2.23.2002
The numerous gays in ''the seniormost ranks of the Reagan administration called themselves the 'laissez fairies,''' writes Brock.
Salon ran a pretty good commentary on what's good about Friends, following the announcement that the show has only one season left. I like the piece mainly because it makes a point I've been making for a while now -- that the show succeeded in spite of the craven Gen-X marketing effort that inspired it in 1994.
The other thing I like about it is that it addresses the longtime gripe of Seinfeld fans, that Friends is just a pale carbon copy of the much-praised Show About Nothing. A representative quote:
If "Seinfeld" was a show about nothing, "Friends" is a show about anything. It was also, surprisingly, a show in which people hung out with other people their own age. If anything about "Friends" is realistic, in fact, it's that. When characters of different ages have appeared on the show, their ages have been major issues. (Monica's relationship with the much older Richard, for example, ultimately failed for that reason.) In fact, from the nondescript title (the network had originally wanted to call it "Friends Like These") to the equal weight given to the collect-them-all personalities -- Flaky, Jappy, Controlly, Smarmy, Mopey and Dopey -- everything about "Friends" that was considered narrow or unworkable became one of its most important assets....Of course, "Friends" couldn't have existed without "Seinfeld." Although the latter was arguably a funnier show, "Friends" will probably age better in syndication. We loved the "Seinfeld" characters because they were loathsome, because they represented the opposite of what we were supposed to like and because they made us feel better about a future in which nothing was expected to happen....
We may have been 25 at the time the show began, but some of us -- like Monica, Chandler, Rachel, Ross, Joey and Phoebe -- would remain 25 for a few more years. But then we all grew up. If Jerry, George, Kramer and Elaine hadn't landed in jail, they would have remained -- So here we are, forever. Forever and ever and ever -- in their own cozy hell, where no red-hot pokers were needed.
The "Friends," on the other hand, will probably end up living somewhere among us.
Nobody, including this Salon columnist, seems to remember this anymore, but about a year after Friends debuted (to astounding ratings), a very snippy Jerry Seinfeld -- then at the height of his show's popularity -- appeared on The Tonight Show and made some unsubtle references to the fellow NBC hit show and its similarity to his show. To be fair, he only made the comments in response to a question from Leno about the then-suffocating preponderance of urban/single/20-30-something sitcoms on TV, which Leno posited as Seinfeld's legacy; to which Jerry replied, "Oh you mean all these shows about friends sitting around talking? Yes, there are a lot of shows about friends right now, aren't there?" I agree that Seinfeld's show is the more groundbreaking one, but I thought then and still think now that not only was Jerry being an unconscionable, ungrateful bitch on national television, he was pretty inaccurate. This Salon story does a pretty good job of carving out Friends' legacy -- and keeping me from feeling too sheepish about admitting to my own friends (who all think the show is so five-years-ago) that I still watch it.
2.22.2002
Oh, and yes this CSS is lifted from Blue Robot, and the rotating-image code is from Crayonbox. Now I just have to fix all this. Comments? Errata? Suggestions?
I'm cruising up Amsterdam, the sun is brilliant, and I'm hearing "All I Wanna Do" on the radio for the first time. I turn it up. It's one of those rare afternoons when driving in Manhattan is a pleasure.
At the light, I have to turn Sheryl Crow down to hear what the guy in the next car is saying. "Hey," he says, "do you want me to fix that dent?" He indicates the passenger door on our Suburau, crumpled by a teenage driver in Missouri. "I got tools. 40 bucks."
"No thanks," I say. "If the car looks too good, someone will steal it."
"Oh, don't worry. I won't do that good a job."
I still tell that as one of my New York stories; it's got a good blend of wise-ass and hustle. But there's another story that happened a few years later. Different car, different ending.
My wife and I were looking at antiques and stopped first at a place on Fifth Avenue in Brooklyn. After we parked, a guy pulled up and offered to fix the dent on the wheel rim of the Camry. I just kept walking, but my wife hadn't quite heard him and started back toward him. She thought he was pointing out something wrong with our car -- the lights on, or a door left ajar. Sometimes she trusts people too much.
What was it that made me grab her elbow and steer her inside the shop? Maybe it was just the New York thing, the wall you've got to put up to keep out the constant assault of the city. Someone makes you an offer you don't want, asks for money you don't have, you just ignore him. Like it didn't happen, like he's not there at all. Sometimes I trust people too little.
