Bowie

     I was thinking about David Bowie the other night, not a rare occurrence, I like his music and as a matter of fact he’s probably my favorite artist in all history.  Before I had ever known how to even articulate a single thought on the subject of music, Bowie was already in my life, sneaking in every once in a while on the radio in the Central section of these here United States.  “Space Oddity” was probably first for me, a song about an astronaut was very right up my alley, so to speak, and that one slipped in through the cracks of Styx and Led Zep and Skynyrd and E.L. fucking O.  Then I started noticing that song “Suffragette City”, my first Ziggy sighting, and on rare occasions “Rebel Rebel” rocked my freaking world, loved it when that song came on.  Buying my first Bowie record is a firm memory, I had the FINAL CUT by Floyd in my hands, influenced by a cardboard stand-up they had of some guy in British Army uniform with a knife in his back, and I had it, waited in line, and just as I got to the counter, the dude behind it asked me if I could hold on a second while he changed the album.  I said sure, and as I stood there he put LET’S DANCE on his turntable, and as he came back to the register, the first lines of guitar work on “Modern Love” kicked off, and before he could take the Floyd from my hands I said “Hang on a second” and turned around, put Pink back where he belonged, picked up the Bowie from the “B’s”, laid my money down, and never looked back.  Thank you anonymous counter-man, for steering me in the right direction.

Anyway, the deeper I went into his music the more I loved it, of course, buying everything I could of his, taping off copies from friends who had stuff, taping stuff off the radio, reading magazine articles and interviews, all kinds of crap. I was pretty down on the stuff he did after a certain point, TONIGHT was a huge disappointment, NEVER LET ME DOWN did just that, and it wasn’t until Tin Machine that I really enjoyed one of his albums, then he went on a nice little run, putting out some pretty cool albums, but nothing really hit me the same way as his music from the earlier parts of his career.  My personal favorite Bowie period is from LOW to LET’S DANCE, just some fantastic albums and live stuff from him at that time, top of his game in my eyes. I liked a lot of his early albums, too, of course, but nothing topped SCARY MONSTERS for me, that’s just my favorite piece of work he’s ever done, top to bottom love the songs and can listen to that album or any song from it almost any time. 

Lately though, and by lately I mean the last, oh, 20 years or so, I’ve kinda fallen in a rut for a while when it comes to Bowie.  I had all the albums on cd, burned them into mp3’s, but after awhile I realized I wasn’t listening to the cd’s, and had started weeding out songs that didn’t strike my fancy at a certain moment, probably late one night where the term ‘weeding’ really applies, if you know what I mean and I think you do.  So I was down to about 40 or 50 tunes of his in his catalogue, and just leaving the rest to lay fallow in my memory, as the old folks used to say. 

Bowie isn’t the only musician to suffer this fate with me, but since he’s my favorite he’s the most prominent in my mind right now.  I was thinking about a question my wife asked me recently; “Do you still listen to cds?  I don’t see you take them out much and just wondered if you still just played them sometimes.”  This was a clever ploy on her part to get me to admit that I didn’t need all those thousands of cds and maybe we could get rid of most/all of them.  It’s ok, I’ve had the thought myself, I’ve schlepped boxes and crates of those things up and down stairs, in and out of apartments, for years, I’ve cursed their existence even more than my roommates, whether they be intimate or not, but let’s not get into that. 

I’ve thought about this often too, the way I listen to music now.  I remember sitting at the end of my bed, wedged between it and the stereo stand where I had my cheap little turntable/radio/tape player-recorder and all my albums, staring at the spines or album artwork and liner notes while I listened to whatever I was obsessed with at the moment, I’ll spare you the name-dropping type of thing here and just say I have the coolest musical taste of everyone I’ve ever met.  Or haven’t met.  Just trust me, if I like it, it’s cool, if I don’t, it isn’t, real simple.  And there isn’t a true music fan who doesn’t feel exactly the same way.  And like all music fans, I could tell when an album was missing by the way it messed up the collage of album spines; a color was missing, part of a picture was out of place, so I knew when someone messed with my albums.  I freak myself out a little bit when I think back to just how obsessive I was when I was younger…

Anyway, I don’t listen to music like that anymore.  Back when you played an album, you normally played it from first song to last per side, and usually both sides, cuz if you wanted to hear one song on an album, you might as well listen to ‘em all.  Plus, I was just too damn lazy to get up and move the needle from one song to another if I didn’t want to hear it.  Now, I just hit the ‘next’ button on my iTunes player and I can skip through my whole catalogue of music on my laptop, and I’m not sure but I think something’s been lost.  I’m not quite sure even what’s been lost, but that feeling is there and I’m inclined to go with it. 

