I think there is a tendency for people to dismiss what you find based on the way you came to the material. It really should not matter. The point is you discovered something for yourself.

The “fantasy” genre of literature is something I had pretty much abandoned after high school. I also never had a good reason to return to anything within the genre except for The Lord of the Rings series. So I had not been paying attention to the genre. I am always looking for new TV series to watch and I heard reviews for HBO’s new series Game of Thrones. (I do not have cable so I have to wait for the DVD’s to hit Netflix. So when it comes to TV series especially the ones on cable I am always about 6 months to a year behind in watching them.) The series is based on the books by George R.R. Martin who is a writer I was not familiar with either. I wanted to read at least the first in the series to see how well (or maybe not) the TV series plays to the book. I was curious on how the adaptation may work. However, the DVD’s will not be available until March.

I bought the book and 800 pages of story made take pause. I have not tackled reading a book of this amount in a while. However, I made it a goal to read at least one chapter a day. Side track a moment. It is also a goal of mine to read new authors this year and tackle more from my “To Be Read” pile.

This book took about 2 ½ weeks to read. And it was so worth the time. This book is filled with very intriguing characters. Each chapter is written from the “point of view” of its various characters. There is continuity between them all. It is a long book but it rewards the reader. Every time, there was something of “cliché” moment for “fantasy” writing the author goes the other way. Then I found myself drawn in even more to the story line where it became a book that was hard to put down.

I am not going to write a full review of the details. I want to give you the opportunity to discover it for yourself. I believe this work is worth the effort. I was so taken by the story than the day after I finished this book I immediately picked up the second volume Clash of Kings. It looks like Mr. Martin’s series is going to be with me for the next two months. After that I will need a new author to tackle from another genre. I am open to suggestions. I do not want to get stuck for too long in any one particular genre.

I was thinking why this series has gained some of the spotlight when it comes to our popular culture. First, HBO knows how to promote a series. They are also more willing to take on shows that big 3 networks would not have the courage to show. But then again the FCC has a thin skin when it comes to the few of the “offended”. A series also brings attention to the book it is based on. In this case, I think it is the tone of this book which is capturing the audience. This is a story about the most “seductive and addictive” drug ever known and that is “power”. This story highlights various factions trying to obtain that “power” and the characters that are caught up in that struggle.

This book I think captures some undertones that are going on in the U.S. culture at this time. The first thing is these are characters that swear oaths and go into actions to defend those oaths. We live in a culture where it seems like those who are in “power” are constantly saying “I did not say that. I was taking out of context.” We have too many so called leaders now that hide behind lawyers, insurance regulations and opinion polls. People want to experience people who are the “antithesis” of that even if it is in a fictional setting. Secondly, I also think that our current Presidential Election process (or better yet “farce”) is bringing people to this series. In the story, it is a kingdom being ripped apart by various factions with the goal somehow reuniting that same kingdom as a whole someday. How this series will come to that ending is yet to be known (at least for myself)? It is not healthy for a society to have at least two years of two parties with various factions fighting it out for the job of the President. Two years running for a four year job is not an efficient way to run a society. At least not forward and up. But it seems like a good way to “go into the ground”. Ideology cannot be fought on a daily basis. There has to be some “pragmatics” at work. This book says as much about our present times as it does for the time in which it set.

I recently lost my old computer. (Still not happy about it). I had to order a new laptop via my company’s worker discount program. And it took about three weeks to arrive. And it came loaded with more “issues” rather than software. It gave me time to catch up on some reading and watching movies. And I want to talk about two movies I saw in this time period.

The first movie I watched because I have some “disease” in my mind that requires watching movie sequels even though I have hated the previous ones. This title is no exception. Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon. It should been called the “Brown Side of the Bowl”. I know the Transformers series has been a very popular and successful franchise movie series. Lots of viewers and made a ton of cash. And it has been a series that has done so with NO CHARACTER DEVELPOMENT what so ever. I did not care for any of them. Another problem was this series had no continuous mythology to hold any storyline together throughout the three parts. You can criticize the Star Wars films all you want (especially the “prequels”) but those films remained true to its established mythology. The other problem is CGI (computer animation) needs to be used with some restraint because the filmmakers overloaded every shot with too much of it. It was very hard to focus on any real action that was taking place. The CGI seem to exist to point out, “Hey look at how good we are with this CGI!” or “Who needs a story when we can do CGI like this?” Plus, a loud soundtrack and rapid edits seem to beat the viewers into submission rather than allowing for a storyline drawing them in. If you have not watched any of these films do yourself a favor and avoid them. The metaphor is the following “A really bad paint job on a not really good car to begin with”. I am sure in the future; they will want to re-launch this series because new technology will make the CGI even better. How about redoing the film with an interesting script that has characters and clear storyline?

