I am thankful for prophets -- 341

I haven’t been sure whether to just go over all of the dark stuff sequentially, and get it over with, or whether to break it up with other things. I guess this is a combination, as it is something else, but still a bit heavy. I just feel that I want to write something about President Hinckley passing.

To back up a little bit, the first president I remember is Spencer W. Kimball, and I could not have necessarily told you a lot about his teachings, but I remember feeling a strong love for him. I was born in 1972 and he became the president in 1974, so there wasn’t really much chance of me remembering Harold B. Lee or Joseph Fielding Smith.

I should also note that my parents joined the Church after they were married, and even before Dad stopped going we were never that orthodox. General and stake conferences were days off for us. I can’t recall ever watching General Conference until I was already out of high school, and I don’t think I knew there were Christmas broadcasts and Saturday night sessions of stake conference until I was out in the mission field.

My point to this is that although I am sure there were lots of people who were confident that Ezra Taft Benson would be the next prophet when President Kimball died, I had no idea. Plus, I was so attached to him that it was really kind of sad, but I remember lying in bed thinking about it and the words of “We Thank Thee O God for a Prophet” came to mind, and it was reasonable, because we would have one, and everything would be fine, and it was.

At this point it was 1985, and I was in junior high, and maybe the youth leaders did not work the same magic as the primary teachers, or youth are less susceptible to magic, but I did not really think about President Benson much. Once I graduated from high school and started going to the newly restarted singles ward it was helpful, because then I did start attending conference, but even after getting my mission call my first real memory of President Benson was at the Missionary Training Center where I saw some video footage of him and was struck by the love in his eyes. What I remember about President Kimball is that I loved him, and what I remember about President Benson is that he loved me.

The problem is, by the time I really started paying attention to things, he was already pretty sick, and I didn’t really get to hear him speak, though I read older talks. At some point I learned the traditional ways of succession, and that President Hunter was next in line, and that he was also not in very good health. My speculation was that President Hunter would die first, so that the next President would be healthy, but then in the April 1994 conference he spoke, and he was powerful, and the next month President Benson died. I thought, shows what I know—he could go on for years. And then in nine months he died, again proving that I know nothing.

I had always like President Hinckley as I started becoming aware of him, and indeed he was eminently likable. I remember being curious what his theme would be, as it had so clearly been temple worthiness with President Hunter. At the time, all he said was “Carry on.” It was simple enough, and yet he was remarkably energizing. Suddenly he was traveling everywhere, which was a big change from the last few years. Instead of being out at Conference due to ill health, he would speak in four of the five sessions. It was amazing.

My strongest memory is from 1997, when I learned that you could read conference talks online, and I brought up Priesthood session, which is the one I had not listened to, and I read his announcement of the smaller temples. This flash of spirit came over me. I don’t know how else to describe it—it was too fast to really register any details, but I was so moved and knew it was what was right and what was needed and what would work. It was so beautiful that it could happen.

Two other things stick out for me. One was the announcement of the Perpetual Education Fund—again something so inspired, and so helpful at providing greater equality of opportunity to members all over the world despite economic and cultural disparities.

Also, I remember when he was talking about the effects of Hurricane Mitch in the Honduras, and about a little girl whose father had died saving her from the flooding:

“I would hope that at this Christmas season, when there will be no gift-giving among these devastated people, this small orphan girl might receive perhaps a little taste of candy, something sweet and delicious,” President Hinckley said. “I must see that that happens. Perhaps just a little will be present enough for that tiny child in La Lima, Honduras.”

I just felt his love very strongly then. Surely there were other times—he was never less than loving, but these will be my main memories. Based on that, how could I not miss him?

At the same time, I have been feeling a little guilty for the past few conferences that I was wanting him to stay while he was getting older and more tired. Really, I have only felt guilty since his wife died, but that was a hard thing for him and now they are together again. Amazing growth happened during his tenure, but amazing growth happened when it was President Kimball as well, and just as I believe that President Hunter’s call to temple worthiness paved the way for the smaller temples, I believe that President Lee’s focus on correlation was important in allowing members to lengthen their stride when asked to do so by President Kimball.

I don’t know what lies ahead. Most likely President Monson will serve, and how long he will have and what challenges and blessings will come is still to be seen, but it is a good journey and I will stay around for it. I thank Thee, O God, not just for one prophet, but for all of the prophets, ancient and modern, and the connection they create to Thee.

Sporky Pig

If the title has not tipped you off, my greatest shame is that I am fat. Clearly this one is not a secret, because if you have met me, chances are good that you have noticed it. There is not really a way to hide it. At the same time, it is amazing how reluctant I have been to talk about it, or think about it, or even weigh myself. I didn’t want to know.

Sadly, that is a big part of how I got here in the first place. There is a story here, but I think I am going to backtrack a little. I have referred to the therapeutic writing that I did, and the idea for that pretty much came from my own head—I have not had an actual therapist guiding me. However, I did have two emotional processing sessions once, and they have had an influence.

I may not be using the correct terms for it. I used the term emotional processing once while talking to a friend to describe me trying to sort out my thoughts and feelings about some things (see, I do a lot of that). She was surprised at the term because it was used for the type of therapy one of her friends practiced. Basically she would use kinesiology to find ages and emotions that needed to be explored. We covered three, but the big one was from when I was fourteen.

We will cover that incident later, but what was interesting to me was that I had a very clear memory of it, and I had noticed how clear the memory was before, but without assigning it any special importance. I thought it was just a dumb thing that happened that I had a clear memory of. Anyway, after discussing it, and seeing that it was in fact pretty significant, I started going back to some of my other sharp memories.

The memory that applies here comes from when I was six. I was on the playground at school, and I was just sitting on this concrete thing by myself and thinking. I could go into my own little world pretty easily back then. A pack of girls in my class came over, led by Suzy A., who was their leader. She started criticizing how fat I was. I remember looking at her, and seeing that my thigh was twice the size of hers and being mortified, even though externally I was ignoring them.

From then on, I always knew I was fat. I hated it, and I tried not to think about it, but it was always there. There were two problems with this. For one thing, I was never thinking in terms of getting fatter, it was always just staying fat. However, there are different degrees of fat, and it would have been good to have paid attention and stopped at some point.

The other problem is that it simply wasn’t true then. I was bigger than Suzy, but she was really under-grown. Some kids tend to be more spindly, and some are more solid, and I was always getting my growth spurts in ahead of time. I was also always one of the taller kids until junior high, when the rest of the kids caught up. Now when I look at pictures from back then, I seem pretty healthy. I didn’t stay that way though, and I didn’t really even know that anything was happening until it had happened.

I think it is a big part of why I am so passionate about honesty and clear-mindedness now. Perhaps you can’t blame a six-year old for being emotionally vulnerable and easily devastated, but surely I should have been able to figure it out sooner. However my coping strategy was always the suppression route. Don’t talk about it, don’t think about, and don’t let it be real. At thirty-six, I now realize that ignorance and avoidance don’t actually change reality, and are not productive in general. I know, give me a gold star.

So that was how I saw myself, and it hurt, and what hurt more was that I believed that was how everyone saw me, or that it would override anything else that they saw. People can make a lot of assumptions about the obese. It’s like you are wearing a poster board saying gluttonous and lazy. Except, I’m not lazy. I work hard, and at times I have even been exercising regularly, which did give me better energy but never made me small. Gluttonous? Not as often as you might think. It’s always been more complex than that.

I was thinking about that a few months ago. I was at a church meeting and the talk was about reaching out to others with their struggles, and I was thinking about how I am pretty functional, regardless of what I have going on (perhaps that was prideful of me), and then I had this flash, “Sure, and it only took you two hundred extra pounds.”

Ouch, but I am beyond that now, right? I have friends that I talk to and I write out things that bother me, or talk about them, and I am not lugging around the same loads of emotional baggage anymore. I have thirty years worth of bad habits, so I am not expecting anything to be easy, but I should be capable now. I’m at least going to find out.

There will be obstacles. I have been an emotional eater, and so there is the possibility of falling prey to that again if you give me a bad enough day. There are also medical issues that will make things harder. In addition to a genetic predisposition to obesity, forty of my current pounds happened after a bad reaction to some medicine, and since I am on insulin, that encourages weight gain as well. I also have a sedentary job, I live in the suburbs where you go by car everywhere because things aren’t close enough for walking, and the corn lobby ensures that most processed foods contain high-fructose corn syrup. Add in all those things we all know, but still fall prey to, like bigger restaurant portions. So maybe really only eighty pounds is emotional, and forty is corn syrup and forty is family and so on. The causes only matter in that understanding them may help me to beat them.

I don’t really know what my ideal weight would be, or what dress size I would end up. Right now the focus is going to have to be more on trying to be healthier, and trying to take good care of myself, because I do often put my needs last, and that needs to stop.

In the past, in addition to the repression, which is kind of hiding things from your self, I have also tended to conceal most of what is on my mind. I wouldn’t tell people things that I wanted to do, because then if you fail they know, and it makes it worse, and you certainly wouldn’t tell anyone your weight because the horror of that must be contained at all costs.

Well, I am telling you that I want to lose weight, and my current weight is 344.5 pounds. It is in fact horrifying, especially when there men who are a foot taller than you and weigh less, but again, it’s not like concealing the number makes me look thinner.

There will be a lot more to write about this. This will not become a full-time weight loss blog anymore that it has been an all-music blog or an all-writing blog, but every subsequent entry will have a number by the title, and that will be that day’s report from the scale. Now I really need to make it move down.

Happy Birthday to Me!

I know I promised more shame, and that is coming, but I thought I should review my birthday happenings. For one thing, I have previously written about changing the month, so some of you may have been wondering about that.

I did not make any scheduling changes. This was not my primary reason, but I was advised that having it in May would make me a Taurus, and I was not stubborn enough. This particular friend (Karen) advised that she could buy me as an Aries, if I went with April, but my older sister already has April and it would not be fair to infringe. The funniest thing about that is my family will tell you that I am really stubborn, but I tend to only be stubborn for a cause, and apparently a Taurus will be irrationally stubborn over little things. I had not known this but (after hearing it) the next time someone was being really obstinate over something silly I asked if she was a Taurus, and she said yes. Perhaps there is something to this.

