Always Be Closing

We definitely live in at least two realities on this planet these days - the real world and the surreal world. In the real world, the Prez makes nice with Russia and works the G8 in Italy while Lil' Kim Jong-Il launches Cyber warfare against mankind. In the surreal world, meanwhile, the headlines are screaming as to the whereabouts of the Corpse of Pop as we shake our collective heads over the sordid double life and grisly death of Steve McNair and his Dave and Buster's wack-job side dish.

MJ it seems can elude the paparazzi even in death, more mobile than Bernie on the weekend as he sneaks out of his own memorial, gold casket and all sliding through the tunnel under the Staples Center and onward to what we can only imagine is his final reward. Maybe he's decided to do those 50 shows over in England after all. The show must go on.

I'm not sure why the 'dark lifestyle' of Steve McNair is any surprise - the do-gooders of the world are always the ones with a graveyard full of skeletons in their closets. From Thomas Jefferson to Martin Luther King to Bill Clinton, the guys who could get things done - who are natural leaders - and who are able to do the most good in the world seem to be the ones who have a huge appetite for the forbidden and sometimes just the tawdry.

Obviously, MLK is in another league with regard to his influence on history, and Clinton was a pretty darn successful president. McNair, in the end, was simply a not-quite-hall-of-fame-caliber NFL football player. But he did do a lot for his community and for charity. He liked to drink and he liked the ladies and he had some piss-poor judgment that killed him. And we'll no doubt be slammed over the head with the details of that via an endless parade of 20/20, E True Hollywood Story, 48 Hours, Lifetime TV Movies, and probably lots more.

Hopefully not too many kids lost a hero this week. Me, my heroes were always the ones with their skeletons in plain sight - Give me Hunter Thompson, Robert Downey, Jr. and William Burroughs and you can have Albert Schweitzer, Mother Theresa and Mahatma Ghandi. And Bono for that matter. I can only hope for the sake of our country that smoking is not Obama's biggest vice. I supported and voted for you, Mr. President - I'm counting on something more. :-)

As for comments related to the real world? Ahh - I don't know what to think (the Daily Show is in reruns this week - I'll think again come Monday).

OxiCleanCodone

I see that Madonna is going to pay tribute to Michael Jackson at an upcoming concert. Good for her. But who is going to pay tribute to T.V. pitchman Billy Mays who also just passed away?

"He sold more OxiClean than Andy Warhol sold Campbell's Soup," cousin Dean Panizzi said in eulogizing Billy Mays and comparing him to the Pittsburgh-born pop artist who turned soup cans into works of art.

Your cousin is one thing - but where are his 'peers'?

Is Vince of ShamWow! fame going to do the honors?

Maybe the Dos Equis 'most interesting man in the world' might say some words: "I don't always buy 'As Seen on TV' products, but when I do, I prefer those from Billy Mays. Rest in Peace, my friend."

With his passing, I may never need to reach for the volume control again. Hopefully, he was a toupee donor and his hairpiece was transplanted to a needy recipient.

Ezra Pound and T.S. Eliot Fighting in the Captain's Tower

I am once again finding myself re-reading A Confederacy of Dunces. For sure this book is and will likely remain my hands down #1 favorite. I don't think I'll ever forgive John Kennedy Toole for taking his own life at such a young age and denying the world more wonders such as this. If you haven't read this, do yourself a favor and pick it up ASAP - it is amazing on so many dimensions.

For my own amusement, I took a quick spin through my bookshelves to see what other books stuck with me over the years and would constitute the Buzzard literary top 20 (okay, as it turns out, top 21). Not surprisingly, the protagonist of one of them is a guy obsessed with ranking things (whether music, or girlfriends or what-have-you). So, in nearly no particular order after Dunces, ...

