Ginger's follies, foibles and fixations.
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| You Listen to Me, Mr. Kick-Ass Ginger's follies, foibles and fixations. |
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Friday, July 26, 2002 Boys Who Like Big Toys Today Mike is directing readers to this choice eBay item. Funny, because Patrick sent me a similar link this morning. Could life-sized space toys be a trend? I wonder if it represents a desperate desire to escape, to really escape the depressing world economic and political situation right now? Hmm. posted by Ginger | 6:43 PM I really, really should be in bed, but it's time for.... The Friday Five 1. How long have you had a weblog? Since October 2001, shortly after I moved to New York from Seattle. 2. What was your first post about? I copied a lengthy mass e-mail I had sent out introducing friends and family to my new life in NYC. 3. How many changes (name, location, etc.) of your weblog have there been, if more than one? The first title was "New York Stories," with an equally boring template. Later I tried to make a customized template that wasn't much better. Later I chose the current template and changed the name to "What Kind of Dining Set Defines Me as a Person?", a line from Fight Club. Most recently I further customized the template and changed the name to "You Listen to Me, Mr. Kick-Ass," a line from Wet Hot American Summer. The location has always been the same. I also have a project-specific blog which is probably forever retired. 4. What CMS (content management system) do you use? Do you like it or do you want to try something else? Um, if this means what I think it means, the answer is Blogger.com. I think they are great, though they are growing so fast I wonder if they have some scaling issues. Still, no problems serious enough to make me go looking for something else. 5. Do you read people who have both a journal and a weblog? Or do you prefer to read people who have all of their writing in one central place? I read mostly blogs, and I prefer that everything be in one place so I don't have to jump around. However, I do like to read Carrie's journals as well as her blogs. posted by Ginger | 3:31 AM Thursday, July 25, 2002 I Heart Eminem (reprise) I got Eminem's two DVDs and watched them on my computer tonight (still no TV): The first one, E, is not much more than a collection of Em's videos from his first two major-label albums, The Slim Shady LP and The Marshall Mathers LP. Since I haven't had regular access to MTV in almost a year and nothing but a wimpy dial-up Internet connection, I missed a lot of Em's videos, and besides even then they would be edited, bleeped, and surrounded by crappy "reality" shows or gag-inducing videos. So it's nice to have the likes of "Stan," "The Real Slim Shady," and so on readily available for viewing in mostly un-edited form. Most of the vids are directed by Phillip Atwell and Dr. Dre, who make a great team. They obviously know Eminem and what he's trying to communicate, and they turn out consistently great work. Kudos are due as well to Paul Hunter who captures Em's angst perfectly in "Way I Am," one of his best songs. A cameo by Marilyn Manson (or possibly a dead-ringer imitator?) is a nice touch. But videos can get pretty boring to watch over and over, so the better entertainment value is by far The Slim Shady Show, an always amusing and sometimes hilarious collection of animated "webisodes" from www.slimshadyworld.com, which for some reason doesn't seem to exist any more. Each 3-5 minute episode features a "Happy Days"-esque group of vaguely high-school aged misfits and ne'er-do-wells loosely based on various Eminem characters. For example, red-eyed Slim Shady (voiced by Eminem) is the brains and the id of the group, alternately getting the gang into and out of trouble. Marshall Mathers (also voiced by Eminem) is the skinny, nerdy, virginal alter-ego who can't ever seem to do anything right (especially when it comes to getting laid)--leaving Slim and the others to bail him out of many a dilemma. My personal favorite, Ken Kaniff (ALSO voiced by Eminem) is fashion-conscious and man-crazy, and clearly the most fun. His act of raising Gianni Versace from the dead is by turns touching, hilarious, and results in new outfits for the gang and a great party. Anyone who accuses Em of homophobia would understand otherwise if they watched Ken in action. Stoner Dave, thuggish Big D and an underused alterna-chick whose name I don't remember flesh out the cast. By the way, if anyone out there wants to make me a t-shirt of a prancing Ken Kaniff, I will pay $$! The characters and humor are more sophisticated than you might expect, even though it runs on the cruder side (well, duh). Tastelessness abounds, quite often to the detriment of celebrities--Kurt Cobain, Leonardo DiCaprio and Robert Downey Jr. are much abused--but always for the sake of comedy. And you don't have to be an Eminem fan to like it--his music never makes an appearance, though in the best episode, "Slimshank Redemption," Slim does some freestyling while in solitary confinement--a hilarious rant which sends up Eminem's style perfectly ("He's not even making sense anymore!" Marshall squeaks). If South Park can be a little tame for your taste, you might want to check out The Slim Shady Show. posted by Ginger | 11:34 PM Celebrity Sighting! Walking with Nell on our way to the Laurie Anderson concert at Lincoln Center, I crossed the street and noticed Michael Ian Black coming towards me. I looked. I looked away. I looked again. He glanced my way. I stared. I wanted to say something but nothing came out. I instead pretended to be Cool New Yorker Who Recognizes but is Unimpressed with Celebrities. Immediately afterward I had to fight the desire to chase him down the street and breathlessly tell him how much I love Wet Hot American Summer, and he is so great in it, blah blah blah... Well, it was a thrill anyway. Storytelling I might be too tired to get into this as much as I'd like, but I must say that Laurie Anderson's performance was evocative, if uneven. I have always admired her use of sound to create something like aural sculptures, which are as much about the spaces betweeen the words as the words themselves. It never seemed to matter much what she said, or sang, but the way she said it. That said, this performance felt like an awkward combination of her old "aural sculpture" style with more relaxed, almost chatty, monologue and a few songs. Though I liked the opportunity to glimpse more of Laurie's real life, the work seemed more of a disjointed collection of "bits" rather than a cohesive whole. An affecting theme of the World Trade Center's construction and subsequent fall weaves itself through the piece, while a riff about "a personality design problem" wanders nowhere and dies, and the great image of her performing in front of a gigantic crucifix ends up as merely a cute joke. There were lots of wonderful moments, but no real point. Not that everything has to have a point, of course. But when I've seen Laurie before, her performances always seemed fully-realized, even if I couldn't tell you what, exactly, the realization was. She did have some great stories, and thoughtful observations about the act of storytelling itself. But I was right--I am too tired to get into all of it now. G'night. posted by Ginger | 12:42 AM Tuesday, July 23, 2002 From The Wall Street Journal The new product is a "big deal in the stapler community," says Clark Allen, a 29-year-old Dallas Web consultant and host of www.VirtualStapler.com, where people exchange stories about staplers and stapler injuries. The color seems to enhance users' bonds with their stapler. "Something about the mechanics of the action, the sound of the CHUNK, and the joining of papers really seem to appeal to these people," Mr. Allen says. (Many thanks to Patrick) posted by Ginger | 11:06 PM Home Again, Jiggidy Jog I have been on countless flights in my life, starting with my first at age six and including my record (to date) of flying on fifteen different aircraft in a single summer (1997). Still, I have always been a little afraid to fly, and it seems to get worse as I get older. It's always the very worst at take-off on my first flight of any trip. Every noise seems unusually rough and clanking, so that I'm convinced something very large and important has broken and nobody else has noticed. As much as I tell myself that flying is safe, as much as I believe that the pilots want a smooth flight at least as much as I do, as much as I silently repeat that there are people who spend their whole lives flying and still manage to survive, still my heart pounds and my palms sweat, until we are up in the air and the seatbelt sign is turned off. I don't know how to combat this, except to just continue to accept it as part of the sacrifice of wanting to travel. I like to ride (I am all for busses and trains), but hate to drive, so if I want to travel somewhere out of the immediate area, flying is my only choice. And actually I like flying, except for the parts where I'm scared and sweating. I know that the fear is irrational. Though there are certainly no guarantees--just as someone must win the lottery, someone must plummet to earth in a fiery wreckage--I'm pretty likely to get through my lifetime of travel unscathed (knock knock!). And because I try not to let irrational fear keep me from doing anything, I only blinked a little when I was randomly assigned seat 13A by the computer when I purchased my e-ticket. This was for my worst flight, understand, the first of four flights of a completed round-trip. I am not unusually prone to superstition, though I do knock the occasional wood (huh huh, says Butt-Head), so even though I knew I could try to get re-seated when I checked in, I didn't bother. And guess what? It was one of the smoothest flights I ever experienced. On the other hand, we had a little "unexpected turbulence" on the flight back this morning, but nothing like this. I have experienced "one of those boom things where it dropped" before--twice. First was, I think, coming back to the States from Lisbon (by the way, TAP Air Portugal has the best food I have ever had on any airline--including my few experiences with first class--bar none) and the second either going to or returning from Hawaii. I don't remember anything going "boom," and it seemed like there wasn't much turbulence going on either. I remember just flying along, then suddenly your stomach is up in your throat as you feel the plane drop straight down, as if some gigantic god-child had been piloting the jet as it's play-toy, then dropped it as it became interested in something else. Everyone on the plane goes "whoOOOAAaa" like they are on a roller coaster, then just as suddenly the dropping stops, and you're flying along again. The passengers either chuckle nervously or attempt to resuscitate their catatonic seatmates, as the captain comes on the intercom saying something like "Whoops! That was a doozy eh, folks?" The first time I was scared out of my mind, the second time was, well, scary but not so surprising. Still, I'd prefer a smooth-as-silk ride any day. posted by Ginger | 8:21 PM |
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