Today is the Winter Solstice, the first day of winter and the shortest day of the year, which is not to say it’s less than 24 hours long or is increasingly diminutive in nature, merely that the number of daylight hours is a mere eight or so, with the remaining 16 cast in darkness, near darkness or dammit-I-stubbed-my-toe-going-to-the-bathroom-at-midnight darkness.
For me it is not so much a SAD day as the weather has been surprisingly decent. So far the goat entrails predicting a colder, drier winter are proving correct, much to my delight. You’d think after growing up in a region where rain is as common as air or crooked politicians that I’d be used to it now, perhaps even find it oddly reassuring. You would be wrong. Plus Jeff gave me a toque that I look all sexy-like in and if it rains I have to switch to something more waterproof and definitely less sexy-looking. Rain interferes with my good looks, see?
I’ll report back in a few months on whether La Nina holds up and keeps us dry or if, as is usually the case, the last week of December heralds months of rain, more rain and in case you missed it, here comes the rain again.
Here’s a photo of myself, my cousin Dan and some midget dressed up as Mickey Mouse. Those red pants with the big white buttons always bugged me. That may be why I’m not smiling, because I’m thinking how much those stupid giant buttons are bugging me. Dan is holding a pack of cigarettes. Okay, maybe not. I believe his t-shirt is a depiction of birds in flight whereas mine is a groovy rainbow-colored advertisement for Zion National Park, which was a pretty cool place, even for a relatively lazy out-of-shape kid like myself (I was 14 at the time the picture was taken).
Dan’s big smile is ironic because he came down with a nasty 24 hour flu bug that same day and threw up in the Circle-Vision theater as it was playing the film “America the Beautiful”. As far as I know he was neither making a politcal statement nor trying to start an international incident. He was just throwing up.
I was going to recount some of the highlights of 1979 but the Wikipedia page on the year is entirely depressing. McDonald’s introduced the Happy Meal and smallpox was eradicated. Other than that it appears 1979 mostly sucked.
Also, that is hair on my head, not some small furry animal.
I’ve been watching the original run of The Twilight Zone (1959-64) the last few months and recall that Rod Serling once divided up the episodes as pretty good, average and crappy in equal quantities. I think he was being unduly harsh as the number of outright clunkers is pretty low. Weirdly I managed to watch two back-to-back tonight and they both shared the same problem.
The first is What’s in the Box which is about a bickering couple, a weird TV and a creepy TV repairman. The husband watches on channel 10 as he sees himself fight with his wife, punch her out the window to her death, go on trial and then go to the electric chair for her murder. It’s like personalized reality TV. As one would expect, the all-knowing TV is correct and all the events it depicts happens. The episode ends with the TV repairman (Sterling Holloway, the voice of Winnie the Pooh) breaking the fourth wall by looking at the camera with a big ol’ smirk.
The problem here is none of these characters are likable. He’s a bastard, she’s a harpy and you really don’t care what happens to them. The framing device of the TV repairman giving them their just desserts isn’t fleshed out enough to resonate so it’s just 20+ minutes of bickering, weirdness and then BAM, out the window! This may be a rare case where an hour long episode would have worked better.
The next episode is Spur of the Moment, a fairly ridiculous effort from the otherwise reliable Richard Matheson. Here it seems he came up with a pun-tastic title then tried to hang some kind of story on it so we get a young woman on a horse being chased by a scary older woman dressed all in black, complete with black cape. As the story unfolds we discover that the black-caped lady is the woman’s older self trying to warn her younger self not to marry the guy without the bow tie. You see, the younger woman is all set to marry a nice man with a bow tie but is still in love with a ne’er-do-well who doesn’t wear a bow tie. He is also blond and you know that means trouble. The episode shifts back and forth between 1939 and the present (1964) with older lady realizing she was seeing her younger self but forever being unable to catch up to her. Possibly because if you’re going to warn something it’s best not to dress up like a cartoon villain, pose like a vampire and screech incoherently and charge at the person you’re trying to warn as if you are trying to kill her.
Seriously, if you saw her approaching, would you wait for what she had to say?
Diana Hyland plays the woman and chews the scenery throughout but especially as the older woman (she was 28 at the time), though the script greases the way for her, employing the subtlety of a jackhammer, right down to her character explaining everything that is happening and or has happened. Exposition ahoy! Apart from the nerd with the bow tie, everyone in the story is a loser, so you’re left wondering why you should give a flying fig about what happens to them. I don’t need a character to be virtuous or even all that likable but there has to either be something that lets me connect to them in order to to sympathize with their plight or the plight better be awe-inspiring in its scope so I can just enjoy the spectacle.
