is reasonable to expect parents to do that?

Mr. SNIDER. Being a parent is not a reasonable thing. It is a very hard thing. I am a parent and I know. OK. I am a new parent. I only have one child, maybe. But I am learning that there is a lot to being a parent that you did not expect. It is not just always a cute baby. There is a lot of labor, a lot of time, and a lot of effort that goes into it. It is not totally pleasurable.

Senator GORE. And you will find when they get a little bit older that when they are exposed to the kinds of themes that we were presented with earlier, if you love your child you are going to be concerned about that. And if you want to protect that child from unnecessary exposure to inappropriate material, you sometimes need a little help, the kind of guidance that is presented in the movie industry.

It is totally unreasonable in my view to expect parents to sit down and listen to every single song in the albums that their children buy in order to fulfill their responsibilities as parents.

Now, the only thing in your statement that I felt at all comfortable about was when you said you shared some of the concerns of the PMRC. I would simply conclude by expressing the hope that artists and the record companies will find a way to manifest that mutual concern in some self-restraint, and show a responsibility and give parents a break.

You are right: It is tough being a parent. It is even tougher being a kid. And if both are going to be able to deal with the kind of material that is coming out in popular music, it seems to me the industry has a responsibility to give them a little help.

Thank you, Mr. Chairman. "

There you have it. Al Gore, Mr. Reason, getting owned by a heavy metal musician. I'd post the transcript of his debate with Frank Zappa as well, but it's just piling on. Frank Zappa is one of the true geniuses of our time. Al Gore is a politically connected bully.

"But he's changed!" some of you will say. Fine. Show me where he's apologized for the largest censorship grab since McCarthy. Show me anywhere that he's said "my wife was off her happy medicine and I was just along for the ride." Show me where he's properly penitent for his past sins. Show me those things, and I'll join the Al Gore movement.

Until you do, Al Gore is, and always will be to me, a censor. The lowest form of human life, below evangelicals even. Worthy of nothing but dishonor and scorn. Unworthy certainly of being the "savior of reason" and unworthy wholly of being the highest defender of a Constitution he holds in contempt.

Post-Oscar Random Thoughts

2007-02-27T20:04:00.000-06:00

Random thoughts from my lonely hotel room viewing of the Oscars this year...

First, the "lonely hotel room." Add "haunted" to that, as well as "horrid." Econolodges are usually decent. The one in Martin is not. It started when I called for my reservation. She informed me that the only King room she had was a smoking room. Odd, I thought, being Martin, Tn. but I ran with it. I have friends who are smokers so the smell doesn't bother me. When I get there, they've got three cars in the parking lot, all on the other side of the motel from me. That's full? When I got in my room, it got worse. There was something screwy and haunted with the lights as every time I shifted around on the bed, the lights would blink. Spooky...

Now that my hotel complaint is out of the way, on to the Oscars...

First, seriously, how much fucking money would it take to get Billy Crystal back? Seriously. I enjoyed Jon Stewart last year more than most but he still wasn't Billy Crystal, or even Whoopi Goldberg, and that's sad. Ellen was orders of magnitude worse. She was only saved from being history's worst Oscar host by David Letterman. Next time, just grab someone off the street, or better, just have Jack Nicholson host the damn thing. They spent half the night on reaction shots of him anyway.

The right movie won Best Picture, although with all the surprises during the night I was sure Little Miss Sunshine was going to buck the comedy curse and steal a win.

Good job, Hollywood. You finally figured out that Martin Scorcese is a pretty good director. You're only 30 years behind the rest of the world...

If they ever do a movie of Al Gore's life, Bob Saget needs to play the lead. Aside from the fact that Al Gore looks like Bob Saget after a few buffet binges, he also has a similar delivery with his jokes. No, that's not a compliment...

Someone get Melissa Etheridge a lozenge, for pete's sake...

Let me get this straight. Pan's Labyrinth wins almost everything else it's nominated for, it's been seen by millions of people around the world, it takes in $30 million in revenue, and it gets beaten for Best Picture by some German movie that I'll bet my house down payment fund half of the Academy voters didn't see? Success doesn't equal quality (see Titanic) but success plus critical acclaim should probably be rewarded.

Happy Feet? Seriously? Dancing penguins? What the hell were you people smoking?

Abigail Breslin is going to be a star. She reminds me of Haley Joel Osment when he presented at the Oscars at that age. Great poise and she nailed her lines better than most of the adults and certainly better than the Fresh Princeling.

Those shadow tumbler people were kind of cool, in a silly sort of way. Bonus points for doing a passable "Snakes on a Plane."

Poor Peter O'Toole. It just wasn't your year. Alan Arkin was just too too strong. While I didn't pick him as a "should win", I'm pretty happy he did.

The clips they ran moved Last King of Scotland up my Netflix queue. Forest Whitaker looks intense as hell in that.

Speaking of Forest Whitaker, it's a good thing the Oscars are voted on days in advance as John Travolta's red carpet reminder to everyone that Forest was in Battlefield Earth could have worked against him.

Y'know, I might be more interested in Hollywood's exhortations that we should all do our part to prevent global warming if I hadn't seen all those people showing up in limos just a couple of hours before. When someone arrives on the red carpet driving a Yaris, I'll listen to their environmental warnings.

That's all I've got. See you guys next year.

Oscar Party by Proxy

2007-02-20T19:57:00.000-06:00

One of the things I miss most about the scattering of many of my old friends is the yearly Oscar party Kelly hosted at her place. While graduation from college caused Kel and I to see each other considerably less than the almost daily we managed while in school and working at WHAL, we always knew that, come February, we'd be reunited for the annual Oscar party. As a bonus, it was the only time of year I ever saw Kelly's friend Kenny who, while no one I ever knew very well, was always a lot of fun to be around when he was. We shared a common "adopted" sister and a goofy sense of humour that drew us to our "sister" in the first place so, when he was around, we never missed a beat.

Unfortunately, time and circumstances have caused even this once yearly reunion to go by the wayside. While a Sunday commute back from Tullahoma at 1 AM was doable, a Sunday commute from San Diego at 1 AM is not, physically or financially.

So, since I can't be there and Kelly can't be here, I'm hoping I can get everyone to do their Oscar ballots by blog this year. Kelly, Kate, even Kenny if you exist anywhere in the blogosphere. It's a pretty crappy "reunion" but it's the best we have.

For my picks, I'm going to do both the one I think will win (which will count against my ballot total, Kel. No trying to cheat me) and the one I think should win. While I haven't seen nearly all the movies nominated this year, I've seen more than in any Oscar year in recent memory. We'll see if it helps me finally topple Kelly's long-standing undefeated record. I doubt it, as Kel is notorious for reading up in advance and playing the odds, whereas I pick mostly by gut and throwing a dart at a sheet.

On we go...

Best Actor in a Leading Role:

Who should win: Forest Whitaker: The Last King of Scotland. This is one of the movies I haven't seen yet but I've heard that Whitaker is superb. Since he's always superb in everything he's in, I can believe it.

Who will win: Forest Whitaker: The Last King of Scotland. DiCaprio was amazing in Blood Diamond but was also equally if not more amazing in The Departed. Two good roles will work against him. Ghost Dog gets the nod.

Actor in a Supporting Role:

Who should win: Djimon Hounsou: Blood Diamond. This was the closest category for me but Hounsou, for a virtual unknown, was outstanding in Blood Diamond, so I give him the nod.

Who will win: Alan Arkin: Little Miss Sunshine. I can't really argue with this one either. Arkin and Hounsou were neck in neck for me. Little Miss Sunshine was great and Arkin was about 75% of the reason why.

Actress in a Leading Role:

Who should win: Judi Dench: Notes on a Scandal. I've never seen any of the movies on this list so I default to Dench, who is far and away the best actress of the lot and, I'm sure, put on a good show.

Who will win: Helen Mirren: The Queen- This movie is supposedly really stellar and Mirren is no slouch so this one wouldn't bother me much. I've just got a soft spot for Dench.

Actress in a Supporting Role:

Who should win: Abigail Breslin: Little Miss Sunshine. Remember how I said Alan Arkin was 75% of the reason Little Miss Sunshine was great? Well, Breslin was the other 25%.

Who will win: Jennifer Hudson: Dreamgirls. The Babel actresses cancel each other out, Breslin's too young and starring in a comedy, and no one saw Notes on a Scandal. Hudson wins by default.

Animated Feature:

Who should win: Cars. And it's not even close...

Who will win: Cars. And it's not even close...

Art Direction:

Who should win: Pan's Labyrinth. Absolutely beautiful movie that should win every art category out there, but won't.

Who will win: Pirates of the Carribean. The small categories are where Hollywood rewards the "big" movies. I can't cry too much. Pirates was very, very good.

Cinematography:

Who should win: Pan's Labyrinth. See above

Who will win: The Prestige. I have no basis for this. Just a hunch.

Costume Design:

Who should win: Curse of the Golden Flower. Haven't seen it yet but the costuming in the previews looks beautiful.

Who will win: The Queen. Another hunch.

Best Director:

Who should win: Martin Scorcese: The Departed. It's a crime that Scorcese hasn't won before but this isn't a sympathy vote. The Departed was the best movie this year, hands down.

Who will win: Martin Scorcese: The Departed. Even the slowpokes in Hollywood have to know that denying Scorcese another Oscar makes them looks stupid. Besides, Martin might send Joe Pesci to rub someone out if he loses again...

Best Documentary Feature:

Who should win: Jesus Camp. I haven't seen any of these but Jesus Camp is reportedly very very compelling.

Who will win: An Inconvenient Truth: Politics trumps religion.

Documentary Short:

Who should win: Who cares? It's Documentary Short....

Who will win: *throws a dart* The dart says Rehearsing a Dream...

Film Editing:

Who should win: The Departed. It was a masterpiece of cuts.

Who will win: Children of Men. It's supposedly very good and they'll want to give it something.

Foriegn Language Film:

Who should win: Pan's Labyrinth. And it isn't even close enough to be not close.

Who will win: Pan's Labyrinth. It's a rare foriegn movie that breaks $30 million. That and it's beyond good.

Makeup:

Who should win: Pan's Labyrinth. Absolutely beautiful.

Who will win: Pan's Labyrinth. Mel's controversies keeps Apocolypto from winning.

Original Score:

Who should win: Pan's Labyrinth. Did I mention I like this movie?

Who will win: Babel. Just a hunch.

Original Song:

Who should win: Any of the three Dreamgirls songs nominated. From what I heard in the next theater over while waiting for Pan's Labyrinth to win, these sounded cool.

Who will win: The Dreamgirls songs cancel each other out and "Our Town" from Cars wins. I haven't heard "I need to wake up" but seriously, how good can any song from an Al Gore movie be?

Best Picture:

Who should win: The Departed. In the end, the best movie for me this year.

Who will win: The odds-makers are betting on Babel to be the upset spoiler. I say no. Letters from Iwo Jima takes it. A war movie from the other guys' perspective is just the right movie to get votes in the current political climate.

Short film- Animated:

Who should win: No Wallace and Gromit nomination = No one cares

Who will win: The magic 8-Ball says... Maestro

Short film- Live Action:

Who should win: *yawn*

Who will win: I've heard of Binta and the Great Idea, which is more than the others, so I vote that one.

Sound Editing:

Who should win: Blood Diamond. It's a damn good movie.

Who will win: Blood Diamond. They aren't going to give it much else, so they throw it a bone.

Sound Mixing:

Who should win: Who should win: Pirates of the Carribean. None of the other movies had so much going on.

Who will win: Dreamgirls. As a bone for getting shut out of the Best Song category.

Visual Effects:

Who should win: Pirates of the Carribean. Not even close.

Who will win: Pirates of the Carribean. If it's Poseidon, I will throw the remote at my TV. That movie sucked...

Screenplay: Adapted:

Who should win: The Departed. For all the reasons noted above.

Who will win: Borat. It was too much of a tempest this year to get completely shut out.

Screenplay: Original:

Who should win: Pan's Labyrinth. What? I liked the movie...

Who will win: Babel. This is generally where they stick the "Best Picture Runner Up" movie so it'll get an award. Babel's it, assuming my prediction of "Letters From Iwo Jima" as Best Picture holds up.

Tag, folks. You're it.

This Meme is Brought to You by Me and Me

2007-01-02T22:20:00.000-06:00

My geocaching blog pal Saintseester started another meme in the vein of one I've already done here. This one casts the movie soundtrack of your life. Basically, you take your Ipod (or your Winamp and 53 gigs of music in my case) and "cast" your soundtrack by hitting shuffle. I had a lot of fun with the other one I did, so let's give it a try.

Waking Up: Jimi Hendrix "Star Spangled Banner"
Yeah! Me and George Carlin in Cars, baby!

First Day of School: The Beach Boys "Rock & Roll Music"
Hmmm... Considering my obsession with rock music (did I mention 53 gigs of mp3?) started when an older kid on the school bus my kindergarten year played a tape of Kiss' "Destroyer" for me, I guess this fits.

Falling in Love: Grim Fandango OST "Mr. Frustration Man"
Boy, does that one hit it straight on the head...

Fight Song: The Eagles "Take it Easy"
So my fight song is about being more laid back? Figures... Give peace a chance, man! *flashes peace sign*

Breaking Up: The Trailer Park Troubadours "Trailer on the Bayou"

Ok, this one doesn't make much sense...

Prom: Weird Al Yankovic "Phony Calls"
Unfortunately, these were pretty much the only calls I got from women around prom time. *sniff*

Life: Tuck & Patti "Forgiveness"
Done a lot of asking for it, quite of bit of giving it, a whole truckload of needing it, and probably not a lot of deserving it, so I guess this fits.

Mental Breakdown: Meatloaf "Objects in the Rear View Mirror"
Damn. That's a depressing song. No wonder I had a breakdown...

Driving: REO Speedwagon "Here with Me"
If this song were playing while I was driving, I'd fall asleep and die...

Flashback: Robert Earl Keen "The Front Porch Song"
Considering how much time my cousin and I spent playing out on our Uncle Orville's porch, this makes for a pretty good flashback.

Wedding: Vangelis "Damask Rose"
Kind of a downer for an instrumental... I think my wife would not be amused if I played this at our wedding

Birth of Child: Moxy Fruvous "Johnny Saucepan"
Apparently my kid will become the chef that I always wanted to be...

Final Battle: Sly and the Family Stone "Sing a Simple Song"
Hell yeah! If I'm going into battle, I'ma bring Da FUNK with me!

Death Scene: Page & Plant "Four Sticks"
"oh, baby, it's crying time..." At least Robert Plant will...

Funeral Song: Alice Cooper "Desperado"
"I'm a picture of ugly stories. I'm a killer and I'm a clown" Works for me...

End Credit: Webb Wilder "Human Cannonball"
"When I go, least I'll know, I'll go with a bang!" You can't end up much better than that.

Tag Kate, Kelly, Linda, and any other unfortunate who reads this thing. You're it...

No Reason For the Season

2006-12-25T00:35:00.000-06:00

I promised I wasn't going to do an "I Hate Christmas" post yet again this year... I lied. I'm pissed off right now and this is cheaper than therapy. I'll warn you now that this isn't going to be funny, witty, or probably even interesting. It may even offend some of you. I'm sorry if that's the case. It wasn't meant to and you're advised to stop reading now.

Still here? Don't say I didn't warn you...

"How can you hate Christmas?" I hear almost daily during the month of December. "No one hates Christmas!"

I am called Scrooge and Grinch and every other cartoon iteration of a miserly old curmudgeon that is seen 6000 times a day on cable TV from Thanksgiving to New Years. I'm told that Cbristmas is a time for joy, caring, giving, and love.

Bullshit.

Let me fill you in on what Christmas is to me...

My first bit of "Christmas cheer" began today, at the annual Christmas dinner with my dad's side of the family. I never see these people during the year because they don't really like me all that much and, to be honest, I don't have the time or the inclination to try to change their opinions.

There are at least 400 children on this side of the family, with each of my cousins dutifully having 12 or so each, so the house resembles a den full of monkeys shot up with Ecstacy. No problem. I'm good at ignoring people and there's football on today. I settle down to watch the game and try to stay below the radar.

