mcbrennan

Or anywhere else, honestly. So this is my first actual Dreamwidth post. I imported my (increasingly rare) old LJ posts, not because I want anyone to read them but because I wanted a sort of bulwark against the likelihood that LJ will just up-and-vanish one of these ole days. I have no idea what I'll be using this for. But who knows, perhaps I'll regain the power of speech that has so thoroughly eluded me in the past year or so.

But it won't be tonight. I need sleep. Anyway, hello there.

My friend Jill (and her awesome pups) are taking part in a walk-a-thon to help raise money for Tony LaRussa's Animal Rescue Foundation--a great organization that saves countless animals every year and gets them into good homes, keeping them off the streets where they so often fall into a life of gangs, drugs, and petty crime. If you've got a buck or two (or whatever you can spare), it'd be great if you could make a donation--any amount at all would be much appreciated. Here's the link for more info:

http://www.firstgiving.com/jillcooney

Consider it penance for all those albums you've illegally downloaded this ~~year~~ week.

xo,
Caitie

Current Music: Jessica Molaskey - All That Jazz | Powered by Last.fm

I'm momentarily (and unexpectedly) in LA tonight. My sweetie had a last-minute job-interview thing here so we hurried over, and will be hurrying back Tuesday afternoon, but for the moment, hurrah. I've already done my prerequisite watch-the-sun-come-up-at-Canter's breakfast and feel like a proper 80s rock casualty. In the morning it's breakfast at Nat's Early Bite, a visit to the Big Kid Toy Emporium and then back to Phoenix for a bit.

So, a nice bit of news--I don't think I mentioned it here yet, but I'm featured in this month's Curve magazine...the one with Katy Perry on the cover, yes. It's a very generous and supportive profile and it's much appreciated (and it's not on the website so visit your local newsstand/bookseller and check it out...Borders and B&N carry it...)

I'm doing a bit better healthwise since I last wrote. Working on a ridiculous script I kind of love even though it is unlikely to advance the cause of commercial success. I'm hopeful this year will bring good things.

Could really go for one of those Canter's omelets tonight but I need to sleep. Just saying hi. Hope you're doing well.

Russell Mael of Sparks and M. C. Brennan, February 14, 2009
Originally uploaded by mcbrennan

Yes, this is exactly what it looks like. :) Marc took me to meet Russell and Ron for my birthday. I was exhausted but very happy.

Aw, man. One of my very favorite people, Blossom Dearie has died. The Times obituary gives an excellent sense of her, but you should really hear her records if you haven't. And the beauty of that is, if you're looking for a place to start, you literally cannot go wrong with any album or song she ever did.

If you're around my age, you've probably heard her even if you didn't realize it. Back in the 70s she recorded several songs for the "Schoolhouse Rock" series on ABC, including "Mother Necessity", "Unpack Your Adjectives" and the sublime "Figure Eight", which is one of the strangest and most melancholy and wonderful pieces of music I've ever heard in my life. From the first time I heard it, "Figure Eight" completely captivated me--and probably warped me a little bit, honestly. It was profoundly weird, Miss Dearie's deceptively girlish voice taking what could have been a simple children's song and revealing hidden layers of morbid, Gorey-esque menace--in an educational-cartoon song about math! I had to discover the artist who could create such an odd and magical thing, and I'm so glad I did. Her wit, her merciless observational and interpretive skills, her immaculate taste, her gift for composition and melody and phrasing and precision--no song ever had a better friend. Gosh, I just adore her. I hate that she's gone. Thank god for records.

Hey, this throwaway "lost and found" ad I wrote on November 5th somehow ended up on the best of craigslist. I'd totally forgotten about it until one of my Facebook friends linked to it...not knowing I wrote it. The internet is weird.

