The Best Things #3

We’re all barrel rolling through life on old-fashioned biplanes, stopping only to walk on the wings and impress the girls who live in the clouds. It’s another week of fantastic desolation and terrible mediocrity; mixed together they form a thick green paste that sticks to walls and feels warm in your hands. It’s fantastic, really, for all its absurdity. It’s okay if you’d rather be a character in a play. At least then when you talked to yourself it would be a monologue as opposed to just plain crazy.

And, god, wouldn’t it be nice to recite a soliloquy. One about flowers and rocks and the cartoons you watched as a kid. Something beautiful in its simplicity. Something that makes people think about things. Maybe, even, the best things.

That was cheesy but these are still the Best Things Ever for August 12, 2004.

NUMBER FIVE

Television

You know the people who make a big deal of pointing out how LITTLE TV they watch? They always try to slip “I hardly ever watch TV anymore!”” into conversations, like it’s some sort of fucking genius badge. The obvious connotation is supposed to be that they are, clearly, too smart for TV and what it has become. On a side note, why do some people act like TV has gotten worse recently? When was TV EVER high-brow literary entertainment? 50s television was mostly corny family sitcoms (I loved how Eddie Haskell was all nice to Mr. and Mrs. Cleaver, but then he’d go upstairs and convince Wally and the Beav to burn down the school. That was awesome.) and a bunch of TV talent shows sponsored by cigarette companies. If anything, TV has IMPROVED since then.

What was I saying? Oh, yeah. I got nothing against people who don’t watch TV for whatever reason, but not watching TV doesn’t make you a fucking nuclear physicist. Especially if the time you spend not watching TV is spent reading Cosmo magazines and shopping at Old Navy.

The point? TV is a medium like any other. It certainly adheres to the “90% of everything is crap” rule, but to ignore the medium completely is to miss out on great stuff that will dazzle your mind or something.

It’s been a wonderful summer for being anti-social and watching TV all the time. I mean, seriously, to have Six Feet Under, The Amazing Race AND Joe Schmo? That’s like some sort of amazing cornucopia of greatness. It’s like a meal with THREE kinds of meat! And potatoes.

NUMBER FOUR

BBC Television’s The Office

This is technically more TV, but I’m watching it on DVD so, you know, whatever. Everyone has been talking about how good this series is, but I’ve been dismissive because, well, there are already way too many things out there that are supposed to be great that I HAVE NOT seen and the last thing I want is MORE. Seriously, my rabid desire to see and own everything good in the world is going to leave me bankrupt and alone — a sleepy and pock-marked old man living at the YMCA and eating all his food out of cans, still writing letters to HBO in the hopes that they will release more episodes of Larry Sanders on DVD.

But The Office IS good, friends. Remarkably good, in fact. My initial reaction was, “Wow, those are some thick accents.” My secondary reaction was, “This is really really funny.”” It’s essentially a series that succeeds because of one character, but that character is one of the funniest characters in television history. Ricky Gervais’ David Brent is such a great new twist on the old sitcom boss. Whenever he’s not on screen, I find myself anticipating his next scene. It’s just brilliant character writing.

The series starts strong, but it wasn’t until the third or fourth episode that everything really clicked. Brent’s “I think there’s been a rape upstairs” line nearly killed me. Seriously. I almost up and died right there. Dead. Kaput. Gone. And other synonyms.

I’ve only seen the first season so far, but I have the second on order from Amazon (No piracy here!). I cannot wait.

NUMBER THREE

New beginnings

My hard drive died this past week. This had never happened to me before. I thought it was something that only happened in movies or to hapless retards who stick refrigerator magnets to their computer cases and try to turn their computer on by holding the mouse like a CB radio and saying “Turn on”.” But it happened to me. Forty space-age gigabytes just up and died.

I didn’t lose too much, thankfully. I back up my “My Documents” folder fairly regularly, and I was able to save my e-mails from the past year or so. Initially I thought I lost nothing of importance, but every so often over the last couple of days, I’ve remembered something I’ve now lost. A little file I had squirreled away somewhere illogical that’s gone forever now.

I’ll get over it. It could have been a lot worse, obviously, but the packrat in me feels really bad about what I did lose. When I’m an old man, I’ll have less to look back on now. I feel like I still have the most important things, but, dammit, I want EVERYTHING.

But, then, I have to put things in perspective. It would be really very sad if this was the time period I looked back upon with the most nostalgia. I really hope that I haven’t peaked yet. I like to think that there’s still a lot more to come.

This better just be the prelude because I don’t think I can take it if it’s the feature.

NUMBER TWO

Excerpts from nothing

Watching large bodies of water at night, thinking about the leaves that will fall soon, I’m listening to the sound of laughter and smiling myself. There’s a person out there waterskiing at night, recklessly cutting into the wake. I wonder why they do it, why they laugh like they do. The light from the boat is prettier than the stars in the sky, a lone white beacon that reflects off the water at a dozen different angles and scatters hectically until it fades. Listen to that engine roar, listen to the continued laughter. Smiling, still, I don’t know why.

Spend five minutes. Write something purely from a place that isn’t your head. Don’t try to put across any obvious or tangible meaning. Just stack a bunch of imagery on top of each other until you have a paragraph.

You’ll likely get some fucked up piece — maybe something with a water-skier (?) — but what’s interesting is looking back at and realizing that, hey, maybe THERE is some meaning there, even if it wasn’t intended.

Give it a try. I’ll post a thread on the forum for it.

NUMBER ONE

Doing the Mario

For some reason I’ve been playing Super Mario World for the Gameboy Advance again recently. It’s my favourite Mario game because, man, the sense of discovery that game gave me when I was 10-years-old was huge. The day my neighbour and I found the “Special World”, we nearly died.

Maybe the colour on both of our TVs was messed up, but Blue Yoshi looked Purple, so we called him Purple Yoshi. And he was the best. We always talked about getting Purple Yoshi because, duh, he could fly. He was way better than Red Yoshi, who had the fire balls and Yellow Yoshi who was adept at stomping the ground. Purple Yoshi, man, — this anecdote really has no point.

To make up for it — and because I’m sort of running out of cool mp3s to post (After THREE WEEKS? That’s pathetic!) — here is the theme song to The Super Mario Bros. Super Show.

Swinging my arms from side to side,
Matt