No luck there...

Unfortunately, several of my family remembered the fact that I am not a loyally slavish supporter of our state's local parole group, er NFL franchise, and quickly spread this news to the rest of the family. Suddenly I was the leper. Instead of quietly watching some football, I was suddenly everyone's favorite "trash talk" opponent. Every time their team completed a pass, kicked a field goal, or even took the field, someone insisted on throwing some crap in my direction, despite the fact that A) they weren't playing against a team I follow so I had no investment in the game and B) even if they were I don't assign my entire psychic well-being on the fortunes of a football team and wouldn't get this riled up if they were. Still, everyone insisted.

Everyone except my father, that is.

My dad decided that taunting me about football teams I couldn't care less about wasn't getting the proper rise, so proceeded to drag out all of the news he's read or heard about the failings of my place of business. Fair enough. I don't run from that, despite the fact that all of the "failings" happen in the major urban sections of my business and have nothing to do directly with me.

Unfortunately, this was also not getting enough of a rise from my dad, so he had to make sure I knew that my entire business was a failure, everyone who worked there was a failure, etc. To take a quote from Todd Snider "I knew what he meant when he said I suck. But he wanted to go on and on about it... So he did..."

Then came the food...

I've learned something in my almost year and a half of dieting that I would really like someone to do some research on. If you're overweight as I am, people will insist on making disparaging comments anytime you get within throwing distance of the desserts.... Unless, that is, you're dieting. Then they insist, forcefully, that you eat not one but all of it. My dinner conversations now go like this;

"Try the Death by Chocolate cake!"
"I can't, it's not on my diet."
"Aw, one piece won't hurt you."
"Yes. It will actually. I'm trying to keep my diet up even during the holidays."
"Oh, just try a spoonful!"
"No, really. I've gotten over my sweets cravings and I don't want them back."
"But you HAVE to have dessert on Cbristmas..."
Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Everything after that was a blur. Gifts were exchanged. More inappropriate food was offered. The home team won the game. I know this because, even after I left the television to get away from the homers, they followed me to make sure I knew that their quarterback had successfully thrown the ball or their kicker had kicked it. There were further insistences that my method of putting food in my family's mouth was disgraceful (for those of you who don't know me, I'm a social worker, not a bookie or a loan shark or a prostitute if you were wondering). Since my wife had long since joined the homers who were standing outside my emotional walls with pitchforks and torches, I tuned the whole thing out and looked for my opening to leave.

Still wonder why I hate Christmas? Read on, dear souls.

Tomorrow I get to run the gauntlet with dinners at my mom's family and my wife's family. At my family, I will be mostly ignored, which I'm ok with actually. There won't be any "I'll be Home for Christmas" type of joy at my arrival, but I likely won't be labelled a whore either so that washes. The homers will be out in force at this location as well, but without a game to chaw on, I should be able to deflect them handily.

From there I will go to my wife's family. My every move will be weighed, measured, judged, and computed to see if I am worthy of their little girl. The answer will come out "no". People will be loud. Arguments will occur. Northern food strange to my southern palate will be served. I will probably be told at least once that that isn't how things were done back in Syracuse. I may be asked about my reproductive intentions with their daughter. And I'll drive. A lot.

Oh yeah. In between those times, I will be bombarded with television images of people who are happier than I. I will be told by at least five people to remember the "real reason for the season."

Problem is, I don't know if there is any real reason...

If there really is a God (something I'm less than 90% sure of anymore) and if he even cares what humans do anymore (something I'm less than 50% sure of), I can't imagine that he looks down at the people spending money they don't have for stuff they don't need to give to people they don't like, at the grandmothers bashing each other in the skull for the privilege of paying $600 for a video game system that will be obsolete in two years, at the people swearing at each other in traffic, arguing as families always do, at the folks getting completely piss drunk to deal with the stress, and says "Boy, those guys sure do a good job of celebrating my kid's birthday."

Here in the town where I live, two rival churches are running large ads in the local paper debating whether you can even get into Heaven without taking a bath with the preacher. They're spending the church donation funds on this. They aren't feeding the hungry, as Jesus taught. They aren't helping the sick, as Jesus taught. They're engaging in a giant penis waving contest.

If there is a God, and if he is watching, I have to believe he's ashamed of our entire race and probably rethinking that whole dinosaur extinction thing at this time of the year.

People wonder why the suicide rate goes up around Christmas. I don't. I know all too well...

And that's why you continue to get "I Hate Christmas" blogs from me on a yearly basis.

Hooray!

Musicians You Never Heard Of... But Should

2006-12-20T19:42:00.001-06:00

It's been a while since I wrote anything here. I'm not sure even the three people who used to read it have endured my lapse, so this may be for nothing. But I'll give it a try.

Since I can't bear to write another word about how I hate Christmas and since the whole season depresses me too much to write anything funny, I'm going to stick with something I can write about even in the December funk... Music.

So, for your reading pleasure, I give you ten musicians that you really should listen to, but probably haven't. For whatever reason, most of these guys have gone under the radar, and it's a shame. So, if you want to give me a gift for Christmas, go seek one or more of these guys out and expand your horizons.

These bands run the gamut from folk to metal to world beat. There probably isn't anyone in the world but me who would actually like listening to all of them. But if you dig a bit, there's likely something you'll get into.

On to the list...

The Trailer Park Troubadours/Antsy McClain
Genre: Americana/Rockabilly
Recommended Album: Way Cool World/Time Sweetened Lies
The best live act on Earth. These guys put heart, soul, and sweat into every concert. They're the band I've seen more than anyone (I stopped counting at 15 times, and that was four years ago). They're best known for their comedic songs like "Skinny Women Ain't Hip", "I Wish I Had a Clapper for Your Heart", and "Prozac Made Me Stay" but singer/songwriter Antsy McClain's true talent lies in his ability to write quirky and often melancholy love songs from a point of view that no one else has even considered. In "Primer Grey Impala", he muses on a women he sat beside briefly in a Waffle House, piecing together from clues in her demeanor and dress that she just left a bad relationship. He watches, admiring her from afar. "If I were a braver man, I'd sit down by her side. Try to find out what it is, she hides behind those eyes. What it is she's running from, why it is she waits..." In "Inspector 372" he combines his keen sense of humour with a rather sad angle as a traveling salesman who never has time to settle down finds an inspection tag in his jeans and creates a fantasy of the "lonely inspector" who did the job. Go see these guys if they're in your area (and to my California readers, they often are) or at least go to their website and get an album. You won't regret it.

Todd Snider
Genre: Americana/Folk
Recommended Album: Near Truths and Hotel Rooms Live
Todd is probably the "best known" of my unknown artists. His most recent album, "The Devil You Know" made Rolling Stone's top 50 albums of the year. But it hasn't translated into Nickelback-like sales. While the selfish part of me certainly enjoys the intimacy of seeing Todd in little clubs (and I have several times), he just deserves more. He is, quite simply, the best young songwriter in America. He's the heir apparent to John Prine, and no surprise since Prine is his mentor and Todd released three albums on Prine's "Oh Boy" record label. Where Snider excels is in telling compelling stories about ordinary folks. In "Just Like Old Times", from his newest album, he tells a tale of a drifting pool shark who has a chance reunion with his high school sweetheart while looking for "some company in the local Scene, I saw an ad that just had to be you." How do you make the reunion of a bum and a prostitute poignant? Listen to the song and you'll know. As he says in the song, so many of his characters "don't want to throw a fishing line in that old mainstream."

Tommy Womack
Genre: Americana/Southern Rock
Recommended Album: Positively Na Na
Those of you who used to listen to WKDF in Nashville back when it's a rock station might remember Womack's name. Back in those days, he hosted a show called "Nashville Tapes" with his Government Cheese bandmate Joe Elvis. Government Cheese was a straight ahead club rock act. When Womack went solo, he moved more into the Americana direction. Like Snider above, Womack wrings all he can out of ordinary folks, but Womack's humour is more sharp than Snider's and he has a talent for twisting a phrase just the right way to get maximum punch out of it. In "I'll Give You Needles" he tells the story of two "mopwater junkies" who meet on occasion in the emergency room. At one meeting, the woman is pregnant and Womack offers to hook her up with an "under the table abortion" but warns her "you might get accosted by angels intent on giving you hell. They'll push and they'll pull and they'll scream and they'll shout and they'll kneel and they'll pray and they've been known to shoot... but they mean well." Later he tells her that "I've got better things to do with my day than watch you sit in the corner and bleed... but I'll give you needles, how many you need?"

Jason Ringenberg
Genre: Americana/Country
Recommended Album: All Over Creation
Ringenberg may also be a familiar name to those who listened to Nashville Tapes in the 80's. As the singer of Jason and the Scorchers, his band broke genres, blending country, metal, and punk in a way no one ever had. As a solo artist, Ringenberg has moved more toward his country/folk roots, although he can still rock out on tracks like "One Less Heartache in the World Tonight" and "Honky Tonk Maniac From Mars." But Ringenberg's best talent lies in his subtle storytelling. In "Bible and a Gun" he tells the story of an escaped slave who goes west, relying on his bible but also carrying a gun. At one point he says "to turn the other cheek, is the braver thing to do, I wish I had it in me, and they wish they had it too. For tomorrow when we meet, this story will end, and an ancient hollow grief, will be our only friend." Also a student of history, Ringenberg brings small historical moments to life with songs like "Erin's Seed", about the Irish immigrants to America who found themselves facing their brothers in the U.S. Civil War, and "Eddie Rode the Orphan Train" about a young man whose parents put him on a train from "Soho down to Arkansas" where people would gather at each stop and pick out children to take home, often to be used as free farm labor.

Tristania
Genre: Metal
Recommended Album: Beyond the Veil
Tristania hail from Norway, as most of the best dark metal acts do. They follow a fairly common trick, started by Celtic Frost, of employing both a "death metal" vocalist and an operatic female singer. But Tristania goes one step beyond, hiring a third baritone singer to round out the group. The contrast of the three very different vocalists is ear-grabbing. Musically, Tristania displays the technical skill required of this style of music but isn't afraid to experiment with acoustic guitar intros and other things not typically not heard in gothic metal acts. They're not everyone's cup of tea and they certainly don't "fit" with the above acts but with lyrics like "you dance in the halls of insanity, yet madness is, your amnesty... your vanity", they belong on my list.

Femi Kuti
Genre: African Beat
Recommended Album: Africa Shrine Live
I saw Femi Kuti as one of the opening acts at Nashville River Stages. He was stuck in between Blues Traveler and Bob Dylan. I'd never heard of him and had no expectations. I was blown away. He came on stage in full African regalia, complete with a huge band an a whole cadre of dancers. For the next hour, they combined catchy beats, driving percussion, expert dancing, and some very politically charged lyrics to entertain us all. If you're willing to expand your horizons, check him out.

The Jeff Healey Band
Genre: Blues
Recommended Albums: Cover to Cover
Healey had one hit in the 80's with "Angel Eyes" and then faded into obscurity. It's a shame. Healey is, quite frankly, one of the ten best blues guitarists alive today. His downfall, unfortunately, was what makes his sound unique; blind since childhood, Healey self-taught himself guitar by playing it lying in his lap like a steel guitar. The unique style of playing allows Healey to get bends and hit notes that are impossible for "normal" guitar players, but it got him labeled a novelty act and dismissed. While he's not the strongest songwriter in the world, he's in a genre where he doesn't have to be. Healey has made the best of the old blues tradition; taking blues standards and making them his own. From his smoking take on "Hootchie Cootchie Man" to his blues'd up version of Jimi Hendrix's "Angel", Healey satisfies all around.

This was fun. Perhaps I'll do it again sometime if it's well received. I've got tons of obscure music in my collection just waiting to be introduced to a wider audience. Until then...

Yet Another Random Thoughts

2006-10-06T23:02:00.000-05:00

My constant reader, Kate, has recently berated her daughter Kelly for not updating her blog often enough. Since Kelly updates about 100 times for my one, I fear it is only a matter of time before I get the same. So to head that off, I present yet another thrilling edition of that last refuge for the boring blogger, Random Thoughts.

Still doing the diet thing, still doing the exercise thing. I wish I could tell you it's going gangbusters, but it really isn't. I have for the last couple of months been on the weight loss trampoline. I'm up one week, I'm down one week, I'm up a while, I'm down again. In the end, much like NASCAR, I'm in much the same place I began. I'm not amused. But I'm also at a loss for how to fix it.

While the gym has never been my favorite place, it's been near unbearable. This is because it's time again for the softball classes in the gym below. My walking time has become infested with loud, annoying girls who all seem to think that if you screech every time you throw the ball, it helps in some way. In reality, it's like nails on a chalkboard. I guess you might frighten your batters, or make them die of laughter...

Which brings me to thing number 2 about the softball class. It has kids in it who look to be no more than 6 or 7. These kids are being taught fast-pitch softball. Now I'm no expert, but I'm pretty sure I've read that people shouldn't play fast-pitch until they are teenagers because their rotator cuff is not developed enough to take the stress. But here they are, all overseen by their parents, in whose eyes you can practically see the dollar signs floating as they envision their children becoming sports stars and providing them with their retirement. I have a personal message for these parents. To paraphrase Bill Hicks, "kill yourself". Seriously. Go home, take some pills, cut your wrists, put a bullet in your brain, jump off a bridge, whatever tickles your fancy. Just do it. The fact that you are auctioning your kids entire childhood (some of these kids are in there 5 days a week) and risking injuries that will haunt them for life, all so you can roll the dice on your kid being the next Tiger Woods or Reggie Bush and you can retire in luxury. Go buy a lottery ticket. Better yet, buy some mutual funds and stop auctioning your kids for money that likely isn't going to come. You may as well just sell them into prostitution. At least that money's guaranteed. But the suicide idea is really the best one. Try that first...

I saw a commercial today for one of the 8000 new sleep aids. This one is called Lunestra. The ad features people taking Lunestra, then settling down to rest. As they do this, a luminescent purple butterly flutters in and lands on their beds. Now correct me if I'm wrong, but if you're taking a pill that makes you see glow-in-the-dark purple butterflies, there's a good chance what you're taking is LSD. Just saying...

Ah, I love the smell of poetic justice in the morning. Yes, that is a Republican, the party of family values, gay marriage bans, and "the internet is a bunch of tubes" that you see in the latest scandal. He may look like a gay pedophile predator using the internet to lure unsuspecting children to debauchery, but he's really part of the moral majority, bringing this country back to the teachings of God. Yep, that's it...

Well, it's pretty much official. Winning my fantasy football league last year was a fluke. I suck. I'm winless in one league and sitting at .500 in another. To all the people who encouraged me to take Cadillac Williams in the first round, I would like to dedicate the following obscene gesture to you...

Joan and I went to the Ryman last weekend to see Alice Cooper in concert. It's the fourth time I've seen Alice and Joan's second. I think I've officially made her a fan. Alice may be getting up in years but there is no better showman on Earth. I've seen hundreds of bands in my lifetime and, frankly, it's not even close.

That's all I've got for now. Maybe more later. Hopefully this satisfies my Annie Wilkes and gets me off the hook for a little while.

Those Who Can't, Judge

2006-09-13T20:16:00.000-05:00

My good friend Darth Kel posted a video on her blog recently from America Has Talent. It was of a couple who had a whole routine based around being quick change artists. Pretty interesting, but the part that confounded me more was that David Hasselhoff, of all people, appeared to be a judge on the show. Having a dislike for reality television that is well documented in this blog, I had never seen the show and had no idea.

David Hasselhoff? Seriously? Having David Hasselhoff judge if you have talent is like having Ryan Leaf evaluate you for the NFL or Paula Abdul tell you if you can sing.

Oh, wait...

Apparently the criteria for judging a talent on reality television is a total lack of the talent you're judging. This got me to thinking. With my background in Mass Communications, I thought I might be able to cash in on this Reality TV talent show thing with a few ideas of my own. Since you guys are my most loyal readers, I thought I'd offer them up here first to get your opinions on which ones I should take to the networks.

Stand-Up Comedy Star: Contestants compete to see who is the funniest comedian, trying to impress guest judges Sinbad, Carrot Top, and Bob Saget.

