Quodlibets

For the Beatles fans

Via Marginal Revolution, a blog entry about the monetary value of the Beatles/Macca.

I haven't really talked about the Beatles lately, but I've been on a kick, precipitated by my reading of Bob Spitz's The Beatles.  It's a comprehensive history of the Beatles, and I really enjoyed it.  I even learned some things I didn't know, and that's pretty amazing, when you consider the fact that I've voraciously read every single Beatles book I could get my hands on since I was a teenager.  My iPod actually has Beatles tunes on it again, and I've been devoting some head time to figuring out why I cling to the Beatles.

I will say, furthermore, that I realized while reading Spitz's book that I've never really been in the practice of listening to Beatles' songs in context, by which I mean: I don't consider all the other album releases in 1967 when evaluating the greatness of Sgt. Peppers or whatnot.  I've got a basic music timeline in my head that spans from the early sixties to now, and I'm usually able to figure out where bands belong, what songs are contemporaries, and so on.  Interestingly, the Beatles exist in a time warp in my head, and don't live on that general music timeline.  They have a timeline all their own.  Possibly this is because I believe that the Beatles might just be the most important musical group ever, or I possibly believe that because I've sequestered them in my head.  Either way, it was somewhat of a shock to read Spitz, because he's constantly making comparisons, pointing out which contemporaneous groups were doing.  I forget, essentially, that Jimi Hendrix and the Beatles were making music at the same time.  (You can discount the Stones in all of this mumbo-jumbo, because I'm always aware of what the Stones are doing relative to the Beatles [historically, anyway], and I'm always, always sure that the Beatles are five million times better and more important.  It's a form of Beatle-mania induced prejudice, and I've sadly made no inroads to curing myself of it.  Down with Mick!)  Regardless, I've also never thought that the Beatles were (sort-of) still a group when Woodstock went down, which is stunningly stupid of me, and also proof of how separate those two timelines are in my head.  I can't decide if I like the Beatles less or more for finally putting the two timelines together, and knowing where the Beatles fit, but I suspect that eventually, I'll say something like, "Fuck it, the Beatles are the best EVER."  Blind love is like that.

Madge

She's a diva, no doubt about it.  Last night, the concert was supposed to start at 7:30.  Madonna came on at 8:50.  It was slightly ridiculous.  Okay, it was very ridiculous.  But I'm going to go out on a limb here and say that the crowd mostly forgave her, because the show is that good.  I'm not saying the music was that good, but just the sheer spectacle.  Plus, in all honesty, it's pretty damn fun to watch Madonna cavort around stage in her little outfits and big dance boots.  She's hot, okay?  For a 47 year-old, she's got it.  I mean, she is sexier than you think, and more gorgeous than you think.  She was hard to look away from.  I'm incredibly glad I went, simply so I can say that I saw her.  Worth every penny (that my dad and his fiancee spent...thanks guys!).

The crowd was very interesting.  Lots and lots of gay men (ooooodles of them; it made me want a gay boyfriend something fierce), and obviously, straight women.  There were straight men at the show, but they were mostly attached at the hand to some Madonna-loving woman.  I don't think that we saw any groups of straight men just hanging out together at the Madonna concert.  I could be wrong, but I doubt it.  And the age range!  There were women who were probably in their teens and twenties when Madonna was big in the 80's dancing like mad when Madge did "Like a Virgin".  The woman in front of us, wearing the ugliest printed capris I've ever seen before (green and purple?  with big black abstract flowers?  UGLY, lady.), was clearly of that ilk.  She seemed to most come alive when Madonna did the old songs, and anyway, she couldn't dance.  Or the woman in the row with us, who pushed her way out in the middle of the show, saying, "Sorry, sorry, my kids are on the phone."  She was also drinking a lot, and later in the show said to me and Bee (my cousin), "If you guys want to move into our seats, we won't be crawling over you so much."  Because her and her seatmate left to get beer so often, and Bee and I were on the end of the road.  Like hell I'm giving up my seats so that you can drink more!

