pet peeve

do you know what really drives me crazy? even more than comma splices and inappropriately using apostrophes to indicate a plural? misplaced modifiers. to wit:

The episodic story of two hippies (he and Peter Fonda) making their way across America on motorcycles, Mr. Hopper placed his hero’s quest for identity and fulfillment within the tradition of the road stories of American literature, from Mark Twain through Jack Kerouac.

via SFGate

this is a professional article, written by a professional writer and supposedly edited by a professional copyeditor. and no one noticed that Dennis Hopper just got described as an “episodic story.” which i suppose could be true, in some abstract manner. but not in the manner this writer means.

the reason this is really a pet peeve for me is that while, logically, i understand how people make this mistake, i can’t really practically understand it. how do you not see that? it’s so glaring to me. and it happens all the time. so people, please learn about proper agreement between your subject and the introductory modifying clause. thank you.

i set fire to our bed

flames on the side of my face

so this week’s av q&a raises the question of art (or “art,” as the case may be) that absolutely infuriates you. which i find interesting because i was just thinking about this.

this time last week, i was driving down the coast to santa barbara. my tape player has apparently decided it really doesn’t want to work anymore, and my other ipod adapter (the radio scanner one) is kind of jacked up, so i was stuck with the radio for long swathes of the journey. and while flipping stations trying to find music (instead of shitty drive time djs), i got to hear the new katy perry song, which is so awful i’m not even going to link to it. just trust me, ok? it’s terrible.

and yet i didn’t change the station. i listened the whole way through. 4 minutes of absolute dreck that hurt my soul. and i realized that i almost never change the station when her music comes on. and i realized that this is because i love to hate katy perry’s so-called music. the lyrics are so vapid and inane, the music so craptacularly bland, the singing so atrocious, it’s like a perfect storm of all that’s wrong in pop music.

it’s not so-bad-it’s-good, it’s so bad that i actively enjoy hating it.

the biggest, meanest motherfucker at R&D Trucking

I don’t remember precisely the first DBT song I ever heard, but this is the first one I actually paid attention to, because the story behind it amused the hell out of me. DBT plays this song live a lot, and so pretty much all of their fans are acquainted with the trials and triumphs of Jan and Chester. And now Chester has passed. Rest in peace, man.

no good intentions

to follow up on my previous post, I bring to you a short playlist of DBT songs about small towns. I have listened to these songs many times, and I think about them a lot, but I’m not going to provide any commentary here. I struggled with some, but it’s pretty much stuff I’ve said in other ways in other places, so I’ll just say that I identify with them all in some way, that I feel they capture that sense of confinement and comfort that small towns bring in equal measure, and leave it at that.

midnight girl in a sunset town

I talk a lot of shit about my hometown, and most of it is deserved. But I will say this for it, and for small towns in general: they’re good places to come from.

On Saturday I went to a Basque restaurant in Los Banos. We didn’t arrive in the valley until the evening, and so we missed the worst of the heat. By the time we got out of the car, as the sun was starting to set, the air had reached that perfect temperature that coastal folks sometimes forget about. As much as I hated the weather in Davis, I absolutely loved not needing to carry a sweater when I went out at night. There is nothing that says “summer” quite like a warm evening with a light breeze. Already slightly boozy and pleased by a day in the sun, I was ready to continue feeling boozy and pleasant—even nostalgic—before we even got inside.

south detroit is a lake

y’all, maybe just because it’s friday afternoon, but seriously, this pleases me SO MUCH:

h/t to EotAW

the clue in the blog

As a nerd, I devoured books the way other people ate sweets. … This is where Nancy Drew came in handy — although, not the shitty remade versions from the late eighties where she was meaner and more popular and the series was more edgy. I liked that there was a mystery but the themes weren’t too adult (unlike those slutty Sweet Valley High girls), I liked that she had a couple of close friends but was sort of more isolated from everyone else her own age, and I liked that she always won even when she was up against people who were older or richer because she was smart.

Megan Carpenter, “Nancy Drew, Heroine to Nerd Girls Everywhere“

Did you know that Nancy Drew turns 80 freaking years old this week? Time for some pop culture reflection!

I was a quiet, shy kid. I moved schools a lot and I wasn’t given to making friends easily. I was never bullied; I was one of those kids who was so quiet and inoffensive that I escaped the notice of any potential bullies. We didn’t usually live in neighborhoods with many other kids around, and god forbid I play with my brothers, so I tended to be on my own a lot, either reading or making up elaborate make-believe worlds for myself. I was never myself in these worlds: I was prettier, or bolder, or smarter. I lived in more interesting times. Frequently, I was an orphan. And whoever or wherever I imagined myself, I was always unafraid to take on the world.

sick sad world

so Daria finally comes out on DVD this week. I have been waiting for this for years. I long ago downloaded pirated copies of the entire series, but the quality on many of them is pretty crappy. this didn’t stop me from rewatching all of them every once in a while, but it did make me pine for DVDs. and they’re finally here, and so of course people all over the internet are suddenly talking about the series. i found this one, from salon, particularly interesting.

the author, Latoya Peterson, argues that Daria provided not just a funny and complex satirical world, but also a role model and sense of reinforcement for smart, awkward girls. unlike Peterson, I don’t know that I ever thought about the show in concrete terms or gained a sense of reinforcement from it. i was 15 when Daria first aired, and I watched it throughout high school. I loved Daria, and I certainly saw aspects of myself in the main character, but mostly I just enjoyed the show as funny and smartly written.

five tornadoes, people

and just for putting up with the barrage of boring posts today, i will also tell you that i went to see DBT on saturday and it was great as per usual. and now you can listen to a song: