In Defense of Cleveland (‘30 Rock’ agrees…)
I haven’t blogged in awhile now and there’s two reasons for this. One is simple; my grandpa died last week and I was a site too busy to post any inane ramblings on the internet. But also because I started to care how many people were reading my blog everyday and what started as something for me suddenly seemed self-indulgent and I didn’t want to do it anymore. But here I am with a few more things to say, I guess, so I am.
I was watching 90210 last week and one of the characters was considering not celebrating her half birthday. I, of course, initially thought it was a little weird that she was considering celebrating it in the first place and that her friends (who… weren’t her friends last season, if someone has any insight as to what the heckles is going on there please feel free to raise your hand here) were so insistent that she do so. Well, I thought, maybe this is just a California thing. Maybe it’s a Beverly Hills thing. All the teenage girls within the 90210 post code treat there half birthdays as a National holiday, what do I know? But then the story went on to explain that Silver, the character in question, was repeatedly disappointed by her mother when she was little to the point where instead of celebrating her birthday when she had high expectations of what the day might hold, she would celebrate her half birthday… because no one expects anything of them.
Watching this on Thursday afternoon with my birthday looming the next day I couldn’t help but agree that that might not be too bad an idea. I can’t remember the last time I had a good birthday. They have been boring, they have been okay, and they have been downright depressing.
On my twenty-fifth I spent the day at work behind a consession counter crying my eyes out because I have twenty-five and nowhere near where I thought I would be at twenty-five. Menial job, few friends, no idea what I wanted to be when I ‘grew up’. Sadly, in the subsequent three years not much has changed except that I have an even worse job and live with my mother. I wish that I could say that there weren’t any tears this year but instead I will assure everyone that there were no public tears, which is much worse. And the people at Chick-fil-A were extra nice as I got my fast food to eat alone in the car. Though, really, I will chalk that up to the fact that Chick-fil-A employees are always overly chipper and nice to the point where I wonder if they are all secretly harboring a desire to reach through the speaker and choke us all to death.
When I sat down to write this blog I had the idea to talk about some of the restaurants in Cleveland. K, J, and I have been getting into good restaurants lately. It might have something to do with the fact that my paychecks lately will pay for a little more than a ten dollar hamburger at the Winking Lizard, but I think it has more to do with us examining further into Cleveland’s potential. I have a sister, who will no doubt read this in a couple weeks and feel the need to make some snarky comment, who lives in Chicago. I think that she thinks Chicago is the best place in the world. And I am not knocking Chicago, I like it there, I pretty much only joined the World Affairs Club and thus Model United Nations in high school in order to get the trip to Chicago, which the University of held yearly at the Palmer House Hilton. I mean, really, why would anyone not want to endure a bit of conference to stay somewhere that looks like this:
In a city that looks like this:
Every year me and my friend… I don’t know what to call her, we’ll go with MS (though I suppose it’d be MM now? I’m sticking with MS) would sneak out of the hotel, get in a cab, and go over to Water Tower, which… was pretty much the only part of Chicago we were aware of and we’d get some dinner, go to the movies (there were probably infinitely cooler things that we could have been doing, but cool was never our strong suit), and generally feel like adults. We loved it. And when it came time to apply to college my first choice was there. I cut out a life for myself in my head. Imagined getting gyros from crappy store fronts, taking the train places, walking to different neighborhoods. Well, if you’re reading this you probably know me well enough to know that that didn’t happen. And it’s only a little bit ironic that everything I wanted for myself my sister got a couple years later. And she hasn’t left, and probably never will.
I don’t know what life would have held for me if I had succeeded on that path but that’s not what I am talking about here. Though it may not be quite evident what I am talking about is Cleveland. Said sister came home recently, for the aforementioned funeral, and we started talking about the good old Cleve. Her standpoint was that there isn’t anything in Cleveland that there isn’t anywhere else. Okay. Sure. But, really, is there anything anywhere that isn’t anywhere else?
There are cities. Beautiful, grand, majestic cities that are the best places in the world. The ones that have history and culture and artists and architecture that’s better than anywhere else in the world. Paris comes to mind. Rome, Florence… most places in Italy actually, London to an extent, even New York has some. I am not talking about these places. I realize that there is only one Sistine Chapel. Only one Notre Dame de Paris. The Tower of London is unlikely to transpose itself anywhere else, although London Bridge did a good job of it.
Cleveland might not have things that aren’t anywhere else but what it has is pretty damned good. The Cleveland Museum of Art for example, while not the Art Institute (which I love, hello haystacks), houses more than 43,000 works by the likes of Caravaggio, El Greco, Poussin, Rubens, Goya, Turner, Dali, Matisse, Renoir, Gauguin, Church, Cole, Corot, Eakins, Monet, van Gogh, Picasso, and Bellows. And that’s permanent, I am not including the always stellar special exhibits that are consistently showing. Plus, they have so really great events, such as the ‘Thank Gauguin It’s Friday’ events. K, J, and I went to the absinthe tasting one. It was great along with being reasonably priced.
And if it’s art you’re after it doesn’t end with CMA. There’s also the Cleveland Institute of Art with it’s various galleries and events (not to mention the Cinematheque). There’s also tons of other galleries, Little Italy and Gordon Square spring to mind. The Pop Shop ain’t too bad either (http://www.popshopgallery.com/index.html), same with Waterloo. For some reason Cleveland tends to be a bit of a haven for artist, probably because it’s a city small enough to be accessible and for their communities to shine through.
Then there is the theatre. Us Clevelanders like our theatre, and while the ballet has sadly gone to pass, there is still the Opera and of course the world famous Orchestra. We have Playhouse Square, where the larger productions live, the traveling Broadway types, and also the Play House which stages it’s own productions. There’s the Great Lakes Theatre Festival, the Beck Center, Cleveland Public Theatre, 4th Wall, Convergence-Continuum, and Dobama. Ranging from large to small there is something for everyone.
We also have our fair share of restaurants now. Not that they weren’t always there, but it seems like in the last five years a new crop have opened of tasty delights that are getting some real recognition. Michael Symon is probably the corner stone of all this… Iron Chef and all, and with Lolita, Lola, Bar Symon, and the forthcoming B Spot there’s a variety of prices and choice. And let’s not forget the Greenhouse Tavern, one of my favorites, a sustainable restaurant centering on local and regional choices, it was just named on of Bon Appetit’s ten best restaurants in the country. L’Albatros I tried for the first time last night, I would have gotten the cassoulet but my mother opted for that and I got the veal short ribs. Both were amazing and I wasn’t surprised they were featured in Esquire. Luxe too, featuring an array of delicious choices from pizzas and pastas to comfort foods like the Kobe corn dog or rosemary cheesy grits with duck sausage. And I have to mention Momocho, ‘mod mex’ food with some of the best guacamole and sauces I have ever had. I order the wild boar and even though I know I should try something new next time I am still salivating over the dish I had. Then of course there’s the Great Lakes Brewing Company. Yes, they are known for their beer, but the tavern is cozy, the food good, and the bread pudding to die for. I could probably come up with a few others to put on the list (Paladar, Beachland brunch) but that could go on forever.
