Kevin Wolf

Lance Mannion, who knows how to write, shares it with all of us here, and is well worth visting as often as you can (as I’ve said before) has tapped me in an ongoing blog meme. It’s my first time, I’m proud, and - aw, hell, let’s just dive in.

For those new to memes: Lance was asked to name four things (look here for his story) in various categories. He then went ahead and gracefully sent it along to me and three other lucky people who are trying to enjoy their holidays.

I kid, Lance. It looks like fun. And since I mentioned diving - well - here I go:

Four jobs they couldn’t pay you enough to do: Work at the White House; anything that would involve even remote contact with Katie Couric; spy; surgeon.

Four movies you used to love and watched over and over to the point that now you have them memorized and the prospect of watching them again causes your eyeballs to bleed: I can only think of one: Terms of Endearment. I love the movies I love and if there’s any I’ve sorta “dropped” along the way, I’m still willing to see them.

Alternatively, four movies you loved when you saw them in the theater but don’t dare watch again for fear they won’t hold up: None. Let them fail. I may see them again later and like them again. It’s happened before. Honestly, I take ‘em as they come whether I’ve never seen them or I’ve caught them 100 times. Can’t help it. A true movie democrat. (Who doesn’t see all that many in the theater first time, anyway.)

Four places in the United States you’ve always thanked God you don’t live even when you were living in Muncie, IN: Any place too cold and remote, like Alaska or North Dakota; “Tornado Alley”; Jeb Bush’s Florida; Schwarzenegger’s California.

Four places you would like to visit on an extended vacation: Dublin and as much of Ireland as I could also squeeze in, London, Paris, and any other region (maybe Australia) where I could stay long enough to soak up the local atmosphere and the local suds.

Four TV shows you are strangely tempted to watch but have so far resisted: The Weather Channel’s various disaster shows (hey, it’s someone else’s disaster); Battlestar Galactica; Spongebob Squarepants and certain other “hip” cartoons; and that’s all I can come up with. My choices re what I do or don’t watch tend to be either delibrate or thwarted by circumstance (like missing The Daily Show all the time). I need a DVR.

Four Websites that aren’t on your blogroll that you visit daily: Google News is the only thing that comes to mind, honestly.

Four foods you don’t really like and can’t understand why you eat them but you eat them anyway and feel bad about it afterwards: Ribbon candy, cotton candy, French onion soup, and Big Macs. (I only make that mistake every 5 years or so. I then take a shower and feel a little better.)

Four albums you never listen to anymore but can’t bring yourself to trade in at Tower Records: ELO’s A New World Record (sorry, Viscount); Wings Greatest; Queen - Jazz; Beck - Odelay.

Four places you’d rather be but sadly won’t be any time soon: Visiting my pal Brad in Detroit; Chumbly’s bar in the Village, NYC, assuming it’s still there; another NYC location: Rockefeller Center over Xmas (didn’t happen); visting family in Charlotte, NC (been on the list for years and I still haven’t done it).

Four people who are now tagged: Brad, you get the call! I don’t know another three with blogs that I feel comfortable tapping, but comments on any category are welcome.

Okay, so it’s clear I’m too contrary to be a good memer, or whatever the OED calls those of us who spread these memes. (And I even took a couple of days trying to think of four for each item.) Happy New Year to everybody, anyway, especially Lance.

I’m off for another weekend away. I’ll be back blogside next Monday.

Tags: General Blogging by KevinWolf
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Well, due to holiday travel I may not be able to blog out for the next few days. I will try to check in and at least post any new comments, or if circumstances and inspiration permit, maybe even a true holiday post. But it may be that nothing will happen until Monday.

Best wishes to everybody for happy holidays - whichever celebration you’re into.

Neddie, Bobby, Blue Girl, Viscount, Neil, Lance, etc. etc. You’re all such good people and good writers, if your blogs do not lie (and I think they do not or they wouldn’t be as good as they are). I wish you and your families some rest and respite in this sometimes crazy season…

(Those unfamilar with the cast of characters above are urged to consult my blogroll on the right side of this screen.)

Tags: General Blogging by KevinWolf
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I, for one, think 2005 was a banner year. Yeah, two aught aught fiver was so smacktacular I can barely fucking contain my joy, rapture and giggles. My oh my, how my heart sings when I review the past year and remind myself of these jewels of American history and world events:

George Fucking Bush is still president
Dick Cheney is still evil personified
Avian flu, human cases
Terri Schiavo
The tsunami
Hurricane Katrina and FEMA
Global warming and record hurricane season
Continuing war in Iraq, years after “mission accomplished”
2,150+ US troops dead in Iraq
“Intelligent” design
Bono - nuf sed
Terror bombings in London
Meet the new Pope, worse than the old Pope
Revelations of CIA torture, NSA domestic spying, etc
The “war on Christmas”
No more Rosa Parks, Richard Pryor, Frank Gorshin, Paul Winchell, Johnny Carson or Hunter S. Thompson

Guess I’m just a glass-half-empty-with-a-crack-in-it kinda guy. Or maybe it’s the fact Joe Strummer died three years ago today.

