Honest, Eminent, Keen Rants
Just an update to all you bleary-eyed troopers who likely didn’t get an ounce of sleep last night, worrying over the state of my son’s ear.
Sleep well, tonight!! He went to see the specialist (one of three on the Island) in Summerside, who inspected him aurally, and then told him orally that it’d most likely heal itself, hourly, and in about 4 weeks. In the meantime, no water is to enter the ear, so earplugs were purchased.
Yes, friends, earplugs were purchased.
Hey, all you cool and hip person who reads this site – I’m curious as to whether you actually visit this Typepad site (with its red and black and white and picture of me to the left etc) to read all the wonderfully funny and interesting, and, yes, poignant, things I write, or do you merely read the words from some sort of rss feed service and not get to experience the beauty and wonder of my online home?
If you could let me know by posting your answer in the comments to this post, I’d, like, really appreciate it.
I just realised that my CAAIQ (Caring About American Idol Quotient) is inversely proportionate to the number of contestants still involved in the show. Don’t get me wrong, I’m still interested. I still watch. But, as the numbers dwindle (there are, for only a few more hours, still five contestants left), my apathy as to who wins increases. Of course, at the beginning of each season, I still don’t care who wins, but I do have to admit that my CAAIQ is at least two points higher (with a 3.4 +/- accuracy rating).
Each week, it seems, it dawns on me with more clarity just how unlikely it’d be that I’d ever buy (or even illegally download) an album from any of these people. None of the remaining contestants, I don’t think, would produce music that would come close to my tastes in music. That goes for every contestant whoever appeared.
So, with little care in my heart, here I go with my somewhat-weekly diagnosis of the week’s performances and my choice of odds-on favourites to leave the competition.
Two songs each, last night. Sometimes I think to myself, I should grab a pen and pencil (or get a laptop) and write down song choices, and thoughts as they came to me while I watched. But that would seem too much like work, so no thanks. I’ll do that when somebody approaches me with money to write these worthless weekly wrapups. That is to say, I’ll not ever do that.
Elliott – I’m sorry, Elliott, but I don’t know if your name has one or two ‘l’s or one or two ‘t’s… I go with two of each. I gotta say, Elllllliottttt has really turned it up a couple of notches the past couple of weeks. Last night, I thought he was the strongest in terms of being consistently good with both songs. His vocals have really seemed to improve, mostly, I think, due to increased confidence. Or at least the appearance of increased confidence. I still think his looks will ultimately fail him, as will Ryan’s propensity to Jewify the pronunciation of his last name. It might very well be the way it’s pronounced, but I think The Ignorant Heartland of Ammurika would prefer Jewish names to be pronounced more like “Smith”. At this point in the competition, the fickle audience is looking for any reason to oust a competitor, and two plausible exit-strategies for Elliott are 1) his poor dental work and rather cro-magnon forehead, and 2) the pronunciation of his last name. Number two wouldn’t be an issue if Ryan (whose “Seacrest” is no doubt an Ammurikanized variation on Seacrestenberg) would pronounce it “YA-min” instead of “yah-MEAN”. His singing has grown on me over the past couple of weeks. His personality, not so much. Yet it is growing.
Paris – I believe a number of weeks ago, I wrote a post suggesting that Paris sing Prince’s “Kiss”, to really ruffle the “keep her a 16 year old virgin forever” puritans out there. Last night, she sang it. If my post had anything to do with her choosing it, I apologize to everyone. I thought it was terrible. She took everything great about the song (the sexiness, the naughtiness, the purpleness) and blanderized it. Maybe it was the arrangement. No, it was Paris. Her second song was no better. I think the pressure’s getting to her. She’s trying too hard at not trying too hard.
Chris – Speaking of trying too hard. Chris, buddy, you gotta open up your heart and let the sun shine in, friend. You sing from a very dark place. Admittedly, you sing really well from that dark place, but man, are you ever getting boring with your serious attitude. Song One you knocked the socks off it. Song Two you sang too hard and in so doing, exposed the weakness in your talent. You give it all you have, from the throat up, but you give your songs no soul, which lies deeper. (Ugh on me for writing that sentence). Seriously, dude, you probably deserve to win, but man, lighten up.