He blew up. I don't remember the names he called me or the threats he made, still sitting in his car. I don't remember what I said back. But I remember being nervous -- and unwilling to back down. I was out on the sidewalk, and glad that the two guys who worked at the shop were both near and large.
It was clear that as long as I stood there, he would keep raving. My impulse then was to turn my back on him, go back in the shop, and ignore him. And then he told me to do just that. "Go on, turn around and go inside." He kept repeating it, commanding it. So of course that kept me out there on the sidewalk arguing with this lunatic car repair guy. Until I'd had enough, and really did turn and walk away.
Afterward, I felt an inchoate rage. I envisioned turning him into the cops for running an illegal business; or coming back to find our car vandalized; or various violent scenarios, fear and its flipside.
It was months before we got the car fixed. I sometimes think of these two dents as inverse New York stories. The sitcom and the cop drama, Yiddish and thuggish, the punch line and the fear of being punched.
"Mark has come out of the matzoh-ball eating circuit, so that should help him here. Even though matzoh balls are round, and the eggs are oval."
This was no Fear Factor: these guys (and one woman I saw during the sushi eating contest) really do compete in eating contests. The whole thing was like watching Iron Chef -- except it didn't make me hungry, it made me sick.
From Der Speigel, we have Batman, Conan, Rambo, Terminator, and Xena.
NB: Thanks, Sandra, for really making my day. I'll bet W has this up on his rec room wall already. Although maybe Cheney should have been the Invisible Man?
It took us days to sift through the thousands of entries we received (well, actually, three) to last week's Oscar Trivia Challenge. Again, to avoid giving away the answers to the casual surfer, Ishbadiddle employs ColorMask technology to hide the answers. Just use your mouse to select the text below and it will magically appear! Just like Yes & Know, only without the pen.
In the true spirit of the Olympics, Chris and Debbie will share a Gold medal for their game efforts to answer the questions. The Bronze goes to Cebra for creativity. I've included Cebra's answers along with the right ones; if you can't tell the difference then go directly to jail, do not pass go, do not collect $200.
* Which movie has won more Oscars than any other without winning the Oscar for Best Picture?
Battlefield Earth. Or maybe Cabaret.
* Which movie has been the biggest Oscar-loser in history -- that is, which movie was nominated for 11 Oscars and failed to win a single one?
Two of the following three have earned this dubious distinction: The Color Purple, Titanic, and The Turning Point.
* What two films have received more nominations than Lord of the Ring's 13?
Either: All About Eve and Titanic
Or: The Postman and Under the Cherry Moon
* Four people have been nominated for acting, writing, and directing in the same film. (One of them twice). Who?
Woody Allen (Annie Hall), Warren Beatty (Reds and Heaven Can Wait), Orson Welles (Citizen Kane), Roberto Begnini (Life is Beautiful), and Alan Smithee (Bloodsucking Pharaohs in Pittsburgh).
* Who's the only Oscar to have won an Oscar?
Oscar Wilde, for There's Something About Ernest or Oscar Hammerstein II (Best Song: 1941, 1945)
* One Best Supporting Actress winner was on screen for 8 minutes. One Best Actor winner was on screen for 16 minutes. Who? (For a bonus point: what film did both of them appear in?)
Judi Dench as Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love, and Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter in Silence of the Lambs. They were both in 84 Charing Cross Road. OR: "Katherine Hepburn & Spencer Tracy, but I can't think of anything they were in together."
* Kate Winslet and Judi Dench were nominated for playing the younger and the older novelist Iris Murdoch in Iris. This was the second time that two actresses have been nominated for playing the same character in the same film. What was the first? And what two actresses were nominated for playing the same character in two different films in the same year?
Gloria Stuart and Kate Winslet played Rose in Titanic. Judi Dench and Cate Blanchett both played Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love and Elizabeth. As far as I know, Gloria Stuart and Cate Blanchett have never played the same character, but it's only a matter of time. Also accepted: those two babies who doubled for each other in Look Who's Talking.
* What two actors received Oscars (in two different years) for playing the same character in two different films? (That's two actors, one character, two movies, two Oscars.) And what four actors were each nominated twice for playing the same character in two different films? (That's four actors, four characters, eight nominations, and eight movies.)
