5 Days and Still Out of It

I got up today and decided to run errands despite still feeling like I have a pillow strapped to my head. This was a mistake. First I went to the post office to pick up a registered letter that was delivered around Christmas, but the line for the service desk was almost to the door. Screw that. So I went to the office to pick up my check and work on the Austin pictures. I remembered the camera but forgot the USB cable. Dammit. Taking this as a sign that I should not have left the house, I decided to forgo all my other errands and simply deposit my check, buy groceries, and stay home.

Back from the Dead

I finally have the energy to sit in front of a computer and type. Since Tuesday I’ve been down for the count with cold/flu/whatever. Wednesday was Mucus Day. Thursday was fever from hell. Today was sleeping and eating again. My house is a mess. I went to work Tuesday but left after lunch, and haven’t been out of the house since. I also haven’t shaved. I was really looking forward to putting up a massive Austin New Year’s Eve blog/plog entry, but I just haven’t had the energy. Maybe tomorrow.

“Who Are Those Guys?”

Paul Newman asks repeatedly in Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, “who are those guys?” That was my overriding impression when I started thumbing through the gallery at Little Rock Blog. If anyone needed more support for the idea that all white people look the same, take a look at the people on those pages. They’re all terribly beautiful by modern standards, but I’ll be darned if I can tell any one from the other. All the girls have the same hair and faces. It’s Stepford-esque. The guys are all similar, too. And everyone smokes light cigarettes and drinks light beer. Can a brother not get a stout and a Lucky Strike once in a while?

I’m not just saying this as a nerd looking at the cool kids[1], I’m saying this as someone who is continually fascinated by human behavior and social interaction. The homogeneity is weirding me out, plus the fact that I don’t know any of these people even tangentially. I never realized what a vast social circle exists in Little Rock with which I have no connection whatsoever.

I just noticed the tag line “image is everything” underneath the page header. Apparently that’s the case.

1.) Because there is probably an element of that to it.

My Christmas Vacation

I went to Harrison for dinner and gift exchange on Friday because the siblings’ in-laws have dibs on their children for Christmas gatherings. I got mostly kitchenware because that’s what I didn’t feel like buying myself. I have officially entered the adult world wherein there is nothing I want for Christmas that I can’t get myself. So now I ask for things I don’t want to pay for, i.e. utility items. This would not have been so bad if my grandmother hadn’t been making jokes that I was having a bridal shower. And of course my insufferable niece asks me again when I’m going to get married. We really need to do something about her; she’s becoming a Mean Girl. I blame Bratz.

I used the weekend mainly to catch up with friends and family. Elizabeth was in from California, Lance and Kevin from Missouri, plus locals Robin and Josh (sorry about the brevity of the visit, guys – I was going to call again Sunday but I went back to LR because I forgot Zoe’s meds) and I talked to Nica and Becky for a bit via phone. That’s about it really. Sunday night was spent at Heather’s watching the first season of Gilmore Girls, drinking wine, and munching on cheese and venison sausage.

Monday I spent my gift cards. I got Robert Altman’s Short Cuts on DVD and picked up the actual CD of Death Cab’s Transatlanticism, plus some Snow Patrol. I caught up with Tara, in from Austin, and she gave me bourbon chocolates and a wide assortment of other sugary things. Kathy came over and we watched It’s a Wonderful Life, which, GASP, she had never seen. Neither has Tara, it turns out. How could you people have missed it?

Death of a Character Actor

I’ve always wondered what the opposite of a “character actor” is. If you’re not a character actor, what are you playing? Scenery?

Anyway, we lost one of the most identifiable ones recently, Vincent Schiavelli. You may remember him as the creepy teacher in Better Off Dead and Fast Times at Ridgemont High, or as John O’Connor in Buckaroo Banzai or the crazy subway ghost that teaches Patrick Swayze how to move things in Ghost.