It actually was the strangest experience I've ever had a concert.  Because of the crowd.  I don't think I can adequately express how surreal it was, but I'll try.  I think that the crowd was riled up because of the wait, and that led to lots of unhappy situations.  Now, I also think that because of the long wait many of the people in the crowd didn't feel inclined to get up and dance.  I sure didn't.  Bee and I were at the end of the second row in section 202.  That, for all those unfamiliar with the United Center, is the first balcony.  In the section next to us, at the end of the first row closest to us, a group of four individuals were standing up.  Because of the stage position, and the sight-lines, they effectively blocked a whole group of people (Bee and I marginally being part of that group) from seeing the show.  This angered already angry people.  The women behind Bee and I were older, and drunk off their asses.  They smelled like a brewery when they walked in.  They were also sort of rough-looking--when talking about them to Bee, I said that they were "broads".  And no word could better describe them.  Anyway, their drunkeness combined with the inconsiderate jerks in the first row created a volatile situation.  They SCREAMED during EVERY single song for those people to "SIT THE FUCK DOWN, ASSHOLES." or "MOTHERFUCKERS, SIT DOWN."  It was loud and unpleasant, and they were angry.

The couple behind the standers was also angry, and they approached the ushers, who TWICE approached the standers and asked them to sit.  They did not.  Then the male person in the couple SCREAMED at the standers (not sure what he was saying) because the female person in the couple left.  Walked out in a huff.  (She eventually came back.)  THEN, and this is where it gets good, one of the old broads behind Bee and I threw an ENTIRE cup of beer at the back of the stander closest to us.  I mean, LAUNCHED a beer right at him.  Oh baby, was he soaked.  And angry.  Of course, now they seem to be standing just to make a point:  "We bought these tickets and goddamnit we can stand if we want to."  Plus, the one guy is wet all down his back with beer.  Not pleasant to sit in beer pants. 

Honestly, I'm not quite sure how the situation was diffused.  Eventually, the standers sat and the broads behind us shut up.  Though Bee said that once when she used the washroom, when she came back in, one of them was sleeping.  Not surprising.  The ladies did duck out before the end of the show, possibly because they were so drunk, but I'd not be surprised if it was more about avoiding security after the show.  What a bunch of fucknuts, all of them.

And this was not even the only occurrence of said behavior.  Down the row from us (closer to where M and her daughter JJ were sitting), one man was escorted out of the concert by security, never to return, presumably for the same sort of sitting person angst--he harassed a girl in the first row who insisted on standing, and threw something at her.  This is according to M, because Bee and I barely registered that disturbance, so great was the one going on near us. 

Part of the problem, of course, was that EVERYONE besides us was smashed.  There was a long wait for the show, people were bored, and so they plunked down $7 a drink and got drunker than drunk.  Like I said, I've never had such an experience at concert, and never want to repeat it.  (Bee did have some beer dumped down her back by the drunk broad behind her.  They were so repellent.  At one point, one of them tapped me with her inexact, drunk hands and said, "I hope I didn't spill on you." and all I could think was, "I hope you're not driving home."  But Bee said that she heard them say that they had driven in from Wisconsin to see the show.  Which is scary.  They were INSANELY past the point of being able to drive.)

Anyway, I never need to see Madonna again.  I'm glad I went, and I'm glad it's over.

This is why you like me!

Because one day I'm talking about serious issues, like government, and the next I'm talking about bathing suits.

Specifically, my search for a bathing suit.  Almost six (six--gasp!) years ago, I bought a bathing suit in Florida, on a visit to my parents' house down there.  It's literally the BEST BATHING SUIT EVER.  Strapless, muted colors, tasteful, fits well--the whole nine yards.  Clearly, I must love it, because I've been wearing it for six years.  As you can imagine, as it's been through the pitfalls of weight gain and loss, exposure to the elements and chlorine, sunscreen and soap, it's pretty f-ing beat up.  In fact, it's pretty disgusting.  Not something you'd want to wear in public anymore.

So, because we're going to Florida (my sis, Katyla and I), I thought it might be time to re-up and buy a new suit.  Preferably strapless, though that's where my criteria stopped.  I duly went to a mall with some big name department stores and at least one swim shop, and embarked on the futile journey of bathing suit shopping in IL.  My god!  The ugliness!  The lack of strapless suits!  The sheer overwhelming number of highly unflattering tankinis!  I tried on about 10 suits, maybe more.  I tried on tankinis, what few strapless numbers I could find, and plain tank suits.  I ended up, unhappily, with a plain blue tank suit that I hate.  I mean, really don't like.  Sam insists that I should keep it and wear it, because it looks good, but I'm unhappy with it.  I mean, yeah, I look fine in it.  But it has straps!  It's boring!

What the hell?  Is it too much to ask that they stock good suits here?  I'm hoping beyond hope that I can find a new suit in Florida this year, or else I'm screwed.  I'm going to end up wearing a six-year old ugliness for lack of something better.  Or keeping the ugly blue and yellow thingy I bought last week, and wearing that to public pool outings (of which, it must be said, there are very few).  Argh.  I hate shopping for bathing suits.  (And they're so expensive!  Who knew a little teensy bit of material and elastic and so on could cost so much.  My ugly suit was 88 dollars.  And I don't even like it!)

