Talking Pat Sajak Union Blues

The picture is the only photograph of Thomas Pynchon I've ever seen. He doesn't really look like an enigmatic literary genius who only breaks his reclusive tendencies to appear on The Simpsons, does he? At any rate, it has nothing to do with anything, just something I grabbed off of Wikipedia months ago when I was looking for random pictures to illustrate this humble blog.

Okay. So, I'm reading Chuck Klosterman's Sex Drugs and Cocoa Puffs and listening to My Bloody Valentine's Loveless album. I have the television muted and on ABC, because I don't want to forget that I'm planning on watching the new episode of Lost at 9:00. (I know there' a State game on, but I don't think I want to watch it. I'm not overly pessmistic, but Duke is Duke. They get more tv time than Leave it to Beaver re-runs [Gods, don't we all miss Pete Gillen on some subatomic level?]. And although State's bigs should be able to dominate Duke in the paint, Duke's ability to force turnovers and run up the score with their Phoenix Suns offense manages to exploit almost all of State's weaknesses at the same time.) I also realize that the fact that I have to set the channel a good two hours before the episode begins doesn't exactly imply that I really want to watch the episode. But I don't watch much network television, so I have a hard time remembering exactly when shows are on. This is what happens when the majority of television you watch is actually on DVD (which is a much more satisfying way of watching most television series, it just means that you can't talk about the show until months after most people have seen them. But this is alright, since most of my friends don't watch that much television either.)

Anyway, Wheel of Fortune is on the television, but I don't really notice it until I reach the end of the essay where Klosterman argues that Empire Strikes Back set the tone for Gen-X. When I look up at the end of the chapter, they're doing the final puzzle on Wheel of Fortune. The category is something like "Fictional Characters" or whatever, and even after Pat Sajak spotted the contestant the letters, it was completely unclear what the answer was. And it turned out that the answer was "Happy and Grumpy". And this is fucking bullshit. I haven't watched an episode of Wheel of Fortune since I was in middle school, at the most recent, but everyone understands that the answers have to be idiomatic if they are multiple words. If the answer had been "Batman & Robin", that would be fine. Everyone associates the two. And if the answer had been "The Seven Dwarfs", that would be fine too. But who the hell would ever guess "Happy and Grumpy"? I thought that I didn't watch Wheel of Fortune because it was too easy. Now I know that I don't watch it because it doesn't play fair.


This weekend, I intend to go see either Juno or There Will Be Blood, depending on whether or not I feel like going to Cary (and, I suppose, on whether or not the theaters don't change the movies they are showing too drastically.) I have a stack of new music books to get through, which have pushed the Nabokov book that I put on top of my bookshelf a few weeks ago in order to motivate myself to go ahead and read it. But a monograph about the first Velvet Underground album or Johnny Cash's second autobiography seem more immediately interesting, even if they are less fulfilling for me as a person.

Talking Union Blues

According to the Washington Post's Reliable Source, Arlo Guthrie has endorsed Ron Paul for president. This bothers me. His reasoning, that Paul would have been the only candidate who would have signed the Constitution in 1787 is flat out ridiculous. (Although I can believe that Huckabee wouldn't have been willing to go along with the First Amendment). And this is simply a slap in the face to what his father, Woody, stood for. Woody Guthrie was a socialist and stalwart union supporter, who would have written songs decrying Paul's racist newsletters and libertarian economic policies. He would have supported either Obama or Edwards, out of the main candidates.

I've never considered Arlo to be the world's smartest guy, but I gave him more credit than this.