We had dinner tonight at a nice Italian place in the center of town. I haven't been out much lately, owing primarily to the fact that I'm now one of those feeble, wibbly, physically-useless throbbing-brain aliens from the Star Trek pilot. But yeah, we had a nice dinner. And everywhere we went, I was impressed by the civic enthusiasm for the oft-hated Cardinals. Most of the city will be shuttered tomorrow for the big game. Billboards, flyers, balloons, everywhere we went it was "Go Cards". Which is a very surreal experience.

I'm not especially big on American football, but I do watch it occasionally and have been watching the Cardinals' playoff games, just because the very concept of Cardinals playoff games is so preposterous that attention must be paid lest some kind of infinite-improbability wormhole open up. When the Cardinals moved to Phoenix I had never so much as seen an NFL game on TV but I quickly came to loathe the Bidwells, the family that has owned the Cardinals roughly since the Norman invasion. Their owner and, um, ambassador was Bill Bidwell, this bowtied, disagreeable jerk whose public persona managed to synthesize a marvelous combination of Midwest pig-ignorance and pompous East Coast moneyed entitlement--two traits I for one just can't get enough of. Despite the fact that we already had a perfectly serviceable USFL team, he immediately brought his last-place perennial-loser team to town and started demanding stadiums. Which local leaders would then insanely agree to build him, but then he would decide--no, that's not good enough. I want the stadium to be made of gold! I want it located directly above an Indian burial ground! I want skyboxes hovering in the actual sky! I want a bevy of hot bowtie-loving Playboy bunnies to come stroke my luxuriant beard! I want to be showered with solid gold doubloons while random taxpayers slavishly buff my corns! All while refusing to spend one dollar to actually field a competitive team. So every year they would lose, and every year I thought it was funnier and funnier and funnier. Because if futility didn't just tickle me I would have hurled myself onto a picket fence by now. Anyway, finally against all reason Bidwell did get his stadium which looks like a giant farty thing of Jiffy-Pop, and his son took over managing the team and they got some grizzled old prospector guy to be quarterback or something.

But I kind of want them to win today. Like many mentally ill Americans I have a knee-jerk affection for the underdog. In a contest between a carefully prepared, supremely talented, ruthlessly efficient professional and one dangerously incompetent doe-eyed moron with a dream, I will root for the moron every time. The Steelers will be undone because they are simply too good. They have won many championships, by all accounts they go out of their way to consistently invest in their business and field a good product, their fans are fiercely loyal in good times and bad. Can America afford to reward this behavior? I say no. And besides, there are indeed actual Cardinals in Arizona. I saw one flying around last summer. When was the last time anyone saw this mythical "steelworker" in Pittsburgh? First they came for the pirates.

But again, please, pay no heed--I know nothing about football and don't really care either way. In that regard I get the sense the Cardinals and I are very much alike. I'm one of those wretched individuals who mostly watch the Super Bowl for the commercials, but of course that was back when there were businesses. I look forward to the several dozen NBC "The More You Know" public service announcements in which Christopher Meloni goes all TMI about that rash he picked up in Borneo.

The downside, of course, is that if the Cardinals win, the whole town will be insufferable. This changes things how? So go get 'em, Cards.

Current Music: Chicago Bears "Superbowl Shuffle"

Okay, one more post, and this one is important. I kid you not.

Friday night/early Saturday AM, TCM is showing Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains.

You heard me. The Fabulous Stains, in its entirety, on TCM Underground*, at 11:30pm Pacific, 2:30am Eastern. It's a film with a weird and mangled history, and it's a bit of a mess, but if you like cult films, 80s punk/new wave music, Diane Lane, The Clash, The Tubes, The Sex Pistols, Nancy Dowd, Laura Dern, Night Flight, or Mr. Data from Star Trek, you should definitely watch. In fact, here is a handy TCM desktop image to remind you.

* ...um, followed by Eddie and the Cruisers. Sigh. Well, Michael Paré was pretty hot at the time, as I recall from numerous dreamy schoolgirl viewings of The Greatest American Hero.

