Pet Peeves #1 - #3

The beginning of what could be a long list...

1. Baby's Name On Answering Machine
Look, I realize that little Charlotte or Baby Ben are now part of the household, but I don't think anyone's going to be calling them, at least until they can talk. So it's really not a surprise to me that Charlotte cannot make it to the phone right now.

2. Incorrect Push/Pull Markings
I don't know why this annoys me, but it really gets on my nerves when a door is marked "PUSH" when you can Push or Pull it to open. I think this is the case with every conveniance store in the world. Why waste the ink? Why make me stop for a moment and switch what I was going to do when it doesn't matter?

3. People Who Take Crosswalks Seriously
Crosswalks have their place, by schools, by parks... But what is up with the crosswalks across busy streets? I'm sorry, but you must have a death wish if you are crossing Powell Boulevard at night and thinking the crosswalk is going to act like an impenetrable force field to the oncoming traffic. I also hate it when they have a crosswalk right next to a bus stop, so you don't know if the people are waiting for the bus or waiting to cross the street. I'm a big fan of walkers, which is why I'd rather not run them over...

Fashion Issue #4

Does Camo Ever Go Out of Style?

Have you ever noticed, that even if camoflague is never like the #1 stylish thing to do, it never fully goes extinct? I have to admit, I've had a bit of a camo bias, since in fourth grade Jason Mulack (our leader) made Tuesdays and Fridays Camo Day, and all of us made sure to attend school fully fatigued (I'm sure the fact that First Blood had come out earlier that year had nothing to do with it). And yes, we had all sorts of camo gear, the pants, a survival knife, and Jason even had a shirt that read "Marines don't die, they just go to hell and regroup." I even remember us picking the green plastic spoon at lunch instead of the white ones, b/c of the green one's latent armyness.

So yes, I am very pleased that camo's still around. And even admire its reinventions, like the underwater camo option. And it really fits camo's personality that it would endure and last so long. The question is why in the world would it ever be remotely fashionable? I mean its army green mixed with green mixed with brown. Not exactly your most aestheitic ensemble. But yet it lives on and on and...

Fashion Issue #1
Fashion Issue #2

Fashion Issue #3

Bunch O' Good Movies

I've rented and gone to good some movies lately. Here they are...

Borat: A
Have you heard of it? Yah, not much to say other than that I too found it very very funny. In particular his intro at the rodeo show and his appearance on the local TV news.

Queen: A-
I was not super-psyched on this movie, being one who doesn't really care that much about the British royal family, but it was really quite good. The plot: right after Blair gets elected, Princess Di dies. As the country mourns, the Queen says nothing, and the country is not too happy about it. Lots of interesting aspects: like the weird traditions even the prime minister has to follow, and the power play between Blair and The Queen. Overall, a well-done movie definitely worth seeing.

Shakespeare Behind Bars: A
Kind of a feel-good feel-bad movie. It's about a jail where an outside director has inmates put on a Shakespeare play. They seem to really get into it. For instance, one past cast member puts off his parole hearing to after the performance because it was going to be the first thing he ever finished in his life. A year after his release he killed himself. So yah a feel-good feel-bad movie.

49-Up: A
This is the seventh and, I believe, last documentary where the director updates us on a group of people's lives every 7 years. The first one was when they were 7, then 14, then... I've read about them for a whiloe and have always meant to see one of them. Well, do. It's like time-lapse photography of the personality.

Oh, and I just realized all 4 movies have something major in common. First one to figure it out gets a full on Chuckdaddy shout-out.

Cities of the Decade

Kind of a fun game to play is to try to think of what city best captures a particular decade. Some are pretty easy. 1920's would definitely go to Al Capone's Chicago, 1960's to the flower children of San Francsisco, and the 1980's to surfacey LA. Others take a little to figure out, but then make perfect sense. Like Seattle for the 1990's (Microsoft, Starbucks, and Grunge).

Others are trickier. The first things that came to my wife's mind for the 50's was the beat generation and atomic testing. I, on the otherhand, thought of a Leave it Beaverish Midwest city. And I have no idea for the 30's 40's or 70's. This decade is also pretty tricky. Perhaps we need some distance (and for it to finish). My only thought was that the defining parts of the 00's would likely be 9/11, the subsequent Middle East campaigns, and Bush's horrible presidency. If you focus on the last item and add in the of late focus on political curruption, could this decade be DC's? Not sure...