Talking TV Union Blues

Okay. I'm getting a slight bit of happiness from watching the effects of the writers' strike on the programming of the few shows that I actually bother to watch on network television. Take tonight's House, for example. It was the bloody Christmas episode. Why didn't they air it at Christmas? Presumably because Fox only had three episodes of the show left (at least, that's what I've read.) and television ratings for regular shows are somewhat lower around Christmas. So, given only three episodes of one of the higher-rated shows on television, Fox decides to sit on them for a while. But then, someone makes the seemingly strange decision to put an episode of House on after the Superbowl, which I thought was usually a spot for introducing a new show. Now, Fox can't very well air the Christmas episode after the Superbowl, which takes place in godsdamned February. It would look ridiculous. And House this season seems to have just enough of an ongoing story arch that they want to keep the episodes in order. So, with (allegedly) only three episodes of the show left, Fox is forced to burn through one precious episode of the show in order to show another episode after the Superbowl (a quick sidetrip- the Superbowl represents the greatest success that marketers have ever pulled off. For one night a year, people forget that they always change the channel during advertisements, and some bastards actually watch what is usually a boring football game for the specific purpose of watching commercials. How fucked up is that? 364 days of the year and they dislike ads, but for one night, it's almost one's duty as an American to take notes about which commercial "won". Right now, the only part of the Superbowl I expect to watch is the Tom Petty show at halftime.) and that's how Fox wound up deciding to use up two-thirds of their House episodes in less than a week.

Tonight's episode was almost pretty good. It wasn't, in no small part because the new staff is so fucking boring, but I could see the places where a good episode almost broke through (hint- it was in the clinic storyline, and the looks exchanged during the last scene.) During the episode, I was thinking about how House just might be the most formulaic show on television. It's still one of my favorites, but that's entirely because Hugh Laurie is such a fantastic actor.

The next thing I'm planning on watching on television is the new season of Lost, which I think starts on Thursday. I've only watched the show on DVD, and I have a feeling that only watching one episode of the show a week will be irritating. The show is often so intentionally byzantine and frustrating, that without the instant gratification of watching two or three episodes in a row, I might actually wind up just waiting for the DVDs for this season. Although the writers' strike could very well fuck all of that up anyway.

Shaggy Dog Stories For A new Millenium

I've never been able to shake the feeling that I'm part of a generation that suffers from a profound case of arrested development (by which I don't mean a) the best American sitcom post-Seinfeld or b)the rap group that I'm fairly certain is my friend James' all-time favorite hip hop act). Maybe it's something that we inherited from the bastards in generation-X. And it's hard for me to pinpoint exactly what I mean. Part of it is when a movie like Transformers comes out, and people like my future brother-in-law (a genuinely intelligent person, albeit with occasionally questionable taste) are legitimately excited about seeing it- way more excited than they are for equivalent Hollywood summer epics. Part of it is the proliferation of cell phone ring tones based on 8-bit video games. Maybe this is actually the case for every generation that grows up in a media-saturated environment, but it seems like my peers are getting nostalgic at far too young of an age. And maybe I'm entirely mistaken. Gods only know just how far my fingers are from the pulse of society (you'd think reading Entertainment Weekly would have me more up to date, but I always skip the parts on celebrities who aren't Levon Helm or Lupe Fiasco, and since they aren't really even celebrities- well, you see how it all falls apart).

And while I've been able to avoid things like the MySpace and Guitar Hero that people who I happen to share a demographic with are drawn to like those birds that collect shiny things, I fear that I'm marching in a complete fucking lockstep with part of the arrested development thing. I mean, why else do I spend more time playing old games on the Virtual Console than I do on actual Wii games?

Sure, there are perfectly reasonable explanations that can function without the assumption of any sort of nostalgia- I'm mostly playing games that I never had on their original consoles- games like Super Metroid and Paper Mario and Actraiser. And the Wii has suffered from a lack of quality titles that aren't collections of minigames or ports of Playstation 2 games. But, given that I had 700 points left on the card that I got for Christmas, why oh why did I download the original Super Mario Brothers? I mean, I played the hell out of this game on the original NES. I already have like five Mario games in one form or another for the Wii. Six, maybe, now that I think about it. So, why did I download it? I'm worried that I did it simple for the nostalgia of it, and that's what is annoying me. God help me if they ever put the NHL game for the Genesis onto the system- I'll probably spend revert right back to spending all my time listening to Nevermind and trying to have a perfect season with the Chicago Blackhawks.

