'Bred Crumbs
05.01.04
These Kids Today, with Their Ludicrous Disaster Movies and Snobby Comic Strips
12:03 PMAs I grow older and more critical, and find myself avoiding popular entertainment because it all suddenly seems so wretched, I have the recurring alarming thought, I'm becoming my parents. But now, thanks to Salon, I have a much more reassuring alternative thought. Maybe I'm becoming Stephin Merritt.
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I won't be watching NBC's obviously laughable 10.5 on Monday. Sunday maybe, for riffing's sake, but I'm not giving up two nights of my life to this piece of ass fiction.
Luckily, on Monday, there's a good local alternative to the movie in which the the Golden Gate Bridge falls apart spectacularly and impossibly. KQED's showing a PBS documentary about the building of the great span, a truly spectacular achievement. Did you know that the bridge was the first construction site ever to require hardhats? Yeah, me neither.
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As long as I'm dwelling on local matters, note that the San Francisco Chronicle has found the biggest, most morbidly fascinating waste of comics-page space since The Family Circus.* It's called All Over Coffee, and it consists of lovingly drawn details of San Francisco architecture, combined with maddeningly dull and ponderous meditations about nothing. Think of the worst haikus you've ever read, and imagine them even longer. That's the stuff of this pretentious panel.
Much better, in the same paper: Don Asmussen's Bad Reporter. No, it's not drawn nearly as well, or sometimes at all. But it's funny, and actually says things.
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* No small accomplishment, given that the paper already runs Zippy the Pinhead.
04.29.04
Memories of Nashville I: Biscuits and Lazy
11:55 PMSo Robbie, Dana, and I went to Nashville for the theatrical premiere of CrossWalk.* It was the first time in a long time I've gone specifically to Nashville; usually, it's just the airport I use on trips to visit family in Kentucky. And it was the first time I've ever spent more than a few hours in Nashville.
Because we aren't country-music fans, we weren't sure what to do with that.
One thing we did was sleep. A lot. Nashville tranquilized us for some reason. Maybe it was the lack of diversions, or the freezer-case persistence of air conditioning. Or maybe it was the scenery. When native Californian Dana tried to figure out why all the vegetation was more weird than beautiful, she realized something I never noticed the whole time I lived out there: while the countryside is lush, everything is the same shade of green. Crayola green. It all does kind of blend together after a while.
Another thing we did was eat. And badly. We all threw away what few dietary guidelines we have and waded happily in the greasy pool of Southern dining.
A must for me was breakfast at Bob Evans, which has the best sausage gravy in the world. Find me better. I challenge you.
The downside was that the Bob Evans we went to had been infected by Cracker Barrel. There was hick crap everywhere, and a store up front trying to trick us into buying it. The only thing missing in this setting of virulent countrification was rampant misspelling. And thank goodness the piped-in music was strictly adult contemporary.
Yikes. I never thought I'd think that.
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* The link is to a new blog entry on the Hidden Deadly Productions website. I won't always cross-link these, which is probably either inconvenient or insignificant.
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