Actually, my primary reason for wanting to reschedule has been that I am always so busy in January that I don’t have time to plan anything good. Twice this has led to me having no plans, and my friend Tara has plotted with my younger sisters and thrown surprise parties, of which the one last year was also a karaoke ambush. Since I said that I would do karaoke for my birthday in May, and then didn’t, I cannot complain about this, but the song selection was terrible. I have a theory about karaoke, which is that vocal talent is a pale second to attitude, and you just need to own the song. I cannot own a song that sucks. So, the closest I could come at Silver Dollar last January was “There is a Light that Never Goes Out” by the Smiths, and it was a little blah. Fortunately, in April I got another chance in Huntington Beach, and I got “Just Like Heaven” by the Cure, and that worked much better. I also did a duet of “Oh Ricki” which is really hard. There aren’t many rests, and you feel like you need to do cheerleading moves, so it is pretty exhausting.

Despite the presence of karaoke, both of the surprise parties were a bunch of people at a restaurant where I thought dinner was happening one on one. There are things that are fun about this, and one of the highlights is seeing how much people care about you, even if it is a little disturbing how adept your loved ones are at deceiving you. The downside is that you really mostly end up visiting with the people you end up sitting near, and if the wrong seating combinations happen some people may not have a good time.

When I throw a party, I like to throw it in a house, and have lots of food and music and side activities and mingling. I have thrown two Mardi Gras parties, one luau, and a Saint Patrick’s Day party (the Great Irish Potato Feast) that were pretty awesome. I don’t throw these at my house though, because the layout is not right, and while the dogs are great for every day living they are not ideal in party situations. Also, it might be overly self-aggrandizing to throw that type of bash for one’s own birthday. I thought about it for 29, 30, and 31, but work was always so exhausting at that time of year that nothing happened, and it was always a little depressing.

The past few years I have taken vacations right around the time of my birthday (usually a couple of weeks later) and that has been great. However, with Australia coming up in the fall, I can’t do any other big vacations this year. (I hope to spend my next birthday in Playa del Carmen.)

This year I had kind of been thinking spa day, and some commercials for Dosha increased that impulse. The commercials specifically mentioned the new one in Bridgeport Village, but apparently they only do hair, so I ended up making an appointment for the Spa Retreat package at the Dosha on 23rd and Glisan. I was having a hard time deciding between the Retreat, the Sampler, and the Experience, but I think I made the right call.

Since I was going to be in the area, I thought I would also stop by Saint Cupcake, Everyday Music, and Powells, and maybe run by Lovejoy Studios, but the day did not go quite as planned. I found I was running late, and I really needed to eat something before going in, and I hadn’t. If I had been even fifteen minutes ahead, I would have eaten at Snow White House, purveyor of delicious crepes and friendly service. I did not have time, so I just jumped on the streetcar and figured I would find something near the spa. Then the driver announced that the car had a malfunctioning door, so in two stops we would have to all get off. The next stop was Hot Lips Pizza, so that is what I ate. The next car came before I finished, so I only had half a slice, but they are pretty big slices.

Looking at the clock there was no time to check out the studios—it was just get off at Marshall and walk straight to Glisan. On the way I saw that I could easily have eaten at many other places, but the important thing is that I was not late, and I did not pass out at any time.

I have to recommend Dosha highly. I don’t know about their other locations, but the service here was highly attentive and everyone was great. I’m not sure I was wearing enough black, but hey, it was Northwest Portland. It had been about two years since my last massage, so I was due. It was only fifteen months since my last manicure and pedicure, and this was my third massage, third pedicure, and third manicure total. Clearly I spoil myself. I had never had my hair styled before.

So getting to the spa had involved a few difficulties, but being there was great. Once leaving, things stared getting hard again. To protect the pedicure they give you these flip-flops, but they do not offer a lot of support, and it was really cold out. There had been snow. If I had thought ahead and brought my Tevas, I probably would have toughed out the cold, but I only made it a few blocks before I decided to just put my shoes back on. I had messed up the paint on one toe, which required retouching, and that one did end up getting messed up by my shoes. The other toes are fine, but it is not perfect. Fortunately, I will not be wearing any open toed shoes for a while.

I made it to Saint Cupcake’s and was quickly disappointed. They were better than the place in Ghirardelli Square in San Francisco, and the prices were much better, but not as fabulous as people have said.
It was getting later and darker and I would have gone straight to the bus, but I needed to go to the bathroom now, so I did go to Powells, but not EM. At Powells I also purchased the third Harry Potter book (forgive me, Henry) and Howards End. Then I hopped on Bus 20 to Beaverton Transit Center, where I intended to get dinner at Jin Wah, which I believe is my favorite restaurant. I liked eating there better when they were a diner, but the food is still good—it is just bigger and fancier.

I realized I was right by Catherine’s and the Avenue, and maybe I should at least look and see if I could find something new for the dance. I ended up getting a shirt and a skirt from Catherine’s. Then I went to dinner. I had my favorites, Cashew Chicken and Pot Stickers. Actually, my favorite Cashew Chicken was at the Chinese Kitchen, but they have been closed down for some time. I had thought about putting in a movie at home, but I got interested in the book, so focused on that.

The fun continued Friday when I took doughnuts into work. I went to Donut Day, because I believe in supporting local business, I think Krispy Kreme is an overrated marketing phenomenon, and that after the frying temperature cools off the grease turns to knives in your stomachs. They are nonetheless what people always bring in, even though they end up staying around for days and no one feels good about eating them. I was pleased to see that my doughnuts were all eaten quickly, and no one felt horrible afterwards. Score one for the little guy!

After work my friend Tara picked me up and took me out to dinner for my birthday and as a prelude to the dance—Portland’s first ever mid-singles dance. It was pretty fun. I can see that I am much older, because I get tired faster and am not as limber. Also, I have a harder time finding my groove, which I partly blame on the music and partly on my dance partners. I only cast that blame because I ended up recovering some old moves that were kind of cool on two separate occasions. Once was dancing with a guy, Mike, who is a really good dancer. I thought I had lost my ballroom ability when a cha cha with some one else was not working out, but Mike could lead and it made a huge difference. I think we were basically doing a West Coast Swing, but we were not thinking about the steps, and that was great. The other time was when they played “My Sharona”. That song just unleashes the rhythm in me. Anyway, it was a pretty good night.

And it was a pretty good birthday. Not all of my plans came to fruition, including the plan to take pictures of everything, like my cupcake and my painted nails (I feel like such a hussy), but I can live with it.

http://www.dosha.org/
http://www.powells.com/
http://www.lovejoystudios.com/
http://www.saintcupcake.com/
http://foodcartsportland.com/?p=38
http://portland.citysearch.com/profile/8416089/beaverton_or/jin_wah_restaurant.html
http://www.everydaymusic.com/
http://www.hotlipspizza.com/

Sporkful’s secret shame

Before I start, I should mention that for at least fifteen years of my life, my coping strategy with everything was pretty much repression. Now sometimes when I feel emotions about something, I am not always sure if they are proportionate. Is this really that terrible? Why am I crying? Anyway, with a couple of incidents that recently had me on the verge of tears, I believe the cause of the overreaction was my shame about not driving.

Did you know I don’t drive? I try not to make a big deal out of it, but it has been a big deal to me. There are invitations that I will decline strictly on the grounds of transportation being a problem.

I started out normally enough, in that I got my learners permit when I was fifteen (almost twenty-one years ago), and I took a driver’s education class, though I may have been sixteen then. Clearly I wasn’t rushing towards driving, because the main incident we are getting to happened right before my seventeenth birthday.

In class I drove on one-way streets in cities, and on highways and freeways, and even over that bridge with the weird surface in Portland. I was not terrible, but I was very nervous. It is just so easy to cause damage to another person or property, and there are a lot of things going on at once. Obviously after the class I would need practice before being ready to get my license.

My main problem was that I did not want to practice driving with my father. I was already nervous, and he yells and swears and berates and is not in any way a calming force. I realize driving instruction is stressful for any teacher, and it might be worse when your pupil is your child, but I could not stand the thought of getting in that car with him. Maybe it was a carryover of some of the tension that was already between us. It’s not like he didn’t want us to be afraid of him.

Anyway, I wanted to learn with Mom, at least at first, and initially he seemed to agree. Our first practice session did not really get anywhere because the Colt wouldn’t start. The symptoms were similar to vapor lock, but the conditions were wrong for that. So I had not really had any family practice yet, and then one Saturday when we were the only two people at home, Dad called me to get in the car.

He just wanted me to drive around the block, and he actually stood outside the car (probably not legal), and I wanted to cooperate. I did not want to be a problem child. But I hit a car.

The Driver’s Ed class car was an automatic (Toyota Corolla), and the Colt was a stick, so maybe that made things harder, but as I got to the top of the cul-de-sac I was having trouble turning enough and I could not clear this car that was parked on the street. I was moving at such slow speed that there was no damage to either vehicle, but I was still horrified, and I was getting out of that car. Dad was angry, and tried to force me to get in and keep driving. He came close to hitting me, but there were people gathered around (because I had just hit a car), and he restrained himself. The owner of the parked car could see that there was no damage, and he was being very nice, but that did not help my father at all.

Basically, I went past him, out of the car and back to the house. I suppose he brought the car back. He didn’t talk to me that day. I think I stayed holed up in my room anyway. Sunday morning I was up early, and he came to me in the kitchen and told me that he couldn’t believe how stupid I was, and he was ashamed of me. I believed then (and still do) that the real issue was that he had lost control over me, but I just could not give it back. He didn’t speak to me again for two and a half years.

Well, after that it was very hard to get back to driving. It was awkward enough just living in the same house in my disowned state, and me driving was certainly a sore subject, so it didn’t come up. Then I was a college student, and a missionary, and a college student again, and when I came back home he was already gone and I took on a lot more family responsibilities. Some of those would have been easier with a car, but money was always an obstacle to owning a car, and that made it less imperative to get the license. I did take additional driver training, and I am not even bad at it, if for no other reason than that I am super careful. I still just kind of hate it though.

