Archives for October 27, 2003

I just sliced a chunk out of one of my right-hand fingers on a soup-can lid. It’s now wrapped tight and I’ve mopped up the blood (there was quite a bit of it!). The finger in question, amusingly enough, is the one with which I type “I.”

Funny what that does to your blogging. Heeeeelp, OGIC!!

BuzzMachine is wicked on the Brad Pitt-Jennifer Aniston Middle East peace initiative, tossing off a pair of sentences I desperately wish I’d written:

That’s what the Middle East needs: a laughtrack.

And that’s the wonderful thing about stars: They have no idea how stupid they are and they have no one to tell them.

(He really should have spelled Aniston’s last name right, though, even though the original story doesn’t.)

Lileks, whom I wish would write about cultural stuff more often, knocks it way out of the park with today’s fugitive essay on Fantasia:

When I look at the great animation of the past, I have the same reaction I have when I see a skyscraper from the end of the Jazz Age boom. Magnificent, utterly American – and for all the machinery involved, it all comes down to the movement of the human hand.

The hand behind the mouse creates something different than the hand behind the pen. Better and worse and worse and better. Classical animation is dead, I think. Frescos, meet oil.

I know he’s right. I wish he weren’t.

Finally, don’t read this story about “earworms” (the technical term for songs that get stuck in your head) unless you want to have your whole day ruined.

You’re tempted now, aren’t you?

If I’ve been scarce around here, you can blame my recent initiation into the fine American art of tailgating. The rumors are true; I gave over my entire Sunday to football and associated activities. You have to hand it to the diehard fans out there every Sunday in the parking lots of America with their grills and coolers; they really know how to turn a football game into a mere occasion for more important pursuits. Never let it be said, pace Oscar Wilde, that they don’t take meals seriously; in this respect, at least, there is nothing shallow about them. I’ve only lately recovered from yesterday’s demonstrations of their depth.

Like I said, this was a first for me (and, for a while at least, a last). On the strength of my native sympathies with the Detroit Lions, I was invited to the Lions-Bears game here in Chicago. Read: sacrificial lamb. The Bears fans who brought me even provided a honolulu-blue Barry Sanders jersey for me to wear, the better to be picked out by the orange-and-navy-clad multitude as an object of pity and curiosity, if the Bears prevailed, or–well, I didn’t find out what my role would entail in the unlikely case of a Lions victory. All for the best, I’m sure.

Left in relative peace thanks to the Lions’ harmlessness on the field, I was able to enjoy the $3,000 view from inside the architectural b

As I was washing the blood off my computer keyboard (now there’s a sentence I’ve never before had occasion to write), I managed to knock the “B” key off. Have you ever tried to reinstall a key on an iBook with nine fingers? Or ten, for that matter. I finally had to give up and seek outside help.

I am not having a good day.

P.S. For those who asked, yes, it’s the finger.