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"Two Words: Umm. Eww."

Okay, I'm so fucking unashamedly excited about the new season (or "cycle") of "America's Next Top Model".

But let's go meta for a second: Mena & I were talking this morning on the way to work about how much we love the show, and I said I was going to write a post about it. And she was like, just don't start it with a bunch of exclamation points and "How much do I fucking love America's Next Top Model!!!"

And I said, well, what if I include this conversation as a sort of disclaimer re: my masculinity? [1]

I said it sounded like a footnote, but she said it should be front & center in the post.

And so there we had an agreement on my post about ANTM.

---

But anyway: wow. What a show!

My very early-on favorite notes:

• I really like Kim, but I don't think she'll last that long. Call me crazy, but that walk just won't cut it.


• Makeovers! [2]


• This week's episode hit home with me, because I have a recurring nightmare where James St. James is chasing me down the street with a bullhorn. [3]


• Yay, they destroyed Cassandra! I liked it when she was crying about her hair getting cut: so good! And then someone was like, "No more beauty pageants" in the background, while they were cutting her hair. That was funny.


• Big D! This video is awesome, particularly the part at the end with J. playing all like a gangsta, & doing a strangely convincing job of it.

If I had to vote for a winner today, I'd vote for Lisa. Though I'm not sure about the blonde hair.

[1] And, you know, if I also drank a beer or something while watching the show. Which I did!

[2] I have a really, really awful confession to make, one that I'm actually embarrassed about: I used to watch TLC's A Makeover Story every day with Mena about 4 years ago. Every. Single. Day.

Now, I can't even watch that show, because the makeovers are just so bad, relatively.

[3] Well, not really, but that was scary, wasn't it? I kept thinking about that Simpsons episode where Homer makes the clown bed in Bart's room. "Can't sleep, clown'll eat me..."

We Don't Want Your Fucking Love!

I have a habit of believing that anything I'm listening to at the moment is the best album in the world, ever. And so as I was listening to the Manic Street Preachers' "Gold Against the Soul" this morning, that thought crossed my mind.

I first heard the Manics on "Everything Must Go," and I didn't know quite what to think. I really, really wanted to love them—after all, all of the music wonks I was reading on alt.music.alternative [1] were in love with them, as were all of the people on the Suede mailing list—but I was kind of like, well, they sound like a fucking standard rock band!

Where's the glam? Where's the eye shadow? Where are the fey, androgynous band members?

Oh, right. He disappeared. [2]

"Gold Against the Soul" was one of the last of their albums that I bought, partly just because I couldn't find it anywhere. This was in 1997 or so, and CDNow just wasn't cutting it for finding out-of-print CDs. And because Mena & I were strangely fearful of venturing up into San Francisco [3], I was left to scour the record stores down in San Jose & Santa Clara for this impossible-to-find album.

And then finally, one lovely day down in Los Angeles, after at least a year of searching, I found it used at Moby Disc. Best. Day. EVAR.

So the funny thing about "Gold Against the Soul" is that, at first listen, it sounds like a very traditional hard-rock album. It doesn't have the punk/metal influences of Generation Terrorists, nor does it have the really dark post-punk sound of The Holy Bible.

But I think it's their best album, and absolutely their most underrated. For a lot of fans—at least, back when I was reading the mailing lists, and the album was just referred to in shorthand as GATS—this semed to be the album that the fans were kind of embarrassed to admit existed.

And the album definitely has its flaws. In fact, frankly, 4 out of 5 tracks on the second half of the album—excepting Roses in the Hospital—are kind of subpar. But the first 5 tracks are incredible. And you know how Manics fans are always going on about Richey's tortured lyrics? These are some of his best: they're just as dark as those on "The Holy Bible," but they're humane rather than nihilistic, (relatively) personal rather than (completely) detached.

And because of that, for me, the album has aged much better than THB. It's one of the few albums I still listen to regularly from my college years. And you should listen to it, too!

[1] A set of people who then moved on to I Love Music and Freaky Trigger.

[2] Or, more likely, he killed himself, thus spawning a whole subgenre of pre-LJ emo fan fiction & Richey spottings ("my cousin's daughter's best friend saw Richey in the Canary Islands, and he looked so happy & relaxed! I wish I could just hug him," etc.).

[3] Mainly because it was so difficult to park around Haight Street, so we'd get into a giant fight every time we'd go. Weird, now, thinking about how often we go to Amoeba.

