I bought my tickets. Now it’s for real. In September I’m flying to California for vacation. I’ll land in San Francisco and be guided about by my friend Erika who works north of the city in the wine country. Then I’ll rent a car and drive down the coast to LA to meet up with my cousin David and hopefully my friends Tracy and Mary. I’m hoping to catch Chris Poland at The Baked Potato on Thursday the 22nd and Jon Brion at Largo on Friday the 23rd. Other than that I have no real goals other than to be some place else and find interesting pictures to take.
Noah Baumbach Update
Periodically I check in on Noah to see what the writer/director of one of my alltime favorite movies is up to. Lately it looks like like his website is down, but I did find this amusing piece he wrote for The New Yorker. I’m not sure of the context, but I’m assuming he’s comparing Tom Cruise to an overeager (and yet statistically knowledgeable) canine. Funny stuff. Rewire the pronouns and add lots of scratching and it probably sounds a lot like Zoe‘s inner monlogue.
Bob Moog 1934-2005
Dr. Robert Moog invented the modern synthesizer. He stands alongside Les Paul and Leo Fender as an inventor who changed the sound of popular music.
By the way, his name is pronounced like “rogue” rather than with the “moo” sound. My high school physics teacher met him once.
A Reprieve
When I first saw that M&M’s were tied into the latest Star Wars marketing onslaught, I didn’t think much of it. I thought it was a little dumb, actually. Not quite as dumb as Darth Vader hawking Cheez-Its, but still kinda goofy.
Until I tried the dark chocolate M&M’s with peanuts.
Over the last few months I’ve bought many, many bags of them. Now my neighborhood Kroger is out. These are a limited-time deal as far as I know. I was saddened until today when I discovered a cache tucked away at the Kroger in North Little Rock on Pike. I bought eight bags. I sold two to Shane. I am the pusherman. Hopefully the people at M&M’s will make this thing a permanent offering.
Shedding the Unreality
In what will hopefully become a trend of unlikely, paradigm-shifting headlines, this article entitled US scales back expectations on gains during Iraq transition, is making its way around the news sites. It says, among other things:
”What we expected to achieve was never realistic given the timetable or what unfolded on the ground,” said a senior official involved in policy since the 2003 invasion. ”We are in a process of absorbing the factors of the situation we’re in and shedding the unreality that dominated at the beginning.”
The cracks are showing; the administration can’t keep up its sunny exterior much longer. Jon Stewart and The Daily Show have been keen to point out that the rhetoric from the administration is changing quietly from the “War on Terror” to the “Global Struggle Against Extremism.” Odd thing to see them employing the kind of euphemistic language that conservatives tend to rail against. He’s not “crippled,” he’s “differently abled” – this isn’t a war, it’s now a struggle. Perhaps as old soldiers don’t die, they just fade away, the Bush administration is hoping Iraq will fade from the public consciousness.
Here’s hoping we can instead continue in our struggle to shed the unreality.
Pictures
New ploggage here. A motley assortment from the last month or two. Mostly Minolta, some Motorola. There are a couple of pictures from last weekend’s trip to scenic Pottsboro, Texas, where we played at the Highport Marina and Resort. It was a long trip, the weather was hot, and setup was exhausting. The show went fairly well, though. Since I had Jeff and soundman Richard in the car, I didn’t have the freedom to stop and take pictures at the peculiar things we drove by (the town of Fink, Texas, for example, or the stretched-limo-style 70’s van in somebody’s yard). I did get some pictures of a freaky bird swarm and a Napoleon Dynamite display at a gas station.
More Spam Poetry
This was in my spam box today at work, underneath some ad for debt relief or something:
The dumb calculator was active. The homosexual cloud said deaf.
The rich fox used to be hetrosexual.
The fair bicycle were rude.
The smelly policewoman said normal.
The unhygenic u f o used to be active. The fair cockroach is pink.
Hot Canadian Singles
I keep getting emails from plentyoffish.com, a personals/dating website. At first I thought it was just spam, but their regularity of transmission and their format suggested to me that either I had signed up without knowing or someone had signed me up. So I clicked over to it to investigate. My username is kobalt. I see that my matches are all Canadian. Then I realize: someone mistyped their email address. Into mine. I have the luxury of colter at gmail.com, so possibly someone forgot a modifier of some kind, numbers or whatever.
The sad part is, plentyoffish.com doesn’t save names or personal info, so I have no way of contacting the Canadian guy who’s probably sitting around wondering when he’s going to get some messages from the site.
Diet Trends and Social Security
Reflecting on the recent hullaballoo on Social Security and how it will supposedly crash on us, I began to wonder about how many children from the 70’s and 80’s will actually make it past age 65, given the dietary trends of the past few decades. Fast food and microwaveable meals, two terribly unhealthy and overwhelmingly popular sources of nourishment, really took hold during those generations. Factor that in with an overall decline in cooking skills, and you may have a recipe for untimely demises for people my age. We have a tendency to think that in the future people will be living longer, but given the eating trends of the last few decades I have to wonder if the opposite may prove true.
I’m going to make fish and broccoli tonight. What are you having?
Mark Morford Knows What I’m On About
Just a few weeks after my post on cat hoarding, the delightful San Francisco columnist and incisive master of the cheeky run-on sentence Mark Morford goes off on the same topic. Coincidence? Or is my blog truly becoming the trend-setter, the taste-maker? Consider also that Charlie Murphy recently announced that Chappelle’s Show is over. I can’t help but think I’m to blame. See my lame previous post.