xtcian

slow, yet kafkaesque

3/31/05

Tessa says I'm not allowed to write a blog tonight because I don't feel well and I have to be in shape to take care of a newborn. So instead, I'm posting a collage of her belly at 12, 18, 30, 37 and 39 weeks. So there.

click for bigger

that Sally Forth sure said a mouthful

3/30/05

We moved several boxes today, and I found some nuggets. Here's one: the 1995 Pink House Halloween Party invitation from the days when we were plaguing Chapel Hill.

I don't think anyone can say we didn't do these things right.

click for big version

pimpin' ain't easy

3/29/05

My nephew Lucas, who shares the same bizarre sense of humor with my brother Kent, has a few random images on his blog today, so I thought I'd do the same. Besides, my beloved Powerbook is in the shop getting a bigger hard drive, and I'm going through terrible withdrawal. If I thought skipping out on the Celexa was bad, this no-computer-havin' thing is like going cold turkey on glue-sniffing and heroin.

Anyway, this first one interests me because we're having a baby – wait, don't leave! – and it's amazing how many of the reflexes we keep into adulthood. This pic is from a Rangers baseball game where the bat shattered and flew into the stands. Every single person, regardless of age, makes the exact same flinch as if they were infants:

I like this next one because when we were growing up, people used to say, "well, be thankful you don't live in Italy – they pay three dollars a gallon there! So "three dollars a gallon" came to mean, for me, a world where there was mere anarchy, and the falcon could not hear the falconer, and fire rained down from the heavens. Looks like it's just another day in Malibu, CA:

Sometimes when I'm feeling blue, I look at this map of the United States – it's the typical Bush/Kerry red-blue map, except it is done by counties, and the map is skewed to represent population (I believe it's called a "cartlinear" image). It should make progressives feel a little better, or at least think that we've got a nice blue cock for Florida:

Fellow Tar Heel David Rees writes the infamous "Get Your War On" cartoons, and, well, this one from the latest Rolling Stone needs no explanation:

bearded like the pard

3/28/05

Dear as-yet-born baby,

You are really freaking me out. I mean this in an incredibly loving way, but here in the waning days before your arrival, I am suddenly seeing you at six years old, screaming your brains out at me because I didn't put the right lunchpail in your school satchel, and it's all quite chilling.

We watched The Happiest Baby On the Block DVD today, and I prayed that one of the "5 S's" would be able to quell your shrieks. Or will you not shriek at all? You won't be a boy, so there will be no urine on the ceiling, but I have heard tales, O, such tales!, of babies with colic who scream for three solid months unabated.

I hold your mom's belly, massaging it, hoping that it will relax those ideas out of you, but it's really just superstition. They say that in order to have the brains of a homo sapiens, we had to come out of the womb early, so the first three months will actually be a "fourth trimester," with you as naught but a fetus on dry land. I have lowered my expectations; like all humans who watch movies, I had been convinced that babies come out looking like - well, what five-month-olds actually look like.

I should be ready for this. I changed diapers three times a day for my sister, I assuaged the screams of about 20 of my newborn cousins, and I raised our next-door neighbor from about ten weeks to two years. I have seen it all. I have seen my sister's pinkie dangling from her hand when Sean shut the door on it; I saw Sean's bloodied face when he rolled his walker down the basement stairs. I have been on a road trip to New Mexico in a Winnebago with five toddlers screaming in blood-curdling tandem. And still I'm afraid.

A few years ago, I would not have brought you into this world. I thought this place was so awful, a rotten country with moronic leaders and terrorists willing to blow us to bits. I told your mother that there was no way we were bringing you into that atmosphere. The world hasn't really changed, so I guess I have.

I had to realize that my existence wasn't going to last forever, my petty theories were worthless, and that the best moments came in glances rather than declarations. When I got my act together just enough, someone as fantastic as your mother agreed to hang out with me for life. Since then, I had to find the fine line between my Mormon survivalism and my laissez-faire nihilism, and when I did, finally, I knew it was okay to hang out with you for life too.

This is going to stop being about me, I swear. You have to understand that when you fight for emotional survival the way your mom and I did, the way I had to negotiate myself out of the school playground without getting traumatized, the way your mom had to outlast the cruel vicissitudes of her father, it has taken all of our wiles to get here. Further, we decided to be "artists," for lack of a better word, which hinges our financial future on things that are, well, "all about us."

I know you'll cure us of that solipsism right quick. But understand that your parents are going to need a while to get used to the new arrangement. I can't wait to meet you. Come out soon, and come out as painlessly as possible, as your mother will not be taking any drugs.

Oh, and shoot for April 6 or 7. You know, if you can.

with love,
your future dad

celextant says bear nor-norwest

3/27/05

Adventures Off Celexa, Chapter 17

I'm really, really bad when it comes to refilling my prescriptions, and it's usually through the grace of God or by accident that I manage to get my new dose of meds at the end of every month. I've been on Celexa for nearly three years now, and I know the drug inside and out, but I've never had the occasion to go cold turkey for four days. Especially the way I did it Thursday through Sunday last week.

Put simply, I kept forgetting. I know there's some irony in there, but I'll leave it to the biopsychology/English double-majors to figure it out. As the drug wore out of my system, the forgetting became worse. Those of you on anti-depressants may know what I'm talking about. I've been swimming in emotional and physical molasses.

Here's what withdrawal is like: first, you get these weird crinkles in your brain if you turn your head too fast, almost as if your eyes have turned, but your brain is slow to catch up, and the time in-between is fuzzy and painful. I was used to this; it happens when I play hoops sometimes in the middle of fast, furious games.