Anyway, all of this was just misdirection. I was actually thinking about my own arrested development earlier today, long before I surprised myself by downloading the damned game. What happened was, I went out this morning and got my drivers license. It took nine damned years, and two failed tests, but I finally got the fucking thing. Which puts me ahead of David Sedaris and Alfred Hitchcock (actually, Hitchcock might have had a license, but in Donald Spoto's biography of the greatest director who ever lived, he wrote that Hitchcock never drove at all, mostly because he had an overwhelming fear of being pulled over. There's a longer story behind that, and it actually goes a long way towards informing viewings of most of the Hitchcock's films, but that's really not my point. I don't know what my exact point is, just that it almost certainly has very little to do with Strangers on a Train), but behind the idiot teenagers in my neighborhood who have yet to realize that lacrosse is a stupid sport played by people who aspire to be Maryland fans. I don't know what that means, I just know that it's fucking true. They all secretly want to be Nik Caner-Medley. And Nik Caner-Medley doesn't want to be Nik Caner-Medley. He wanted to be a fucking lacrosse player.

Changing the subject, I spent a few hours this weekend (after I finished Cormac McCarthy's No Country For Old Men during commercial breaks while watching the NCSU/FSU game but before I made a noble but flawed effort at making beef stroganoff) catching up with the Filthy Critic. I haven't read Filthy since last summer, and it had been even longer since I really spent time with the man who is almost certainly the finest film critic on the internet tubes(I say this with no sarcasm or irony whatsoever. I don't agree with a lot of his opinions, but his work is never boring and almost always genuinely insightful. His style means that you often have to work a bit to realize that he isn't simply funny, but fucking close to brilliant. I'm serious.) I love that he gave Kings of Kong the incredibly elusive "five fingers". It's out on DVD now, and if you haven't seen it, you really should check it out. It's probably my favorite documentary since American Movie, (although I'm having a hard time remembering that many documentaries I've liked this decade. The Aristocrats and Lost In La Mancha both come to mind, but that's about it. Super Size Me and Bowling For Columbine were both all right, but both were also very deeply flawed as films.) I'd fucking love for someone from the Oscars to try and explain how Kong wasn't even fucking nominated. But then again, this is the award ceremony that honored the terrible Fahrenheit 911 and ignored Hoop Dreams. They aren't as bad as the Grammys at giving out statues to people, but they aren't particularly skilled at it, when you get right down to it. Oh, that's right. I loved Beyond The Mat, and that came out in 2000. That was my favorite documentary since American Movie. Kings of Kong is probably better than Beyond the Mat, actually. It's a close call, at least.

Science Fiction Punk Rock Theater

I downloaded an album from eMusic that I've become oddly fascinated with. It's a collection of current punk bands covering the Rocky Horror Picture Show soundtrack. Now, Green Day is the only punk band from the last twenty years or so that I've paid any real attention to, and I haven't given RHPS much thought since high school, but I found the concept so interesting that I didn't really feel like I had much of a choice about downloading it. And it is remarkably fascinating. There's a certain logic to the whole thing- Rocky Horror was almost punk before punk really existed after all, but the execution of the entire thing is pretty impressive, especially for a collection of bands of which I had only heard of two of them.

When I heard that Heath Ledger had died, I eventually realized that I couldn't think of a single one of his films that I had seen. It turns out that I have seen one movie he was in (Monster's Ball, but the only things I remember from it are Puff Daddy being executed at the beginning and Halle Berry and Billy Bob Thorton grinding on the floor). Brokeback Mountain has been on the increasingly long list of movies I've been meaning to see, but I have no idea when I'll eventually get around to it (My Netflix queue is over 80 movies long, and I've been trying not to add things to it.)

The show last night was really good, although it only lasted a little over half an hour. The weather wasn't as bad as I had feared, and I was dismissed from jury duty. (Which is a little annoying. I mean, they were after me for like two years to serve, and when they finally had me, they simply wasted a few minutes of my time for a few evenings and then said they didn't want me. I guess not everything means something)

Sifting Through The Wreckage

It was about ten years ago, when Titanic won best picture over Boogie Nights, L.A. Confidential, As Good As It Gets, Good Will Hunting, Jackie Brown, The Full Monty and four or five other superior films, that I first promised myself I wouldn't get upset about the crimes of the Oscars. Since then, my resolve has been tested by the awards several times- Russell Crowe not winning for several amazing performances (although he did win for a less amazing performance in Gladiator), Daniel Day-Lewis somehow not winning for Gangs of New York, Gladiator beating Traffic for best picture, I could go on. So, true to that spirit, I'm not upset by a couple of really puzzling Oscar nominations. But I will mention the two that I noticed.

