I won't rehash what I've posted elsewhere, or what everyone else has posted (except to thank Gabe and Kelly, and all of you fine people). But, I will say this.
The last time I was this sad about something that shouldn't directly affect me was when I woke up to the news of David Foster Wallace's suicide. If I'd been here then, I would have posted about it here.
No, this isn't the same thing, exactly. The comments were probably never going to form into transcendant meta-fictional novels (short stories, fine, I'll give you that). But to me it feels like a similar loss of something I can't replace.
I should not be sitting here in a room that...seems pretty dusty for some reason... getting emotional about a website on which I made the occasional comment.
Wait, yes I should, because this was a totally unique collection of brain-having hilarious weirdos that can't be replicated (unless we all ride off into the sunset together.).
Goddammit all.
Kevin Eubanks is actually in an absolutely smoking jazz quartet called Prism (ugh) with bass legend Dave Holland and two other guys you've never heard of. If you like very not smooth jazz check them out .
Of all the stupid things for me to be serious about today...
I think I came here because I saw "Gabe and Max's Internet Thing" and wanted/needed to find out what else those persons were up to, and it was this.
I've never seen a member community like this anywhere else, and I don't want to try to have to start looking for a new one.
I'm basically a lurker, although I've posted now and again, with limited effectiveness, but I feel like I know the folks here, which is more than you can say about most webbbloggs.
Did anyone clearly explain what was going on here? Spin doesn't feel like they can keep someone on the payroll to run the site? The ads don't pay the hosting bill? All of the above? You'd think that there'd be a way to keep the site active, with volunteer or near-volunteer writers and editors, even if the community is somewhat insular, and may not be growing. It can't be a total albatross around Spin's neck? Who else could buy it--maybe Maximum Fun could use a pop culture blog?
"Barney Miller's Crossing" It's never too late--Barney and Company travel back in time to the '30s, and Wojo spends half of each episode trying to figure out why the Inspector, now played by Jon Polito, keeps going on and on about being given "the High Hat".
My day has gone roughly how I project my next month or so to go, which is not super. Having a business very closely tied to schools means that this time of year is full of constant insanity, what with school administrators not having any idea what they did five minutes ago, let alone in June, and with our product growing features and complications like a...hydra that keeps adding heads even though nobody is cutting any heads off and CUT IT OUT HYDRA.
I am also the chief "hey why is it doing this" guy for the department, which means I am going to need a diving helmet to get 30 uninterrupted seconds of concentration time around here, not to complain (he complained).
We do get lunch brought in for us for a couple months, but this is in exchange for the expectation that you willl answer the phone and make with some emails while you chew.
On the upside, I do have some shows to look forward to, like the big Dave Chappelle n' Friends tour, followed a week later by Eugene Mirman opening for Robin Hitchcock,. So I might make it after all!
I can't even tell you how long I've been reading the site--as I said in another post, I think I found it when someone showed me Gabe and Max's internet thing, which led me to need to find the funny manz.
At any rate, I'm here multiple times every single day since then, occasionally making an awkward post 3 hours after everyone else (like now) because stupid work (or tonight because of the best library book sale since the one last year).
Not that Gabe didn't make me laugh, but I'm truly going to miss his posts that edged into seriousgum, because I think he has a real ear and mouth and brain for how to be an actual human in a Doritos Locos Tacos world.
Also, it's all you monsters' fault that some dumb internet "what author do you write like" test told me David Foster Wallace.
Can't wait to see what's next, Gabe.
Remember, [ctlr-v pithy statement here.txt]
So what got me here in the first place was a pre-gum Gabe project. And then I stayed because of you people, and because of Gabe and Kelly and so forth. I'm just so glad to hear that after all these years of e-blogging, Gabe can finally turn his attention back to his long-neglected business. I just hope my first 3 (or 9) emails are still free...https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PPsUmhqncAg
To get in the way back machine, think about The Truman Show. I saw it at a screening before it came out, and it was more or less pre-internet, and somehow I STILL knew a little bit about it going in, and wish I hadn't.