Current Music: The Stains "Professionals"

I know I'm just besieging you with posts tonight, but if you haven't already seen it, I know you'll enjoy this strange and wonderful project in which the residents of Pittsburgh's Sampsonia Way created a series of hilarious theatrical tableaux that were (intentionally) immortalized for all time by the passing Google Street View Van. Yes, there is a giant ham walking around. Yes, that mad scientist is firing a charged energy weapon. And yeah, I think those are LARPers having a broadsword battle in the park. Many more scenes to see, all assembled with a loving eye for detail and, clearly, a great love of their neighborhood. Very nice that Google was a willing participant in this project. I'd love to see more of this sort of thing--Google should really let more neighborhoods know when the Street View Van is going to be driving by.

02:39 I have seen the moment of my greatness flicker, and I have seen the eternal Footman hold my coat and snickers. #
02:40 "Come back here with that Snickers," said I. "Bloody snack-stealing Eternal Footmen. I shall speak to the management." #
02:41 Remains to be determined if I have seen the moment of my greatest twitter. #
02:46 I believe it was the great Lord Byron who once wrote "Age shakes Athena's tower, but spares gray Snickers." #
02:48 Once fell in love with a Byronic Hero. No, wait, this says Mo-, not By-. #
02:49 Some wags say I'm Mo, but I must steadfastly insist I'm By. #
02:52 ....aaaaand we've taken that well past the point where I've committed comic seppuku. Apologies. I'll just get a mop. #
03:12 It is the Apple Macintosh's 25th anniversary today. I would like to celebrate by booting up the ol' 128k Mac, but it's in storage. #
03:14 Actually I have a 1st-gen Mac, 2 Mac Pluses, A Mac Classic a DuoDock and Jobs only knows what else in storage. And a Commodore Vic-20. #
03:16 Oh, and a Performa, a couple of ungodly bad laptops circa 1996-97...all keeping uneasy truce with a tank-sized IBM PC-XT. #
03:20 Oh, and two early iMacs of course. :) Don't get me started on Betamax players, CED videodisc machines and 8-track decks. Sigh. #
03:21 And that was another installment of "Inventory of Obsolete Junk". Tune in next week for "My Collection Of James Last LPs: An Appreciation." #
03:57 @besskeloid Downloading it now...through entirely appropriate and legal means of course. The cover art is amazing/terrifying. :) #

Packaged and shipped fresh by LoudTwitter

As we enter a new and doubtless marvelous epoch, perhaps you'll enjoy a look back at these wondrous postcard visions of the 21st century as envisioned by a French artist around the turn of the last century.

The site is in French but basically what it says* is that the twelve-panel scenes were likely food-box giveaways that illustrate our grandparents' idea of the year 2000--inventions to improve our daily life and work, studies and travel/exploration (this description sort of glosses over the several innovative new war machines) "but curiously, the fashion (clothing) remains that of the Belle Epoque"--a point not lost on local steampunkophiliacs, I suspect. The link popped up on BoingBoing and MeFi a couple of years back. IT REMAINS EVER RELEVANT.

There are actually several amazing pages on the National Library of France's site looking at past visions of the utopian future (and its nightmarish alternatives), if you're into that sort of thing. And if you don't trust the wily French, how can you go wrong with what the Victorian-era Germans have planned for the 20th century? Utopia, I'll bet! (Bless you, Paleo-Future...)

If none of that will do, enjoy this Criswell album instead, courtesy of these cool cats. I sincerely hope that whatever the future brings, it's better than the past eight years. Somehow.

___
*two semesters junior high school French, circa 1982, thank you very much.
**they were more likely cigarette cards than food-box art if you ask me, which yes you did.
***also, I suspect many of these drawings were intentionally fanciful and over-the-top. Our ancestors were not complete idiots.

Current Music: ELO "21st Century Man"

"...but then, Bowie always was a trendsetter..."

Current Mood: insolvent

Happiest of birthdays to the faboo

mcpino! I hope 2009 brings you an astonishing abundance of delightful days!

