we just won't be defeated

at the movies

I'm nearing the end of a glorious four-day weekend during which I've had - to be completely honest - not a lot to do.  I got out yesterday afternoon for a picnic with CarrieNation and Emma and a few other lovely ladies, but other than that I've mostly spent my time watching movies.  Specifically, I've been watching movies from my 100 Favorite Movies list.  It's been a pretty good holiday.

Whenever I start to get down about my job, I remind myself that there's literally nothing I can think of that I would rather do to make a living.  The only career that even comes close (and it's still a distant second) is movie critic.  So at the risk of having more failure fodder for my next milestone post, I'm announcing another little creative writing project: I'm going to re-watch and write a review for every movie on my list.  I'm not setting any time frame for completing this project, but you can expect me to finally get to Zodiac at some point, oh... in the next couple of weeks.  I'm gonna start with that one.

i can't believe i did it again

Last year, I almost missed my nephew's birthday.  I resolved that I was not going to repeat that mistake, so I have been double-checking my archives for at least six weeks now.  The end of May always seemed so far off, though.  So somehow - despite my best intentions and my earlier vigilance - I let the date sneak up on me.  And, once again, if it wasn't for my sister's Facebook status, this day would have slipped by unnoticed.  I'm sorry, Steve.  Next year I'll get it right; the third time is the charm.  'Til then, here's wishing you another happy birthday!

Steve

welcome to the working week

 
Oh I know it don't thrill you/I hope it don't kill you.

Actually, things haven't been too bad down at the lab lately.  And the outlook for the immediate future is positively rosy.  Today is my Friday, and I'm looking at glorious four-day staycation.  Then I'm off to Lake Tahoe.  And then I'm off to the Outer Banks.  Including the week that just ended, my next month is looking like this: Four-day week.  Three-day week.  Four-day week.  Two-day week.  Things sure are gonna be rough once June 21 rolls around and I have to work five whole days in a row.  The horror... the horror...

isn't it almost june?

I know better than to pay attention to the weather more than a week out.  But I leave for Lake Tahoe in eight days, and I sure would feel a lot better about the idea of spending a day on my bike if the current forecast didn't look like this:

Tahoe weather forecast

M is for "miserable failure"

This is our thousandth post here at hotrod.vox.com.  We could have spent the past almost four years doing something productive like meeting girls and dating.  Instead, we've been doing, well, this.  We'd been wondering for a while how best to celebrate this milestone.  (To say nothing of whether it's worth celebrating at all.)  Given our conflicted emotions over the value of this colossal waste of time, we decided recently that the best way of commemorating the occasion is with a list of our greatest failures over the years: posts that were never written, (good?) ideas that were abandoned, arguments that were.... not lost, exactly, but won unconvincingly.

And so it's perhaps appropriate that this list of our many shortcomings is yet another post that will never see the light of day.  It's been a week since we last updated, and we've been reluctant to write anything else until this one is behind us.  So we've been stalling, which ends now.  We're gonna punt instead.  It's not lazy, it's meta.  And a little bit lazy.  How we ever generated a thousand posts is beyond our comprehension.

collect them all!

I've never really thought before about what my favorite songs are once you get past the top five or ten.  So I didn't have any major crises of conscience (read: Coldplay) when it came to expanding that list to the Hotrod Top 100.*