On Friday night, however, we went to see the brilliant Shockheaded Peter at the Little Schubert theater, and the play, which hits you like a traffic accident involving Edward Gorey and Tim Burton, did some crazy things to my cerebellum. Later that night, the headaches - more like weird swirlies waves of discomfort, started a low pressure system just off the north coast of my left eye.

And though I was becoming desperate for the drug, I forgot to get to the drugstore AGAIN. Another day without the SSRI, and on Saturday, I began to feel as though I were walking through seventeen feet of Mrs. Butterworth maple syrup. Just getting up for some water took about three minutes of strategizing. Moments of ecstasy were followed by strict bursts of annoyance. I can only imagine what would have happened to my psyche if the Tar Heels hadn't gone to the Final Four. Which they did, by the way.

By Sunday, sunlight was having a weird effect inside my eyeballs, and I knew it was time. Celexa is water-soluble, meaning that it begins to leave your body the second it is taken. I stumbled to 7th Avenue - downhill, thank god - and grabbed the pills from the pharmacist like a drunkard circa 1883.

And so I'm back in the cool, cool breeze of my wonderdrug, and I learned a few things: first off, keep your meds current, because if there is some trauma that shuts down the city for a few days, you had best be prepared.

Secondly, I had always been told that coming off Celexa was like having a really bad flu. It was definitely bizarre and uncomfortable, but it was nowhere near as bad as the frickin' flu. I now have a little more faith in my ability to wean off the pleasure pills, and that, in itself, is as comforting as the drug itself.

poppies for young men

3/24/05

I have oft waxed adoring of my friend Jiffer Bourguignon - the story of my old housemate can be found here and my usual penchant for picture recreation can be found here. Not content to get her post-grad degree from Columbia and watch lots of network television like the rest of us, Jiffer decided to go to Afghanistan and see what could be done. This, might I remind you, is someone who used to steal my Pop Tarts so often that I had to padlock my kitchen cabinet.

She has sent a number of pictures from the scene, making her the second close friend to report back from the Afghani front [oldtime blog readers might remember my interview with Colin Soloway (the reporter who discovered John Walker Lindh, the "American Taliban") a few hours before the Marines took Baghdad].

Jif's pics were so evocative that I asked her if I could post some on the blog. She said I could, and if she has a few minutes on Afghanistan dial-up, maybe she can say a few words in the comments section.

This first one is the most haunting to me; she called it "What It's Like to Be a Woman Here":

This Afghani girl was at the same bazaar:

This is Jiffer herself grabbing kebabs:

Near the marketplace:

The famous "blue mosque" of Mazar-Ali in Mazar-i-Sharif:

On New Year's Day of the Afghan year 1384, the spectators watch...

...a game of Bushkazi, basically polo with the body of a headless calf as the "ball."

out, out, brief candle

3/23/05

Opinion About Terri Schiavo No. 195,783,483

I'm sorry, but I have fucking had it. For those of you living in a Unabomber-style hut with no access to the in-tor-net, Terri Schiavo is a woman who starved herself nearly to death 15 years ago, went into a potassium coma, and has been in a "persistent vegetative state" since. Her husband has been fighting to take her off life support, but her parents have sued to keep all the tubes in.

She is awake, but utterly without recognition, speech, or any sign of self-awareness. She does not see, does not care about anything, cannot register thoughts, and stayed "alive" only because they drilled a hole in her stomach and fed her liquids. Now the court ordered the feeding tube out, and America has promptly lost its shit. The most unforgivable thing the media has done (among a host of unforgivable activities) is to constantly reuse this picture:

This image has become the de facto representation of Schiavo, as she appears to be looking straight into her mother's eyes and registering pleasure. In fact, Schiavo is looking right through her mother and doesn't even know she's there. She doesn't even know that she herself is there. It's a stunning lapse in media ethics when this picture is used as tacit proof that Terri knows anything about anything, and has been the torch around which countless numbers of disturbed right-wingers have flocked like pathetic moths.

In an era when we've killed so many innocent Iraqis, when the bodies pile up in Central Africa, and 350 million Chinese have no safe drinking water, how the fuck does Congress get hijacked by this woman's parents? Republican lawmakers intend to ride Schiavo's lifeless carcass as far as it will take them, and it would be laughable if it weren't so ineffably sad.

And contradictory. Bush himself signed a right-to-die act as Governor of Texas, but we've come to expect such brazen acts of flip-flopping from him. Worse are the legions of rabid conservatives, the very same assholes who have no problem executing as many Death Row inmates as possible. It's so fucking sickening.

Would there still be morons wearing their plaid shirts buttoned to the top, trying to sneak bread and water into Terri Schiavo's hospital if she were African American? Or a MAN, for that matter?

Why are conservatives like this? What led them to be such CONTROL FREAKS? It's as if their own lives are so infinitesimally small that they can find meaning only in fucking with the private tragedies of the rest of us. When are Americans, even those of you in the Red States, going to wake up to the fact that your blessed Republicans are making government more intrusive and unwieldy ONE FREAKISH ISSUE AT A TIME?

If I ever get even close to Schiavo's state, I want it known, here on the blog and searchable for centuries, that you can feel free to kick that fucking plug out of the wall socket. Our Woods Warrior has a thought-provoking post about this, stating that many people who have tried to commit suicide change their minds as they leap off the bridge. In the throes of the moment, we may be substantially elastic in what we thought we wanted. I can grok this all right, but still, I HEART SCIENCE, and if Science says that I won't be able to tell the difference, yank out that feeding tube and have a big party in my honor. With Jaegermeister.