MEMO to Studio Execs: Regardless of what you think. Or don’t. The story is what matters in the end. Always did. Always will. So make THE STORY.

There was a quote on the back of the DVD case from a supposedly well-educated film reviewer. He claimed it to be “The Best Action Movie Ever Made”. He needs a refund on his film education. And a pile of John Woo directed DVD’s to see the error in his thought.

I do not get to the Movie Theater that much anymore to see new releases. It is usually a matter of time. And the fact, many of the films do not make me want to go and see them right away. A couple of weeks ago, I saw The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. I read the three books in Millennium Trilogy by the late Steig Larrson. I also watched the Swedish trilogy of films based on them. David Fincher who directed the movie has made some of my favorite films like Seven and the adaptation of Fight Club. It is interesting the various takes on this material from the original book. The latest version I am going to have to watch again at some point. It was a good film but given how well I knew the material I am going to need to do some rethinking to determine my thoughts on it. I must say the Lisbeth Salander character is one the more interesting characters to appear in mass culture popular literature in the last few years. She is better than anyone that appeared in the Twilight series that seems to dominate popular literature. (Note: I never read any of those books and the first film bored me to the point of turning it off. Emo-vampires are annoying.)

I know that films and the books they came from will always be compared to each other. However, the two mediums are totally different in their “execution”. A book can pack out lot information into in. A book is also read by the pace of its reader. A film on the other hand is a visual medium that has to “show” the story. It is also paced to fit into a smaller amount of time. Therefore, the story has to always be in “motion”. There is also the reality of economics between the two. The film cannot possible include all the finite details of the book. The important part is that both can create two unique works based on the same source material. A viewer has to give each a chance to interpret and reinterpret the story. It can be a real deterrent to get “over-hyped” on which one was better.

Finally, I want to talk about the experience of going to an actual movie theater. I like to go to the earliest showing possible but never on an opening weekend for that particular movie. This way I can watch with the smallest crowd possible. I want to have the lowest chance to be annoyed by the bad habits of people. For example, that guy who buys the extra-large popcorn and manages to slowly consume it over the course of two hours. I would mind it. However, this person does not possess the ability to chew popcorn with his mouth shut. The parents who bring their young children to Rated R movies are especially annoying. It is a movie for adults and the material is made for adults. It is unfair to subject a child to material they could not possible understand. I do not go to kid movies in the theater (even though I enjoy the Pixar movies) so keep your kids out of the Rated R showings. However, the one that annoys me the most is the couple who needs to discuss the film as it is playing. I do not mind the emotional response of laughter or fearful screams. It is the people who think their thoughts should be aired during the movie “Siskel and Ebert” style. The coffeehouse after the movie is the place for this discussion. These people always seem to want to sit right by me. And cannot understand why I stare at them or even tell them to “Shut up”. And they found me when I saw The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo. The movie is thriller and there are a lot of clues being shown throughout the movie. They could not understand any of them and had to discuss each moment. It is a movie they will show you the next clue. SO SHUT UP AND WATCH. They were out of my voice range and I was not in a yelling mood at the time. And they did see me staring at them and motioning to SHUT UP. And I got nothing. Why can’t these people just wait for the DVD to come out?

You know in the beginning of a movie they have the public service message of reminding people to silence their cell phones. There should be this message. And goes like this. CGI is used to recreate Clint Eastwood circa the first Dirty Harry movie. And says something along the lines like this, “If you are one of those people who needs continuous explanation of movie or has to share their opinions. Get up and leave the theater now! Or people like me are going to find out if we fired 5 or 6 times at your ass.” That is the premise. I know it needs some fine tuning. We can agree that there is a need for this message at movie theaters.

Now that I think about Travis Bickle (Robert DeNiro’s character in Taxi Driver) should deliver the message. You know he was crazy enough to do something about it.

New computer is in. However, it seems not to want to work well with home DSL modem. So now I have to spend time with my ISP.

So as I am trying to rebuild my computer files.

If anyone knows of someone or can recommend someone I am looking for someone who might be able to attempt to retrieve files off my old (and dead) laptop. Please contact me. It would be greatly appreciated.

And while you are hear please pick a random post and let me read your comments. Thanks.

I have been taking a break from posting. I wanted to start the year “Full Throttle”. However, my laptop computer died on me last night. And it will be about two weeks for the new one to be shipped to me.

I am not happy at all. I was working on some posts and was in the final stages before posting them. And now I fear that work will be lost.

Please stay tune.

This is a great example of a “Concept” song. It has a narrative and a structure to it that can be followed without being given notes.

Clerks where they could only film in the convenient store at night when the place was closed so the”Savages” put gum in the lock of the security shutters. This allows them to act as if there was daylight. So they had to make sure the front door was never in the camera shot.

