Mixed Media Junkie

I told you I’d be neglecting you, didn’t I?  Poor, poor blog.  There’s a new baby dlog in the family and you get no love.  Don’t worry, you’re still the primary blog on my profile. 

Money, why are you always playing so hard to get?  Is it because I don’t treat you right?  Is it because I use you so wantonly and unabashedly?  I thought you liked the asshole type.  I’m always trading you for things like “food,” and “rent,” and “drugs.”  Okay, not drugs per se.  More like, basic American rights such as ”digital cable television with a digital video recorder” and a “DSL connection.” 

I miss you, money.  You used to keep my wallet and bank account company, remember?  They usually don’t last long, but our love affairs are intense and passionate.   You make me work so hard for you – 40 hours a week, as a matter of fact, not counting overtime.  And still, I only see you every other week.  You magically appear in and out of my life (and bank account) as if by some sort of strange electronic magic.  And then poof! - just like that, you’re suddenly gone again.  You are the very definition of a tease.

Why torture me so?  It just seems so cruel.  I now know why they call you cold, hard cash.  It is because you have a cold, hard heart.  And you are cash. 

I won’t lie – I cannot live without you in my life, money.  I hate to admit it to myself, but I need you.  I want you.  I want to spend the rest of my life with you by my side.  I would say that if I can’t have you, then nobody else can – but we both know that’s impossible.  You do spread yourself around quite a bit, don’t you, money.  It’s okay, I don’t judge.  I’m not jealous.  I can understand why everbody wants a piece of you.  You are highly desirable, in all your forms, be it stocks, bonds, liquid assets, or actual currency like paper bills, coins, even gold bullions.  I would want you even if you were a dirty gold doubloon.  I’m not discriminating.

I can’t say that I’ll love you forever, though.  In fact, I will probably spend you as soon as I have you.  But don’t let that dissuade you from spending time in my company, because I think we are magical together.  You and I are a force to be reckoned with, and we would make sweet, sweet music together.  Or at least, I would purchase sweet sweet music with you, and maybe some concert tickets to Coachella, because there are some awesome bands playing this year, and I’d really like to see Wolf Parade and Ted Leo and a band called Gnarls Barkley that does a cover of the Violent Femmes’ Gone Daddy Gone.  

*Sigh*  I probably won’t see you in time for Coachella, but that’s alright.  Come back to me soon, baby.  Come back.

I've neglected this little baby of mine for a bit – updates coming soon!  Plomises abound!

Anyway, Tim and I are starting a new food & drink & sports blog: Eat. Drink. Sports.  It's a little rough around the edges, and we're in the process of figuring out features and such, but it should fit in some of my other interests that don't quite belong here on MMJ.  It'll have a mostly guy bent, such as grilling recipes, beer reviews, and sports opinions, but hey, chicks dig that stuff too, so I've been told.  Check it out when you have the chance.

I feel a little bit like the boy who cries wolf every time I update this blog and slap on a headline above each new post - not because I lie and spread fabrications, but because I don’t really think most of my ramblings merit headlines.  Sorry, folks, no original news to be had here.  I’m just a slave to blog conventions.

Anyway, I’ve been listening to archived Ricky Gervais radio shows while wearing headphones here in my cubicle at work, and I’ve caught myself starting to think with an English accent from time to time.  More accurately, I’ve started to hear Ricky Gervais or Stephen Merchant in my head, pronouncing my thoughts in their distinctly British way.  I’ve also adopted some Britishisms - only in my head though, because I don’t think I could pull off using ‘daft’ and ‘brilliant’ and ‘innit’ in everyday conversation without a well-practiced English accent.

Apropos of nothing that I’ve just discussed, spending >8 hours in a cubicle has attuned my hearing to differentiate the approaching footsteps of my boss from others.  I don’t know if it’s his lumbering gait that’s a tell-tale sign, but it’s a handy skill that provides me that split-second to tab away from my browser and into a productive looking spreadsheet or application.  I suppose it’s a vestigial instinct from when our ancestors had to listen for approaching predators; now I imagine you imagining me cocking my head like a prairie dog and sniffing the air.  Yes, that’s how we survive in cubiclezovakia.