Fresh like, unhh; Impala, unnh

3/22/05

If you want to critique culture, you better stay abreast of it, which is why I subject myself monthly to an hour of "Top 20 on 20" on the XM Radio, which plays a loop of the nation's biggest hits of the moment. It's an excellent crib sheet to remain aware of what's selling, and like a good workout, it's exceedingly painful with occasional rewards.

Before I say anything else, I'd just like to point out that I have rocked as hard as any other middle-class white kid. I moshed to the Clash when I was 15 at William & Mary, I threw toilet paper at Dinosaur Jr. in 1993 and I took ecstasy while watching a Japanese noise band play vacuum cleaners at a warehouse in New Orleans.

I also studied violin for twenty years, piano for twenty-three, and my tastes admittedly run in the high-harmony Brit pop clusters of the Beatles, Squeeze, XTC and the twisted orchestral pop of the Smiths and Cocteau Twins. Yet when I first heard "The Message" by Grandmaster Flash, I made my mom pull the car over so I could take it all in. In short, I feel like I've done the fucking work. I still look for those moments of epiphany. I am not some ninny-come-lately who thinks that all new music is crap; I long for decent new music, I breathe in it.

So it is with genuine innocence that I ask: what the blithering motherfuck is going on with current rap artists? No, I don't mean Outkast or anyone doing something intelligent, I mean shit like "How We Do" by The Game Featuring 50 Cent. The music is terrible; it's just a terrifically boring sample played over and over to a soulless synth beat, with these two guys talking, basically, about themselves.

This is what I don't get: I love hip-hop/rap that is funny, is about subject matter like the universality of love, or even giant asses ("Baby Got Back"), political treatises (Public Enemy, The Roots) or something insanely catchy (Andre 3000 and Big Boi, De La Soul). Even if the song lacks all music, I'll listen to any rapper expound upon anything external, but FUCK! All they're really good at is yammering about their own solopsistic bullshit. What do today's teens really see in these songs? Most of these tracks don't even have a decent beat.

When Rashad McCants, star of our Carolina basketball team, makes a 3-pointer, he usually does the "diamond" symbol of Rockefella records (home to Jay-Z). What is Rashad really saying, that he believes in the ethic of Rockafella? And what does Jay-Z talk about, other than his own navel? I'm at a loss here. I just don't get what there IS to these songs.

Yes, yes, I sound like an old fart. Too fucking bad. Someone has to ask the question. When our parents hated KISS in 1979, it was because they hated their style, their sentiment, their incredibly silly makeup, and it was just too darn loud. Our parents objected to what these bands were - I am not making the same mistake. I am wondering aloud what "How We Do" actually is, because I can't see it even when I strain.

The rest of the Top 10 may be trite, but at least they're trying. Green Day, despite their faux cockney accents and deep derivativeness, have excellent politics, and the songs actually have chords; they are trying to put forth an actual notion. "Boulevard of Broken Dreams" is just Em G D A (like about twelve other pop songs I could name, including, basically, "Wonderwall" by Oasis) but they are attempting something - and, I believe, succeeding.

But the ease with which rap artists can make a releasable track is indicative of how artistically shoddy these things are. There is a new number one song each week, and getting to number one is pathetically easy. It will soon get to the point where every artist will have one song, then disappear. You'll have someone like Kelis release "Milkshake" and that will be it, every time. Rock and Roll Jeopardy will be insanely hard when covering this decade, unless each question can be answered "Who is Beyoncé?"

I'm all ears. Someone please tell me the appeal of "How We Do" and the like. The answers "you just don't get it" or "the aural cortex of human beings has changed over the last 15 years" or "go back to listening to Erasure, ya ponce" will not be accepted.

wombmate wanted, non-smoker

3/21/05

The following was transcribed via a Morse Code variation from the baby currently residing inside my wife Tessa. When a certain word or phrase was unintelligible, I put the possible meaning in brackets [like this]. I hope I got most of it right.

***

Hello. Or not quite hello. I have roughly [two] more weeks until I will officially say hello, because I don't exactly exist yet. My name is [unintelligible - begins with L, N or K?] and I wanted to give fair warning that I will be there soon. Wherever "there" is.

I have enjoyed my time here. It is warm, gooey and offers much in the way of nutrition. My host, who I will refer to as Maternal Unit, has been doing exactly the kind of jostling I like. I have four states of being: Awake and Kicking, Asleep and Kicking, Asleep, and Hiccuping. I confess I like the latter of these best of all. I will hiccup all night if I have to.

You may wonder how I am able to communicate with you. It is through an elaborate set of taps, kicks and [elbow swooshes] taught to me by a being I will call External Unit One. This External Unit is not my Maternal Unit, as I can differentiate their voices. External Unit One tends to become very agitated and I can often hear his high-pitched [complaining].

Yes, I dream. It may seem like I have nothing to dream about, but I hear almost everything, and about three months ago I was facing up and could detect light. Apparently in my youth, I was in a warmer climate. It has gotten much darker as I've grown. Maternal Unit says that by the time I am born, it will be light and "sunny again," whatever that means.

There isn't much room to move around anymore, and let's face it, the fluids aren't [holding the same charm] they once did. I don't know why I am drawn to go lower in the Maternal Unit, but it seems right. It is time to say goodbye to this place. Once I loved every corner, and I explored, especially on the right side. But I am inexorably drawn away by an unseen force, more mysterious than I can know. External Unit One has hinted that this force is the [conundrum] faced by everyone on the Outside.

I am ready for it. I would like to see the Outside. I hope the journey there proves to be without too much pain for me, or the Maternal Unit. I am tired now and wish to go back to sleep, perchance to hiccup.