Here we just have a spoiled brat blaming her dead dad for being so screwed up and whose idea to warn someone is to act like someone auditioning for the part of The Wicked Witch of the (Wild) West. And they sped up the film in the horse chase scene to make them look like they were riding really fast. Convincing!
Anyway, it was odd that I ended up watching two bad episodes back-to-back, so I thought it was worth reflecting on why they stunk.
I’m a sucker for random name generators and came across one that can convert your real name into an authentic* Star Wars one.
Below is the handy code/link the site provided by the site for my name. Yes, I am Giantdream Atotos. Atotos has a pleasant ring to it but I’m not convinced yet on Giantdream. And a clone? I wanted to be a bounty hunter. Bounty hunters are cool. Clones are not. Unless it’s a cool clone, in which case all of them would be cool.
No, it’s not the title of a Pearl Jam B-side (does the concept of a B-side even exist anymore?), it’s been seven days since I shaved my head and the verdict is in: I like it! Never having hat hair alone has made it worthwhile. I tried using shampoo but it really didn’t do much. Soap seems to work better now. Drying my hair takes two seconds with a towel — if I’m slow. It’s all around what I’d called darned convenient.
I tried a few more times to get a decent pic but mostly failed. Here’s one, anyway. Chances are I will update this at some point when I eventually manage a better shot. Nonetheless, the non-hair is clear.
This was taken on December 2nd, the day I I turned my hair into a tribble. My chin looks a bit scrunched up because I was holding the camera out in front of me.
At last, an exciting update on the mulch situation in China Creek Park. The update: they found a rake! After this discovery the mulch was raked into place, as seen below. What was once barren and root-covered is now covered in a luxuriously thick and spongy layer of mulch that is just crying out for me to jog on it. But I can’t.
Stupid ankle.
Look closely at the first image below and you can see the diligent raker working away at spreading the mulch over the last small section of the path. The rest of the crew were playing with string along the northern edge of the park, either measuring out a new fence or because they just like playing with string.
Curiously, the port-o-potty was sitting with its door askew. This would not make for a very private trip to the loo.
Upon closer inspection I discovered that someone had torched the thing. Gadzooks. Was someone trying to humorously light their flatulent gassings and have it go horribly wrong? Did someone think this was where you built port-o-fires? Whatever it was, it’s clear no one was ever going to poop here again (if they ever had. I sure as heck wouldn’t have).
Strangely, when I came back an hour or so later the park had already given birth to a new port-o-potty, even before the old one had been taken away, allowing for a convenient before and after comparison.
At some point in the new year I will actually come back here to jog. I hope by then the mulch is still new enough to be spongy and robust. I at least hope that flood corner will be under less water than usual.
Here’s a few pictures I took of Jeff and Jason (who he is a Big Brother to — not the Orwell kind of big brother, the ‘helping out a kid without a dad in his life’ kind) putting up the Christmas tree. I officially helped because I placed two bulbs and, I think, a candy cane.
I’m not sure what Jeff was doing in the fourth shot but I took my best guess.
Jeff and Jason begin assembling the never-needs-watering tree.
Jeff and Jason begin assembling the never-needs-watering tree.
Jeff ponders the utility of the tree as an umbrella.
Jeff ponders the utility of the tree as an umbrella.
Partly I wanted a change, partly it was tacit acknowledgment that my hair was thinning and getting thinner, as if suffering under some kind of gypsy curse (or just bad genes). And partly it was because my hair has always been fussy and kind of stupid and not having it makes it much easier to deal with.
As a bonus, I got a tribble out of the deal:
Fortunately I only have one head to shave so there is no risk of a second tribble and the subsequent infinite tribble breeding that would follow the two meeting up.
R.E.M. has released their final album, a compilation that for the first time covers their five albums with I.R.S. as well as the 10 they recorded for Warner. Part Lies, Part Heart, Part Truth, Part Garbage 1982-2011 also includes the obligatory new tracks (three, in this case) to lure completionists into buying the double disc set — a tactic that worked better before the ascendancy of digital music. Now an R.E.M. fan can just buy the bonus tracks separately. Record executives somewhere are shaking their fists over that.
Here’s the total list of tracks via Wikipedia. As one would expect of a retrospective, it covers the band’s entire career and includes all of the singles/hits along the way. It’s also clear — since the band chose the tracks themselves — that they have a few personal favorites (Automatic for the People gets four tracks).
