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New Look

Just a quick post to say that the redesign (and restructuring … those of you with RSS feeds may need to relink? I’ve no idea how this all works) of the site that you see here is all thanks to my good friend Beth Sullivan.

Why a redesign? I don’t know it’s like a blog is rug, trapping all yer dirt, that needs aired out from time to time. Plus also I’ve got professional demands.

Follow me on Twitter probably soon, I worry!

UPDATE: On posting this post I’ve now stuck in my head Dr. John’s “New Looks” from the National Lampoon’s European Vacation soundtrack, with only my lack of imaginative post titles to blame.

A Taxidermy Joke

I don’t know that I’ve ever been told one of these. Here’s one sent by my friend Richie:

A guy walks into a bar down in Alabama and orders a white wine. All the locals sitting around the bar look up, expecting to see some pitiful Yankee from the north.

The bartender says, “You ain’t from around here, are ya?”

The guy says, “No, I’m from Nebraska .”

The bartender says, “What do you do in Nebraska?”

The guy says, “I’m a taxidermist.”

The bartender says, “A taxidermist? What in tarnation is a taxidermist? Do you drive a taxi?”

“No, a taxidermist doesn’t drive a taxi. I mount animals.”

The bartender grins and hollers, “It’s okay boys. He’s one of us.”

Personalized, I think, just for me.

Rough Seas

To the right over there you’ll find a smalled-down version of the first page of Bing results when one searches “Dave Madden”. If you look closely, you’ll find a certain Web page missing from the list.

I don’t want to be a prima donna, but I mean, I’ve read all the posts and commentary lately about how Google is no longer as relevant as it once was. How it’s been hijacked by spam and it’s getting harder and harder to find relevant pages. But I’ll have you know that googling “Dave Madden” brings this page up fourth—after the Partridge Family guy’s Wikipedia page, the main page for some Austin singer-songwriter, and the Canadian Partridge guy’s IMDB page.

So, Bing. What’s going on? Am I not relevant enough to you? Is this for all the bad things I’ve said about MS Windows in the past?

I’m sorry. I feel you taking over. Please promote my Web presence?

Two Kinds of Comedic Agony

By “agony” here I’m talking about mental anguish than can often manifest itself physically. I experience two chief ones when watching comedies. And by comedies I mean sitcoms.

Type One: Gervaisian
It began in The Office and it went through to Extras and then (or before?) it became the basis for the U.S. Office. Maybe there’s a more general term for this. Maybe it predates Gervais/Merchant. But you know what I’m talking about, those moments when David Brent’s/Michael Scott’s idiocies, ignorance, or delusions of grandeur are exposed to public scrutiny (other characters’ and ours). So like the time when David begins telling his “black man’s cock” joke and then a black man walks up. Or Scott’s Tots finally learning the truth. When I laugh at these moments, it’s always to alleviate intense discomfort. N has this great “Oh God!” he yells to indicate the degree of agony we’re both experiencing. It goes far beyond mild embarrassment. It’s a big part of what makes these shows so attractive, that we can be forced so fully to this weird pain. And that we can revel in it and laugh.
Continue reading Two Kinds of Comedic Agony

A New Game

Today was my first day of school. It went fine. Two new courses (not a strange thing given that this is my first year at UA, but still it’s both a challenge and a delight). I have high hopes. And as it’s the first day of the spring term of course course descriptions for the fall term are overdue. So I’ve been spending the evening scowling at that insufferable Office wedding episode and coming up with forms courses to teach. This led me to think about texts and, thus, texts, a word I’ve for years now savored the slow, slow enunciation of. Tek-ssss-tsss. Say it for yourself aloud a few times. Make it three syllables. And then in thinking more generally about sounds and consonants and plosives and such, came a new game. Or like a game to make characters in a novel play because anyone in the real world would find it, too, insufferable.

One person is the speaker, another is the listener. The speaker decides, on a whim or randomly, which of ch or j to utter. NOT “chuh” or “juh”, but ch and j. Just the initial plosive with some breath after it. (Is it a plosive, linguists? Or is that reserved for just like k and t? Or p and b?) And then the listener gets to guess whether what she heard was ch or j.

This, to me, is hilarious. I could play for hours.

UPDATE: Turns out ch and j are “affricates”.

Twilight: Eclipse Live Blogging Event, Part 5

Things Bella hasn’t to my knowledge done to present herself as a person worthy of all this relentless protection:

  • Asked someone how his or her day was.
  • Saved a life.
  • Provided the right answer on that econ final.
  • Found that Silly Bandz Edward lost.
  • Offered to clean up after that big graduation party.
  • Spared a dime.
  • Ironed her mom’s thongs.
  • Bought her own damn car with, say, a part-time job.
  • Confessed to Jasper how terrible his haircut is.
  • Really, anything.