One last thing. I am told that there is a debate about when life starts here in my temporary home. I can't remember anything more than five months ago. Before that, I was just a bundle of possibility and couldn't have cared less. So here is your answer: life begins at four months. There you have it [you pro-life Republicans, so keep your hands off my mom and every other child-bearing female].

Love, Me.

at least we think that's what she said

perdu!

3/20/05

Okay, so this blog is going to be about the show "Lost," so I'm warning you now, if you're not interested, then by all means go visit some of my knitting blogs and quit telling me how to run my business. Seriously, I'm never going to grow up if you won't let me, Father.

So: "Lost." In full disclosure, we hung with the creators and producers of this show last summer in LA, and they are very smart, funny people - the pilot was among the best I'd ever seen, and I think they are doing an unbelievably good job at keeping the suspense going over the course of a season.

My favorite episode has to be the most utterly nonsensical one of the bunch: the one where we learn that Locke (the excellent Terry O'Quinn, the bald guy with the knife) was paralyzed before the plane crash. The reveal at the end was such great television that I had to yell for Tessa in the other part of the house - if crazy plot twists are wrong, I don't wanna be right.

The show started out being Matthew Fox's (the doctor) baby, but we've lost him in the last month or two, which is probably due to an old writer's reflex; he was supposed to have died in the pilot. Funny how these ideas can work their way into later drafts, like an old prejudice that can never be fully extinguished. There are tiny bits of the Pink House movie that don't entirely make sense unless you'd read vast plot twists of earlier versions.

By far, the most enjoyable character (for me) has to be Hurley, the obese vaguely-Hispanic dude whose big secret is that he is worth $150 million of cursed money. He got the cash by using a string of numbers uttered by a fellow inmate at an insane asylum to win the lotto - which, of course, are the same numbers that once emanated by radio from the "Lost" island itself. If, and when, they explain the "numbers" plotline, I will be duly impressed, because right now it looks like it was a fantastic idea in the writer's room that they figured they'd worry about explaining later.

Another curious thing about the "numbers" episode: when Hurley tells his old insane pal that he used the numbers for the lottery, the insane guy freaks out and says "you let out the beast!" or something. To which I would have said, "well, you moron, you shouldn't have repeated the numbers 500 times a day for 20 years!"

A few quibbles: I'm tired of Harold Perrineau's problems with his son, and I'm tired of the Korean marriage. Everyone has really got to get over it. I'm much more interested in what J.J. Abrams does best, which is set up huge stakes and untenable positions for all his characters. It's something "Alias" has always done well, and like "Alias," he doles out his information in such a funereal pace that it can get quite aggravating. Aggravating yet titillating.

First off, we already have two bizarrely metaphysical reasons for the plane to crash: "bad things tend to happen around Walt (the boy)" and "really bad things tend to happen around Hurley, especially when he's paid for it." Combine this with Locke's belief that the island offers "everyone a new beginning" and, of course, the giant polar bear that eats people and the other island inhabitants that kill at random, and the island itself is starting to look an awful lot like an ancient religion's idea of Purgatory, Hell, or even Heaven.

I'm sure I'm not the first Jonathan Armchair to muse that the entire cast of "Lost" is actually already dead; shit, Locke's ability to walk is straight out of the Mormons' idea of a Celestial Kingdom, and Sayid himself said that there's no way they could have survived the crash. The island seems to be a vacuum for lost souls, a temporary(?) resting place for the missing sock in our extra-humanist laundry.

I'm into this as long as the island itself is not there to answer questions, to teach lessons, and insert some kind of moral certitude into the affairs. The writers have already said that one of our beloved characters is going to get offed before the season's over, so at least they're playing with the same set of nads currently used by the writers of "24."

Speaking of nads, "Lost" is co-written by an unusually large number of women, which has to be why it's so compelling. I think we might be living through a Golden Age of Television right now (although I'd have to ask Va. Heffernan), given that so many shows have such excellent writing. The Tivo Revolution has really distilled the TV experience into a fine collection of cream and wheat - if you're one of the snobs that never watches television because you think it sucks, you're really not trying very hard, and, like Barney said in "The Simpsons" when Lisa tried to serve gazpacho at a barbeque, you should go back to Russia.

read? i only look at the pictures

3/17/05

Random Images from This Winter, Part XXXVII

First, a shot from Election Day, where we were doing Election Protection in Reading, Pennsylvania. I courted the local kids with about forty pieces of Starburst, and by the end, they were walking around the neighborhood screaming, "Kerry Edwards!" The election was a disaster, but I'm pleased to report that we delivered Pennsylvania, as promised:

Our very close friends Lindsay and Dana had a giant, beautiful baby Jack in December - I was lucky to be in the room while Dana went into labor (an event that should serve me well later) and we went to the hospital the day he was born:

Occasional commenter Josie, a girl I worked with at High's Ice Cream in Norfolk, VA during the summer of 1985 (and everyone had a crush on her) sent me a peanut ornament for our li'l peanut, and we took it to Texas, where it was featured on the tree this Christmas:

A nice New York City moment on the subway: an Orthodox Jew, a Muslim studying the Koran, and an African American all in perfect harmony on the Q Train. I'm from the Sesame Street generation, so this kind of thing still warms my aorta:

Just as umbrella salesmen spring up from the pavement in Manhattan every time it rains, some locals made a lot of cash digging cars out of 5-foot snow drifts on 8th Avenue in Brooklyn:

One of Tessa's best friends, the lovely and talented Nell Casey, is only seven weeks behind us in the baby dept. - they hated taking this picture, but I think they look damned cute:

incus, malleus, and stapes

3/16/05

I went to the Ulrich Schnauss show at Rothko last night with my brother Kent, and although the audience might have found his down-tempo thrashy techno a bit on the fruity side, I was awash in his songs. It was so loud that the music enveloped you whole; you needed earplugs to take away the highs and lows, and you were left with your ribcage rattling in time.

