Man vs. Clown!

Asobi Seksu – Merry Christmas

19Dec09

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Every year when I was a child, we would put up our Christmas tree on the weekend closest to December 15. As I mentioned around this time last year, my girlfriend has different ideas about when a Christmas tree should go up. For her, just after Hallowe’en is about the right time. I put my foot down on this and insisted that ours go up no sooner than American Thanksgiving. We Canadians might not wait until then to gorge on turkey, but we do increasingly observe Black Friday, the traditional start of the Christmas shopping season.

In the end, I was deceived into erecting the tree about a week early, sometime around that other day of thanks, World Toilet Day. But with that job long out of the way and the ides of December nearly here, this lazy Sunday is a good time to upload my annual Christmas mix instead. As usual, it clocks in at just under 80 minutes, which makes it ideal for burning to a CD. Here’s the playlist:

Band of Horses – “The First Song”
The Pearlfishers – “Snowboardin’”
Brian Wilson – “Christmasey”
Remington Super 60 – Here Comes Christmas
Barenaked Ladies – “Do They Know Its Christmas”
Reverend Horton Heat – “Pretty Paper”
Jill Sobule – “Merry Christmas from the Family”
Everything But the Girl – “25th December”
Fireflies – “X-mas Song”
Ivy – “I Hate December”
Daniel Martin Moore – “Christmas Time Is Here”
Rosie Thomas – “Christmas Don’t Be Late”
Ryan Adams – “Hey Parker, It’s Christmas”
My Morning Jacket – “Christmas Time Is Here Again (Bring Out the Joy!)”
Departure Lounge – “Christmas Downer”
Glasvegas – “Cruel Moon”
Summer Cats – “Plastic Christmas Trees”
Hello Saferide – “Ipod X-mas”
The Features – “The New Xmas Wishbook”
Nellie McKay – “A Christmas Dirge”
Russell deCarle – “Blues for Christmas”
Lily Frost – “I Don’t Need Presents”

Download it here, if you like. Or don’t. Really, I’m just trying to give a little something back to the world after sneaking a DVD of Robin Williams’ RV into an unattended shopping cart at the grocery store earlier and ruining the day of whoever will have to buy and watch it. That wasn’t really in the spirit of the holiday season.

* * *

As before, the download links to my previous holiday mixes (detailed here, here, here, and here) are still active, you lucky people.

X-mas I (2003)
X-mas II (2004)
X-mas III (2005)
X-mas IV (2006)
X-mas V (2007)
X-mas VI (2008)

http://www.megaupload.com/?d=TB5JQXJE

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Here are some links

11Dec09

After weeks of chronic headaches, I couldn’t help noticing yesterday that the right half of my face had swelled up like half a pufferfish, which theoretically should scare off half of all potential predators, but instead landed me in the emergency room last night. It looks like an abscessed molar is to blame, but I figured I’d make sure it wasn’t salivary gland cancer, as I don’t want to end up like Roger Ebert (that is, like a Phantom of the Opera lookalike, not like an internationally respected film critic).

Five hours in the emergency room were not for naught, however. For one thing, it gave me the chance to endlessly recycle one of my favorite dumb jokes: a deliberate misquoting of a scene from Rushmore. (“I like your nurse’s uniform, guy.” “These are ER scrubs.” “E are they?”) And for another, I would never have otherwise overheard a thuggish, gangsta-looking, baggy-panted guy with a bandaged finger griping, “Man, I could be home watching Grey’s Anatomy!”

Anyway, that’s why I haven’t written much in the last few days, and it’s why I’m not writing now. Instead, I pass along for your perusal this collection of links:

In addition to the pains in my head that have made it hard for me to live but I go on anyway (like Phil from the warehouse), my ability to communicate has been limited by Rogers Cable’s decision to deny internet and phone service to me and a number of other customers yesterday. The silver lining to this not-atypical occurrence is that it gives me a chance to catch up on reading the contents of many of the dozens of open tabs that continually cause my Firefox to crash. Noteworthy among my recent long-form internet reading (and you’ll see that I really do apparently read men’s magazines for the articles) are the Johnny Carson Playboy interview, Matt Latimer’s account in GQ of working as a speechwriter for George W. Bush, and an Esquire story about a horrific chimpanzee attack, which makes me feel a little better about my own current facial disfigurement.
Speaking of things that have been so hideously destroyed as to be unrecognizable as their former selves, there’s National Lampoon. Like Mad, National Lampoon was once a great satirical magazine and is now a brand in bad shape, but I’ve talked about that before. Here now is National Lampoon’s 1971 satire of Mad.
And speaking of masterful takedowns, KTLA anchor Sam Rubin’s furious calling out of Perez Hilton is easily my favorite Perez Hilton–related headline since will.i.am’s manager briefly made me respect the Black-Eyed Peas after punching out the internationally reviled man-child. (My least favorite Perez Hilton–related headlines, incidentally, are written by Perez Hilton himself and involve multiple exclamation marks. Despite their shared fascination with the lifestyles of the rich and famous, F. Scott Fitzgerald would have been disgusted with Hilton’s abuse of punctuation.)
Shortly after my girlfriend ran across this Paste magazine spread chronicling the evolution of the hipster, Mike “The Math Librarian” Martelle (recently named as having the top nickname among MMA fighters you’ve never heard of) sent along this story about a mysterious spiral of blue light appearing in the skies above Norway, with the comment “Hopefully an opening to another world where hipsters don’t exist.” This possible portal may or may not have been caused by the malfunctioning of the Large Hadron Collider, which the Math Librarian has strenuously opposed ever since initially misreading its name as “Large Hardon Collider”.
And finally, in other correspondent news, your favorite Internet humourist Jay Pinkerton alerted me to a list of the 85 best Morrissey songs that’s worth reading for, in the words of The Stranger, “the wealth of hilarious fake Morrissey song titles accumulating in the comments.” What would be really great is if Morrissey had the sense of humour to co-opt any of these made-up titles and actually write songs called “I Have Been Peeved” and “Catherine, I Dislike You” for his next album. (Jay submits “These Mints are Only Vaguely Minty” and “Barbara, I’m Merely Flexing” to the canon. I answer with “Reports of My Death Have Been Unfortunately Exaggerated”.) Also worth noting is the strange WWE comic-book spread Jay forwarded without comment. I don’t even know what to make of it except that Matt Hardy is clearly nowhere near that jacked. In fact, the inability of the artist to provide realistic depictions of the WWE superstars is probably the reason the writer has them refer to each other by name—usually in boldface—in each word balloon, just so the reader can piece together who’s involved in the story. Thanks, Jay Pinkerton, for the link.

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Eulogy for Umaga

06Dec09

“When the death of Umaga was announced to us yesterday morning, there struck a deep and solemn note in our lives which, as it resounded far and wide, stilled the clatter and traffic of twenty-first-century life in many lands, and made countless millions of human beings pause and look around them. A new sense of values took, for the time being, possession of human minds, and mortal existence presented itself to so many at the same moment in its serenity and in its sorrow, in its splendour and in its pain, in its fortitude and in its suffering.

“The Samoan Bulldozer was greatly loved by all. He was respected as a Samoan and as a bulldozer far beyond the many realms over which he bulldozed. The simple dignity of his life, his manly virtues, his sense of duty, his gay charm and savage nature, his example as a son and a brother and a cousin in the Anoa’i wrestling family, his courage in hair-versus-hair, triple-threat, or falls-count-anywhere matches — all these were aspects of his character which won the glint of admiration, now here, now there, from the innumerable eyes whose gaze falls upon World Wrestling Entertainment.

“We thought of him as Vince McMahon’s representative in the “Battle of the Billionaires” at WrestleMania 23, bravely facing off against Donald Trump’s champion, Bobby Lashley. We thought of him when calmly, without ambition, or want of self-confidence, he assumed the heavy burden of the Intercontinental Championship and succeeded “The Rainbow Warrior” Jeff Hardy. We thought of him, so faithful in his study and discharge of the orders of his manager and handler, Armando Alejandro Estrada; so strong in his devotion to the enduring honour of Samoa; so self-restrained in his squashing of jobbers; so uplifted above the petty squabbling over title belts, yet so attentive to it; so wise and shrewd in choosing between the Samoan drop or the diving headbutt.

“All this we saw and admired. His conduct in the ring may well be a model and a guide to Samoans and other savage island grapplers throughout the South Pacific today and also in future generations. The last few months of Umaga’s life, with all the pain and physical stresses that he endured — his release from World Wrestling Entertainment for violation of its Wellness Policy due to his purchase of the growth hormone somatropin from an online pharmacy, and Umaga all the time cheerful and undaunted, undisturbed and even unaffected in spirit — these have made a profound and an enduring impression and should be a help to all.

“He was sustained not only by his natural buoyancy, but by the sincerity of his complex polytheistic faith and ancestor worship. During these last months, the Samoan Bulldozer walked with Auraka, the all-devouring Polynesian god of death as if he were a companion, an acquaintance whom he recognized and did not fear. In the end, death came as a friend, and after a happy wrestling tour with Hulk Hogan in Australia, and after a good-night to those who loved him best, he fell asleep watching television, suffered a heart attack, and bled profusely from his nose, as every man or woman who strives to fear the creator god Tagaloa and nothing else in the world may hope to do.

