I had a couple of leftover vacation days from last year that had to be taken by March 31st, so last Friday and this Friday I used them. Here are some reflections from the time off.
Jim and Pam on The Office
As stated here before, The Office is one of the few TV shows these days that I find myself really enjoying. Friday night it was an Office marathon, which included one of my favorite episodes, the one where office manager Michael accidentally outs one of his employees. "The company has made it my responsibility today to put an end to 100,000 years of being weirded out by gays," says Michael.
As much as I enjoy the office, there are two characters they're either going to have to alter or write out of the show: Jim and Pam. Many people think the unfulfilled love between Jim and Pam is what moves the show, but it isn't. All I see their characters providing are the worst jokes of the half-hour. The pranksterism of Jim is particularly cringeworthy. Whoever is the asshole in the office, Jim locks them inside a conference room, throws their cell phone in the ceiling, puts their calculator in Jell-O, whacks them in the head with a door. I guess we're supposed to see Jim as ourselves doing what we wish we could do to the annoying assholes in our own lives, but to me it makes him seem even more obnoxious than Dwight Schrute's character. I enjoyed Jim and Pam better when their function was too look bewildered and slack-jawed as Michael and Dwight, the true stars of the show, did their thing.
I Piss Excellence
Saturday night was a night for Talladega Nights. Some guy at work recommended this, and indeed it was quite enjoyable. Will Ferrell's cheerleader character on Saturday Night Live once represented the low point of that show for me, but his later creations have tickled me, particularly the skit where he comes to work in a Speedo because he insists he feels more comfortable that way, then brings his package within centimeters of several seated people's necks.
Talladega Nights had some good humor, but...back to my post months ago about "I Pooted" being on city-wide billboards...humor today is less clever and more crude. For instance in Talladega Nights there are some little kids saying things like, "I pissed my pants, and I haven't changed my piss pants all day!," "Go shave your balls!," etcetera. At the end (I'll go ahead and ruin it for you), Ferrell and Sascha Baron Cohen, who plays a competing racecar driver, have a big kiss. Is this funny, or just nasty as hell? I'm looking to laugh, not to be made uneasy. (Our sometime visitor Scott said he and his wife went to see Cohen's Borat and felt so grossed out and uncomfortable his wife contemplated leaving the theater.)
But overall it was entertaining and not boring and had some great moments, including the quote from Ferrell's Ricky Bobby character above.
Is Bon Scott in the Building?
I've got about a dozen tunes I've put together on my computer, but I can't sing so they sit there without vocals. However one day on a rock n' roll band chat board some guy had posted a song he had done with his own singing, and I thought he sounded pretty good. I signed on to encourage him, and a couple of months later sent him one of my tunes to see what he could do with it.
The song itself was shaky so I figured it would be a good test balloon. I gave him an idea for a theme, and he agreed to work on it. It was a little extra-exciting because this guy was in Sydney, Australia, and I marvelled that you could now collaborate with people around the world. My own Bon Scott a world away!
A couple of weeks later I got the tune back...he didn't sound nearly as good as he did on his own song, but I couldn't complain since this was a total stranger agreeing to help me out. Though I figured this guy was in his mid-20's I began thinking maybe he was even younger, like 17 or 18! That felt weird but I figured as long as he could bring the goods, who cared? The goods weren't delivered, though, I didn't think, and a subsequent song I sent to him for a second try is still without vocal toppings.
So I searched around my own area on some music sites and found a guy right here in town who sounded great. Checked his MySpace page -- he's 20! Sigh...why is everyone doing what I like to do 16 years younger than me? (All the hot girls, too!) I became further intimidated when I listened to the clip of his Dream Theater-ish band, and they sound really kickass, plus modern. Would he bother putting a melody on top of some of my `80's-sounding shit for the hemmerhoid generation?
Nah, I never heard back from that second kid at all, although it's only been a couple of days. I have thought I could search for players in my own area my age and form a real, performing band, but...I'm really not into hauling gear around, coordinating schedules with largely indifferent bandmates and, most of all, navigating asshole personalities. So...
Guess I'll put the headset on tomorrow and fulfill my true destiny: supplying people with billing and technical information about their cell phone accounts.
Heh...nah, that passed through my mind, but I'm wanting to come up with something more like Interpol crossed with Ghost Trane crossed with Anthrax. Not that anything I've come up with sounds like that but...not Southern blues-rock, anyhow.
They are the modern day equivalent of the creative loafing musician exchange. This is how we found our new geetarist/keyboardist/vocalist.
Happy hunting.