I think I've got the concept of "stochastic resonance" wrong, but apparently it's the idea that very low "white noise" can trigger much louder noises and even physical phenomena. The low sound of the Earth moving, in other words, contributed to the Ice Ages. Also, some researchers believe that a white noise machine - like the ones at Sharper Image - actually stimulates brain cells and makes your kids smarter.

I think I experienced something like that tonight: as the music swelled to an unbelievable crescendo for about ten minutes, I found my brain to be acutely at ease and working at a fast, intense clip. You could no longer hear yourself breathe, you could hear nobody in the room, and you could barely pick out individual notes in the songs, but - to destroy the cliché - you could hear yourself think.

I got more quiet idea-making and planning done in those ten minutes that I have all week. It was as if the music, or noise, stimulated a beta state in my own head, and allowed me to think through the next few months (which, if you've been reading this blog, you know will not be all that easy).

There are other songs that will get you there: "Nothing Natural" by Lush or anything off "Loveless" by My Bloody Valentine come to mind. I encourage all of you to go to a show, something ambient and electronic, and stand by the speakers with earplugs in. I really think you'll get some shit done.

rose by another name

3/15/05

I would like talk to you about the color pink.

Pink is one of my favorite colors, and figures prominently in my life. I have been more than happy to wear a pink blazer to my fourth grade portrait, even though it meant getting beat up by the bike rack; I have no problem posing with pink trees or wearing a pink ensemble, when it comes down to it. I even made a movie based on my wonderful friends called The Pink House and painted our car pink in the process.

So why is it, then, when I found out we were having a daughter, that I wanted avoid all things pink? Part of our don't-tell-us-the-gender plan for the baby was based, subconsciously, on my desire not to get a vat of pink onesies from well-wishers knowing we were having a baby of the female persuasion .(Turns out Matt and Carrie bought us a pink onesie anyway, but it's awesome).

And baby stores DO NOT make it easy for you. Sure, Buy Buy Baby has the occasional green and purple barf bib, but there are basically two colors in babyland, blue and this:

Tessa hunts for something other than pink

I guess I was trying to make a statement. That we weren't going to have any sort of forced gender compliance with our daughter, and it was going to start at the very beginning. I asked Kent to get us something other than pink, and he said, "sure - how about Goth Black?" Oh, how I wish there were.

Not wearing pink would be the first in a "how we're doing things different" regime that would also let her enjoy sports, never care about Seventeen magazine, not fall for the first dumbshit boy who comes her way, and we'd never have to revive her inner Ophelia.

I also had similar feelings about the name: we had a few favorites, but I'm not going to force any of them on her. We were going to wait until she popped out to see what she had in mind. Now, as the day gets closer, I realize I'm mostly being an idiot.

For the first three months of the baby's life, it's just a beige-pink blob fighting for survival. Its habitat is the three inches closest to your own skin, and it not only has NO OPINION on its name, but it could freakin' care less about the color of its booties.

Maybe I should relax, just let the endless pink wash over me. It is such a handsome color; I do love it so. Perhaps it won't be so bad for our little girl to have a few pink things after all. Pink pink pink pink zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

help

my sexiest migraine

3/14/05

Can someone PLEASE make my head stop hurting? I began to get these headaches in the afternoon right around my 31st birthday, and the last five years or so, it's like fuckin' clockwork. If I take three Excedrins in the morning when I wake up, generally I can go the whole day without pain, but unless some commenter can prove otherwise (Steve A.?), I'm assuming that 3 aspirin-acetaminophen-caffeine pills each A.M. is not exactly healthy livin'.

Before you all start, YES I stay pretty well-hydrated. The kidney stones (HIGH-lariously documented here, among other places) scared me straight into water-logged submission, so I drag water around wherever I go.

And YES, I have the occasional hazelnut soy latté, and I realize that some of these headaches could be caffeine-related, but they seem to come and go regardless of the latté intake. And before Jon Vaden starts telling me it's because of my disturbingly stupid sleep patterns, that doesn't seem to figure one way or the other.

I've started taking Petadolex, which is a herbal softgel containing the Butterbur extract, but that will take another month or so to kick in. In the meantime, the backs of my eyes are throbbing, and I find it hard to get anything done in the late afternoon. Suggestions, my friends?

alive, she cried

3/13/05

Tessa is nine months pregnant, and as of Saturday, if the baby were born, it would not be considered "premature." Our due date is not until April 2, but only 4% of babies are born on their due date, and we are both mindful that it could happen at any moment.

The crib has been built, the changing table has the little "baby taco" mattress on it, we have 88 Huggies© diapers at the ready, along with the Dekor Plus diaper disposal system. Tonight, Tessa decorated the baby's room with the gorgeous stuffed animals from friends, and I built a bookshelf and filled it with Dr. Seuss, Mother Goose books from 1940 and my favorite, C D B.

It's utterly bizarre to be planning a welcome for someone who is already here. Just a few inches of Tessa separate the baby from the rest of the world; the little girl is never out of our thoughts, never not in the same room, and yet she's not here.

To tell the truth, I'm a little freaked out by the baby's room. It is all set up, and bizarrely formal, like a room left in place from someone long gone. I have been in other rooms, rooms where the occupant is no longer alive, and the place is haunted by their hollow lack of presence.

Our baby's room is haunted too, but it's haunted by someone who isn't alive yet. It lays in wait, like a raw sloop fresh from the boatmaker, still clean, ropes taught, no cannon shot, about to be splashed into the foaming sea. I wander in there every once in a while, and try to enjoy the silence, as if I could store it up like sleep, but it doesn't work that way.