Bing Crosby as Father Chuck O'Malley in Going My Way (1944) and The Bells Of St. Mary's (1945).
Paul Newman as "Fast" Eddie Felson in The Hustler (1961) and The Color Of Money (1986).
John Ritter as Ben Healy in Problem Child (1990) and Problem Child 2 (1991).
Peter O'Toole as King Henry II in Beckett (1964) and The Lion In Winter (1968).
Al Pacino as Michael Corleone, for The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather: Part II (1974).
* What's the only sequel to win Best Picture?
Either Honey, We Shrunk Ourselves or Godfather II.
* Four women have been nominated for acting in movies directed by their husbands. (One of them won.) Who?
Frances McDormand (Fargo), directed by Joel Coen.
Gena Rowlands (A Woman Under the Influence), directed by John Cassavetes.
Melina Mercouri (Never on Sunday), directed by Jules Dassin.
Julie Andrews (Victor, Victoria) directed by Blake Edwards.
Mariah Carey (Glitter.) Well, she hasn't won...yet. And I'm not sure if she's married to the director. But she deserves to be in here somewhere.
* There are two families with three generations Of Oscar Winners. Who? Walter Huston (Best Supporting Actor, The Treasure Of Sierra Madre, 1948); John Huston (Best Director, The Treasure Of Sierra Madre, 1948); Anjelica Huston (Best Supporting Actress, Prizzi's Honor, 1985). Carmine Coppola (Best Original Dramatic Score, The Godfather: Part II, 1974); Francis Ford Coppola (Best Original Screenplay, Patton, 1970; Best Adapted Screenplay, The Godfather, 1970; Best Picture, Best Director, and Best Original Screenplay, The Godfather: Part II, 1974); Nicholas Coppola A.K.A. Nicholas Cage: Francis Ford Coppola's nephew (Best Actor, Leaving Las Vegas, 1995)
Either: The Kennedys and The Baldwins (if you stretch the definition of "generation")
Or: The Hustons and the Coppolas:
* Why didn't "Waking Life" get a Best Animated Feature nomination? (That's not actually trivia, I was just wondering).
No one can answer this one.
Most of the questions (and heck, the answers too) are from Oscar Trivia; a few from the insane Williams Trivia Contest.
Above a street in Rosslyn, Virginia, next to the Gannett Headquarters, is a beautiful spiral henge of colored glass. It reaches up into the sky, and as you move inside, the glass shifts in color from yellows to reds to purples. Etched in the glass are the names of journalists who were killed while doing their job, or because they did their job too well. Now the name of Danny Pearl will be added to the list. His last words were "Yes, I am a Jew and my father is a Jew." (A statement of pride? A forced confession?) Then his kidnappers slit his throat. All on videotape.
How is it that the murder of one can still shake me even after the death of thousands? Did his kidnappers really think that killing him would aid their cause? In what world does this make any sense?
A couple of weeks ago, I posted a link to this open letter to the people of Pakistan from Mariane Pearl. Here it is in full:
"I want to talk to the people of Pakistan because I want to convey to them the kind of human being my husband Danny Pearl is. I feel compelled to do this because I have seen him mistaken today as a symbol of things that have brought suffering to the world."Danny is a journalist and not a spy of any kind. I met Danny about five years ago in Paris. We were immediately attracted to each other but it was his openness to the world that made me fall in love with him and make him the person that I love most upon this earth.
"Danny had an insatiable urge to cross borders and learn about cultures and other people with the same spirit with which the Prophet Mohammad told Muslims to travel as far as China to gain knowledge. Danny is a man from Los Angeles, California, who was covering the Middle East as a journalist. He told me so much about the cultures of Iran and Saudi Arabia and the friends he had made there. I wanted to become like Danny. He was an inspiration to me to overcome my own Western world and cross borders into other cultures.
"I shared this experience with Danny on a very deep level, transcending a personal background that was very diverse. My father was Dutch. My mother was a Cuban, and our people have suffered a lot. They lived in Paris, and this is how I came to be born in Paris. When Danny and I married in a ceremony in France we made a pledge to each other in our marriage contract that we will always be open to new people and new cultures, making it our life mission to open our own minds and other's minds.
"Danny has been a journalist with the Wall Street Journal for the last 12 years, and I am also a journalist. The opportunity came for us to come to South Asia. I had never been to South Asia. We knew it was our opportunity to discover a whole new part of the world. Bombay was to be our base in the region because it is a convenient place to travel throughout the region.