Katharine – I realised last night what it is about her that keeps me from embracing her as much as everyone else. She reminds me of Catherine Zita Jones Douglas. She’s got the same stature as the woman Michael Douglas has sex with. Her closeups reveal the same sheen and glimmer of just-too-much makeup that CZJD has. Mind you, if she reminded me of a pre-Douglas Catherine Zita Jones, then all bets off, she wins my heart. But, the Michael-Douglas era Catherine has an aura of smirch about her. And so does this Katharine. Nope, can’t root for her. And once I made that Zita Jones connection, the performance of her songs became irrelevant to me. I think, though, that her songs were rather ordinary. Nothing to write home about.
Taylor – Taylor has got to stop dancing and trying to force his goofy, jokey sensibilities on Ammurika. Yeah he loves to sing, yeah he has a great voice, yeah he’s passionate about it all, yeah he doesn’t mind looking the fool expressing himself… all these things should add up to a winning guy. But they don’t. Because of the dancing. Because in that dancing, he shows us just how much (as Simon truthed it) he looks like anyguy at anywedding. And, he’s not strong with upbeat songs, I don’t think. When he does those, he becomes a moderate talent. But when he sings soulful and bluesy, like he did on “Something”, well, it’s like he’s another person altogether. I really enjoyed his rendition of that song, and thought it only lacked due to the necessary brevity of its arrangement.
The five, in order of their performance last night:
Elliott
Chris
Taylor
Katharine
Paris
I think Paris will go tonight. At the beginning of the competition, I would have thought she was a sure Top Three candidate, but the last few weeks, she’s been slipping quite a bit in both the quality of her performances, and in the number of votes she gets, comparitively.
If not Paris, then I can see anyone else, except Chris, leaving. I would only be surprised tonight, if Chris leaves.
Technorati Tags: American Idol
Home sick, today. With what, you ask. Let’s just say that if my bowel movements were a baseball player, they’d be Pete Rose, because whenever he gets a walk, he always runs to first base.
So, I’m home, just about to heat up a can of chicken noodle soup (the only food I’d have eaten in the past 30 hours), when the phone rings:
Hello?
Dad, is there anyone there to come pick me up?
Why? What’s wrong.
I can’t hear anything out of my left ear.
What?!? How come?
I don’t know.
Whattya mean you don’t know? How do you not know?
I might have hit it.
How do you not know? What happened?
I don’t know. I may have back into a tree.
After a few minutes of unsuccessfully Columboing the events of the incident, I said I’d pick him up. Driving to his school, I was wondering how hard it is to learn sign language for the deaf. On the way home, I managed to get these details: his ear feels like it’s full of water or something. He turned around as he walked into a bush, and a twig may have hit his ear. He’s not in any real pain, but every five seconds or so a sharp pain happens. I suspected it could be a damaged ear drum.
As I was incapacitated and establishing a very close diplomatic relationship with our home’s plumbing, my wife took him to the QEH. Four hours later, they come home with the news that he has a perforated ear drum and that he has an appointment with a specialist in Summerside tomorrow.
I’m suspecting that the ear drum will heal itself in time and that he’ll be good as new.
I don’t have much experience with MySpace. I tried to set up a page there for myself, but found it too time-consuming. Plus, I already have this lovely site, so why do I need to bother with another.
However, I did receive an email today from a friend who just set up his own MySpace site. He even put up some of his music.
Check it out:
Moe Gorman’s MySpace Page
Technorati Tags: MySpace, Moe Gorman, music, blog, PEI
This weekend, my son asked me if he could borrow the Canon A-510 digital camera and make a video. He said that he and his friend, Keaton, had an idea to make a movie along the lines of “The Straight Story”, by David Lynch. (If you’ve never seen that film, you owe it to yourself to see it. It’s a wonderfully gently movie, starring Richard Farnsworth as an old guy who travels across country to visit his estranged brother, who is dying.
Since this sounded like a step up from their usual “two guys with swords chase each other and one dies at the end” plot-line, I gave them the camera for the afternoon. They asked me to play a small (but pivotal, I think) role. After the shoot was over, Cameron did a rough edit. Then I helped out by tightening it up, deleting a couple of unnecessary scenes, adding music and titles, and finding an ending out of the non-ending footage they finished with.
Overall, I think they did a pretty good job, and even threw in a bit of an homage to the strangeness of David Lynch.
Technorati Tags: video, parody, David Lynch, The Straight Story
The first month of The Annekenstein Monster Daily Trivia is over. Here are the results:
18 players played during the month.
