You're Doing It Wrong

World Cup is over. I can get back to my normal routine again. I had terrible luck with taping over the weekend. My US / Canada game cable coughed during the US’s second goal so I missed that and then my Germany / Sweden game cut off about 2 minutes before the game winning goal and it sounds like it was controversial so I’m especially sorry I missed it. I enjoyed all the games I saw and it was great to get to see the US Women play although it would have been nicer to see them win. I’ve never cried about sports before but I came awfully close when they lost to Germany.

Last weekend I saw Matchstick Men and the weekend before I saw Lost in Translation. Both movies feature a major moment with the song: More Than This. Go get your Roxy Music.

I had the busiest week on record last week and I’m still too tired to talk about it. I got a good nights sleep last night so I am feeling halfway human again but the other half still feels completely insane.

Here’s some hints for faking indy rock cred and it’s entertaining except for the stupid popup ads. How can the person who created those sleep at night?

Blogging always takes more time than it should but I want to get this stuff up here before I forget.

First is The Puffies, annual awards to overblown book blurbs. Entertaining and a little disturbing.

Then there’s an article by Steve Almond on the Harold Bloom dumbing of American readers editorial in response to Stephen King winning a National Book award. The key point he (Almond) brings up which I like is:

“Indeed, Bloom’s rage seems entirely misplaced to me. Rather than attacking writers, or those who bestow accolades onto them, he should be excoriating the true opponents of creative enlightenment. A short list would include: the deification of consumerism, the decline in funding for public education, the economic inequality that has become the hallmark of late-model capitalism. This culture discourages creativity, and deep thought, because such actions are not profitable. The horrible fact that people turn to Stephen King rather than Saul Bellow is, in other words, symptomalogy. ”

While I was checking out the Mobylives website. I found another good column on discount chains and bookselling. Key quote:

“What that means is the major discounting efforts of these non-bookstore chains are not stimulating and growing the [book buying] market but simply shifting consumer dollars away from bookstores and other potential book sales. Consumers buying a mega-seller at a Walmart will not be discovering a book of promise, as such chains do not invest in authors and non-bestselling books. Bookstores do, and we are losing an opportunity to handsell other good books to these consumers who do not regularly visit and browse in a bookstore.”

(I am updating these links using the Wayback Machine) and interesting to see what we were saying about book selling in 2003. Wow.)

I’ve been trying to ignore the World Cup and focus on my writing class but last night we had tickets to the games at PGE park and I am hooked for the rest of the tournament. The first game was Ghana and Australia and I don’t know what was going on but the stretcher came out about 10 times. Ghana played a pretty loose game but fun to watch and they’ve been training in Portland so they had a sort-of home crowd love fest going on and it was fun to see them win. I would have liked to see Australia do a little better — at one point I thought it was their strategy to pass the ball to the other team. There was a huge group of Ghana fans with drums and when the them scored they went nuts — it was hard not to cheer for the team.

The second game was Russia v. China who came out with completely opposite warm up styles. China had synchronized warm up while Russia was all over the place. The game was a completely different level of playing compared to the first game. Great game. And a huge group of Chinese there cheering their team on. We had a group behind us going nuts, singing and waving flags. They also had some kids with screechy whistles and if it didn’t have the potential for starting an international incident I would have ripped those things out of those cute little kids’ hands.

Last comment — is there some cosmic rule that Bob and I at these big crowd events must always be seated adjacent to the ADD people? Why would you buy tickets for a pair of soccer games if you weren’t going to sit in your seat and enjoy the game? This guy had his feet ON MY CHAIR when we went in to sit down — thanks buddy, I have to put my ass there now.

Very insanely busy week. I have class tonight, Arts & Lectures tomorrow night, U.S. Women play on Weds, PGE park games (Germany, Canada, Russia and China) on Thurs, trying to catch up for writing class Fri and Sat and then PGE park semi-final games on Sunday. Plus Alias started last night and Angel starts on Weds. night.

