Good thing i'm getting this out there before tomorrow afternoon, lest anyone was considering violently throwing a half-thawed turkey into a vat of overflowing 500 degree oil to celebrate our first harvest at Plymouth in 1621. Personally, i was planning on tying a turducken to a tree and just firing rockets at it with my new Panzerfaust III (thanks, ebay!) until i saw that the turkey had been sufficiently defeated, upon which a circle of my closest friends would sing "do you believe in magic" and pick through the assortment of bones and tree bark to put together some pretty unique necklaces. Tradition, you know? It's what America is all about.
Folks, there's a lot of danger out there, and a large amount of it happens to be lurking. In fact, in a google search for "danger lurking" you'll find it's currently residing most in: bottles of red wine, the tour de france crowd, your clothes dryer, public wi-fi, barack obama's tax policy, and flu shots. Really, you're best off not trusting anything. And that means you, old people, small lizards, and snow.
Wednesday, November 26, 2008
Monday, November 24, 2008
Tryptophan: The Anthrax of Thanksgiving
One of my personal favorite aspects of the holidays in America is the inevitable horror news coverage of holiday-related subjects. We're talking about live from the situation room, kids choking on tinsel, people starving in line at the mall, and this great obsession we've developed over the last couple years, with no explanation whatsoever:
We're talking of course about tryptophan, the most silent of killers. Standing in line at Bank of America, where they've recently set up flat screen televisions to counterbalance the long lines of people waiting to hear about their housing loans being eaten by giant sandworms, i overheard the first of what will surely be an endless slew of threat embellishments. As a news segment ended, we saw the stereotypical anchorwoman making banter with her weatherlady, wishing her good luck on Thanksgiving in coping with the scariest sounding amino acid on the planet. Though i don't recall it word for word, it went something along the lines of
"be careful getting behind the wheel on thursday night after all that tryptophan..."
Tryptophan. It's an amino acid, and an essential protein builder in the human diet. There are high levels of it in chocolate, bananas, milk, yogurt, eggs, fish, poultry, red meat, spirulina, and peanuts. So for the jury still out on whether or not it's the turkey that's going to make you fall asleep on the drive home from aunt mildred's and plunge your car full of children off an overpass and NOT the ten corona's you drink watching the Detroit Lions get pummeled like a demented tether ball, you've got a few things mixed up.
In fact, it's overstatements on small scientific findings like this that make me think we're better off as a christian fundamentalist society. Science is way more scary than useful to the general public, and so are all the amino acids, for that matter. Allow me to be the first to suggest we place all amino acids on the FDA-prohibited list, and protect American families from this atrocity this Thanksgiving. Drive safe everyone, and avoid the benadryl green beans.
We're talking of course about tryptophan, the most silent of killers. Standing in line at Bank of America, where they've recently set up flat screen televisions to counterbalance the long lines of people waiting to hear about their housing loans being eaten by giant sandworms, i overheard the first of what will surely be an endless slew of threat embellishments. As a news segment ended, we saw the stereotypical anchorwoman making banter with her weatherlady, wishing her good luck on Thanksgiving in coping with the scariest sounding amino acid on the planet. Though i don't recall it word for word, it went something along the lines of
"be careful getting behind the wheel on thursday night after all that tryptophan..."
Tryptophan. It's an amino acid, and an essential protein builder in the human diet. There are high levels of it in chocolate, bananas, milk, yogurt, eggs, fish, poultry, red meat, spirulina, and peanuts. So for the jury still out on whether or not it's the turkey that's going to make you fall asleep on the drive home from aunt mildred's and plunge your car full of children off an overpass and NOT the ten corona's you drink watching the Detroit Lions get pummeled like a demented tether ball, you've got a few things mixed up. 
In fact, it's overstatements on small scientific findings like this that make me think we're better off as a christian fundamentalist society. Science is way more scary than useful to the general public, and so are all the amino acids, for that matter. Allow me to be the first to suggest we place all amino acids on the FDA-prohibited list, and protect American families from this atrocity this Thanksgiving. Drive safe everyone, and avoid the benadryl green beans.
Tuesday, November 11, 2008
"Before, You'd Brush Your Teeth, But Still Smell Like Anger"
Since my last post was unusually enjoyable to put together (imagine that, me wanting to talk about 90's rock ((or sports!)) i've decided to dedicate at least one more to someone i feel is deserving of a real haranguing. This is also an issue i've managed never to flip-flop on, unlike such infamous claims as:
a) i'll never eat guacamole so long as i live
or
b) oh, if i could only just sleep with that britney spears!