Top Ten:
1. annekenstein (168 points, 6 wins)
2. Wessie (157 points, 3 wins)
3. TracyJ (146 points, 3 wins)
4. reverseflash (139 points, 5 wins)
5. paella (138 points, 1 wins)
6. misskris (104 points, 0 wins)
7. Cool Girl (83 points, 0 wins)
8. Frankie (78 points, 0 wins)
9. Grover (77 points, 3 wins)
10. desperation (65 points, 0 wins)
Thanks for playing, those who play. I guess the challenge is officially on, now, to try and knock annekenstein off the podium. Good luck, losers!
If you’d like to join in on all the trivial-ness (it only takes about a minute a day), bookmark this link and come back to it once every day:
The link to The Annekenstein Monster’s Daily Trivia Page
Well, we did it. We finally chose someone to be the fifth actor in our stage show this summer. After 19 auditioners (practically every one of which did a really good job), we couldn’t narrow it down beyond a select handful. So, we asked them if they’d come back and do a bit more script reading and auditioning with us.
That happened earlier this week, and after seeing them again, the decision was no easier. It’s a pretty good feeling to have to choose among people, all of whom would likely be a great addition. Conversely, it’s not so great knowing that some pretty talented people won’t be joining us (not that “joining us” is any kind of end-all, be-all). So, Thursday night, the four of us who are currently on the island, got together for a couple of hours, talked about all the strengths and pros of each person and tried to imagine some potential cons, and finally made a unanimous decision that we think is pretty exciting.
I’m not going to divulge the name quite yet. While the person, when asked to become part of the group, was enthusiastic and excited, and agreed, we haven’t talked money yet. So, until those final details get worked out, and agreed upon by all, it’s probably best to keep the name as under wraps as mildly leaked information can remain under wraps on PEI.
But we do have a new cast member for the summer show. And it’s going to be fantastic.
I just signed up to Frappr, which is a kind of cool Google Maps way to view where your friends and acquaintances are, globally speaking. It’d be superkeen if you took the time to visit my map and add yourself. Click the link, won’t you?
The Annekenstein Monster’s Friend Map – Friend Map by Frappr Maps
My son and two of his friends have been playing what I would classify as a role-playing game, for about two years. It’s a game they made up themselves (although I believe it’s mostly from the brain of my imaginative son), involving a town they built and the people who inhabit it. It’s pretty intricate in its mechanisms and history and rules and procedures.
Originally, it was called Lepodink, which was short for the three main elements of the game: Legos, Pokemon figures and dinkies. Sometime in the past few months, the Pokemon figures and dinkies have been abandoned in favour of 100% Lego-only. Hence: Lego Town
From what I can tell, each of the three have several characters (who each have families) they’re responsible for. Each character has his or her own profession and associations with other characters. It’s all played on a couple of those play mats that have streets on them, etc., with Lego buildings and Lego people populating it.
Here’s a picture:
Lately, they’ve felt the need to implement some rules, to make the town run more smoothly, and to protect themselves from the criminal element. They’ve also made me Judge, and whenever there are grievances between citizens, or laws that are allegedly broken, they come to me, explain themselves, and I judge what I think is a fair punishment or fine (if the case doesn’t get thrown out of court for any number of protocol breaches).
Here is the list of rules that they made up. This is the list that they need to make their Lego Town run more smoothly. I wonder if Charlottetown would do well to implement some of these:
I like how number 6, “No mafias” is just sort of stuck in there, in the middle, like it’s akin to jaywalking or something. And I also like how number 13 isn’t really a law at all, like an unfinished thought. But I think I understand its meaning. And as for mafias, they were a big problem in this town a month or so ago, and I believe that was the impetus for establishing a system of law and order. The town was out of control, much like the town Deadwood in the HBO show, and, like that town, is only now taking the necessary early steps to make it a more livable, enjoyable place to live. One difference, though, between LegoTown and Deadwood, is that there is far less swearing in LegoTown. Now that law and order has been established, the mafias are quickly dying out as respectable businesses and owners take back the town.
I’m very thankful that they spend a lot of time each day playing this game, rather than spend it playing computer games. Now that the weather is nicer, though, the challenge will be to get them outside. Which isn’t really a challenge at all. We spent about an hour playing football in the backyard tonight, after they spent about an hour playing LegoTown.
Busy lives. Busy lives.
Technorati Tags: Lego, imagination, children, games
The Annekenstein Monster 