was deep throat disloyal?

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now i get it

a friend (and former co-blogger, in another life) used to piss me off royally by bragging about being able to work from home, in his slippers, on the back porch every morning.

of course, sitting in an office as i read that, i naturally hated his guts.

but i'm doing it this morning and ... wow. just ... wow.

so i'm sorry for cursing you. :)

a nerd am i

is it wrong for me to say that i actually enjoyed the latest star wars movie? i feel so ... critically out of touch. yes, the dialog was at times annoying, and on that end, i heard that tom stoppard was called in to be a ghostwriter of sorts for conversational scenes. if this is true, he must have missed those anakin-padme scenes in the script, because they were awful. but on the whole, it was satisfying and acted as a good set-up for the first ... er, fourth installment.

a correspondent, after reading that i hadn't done any reviewing in nine years (see the post immediately below this), asked what it was, and if he could read it. i'll have to go looking for it; i'm not in the habit of posting old stuff i wrote for the newspaper. but i might make an exception.

i'm about to upgrade my laptop to tiger and for the first time since 8.5, i'm more afraid of what it will break than what it will deliver. this cannot be a good sign for apple.

and there was one jedi knight who was kind of stacked, except for the large horn-tentacle things coming out of her forehead.

a. is out of town this weekend, so i'm a bachelor. and what do i do? go see a nerd movie last night, sleep in until 7:30 this morning and spend all morning and part of the afternoon planting flowers. a nerd am i, as yoda might say.

old school make believe

i'm going to do something i haven't done in nine years.

***

a no-class, beat-down fool and his music
"make believe"
weezer
geffen

it's been a while since i actually reviewed anything ... i quit caring a few years ago about what people think about music. one of the criteria i used to judge people with was the CDs in their collections; i do believe that what you choose to listen to in your free time says a lot about the kind of person you are.

or, more accurately, it's just another way for us to advertise who we are, and what socioeconomic class we live in (or aspire to). if i think i'm cool, and i listen to weezer, i'll think you're just like me if i see "pinkerton" next to your stereo -- or, more likely nowadays, on your ipod's playlists. i get the same feeling when i pass someone on the highway and they have an apple sticker in their back window. "there goes someone cool," i think to myself, and let them pass me on the right.

but i wanted to give this a shot, because this album is saying things to me that i've not heard in years. so forgive the shoddy analysis, inconsistencies and factual errors. this is where i'm at with "make believe" today.

look at all those movie stars -- they're all so beautiful and clean
when the housemaid scrub the floors, they get the spaces in between

weezer = irony

if you could bore into the brains of most people, their first thoughts of weezer are likely to be "generation x irony." it's the trap they set for themselves with "buddy holly" -- a wink and a nod and air quotes, with a fantastic production job by rik ocasek and a better video by spike jonze. it was the first album, the second single, and you know you never get a second chance to make a first impression.

but over time, i realized i was wrong. weezer has always been emotionally direct and to the point, even if they obscure that by (at times) too-cool-for-school lyrics. you had to dig just a bit, but it was rewarded if you cared to make the effort.

well, on "make believe," i don't think rivers cuomo is hiding much from us.

I never thought/That anyone/Was more important than the plans I made
But now I feel the shame/There's no one else to blame

that title, by the way, is "pardon me," which is a big "i'm sorry" to everyone he's ever hurt. and the phrase "i'm sorry" seems to be featured in every other song. i get the feeling he's been a jackass and needed to come clean.

Get your hands off the girl,
Can't you see that she belongs to me?
And I don't appreciate this excess company.
Though I can't satisfy all the needs she has
And so she starts to wander...
Can you blame her?

it makes for arresting listening, but it's a bit of a downer after a while. it might be the same reason why i think "sideways" is good, but a bit too ... shall we say ... accurate about certain parts of my psyche. i could identify with the teen who railed against the world in "in my garage" and part of me loves to remember what that was like.

now, on "make believe," it seems that kid grew up but remains as fucked up as before. and what that might say about yours truly i'm afraid to ask. nostalgia is a trap.

i feel like dr. phil here, but his "self script" needs a bit of an adjustment.

i can’t tell you how the words will make me feel

to know an album, i have to live with it for a while, let it sink it and bounce around my brain. if you find myself humming a chorus in the shower, or just dying to quote from some song in a staff meeting -- it's working on me.

the ipod has been a great aid for this. i listened to the disc in order twice, then put it on shuffle, to see how i reacted to the songs out of normal order. and i discovered some gems that suffer, i think, from their placement on the disc.

