My Addled Brain

Happy birthday (belated on these pages) to Teh One, who turned 17 Saturday.

Wait, that can’t be right. That means…uh…oh, sorry. She’s 27. Not 17. Definitely not 17. Nope, no way.

Celebrations were had here and there, and my gift to her was the gift of people dressed up as homeless felines belting out broadway tunes. It’s not that I didn’t enjoy the show, it’s just not really my “thing”, if a “thing” can be an intangible concept, which I always believed was the exact opposite of a “thing”. Anyway, I did learn a few things Saturday night, among them:

• Cats have three names. A boring name, an f’ed up name, and a name no one else can know. I assume this is because if you knew it, the cat would be forced to do as you say. Or perhaps it’s just embaressed by it.
• “Jellicle” is an adjective, desribing a person or animal that has not been spayed or neutered. Here, I’ll use it in a sentence for you: “Mr. Barker ended another episode of the Price is Right with ‘This is Bob Barker saying, have your pet de-jelliclized.’”
• “Deuterotomy” sounds like an unfortunate medical procedure. Attaching “Old” to it makes it sound like it happens all the time. Example: “I took Growltiger in to the vet for the ol’ deuterotomy, and now he’s de-jellicilzed.”
• If your cat gets cat-napped (punny!), don’t bother with the police or a private detective. Just call Doug Henning.
• Once again, it is proven that anything can be made better with the careful addition of pirates to the narrative.
• Even if your show is devoid of the most basic of interesting plots, throwing in a despondent chick with a set of pipes can liven up any situation. During the reprise of “Memory”, I was surprised the balcony didn’t collapse.

If any of you have gifts to lavish upon her, feel free to instead make a donation to the Addled Brain Charitable Organization in her name. Your contributions will go directly to a worthy cause, namely expensive electronics for my house. Hey, those were some expensive tickets! I gotta get something for my generosity.

You know, it’s not like I care one way or another about the Royal Family. For example, the whole “Lady Di” thing was pretty much lost on me. Yeah, she did some charity work, and it’s sad she died in the manner she did. But I apparently missed the part where she was the female messiah - at least, from the way her death was mourned worldwide, you’d think this was the case. I don’t have issues with them per-se, mind you. If they want to go cheat on their spouses or become spokespeople for a chain of malls, so be it. Just don’t expect me to go all ga-ga over it.

However, if England wants to drop hard-earned tax dollars to pay for their very own real-life (if poorly scripted) soap opera, who’s to say they’re wrong? My ambivalence about them notwithstanding, a lot of people seem to have interest in people who’s primary virtues seem to be polo and the right to wear some spectacularly horrid jewelry. Still, this quote about them just leapt out at me for some reason:

“We believe this represents a value-for-money monarchy,” said Alan Reid, the “Keeper of the Privy Purse” who looks after the queen’s finances.

“We’re not looking to provide the cheapest monarchy. We’re looking at one of good value and good quality,” he added.

CNN.com, on the Royal Family costing each Briton about $1 US per person

Well, at least they’re a good value. They’re MUCH better than the Royal Family they’re selling at Macy’s, and not nearly as trashy as the Wal-Mart one.

Batman Begins

Even better than
the one where diplomats get
all dehydrated.

No camp, no low riders in neon lights, no moody goth city. Gotham lives and breathes in this film, and you could swear to it’s existence by the end of the movie. It also explains where he gets “all those wonderful toys”, as well as where he learned be who he is. But most important to all of this is the direction. Burton made Batman and his world bigger than life; Nolan drags him into the real world and makes him plausible, an altogether more superhuman feat than Bats himself.

If most of my family wasn’t a bunch of heathens, I would probably feel worse about posting this than I do. But I don’t, so much laffs can commence.

I popped into that damn store again, because the demon god Beelzebub demands I purchase more of that soul-destroying rock music. Oh Beelzebub, I heard your cries, and I gladly complied. A few selections later, and I had pretty much tapped out my allowance for the week. But I’m not one to let something like fiscal responsibility get in the way of communing with the devil, so I puttered around for a few minutes to see if there was anything else I could find to more firmly implant my soul in the everlasting fires. A quick perusal of the endcap displays was in order. There was the usual display of brand-spanking-new music that I had no interest in, like that Top 40 nonsense that I believe now comes from a machine that randomly creates synthesized melodies. There was the emo-alt-rock selection, complete with two pasty brooding teens ogling the new Hawthorne Heights album, apparently forgetting that it’s not hip within that crowd to be seen actually buying albums with money. There was the standard “new” country rack - I call it “new” because most real country music died in the 80’s, and got replaced by easy listening songs played with an extra guitar - if you’re lucky, that guitar is steel. Of course, if you were really lucky, you probably wouldn’t be listening to it in the first place. There was a rack devoted entirely to some bizarre collection of jazz music, as remixed by techno DJs. I found myself intensely curious about this concept, but not enough to actually pay money for it.

Further research would prove this was wise. Imagine Billie Holiday singing “Fever” to something that sounds like it came from Fatboy Slim’s reject album. Standard electronic beats blare as “Fever fever fever fever” echoes in the background. One can only hope the ghost of Billie Holiday has figured out how to kill the living, because whoever pulled of that remix deserves retribution from the grave.

