Don't Stop Til You Get Enough

If this is still anything close to the pop culture blog that I originally envisioned (and, let it be said, it's probably not) then I believe I am obligated to comment on the death of Michael Jackson. Here are some things I've reflected upon:

• He was arguably the most famous person alive for a goodly chunk of my life
• He was a profoundly odd person
• He might well still have been wildly famous even without being profoundly odd -- but those two facets seem very much wound up in one another.

It's one thing to say, well, sure, Michael Jackson was a weirdo -- or a creep -- or worse (and worse was definitely alleged). Those associations were always pretty automatic whenever I'd see some new footage of his sculpted, increasingly noseless face. It's a whole different feeling to watch the little 2-minute career-summation obit roll on NBC Nightly News last night.

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What you already know to be a strange life goes just all-out incomprehensibly strange when you see it condensed like this. And as I've watched a bunch of his music videos today -- in throwback style, even MTV has been showing music videos!! -- I realize the degree to which his dancing, and his lyrics (when he penned them), and his outfits were also profoundly odd. This was never the same thing as Gene Simmons painting his face and putting on a good show for the kids. If Michael Jackson's motives and demons were mysterious to us, I cannot imagine how much more mysterious they probably were to him.

Old-Media Fail

This is a thought I had: Wow. This is a completely new way to get news and information. Sure, you could say it lacks in context and it traffics in guesswork -- but everything's on the table, and it's happening right now.

I had that thought in 1991, as I watched stuff blowing-up and listened to Bernard Shaw, John Holliman and Peter Arnett broadcasting live from Baghdad (and often under a table, if memory serves) on CNN.

In a perfect world, I'd be even more of a luddite than I am. I mourn the loss of newspapers (though not always what newspapers have become in their most recent incarnations). I tolerate and sometimes appreciate public radio on my drive in to work (what can I say? my cassette player's busted). More nights than not, I try to watch one of the Network newscasts that occasionally manage to interrupt a barrage of pharmaceutical ads. And, yeah, I even once found cable news fascinating and relevant.

But seeing Twitter trump all of them in covering the turmoil in Iran is both exciting and sad. I'm not quite one of the new information elites (this is only my first post since like March or something, yo?!), but I at least realize that it's going to take the blogosphere and the twitterverse to actually alert me that there is more to know.

tunes for cans

Had a lovely weekend with the Mrs.

Saturday night we went to a benefit concert at Hampden's own Village Church. The entry fee was $7 or 5 nonperishable food items per person, with either to benefit the Maryland Food Bank. Only had a couple canned items we felt we could part with (and we did -- so long, Apple Pie Filling) so we went the cash route. I haven't spent a whole lot of time in churches in my adulthood, but it was kind of nice to sit in the slightly chilly, candlelit church and listen to three groups I knew nothing about. The second group to play was the Cameron Blake Band, and their music was church/worship-related, though neither in a "How Great Thou Art" or "Our God is an Awesome God" kind of way, exactly. A sample lyric: "Our fig plant has rot with fever and cough." Some interesting stuff going on. Headlining were Caleb Stine and a couple of his band, the Brakemen. Loved it. Sounded a little bit like the other guy from Uncle Tupelo, and he clearly enjoyed another day to play some of his really solid compositions. Thoroughly enjoyable tunes all around, and a few more full bellies in these hard times.

Then Sunday, my wife took me to the National Aquarium in Baltimore to see some some dolphins and stuff. My wife's wonderfully terrific blog somehow resulted in some complimentary seats at the new dolphin show -- provided we listen to a presentation about buying a timeshare in Boca. No, we were simply asked to spread the word. Well, I must concur that them is some smart and charming dolphins! If you've got some rugrats, find a little time to take them to the aquarium, won't you? The show features not only some astounding vertical leaps by the be-flippered ones, but also a nice primer on conservation for the young set. As for the rest of the aquarium, I'm again impressed by just how much ocean life they can feature in such a relatively finite space. Personal favorite: the porcupinefish.

