Just When The World Is Looking Really Bleak...
Mood:  crushed out
Now Playing: Paul Westerberg - Folker
Topic: Miscellaneous

A story like this comes along.

Something so sweet and appealing that - at least for a little while - it makes you believe that our species might not be doomed to eradicate itself after all. Regardless of how it all works in the end, though, today I'm happy for those crazy kids Pem Dorjee and Moni Mulepati. They stood up to all the forces arrayed against them, from the gods who control the generally inhospitable weather at the top of Mt. Everest to the ethnic hatreds they have to contend with at lower altitudes, and joyfully flipped them all the bird. Thanks for making me smile, Pem and Moni.

Tolerance
Mood:  irritated
Now Playing: The Kowalskis - All Hopped Up On Goofballs
Topic: Politics
There's currently a huge furor over a sensitivity training video made by the San Francisco 49ers football team. This video was made for internal use and was not meant for public distribution, but of course that means nothing these days, when several gigs worth of data can be easily carried in a shirt pocket.

OK, this video was obviously intended to be humorous, using a "what NOT to do" approach. It is raunchy and insensitive, but the intended audience was pro football players - NOT choir boys. The thing is, when you make it your cultural prime directive that NO insensitity will be allowed anywhere in any shape or form, you basically eliminate humor from the culture. Humor thrives on insensitivity and political incorrectness, it withers and dies without it.

As a society, we have gotten ourselves into this position where zealots on the right AND the left are running the show. I firmly believe that the only reason the right is much more visible right now is that they have more political power. When the pendulum swings back the other way, the left will become increasingly bolder in attempting to enforce their idea of political correctness on the rest of us.

Somehow, the great majority of us in the middle have to find a way to put ALL the zealots back in their place and say "hell no" to the suffocating censorship they so dearly love to enforce.

Out Of The Frying Pan?
Mood:  spacey
Topic: Music
Having just recently survived a trip to California, it looks like I'll be heading back that way in a couple of weeks. In case anyone stopping by here is unaware, I'm a huge fan of a band called The Eyeliners. They're in the midst of a national tour with a legendary punk band I'm also very fond of - Social Distortion. I've never seen Social D play live, so I was thrilled when I heard about this tour. Only problem was, there weren't any southern dates scheduled that would be within driving distance for me. So, based on a variety of practical considerations, I ended up deciding to go the June 11 show in Bakersfield. It's a fairly long drive from LAX to Bakersfield, but this is a weekend show so I hopefully won't have too much trouble navigating my way through the California traffic.

Assuming I actually make it to the show in time and in one piece, it should be a spectacular night.

Sometimes You Get What You Need
Mood:  flirty
Now Playing: The Eyeliners - The First Four Years
Topic: Music
OK, I'm sure untold millions have been waiting patiently to hear this story, so here goes...

I made a quick trip to Los Angeles last week (Tuesday and Wednesday) to see an Australian band I've raved about here before - The Spazzys.

When I got out there I found the motel without too much trouble, rested for a while and got cleaned up, then set off for Sunset Blvd., majorly hyped to see The Spazzys. After negotiating the ubiquitous LA traffic, I get out there pretty early, and spend an hour or so walking around the neighborhood and browsing through Tower Records before I head over to The Viper Room a little before 8:00 (the advertised time for doors to open was 7:30). When I get to the club, I look through the door and see that The Spazzys are there, sitting in a booth in the back. Then some guy who works for the club comes over and says that the box office isn't open yet, and that the first band (Spazzys) wouldn't be going on until 9:30.

So I go walk around the neighborhood some more, and then go rest in the car for a while, before heading back over to the club around 9:00. When I get there, I notice Lucy (Spazzys bass player) standing outside talking to someone. I go over there, and within a few seconds I realize that they've already finished playing! I strongly suspect that the dude who told me to come back at 9:30 was intentionally being a prick - I probably didn't look like the sort of scenester that place likes to cater to. Naturally I wanted to strangle the asshole, but mostly I was sick about missing the show. However, Lucy immediately spied my Groovie Ghoulies t-shirt, which opened up an avenue of conversation and I ended up getting to meet Ally and Kat as well - Ally knew who I was immediately from my posting on their message board.

Another treat was that I also got to meet SB and spend some time talking to her - we've known each other online for a fairly long time from the Groovie Ghoulies message board. After a period of time, SB and her friend left and then Ally and Lucy went off to get cleaned up before going out later. Kat stayed behind, so I got to spend some time alone with her and we had a beer and listened to the headlining band for a few songs (an outfit called Ringside - they sucked).