The sister pointed out that Cleveland might have some really good places but Chicago is constantly on the best restaurants list, and another person was telling a story about how the concierge at their hotel said there were 38 new restaurants in the last six months. That’s great, it really is, but I don’t have a problem with having a much more manageable restaurant set.
So, sure, maybe there isn’t much in Cleveland that you can’t find anywhere else, but… who cares? Cleveland’s affordable, fun, and tons to do. It’s easy to miss out on it, I suppose, if you don’t look you don’t find, so I suppose you could say it’s subpar to Chicago in that respect, but I can’t imagine being busier than I already am. Cleveland’s smaller, sure, and Chicago is great. But I don’t mind a little of this:
In Which LadyLinzi Gets Annoyed By Slasher Film Reboots.
There are several things I feel I need to add about the Sexy Jason/Miss Voorhees costume. My first reaction is, of course, an open mouthed, sort of gaping pronouncement of ‘I have nothing to say about this’. Which should be true, but this is still me so really my brain is probably thinking way too many things about it. And while they don’t need saying I am going to say them anyway, because that’s what I do.
One, I understand the fact that Jason wears a hockey mask. We all know this. It’s probably his defining piece of wardrobe. I mean, does anyone pay attention to whatever else he’s wearing? Still, it’s not like he’s a rogue hockey player who ran away from an away game to wreck havoc on random town number twelve. In fact he only seemingly has the mask in the first place because the jokester in Part 3 decided to go scuba diving in a dark lake while wearing a hockey mask. So why exactly is ‘Miss Voorhees’ wearing a tight mini-skirt, low cut hockey outfit? I suppose it’s cause it’s hard to sex up overalls and lumberjack-esque button downs.
And, two, why, I mean WHY, would anyone want a sexy female version of any sort of serial killer outfit? I’m not above it, I love slasher films, and Friday the 13th is (for absolutely no real rhyme or reason) my favorite franchise. I have my Jason mask in the basement, I have my machete sitting there across the room, I don’t entirely know what this says about me but there you have it. But having lame paraphernalia around the house doesn’t mean that I’ve forgotten the fundamentals here: There is absolutely nothing about Jason Voorhees that’s remotely sexy. He’s a massively deformed, mentally handicapped recluse to lives in the forest and doesn’t seem to do much other than kill people who happen to visit his camp, or… well, Manhattan…, at a particular time of year. I often wondered what would happen if I visited Crystal Lake on Tuesday the 6th. That being said, he is smashing with a harpoon.
On another Jason related note I feel the need to talk about remakes. [Since I am not a bitch I shall warn, spoilers within.] I am not going to rant and rave about how they need to come up with an original horror film, cause there’s enough of that. And I am not even talking about the ones translated from other languages. For every Ringu or Ju on that gets remade into English there are probably two straight English remakes. And, let’s face it, there really aren’t enough Americans who will tolerate subtitles. [Note to Americans who wont tolerate subtitles: Just quit reading my blog now, I don't need your patronage!] We all know that originals are always better. I am talking about the Prom Nights, and the My Bloody Valentines, and, of course, the Friday the 13ths.
I mean, we clearly needed a reboot, right? We couldn’t just have another Jason movie tacked onto the back of an already whopping eleven sequels (including Freddy vs. Jason). And when exactly did Jason become clever?! He’s not supposed to set traps, he’s not supposed to take prisoners, and he’s sure as hell not supposed to have organized some sort of network of underground mines to stalk around with said prisoners. Jason’s a reactionary type of guy. He doesn’t like people in his space, and he doesn’t like them doing vice-y things. Really, I mean, the best way to make sure you die in a Friday the 13th movie is to have sex with someone else’s significant other while smoking a joint and drinking. All at the same time. With the windows open and shouts of ‘Stupendous breasts!’ echoing through the forest. If that doesn’t get his attention, I don’t know what will. That being said, of course, that’s not the only way you’re gonna die. I mean, basically if you get in this dude’s way… you’re toast. Which brings me to my largest grievance of the remake. Yeees, we know, Jason has a soft spot for his murderous, decapitated, mother who’s head he keeps in a little shrine with her sweater and a bunch of candles he materialized out of tree bark and leaves, that’s shown in Part II, which I consider canon here. But, I still can’t see him keeping some chick chained in an old mine just cause she bears a striking resemblance to Pamela Voorhees. I mean, sure, I was annoyed initially that he was running about the woods swinging his machete like it’s going out of style. Surely, Jason doesn’t run! He walks about menacingly and busts through doors without bothering to check to see if they are locked or not. But then I recalled that he does, in fact, run. In Part II he’s downright nibble! He also wasn’t quite Jason yet, but we’ll leave that. It was only later in that franchise that he became a bit lumbering, so we’ll let that slide. What I can’t let slide, besides the prisoner taking, is the cleverness. Jason is not clever. I don’t think he’s capable of being clever, his mental capacity is really just not that high, given the fact that, as stated above, he is mentally handicapped! That is why he was teased, that is why he ‘drowned’ in the first place while the camp counselors weren’t paying attention and thus propelling his mother into killing the new crop. He doesn’t exactly have a plan here, in fact, I think probably the only reason he kills is because mom did. Because it’s just the thing to do. They say we learn from observation, after all. He’s not supposed to set traps, he’s not supposed to have a plan!
All that clever stuff should be reserved for Michael Myers. And what was something I hated about the remake of Halloween too. Now, note, I did not hate the remake of Halloween. It was entertaining in the way that only slasher flicks can be. The problem was that Rob Zombie felt the need to tells us why Michael Myers was like that. I don’t need to know. I’d rather just sit back and relish in a character that was not originally meant to be understood while he stalks through town killing people, why is completely unimportant. I don’t need to know that his mom was a stripper… which, well, let’s face facts she clearly wasn’t in the original, or that he tortured small animals and kids on the way home from school. I don’t need nor want to know that he was a completely fucked up individual with obvious antisocial personality disorder and probably a few other psychoses thrown in and rather think of him as Dr. Loomis described; evil personified. Isn’t that just more entertaining? I mean, nothing seems to drive him really other than an unyeilding desire to kill his family members, something they toyed with to confusion in the remake. And even then, we don’t particularly know why. Nor should we care.
The problem with both these franchise reboots is simple, though it’s taken me this whole essayish thing to figure it out. In both franchises there is really only one character that holds the whole thing together, and that character is the killer. Victims and heroines and heroes come and go with these things, the only consistent is a silent stalker who knifes up the first person to get in their way. But they are our silent stalkers who knife up the first person to get in their way. We’ve watched them through countless movies and gotten to know all their nuances, for better or worse. And in the new films they just didn’t quite… well, seem like themselves.