And I'm not much for silence anyway. I love the sound of a lawn mower, a shower being taken, the dishwasher already on. I come from a family of screamers, and I've missed it. I trust our little munchkin can scream some life into her quiet little room.

CW sez he needs more Celexa

3/10/05

I'd like to end Media Criticism Week here on the blog with one last rant: I simply cannot stand for this pervasive idea of "conventional wisdom." Loosely explained, the CW is basically "the general opinion of those in the know." The phrase had been knocking around for a while, but Newsweek crystallized it about a decade ago with its CW Watch snarkily inserted into the front of the magazine each week.

First off, Newsweek's use of the CW is so broad and belligerently stupid that I'm flabbergasted such a good magazine keeps it around. I guess it's where they show they can have a good a time as well as anybody, but the full-scale binary denunciations of entire movements, people and countries strikes me so reductivist as to be criminal.

Plus, what the hell is "conventional wisdom," anyway? It sounds like what parents used to say when they had no answers left: "because I said so." The CW is nothing more than the petty ramblings of about six - count 'em, six - members of the news literati who have decided they've got the fingers on the pulse of the American vena cava.

Think they're harmless and I'm ranting for no reason? Wait until the "CW" decides that your issue is boring or unworthy, and we'll see how quickly you scream at Injustice at the service of a Quick Joke. "CW says that gays should just give up the marriage thing." Ho, ho, ho - looks like the joke's on YOU, gays!

Besides, the CW of America is more and more meaningless as Americans become more and more disinformed and fractured. The conventional wisdom of a Blue State is wildly different than that of a Red State, thank god. Please, if I ever start using lazy terms like "conventional wisdom" seriously, I give you all permission to take me out back and hit me in the head with a shovel.

why frequent, kenneth?

3/9/05

The conservative blogosphere must be giddy with delight tonight as Dan Rather signed off CBS Evening News for the last time. If there were ever a case of three 2's beating a King, then this is it; the armchair assholes who claimed victory in kicking out the coot don't deserve to be doing his laundry.

First off, let's clear something up: even if the actual papers involved in "Memogate" (horff) were dreamed up at a Kinko's, the thrust of CBS's story remains abjectly true: the President and Commander-in-Chief of our own forces was a fucking coward and ducked his service through the pussy-footing of his jerk dad.

Personally, I don't have any problem with this per se: if I'd been served draft papers in 1969, I would have burned them at a rally and then found property in British Columbia with my Uncle Chuck. What I would NOT do, however, is claim to have been in the National Guard, nor would I have one leg to stand on as the head of this nation's military.

The way Bush has been given a pass on this issue is further proof that the media is fucking pathetic, second only to the American populace. Now he claims he's a "war president," which is a little like a kid flooding his own house with bathwater and claiming to be a sea captain.

But there was one person who tried to show some nads on this issue, and it was Rather. And yes, he should have been a little more careful with sources, but anybody who works in television news (or print, for that matter) knows that worse transgressions happen every day. At Fox News, lying and inventing sources (the whole "people say" trick) has been a daily rite of passage, and last month, we learned that a White House press operative was a shill for the Bush Administration. If there were a stronger word for "hypocrites," I'd use it.

But alas, Rather takes the fall for the sniveling work of some out-for-blood bloggers (CNN had the audacity to call them "experts"), and gets canned for integrity, and of course, bad ratings. If he were #1, he could sacrifice Weimaraner puppies every night and nobody would mind.

The way these conservative pundits have taken such delight in gloating over Rather's demise makes me want to puke. Dan Rather provided on-the-scene commentary for JFK's assassination while Ann Coulter was still shitting her poopypants. He carried Marines to safety in Vietnam, while Rush Limbaugh has trouble getting up a flight of stairs. Yes, he might have been weird, bizarre even, but he was human, which is more than I can say for most everyone else.

i'm not wearing any pants

3/8/05

I would like to call a BOYCOTT TO ALL LOCAL NEWS BROADCASTS. They are absolute shite in every market in the country, and they're taking up valuable real estate that could be given to "Law & Order" reruns and old episodes of "WKRP". To wit:

- if you're in a small town, the local news is a thorough embarrassment. Not only do they get the weather wrong - deadly wrong, if you were in the North Carolina ice storm two months ago - but the story selection is on par with a middle school poetry slam. Two years ago there was actually a story in Zebulon, NC about a farmer that had three yolks in one egg.

- small towns try to amp up their ratings - and, presumably, their own gonads - with screaming headlines intoned by Your Trusted Anchor like "WHAT YOU DON'T KNOW ABOUT VENETIAN BLINDS... MAY KILL YOU. STORY AT 11."

- that quote above actually happened. Ask Chip or Scott.

- if you're in a big metropolis, the local news is a cavalcade of the worst, most brutal crimes against humanity that God has to offer. Since New York encompasses about 45 terrible neighborhoods (and LA has about 38), local stories from both cities include nightly baby beheadings, cocaine brawls that leave four dead, hit-and-run accidents that saws off the legs of a family's breadwinner, six-year-olds that rape their cousins, and fires that burn seven families alive because of a snickering slumlord. I just can't fucking stand it anymore.

- local news anchors not only punctuate this horror with random stories about a crazy cat that won't get off the trampoline, but they waste about 1,823,905 minutes yearly with their between-sections banter. Seriously, how many times are you going to joke that the weatherman brought rain? Or that the sports guy sure is wacky? CAN IT, YA FUCKING DOOFUSES.

