Talking About Stuff, with Mike and Christiana

Okay, so I've got a three-hour drive ahead of me after my long, stressful week traveling, but can I leave? No! Because I'm waiting to meet with someone who has kept us waiting for forty minutes after his scheduled meeting time. This is, of course, the same person who rolls his eyes and complains if we are five minutes late to his 7:00AM meetings. *sigh*

You know, we really need a better adjective for music that tends to stick in your head. ‘Catchy’ doesn’t really seem to cover it. Oh well...

“Move Your Feet” by JuniorSenior is sticky.

The song itself is the sort of fun, mindless dance-pop that has all the subtlety of a strobe-light, or a pair of Elton John’s sunglasses. (Sample lyrics: "Everybody/ Move your feet and feel united. / Oh-oh-oh.") Boy though, will it ever stick in your head! If it doesn’t, I’d say you’re bomb-proof.

Even better though, on that web site, you can download the video on Quicktime. It’s only about 5.1MB, because it’s a tiny picture and very pixilated. But with this video, that’s not a problem! It’s designed to look like the old Atari or Nintendo video games, but it’s got a hilariously goofy feel to it, like some of the more bizarre manga or cult web-comics. It contains zombies, talking hot dogs, and a mischievous squirrel doing tequila shots and attacking things with a hammer.

It also contains some not-so-subtle gay overtones. I don’t know if these two guys are a couple (they aren’t related) in real life or what, but watch this video and tell me I’m wrong. Hmm, perhaps ‘sticky’ isn’t altogether inappropriate after all.

Anyway, I think it’s an entertaining little diversion. Something I can definitely use these days, as I’m traveling for work and being forced to work 12-hour days every day! Ugh! I suppose technically I could refuse, but that would make me ‘not a team player’ and hopefully it will only be for a couple weeks.

Leah Bobet has got a quiz up...

You are an Old-School Junkie! You can't get enough
of the days where progress was good, science
was magic, and a new era for humanity was just
on the horizon. Characterization and craft be
damned, your stories are about -ideas-.


Which SF Wavelet Movement Do You Belong to?
brought to you by Quizilla

This is the most awful hold music ever...

Ugh! It’s all cheery synthesized generic approximations of top40 songs from 1983. :P

Anyway, while I’m sitting here on hold, why don’t I give another crack at the post I tried to put up earlier.

Things I Have Been Enjoying Recently
Books
I’ve been re-reading the Dark Tower series by Stephen King in anticipation of the new volume coming out this fall. I have been pleasantly surprised to discover that I am connecting with the backstory parts more than I did the first time through. Before, I was impatient with those sections and wanted to get back to the ‘real story.’ This time, however, they are reaching me.

Perhaps it is because I am old enough now to reminisce about my own adolescence, (though I would NEVER go back! Ick!! *twitch twitch*.) I read the books for the first time when I was in high school. I was so impatient to get out of there that I suppose I didn’t want to hang around for other people’s comings of age either. *shrug* Anyway, I’m now eagerly anticipating my re-read of Wizard and Glass, because it disappointed me before by being so enmeshed in backstory. Perhaps now I’ll be able to get into it.

In the meantime, because I haven’t bought a copy of The Wastelands yet, I picked up the paperback of Seabiscuit at the grocery store. I’m not that far into it yet, but I’m already liking it. I don’t generally read a lot of non-fiction, but the idea that this horse and all these people really existed is just... neat. It’s one of those stories where, if it were fiction, nobody would believe it. ^_^

TV
There are three shows that I’ve been watching a lot of recently: Insomniac on Comedy Central, and Curb Your Enthusiasm and Project Greenlight on HBO.

Insomniac, if you haven’t seen it, consists essentially of a guy wandering the streets of various cities late at night. He is looking for the segments of American life that the ‘early to bed’ crowd never get to see. Obviously, it involves a lot of drinking. But he also talks to a lot of really interesting people, like a late-night ‘water taxi’ driver, the guys who watch over rodeo animals at night, or even just random weirdos walking down the street.

Aside from some fun jokes and the entertainment of watching drunk people try to be interesting (though let’s not downplay that!), there really is a neat sense of peering under the floorboards of everyday America. Not to mention a subtle ironic subtext that, in order to see these things with him, you have to be at home watching tv. ^_^

Curb Your Enthusiasm is a fake (mostly) documentary-style show about Larry David, the co-creator and character inspiration for George Costanza. Watching this show, you can totally see why. Simply put, it is about how he constantly puts himself in incredibly awkward situations. He makes his life fr more difficult than it needs to be.

An example: He refuses to give candy to un-costumed teenagers on Halloween, and is shocked to discover in the morning that they have TP’d his house and spray-painted ‘Bald Asshole’ on his front door. “It’s a hate crime,” he tells the police. “I’m bald. We’re a group.”

Another example: While driving, he engages in a game of ‘Cowboys and Indians’ with some kids in the back of the station wagon in front of him. They trade imaginary bullets from pointed-finger ‘guns’ until the station wagon screeches to a halt. The boys’ father, a HUGE pro wrestler named ‘Thor’, gets out and screams at Larry for pretending to shoot at his kids. “Haven’t you ever heard of Columbine?” shouts Thor. “It’s people like you that make those things happen!” Funny funny show.

Project Greenlight is a reality series about making movies. It’s fascinating to see how chaotic movie sets can be. I think that my passion for film and my irrational desire to have a movie made of something I’ve written contribute to my enjoyment of this show. Though it’s sometimes a little uncomfortable to watch well-meaning people get chewed out by mean people over tiny missteps, it is also intriguing to learn that even in the film industry, people have to put up with the same kind of crappy, bitchy office politics that everyone else does.

Movies
Not too much new stuff here, but if you haven’t seen Pirates of the Caribbean yet... *Smack* What’s wrong with you? Go right now! The boss won’t mind, not if he or she has seen it. And if they haven’t, bring’em along! Tied up if necessary!

*ahem*

Other than that, I’m psyched about going to see Star Wars and Chicago at the museum outdoor cinema series tonight and tomorrow. It’s going to tres nifty and stuff. ^_^

So I just wrote up about 1500 words on what I've been up to recently, things I've been reading/watching/doing etc. and of course, when I go to post, it loses the server and dumps my post into the cyber-abyss, never to be heard from again!! And so I repeat: Argh!