There have been good things about not driving. If I did have a car payment, insurance, and gas to worry about, I would not be able to afford the mortgage, and I would not have paid off college as quickly. (I sure wish I had stayed debt-free, incidentally.) My being able to help others, and be a fairly benevolent landlord, has a trade-off in that my other family members are pretty good about giving me rides, even though sometimes it is still a hassle and I don’t even want to bother (this was a big part of me not joining a foreign film club). Also, I have had great conversations with people who have given me rides, and done a lot of unofficial counseling, and I am grateful for those opportunities. Despite all of this, it just seems like driving is something adults do, and something I should be able to do, and yes, I have found that embarrassing.

There was also some misconception on my part. My sisters have told me that for their first years of driving they had nerves too—getting comfortable doesn’t happen for awhile, so maybe I am not abnormal, and I just need to push through the fear.

Also, even though I am genuinely scared of the driving, it is possible that some of that knot in my stomach is not really the car, but my father. It was really traumatic being cut off like that. I had nightmares a few times. Possibly the reason I loved managing the sports teams so much were that the coaches were like father figures. I didn’t even ask them for advice or do that much with them—I just needed to have them there. And no one ever knew. It was our family secret. I sort of told myself it was a relief not having to deal with him, because he was jerk on a regular basis, and conversations were no longer happening, but I don’t recommend it for your teenage daughters.

After two quarters away at college (after Mom had refused to let him turn my bedroom into an office), he said he wanted to start over. It was not an apology, but I was ready to hug him and tell him that I loved him, and I meant it. I sensed at the time that if we ever fought again, we would not be able to find our way back, so we never had important conversations after that. Everything was shallow, where I said things that were supportive of what he said, and then him contradicting me anyway.

That was the end of his first child disownment (there had only been siblings and parents before), but it would be followed by disownment of all my other siblings, reconciliation with my sisters (but not my brother), disownment and reconciliation with my sisters again, and then a final disownment of the four of us once divorce proceedings were started. He did open a window to reconciliation when he sent us an email announcing his remarriage, but I didn’t take it, partially because I couldn’t thing of anything to say that sounded right. (I hope you treat this one better than you treated the last one?)

The last time he disowned us, I was worried about doing anything then that might cause issues with the divorce proceedings, but I thought that when all of that was over, I would write to him and give him a chance, but that I would be done pussyfooting around, and it would be an honest relationship or none at all. Then, when it finally was done, I no longer wanted to write to him. Maybe it was because when there was email from him I felt that same pit in my stomach that I get when I think about driving.

(I think the reason he did send the wedding announcement was that I had scanned in and emailed an invitation for his fiftieth reunion, which I thought he should have, and he took that as an opening, replying to that and sending a separate message with a question about some paperwork. Therefore, our email addresses were included on the message he sent to everyone with a picture of them holding the marriage license and a date. His communication skills are as good as ever.)

When I was in Italy, different family members would ask about Dad, and would be sad that we were not in touch, and I would explain that I did not have time for him. He takes more emotional energy than most people, with very little payoff, and so it’s not the best investment. I don’t just mean payoff for me in having a rewarding relationship, but I don’t think he gets very much out of it either. I do have other family members who depend on me, and a job and church responsibilities and friends and this life. One thing I have realized during this period of self analysis is that I cannot do everything that it would be good to have done, and it actually can be okay if the only thing you do with some family members is to leave yourself open to later inspiration. It was sort of scary, like “Really? I can ignore this?” When I realized, yes, I can, it was very liberating.

I don’t know what will happen with Dad, but I am okay with that. For driving, I want this to be the year that I get my license. Again, I do have limited resources, and right now the most important thing seems to be writing, with a few strong sub-currents of emergency preparedness, physical fitness, and the local mid-singles group, but that’s okay. I think I will start practicing towards the end of April, maybe the 26th.

I can’t truly say I am looking forward to it, but I am okay with it being there. I remember once that I was looking for something on Aloclek, and I saw a sign for a stunt driving school. I don’t know if it is still there, but that’s something that should help conquer fear right there. Establishing that level of control over the car would be amazing, so maybe I will take that course, or do a loop on a racetrack, once I have my license. I’m not going to let fear rule me. It’s not practical.

And so that’s my deep dark secret, and I can put it out on the internet, and the world will not end, and I will not lose friends, and things are pretty much exactly as they were on the outside, but on the inside I am better. I read once that Alcoholics Anonymous has a saying, you are only as sick as your secrets; there’s a lot of sense in that.

My next area of deep shame will turn out to be no secret.

Out with a fizzle; back in with a bang.

You know, "bang" does not look right in lower case letters, but I don’t think I can justify capitals and grammatically you should only use an exclamation point with dialogue. Just pretend this is exciting.

Obviously, I did not finish my plan of writing twelve days in a row. Mainly I was overbooked with a big project at home that took a lot of my time, but also the next topic on the schedule was political and kind of dark, and it didn’t feel very Christmas-y. I will get to all of the topics on that list, but I really needed to take a break, and then come back.

I do love Christmas a lot, but the New Year is also very special to me. On a family level it is Mom’s birthday and it starts the round of other birthdays. Mainly, for me, it is about fresh starts, and getting another chance. Usually even when I have really rough years (or at least rough Decembers), as I approach New Year’s Eve hope starts seeping in again and I feel optimistic for the future.

This year I feel like the optimism is pretty well grounded. Having finished my rigorous self-evaluation and mental processing, I feel like I am more emotionally healthy than ever, and more ready to move forward. That I have been writing regularly helps a lot, because that has just not been true in previous years even though it has always been desired.

Obviously, I hope to do a lot more writing in 2008, eventually followed by some selling. I don’t think I will be actively selling until after the writer’s strike is resolved. I have not checked the official WGA policy yet, but I believe their demands are fair, and I do expect to be a member some day, so it seems right to wait. Also obvious is that the sooner it ends the better, but it is worth holding out for a fair deal. Kudos to Worldwide Pants, and may they be an example to the others out there.

There are some other major goals that I have, and I hope they are not too ambitious, but that everything can actually be accomplished. My next few entries will be about these issues, how they came about, and what I will be doing about them.

Some time ago I realized that shame is kind of a useless thing. If you are doing something wrong, you should change it, and if it is right, don’t worry about it. That’s a little simplistic, because change can be very hard, and not worrying about the appearance of things can be hard as well.

Based on my experience, I think it is more common that the things that really bug us and hold us back are the wrong things. Sometimes they aren’t even real, like when you are embarrassed because of what other people will think, when they would not think about it at all. A lot of my therapeutic writing was knocking down false perceptions, and getting rid of fear.

I don’t feel like I am expressing the concept really well, but it will make more sense over the next few entries. Get ready to explore the dark side of the spork.

On the importance of not sucking

I knew I was going to be using this topic, but I thought I might be more humorous, and actually I am feeling fairly serious now.

After the San Francisco trip, a friend picked us up from the airport and we regaled him with stories of our time there. He asked us, “Why do Mormons suck?”

I replied that they don’t, and raised the counter question, Why do so many fundamentalist Christians suck? You could keep going with that too. Why do so many lawyers, or Intel employees, or short doctors or republicans or men?

It is easy to make generalizations like that, because it is easy to discover proof that people suck. Working in customer support for so long, I could give you many examples showing that humans in general are willfully ignorant and mean-spirited, with an over-inflated sense of entitlement. However, when I talk to people I often find them kind, and smart, and interesting, and having lives and problems that I can really relate to.

Some groups may be more prone to sucking, especially if the membership within that group brings a feeling of superiority. This should really never happen with a religious group, especially a Christian group, because that should teach you that you are sinful and you need Christ to be saved. If He could sit down with publicans and sinners and not be looking down at them and sniffing in disgust, well, how can you look down on anyone? That it happens all the time anyway is not a reflection on religion, but on people.

There is great importance in not sucking if we are going to represent Him. If I believe I have something true, and good, and joyous, that needs sharing, the last thing I should want to do is alienate anyone. That seems fairly obvious. I suppose people don’t realize that they are doing it, or they think it is okay for that type of person. We can’t really put an asterisk next to “Love thy neighbor” and list our preferred exceptions. It just doesn’t work that way.

For the San Francisco trip, we did get a general feeling of superficiality, and that is bad, but the real problem is that they were disorganized, and that’s not a sin. It’s just inconvenient when you are planning a large event involving lots of people.

Thinking of other people who suck, it is usually snobbery. I suppose the concept of sucking brings in a vacuum, which implies a certain emptiness. Maybe that makes it easier to sustain an illusion of superiority. There’s generally no valid basis for it though. What, you’re better because you can sing? Because you have never smoked?

There is a frequently used joke that goes something like, “Every time I think I am becoming humble I realize I am mistaken.” I don’t find it funny because paradoxes annoy me, but okay, perhaps it can be hard to recognize an appropriate level of humility even if you find it. However, I don’t think it’s necessary. The opposite of humility is pride, and pride is enmity with God and man, so if you work to rid yourself of any enmity by growing in charity, the humility should take care of itself.

I just know that the people I like and admire most tend to be very accepting of other people, and interested in them, and usually they are also interested in lots of other things. In terms of curiosity and passion, they are full.

I also know that we all tend to do a little better with a personal touch. There was recently an essay in the Oregonian about a local woman who had her hours cut at work, and it covered her experiences applying for aid, and the utter humiliation and futility of so many of the hoops set up for people in need. It was depressing, but it generated a big response of people wanting to help. I could give lots of other examples of individuals whose hard luck stories generated big responses, but on the whole the Oregon Food Bank is strapped and other charities are strapped, and need more help.

Studies have shown that charity ads with a face and a name receive more response. We may feel bad over 1000 anonymous displaced persons, but tell us about a specific person, and what they have lost, and we will feel it more deeply, and reach farther into our pockets.

This may be partly because one person is manageable. I know I can’t fix 10,000 people on unemployment, but I can give one family a merry Christmas, and it is comforting in how finite it is. More to the point, I think when we have an individual and their details we connect more.