Something for the Weekend

Mena & I've had a busy (but fun!) weekend. We flew to North Carolina for Anil's and Alaina's pre-wedding party. It was fun to see David and Adriana, who we don't get to see very often, along with Anil's parents and sister. We also got to meet a friend of Anil's from his Harrisburg days, and hear about the time (or one time, at least) that Anil spent $100 on a Prince CD that he already owned, just because it was in a pretty wooden box. [1]

But so as part of the trip, we also got to see Mena's family in Charlotte. We took a red-eye flight to Charlotte on Friday night, and arrived at 6:30am, then drove about 30 minutes to their house. Somewhat exhausted, we took a nap for about 3 hours, and then Mena went swimming in her parents' pool, while her grandparents watched from the shade. Mena took Annie in the pool with her, as well.

So when I got outside it was kind of a crazy scene: Mena, and her dad, and Annie in the pool; the theme from the Enchanted Tiki Room playing loudly on the speakers out by the pool; Augie locked up in the house, because he'd been barking too much.

But then, to top it off, Mena's dad said, "Turn on the fountains!" As an added touch, Mena's parents had some fountains installed out by the pool—they recycle the water from the pool & spray it in an arc from the brick fence back into the pool. And so, after they turned on the fountains, I took a picture that just seems to completely capture Mena's family:

All I'd need to do is to embed some audio into it that plays music from Disneyland, and it'd be a quintessential representation of Mena and her family.

[1] Which I can actually relate to, sort of. In college I had a phase where I bought a bunch of nicely-packaged versions of albums I already owned: the glow-in the dark version of Spiritualized's Pure Phase; the actually in-a-metal-canister version (Metal Box) of Public Image Ltd's Second Edition; etc.

All very pretty, and very useless, & which I just sigh about whenever I have to pack them in a box when we move.

And none of these cost $100, mind you, but then again, it's not really the price that's important—it's the fact that you're buying an album that you already own.

My other blog

Because of the really intuitive URL (http://btrott.typepad.com/test/), I guess you may not have known that I actually have a moblog, where I post photos from my mobile phone. But for a really long time, in fact—basically, prior to last month—the moblog was the only place where I posted.

I've thought about adding the moblog posts directly to my weblog, but I don't want to discourage myself from actually writing real text posts [1].

So instead of adding the photos to my main weblog, I played around tonight with getting the moblog to show up on my weblog sidebar. And not just the titles of the posts, but the actual photo thumbnails. It was harder than it should have been—I really wish I could've used E4X—and it may not work in Internet Explorer on Windows (I haven't tested it yet there, because I don't have a Windows computer at home).

But so otherwise I have it working now, as you can (hopefully) see in the sidebar to the right! I'm using XMLHttpRequest to parse the Atom feed for my moblog, parsing it, then adding the photos to the sidebar dynamically. The really cool part is that I'm using a Notes TypeList to add the necessary Javascript on my blog, without having to switch to custom templates.

Thanks to:

• Prototype, for providing a really nice base for Ajax requests
• this post, for supplying a DOMParser replacement for browsers that don't support it directly [2]

[1] And no jokes about whether my usual posts about TV should be considered "real" or not.

[2] ... which gets around the really dumb "feature" that some browsers don't try to parse responseXML for responses where the Content-Type isn't text/xml.

Know what happened to him? He died!

So I decided tonight to watch the pilot and the final episode of "Freaks & Geeks," one of my favorite shows ever, as evidenced by the fact that we own the special yearbook version of the DVD set. Fuck, what an incredible show this was.

I had planned to watch "Purple Rain" again tonight. But then, I decided on "Freaks & Geeks."

It wasn't really such a whim—it was in part because I'd watched the first episode of Kitchen Confidential tonight, in which John Frances Daley co-stars, and which I feel kind of ambivalent about. I really liked Anthony Bourdain's book, and overall I didn't dislike the show—it didn't completely blow me away, but it had its moments, and I'll watch it again.

But so the other reason why I got into the "Freaks & Geeks" mood was because a couple of weeks ago, we bought the "Undeclared" Season 1 (and only) DVD set at Amoeba. We were really into "Undeclared" while it was actually on TV, but I don't think they ever aired the final 3 episodes (or, probably quite a few others). So as part of buying the DVD set, we got to finally see the last 3 episodes of the show, which were amazing, particularly the last episode, with Ben Stiller. I honestly don't know why this show wasn't more popular. I guess for partly the same reason as "Freaks and Geeks."