I Want to Be a Playboy Bunny: Beautiful women compete to see who will bare all in the pages of Playboy. Guest judges include Gloria Steinam, Hillary Clinton, and Bea Arthur.

So You Want to Start a Dot-Com: A group of techies vie to win a contract to co-found the next Google with their partner, Senator Ted "the internet is made of tubes" Stevens.

America's High Priestess: A group of wanna-be Wiccans show off their spell-casting and tree-hugging skills to earn the title of "America's High Priestess". Celebrity judges for this contest will be Pat Buchanan, Billy Graham, and Pat Robertson.

What do you think, sirs?

Hey Kelly

2006-08-31T06:50:00.000-05:00

I'll make you a geocacher yet...

http://www.geocaching.com/track/details.aspx?id=655735

I'll let you know if it gets to your area.

Yeah, I Know...

2006-07-11T21:46:00.000-05:00

I haven't been posting lately. I'm a bad man. Actually, my other blog site, Adventures in Geocaching has taken off like gangbusters and is taking up most of my creative energies. I promise I'll post here soon, Kate. Please don't hurt me...

A Modest Immigration Proposal

2006-06-06T19:47:00.000-05:00

By now, reams of well-reasoned arguments (and tons of crackpot rhetoric from the Bill O'Reillys of the world) have been written by people smarter than me (well, except for Bill O'Reilly) about how to solve the illegal immigration issue. Should we build fences around the border? Give amnesty to those already here? Send crazy vigilantes down to patrol the border? Send the illegals on a massive hunting trip with Dick Cheney?

This is one man's modest, (only slightly) satirical proposal of how to fix the immigration problem. It appeared to me, literally, as I was watching television the other night. The solution lies in an obscure Japanese program that has been retooled and broadcast on American television via Spike TV. The show is Most Extreme Elimination Challenge, or MXC.

For those of you not familiar with MXC, it's a re-dub of the extremely peculiar Japanese game show Takeshi's Castle. In the show, Japanese "contestants" are put through strange, often impossible, physical challenges such as balancing on a swinging bridge while people fire soccer balls at their head, hurling themselves at walls while wearing velcro jumpsuits and trying to stick, running through doorways that might be made of paper or might be made of wood, or trying to run across a pond full of "stepping stones" where some of the stones are unstable, and dodging oddly dressed monsters while trying to score a touchdown. It's a pretty dumb show and a guilty pleasure for me. But it might just be the solution to our country's most pressing problem.

Think about it. Illegal immigrants already swim across large bodies of water, dodge "Minutemen" trying to nab them, climb walls topped with barbed wire, and avoid INS agents. If they're going to go to all that trouble to get here, why not make it work for us. My idea is to set up giant Takeshi's Castle sets up along the border at the most frequent crossing points. Hire full-time camera crews to work the shows, producers and editors to put the shows together, and writers to provide dialogue.

My plan is to run anyone trying to illegally cross the Mexican border through the full run of Takeshi's Castle challenges. Anyone who makes it through the entire gauntlet of challenges gets a green card.

One of the things Takeshi's Castle is known for is that the challenges got more and more difficult until almost no one is able to complete it. This is a list of the challenges in the show. The challenges in the show get progressively harder until almost no one makes it through to the end. The series of challenges would weed the thousands of illegals trying to get into the country down to just a few. Voila! Immigration problem solved!

But wait, you say. These immigrants are going to take our jobs, their children receive our social services! This is going to cost us money!

No problem there. The government can just start a 24-hour "Most Extreme Illegal Immigration Challenge" channel and sell advertising to offset these costs. You gotta think the "reality tv" craze could support a channel dedicated to this most real of reality shows. If not, we can just add a few more shows. "I Want to Be American" Idol, where immigrants attempt to sing the Star Spangled Banner in George Bush approved English while Simon Cowell insults them; The Mole (as in the sauce) where a group of illegals try to sneak into the country, only to discover that one of their number is a secret border patrol agent; El Apprentice, where a group of immigrants are put through meaningless challenges, with the winner becoming Donald Trump's poolboy.

You get the picture. We've got a potential goldmine on our hands and we don't even know it!

There you have it. One guy's Modest Proposal to fix a big problem. Jonathan Swift, eat my dust!

-Gryph

"What do you think, sirs?"
-Joel Hodgson as Joel Robinson on MST3K

"It Stinks!"
-Trace Beaulieu as "Dr. Forrester" (in response)

Ten Things...

2006-05-23T19:30:00.000-05:00

This almost became another Random Thoughts topic but I decided that Random Thoughts are SOOOO last week and, being an aspiring A-list blogger (but actually owning a Z-list blog) decided to buck the trend and steal from someone unique this week. So I looked to ESPN's Peter King, who in his Monday Morning QB column always does "Ten Things I Think I Think." Any resemblance between this and Random Thoughts is purely coincidental...

1. I think my exercise program is going relatively well. I can regularly do 2.5 miles most nights and can occasionally do 3 but 3 seems to be that magic threshold where, if I cross it, I risk hurting myself enough to have to miss some time and negate more than the extra walking I did on the first day. I've lost a little over 30 pounds since the middle of February. Joan's lost about 50 since August. I guess the combo of Atkins and exercising finally got her over that plateau she's been on for a couple of months.

2. I think I have been doing the gym 5 days a week for 3 months and I still don't "get" the "gym people". They stand in front of the huge mirror, looking at themselves as they lift. Does this have something to do with getting their technique right or, as I suspect, is it a vanity so they can see for themselves how their nice big muscles look. I try to avoid the mirror myself as my Moby Dick-esque body is not a nice thing to see staring back at you. It's the stuff of nightmares actually. I readily admit I am an ugly, ugly man.

3. I think I feel old. We recently switched our gym time back an hour due to changing work schedules which means there are more kids there now. Did I ever have that much energy? If so, where did it go? I know I used to have more energy than now because I used to go to MTSU for an 8 am class, have classes until noon, bum around Murfreesboro all day waiting for my night class, go to night class from 6-9 pm, then go hang out at the coffee shop with Darth Kel until 3-4 am. I'd then drive to Shelbyville, go to the radio station to record my newscast for morning, as often as not see a note from my drunk idiot of a station manager saying she was "too sick" (read stoned) to come in and I had to cover the 6-9 am shift. Record newscast, catch a 45 minute nap on the floor of my office, run 6-9 on-air without sounding like the Night of the Living Dead, catch another 2 hours or so nap on the floor of my office, and run my 2-7 airshift. The next day, it'd start all over. I think that'd be a recipe for my death now.

4. I think in spite of my drunk boss I had a blast during my three years in radio. With that one exception, I worked with some great professionals and some real characters. From Tom, our "salty old veteran" to Darth Kel, our "this kid's going places girl" to Ricky, the living embodiment of Johnny Fever who taught me more about radio than he'll ever know, to Doug, my first station manager who took a punk kid with a mediocre voice and a big cd collection and turned him into a professional, for 3 years anyway. I may have to dedicate a full blog post to them one day as well as to some of our more "unique" regular callers. It truly was a zoo sometimes and was the best stretch of my life.

5. I think maybe I should have picked less than 10 things I think. This is hard...

6. There is NO thing six!

7. I think television is still a medium that can move you if well done. My most recent example of that was on HBO Sunday. Baghdad ER was a documentary that showed the daily workings of the biggest military ER in Iraq. Being HBO, the footage was straight, live, and uncensored. I dare you to watch that show and tell me that what we're doing in Iraq is worth that. If you can, I think you're a harder soul than I.

8. I think it took all of two days for someone in the break room at work to lecture me for reading The Da Vinci Code during lunch. It was two days later than I expected but it was still annoying. Still, it must not be that controversial. It didn't even take a day for someone to lecture me for reading Harry Potter.

9. I think if I'm going to rip off Peter King, I should at least have one sports-related item so Go Colts! I'm already strategizing about defending my fantasy football title this fall.

10. I think this column is done.

-Gryph

Marketing 101: For Catholics

2006-05-16T20:16:00.000-05:00

I've watched with amusement recently as the Catholic faithful have used the occasion of the release of the Da Vinci Code movie to make sure we all remember that they don't like the book and consider it heresy.

We get it.

In fact, I think you'll find out that lots of people get it. To the tune of about 80 to 100 million dollars worth of opening weekend...

The only people who don't get it are the Catholics themselves. Because say what you will about Dan Brown as an author (and I've heard everything from "he's the next King" to "he's a hack and appeals to the lowest denominator"), he's one hell of a smart marketer. Publish a book about a controversial religious topic that is clearly marketed as fiction (thereby giving a ready excuse for the people who complain about the historical inaccuracies) but write up a few pages of vague commentary about how some of the things contained inside "might" be true, then stand back and watch as the Catholic Church unwittingly sells your book for you.

Catholics have never been known for their keen sense of humour, but you'd think eventually they'd at least learn from their mistakes. It's become a booming business to release movies, books, and music that pisses off the Catholics and then stand aside as they protest, opine, and cry their ways into millions of dollars worth of free marketing for you.

But they haven't gotten it. So I'm going to try to help my Catholic friends out a bit.

STOP IT!

If you don't like The Da Vinci Code, don't go see it, don't read it, don't patronize movie theaters that carry it.

But do it quietly. Because every time the Pope or one of his goons goes on CBS News and denounces the book as heretical, little dollar signs flash in Dan Brown's eyes. He probably gets a woody. I know I would. Because money makes people happy and nothing is guaranteed to sell a book or a movie about controversial religious topics than having the Pope denounce it.

Especially if that book about controversial religious topics also portrays the Catholic church as trying to cover the controversial facts up for thousands of years. Then it looks like the fictional book with the vague hints of factual content might just *be* factual. After all, why would the Pope himself be so upset with a work of fiction?

So organize your protests Catholics. Picket outside the theaters and tell everyone you know that Dan Brown, Ron Howard, and Tom Hanks are going straight to Hell, do not pass go, do not collect $200. Cry, lament, and wail to the Heavens about the injustices done to your faith.

But take a second while you're doing it to pause, and listen. That laughter you hear? That's Dan Brown.

Round Robin Story Challenge

2006-04-21T22:04:00.000-05:00

I've had this idea floating in my head for a while and I decided to experiment here and see how it worked. My idea works kind of like the blog version of a chain letter, with a creative twist.
I'm sure my readers (all three of you) have heard of the concept of a "round robin" story; that being where someone begins a story, tells it to a point, and then someone else picks the story up, telling it to another point, and passing it on.

So who's up?

Here are the rules:

1. I'm going to provide the opening of a story and then "tag off" to someone I know with a blog. That person will (hopefully) be willing to run with the idea, write a bit, and then tag off to someone she knows, who will hopefully tag off to someone she knows, etc. Hopefully, through the "she knows three people who knows three people, etc" idea, we can make this idea reach well beyond the boundaries of the few blogs we know, allowing us to meet new people and, hopefully in the process, write a decent story.

2. In order to keep things organized, everyone who participates in this challenge should title the blog post "Round Robin Story Challenge", that way it's easy for people to find if they try to browse through the stories. At the top of your post, before the story, please link back to this blog (so people stumbling across the middle portion of the tale can go back from the beginning) and at the end of your story, post a link to the person who you are "tagging" off to, so people can find the next installment.

3. It's probably a good idea to ask the person you plan to tag to if they want to participate in writing the story (although I didn't. My tag partner is completely unawares) or at least try to pick someone you know is a good sport. If you do tag off to someone who doesn't wish to participate, either tag to someone else or, even better, ask them if they will make one post with the title and link back to here, and then tag off to someone else. Any way we can expand the scope is a good expansion.

4. I'm just going to write the opening sentence because I'm lazy (and because I'm anticipating getting tagged back at some point) but I'm hoping you guys will write at least several paragraphs per session. Feel free to write as long as you want.

Have fun and let's see how far we can take this...

The Dancing Bear
The bear came to me again last night in my dreams, dancing in a ray of moonlight outside my bedroom window. I felt no fear in seeing him there. I knew he would not harm me. But I also knew, somewhere deeper, that to go to him would be my death...

There you go. The first bit of our journey. Kate, my biggest (read only) fan, I'm tagging off to you. Have fun!

Kate's Blog

Random Thoughts: Electric Boogalou

2006-04-15T07:55:00.000-05:00

What do you do when you have been ordered to blog but have nothing to say? Random Thoughts comin' atcha.

Saw Todd Snider in concert last night in Huntsville. This is the fifth time I've seen Snider live since discovering him at Nashville River stages several years ago. Great, great live act. If you're reading this blog, your mission is to go find some Todd Snider and listen. If you like folk/alt-country at all, you'll love him. Think John Prine with a more cynical sense of humour. He closed last night's show with a cover of "Mr. Bojangles", written by his admitted hero Jerry Jeff Walker. I LOVE the original version of this song and I love Jerry Jeff Walker but Snider's voice matches the song so perfectly that I think he actually surpassed the original. He's got a world-weary tone to his voice that comes from far too many trips to rehab and far too many miles traveled. It fits the song well and makes an already melancholy song even more so. Go listen. Now. Trust me.

Staying with the music theme but switching genres, Queensryche has finally released their new album, a sequel to their landmark 1989 album Operation Mindcrime, which graces my cd player often to this day. Of course, in keeping with Griffy luck, it comes out at the same time as the afore mentioned Todd Snider show, forcing me to make a financially based decision. It's like choosing between your children. Snider won out, but hopefully I'll be able to pick the 'Ryche album up soon. Being broke sucks.

Yes, I know jumping from folk/country to heavy metal is a pretty big leap. As my wife will attest, my music collection suffers from a severe case of multiple personality disorder. Putting the whole thing on random is likely to bring up Johnny Cash followed by Celtic Frost followed by B.B. King followed by something from one of my Monty Python albums followed by L.L. Cool J. Hazards of being a radio guy I suppose. My tastes go all over the map.

I've never really been known as a fashion maven. My wife has to match my clothes for me (although that's easy since, given my druthers, my entire clothing collection is black or grey. I look like a chubby Johnny Cash some days...). Anyway, I'm hoping one of you more fashion-conscious left-coasters can help me with this one. What's the deal with the day-glo plastic shoes with all the little holes in them? I see them everywhere lately so I'm assuming this is the new fashion. What is their purpose? They look as if they would glow in the dark so they might be good for jogging at night. What function do the holes serve? Or is it just fashion to have shoes with holes in them now? I hope so because I have two or three pairs of shoes with holes in them sitting in my closet. They're my fishing shoes but if they're fashionable, I might put them up on Ebay. Do you think smelling like Duck River mixed with my feet will lower their resale?

Andy Warhol just called me. He says reality television's 15 minutes were up a while back. Am I the only person who doesn't watch this tripe? Apparently I am. People at work look at me as if I have leprosy when they are discussing the latest elimination on American Idol and I can only stare blankly at them, having never heard of any of the contestants and only vaguely knowing that Simon's the mean judge and Paula Abdul isn't nearly as hot as she was when I lusted after her in the 80's. I just don't get it. And don't even get me started on Fear Factor, my sister-in-law's favorite show apparently. And I don't know why it's her favorite show. It's about people climbing to dangerous heights and eating seemingly inedible foods. Having a 4 and 3 year old, I'd think she'd see enough of both of those things to satisfy her. I was at their house once when the little one ate a bar of soap. Not put it in his mouth, mind you. Bit, chewed, swallowed, and went back for more. How many people on Fear Factor could do that? I guess I just don't get the appeal of the whole reality thing. I don't even like living in my own reality. Why the hell would I want to live in someone else's?

Did I mention that Todd Snider was really cool last night? Have you checked him out yet? No? Go do that now. I'll wait.... .... .... ... Got it? Good stuff, eh? You can thank me later. I accept cash or Paypal.

I don't have anything else interesting to write about (not that I had anything interesting to write about before) so I'll sign off now. Be well.

-Gryph

"It's hard to kick the door down, when you ain't wearing no shoes..."
-Todd Snider

NP: Queensryche "Suite Sister Mary"

You Can't Have Meme without ME...