"the other way," for example, i can't get out of my head. i suffer from this disease -- i used to mess around with an acoustic guitar. i learned to play by playing along with other songs on CD, and from that, i learned that there are a few staple chord progressions that most rock songs just mess with slightly. they sound good however you jumble them around.

and this song is no different. it's classic, and you've heard it a thousand times before -- it almost sounds like a surfer song from 1962, complete with handclaps, backing vocals and a bitchin' rumbling guitar solo. but it's almost buried because, by the time you get to song 10, you're a bit worn out. i found myself thinking "didn't they just write this song a few songs back?" because, well, weezer leans on the classics ... but taken out of context, the song shines.

everyone -- yes, everyone -- is my friend

the singles -- "beverly hills" to start, then most likely "we are all on drugs" and maybe even "this is such a pity" or "perfect situation" -- will be strong, and if i'm right about "drugs" then once again the public will be fed the "ironic" weezer. it reads like a teen movie about rich kids who do too many drugs, and manages not to make it sound too cool in the process.

"drugs" and "beverly hills" are the social statement songs, and there's not much to say about them that hasn't already been said. "beverly hills" is just a kick-ass song, brightened by rick rubin's always-polished production. in fact, the whole album has a nice, diverse (for weezer) lineup of instruments, with some varied guitar sounds and (a first for me, at least) a piano that drives the rhythm as much as the drums. rubin always does a nice job with the groups he produces, and this is no exception. it's not his best -- i'd have to put money on the "american songs" discs with johnny cash, or "wildflowers" with petty and the heartbreakers -- but the warmth of sound is welcome for a group whose past two recordings are almost identical in sound and flavor.

the most radical departure here is "freak me out," a song that, as best i can tell, is about the over-reaction many of us have in urban settings when the hairs stand up on the back of our necks as we sense danger right behind us. it has an ethereal feel, with pretty harmonies and guitar harmonics and those sounds you get when you pluck the part behind the pickups but in front of where the strings originate (i'm sure there is a word for that). it's spooky and comforting at the same time, and totally unlike anything i'm familiar with from weezer.

haunt you every day

i am going to resist the temptation to give this disc a grade, a ranking or a place on a list with other weezer discs. it sits on its own for another week. i'll check in then to see if it's been on the playlist every day.

i can't look away

thing is, i wrote something last night, and i can't stop looking at it.

it took little time and less thought, and might read that way because of it. and yet writing it felt like exhaling after a long day of holding my breath. sometimes i wonder why, exactly, i do what i do every weekday.

an actual IM conversation

note: "peter d." is a coworker of ours who followed the dead for years, and looks even today like jerry garcia from that evil other dimension in "star trek" where all the bad guys had goatees ... peter looks like jerry garcia if garcia had decided that working in a cubicle farm, and not living the hedonistic life of a rock star, was his true calling.

8:59:01 PM TOL_rocks: just ask me to reminisce

8:59:04 PM TOL_rocks: i can do it on command

8:59:11 PM TOL_rocks: it'd be my superpower

8:59:16 PM TOL_rocks: if we were in a comic book

8:59:18 PM AAGrrl: i don't know why you're a Republican/Libertarian

8:59:20 PM TOL_rocks: what do you mean?

8:59:33 PM AAGrrl: what you care about and love to do is not very "republican"

8:59:49 PM TOL_rocks: maybe you should try stretching your definition of that term

8:59:53 PM AAGrrl: i think you have a chip

9:00:00 PM TOL_rocks: an R chip?

9:00:02 PM TOL_rocks: :)

9:00:06 PM AAGrrl: and somone randomly activates it

9:00:09 PM TOL_rocks: lol

9:00:18 PM AAGrrl: so you believe and say some dumb programmed shit

9:00:20 PM AAGrrl: the end.