Let me just get all glass-half-full here and say the world’s a better place now than when Joe left it. Right? Isn’t it?

Tags: News of the Day by KevinWolf
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Was talking with a friend last night and found that in general we each had a bad year, or certainly a worse-as-it-went-along year. (His was worse than mine by a long shot, though.) “Fuck 2005!” we said (not really but almost).

I guess a lot of people are like us: Good year or bad? Anything good in the offing for next year or not? Have you made any New Year’s resolutions? And do you think Britney will finally put out an album of new stuff in 2006?

Taking stock like this is a natural thing and even though I don’t celebrate Christmas in any huge way (just seeing family) and though I am most often asleep by 10 p.m. New Year’s Eve I, too, use the approach of a new year as a time for reflection. At the very least, as I told my friend, it’s a mental trick that allows leaving the bad year behind and moving along to something different and hopefully better.

Hell, I’m eager to move on. I need to kiss ol’ 2005 goodbye. Aside from my progress in karate - the only thing keeping me sane, I think - I’ll glady shuffle along into 2006.

And my only resolution (a practice I don’t usually bother with) is to find more time to stretch in order to advance my karate. So, hey, I guess there is something to look forward to next year! Karate and Britney!

Tags: General Blogging by KevinWolf
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On my way into work this morning - an experience that lately has not inspired good thoughts - I was listening to The Instigator by Rhett Miller and something in one of the songs made me smile. (Can’t think what exactly. This album’s got a lot of good songs.) Then I got off the bus for the last leg in to work (a walk) and the sun, trying to show its face on this shortest of solar days, had turned the eastern sky into a Maxfield Parrish blue.

It’s another day and for once I didn’t feel so bad.

Tags: General Blogging by KevinWolf
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On Message: Bush often speaks before pre-screened crowds, with signs stressing his theme [of a totalitarian style of democracy that benefits the rich] photo: Khue Bui for Newsweek

I may as well start with Neil Shakespeare’s comment on my intention to read Newsweek’s story about Preznit Bush’s splendid isolation:

Bubble Boob. And he’s not really in a bubble at all. He’s just got his head stuck up his own ass.

Ah, yes. The truth shall set you free…

Anyway, I’ve read the article and as predicted it did not go far enough in discussing Bush’s apparently intrinsic problems. The authors, Evan Thomas and Richard Wolffe, even dismissed the compelling discussions of Bush’s behavior - such as his dry-drunk thinking - as “psychobabble.” Here’s an example of their snivelling inclination to take Bush on the terms he (and Rove, et al) have set since his first campaign:

Bush may be the most isolated president in modern history, at least since the late-stage Richard Nixon. It’s not that he is a socially awkward loner or a paranoid. He can charm and joke like the frat president he was. Still, beneath a hail-fellow manner, Bush has a defensive edge, a don’t-tread-on-me prickliness.

Now, if I were writing about Bush’s character, I’d say he’s an ex-frat boy who remains spolied by a lifetime of privilege and that his hail-fellow exterior is a mask hiding a deep disinterest in anything other than himself, God, power and money - and the social trappings that accrue to those with these attributes.

Thomas & Wolffe also predictably mention that “he has been mothered by strong women, including his mother and wife.” Did I call it or what?

But I guess I can be content with two things: (1) The article got published. Try imaging that happening three years ago. It’s too careful to change anybody’s mind but it may open things up a bit as to presidential topics. Journalists in other quarters may be emboldened. (Got knows they all need to find their nuts and begin reporting on the insanity rampant in American life, spearheaded by Fearless Leader.)

(2) You can read between the lines of the article’s walking-on-eggshells style and come away with a very scary picture of a sick White House. There are almost no attributions on the record and those willing to speak did so anonymously

for fear of antagonizing the president
for fear of giving offense
[because they] did not want to be identified discussing private meetings
for fear of offending the White House
[because officials] did not want to be indentified discussing high-level meetings
[because they] did not want to be identified criticizing the president.

Here and there are scattered sentences that suggest what the article might have been yet miserably failed to be (even allowing for the authors’ sometimes breathless buying in to the ridiculous media contruct that is “President Bush”). For example:

Often, Bush’s joking is personal - it is aimed at you. The teasing can be flattering (the president gave me a nickname!), but it is intended, however so subtly, to put the listener on the defensive. It is a towel-snap that invites a retort. How many people dare to snap back at a president? [I wish he’d sling a nickname at me so everybody could find that out.]

Newsweek’s article briefly mentions the many disturbing aspects of Bush’s lack of character (there’s a distrust of anybody but yes men, recent gestures toward critics are only show, Bush “is not intellectually curious”) only to just as quickly dismiss them, with no proof:

Bush has said he does not read the newspapers (actually, he does).

I for one don’t believe he gives more than a cursory glance to any medium. It’s a wonder Thomas & Wolffe are so easy on Bush: He’s not very likely to read their article. (An aide can give him a synopsis. Not as taxing mentally, don’t you know.) Perhaps they did not want to be identified criticizing the president.