"We've been in the region for a year-and-a-half, and all we've done is work to create as many dialogues as we could. September 11 was a terrible tragedy for us as it was for other people involved, but we have seen it through the eyes of South Asian people because this is where we have been living and working. We have witnessed the suffering of the people here. We haven't taken sides. We just saw people in distress. I can say I understand personally a lot of the anger and frustration that the people are going through here, and I was not surprised when I read the email from the people who have Danny, expressing their anger.
"But I also want to say that Pakistan is a country that has moved me and touched me. Since I came here two months ago I have learned a lot about the culture, especially about Islam, its ethics and its amazing nobility. I have seen this nobility in every level of society and that has built a lot of respect in me for the Pakistani people.
"The people who are keeping Danny captive are crying for justice. This I know. But this I also know--they hold my husband. My husband is my life. I am six months pregnant, and he is the father of my unborn child. We just found out two days before Danny's disappearance that we are to have a baby boy, our first child. I can tell the people who have Danny that harming an innocent man who has always been sympathetic to human beings regardless of their context perpetuates the cycle of suffering and misery.
"Danny is a man before being an American. I ask his kidnappers to set him free as people inspired by Islam's ethics. I ask them to be people who have the courage to actually take the first step to end this cycle of suffering. Let real justice win. Maybe because you have suffered so much, because you are crying so much for justice, maybe you are the first ones to implement justice. Danny is innocent."
Christina wrote: "I didn't know him well, but I remember Danny Pearl from when I worked at the
Wall Street Journal from '93-'95 in New York. My memory of him is of someone who was excited every day at the prospect of being a Journalist. Big smile, big ideas, fun guy. What happened to him breaks my heart."
James over at It's A Mystery posted a link I sent him, in which a D&D player attempts to disprove allegations that children can learn actual spells from the Harry Potter books. (Sorry, I can't remember where I found this originally. So sue me.) And I have a new Disturbing Search Request.
MetaNews Roundup
So there have been a ton of pieces of late about blogging, not the least of which were in Time and on NPR. But only two are really worth mentioning here: a we-knew-blogs-when-blogs-were-cool article in Wired online (worth mentioning because the second page peeps Paul Ford’s blog, linked earlier in Ishbadiddle by Andrea), and a concise piece about how to write personal writing better at A List Apart (worth mentioning because ALA is just so damn cool).I’ve been away from the Ishbadiddle fold for a few days, and look at the content generated!
2.21.2002
The Village Voice has put out its annual Pazz and Jop critics' poll -- available in this week's newspaper and on their website. The web version is superior on a number of levels -- not only because it says up for longer than a week, but because the Voice people have seen fit to include all of the respondents' polls; pre-web, only some of the polls would be represented in the paper.
The winners were predictable. On the album list, Dylan's Love and Theft topped the poll by the largest margin in P&J's nearly 30-year history. The Strokes' much-debated Is This It was #2, but it wasn't even close; Love and Theft all but doubled its points. Equally predictable, on the singles list, Missy Elliott's innovative, much-praised hit "Get Ur Freak On" topped the poll handily.
Whatever its faults -- don't get Jay Smith started on this topic -- P&J is probably the most useful music poll/award produced annually, because its slant -- i.e., the things rock critics drool over (usually a mix of acclaimed geezers, anointed indie-rockers and Important rappers) -- is not quite as craven as the slant of the other honoraria: the Grammys, the American Music Awards, the polls done by specific magazines, etc. In other words, rock critics might all talk to each other and breathe the same stale air, but it's likely that they listen to more music than the average Grammy voter; and it's quite unlikely that Robert Christgau, P&J's poll manager and elder statesman, calls respondents and pressures them to vote for his favorites. (There's one simple reason why Mick Jagger's latest album, loved by no one except Rolling Stone publisher Jann Wenner, made the top five of Rolling Stone's 2001 music awards, for example.)
As someone who is a sometime-published music critic, always compiles year-end music top 10s, but does not contribute to Pazz and Jop, I like to compare my annual tallies with the critics' consensus. This year, nine of my 13 album-of-the-year picks made the P&J top 40 (exceptions were my #2 pick, Dismemberment Plan; #6, the Beta Band; #10, Craig David; and -- natch -- #12, Ben Folds). I'm happy to see that my number-one pick, the Avalanches' Since I Left You, nearly made P&J's top 10, a strong showing for a debut album. All but three of my single-of-the-year picks made the P&J list.