But we’ve also gained a lot too.  When cd’s hit their second cycle and had artists who were now realizing, hey, I’ve got 70 plus minutes worth of space to fill up on this disc, I’d better come up with some more songs, well, let’s throw this piece of crap that would normally be on a b-side, and charge you 18.99 for the whole frickin’ cd, well, you can kinda see why people prefer to download one song at a time.  Who can you trust these days to come out with a full album of quality songs?   The cynical side of me of course says trust no one.  I wonder which artist will announce that they’re not even going to make albums anymore, just singles for sale online, and if you want to make an album out of those singles, well, burn it your damn self. Being able to separate the wheat from the chaff, so to speak, is a good thing.

So to bring this very long and probably very boring post to an end, my purchase last year of a new laptop kind of made this whole question moot. I have enough space to dump virtually every cd I have onto my drive, and now, instead of having to save space for porn spreadsheets, I can have tens of thousands of songs  available on iTunes. I have an entire playlist of just Bowie that I can put on my iPhone and carry around with me for those boring family gatherings. I've re-discovered songs I hadn't heard in years (and on reflection, HOURS was pretty good, and TONIGHT wasn't as horrible as I remembered), and even though he's basically retired, it's almost like having new material again. Almost.

I Am Not A Geek

WARNING!! WHINY RANT COMING!!

In the past few weeks, two shows have caused me to review my claim to Geekdom; the BLIZZCON opening ceremonies on DirecTV, and the Spike Awards on the Spike TV cable channel.

I hadn't planned on watching the Spike Awards, since previous years viewings had caused me to wish I had spikes jammed deep into my eyes. Corny, clownish, and embarrassing, the past shows had all tried to be cute and funny, and failed miserably. This years was no exception, but there were a couple clever bits that sucked me in to watching for a few minutes. (Full disclosure; I dvr'd it and fast forwarded through probably 80%) One neat gimmick was, when a winner couldn't be there to accept an award, instead of just putting up a video on a screen of them giving a quick thank you speech, they would project the actors head on a head-shaped screen that would rise up out of the pool of water in the middle of the stage. Neat.

Blizzard is a video game company that makes World of Warcraft, Starcraft, and Diablo. For the past several years they've held a giant convention in California that celebrates their games and gives cosplayers another excuse to break out that home-made metal bikini or foam sword. Blizzard likes to make big announcements regarding their games during the con, and they offer the whole thing as a pay-per-view event. Like all good pushers, they give you a taste for free in the form of the opening ceremonies, broadcast live with a couple of hosts sitting at a news-type desk offering commentary between the speeches that constitute 'opening ceremonies'.

It was during the Blizzcon show that I really started to get the feeling that I was even more of an outsider than I had previously thought. For years, whenever I would see some form of entertainment that I loved being mocked by mainstream society, I just figured that my fellow geeks felt the same way I did; a combination of anger and sadness. But the more I see people who ostensibly share the same loves I do participate in events and displays that I find atrocious and borderline offensive, I guess I have to accept the fact that I'm not even a part of that group. The attendees hooting and hollering at the Spike Awards were a freak show and generally behaved in what I consider an embarrassing manner, lapping up every lame joke at their expense. I wasn't really upset with the folks at Blizzcon, but the announcers were terrible. Would it be too much to expect professional broadcast types doing a professional broadcast, not stumbling through the tele-prompter or unable to execute even the simplest of ad-libs? Bleh.

The same thing happens around Halloween every year. I love horror movies, so October should be a great month for me, but with the excellent exception of Turner Classic Movies, those 31 days are generally treated as a joke on television. It's not often you see the genre treated with any respect. And don't even get me started on comic books, a subject often treated with ridicule and derision. The Big Bang Theory is one of the worst offenders in this area.