Because of this, I think a key component of not sucking will be looking outward and making connections. Don’t stay in your insular little world where you can be smug and snug! Make eye contact and voice contact and pay attention to the little details. The world is a richer place when you actually pay attention to it.

This is not always easy. I have no patience for stupid people. I don’t feel so bad about it when they are willfully stupid, and just don’t want to think or know anything more, but I feel like I should have a lot more compassion for the ones who can’t help it, and all I really have is impatience. I have bonded with a few, but I still always dread the next one. This is wrong of me. Still, that’s a relatively small amount of people.

Snobs? Heck, I just met one today, and it was amazing how desirous he was of avoiding conversation, but I had to try in case he was just shy or did not realize that we knew each other. But it was amusing because I got in a little jab at him and then I had a brief online conversation with my sister where we rolled our eyes at him.

Do those two confessions make me sound like a nice person? Probably not. It’s still something that I’m working on. I can say that I have never regretted getting to know a person, but I have regretted passing opportunities by, and not speaking up when someone seemed down, and not paying enough attention when someone seemed to need something.

Are Mormons lame? They can be, but it is a matter of personality, or a poor understanding of how to live the religion. There is nothing in the religion that dictates we should be so. Do Mormons suck? Some do, sometimes, but they should know better. Feel free to tell them so.

The Sad Ballad of Cute Cafeteria Guy

About two years ago when I started this blog, I committed to not using my own name or the names of my family members. This was to protect me in case I ever want to call my boss stupid or something like that. I decided it would be too complicated, and probably unnecessary to find code names for friends, but if there was a love interest I would use a code name and I gave three examples: Mr. Intimacy Issues, Gerard, and Cute Cafeteria Guy. They weren’t really hypothetical.

Oddly, Gerard is back in the area, and based on my horoscope I believe he is going to call me Wednesday. Mr. Intimacy Issues and I have the same relationship that we did then, and there is no reason to change his code name. Well, there’s no reason in terms of accuracy. Everyone who knows both of us recognized him right away, so I guess it isn’t a very good code name. Quite a lot has happened with Cute Cafeteria Guy, and I thought I would take a moment to reflect on that.

I would say I have been in love twice, and both times it happened at first sight. Some times I have talked myself into liking someone, and that is always a mistake. At other times you get carried along in an unexpected rush of attraction, and maybe you know it is not love, but the flow is pretty strong anyway, and this was more like that. I was not initially attracted. There was nothing wrong with the way he looked or anything; it’s just that my first thought was that he had to be gay.

Perhaps that sounds like an unfair stereotype, but there are generally two types of cashiers that we get in the cafeteria. The most common type is an older, outgoing woman who doesn’t have a lot of skills but does need some extra money. We also get younger girls who haven’t figured out what they want to do yet. There are occasional departures from this formula, but there were never young, handsome, straight guys.

He was remarkably friendly, which did nothing to discourage the stereotype. Still, he did not really give off that vibe. Later on as we started visiting more he mentioned a daughter, but that was still not definitive. I was by this time definitely attracted to him, and I was starting to feel that he was attracted to me. I know his eyes would light up when he would see me, but he was still so friendly to everyone else that it was hard to know how special I was. That’s the problem with nice guys.

At this point I knew quite a bit about him. A lot of it was good, like he was also an artist and a drummer, and those were things that just made him more attractive. I also knew more about his previous job history, and it started making more sense that he was in this job.

Other things did not mesh. He liked hot dry places like Arizona, and I am a complete green Oregonian. We both liked Law & Order, but I prefer SVU and he liked Criminal Intent. They were little things, but they were symbolic of the more important disparities making a successful romance unlikely.

The biggest issue was time. Often I felt like we were on the verge of making a breakthrough, and someone else would come into line and I would have to go. It is hard to progress very far in one minute a day. It was still a minute to look forward to.

The most flustering moment did not happen with him. I needed something quick, so I went through a different line in the other café. The cashier (one of the young girls) was really excited, and she knew my name, and she said “You’re Jason’s girlfriend!” Then she excitedly let me know it was his birthday, and I should go wish him a happy one.

I just said that he had mentioned it, and we had talked about his birthday earlier, but my mind was still reeling from the girlfriend thing, and from being known by name. Obviously, she could not really have thought I was his girlfriend, or she should have expected that I would already know about the birthday. I think what was in her mind was that this is the girl that seems to like him and he seems to like back, but that is longer and complicated and it just came out girlfriend. It seems we were a topic of workplace gossip.

It was interesting, but it was such a wasted opportunity. I should have said something like, “Did he say that? Then he better ask me out!” If I could have said something kind of light, but that confirmed my interest, I think that would have been good. I was just too floored in the moment to think of anything. Anyway, that moment slipped past, and then later he started mentioning a girlfriend, and then I saw him with the girlfriend, and one day I came up behind someone congratulating him and he was getting married that weekend. I congratulated him too, and really, I never expected us to work out, but it was kind of a bummer.

Friends tried to be supportive, but the supportive comments ranged from “It won’t last” to “Now you can flirt with him guilt-free.” Actually, marriage to me means you don’t flirt at all. I was worried about it being weird, but he never came back from his honeymoon. Yay?

There were good things about it too. First of all, he was a truly nice guy, and it was fun interacting with him. Also, it was nice believing that someone could like me, and not having it end in catastrophe (that sentence references some horrific times). The best thing was, and I will sound like a terrible person here, but I need to do that periodically, after seeing her, I am cuter. I can’t say that very often, but it made me feel like I was not completely delusional.

I also learned some things about myself. It was analyzing my attraction to him that helped me pinpoint my ideal height range, which gave me insight into why I was not attracted to certain other guys. This is a shallow insight.

The deeper insight came once when I was going to meet a friend, and I had missed him at lunch and I just decided to go see if I could see him for a minute, without any reason than saying hello, and I did. As I walked away, feeling like a dork, I realized that I cannot imagine being smooth. I have mental pictures of what my life would be like if I were rich or thin or other things, and my ideas may be wrong, but at least I can conceive of something. Being suave is completely alien. And I also realized that I felt just the same way that I did in junior high. However, that was when I stopped believing that I had any romantic chance at all, so it makes sense that I stopped developing there at fourteen. This crush was a big steppingstone for me. Romantically, I think I am close to sixteen now. I’m almost ready to date.

Odd. After yesterday’s entry, I was just thinking how I am turning into this curmudgeon griping about modern times, and one month away from turning 36. Well, 30 is the new 21 and 40 is the new 30, and my RealAge is 34 but relationship wise I am still in my mid-teens (jail bait), so yeah, I’m turning 36.

I wonder if I can find it on eBay...

It seems like I keep coming back to music and movies and television. They are things that I think about a lot, and generally enjoy. One thing I have been pondering lately is my first real record album, Aerosmith’s Toys in the Attic. The album was released in 1975, when I was three, but I believe I got it in 1977 or 78. The reason I believe this is that for a long time I thought it was by the Steve Miller Band. How could I be so horribly mixed up, and why would that lead to the later purchase date? Good questions.

Basically, I remember a shopping trip at K-mart, and probably the Tualatin K-Mart, which is the one we went to when we lived in Wilsonville. We moved here in 1978. I was taken in by the cover art, but I was told that I would not like it. I wanted it anyway, and got it, but I remember that it did not sound at all the way I thought it would. I believe it ended up going to my brother. The other strong memory I have is of my older sister playing Swingtown over and over again, which I remembered as Spacetown. I think we all got to pick a record, and that she picked up the Steve Miller Band Book of Dreams, which came out in 1977 when I was 5. Looking at that cover art, I can totally imagine her choosing it because she was really into horses. And I did not start reading until after I started first grade in September of 1978 (kindergarten was only offered privately at that time, and a bit expensive for us), so any confusion on titles should be forgivable.

There are several things that I think about with this. One is that the answer wasn’t really that I wouldn’t like it—just that I wasn’t ready for it. I should have held on to it and played it once a year until I could appreciate it. Five-year olds do not tend to be that forward thinking.

My other thought is that it is sad that with CDs being so small now, cover art is kind of a waste. For technical aspects I do prefer CDs to vinyl. I was always worried about scratches with records, and I can play CDs on computer, and burn my own and still have better sound quality than cassette tapes, so that is all worthwhile, but there is still a bit of a loss there.

I also like shopping online, and I’m sure downloading individual songs is convenient, but there is another loss right there as more record stores close down. Having a central place where you could browse for new things to catch your eye was good, and it is a good venue for finding local artists, and just that people would buy the whole album was good. Will people even make albums with a theme or unifying concept anymore if they keep finding that they lay fourteen tracks and people only buy three? A lot of things are fundamentally changing, and not necessarily for the better.

One of my favorite memories is calling Mike one night, and we just spontaneously decided to go over to Tower Records. He had heard this new song on the radio he wanted to check out, which happened to be Roxette’s Look Sharp, and I wanted to get The Promise. I assumed it was by New Order, because it sounded like them, but he was saying it was When in Rome, whom I had never heard of. Obviously he was right, and he did gloat a bit, but the point was he had just gotten out of the shower and his hair looked great and the moon was full and we came away with music. For a junior in high school, that was a great night. The last two record stores that people have really recommended have both closed down. I guess I can try EM, but things just aren’t the same.

The other train of thought is that when I call Toys in the Attic my first real record, I did have some others. They were all Disney or Sesame Street. When I did make the transition to pop shortly thereafter, it was a Shaun Cassidy record. I got it because I knew him from The Hardy Boys on TV. Clearly this would still not be as edgy as Aerosmith, but I am still wearing my hair in pigtails and scared of the dark at this point. In fact, Dah Doo Run Run becomes a defense mechanism for me, as I use it to drive scary thoughts away by singing it in my head. I’m not sure why I never had an Osmonds record because we watched their show too, but my older sister had two. Also, my older sister had a Bay City Rollers record we would listen to, because they had a Saturday morning show.

Perhaps it is fitting that my real introduction to pop music came through television as well, when we got cable and there was this channel called MTV. Clearly the television had influenced my previous listening choices.