I will probably weigh in on Nightmare on Elm Street when the remake comes out, but I will say this; If they were going to replace Robert Englund, Jackie Earle Haley was the only choice.
Costumes, Films, and Things That Go Bump in the Night.
It’s never a good thing when one, one in this case clearly being me, finds their life so intolerably boring that they can’t even think of anything to write about. But, sometimes nothing comes to mind. And then I end up going a week without a peep on my blog. A week spent sleeping erratically, getting caught up on bad TV, and generally bemoaning my achy back and annoying life.
BUT, never fear, it’s my favorite time of year! That… was not meant to rhyme. This is why I would never willingly choose to live anywhere like Florida or Southern California; I love seasons too much. The wet, both from rain and snow melting, Spring with it’s sort of rebirth feel, the summers that are both too hot and too short, even the horridness of Cleveland winter is worth it for fall. I, quite simply, love autumn. The change of colors, the vague constant smell of burning leaves, the dropping temperatures when it teeters on the brink of warm and cold and it becomes jacket weather. My best friend K said that it seems like the start of something, and she’s right. She’s also probably right about the fact that it comes from school. Spring is rebirth, but autumn is… renewal for me in a way that New Years could never really be. You can’t see me, but I am giving autumn a sort of swoony sighing expression.
And then, of course, there is Halloween, which is by far and away my favorite holiday. Most people say Christmas, and yes, Christmas is good. Christmas is warmth and friendliness even from strangers in a way that no other holiday can be. But, when the Halloween stuff rolled off the truck at The Job I got an excited sort of thrill that most certainly did not come when we started finding Christmas stuff in the mix.
There are a few things I love about Halloween, but dressing up is definitely one of those things. Everyone likes being someone else every once in awhile, but nobody likes it like me. Well… okay I am sure there are quite a few people who would disagree with the semantics of that statement but suffice it to say no one I know likes it like me. It’s the one time a year where it’s socially acceptable to wear ridiculous outfits. Not… that that really stops me in the rest of the year but social acceptance is still a nice thing. I’ve, also, never exactly been the type to subscribe to the sexy Halloween costume camp. I don’t really think that putting the Scarecrow from The Wizard of Oz in a skirt chopped off at the upper thigh is a good idea and am still confused by this:
(I mean… really??)
But then again, I don’t take Halloween as an excuse to wear nothing and call it a costume. K likes to use my fondness for the film Mean Girls as an excuse for her to watch reality TV. But, honestly, it’s seriously some accurate social commentary (it’s all just so true) there. And, the bit about Halloween is… pretty much spot on.
In the regular world, Halloween is when children dress up in costumes and beg for candy. In Girl World, Halloween is the one night a year when a girl can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it. The hard-core girls just wear lingerie and some form of animal ears.
Annnnd, it’s true. There’s only how big a crowd needs to be (Halloween at Ohio University comes to mind) before you get a gaggle of sorority-esque girls in pink tee shirts and bunny ears with their arms linked together as they giggle like fourth graders and sip on Bartles & Jaymes. If you want to purchase a woman’s pre-packaged Halloween costume and don’t particularly want to be a Tavern Wench (yeah that was my uncreative last year), you’re hard pressed to find one that doesn’t reveal more skin than Paris Hilton in August. Rebelling from this norm mean one of two things; either you made a visit to your local thrift store or else you got very acquainted with a needle and thread. Or, both. This year I am going as Budget Dinosaur. This involves a full sweatsuit with a tail sewn onto the bum. Oh, and a dinosaur nose. It seems to somehow fit with K and J’s Mega Shark and Giant Octopus, and it was pretty much the least sexy thing I could think of. Well, that and a cardboard box robot. Maybe next year.
The other thing is that it’s the time of year when it’s easiest to be scared shitless. Horror movies are released year round, of course, but not quite like they are in October. It only makes sense really, Hollywood has never been one to ignore a cash cow and once a year, at least, people become obsessed with being scared. There’s a certain, sort of, thrill from the heart pumping, adrenaline rush that comes along with fear. Of course, it’s been a long time since I’ve actually been afraid of a movie. The first scary movie I saw was Scream. I was fifteen, had no idea what to expect, and was petrified. Absolutely pants shitting terrified. I remember sleeping on my best friend’s bedroom floor that night with her snoring away, and me wide awake and unable to even close my eyes without seeing Drew Barrymore hanging from a tree with her intestines spilling down her front. All I wanted was for that image to just go out of my head and to stop being afraid. Now, I sort of wish I could get it back. Sometimes they have a lasting effect. Not often, mostly I leave laughing, but every once in awhile there’s little things that stick. Two instances come to mind:
1) I cut class to go to the movies and see The Ring when it came out. I kept reading things about it and didn’t feel like waiting. So, I jumped in my car, drove to Easton and saw this movie I’d heard so much about. I wasn’t scared. It was sufficiently atmospheric, clever. I didn’t really know much about Asian horror films in general at that point, had never seen Ringu and knew that it’d be something I’d be looking into in the future. But scared? Not really. Not until a weak later at least. I am not entirely sure how plumbing sounded like my television turning on, but in my half asleep haze… it did. I flew out of bed. Flew. And didn’t sleep for the rest of the night.
2) Several years ago K and J and I went on our yearly sojourn to Virginia where her family has a cabin in the woods. We toted along a pile of scary movies to make the evening complete, but we knew that we wanted to toast some marshmallows on the campfire afterwards so we decided to watch the one movie we knew wouldn’t scare us in a million years, the remake of House of Wax. There is only one scary part in that movie; when the group of college kids camp out in a random field (whaaaaat?) and someone pulls up in a truck and just stares at them for awhile. It’s benign, but seriously… it would be scary. Yeah, it was. Just after the conversation we were outside when a car pulled up out of nowhere into our driveway. They were just warning us that they were hunting raccoons and not to be afraid of the gunshots… but we were probably MORE afraid of them just driving up.
But, in general; I’ve jumped, I’ve screamed, I’ve been completely grossed out, but that’s not really the same.
At least we have haunted houses for that. My first experience with one was the Hudson Haunted House, and at one point I found myself stuck in a corner as a man in a butcher’s apron and wielding a cleaver proceeded to swing at me repeatedly. I wouldn’t move and after far too long someone had to pull me away. It might have been my mother. As soom as I moved on I knew the guy was probably thinking ‘Okay, girl, hurry up and move so that I can stop doing this!’ but at the time I was completely paralyzed with fear. It was awesome. They can be horribly lame, but they’re sort of like horror films come to life; and those can be well lame too. But, even when bad they are still usually amusing. The same is pretty much true for Haunted Houses. People in very stupid masks can be scary, even when you know they are about to leap out at you.
It’s fun to be scared. Especially in October, and especially towards the end, and there’s a lot of stuff out there to help you along. But, really, if you want to seriously freak me out all you really have to do is stick me on a country road in the dark and let my imagination go free, cause really, that’s all any of those things can do… help along the imagination.