(I had a bit on the music I listen to here, but it basically boiled down to "everything I like is cool, and everything I don't like sucks, and if you disagree you're wrong, 'cuz I'm the coolest mutherfucker I know", so maybe I'll save that for a separate post. That'll be fun & polarizing.)

Looking back over this post, I realize it seems a bit whiny and pointless, but it's frustrating to see things I value treated as worthy only of mockery. Rant over, at least until my post on Ron Santo.

TMBG

My friend Michael is practically forcing me to write a blog post on the upcoming concert in Milwaukee featuring They Might Be Giants by tagging me in posts twice this week. Well, I'm going to cheat, since he did most of the heavy lifting with his first post on the subject earlier. His experience pretty much mirrors mine, except I've not gone back and filled in the gaps in my TMBG collection. So all my favorite songs of theirs will be considerably 'old school'. In whatever order they occur to me...

"Birdhouse In Your Soul"
"Kiss Me Son of God"
"My Evil Twin"
"Ana Ng"
"Don't Lets Start"
"Istanbul (Not Constantinople)"
Let's face it, all of LINCOLN
"I'll Sink Manhattan"
That last one, they did live on MTV's 120 Minutes when they hosted that show sometime in the early 90's, I believe, probably on YouTube somewhere, definitely on a video cassette buried in a box in the garage, but if I'm lazy enough tonight to not post any images, I'm too lazy to go look for links. G'night.

What I'm Listening To

Here's a little companion piece to the Summer Movies post I did an eternity ago, mostly about which podcasts I'm listening to. I'll throw in a bit on music at the end...

I'm a little surprised at how many podcasts I actually take in on a monthly basis. Most of these shows are weekly and last about an hour, and I can usually squeeze in a few during the day in between taking care of the kids and driving around doing errands. But unless I'm playing World of Warcraft, I have to give the 'cast my undivided attention; I can't concentrate on what's going on in the show and, say, read a magazine or surf the web. If I do that, I'll miss big chunks of the 'cast and find myself rewinding to hear what I missed. So I'm often dividing up each show, listening to part of it here, the rest of it there, etc..., which isn't ideal, but it doesn't take away my enjoyment, since the 'casts I listen to are almost always entertaining. These are all available on iTunes, and all are free to download.



THE B.S. REPORT It's a sports-related pod hosted by ESPN.com writer Bill Simmons. If you're not into sports, it's probably not for you. Also, if you're into sports, but not into pop culture references scattered throughout your sports, it's probably not for you.

DOUG LOVES MOVIES Comedian Doug Benson loves movies. Loves the shit out of them. His weekly show 'plops' on Fridays, and is usually recorded live in front of an audience at the UCB Theater in Los Angeles. He has guests (3 most of the time) that play the Leonard Maltin game, a kind of 'Name That Tune', but with movies. The guests range from awesome (Edgar Wright, John Lithgow, Paul F. Tompkins, Sarah Silverman, Scott Aukerman) to awful (Tig Notaro is terrible every time she's on), but Doug is almost always hilarious. My favorite show.

THE POD F. TOMPKAST One of the more...different shows here. You may remember Paul F. Tompkins from his time on MR. SHOW WITH BOB & DAVID (or not). I would never have guessed his podcast would be so damn fascinating and funny. It's a monthly show that started a little over a year ago, and it's worth downloading them all and listening to them in order because the show contains a serial called "The Great Undiscovered Project", featuring Ice-T, Andrew Lloyd Weber, Gary Marshall, John C. Reilly, The Cake Boss, and tons more...all voiced by Tompkins. That's just a small portion of the show, which also features bits from his live variety show, Paul's off-the-cuff ramblings, and a phone call to his pal, comedienne Jen Kirkman. I was shocked at how much I love this show.

