A podcast about books, art & life — not necessarily in that order
Just got back from our Sunday greyhound hike, which we haven’t participated in in a while. Pix to come are here!; but meanwhile, here’s a shot I took in the parking lot of our local pet store, where we stopped on the way home:
His mom cruelly left him in the car while she went to the store.
I’m sick as a dog, but I oughtta give you something nice to look at, dear reader. So here’s a photoset from this past Sunday. A young bride-to-be hired my wife to take photos of her in her wedding dress in NYC. I tagged along to carry stuff and take candids. We shot in Tribeca, Washington Square Park, and . . . the subway!
I also shot a minute-long video of our bride getting serenaded in the park:
So enjoy the pix! I’m going to rest and recover.
Courtesy of VM reader Eric Scharf, we now have proof that Alton Brown is actually the long-lost twin of Thomas Dolby:
I’m waiting for his next book, Alton Ate My Buick
What I’m reading: Moby Dick
What I’m listening to: Just iTunes randomness, and two interviews that I had to transcribe for articles in my October ish.
What I’m watching: Some football. And Annie Hall to celebrate Rosh Hashanah.
What I’m drinking: Stella Artois, Plymouth & Q Tonic, and some nice red wine my wife picked up.
What Rufus is up to: Getting a small cut on his paw, which led to him being bandaged up for a few days. But it healed in time for him to go on a Sunday greyhound hike!
Where I’m going: New Brunswick, for Contracting & Outsourcing 2009! Then bed!
What I’m happy about: That we’re in the final week for our big conference, and the final 10 days for our 10th anniversary issue. The combo of these two has been pretty exhausting for me.
What I’m sad about: It hasn’t gotten easier.
What I’m worried about: The FDA speaker for day 1 of the conference not showing up. I’d feel better about it if he’d returned a single call or e-mail from me in the past 4 months.
What I’m pondering: Whether I should bring tap shoes or a karaoke machine to help fill the 30-minute hole that would result from “what I’m worried about” coming true.
Happy New Year, Mom!
Football season’s on! Why are you wasting your time on the internet? Oh, wait: you’re here to check out another awesome collection of oddball links! Well, just click “more”!
Continue reading “Unrequired Reading: Sept. 11, 2009”
What I’m reading: I left off on Moby Dick
What I’m listening to: Dear Science
What I’m watching: In The Loop, which was fantastic, followed by Local Hero, so I could have a Peter Capaldi double-feature. Now I have to find out if one of my British relatives can get hold of the DVDs of The Thick of It. Amy & I also watched a couple of the Comedy Central Roasts (Bob Saget, Joan Rivers), both of which featured fantastic Gilbert Gottfried riffs.
What I’m drinking: Plymouth & Q Tonic.
What Rufus is up to: Finally going out on a Sunday greyhound hike! And helping me add the captions to the photoset of our trip to my cousins’ place in Connecticut a few weeks ago.
Where I’m going: Greyhound picnic in Bridgewater, NJ next Sunday! Here are some pix from last year’s picnic. And more pix!
What I’m happy about: Um . . . not blogging, actually. I think I boxed myself in with all the “regular features” posts, so I’m happy not to think about those, even though I’m disappointed that I couldn’t come up with a good joke for how Wheaties’ new “EVOLVE” campaign is a broadside attack on the Intelligent Cereal Design crew.
What I’m sad about: Not getting that joke to work.
What I’m worried about: Change, y’know? And losing readers by not posting so often. I’m a (hot) neurotic mess, okay? Sue me. And go follow my twitter feed, if you want some sorta fix: twitter.com/groth18
What I’m pondering: I’ve decided to take more time off from the regular posting, and continue to rethink what I want to do with my writing. Last week, I had an idea for a new direction and a more coherent project than my standard ramblings here. So I’m pondering whether my dear readers would still be my dear readers if this project turns out to become a (self-published) book that I’d ask those readers to buy.
What I’m reading: Moby Dick
What I’m listening to: The Flat Earth
What I’m watching: A documentary on Faubourg Tremé, Nick and Norah’s Infinite Playlist, and The Last Dragon. With Bruce Leroy.
What I’m drinking: Plymouth & Q Tonic.
What Rufus is up to: Meeting a 14-month-old Newfoundland who was almost twice as large as him.
Where I’m going: Nowhere in particular, holiday weekend be darned!
What I’m happy about: I found the Pilot G-2 0.5mm retractable, a replacement pen for the occasionally-exploding Pilot Precise 0.5mm pens that were my standard. I’m happy to report that gel ink makes the rolling-ball pen flow pretty smoothly. One of the problems I have with writing longhand is that most pens tend to scrape and, well, move too slowly on the paper to keep up. Yes, I have problems.
What I’m sad about: Chef Central has apparently stopped making my favorite coffee, so I have to start trying out new whole bean options.
What I’m worried about: Having to fix my iMac after running Drive Genius 2 on it rendered it unbootable.
What I’m pondering: Taking a week or two off from my regular features and only posting intermittently. In fact, that’s just what I’m gonna do. I’ll post some Unrequired Reading at the end of the week, but don’t expect many posts for a little while, okay?
I was enjoying this A.V. Club Patton Oswalt interview about his new movie, Big Fan, enough from the outset, but he won my heart with this riff about internet commenters:
AVC: You yourself are not a sports fan. Is that right?
PO: No. But nowadays—and I don’t want to make some dopey cultural statement here—everyone can be, just by existing in society, a nerd like Paul Aufiero, because we all have a ship that we follow. Even if it’s other people, like on MySpace pages, we’re just as collective of enthusiasts now. That seems to be the world we’re in. In a way, Paul seems like he’s almost this old-school enthusiast, because it’s not the Internet or the Twittering or the text-messaging. It is just flat-out, “I will go and worship this team in my own quiet way.†Which is a very real way, but it’s almost a form that’s dying out now. Rob sees that type of fan sort of flickering a little bit.
AVC: Though you could say that he does create this “Paul from Staten Island†persona for the radio that’s related to him, but anonymous. In that sense, it’s like an Internet persona.
PO: Oh, totally. There’s something kind of beautiful about that pure love of things. Like, “I’ll show that I love the thing I love by hating everything else.†Yeah, I’m not a sports fan, but I certainly am good to ask about film and food and literature and comic books, so there’s certainly a big part of that guy in me. And you know, look at the comment threads on The A.V. Club. [Laughs.] Full of delightful little Paul Aufieros. They either want to say how much they love this thing that is being written about, which I always think is beautiful, or what I think is even more beautiful, they have to make sure that the world knows that, under their pseudonym, they hate this thing. They think, “I’ve got to go on record.†In their minds, there will be an afterlife where they’re presented with an inventory of everything they could have commented on, and are asked, “Did you step up and make your voice heard?†Maybe there’s like a weird commenter’s nirvana. Is there anything different if you go into every comment thread to say that something sucks? How is that different from a guy who goes to church every single week and praises God and rebukes Satan? There’s some weird afterlife that they’re doing time for.
AVC: They have to make their stand on every little thing.
PO: Exactly. “I want to be able to get into commenter’s paradise.†[Affecting voice of God.] “Well, Dr.WhoFan07, there was a blog written in 2004 which stated that Tom Baker was not the best Dr. Who, and you did not get on the comment thread to say what a shithead the writer was. So because of that, you are denied access forever!â€
If you’re on Twitter, then I see no reason why you shouldn’t be following twitter.com/shitmydadsays.
You can thank me later.