Apparently, I'm not the only one who obsesses over this sort of thing -- Douglas Wolk, my friend and former CMJ editor, clued me in to a P&J number-crunching site where someone named Glenn McDonald has actually figured out which poll participants match the overall results most closely and ranked them based on some formula. This is sorta fun, if you care even a little bit about rock criticism and spot a name or two you are familiar with (Rolling Stone's heavily published Rob Sheffield, for example, or sometime MTV and VH1 personalities Allison Stewart and Anthony DeCurtis) -- are they total shills for the rock-crit party line, or do they march to their own drum, as it were? (FYI, Sheffield is apparently way into the critical faves, making the top 10.)
Anyway, I shouldn't talk -- I often match the P&J results pretty closely -- and in fact, my friend Jay took the liberty of running the numbers for me. Here's what he found:
From: Jay Smith
To: Douglas Wolk, Chris Molanphy
Subject: Re: Pazz and Jop
Date: Tue, 19 Feb 2002 12:13:31"Now I have the perfect way to know which of my
friends and acquaintances is the PazzAndJoppiest! Ted's just a little bit
PazzAndJoppier than Gavin. Douglas is PnJier than Robin, but not so
PnJ as Windy. And somehow Ivan's become more PnJ than any of them --
what's up with that?Chris, I've run the numbers, and I'm giving you an honorary 60.7. Oooh,
not quite as PazzAndJoppy as Joe Levy! Sorry, Chris. Just ditch that
Beta Band crap and learn to love the Dylan, and you're top ten material.
Oh, and then you'd be pushing Sheffield out of the top ten. Grudge Match!
I guess I kind of deserved that. CMM
Now that the 2002 update has taken place, I cannot wait to read new accounts of the dreaded faux pas.� My personal favorites are when the person telling the story is actually the freak, as opposed to the person they are complaining about in their written diatribe.
Have at it, my friends!!!
-- Sandra
2.20.2002
Has anyone reading this ever joined a fan club?�� I was doing a search on Jeri Ryan at the office (purely work related, I assure you) and the first site that popped up was her official fan club site.� Not surprising.� But when I opened the site there was only a letter saying that due to career and personal commitments, the founders and runners of the site no longer can longer continue their work.
�
Now, I am not trying to make fun of anyone.� But what causes people to think, "Hey let's start a fan club."�And why Jeri Ryan?� Was she even on�Star Trek Voyager (a magnet for fanatics no doubt) five years ago when this club started?� I read somewhere else that she was�a runner up in the Miss America pageant in 1990.� Does that qualify you�for a fan club?� Again, no offense, but she was a supporting player in a somewhat popular syndicated show.� Did her performance as "7 of 9" really change people's lives?� Does Michael Dorn (AKA Worf) get a fan club, too?� And then, why quit with the fan club?� I can only imagine the conversation; "Honey, I know it's hard, but with me being up for partner at the firm and the second baby on the way, I just don't think we can spend the time we need on Jeri's page to make it really good.� Jeri wouldn't like that, and we don't want to piss her off."� I guess I always really believed that fan clubs were inventions of/run by movie studios and talent agencies as hype vehicles.� Seeing this type of sincerity in a site without hype, is somewhat disturbing.
[NB: What I find disturbing is the fact that this is the second reference to Jeri Ryan on this site in the last week. I'm afraid we've just moved down a notch in the Geek Hierarchy.]
Someone just sent me this thought-provoking short online film -- maybe material for Ishbadiddle? Happy Valentine's Day & Chinese New Year!
-- Matt
2.19.2002
So they're filming a movie in our neighborhood -- Duplex, starring Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore, directed by Danny Devito. IMDB gives the logline as: "A young couple has a chance to move into a gorgeous duplex in the perfect New York neighborhood. All they have to do is bump off the current tenant, a cute little old lady." I'm glad to know that Hollywod thinks Park Slope is nice enough to kill for.
