True Love

Kevin's first act upon picking me up at the airport after a long weekend in Vancouver? A kiss? A hug? An "it's great to see you?"

No.

Handing me Arrested Development, Season 3.

Let's get this boy a medal.

Required Reading #1: Absurdistan

There are all of these terrible people in the world who will insist that you ought to read John Kennedy Toole's A Confederacy of Dunces. To get you to take the bait, they'll use all of the right words - "cult favorite," "biting social commentary," and "wickedly hilarious." And, if you're particularly weak, or if the pusher is particularly malevolent, you find yourself knee-deep in the midst of this vile, vile tome.

I propose that Gary Shteyngart's Absurdistan is exactly what those Confederacy of Dunces admirers hoped their book would be. A few examples:

- it features a hygenically-challenged and obese protagonist in Misha "Snack Daddy" Vainberg;
- it critiques modern intelligentsia by exposing the role of Accidental College and its Multicultural Affairs major and its motto "Do you think one person can save the world? So do we!"
- and, most damningly, it combines the role of the media, petroleum, war, and the American firm "Golly Burton."

But mostly, it's just really hilarious. How can you lose with lines like "Along the way, we took turns hitting the driver with birch twigs, ostensibly to improve his circulation, but in reality because it is impossible to end an evening in Russia without assaulting someone" (Shteyngart 2006 : 76)?

Also, and not to be petty about it, but doesn't the author kind of look exactly how a brooding Russian author ought?

California, through Kevin's eyes

Now, experience California through state-of-the-art Kevin-o-Vision.

"Do you think you'll ever get to know people here? They're nice, but they're different."
While walking down Castro Street to get some gelato.

"It's 3 p.m., and Monday Night Football's in double overtime!!"
While - duh- watching MNF.

"This guy's our governor."
While watching True Lies on soul-sucking digital cable.

"This place is weird. How many Quiznos have you seen?"
While driving down El Camino.

Pearls Before Swine

Oh, my word. Has anyone been reading Pearls Before Swine this week? (Correct answer: yes. Incorrect answer: What's PBS.)

So, the comic crossover has been done very well by PBS in the past, most notably when the kids from Baby Blues killed the kid from Zits. But here, Pastis has taken his gift to a new art form.

Start with Sunday:
http://www.comics.com/comics/pearls/archive/pearls-20060813.html

What I like is that there's really no surprises here, if you think about it.

I've made a huge mistake

Season 3 of Arrested Development will be released just in time for my birthday. Just a heads up.

the soundtrack to my life is so lame

Please believe me when I say that for the past three or four years I've had Prokofiev's Peter and the Wolf stuck in my head. It definitely started shortly after I started grad school, and it continues to this day. And how it continues...

I mostly blame The Simpsons for this, as Peter and the Wolf frequently is used as a background music. I know this as I watched seasons 4, 6, 7, and most of 3 while unpacking boxes and before our cable was installed. (1) Every time that stupid Peter string section starts up, it's like taking another hit.

However, things definitely took a turn for the worse when my Peter infection hit Kevin. There's just no escaping it. It's like a third grade music appreciation class up in here.

Joining Peter and the Wolf in its constant brain airtime is the Broken Social Scene's KC Accidental. Not the whole song - just the instrumental beginning, which I sing, a lot, out loud. A lot. Badly.

What I really want to know is why these two songs have remained stuck in my head more or less permanently for these past years. I suppose I can engage in some ad hoc theorizing about the BSS - I listened to the record pretty heavily for a while. But, I've certainly listened to other albums much more (and more recently) without the same effect. (2) And I can't say I've really intentionally listened to Peter and the Wolf since puberty. So, it remains a mystery.

Joining this duo is a recent entry, but I'll make a prediction that it will be here for at least as long as I'm living in California: The Rosebud's El Camino. Once it became wedged in my head after a show; now it's on heavy rotation due to our proximity to El Camino Real, a main drag in these parts. Every time I'm getting directions and El Camino comes up, my cerebellum cues up the keyboards and those inane lyrics. "Fighting crime and saving lives," indeed.

(1) After watching these seasons, as well as a goodly portion of the acclaimed fifth season while homeless, I am perfectly confident in my assertion that the fourth season is, by far, the very best. I am preparing a formal treatise on the topic to be posted shortly.

(2) I have to believe that it would be pretty cool to have Joanna Newsom on mental repeat. That's the kind of thing that could finally push me over the mental-stability edge.

T-26 Days

In all of the moving-ness, I've forgotten to trumpet my upcoming birthday.

I've grown increasingly fascinated with my birthday as the years have progressed, and the authoritarian deathgrip it affords on those I love. I suspect that every would-be dictator begins on this same slippery slope - first I demand a day, then a week, then (heaven help us all) a month.

Truly, though, my birthday is amazing. My mother was in labor on Labor Day. Come on!

So, please be prepared. I'm not certain what form my tyrannical reign will take this year, but I'm hoping it will involve cratorious lakes or ipods.

Technical Difficulties

For a harrowing week, I thought that I'd not only mysteriously broken our digital camera, but also our desktop computer. This would make so much sense since I tend to ruin all of the nice things I ever buy or am given.

Thankfully, the desktop wasn't irreparably broken. I confirmed this after a long but painless call to Dell. At one point, during the various turnings-on and turnings-off of the computer and checking of lights which finally lit, the customer service representative said, "thank God." Thank God, indeed.

A word about this desktop: it's the Toronto-era Vince Carter of the electronic age. It's often injured (a bad hard drive, a bad motherboard, cranky drivers) and often decides that it just won't work. It might be very prissy, too. I suspect that the computer actually just hates me - it hates that I use it to do all of this grunt work (like spreadsheets and word processing and web-based emails) rather than to do the fancy programming it yearns to do.

Following the analogy, my laptop computer must be channeling Iverson. It has endured so much: being spilled on, being dropped (repeatedly), being stepped on, missing keys, a defective USB port, a screen that wigs to pink with just a harsh look, and a defective keyboard. Yet, the laptop lives on, defying all expectations. It might be my most reliable piece of electronics, but - like the Sixers - you'd better believe I'd trade it in a heartbeat for a younger, fancier, and unproven model.

Particularly if that model bears a cute little Apple logo.

Here's my new secret job fantasy: I'd like to work at Apple. (Cue fantasy music, possibly something from the Rushmore soundtrack.) The commute would be very easy - I might even be able to ride my bike. I wouldn't really have to do anything at this job. Perhaps I'll just bake cookies and tasty pastries for the campus cafeteria. But my cookies would be so tasty that Steve Jobs himself will fill the trunk of my car with all sorts of well-designed Apple merchandise. Sigh.

Until then, I'll resign myself to sampling all the flavors of digital cable and sunning myself at the pool while reading the new Jasper Fforde. This is the perfect recipe for living in a summer-vacation-coming-to-an-end denial.

But, it is true - we're settled in, mostly, and we're trying to figure out this weird place.

In a particularly bizarre twist of fate, we just discovered that we live less than a mile from the military/NASA installation where my father worked for several months while I was in high school. This is the same NASA base where I'm going to try to pass myself off as 12 and go to Space Camp, an idea I'm certain my father himself must have considered, given that it's Space Camp. I'll let you know how that scheme goes.