Furthermore, can I just say two more things about suit shopping?  Those damn "sanitary strips" in the crotchs of bathing suits are gross.  If I think about them too much, I start to feel sick to my stomach.  Like a sheet of plastic is sufficient to protect you from the disgustingness of women who don't know that you have to leave your underwear on to try on suits.  Which brings me to my second point, which is that NO ONE looks good with underwear under a bathing suit.  It's nearly impossible, if you wear any sort of underwear besides a silky thong, to figure out if you'll actually look good if you remove the bulky lines of cotton underwear from the equation.  I wish there was some other way, but it just doesn't seem to exist.

Bathing suit shopping: worse than bra shopping.

My tour "rider"

My sister, a friend and I are going to Florida next weekend, to stay at my dad's house.  Apparently, my dad has a service (in the interest of full disclosure, run by a close friend of his) that makes the house ready for guests, etc, and last night, my dad asked us to make a list of things that we'd like to be in the house when we arrive.  Visions of diva-hood danced in my head.  I could request a bowl of M&M's with the brown ones removed, or bottles of Fiji water with the labels painstakingly removed.  Bottles of champagne chilled to exactly a certain temperature.  You know, like rock stars do on their tour riders.

But actually, my list of things would look a little different.  It might be diva-ish, but in a different way.  For instance, I'd request FAGE 0% Greek yogurt and Cascadian Farms organic Honey and Oat Granola.  Right?  Diva-ish.  But sort of crunchy.  (Lately, the only thing I really WANT to eat, ever, is yogurt and granola.  I bring it for lunch, and when I don't know what to eat for dinner, sometimes I eat it for dinner, too.  And I'm a person who didn't even like yogurt three months ago.  Now, I almost like the plain Greek yogurt alone--no granola or preserves, just plain, creamy yogurt.  Hence, it's what I think I'd like to eat in Florida.  Except that you can't get Greek yogurt [so far as I've found, anyway] at the regular grocery stores, and I don't eat any other yogurt.  I think it's pretty sick to make this woman who runs the service run all over creation looking for my yogurt and granola.)  I was also thinking that if I requested cereal and milk, I'd then have to specify Organic, hormone-free milk, because I refuse to drink anything else.  I know I eat lots of other foods laced with hormones, but the milk aspect is one way to easily (and cheaply) cut out that stuff.  (I've also started buying the individually packed hormone-free chicken breasts from TJ, and freezing them for future use.  It makes me feel better.)

Regardless, at this point, the list is starting to look a little funny, no?  All these foo-foo organic foods and weird products.  Maybe I'll just limit my list to caffeine-free DC, and try to find a Wild Oats, WF, or TJ near the FL house.  And I'll go on Friday afternoon and stock up on the Greek yogurt.  Because it just ain't a vacation without Greek yogurt.

Update:  So much for that idea.  Florida is a barren wasteland free of uppity organic food stores, and furthermore, Fage's website says that it currently does not sell its products in FL.  Looks like I'm living without Greek yogurt for four days.

Update again:  Wait, I'm wrong.  Florida does have Fage, and it's possible that Fresh Market will have it.

SUPERGROUP

VH1, as we all know, makes some of the best worst television.  For instance, I Love the 80's and that breed of show is terrifyingly bad in its construction, but somehow compulsively watchable.  I will readily admit to watching each episode multiple times, if only because there isn't anything else on the television.  I mean, shit, S and I even watched the two-part horror that was I Love Toys. 

To that end, I find myself obsessed with Supergroup, VH1's "metal" celebreality vehicle.  This can be explained by two things: a) I ADORE Sebastian Bach and b) I ADORE Scott Ian.  How these two men came to be on the same reality show I'll never know, but it's like a Rock-God fest for me.  I'm pretty sure that I could (and will) watch each episode multiple times, just so I can see those two men in action.

And let's be honest, Sebastian Bach is an odious creature.  He's really kind of a sexist jerk, actually, but there's something about his puppy-like eagerness to be liked that I can't get enough of.  I love him on Gilmore, and I love him in real life.  Now, Scott Ian, on the other hand, seems to be somewhat of an intellectual.  I may be wrong, but that's how it seems.  He even said that he didn't understand the point of strip clubs, which wins him many, many points in my book.  Sure, his beard is ugly, and I hate Anthrax, but if you put Scott Ian in front of me right now, I just might fawn all over him.

