Creepy Halloween videos
I haz them!
Tom Waits, “What’s He Building In There?”
Vast, “Pretty When You Cry”
Horrorpops, “Ghouls”
Not visually creepy, but interesting: “Bela Lugosi’s Dead” performed onstage by Trent Reznor, Peter Murphy, and TV On the Radio
Cadaveria, “Spell”
Aesop Rock, “Coffee”
Tool, “Vicarious”
Nine Inch Nails, “The Perfect Drug”
Rob Zombie, “Living Dead Girl”
Light! Must remember the light
Finally a sunny day that’s warm enough to go outside–and I have to stay inside for lunch. The application server for the stupid VOIP phones was down, so I had to stay in the office during my lunch break to transfer calls to another coworker. We’ve had terrible, buggy service and poor technical support from 8×8 since installing their service. I understand that systems fail sometimes, but not even being able to get hold of a tech there frustrated the hell out of me today. This wasn’t just a work inconvenience–this affected me personally, being unable to get out for some much needed sunshine and exercise. Grr.
And now, some jokes about yo mama
Xeni Jardin devoted a day or so of tweets to playing the dozens, geek-style. Here are a few of my favorites.
Yo mama so fat pkzip can’t compress her.
Yo mama so FAT32, NTFS won’t even give her permission.
Yo momma so fat when she sits around the house she sits around all 10*10*16 multiversal instantiations of the house.
Yo momma’s so big and ugly she lies dreaming in R’lyeh.
Yo momma so fat THX can’t even surround her.
Wackity shmackity doo!
Morning DJs make my head throb at the best of times, but Pete Powers on 99.9 The Buzz just ascended to the next level of clueless. Along with the usual arsenal of sound effects and out-of-context film quotes, he now plays a lame recording of someone saying “Wackity, shmackity doo!” after his shitty jokes. It’s a reference to Patton Oswalt’s second stand-up comedy album, Werewolves and Lollipops; I’ve included a clip below where the relevant bit starts about halfway through.
You see, the WHOLE FUCKING POINT of the bit is that you can’t transform unfunny things into funny things by including lame voice-overs. And no, in this case turning to self-referential ironic mockery doesn’t work either. The DJ’s failure to comprehend this is just so . . . full of fail.
The Alcohol Algorithm
I’m somewhat blitzed this evening. After a tough day at work I had a great time playing Question Derby at River Run. This isn’t . . . bragging, exactly, but as a 40-year-old drinker, I’ve been drunk many times in my adult life. I tend to pause before speaking or moving when I’m drunk because I’ve adopted a simple, robot-like set of instructions to follow before taking most actions.
1) Do not endanger myself or others. I walk carefully, look for obstacles, avoid bumping things because I know I’m clumsy, don’t drive a car, etc. I sometimes feel like an ostrich having to make its way through a discothecque.
2) Do not say anything stupid. I can get enthusiastic and eager when drinking. I’ve gotten to where I run things I want to say through an extra filter that tests, in essence, “Am I about to say something really stupid or embarassing?”
3) Have fun! If what I’m doing is not dangerous, ignorant, or egregiously outside social norms, I know I can tend to ramble and blather on. I don’t mind saying things that I later think might be odd, random, irrelevant, etc., as long as I’m not making others uncomfortable.
Boozin’ it up
A few miscellaneous tips for drinkers and amateur bartenders
1) Ice is important. You need about twice as much as you probably think you need. You can quickly chill cocktail glasses and shake drinks until they’re very cold, and for lots of drinks on the rocks you’ll shake a portion on ice and also pour the drink over ice to keep it cold.
2) When collecting spirits for a home bar don’t get top shelf brands of base liquor unless you really want them. The subtleties of the best brands are usually lost when mixed with fruit juices, sodas, etc. If you really love good sipping tequila than by all means get some, but don’t put $35/bottle tequila in margaritas for your buddies.
3) Invest in good liqueurs over time. Start out with some Cointreau, Kahlua, and amaretto, but don’t stop there. There’s a wealth of delicious liqueurs out there that reward you with drinks different from any you’ve tasted before: Luxardo (maraschino), Amaro (herbal), absinthe (anise), Frangelico (hazelnut), and so many more. They’re pricey, but a little goes a long way in a drink.
4) Try some bitters. Any liquor store will have Angostura bitters, and it’s mighty fine and useful stuff. Try a few others, though: a lemon bitters, Regan’s Orange, Peychaud’s. You usually only need one or two dashes per drink to add a great depth and complexity, so a bottle of the stuff can last YEARS.
5) Don’t use regular table sugar. Most mixed drinks are cold, and crystallized sugar doesn’t dissolve in cold liquid without a lot of shaking. Make simple syrup: one part water to one part sugar, heated in a pot until the sugar dissolves, stirring occasionally, let cool and pour in a bottle when done. Alternatively, get some superfine sugar (also called bar sugar or caster sugar); it dissolves easily even in cold liquids.