They picked 40 songs so I’m going to do the same and pick my favorite 40 songs and see how our lists compare. Like R.E.M., I’ll pick at least one track from every non-compilation album, including the Chronic Town EP released in 1981 (30 years ago, egad).
Stumble (Chronic Town)
Sitting Still (Murmur)
Catapult (Murmur)
Pilgrimage (Murmur)
7 Chinese Bros. (Reckoning)
So. Central Rain (Reckoning)
(Don’t Go Back to) Rockville (Reckoning)
Pretty Persuasion (Reckoning)
Feeling Gravity’s Pull (Fables of the Reconstruction)
Maps and Legends (Fables of the Reconstruction)
Begin the Begin (Lifes Rich Pageant)
These Days (Lifes Rich Pageant)
Fall on Me (Lifes Rich Pageant)
Cuyahoga (Lifes Rich Pageant)
The Flowers of Guatemala (Lifes Rich Pageant)
Finest Worksong (Document)
Exhuming McCarthy (Document)
It’s the End of the World as We Know It (and I Feel Fine) (Document)
World Leader Pretend (Green)
Orange Crush (Green)
Losing My Religion (Out of Time)
Texarcana (Out of Time)
Nightswimming (Automatic for the People)
Find the River (Automatic for the People)
Crush With Eyeliner (Monster)
Bang and Blame (Monster)
New Test Leper (New Adventures in Hi-Fi)
Bittersweet Me (New Adventures in Hi-Fi)
Electrolite (New Adventures in Hi-Fi)
Suspicion (Up)
At My Most Beautiful (Up)
Daysleeper (Up)
Imitation of Life (Reveal)
Leaving New York (Around the Sun)
Man-Sized Wreath (Accelerate)
Supernatural Superserious (Accelerate)
Discoverer (Collapse Into Now)
Uberlin (Collapse Into Now)
Oh My Heart (Collapse Into Now)
It Happened Today (Collapse Into Now)
My original list had too many songs (five from Lifes Rich Pageant alone) so I culled a few to get down to 40. I found it especially difficult to pick only a handful of favorites from Murmur, Reckoning and Lifes Rich Pageant — each of these albums are remarkably lean, each song equally worthy of inclusion. A big surprise was finding four songs from Collapse Into Now. Although it sounds drastically different than something like Murmur recorded 28 years earlier, it’s perhaps R.E.M.’s most thoughtful and mature work, but free of the pretension and torpor that afflicted lesser efforts like Around the Sun. It is, in other words, one of their best albums.
Comparing R.E.M.’s list to mine, we overlap on 18 songs, roughly half and we both matched on at least one song from every album. And looking over the official listing I see they included “Bad Day” from the In Time compilation album. Cheaters. It’s a worthy song, though, so I could probably find some song to punt in order to squeeze it in.
Notably absent from my list are some prominent hits like “Stand”, “Shiny Happy People” and “Everybody Hurts”. I’m not one of those who hates R.E.M.’s silly songs nor grinds my teeth at their ballads but I felt in each case there were other songs on each album that resonated more for me (even if they were ultimately overplayed, like “It’s the End of the World as We Know It”, the song that was my R.E.M. gateway drug).
And now a bonus list, my picks for R.E.M.’s best five albums (they released 15):
Lifes Rich Pageant
Murmur
Automatic for the People
Reckoning
Collapse Into Now
It’s fashionable to think of Automatic as overrated and over-serious but I still appreciate that the band produced a richly dark meditation on mortality that expanded their musical palette with confidence (and was more successful than the various experiments of Out of Time). The simple beauty of “Nightswimming” and “Find the River” lift the album significantly.
The worst album? That would have to be Around the Sun. It’s perhaps the most personal album, nearly all of the songs centering around relationships, but the pacing and energy of the songs never picks up. It’s the musical equivalent of a car stuck in second gear. Even the allegedly peppy songs like “Wanderlust” never generate much heat. The musicianship and vocals are fine throughout but they are in service to songs that are ultimately dull (“Leaving New York” is a solid opener, though). While Up and Reveal also had their share of so-so songs, neither album falls into the slumber of Around the Sun.
This should really be a Facebook non-content post but I only post on FB every six months or so as the mood strikes.
I have a cold and I don’t get colds very often but they still do indeed suck. The stuffy head, the lack of energy, the desire to nap at non-napping times, the urge to do a lot of nothing.
As I said to someone, I feel like a kitten — weak and fuzzy, but cute. More scruffy than cute at the moment. Maybe more of a tomcat kitten than an adorable one, perhaps.