Saturday Nite's Allrite for Blogn

I have been neglecting my blog, which is far better than to neglect, say, a houseplant, as the blog will go on with or without me, and the houseplant needs water and sunlight and such. Not that I provide the sunlight, exactly. But I will sometimes move a plant around when I think it needs more or less sunlight and, thus, a different window to sit near. So here's a list (not all-inclusive) of things I haven't written about since my last post:

• I attended the opening reception for "How We Dwell", an ongoing (though possibly defunct by now, I haven't checked) series of art installations in a lady's apartment. The installation I was present for featured photographs of the artist trying on all of the hostess's clothes. There was a young girl also at the apartment that evening who played Beethoven's Ode to Joy on the keyboard and talked about making sauces with Grape Jelly. It was kind of weird, but in a really nice way.
• I just bought a record by Of Montreal, which I thought might be the new one, with the single I like, but it turned out to be an older one, with "Wraith Pinned to the Mist and Other Games" which is already being loosened from the grip of its association with Outback Steakhouse. (Incidentally, I would never had cried sellout against OfM, if only because the use/corruption of this song was such a vast improvement on the drunk-Paul-Hogan-impersonator jingles of Outback's prior campaigns.) So, anyway, it's just exhilarating to have any new (to me) record on my turntable, and it's a nice bonus that this one is just awesomely good.
  
• Went duckpin bowling again a few weeks back. I haven't gotten any better at that. But it was nothing like the Special Olympics. I'm not even going to say "Special Olympics"
• Spring started happening. I saw robins in Hoes Heights and daffodils blooming along the side of Druid Hill. Spring is far and away Maryland's best season, and I'm psyched.

Naw, naw. Whatchu gotta do is t' free up more capital.

Thanks to all (one of you) who voted in last week's poll. I shall indeed write this post "about" the economy.

I've been reading some newspapers and blogs and whatnot, and it seems to me everyone is looking to report on the silver lining that surrounds this massive cumulonimbus mess we've got hovering over us. I've seen reports about how cobblers are having increased business as more people look to mend their shoes. Saw something today about how there are less divorces during hard economic times (though I don't know if the marriages preserved solely by depressions are walks in the park). And I'm sure we're just months away from the "hobo-chic" trend sweeping the runways in Milan.

But despite all these sunny goodtime scenarios, I'd like to nominate another candidate as one of the worst spinoffs of the current downturn -- people trying to talk economics. People who shouldn't. People who aren't, by any stretch of the admittedly already-loose definition, economists.

I'm a real big hater on cable news generally these days, but man -- unleash these blabberlips on the subject of fiscal stimulus or capital markets or protectionism or anything this side of missing 3-year-olds and they instantly make clear that they don't know what they're talking about -- even to me, who also doesn't know what they're talking about.

In my line of work, I find myself privy to the musings of a pretty broad cross section of the public. These people are not idiots. When we tackle the usual small-talk niceties, they just nail it. I mean, when it's a cold day out, by God, they aren't going to tell you it's hot. Y'know? When the Ravens looked overmatched against the Steelers the next weekend, they weren't coming in crowing about Baltimore on Friday -- and they showed reserve enough not to tell me "told you so" on Monday.

But, dude, people I run into at work and in my own life are letting some under-their-breath things slip about what they don't like about the stimulus bill or about TARP or about the plan to bail out homeowners. If their complaints were only that the plans were too obtuse, that would be one thing. But people have watched just enough cable news to think they know something. By and large, I think most people in the country are just letting the educated guys and gals we asked for (or didn't) give things their best shot. Some are hoping for success and some are hoping for a perception of failure that lasts at least long enough for their political advantage. This is all well and good. I just cannot take much more of the vocal minority of people who loudly express their barely-informed opinions on matters which learned economists themselves struggle to grasp the complexities of.

Nevertheless I reserve the right to vet my ill-considered remedies for our malaise whenever I see fit. Perhaps I will next discuss nationalizing the banks. It's my blog. Suck it.

If it's Tuesday...

...it must be singing cartoon horses. I'm about a minute and a half in, and I'm not tired of it yet.

Scape goats...er, fish

When I was much younger, I had a couple of goldfish. I know that I told my family, and I believe that I told myself that these fish preferred whatever the "soft rock" station out of Atlanta was at the time. I also made it clear that I didn't particularly care for the music, but I would occasionally switch over to the soft rock station for a while, in deference to my fishes'...um....wishes. I think I knew at the time that this was all a fraud -- that I just kind of wanted the soft rock now and then, but it sure helped to have the fish around to explain this away.