To my mind, the way that movie would been more successful (successful creative enterprise, not successful in terms of mo' money) is if you could have just told people "Look, we are not going to show you a trailer, or review the movie, or anything, but trust us it's pretty good, Jim Carrey is a big star, right?"
Of course you can't really do that, and at the screening w/the director, he pretty much agreed that he hated the idea of marketing his movie and simultaneously partially spoiling it, but didn't see a way around it.
The takeaway here is, I totally saw The Truman Show before all of you, so there.
I also am late to the party. Yesterday I had to deliver a followup PowerPoint (ugh) to the boss's boss, and it went fine. It is amazing to me that that guy always has reasonable follow up questions. Smart executives exist, in small numbers!
I managed to get in some banjo practice for "intro to bluegrass banjo" class, which just started last week, and is taught by an old hippy in torn acid washed jeans (and a tie) who seems very nice and is likely to be a good teacher, but who also seems to have sort of Parkinsonian symptoms, so his demonstrations of "now here is some fancy banjo playin' " seem a little clunky to me.
Also went to pretty good jazz jam session (Chicago monsters, Monday nights at 9 at "Serbian Village", of all places). The first set, before they opened it up to other players, featured a bass trumpet player?
Finally some questions, perhaps covered elsewhere:
1. Steph's book? Tell me more, so I can order some in to the Barnes and Nobles where I work a couple nights a week?
2. I take it assorted folks had trouble logging in here recently? Not just me? Was the password reset also busted for folks?
I mostly agree, but I like the lead cop character so much that it mostly outweighs the "wait, everything just wrapped itself up 40 pages earlier than I figured it might" reaction I had.
Did you read Crooked Little Vein? That book is totally nuts (and also doesn't really have an ending).
In hilarious misunderstanding news, I overheard my girlfriend talking on the phone one November, telling someone she was getting me a mandolin. Privately, I got all excited--what a great job picking out presents, person who knows I am a musician, who kind of likes bluegrass, and who is always thinking about buying more instruments.
Movie-trailer-record-scratch/Smash-Cut to Christmas morning, where a disapointed mordonez does not open a new bluegrass mandolin, but a new mandolin slicer. Don't get me wrong, in a vacuum where I hadn't pictured something else entirely, I enjoy having a mandolin slicer, but...but...v. sad, wrong mandolin.
[I bought myself the other kind of mandolin a year or two later, and can even play it a little now--I use both of them with similar frequency. Also banjo lessons start a week from Saturday!]
Oblivion has made it kind of impossible for me to read the Pale King. Yes, absolutely, how does he do it, but at the same time...
There's can be a temptation, when you learn more (say, a LOT more) about an author's life, to just try to map his/her life onto the fiction. Of course in many cases, that's a load of bollocks, but in the case of Oblivion, the urge to succumb to that temptation is for me, quite strong.
So if one does, the stories seem to tell me something about what DFW must have been dealing with through most of his adult life. And not just "Good Old Neon"- while Oblivion is, overall, a masterful collection of stories, it's also potentially a window into the life of a very sad man, and it's kept The Pale King on the shelf, just staring at me.
My worry (E! notwithstanding, which, great post Gabe) was, when I heard about a shooting on the MIT campus, was "please don't let this be Aaron Swartz related in some dumb way". So I was relieved (?!?) to find out that it wasn't. I guess.
I know this is about Halloween costumes and everything, but Gabe is really on to something with the whole "why do they keep saying Silver Linings" thing.
I mean, you had to title your movie something, yes, and obviously some movies would be exempt from this (Argo fuck yourself indeed), but i really hate when they do this. Why it was just 17 years ago that (spoiler alert) the dramatic closing scene of Mike Leigh's "Secrets and Lies" was sort of ruined for me by Timothy Spall making a dramatic speech about how we're all so wrapped up. In our SECRETS....and LIES.
Ugh.
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