I still look through the big circle of the lens to the back of the camera and wonder.
‘Shiny Happy People’
Was driving the kids back home from swim lessons and played R.E.M.’s Out of Time in the car. Wasn’t sure if the kids had heard it before, but when “Losing My Religion” came on, they knew some of the words and were doing their best to act out the verb at the end of lines. “I think I thought I saw you cry.” = Kids make crying sounds.
Got to “Shiny Happy People” and realized I hadn’t seen thie video for a while. Maybe even since the 90s. Recalled impressions (while safely driving) from ’91:
“They look happy.”
“Michael ‘Never-gonna-lipsync’ Stipe is now lipsyncing all the time. He’s decided to be dorky. Dig it.”
“I crush on Kate Pierson. Oh, Kate. Kate Kate Kate.”
“This video is a depiction of the interior of Mike Mills’ brain.”
“If I ever get a chance to meet Peter Buck, gonna check to see if he’s ticklish. It might sprain his face, but bet the answer is ‘yes’.”
“Hey! I’m Jane Pratt! Dig my daisy dress! I’ve helped millions of girls with self-esteem and assertiveness! Rad! Also, again, my daisy dress!”
Got home, watched the video after the kids changed into their pajamas.
The comments on YouTube’s Warner Brothers official clip (doesn’t allow embedding, so I’ve created a work-around) have an intermittent theme of “It’s sarcastic/satire, you idiot.”
Yes, yes. Old man laboring makes the whole thing happen. Nothing is easy. But he gets relief from a sweetheart of a girl. All is well. Work done. Let’s all hop around and make silly faces without being wry. If we’re gonna dork, let’s dork all-out!
They keep cutting away from Peter Buck right before it looks like he’s gonna crack-up. A motif!
How’d they go forward in time to 2011, gather a bunch of people from downtown Portland, and get them to 1991 to dance around? Hope they returned everyone and restored the timeline.
Kate, Kate. Kate-tilly-itily-Kate. Your hair is a thick raspberry-flavored cotton candy my fingers would gladly get stuck in. Wait. Did I type that, or merely think it?
Comment dit-on?
Would love to be a bon vivant, but being cultivated takes a LOT more effort than I’m likely to put into it. A severe curmudgeonly streak also sours that enterprise. Maybe a ennui vivant? Nah, I get too amped up and laugh too much for any credible affectation of malaise. Golly, it is SO frustrating to develop self-labels.
“I’m a night owl” = “I’m afraid of death”?
My default setting is to stay up late. Go to bed around midnight to 3 a.m. No matter how many grown-up years pass that teach the hard lessons and wisdom of getting 8 hours of sleep, I petulantly stay up late.
Part of me still thinks: “Woo-hoo! I’m not a kid anymore. I can make up my OWN rules!” This may be the same instinct that causes me to see a colored bead or wayward Lego block or hair barrette on the floor of my house and think: “That’s not MY mess. Leave it to whomever dropped it there.” I have to reflect, realize: “Oh, yeah. I’m the adult now and if I don’t pick that up someone will step on it and I’ll feel badly.” Then pick that bauble up.
As soon as Friday night the habit reverts. Doesn’t matter that I wake up first with the kids 6 of 7 mornings each week. Doesn’t matter what my activity is: writing, reading, watching tv, reading on the internet about what I just watched on tv, listening to music. There I sit/lay/slouch/stretch. Brain glazing over. Yet I will not budge until exhausted.
Rationally, 8 hours of sleep is important, daylight is important. But I can’t (usually) bring myself to put cause and effect together: go to sleep at a decent hour, get decent sleep, all for a more decent day tomorrow.
Why, then, rage, RAGE against the dying of the day as if I could wait out and defeat (or at least stalemate) the rotation of the planet?
I don’t think it’s an inherent trait. People say “I’m not a morning person” and “I’m a night owl” like sharing they have brown hair and that’s just the way it is. I think it’s fear of missing something. Of making the most of good health and mind right now because tomorrow may not bring this solitude (and it is always solitude – I don’t hang out late anywhere since my mid-20s) and this ability to browse and mentally meander.
The headline to this is a little dramatic. I sleep easily. My dreams are very simple and fond. I get out of bed quickly. But even on weekends, the mornings start with tasks. Making breakfast. Pets. Read the paper. Clean house. Plan the day. Not bad, all necessary and often delightful, but not as much fun as traipsing around, or standing still, in a marsh of mental confections and the occasional alligator easily dismissed with a FLICK on the snout. [Shout out, Fanny!]
What’s up, Sally G?
That is all.
Justin Bieber’s “Someday” stink water
Saw this commercial earlier in the week:
Induced a mental cramp. After recuperative staring at a candle, things to unpack:
1.) The gal seems a couple years older than Bieber. Should the ad carry some kind of warning, depending on state of residence?