Christmas Eve. This used to be the big event for my family, which is to say my mom's side of the family, which was all the family I ever had for at least half my life. We always got together and opened gifts and had our big Christmas dinner and celebrated on Christmas eve, so much so that when I found out most people didn't open their presents until Christmas morning it seemed strange and bizarre and I didn't believe it. Opening presents in daylight? In the morning? How can you enjoy the tree and the Christmas lights in daytime? How can you have Christmas dinner at 10am? Doesn't make any damn sense. Oh, sure, on Christmas morning Santa (aka my Grandma) would have brought me maybe one surprise item, or some chocolates or a satsuma in my stocking, but nothing major. It was just a little bonus stuff. Later I came to understand that for most people it was exactly the reverse--maybe, maybe they'd get one gift on Christmas eve. When I was in my teens I reconnected with my dad's side of the family, and the wisdom of our Christmas eve family gathering became apparent to me. It freed everyone up to go spend Christmas day with another branch of their family. With all those broken homes and in-laws and whatnot, it was almost a necessity. I've had a lot of Christmas day events in the past 20-plus years, but none of them were ever as sweet, or felt more like Christmas, than those Christmas Eves in the trailer with my Grandma and the family.

How are you supposed to sleep with all those unopened presents? It makes no sense! Bah.

I was, and this should not surprise you at all, the Christmas Elf. Starting when I was about 7, every year on Thanksgiving night I'd wait until my grandma was fast asleep and put up all the decorations myself, haul the little artificial tree out of the shed, stay up til 3am trying every bulb in every string until I'd assembled one string of lights that worked. For you youngsters, in the olden days when one Christmas light would burn out, the whole string would stop working. This was to make you go buy new lights every year, but we outsmarted them by never having enough money to replace the lights, so I had to do some electrical engineering. The resulting fires were minimal and easily extinguished.

I suppose it does weird things to you when you're saddled with adult responsibilities (or adult indifference) at that age. I did most of the family Christmas shopping in the discount bins at the Revco or Ben Franklin, decorated the trailer inside and out, bought and signed and stamped and mailed the Christmas cards, sometimes even bought my own gifts, but I still believed in Christmas and Santa and all the magical things youngsters believe in. I used to obsess over how Santa would get in, since we didn't have a chimney. In fact sometimes I suspected that's why he didn't stop. But on the night of the 24th, every alley cat running across the roof of the trailer was a right jolly old elf and his eight tiny reindeer. Eight tiny meowing in-heat reindeer. I believed against all sense, against that nagging voice in the back of my head that says "no, you know, there's no Santa, there's no magic, you're it, it's just you." Same sort of voice that comes up when one's desperate nightly prayers to God are returned Attempted Not Known. Sometimes you need things to be true even when you know they're not.

In the intervening years I did my best to keep Christmas going, and in so doing, try and keep the family together, so that we'd see each other at least one day a year. But my grandmas died a couple of years back, and my young nephew died this year, which devastated everyone, and now the family's just fallen apart. My sister moved to South Dakota, and the rest of us--well. My mom pretty much canceled Christmas, though we're all getting together for some kind of a dinner tonight, at my aunt and uncle's place. I was admonished that there would be no gifts or merriment allowed, but needless to say I'd already got them all a few very modest items so they will have to like it or lump it. I doubt Cost Plus will take back the pretzels. But I get the feeling this may be the last time we all--well, what's left of us--get together for Christmas.

These things happen. Life is brief. You have to cherish the times you get. Etc. I'll be mumbling those mantras to myself later today. And there'll be Christmas with friends, with my sweetie, with my dad's side of the family, and lots of good things. Families of choice. Unwitting members of my karass. What-have-you. I'm grateful for all of it.

And I'm grateful for you, too, dear friends. Since I probably won't have another opportunity to say this, have a happy Christmas. In the words of Lou Reed, "Merry Christmas, Happy Hanukkah, or whatever it is you do--happiness, through the years, to you."

