Category: Pop Culture

Weekend wisdom

Biggest discoveries of the weekend so far:

  • Sugar water with a couple of drops of dish soap really does work when you’re trying to kill gnats. You put it in a little dish, the sugar attracts them, and the soap keepe them from being able to get out.
  • The Dark Shadows movie was every bit as wretched as I thought it would be, which is why I waited until I could see it for free. It was still overpriced.
  • I make a pretty damned good meatloaf. Just sayin’.
  • I need to get rid of lots more stuff at both houses. Fortunately, I’m feeling really motivated right now.

There are eight million stories

My new obsession this week is Naked City. I’ve been recording it off MeTV and now I have this (probably ill-advised) urge to buy the complete series on DVD in November.

It’s no big secret that I’m a sucker for old cop shows, specifically the ones that were shot on location in interesting urban areas, like The Streets of San Francisco (probably the best of the genre), Adam-12, Homicide, Cagney and Lacey, etc. Aside from being entertaining of their own accord, I love that they provide such a time capsule of what these cities really looked like at a specific time in the past, with diners and neon signs and dumpy furniture stores…and not an artisinal cronut stand in sight. It also helps that Naked City seems pretty consistent in its geographical accuracy; when they say they’re at Second Avenue and East Fourth Street, they really are. It’s always kind of a crap shoot on other shows.

Naked City is especially interesting, though, because it aired a good ten years earlier than most of my favorites and during a time when filimg on location was really unusual for a weekly TV series. It also has a sophistication that was lacking in most dramatic series of the time (it shared a creator with Route 66). All of this is making me wonder if it might actually be worth owning. I know you’ll be on the edge of your seats till November so I’ll let you know my decision as soon as possible.

Working for the weekend

Random thoughts on Canada, my new old neighborhood, food, etc.:

  • CanCon: The only reason any radio station still plays Loverboy.
  • The City of Vancouver Archives never disappoints me.
  • I’m warming to my newly rediscovered childhood neighborhood. It’s still not my dream ‘hood and I really hate the giant yard BUT I find that I actually have more useful stuff within easy walking distance here than I did in Winston-Salem–or maybe even South of Market, for that matter. I can walk to several decent restaurants and a supermarket (even if it is just an Aldi), and dropping my car off for its annual checkup this morning was dreamy. There’s hope, I suppose. And contractors next week…
  • Happy occurrence of the week: Buying jeans of a size that I haven’t purchased in fifteen years.
  • In case you were wondering, there is at least one German restaurant in the world that doesn’t sell beer and this is it. And yes, my friends and I were also amused by the idea of a German and Italian restaurant. Adding a few Japanese dishes would probably get it firebombed by Asheboro’s remaining WWII vets.
  • Cool thing of the week: This, via here.
  • Taking a four-day weekend next week. Destination suggestions? Anybody out there?

1984 and other thoughts for a Monday afternoon

I was working on a really long and repetitive metadata project so I was pretty much under the headphones listening to music all day. It would be an understatement to say that the iTunes shuffle was very 1984-centric. I mean unrelentingly 1984, including obscure stuff that never seems to pop up otherwise. It’s like there was some sort of conspiracy to make sure I left work completely and thoroughly depressed…and no matter how often I re-shuffled, it just kept coming and coming. Right now, I’m getting “Cold Kid” by Glass Moon, which came immediately on the heels of “One Small Day” by Ultravox. Seriously. All day long it’s been music from the year that was–until 2011, at least–the gold standard of miserable, depressing years for me. I should be ready to stick my head in the oven by now.

But I’m not. Which is rather a nice feeling.

That said, I don’t think I’ll be opting for First Wave on the way home tonight. Not that I ever do anyway. Interestingly enough, I can barely stand to listen to early 1980s alt-pop these days…unless it’s in French. I had a conversation about this with a friend (one with whom I spent much of the 1980s) the other night. In retrospect, the 1990s were much more suited to my personality than the 1980s were and I liked them much better; the music was better, the boys were cuter, and I got laid a lot more. Further, I’m actually sort of off the whole “living in the past musically” thing of late anyway. Unless it’s the really long past…like before I was born…

Anyway, I’m off to DC next weekend. If anyone else will be there as well, I’m up for dinner at my new favorite Lebanese place in Alexandria. Or at the Roy Rogers of your choice.

With that, I’ll say “Happy Canada Day’ and be on my way home.

Randomly Thursday night

Stuff:

End of stuff.

Randomly Friday afternoon

Thoughts before shutting down work, visiting Mom, and driving over to my weekend house in Winston-Salem:

  • A neighborhood where $1600/sq ft is a housing bargain is probably not one where I want to live. That’s irrelevant, of course, because I couldn’t afford to live there even if I wanted to (link via Dan).
  • I’ve loved this song (and its siblings, “I Know a Place” and “Don’t Sleep in the Subway”) since I was a wee tyke. As I grew older, they also represented an urbanity that somehow got lost during the late 1960s and 1970s but was something I really wished I had lived through. It’s interesting to read the back story and even more interesting that I chance upon the link via an urban issues site I frequent rather than via one about music. Obviously I wasn’t the only one who recognized Pet’s whole urban vibe thing.
  • On suburban blight, an issue I’ve been intrigued by in recent years, especially since watching it firsthand in East Charlotte when I lived there briefly in 2005-2006. Atlanta has more than its share as well. The big issue, as the author points out, is that discarded suburban strips are less likely to attract the sort of homos, hipsters, and homesteaders that have rehabbed other types of down and out neighborhoods, just because the built environment is so much less flexible.

Next week is beyond hectic for me. Don’t expect much in the way of updates. Not that it matters that much, I guess (David said, kicking a tumbleweed out of his way…)