Vincent Schiavelli 1948-2005
(The guy on the left)

What’s not to delight in a dreamy wrist accessory?

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This Just in from the Department of Understatement

Saw this in the D*G’s front page last Sunday (yes it takes me a week to read the Sunday paper):

President Robert Mugabe of Zimbabwe, speaking to 3,000 delegates at a conference…conceded that shortcomings in his land redistribution program contributed to critical food shortages in his country.

You read that and think, oh ho hum, there are some problems there, but if you’re not aware of the particulars of Mugabe’s land reform, you’d have no idea that that statement is roughly equivalent to “Bush concedes shortcomings in Iraq War.” For those who may not know, Mugabe instituted a sort of government-imposed revolution whereby all white farmers were expelled from their land and their property given to black folk. This was in many cases a violent expulsion; imagine the Mafia enforcing affirmative action. Trouble is, the folks who took over the land have no farming experience, so you can imagine that this essentially crippled Zimbabwe’s economy.

Oops. Finally Mugabe is starting to admit the program wasn’t such a great idea.

Inspired Thievery

Perusing Spinsouth‘s recent blog entry containing a fine Johnny Cash mp3, I realized I should be offering occasional free downloads. The lowly pointedstick.net server is probably too clogged up, but the littlerockmusician.com server isn’t doing much (other than hosting a forum that may already be dead because I never think to promote it[1]), so I can store stuff there. With that in mind, I give you:

Millard Powers – Simple Thing

Millard fronted an amazing band called The Semantics, alongside Will Owsley and Zak Starkey (son of Ringo, now in Oasis), and has also played bass for Ben Folds and Counting Crows (of whom he’s likely to become a full member if he hasn’t already). Millard and Will also moonlight in Amy Grant’s backing band.

This track came from Millard’s old mp3.com page. Since their original business model folded, Millard has been without a home on the web. Evidenly he has no interest in getting his music out through traditional means. I just noticed that some guy in Panama registered millardpowers.com only two days ago. Weird. I love Millard. He can do Ben Folds better than Ben Folds sometimes.

1.) I set the site up years ago as a way to keep in touch with my guitar students, and for anyone who wants to find a music teacher in Central Arkansas. By all means, check it out and spread it around.

The Acceleration of History

Of course the Internet speeds the exchange of information, allowing scientific communication to accelerate and advancements to be made more quickly, but something I’ve noticed recently is that it has a similar effect on the distribution of historical facts. I have seen more references to Saturnalia this holiday season than in any previous year, and I blame the ease with which the Internet allows us to transmit information. In the case of Saturnalia, it’s likely a side effect of this hubub regarding references to “Christmas” versus “holidays.” Apparently the tide of political correctness is being turned back toward the Christian majority who want to make sure that everyone knows Christ is the reason for the season. I won’t get into that, though [1].

What I’ve been seeing lately are a flurry of emails and weblinks discussing December 25 and its Saturnalian origins. Much the way Easter was co-opted by the Christians from pagan tradition, so Christmas was conveniently placed at the same time of the Romans’ Saturnalia in an effort to convert the heathens. In fact, most biblical scholars put Christ’s actual birth a few years back into the B.C., and probably in spring or summer, as the Nativity would have been an unlikely scene in the dead of winter. Not many shepherds would keep their flock by night in the fields during the cold season.

Another, completely unrelated historical item I came across today was graffiti from the walls of Pompeii. For some reason I never considered that the scrawlings on the walls of truck stop bathrooms have a long tradition, stretching back very likely to the first days of indoor lavatories. The Pompeii markings read nearly identically to their counterparts in the modern day. The topics are alternately scatalogical (“show us your hairy privates”) and romantic (“Marcus loves Spendusa”). I also never realized “I was here” has been written on walls for millenia. Were we to intuit the central message of humanity from these writings, one could only assume that it would read: “We were here, we had sex, we loved.”

For anyone searching for the meaning of life, the answer may well lie right there.

1.) Yet.