Current Music: Jack Benny - 1942-12-27 - Jack Benny Program | Powered by Last.fm

[Error: unknown template 'qotd']

Well, let's see. February 14. Emperor Norton was born on February 14th, so claims Wikipedia. That seems more than fitting. Driven to a massive mental breakdown by failure, poverty and homelessness, surviving only by panache, mad genius, and staggering delusions of grandeur. I should start issuing decrees and get it over with. Nina Hamnett, the eccentric bisexual Welsh writer, artist and "Queen of Bohemia"...that's a lot to live up to, but I'm working on it. Somebody get me a picket fence. Nivelle de la Chaussée, a French writer who combined comedy and tragedy to the bewilderment and irritation of many. Jack Benny, who I love--though I might be a bit more indebted to Fred Allen, confidentially. Thelma Ritter, sassy character actress who came to fame at age 45--so, maybe there's still time. Jimmy Hoffa, head of the Teamsters--hey, I was a Teamster at one time. Hoffa disappeared without a trace, an option that grows more appealing with each passing hour. Esteemed newscaster Hugh Downs...I have a box of his neckties somewhere and I sleep on one of his pillows, long story which I've told you at least ten times. Tim Buckley, a talented, unstable, self-absorbed singer-songwriter who managed to squander his talent, alienate his fan base and blow every chance he got. Hm. Teller, who knew when to keep his mouth shut. And Simon Pegg, who I list because I adore him and not out of any obvious similarities, though we've both spent an unseemly of time worrying about the starship Enterprise.

Draw your own conclusions. That's all I've got. Send cake.

[Error: unknown template 'qotd']

No question. Disco Stu. I love Disco Stu. Best throwaway joke-turned-recurring character ever. Runners-up: Sideshow Bob and Professor John I.Q. Nerdelbaum Frink, Jr.

The Simpsons is one of those things that's been around so long it's easy to take for granted and easy to criticize. And I regularly do both when the subject comes up, because I strongly prefer the early seasons (with actual character development) to the rote Homer-gets-his-penis-stuck-in-a-park-bench-which-somehow-leads-to-a-zany-cameo-by-Jude-Law episodes we see more often these days. Lisa in particular used to get heartbreakingly great episodes, but it's way more Homer's-buffoonery-focused now. And still, we should be grateful for it because it's the best thing on--it has a strong claim to being the best TV show ever made and certainly the best long-running one. Sorry, Gunsmoke.

Which reminds me. I miss Life In Hell. Does Groening even draw that anymore? If so, who carries it? Where can I find it?

Current Music: Everything but the Girl - 25th December | Powered by Last.fm

Greetings, my friends. We are all interested in watching old television clips filled with awkward and erroneous predictions about the future, for that is where you and I will spend the rest of our lives! A new year is coming? Are you prepared? Look ahead now and witness the future events like these that will affect you in the future!

The last sentence Carson utters in this clip will haunt your nightmares.

21:10 @stephenfry Oddsocks was perhaps the least intimidating Bond villain ever, imho. #

Packaged and shipped fresh by LoudTwitter

Made Stephen Fry Laugh
Originally uploaded by mcbrennan

Perhaps my finest hour--I made Stephen Fry L his A O this eve. I can now die happy. There's no rush, though.

I Have No Idea What I'm Doing Here.

Chip in an easter buck for the animals!

Los Angeles, I'm Yours

Me and my new boyfriend Russell.

How Do You Say Auf Wiedersehen?

Interweb Boomerang

The Pregame Show: Ignorance Is Bliss Edition

Conned Again!

The Most Interesting Street In America

Tweet

Change We Once Believed In

The Tao of Brisby

This just in to our studios...

Merry Chrimble, Moody House!

Writer's Block: Under the Same Sign

Writer's Block: Disco Stu doesn't advertise

For the three people that haven't seen this today...

1966 Predictions For 2009!

Tweet

Made Stephen Fry Laugh

Profile

May 2009

Syndicate

Most Popular Tags

Page Summary

Layout Credit