WTF with MARC MARON Marc's a stand-up comic who's been doing it for about 25 years, along with a stint as the morning show host on Air America. I first saw him as the host of Short Attention Span Theater on Comedy Central back in the early 90's. He's kind of...dark. Anyway, he brings guests into his garage for interviews, usually fellow stand-ups. I was a little worried the show would get into the dreaded "what IS comedy?" territory*, but that's far from the reality of what happens. There are episodes that really surprise me, because I go in thinking "I'm really not that interested in this person", but Marc really pulls some cool stuff out of them. I'm thinking of guests like Ed Helms, Jimmy Fallon, Sandra Bernhard...nothing against any of them, but I never thought I'd enjoy spending an hour listening to them talk. My favorite's are the shows with Doug Benson, Kevin Smith, Louis C.K., Janeane Garofalo, and Demitri Martin. The Gallagher episode is a must listen.

THE SMODCAST NETWORK Kevin Smith's SMODcast shows are hit or miss for me. I love the original Smodcast, but that's because Scott Mosier may be the coolest person in the world. Kev & his wife Jen's show PLUS ONE is fun, but gets old real fast, as does TELL 'EM STEVE-DAVE. HOLLYWOOD BABYLON is a riot, featuring Kevin and L.A. radio personality Ralph Garman discussing all things entertainment in front of a live audience. I gave up on JAY & SILENT BOB GET OLD months ago, it just, well, got old.

There's a couple other shows I'll check in with occasionally, like SCRIPTNOTES, a screenwriting podcast, or the television-centric FIREBERG & ICEWALL, but those are the main podcasts I listen to.

Music wise, the only cd I've bought lately is Pickin' Up the Pieces by Fitz & the Tantrums, an awesome 60's soul-inspired disc that I can't stop listening to. And thanks to Mr. Trader, I've got a few TMBG albums to absorb as I get back into that band following their excellent show at the Pabst Theater in Milwaukee last month. Still buzzing about that show...


*"Comedy is the ability to make people laugh without making them puke." - Steve Martin

Great American Beer Festival '11

So, late last year, Dawn and I were watching Art Mann Presents on HDNET, which isn't really that surprising because we like the show and watch it semi-regularly, we don't watch every episode but I'm glad we watched this one. If you haven't seen the show, amiable host Art Mann goes to different parties and/or conventions where there will be lots of people drinking and generally partying it up. This particular episode had him in Denver at the Great American Beer Festival, and damn if it didn't look like fun. So shortly after that, we made a commitment to make it to next year's event, which was pretty easy, actually. We bought tickets for the Friday and Saturday portion of the the fest, foisted the kids off on friends and family, and headed off to the foot of the Rockies for a weekend of drunkenness and debauchery. Well, drunkenness anyway for sure...

Dawn made me take a picture of the bear.

The Great American Beer Festival is an annual event held in Denver that features over 2400 beers from 465 breweries from around the country. Although companies like Budweiser and Miller had a presence, the breweries were predominantly smaller, regional types. Rather than pay to become members of the Brewers Association or the American Homebrewers Association, which got you into VIP-type of events and cost more, we just bought two tickets for both nights and didn't worry about special events.

Due to my totally justified aversion to flying, we drove out to Denver, but not without making a stop in lovely Manhattan, Kansas, to visit Mr. & Mrs. Mojo and the always charming J-Rod. Thanks to the Mojos for letting us stay at their estate for the evening. I stayed up way too late and had more fun than I should have.

We got into Denver early Friday afternoon, and after freshening up at our hotel, we hit the fest a little after 6 p.m. The convention runs from 5:30 to 10:30, but last pour is 9:45. The convention center was about two blocks from our hotel and it was a beautiful day in downtown Denver so we had a nice walk with dozens of other people headed our way. We moved quickly through the line into the event, traded our tickets for plastic cups, and stood amazed at the amount of people already there getting their drunk on. Brewers tables were lined from the front to the back of the hall, all with signs announcing the names of their beers and where they were from. The fest had them roughly joined by area, so we hit the 'local' beers of the Great Lakes area first, with some Goose Island, Leinenkugle and plenty of others to get started.

Just inside the convention hall

Over the course of the next three hours or so we sampled dozens of beers, if not hundreds. I tend to prefer lagers and darker brews, which meant that it wasn't too long before I felt like I'd swallowed several loaves of bread. Fortunately, there were several areas with tables & chairs where we could relax for a few minutes before diving back into the fray. Even though the sample size of each beer was roughly an ounce, it adds up quick. We managed to survive the night and make the walk back to our hotel where we passed out relatively quickly (hey, that drive from Manhattan, KS to Denver really wipes you out, then throw a couple cases of beer on top of that).