I’ve been doing tons of online research lately related to my new writing project and in addition to finding a lot of great information I’m also finding a lot to be annoyed about. What is this thing where the search engine links you to another search engine which is just a big fat commercial — sussing out what you want to *buy* based on your query? Does everything have to be about buying something?

Big Brother finally finished. It ended up with the two loathsome people in the finals but I had to see how it ended. Glad it’s over. Alias starts Sunday and I watched the first Brotherhood of Poland N.H. — not sure if I’ll stick with it. Too many things to remember to tape.

Life isn’t THAT hectic but I’m feeling unorganized (or would that be disorganized?) and spun out. I’m tired, too, and I got a good night’s sleep. I don’t know what the story is but I ate a lot of sugar and fatty crap yesterday so perhaps that’s a contributing factor.

Over the weekend I ordered this book I was looking for that I couldn’t get at the library and I found it super cheap – only $5. I didn’t want to do a whole book order for just $5 so I browsed their other books to see if there was anything remotely interesting and decided to buy a collection of Ring Lardner stories and a collection of Jack London stories. I remember being totally into Jack London as a kid and I haven’t read him since so I’m curious to revisit his writings. But back to the book order, this brought it up to a whopping $10. I put the order in and got a confirmation that the book I actually wanted was already sold but they were sending the $5 of books I tacked on just trying to make the order worthwhile. They did not respond to my request to cancel.

I saw the calendar yesterday and discovered it was the equinox. I knew summer was over but I didn’t realize it was official. Looks like the rest of the week will be great weather so I have high hopes for my tomato patch. I might get enough for a pasta sauce after all.

Another thing — my three month vacation from doing laundry is over. Bob is back in school. I did four loads this weekend and I’d like to know how ALL of his clothes manages to come out inside out.

I have a zillion scrawled notes here for blogging. I spent the entire weekend working on writing. I’m starting Cynthia’s class again tomorrow and I volunteered to go at the first class. I still hadn’t finished my last project — I just put it in the mail last week. I knew I could do it and I’ve been working on notes and mini-outlines for a couple of weeks. I finalized my outline yesterday morning and today I fixed up the first 13 pages I wrote last weekend and added another 12. A productive day. It seems 100x easier this time and I’m not sure if it’s an easier idea or I have more practice. Probably a combination of both. My first act is a little thin but I like having room to add more later.

I am a week behind on my New York Times magazine. I just read last week’s and there’s a recipe for grilled chocolate sandwiches. It sounded so unnecessary — I saved it. We’ll be trying that this winter.

Bob got Krakatoa: The Day the Earth Exploded. by Simon Winchester unabridged on tape from the library and I kind of groaned because I didn’t know how we’d get through it. I read the review of the book in the NYT and the review scared the crap out of me — I wanted to read the book. We listened to half of the tapes on the way home from Orleans. Over Labor Day we unexpectedly went to the coast for a wedding so we listened to most of the rest and I finished the last couple of tapes last week. It’s an amazing, terrifying story and well written. Winchester is coming to Portland this Fall and I don’t want to miss him.

My last topic is on clothing. I think I say this about every 6 months but I hate everything in my closet. I also hate buying clothes. I’d rather do other things with my money. If I have 4 outfits I have enough for each day of my work week and I can wear any junky outfit at home on the weekends and I do. And of the few clothes I buy, there are a few things that I never wear. Does everyone do this? Buy things they never wear? It’s so embarrassing.

On Wednesday night Bob went to a club to see some funkateer music guy, Bernie. He got home after 2am so he went and slept downstairs. (It’s also about 10 degrees cooler down there so it’s a much better choice.) Yesterday morning I went down to say “bye” before I left for work and he’s on the bed in this crossways, crunched up position because the bed is covered with cds. I started laughing and said, “sleeping with your cds?” and he was still mostly asleep and said, “yah.” I think we’re both going to sleep down there tonight since it’s going to be another hot one and Bob said he would clear the cds off the bed.