9:00:23 PM TOL_rocks: as i said at lunch: were i alive and this age in 1965 in berkeley ...

9:00:38 PM TOL_rocks: i'd be like wavy gravy or the manager of the jefferson airplane

9:00:51 PM TOL_rocks: i'd know peter d. when he was known as "starshine"

9:00:57 PM AAGrrl: LOL!!!!!

the man in the gray flannel cubicle

a. and i recently finished "the man in the gray flannel suit," a post-world war II novel about the rapid ascent in american society of what another author called "the organization man" -- the tendency for otherwise sane men to sacrifice individuality to the needs of the modern american corporation.

tom rath finds himself in a job he mildly detests, coming home to a house he's with which he is dissatisfied, and a wife who years to move up in the world. their neighborhood, she notes, is the kind that some people aspire to, and that others see as a necessary stop on the way to better places. they live with and around couples who hold martini-soaked parties to celebrate raises -- and it's always the men who get raises, because the women stay home and raise children -- and no doubt cover up all sorts of misery and heartache with the accoutrements of modern materalistic life.

tom decides to take a job at a large corporation and realizes he's not happy being one of the lifeless clones, the men who all wear the same gray flannel suit (de rigeur uniform that it is) when he finds himself flashing back to his days in italy and the pacific in the war.

the book turns out to be far more of a sentimental slog through one man's encounter with the ultimate ironic happy ending; in the end, everything (and i do mean everything) works out for him, without him having to do much to make it happen.

the title seems to speak to something that the book doesn't really address: the mind-crushing uniformity of the modern corporation. what kind of person, one wonders, can handle -- even thrive in -- such an environment?

**

turns out one of my team members ... we'll call him k. (and if you know who i'm talking about, k. makes a lot of sense) ... is leaving SuitWorld™ in a few weeks.

i won't get into the many reasons he's stated for leaving, because i'm not him, i'm liable to put words in his mouth and anyway, it's not much that i haven't said in this space before. suffice it to say that the rigidity, acute planning by management of our time and the overall direction of our team just doesn't fit his personality.

k. and i were chatting not long after i found out. i said that (paraphrasing) of all the people on our team, i thought i would be the one to say "take this job and shove it" for the reasons described above. but it was k. who did it first, and did it rather quietly (i might add).

it told me more about myself than about k., because ... well ... maybe i can put up with the BS described above. and that's not how i've pictured myself. maybe i like bitching and moaning about it, but won't do anything to fix the problem, because it's easier and more fun to whine than to work for change. maybe, all things considered, i'm more of the man in the gray flannel cubicle than i first thought.

bumper stickers as a big "fuck you"

a. and i were in st. paul, on grand avenue, a few saturdays back -- back in april, when the world was warm, and unlike may, which is cold as march -- and we saw the most bumper-stickered car i've ever seen.

and isn't it funny, in urban areas, that as bumper stickers approach infinity, the liberal message therein increases? this car had, among other things, the "darwin fish" and ...

well, lileks captures pretty much the essence of what i saw that day, and he saw quite recently:

The other day I saw a car whose owner had, shall we say, Issues. Sticker #1: “If ignorance is bliss, you must be orgasmic.” This seems rather presumptuous, no? Taken by itself, it’s innocuous, but then you note its brethren: “Born OK the First Time.” So the owner doesn’t like Born-Agains, obviously – but the sentiment is still rather naïve. No one’s born OK the first time, inasmuch as we come howling out of the womb as selfish ethically blank bundles of appetite whose nascent sociopathic character has to be shaped to deal with the human community. Then there’s the third sticker: “It’s your hell. YOU burn in it.”

Gee. And you’d put this on your car . . . why? Because you think that someone behind you might note the absence of a chrome fish emblem and assume you’re some godless swine destined to tumble down to hideous ruin and perdition, of course. How angry do you have to be to flip off people in a way that not only presumes the worst about their opinions, but assigns them to the very fate you think they want for you? GO TO HELL YOU IGNORANT BORN AGAINER!