2006-03-21T22:25:00.000-06:00

Darth Kel updated her blog today with an interesting concept that she stole from someone else who undoubtedly stole it from another. So I decided to steal it for myself. Partially because it's kind of a cool concept and partially because it gets me out of trouble for not posting for a while.

The concept is that you use your Ipod as a Magic 8 Ball, asking it questions and then shuffling to get the song title answer. Unfortunately, I suffer from technology envy and don't own an Ipod so, in the interest of full disclosure, this is the same concept using a copy of Winamp and the 33 gigs of mp3 files I have on my portable HD.

Anyhow, on to the questions.

Q: Will I Ever Update my Blog Enough to Satisfy Kate?
A: "Right Now" by Van Halen
Oddly Enough, this is when Kate usually wants me to update...

Q: What Should I Do With My Life?
A: "Save Me" by Queen
I'm not sure what to make of this one... I say this sometimes when I'm at work. Of course, Save Me could me encouraging me to enter the medical profession (or begin a career as a flamboyantly homosexual lead vocalist, I'm not sure which...)

Q: Will I Ever Be Happy With My Career?
A: Savatage "Living For the Night"
Apparently I should have stuck with third shift...

Q: Will I Ever Have Children?
A: Dee Snider's SMFs "Stay Hungry"
Um... Ok... I think my 8-ball has mental health problems.

Q: What Song Will They Play at my Funeral?
A: "Joanie the Jehovah Witness Stripper" by Paul Thorn
Heh, and my grandma thought my plan to play Led Zeppelin's "Ramble On" was bad...

Q: What is my musical theme song?
A: "Act III- Manhunt" by Shadow Gallery
Obscure Prog Metal. Not the song I'd have used but close enough.

Q: What do other people think my musical theme song is?
A: Robert Earl Keen "Famous Words"
Hmmm... Not too bad.

Q: What type of woman do I like?
A: "Stuck in the 90's" by Moxy Fruvous
Hmmm... Was never into grunge chicks...

Q: What advice do you have for me?
A: "Addicted to Spuds" by Weird Al Yankovic
Damn... This thing knows my trouble resisting french fries...

Q: What type of music do I prefer?
A: "Here in my Heart" by The Scorpions
80's arena metal? Well, there was a time...

Q: What type of music will I listen to in the future?
A: "Get Off my Cloud" by Union
Hmmm... 90's arena metal. At least I'm moving...

Q: How can I make myself happy?
A: "Those Memories of You" by Dick Dale
"I'm so lonely I could die..." Well, that's depressing...

Q: What's my biggest fear?
A: "My Bologna" by Weird Al Yankovic
Hmmm... Better check the expiration date on that...

Q: Should I go ahead and end this column now?
A: "Minarets" by Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds
A seven minute song in answer to this? I'll take that as a no...

Q: Can I end it now?
A: "Sweet Revenge" by John Prine
Ah, vengeful eh? Well to hell with you! I'm ending it whether you like it or not!
A: "Love Mistake" by Nancy Wilson
Oh, dragging my personal life into it, eh? You stupid little...
A: "DysFUNKtional" by The Trailer Park Troubadours
What? Who you calling dysfunctional you stupid machine!
A: "Dance With Me" by Tuck and Patti
No sense trying to make nice now... The damage has been done.
A: "Utne Wire Man" by Blue Man Group
Oooohh... Soothing... *lull* No! You won't sedate me you evil program! I'm uninstalling you!
A: "Quiet Man" by John Prine
That's more like it! I'll do the talking.
A: "Hey You" by Pink Floyd
What?
A: "Bedrock Anthem" by Weird Al Yankovic
What is your fascination with Weird Al anyway?
A: "Talk Soup" by Weird Al Yankovic
Seriously, I don't own that much Weird Al. Why do you keep selecting it?
A: "When the Levee Breaks" by Led Zeppelin
That's more like it. I can forgive anyone who's a Zep fan. Peace?
A: "Waco Moon" by Todd Snider
Another good one! You're ok there Winamp. I'm ending the column now, ok?
A: "Spiritual" by Johnny Cash
"Jesus... I don't wanna die alone..."

Pretty fitting end for this column, wouldn't you say so Winamp?
A: "I Can't Complain" by Todd Snider

Glad you agree...

-Gryph

All That and a Pack of Gum

2006-03-13T21:51:00.000-06:00

My wayward editor, Darth Kel, has been posting semi-regularly recently about the silliness she's seen on various commercials. It's always nice to hear that the left coasters have dumb spots too between their episodes of Springer. But I've got her beat. One of the local car dealerships was running a commercial tonight. One of those super-amateurish deals where the owner stumbles over his lines and brings his kids out, all of whom look embarassed to be there.
Let me start by saying,as an old radio vet, I can tell you we pretty much all HATE sponsor records. Once you've done the radio bit long enough you can nail a spot in one take, two at most. Run the music, live to tape, usually straight to the cart. 10 minutes in the production room tops. Owner records though, often require 10, 15, I've even seen 30 or more takes, all on the reel to reel so you can (hopefully) splice bits of all of them together to make one 30 second ad that doesn't make your sponsor sound like a complete moron. An hour or so in the booth and another 30 minutes or so putting it all together.

Anyway, that's a tangent. This spot tonight featured the owner of the dealership and his kids (one of whom was ACTIVELY trying to shuffle away from the camera so as not to be involved with this embarassment). He began like normal, fumbling his way through the Cobalts, Luminas, and Suburbans on sale. Then it got weird. He mumbled something about celebrating "fresh breath" and informed all the viewing audience that this dealership would be giving a FREE! pack of Chiclets to everyone who comes in for a test drive.

A free pack of Chiclets...

I know the local area dealerships don't have the financial capital to compete with the Nashville dealerships that offer Titans tickets, money, or sometimes even Carribean cruises to anyone who test drives. But gum? Who came up with the idea of gum? Was the owner watching one of those bigger dealerships who offered football tickets and thought "that's what I should do too." *casts about on his desk* "What should I give away? Stapler? No. Pencil? No. Copy paper? No. Too expensive. Paper clips? No. Wait! This is it! Gum! Everyone loves gum! Johnny! Get our ad agency on the phone. I want a new commercial done today! A pack of gum for every test drive! Yes, I said gum! No it's not a bad idea. You're fired!"

I admit that I'm not an advertising major. Advertising is in the same college as my major, but a different emphasis. But I do know enough through my days in radio to have a rudimentary idea of what works and doesn't work. My highly tuned senses are telling me that offering something that anyone can get for $.59 at the local Qwik Mart is not going to be a major incentive to lure people in. Maybe that's just me, I don't know...

Maybe I should learn something from this guy. He's obviously more successful than me. Maybe I can turn this around to help my wife's flagging candle and soap making business and reclaim some of my living room. I can even offer a choice. Buy a candle from Phoenix and Dragon and, for a limited time, you'll receive a free ball of lint from my dryer! Or if lint is not your cup of tea, how about a cup of tea? One free teabag for orders over $50. For orders over $100, you get a blank cd-r! You can't beat that! Come on down!

Or maybe not...

-Gryph

Oscar's Living in the Past

2006-03-06T20:51:00.000-06:00

Despite not having my usual Oscar party to attend and bet on, I did watch the entire broadcast last night, and even managed to not fall asleep. Not even Jon Stewart, who I think is one of the funniest guys around right now, could save this snoozer. If the overnight numbers hold up, this is going to go down in history as the second least-watched Oscar broadcast since they began to keep ratings. I'm sure the Bushies will be quick to call it "America's repudiation of Hollywood's gay agenda" and the Hollywood types will probably blame it on Stewart who, like Chris Rock before him, was funnier than your average Steve Martin or Whoopi Goldberg hosting slot but didn't have the innate sense of where the "line" was between parodying the Hollywood culture and insulting their fragile little personalities. In truth, it's neither of these things. No one who is worried about Hollywood's "gay agenda" has watched the Oscars since Gone With the Wind was nominated. And, if anything, Jon Stewart probably added a couple million of his Daily Show audience, not your typical Oscar viewers, at least until they discovered the real reason why this Oscar broadcast will go down as one of the least watched ever... No one cared about the movies.

With nothing to root for that anyone had seen (I'm not even sure all of the Best Picture nominees have screened in Nashville yet), no one had a horse in the race. People tuned in to see if Lord of the Rings would sweep. All those women who saw Titanic 32 times each tuned in to see if it would win Best Picture. But this year, the question wasn't "Who will win between Brokeback Mountain and Crash" it was "Why should we care?"

Unfortunately, if last night's constant preach-fest is any indicator, the obvious answer to this problem isn't going to occur. That answer being that they run the "Oscar year" from September to September, giving all of the nominated films a chance to release widely and more importantly, in what is apparently blasphemy to the AMPAS if you believe the whining from last night, giving at least some of the nominated films time to release on DVD. Hollywood's current trend of releasing most of the "Oscar contenders" in the last couple of months of the year will guarantee the continuation of low ratings for the awards broadcasts in years where no "blockbuster" is nominated.

I know, I know. The President of AMPAS (and about 22 other presenters it seemed) made sure you understand that you HAVE to see movies at the theater. You CAN'T watch them on video, or at least you can't until you've given them your first $10 before plunking down the second $20.

But let's face it, it's just not true. Yes, you need to see King Kong on the big screen. Yes, you need to see Harry Potter in IMAX to get the full effect. But do you really get any more from "Capote" in the theater than you do at home? Do you really HAVE to see Felicity Huffman playing a dude in full THX sound? Is Eugene McCarthy any more impressive in "Good Night and Good Luck" if he's 20 feet tall?

Not really... With the exception of Brokeback Mountain, which I haven't seen but which looks very much like "A River Runs Through It" in that its story is mostly secondary to the beautiful scenery and would probably be more impressive on a big screen, none of the nominated pictures have any reason to make people see them in the theater unless they just can't wait for dvd. People go to the theater to see spectacles. FX and stunning cinematography are what drives the big screen experience. People want to see larger-than-life dinosaurs, people fighting in spaceships, and magic-wielding children. Most of the technological advances that the drones on last night's broadcast lauded as reasons to go to the theater, were invented by Industrial Light and Magic, aka Lucasfilm, aka the people who brought you Star Wars. They were invented with those films in mind and they have been designed specifically to make ILM-and-THX-driven films look and sound pretty. Multi-speaker THX-certified surround sound isn't really needed to listen to Phillip Seymour Hoffman's effete mutterings or Edward R. Murrow's anti-McCarthy tirades.

So am I saying that Oscar should only nominate big-effects blockbusters? Not at all. I would have stopped watching altogether if FX-laden stinkers like Pearl Harbor or XXX: State of the Union had gotten nominated. But save me the holier-than-thou attitude, the talking-down-to, and the sermon. Quit acting like people who watch your films on dvd are some kind of hillbilly scum who are ruining your careers. And quit using the Oscar ceremony as a pulpit to preach about the evils of piracy. The people who are stealing your movies aren't watching the show and, even if they are, they aren't suddenly going to say "oh wow, George Clooney says I shouldn't download movies. I feel so guilty!" The Oscars are already 4 hours long. Keep the preaching to a minimum.

Now that I've gotten my rant out of the way for tonight, some other random Oscar thoughts:

Hooray for Wallace and Gromit, the best movie released in 2005, for winning Best Animated Feature. Corpse Bride was really good and, while I haven't seen Howl's Moving Castle, Miyazaki always delivers, but Wallace and Gromit made me laugh harder than I have at a movie in a long time.

What was up with those songs nominated this year? Travelin' Thru was bad (with the exception of waiting to see if the bust of Dolly Parton's gown was going to explode from the pressure of those things that they obviously took a shoe-horn to get inside it), that song from Crash was BORING, and "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" was indistinguishable from every other rap tune released this year. I guess it was time for Oscar to finally discover rap music, but it's a shame they couldn't do it when New Jack City was released since that movie had a track from Ice-T, who has more talent in his pinky than the Whatever-Mafia does between them.

I've already mentioned that I thought Jon Stewart did a much better job than he'll get credit for because he bruised some Hollywood egos. Specifically, the campaign-style ads were a nice touch and Stewart had the line of the night with "some of the women in this audience could barely afford enough fabric to cover their breasts..."

It's official... The most beautiful woman in history, Lauren Bacall, has gotten old enough to need to be kept off TV. The woman who played so many characters with perfect poise and cunning intelligence stumbled, fumbled, and bumbled her way through presenting a subject she was once an expert on (film-noir, having starred in many of the best of them). I was embarassed for her and it made me sad. We'll always have "The Big Sleep" Ms. Bacall...

I'm not a religious man but I do believe in a creator and Ziyi Zhang is my proof that he exists. Nothing that stunning could have been created by accident.

I know a lot of people hold animosity toward the Star Wars prequels (I've been known to wish for a few tomatoes to lob at Jar Jar Binks myself) but not nominating Revenge of the Sith for best Special Effects is a crime. The climactic scene on the lava planet alone was as good as all of the effects in Chronicles of Narnia combined. The only movie that was even in the same category was King Kong, with WETA Workshop proving once again that they've become a force that can match anything put out by ILM, the long-time best out there.

That's all I've got for today. A post this long should buy me another month before I'm expected to post again, right Kate?

Yeah, Yeah...

2006-03-01T20:56:00.000-06:00

One of the three people who actually read this thing (and there are only three, I've counted) has officially fussed at me, in e-mail no less, about my lack of updates recently. I know. I've been awful. So anyway, to fill space and provide as much non-entertaining content as possible to my faithful (and probably sleepy by now) readers, I figured I'd steal from the rarely funny and always overrated David Letterman and present my Top Ten Excuses Why I Haven't Blogged in a Month. Some are true, some no so much. You figure which is which...

10. Joan's uncle died last week so it's been in a haze of crying, packing, going to Ohio, returning from Ohio, etc for the last week or so. Road tripping drains me more than exercising so I've been too pooped, emotionally and physically, to do much that requires thought.

9. The dog ate my column... (I tried to use this on my editor once when I actually had a column with a deadline. She was not amused.)

8. Joan and I have joined a gym to try and help us with our weight loss in addition to the Atkins. I get home at 6, rush to get dinner made and eaten by 7, when we join our friends at the gym. Around 8:30 we come home tired, sweaty, and devoid of column ideas...

7. I was in the hospital recovering from a hunting trip with Dick Cheney.

6. I caught the last bit of Elektra on Showtime, fell asleep and banged my head, giving me a limited form of amnesia that only makes me forget column ideas (and Valentine's Day. Really honey, that's why I forgot...)

5. I was planning to blog, but Iron Chef had Battle Octopus and I GOTTA see that honey (this one, much to my wife's chagrin, is all too true).

4. I was waiting to see if Kate would really come break my legs aka Annie Wilkes. Turns out she would...

3. I'm doing my part for the environment by not using up the valuable electrons usually wasted with my drivel.

2. If JK Rowling can take two years between published works, so can I...

and the #1 reason why I haven't blogged in a while is...

1. I'm really not interesting enough to sustain one.

There you go Kate. You can put the axe down. Really. Put down the axe. Aaaaaargh!

The Best Of...

2006-01-22T21:53:00.000-06:00

Hey, why not. Everyone else is doing it. Every magazine, web site, and critic on Earth is busy compiling their list of "The Best of 2005". And since list columns are the only thing more lazy than Random Thoughts columns (except yours Kel, which are FABULOUS), I'm all in. I will note that these are hardly comprehensive. I see a lot of my stuff on dvd and since they release all the "Oscar contender" movies about 2 days before the end of the year, I haven't seen them. No Brokeback Mountain, no Syriana, no Capote. Deal with it.

Anyhow, here goes for this year...

LAN 2005 Best Movies (theatrical)
1. King Kong- Peter Jackson delivers again. I hate remakes on principle and this is still my best picture.

2. Sin City- What every comic book movie should be. Great stuff that looked like it was ripped straight off the page.

3. Walk The Line- Johnny Cash is one bad mutha. And the movie's great too. Bonus points for letting Shooter Jennings play his dad.

4. Harry Potter and The Goblet of Fire- The rare series that gets better with age. I fear the kids may be eligible for free coffee at Denny's by the time they make all 7 movies, but I'm looking forward to seeing where they head.

