Say goodbye to all of this... and hello to oblivion.


Via MetaFilter: In the past few weeks, two members of the Rocky Horror Picture Show's cast have died. Bah.

Today's Front Pages is a nifty Flash application... it shows the front pages of major Unites States newspapers, and therefore gives you a sense of which news stories are getting significant play on any given morning in the country. [via waveflux]

Every paper in the nation is talking about yesterday's Iraq speech from Bush. It's an interesting example of the homogeneity of American media, and serves to show that we've probably reached a point where the integrated spectacle is eternally self-perpetuating. Have a nice day, and enjoy your Orwellian dystopia!

Blogger angst continues apace (see previous post). Some great suggestions for possible fixes were made by Joe, and I'll likely fiddle with them this evening. All the same, I'm seriously considering a complete redesign. I've decided that having the same site design for three years is a little like having the same hairstyle for three years.

My new friend Heather just emailed me an .mp3 of Self's cover of "What A Fool Believes," played entirely on toy instruments. I can die happy now. (Another blog I just started reading is Things I Still Don't Know; I've been corresponding with the author for a few weeks now, and she is rad)

OK, off to San Diego for a few days. I'll be there until Friday morning, at which time I will return to LA and continue JobQuest 2005.

UPDATE: If I don't stop trying to modify the stylesheet to get this site to look the way I want, I'm going to have a hissy fit. Bah. I guess I could just take a couple of hours and add < p > tags to all posts, but that'll probably just screw me up when it comes time to do the redesign.

HELP!

Regular readers of this blog will recall that the typeface normally appears gray. When I published my last update all text appeared as black, and now the blog looks like ass. Wha' happen? And how do I fix it? The first person who tells me how to fix this will have lunch on me (figuratively, not literally) the next time we are in the same city.

UPDATE: I placed a < p > tag at the beginning of the above paragraph. That fixed this post, but everything else still looks weird. Bah. If this persists, I may reconsider an all-new design, as this template has been persnickity in the past. Big love to Tone for his suggestions thus far.

UPDATE #2: Still fiddling with Blogger; still gnashing my teeth in frustration. I really don't want to overhaul the entire design, as my blog has looked like this for almost three years now. But I'm now actively considering it. If anyone knows (or is) a decent designer, who is knowledgable in CSS and will work on the cheap (I'm trying to be conservative with the cash flow until I've found a job), feel free to put them in touch with me.

I went into Hollywood yesterday to buy a digital piano (assisted by Space Kitty, who graciously volunteered to help me schlep). Said piano was being sold at a huge discount by a beautiful Australian woman who bought it as a gift for an asshole boyfriend and wanted to recoup some of the money she had dropped on him.

While wandering around Hollywood Boulevard, we were offered a free tour of the old Screen Actors Guild building. The gentleman offering the tour said that it would only last five minutes, and since that was about the length of time we had before we needed to pick up the piano, we said "Sure!" Of course, as soon as we entered the front doors it was evident that the whole "tour" was a way to get the unwitting tourists sucked into a presentation on Scientology; needless to say, we got the hell out of there. A little Googling shows that this is a common ploy (scroll halfway down on the linked page).

And then I had dinner in the Valley. I feel like I've already become a cliche.

(The best expose I've ever read of the Scientology wackiness was a 1996 article by journalist Mark Ebner from the now-defunct Spy magazine . I managed to find the article [titled "Do You Want to Buy a Bridge?"] online, and you can read it here)

A few people have pointed out that I haven't actually let people know whether or not I arrived at my destination. My bad.

1. I made it to Los Angeles on Saturday evening. I spent a couple of days sleeping and devouring Tylenol to recover from the grueling drive.

2. I'm in San Diego at the moment; I came down for Theron's birthday party (he showed up already drunk, that lush). I'm going back to LA this afternoon, and will be down again next week.

OK... I managed to drive through Texas in essentially one day, and all without exceeding the speed limit by more than 5 mph (except when I was passing slower vehicles). I am a mighty god.

Thirteen hours of driving brought me to Tucson. I don't care for the town at all (J. and I almost moved here about 9 years ago, but after spending a day-and-a-half here neither of us ever wanted to see the place again), but the hotel is fine.

I am not going to kill myself with driving tomorrow. I'll get up when I naturally wake, take my time leaving, and go the speed limit the whole way. I'm going to L.A, first... I have excellent job leads, and want to follow up with that. I'm planning to head down to San Diego around the 27th, and after that will make frequent appearances in both cities until I am gainfully employed.