My day at the fair, by Joey, Age 40
For my birthday we went to the Orange County Fair up in Barton. I LOVE the fair. Not in an ironic hipstery way–I sincerely love the stalls full of well-kept animals and hopeful owners in their country best. The midway games, rigged or pointless or impossible, full of cheap toys made in a Chinese village where the workers must wonder what the hell we’re thinking. The Bloomin’ Onions, sausage and peppers, roasted corn, fresh lemonade, and cotton candy. I want to watch kids rassle pigs; I need fried dough with cinnamon sugar ; I crave a mirror with Black Sabbath’s logo.
See this little girl? She had bunnies. She took care of them herself and was very proud to show them off. 
Had the makings of a sharp little businessperson too, letting us know when the next litter was due, how much they’d cost, asking if we’d like a cute bunny of our own. There’s something about a county fair that just feels different from anything else in the world–that mix of socializing, business, entertainment you don’t get any other place, local tradition, agriculture, good bad food, and, yes, tackiness.
Seeing with new eyes
It’s amazing how much more I do when someone’s visiting from out of state. My mom’s in town and I’ve gone to some beautiful state parks (including the beautiful Moss Glen Falls), shopped at the Vermont Country Store, climbed Mt. Washington’s Cog Railway, and driven north around Mt. Mansfield. Some of this is made much easier because I’m on vacation, but New England is so close together–I need to do fun things like this more often with Suri, myself, and our friends.
A little wine for the cook . . .
One thing I really respect about food service is its meritocratic nature. Unless you’re selling very cheap food to lots of people, the only way to survive is to consistently put out good food. You can’t bullshit diners into thinking that bad food is OK or OK food is good. It doesn’t matter where you went to culinary school, where you’ved worked before, how much people like you, what awards you won in the past, or who your relatives are–dry chicken is dry chicken.
I think this emphasis on quality has a lot to do with the high proportion of drunks and druggies in the restaurant business. It’s one of the last industries that pretty much never does drug testing, maybe because it’s increasingly become a haven for skilled people who lead legally suspect lives. I’ve got really old fashioned ideas about this. I’m happy so many big companies have employee assistance programs to help workers in trouble, but if someone shows up on time and sober then it’s not any of the boss’s damn business what they were doing before they showed up. Don’t get me wrong, a cook shooting heroin on the line and fucking up orders is a big problem, but until he’s so far gone that he’s actually incompetent THERE AT WORK, no one wants to train up somebody else. If the diners are happy, no one’s stealing much, and cops aren’t raiding the place, then the kitchen staff can be the biggest pack of high, drunken malcontents you ever met.
15 movies
Books shouldn’t get all the love! 15 movies that stick with you, not necessarily the movies you feel are the best made. We’re talkin’ the ones that have become part of you, that come directly to mind when you think about film. Tell or tag other people if you want, I never do.
1. Blade Runner. After watching this I feel like I’VE seen attack ships off the shoulder of Orion.
2. Amelie. My love for this movie know no limit. It’s what I think life should be like.
3. Monty Python and the Holy Grail. Honestly, I wish I could erase it from my memory. I’ve seen it TOO many times.
4. Casablanca. Love, courage, greed, friendship, patriotism, fear, cunning. They’ve never been done better.
5. The Professional. Works as an action movie and as an unusual buddy movie–look, a kid who’s neither cutesy nor a full-time hostage!
6. Unforgiven. What a peculiar way to begin a movie–with a title card about events in the hero’s prior life that have no direct bearing on the plot. It reads “She was a comely young woman and not without prospects. Therefore it was heartbreaking to her mother that she would enter into marriage with William Munny, a known thief and murderer, a man of notoriously vicious and intemperate disposition. When she died, it was not at his hands as her mother might have expected, but of smallpox. That was 1878.” When you reach the end, it makes perfect sense.
7. The Dresser. Amazing performances in a movie that’s mostly about just two actors, Albert Finney and Tom Courtenay. There’s so much going on here about the price of dedication, making a place for one’s self in a frightening world, and the ravages of age.
8. The Breakfast Club. Teenage frustration and isolation has never been depicted so well in film. I still find this movie hard to watch.
9. Star Wars. In fairness, the way this movie has stuck with me might be because I had a) a soundtrack album with much of the dialogue, b) Star Wars bedsheets, and c) a significant number of action figures.
10. Barton Fink. Not one of the Coen Brothers’ best known movies, but one that bears repeated watching and thought. The Coens’ antipathy towards their protagonists is well balanced hear with real sympathy for Fink’s plight(s).
11. Silence of the Lambs. It’s a textbook example of how to adapt a novel to a screenplay and one of Hollywood’s best-ever thrillers. It remains the only movie I’ve ever watched twice in one day, the first day I rented the tape.
12. My Neighbor Totoro. There’s almost no tension or conflict in this film, but its charm and imagination never falter.
13. The Princess Bride. Like it says on the box–”Fencing, fighting, torture, revenge, giants, monsters, chases, escapes, true love, miracles…”
14. Wings of Desire. Dreamlike, challenging, and unusual, but never pointless or self-indulgent. Its optimism and quiet passion never fail to move me.
15. Aliens. That’s how you make a sequel. You take the compelling setup you inherited, give it an utterly different genre spin from the original, spend a giant Hollywood budget, and have the courage to give the world a woman as real action hero.