Perfect Slices of Absurdity.
I need a moment to appreciate Glee.
Now I can understand how this wouldn’t be someone’s thing. Musicals aren’t most people’s thing. And no, people in real life do not walk around and break into song randomly with perfect choreography; and not everyone knows the steps or the harmonies. They’re unrealistic, yes, but they are also fun. And really, how realistic is most theatre? The medium itself doesn’t exactly lend to realism. I mean, really… soliloquies, aphorism, even exposition are all just devices along the same line as a song. Just a way to let the audience know how the characters are feeling. And, there’s the extra bonus of having a catchy tune. But, like I said, I can understand how they weren’t be everyone’s thing.
So I can understand how Glee wouldn’t be everyone’s thing. The fact that I think those people are likely joyless buffoons is another matter (just kidding! mostly…). But personally I think it’s one of the best things to come out of the television in a long time. It’s so unrealistic. It’s probably about as far from reality as one can get. I saw a Twitter comment saying something along the lines of ‘Hey Glee? I know it’s been 11 years since HS but cheerleaders don’t wear their uniforms 5 days a week’. I nearly died laughing, because seriously, out of all the absurd things to come out of that show they latched on to that? Glee is pretty much a perfect slice of the absurd.
Ryan Murphy, the creator of Glee, also created a show from when I was in high school. It too was a blend of implausibilities mixed up in a bowl of hilarious high school hi-jinks [ps. Alliteration is a literary device too!!] called Popular.
The show centered around two high schoolers, Brooke McQueen (Leslie Bibb), the popular blonde cheerleader trying to stay on top, and Sam McPherson (Carly Pope), the brunette ‘unpopular’ who writes for the school newspaper and hates the hypocrisy of the social hierarchy. There are two seemingly contradictory elements of Popular that made it what it was;
1) It’s incredible ridiculousness. First there is the basic plot: Two girls who hate each other for absolutely not reason other than the fact that it’s convenient to the plot and that they stand on opposite sides of the social spectrum are forced into each others lives by the convenient fact that their parents both go on a cruise, meet, fall in love, and get engaged within the course of a week. Second, let’s look at some of the names; Mary Cherry (who’s mother is named Cherry Cherry), Poppita Fresh, April Tuna, Exquisite Woo… Plots were twisted, characters played with, references to wholly obscure things.. In one episode the non-populars donned blonde wigs to prove that blondeness was the only real requirement for popularity. A bet was placed, brunette wigs purchased, and the non-populars probably would have won if Mary Cherry hadn’t bought the competition with her convenient millions. The prize? The losers had to get Mohawks, which they did.
2) Yet, despite all it’s madcap slapstickish comedy there was still something relate-able about Popular. There was a lot about getting pigeon-holed into categories. There was a lot about individualism. It said that anyone could be popular, but that popular is just a word that has very little meaning except to a group of people who have their own problems. And boy did they ever, in true high school dramedy fashion. Brooke struggles with bulimia, Mary Cherry struggles with parental acceptance, mean girl Nicole struggles with the fact that no one really likes her, and she knows it. Popular told us that everyone has issues, and it told us that in a pretty hilarious type of way.
Now, Popular was canceled abruptly after it’s second season on a cliffhanger, and that’s because Popular wasn’t that, well, popular. And I’ll be truthful, because of the reasons above, it was a really weird show. And it was geared towards high schoolers and aired on the WB. It’s not really all that surprising that it wouldn’t reach an audience that would truly appreciate it. But, I will never stop singing the praises of this show. It’s perfect confectionery absurdity, and it’s fun. What’s more, as the series progresses it only gets more ridiculous. Season three would have held many pleasures, I am sure, but it remains nothing but an outline in a random notebook of Ryan Murphy’s, I am sure. Still, I have both seasons on DVD, and I watch them all the time. In fact, I let my sister take them to camp once and pretty much had to pry them away at the end of the camp season (I am STILL missing one disc!!). I’m not saying everyone was sitting around watching Popular all summer, but I think they got some fair play.
Glee picks up where Popular left off. Not literally, of course, the setting is different (Lima, Ohio steps in for somewhere California), the characters are different, the premise is different. But Glee reeks of Popular’s leftovers. Reformated and polished, but still. We still have the brunette loser, bye Sam McPherson hello Rachel Berry, who’s pretty much tortured by those around her [she repeatedly gets slushie in the face] but who is never swayed from understanding her own self worth, and the fact that she’s probably better than those throwing the slushie. She has a great voice at least. Lea Michele. Oh, Lea Michele I can not sing your praises high enough. I was lucky enough to see her as Wendla Bergmann on Broadway in Spring Awakening. I was impressed with her voice then, and I am even more impressed now. Rachel, like Sam, has a crush on the football player who really just wants to sing (seriously, that’s just recycled, in season one of Popular Josh gets the lead in the musical, his dad is not happy, same plot, still good), and is at odds with the blonde cheerleader who has problems of her own. Okay, so Sam never gets the guy and moves on quite spectacularly and Brooke never gets pregnant, but this is some classic high school stuff here.
There’s an obnoxious, androgynous, teacher. Diane Delano played Bobbi Glass, the student’s biology (and then chemistry) teacher who talked like a man, looked like a man, and… well pretty much acted like a man, while still being obviously female. Jane Lynch takes the part here in Glee, as Sue Sylvester the head of the Cheerios, who apparently get an absurd amount of the school’s budget. She’s rude, brash, sometimes downright mean, while making jokes about her lack of ovaries that leave you wondering if she’s had some sort of surgical issue or if she just classifies herself so far away from female she rejects them. Sometimes I wonder, if the series goes long enough is Mercedes going to help Sue to a GLBT center?
They’re not the same. Not at all, but it’s hard to not notice a few not so subtle similarities between them. And that’s not a flaw because both these shows try to do the same thing; be life without being realistic, and no matter what you think of either of them you can not deny that they succeed in this. I’ll buy Glee on DVD and it will sit beside my copies of Popular seasons one and two and will probably be re-watched throughout my life, just to remind me that the world can be ridiculous, heartbreaking, absurd and just unabashed fun. Until then, I’ll make due with the soundtrack.
Sometimes Titles Are Just Vastly Overrated.
Someone, we shall call him (sigh) M, once said that my life was like a little storybook. I can’t seem to find the conversation in question but I do remember that my immediate response was a confused ‘But it’s so awful’. This was a sentiment I immediately regretted, for two reasons.
1) My life is not awful. There are aspects that are worse than others (ie. my job, my inability to understand maths, my somewhat crippling lack of self worth), but to categorize it as ‘awful’ sort of trivializes those who really do have it ‘awful’. Human trafficking victims come to mind.