Finally, I came to that other staple of the Beast Buy endcap, the music publisher’s catalog compliation collection. This time, it’s Arista/BMG’s Platinum & Gold Collection. Quite the collection too, with plenty of your classic favorites - Waylon Jennings, Dionne Warwick, Tony Orlando and Dawn (a Sticks of Fire favorite, as I understand it), Air Supply (doing well these days - I mean, they were on TV and everything last month!), as well as fan-favorite Ace of Base. With a catalog like that, I don’t blame BMG for exploiting it for every last dime they can, not one bit.

As for the albums I ended up buying?

• I’ve heard American IV - The Man Comes Around before - my superior at my previous employer loaned me the CD, and I ended up hanging onto it for about a month. If a CD could show wear and tear from a laser, I guarantee that thing would look like ten miles of bad road by the time I was done with it. “Hurt” and “The Man Comes Around” prove that they didn’t just call him “The Man in Black” because of his fashion sense.
• Coldplay’s X & Y is a great album. It breaks no new ground. It doesn’t revolutionize a genre. It doesn’t make them this generation’s U2 - at least, not yet. But it’s a blast to listen to, and some of the melodies bore into your brain and stay there for days on end - “Talk” and “Hardest Part” have been doing this for the better part of a week now, duking it out over the right to be hummed by me at inappropriate moments during my workday.
• Foo Fighters’ In Your Honor has exceeded my expectations. Two, two, TWO discs in one: one hard rockin’, one mellow (but still rockin’) - pick the one that fits your mood and go with it. Highlights include “No Way Back” (the intro almost got me jumping up and down in my seat the first time I heard it) and “Virginia Moon” (Norah Jones!)

The latter two discs came with “free” music downloads, for exclusive, “never before released songs” you can only get by purchasing the album. And having either Windows 2000 or XP. And downloading Napster. While I qualify for the first two, I refuse to install a program on my PC just for two songs - not unless they toss in some pr0n as well, mind you. So, these two treasures will have to remain undiscovered by me, despite the profound a sense of grief the decision brings.

I said it would be occasional. The occasion, apparently, is not as occasional as some had hoped, I guess. Well, after this, maybe you’ll hope they’re a little more occasional.

The honest truth is, DK was an absolute beast in the sack. I’d run off with him for the evening, and we’d make mad, passionate love wherever we could find a place we thought we might not be discovered. The first couple of times, we got a hotel room. While I enjoyed every minute of those visits, they utterly paled in comparison to the first time we tried a construction site. The raw steel and wood, the smells of the site, not to mention how easy it could have been for strangers to see us in the act, just added to the thrill for both of us. So I suppose it shouldn’t have been a surprise when my boyfriend found us at the top of a five-story girder framework one afternoon just before DK and I really got into it. For some reason, Victorian era dress style really turned him on, so I had purchased a pink gown, complete with the frilly full hoop skirt. Next thing I know, I hear from the bottom “It’s me, Mario! And I’ma gonna kicka you ass, you two-a-timing wench! Ha haha!” I looked down, and even from five stories I could see his dead-eyed look. He was holding a sledgehammer. Well, I shouldn’t say holding, he was swinging it like a madman, tearing up anything in his path as he worked his way, slowly, up to us.

- From “Of Bananas and Barrels”, by Princess Peach

Mrs. Robinson died yesterday of cancer. A damn fine actress, a beautful woman, and yet another example of the Billy Joel/Christy Brinkley syndrome at work - her husband is Mel Brooks. I’m sure most of you have not seen The Graduate, because how relevant can a movie made in the late 60’s be?

Wrong, bunky! Dustin Hoffman is the prototypical slacker, long before being a slacker was ever a term, much less a lifestyle. See the movie, the monkey commands you!

I hardly ever watch television. There are various reasons for this, and none of them have to do with my feeling superior to those who do. I mean, I know I am superior to them, but that doesn’t mean I need to toot my own horn or whatever. At any rate, this means that when I do discover television worth watching, I’m usually way behind the curve.

For this reason, I am honestly pleased about the advent of two recent developments in the world of entertainment commerce:

• Blockbuster Online
• TV shows going to DVD

These two simple creations have introduced me to a new surprise joy - Arrested Development. Holy crap, that show deserves a lot more love than it gets. It even makes Teh One laugh, and she’s the same person who thought Team America wasn’t funny. (Notice to new readers (which there sure seem to be a lot of now): the previous statement could be considered ironic. You may not be warned of the use of irony, nor it’s lingusitic cousins sarcasm and smarty-pantsness, in the future.) Sometimes subtle, sometimes beating you over the head with laffs, the entire cast, from the hard-liner son Michael Bluth, to his two brothers George (a womanizing magician with a penchant for Segways) and Buster (a neurotic train wreck), his sister (who supports multiple causes for nothing more than the social aspect) and her husband (David Freaking Cross, people!), his parents, and the kids, it’s well written, extremely clever, and everyone is great, including Bateman. Hell, especially Bateman. Oh, did I mention it has David Freaking Cross?

I highly recommend carving out a few evenings and getting your hands on the first season’s dvd with all due speed. (I make no money from that link - get it from wherever you want. I only used Amazon because I’m lazy, and it took me 20 seconds to pull that link from their website.) You will thank you, and your children will thank you, as will Executive Producer Ron Howard, whom I hear is doing well in Hollywood these days, despite the child star stigma that seems to follow so many of our favorite young actors.

Damn, but you’re popular Tommy.

You’d think, with all this cool new traffic I seem to be getting, I’d bother to post something either pertinent or entertaining.

I’ll see what I can do.