5. Star Wars Episode 3- Lucas brings it home after bobbling the first two.

6. Mirrormask- Bizarre, but I liked it. Neil Gaiman (of Sandman fame) wrote the script. Definitely the most imaginative thing you'll see all year.

7. Corpse Bride- I love Tim Burton and claymation.

LAN 2005 Best Movies (DVD) aka "stuff that came out last year that Gryph didn't see until they hit video."

1. The Woodsman- I've seen a lot of horror movies in my life. I like them. Horror movies don't scare me. This did.

2. House of Flying Daggers- My wife has resigned herself to the fact that, although we are now married, I retain my severe crush on Ziyi Zhang. Beautifully shot, beautifully acted, and Zhang's not hard on the eyes either.

3. Million Dollar Baby- Even with it winning all the awards, I was surprised how much I liked it.

4. Kung Fu Hustle- Stephen Chow's a funny guy.

5. March of the Penguins- Proving that Morgan Freeman could narrate the phone book and make it cool.

6. Murderball- Surprisingly fun doc about quadraplegic rugby players.

7. Hidalgo- Brainless but entertaining. Viggo Mortensen is looking to be one of those "watch everything he's in" types.

8. Finding Neverland- Another Oscar contender from last year that I didn't get around to until this year.

9. An Evening With Kevin Smith- Almost 4 hours of clips from speaking tours. Just a guy standing on stage answering questions. But it sure was fun. His story about trying to write the Superman movie for Warner Brothers ("we don't want a cape. Or flying. Or the suit...") is worth the price of admission alone.

LAN 2005 Not-so Best Of Movies (aka "movies I went to expecting more and was disappointed).

1. Phantom of the Opera- I always thought I enjoyed Phantom (having never seen it but having a couple of albums with music from it). This made me question that. I think I may just like Michael Crawford. This movie made me sleepy.

2. National Treasure- I heard such good things. What I got was Jerry Bruckheimer's "Da Vinci Code For the Retarded".

3. Sahara- People kept telling me I should read Clive Cussler's books. I may still one day but if it's anywhere near as idiotic as this movie, I'll want my money back.

4. Elektra- I'm one of the three fans of the Daredevil comic who enjoyed the Daredevil movie. I went into this one expecting the same. Two hours later I wondered how it all could have gone so wrong in a year...

LAN 2005 Best of Television

1. Dead Like Me- The unfortunately now cancelled series' second season was orders of magnitude better than the first, which was pretty damned good. Thank you Showtime for cancelling this to give us "Barbershop: The Series".

2. Deadwood- Nobody does tv shows like HBO, as you'll see throughout my list. Deadwood was the best of the best this season.

3. Rome- Yet another HBO entrant, and a new series to boot. Beautifully shot, excellent acting, and a "hook you in from moment one" plot. It's so expensive ($100 million for the one season) that I'm not sure it can ever make the ratings needed to make it profitable, but it's fun while it's lasting.

4. Six Feet Under- This was their last season and they went out with a bang. I'll miss The Fishers, if for no other reason than to be reminded that there is a family (fictional or not) that's more screwed up than mine.

5. Entourage- I hate HBO comedies almost universally. This is the exception. Jeremy Piven is a genius and easily the slimiest character on tv today.

6. Iron Chef America- I'm a sucker for Iron Chef. I tivo it daily. The American version isn't nearly as good as the original, but it's not bad. Alton Brown is a virtual encyclopedia on commentary. Mario Batali and Masaharu Morimoto are geniuses in the kitchen. Cat Cora I can live without but I felt the same way about Sakai in the original series as well. I just try to forget Bobby Flay is even involved...

Ok. I've got some more best and not-so best lists but it's my bedtime so they'll have to wait until tomorrow. Debate amongst yourselves until I return.

Until then...

-Gryph

Random Thoughts

2006-01-09T20:50:00.000-06:00

Ah, random thoughts. The haven of the blogger with nothing else to say...

Got my mp3 player in this weekend. Unlike the fancier (and more expensive) ipod type players, this one has no hard drive of its own. Instead it has a place for a USB flash drive to plug in. It also has an FM transmitter to play over your car stereo. It's almost like being in radio again. No more sitting through the mind-numbingly generic crap the local Clear-Channel owned classic rock station plays. No more selling my soul to listen to the dj-less local JACK station, thereby putting my brethren out of work. No more classical music on NPR once the news ends. Now it's an endless stream of Led Zeppelin, John Prine, Todd Snider, Dr. Hook, and Muddy Waters. Now if I can just get my car working correctly so I have somewhere to listen to it...

Am I the only one annoyed by the television networks these days? It's not the vapid programming that upsets me but that fact that every network seems to have adopted the "little flying graphic in the corner of the screen" technique. Not the little semi-transparent logo. That annoys me but I'm used to it and at least I can see through it. The worst offender is, unfortunately, also the network I watch most, Food TV. While I'm trying to watch my daily dose of Iron Chef, food network seems to feel it is necessary to constantly bombard me with moving non-transparent graphics advertising whatever the show of the month they're promoting is. Normally this is just an annoyance but Iron Chef, being a japanese program, is partially subtitled. Stupid little graphic = can't read the subtitles. Very annoying.

I'm looking forward to the Colts-Steelers matchup on Sunday and hope my Colts don't follow their usual pattern of choking when it's on the line.

A recent editorial in the Nashville City Paper lamented the fact that technology is so prevelant now that no one has time to "stop and smell the roses" anymore. I'd have an opinion on that subject, but I'm busy blogging...

I finally, at my wife and a couple of friends' nagging, finished the Harry Potter books. Not bad. I'm not sure it's worth the cult-like fervor that has arisen over it, but it's definitely not bad. Anything that gets kids to read 900 page books is ok with me.

After year spent mostly going "eh" at the movies coming out (did we really need a remake of Bewitched?), Hollywood has come on strong at the end of the year. Too strong. Where were all these movies when I had money to see movies during the summer? King Kong is everything it was hyped to be. Narnia was a mostly-faithful rendition of the books (not as good as the Rings movies but then Narnia was never Rings), Walk the Line was simply amazing, Harry Potter once again topped itself in quality. I don't know if they'll manage to end the series before the kids turn 40, but so far so good. All in all a good winter to follow a clunky summer with a few gems (Star Wars, Corpse Bride). I look forward to my annual (although, sadly probably cross-coastal) Oscar handicapping with Darth Kel. Just for the record, Kel, my early pick is Brokeback Mountain to win everything in what will be more a salvo at the Bushies than any measure of the film's quality.

Christmas is finally over and I am very happy. That said, TAKE DOWN YOUR FRACKIN' LIGHTS! This means you. Now. Right now. Leave the blog and go do it. Now.

-Gryph
"A clown puts his makeup on upside down
so he wears a smile even when he wears a frown"
-John Prine
NP: Anthrax "Be All, End All"

Damn You Murphy

2006-01-09T19:18:00.000-06:00

I'd like to say right up front that Murphy is a rotten bastard...

You know Murphy. The guy with the law. "Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong." That one. In my case, the law goes "A man who finally tops off his emergency fund will soon have an emergency."

In my case, these emergencies take two forms. Automotive and medical.

Just a few weeks ago, Joan and I made a trip to open our new savings account and FINALLY get our emergency fund to the $1000 recommended before starting to whittle down our debt. We've had an emergency fund before. Prior to the wedding, I made sure we scrimped and saved so we'd have that $1000 in the bank just in case. So began the cruel ministrations of Mr. Murphy.

First the wedding cost us a bit more than we expected. Not a lot but just enough to get us a bit below that magic number. Murphy's major offensive was saved for when we returned from our honeymoon to discover that Joan's car, which had been limping along on its last leg, had decided its week-long vacation was an excellent time to take a permanent one. Exit our entire emergency fund (and the majority of our wedding gift money) to buy another car.

Unfortunately, that car apparently spoke the old one because soon after bringing it home, it began to exhibit the symptoms of a sickly vehicle. Little stuff. $100 there, $300 there, just enough to keep me below that magic threshold.

Finally, the demon car appeared to be exorcised. Finally we began to have a few extra dollars to spare. Finally we topped off our emergency fund and began to whittle the debt again.

But we didn't kill Murphy. Like Jason Vorhees in those old Friday the 13th movies, he rose from seeming death to kill again. Not content to settle with breaking our car, he decided to break me. My foot actually. A stress fracture. Doctor bills, prescription fills.

This weekend, apparently not content to beat up Joan's car or my extremities, Murphy has decided to zero in on my car. It goes under the wrench tomorrow. Additionally, Joan has also recently been battling some lingering medical issues which keep piling up doctor's visits but don't seem to be piling up any cures.

So, here we are. My poor emergency fund gets emergencied into extinction once again.

Someday I'm gonna find that guy Murphy... And when I do, he'd better watch out.

Christmas Among the Natives

2005-12-25T20:25:00.000-06:00

As I sit at my desk typing this out, my pet hamster Bhruic is having a run in his wheel. Having just completed 3/4 of my Christmas weekend obligations, I know how he feels. For the last three days I have been running between family gatherings, sitting in houses too small to entertain in, full of children too noisy to entertain around, putting several hundred miles on my car and several thousand calories in my body. I'm tired. More tired than I am after an average week of work. And, knowing I have yet another day of it ahead of me tomorrow, I'm feeling a little like Bhruic. I run and run. I know I've run because I feel the muscles aching and the weariness seeping into my bones. But, like my hamster, I emerge from my running in much the same place I began.

I know, I know. Christmas spirit and all that. Do unto others. Goodwill and cheer. Peace on Earth. It's not that I don't appreciate these things on occasion. It's not even that I don't enjoy seeing my family (on occasion) and Joan's family (on even rarer occasion). It's just that there's so much of it crammed into a few days time. For a guy who's skittish around crowds and nervous around children at the best of times, it can be a nightmare somewhere about the middle of day two. And it's not just me. One trip to the mall on Christmas eve will show you hordes of weary, beaten people running about to finish up that last bit of gift buying they put off until they no longer could.

There is so much written this time of year about the "real meaning of Christmas" but isn't the real meaning of Christmas a seemingly never-ending gauntlet of family dinners, holiday parties, and insane traffic? It has been as long as I've been doing it. Peace and joy are in much smaller supply than panic and depression. Goodwill is really just the place you go to buy gifts if you're cheap. Merry Christmas is just a phrase. Weary Christmas is a fact of life for most people.

So why, I ask you oh faithful readers (all two of you), do we put ourselves through it? Why do we bombard ourselves with media of varying types proclaiming the season to be jolly and gay when many of us would just as soon give it a skip? Why do we pack visits to every relative into a small holiday window until Christmas is not so much a celebrated holiday as an episode of The Amazing Race with 300 million contestants?

People often, using a tone usually reserved for people who broke wind at parties, how I can dislike Christmas. My answer... How can you not?

I look over and see that Bhruic has finished his run and has now buried himself in a corner of his cage for what looks very much like the proverbial "Long Winter's Nap."

Now that's something I could get into celebrating...

-Gryph

"On Christmas day you can't get sore
Your fellow man you must endure
There's time to rob him all the more
The other 364..."
-Tom Lehrer

NP: Bob Dylan "Not Dark Yet"

Happy Holidays (If That's Ok With You)

2005-12-13T17:48:00.000-06:00

I have to admit I'm confused by all the recent hubub surrounding retailers having "Holiday Sales" or saying "Happy Holidays" in their ads. Apparently, according to the morality police, it is another attempt to "take Christ out of Christmas."

When did this begin? People have been saying Happy Holidays and having Holiday Sales as long as I've been alive. It's not a new phenomenon. Why is it a big deal now? I get the thing with "holiday trees" as Christmas trees are specific to the Christmas holiday (though they owe more to the pagan Winter Solstice than to Jesus, whose one published encounter with a large hunk of wood didn't turn out so good for him), but when did Target become a Christmas tradition? When did Target become a religious symbol? Since my editor, Darth Kel, is so familiar with Leviticus, perhaps she can shed light on this for me. Is there something about the disciples hitting the day-after-Thanksgiving sales? Aren't the same people who are beating up Wal-Mart for not properly celebrating their religious holiday the same people who constantly berate us for making Christmas too commercial?

Perhaps you didn't notice, but there are several holidays in December. Perhaps the folks at K-Mart wish to include Jewish people in their celebration of spending more than you can afford on people you don't really like. Perhaps they want the business of the people who celebrate Kwanzaa. Perhaps they hope to snag those people looking for that last minute Pearl Harbor Day gift or the perfect card for Boxing Day. Bottom line is, retailers have no vested interest in your religion, nor should they. Their job is to make money, pay taxes, and keep the economy rolling. They come closer to worshipping Alan Greenspan than anything.

Anyway, with the rant out of the way, I have some questions I hope the organizers of these protests can answer for me...

My grandmother really loves to watch "Holiday Inn" at Christmas. She's a very religious lady and I'm sure telling her that Bing Crosby was a anti-religious bastard will devastate her. Is there a grandfather (or grandmother in this case) clause I can invoke here to keep my poor granny's favorite classic movie intact?

Speaking of Holiday Inn, I stayed at one last Christmas when I was in Orlando. Was this wrong? Am I eternally damned for not going with Econolodge or Super 8 during the month of December?

I have been known to listen to Billie Holliday on occasion. Is this a problem?

My friend owns a copy of Tombstone on dvd, featuring Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday. Should I try to get him exorcised or is the rot too far gone?

British people often refer to their vacations as "going on holiday". Is it ok to associate with Brits?

I hope someone will help me out with these dilemma soon. I'm really worried. Until then, I leave you with a song from the great folks at Mystery Science Theater 3000, my favorite "Christmas/Holiday" tune.

Let's Have a Patrick Swayze Christmas

CROW: Okay, now if you'll all look at your sheet music, uh, we can rehearse my new song.
JOEL: You wrote a Christmas song?
CROW: Hey, there's no tradition like a new tradition! Ha ha ha!
TOM: Um, wait a minute. "Let's Have a Patrick Swayze Christmas?"
CROW: Oh, yeah, yeah. Based on my favorite movie, Roadhouse.
TOM: C'mon, what the heck does PATRICK SWAYZE have to do with CHRISTMAS?!
CROW: Hey, you keep Christmas in your way, and let me keep it in mine, okay?
TOM: Oh, geeez.
JOEL: Hey, c'mon, Tom Servo, it seems like a nice enough sentiment and we can give it a shot. C'mon.
CROW: All right. Okay. Okay. Uh, 12/8 time, uh, key of A-flat major--
TOM: Good.
CROW: Uh, Cambot, shoot 'em the tune. Uh, okay, you'll just have to stay with me, everybody, okay? Uh, your part's written out. "Let's Have a Patrick Swayze Christmas", by Crow T. Robot.
JOEL: "Paul, let's have a Patrick Swayze Christmas"?
CROW: Right. Hit it, Cambot!
TOM: Oh! Oh, I start. I get it. Hmm.
CROW: I'm sorry.
TOM: Pick it up.
Open up your heart and let the Patrick Swayze Christmas in.
CROW: We'll gather at the Roadhouse with our next of kin.
TOM: Not bad!
JOEL: And Santa can be our regular Saturday night thing.
'BOTS: We'll decorate our barstools and gather round and sing.
TOM: Oh, let's have a Patrick Swayze Christmas this year!
CROW: Or we'll tear your throat out and kick you in the ear!

JOEL: Hold it, hold it a sec. Cambot, stop it. Uh, Crow, I don't know if I think this is an appropriate sentiment anymore for Christmas.
CROW: Hey, what? Like a good action sequence don't belong in Christmas?
JOEL: Well, no, it's just that I've never heard of an action sequence in a Christmas carol before.
TOM: Well, yeah!
CROW: Well, then grab hold o' your socks and read on, Joel Robinson!
TOM: Okay, pick it up from measure 20, Cambot. Lovely intro, though. Very tasteful.
CROW: Thank you.
TOM: I like that.

It's my way or the highway, this Christmas at my ba-ha-haar.
CROW: I'll have to smash your kneecaps if you bastards touch my car!
JOEL: I got the word that Santa has been stealing from the till.
'BOTS: I think that that right jolly old elf better make out his will, ohh,

ALL: Oh, let's have a Patrick Swayze Christmas, one and all.
And this can be the haziest...
This can be the laziest...
This can be the Swayziest
Christmas of them aaallllllllll!"
TOM: La la la laa ha HAAA!