And, 2) I understand it. I am always enthralled by the mundane; I see strange beauty in things that might not be considered beautiful at all, like crumbling builds on Carnegie and steel factories. But, mostly, I can’t say that I don’t understand the sentiment because I’ve felt the sentiment. There are a million and a half lives out there that are completely brilliant; interesting, exciting, happy, all those things. There are also equal amounts that are more than commonplace. The sort of day to day sadness inducing kind that result in mental breakdowns and/or sitting at home every night falling asleep in front of your television in your heated Stouffer’s dinner while your cat rubs against your leg demanding attention you’re too tired to give it. [Note: I am entirely convinced this is the sort of life most of the managers at work have, though to be fair some of them are falling asleep in their heated Stouffer’s dinners with husbands and/or children.] But those are extreme cases, most people will settle for… well, happy. Happy despite being busy and despite those around them who are more than migraine-inducing. And this, I imagine, is what he meant.
Sometimes (I wish I could say ‘I used to’ here but I’m afraid it’s a day to day thing) I imagine that the story of my life would read something like this:
Once upon a time there was a girl born in Cleveland, Ohio. She grew up, quite unremarkably, went to school and then got a job. Nothing very exciting ever happened to her.
It’s an accurate picture, yes, but it doesn’t take into account my actual… life. It doesn’t say anything about how my sister, K, and I used to explore the twelve foot space of trees in our backyard that we’d call the woods and build forts in. Or investigate the unreached corners of our cellar, attic, or crawl spaces. It doesn’t say about how gregarious we were about putting on our plays in the basement for an audience of our parents (sometimes we even rehearsed for days). There’s nothing about how entirely elaborate our games of Barbies would become, with plots and planning, dozens of characters and sets. How my sister and I would ride our bikes to school in the morning with a tape deck attached to my handlebars so we could listen to music as we went. How I used to tuck paperbacks into the pockets of my coat or read while walking. How as I got older I got a little bit more afraid of life, and how I didn’t want to stay in state for college because I knew it would be the first thing in my life that I settled for, and how desperately I never wanted to settle for anything. How I have been through so many styles and preoccupations with clothing and jewelry and accessories trying to find something that was right for me before realizing they all were, and probably will be. How I like my hair to look messy and it might be partly because a co-worker once said that Billie Piper always had the most perfect bed head. How I love horror movies and will see the ones that even look horrible just because it’s the genre, but rarely get scared. There’s nothing about how I’ll watch films and listen to the score and wonder if it’s been composed by Rachel Portman because every time my ears prick up it’s usually her.
Tiny things in people’s lives are what make them who they are; they are also the things that make the life worthwhile. It’s the stuff in between all the crap that’s the storybook. The day to day can become worth reading if the person telling the story is interesting enough. Not even just worth reading. The tiny stories of when this happened or that happened are everything, and you can sit in rapt attention while hearing about the entangling and elaborate plot to a video game, even though you have a distinct feeling that you should probably not care. And isn’t that enough? I know that it is. It’s enough to just be content in what you do, who you’re with, and how you feel. And that’s a sentiment that most certainly comes with age.
When I was little I wanted something exciting to happen to me. I wanted to discover that I was really some sort of princess or that I’d suddenly sprout fins and become a mermaid. Books and movies are designed that way, ordinary people discovering they are special. When you get older you want different things, and so the medium changes. You get epics. But I have never wanted an epic romance because they always have the same thing in common. Big love stories, the ones that people remember, are not happy. People die, people leave, and people give each other up for the greater good. I would rather just be happy. That’s enough of a feat.
For now I will continue being. Eating plums and walking around in my little shoes. I will wake up in five hours and forty one minutes and I will be tired and grumpy and angry at the world for making me do something I hate. But then it will end, and you know what? I’ll probably still be me.
Oh, the Places We’ll Go.
I find it a little bit weirdly interesting how little it takes to make me want to go places. I’m reading a book right now that is probably one of the most ethereally bizarre things I’ve ever read. I love it, don’t get me wrong, but out of the ghosts and the familial issues and loss and exploration the most overwhelming feeling I have is to fly to London and explore Highgate Cemetery. Observe:
I mean… come on, right? That’s pretty damn amazing.
I’ve been to London three times. And while there is only a certain amount of how well one is going to get to know a place while touristing around for a couple of weeks I feel like I have seen a good amount of the city. And yet, I am always finding new things I’d like to see. I am aware that I watch and read far too many things that take place in England but basically at this point I would like to explore the country so thoroughly that I don’t think my bank account would ever recover from the expense of it all.
I’ve been to Paris twice and never made it to the catacombs. Never seen the Bois de Boulogne or the Parc des Buttes Chaumont. Never even visited Edith Piaf or Jim Morrison at Pere Lachaise. I want to go to Giverny and Mont Saint-Michel.
I’ve never been itching to see Spain, but I want to go to Barcelona. I want to see buildings designed by Gaudi. Walk in the Park Güell, stand in front of the Sagrada Família in amazement and wonder if it will ever truly be finished. I want to go to the Theatre-Museum Dali in Figueres and smile at the Mae West room and at all the little bits of Gala dropped into all the artist’s work.
I want to stand in the snow, wearing a parka I’d never actually wear and drinking hot cocoa while I watch the flickering Aurora Borealis.
Most recently I have become somewhat obsessed with going to Switzerland. I wrote a play once where the father of the two main characters goes to Geneva. Of course, at the time, I knew nothing about the city at the time, and it’s not like I’ve been there now, but I think it’s sort of an anomalous city, like the Philadelphia of Switzerland. It’s a very French city in a country primarily associated with Germanic ideals. And it’s pretty, with it’s gigantic lake and shooting fountain and Parisian looking buildings that are sort of beautifully soft around the edges. Zürich is the highest ranked city for quality of life. Probably because it’s taxes are enormously high as it’s also one of the most expensive cities in the world. It’s far more spiry, more German, more quaint.
And, similarly, Austria. Vienna, yes. Salzberg (Sound of Music!), yes. But, beyond that I want to go to Hallstatt. This completely random town in the middle of nowhere Austria that I just happened to have seen on Rick Steves. And it’s because it’s so random and so in the middle of nowhere that makes it’s so incredibly beautiful.
It’s a small place with a population of just one thousand people and you have to take a ferry from the train station. The whole thing is sort of packed onto the edge of the lake by the mountains crowding it from behind. Above it is the salt mine that used to be the European center for collecting salt, a whole period is called ‘the Hallstatt period’. It’s hardly surprising, I suppose, as it’s only about two hours from Salzberg. Okay… so none of this is anything that you couldn’t read on the Wikipedia link included under the picture, but I have nothing real to add, as I have not been there. Sigh, I am so put upon. Someday.
I lived in Mansfield, Ohio for one school year. It wasn’t something I was entirely looking forward to, more just a means to the Columbus campus, which was at least a decently sized city even if it is still in Ohio. I remember auditioning for schools (I had intended upon being a theatre major and had to audition for a space) and looking around to make sure that I wasn’t going to be languishing boredly in some small town with nothing to do. Mansfield was sort of like a last resort, I went there one time before I moved and I didn’t do much more than visit the tiny campus and drive around town a bit. I didn’t really care what it was like because I wasn’t going to like it and it only going to be ten months of my life.