No, i've consistently disliked Carlos Santana for a good 20 years, and have never, never once, not ever so much as nodded my head in a hotel elevator or mongolian barbeque when "black magic woman" came on the radio. Santana was terrible enough leading up to the 1990's, but the album he put out at the end of the decade featuring "Smooth" with Rob Thomas really sealed the deal for me then and there. That song might go on my all-time most hated songs mixtape, to play when Bristol Palin is sworn in as president in the year 2040, or if the Royals ever move to a city like Albuquerque.
From there he went on to (successfully, now) collaborate with every other crappy artist under the stars, and received nothing but praise and money for doing so. Really, collaborations with Sean Paul, Everlast AND Nickelback? Really, America? All the while making headlines for doing things like curing bad breath by forgiving child molesters and being saved by christ from committing suicide 7 times.
Honestly, if you need to be saved 7 different times by Christ himself from killing yourself, how much confidence can you have going into your next solo that there isn't going to be an 8th? I feel for Carlos about as much as i miss O-Town. And Crazy Town. All the towns, really. Sugah. Baby.
a) i'll never eat guacamole so long as i live
or
b) oh, if i could only just sleep with that britney spears!
No, i've consistently disliked Carlos Santana for a good 20 years, and have never, never once, not ever so much as nodded my head in a hotel elevator or mongolian barbeque when "black magic woman" came on the radio. Santana was terrible enough leading up to the 1990's, but the album he put out at the end of the decade featuring "Smooth" with Rob Thomas really sealed the deal for me then and there. That song might go on my all-time most hated songs mixtape, to play when Bristol Palin is sworn in as president in the year 2040, or if the Royals ever move to a city like Albuquerque.
From there he went on to (successfully, now) collaborate with every other crappy artist under the stars, and received nothing but praise and money for doing so. Really, collaborations with Sean Paul, Everlast AND Nickelback? Really, America? All the while making headlines for doing things like curing bad breath by forgiving child molesters and being saved by christ from committing suicide 7 times.
Honestly, if you need to be saved 7 different times by Christ himself from killing yourself, how much confidence can you have going into your next solo that there isn't going to be an 8th? I feel for Carlos about as much as i miss O-Town. And Crazy Town. All the towns, really. Sugah. Baby.
RATM
I don't remember what precisely triggered my most recent plummet back into 90's era music, but now that i've re-found this i have a few things to say about it. First of all, i think the argument can be made that Rage Against the Machine was the greatest rock band of the 90's without me sounding like i haven't got any brains. True, all Rolling Stone will ever talk about until the earth is sucked into a stellar-mass black hole is how great Nirvana was, how important Kurt Cobain's flannel shirt funk was to the writing process of such inspirational hits as "Scentless Apprentice" and whatnot, but really, looking back- Can you dig up a more listenable rock track from 15 years ago than this? Or, more important a question, can you handle how much ass this kicks?
Rage Against The Machine No Shelter Music via Noolmusic.com
If you wanted to break it down scientifically, you could analyze this song's current relevance primarily as a result of its restraint from soon-to-be-dated technology that sounds terrible 15 years after its recording, (see: all 80's music) but mostly i hand it to the bass work of timmy-c and the most confusing, angry-nonetheless-presumably-intelligent rapper ever. I wont even touch on Tom Morello, since i already spent the 90's treating him like the Maharashi. The breakdown at 3:00 minutes is bed-wetting good, and the fact that the song can get any heavier at 3:50 than it was at 3:30 makes me wonder how i ever learned to read.
Just think of the context we're dealing with here, with the 1990's as a decade in general. Rage Against the Machine playing in the same era as The Backstreet Boys is sort of like imagining Tiger Woods playing an 18-hole deathmatch against someone like Jon Lovitz. What i mean is, you know who comes out on top. Subway would find a new spokesman. To my credit, i do actually recall asking my dad if i could go see RATM at their protest concert outside the Democratic National Convention in LA in 2000. Why my father would prevent a 16 year old boy from his certain first hint of enlightenment (and probably arrest) at a massive firetorch rally in downtown Los Angeles is totally beyond me, and a conflict that likely threatens to plague our relationship until an unnecessarily large Christmas present is bestowed upon me.