“From his debut on the April 3, 2006 episode of Raw to the New Year’s Revolution pay-per-view in January 2007, Umaga was undefeated. Never at any moment in all the perplexities at home and abroad, in public or in private, in house shows or televised matches, was Umaga ever pinned or made to submit. Well does he deserve the farewell salute of all World Wrestling Entertainment superstars and fans.

“It is at this time that our compassion and sympathy go out to his brothers, the Tonga Kid and Rikishi; to his cousins, the Headshrinkers; and to Rosey, his partner in the tag team 3-Minute Warning. Our hearts go out tonight to his uncles by blood, Afa and Sika, the Wild Samoans, and to his uncle by marriage, Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka, who sustained Umaga through all his toils and problems, and taught him the strategies of the Samoan strap match, the art of eating raw fish during interview segments, and the cultural significance of tribal facial tattooing. May they be granted strength to bear their sorrow.

“To Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson, another of whose cousins is dead — former WWF champion Yokozuna having perished shortly after October 1999’s Heroes of Wrestling pay-per-view — there belongs the consolation of seeing how well Umaga carried on his legacy and bravely endured the heinous sledgehammer attacks of his mortal foe, Triple H.

“Now we must leave the treasures of the past and turn to the future. Famous have been the reigns of terror of the wildmen of Samoa. Some of the greatest periods in wrestling history have unfolded under their wildness. Now that we have Jimmy Uso now signed to a WWE developmental contract, our thoughts are carried back nearly a decade to his father, Rikishi, who, in many ways, embodied and inspired the grandeur and genius of the WWF’s Attitude era. Jimmy Uso has already been acclaimed as first of a new generation of the Anoa’i family legacy.

“Tomorrow, the proclamation of Jimmy Uso’s sovereignty will command the loyalty of his native island and of all other parts of the South Pacific. I, whose youth was passed in the august, unchallenged and tranquil glories of the World Wide Wrestling Federation era, may well feel a thrill in invoking once more the prayer and the anthem Fa’avae i le Atua Samoa!”

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The pot calling the kettle drunk

05Dec09

If you think it sounds like a bad idea to invite me to read aloud to a class of kindergarten students, (1) I agree with you and (2) you’re obviously not my girlfriend, who is actually probably my girlfriend because she has a lot of bad ideas.

The book I read aloud yesterday was not the one in my hand when I walked into the room, Chuck Klosterman’s new collection of essays, Eating the Dinosaur. (I simply brought it to read on the bus.) This disappointed at least one five-year-old boy who got excited when he saw a dinosaur on the front cover. This also spared a five-year-old boy from learning about Chuck Klosterman’s theories about why Rivers Cuomo prefers having sex with Asian women, which is really nothing anybody wants to think about except Chuck Klosterman, Rivers Cuomo, and some (but not all) Asian women.¹

Anyway, despite his occasional misuse of “i.e.” and “enormity”, I’ve made it through 85 percent of the Klosterman book without my usual recurring impulse to punch him in the face. But the even more surprising thing about the book is this:

I’ve mentioned this before but got so many of the details backward that it bears repeating: I once watched an old episode of Friends with my brain-damaged housemate’s boyfriend, who was waiting for her to finish getting ready. It was the episode in which Joey and Chandler have an extra Knicks ticket and are lukewarm to Monica’s suggestion that they take her boyfriend Richard (portrayed by Tom Selleck) until they realize they might get a chance to drive his sports car and fall all over themselves to invite him.

At this, my brain-damaged housemate’s boyfriend burst out laughing and blurted, “Who wouldn’t want to go to a basketball game with Tom Selleck?!”

This is something that has stuck with me for a long time because it was simultaneously true and idiotic. On one hand, yes, it would undeniably be a good time for anyone² to just hang out and catch a major-league sporting event with Tom Selleck, a famous person who seems nice. On the other hand, this guy was clearly misunderstanding the very nature of a fictional television program and that Tom Selleck was playing a character on said program rather than himself.³

By sheer coincidence, in the essay contained in Eating the Dinosaur about the stupidity of laugh tracks and how they’re meant to condition people who are too stupid to decide if things are funny for themselves to laugh when they’re meant to, Klosterman cites this exact scene out of the ten seasons and 236 episodes of Friends. It’s like he specifically wrote this piece for me, intentionally reminding me of the single dumbest audience member I’d ever seen laugh at something at the right time for the wrong reasons. It’s uncanny.

^{1. On a similar note, yesterday I suddenly laughed out loud very hard after imagining a five-year-old returning a copy of Finnegans Wake to the library while sobbing inconsolably because it turned out to have nothing to do with Mr. Dressup.