For the first few months it wasn’t too great. I didn’t have a car, which proved problematic as there’s really no way to get around Mansfield without a car. Once I rode my bike to Meijer and carried groceries back in my basket. It took nearly an hour to get there and I could only fit orange juice, milk, bread, and eggs. I was shy so I didn’t have many friends, and I couldn’t get to the video store so I bought every movie I wanted to watch from amazon.com and had it delivered. But then I got a car and I drove all over the city, I drove to the surrounding towns, explored the country side, explored every nook and cranny. Residential areas, manufacturing areas, everything. And slowly I started to really sort of like living in Mansfield, OH.
When my best friend K and I took our trek across the country (Cleveland, to Memphis, to New Orleans, to Dallas, across Texas to Carlsbad Caverns in NM, to Las Vegas, to LA, to Santa Barbara, to Big Sur, to San Francisco, to Denver, to Mt. Rushmore, to Chicago, then back to Cleveland) we happened upon a town called Orla, Texas. I might be applicating the word ‘town’ a bit liberally here, actually. It was more like a crossroads with a couples buildings placed on it. Well, there were a couple of abandoned, crumbling buildings as well. The only reason it came to our attention at all was the fact that it happened to have a post office. Now what the hell it needed a post office for is beyond me, maybe for a couple of neighboring ranches or something… I suppose everyone needs a post office but it probably cost more to construct the building and move government employees in than they got throughout the year by selling postage. Actually, now that I think about it the post office might’ve been the entire town because when we went inside to buy stamps and mail our postcards back home we couldn’t help but notice a white board scrawled with ‘Population: 4′. The best we could figure was that it was written on the whiteboard just in case anyone went out of town.
It was dusty and I sort of expected a tumbleweed to go rolling by at any minute but I was glad to have seen Orla, TX.
There are too many places in the world. Too many countries and too much towns and cities and far too little time. I say a lot that I don’t plan on staying in Cleveland, and that’s true. But, I don’t want to move away from Cleveland for any sort of reason against the city itself, I like it here. The reason simply is this; I’ve already lived here.
I find myself driving back to Mansfield sometimes. Not in the past year, as it’s less convenient. I would go from Columbus, drive the hour and shop at places I used to shop, drive down streets I remember. Check out the apartment complex where I first lived on my own. I don’t forget any of it and what’s more I miss it, but that doesn’t mean that I don’t want to move forward and see other things.
There’s nothing wrong with being tethered to one place, I find that as I grow older I understand that better and better, but that doesn’t stop me from wanting to see the rest of the world.
Something in the Air.
I haven’t posted anything for quite some time, although I have written things that remain largely unfinished. Sometimes I wish this could be the sort of blog where I just say everything that happened to me, but it doesn’t seem like I am able to do that, anyway it doesn’t seem all that interesting. Obviously, my personal life trickles in and I would never say it didn’t. But anyway there you have it. I have a good reason; so I knew that two of my teeth weren’t particularly in working order. Both were chipped and both were turning a bit gray. I was fairly convinced of root canals but when one broke in half the other day and I finally went to the dentist it seemed as if that wasn’t the order of the day. I am not entirely sure how they both decided to rot completely but suffice it to say they were probably too far gone to save. They’re not in the front, but they are not quite molars either, about halfway back just behind the eye tooth. So, Tuesday I had two teeth extracted, and Wednesday I was fitted with what can only be described as a retainer with teeth on them. I could say a lot of things about this, most of which I will refrain from saying, but I will say this: I am self conscious enough about the millions of things wrong with me without this. I am twenty seven years old, which is either too old to be wearing a retainer or too young to be wearing fake teeth.
I am completely un-hung up about appearances, true story. I don’t notice a lot of things that other people notice. Little flaws in people that others bring up later go completely over my head. And believe me it’s gotten me in trouble once or twice (I really don’t plan to insult anyone by insensitive comments that pertain to flaws I haven’t noticed, but I can’t deny it’s happened once or twice). I have wondered if this is something that is wrong with me, but I don’t know. Anyone’s input would be appreciated here. Anyway, point is this does not apply to me. Every single flaw, and there are plenty of them, is magnified to epic proportions. My nose is too big and bumpy, my eyes are too small and not set back enough, my skin is splotchy, my forehead is too low, my right boob is totally bigger than the left, and we’re not even going to get started on the rest.
Now, of course I know that this is not unusual, everyone is their own worst critic but really, it may be petty and maybe a non issue but, who the hell wants to kiss someone while they are either wearing a retainer or have no teeth?
I have felt, lately especially but in generally, that me and everyone I know are competing for who’s life is worse. Maybe I should say competing over who’s job is the worst, and life in extension. I’ve noticed a somewhat startling trend among bosses, they are mostly idiots. It seems to me like if they were to take five minutes to ask the opinion of the people who need to implement their ideas then everything would run ten times more smoothly. I know I have complained the pants off of The Job, but for gods sake… day after day of doing the most pointless activity known to man is sure to wear on anyone. Really, Thursday is an exercise in futility, doing them same things that I’d done two days ago, it’s just like going through the motions.
Honestly, the only good news is that I now know everything that’s in those damned boxes so the whole process goes a bit faster. I just have to glance into the boxes and then glance on the shelves to see that that most certainly will not fit on the wall.
But that’s enough about me, as I said it seems to be everyone. Now, I would never air anyone else’s personal grievances on the internet but it seems like all around me people are getting screwed over. Whether it’s being assigned to go on the sub-par conference trips, being demoted for no good reason and then have that be trivialized, or be expected to present something that departmentally void and without warning there seems to be something serious in the air.
Talking to my sister earlier today she seemed to agree. I said that corporate supervisors were just power hungry and store managers were just idiots. She said it was possible to be both. And that’s true, really. Sometimes I really wonder how the people of authority get to be people of authority with so little common sense, and the only conclusion I can come up with is that they weren’t always that way. I think perhaps it’s possible that there is some sort of evil organization who collects up all figures of power, puts them in a room, and then forces them to watch Jessica Simpson movies until there are puddles of drool on their shirts and a sufficient amount of brain cells are dead. Actually this might be something to look into, maybe Pterodactyl Man can combat it [If you do not get that reference... see my myspace]. The Time Keeper can be the CEO.
I say that I’m stupid a lot. And there are a lot of times I genuinely believe it, but honestly I know that I am not stupid. In some respects I find myself to be exceedingly clever (and modest too, obviously). There are some things in which I do not excell and those things have stood in my way a lot of my life, but I am not stupid. And when I am constantly treated as if I am by people who I have a sneaking suspicion are… it’s a bit frustrating and it doesn’t make it easier to go in everyday.