Let me take a moment here to warble the praises of downtown Denver; it's fantastic. The 16th Street Mall is many blocks of shops and restaurants, blocked off from regular traffic, that we spent several hours wandering through. There are free buses travelling up and down the street, lots of outdoor eating and cafes, and it's a great place to people watch. Granted, it's probably not the same in the middle of February, but for a beautiful fall Saturday it was perfect. I recommend the Rialto Cafe, great food and service, and their Farmhouse Stack on the brunch menu was awesome.

The Silent Disco

We returned Saturday night to discover that the second evening is a LOT more popular than night one. Wow, the place was packed, making it a little more difficult to maneuver from table to table. That certainly didn't stop us from enjoying ourselves, but as a result we left maybe 30 minutes earlier than the night before. Still plenty of time to drink and people watch, plus Dawn got in some karaoke, wowing the convention hall with her rendition of Pat Benatar's "Hit Me With Your Best Shot". There was no encore. I wore my Repo Man shirt on Saturday, and was pleasantly surprised how often I received comments on it. One vendor exclaimed "Repo Man! How many people know that movie?", to which I replied, "Only the cool ones." He loved it. On line to the bathroom, I got into a mutual admiration society with another guy who had on a Pork Chop Express shirt. We almost got married right there.

Bull &Bush were really the only vendors putting on a show.

Admittedly, drinking so many different beers, they tended to blend together. One Irish Red or Belgian Wheat can taste like any other after a while, but the reason you go to an event like this is to try everything. So every fruity, vegetable-y or even pepper-y beer I could find, I tried. Most of them sucked. The Chili beer was terrible, but then again, I don't like chili's, so big surprise there, right? Same for the Beet beer. But without a doubt our favorite drink of both nights was the Peanut Butter Beer, from Blue Moon Brewing Company. They tapped that keg at 7pm both nights, and we went back for more until they ran out. I would buy that beer in a heartbeat, but they informed us it was a special brew done just for the Fest, due to the prohibitive cost of making it. They put real peanut butter in the mix, and it tasted exactly like you'd think a peanut butter beer would taste. We loved it.

We had a great trip to Denver, and I'd recommend both the city and the Great American Beer Festival for anyone who likes beer. It's an awesome time, and well worth the trip. One note of caution; be sure to get your tickets early, they sell out every year. Tickets will probably go on sale late June, early July, so keep an eye on the GABF website, and always drink responsibly! I doubt we'll make it next year, we'll be saving up our cash for year two of this event. :^)

Went to GABF, got the shirt.

Movies I Shouldn't Like

HBO and Cinemax had one of their free preview weekends a while back, and I like to surf through those times and record movies and shows to my DVR that I wouldn't normally go out of my way to watch. One of those movies was a film that by all rights I shouldn't have liked, but did, and it got me thinking about other movies I like more than seems logical. Maybe I'll do a series of posts on this, starting with the movie that sparked these thoughts, GET HIM TO THE GREEK.

As you can see from the poster, it's brought to you by 'the director of FORGETTING SARAH MARSHALL and the producer of KNOCKED UP and SUPERBAD.' Normally these proclamations are designed to draw people in, this one pushed me away. I am not a Judd Apatow fan, the comedies he's made or been involved with all seem to have a lack of characters for me, and I find them to be boring. So I had no right enjoying GHTTG. I'm not a Russell Brand fan, I can't recall him ever making me laugh. This film should've been high on my list to avoid. Rock & Roll rarely works in movies, when film makers are trying soooo hard to convince you that their lead actor is the Greatest Rocker Ever, but the songs all suck, well, that's a death knell for a movie about music.

Go figure, I recorded the movie, made my wife watch it with me, and within 10 minutes I was already loving Brand's character Aldous Snow. I bought it all, and mainly because he's incredibly believable in the role of a debauched rock star. And the music ain't bad either. Jonah Hill is o.k.

So it may not be a perfect movie, the end's a little goofy, but I liked the characters enough to see me through any problems I had with the plot. It's always fun when a movie surprises me and confounds my expectations, and GHTTG certainly did that. Good on them.