ABBA - Waterloo/AC/DC - You Shook Me All Night Long/Arcade Fire - Neighborhood #1 (Tunnels)/The Beach Boys - Don't Worry Baby/The Beach Boys - Sloop John B/The Beatles - She Loves You/The Beatles - Ticket to Ride/Beulah - Night Is the Day Turned Inside Out/Big Star - September Gurls/Big Star - Thirteen/Billy Bragg - Waiting for the Great Leap Forwards/Billy Bragg & Wilco - California Stars/Bon Jovi - Wanted Dead or Alive/Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - I See A Darkness/Bonnie Tyler - Total Eclipse of the Heart/Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band - Brilliant Disguise/Bruce Springsteen & the E Street Band - Thunder Road/Bryan Adams - Summer of '69/Buddy Holly and the Crickets - Everyday/Built to Spill - Car/The Clash - I Fought the Law/The Clash - Rudie Can't Fail/The Clash - (White Man) In Hammersmith Palais/Creedence Clearwater Revival - Lodi/The Cure - Close to Me/Dar Williams - Highway Patrolman/David Bowie - "Heroes"/David Bowie - Space Oddity/David Bowie - Suffragette City/Def Leppard - Photograph/Del Shannon - Runaway/Derek and the Dominos - Bell Bottom Blues/Dexy's Midnight Runners - Come On Eileen/Don Henley - The Boys of Summer/Dusty Springfield - Son of a Preacher Man/Elton John - Mona Lisas and Mad Hatters/Elvis Costello and the Attractions - High Fidelity/Elvis Costello and the Attractions - No Action/Elvis Presley - Suspicious Minds/Everclear - Wonderful/Flaming Lips - Bad Days/Fleetwood Mac - Second Hand News/The Grifters - Holmes/Guns N' Roses - Rocket Queen/Guns N' Roses - Sweet Child o' Mine/The J. Geils Band - Centerfold/The Jackson 5 - I Want You Back/Jackson Browne - Somebody's Baby/The Jayhawks - Blue/Johnny Cash - Wreck of the Old 97/Johnny Cash - Sunday Morning Coming Down/Journey - Don't Stop Believin'/Kelly Clarkson - Since U Been Gone/The Kinks - The Village Green Preservation Society/Led Zeppelin - When the Levee Breaks/Liz Phair - Divorce Song/Lyle Lovett - The Girl in the Corner/Lynyrd Skynyrd - Free Bird/Madonna - True Blue/Matthew Sweet - Sick of Myself/Maurice Williams and the Zodiacs - Stay/Michael Jackson - Billie Jean/Neko Case - I Wish I Was the Moon/Neko Case - That Teenage Feeling/Neutral Milk Hotel - Holland, 1945/Night Ranger - Sister Christian/The Old 97's - Big Brown Eyes/The Old 97's - Designs on You/The Old 97's - If My Heart Was a Car/Outkast - Hey Ya!/Palace Music - Ohio River Boat Song/Pavement - Range Life/Peter, Paul, and Mary - Stewball/The Pixies - Here Comes Your Man/Prince - Little Red Corvette/Prince - Purple Rain/Queen - Fat Bottomed Girls/Radiohead - Creep/The Replacements - Achin' to Be/The Rolling Stones - Let it Bleed/The Rolling Stones - Tumbling Dice/The Ronettes - Be My Baby/Roy Orbison - In Dreams/Sam Cooke - (What a) Wonderful World/Sinéad O'Connor - Nothing Compares 2 U/Slint - Good Morning, Captain/Smokey Robinson and the Miracles - The Tracks of My Tears/The Temptations - Just My Imagination (Running Away With Me)/Tom Petty and the Heatbreakers - American Girl/Tom Waits - Jockey Full of Bourbon/The Traveling Wilburys - Handle With Care/Uncle Tupelo - Gun/Van Halen - Ice Cream Man/Van Halen - Jump/The Velvet Underground - Sunday Morning/Warren Zevon - Werewolves of London/The White Stripes - The Hardest Button to Button/Wilco - Box Full of Letters/Willie Nelson - Sad Songs and Waltzes/The Wrens - She Sends Kisses/The Yeah Yeah Yeahs - Maps

* There are 101 songs, but that's because I like to include the 'Honorable Mention' on the lists I make.

all about astrid

A few thoughts about my expensive and totally indulgent new toy that arrived in the mail a few days ago:

• I don't think I have fell so swiftly in love with a gadget since I bought my Zune, Ajax, back in 2008.
• People complain about the cost of Blackberry products a lot, claiming they are overpriced for the power, only hipsters buy them to improve their images, blah, blah, blah. I stand by my claim that those same people have never really used a Blackberry.
• The design is ingenious and thorough. It's like they thought of everything. Every minute I spend on my Blackberry is a treat.
• I refuse to call it a "Crackberry."  Though I am as addicted to it as I am to crack.
• The Blackberry experience has blown me away.
• I unboxed Astrid, plugged her into Horatio and within, oh, three minutes, she was up and running and receiving calls.
• I am happy to report it was quite possibly the easiest thing ever.
• Holy shit. I'm not even exaggerating. It was just that easy.
• Never before has using a cell phone been such a pleasurable experience. So much so, I am resolved to spend more time talking on the phone.  And texting.  And emailing from my phone.
• My favorite thing is the little message it adds to my emails.  "Sent from my Verizon Blackberry."  That lets everyone know I have a Blackberry.
• It's tough thinking of things to write about my phone, because after all it's just a phone and who the fuck cares?
  

video vault

See, this is what I was talking about.