And you can just skip the obvious joke.

I took a few days off from work last week in order to tackle the various projects that I needed to. However, the “Forces That BE” decided otherwise. I wanted to be productive. I wanted to tackle a bunch of small projects around the apartment. I really need to be better at housekeeping. I am very close to being required to change my name to “Oscar”. I wanted to write out some postings. Make some more notes on future projects.

That was the plan.

The “Forces” that be decided I need to get sick with a sore throat, congestion, fever. So I spent most of the time in bed sleeping. Or trying to. But ended up on the couch watching Netflix. Burning fever makes the eyes have a hard time reading or trying to look at a computer screen to write. It is also hard to get any sympathy since I do not live with an audience. People win awards for portrayal of “sick and dying” characters. On your own it is just a pathetic act. It was just a nice way to waste 4 days doing nothing.

I am trying to get back to getting things done. I have a new tenant that brought forth issues I need to deal with. I just wish my plumbing skills were better. I have a garage that the town is making repair and the project has been delayed that I am not sure if the town’s patience is going to last. And I wish the nice weather would just a bit longer to get it done.

As I was staring at the ceiling last night. I was thinking about the universal forces at work and wondering. It would be nice if they just went with my “flow” for once. Not presenting problems but offering up solutions. It would be nice if the time, the money and the materials were there before the problem for once. Scrambling about is not a fun form of exercise. It has always been a problem of getting “the horse and the cart” in the right order. Everyone yells that the “cart” needs to move. But no one wants to help find the “horse” to get the job done.

I wish there was times in which the effort was noticed more upfront than the results.

But then again, these thoughts are the lingering side effects of the illness. Or the NyQuil.

looking at you now, I can see exactly where you fall on this spectrum. you are a man constantly trying to fix today what Yesterday Man did to you. you make up your bed, you clean those dirty dishes from the night before, and pledge not to start drinking until six, thinking that’s the way to keep an even keel. but in reality you’re always playing catch-up. I know this because I’ve been there. the thing is – you can’t fix the mistakes of Yesterday. Yesterday Man is dead, he’s gone forever, and blame and atonement aren’t worth a damn. what you CAN do is help yourself today. eat a vegetable. read a book. cut that hair of yours. leave Tomorrow Man something more than a headache and a jam-packed colon. do for Tomorrow Man what you would have wanted Yesterday Man to do for you.

It reminded me of this clip from the Drew Carey Show.

“Tradition and heritage are all dead people’s baggage.

Stop carrying it. Move Forward.”

Doug Stanhope, Track 4

Oslo: Burning the Bridge to Nowhere

A co-worker of mine leaves copies of Rolling Stone magazine in the break room. It has been about 15-20 years since I was a regular reader of that magazine. I do not have any really opinion about it either. It is just something to read to kill time while on break or lunch. However, compared to the local daily paper it has a little more substance to it. The back of each issue lists the top 20 album sales for the week. I looked over the list and most of the music I have never heard of. If this is a measure of where one place’s in comparison to modern music then I am way out of place. The thing is twenty years earlier and for reason now “unknown” I had the desire to investigate more of that music. Today, I just don’t care about most of music for the masses. A car payment and a mortgage did an effective job of taking up a good portion of my “entertainment dollars”. The other thing is I have developed better “filters” to either tune in or tune out music. There is also another chart on that page that lists the Top 10 songs from a decade or two earlier. I remember those popular songs and most of them are no longer played. I have come to the conclusion that most pop culture items, in this case music, is not made to last. There is not a vehicle that is more inefficient and does not carry good distances when it comes to mileage than “The Bandwagon”. So do not waste a lot of effort trying to “hitch on to it”. (Thoughts like this are why I could never go into “marketing” as a full time job.)

Art in its various mediums is basically an effort by “mortals” hoping by chance they might stumble on to “immortality”. This must be accomplished within certain frame of time which is a value unknown by the particular artist. In other words, the sun only shines so long. I began to think about this when the band R.E.M. called it end to their group after 30 years. It is also another “marker in time” when the major music groups that endured from when you discovered them in your youth come to their end. I heard it mentioned it was because of poor album sales. They may not have been selling like they did in the late 80′s and the 90′s. It does not mean they were putting out bad albums. I think they were still creating some good music and the last two albums showed no letting up. However, it was their call to make no matter how I felt. R.E.M. was one of the bands I found in high school that I was a “secret fan” of then. The crowd I was with at the was “Heavy Metal Only!” This band got me going into other music because back then “alternative music” and the mass population had not been introduced to either other at that point. I remember buying R.E.M.’s Green album while at the same time buying Never Surrender by Triumph. (Although that was not my biggest purchase of diverse music at the same time. That would be Strays by Jane’s Addiction along with Songs of Silence by Simon and Garfunkle.) The Internet did change how music was distributed. Album sales are no longer a good measurement of music’s popularity and quality. Radio is now program to be “boring and repetitive” with a condense playlist. Most bands now publish the number of Twitter followers they have rather than how many actually album copies they sold. It is also a shift by not only technology but generational one too. Internet streaming and digital storage means you no longer have to hold an actually physical copy. It is now more about the “experience” of the art. Remember making mixed tapes in the 80′s and early 90′s? I am a bit nostalgic for that “passion” in creating them. But I do not miss how much actual manual labor was involved in the process.