To be fair, I think a lot of it is time-dependent. The 70’s seem to have been a fairly depressing time for music, at least on the radio stations we got. I just have very vague memories of Cat Stevens and the Captain and Tenille. In the car there was always a lot of Neil Diamond, the Ray Conniff Singers, and Abba. I could easily never hear any of them again.

We did play At The Hop a lot, so I still have a strong fondness for fifties music, but then these hippie/folk influences crept in and they lost me. What I didn’t know was that groundwork was being laid for good stuff to come.

Again, this is stuff that I want to know more about—what is the musical industry and who influenced whom. Actually, it looks like we might have better music during Republican presidencies. Perhaps it is a therapeutic reaction to bad socio-political situations. Who was in the top 40 five months after Watergate? Some day, I will know.

The Critic--Christmas Special Edition

Over the years, with three big fans of holidays, animation, and cute characters, we have accumulated quite the selection of Christmas specials. We don’t really watch them that much though, because things pop up on television, and we are all busy. The two that we bring out pretty reliably are The Muppet Christmas Carol and A Muppet Family Christmas because we like them a lot, and I can’t recall ever seeing them on TV. I guess the Family Channel does not have the broadcast rights, as that is where we see most things.

The point is that we have things that I have either never seen, seen once when they were still relatively new and barely remember, or a few that we have seen a lot. We decide to go through and watch them all this year and see what we want to keep, and what VHS tapes need to be converted to DVD. We still have a lot to go through, but here is a partial breakdown.

Emmett Otter’s Jug Band Christmas –This is one that I could just barely remember. Between the stable of Jim Henson’s regulars and based on a story by the Hobans (of Frances fame), I was hoping it would be wonderful. It is a little too slow. The music is pretty good, and I love what they do with the birds (there are ducks, a heron, and an owl that are all pretty cool), but not enough happens. Maybe it is also too grim. The ending ends up being happy (a bit contrived as well, but they didn’t take the easy way out with a protagonist winning the talent show) but before that happy ending Emmett and his mother just get more and more downtrodden. Maybe they focus too much on the dead father.

The Leprechaun’s Christmas Gold—I can’t help but notice that this was the last Animagic special that Rankin Bass did, so maybe the were running out of steam. Maybe what they were really out of was songs that inspired them, because Christmas in Killarney seems like an odd starting point. I guess you think, hey, this is a Christmas song, and it is Irish-themed, so toss in leprechauns, a banshee, and Saint Patrick. At this point, someone should have noticed that you aren’t going to really get a plot that flows. It doesn’t flow, but lurches from one odd contrivance to the next. The voice actors don’t really put much into it either, but how do you find your motivation when there is no logical reason for it?

Mickey’s Magical Christmas—This starts with the premise that all the Disney characters are at a club, and have just seen a great show, but they are snowed in. They try to bring the Christmas spirit to Donald, but he is a tough nut to crack, possibly because the special itself is really uninspired. Scanning over the crowd is fun, but the clips are old and not that great, and there is clearly no budget to bring back any of the real voice actors, so it all ends up being rather a disappointment.

Rudolph’s Shiny New Year—This has some cute bits, but is a bit too long. They were padding it out to fill out an hour instead of thirty minutes I guess. It is a keeper, but probably not one that we will bring out often.

Nestor, the Long Eared Christmas Donkey—If you have seen The Small One, this is a lot like that, only instead of just being kind of weak and lazy, the little donkey has really long ears, putting him more into Dumbo space. Abused for his difference that ends up allowing him to save the day, clearly there is a kinship with Rudolph. Also his Mom dies protecting him (Bambi?), so it is cheap and manipulative, but it gets me anyway. Character-wise the mutant donkey looks really cute, but the voice is annoying, making this another keeper that probably won’t come out that often.

Previously I had a top three, which were Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer, How the Grinch Stole Christmas, and A Charlie Brown Christmas. I have since realized that I like remembering the Charlie Brown one better than I like watching it. The tree becoming better with a little affection is sweet, and Snoopy dancing is cute, but it’s simultaneously too slow and precious.

What has taken its place is The Year Without a Santa Claus, which is truly excellent. I like the music, the story moves, and I could get nitpicky on plot but it is fun enough that I refrain. It is closely followed by Santa Clause is Coming to Town, which is nice in that it has a romantic subplot, and a really cute penguin. I like the Winter Warlock too.

The first two Frosty specials are good, and Rudolph is still a favorite. The Grinch is probably the best for me now. I love the facial expressions they do with Max, and it is about the only special that does not make Christmas coming depend on Santa Claus. The quality and continued value of these leads to another gripe of mine—inferior sequels.

I don’t know why they can’t make good Christmas specials anymore. Even in the 80’s, when Christmas specials were produced solely to tie in with merchandise lines, they were watchable. The Glow-friends Christmas Special is actually pretty good, and the He-Man/She-Ra one has its moments. So how can you take a great character like Rudolph and make something so utterly dreadful as Rudolph and the Island of Misfit Toys? And how does it manage to be both annoying and boring at the same time? Shouldn’t one override the other?

Frosty Returns did one thing right, which is that they got Mark Mothersbaugh to do the music, hence there is a little bit of redemption in two musical numbers. Otherwise there is nothing really original or well conceived about the plot or the animation, and somehow what annoyed me most is the ending. He’s just leaving because he’s bored now? When did Frosty become fickle?

Finally, well the Jim Carrey Grinch movie is a remake, not a sequel, but it is bothersome how it completely missed the point of an excellent book. I hadn’t been thinking about it too much, because avoidance was working well, but the Sunday School teacher referenced it last week, using it as an example of how Cindy Lou’s goodness rubbed off on the Grinch. And you know, I doubt he even knows about the real one. Again, kids today! I am on my way to becoming Dana Carvey’s grumpy old man character—“And that’s the way it was and we liked it!” And yeah, probably people in their twenties don’t remember Dana Carvey either. Bah!
We’ll see how the rest turn out. I am curious about how Rudolph and Frosty’s Christmas in July will be. I only saw it once and it was so long ago I have no idea. I am also looking forward to watching It’s a Wonderful Life in its entirety. Somehow when I catch it on television he is always already at the bar and things really start going downhill.

After that, maybe there will be an idea for a new Christmas special. Can a modern one be good without having the glow of nostalgia around it? Maybe we just need to find a good song that Rankin and Bass missed. I don’t think “Rocking Around the Christmas Tree has been taken yet.

In which Icelandic cinema is completely snubbed

To start out with, I have to say that it is pretty good progress for me to be listing favorite anythings. As a small child I had an aversion to doing so, lest it hurt the non-favorite’s feelings. I would try and avoid it, or pick one that no one else picked. So if you asked me what my favorite color was in first grade, I would say orange. No one ever picks orange.

I no longer anthropomorphize colors, but I also attach less importance to the whole favorites concept. Now if you ask me what my favorite color is, it will depend on my mood. It has been blue, red, yellow, gray, and pink. I can’t remember if it has ever been green, but it hasn’t been orange, even though it is a perfectly fine color.

That being said, I can’t really give a top five foreign films that would feel right—I just need to break it down by country. Actually, it is more that I am breaking it down by country and language. There are a lot left out, because I usually remember movies that I want to see in groups, so in my rental queue there are long stretches of Japanese, Iranian, and Italian films coming up. Japanese and Iranian will be pretty new, but I have seen some Italian films already, and we will start there.

Italian – Il Postino.

It seems like most of my family there has a strong affection for Life is Beautiful, and I do too for that matter, but Il Postino touches me more. Oddly, the first three Italian films I saw were these and Pizzicata, and I started to wonder if I would ever see an Italian film where the man lives. Then I saw The Bicycle Thief. He lives, but it is infinitely more depressing.

Spanish – Mujeres al Borde de un Ataque de Nervios (Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown).

It is so funny, and colorful, and wow Antonio Banderas is young. Also, things work out pretty nicely considering how many complications get thrown in. That is actually breaking it down by language, rather than country, but is there a point in breaking down which of the two Argentinean films I have seen is my favorite? I think I have only seen one each from Mexico and Colombia. If we go by continents though, South America is Tango. It isn’t really a great film, because it is a dance movie and so the point is to get to the next dance number and so you sacrifice some things, but I really like the dance numbers.

French – He Loves Me, He Loves Me Not (À la Folie…Pas du Tout).

I need more people to see this one, because if you haven’t, I can’t talk about it without spoiling it. Suffice it to say that the first half of the movie is engrossing, and then you find out that the director has played a trick on you and it keeps getting more brilliant.

Chinese – Not One Less

I like the journey that it goes on. The heroine really does not start out sympathetically at all, but somehow things turn around and you get fully invested, and then you get a mega-happy ending. I saw Spirited Away and Rabbit Proof Fence on the same day, and in both cases you have young girls overcoming the odds primarily through persistence, and I thought there was room for a trilogy. I thought the third film might be Bend it Like Beckham, but then I saw it and it wasn’t. Not One Less is the right companion piece.

Truly for cinematography, there is no one that I admire more than Zhang Yimou, and this film is not really his showcase for it. For that, I can’t imagine a more beautifully shot and beautiful film than Hero, but this is a more personal film, and I think more relatable. After all, the movies that you admire and the ones you like are not necessarily the same.

Mentally, I know that Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon is a better film than Iron Monkey, which was a little too slap sticky. However, the comic tone helped me feel that I had better odds of a happy ending, and the final battle on the poles with the fire is awesome. When they do the flying wire work I don’t believe it, so it takes me out of the movie. With that scene, I just bought it. I’m sure they weren’t really working over fire without safety equipment, but you shouldn’t be thinking that during the movie and during the movie I was only thinking “Wow.”

I guess that is it. I don’t think I really have a favorite Australian film (Rabbit Proof Fence is a bit of a downer), and if you do British, is that one or do you separate out all the areas? (England: About a Boy, Ireland: The Secret of Roan Inish, etc.) I will say this, I understand the point that they were trying to make with Strange Brew, but it was still a really annoying film, and if I ever decide to have a favorite Canadian film, it will not be that.

Anyway, Le Chiavi di casa should be arriving soon, but right now all we are watching are Christmas specials. I think I will review some tomorrow.