Also, my body does not seem to want to get used to these early morning shifts. I thought it would by now. And Pyewacket has discovered the wonderful world of sleeping on my mother’s bed rather than mine, I suppose she likes not being disturbed until a reasonable 6am.
To keep me sane, thank goodness for: Truffle Cookies, The Marvelous Misadventures of Flapjack, Cult movies, October and Halloween, Halloween stores, McDonalds breakfast, morning caffeine, BBC America, Hotel Babylon, text messages, trying to find things to argue about and failing, my mother helping me through Novocaine shots, Dewey’s Pizza, zombie movies, Simon Pegg being the only search that’s brought people to my blog, dark chocolate antioxidants, $5 Mondays at the Cedar Lee, Romantic Poets and their infinite emoness, Keats, Shelley, and this: 
(je suis clickable!)
In Which LadyLinzi Gripes [But Not About Her Life]
The other day at work one of my co-workers said that someday I was going to run out of things to complain about. Like one day I’ll be mid-sentence and just stop and be silent for the rest of my life. She quickly assured me that it’s funny rather than annoying, but she had a point; I do complain an awful lot. But there are just so many things to complain about! And it’s not just things in my life… yes, it’s true there are a lot of things to complain about in my life, but there are also a lot of things to be glad about. Yes, it’s hard to think of them sometimes when other things are getting me down and that’s what the last blog was about. This is about the annoying bits. Not the life gets you down annoying bits, I mean the external stuff.
At the Job we have horrible songs and advertisements playing over a loudspeaker all day. And I mean ALL DAY, like even at 5am when the store won’t even be open for four more hours. There’s lots of Top 40 stuff, a lot of seventies, a lot of… theme song to ‘Chariots of Fire’. There’s actually a song by the Captain and Tennille. And the adverts, oh god the adverts. The woman’s voice makes her sound like a headband wearing, cardigan and polo sporting, Stepfordized smiling head with the most annoying voice known to mankind. Just her talking is enough to make me shudder but then recently they debuted this gem:
Lady: Hi honey, want to join me in a creative metal project?
Husband: Awesome! Yes I’ll join you in a heavy metal project. (cue cheesy guitar riff)
Lady: Duuuuuuude, I said creative metal not heavy metal. (This is where she explains that Creative Metal is a new crafting technique and blah blah blah shoot me now…)
Husband: Rock on, that sounds fun too.
Really? Really does that sound fun at all? Cause if I was looking forward to some heavy metal I certainly wouldn’t be pacified by rolling a crappy patterned roller over some cheap aluminum. And FYI Creative Metal is boring as sheet. Certainly not as good as rocking out. I’d settle for slow jazz.
My hatred of this advertisement has apparently reached such epic proportions at work that everyone knows about it. Someone wrote ‘Anyone wanna join me in a heavy metal project?’ on the white board in the break room (we still don’t know who it is) and everyone assumed it was me. I wish it had been, cause yes I HATE that commercial, but at the same time… it’s hilarious.
You know what’s not hilarious? Apple products. Yes, I have an iPod, and yes there are lots of things I like about it. I like the way things are organized. I like the way I’m used to how it works. I don’t like the way it decides to go into ‘diagnostic mode’ and run unnecessary tests on all the programs before allowing me to access my music. I don’t like the way it freezes up and, again, refuses to allow me to listen to my music, and I don’t like the way it suddenly cuts off my music in the middle of a song and refuses to turn back on without plugging it in while simultaneously pressing the power button for ten seconds. I don’t like the way I take it to the ‘Genius Bar’ and they tell me all that stuff is “perfectly normal”. Fuck you Steve Jobs. Seriously, if you need that much crap on your phone… why are you even reading this. The day I get anywhere near an iPhone will be a very cold day in hell. http://www.who-sucks.com/tech/15-reasons-why-apples-iphone-sucks
I hate Cleveland roads. I’d like to say that I hate Cleveland Heights roads, but I am afraid it’s the whole city. Yes, I get the fact that I am used to Columbus roads, and yes I get the fact that snow and salt wear away at the pavement until potholes are hardly surprising. I get the fact that it takes money to fill them, money that the city surely does not have. And I get that maybe I should learn how to drive around them a little better. But I have had two flat tires since I moved back here just over a year ago. Two new tires in one year. Really? That just sucks, especially when you work at an unnamed Craft Supply store that has unstable hours and pays minimum wage. Pretty much… that’s a whole paycheck.
I hate how people never watch good shows so that they end up being canceled. I hate how truly awful ones stay on forever.
Really, there’s a lot to hate.
But, quite plainly… I love to hate things. This is the reason I read books I don’t particularly like and watch televisions shows that make my eyes roll.
The biggest example of this right now is obviously Twilight. I read Twilight originally for two reasons 1) because I don’t particularly like being out of the loop when it comes to cultural phenomenons, and 2) because you can’t make fun of what you’ve never read.
I started reading the first book before I moved from Columbus to Cleveland because I was curious. I realized, as I was purchasing it at Wal-Mart and shoving it to the bottom of my cart so that I could possibly get through the self checkout before anyone could see I was buying this thing, that this wasn’t going to be something I was going to read in public. I was 26 at the time, and probably should have had something better to do with my time than read a book geared towards preteens and lonely 40-something housewives. Of course I didn’t. So I diligently started reading, assuming I’d finish it in several days and be back to Wal-Mart for the next installment of frothy vampire delight. Uh, no. It took me months to read this tripe. Later in the summer I was only about one fourth through when I took it to the beach on an excursion with K and settled in to force myself to finish. It took her about an hour of me groaning for her to ask me what the hell I was reading. My response was something like this; ‘This pathetically overwrought high school vampire drama with way too much angst and absolutely no comic relief.’ I mean, I get that Buffy the Vampire Slayer had its fair share of angst, but it also had whole characters devoted to making us laugh. She didn’t ask any more questions.
But then of course it got at least a little exciting and I sped through the last final pages, the first two hundred and whatever already forgotten. I ran out to grab New Moon, opened it up right away, and discovered that it started out just as hideously boring as the first one. And then proceeded to deliver ONE HUNDRED pages of the heroine being so depressed that she can not even move. I wanted to die. Actually, I can’t even believe I didn’t throw it out the window and stuck around for it to get relatively exciting again two hundred pages later. Same dos for Eclipse. Breaking Dawn just took me a year to read because I couldn’t stand the thought of going back to read more of it… in the end it just seemed completely pointless.
Now, I suppose I can understand how someone could get attached to this sort of story. When I was younger, maybe… middle school… the idea of enduring love might’ve been attractive. Being protected might’ve been attractive. The supernatural complications would have definitely been attractive. So, I am unsure as to whether or not I am simply too old to glaze over the inherent creepiness of Edward Cullen or too well read to be able to deal with such poorly written prose, but I can not stand these books. And yet I love them. Really, there has to be at least a small element of love in something I take some much time making fun of. Or at least amusement. We’ll go with amusement. But what I really hate is the perpetuating of an antiquated view that women should be taken care of, almost against their will, that they should be controlled and watched out for and that their lives don’t matter. I hate the fact that there will be girls out there who think this is what they should want. If that’s not eye rollingly (there’s a Meyerism for you, right there) awful, then I don’t know what is.
