Archives

Jul262006

Back in the Real World

Well, I’m home. The Girlfriend and I had a great time in Vegas, aside from the weather. As previously reported, it was hot. And when I say hot, I mean really hot, hotter than Utah — which can get pretty uncomfortably warm — ever thinks about getting. Hot like sticking-your-head-in-a-pizza-oven hot. It was so hot, I saw birds walking around with their beaks open, panting for breath. It was so hot, I think I saw some demons on furlough from the pits of hell lying prostrate on the side of the road, praying for shade. Or maybe those were just some Nevada Department of Transportation guys not doing their jobs — I was singularly unimpressed by the roads in and around Vegas, and deeply annoyed the couple of times we got stuck dealing with construction. Long story, but basically the NDOT crews gave every indication of having no clue what they were doing, which meant that traffic was at a standstill for much longer than you want to be at a standstill when you’re in the middle of a pizza oven.

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Jul212006

Offline for a Few Days

Hey, kids, just a little FYI: The Girlfriend and I are leaving first thing in the morning for a road trip to Sin City. No, not that Sin City (although I’m sure we could find a spiritual sister to skinny little Nancy Callahan easily enough) — I’m talking about wonderful Las Vegas here, home of the World Series of Poker and really cheap shrimp cocktail. My good friend Jeremy and his wife, who live down there, are expecting their first child in November, so we thought it’d be good to get together before everything changes. I’m told it’s hotter than hell in Vegas right now, but this is the week that worked best for everyone.

Besides, it’s hotter than hell here in the SLC, too, so it’s not like we won’t be used to it.

I was hoping I’d find the time tonight to write a good long entry about the events of last weekend, but it’ll have to wait, as it’s late and I need to get some rest for tomorrow’s drive. I intend to remain blissfully unplugged while I’m gone, so no fresh content until next week. Feel free to leave comments if you like, but they’ll wait in limbo until I have the chance to review them.
Have a good one, loyal readers, and like the running gag in John Landis films, see you next Wednesday!

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Jul202006

BearCam

Every once in a while something magical comes along, fills me with wonder, and reminds me that the world actually isn’t a fetid stinkhole of pain and depression after all. I’ve encountered two such somethings today. The first was the doe and two fawns that crossed the road in front on me as I drove to the train station this morning (in the middle of suburban South Jordan, Utah, I might add). And the second is the Pratt Museum’s BearCam, a live video feed from the McNeil River State Game Sanctuary in Alaska, where bears like to congregate in the summer and feast on salmon. I just heard about this awesome little distraction through an article on Wired and within moments of clicking over there, I was watching a brown bear ambling through rushing waters in search of a tasty snack. Simply fascinating.

The camera operates from 5 a.m. to 11 p.m. Alaska Standard Time; between 1 and 5 p.m., an actual human being makes sure the camera is pointed at the action. Better hurry, though: according to the Wired article, the bears wander off in late August, whereupon the cam will be shut off for the season.

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Jul202006

Exploration Day 2006

It’s July 20th, the 37th anniversary of the first time human beings walked on the moon. My opinion that this day ought to be made a national holiday has not yet found any support from the Powers That Be, and, poking around the Interweb today, I’m disappointed to see so little discussion about the anniversary or human spaceflight in general. I did find one op-ed by Buzz Aldrin, who was at Tranquility Base with Neil Armstrong when he took his small step, and Rick N. Tumlinson, the founder of an organization called the Space Frontier Foundation. Their sentiments will no doubt sound corny to some, but they appeal to the idealistic core I keep hidden under my cynical exterior:

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Jul192006

Bush’s First Veto

When I was 16 years old, my uncle Louie was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, better known as ALS or Lou Gehrig’s Disease. ALS is a neurological disease that causes the myelin sheath coating the body’s nerve cells to deteriorate. Think of this sheath as insulation around an electrical wire; when the myelin goes, the nerve short-circuits and ceases to function. The victim first loses strength in affected areas of the body, then loses control over them altogether. In time, the effect of the disease spreads throughout the body and, as the muscles receive less and less stimulation from the deteriorating nervous system, it begins to atrophy. The victim essentially wastes away.

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Jul192006

Lileks on Barnard Hughes

Today Lileks applies his usual mixture of insight and off-beat perspective to the late Barnard Hughes. As he always seems to do, he says something I wish I’d thought of for my own write-up on the man:

…He had been 70 years old for the last forty years of his life, it seemed. Perhaps he was cast as an old man long before he was old, and it stuck. Died at the age of 91, which meant he spent half a century as a septugenarian. Happens to some guys. Wilford Brimley, for example, got 15 years shaved off his life at some point; he was a middle-aged guy in “The China Syndrome,” and then he was an Old Coot (with a faint note of Old Fart) with nothing in between except an improbable role as a heavy in “The Firm.” If he ever got an Oscar he’d have to split it with his moustache, which does most of the work.

He also sums up Mickey Spillane, the low-brow mystery/crime writer who died this week, in a single, dead-on-target paragraph. It’s worth a look…

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Jul172006

Rediscovered Beatles Recordings

I know it’s something of a heretical view, but I must be honest: I’m not much of a Beatles fan. I like many of the band’s singles and I freely acknowledge their significance to the history of popular music, but for the most part, I’ve never understood the deep, almost mystical reverence that so many hold for the boys from Liverpool. They just don’t grab me that way. I think it’s even arguable as to whether their music qualifies as “rock and roll”; the later stuff, especially, sounds to my ears more like a descendant of the English music-hall than anything related to the blues.

Still, I like them well enough, and I’m always interested in stories about lost-and-found treasures. Which is all my roundabout way of saying that I was very intrigued this afternoon by the news that some 500 tapes from the 1969 “Get Back” sessions have been recovered:

The tapes recorded [The Beatles] performing more than 200 cover versions of work by the artists who had influenced them: Chuck Berry, Elvis Presley and Buddy Holly. They played their own version of Bob Dylan’s Blowing in the Wind, and Rod Stewart’s Maggie May. They belted out Great Balls of Fire, Hippy Hippy Shake and Lucille in spontaneous bursts of play.

You know that at least some of this stuff will be released on CD — more likely all of it will in a big old collectible box set — and, despite my reservations about the orthodoxy of the band’s greatness, I’d really like to hear Lennon’s take on “Great Balls of Fire…”

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Jul142006

Red Buttons

I’ve never seen Sayanora, the film for which Red Buttons won his Oscar in 1958, so I can’t say anything about that. In fact, as I’ve tried to think of a signature Buttons role to hang this tribute on, I find I can’t think of him in any specific part or film. He’s simply one of the many familiar faces that I grew up recognizing on television and in movies, like Barnard Hughes. However, unlike Hughes, who stands out in my mind because of specific characters (or at least a specific character type) that he played, Buttons was always just… Red Buttons.

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