After picking my way through the trucks, props, and PAs with clipboards, I reached the coffee cart I sometimes patronize on my way to the train. The coffee's not very good, but the guy is friendly and it's less than a buck. As he gave me my change we talked about the movie. "It's good for business. Some of them buy their coffee from me." Maybe it was one of them who spent the bill I got with www.wheresgeorge.com stamped all over it. So of course I had to look. At Where's George, you can enter the serial number of your bill and see where it's been. My bill had come all the way from New Orleans, marked by a guy named Vernon. The idea is to mark your bill, enter it in the database, spend it normally, and then watch what happens to them -- kinda a combination of the film Twenty Bucks, and those grade-school experiments where we would release balloons with postcards and see how far they went.
As with most things webbish, there's a small subculture devoted to tracking money. One guy in New Jersey has entered 122,927 bills into the database. A million people have logged 15 million bills. There are get-togethers of "Georgers." There's a set of slang terms. (A "Wild Abe" is a $5 bill with the www.wheresgeorge.com marking found "in the wild"; "FRB Bingo" is getting hits on bills from all of the Federal Reserve Bank; a "boomerang" is a bill that's traveled far and then returned to its home city.) It's almost like obsessively tracking your referral logs on your blog. Not that I would ever do that.
Speaking of currency, Debbie got me an excellent book called Boggs: A Comedy of Values. JSG Boggs is an artist whose medium and subject is money. He draws money. Realistic money, but different enough to notice. He then goes and tries to trade it for something of value. He's not a counterfeiter (although the Treasury Department has a different opinion), because he doesn't try to pass off his art as money. Rather, he tries to barter his art in lieu of money. If the merchant takes the drawing, Boggs takes the receipt, the item, and anything else ancillary to the transaction, and sells those to a collector (for actual money, one presumes.) The collector then gets to hunt down the Boggs bill and try to buy it from the merchant (generally for far more than the bill's "face value".) The bill isn't the piece of art -- it's the transaction itself, the willingness of a merchant to temporarily turn commerce inside-out.
The general point is, what makes money valuable? It used to stand for gold, now it only stands for itself. Money is dependent on our confidence in it, which is why the British and US authorities weren't too keen on Boggs' activities. (John Kenneth Galbraith, who certainly knows something about money, had some interesting things to say on that subject.) The British case against Boggs is the narrative arc of the book, but along the way Weschler delves into the interplay between art and commerce, and the history and meaning of money (although he shortchanges alternabills like Ithaca Hours).
What would Boggs would make of the Georgers? Both are more interested in what these little pieces of green paper do, in the transactions they make possible. Boggs wants us to question our faith in them; but the Georgers have a less abstract interest in money. For them, it's like each bill is a message in a bottle, a way of sending themselves out into the wallets of America.
Newspapers have said Philippine karaoke parlors have been removing "My Way" from play lists because fights frequently broke out -- for unfathomable reasons -- when the song was sung. The song seems to drive many drunken men to commit anything from slight physical injuries to homicide, reports said.
A recent article by Stuart Jeffries in the Guardian helps you determine if your CD collection is in need of a hipness replacement:
Perhaps you've become part of the Dido Demographic. You're middle class, in your thirties or thereabouts, and, even though you don't like music as much as you used to, you still want to be part of the scene, even if that only amounts to having some CDs that won't disgrace you when friends leaf through your collection.
Chris responds:
Thanks for this. It's amusing but a bit erratic in whom it is targeting. I mean, someone who'd own 'Solitude Standing' (1987) and 'Graceland' (1986) probably owns 'Brothers in Arms' and 'The Dream of the Blue Turtles,' (both 1985) too. So, so much for the "Dire Straits and Sting as too unhip even for the unhip" theory.
The perspective of the piece is also terribly British, not just in the U.K. favorites that are trotted out as if they are common knowledge (The Beautiful South, the Lightning Seeds, and Texas, who despite their name are British and huge there), or in the one album that is held as up as great and totally unembarrassing (Pulp's veddy British, droll 'Different Class'). It's also reflected in the narrowness of the definition of hip and unhip. Emily, for example, considers her 50-something mother to be quite hip for loving Nirvana and Green Day, and I would be inclined to agree; hell, I still consider my 60-year-old Dad a bit hip for liking Public Enemy's "911 Is a Joke." This limey, however, considers 30-somethings liking *PORTISHEAD*, fer cryin' out loud, to be hopelessly out of touch; last I checked, only in New York City restaurants is 'Dummy' played with any frequency, and the album is still considered by U.S. critics to be in the ballpark of 'Nevermind' and 'Exile in Guyville' among important, influential '90s records; I don't know if 'Dummy' even went gold in America.