It turned out that The Spazzys had scheduled a last-minute show at Spaceland the next (Wednesday) night, and I was sorely tempted to stay over another day to see it. However, I would have had to make a lot of extra arrangements and the flight change and other added costs would have been fairly expensive. Also, at that point I had already been off from work eight days straight from being sick combined with the trip - asking for another day off might not have gone over too well. Even though I had been bitterly disappointed, the trip definitely hadn't been a bust - The Spazzys had turned out to be as nice and gracious in person as I could have possibly hoped, and I also got to meet SB as well as another longtime online friend who lives in the area (later on after the show). I ended up deciding to call the trip a success and come on home as scheduled.

Wednesday morning I had a few hours to kill before getting back to the airport, so I drove over to Venice Beach and walked around for a while. A lot of interesting folks there, albeit interesting in a very "spectacle of humanity" kinda way. It was a lot of fun just walking around in the cool sunshine and seeing the natural beauty of the shore, though.

Sooo, that's my LA story. It definitely wasn't everything I wanted, but...

California Sun
Mood:  lyrical
Topic: Music
I made a quick trip to Los Angeles earlier this week, to see a band I'm nuts about and a friend who lives in LA. The excursion turned out to be both bitterly disappointing and thrilling at the same time. I don't have time to do a full recap right now, but I will try to provide most of the gory details later. For now I'll just say that although life can be very strange, that's not always a bad thing...

The Intangibility Of Humor
Mood:  not sure
Topic: Movies/TV
I usually strive to maintain a relatively positive atmosphere around here, but I'm sick and I look like a monster - humor me...

For the life of me, I have never been able to grasp how anyone could find Will Ferrell to be funny. An impartial observer watching me watch Mr. Ferrell in any of his numerous performances would have roughly the same experience watching a blind person sit through a performance by a troupe of mimes. I say only roughly the same experience, because there would most likely be considerable wincing on my part.

I just don't get it. Do people genuinely laugh at this guy's jokes, or do they pretend that he's funny out of some sort of general sympathy with his political views? Even when I don't personally like a comedian, I can usually understand what it is about him or her that folks find amusing. In this case, though, I'm entirely at a loss.

I see the horrifically lame TV commercials for this horrifically lame new movie (Kicking & Screaming) about a kid soccer team, and then I see "Ebert and Roever (sic) give two enthusiastic thumbs up!" What's next, an Oscar for Crossroads?

P.S. Recovery from my dread disease is moving forward, albeit slowly. Hopefully, discovering on IMDB that Mr. Ferrell is preparing to begin filming Joan of Bark: The Dog that Saved France won't send me into a relapse...

Not Pretty
Mood:  don't ask
Topic: Personal
What really hacks me off about this deal is that there apparently is an adult chicken pox vaccine. So I missed out on catching this lovely disease as a kid, and then missed out on getting the vaccine all through adulthood, only to catch it via my dad's case of shingles at this late date.

I guess the moral to that story is you shouldn't rely on doctors to give you what you need. If I had been proactive and asked for the vaccine years ago, I wouldn't be currently looking like something from a horror movie. This really sucks...

Too Late
Mood:  sad
Topic: Personal
Crap - missed out on my one-post-a-day pledge by one frickin' minute! But I do have a pretty good excuse, and besides, it's not Sunday yet on the west coast...

Scratching The Itch
Mood:  irritated
Topic: Personal
Well, to most likely offer TMI, what I had thought was just a minor bug has turned out to be adult chicken pox. It seems I somehow contracted shingles as a child but missed out on chicken pox, leading to my current predicament. In the past couple of weeks both my dad and a co-worker have had cases of shingles, which derives from the chicken pox virus. It would appear I contracted this lovely disease from one or both of them.

The good news is that there's an anti-viral drug that will help, and I'm told the thing should run its course within a week or so. The bad thing is that while there was very little itching initially, there's plenty now. I'm using hydrocortisone, but I have a feeling the next couple of days will be rather uncomfortable.

Now where'd I put that tequila???

Green Day
Mood:  smelly
Now Playing: The Spazzys - Aloha! Go Bananas
Topic: Music
Feel like crap today - spent most of my time in bed thus far. However, I just found out the good news that Green Day will be playing in OKC on August 17th! I've never seen them live and I had been kinda bummed to have missed out on the first leg of the American Idiot tour, so it's really cool to find out that they'll be coming to my town. Green Day is a band that has definitely had its ups and downs, but one of the things I admire most in a band or an individual is sticking with it and staying true to what you believe in when you're NOT on top of the world.

Green Day has definitely had some lean years, both creatively and commercially, but that just makes American Idiot's artistic and commercial triumph all the sweeter. Even when they were making music that wasn't particularly exciting, I always respected them and believed that it was possible for them to thrill us once again. It's really nice when a band rewards one's faith in the way that Green Day has done with American Idiot...