The Spork of Music

Okay, I have name-checked them several times now. Obviously number one is the Ramones. That is the rule. I don’t need the validation personally, but I think it speaks well of the band that I have never heard anyone criticize their music. I have encountered people who have no idea whom the Ramones are, and that makes me sad. Kids today!

Number two is the Clash, and this is setting me up solidly as a punk rock aficionado, but we are veering off sharply and number three is A-HA, the first band I really ever got excited about (and my second concert). This relates to a different, but equally important aspect of my musical life—I also love 80’s pop.

Number four is Crowded House, and that is not so much a single band as it is a Neil Finn continuum. I started with an affection for Split Enz, and then it followed to Crowded House, and Finn Brothers, and back to Crowded House again. I think the first Crowded House album is the one closest to my heart, though, so we will say that is the band.

I was not sure what to do about the fifth spot for a long time. It did feel like five was the right number, but I wasn’t sure who else could fill that niche. What makes someone a top band on your personal list?

I think one criterion is that you like most of their stuff. There are some individual songs I love, and being a one hit wonder is nothing to sneeze at. Lots of people never produce a great song. Still, no single song is enough to make a top five band.

Also, you are not embarrassed to like them. Now, some forms of embarrassment may just be a lack of confidence in your own musical taste, and then you should just trust your taste. What I mean is more like in the case of Third Eye Blind. Musically, I like them a lot, but dudes, leave the drugs alone! Just say no. Or with Blink 182, great songs but grow up! I could never make it through a Blink concert. Ideally you do like your Top 5 bands both recorded and live. I don’t think I would fit in on the floor of CBGB’s, but I’m sure the shows would be great.

I think these are some good ground rules, but the rules can’t be too much of a factor, because again this is an emotional response. I was at a birthday party tonight, and as various parties disagreed on whether or not Transformers was a good movie, one attendee related an experience where she just wanted back the two hours of her life lost on Patch Adams.

“Wait, that was a good movie. It was based on a true story!”

Oh sure, it is easy to mock the people who like it, and you could probably do a critical analysis of the movie and find many points where it should have been better, but okay, some people liked it. That’s their prerogative.

I know a lot of people would consider A-HA to be really lightweight, and there may be an element of truth to that. I also know that I can’t tell you how many times I listened to Hunting High and Low, and there wasn’t a bad song on that album. Then when Scoundrel Days came out it was less pop, and more mature, but it was still good and spirited and a lack of success in the United States is no indicator of quality. I like them, and I appreciate guys who will admit that their music is okay. Yes, I would find it weird if a guy said they were his favorite band, because they were awfully pretty, but that’s not how you judge a band—that was just a gift to the girls.

There can be gender bias, in what is acceptable for favorite bands. For a while the number five spot was occupied by Matchbox 20. Looking back it was largely a reaction to Mad Season, which is still a favorite album, but guys would try and talk me out of it. My initial response was irritation that they thought they had a vote, but honestly, I think Matchbox 20 might be for girls. I know there are boys in the band, but that is not always an indicator.

Finally, I realized that there was still an aspect of my musical life missing from the scorecard. I had covered the 80’s when I was in high school and loved pop, and though the punk was older I did not discover it till this century, when I was a working adult. In my college years, there was a term being thrown around that seemed to have no meaning whatsoever, and that term was alternative.

Sometimes it really feels like trying to sort out musical genres is a joke, and that is especially true of alternative. Nonetheless, there is music that is good and that does not really fit any label. When I was in college I fell for the Gin Blossoms, and they round out my Top 5. Presidents of the United States of America could also be contenders there, but the Gin Blossoms are more emotionally evocative and I take them more seriously.

Don’t you feel like you know more about me now? These types of questions can be useful, if for no other reason than to see if we could mutually survive a road trip. With my group of friends in junior high, we did not have the same favorite bands at all, but we could make it work, and I was perfectly fine listening to Duran Duran, David Bowie, INXS, and the Cure, along with my beloved Norwegians.

The reason these guys knew my top bands and were trying to dissuade me from Matchbox 20 was that I had used it in a standup comedy routine on how it is a great way to get to know people, and you can spot trouble signs. The disturbing lists I made up were indicative of being too sheltered (Uh, Motab, of course, Afterglow, not really a band but Michael McLean, um, and the Osmonds and the Jets), but in real life I have known a person who would not be able to give favorite bands because he only listens to orchestras. I asked him once if he only listened to classical music, and he said of course not, and I thought great, let’s find out what other kinds of bands he likes. World music.

To be fair, I have classical music and world music in my own CD collection, but did it ever occur to you that this popular music is popular for a reason, and can have redeeming qualities? Maybe if you rocked out every now and then you wouldn’t be so depressed! I just find snobbery so irritating. Of course all his favorite composers were German.

I feel like my list will stay, not just because I will continue to love these bands but also because there is historical relevance for me, but I keep finding more interesting stuff out there all the time, and it’s a shame to shut yourself off from it. Kill Hannah is a new band that seems promising. Their lyrics are very gothic, but musically they are fairly bright. After attending Provoked I looked up the Ruts and they are amazing. I know the Strokes are not new, but they are new to me, and not bad. Also, I am very fond of the All-American Rejects. I don’t know if they can displace any of the 5, but maybe someday I will feel the need to expand to 7 or 10. Ooh, and Tom DeLonge’s new band, Angels and Airwaves, mostly for Everything’s Magic which is kind of my theme song now.

I can be highbrow too, and while I would never ask a date about his favorite foreign films unless he had previously referenced a liking for them, it is something I can talk about, and tomorrow I will.

Advent-ageous

Wow, I have let the time get away from me. No wonder my mind is backlogged.

I have been feeling a need to get back in here and write, and I was thinking maybe another period of consistent writing would be a good idea. So you know how they have those advent calendars where you open up one window a day leading up to Christmas, and I intend to blog each day through Christmas. Clearly I have missed the traditional German start of December 1st, and the Eastern European start of September 1st is right out.

As a good Italian, I know the twelve days of Christmas start after Christmas, leading up to Epiphany on January 6th, but over here people start Secret Santa projects twelve days before all the time, and I’m going to go with that.

This is going to be more ambitious than the stint I did in late October, because the time period is longer, and I want to make them connected, where I am creating a logical tie-in at the end of each post to what will be coming the next day. I have my subjects mapped out, so it should work. Of course, I will also be posting at night, so my last planned post is for the 24th but will be posted at night on the 23rd. I can live with it. Today, I am introducing the project and catching up on writing.

Anyway, the presentation was done and the office move is done and the new people are trained and no one is on vacation, so all I have to do at work is settle into my new job, which is going okay. I finished the second draft of the script, and feel good about the changes. It has been a learning experience.

For one thing, I write on the computer, but apparently I cannot edit on the PC—I need to be reading a hard copy, and making notations. It just was not flowing the other way. That’s not a problem; I just didn’t know I was like that. Now I am wondering if I should do anything special for the third draft. Maybe I should act out the scenes for better realism, or string each individual character’s dialogue together to make sure their voices are consistent. I may just go through once and mark which scenes are strong and which are weaker and take it from there.

I am also trying to work out this balance of work and leisure. I could just write all the time, but it is refreshing at times to watch a DVD or listen to music or take a walk. Video games could be refreshing if they weren’t so addictive.

One of the DVDs I watched was of the Seattle performance of Henry Rollins’ Shock and Awe tour. I had watched many of the clips on Youtube, and wanted to see the rest. Now, I cannot wholeheartedly recommend it because there is a lot of profanity, and a sort of a self-love theme (interpret that as you will), but he is smart and funny and I find him adorable.

The clip where my crush really started is posted as Henry Rollins Hates Dating. He goes off on how it is so shallow to ask list questions (the three CDs in your changer, your favorite foreign films, top five bands), but so hard to refrain.

My initial thought was that it might be wise to get to know people before going out with them anyway, but this can be hard depending on how many people you encounter in your regular life. Regardless, I don’t think those questions are necessarily bad. No, you should not eject people from your car just because they give a wrong answer—that’s heading into Scott Baio territory (never a good sign)—but finding out these likes and dislikes can be a good introduction into the heart and mind of a person.

I think this is especially true of music, the response is generally emotional, and so when you find someone who loves the same band, it feels great. So tomorrow, I will reveal the Sporkful Top 5 Bands of All Time. If you don’t know who number one is before we start, you clearly have not been paying attention.

I love Vince Vaughn, but I will not be seeing Fred Clause

I am growing very fond of Cinema 21. My first impression was that it was kind of a dive, but it is clean, and the service is consistent, and while I am not sure that the seats are supposed to move as much as they do, they are still pretty comfy.

Where they have really become important is that they show very compelling fare on a regular basis. Also, you generally only have a week to see whatever it is, with no guarantees about it turning up later on TV or DVD. I have gotten pretty apathetic about making it down to the megaplex with stadium seating, enormous tubs of popcorn, continuous commercials, and poorly crafted storytelling, but Cinema 21 keeps luring me down. Anyway, this time they got me with Joe Strummer: The Future is Unwritten.

I did not fall wildly in love with the movie, but I am glad I saw it. It filled a lot of things in where my knowledge was spotty. It was not as energetic or comprehensive as The End of the Century (also seen at Cinema 21), but it had its own mood and its own point, and it did okay.

I did read up on the film a little before going, so my viewing experience was framed somewhat by comments from other viewers. For the complaint about no captions done on any of the interview subjects, yes, that did make things harder. You are constantly trying to guess and identify, and then pieces come together and you are ‘okay, former girlfriend’ or what have you. At one point I was thinking someone might be his brother, but then no, his brother has been dead for decades. So that is hard, but I think it worked within the context of the film. The interviews are done around campfires, which was an important tradition for Joe, and that brings a mood that is informal and intimate and captions explaining whom everyone was would not fit. For more informed fans a lot of the faces will be pretty familiar anyway, where that is less of an issue. Since I went in recognizing almost no one, and was still able to derive meaning, clearly the film is still accessible.