Rage Against The Machine No Shelter Music via Noolmusic.com
If you wanted to break it down scientifically, you could analyze this song's current relevance primarily as a result of its restraint from soon-to-be-dated technology that sounds terrible 15 years after its recording, (see: all 80's music) but mostly i hand it to the bass work of timmy-c and the most confusing, angry-nonetheless-presumably-intelligent rapper ever. I wont even touch on Tom Morello, since i already spent the 90's treating him like the Maharashi. The breakdown at 3:00 minutes is bed-wetting good, and the fact that the song can get any heavier at 3:50 than it was at 3:30 makes me wonder how i ever learned to read.
Just think of the context we're dealing with here, with the 1990's as a decade in general. Rage Against the Machine playing in the same era as The Backstreet Boys is sort of like imagining Tiger Woods playing an 18-hole deathmatch against someone like Jon Lovitz. What i mean is, you know who comes out on top. Subway would find a new spokesman. To my credit, i do actually recall asking my dad if i could go see RATM at their protest concert outside the Democratic National Convention in LA in 2000. Why my father would prevent a 16 year old boy from his certain first hint of enlightenment (and probably arrest) at a massive firetorch rally in downtown Los Angeles is totally beyond me, and a conflict that likely threatens to plague our relationship until an unnecessarily large Christmas present is bestowed upon me.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
Tim Curry vs. Tiny Flesh Eating Mutant Apes
Michael Crichton's recent passing saddens the literary and film worlds, but he has a special significance to me, as i just realized his books were the first i ever read and then immediately saw adapted to the big screen. I read Congo sometime around 1994, when i was listening to a lot of Coolio and feeling confused about life in general. I found a paperback copy of Congo in my grandmother's library, though in retrospect it seems unlikely she was responsible for putting it there. I read it cover to cover, and though i can't remember being particularly horrified in the reading process, i was big time into it.
A few months later, i coerced another kid's parents into taking us to see the movie, despite the fact that we were 11. There, i witnessed Tim Curry being eaten alive by miniature ravenous apes, who fell into an erupting volcano of molten lava. This, as i recall, was as traumatizing an experience as the time i saw Stargate with the same exact friend, and he fell asleep about ten minutes in, leaving me with Kurt Russell for a babysitter. This was my first experience of disappointment with film adaptation, and astonishment that a director had the power to interpret a book differently for a film. How dare they?
I immediately moved on to Jurassic Park, which, with one exception, did NOT disappoint in its film adaptation. Jeff Goldblum was the difference. He alone made up for the fact that the old guy/owner of the island escapes clean on the helicopter at the end, to wistfully look out the window and lament something like "god, what have i done?" In the book, that guy is eaten alive by about a hundred tiny, ravenous green dinosaurs. Not until 2008 would i piece together this tradition of Crichton's, having his characters meet a very chewy end, by a pack of overtly small, carnivorous animals. Oh well.
Then, if i remember correctly, i tried to read Sphere. On that one, i got about 40 pages in, and gave up. I think i saw the first half of that movie too, with Samuel L. Jackson and Queen Latifah. Things kind of went downhill around this point for my Crichton fanclub membership. Something about puberty really wrecked that whole author for me.
A few months later, i coerced another kid's parents into taking us to see the movie, despite the fact that we were 11. There, i witnessed Tim Curry being eaten alive by miniature ravenous apes, who fell into an erupting volcano of molten lava. This, as i recall, was as traumatizing an experience as the time i saw Stargate with the same exact friend, and he fell asleep about ten minutes in, leaving me with Kurt Russell for a babysitter. This was my first experience of disappointment with film adaptation, and astonishment that a director had the power to interpret a book differently for a film. How dare they?
I immediately moved on to Jurassic Park, which, with one exception, did NOT disappoint in its film adaptation. Jeff Goldblum was the difference. He alone made up for the fact that the old guy/owner of the island escapes clean on the helicopter at the end, to wistfully look out the window and lament something like "god, what have i done?" In the book, that guy is eaten alive by about a hundred tiny, ravenous green dinosaurs. Not until 2008 would i piece together this tradition of Crichton's, having his characters meet a very chewy end, by a pack of overtly small, carnivorous animals. Oh well.
Then, if i remember correctly, i tried to read Sphere. On that one, i got about 40 pages in, and gave up. I think i saw the first half of that movie too, with Samuel L. Jackson and Queen Latifah. Things kind of went downhill around this point for my Crichton fanclub membership. Something about puberty really wrecked that whole author for me.
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