Finished

I finished up reading Juliet, Naked by Nick Hornby, and managed to find the time to consume the last 150 pages in one sitting, something that's not too easy with a toddler running around the house like some sort of crazed wolverine on a sugar buzz. But the important thing is that I actually wanted to finish the book that fast. The last third of the book was fascinating because I had no idea how it was going to wrap up, or even how Hornby was going to tie off his various story threads before the end. I thought it was a satisfying conclusion, maybe a little abrupt, but when you've spent page after page constructing your characters as well as Horby did, I feel you're allowed a little shorthand at the end.

My favorite example of finishing a book in one big chunk is Jonothan Carroll's The Land Of Laughs. It's the story of teacher who meets a girl who's as obsessive about a certain children's author as he is. The two of them travel to the author's small Missouri hometown to write a biography, and of course it all goes horribly wrong. I spent the last portion of that book in a tense little ball on my recliner, I had no idea what was going to happen, but I was pretty sure it wouldn't be a happy ending (spoilers!). Just a fantastic book, and one I need to re-read in the very near future.

Pardon the Interruption

Sorry for the lag in posts lately, I have some entries that need polishing, I'll update more next week, including a review of the Great American Beer Fest going on this weekend in Denver.

Summer Movies 2011

Looking over the movies I saw this summer, I was struck by the emptiness in most of these films. But that's what summer flics are all about, so without further ado, here's a pretty vapid list, in chronological order. Oh, and these are all 2-D, the third dimension sucks.

THOR

I actually saw this twice, once with my wife Dawn on opening night (she loved it), then later with my 11 year old boy (who also loved it). I liked it the first time, and was surprised how well it held up on the second viewing. Solid characterization that was true to the source material (well, except for Jane Foster and Hawkeye), some impressive visuals, and a nice story arc for Thor compel me to give it 4 out of 5 stars.

KUNG FU PANDA 2

Kinda surprised I didn't like this one more, since I really enjoyed the first film. Gary Oldman's peacock character was fun, but other than that I found it kind of bleh.

X-MEN: FIRST CLASS

On the other end of the spectrum, I enjoyed this more than I expected. The story's clear, the characters have depth (well, most of them anyway). I was only disappointed in the death of a certain character near the end, but otherwise I was really into this movie. And it has Banshee! Awesome!

GREEN LANTERN

Haters gonna hate, but I thought this was fantastic, a really good introduction to the Green Lantern. I'm not going to refute every complaint I've seen online about this movie, I'll just say it was a total geek out to see GL on the screen.

BRIDESMAIDS

I liked this one, but I forgot almost everything about it half an hour after leaving the theater. Seeing the ads for the DVD release recently reminded me of how many times I laughed, but it wasn't enough to make it a really top-tier comedy for me. Plus that frickin' Wilson Phillips song really makes me ill. Here's a link to some great out-takes, Jon Hamm is pretty funny.

CAPTAIN AMERICA

Loved this one, Chris Evans gave a performance that surprised me, he really evoked what I thought Steve Rogers should be like. And the Red Skull! Holding the Cosmic Cube! Total geek moment.

COWBOYS & ALIENS

Huh? Wha...? Did something happen? I think I fell asleep for a couple hours there...

Ok, that's not really fair, I didn't hate the movie, but in a summer of (mostly) empty movies, this one just seemed like the worst offender for some reason. Harrison Ford was good, but that's about all I remember.










No, I didn't see HANGOVER 2, I didn't think the first one was all that funny, and you can tell by the trailers that the sequel is just a re-hash of the first one. Plus, I liked that movie better when it was called DUDE, WHERE'S MY CAR?

At the Garage Sale

Thoughts on DC Reboot

I'll say right from the start that these thoughts will be semi-incomplete, because I haven't read all of the comics involved here.  In fact, I've read only one, Justice League #1. I likely won't be reading most of the new series, because I've given up comic books. Now, I'm not going cold turkey, there are still some titles I'll be picking up in trade paperback, but, as of now, my days of buying monthly comics are behind me.  I think.