One book you won't find on my horrific shelf is A Supposedly Fun Thing I'll Never Do Again.  That's because I'm currently reading it.  Its current home is inside my backpack.  Yesterday on the way home from work, I finished the essay about David Lynch.  Since the bulk of the essay was written (or at least a literary device was employed to suggest that it was written) from the set of Lost Highway, and since I have never seen Lost Highway, I decided before starting the next piece about professional tennis that I wanted to watch Lost Highway last night.  Except I couldn't.  I don't own a copy of that particular film and a quick survey of the evening's television listings confirmed that it was showing on exactly none of the hundred or so channels I receive.  If only there was someplace I could go and give somebody a few dollars to borrow a DVD - or even a videotape.

You might be thinking about now that this is going to turn into another rant about how Netflix is evil and ruining society as we know it.  And those things are certainly true.  But that's not what this is about.  Sure, Netflix killed a once-thriving independent business - the cornerstone of our fragile economy - that happened to be a block from my home and was a temple to the art of film.  And sure, Netflix' CEO has publicly stated that destroying such independent shrines as the one that I visited several times weekly was his corporation's primary raison d'être.  But I'm not bitter.  On the contrary, I'm filled with a sort of.... shameful joy.  I realized yesterday that Netflix is doomed.

I didn't know when I left home yesterday morning that I was going to want to watch Lost Highway last night.  And I sure didn't know it three weeks ago when setting some arbitrary "queue."  Hell, three weeks ago I didn't even know I was going to be reading a collection of essays that included one about David Lynch.  (I know it's willfully obtuse to state that I wanted to watch Lost Highway last night because I went to see an exhibit on parking structures at the National Building Museum last month, but I'm okay with that and I'm not going to elaborate.)  This is a problem that Netflix can never solve, and it's why the company will ultimately fail.  Netflix decides what its subscribers will watch and when.  Oh sure, there's a queue, but that queue can never be updated to accommodate real-time decisions.  The Netflix subscriber surrenders personal choice - surrenders freedom - for a mere ten dollars a month and no late fees.  I have faith that one day more people than not will come to the realization that they're selling their liberty for cheap.  On that day we shall finally throw off the shackles of our tyrannic oppressor.  I can't wait.

In the meantime I'll be watching Blue Velvet again.  I own that one.  On VHS. 

bookshelf boogaloo

A few Voxers spent their Sunday cleaning, purging, and reorganizing their bookshelves.  That seemed like a lot of work, so I didn't bother.  Also, I obviously didn't need to.

what mess?

I dunno, Homebody.  I'm not sure this photo is any better than the one it replaced.

hog hootenanny

 
And then, after my ride, I feasted.

 

from the rooter to the tooter

I had been waffling on whether or not I was going to attend the pig roast.  Matyas - of KttD fame - had invited several of my friends and me up to the hinterlands of northern Maryland to dig on some swine.  It sure sounded like a good time, but my concern was that she lives way out in the sticks.  And I was already planning to spend the day in different sticks, wearing myself out.  The pig roast would make for a very long day.  Ultimately, however, Matyas and Emma Peel wore me down.  (The promise of delectable pig meat didn't hurt either.)  And so I headed home as soon as I finished riding, took a quick shower, and hopped on the Metro to meet up with Emma, our friend Megan, and Emma's friend Andy who was in from out of town.
 
The evening was windy and unseasonably cold, so for some people that might have been the most memorable aspect of the occasion.  Others might focus on the pig on the spit and the chickens on the smoker and the seventeen types of desserts and describe the event as delicious.  And others still might reflect upon the lonely middle-aged man serenading the unattended children in the gazebo with unfortunate Indigo Girls covers and classify the gathering as creepy.  But for my money, the hootenanny was positively Dickensian.  Allow me to explain.
 
I was invited to the pig roast by Matyas, with whom I went to college.  She invited my friends because after three years of attendance at Karaoke to the Death she had become friendly with them on her own terms.  Last weekend, while out on the town, Emma met Matyas' younger sister, who I always forget lives in DC.  That would be strange enough, but it turns out that Emma and Matyas the younger attended Ohio University at the same time and knew some of the same people.  But wait, there's more: Andy - Emma's friend from out of town, who used to live in DC - turns out to be old friends with Paxton, who is the younger Matyas' long-time boyfriend.  And Paxton - who is from Cleveland (which I didn't know until this past weekend) - is also friends with Megan's brother.  (I guess they were once at the same bachelor party, which was apparently a very funny story that I never did hear thanks to Megan.)  And to top things off, a fellow guest of Paxton's lived at the same time as me in the orphanage from which I was eventually adopted and he found out after I left that his biological father was the scoundrel who taught me way back when to pick pockets (which was the only way I managed to stay alive on the mean streets of Toledo, Ohio), and that the haughty ingenue in my adopted family with whom I fell madly and inappropriately in love was, in fact, his sister.
 
It's a small world.