The other complaints were about some faces that were too familiar, in that they had big names that provided no value. I think I was okay with Martin Scorsese, though I am not sure he added a lot of value, but John Cusack definitely fit in fine, and what he added was short and was appropriate for that section of the film. Actually, not too many people complained about them. There were many more complaints about Johnny Depp and Bono, and there I have to agree.

For Johnny, I just don’t think his comments were valuable, and also despite being himself, instead of Captain Jack Sparrow, he had the headscarf and the braided beard and it was just a joke. Maybe they caught him during the middle of filming one of the Pirates movies, but yeah, it jarred.

Bono’s comments were irritating and probably unhelpful, but I may be being unfair here because he bugs me a lot. He shouldn’t. He speaks out against poverty, which is a cause close to my heart. He seems to try and do good things, and I feel guilty for disliking him because my sisters and a friend really like U-2 as a band and admire him as an individual, but the more he talks the more I want to tell him to shut up, and yell at him to shut up. I don’t know, I guess I can’t always be logical. Nonetheless, he speaks in platitudes that don’t work if you think them out, and their music is overrated. In my opinion.

One thing that seemed lacking is that I felt throughout like there could be more of Strummer’s voice, even though they did use lots of footage and clips and cartoons he had drawn, but despite lots of material I was feeling it needed more him and less commentary by others on him. They interviewed him in The End of the Century, and he was dead by then (Joey, Dee Dee, and Johnny Ramone and Joe Strummer all died so close together. I mean really, it was three and a half years, but it felt like every time you turned around another legend was gone), and he was so personable and well-spoken that I just remember feeling that loss, and I wanted to hear more from him. So as I was watching, I was thinking that, but as the end approached, it became even more intimate, and it ended with a fairly long speech for him, that was really a plea to the world to rediscover humanity, and it was very beautiful and the note it ended on was good.

Anyway, the point of all that is that I am glad I saw the film. I will not be posting again for at least ten days. Yeah, that would actually be pretty good for me, but I mention it because I have a specific plan here. When I last wrote, I was going to print the screenplay on Monday, read it in one sitting for general flow, and then start editing. Well, I did print it Monday, but it took me the rest of the week before I did the read through and I have not done any editing. Also, although things are much more caught up at work, they are not completely caught up and I need to do a major presentation on the 27th. So, I am pretty much grounding myself from the Internet until then.

Obviously I will use it at work as most of my tools are web-based, but the browsing for fun that quickly turns from a few minutes to hours it out. I have specific things I can do each day, like checking email once, and people to whom I will send email, and paying my bills online when the next paycheck hits, but it is all very structured, and I am hoping it will pay off.

That being said, the flow of the script was good. Certainly the dialog needs to be reworked, but that is normal. When you are really in the zone you might get an exchange or a paragraph just right on the first try, but good writing is rewriting. I imagine that it will need this rewrite and then a third draft before I will consider it marketable. Have a happy Thanksgiving all, and be grateful for good music and good movies. It feels like they become increasingly rare all the time.

An unfortunate chain reaction

I was thinking that my post two days ago might have given the wrong impression, because I write so much more about the Clash than the Ramones, and really the Ramones are my favorite band, even thought I like both a lot. It is important to me because I go through phases myself of wondering if I like the Clash more, and then I keep coming back to the Ramones. However, I think the memory of discovering the Clash is clearer because I’d had so little exposure to them previously. It was just the one music video, and it’s a good song but I don’t think it is the most representative of their style. With the Ramones, for what it’s worth, I had seen Rock and Roll High School twice, they did a guest spot on the Simpsons, and their song from Pet Sematery(sic) did get some airtime. Anyway, I just needed to get that off my chest.

So, I have am now blogging the seventh blog in seven days, and accomplishing my goal. I would say it has been more valuable that I anticipated. Part of it was just wanting to keep in the habit, but it occurred to me that the practice kept me thinking about different things and mentally stimulated. I am just better off when I am writing—saner, more insightful, and more balanced. That is one reason why it is something I need to do, whether I end up professional or not. (Also, I end up with mad typing skills when I am doing thing regularly.)

My plan for Sunday is to catch up on some journal and letter writing, then Monday I will print the screenplay and read it in one sitting for the general flow. Then I will go through and start reworking. I would like to think that I will blog again Friday, and maybe Saturday start the next script, but I don’t know how long doing the second draft will take, and honestly I am not sure what the second project will be, though I am leaning towards one specific idea.

A lot of this is finding out what is realistic, and what works well for me. I am not actually compatible with the mental image I had, but the reality is turning out okay, despite still being a work in progress.

This is pretty short, so I am going to throw in a funny story. Actually, it is kind of horrible, but yeah, also funny.

Little Sister M works in a daycare center downtown, having just started a few months ago. Every year on Halloween the children are invited to trick-or-treat at a nearby office building. M had eight children she was responsible for. The mothers of two came, and were responsible for their own children. M had two, another teacher had two, and a coworker who is generally considered useless, P, had the other two. Other classrooms with other teachers were also there.

There are stops on each floor, with escalators in between. They had done a couple of floors and were going up. P stepped on with her two, and then M stepped on with her two children. I am not sure where the others were, but probably in front, because they did not get caught. P seemed to have some confusion about how handrails or escalators or handrails on escalators work, because she lost her footing and started falling, propelling her two young charges backwards. M caught them, but she could not grab two flying children while keeping two other children and maintain her balance, so she fell backwards as well, landing on a non-daycare related woman who started screaming. She may have landed on someone else, but that is not completely clear.

Everybody saw, from the boss to complete strangers. One fellow teacher fortunately had the presence of mind to press the stop button on the escalator, and I am certain that this helped. As it was, P’s hands were bleeding, and although she could not see at the time, M has escalator marks all up and down her leg. They’ll probably fade.

If any of the adults were seriously hurt, or if the children were hurt, I would probably not be able to laugh (or I would at least feel really guilty). As it is, it could have been a lot worse. The children were seriously traumatized. Neither of M’s two would stop crying, and one was too upset to walk, so after another floor or two M gave up, only having completed 5 out of 19 floors. Happy Halloween, indeed.

I am just glad everyone is okay. I mean, I am also a little sad no one was videotaping, but mainly I am glad that everyone is okay.

The PC that Spork built

Well this is the fastest I have ever had a good idea debunked. I just learned today that YouTube is deleting all of the AMVs December 1st. For listening pleasure, people keep recommending Pandora, and I may have to try that. For devotees of amateur music videos, this is an outrage.

I know, they are combining copyrighted music with copyrighted video, but they are certainly not doing it for profit, and where illegal downloading has the potential to remove profit from the content owners, I see the AMVs as free advertising. People find songs they don’t know, they find movies they are not familiar with, and interest is generated. It’s just really disappointing and seems totally shortsighted.

YouTube is working with various music labels to license the music, so the regular band videos should still be available, but it will be a poorer environment with the loss of AMV input, and it’s a shame for the makers. They can still make the videos of course, but there will not be another outlet like this for sharing. Well, maybe something new and underground will spring up, or already has. I usually come to things a little late.

That is actually a good segue into my tech history. I was actually afraid of computers for a long time. When I was in third grade they brought in an early Mac to the school and showed us, and the main thing that was impressed upon me was how easy this expensive item was to break. The disk can’t be in the drive when you start up or shut down or it will grind that away. If you turn on the monitor before the computer, the power surge will kill it, or vice versa. I just remember I was reluctant to touch it, and I never got into computers despite having a lot of nerds in my acquaintance.

When I got back from my mission, I just wanted to leave retail behind, and so I took this telemarketing job that basically involved a phone, a pen, and a call list, but it was 8-5 on weekdays and it was totally something I could accomplish. What I did not know is that this job (calling people who had expressed interest in a Medicare Supplement) was just the testing ground for new employees, and if you stuck that out they moved you into the next room, onto a PC. Soon I was running DOS reports.

Honestly, I did not love it, but I lost some of my fears, and the next few jobs I ended up taking were always progressively more technical. What I had not known was that computers had become much more durable over the last thirteen years, and you could do things without breaking them or destroying all data by one missed keystroke.

Soon I realized that I needed one for school, so I went to Circuit City and picked out the cheapest one I could find, which was a Packard Bell 486. It was about two generations behind, which meant I could afford it. Honestly, it worked out pretty well, because college was mainly about the word processing, and I also started doing my genealogy on the computer, but I was not doing anything fancy. We did not even have internet in the dorms yet.

Time went on and I graduated and took more jobs in the tech sector, and PCs also got cooler in terms of how much they could do, and then I had an opportunity to get a good deal on a processor, motherboard, and operating system. I thought, yeah this could be cool. I felt confident that I could build my own system, and I should have been right, but an unlucky thing happened.

Before I really started accumulating the parts, I read an article on PC modding and it made me overly ambitious. Now, real modding takes some real ability, and I wasn’t going to do that, but I did see an acrylic case available, and thought, yes, I will make a transparent PC, so I started picking pretty blue parts. I had a blue aluminum power supply, blue round IDE cables, UV blue fans, and a blue case light. (The optical drive was just beige.) I was all set.

It was very important to me that I do this on my own. This is because one coworker told me to bring the parts in when I was ready so they could help me, and this particular coworker was an idiot. The condescending “you’re a girl” attitude would have rankled from anyone, but seriously, I’ve heard some of the technical questions he’s asked other people. He’s not touching anything I value. But I had also bitten off more than I could chew.

Putting the case together was easy enough, and even putting in the board and chip was fine, but I was stymied on how to attach the hard drive and CD drive. The spaces were too wide. The only instruction with the case was a single page of paper with a diagram showing all the parts. It was not helpful.

So I gave in and called a coworker, but a smart one whom I respected and liked. That ended up being a really fun day, and we made a lot of progress. They key was that you needed to screw multiple standoffs together until you got the right length. However, we hit another snag, in that the power supply did not fit into the case opening. Neither of them were exactly standard parts, so that shouldn’t have been too surprising, but now I was going to have to sand down that area to make it large enough.

Much time passed. I bought a tool I could do this with, but I still didn’t get to it. Finally, when the idiot chauvinist was on vacation I did take everything into the office and I let my smart coworkers help me, and we had the system built. It felt good, and this was also when I moved up to a flat screen monitor, but there was a problem. So much time had passed that my technology was no longer very forward, and I had gotten another chip/board/OS combo as a gift.

