- Turn it off after Weekend Update.
- No hammer.
- Avoid movies with colons in their titles.
But most importantly,
- NEVER READ THE COMMENTS.
Month: March 2010
Kara took about eighteen pictures of Lou Ferrigno at Emerald City this year because she was fascinated (not in a good way) with his biceps. I urged her to stop, having heard tales of Ferrigno’s anger at people who took his picture without paying–it is his only job, after all–but honestly, I think now I see what she was saying.
Credit for that picture to Josh Trujillo; you should click through to check out the gallery, which has cute kids in costumes.
The Fairy Scientist
Remember me talking about how Kara’s dad made a documentary? Now he’s produced a short film for a competition on skepticism and science, featuring her adorable fast-talking niece Lydia in a quest to verify the existence of fairies. Unlike Andrus, this one you can watch right now as part of a proven and effective way of avoiding your work. Go do that!
SO THERE
I love Nathan Rabin. I’m just going to quote this whole thing, from his ongoing retrospective on the endless NOW THAT’S WHAT I CALL MUSIC series of chart-topper compilations:
Like The New Radicals, Semisonic will forever be tarnished with the one-hit-wonder tag. That’s a shame, because it was a fantastic power-pop group, a trio of eggheads with a gift for monster hooks, passionate vocals, and sincerity that never lapsed into sentimentality. Their 1996 album debut Great Divide is a minor power-pop masterpiece, but the trio’s follow-up birthed “Closing Time,” the group’s unlikely contribution to the NOW pantheon.
At a time when much of what passed for alternative music was steeped in rage, angst, and sneering irony, Semisonic frontman Dan Wilson was refreshingly willing to be romantic and sincere. He wrote great love songs like “Secret Smile” and “Singing In My Sleep,” and songs that weren’t what they appeared to be, like “Closing Time.”
On the surface, the song finds the romance in barflies scrambling for a closing-time hookup, but according to So You Wanna Be A Rock & Roll Star, the likeable memoir of Semisonic drummer Jacob Slichter, it was written about the birth of Wilson’s first child. The song’s key line is purloined from the Roman philosopher Seneca, who originally wrote, “Every new beginning comes from some other beginning’s end.” It’s a line with multiple meanings; there’s the end of life in the womb and the beginning of life outside, but also a father and mother forsaking the pleasures of youth for the responsibilities of parenthood.
Dear everyone who has mocked my Semisonic completism: YEAH, FUCKERS.