Thanks to Space Kitty for issuing the updates! This is a conversation we had yesterday when I was an hour or so outside of Houston:

B: So, yeah... Texas.
SK: I've never been. I imagine it as being really ugly.
B: Actually, it's really not. The east part of the state is horrible, but central and west Texas are absolutely gorgeous.
SK: Really!
B: Indeed. It's very green, beautiful trees, and right now I'm driving by a field with cows and horses and centaurs and shit.
SK: Centaurs.
B: Yeah. Centaurs, satyrs, dryads, hamadryads... do you know the difference between a dryad and a hamadryad? Because I sure don't.
SK: Looks like someone took a wrong turn at Albuquerque!
B: Yes. I ended up in Greece. That explains all the anal sex I've been having today.
SK: I'm hanging up now.

Texas is now just a vision in the rear-view mirror. Hello, New Mexico!

So, not so much with the internet connection in Tex-Ass. (nice one, Ben) Here's hoping New Mexico and Arizona have a more reliable connection to the internets.

*hopes*

This just in..... Texas, apparently, is interminable. Send happy thoughts to our road tripper!

I'm leaving in a few minutes. By nightfall I should be deep in the heart of Texas.

Every time I listen to 69 Love Songs, vol. 1 by the Magnetic Fields, it starts to rain. The State Department should send me on a humanitarian mission to Africa; I could drive across the plains in my '94 Honda Accord, blasting "I'm the Luckiest Guy on the Lower East Side" out of my speakers and bringing life-giving rain to the drought-impaired parts of the continent. And then get trampled to death by a herd of wildebeest. Hot.

I am in New Orleans. I was stressed about the car and thus didn't sleep more than three or four hours last night. Therefore, I am too tired to go out. This makes me feel pathetic. I did have some shrimp gumbo, so the stay here isn't a total loss.

While driving through northern Florida today (which is really just southeast Alabama) I saw a billboard put up by the John Birch Society that said something like, "THE UNITED NATIONS IS COMING... TO TAKE YOUR GUNS AWAY."

I thought, "Well, it's about fucking time. Thank God. It could be the UN, the Illuminati or fucking Starfleet for all I care, just as long as someone takes off with those worthless things."

I've been rather emotional today. Here are songs that made me cry at some point on the road:

1. "Zion's Walls" (from Old American Songs by Aaron Copland)

2. "A Simple Song" (the opening aria from Mass by Leonard Bernstein)

3. "Under Pressure" (a live version on the Queen: Greatest Hits CD. I have a really cool story about that song from a few years ago which I will relate soon)

Latest satellite reports confirm that the_bone has reached the 10 Freeway. Just keep heading west and make a right before you hit the Pacific!

(Yes, I *do* plan on reporting every last detail, thanks for asking)

Disaster averted

When the air conditioner died yesterday, the worst-case scenario was that the compressor was busted... a problem that easily would have set me back another thousand dollars. Despite being very conservative with my expenditures I seem to be hemorrhaging money due to circumstances beyond my control, and this seemed like it was going to be another of those situations.

Therefore, I was very relieved to find that the problem was limited to a faulty fuse and a faulty relay. $120 bucks, and I was out of there by 10:00. I'll be on the road again within the hour. This way I've only lost four hours or so of driving time.

Let me forevermore sing the praises of "Auto Air, Brake and Muffler City" of Tampa, Florida (recommended to me by a guest at the hotel where I stayed the night). They could have told me that the car needed a new compressor and I would have had no choice but to pay them. Rather than take advantage of a traveler, they just fixed what needed to be fixed and were totally ethical. Needless to say, the mechanic got a good tip.

I'm starting to feel a little better about this whole "humanity" thing now.

I'm in Tampa for the night. My air conditioner stopped working around Sarasota. This is after spending a thousand dollars on necessary maintainence just yesterday. Sigh.

Fortunately, I have a recommendation for a good local mechanic, and I'm going to take it in to them first thing in the morning. This adds a day or so onto the trip, but there's no way I'm going to be without air conditioning when I drive through the Mojave in a couple of days.

And we're off!

I just received launch confirmation. the_bone is departing Ft. Lauderdale as I blog.

Godspeed!

If everything goes well with my post-operative meeting with my oral surgeon (no snickers from the peanut gallery, please: I'd like to think we're all grownups here), I'll be on the road this afternoon.

I'll have my laptop, so going off the highway to find a WiFi connection is a possibility. In the event that I'm not able to post, I've asked my friend Space Kitty (who already has a Blogger account, making my life easier) to post a quick update for me each evening with my location.