Also, it did not take me long to get sick of the acrylic case. Our previous system (an HP that Little Sister J got through her job) had one latch to open the side, and another latch to release cards. Anything you needed to change on this one was a major ordeal. In addition, although it had never occurred to me to install a floppy drive, burning CDs is not always practical. I started looking at USB keys, but with the USB ports in the back it was not very practical.

I started lusting after an Antec. People would talk about how everything was built to standard specifications, meaning it would never require buffing or welding, it cools quietly, and best of all, front panel USB is standard. I started acquiring parts again.
By this time I had ended up with yet another free processor and board, so I sold the previous two, paying for my case, and built the current system.

There are things that were embarrassing. I bought RAM and a DVDR drive and forgot, so I bought more RAM later. I probably don’t need 4 Gigs of RAM, but I’ve got it. I did still let coworkers help, because I have found that I am just not that into it. I think I am not a real geek. When Richard and Jerry encountered the standoff issue or the power supply issue, they got glints in their eyes and rubbed their hands together, and it was cool to have a problem to solve. I just feel picked on. I do like puzzles and challenges sometimes, but I don’t think I am into technology enough.

I do nonetheless have some recommendations and preferences that are very strong:

LCD monitors: You can get rock-bottom prices on CRT monitors, but they are such a pain to move, and they just don’t look as cool.

Antec cases: It makes such a difference.

Round IDE cables: In my heart, I know my hatred of the ribbon cables is not logical, but it’s there.

Logitech mice: When I had the first PC, it held out pretty well but the mouse died in a month. I called support and they sent me this remote control that did not work at all, and rather than deal with the hassle I just went and bought a mouse. Knowing nothing, I just bought the second cheapest, which was a Logitech, and twelve years later I am still using it and it still works. I have bought other mice, and then I can’t bear to let this one go because I am so amazed by its tenacity. And it’s not even an optical mouse; it has a track ball. (I don’t think optical mice even existed in 1995.) Their keyboards and speakers are fine, but I would never buy a mouse from anywhere else.

Mozilla Firefox: I am not a Microsoft hater. I use Windows, and Office, and I even use Internet Explorer at work, but at home, I can’t stand all the stupid ad-ware/spy-ware/pop-ups. Using Firefox helps a lot, and I have not run into any site conflicts with it so far, and you can with some of the more obscure browsers.

Front-panel USB: There are so many USB peripherals, and I love my key drive so much, that this is just a must. If you don’t have it and can’t get it soon, PCH Cables has this items that plugs into the USB port and on the other end is a USB port. I guess it would qualify as an extension cable. It looks like half a golf ball. I don’t know what they call it.

Iguana Micro (www.iguanamicro.com): Nestled in the heart of geek central, this store is convenient, reasonably priced on most items, and the staff is knowledgeable. My first time in I was pleasantly surprised the find that the owner was someone I had known in grade school. He is pretty much always in the back now, but it is still one local business I am happy to support.

True to form, while building this one, I was thinking about the next one. I was also thinking about turning the acrylic one into a Digital Video Recorder, because I had read an article on how, and reading puts ideas in my head. However, about the time I was transferring files it stopped, never to start again. It seems to have been the power supply, and that is replaceable but then you are dealing with taking things in and out of the stupid case again so I just scavenged it for parts and saved one acrylic cube for the memories.

My other thought was how now there are workstation boards where you can put two processors, and if you quad core, you would have eight cores and that is power, and sure I don’t need it for word processing and internet, but if I did want to start editing video as I get more into film, well, it would be cool. But I have learned my lesson and I did not go out and buy processors, because by the time I would actually be ready to build the system, octo-core will be out, or something like that.

And all of this may make it sound like I am actually a geek, but I don’t have the chops for it. I’m medium geek at best.

YouTube Radio

I just got back from seeing Henry Rollins, so this seemed like a good time to blog about YouTube, as that is where I discovered my love for him.

Some of you know that I came to punk rock in kind of a roundabout manner. First, I liked the Ramones, but I didn’t really think about it a lot until the first time I heard “I Wanna Be Sedated”, which moved me from passively liking them when they were around to actively seeking them out and being amazed. It’s a cliché, but if I am going to a desert island and can only take one album, that album will be Ramones-Mania.

So fine, I like one band, no big deal, and then one day there is this amazing song on the radio, and I only hear a little bit, and my sister confirms that it is the Clash, but she doesn’t know what song. Up to that point, I only knew them for Rock the Casbah. I had heard Should I Stay or Should I Go, but I didn’t know it was them. So in the process of discovering that I was looking for Train in Vain, I discovered London Calling and Bank Robber, Rudy Can’t Fail and Lost in a Supermarket, and the list goes on. Suddenly I was aware of another great band.

This was when I started wondering if, like Sheena and Judy, I was a punk or punk rocker. I mean, here are two cornerstones of the movement, but looking at them individually they didn’t really fit into the stereotype. So, I was not sure, but there was this song I liked, Fall Back Down, by a group called Rancid. Actually, I found I liked multiple songs by them. Have you seen them? Pink mohawk, orange mohawk, and shaved head with a clown tattoo on the skull. Well, those styles change actually, but nonetheless, it is clearly punk. Also, all of these other bands that I was looking up because I was intrigued with them were getting punk+ labels. That sounds weird, but I think it was that Violent Femmes were called Hillbilly Punk (if you ask me, punkabilly flows better), AFI was probably called Goth Punk, and it seems to me that Green Day and the Presidents were in there too.

So fine, I’m a punk. At least I now finally have a justification for my studded leather wristband, and I still feel perfectly comfortable in my disdain for the Sex Pistols, because I can. But it led me to wonder, is there more? What am I missing?

I had also discovered that you could often find original music videos, live footage, and tribute videos at www.youtube.com. So I would want to hear a song, and I would just bring up the video and I didn’t have to watch it. It is more work than a real radio, or an iPod, because you need to keep choosing the next song, but I have it on my computer, it is easy, and seeing the other submissions and related videos keeps me finding new things. (Newest find: Sacrifice by London After Midnight. I don’t seem to like anything else by him, but that’s okay, this song rocks.)

I had started using it to find stuff that I knew, but at one point I realized I could also use it to explore unfamiliar territory. Sometimes it is mind-blowing. Warren Zevon was a name I heard all the time, might as well look him up. How could I have never heard Werewolves of London before? You would think it would at least get play on Halloween if nothing else. There was even a video for it.

This leads me to a quote from School of Rock, “And there used to be a way to stick it to the Man. It was called rock 'n roll, but guess what, oh no, the Man ruined that, too, with a little thing called MTV!”

I loved MTV and VH1 back in the day, when you could actually watch music videos—that was great. But having a national audience instead of just a local audience like a radio station is an amazing thing, making the decision of who gets airtime even more important, and I wonder who made those decisions and how. Maybe it did kill music, though I believe it is coming back to life.

So in terms of studying my punk history, School of Rock is also helpful in that there was an amazing flow chart, and it provided some other names to look up. Okay, I didn’t really like the Buzzcocks, but Husker Du is cool, and there are plenty of others to check. One music reviewer mentioned the Descendents and Stiff Little Fingers, and they have clips on YouTube. Hank mentioned at least four other bands tonight, and that is where it comes full circle actually, because I was looking up Black Flag when I stumbled upon some of his spoken word footage and that is where the crush happened. He’s really personable when he’s talking—more so than when singing, I would say.

The other thing that I am feeling is a desire to get more to the history of how it all developed. A while back, Little Sister M came in and said she was playing the Stooges. It was not completely true, in that she bought an Iggy Pop 2-disc set, and one disc was him with the Stooges, but the one she was playing was not. Nonetheless, points to her for knowing the name would impress me. Anyway, after she got done playing “Candy” over and over (I do that with new songs too), I asked her to play “Real Wild Child” for me, and I noticed for the first time some similarity in it to “Shake it Up” by the Cars.

What may be most interesting there is that the version I own of “Real Wild Child” is by Peter Ocasek, Ric’s son, so it all comes full circle indeed, but I started thinking about musical influences. Back in the 80’s, when I loved pop music (I still love those songs), I would always be surprised by the favorite bands of my favorite bands. Really? A-ha and the Doors? Now, I can kind of see where maybe the organ playing on “Light My Fire” is only a few steps removed from the electronic keyboards in “Take on Me”. Maybe it’s a stretch, but I would like to explore it more—the evolution of pop music over time and how it reflected and influenced society.

I’ll just make one other point about YouTube, which is that I think it could be a more effective marketing tool for emerging bands than MySpace. Amateur music videos (AMVs) are very popular. Generally they focus around a television show, a video game, or an anime of some kind, and often the focus is on a specific couple. So here is what you do:

1. Take your most romantic and beautiful song.
2. Get someone to make a video for it using clips from something popular.
3. Make a regular video for the same song showing you and how cute you are (straight performance is probably easiest).
4. Make sure the information with both videos points to your web pages, ideally where people can buy your music and learn more about you.

The most popular TV couple seems to be Clark and Chloe on Smallville. For movies, Ron and Hermione from the Harry Potter series are big. For anime, unless you have one you are passionate about, I don’t know. Naruto might have the most but it is hard to keep track because there are so many. For video games, there are a lot of Kingdom Hearts videos, but the comments always say that they came for the song and did not know about the game, and that is not what you are going for. Stick to Final Fantasy VIII or X.

I know the first songs I looked up were “Here Without You” by Three Doors Down and “Rest in Pieces” by Saliva (I was feeling maudlin that night), but that led to me seeing more about Samurai X and Final Fantasy Advent Children. I think what finally led me to Final Fantasy VIII was Evanescence, “Bring Me Back to Life”, but that led to Sacrifice, and finding also a Kingdom Hearts AMV for it and one from The Crow which is excellent, though a bit bloody.

Anyway, it’s one more way to reach out. But I personally don’t have any video capture software, or any obsessions with fictional couples for that matter, so I probably can’t help. When I learn how to use my camcorder, I will film the performance video. Just ask.