Thrift Store Wisdom

Quit a job, start a job, realize that being homeless is the closest one can get to the bohemian lifestyle in this modern age. Then among the mounds of crap at Value Village that just begs me to recite part of an 'Austin Stories' episode I find something amazing.

Tough to guess but it's a framed copy of the Consititution. It doesn't matter what I'm going to do with it right now because it's going to become part of some elaborate joke that may take years to reach the punchline but for the moment it's going to hang on my wall and allow me to play the patriot card. After all nothing stops an argument like asking, 'Why do you hate America?'

Unless the conversation is about America.

And the other person does in fact hate it.

I also found two lamps I plan on combining into one lamp. Then eventually taking that lamp apart, using the pieces and creating some kind of bizarre hybrid lamp that doesn't really serve much of a purpose but is kind of cool in it's own right. For the moment I'm going to have to settle on one kind of strange lamp.

Why is it the only good song about quitting a job is 'Take This Job and Shove It'? It's a good song and it works well in nearly all job leaving circumstances. Even if I can hardly think about that song without reliving one experience singining it, with a group of folks, after having a bit too much to drink. Still when leaving under fairly good terms from a job that wasn't the worst around it's tough to sing that. Think it sure because right now noone controls my mind, or so I think, but it doesn't exactly work.

And does it mean you're a cheap bastard or a good shopper when the cashier compliments your purchases for saving so much money?

Oh well as the song goes, 'It was a new day yesterday but it's an old day now.'

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Now playing: Tubular Bells, Part 1 - Mike Oldfield
via FoxyTunes

Saturday Midnight in the early 90s

Back then there were horror or atleast slightly suspensful shows on. 'Twilight Zone', 'Tales from the Darkside', 'Monsters', and on really late the black and white 'Outer Limits'. Most of the independant stations in Long Beach played some of these and it often meant bouncing between 13, 9, and 5 to catch which ones were on at the right time and once in a while you'd be treated to a movie like 'Dolls', 'Return of the Living Dead'or 'Silver Bullet'.

And then there was 'Dracula: the Series'. A precusor to 'Buffy' that played more on the camp side and for a long time I wasn't sure really existed. I think it would be shown twice. Once in the morning and once at around midnight. I caught more of the midnight one than the morning trying to distance myself a bit from the cartoons of my youth or what have you. It was the first time I had a show that was basically mine. It was like a secret that was shared only between me, my siblings and a couple of friend. But all of a sudden it disappeared.

Since all of this was well before the height of the internet and back then only a select group of people would exchange information and the possibility of putting a whole episode of something into cyberspace seemed impossible I'd have to wait. And start to doubt that the show existed. Because there have been a few times I'm not a 100% sure if something happened or if I just imagined it.

But now I own it and dispite there being a few times where I wonder why I have such loyalty to this show it's not as bad as what happened when I revisited some things from that age. If I can meet the child I was that thought 'Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves' was a good movie I'd like to kick his ass. I'm sure people would pull me off him eventually but he'll understand later.

But I've learned I can't trust what I use to think was good.

Monsters of Monologues

Have you ever stopped to think about Eric Bogosian?
After seeing him on 'Law and Order: Criminal Intent' and then buying 'Talk Radio' I have. It all harkens back to an SNL skit which had Bogosian going against Spalding Gray in a fight as the Monsters of Monologues. I recall lauging at this and having to explain it to people around me and then them still not getting it.

Kind of like the Mamet joke at the end of the Simpson's were Lisa tries to be a dancer.
But I digress.
Perhaps the reason I think about him is because of the titles of his plays, "Drinking in America" which I was almost in during High school but the school refused to let us do it and I doubt we'd have gotten the rights. "Pounding Nails in the Floor with my Forehead" I believe that was another set of monologues but I recall finding it in the New Library at NMSU (when it was the New Library) and thinking that that was how I felt. That ultimate frustration that can come from dealing with the modern university system.
But what student doesn't feel that often?
I guess that's what Bogosian's writing was to me. A mix of things I felt that I knew and things that were related but often only slightly like 'SubUrbia'. So to see him on a USA line up acting opposite Private Pyle seems so very odd. I half expect to find other meta connection with that show cropping up for no reason.
But not being the big fan of L&O CI, as the kids call it, I doubt I'll ever see it. Instead I'll stick with SVU because it's got Ice T and Richard Belzer. Even if I can't see Christopher Meloni without thinking of the police convention check in scene in 'Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas'.

*Added Sunday December 02, 2007*

Turns out that Alia has also joined the cast of L&O CI.
The original Alia from Lynch's 'Dune' not the Sci Fi mini series.
Now that's Meta.