Travel Discography

If, while I'm staying at the Super-8 Motel in Whackjob, Alabama, some inbred miscreant from the cast of Deliverance hotwires and subsequently takes off with my car... they're going to get some awesome CDs. This is the playlist for the trip:

Aaron Copland, Copland conducts Copland
If I'm doing a trip across America, then I'm going to listen to the music of the quintessential American composer, damnit. Aaron Copland conducting his own work with the London Symphony Orchestra, plus legendary baritone William Warfield singing the song cycle Old American Songs... it doesn't get much better than that.

Randy Newman, The Best of Randy Newman
I started writing songs again (as opposed to the more formal compositional projects and vocal arranging that have occupied that side of my musicianship for the past decade) a little over a year ago. Since then, I've tried to get back into that frame of mind by listening to the masters... and Randy Newman is consistently brilliant.

Van Halen, Best Of Both Worlds (Best of Van Halen)
This is an awesome driving CD. Reach down, between my legs... ease the seat back.... (When I was younger, I always heard that line from "Panama" as "Easy feedbag")

Steve Reich, Tehillim/The Desert Music (Alan Pierson conducting the ensembles Ossia and Alarum Will Sound)
I don't particularly care for Tehillim, but The Desert Music (for chorus and orchestra) is one of my favorite works. I hear this recording in my dreams. When I get to Arizona I'm rolling down all the windows, turning up the volume on the CD player, and playing this album.

Morton Lauridsen, Lux Aeterna (Paul Salomunovich conducting the Los Angeles Master Chorale)
Lauridsen is my favorite living composer. I love this album.

Enigma, MCMXC a.D.
Sexiest. album. ever.

Leonard Bernstein, Mass (Kent Nagano conducting the Deutsches Symphonie-Orchester Berlin)
The Bernstein Mass is a 2-hour long "theatre piece" composed for the opening of the Kennedy Center, which uses Latin texts from the Mass and new English texts by Bernstein, Stephen Schwartz and Paul Simon to explore the bright and dark sides of religion. It's a powerful work, and it showcases Bernstein's compositional eclecticism; the styles vary from atonality to rock to the lush and lyric pandiatonicism evident in other works from his corpus such as Candide. It hasn't been recorded often, and I'm so looking forward to listening to it, mostly to hear tenor Jerry Hadley in the leading role of the Celebrant.

Magnetic Fields 69 Love Songs
For those tender moments when I want to quietly sob into my steering wheel.

Queen, Greatest Hits
Little-known facts: Freddie Mercury was born in Zanzibar as "Farrokh Bulsara." His parents were Parsees from India, and Mercury spent a significant amount of time in that country while at boarding school. After his death in 1991, his funeral and cremation were conducted in the Zoroastrian faith. If you don't believe me, check here for verification. Anyway, this too is excellent driving music.

OK... it looks like I will be leaving for California either Tuesday afternoon or Wednesday morning.

A question: I'm planning to take pictures all along the route. However, I'd like to come up with some sort of theme. This project could easily devolve into "OMG! I'M IN NEW ORLEANS!!1!!11!" territory, and I think it's a more interesting artistic choice to have some sort of unifying thread in either subjects, mood or method. I was thinking that I'd take a picture at exactly noon on each day, of whatever was around me at the time, but then I'd only have 4 or 5 pictures total and that kind of sucks.

So, any ideas?

I had three teeth extracted today. Updates will resume this weekend.

In discussing the recent revelations about Mark Felt's role in the Watergate scandal, former presidential candidate George McGovern said "I sometimes wish we had a Deep Throat in the administration today."

The quipster in me immediately thought, "In the strictest sense, Jeff Gannon probably fits the bill."

"I'm fucked. The rest is fucking silence."

So much for being bored with the internet.

Via a comment on MonkeyFilter, I present to you: The Skinhead Hamlet*. Oi!

* that's "skinhead" in the traditional sense, not in the racist fucktard sense.

The unthinkable has happened...

It's only taken most of a decade to get to this point... but right now, I'm sick of the internet.

I'm going to go buy several books and read all of them this weekend. I'll check email a couple of times a day, but don't expect much in the way of blogging until Monday or so.

Submitted without comment: The Ten Most Harmful Books of the 19th and 20th Centuries as selected by frothing right-wing nuts and published in the conservative weekly Human Events Online.

UPDATE: If, however, it is commentary you seek, AmLeft's is good.