2. Except Rosie O’Donnell, of course, but who wants to go see a WNBA game with her?

3. This raises the question of what this guy even thought Tom Selleck was famous for in the first place, if not playing fictional characters such as Thomas Magnum, Quigley Down Under, and Mr. Baseball. Or did he somehow know Tom Selleck in his capacity as a high-profile member of the National Rifle Association?}

* * *

On the subject of inappropriate utterances, my girlfriend wanted me to mention this, and while it didn’t seem to merit a post of its own, this seems to be a good place. The other day, we were in the LCBO — not our usual LCBO, but one in a seedier part of town that we’d gone to for something that wasn’t in stock at the other one. As we stood in a long, slow-moving line, the customer behind us got impatient and shouted at the lone cashier, “Shouldn’t you get some help?!”

I, my girlfriend, and most likely everyone else in line looked back at the red-faced, jittery man clutching three two-liter bottles of malt liquor and shaking in a fit of equal parts impatience and delirium tremens, and simultaneously thought the same thing: “Shouldn’t you?”

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More advice to a would-be poet

04Dec09

My friend Kitty, who knows about such matters, offers useful advice to would-be poets at her blog. As a holder of a bachelor’s degree in philosophy, I am an authority on worthless career choices in general; however, when I graduated kindergarten, I was also awarded a diploma naming me a Bachelor of Rhymes. Thus, I just happen to have the academic credentials to offer my own supplementary advice to would-be poets:

Worthless prose can be easily turned into prize-winning poetry by simply inserting random carriage returns.
Fairly or not, if your surname is Astor, you’ll inevitably be written off as a poetaster. Concentrate on the family fur-trading and real-estate fortune instead.
A line of iambic pentameter need not be literally five feet long, despite the name. If necessary, however, this can be easily achieved by increasing the size of your font.
As the setting of the novel Moby-Dick, the film The Nanny Diaries, and the TV sitcom Wings, the island of Nantucket is still a surprisingly fertile and untapped source of inspiration for limericks, dirty or otherwise.
Think carefully before accepting Virgil’s offer of a guided tour through Hell and Purgatory. Can you honestly do better than the last poet who covered this topic? Do you have a one-way or return ticket? Is this the Roman poet Virgil or professional wrestler Ted “The Million Dollar Man” DiBiase’s henchman Virgil?
Wearing black is slimming, but so is supporting oneself as a professional poet. Doing both is not only overkill but also a dead giveaway of your amateur standing.
Not only is finding a rhyme for the word “orange” impossible, but the definitive citrus-related verses have already been written — “Lady Marmalade” by Patti LaBelle — so don’t even bother.
Haiku and “Beowulf” respectively demonstrate that poems about the Japanese are shorter than average and poems about Danes are longer than average (an interesting correlation with actual height). Poetry is therefore one of the few fields in which the Japanese work less hard than the worldwide average, making it an ideal career choice for lazy people in that nation.
If you write a semi-autobiographical novel about an oven, follow this up by smothering yourself in a bell jar.
Should you be fortunate and successful enough to be named Poet Laureate, don’t pass up your right to wear a wreath of laurel leaves, in accordance with ancient tradition. In a pinch, a bay leaf plucked from your crown can enliven any soup, stew, braise, or pâté.

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The Banter Report

27Nov09

Location
At home, listening to Christmas music, as The Killers’ “Great Big Sled” comes on.

Banter
Me: You know what would be terrible? Christian prog jingle bell rock.
My girlfriend: Hey, speaking of Christian rock, did you know that Brandon Flowers is a—
Me: Mormon?
My girlfriend: Yes.
Me: No. Is he?

Outcome
“You make me so mad!”

* * *

Location
At home, while my girlfriend reads the Internet.

Banter
My girlfriend: You know that baby at the airport who fell 15 meters and died? Well, the family was on its way to Argentina to have it baptized?
Me: So … trip cancelled?
My girlfriend: Now it’s going to be in purgatory forever.
Me: Which is pretty much the same as being in the airport, really.

Outcome
My girlfriend, both a Catholic and a seasoned air traveller, considers this, then shrugs in agreement. Meanwhile, I wonder if I’ve just lifted a bit from Douglas Adams.

* * *

Location
At home again, where my girlfriend is making me look at purses on her laptop.

Banter
Me: Eight hundred dollars for a purse? I don’t understand why women make less than men. They should make more than men, because they spend so much of their income on useless crap.
My girlfriend: It’s not useless! You can put lipstick in it.
Me: You know what else you can put lipstick in? A pocket. And pockets come free with pants!

Outcome
My girlfriend laughs. “Go Banter Report that. Then come right back and look at purses with me.”

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