2.) She also leads an aritocratic existence with a ballet dancer’s build. He’s an intrusive, daring scamp in lavender tennis shoes. It’d NEVER work! [Cue dramatic music, their mad dash to a car and drive away from the grown-ups who just don’t understand/]
3.) Does it count as subliminal advertising if human anatomy is outright depicted on the container?
4.) Though I wish him no ill will, I bet Bieber repellent spray would sell better.
Fuck you, Apple, I’m STILL not going by “@me.com”
Long, long time ago …
I bought a “.Mac” account. An easy way to create webpages, online slideshows, share files, have online storage space, download free software/updates. Didn’t use it a LOT, but it was neat when those services were rare. Oh, yeah, and I had @mac.com as my email address.
Sure, it became my junk email account immediately for online signups. But, whatever. Felt a hokey having an email address that identified me as part of a brand lifestyle. Was there ever a “@tacobellchalupa.com” email address? Again, whatever.
Then three or so years ago, Apple transitioned naming their service from “.Mac” to “Mobile Me”. Worse? email addresses would transition from “@mac.com” to “@me.com”.
Even a RAVING narcissist as myself was revolted. Sure, in theory it was part of a “Hey, sharing and caring using Apple products and our online services ain’t about US here at Apple, it’s about YOU, your life, claim it! Show the world online more about ME. I mean, er, YOU, but USE ‘me’. Hold up: what marketing numbskull wrote this hack copy?”
Now, I know demographic research into the rising generations show decreasing sense of guardedness about security, greater inclination to share with peers, propensity to seek approval of authority. Hasn’t been MY experience with Gen Y or Echo generation or whatever. Have met too many future ornery old cusses (hooray for that!) so I tend to review these PowerPoint Purveyors of generational labels with skepticism. Distrust of authority. Refusal to engage in constructive thought or genuine emotion. You know, like all Gen Xers.
Just letting you know, Apple and Google bots (and, to show sensitivity to minorities, Bing bots), that I will use “@mac.com” as long as possible. Well, okay, for junk. But it’s the PRINCIPLE, man!
Hope Hitchens & Vidal make it another year
I have an awful feeling that two writer/media figures/heroes of mine, Gore Vidal and Christopher Hitchens, might not make it to the end of the year. Hitchens in battling severe esophageal cancer and recently lost his voice. Gore Vidal has been yellowing for some time, hasn’t emerged recently, and hasn’t moved under his own power in public for years.
To superstitiously ward this off, here’s an excerpt from an conversation between Hitchens and Anderson Cooper. CNN is rarely a place that goes deep, but I really like Cooper calling bullshit on the concept of “closure” when it comes to someone’s death, and Hitchens agreeing:
Gore Vidal was a commentator on a 3-hour documentary about Abraham Lincoln aired on the History Channel. Here he compares the severe acts of Lincoln (shutting down presses, suspension of habeas corpus) to the same acts, much less necessary, by George W. Bush.
Update on 2012-12-15 19:53 by Derek Denton
One year since Christopher Hitchens died of esophegeal cancer on December 15, 2011. A thoughtful interview with Anderson Cooper on life and death. Cooper, part of the Vanderbilt family, was orphaned at a young age.
Hoarding – digital & real life
Yes to hoarding books — up ’til 2007, when we unloaded 14 cases of books before moving to our current home. Even so on our shelves to this day – THREE different copies of ‘Middlemarch’, THREE of ‘Lolita’, and 5 or so Collected Works of Shakespeare that I can still rationalize with quasi-scholarishness.
Yes to hoarding magazines – SPY, Q, Rolling Stone from when I subscribed from ’87-’91. Also ditched in 2007 upon realizing society was not going to rely on MY collection to reconstitute pop culture. Though I sustained a hope the kids would come across this trove and be impressed by their hip dad who would let them tear into all this stuff for their authentic/ironic study/collage projects.
Yes(ish) to hoarding DVDs and CDs. Sometimes go months between getting new movies or music, though. Not feeling sheepish here.
Yes to hoarding VHS tapes of tv miscellany. Got halfway through digitizing them this past year. Lots of phenomenal morsels, but my eye and mind when appraising the crate full of them is getting cooler and more severe.
Yes(ish) to hoarding email from the early 90s onward. Haven’t read them in decades, actually, since they were current. Oh, when email was new! “Whoah, I can type words on the Mac Plus, and this telephone wire in the back running along this janky carpet will send these words to my friend in Texas? GET THE FUCK OUTTA HERE. WITCH! WIIIITCCH!”
No to hoarding cats, though our dog looks at the two cats and disagrees.
No to hoarding old letters – in a very modest box is a collection of damning and charming letters from the 80s and 90s to serve as a reality check when my own spawn roil in dating intrigues and frustrations of COSMIC IMPORTANCE.
Single Mom / Depressed Mom internet meme
Read about the Single Mom / Depressed Mom photo meme, then make your own (above is what I came up with).