14 posts tagged “death”
Please don't tell anybody, but I don't hate Dirty Dancing. Part of it is that pre-nose job Jennifer Grey was one of my earliest celebrity crushes, but I also love the soundtrack. The opening credits were my first introduction to one of the greatest pop songs of all time.
Most artists would be happy to have sung just one of the greatest pop songs ever. Michael Jackson sang two. This is the better one. Barely.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid is my all-time favorite movie. But The Sting is pretty good too. And so are Cool Hand Luke, Slap Shot, and The Hudsucker Proxy. Actually, I can't think of a single movie that Paul Newman was in that I wouldn't watch. If there's a higher compliment one could pay an actor, I don't know what it is.
I think Dabysan is trying to kill me.
Late last week, Daby IM'ed me and asked if I wanted his couch. He and Ms. Nation had jointly purchased a new sofa, and he was looking for a good home for the old one. And - more significantly - looking for a sucker to rent a truck and help him move it to make room for the new model. Now, I already have a sofa. But Daby promised his was "the most comfortable in all of Christendom" and my spare bedroom is sorely lacking in upholstered furniture, so I figured I had room for two - at least for a while. The thought of doubling my potential for lazy lounging sealed the deal. I accepted.
So I all but recoiled in horror this evening when I arrived at Daby's apartment to move my new couch into my apartment. And as I recoiled in horror, I recalled that there had been very few occasions in the past however many years in which I have been seated on Daby's couch, and that those few occasions on which I had been seated upon it had been so traumatic that I must have completely blocked them from my memory. Most comfortable in all of Christendom, my ass. This vile and unholy pile of wood and furniture stuffing was - is - upholstered with sandpaper and live scorpions. Mere contact of bare skin on fabric would send chills down my spine and make me itchy. An ordinary evening would result in a painful and unsightly rash. Who knows what would happen after prolonged exposure? Leprosy, certainly. And death doesn't seem out of the question. I didn't want to touch the thing to move it out of his apartment, let alone into mine. I nearly left without a word, furious at Daby's chicanery.
The sofa currently sits two stories below me in the basement of my building. I've taken three showers since moving it and can still feel that abrasive fabric on my skin. I'm about to run out for some steel wool. That and some elbow grease may help me finally feel less.... unclean. If I am able to make it 'til tomorrow without nightmares, I may be able to focus on just why Daby might want me dead. Between the Rock Band incident and this, I must be cautious. You better believe when I walk out my front door in the morning, I'm going to look up to make sure there's not an anvil suspended above my head.
Like every other asshole who works in an office, I'm expected on Monday mornings to report on the status of my weekend. Typically, this results in a series of bland and vague generalities on my part to disguise the fact that I'm the most boring person alive. I mean, they know that - but still we pretend. It's a delicate dance. The Monday I finally go into work and openly admit "I spent the weekend arguing on the internet about pie" is the last Monday I ever want to see. I have some pride. So I kind of shocked even myself today when I recounted the details of forty-eight hours away from the mindless drudgery of work.
I guess, technically, I didn't do much on Saturday, in that I did only one thing. I went for an eighty mile bike ride - the original long version of the beach and pie ride. It's my second favorite of all the DC area rides, and I had a good day even though I didn't feel like riding when I woke up. It took a little longer than I might have hoped, but I felt great the whole day and let others set the pace. Afterward, I watched Barton Fink for about the fiftieth time. On Sunday, I slept in until almost eight o'clock before heading downtown to help out at the Team in Training tent at the inaugural Nation's Triathlon. My shift was supposed to be eleven to one, but most of the triathletes had passed by the time I arrived. We were at the transition area from bike to run, so we knew how many people were left to pass. It was only quarter after twelve when the last person came off the bike course to start running, so we were able to pack everything up and take off early. I had planned all along to kill some time with some touristy stuff, but with a little extra time I walked over to the triathlon finish on Pennsylvania Avenue on my way to the West Wing of the National Gallery of Art. When I got there - to the gallery - they searched my backpack, but also informed me that I would be required to check it. The disinterested woman I visited next told me I would have to remove all cameras and phones before leaving it. When I asked for clarification (I had both a camera and a phone that I didn't feel like carrying) I was told that I needed to take all electronics with me. I also had an MP3 player, and I really didn't feel like toting three items around. So I moved on to Plan B. I departed the National Gallery for the National Building Museum, which is a mere two blocks from DC's meager Chinatown. I'd just been there a few weeks prior to see the Eero Saarinen exhibit, but all I really wanted at this point was a place I could comfortably loiter in air conditioned splendor for about an hour (I had thought to bring a book along with me) and that is quite achievable in the vast interior of the Building Museum. It's a little-trafficked museum well off the beaten path, and it just so happens to be the District's most handsome structure. Frankly, I should have headed there from the outset. When I arrived, though, I wandered up to the information desk just to make sure there wasn't anything I hadn't already seen, and I noticed that a tour of the building itself was just beginning. I'd never done that, so after learning it would occupy only forty-five minutes, I signed on. That effectively - and informatively - killed the time until I was to meet up with Emma and Daby and Carrie Nation and Bernadette to see Burn After Reading. I'm still formulating my opinions on that movie, so I'll withhold comment at this time. Then we went for an early dinner at a good noodle place that Emma suggested. By this time, it was almost six, and though I wanted to be home in time for some football, I had time for a little Rock Band at Chez Daby/Nation; Bitches Britches needed a drummer, and I intended to wow them with my percussive ability. I didn't, but I brought the house down with my near perfect vocals on Radiohead's "Creep." And then I almost died, but I didn't know it at the time. I just knew the Rock Band - and much of the power - wasn't working and I had to get home anyway. So I went home and watched the Steelers kick the shit out of the Browns. It was a good end to an unusually busy weekend.