In fact, Bach and Ian mitigate the horrorocity of the Nuge and that Evan dude who is married to Tera Patrick and makes all kinds of porn.  Jason Bonham is a non-entity at this point, because he's maybe said five words in the entire hour we've watched.  Anyway, why would you want to be a drummer if your father was the best rock drummer that ever lived?  I mean, sure, Ringo Starr's kid, yeah, be a drummer.  But when your dad is John Bonham, you might want to pick a different instrument. 

Regardless, I know where I'll be on Sunday night (okay, I'll actually be at my little brother's graduation party).  But symbolically, I've got my ass planted in front of the TV watching Bach and Ian prance around Las Vegas.

Slight Glitch

I meant to write this up yesterday, but this will have to do.  Yesterday, I did an Amazon search for the book Sex with Kings, which is an historical account of the mistresses of various kings.  (I once did a paper in college about Louis the XVI's [either him or Louis XVII's] mistress, a very powerful woman in her time, and I maintain a fascination with Napoleon and Josephine and Marie Antoinette to this day.  Anyway, the book seems right up my alley.)

But instead of getting the generic results screen, or the exact page I was looking for, that search pulled up a book about Martin Luther King Jr.  Not kidding.  I just tried to replicate the results now, and it didn't work.  One of those little bugs that happen every once in a while (like the publicized result for searching "abortion": did you mean adoption?), but a funny one.  It's also in considerably poor taste, but what can you do?  It wasn't any human error that produced that result.  As long as it's not still happening....

More on Amazon:  Today, I did a big order for the library from Amazon, for our popular rental video collection.  Three (so far) of the videos are listed as Region: Unknown.  Which means that we can't purchase them, just in case they don't play on Region 1 DVD players.  I wanted an answer as to why certain titles would list that way, especially considering those very same DVDs are available online from Facets--with nary a warning about region.  So I went to the DVD region help page, which wasn't helpful in the least, and was about to email customer service when I noticed a "by phone" button.  If you press this, you are given the option of having Amazon customer service call you on a number you provide, in a time frame you provide.  What the hell, I thought. 

The call was prompt, the help was prompt, but the help was also useless.  The girl on the line just read me the information from the website, which unfortunately for her, I had already read.  I wanted bigger answers.  For instance, why?  Why are some DVDs regions unknown?  She said the only info. she had at her disposal was the information on the web page.  Whaaaaaa?  What's the damn point of customer service if they have no additional information?  I know it's not that poor girl's fault, and I tried to be ultra-polite as I pumped her for information, but really.  How useless.

Library Hilarity Ensues

I'm not sure what the point of a live-action re-enactment of Pacman is.  I'm especially not sure why a university library is the place to do such a re-enactment.  But clearly I'm missing something, because someone does know those two things.

Pretty funny. 

If Cosby was a white guy in Ohio in the 80's

I found a great website today.  Really, please just go look at it.  It might make your eyeballs bleed, but it'll be worth it.  And not only is it appropriate for a work environment, I urge you to share the wonder of it with your more like-minded, humor-appreciative co-workers.

(Found via the Chicago Tribune's list of top 50 websites.)

PS

Can I just add that I think Rod Blagojevich looks like the biggest tool in the world whining petulantly that he didn't know that The Daily Show was a comedy show?  What cave do you have to live in to not know that Stewart and Co. regularly skewer politicians?  Osama bin Laden probably knows that John Stewart isn't running an actual news show, but a parody of one.

Two thumbs down, Blago.

One more reason to love a librarian

This letter appearing in the Boston Globe, in response to a very nasty op-ed piece in the Globe.

WHILE I couldn't agree less with Richard Cravatts's take on the enforcement of the laws concerning privacy, I will agree with his contention that librarians know the Dewey Decimal System. That a librarian's professional training concentrates on mastering the use of the system is quite off the mark, however, and as enlightened a concept in the 21st century as starting a fire with a stone and a spark. In any event, should he himself ever need to be catalogued, I've got a spot for him on the shelf at 621.945. That would be the 620s for Engineering, 621.9 for Tools and Fabricating Equipment, and, specifically, 621.945 for Boring Tools.

             ERIKA TARLIN
Somerville

Frankly, I don't think anyone could have done a better job of making Mr. Cravatts into a, well, boring tool.  Hats off to Erika Tarlin for making librarians look awesome.

(You may need a password to see the op-ed piece; try Bug-Me-Not if you don't feel like registering.)