CROW: How long before it becomes a standard?

JOEL: I think you gotta come with me. C'mon.

CROW: Waaaaah!

TOM: We'll be right back. Oooh. Save a leg for me! Heh heh heh.

The Politics of Freedom

2005-12-03T07:59:00.000-06:00

Forgive me... I try very hard not to talk about "weighty" social or political issues in this journal. I'm thinking about setting up another to do that but I've always tried to keep this one light.

That said, I've got to get this off my chest because I'm officially pissed off.

Here's a link to the article from MSNBC that set me off.

And here's the specific quote, from FCC Chairman Kevin Martin:
“You can always turn the television off and of course block the channels you don’t want,” he said, “but why should you have to?”

What? Look at that statement again because I think it tells more about the philosophy of the Bushies than anything I've seen. Here you have the FCC chairman, a person who was put in place to regulate free, over-the air television, advocating the censorship of pay cable TV, while brazenly admitting in his own argument that the cable industry has put in safeguards through parental locks to ensure parents can control what their children see.

So what does this tell us about an overall Bush Administration philosophy? Well, Bush appointed this moron, as well as his predecessor Michael "Disgrace to my Father" Powell, who melted down at Janet Jackson's boobs, less of which were visible than is seen on an average episode of "MTV Spring Break". So Bush bears full responsibility here. I can't vote for the FCC chairman so I'm taking out on someone (and probably getting myself barred from flying ever again as a "suspected terrorist.")

This one sentence tells me all I need to know. Broken down to its essence, it says "It doesn't matter what measures you take to police yourselves, until the entire television landscape fits our fundamentalist ideals, you will be under scrutiny."

Parental locks are really quite a brilliant tool. Television programmers assign their shows a "rating", you see it at the beginning of each broadcast. TV-PG, TV-M, etc. You then simply take 30 seconds to lock out anything above the rating you feel is inappropriate for your child. Simple. "But why should you have to?" asks our nimble-minded FCC chairman.

Well, Mr. Martin, pull up a chair. Class is in session.

You see, some of us less enlightened heathens in the world are not offended by swearing, breasts, or violence. Some of us know people have sex in real life (well, maybe not your parents, but certainly most of us), deal with violence, and hear cursing. Some of us don't want to watch The Sopranos if Tony has to tell Big Pussy (or I suppose that would be Big Elbow now, to avoid any sexual connotations) to "take that doggone gambler to the river. Today he gets baptized with the fishes".

But hey, I get where you're coming from. Sex is bad. Immorality is bad. And after all, we don't have anything else to worry about now that we've caught Osama Bin Laden...

I know I feel much safer in my home knowing that Cinemax won't be able to show "Lord of the G-Strings" anymore. I'm sure the unavailability of "Sex Trek 69: The Next Penetration" on our televisions will improve the sagging economy and restore lost jobs. I'm sure every one of those 2000 people who died in Iraq will get up and walk again if only we could rid the world of "Busty Cops".

Wow. I feel safer already....

-Gryph

"Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state, an intolerable one."
-Thomas Paine

NP: Trailer Park Troubadours: "Trailercana"

Harry Potter and the Needlessly Annoying Teenagers

2005-11-19T09:14:00.000-06:00

My wife, being a huge Harry Potter fanatic, insisted we go see the new movie last night. I am just happy she didn't make me wear dress robes and a pointy hat... All in all, a pretty decent movie. Lots of action and some long needed character development from secondary characters who Rowling had been painting with a pretty broad brush previously (although I still think Lucius Malfoy is the modern day incarnation of Snidely Whiplash. All he needs is a moustache to twirl).

The movie also reminded me why I don't go to movies any more. When the wife mentioned going to this one I had one requirement before I'd go with her. "We have to go to the 9pm showing," I said. "There will be less annoying teenagers."

I know, I know. I was a teenager once. People tell me I was probably annoying too. And I certainly was. But not like this. We didn't have cell phones when I was a teenager. We didn't find it humourous to call the person one row over and loudly talk about whether Josh or Tad liked Amber. Also, I grew up poor. Dirt poor. Poor enough that the poor kids in class pitied me. When I went to the movies, it was a major investment. If I dropped that kind of change, I was by God gonna WATCH the movie. Amazing concept that...

But apparently the children at this show were not under the same financial constraints I'm under. Because the movie was less an experience for them as it was a place to come and loudly talk to their buddies... Inside the theater... While the movie is going on.

Halfway through the movie, I'm trying to watch Harry risk his life fighting dragons and I'm not engrossed in the picture, worrying about Potter and his fateful flight. I'm having to listen to someone apparently named Kayla who was in deep conversation with someone named Bridget about something or other.

At this point, my brain is imagining a phone call I plan to make on Monday.

"Senator Frist's office."
"Yes, I'd like to ask the Senator to introduce legislation to expand the use of the death penalty."
"Ok... What for?"
"Using cell phones in movie theaters."
"Isn't that annoying?"
"It is. First degree annoying. Punishable by death."
"The senator has been working on that legislation since someone talked through all of Under the Tuscan Sun."
"Senator Frist watched Under the Tuscan Sun?"
"Er... I meant Senator Frist's wife saw Under the Tuscan Sun. The Senator only watches movies featuring Vin Diesel and The Rock."
"Riiight... Just get on the death penalty thing, eh?"

Or maybe not...

Am I overreacting here? I feel like I might be but darn it, movies cost $9 now. With soda you're looking at close to $30 for two of us. That's a lot of change to plunk down. I'd like to actually, y'know, HEAR the movie I'm watching. But maybe that's just me. I'm sure Harry Potter could wizard up a spell to shut these teenagers up, but me, it just continues to strengthen my resolve to leave the movies for Netflix for the most part.

Next up for the theater, The Chronicles of Narnia. I just hope the lion eats anyone under 18...

-Gryph

"If your parents never had children, chances are you won't either..."
-Dick Cavett

NP: Moxy Fruvous "Thornhill"

Wait Your $%#@#^ Turn!

2005-10-30T21:25:00.000-06:00

Before I get called a Scrooge, let me get it out of the way early. I hate Christmas. Not just feel uneasy about it. HATE it with a passion usually only reserved for Phil Collins tunes on my radio. I hate having to shell out money to give presents to people I don't like, I hate my television being filled with endless shows featuring some dude with a beard who likes to hang out with midgets (once you've seen The Grinch, they're all pale comparisons anyhow), I hate the increased traffic on the roads, I hate watching news stories about old people giving each other concussions over the last Pull My Finger Elmo, I hate Christmas trees, Christmas lights, and Christmas carols, I hate the fundamentalists all trying to "save" me by telling me the "reason for the season". But most of all, above any of the things listed already, I hate the fact that stores and advertisers insist on pushing the "Christmas rollout" campaigns back further and further each year until Santa is on the television riding around on an electric razor while the kids are still out for summer break.

STOP IT! Stopitstopitstopit! Christmas already has an entire month dedicated to it. Stop pushing into other holidays months. I want to see ghosts and ghouls in October, not jolly men in red suits. The only appearance of Santa during the month of October should be in the slasher film Silent Night, Deadly Night and all its 134 sequels. I love halloween and I can't enjoy it anymore because Costco has jingle freakin' bells playing while I'm trying to get my groceries...

It's very simple. God, in his infinite wisdom, has granted us a means to tell when Christmas has begun. In the beginning, God created the Macy's parade and it was good (especially the Snoopy balloon...). And lo, the Lord said "let there be Santa at the end" and there was and it was to be the beginning of Christmas. I think that's in Leviticus. No one ever reads Leviticus so that's bound to be where it's at.

Santa comes down the street on Thanksgiving day, you can put up your tree and your airport runway lights with my blessing. You can drag out the decorations, put on a copy of Miracle on 34th Street (the original black and white only please) and sing "Grandma Got Runned Over By a Reindeer" to your heart's content. Before then, bugger off.

Let the rest of us enjoy our holidays as they come.

Bah. Humbug. Now if you'll excuse me, I have some presents to steal from those nasty Whos from Whoville...

Kill the turkeys, ducks and chickens,
Mix the punch, drag out the Dickens.
Even though the prospect sickens,
Brother, here we go again.
-Tom Lehrer

NP: Nightmare Before Christmas: Original Soundtrack

Satin Sheets to Lie on, Satin Pillows to Slide On

2005-09-19T19:01:00.000-05:00

If I ever doubted who the country mouse was in my marriage, I don't now. My wife, who spent her formative years in a very nice section of upstate New York, knows all about which fork you eat the salad with, when it is and is not ok to wear white (my answer: not when you're having barbeque...), and what a napkin roller is for. Having grown up in Tennessee, in places with names like Singleton and Unionville (also known by the locals as Doolittle), my idea of culture is a bag of pork rinds and a drive-in movie. If we really wanted to "do the town", we'd head over to the Waffle House after for some steak & eggs. I'm about as cultured as an episode of Hee Haw...

Never has this been more apparent than recently. While perusing Overstock.com for deals (my wife's family are notorious deal seekers. Her grandma was once arrested for abuse when she held on to a dollar so tight George Washington filed a complaint), my wife was ecstatic as she proudly announced to me that she'd bought a set of satin sheets on clearance.

Great, I thought. Rich people on tv always have satin sheets on their beds. They are supposed to be a symbol of romance and affluence. I don't care one way or another for looking affluent but anything that puts the wife in a mood to be romantic is ok with me.

It was a good idea in theory...

What I didn't know, having only ever slept on the sheets you get for $17 at Wal-mart, is that satin is slippery. Very very slippery. Here's how the conversation went the first night we put them on the bed:

Joan: Ah, satin sheets. They're soooo nice.
Me: So... Does that mean you're feeling romantic?
Joan: Maybe...
Me: Woohoo! *leaps onto the bed, hits sheets and slides off the other side onto the floor*
Joan: You missed...
Me: Ow... I think that was my spleen...

For the next several nights I gave them a try. I would gingerly climb into the bed so as not to slide off the other side and proceed to slip all over the place all night long. I'd wake up to discover my pillow had shot off the bed and I was now the owner of a neck crick.

And don't even get me started on the "romance" aspect. I fail to understand how satin sheets are remotely romantic. What's romantic about sleeping on a Slip & Slide? How can one be romantic when, every time you attempt to move next to your spouse, she slides away? By the time I finally caught Joan, I was too exhausted to do anything but give her a kiss on the cheek and fall over, slide off the bed, and injure myself further.

Nope. All those soap opera people can keep their satin sheets and their fancy beds. I'll take cotton. Plain old simple cotton. Cheap, warm, and non-injurious.

Now where's my straw hat?

-Gryph

NP: Iris Dement: Infamous Angel

"Some say they're going to a place called glory
and I ain't saying it ain't a fact
But they say I'm on the road to purgatory
and I don't like the sound of that..."
-Iris Dement

The Purpose Driven Life Among the Natives

2005-08-24T19:05:00.000-05:00

Not long ago, I wrote a column about all the signs that I see on my daily drive to work and how many of them either make no sense or the sense they do make is stupid. Well, I've seen another one, and this one I don't know what to make of. It was a billboard on the side of the interstate during a recent trip to Nashville. All it said was "You Were Created for a Specific Purpose!" That's all. It didn't explain what the purpose was that I was created for.

So what, I began to ask myself, is my purpose anyway. According to my sign, I was created for it and "a purpose" seems to mean just one thing. If I have one singular purpose in the world, shouldn't I know what it is?

Is my purpose to be a good husband? That's one of the main drives in my life due to my recent marriage but is it my "one purpose"? And if so, were the 31 years prior to my marriage completely purpose-less? That seems an awful waste.

Perhaps it has to do with my career in some way. Since I began work at 14, I have been a babysitter, farmhand, cook, dishwasher, store clerk, DJ, semi-professional writer, security guard, computer tech, and social worker. That's a lot of jobs. And none of them relate to each other very much. Remember, this is a SPECIFIC purpose I was created for. Meandering from one career to the next, never latching on to anything (and only once doing what my college degree actually trained me for) doesn't seem very specific in its purpose. In fact, it seems quite purpose-less. Was my time as a radio broadcaster more purposeful than my time working with children? Or vice/versa? I don't know.

I've always been said to be a good listener and advice giver among my friends. Perhaps that's my purpose. But that talent (if it is such) is only used sporadically and even less so recently since distance has kept me from being the shoulder to cry on when needed and a strange spurt of relationship stability has made my services unneeded. I'm 31. Is my "one life purpose" already fulfilled? Can I go "lay down in the graveyard and wait my turn" as my grandfather used to threaten to do? Am I doomed to another 50 years of purpose-less life ahead of me, wandering the world but making no dent?

Needless to say, I'm confused. If I have this one overriding purpose, you think someone would clue me in. Either my creator (and, at least according to the sign, I do have one or else it would say "you were accidentally evolved over eons from a puddle of primordial gloop for a specific purpose!) or by the people who made the sign that reminded me of my supposed purpose.

So I leave the question to you, gentle readers. Do you know what my purpose is? Or if you locate a lost purpose wandering around your neighborhood, could you direct it my way? I'd be eternally grateful (and much more productive...)

-Gryph

"If there's a new way
I'll be the first in line
But it better work this time..."
-Megadeth

NP: Meatloaf: Bat Out of Hell

Pac-Man Fever

2005-08-09T19:13:00.000-05:00

I read an article today on msnbc.com about a guy in Korea who died after playing video games for 50 hours in an internet cafe. The article stated that he took breaks only to go to the bathroom and take small catnaps on a makeshift cot. But the part of the article that really caught my eye was that the guy had apparently recently quit his job to "devote more time to his video games."

So what I want to know is, how do you land this gig? Because I would like to apply. The guy obviously wasn't feeling a financial hardship from quitting his job because he could afford to pay an internet cafe 3 days worth of rental on a computer. Since I-Cafes usually charge by the hour, he must still be doing ok. And I want to know how.

Granted, my resume isn't quite as impressive as this guy's. I can't spend 50 hours straight gaming since I have other interests such as spending time with my wife and reading, but I think I could sink 10-15 hours a day into video games if I really tried, didn't have to get a job, and could find something Joan would play with me.

So how do you do it? How do I get someone to pay me to sit and play video games? My first thought was that maybe I had to move to Korea. That's where this guy was from. Maybe Korea has a better deal set up than we do for we hardcore gamers. But after several hours of research, I can't find where to apply for it. Or Korean citizenship. And Joan's not too hot on moving there. She likes Korean food, but only to a point.

So I needed to find something here that would do the trick. I can't rely on my rich parents to support me since my parents' combined income wouldn't put them in the "rich" category. Heck, it barely puts them in "middle class". My dad, like me, works for the government and in Tennessee that's almost food stamp qualifications on its own (unless you're a state legislator, but my dad's not even a county legislator). So rich parents is out.

What about Joan's parents? Well, they're richer than mine, but still not rich enough to support my gaming addiction and besides, they don't really like me that much to start with. I can't imagine trying to have that conversation with them. "Mom, Dad, can I have $30,000 a year for the rest of my life? What's it for? So I can play Grand Theft Auto. Mom? Dad? Hello?"

I then thought maybe I could mooch of the parents of friends. For some reason, my friends' parents all like me much more than my own do and definitely more than Joan's parents do. Heck, the only person who reads this column continually, week after week, of her own volition, is a parent of a friend. Unfortunately, none of my friends' parents are loaded, at least not loaded enough to want to load some of their cash into my freeloading lifestyle. I need to go make friends with Donald Duck. He at least has a rich uncle...

Perhaps I could adopt the philosophy of NASCAR and sell advertising space on my body. My backside is already ample enough to rival any billboard and several months of non-stop gaming, taking breaks only to refill the beer and pork rinds, would make it that much wider. Now I'm on to something. But my wife reminded me that if I never left the house, no one would see the ads anyway except her and if she spent money on whatever sponsor I found, there'd really be no point in them giving me the money in the first place. She also reminded me if I ever wanted to see any of her sponsorable bits again, I'd better include showering in that break routine, along with a trip or two to the gym. Ouch. Scratch that idea. I'm not addicted enough to give THAT up just yet.