In conclusion… well, maybe there isn’t a conclusion today. Maybe I just hate those too.
Distraction Faction
I have, today, decided to not be negative. It’s easy to be, that’s for sure, when nothing seems to be going right and waking up in the morning gets harder and harder everyday. But, there’s a lot of other stuff out there. And really, even though I work everyday at 5am, I only work for five hours, which isn’t long and allows a decent nap afterward. It sucks, really, in fact it might be pretty much my idea of a living nightmare… but it could always be worse. So, instead of dwelling and feeling sorry for myself I’ve decided to go about this in a much more mature fashion; distraction. There’s far too much going on in the world to be pissed off because I’m tired. Even the small things. Like;
Burger King Commercials.
Am I the only one who is terrified by the King? I mean, I was freaked out by his frozen expression and creepy grin the first time I saw it, but the recent commercials are just simply buying into that. It’s like someone at the BK Corporation handed over the sketches to their adolescent daughter and watched the nightmares roll. There are only three things I would like to wake up to less than the King standing over my bed with his menacingly chipper expression; ET, Prince and Apollonia Kotero doing it, and Edward Cullen. Actually, those things might just immediately send me into a catatonic state that would likely require playing Star Wars on a loop until I’ve been mind tricked out of it.
But, the King would be a close second. I get it; they’re trying to promote the late night menu. Stealing the fourth meal from Taco Bell. Giving Cleveland Heights an option after 10pm other than IHOP. But, seriously… how exactly does being pranked awake because you ‘went to bed before the King’ make you want to buy food? Actually, if that happened to me I might never eat again, I certainly would never speak to my friends again. And the whispering just makes them worse. Really, they’re decent commercials for McDonalds.
Brainless Sci-Fi.
Okay, brainless may be a little harsh. What I mean really is guilty pleasure not high concept Sci-Fi. As stated before… I like a lot of crap, CW-style. I like shows about fabulously catty people growing up in impossibly posh conditions a la Gossip Girl, yes, but there’s only so long I can watch insipid crap like that. And that’s where the SyFy Channel comes in (ugh, do I hate typing that). There’s a lot of high concept Sci-Fi out there. And I love it, as far as I am concerned when it comes down to show and movies, even books, the more complicated the better. I am far happier when I have absolutely no idea what is going on. I’d have to be, after all my favorite show is Lost. Yet, at the same time there is a special place in my heart for monster of the week-esque plots where whatever problem has presented itself this is solved by the end of the hour, everyone is generally happy, and it’s just a bit of, well, fun.
Let me take a moment to appreciate Eureka. Seriously, I could watch this show all day. It’s always a sure fire way to get my daily, or weekly rather, dose of literally the most ridiculous technologically advanced crap unknown to imagination. For those unfamiliar this is the plot: Federal Marshall Jack Carter and his delinquent daughter (though, obviously she’s really just a mildly rebellious teenager who grows) crash their car outside the small town of Eureka located somewhere Oregon which just so happens to be inhabited by a bunch of geniuses who mostly work for a government organization called Global Dynamics that pretty much makes weapons and develops random tech for the Ministry of Defense. Well, that’s the overall plot anyway, really it’s a bunch of calamities in a row brought on by people who are too smart for their own good. Oh, and Carter inexplicably becomes the sheriff.
This show is ridiculous. Here’s an example: currently they apparently have a super collider that ‘makes the hadron collider at CERN look like a slingshot’ (note on the fact that the word hadron is not in my Microsoft Word dictionary, I am thinking of protesting). I am a little unaware as to the point of them having a super collider that makes the hadron collider at CERN look like a slingshot because the rest of the episode is about a high school student accidentally creating an artificial North Pole over the Pacific Northwest. I suppose the point is to prove once again that Global Dynamics has the best and most amazing stuff. How is this show not terrible? I have no idea, but it totally rocks. Now, if only we could get the LHC working.
[Also in this catagory: Warehouse 13, Primeval, series 1 & 2 of Torchwood, and Doctor Who (though to be fair to myself at least half the stuff I love about the later is the, probably imagined, deeper stuff).]
Saturn.
Call me stupid, but I wasn’t aware, prior to April 14th, that planets made sounds. Or, radio emissions, whatever. Well that’s a bit of a broad statement I suppose the correct thing to say would be that space has radio emissions. I suppose I should have been tipped off by the fact that I knew the Big Bang theory was considered proved enough to grant Nobel prizes to Arno Penzias and Robert Wilson for their work at the Holmdel Horn Antenna when they discovered microwave background radiation in 1965. Personally, I think the Horn Antenna looks like modern art. I wouldn’t mind one in my backyard, next to the bouncy castle.
So it shouldn’t surprise me that space makes sounds, nor that we can hear them. I think that I had just never thought of it before. But, regardless of all that, it’s infinitely cool. Here’s a link:
What impresses me the most, really, is that everything in the universe has a different sound. Everything is broadcasting different frequencies that… well some of them sort of sound like the electrical box that sits in the outside corner of my little room and makes sort of vvvrrroooming noises. Actually, that’s sort of scary. If I wasn’t used to it I would still be convinced the house was going to go up in smoke. But, then there’s Saturn. Saturn sounds haunted. Like ghosts should sound if you left on a recorder and listened to their high pitched whining. Like if someone was expertly adept at licking their finger and playing glasses in varying fullnesses. Sometimes, when in a particularly bad mood, there’s just nothing to do other than lay down, close my eyes, and play Saturn on repeat.
(click me)
The CH-UH Public Library.
I was a fan of the Columbus Discovery Place Library system, it was good, it had a lot it, and best of all was free, so long as you returned everything in a timely manner and didn’t have to pay the dollar a day fine. Compared to the Cleveland Heights – University Heights Public Library the Discovery place version is compete shit. It has everything. And if it doesn’t have it, it can get it… and fast. When I put myself on the waiting list in Columbus I would often be three hundredth in line and I waited for months. With the CLEVNET system the longest I’ve ever waited was weeks. This resource is unbelievable, really, and if you don’t use it, you’re a fool. Unless, of course, you have massive fines that you just haven’t paid. You have no excuse. The best part? Even for DVDs the fines are only ten cents a day. So worth it.
Simon Pegg.
Is finally on Twitter. To which I say swoon.
So. Tomorrow I will wake up at 4:15am angry and pissed off, I will go to work angry and pissed off, I will likely complain the whole time. But then I will come home and I will think of all those little things that help at least a little, or at least keep my occupied enough to not care so much. What’s on your list? Well that’s up to you. But, in the event of emergency… there’s always such thing as a good stiff drink.