- local news brings local ads, and I don't have to tell you that locally-produced commercials - especially but not limited to car dealerships - are so groan-inducingly bad that I have BROKEN MY EYEBALLS looking skyward in disgust. Why are all local ads so fucking awful? They don't have to be. You can make a decent ad for your tan salon for the same price you made your shitty one. And keep your little shit daughter away from the Pontiac you're trying to sell. And your little "pitch phrase" is TERRIBLE. And don't try to ACT! Jesus, you're KILLING US.

- if I'm going to get news that really matters, I'll get it from the internet, thanks. The Yahoo! Most Emailed page tells me everything I need to know about the human condition, and it also has pictures of kittens, sex and gore. Fuck local news and their venetian blinds. May they strangle themselves in them.

10,000 brainiacs

3/7/05

It's always been stunning to me that such musically rich places like, say, New York City and Chapel Hill have had such wretched excuses for radio stations. Sure, you can hunt for the little college broadcasts, but these, too, are often a dreadful bore (and yes, that means WXYC too, you pretentious shits - THAT'S what you get for not hiring me in 1991!).

XM Radio has made most of this redundant to any true music fan, but this trip to Chapel Hill revealed a new station: 100.7 FM, The River. It's a terrible name, and I was only tuned to it because it also carries the Tar Heel games, but they have a new format that is self-described as "we'll play anything."

Obviously, they didn't play Tibetan throat singing, Mahler's 8th Symphony or even any country music for that matter, but their playlist was truly massive and seemingly random. They played Julian Lennon's "Too Late for Goodbyes" and followed it up with a Green Day song, then "Two Hearts Beat as One" by U2, then the Sundays, then Dave Matthews, then some old Bowie.

If this idea gets good ratings and catches on, then American radio culture will truly have evolved into something interesting: the endless Balkanization of music genres will have led to "formatless" radio stations that can play almost anything on earth. In essence, radio will become the commercial apotheosis of the current technological metaphor for randomness: the iPod Shuffle.

I think the iPod Shuffle is a hit because nobody in the music business (except Steve Jobs) understood that we, as lovers of music, basically love to be free of being our own fucking DJ all the time. Sure, we want to curate our collection and only stick to the stuff we like, but we LOVE to be surprised and titillated by the essence of not knowing what comes next. If you all remember correctly, that was why the radio was so magical when we were between the ages of 8 and 16.

I will stick with a radio station - or any other entertainment, for that matter - if I'm even slightly excited to find out what happens. And if this "formatless format" sticks to about a 3:1 decent-to-crap ratio (which is true of "The River," XM Channel 43 and VH1 Classic) you're going to have a winner.

A radio station like that in a big metropolis will even give the iPod a run for its money, because radio can do something an MP3 player cannot: allow you to bask in the glow of your random culture, knowing that you are part of a larger brotherhood that is doing the same. That's why we never turn off a song on the radio that we already have in our collection - it means more if we're all listening to it.

back free of monkey

3/6/05

Tessa and I are spending our last few days of pre-baby freedom in debauchery and panache, just the way we like it. This weekend, we all met at the beach to celebrate Chip and Cathie's wedding, which, to us, was a national holiday:

Storm-chaser Lars Lucier was on the scene as our roving archivist; after 2 hours of touch football (where I shredded my hamstring, thanks), the 70-degree weather turned to rain, and of course, drama:

Sunday, of course, brought the re-match of my beloved Tar Heels against the foul, sniveling, trenchmouthed denizens of Dook University. This was my 20th home Dook game in a row. That's right, I have been here representing the forces of Good for TWENTY STRAIGHT YEARS. I can't believe it even as I type it.

At my first Duke game in 1986, my parents were going through a horrific divorce, and basketball came to represent an escape from all that trauma, and eventually it turned into a religion of its own for me. I can't possibly express how much our hoops team - and the philosophy of Dean Smith - mean to me without alienating half my readership (I know who you are, you bastards), but suffice to say I have crawled here every year through sleet, heat, depression, sickness and insanity.

The problem with vanquishing Evil is that Evil has been winning a lot lately. Nine of the last ten, actually. We decided my Carolina blue turtleneck - worn to the last 16 games - had lost its mojo, and needed replenishing. Lee Coggins ceremoniously resurrected it with ancient sage smoke:

The game was my as-yet-unborn girl's first Dook experience:

And let's just say that it ranks up there with all the classic games these two teams have ever played. We were down nine points with three minutes left, and I have to say, I sunk my head into my hands and readied myself for failure. But the Tar Heels rallied, and after a flurry of points, Marvin Williams - the same age I was when I watched my first game in person - completed a 3-point play that put us up by two.

Duke had the ball, and the whole place was electric with anxiety-fueled defense. As they came down the court with 20 seconds left, I put my hand on my lucky unfinished baby and Tessa held it there. They missed; we won. Pandemonium erupts:

And many things are brought back to life: my faith, my humour, and my lucky turtleneck - all shared with two very awesome ladies.

tHiS JuSt iN *burp* ~fART~

3/3/05

You get the feeling that journalism teachers around the world are ready to hang it the fuck up. I can't imagine starting in the news media in the '60s or '70s and realizing what "news" has turned into - they must all see themselves as the last, dying breed, like Obi Wan stuck in a clay hut on a nondescript planet.

News sucks, and what's worse, they're bad at sucking. Do you want to know why I always turn to the Weather Channel? Because all they want to tell you is the weather. No agenda, no spin, no hoo-hah and no bullshit. Sure, they like to amp up a hurricane or a good blizzard, but the fine folks at the Weather Channel are so free of bias and ego that I like to cool my heels watching the snow pile up in Hastings, Nebraska.