Maybe I could follow the lead of crappy artists and obtain a government grant. There are government grants for everything. Just ask that weird guy on tv with all the question marks on his clothes. No, not the Riddler, the other weird guy on the late-night infomercials who looks and sounds like he has a government grant to drink too much coffee. Unfortunately, of all the grants out there, there seems to not be one for video gaming. Damn Department of Homeland Security budget must have swallowed it up. Like blowing up terrorists in Tom Clancy's Splinter Cell isn't homeland security. Hmph!

Oh well. I guess my days as a professional video gamer are not to be. Probably just as well. The guy in the article did die. Apparently he forgot to make a save point before entering the "massive heart attack" level. Go figure.

Later,
Gryph

"The Iraqi government is struggling to try and draft a constitution for their nation. I don't know why we don't just let them have ours. We aren't using it..."
-George Carlin

NP: Blind Guardian "The Lord of the Rings"

King of the South

2005-07-27T19:30:00.000-05:00

I've spent my whole life in the South and I love it here. When people play the "If I could live anywhere, it'd be ....." game, my answer is always the boring one. Because it's here, just with more land and a nicer house. I love how you can go from a bustling city like Nashville to rolling farmland like Triune in the space of about 20 minutes' drive. But over the years my beloved South has undergone a lot of changes. Part of it is just the world moving on as the world does. Global television and the internet have brought New York City and Nashville seconds apart from each other. Part of it is the car factories that moved to Tennessee to take advantage of the cheap land and lack of income tax, bringing unemployed Michiganian auto workers with them. As Lewis Grizzard once pointed out "there's more yankees here now than there were when Sherman marched through".

But that's ok. My wife is a yankee (reformed) and most of my friends are from out of state somewhere. I welcome anyone to come experience the splendor of our great state. But, in order to keep the South the wonderful place that it has always been, there've got to be some rules. Therefore, I've decided that someone has to do the job and it may as well be me. From here on, I have officially declared myself King of the South.

As any good king would do, I have even written some proclamations for my new subjects to abide by. This goes for yankees and corrupted natives alike...

Proclamation 1: Anyone in the Kingdom of South displaying a garment, bumper sticker, or other accoutrement displaying the phrase "Cowboy/girl Up" will be required to prove that he or she has spent at least 8 of the last 12 months herding cattle from Wyoming to Texas. Those found to be in violation of this proclamation will be held down by 3 "real" cowboys while a fourth demonstrates the art of branding by permanently embellishing the offender's forehead with the word "MORON". The offender will then be banished from the Kingdom of South and set free to find his/her fortune in the barren wastes (also known as Baltimore).

Proclamation 2: Nascar is not a sport and heretofore will not be referred to as such in Kingdom of South. Football is a sport. Basketball is a sport. Boxing is a sport. Nascar is driving. In circles. For 5 hours. If a denizen of the Kingdom of South really wishes to fork out $300 to watch nail-biting, edge of your seat action in a car, they may pay the same fee to me, thier king. I will then allow them to ride shotgun in the Royal Minivan as I attempt to merge onto Briley Parkway during rush hour. This is not recommended for the faint of heart.

Proclamation 3: Real southerners do not eat chitlins. These are touted as southern delicacies in an attempt to play jokes on yankees. Bets are often made between southerners on whether the part of a pig that the crap comes out of can be made appetizing sounding enough to convince a northerner to eat it. This practice is hereby outlawed in the Kingdom of South. It is cruel and heartless and the poor yankees don't know any better.

Proclamation 4: If a citizen of the Kingdom of South is found to be wearing a belt buckle that is similar in weight and size to the WWE Heavyweight Title, said person will be forced to defend his right to wear such a belt against Batista and Stone Cold Steve Austin in a Texas Tornado Death Match at the next pay per view event.

Proclamation 5: There is no animal that naturally produces hot pink leather so anyone in the Kingdom of South caught wearing hot pink cowboy boots will be summarily dumped in the Cumberland River, his fate to be decided by the ravages of whatever chemicals happen to have been deposited there the day before.

Proclamation 6: Citizens of the Kingdom of South will not be permitted to begin any sentence with the phrase "You might be a redneck if..." Jeff Foxworthy is funny when he says this. You are not.

Proclamation 7: Singers will be required to take a test that proves a passing familiarity with the works of Hank Williams Sr., Patsy Cline, Willie Nelson, and Ronnie Milsap before being allowed to use the word "country" to describe his/her record. If your primary influence is Def Leppard, you are not a country artist.

There you have it. A few decrees to keep the Kingdom of South running smoothly. I think this king thing might work out. It's good to be king, at least according to the Kingdom's Secretary of Rock & Roll, Tom Petty. Besides, once Darth Kel conquers the left coast as she seems poised to do any day now, we can begin a sweep of all the states in the middle until we meet in Oklahoma, poised to raise our flag (a pint of Guinness and a Miller Light in the bottle) and begin our reign of terror. Mwahahahahahahahahahahaha!!!!

Or something like that...

Until then,
King Gryph

"It's good to be king, whatever it pays..."
-Tom Petty

NP: Tom Petty: The Last DJ

Grandparents Say the Darndest Things

2005-07-18T19:49:00.000-05:00

No one warned me...

When I was engaged, everybody and their brother had advice for what to expect in a marriage, how to gain the upper hand in the marriage, how to keep a marriage successful, how to avoid marital conflict. I even had several married friends give me advice that was essentially "RUN. NOW. While there's still time!!!!"

But no one warned me about the grandparents...

Granted, no one had to warn me about Joan's grandmother. She's hated me since before she met me and becoming part of the family has made it worse. So it was a great surprise when she was the first to slap us with the BIG QUESTION. The question no one warned me about. The question I assumed I had a year or two before I had to deal with.

"So, when do you guys plan to have kids?"

What???!!!! Kids. Nowhere in the wedding vows did anyone mention kids. Kids are not in my contract. I read it twice.

Don't get me wrong, I like kids. One of the things I inherited on getting married was two adorable nephews, 3 and 2, who I love like I'm their blood. I have dedicated myself to being the "cool uncle". The one who brings fun gifts and knows interesting stories. The one who is more like a kid himself than an authority figure.

But that's just it. I like kids. Other people's kids. Other people's kids are great. If I feel the need to bond with a youngster I just call up Joan's sister or one of my cousins with children and I take them to the zoo or the discovery science center or a baseball game. But, and this is a major point, I can give them back. If they start to cry or yell or smell funny I can take them back to their mothers to be repaired. You can't do that when the kid is yours.

So I brushed off Joan's grandmother's comments as an attempt to get inside my head and cause me to bolt. But then comes my grandmother with the same thing. My grandmother is much more subtle than Joan's. No "when are you having kids" from her. Just subtle hints about how she's getting older and liable to die before I provide her with great grandchildren to enjoy. No pressure...

People at work ask the same question. Friends as well. Suddenly everyone seems creepily interested in my reproductive processes.

Is it really so wrong to not know yet if you want kids? Apparently so. The advice givers were mortified that Joan and I hadn't worked this out before we got married. But we had. She isn't sure (leaning toward yes), I'm not sure (leaning toward no) but we both want to wait a few years until we're settled and in a better place financially before we even begin discussing it. That's a decision.

And if we do, eventually, decide we don't want children, does that make us somehow evil? Also apparently so. Someone not long ago told me that couples who don't have children are "selfish" because people are put on this Earth to reproduce and if you don't it's only because you're too caught up in yourself to make a sacrifice for someone else. They couched it in some sort of religious argument, which is usually the quickest way to lose me. But isn't it more selfish to have a kid if you aren't sure you are ready for one, or even want one at all? Isn't it more selfish to blindly reproduce without studying the consequences and your ability to parent? Isn't it more selfish to just have a kid knowing you're in debt and the child won't have everything they might if you only waited a few years?

And aren't all those people pressuring me to have children just attempting to get themselves what I'm already enjoying; someone to spoil without the responsibility? Isn't that, in itself, selfish?

So here's the official announcement to stop the questions. There will be, barring any accidents of birth control, no children. Not for a few years and maybe not ever. Get over it. If you want kids, go adopt some. I work with lots of them who need good homes. My sperm are not for rent.
"A word to the wise ain't necessary -- it's the stupid ones that need the advice."
-Bill Cosby

NP: Pink Floyd: Dark Side of the Moon

Gimme a Sign

2005-07-07T21:35:00.000-05:00

When I was a kid, church signs were simple. They usually said something along the lines of "Close Second Primitive Baptist Church. Service: 10:30, Sunday School: 12:00. Preacher: Brother Jimmy Wallace" But somewhere along the line, the people in charge of church signs got a spark of misguided creativity. Suddenly my hour long commute to work (where I pass roughly 573 churches. This is Tennessee after all) is filled with church signs that have little quotes on them. And I'm not talking about quotes from people worth quoting like Mark Twain, Thomas Jefferson, or Dr. Martin Luther King. I'm talking stupid little bumper sticker quotes that are supposed to make you think or laugh but usually make me slightly nauseous.

There's one on my drive in that tells me "Seven Days Without Prayer Makes One Weak." Get it. Weak. Because that's kind of like Week, only spelled differently (unless you're the Church of God I saw on a trip to Nashville one time that actually had it spelled week. That one did make me laugh). That's the level of humour you're looking at here.

And those are the coherent ones. Unfortunately, roadside signs do not have Microsoft Word equipped in them so spelling and grammar checks are non-existant. So you'd think the church folken would put their most literate member in charge of the sign, right?

Wrong... I've seen spelling on signs that would make my second grade English teacher cry. I'm not talking about the normal "letters fall off in the wind" mispellings that result in messages like "G e the De il an nc and he w l be our ru er", which always reminds me of the Ea A Oes song from A Mighty Wind. This is people without a basic elementary competency.

Even worse than those are the people who can't remember their bumper sticker dogma and end up posting things like "If you were convicted of being a Christian, would there be enough evidence to convict you?" I'm still confused by that one. I've certainly heard of having enough evidence to convict but not being convicted (see Simpson, Orenthal James) but I'm pretty sure if you were convicted there was, by definition, enough evidence to convict you. Maybe it's a Zen thing like that whole tree falling in the woods deal. I'm not sure.

So, since I'm sure none of the churchies are going to heed my plea to go back to simple church signs (only announcements of fellowship dinners should disturb that natural order) I'm proposing another idea. A national Bureau of Church Slogans to oversee sign content. Why not, we already have at least 12 departments doing intelligence and anti-terrorism work under Bush. We have a Federal Communications Commission that seems to feel it is their job to tell me what I can and can't watch on television. Why not a Bureau of Church Slogans? There are more churches with signs in my home county than there are television stations anyway.

I even have a candidate for the first Secretary of Church Slogans. My own editor, Darth Kel. Darth Kel possesses the intellect, knowledge of proper grammar, and a sense of good sentence structure. She has managed to turn years of my aimless brain dumps into readable works, and throughout it has remained a steadfast friend, so she's experienced in working and maintaining good relations with the mentally deficient.

So there you have it Kel. I just promoted you. Go forth and proselytize. Or at least assist others in thier proselytizing ways. Once you've got that under control, we can expand your sign-fixing authority. There's a place in Dothan Alabama called "Sue's Barbeque and Hair Salon" that could use your help.

No, I'm not making the BBQ/Hair Salon up...
Really...
We drive past it every time we go to Orlando...
No, I don't eat there...

Until next time,
Gryph

My religion consists of a humble admiration of the illimitable superior spirit who reveals himself in the slight details we are able to perceive with our frail and feeble mind.
-Albert Einstein

NP: Pat Benatar- Best Shots

Random Thoughts: The Plagiarism

2005-06-16T23:11:00.000-05:00

The good thing about having an editor is that you can steal their stuff and they don't get pissed off about it. They just chalk it up to artistic strangeness, thank the literary gods that the column showed up on time for once, and edit politely. So when Darth Kel posted a couple of "Random Thoughts" columns on her blog, the little hamster wheel in my skull began to move. Perhaps I could steal the idea, er "pay homage" to my dear editor, manage to make a rare deadline, and keep my very own Annie Wilkes, Kate, from kidnapping me, chopping off my legs, and forcing me to write columns on an old manual typewriter for her private pleasure.

But I digress... Random Thoughts, eh? Right. That's pretty much my life in a nutshell. Random Thoughts.

Why is it that cheerleaders are ALWAYS cheerleading? Little kid cheerleaders, high school cheerleaders, or college cheerleaders. They're easy to pick out. They stand in places like the grocery store staring blankly at the creamed corn and run through the hand motions, silently mouthing the words, looking like a person afflicted with some sort of twitchy muscle disease. That or a person who really, really loves creamed corn. It's just odd. You never see the star high school running back take out the old guy on aisle 4 with a flying tackle...
Guinness in the bottle is not nearly as good as Guinness on tap, but Guinness of any kind is a damn sight better than Budweiser in any form...
Alton Brown is making polenta right now on Food TV. I've never made polenta. I smell a cooking experimentation night on the horizon. My poor wife...
Where is Nantucket and why do all the filthy limericks involve people from there?
The new season of Six Feet Under is back on HBO. Praise be to all that is good and wonderful. My TV is fun again.
Bob Dylan's doing the Amazon.com tenth anniversary free webcast show. It takes a little of the pain out of missing he and Willie Nelson at Greer Stadium later this much, but not much of it...
I feel like a curmudgeon now. I remember the day Amazon.com opened its doors. They only sold books and no one thought they'd last a year. I remember not long after they opened up, they started giving away ten 56k modems (bleeding edge tech back then) a day to random people just for visiting their site. I won one of them but my crappy phone lines still connected at 28.8k. That was heartbreaking.
God I miss the early days of the internet. I got so much free crap from people who practically gave their stores away just to convince people to try "E-Commerce". Course, they're all bankrupt now, but I still have the stuff.
If Darth Kel ever makes it back to Nashville, she damn well better come visit me. She hasn't seen me since I got married and I miss her black-armor clad air of menace (but friendly menace...)
I got the Looney Tunes Golden Collection Volume 2 this week as a gift from my wonderful wife. I love The Simpsons, South Park, Family Guy, etc. but Tex Avery, Chuck Jones, and the Warner Brothers crew still hold the title for the greatest cartoon series ever, hands down. I've been watching these things since I was old enough to get TV and they still make me laugh.

Well, it's late and the wife is giving me THE LOOK which usually means if I don't come to bed soon, I'll be bedding down in the recliner. So that's all folks.

-Gryph

"This song is just six words long, this song is just six words long..."
-Al Yankovic

NP: Los Lonely Boys: S/T

When I'm Sixty-Four

2005-06-10T19:31:00.000-05:00

When did I get old?

Shouldn't there be a warning of some sort? An alarm, a flashing light, a nice postcard from God saying "Dear Gryph, you are now getting long in the tooth, Love God"? Something. Instead it just creeps up on you until one day you discover that the world is moving and you are not. It seems like you go to bed one night a member of the "cool" culture and wake up the next day not understanding a damn thing kids say and wondering what the hell that noise is and how they can get away with calling it music?"

I've known I was getting old for a couple of years, since I hit 30. But I didn't realize I'd officially gotten old until earlier this week.

For any of you who live in the middle Tennessee area, you can't help but know it's once again time for Bonnaroo, the three day Woodstock-esque festival on a farm in Manchester. It's been going on for a couple of years now and I've always kind of wanted to go, but there's never been a band on there that I loved enough to brave the traffic headaches... until this year.

This year I browse the Bonnaroo lineup only to discover that one of my favorite artists of all time, John Prine, is playing. I don't miss John Prine shows. I've seen Prine three times in three different states. So having him about thirty miles away is a dream come true, right?

You'd think...

In my younger days, I spent an unthinkable amount of my income on concerts. I averaged 5-8 shows a year at the big venue, Starwood Amphitheater, and about one every two weeks at clubs and bars around Nashville. If I was bored one night, I'd scrape up some change, jump in my car, and head for Nashville. I'd go see bands I'd never heard of, as long as they seemed to be somewhere in the vicinity of the genre I listened to. I braved ice storms, flood warnings, tornado warnings, torrential downpours at outdoor venues, and really bad bar food to get my concert fix.