Tags: News of the Day by KevinWolf
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Yahoo has released a list of the most popular searches conducted by the public using their service. For the third time in four years, the top search is for Britney Spears. As ABC News/AP reports:

Although the 24-year-old pop star released an album of remixes, B in the Mix, The Remixes, in November, it was the birth of her son, Sean Preston Federline, on Sept. 14 that brought her the most attention, Yahoo said Thursday.

Following Spears were, in order, 50 Cent, the Cartoon Network, Mariah Carey, Green Day, Jessica Simpson, Paris Hilton, Eminem, Ciara and Lindsay Lohan.

The list of overall top searches, all of which were entertainment related, “shows us that people are fixated on the activities of pop culture icons,” Yahoo “Buzz Index guru” Erik Gunther said in a statement.

Now, here’s what ol’ fuddy-duddy me does not understand: Why in god’s name would you have to search for information about Britney Spears or any of these other hugely popular non-entities when you can’t fucking escape them and get a moment’s peace?

I tend to ignore Big Media; I actively avoid “entertainment news” about talentless celebs. Yet, without even trying, I know the name of Britney’s husband and that she pushed out a kid this year. I couldn’t possibly care less, yet this useless information gonna clutter my imagination.

I also beg to differ with the “guru” (bad job title, son) who thinks these tossers are pop “icons.” Elvis and the Beatles, Ali and JFK - those are fuckin’ icons, my boy. The Three Stooges, man. Like that. Not idiots who are three minutes and a coke bust or weapons charge away from “where are they now?” status.

One thing, though: I do find it kinda cool so many people are searching for Cartoon Network (home of Sealab 2021 as seen above). Gives me pop culture hope.

Tags: Culture by KevinWolf
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The stuff I’m thinkin’ about these days:

Work

Nuf sed.

Richard Pryor

Dick Gregory called him the only genius comedy produced. If he’s talking stand up only, I agree. He was funny and true. Something more rare everyday, it seems. Comedy Central had a list of the best-ever comics a while ago, and though I usually find these lists just plain stupid, this one was generally cool. #1: Pryor and #2: George Carlin. Can’t argue with that.

Buying a Condo

Okay, so I put in a bid on a place. First time buyer. As if I didn’t have enough stress in my life. But it feels like the right move, for the first time ever. Probably a wealth of blogging to be had as well…

Listening List & Thoughts

Some Xmas stuff, mostly from my childhood. Nat King Cole, natch. Did you know he recorded “All I Want For Christmas Is My Two Front Teeth”?

The only preaching I’ll sit still for is from singers. Doesn’t even matter if what they’re on about is not religion. It’s still testifying. Aretha, ‘course, and George Jones. Maybe they could get me to church…

And bands you just don’t question because they’re too good, certainly live. You just listen. You tell your friends. If someone says they don’t like what they hear, they ain’t really your friend: Los Lobos, NRBQ, Barrence Whitfield/& the Savages/The Mercy Brothers (whose Strange Adventure is my favorite album of the past two years, if my iPod stats do not lie). Anything with Barrence is worth a listen.

XTC: The Big Express - just seemed to hit the spot especially lately. Not that excuses are necessary for turning up the XTC.

Allman Brothers Band: Hittin’ the Note - The Viscount and I agree that Gregg Allman has always been a helluva singer and still sounds great.

Bobby Hackett & Jack Teagarden: Coast Concert - Trad jazz of the best sort. Jeez, Hackett’s tone is so clear and beautiful. And any chance to hear Big T sing and play “St James Infirmary” must be taken. Like watching Fred Astaire dance. Pay attention, children. Take notes.

Newsweek Magazine

I just bought the latest issue (I don’t even follow mainstream coverage of things usually) simply because of the “Bubble Boy” image of George F. Bush on the cover. I’d also heard some chatter in the blogs and thought I’d check it out. I’m sure it won’t go far enough in painting a picture of Bush’s dangerously solitary world, in which he is coddled by the “strong women” in his life - as the story usually goes - and can thereby indulge his fantasies of being the President of the US, having a brain, etc. We’ll see. The cover alone feels like some kind of breakthrough, though. And another sign of a very ugly three years to come.

The Dead

Should never be far from our minds. Not just Pryor and Rosa Parks and other well known and sometimes truly important people. Sometimes just average Joes. GI Joes - and Janes. 2,147 confirmed dead as of yesterday in Iraq. Bush’s Christmas present to a couple thousand families.

Tags: General Blogging by KevinWolf
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Just an FYI to the folks who care: I managed this past week to earn my green belt in karate.

Don’t feel too proud of me, though. If I’ve learned anything at all in the past year it’s how much I have yet to learn.

BTW: What should I take to the dojo party on Saturday? I’ve been so preoccupied lately that I’ve given it almost no thought. And I’m not exactly a chef, though I can follow directions. Maybe I’ll just bring gallons of alcohol…

Tags: karate-do by KevinWolf
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From a Macy’s ad in the paper today:

Just use your savings pass or your Macy’s Card for extra savings on the spot!

Best of all, there are ALMOST NO EXCLUSIONS*

*Excludes specials. Other exclusions apply; see savings pass.

Tags: News of the Day by KevinWolf
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