All products must evolve with the times. However when the people behind them announced changes their audience (customers) react with “Outrage and threats”. Netflix change their fee structures and may lose some content for streaming. I like the service for now but it does not mean I am “indentured” to them for life. I started with AOL which was the biggest and best at one point. Busy signals and price hikes made me change. Facebook changed their page layout in how you interact with it. I read a lot of people on there who were “pissed off and ready to quit”. None of them did. In fact, most of them still are posting with the same frequency they always did. MySpace did not update their interface and look what happened to them. The interface is going to change. The phone was a great new communication tool for the time. So does that mean they were to stop with the “rotary dial” as the way to operate it? Remember when you had to actually get up and change the dial on the TV to get to another station? (Actually given the “overweight” problem this might be a good thing to return to for some form of exercise.) So see what is actually happening before you go into some sort “self righteous outrage rant.” Make the change if necessary but stay off the soap box. Here is my example. I used to like to get my Sunday morning coffee and breakfast sandwich from a popular local “north of the border” chain outlet. I began to hate navigating their parking lots. I hated waiting in lines that consisted of only ONE person in front of me. Ordering a simple cup of black coffee only to get it with cream and sugar. A gift card (that came with a receipt) that the manager could not fix and was told I had to take it back. I began to dread their places. And by the way their corporation does NOT monitor their Facebook page so do not go there looking for customer service. I could have written a complaint letter and would have probably received a bunch of coupons to their establishments. So the message would have been, “The next time you come here. Your Poor Customer Service Experience is ON US.” I did not tell others not to go there. I just “Un-liked” their Facebook page and went somewhere else. “High Vocal Outrage” does not carry across the masses as far as you think it might. Besides enough “smart” customers walking away from them will make them change or die out.

There is no such thing as the “Status Quo”. Calling out for its “defense” is like saying you are willing “to take a bullet for the Easter Bunny.” It is feels good to sound “Very brave and moral” when you really do not to actually prove anything. Nostalgia is powerful but can be very draining thing to hold on to. Any form of social interaction will never make 100% of the people “happy”. That’s on them. Not you. And not me either.


I know I am arguing against “Nostalgia”. But I have to admit I am not immune to its effect. I got pissed when Miley Cyrus covered Smells Like Teen Spirit. She is “pop culture candy”. Twinkies have a longer shelf than her and more substance. That song was an anthem for “the disenfranchised” not for someone who comes from privilege. It is hard to believe it has been 20 years since the release of Nevermind by Nirvana. It was an album than change the cultural landscape when it comes to music.

Here is a link to Alan Cross talking about this album and why it mattered.

1991 was the year the big rock albums came from Metallica, Guns n’ Roses and do not forget Jane’s Addiction or Soundgarden.

I remember when I first heard this album. And Smells Like Teen Spirit was not the first song I ever heard from them. The album was being played on the local college station. It was Breed and it grabbed by the attention of my ears’ immediately. I had to get this album and bought at the local chain “Cavages” (And they have been out of business for almost 20 years now.) I bought the album and at the check-out. The young woman working the counter said, “There is something going on with this. It is the fourth copy I have already sold and we opened 30 minutes ago.” Smells Like Teen Spirit was just getting MTV play the same week and commercial radio was not far behind.

There most likely will never be a music album that will cause a major cultural shift like this. This is the album that knocked Michael Jackson out of Number 1 on the sales chart. And after this his music for the most part would never have the mass impact that it did in the 80′s. (Plus he became more of “circus act” in his own life.)

I still play this album today although on an MP3 player. The format may be different. But the music has endured so far.

That may change.

Then again it might not.

I cannot predict a future. I surely did not predict this one.

But I can at least guarantee this.

The Status Quo will still be elusive.

And politicians will still be promising to deliver it.


“Once you start laying back on your resume. The more you hear a country talking about their history. The more likely they’re not doing a fucking thing anymore. You always have to progress as a society. As a people. As a species. Egypt they created the pyramids. Fantastic! What have you done since then? Nothing?”

                                                Doug Stanhope, Track 7