A few weeks back, I wrote about the habit on Broadway of making <i>Theatre</i> out of the latest popular movies, and wondered if they dare make it a challenge - do There Will Be Blood as an Alan Menken/Tim Rice vehicle with a singing mime, something, starring Cybill Shepard. Take a chance, for fuck's sake.
Well, the tagline I used was Incredibly Loud and Extremely Close, Teh Musical. Now, I don't know the first thing about the movie, only that it is hipper than I am and is supposed to be ridiculously derpressing, in the run for most depressing movie of all time with 2011 Oscar Nominee Winter's Bone and any Adam Sandler movie ever. You know, cinema to kill yerself by. No desire to see it, needs moar robots/Tie Fighters/boobies.
I have to leave for work, pulled an overnight OT deal. Which is actually, for once, good, as the wife, so cool in so many ways, has Redboxed the bastard.
Wish me luck with my PM PM. Wish her luck with her taste in film.
I read in the Blogger Terms and Conditions that if you do not post regularly, they send attack squadrons of well-trained (especially for the short life-span) mayflys to guck up your windshield, and I gotta make to work this morning. So, stuff.
Lady Gaga can go tenderize her tenderloin. Rock and roll, kiddies.
At this moment, our home is in the midst of self-imposed chaos. The end is clear, but not near, as I am attempting to simplify and order things, home improvements, donation of clothing, trying to find the floor. Along with the usual household tasks, there is sorting, storing, tossing, and questioning. Given my usual packrat tendencies, there is frustration in Paleoville.
"What's this, honey?"
"Oh, Billy The Singing Bass*. Well, I paid good money for it, and we may need it someday."
"Bullshit, you haven't seen it since the previous century. And, really, need?"
"But, honey!?!?!"
Doesn't matter which one of us started the above exchange, that is how it will end. Oh, and then donating/tossing/storing of said item. With all of this, out of nowhere, a new wrinkle has reared it's ugly head.
Any homeowner will recognize this - the zombie home improvements of previous owners. In our case, the bathroom, 'my' bathroom in the basement. The room is uglier than forty miles of mud road, and a renovation was going to happen eventually. However, my hand has been forced now. There is water under the floor tiles. Understandable as the floor tiles were commercial vinyl stickyback tiles, with eighth-inch gaps, that then had silicone caulk run as 'grout'. The drywall is crumbling, and where not actually flaking out, is a series of bubbles under the paint. Understandable as the walls are gypsum, not plumbing grade fiberboard. The shower is one of the 70's style glass door showers that are less watertight than a frog's ass. Enough mold to either make bread, brew beer, get reeeaalllly high, or get black mold disease.
So, I gotta deal with it, well ahead of my internal 5 year plan. Ok, wevs.
But, this brings me to my larger point.
HGTV and TLC are evil and must be destroyed.
Now, I can say, with a fair amount of pride, that I am very good at home improvement thingys. I've remodeled, extensively, two previous homes, and will be doing this one. I'm a professional electrician, I can do my own HVAC, I'm a competent plumber and carpenter. A lot of this arises from the fact that I work in construction. And it thoroughly infuriates me that these two channels, the worst offenders in my book, make home improvements look like a walk in the park for the homeowner, while actually having pros do the horse work behind the scenes. I remember reading, during the great boom in 'house-flipping' and 'fix-my-kitchen' type shows, that Ty Pennington was one of the few home improvement show people who had been a working tradesman (and I think he had the greatest gig in television history, I really respect Home Makeover, a public good, a public win, and entertaining as well), that most of the hosts were actors or Bob Villa-type salesmen (Bob Villa had been a Sears salesman and apparently didn't know an axe from his elbow). I'm not a construction savant by any means - I've had a lot of training and a lot of exposure to different trades, and I've asked a lot of questions.
I am not going to hack on people who do their own stuff. I respect that. It's fun, good for the bank account, and good hard work. But, to say again, IT'S HARD WORK. And it must be done RIGHT. I'm not talking aesthetics - if you want your bathroom wall to be institutional green, well, whatever floats yer boat. Structural stuff, though must be done correctly.
Water damage from a half-assed bathroom install can, with no exaggeration, kill you. You get black mold inside the walls, an adult just gets miserably sick; kids and the elderly can die of respiratory stuff. Bad carpentry? Bye-Bye sunroom (and hello woodpile). The dangers of pulling an electrical installation from your rectum are many and known - let's start will turning on your toaster and ending up a smoking puddle of fat, and progress to burning down the neighborhood.
Ask questions. Get help. Read, for fuck's sake. And know your limitations. I won't work on gas lines. They look easy, and can go easy, but they can also go incredibly stupid. If you an afford the stainless-steel cooktop, you can afford to have someone do the gas-line hookup. I have to cut an escape hatch in for a downstair bedroom. I'll dig the hole, install the bolster, and install the window, fine. Guess what - I am not messing with my foundation, I'll pay someone to do the block-cutting right, so that, you know, half my house doesn't start to sag. Some of the other remodeling I am going to do, I am going to get an engineer in to let me know where I have to keep support. I can look at a wall and guess it's load bearing or non-load bearing, but I'd really like to know what I need for supporting the, you know, first floor.
Each of these shows has the professionals to do this, working behind the scenes, and I don't recall seeing many disclaimers.