I don’t get it. She’s not, like, the ring-bearer or anything. So she gets killed by an army of newborns. Why is this a problem?

Twilight: Eclipse Live Blogging Event, Part 2

Okay it’s the third movie by now so I get it: women and girls are delicate things that are constantly in danger and need men (preferably men with supernatural powers) to protect them at all times.

But does Bella have to be so delicate and in constant danger and needing of supernatural boys to protect her at all times?

Bella’s story happens to her the way I imagine reading these page-turners washes over you in an easy lukewarm flood.

Untitled Taxidermy Project

No, this one’s not about my book. Back last summer, Variety reported that a company called Stiletto Television was going to produce, in the terms of the industry, “a late fall special [on taxidermy] that will act as a backdoor pilot for an upcoming series.” Stiletto Television has previous produced Barry Manilow specials and that very bad Nemesis Rising show for Logo that I guarantee not a single reader of this blog ever watched. It’s also done series for OUTTV and something called GayborhoodTV.

And now taxidermy. Or, well, not now but maybe later. I’ve kept a lazy eye on this project and nothing has happened since July. You can check out the ghost-town of the special’s IMDb page. “Development hell.” This is another industry term I know.

Here’s a recent update from Stiletto Entertainment’s (parent company) Facebook wall:

Barry blew the roof off of the emotional and very moving Nobel Peace Prize Concert in Oslo, Norway on Saturday.
The staid audience came alive when he began to perform.

As even Mr Manilow must know, dead heads of state are one thing, but dead heads of ungulates are a whole different audience altogether.

Oh boy. Is this the point where my blog becomes an online petition to get Barry Manilow hosting a TLC series on taxidermy?

Skullcandy! [Fist-shaking]

I broke my second pair of Skullcandy earbuds on the train ride up. I nodded off. They were plugged into the side of my laptop. The laptop slid off my tray table and hit my thigh, waking me up, and the plug bent literally out of shape and the wires got disconnected. I thought: these are expensive.* I thought: I’m going to fix these!

I went to Radio Shack, following some Web sites’ advice. Here’s what I ended up with:

Thanks, brother-in-law, for soldering help. Alas: it didn’t work. Not a sound came through. Then my sister came home from work, and she fixed them:

Thanks, sis, but oh, what a rickety little plug!

—

* Wrong. One can nab a pair on buy.com for about $10 shipped.

The Brothers Karamazov?

Here’s the book I decided to bring with me on my holiday travels. The idea was to read it on the 19.5-hour train trip, but I hadn’t finished Howards End in time, so I had to bring that with me too.

At any rate: Damn is this a long book! NaNoWriMo was decidedly easier to do each day than go back to this book to slog through it. Middlemarch? Blissfulness. Bleak House? A delight! Dostoevsky’s characters’ paragraphs of dialogue? I can’t bear them.

What this post is all about: please, those of you who’ve read the book, provide me in the comments with any pep talk you may have. I’m about halfway through book two (part two?), and I’ve got Lipsyte’s undoubtedly incredible The Ask waiting for me on my new Kindle. I want to get through Brothers K before hitting the Lipsyte the way I want, say, to add more fiber to my diet. But then part of me is all: screw fiber, eat something delicious.

I guess what I need is to be shown what’s delicious about Dostoevsky. I need to get Laura Bush on the horn….

Update: The above is a stupid post, stupidly written. In looking for aid I found a collection of introductions to the novel. Specifically this:

Meanwhile his father, miserly, greedy, and corrupt, refused Fyodor an allowance, and his last letter to him was a denial of a small sum begged by Fyodor to buy a little sugar and tea to take on summer maneuvers. Shortly after, the father was murdered by his own serfs. The police authorities made little attempt to find and prosecute the actual murderer. “We cannot arrest a whole village,” they said, “and the whole village is guilty.” It was a communal crime, and even those not actually involved in it sympathized with the murderers. Among these was Fyodor himself, who, however, had his first epileptic fit on learning of his father’s death. In all his novels, Dostoevsky emphasizes the collective nature of all crime. And all his books are about crime: “The guilt of every individual is binding upon us all, just as his salvation saves us all. Crime is the center of Dostoevsky’s tragic world,” wrote Romano Guardini.

I don’t know what I was thinking. As if books need defenses. Well no, I know what I was thinking, it’s just cuter to say that I don’t. Here’s what I was thinking: Dostoevsky’s book is an end, a box to check. Here’s what I should have realized: a novel is a world to spend time in, written by a person with a history.