Networks criticized for lack of Anna Nicole Smith coverage.
I think that goes hand-in-hand with CNN’s entertainment coverage Who is Prince Frederic von Anhalt? and (very important!) story about how New photos show Smith in bed with Bahamian immigration minister.
I have little to report today.
It was my “day off” — a Tuesday, no teaching, just dissertation work … supposedly. February 13, the day before my least favorite Hallmark Holiday of the year. My colleagues and I have discussed it a bit, and we mostly agree that we really only “celebrated” it when we had to in elementary school, when we had to fill out cards for every student in the class. This was not a bad requirement, we realized — without such a mandate, the unpopular students would have received few if any cards.
Back to Gn’R if only briefly, a continuation from yesterday.
I started listening to Guns N’ Roses in the 8th grade by way of the radio and bus rides to track meets, but it was in Germany that I came across the album Silent Shots, which is basically a concert album and always hard to find. Its version of “Rocket Queen” is my favorite, and I have it on cassette, copied from a CD a friend in Germany had. But since I no longer keep a cassette player it’s hard for me to listen to it, and I’ve put it in storage in Idaho.
I not only finished “G” but I also got through “H,” which only had one entry: Hole.
This is not to say that I do not have any other music by performers starting with “H,” merely that if I do, I only have one track by them, so they are in my catch-all, miscellaneous directory.
“I” is next and has a handful of entries, of which only INXS is something to which I listen to with any frequency.
I’m still in the middle of “G” and listened to f# a# infinity (or: F Sharp A Sharp Infinity … many ways to write it) from Godspeed You Black Emperor (or: Godspeed You! Black Emperor).
I do not recall who gave it to me a few years ago but I never bothered to listen to the whole thing. The first track captivated me, though I didn’t pay as much attention during the next two; all three are subdivided into “movements” of sorts, and the last track contains, after a break, a “hidden/secret” track. All in all: would listen to again. It’s from the mid- or late-90s, their first real album.
I then got around to Gogol Bordello, which I grew to love while I was in Berlin. “Sally” is still a great (post-)punk-ish piece. Some of the later tracks on the album (Gypsy Punk) are a bit over-produced, like layered metal, a bit heavy, but still enjoyable enough.
This evening I’ve got Golden Smog playing; I don’t think I’ve ever listened to them. The album is Down by the Old Mainstream, and it’s mellow enough, which is nice for a Saturday evening. “Red Headed Stepchild” is a bit louder.
Tonight was a birthday party of sorts for Julie and Nicola out at the Hilldale Great Dane. I arrived and promptly encountered Adrienne, who introduced me to her girlfriend, Megan, and a guy named Ben, who is Cherokee and studying German, not yet a grad student, though, I guess. Class-clown type.
I took the 7 to the capitol, then waited for a dozen minutes or so before the 2 arrived. I couldn’t stand in the shelter because a woman in there all bundled in layers and layers of coats was smoking (despite the *very clear* no smoking sign[s]) and the smell was overwhelming. A guy showed up and I gave him bus information on the 4 and 5, which would arrive after the 2. My good deed of the evening. A homeless guy with a hand-scrawled note on crumpled paper approached and asked for money. The 2 arrived, I got on, got warm, and headed west. The bus stops right across from the Dane at the mall.
Adrienne informed me that Julie was sick — stomach “flu” or such — and no one knew if Nicola was actually going to come. Soon Andrea and Helmar showed up, then Jennifer and her husband, Helena and Daniel, Stella, Ben, Elliot and Charlie, and soon we had a party of 15-16. Nicola arrived. It would have taken an extra hour of waiting (we’d been waiting long enough as it was) to get a place for all of us, so we split up, and those not really looking for food just headed to the bar area and the pool tables; a party of five (as Adrienne liked to say: the two gay couples and a token hetero) kept a reservation for 5 for food.
I chatted for a while with Stella and Helena, but mostly watched Jennifer’s husband and Daniel play pool. The Pro Bowl was on one TV, the Florida vs. Kentucky game on the other. Wisconsin won their basketball game today, I read.
After 9 a handful of us (me, Stella, Nicola, Cherokee Ben, Charlie and Elliot) headed across the way to Ben & Jerry’s for ice cream, though I held off. They were closing in a few minutes and only cones and dishes were available. No hot chocolate syrup for sundaes, much to Stella’s displeasure.
The timing was perfect and I just caught the 9:38 #2 back to the capitol. I got lucky and we got ahead of a 6, so I transferred at the capitol and rode that to Ingersoll rather than walking the whole distance.
Rather than watch the new(er) Doctor Who episodes I went for the equivalent of TV comfort food and caught a few old episodes of season 2 of Alias this afternoon. The first two seasons are amazing, the acting, dialogue, tightness of plotting, etc., and so even re-watching them again and again offers a great deal of pleasure.
Tomorrow I might try my hand at a new bread recipe or such. I was reading through more of Harold McGee this afternoon and would really like to start a sour dough “starter.”
So, as everyone knows, Anna Nicole Smith is dead (dead at 39, cause still unknown) after a 12 year legal battle with her dead husband’s now dead son and with a paternity battle brewing regarding her infant daughter. It’s an opera, and a not very good one at that. But it gets better.
Enter: Zsa Zsa Gabor.
I’ll start with an L.M. Montgomery quote that I “stole” from Jasmine:
“I’d like to add some beauty to life. I don’t exactly want to make people know more…though I understand that is the noblest ambition…but I’d love to make them have a pleasanter time because of me…to have some little joy or happy thought that would never have existed if I had not been born.” — L.M. Montgomery
I never read any of Montgomery’s works, but since she and I share a birthday I feel that I should.
1) the NY Times article on Lost and Heroes (among other TV shows): “The Unseen and Unexplained, Inching Closer to the Truth” by Alessandra Stanley.
To quote the author and article: “‘Lost,’ on ABC tonight, is the most intriguing of all the series that traffic in the supernatural, mostly because it defies its own illogical reasoning.”
A quick summary of the day.
It started with a giant “FUCK!”
The exclamation, not an enjoyable encounter.
I finished 23 hours of so of “E” this afternoon when I made it through two albums of Evanescence.
Here’s the thing, it’s just light nu-metal with a female vocalist, and it accomplishes the same thing as those generic-world-music-female-vocalist tracks … see, for example, Gladiator. You don’t know or care what the words are, and you don’t think of what she is doing as singing. Here, for example, there is no melody, per se … she just strings together words, providing dramatic intonations for them. At her best the lead singer caresses those words, and you, the listener, want to be caressed and wrapped up in the music and lyrics as well.
Eva Trout, earlier on the playlist, was more satisfying in a musical and lyrical way.