Urgent, breaking news: I just learned of the existence of the Pinball Museum in Las Vegas.  Housing over 180 working machines (with models from the 50’s to the late 90’s), the Pinball Museum is open to the public, and you can play all the working models.  Rest assured, dear reader, Hazelina and I will be making a pilgrimage in the near future.

I’m trying to ration out my posts – I don’t want to have what Kenny Fischer might call a “premature evacuation” of my blogging material.  I know the excitement of a new blog will eventually, inevitably, inexorably, wear out, but I may as well jot some stuff down before these thoughts dissipate into the ether.  Here are some tidbits that I may expand later:

• new Rhett Miller album, The Believer, out today.  Immediate reaction: poppier, less alt-country, less rockin’ than usual 97’s stuff, but good ear candy nonetheless.
• relatedly, I want to subscribe to The Believer, the McSweeney’s literary spin-off mag.  I also want to order pretty much all of the McSweeney’s back catalog.
• new Built to Spill album leaked – my copy has clips of “Who is Mike Jones?” comically sprinkled throughout, as if Doug Martsch and Mike Jones have come to some sort of kooky cosmic convergence
• last three books read: Harry Potter: Half-blood Prince (no linkage necessary), Blink (thanks Phil!), Encyclopedia of an Ordinary Life (definitely more on this later)
• right now, as I’m typing, Kevin & Bean (morning radio show here in L.A.) are interviewing a Mexican guy who has developed a FULLY FUNCTIONAL JETPACK.    Hello future, you are now.  Courtesy of Mexico.
• new Amazing Race tonight on CBS.  Best of the reality/game show sub-genre.
• watched MTV True Life: I’m a Competitive Eater over the weekend.  Two words, one man, no peers:  Takeru. Kobayashi.
• Yes, keen reader, that was a Can’t Hardly Wait reference up there.  Get over it, it won’t be the last.

I was going to go with dear readers (plural), but that seemed a little premature, to assume that multiple sets of eyeballs would be led astray and accidentally read this blog.*  Anyway, as this is my first post here, I feel somewhat compelled to offer up a kind of mission statement to orient you as to what this blog purports to be.  (Not Mission Statement, uppercase, italicized, which seems even more full [fuller?] of itself than a mission statement for a blog would seem to indicate, and consequently leading to the probably-not-too-far-off-the-mark impression that I’m full of myself as well.) 

Anyway, ”to write more” was a vague, ill-defined New Year’s resolution of mine, and as I find myself spending the majority of my day on the computer, it seemed only appropriate and convenient to throw these ramblings somewhere up on the web.  I decided to start this blog specifically to capture my off-the-cuff (and sometimes more focused) thoughts on the various media I consume: what I watch, listen to, and read.  Hence, Mixed Media Junkie.  I’ll try to leave personal musings for other avenues (i.e. myspace, livejournal, tear-stained diaries) but there may be cross-postings and linkages here and there.

 *Permit me a brief aside here.  As you can probably already tell, my writing’s a little unfocused, with the occasional (okay, frequent) parenthetical aside and footnote.  Maybe my writing will evolve, but things like brevity, cohesion, getting your point across… you know, the characteristics of good writing, those things will probably only be making cameos here.  Anyway, to illustrate my point, it’s taken two sentences to get to the point of this footnote, which is that I used to hate the word ‘blog’ when it first started cropping up.  Hazel (you might as well get used to her name, she’ll be alluded to often) pointed this out the other day, and I think it’s because it’s not a very fun word.  Blog.  It’s short, squat, unpretty.  It has no allure, and definitely does not roll off the tongue, possibly due to the fact that it’s a weird cropping of a conjoined word – weblog.   By its sheer ubiquity though, it’s gained acceptance in the mainstream lexicon.  It’s like a shrill crying baby that no longer registers in your immediate consciousness because it’s been shrieking for so long.  Similarly, I will no longer fight the existence of the word ‘blog.’  There’s just no way to shut that fucking baby up.  So here it is: my music/television/movie/book/internet blog, with a good smattering of tangents and digressions into who knows what.  Welcome.  Enjoy.  Discuss.