Because, see...I really liked Justice League. I'm not the biggest Jim Lee fan, but I liked his artwork on this issue, and I like the writing and the characters. It was exciting. New territory, really, and there's this feeling that the book could go anywhere. That's not a feeling you get too often when you've been reading comics as long as I have, and I'll get into my thoughts on the medium at a later date. But I was impressed with JL1.

What kind of has me glad I'm walking away from the hobby (mostly) at this time is the feeling that DC won't be going far enough with their reboot of their entire universe. Their boldest steps seem to be with Superman, and their really messing with him in Grant Morrison and Rags Morales's Action, casting him as a working man's hero. I have no problem with that, I've never been a huge Superman fan, and in fact the only time I've bought any Superman titles regularly where when they killed him back in the '90's, and All-Star Superman by Morrison (him again) and Frank Quietly. But titles like Batman and Green Lantern are basically picking up where they left off, transporting their old continuity into the the new universe. Where's the fun in that? Like Bridget Fonda* says in SINGLES, if you gonna have the operation, HAVE THE OPERATION. Stop trying to have your cake and eat it too.

I admire DC for the guts it took to even attempt this, it's a bold move and I wish them luck. I just don't think it's a bold enough move. I might end up picking up some trades down the road, Action intrigues me, I really love Green Lantern, and Justice League could be good, but nothing else I've seen so far really makes me think I'll be missing out on anything if I walk away from the monthly habit.

*Ugh, less than a week in and I'm quoting Bridget Fonda.

Blogger App

Just sending this to test the new Blogger app. I don't know how useful it will be, but I suppose I can upload pics to the blog when I'm 'on the go', so to speak. Thanks to @MichaelTrader for the heads up!

What I'm Reading

Moving my way through two books right now, with several others that have been started and abandoned at various points and a couple more waiting to be read.

I'm over half-way done with Medium Raw by Anthony Bourdain, he of the Travel Channel's "No Reservations" fame. It's a follow-up memoir to the best-selling Kitchen Confidential, and I'm finding this book to be just as fascinating as its predecessor. I wouldn't consider myself a 'foodie' by any stretch, but his stories of his exploits around the globe in search of food, drugs, women or inner peace are giving me a desire to be a better cook.

Juliet, Naked, by Nick Hornby, is the first novel I've read of Hornby's since the classic High Fidelity, and he again touches on the familiar themes of music and love and how the two can become intricately intertwined. I'm only a few chapters in, but the book has already taken a few twists I didn't expect, and that's a good thing.

I recently finished two books by James Andrew Miller and Tom Shales, Live From New York and Those Guys Have All the Fun. Both books are 'oral histories', and both had their merits, but I found "Live..." to be captivating, while "Those Guys..." could be a bit dry.  The former deals with that late-night institution, Saturday Night Live, the latter with ESPN.  I'm a huge SNL fan and while I've not consistently kept up with the show (I really lapsed in viewing from about 97-2004), the behind-the-scenes interviews and stories really grabbed me. Bill Murray is a favorite, and the good and bad stories about producer Lorne Michaels never failed to entertain. The authors follow-up, as I said, is a bit dry, and it frequently delves into the business side of the sports entertainment giant, to its detriment. I didn't really care about the intricacies of how some executive brokered a revolutionary cable agreement or milked money out of the NFL for a rights deal. Yawn. But the Keith Olbermann material is gold, gold I say! He really does come off as an insufferable perfectionist ass, which is one of the things that makes him great. Not a bad read, but it paled in comparison to the SNL tome.

Books I've started but haven't had the desire to finish yet: The Bookman by Lavie Tidhar, The Strange Affair of Springheel Jack by Mark Hodder, and couple others I can't be bothered to remember or seek out in the mess that is my book shelving system. Both of these seem like they'll be good books, but other things ended up supplanting them in my reading queue and I just haven't gotten back to them. Yet. But I will. I promise. Maybe.

It Begins...Again.

My friend Michael has inspired me to start up my own blog, or, more accurately, re-start my blog, since I've let it lay fallow for about 9 months. People have incubated babies in the time since I last posted.  The hard part of this will be my reticence to blah blah blah about personal facts no one gives a crap about, plus the 'l' key on my laptop keyboard is kind of hinky right now, which is a formidable obstacle to overcome.  Waaaahhhhh.