I don't have cable, nor a desire for it, so I don't have any idea if the shows in general are even still 'all the rage', as the hip kids say, or if these specific channels still exist. I won't be arsed to look it up, either. But these shows walk a fine line between fraud and stupidity in the first place, and in the second place must be plowed under and the ground salted.
Home improvement soundtrack:
Lawn care soundtrack for today:
Michelle Bachmann soundtrack for today:
*I do not now, nor have I ever, owned Billy teh Tasteless Bass.
I am a football fan. The Green Bay Packers and Wisconsin Badgers. Once their seasons are over I don't really pay attention to the rest of the NCAA or NFL, but a Packer-Bears game, or Badgers - Michigan, damn right I pay attention! I voluntarily (pay attention to that word, it will come up later) came up with enough to buy a Packers share at the latest stock offering* last fall, and I'm proud to have it!
Now, I live in MN, and while not a Vikings guy, even with the GB - MN rivalry I'll root for the Vikings occasionally, against the Bears or the Cowboys (sign of the FSM, to ward off evil), or whatever team is dumbass enough to play Tebow. I don't especially want to see the Vikings leave, rivalries are fun.
But, Roger Goodell, in a moment of sheer gall, myopia, stupidity, has declared to our state Gov. Dayton, that if there is no stadium deal soon, there will be 'consequences'.
You know what, Roger? Fuck off. Make that call to Zygi. Zygi Wilf, the primary owner of the team, is a billionaire, and can write a check for his dream cash cow stadium complex and still afford Kraft Dinner. He wants MN to pony up $700M in known costs when we have bridges falling apart, roads that cause kidney damage, schools that could really use textbooks not approved by the Texas Board of Education. Our previous guv, lil' Timmy "Bad Mofo" Pawlenty managed to kick so many fiscal cans down the road that we'll need a bulldozer to clear them, assuming that we can fix the damn road enough to get the dozer to the pile.
I'd use words such as 'microcosm of society writ large', in that once again, taxpayers are subsidizing a billionaire who employs millionaires, but I don't know what that means. So I'll just say "bullshit".
Build your own stadium, you twerp.
The damnable Ind Republicans are even against it - probably the only time I'll ever agree with a tea-brat. Zygi and the NFL want taxes taken from my pocket and my paycheck to support this? NO. I'll pay taxes happily for roads, courts, schools, the Commons, but I will not subsidize this mafioso wannabe. I voluntarily give to charity, the Habitat For Humanity Re-Stores and Goodwill love me nowadays, and I love the Legacy Amendment to support the arts and environment. These are public goods, and I'll pay without complaint. But giving this thug $700M? Go to hell. Oh yeah, and the Vikings dream site? An old munitions plant, which has wrecked the groundwater for miles. Why is this relevant? Because the estimated $700M DOESN'T INVOLVE ANY SITE PREP, and that will be on us as well!
MN has got to take a stand, set an example. Screw the NFL. We gave you a stadium once, and have upgraded it several times. Make do, like you encourage us to, tighten your belts. Or pay for it your own damn self.
*Anyone mentioning that "Ohhh, it's not a 'real share', you don't get any returns, oh oh oh I'm concerned" will be beaten senseless with their own lungs. In other words, no shit. I'm supporting my team in a way I choose to. Bugger off.
...if you are as big a dork as I am. It has potential, anyhow, I'll give it a chance.
Produced by Felicia Day, who I have started a religion for, and starring Wheaton, who I like quite a bit. I'd like to see them do Car Wars by Steve Jackson, Junta, or maybe even Toon!, although it's not a board game, it makes for a great one-evening session.
After all, i think the Brew Crew could use a power cleanup batter...
Whilst my dear sweetums was having a chica's night last night, I was ordered to vacate the residence until such time as I came home. Heartbroken, and a bit put off (they was making Papa Murphy's, dammit! They make a paper-thin crust pizza that is almost, if not quite, diabetic-acceptable...), I joined the other husband involved, and his two boy mini-humans, at a local indoor batting cage.
Understand that the last time I swung at a pitched baseball was about 24 hours before I heard about Dungeons and Dragons, so that would be (ummm, scriblescribbleerase forty-hymaah, carry teh bucket, extrapolate pi, nineteen-eighty-three) a long damn time ago. And I didn't like sports much then. However, innately convinced of my ability to conquer anything I put my staggeringly something mind to, and with the knowledge that my body is the Temple Of Adonis (2500 years old and falling the fuck apart), I gleefully accepted the challenge. Yes, there was beer.
I rocked. Absolutely rocked! Once we got the pitching machine set up to hit the strike zone everytime, and we worked our signal for when the ball was coming, I started cranking them! Had there been fielders, I'd have schooled them, pulling the ball to the opposite field by smacking 'em off the handle, bouncing grounders that I know would have had them all fooled, and long, straight solid shots placed between the shortstop and the left fielder. I pwned.
But, I'm a bit out of shape, and I'm having a few physical hangups this morning. I've taken 10, maybe 12 ibuprofen, I couldn't be arsed to count, or look, and there was a very nice early morning walker who I asked to shoot me, but he was getting to the cardio part of his walk and just as I asked that, he started with the running routine. (Exercise? Peh!)
Yep, on my way! I'll do autographs free right now, if asked and sent a ball. Trust me, by July, you're gonna want one of these babies, your financial future will be secure! (That's my economic tip-o'-teh-day, by the way.) So learn from me, people - do your dream. Myself? I'm gonna find my 2nd Addition DM Guide as soon as I can walk.