1920's = Chicago
1930's = Gary
1940's = Detroit
1950's = Cleveland
1960's = San Francisco
1970's = New York
1980's = LA
1990's = Seattle
2000's =Las Vegas

The Forbidden Foie Gras

Looks like Chicago is going to ban foie gras. And Oregon and New York are considering it too. Not sure how I feel about it. As a meat-eating leather-wearing bacon-of-the-month-club member, not sure I can be all that critical of people into oversized duck livers. Shit, I even eat at KFC sometimes and I heard those chickens don't have heads, just gigantic genetically modified breasts. Guess I feel like even if it is terrible thing it shouldn't be illegal. Have to admit I'm a little curious of how it tastes now...

Thoughts After a Dentist Appointment

1. I know I'm probably the 5 million and oneth person to notice this, but what are they thinking when they ask questions while scraping your gums? It really does put you in a strange position where you either ignore them or make them stop their work so you can answer. I've found asking long open-ended questions helps. "So, how was growing up in Medford..."

2. Are there any male dental hygenists? Or any female dentists? My dental office reminds me of a harem. Young women all hovering around the main dentist who they all seem to mildly worship.

3. Avoid the cinnamon flouride. Sounds tasty, but it burns...

What's Up With The Sideways Smiley Faces?

I'm not sure when this trend began, but now it seems like everyone and their grandmother is all into combining the colon parentheses symbol into the :). Previous to this blog, I've relented. But as evidenced by my love of the multiple exclamation point (!!!) and even the occasional shocked question (!?!), I am certainly no grammar purist. And I did get a message from someone in which the :) was genuinely helpful. It was before I knew its meaning, and my first reaction was that the person was being kind of an asshole. But after decoding the :) I realized they were joking. Maybe we need more symbols like this to make e-mail conversations less prone to misunderstandings.

Or maybe not. I guess they are one step better than those actual yellow smiley faces that were in vogue pretty recently, but aren't they just as overly cutesy in the end? They also remind me a bit too much of the middle school jk. Yeah, I just can't do it. I'm going on record as being anti-:). Or a :( if you will.

Music Issue #4

Music Issue #1
Music Issue #2
Music Issue #3

Ben Kweller "Sha Sha": A
Discovered this guy kind of randomly and I keep on putting him on . Nothing groundbreaking, just solid solid good. Kind of like a post-replacements Paul Westerburg. Here's a video of a song whose chorus cracks me up. I do wonder if he's one of those artists who you suddenly stop liking, since his songs are a bit TV Theme songesque and littered with "Shas and Bops." But as of now his is my definite album du jour.

Hazmat Modine "Bahamut": B+
Like and keep listening to more and more. He's listed under world on iTunes, which might be the only classification I wouldn't put him under. Imagine Tom Waits singing blues songs with a touch of Eastern Europe. Indie Rock lovers of 80's redux though beware, it really is fairly bluesy. Here' s them performing Bahamut on a Russian TV show.

M. Ward "Post-War": A-
Hmmm. I should probably stop trying to find a classification for these albums. M. Ward... Vic Chestnut on steroids? All right, I give up. But definitely give this album a try. Very interesting. Here's a live performance of Right in the Head, although I think it sounds much better produced, so you might just want to check it out on iTunes or steal it from SoulSeek.

Random News Items

1. Although most scientists are predicting temperatures to rise 2 to 3 degrees over the next century, some are fearing it could be as high as 5 degrees- which is the same difference as today to the ice age.

2. Elephants have joined the being able to see yourself in the mirror club (along with humans, dolphins, gorillas, and chimpanzees)!!! You go girl!

3. A Bulgarian soccer team ordered a volatile 19-year-old player to get married, believing that would force him to settle down

Gay Pages

On the cusp of the mid-terms and a hopeful Demotrounce, I was thinking about how my vote for MVP still goes to Mr. Mark Foley (who better still have a bigger impact than Foot-In-The-Mouth Kerry). And it reminded me of an article I read a few weeks ago about how Foley was not the first Congressmen interested in pages. I don't have the specifics, but the general story was that in the 80's two other Congressmen got in trouble for relationships with male pages. The first guy tearfully came out of the closet and begged forgiveness. The second (I believe from Illinois) more or less said it was his private life and since the age of consent in DC was 16 he wasn't breaking any laws. What happened to the second guy you ask? Reelected 4 more terms.

I don't know about you all, but this really surprised me. I think of gay rights as the Civil Rights campaign of our age and I feel like we have come very far since my childhood in the 80's. Does this show that we haven't? Or is it more that it was so in the closet that people were okay with him being gay as long as he continued to not talk about it? Or perhaps it was just that the second guy stuck up for himself. Not sure... But I can't deny that I'm not a little bit thrilled that this is doing so much damage to the party of conservative values. Gay pages rock!!!