hit and run

pardon the interruption

so, as most of you know, Things Are Afoot. new job, etc. which means less blogging. but don’t think that i’ve forgotten you, dear readers! here, entertain yourselves while i’m out:

nice sweaters!

so this song really toes the line of being too precious and twee, but i really like it anyway.

my mother, my nemesis

so my friend sent me this guest post on dooce, by sarah of que sera sera. and it delighted me and made me remember my childhood battles with my own mother. fighting with your mom is not like fighting with your brothers; for one, you can’t just pound your mother into submission. there are power dynamics at play. but if you’re persistent enough, you can actually win on occasion.

even during my high school years, i didn’t engage in many drag-out battles with my mom. i’m not much for confrontation to begin with, and both of my brothers led very dramatic lives (one unintentionally, through health problems, the other just by being a rebellious drama queen). i figured out early on that if nodded, smiled, did well in school, and came home on time, i could get away with quite a lot and avoid the entire need for a fight.*

but, you know, i am also a terribly stubborn person, from a family of terribly stubborn people, and so altercations were impossible to avoid entirely. there were the small, long-running battles: whether i would ever put on a slip without being argued into it first (no), whether she would ever let me have my hair the way i wanted (not for a long time), whether i could wear shorts to school (not until i wised up enough to start changing at school). but then there were the few, the proud, the blowouts. some of the more memorable below the jump.

curses!

god dammit, nathan rabin, stop making me love you:

[Waylon Jennings] had the kind of upbringing that tends to breed either convicts or country legends.

I would argue that it’s not an either/or thing, but otherwise…

reminder: professionalism ahoy!

just a reminder: i have a new blog, one with my name on it and shit. one where i (theoretically) act like an adult and write posts i can actually show to the public. it’s finally up and running, so please check it out.

i’ll still post here, of course, but this will continue to be my “personal” blog, with no names but lots of whining and muppet videos.

embrace your destiny

i don’t consider myself a writer.

which is weird, right? because i write all kinds of things. i write this here blog (with a blatant disregard for consistent capitalization, even). i write a regular column, and i’ve written a whole book, and my resume even has a whole section for “publications.” most people would probably call me a writer. so why don’t i?

this is not okay

people. oh my god. seriously. first chester, and now blanche devereaux. brian moylan at gawker wrote some lovely things in his post on rue’s death, things i wish i could say half as nicely:

Now Betty White, who is enjoying a career resurgence late, is the only member of The Golden Girls cast still alive. Estelle Getty died in 2008 and Bea Arthur passed last year. These deaths seem harder than when most actors of celebrities pass away. Maybe it’s because the characters they played were close to the actresses’ personalities, that we feel like we were so close to them. Their infamous theme song wasn’t so much about the women’s relationship to each other, but thanking us for being their friends and sharing in their adventures.

For younger people who grew up watching the sitcom—or discovering it in syndication, where it still lives today—these were like our surrogate grandmothers. Funny ladies who were at turns gentile, kind, funny, and daffy. Ones that lived a full life of friendship, dating, multicolored caftans, and lots and lots of cheesecake. Yeah, it was a TV show, but thanks to the wonderful actresses who inhabited the roles, it always felt like the real thing.

i’ve already discussed my love of the golden girls. i was watching the show last night, actually, and thinking about how part of the reason i’m hesitant to get rid of my cable – even though it’s ridiculously expensive (ugh, seriously, how can television cost that much?) – is that i love knowing i can watch golden girls every night at 11 while i’m puttering around, getting my shit together for the next day. it’s a good way to end the day.

let me show you how i feel about this development:

like a horse in a saddle

oh, people. it’s time for another installation of “slimlove loves nathan rabin,” as he tackles one of my favorite delightfully demented albums:

Like The Byrds did with Sweetheart Of The Rodeo, the brothers Ween recruited an all-star team of session musicians to give their smartass foray into country an authentic sheen on 12 Golden Country Greats (true to form, the album is only ten songs long; the album title refers to the session musicians). That’s the album’s most inspired joke: having country legends like Hargus “Pig” Robbins, Elvis’ longtime back-up singers The Jordanaires, and Buddy Harman dress up Ween’s puerile humor in a sparkling, rhinestone-studded Nudie suit.

i started listening to ween in college. their 1999 concert at the warfield was an epic event in my early adulthood. for a while there, T and i were both completely obsessed with 12 golden country greats. we listened to it in the morning before going off to class/work. we tried to convince everyone else we knew to listen to it. we could not understand why they could not see the humor in “piss up a rope,” which is so intentionally offensive it’s hysterically funny (i stand by that opinion, but your mileage may vary):

in recent years, ween has kind of stuck with the neo-prog rock sound they began with the mollusk (a brilliant album, incidentally). and while i still like their newer stuff and i find it, generally speaking, more listenable than godweensatan the oneness or the pod, it’s also not nearly as surprising or crazily awesome as the older albums. but then again, i guess that’s what happens when you stop huffing scotch guard.*

—

and yeah, i know that scotch guard thing was a joke. but at the time, if you’re listening to the pod while under the influence, it seems not only plausible but eminently reasonable.

what mighty contests rise from trivial things

and what brilliant ideas rise from bar napkins.

RIP Chris Haney, photojournalist and creator of Trivial Pursuit.