Best Animated Feature- Surf's Up gets nominated but the Simpsons movie doesn't. Really? Really? We all know that this award is Ratatouille's, (although I'm sure Persepolis is fantastic) but really?

Best Song- Enchanted got three nominations. Fucking Three. Eddie Vedder was shut out after winning the Golden Globe. I understand that this award exists to give Disney films Oscars. Hell, Mary Poppins beat the songs from A Hard Day's Night. If the Beatles didn't have a chance, then I suppose Eddie didn't either. (You might remember that Phil Collins got himself an Oscar in this category for a song from Tarzan. That's all I'm going to say).

Going to the Cradle tonight, where I'll freeze my ass of for probably at least an hour waiting in line to get in. Free shows are awesome and all, but I'd really prefer to pay the fifteen or so dollars and not have to wait in line when it's about 30 degrees outside. I'll probably write something about it tomorrow if I don't have jury duty. (If the Feds do decide to bring me in, it would be on the morning after I get home at 1:30 in the morning.)

I have to say it was a good day.

It snowed a little bit.
UNC lost.
Huckabee lost.
State won with a Gavin Grant play I still only half believe really happened.
Cat's Cradle scheduled a Brother Ali show.

Happiness is kind of alright, as it turns out.

Last Thoughts on Bobby Fisher

"In ceremonies of the horsemen
Even the pawn must hold a grudge"
-Bob Dylan, "Love Minus Zero/No Limit"

"Lolita and Bobby Fisher
Country no part is red
Just black and white
Humphrey Bogart is dead"
-Buck 65, " 1957"


Bobby Fisher is dead.

He was not a good person. He believed in horrible, vile things. He was an anti-Semite, he publicly lauded the September 11th attacks. He defied sanctions put in place to punish the genocidal dictator Slobodan Milosevic. When he was a young man, sportswriter Dick Schaap befriended Fisher, taking him to Knicks games and acting as a sort of father figure to the young genius. Later in his life, Fisher told Schaap son's Jeremy that his father was "a typical Jewish snake". There is no good reason to mourn Fisher's death. But there is a great deal to consider about his life.

The sheer amount of symbolism and apparent cliches that comprise Fisher's life can be daunting. First, he was the classic child prodigy- a champion and grandmaster in his teens- in the mold of Mozart or Rimbaud or LeBron James. He was a symbol of the Cold War- his now legendary victory over Boris Spassky in Iceland in 1972 is as much a milestone of the athletic side of the Cold War as the Miracle on Ice in 1980, or the theft of the gold medal from the United States in basketball in the Munich games. He was a national hero, if only briefly. He is the insane genius- like Nabokov's Luzhin, or Van Gogh or John Forbes Nash. He is the recluse, who dropped out of the public eye , like J.D. Salinger. He is the self-hating Jew (his mother was Jewish, although Fisher he denied being Jewish, much as he denied the Holocaust), the conspiracy theorist, the man without a country for the last fifteen years of his life.

He also played chess. He might be the greatest chess player ever. When I was younger and played chess, I studied his book, Bobby Fisher Teaches Chess, and imitated the way he held his hands over his face in a picture. I still do, although now only because of 16 or so years of habit.
I quit playing chess, mostly because I realized that I'm not patient enough to be good at it, but whenever I saw a newspaper article on the increasingly tragic genius, I would read it. His story began to combine the mythic and the pathetic in such large portions that I could no more ignore it than I could ignore a classical tragedy, at least, until the mythic portion was so utterly devoured by the pathetic that observing Fisher became little different from watching a particularly nasty car wreck.

Bobby Fisher's life included a great many things worth mourning- what might be seen ultimately as his talent being largely wasted and his humanity being gradually destroyed. But I see little point in mourning Fisher's death.