The whole article is a reminder that the Brits are even more obsessive about defining subsets of hip popular culture than we are -- which is why some have said that however good the John Cusack-starring 'High Fidelity' is as a film, Nick Hornby's High Fidelity, a book about obsessively judgmental British 30-somethings, should never have been Americanized.
However, there are several notably True things in here, like the bit about people buying rap records because of good intentions -- many times when I'm visiting the apt. of someone in their 30s/40s and clinging to shreds of old hipness, there's one or two critically acclaimed hip-hop CDs that look oddly clean and/or untouched -- or the utter middlebrowness of the Dido/David Gray/Travis trifecta that has colonized (colonised?) the U.K. charts lately.
But let's get to the central bit of data, which is why you probably sent me this. Number of Dido-unhip CDs in Chris's CD collection: 18. Strangely, no Dido, though. :)
Already hopeless at 30,
CMM
My reply:
Yeah, but take 18 CDs expressed as a percentage of your total collection, and I'm sure you come out on top in the hipness category.
This reminds me of a story my friend Marcus told me about reviewing records for NME in the 70s. It was always critically important, he said, to drop this fact when selling off unwanted LPs, to indicate that I-got-this-for-free-and-its-awful, not I-bought-this-and-its-awful. Thankfully, ebay now anonymizes the selling of our awful albums, and we no longer have to fear the disdain of used-record-store-clerks.
And Danielle replies:
Of course, in my opinion, one of the reasons that Chris so richly deserves the respect we all accord him is that he never sells, no matter how, erm, unusual.
Roachford, anyone? : ]
Chris again:
See, that's why I call my collection "a library." It lets me get away with owning all manner of unconscionably bad stuff.
At 6:54 AM -0800 2/19/02, D.N.W. Pelfrey Duryea wrote:
> Roachford, anyone? : ]
Touche, dearest -- but I still say that the most embarrassing things in my collection are the Glass Tiger CD I bought in 1987 and the THREE (count 'em) Huey Lewis & the News CDs I own.
I want a new drug,
CMM
Bum Rap
His butt, however, remained intact and -- much to the delight of onlookers and George Michael himself -- still perfectly round.
"Look at my butt,"� Michael exclaimed to the press corps gathered at the 10am briefing.� "The robbers can�pinch me possessions but they can't pinch me bum!!!"�
As laughter rippled through the crowd, Michael became a bit enraged.� "I don't think you understand," the former pop star began, "Look at my butt!� It's perfectly round.� The British use it as a unit of measure!!!�"
________________________________________
George Michael's Home Robbed
The Associated Press
Sunday, February 17, 2002; 12:38 PM
LONDON �� Thieves broke into pop singer George Michael's mansion and drove off with his $114,000 Aston Martin sports car and $140,000 in paintings, jewelry and clothing, according to a tabloid report Sunday.
Scotland Yard officials declined to confirm the victim's identity, but said they received a call about a stolen vehicle Wednesday morning. Officers went to a home in Hampstead, where the pop star's $4.3 million home is located, and found it had been burglarized, a police spokesman said.
Police were still awaiting a statement from the victim and had made no arrests, he said.
The News of the World reported Sunday that Michael, who rarely uses his London home, was in Los Angeles at the time. Michael's manager and publicist did not immediately return calls for comment Sunday.
2.18.2002
[NB: I can explain, really. Every once in a while (OK, at least once a day) I check my referral log, which tells me how people found my site. (This is why having a blog is hazardous to your productivity.) Sometimes people have typed in something very strange to google and ended up clicking on me. For instance, in the last 20 hits, people have hit Ishbadiddle by searching on: "sentenced noose video download"; "asbestos in demolition projects in Iowa"; "airplane wallpaper"; "Ever since Britney was signed on to her record company someone very"; "decade lost AND fitzgerald"; "coworker invasion of privacy in banking"; "arab fake britney"; and "audio about anwar sadat assasination." Really.
So there's a site called Disturbing Search Requests where folks can post, well, Disturbing Search Requests. (For obvious reasons, it's better than posting them up on your own site.) Hence the stuff that comes up when you google; it's merely reflecting the strangeness of the internet in all its glory. You can see more of the strange paths to my door with this search.]