There's little I can add to the scores of pixels dedicated to George Carlin - dead today at 71 - that isn't redundant. I mean, when a beloved entertainer is eulogized so eloquently and thoroughly as Cappy's touching tribute, my meager words are superfluous at best. But I'd be remiss if I didn't say anything....
In my younger years, I listened to comedy records almost as much as music records, mainly because that's what we had around. My parents didn't have much use for popular music (ours was the only household in America in the 1970's without a copy of Rumours), but they had a seemingly inordinate amount of comedy records. I was raised as much on early Bill Cosby and Bob Newhart records as anything else. (I recall the Smothers Brothers being pretty funny too, and there were several more that are now lost to me.) Perhaps that's why my parents never flinched (I don't remember them flinching, at least) when I began bringing home George Carlin tapes home from the local library, even though there was rampant swearing and I was in seventh grade. We even listened to them in the car, for the whole family to enjoy. I learned early on that it's tough for them to reprimand me for my filthy mouth if they're stifling laughter. I believe whole-heartedly that an exposure to stand-up comedy at an early age helped to shape who I am today, just as I believe that an exposure to George Carlin at just the right time taught me how to swear. For both, I am eternally grateful.
So this guy Sydney Pollack died yesterday. He's probably best known for his acting roles as a skeevy doctor in Stanley Kubrick's criminally underrated Eyes Wide Shut and skeevy lawyer in last year's sublime Michael Clayton. But he was a director, too. A few years back he made a boring documentary about a boring architect.
This past week most certainly did not go as we had anticipated. After several weeks of near-constant scrambling down at the lab, we thought on Monday we might actually be able to relax a little. As it happened, this was our busiest week in a while and we didn't have any time even to manage the ol' blog. On behalf of the entire staff of hotrod.vox.com, we apologize and offer an overdue and abbreviated glimpse of the week that could have been.
hotrod's birthday (observed): Many, many thanks are due the organizer and attendees of our birthday festivities, which transpired Sunday evening. Our official birthday is in September, but we didn't celebrate then. We never do. It usually takes people about six months to remember that they missed it.
challenged: The New Pornographers played two sold out shows at the 9:30 Club this week. We didn't attend either performance, but we did read with some glee the interview with Carl Newman in which he stated that DC is the best town for music but that despite that fact the New Pornos always play shitty shows here. And that he's a hack. Get your shit together, Post Express. We already knew all that.
mum's the word: Some losers at our college started a movement (of sorts) to paint their fingernails red on the first anniversary of the Virginia Tech massacre as a way to honor the victims. For the record, Virginia Tech's colors are orange and puce. We suspect these guys were just looking for an excuse to wear nail polish.
holy shit: The Pope seriously fucked up our morning commute.
hungry heart: Danny Federici - multi-instrumentalist and original member of the E Street Band - died this week. Rest in peace, and cue the video.
seven-inch: Today is Record Store Day, so get out there and buy some CD's from somebody in your neighborhood. Steve Jobs is killing music. He's evil incarnate. And we realize this item could have stood on its own now that we've got some time. But fuck it, we're on a roll.
Legendary Picksburgh broadcaster Myron Cope is dead at 79. My Terrible Towel will be lowered to half-mast for the next week. Hear Myron in all his glory here.
I find myself oddly.... not saddened, exactly, but.... disappointed by the untimely death yesterday of Heath Ledger. And there's really no good reason why. I won't lie; my initial reaction when I first heard the news was: this isn't going to affect the new Batman movie, is it? And it won't. My second reaction was: that's a shame, he was a pretty good actor. But the thing is, I don't know why I consider him to have been a good actor. It's certainly not based on my own movie-viewing experience. A quick visit to IMDB.com tells me that I have, in fact, seen only one movie in which Heath Ledger acted. (That one movie, by the way, is the teen-comedy Shakespeare re-tread "10 Things I Hate About You," which is a supremely guilty pleasure. I never fail to stop on it if I happen to find it when flipping through the channels on a weekend afternoon. Please don't tell anybody.) And several of his movies, I wouldn't watch if you paid me. Basically, my opinion - as so many surely already suspect - is based on nothing.
So I am revising my position, and taking the Sean Taylor stance: it's a shame, his daughter has to grow up without her father. But it's worth noting that being associated with Batman in any way all but guarantees credibility with me. I never realized I could be swayed so easily.