I think "Undeclared" suffered from not being able to find the right demographic—i.e. there's a demographic that likes high school shows, & a different demographic that likes, um, old people shows. And the college students, or people who'd appreciate a fucking awesome show about college freshmen, just spend the whole 4+ years getting drunk & watching unfunny SNL episodes. Or maybe that's just bitterness about my college experience. [1]

But back to "Freaks & Geeks," which was one of the great tragedies of modern television programming. It first aired on a Saturday night, spent about 6 weeks there or so, then moved to (I think) Monday night? I don't even remember. Then it was off for about 3 weeks, while the NFL playoffs, or the stupid March Madness tournament, took over the television. And then finally, it underwent the mercy killing that we all knew it would endure from the beginning—better to burn out, etc.

I really remember watching the pilot, on some Saturday night in 1999, and just being completely blown away. And frankly, I still am. Mena & I loved "Freaks & Geeks" so much that we flew down to LA for the Museum of Television and Radio interview with the cast, along with the showing of one of the episodes that never aired. In some sense it was one of the weirder things we've done—as much as I love TV, I honestly can't imagine taking a plane flight just to see an episode & an interview with the cast and the creators.

But that was the thing about Freaks & Geeks—it put the fanatic in fan, for people who liked it. Or the other way round, maybe.

I realize I've said actually nothing about the show itself, but that's because you just have to see it. The incredible cast; the romantically nostalgic & realistic look at high school life; and the absolutely most perfect use of music ever in a TV series. [2] I'm sorry, I just can't do it justice.

I think the greatest testament for this show is that the pilot, in its final scene, made me a lifelong fan of Styx's "Come Sail Away," and it takes a pretty fucking amazing show to do that.

[1] But so then there are people like me, who will watch almost any reality show on television. No judgment!

[2] According to Paul Feig & Judd Apatow, the creators, they originally imagined a show that was completely filled with music the entire time. That proved difficult for licensing reasons, but even so, this show uses music better than any other I've ever seen, and better than most movies I've seen.

Just like mama used to do

Apparently, my liberal use of fuck/fucking/etc in my blog has shocked at least one Frenchman. Only 60,656,177 more to go! [1]

But speaking of vulgarity, Mena & I saw The Aristocrats last night and loved it. Going in I wasn't actually expecting that much, partly because the joke in and of itself just isn't that funny. But now I realize I was missing the point—there were a number of funny versions of the joke in the movie, but what was funniest, of course, was just hearing the improvisation & the performances themselves.

Some favorite parts:

• Mario Cantone's Liza Minelli impersonation, complete with that crazy wide-eyed look.


• Kevin Pollack's Christopher Walken impersonation.


• How everyone kept making fun of Gallagher.

[1] As of July 2005.

I'm a Survivor

So, you know, I tend to watch a lot of television. And I mostly watch it by myself, while I'm working, as background noise & light that I can sort of half-focus on. But so there's nothing quite like watching TV with friends, particularly friends who are all into a particular show (or, at least, who like to protest too much about it, like Anil).

Last night, Anil, Alaina, and Krissy came over to watch the first episode of this season of Survivor: Guatemala with us. It was a lot of fun, partly because of the group viewing experience & commentary, but also just because it was a particularly good first episode.

Generally, for me the first episode is always a bit of a letdown—I'm excited because the season's starting, but I'm also not into any of the characters yet, and everyone is still just too fucking robust & healthy for it to be that interesting. But this was one of the better first episodes I've seen, and based on that, I'm actually pretty excited about this season! [1]

Bringing back Stephenie and Bobby Jon (both from Survivor: Palau last season) was a brilliant move, I think—not only because they were two of my favorite players, but because having identifiable, known people on each tribe really got me more immediately invested in the show & the game. I generally tend to spend the first 6-8 episodes of the season just waiting for the merge, because that's when I can actually keep track of people, & when I start to root for individual players. The addition of recognizable faces gave me immediate reference points to identify the tribes.

Good things:

• When Mena, a quarter of the way through the show, said, "I forgot to put on my buff!", and we all laughed, because it was funny—and then she ran upstairs to get her buff, and we all realized she was serious (well, I already knew she was serious, but still).