No wonder Tessa's mom stopped listening to any health news - just wait three years and it contradicts itself. Butter kills you! Butter saves you! Eggs give you heart attacks! Eggs stop heart attacks! An aspirin a day helps your aorta! But aspirins destroy your aorta!

I know Google news is ripe for mockery, but why do we have contradictory piffle like this:

Or how about this unintentionally funny (or rather, mind-blowingly stupid) headline:

But tonight, we had a whopper. Stop the fucking presses, and shut down the server. STORY NUMBER ONE IS OUT, AND IT'S BREAKING NEWS!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

the blue denouement

3/2/05

Not to prattle on, but there's one thing about our movie that I have struggled with since a typhoon washed away our set: the ending. We tried many fixes, and cute little ideas, and I thought we were toast, but... not a single student said anything bad about the current ending, and some loved it. Victory!

In that light, I'd like to proffer my favorite endings in all movie history. I know film buffs will wax rhapsodic about "Casablanca" (blah fucking blah) but some modern endings have been just as good. To whit:

Manhattan - Woody Allen runs across the length of Manhattan to stop Mariel Hemingway from going to London to "get corrupted," and the ensuing talk they have is probably the least cynical passage ever written. When Mariel exhorts him to "trust people" a little more, the camera holds on Allen for the slightest second too long, while Gershwin's "Rhapsody in Blue" begins - and that's when I lose it, every time.

The Untouchables - Say what you want about De Palma, but I love this flick. After a whole movie of fighting Al Capone and the liquor bootleggers, a reporter asks Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner) what he will do if Prohibition is repealed. "I'll probably have a drink," he responds, which is innocent enough, until you realize the real-life Ness was plagued by tragic alcoholism. Nice tweak on an audience that has no idea how meaningful that little line is.

North by Northwest - Eva Marie Saint is dangling off the top of Mt. Rushmore, about to slip and fall to her death below. Cary Grant reaches toward her, and as she begins to slip... BLAM! Grant pulls her into the top of the sleeper car of a train, and the two ostensibly make the beast with two backs while the train slides into a tunnel. Freud himself would have popped a frickin' boner.

The Usual Suspects - Please, can a movie be this good again?

The Sixth Sense - Okay, besides this one?

Birdy - Alan Parker's somewhat-forgotten masterpiece from 1984 stars Nicolas Cage and Matthew Modine, both of them arguably at their peak. Modine plays Birdy, a teenage boy who feels so outside the lines of normal that he melds into a sort of... well, bird. When Vietnam shatters both boys' lives, Cage is sent to the psycho ward to bring Modine out of his shell, so to speak, but Modine may be damaged forever. The last shot, so funny, surreal, and absolutely perfect - is so good that YOU NEED TO RENT THIS MOVIE.

Raising Arizona - In a way, how could you possibly end this movie? Nic Cage, again, lying in bed, dreaming of his future. In his utopia, he's a father, Holly Hunter is his loving wife, and they are surrounding by loving kids, while one whispers "Dad-" in his ear. It's such a moving elegy at the end of this joyride, that I can tear up thinking of the possibilities of my own future family. At the last second, Cage opens his eyes, and he thinks, "I dunno. Maybe it was Utah."

It's a clever little moment that suggests the patriarchy and family celestial kingdom of the Mormons - an ending that is so complicated, beautiful, aching and bizarrely funny.

That's all I expect out of my endings. I'd like to ask everyone to try a little harder, and I will too.

pardon our progress

3/1/05

This is our fourth year of returning to Chapel Hill in the spring to teach Peter Kaufman's scholarship class, and it's awesome for two reasons: one, the classes are usually full of great students who ask interesting questions (i.e. there's nobody like ME when I was a student) and two, this trip always means spring is just around the corner.

Today we taught a class discussing the Pink House movie and "Five Wives" but managed to slip a few stern warnings about media literacy in there as well. One of the great things about going to a decent college is that you leave with enough ego and know-how to look at our culture and call bullshit on the things you know to be flawed. Before I was in college, I used to accept everything in a newspaper or on TV as absolute truth, and afterwards I could color it with the appropriate tones of salt.

Anyway, we had the students write down answers to the following questions about "The Pink House":
1) did anything confuse you?
2) what scenes or characters did you like?
3) what scenes or characters did you dislike?
- and tonight, lying in bed, I read through the papers and thought, "there's no pulling the wool over these kids' eyes." Even if you haven't seen the movie (and few of you, as yet, have) you might get a kick out of some selected responses:

"I usually hate animation in movies - it gives me those weird 'Mary Poppins' vibes - but I thought the animation in the movie worked really well."

"You need to make the connection between Chloe and Windy more clear, as she is the key to the message in the film - she is the real 3-D manifestation of what the 2-dimensional painting of Chloe embodies: the lasting, eternal nature of love."

"I didn't really understand why the school was 'Carolina Baptist College' - I mean, there didn't seem to be a huge Baptist influence."

"I loved the whole 'magical realism' genre."

"I was confused by Pritchard's sudden change, and the old Oxford's sudden appearance in the basement. The situations seemed too coincidental. I realize this somehow fits with magical realism, but I think it could fit better."

"If Murray is graduating, how can he be Student Body President? He's not going to make a good President if all he cares about is the Pink House."

"I liked the scene with Zola and her German boyfriends. I also thought the party was really realistic - my favorite scene!"

"I loved the Spanish girl in the house. She was clichéd to the point of being endearing."
"If you do consider the audience's relationship to the film as a protagonist relationship, the 'True Loves' archetype is absolutely necessary, because everyone tried to relate to that. Nobody wants to be any of the other archetypes, but everyone likes to think they have the potential for true love - so great ending!"

"I loved it. Keep doing what you're doing."