So a three day show with several bands I like, headlined by my idol, is a no-brainer, right? Well, it would be, except for that little part about being old.

Where I used to be perfectly willing to brave the elements and eat Ramen for a week to get to a good show. It wouldn't even have been a question. So why was my mind now coming up with every excuse I could think of to not make this one?

Well, I told myself, I really shouldn't take another three days off work so soon after taking a week for my honeymoon. And I've got reports due on Monday that I really should stay and work on. And the van needs brakes too. And an oil change. Oh, and didn't we dip into the emergency fund to fix that transmission? Better replace that. Where would I get camping supplies at this late date? Do we have enough to cover rent if I go to this show. And I have to take Joan along. Can't leave the wife behind. That's a second ticket. Ooooh, and food too. That's always high at these things. And my back has been kicking up something awful the last couple of weeks. Sleeping on the ground can't be good for that......

STOP!!!!

That's when I realized it. I'd turned into my father. My father who has been to one concert in the last two decades (Elton John, his favorite artist). The guy who always said "those things are really expensive." The guy who always talked about his bills and having to take the wife along and how booth food never agrees with him.

I'm my dad. Not necessarily a bad thing, my dad's pretty cool for an old guy. But there's the rub. I'm not ready to be "pretty cool for an old guy". I'm not ready to be anything for an old guy. I'm not ready to BE an old guy. How did this happen?

So that's it. I'm old. No trip to Bonnaroo for me. No John Prine concert. No three days of rock and roll. I'll have a Metamucil on the rocks. And make it a double.

-Gryph

"I don't believe in dying. It's been done. I'm working on a new exit. Besides, I can't die now - I'm booked."
-George Burns

NP: John Prine: Fair and Square

This Old House

2005-05-27T21:06:00.000-05:00

It's funny the things we get attached to...

I guess that requires some explanation on my part. My grandmother this week closed on the selling of her house and farm. I knew the move was coming. No one has lived in the old place since last November. My grandmother had gotten to the shape that the family didn't feel comfortable with her living alone so far out in the country anymore and I was engaged and would be moving out soon myself. So my grandmother bought a little house in town and began the process of selling the farm.

The farm that I'd lived at for the last 13 years. The farm that I'd visited on a regular basis since birth. Actually, the home my mom and dad brought me back to after I was born.

I'd never meant to make it my home for 13 years. I moved there out of high school because it offered free rent and was close to my college. I always assumed when I graduated, I'd move on. But then my grandfather got the first of his 4 bouts of cancer. Suddenly radiation, chemo, and sickness were as much a part of my life as books and teachers. My grandmother doesn't drive so having someone else in the home to do doctor's trips, grocery runs, etc. made my staying necessary.

A few years later, when it looked like my granddad had beaten back cancer one more time, I looked into moving again. But I didn't, and then my granddad took another turn for the worse. This time it was dementia (which we later discovered, too late, was also cancer. Of the brain this time) and I couldn't bring myself to leave.

So I waited and, as expected, the cancer finally took my grandfather and with it any thoughts of moving away. My grandmother has always had someone there and, as mentioned before, couldn't drive. So again I stayed on, trying to allow my grandmother to live out her last days in the house that her husband had built 50 years before.

But it wasn't meant to happen. I had obligations and, surprisingly to a lifelong confirmed bachelor like myself, a relationship that looked a lot like it was going to end up being a marriage. I couldn't stay there with her anymore and her being alone in that old house 10 miles from the nearest hospital kept me up nights. It kept her up nights too and so we began the unthinkable. Moving my grandmother into town where she would have neighbors to keep an eye on her, easier access to emergency services, and more ability for family to stop in while passing through town.

She took it pretty well. Better than I expected actually. Better than me...

A couple of months ago, my fiance and I went out to load the last few boxes of things from my room and I felt a pang then. Nothing major, just a little twinge of regret for something that will never be again.

But planning a wedding and a honeymoon, getting my grandmother settled and making her as happy as possible, and trying to unpack myself into not only a new house but a new city (and a new person to share it all with) made me forget that pang.

Until this week, when my grandmother called me and told me the sale had closed. My uncle, through a power of attorney, had signed the papers that day. I guess my grandmother couldn't bring herself to do it.

Someone else owned my grandfather's farm. Someone else owned my grandmother's house. Someone else was going to sleep in the bedroom that had been my sanctuary, where I studied long nights in college, where I wrote all my columns, where I buried myself as a small child when I wanted to write stories about Godzilla or heroic dogs (I was a Jack London nut as a kid) or detective stories where myself and my friends solved mysteries like the Hardy Boys or the Three Investigators. Someone else was going to cook their dinner in the kitchen that my grandmother fed my mother in, and myself after. Someone else was going to spend Christmas in the house where most of my good Christmas memories lived. Someone else's name was on the deed of the land that my grandfather had bought for $25,000 over 50 years ago. Someone else. Someone I didn't even know...

That wasn't a twinge.... That was a snap.

So yeah, it's funny what you remember. I could tell you stories about my adventures with my grandfather trying to rid our garden of a particularly persistent terrapin, stories about my grandmother's fried chicken and how people came from all over the community to get it, stories about a million characters in a million tales all acted out by a kid in his grandparents' front yard. I could tell you about all that, but the truth is, none of that causes the snap.

It's that damned house...

Somehow, a bunch of brick, mortar, and wood has come to be the omnibus symbol for all those things. The umbrella under which all those things reside.

The umbrella that is no longer here.

I've heard a million country songs about people getting their hearts broken over alcohol, cheating, dogs, and women. But no one ever writes about getting his heart snapped in two by a house.

Until now...

-Gryph

"Ain't gonna need this house no longer
Ain't gonna need this house no more
Ain't got time to fix the shingles
Ain't got time to sweep the floor
Ain't got time to oil the hinges
Or to mend no window panes
Ain't gonna need this house no longer
I'm getting ready to meet the saints."
-Traditional Spiritual

NP: Brian Setzer Orchestra "Rock This Town"

Man's Best Friend?

2005-05-23T21:48:00.000-05:00

I'm a video game fanatic. I spend waaay more money than anyone should making sure my computer will play the bleeding edge of graphical video games. So it was with great interest last week that I read all the news coming from the Electronic Entertainment Expo, or E3. E3 is mecca for video game lovers. All the big developers bring out demos of their super-secret under development titles and give the public brief glimpses of the future of gaming.

So what was the big talk of E3 this year? The newest World War II shooter? The latest batch of multiplayer online games? The next big idea from super-developers like Sid Meier or Peter Molyneaux? The next chapter in the seemingly unending series of Sims sequels? Nope...

This year, the big talk was about Nintendogs.

In the fine (?) tradition of Tomigotchi and Neopets, Nintendo comes with a way to own a dog without any of the fun.

Is this really needed? Don't get me wrong. I'm a dog lover. Anyone who knows me knows that when I list the most important female in my life, I need a 1a and 1b. My wife Joan and my dog Sasha. Sasha's been there for me through the good times, the lonely times, and all times in between. I was more nervous about bringing Joan home to meet Sasha than I ever was about bringing her home to meet my mom.

But somehow, this just doesn't fill the void. An electronic dog can't stand at the door, tail wagging, to greet you when you come home. Well, I suppose it could, if you positioned your TV next to the door and left the program running all day. But then you'd be a sad, pitiful person and under other circumstances I'd suggest you buy a dog... I suppose since the Nintendo DS is portable you technically could take your dog out to the park for a walk, but again, it's not really the same thing.

But, I suppose I understand the appeal. When I got married I had to leave Sasha behind at my grandmother's house, a victim of the "no pets allowed" rule that infests most rental properties nowadays. A group of people so greedy that they can't eat the cost of a steam cleaner rental (or be bothered to take it out of a pet deposit) that they keep people from what I believe is one of their fundamental needs. Most apartments come furnished with a refrigerator to meet your need for food, a stove to meet your need to cook it, a shower to meet your need to be clean. But they not only ignore, but effectively squash another basic human need. Man has been palling around with dogs almost since there was man. It's just nice in a world of conditions and grey areas to know you have something out there who loves you unconditionally, who won't take your bad moods personally, who will always be there with a wagging tail and a friendly bark to let you know that it's all ok.

So yeah, I guess Nintendogs tries to fill that void. How successfully, I don't know. I don't think I'll be investing in a Nintendo DS anytime soon just so I can have a virtual relationship with a virtual pet. It's too much like having an imaginary friend. Until I can afford a house of my own, I suppose I'll have to live with my weekly visits to my grandmother's house where Sasha anxiously awaits me and gets waaay too excited when I show up.

It's nice to know you've always got a friend. Real life or electronic, I guess the premise is all the same. Just keep a steady supply of AA's handy. Wouldn't want VirtuaFido to wink out...

-Gryph

"If you pick up a starving dog and make him prosperous, he will not bite you. This is the principle difference between dog and man."
-Mark Twain

NP: Johnny Cash "Rusty Cage"

A Long Time Ago in a Childhood Far, Far, Away...

2005-05-14T12:09:00.000-05:00

May 19 is the day...

For those of you who never watch TV, browse department stores, or for some other reason live under a rock sufficiently remote to not be blitzed by the media hype, May 19 is the day George Lucas releases the final movie in his Star Wars saga.

I'm apprehensive, but hopeful. The previous two movies in this new series have been somewhat disappointing, yielding brief glimpses of the high adventure of the original series (the pod race, Yoda's lightsaber duel), but for the most part, the majority of Star Wars lovers have been disappointed.

Part of that is the filter of years. Most of us were younger then, in some cases like mine as young as 5, and 28 years of life have made us more jaded, less filled with wonder, and harder to wrap up in that blanket of belief suspension needed to truly enjoy a movie like this. Part of it, admittedly, is just George Lucas not capturing the magic of the original trilogy.

I'm hopeful for a couple of reasons. One, I've heard some great reviews from advance screenings (director Kevin Smith, whose opinions I respect greatly, thinks it's the second coming of Empire Strikes Back). Two, it marks the return of Darth Vader.

For millions of children of the late seventies and early eighties, Darth Vader was the coolest thing ever. The menacing black costume, the brook-no-failure attitude, that swooshy breathing, and most importantly the voice of Jame Earl Jones, which seems to come from a place so deep that you don't figure anything good can come from it.

But mainly, I'm hopeful because it's my last chance to capture that feeling again. The feeling of a 5 year old boy sitting next to his dad, being swallowed up by the theater seats which seemed so big then (funny since now I often complain they're too small), munching popcorn and preparing to experience his first movie. What a way to begin. If the seats seem huge to a 5 year old boy, imagine the feeling when the opening scene of Star Wars comes on and that tiny little Rebel Blockade Runner shoots past the camera followed by a massive Star Destroyer that seemed to go on and on and on for eternity. I still think it's the greatest opening shot in motion picture history. I can't even begin to tell you the effect that had on me, other than to say that my dvd collection is twice as big as most folks and I have a B.S. in Mass Communications. That movie turned me into a junkie and I've been chasing that fix ever since.

On top of that, I tie the Star Wars trilogy into other memories. By the time Star Wars came out, my mom and dad were recently divorced and my dad took me to Star Wars as one of our weekend visits. I missed him terribly and his being there for that moment was something I'll never forget. Over the years, he moved around a lot, following a string of jobs that took him to states too far flung to make regular visits unrealistic. But he always made a point to come home when a Star Wars movie would come out. Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi became as much father-son reunions as they did movie experiences. I would write stories about the characters, often previously acted out using my Star Wars and GI Joe toys, and mail them to him in whatever state he currently lived in. He'd read them and write me back, sometimes suggesting new adventures for Luke and Leia and Han and Darth Vader.

You know, when I sat down to write this, I intended to commemorate the end of a movie series that meant so much to me and maybe throw a memory or two of my dad in. Looking back on what I've written now, I would actually say that the Star Wars trilogy was probably the major lynchpin of our relationship when I was young. I'm just now at this moment realizing that virtually all of my memories of my dad from age five until about fifteen involve Star Wars in some way. Watching the movies in the theater, writing stories, telling him about my play sessions with my Star Wars toys, getting together when I got the newly released trilogy on VHS to have a marathon viewing session. All of it.

I don't know whether to be happy or sad about that... Part of me feels like your relationship with the person who gave you life ought to be deeper and more weighty than some fluffy space opera. But part of me doesn't care. In my current career as a social worker I see and read about kids every day who never knew their father, as well as some who would be a lot better of if they never had. So even though I didn't get to spend as much time with him as I'd have liked as a kid and even though most of that time is based around a series of movies, I'll take it. I'm fortunate enough to know that a lot of kids would envy me it.

So... May 19. I'll be there, not expecting but hoping.

Wonder what my dad's doing next weekend?

Until then,

Gryph

"I find your lack of faith disturbing"
-Darth Vader, while choking an underling

NP: "I Spoke as a Child" by Todd Snider

Life Among the Slightly Older Natives

2005-05-11T20:52:00.000-05:00

I knew I was done for when she mailed me the URL...

Kelly, that is, also known as Darth Kel to anyone who has ever had her as an editor and felt a verbal, but very real, version of the Darth Vader Force Choke.

Missed deadlines are not an option...

I expected her, as soon as she told me she'd begun blogging, to begin persistently asking me to resurrect the old moldy corpse of Life Among the Natives.

Life Among the Natives (LAN), for the pretty much all of you out there who don't know, ran between 1999-2000 as a humour/commentary column in a "online newspaper" called tullahoma.net. My friend and former college newspaper editor, the aforementioned Darth Kel, was entertainment editor for the paper and was apparently desperate enough for column inches to ask me to write for her. I agreed and every Wednesday for 58 weeks, LAN made its regularly scheduled appearance to virtually no fanfare whatever.

It was tough meeting those weekly deadlines, knowing that Darth Kel was waiting for me to hurry up and write something so she could turn it into something readable and publish it for my tens and tens of fans. But I had a ball. I have never before nor since been so prolific. When Kel left T-net in 2000, I went with her. I knew this process was always a team and Kelly was the only person I felt comfortable letting edit something as personal as LAN had become.

From time to time, Kelly has e-mailed me, wondering if I was writing (the answer, mostly not) and if I ever considered bringing LAN back. Before, I could always plead having no venue to publish, all the time knowing that my real fear was getting back to it and finding I'd lost the little bit of talent I had. What if, when I opened up wordpad, nothing came to my mind and flowed through my hands to fill up those vast empty pages? What then? But with T-Net out and no ready place to publish, I had my excuse.

Then came the bloggers...

At first I thought I was safe. Darth Kel, despite being one of the two smartest people I know, has never really the fastest to catch up with technology. In '94 when I was telling her of the wonders of these things called BBS, she was looking at me like I was a loon. In '95 when I excitedly told her about getting Internet access, she again seemed uninterested. So I figured with blogging just taking off fairly recently, I figured it would be a couple of years before Darth Kel discovered blogging.

It wasn't.

A few months ago she e-mailed me and told me that she'd started a blog. Good news. Kelly has always been the better writer of the two of us, though she usually prefers to edit and will never admit it in a million years. At that time, she made one mention of bringing LAN back. Here we go, I thought...

She never brought it up again.

So why, I wondered, did the person who pestered me to bring back this old dead column when I had no ready place to publish it decide to suddenly stop so close to her percieved goal?

Once again, the force is strong in Darth Kel. She knows me too well. She had sewn the seed, and kept it fed and watered through my frequent visits to her own blog. She knew all she had to do was throw all that empty space out there for me and I'd eventually be honor bound to attempt to fill it. I'm still a writer, even if the old muscles haven't been flexed in a long time.

So here I am... Filling the empty space. I can't promise LAN will become a weekly column like it was in its heyday. I'm going to try to keep it up regularly but a whole heap of "real life" has come and sat on me since 2000.

So come back again sometime, or as we say here in the deep south "ya'll come when you can stay longer." I'll fill the empty space if you'll provide me with the excuse to do it.

Until then,

Gryph

"In the end, everything is a gag"
-Charles Chaplin
NP: John Prine: Fair and Square