• A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
• Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas - Hunter Thompson (okay, maybe this is #2 for me)
• A Prayer for Owen Meany - John Irving (I liked this better than Garp or Cider House)
• Lives of Monster Dogs - Kirsten Bakis (Brilliant book, written in 1998 but she hasn't written another)
• A Million Little Pieces - James Frey (I liked this even better after I found out a lot of it was made up)
• Junky - William Burroughs (Junky beat writer extraordinaire)
• Monster - Sanyika Shakur (Former LA Crip - great writing)
• Trinity - Leon Uris
• High Fidelity - Nick Hornby (lots of obsessive top 5/10 lists - love Hornby but this is my fave)
• American Psycho - Bret Easton Ellis
• The Great Gatsby - F. Scott Fitzgerald
  
• Out - Natsuo Kirino
• Mysteries of Pittsburgh - Michael Chabon
  
• Hell's Angels - Hunter Thompson
• Invisible Man - Ralph Ellison
  
• Psychotic Reactions and Carburetor Dung - Lester Bangs
• Something Happened - Joesph Heller
• The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn - Mark Twain
• Sex, Drugs, and Cocoa Puffs - Chuck Klosterman
• The Bonfire of the Vanities - Tom Wolfe
• Manchild in the Promised Land - Claude Brown
  

Modern love gets you to the church on time

Interesting overview of eHarmony web architecture on slideshare, not so much for the architecture itself as for the fact that as I look over the slides I can visualize their Hadoop cluster churning away (mapping and reducing those 20 cazillion dimensions of compatibility as my lies are compared to the lies of a cross section of candidate buzz gal pals). Ain't modern love wonderful.

Twitter-de and Twitter-dumb
Well, I'm fully twittered up now but still can't seem to muster up the energy to start sharing the minutia of my day-to-day existence these days. (It's enough that I have to suffer through it but must I force others to do so as well?) I'll give you what my nightly digest would doubtless consist of this evening:

• 8:55pm: watching 'Factory Girl' on the movie channel - great swinging 60s vibe and the luminescent Sienna Miller
  
• 9:55pm: getting ready to watch 'Weeds' on Showtime - I've had a major crush on Mary-Louise Parker that began in the 90s, was heightened with her turn as the West Wing's Amy Gardner and continues unabated with Weed's Nancy Botwin
• 10:30pm: can't get into 'Nurse Jackie' for some reason - love Edie Falco and the scripts seem pretty good but I find myself drifting
• 11pm: daily show
• 11:30pm: starting the book "the media relations department of Hizbollah wishes you a happy birthday"
• 1am: sleep

Pretty darn fascinating ...

Jacko Fever

I'm amazed at the Internet traffic surrounding Jacko's death. I find the reaction to his death far more fascinating than the death itself (which is usually the case with a mega-celebrity). It is interesting to measure the tolerance (even demand) for eccentricity when it is applied relative to fame. I mean, how many co-workers do you know whose nose has been steadily disappearing, with a complexion that has gone from dark to light to translucent and who has taken to wearing one glove and a series of outfits not seen outside the cover of Sgt. Pepper? Oh, and whose family photos on their desk consist of unrelated children and circus animals?

"Hi, Mike - how was your weekend? How are Bubbles and 'the kids'? I see you must have spent some time in the Hyperbaric Chamber, eh? Beats a tanning salon all to hell, I bet - you'll be ready for the beach in no time - where are you vacationing this summer? Neptune, you say?"

As for his musical influence and talent, I personally thought that he hit his peak with 'Ben' back in '72. (I mean, how do you top a love song to a Rat?)

Something is happening but you don't know what it is, do you, Mr. Jones?

I'm a bit late to the blogging game. I'm usually slow to try new things, whether it be MP3s or DVDs or what-have-you. However, I am surprised that it's taken me this long to morph out of read-only mode in the blogosphere, given my penchant for the written word in other mediums (my excessive verbosity has become notorious to those whose jobs require they read it).  My plan is to use this as a sounding board for my opinions on technology (I'm generally for it), politics (I'm almost always a bleeding heart liberal, except when I'm not), and popular culture.

Popular culture is probably my favorite topic - but usually more along the lines of trying to find the answer to 'What sorts of music and movies young people in Iran and China like and how do they subvert authority to get access to them?' and not so much seeking clarity on 'What rock did Lindsey Lohan crawl out from under this morning?', though perhaps in some sense the answers to these questions are not so dissimilar.  And it's certainly not to say I'm not interested in Lindsey's rocks.

Well, just a first post to get this started. A "Hello, World" if you will.

Later.