• Bobby Jon's eyes rolling back in his head.


• The fishmonger (wtf?), Lydia


• "Gary Hawkins," a man so famous that he needs an alias to stand a chance on the show!

[1] It's been (not so politely) suggested to me that I use too many exclamation points in my posts, so I'm now really self-conscious about it. Not self-conscious enough not to use exclamation points, though.

Not Another Post About Reality TV

Mena has a great post up on Mena's Corner today, talking about the good aspects of being a (relatively) big company. It's funny, because in the grand scheme of things, Six Apart is such a small company. Particularly when you realize that we have 3 proper products, and physical presence in 3 different continents—then a company with less than 100 people doesn't seem quite as big.

Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson from 37 Signals have both responded to Mena's post on their own weblogs (this is the beauty of blogs, people, in action!). From their responses, I wonder whether they took Mena's post as criticism of being small—I certainly didn't read it that way, and not only because I'm biased, but because it was one of the most reasoned, non-defensive posts Mena's ever written, in my opinion. [1]

What Mena, Jason, and David seem to agree on—even if it's the one thing that they all may think they don't agree on—is that different companies need different sizes to succeed in the markets in which they're doing business.

Believe me, both Mena and I really, really understand the appeal of being small—for sheer productivity, nothing compares to the month (1 fucking month!) in which we developed the first Movable Type release. But we never would have been able to produce three product releases in one 2-week period as a 2-person team! And we never would have been able to create a Japanese version of Movable Type 3.2 in only a couple of weeks, either.

So that is one of the key benefits of growing (again, relatively) big—being able to expand your goals & your ambitions to multiple products, around the world.

[1] Last night, I was reading in bed while Mena was writing this post, and I just kept hearing her typing and typing. And I thought, oh shit, it's another 10,000-word Kottke response. But all bias aside, I thought her post was incredibly succinct, and really made me remember how much I love this company & the things we've accomplished.

Je suis la mouche

Mena's and my love for Serge Gainsbourg's 1971 masterpiece "Histoire de Melody Nelson" is immortalized forever in the default username and password for Movable Type ("Melody" and "Nelson," respectively). I can't state enough how amazing "Histoire" [1] is.

But of course, the only bad thing about "Histoire" is that there's only one such album. Gainsbourg's entire catalog is incredible, of course, but for that mix of psychedelic guitar, deep funky bass, and spooky choirs, there's nothing quite like "Histoire".

Or... maybe not!

Because just last weekend at Amoeba, I picked up the recently-reissued "L'Enfant Assasin Des Mouches" [2] by Jean-Claude Vannier, who arranged and produced "Histoire de Melody Nelson." And it's even more fucked-up and psychedelic than the Gainsbourg album! The story (written by Gainsbourg), basically, is about a child who tortures flies, & who then descends into a fly kingdom where he's tortured and eventually killed by the flies.

Of course, it doesn't have Serge's louche vocals or the lyrical narrative, but musically, it sounds like a mix of "Histoire" and Gainsbourg's 1970 score to the film "Cannabis," in which he also starred along with Jane Birkin (and which Vannier also had a hand in, incidentally). Lots of guitar, strings, and spooky choirs. Very much recommended!

[1] Which I'll call the album throughout the rest of this post, BTW, because it takes too long to write the entire album name, and it's too confusing if I were just to write "Melody Nelson", because there are a number of songs on the album named that or something like it.

[2] "The Child Fly-Killer"

"I'm married! I'm beautiful!": A Scientific Proof for Saturday Night

Observations:

1. Muriel's Wedding is a really depressing movie. Though, to be more specific, it has a lot of really depressing scenes, but in the end, it's actually moderately uplifting & hopeful.


2. As a general rule, any ABBA song can be both depressing and uplifting, but in a certain context, even Dancing Queen is depressing (this may be a corollary of #1, actually).


3. Contrast that to the Go Betweens' 16 Lovers Lane, which is an incredible, incredible album, but is actually depressing all the way through.


4. Hey, it's Saturday night!

Conclusion:

Saturday nights are good for sitting around, watching depressing movies, and listening to depressing music.

Q.E.D.

Breaking update: Counterpoint!

Watching Brain Candy is a much better way to spend Saturday night! "That's not a gift! You freakin' stoled it!" Best movie ever.

New conclusion:

Brain Candy is the Gleemonex for any Saturday night.