The car was in the parking lot where Gnat goes to school. I haven’t matched it with a parent yet, but if I do I’m tempted to say “God bless!” Just to piss her off. I’m no Churchy LaFemme, as Homer (and Walt) might say, and I have no problem with the unchurched who pursue the Divine outside the buttressed confines. But nothing makes me choose a side like people who believe that the entirety of the theistic perspective can be adequately refuted by self-congratulatory slogans on adhesive-backed plastic.

flickr

at the risk of damaging my anonymity, here's a link to my flickr page. everything should be public and therefore viewable by all.

have fun.

on the bus

i was sitting behind this woman who was the epitome of put-togetherness ... natural sandy blonde hair, pulled into a ponytail, and every strand was in perfect horizontal alignment -- nothing was out of place ... black suit with power seafoam-blue silk blouse, and its collar was out over the collar of the suit ... reading some sort of report, and i noticed her perfectly manicured nails, though oddly enough, they were either clear-coated or she wasn't wearing any kind of polish ...

and then, when i followed her off the bus and got to street level -- i see she's about 4'9". in heels, even.

i laughed all the way to my office.

you ruined everything! you ... ruiner!

(note: this is taken from the comments over at honest wagner, so please forgive the proper capitalization.)

God bless John Perrotto for his column on the Nutting family.

I decided to flee their "empire" in Wheeling almost 10 years ago. Our office had threadbare carpet; our computer systems were held together with spit and duct tape; our management was worn down, beaten and completely subservient.

There was little resembling good journalism that came out of that place -- and this is not to denigrate the people I worked with, who on the whole were good people. We were paid shit wages, and Ogden was more than content to put shit in his papers, as long as advertisers kept buying space.

And they did, because he owned all the papers in the Upper Ohio Valley. If they wanted to advertise, they had to go through the Nutting family.

I knew this family would ruin my beloved Pirates. I should know, as I watched him ruin two perfectly good newspapers. What fans see now is what we saw every day.

And no, I don't think the good people of the Upper Ohio Valley could or would ignore his papers. If you want to read news, check the comics, see the local sports coverage or do the crossword puzzle over breakfast, you have no choice, as he owns them all -- The Intelligencer, the News-Register, the (Martins Ferry) Times-Leader, the Steubenville Herald-Star, the New Martinsville/Wetzel county papers, etc.

But I haven't lived there for nine years, so I could be wrong. I doubt it, though.

right-fricking-on!

best explanation yet for blue-staters who think they know about republicans:

They're not moving for the churches, and they don't vote for Mr. Bush simply because he reads the Bible every day. One of the main reasons they like him is that he gets bashed so often. When Jon Stewart sneers at him, they empathize because they're used to being sneered at themselves.

They know what their image is in Manhattan and Hollywood, and they know they're not all that different from the Democrats in those places. They, too, watch "Desperate Housewives," and they're not surprised to hear Laura Bush doing Chippendales jokes. They've spent their own dollar bills there. They don't see anything the matter with that - or with themselves.

i let myself watch five minutes of "the daily show" last night. it was refreshing -- jon stewart really is a funny guy -- but the old reflexive born-again-christians-are-bigots thing started up again and i had to go to howard stern.

sigh.

allergies

home sick today. thanks to the arrival of spring, i'm in a constant zyrtec-d-induced state of dopiness, cottonmouth and extremely dry nostrils.

reminds me of what george costanza said once about nose picking:

GEORGE: So let's say in her mind she witnessed a pick. Okay, so then what?

JERRY: Is that so unforgivable? Is that like breaking a commandment? Did God say to Moses "thou shalt not pick"?

GEORGE: I guarantee you that Moses was a picker. You wander through the desert for forty years with that dry air ... You telling me you're not going to have occasion to clean house a little bit?

i always feel guilty when i miss work for illness, which i think ensures that i don't take advantage of the situation by calling off unnecessarily. i have a rule -- if i get fewer than four hours of sleep that night, i don't work the next day. and in this case, four hours would have been paradise. i'm on the phone with my allergist and the ear-nose-throat guy as soon as i wake up. :)