It is not a very good job

Around a year ago I read that newspapers often keep backlogs of obituaries for celebrities, periodically updating them. This way, when said person eventually passes, they can make a last-minute update and get it out on the next news day. It's usually pretty green writers that get these assignments. I figure, that's got to be a pretty boring, surreal job. But wouldn't it make a good screenplay? Some kid - well, maybe he's not a kid. Maybe he's 30 - gets this gig, starts wasting away in it. To keep sane, he starts writing his own, funny, semi-fictional accounts of these people's lives. One gets printed; I don't know how, maybe a comical misnaming of a file. Anyway, shit ensues. But some people like it. There end up being more. He's getting popular, but the SAG aren't really fans. Heartwarming climax. Etcetera.

Hm. Sounds kind of like Be Kind Rewind. I bet that's a good movie.

Slowly going

Am I losing it? A couple of days ago, while searching for some research material for a paper partially about some of Gogol's short stories, I found a couple of books not at the main Humanities and Social Sciences library. Instead, it said they were located at the Book and Record Depository, almost on the other side of the city. When I got there? The online records say they're back at the main library, in the Special Collections. Which is closed on the weekend. I would have sworn I read the record correctly. Now? A few other doubts.

Deadlines have killed me. Even the easy ones. I've fallen asleep during things like The West Wing, which just isn't done. Everything's moving slower, everything's falling behind. I need to catch up. I need to blink - once, twice. Put a little something in my lemonade, take it with me.

Half awake.

Right now, I just want to dream of soft skin, butterflies and bluebirds. I'd be okay with that.

Second degree plea

Highlight of my day: Dooce killing the BYU Student Honor Association server. The link in question, the Modesty & Grooming Standards posters, are worth a gander in their own right. It'll just take a while. The moral of its story? You're probably going to Hell.

If you want a real post, write my papers for me

PS: Do not actually do this; the university frowns upon plagiarism and after being recited the university's official code on the matter 34 separate times, I don't exactly have plausible deniability. I swear, Mister Dean, that page was curiously missing from every single course syllabus. I know, right? You should check into that. Send a memo to the faculty. I can see you've got this taken care of, I'll let myself out

But since that's not actually going to happen, I actually have to write a research article about a pretend research-study; a bad pretend research study. What do you receive, dear reader, as payment? Scraps of lyric ideas that came to me this evening, as it hit me that things are starting to look up after all.

Zero to

Jesus man another hill
And the sense of something breaking

Butcher, baker, candlestick maker
A cereal prize
It's gonna be a good one

I can feel it
Flax in my fingers
Straws in the car for weeks

Zero to more
New rides, fast times
Another hill, a knowing wink

The last tercet is feeling the most like the chorus right now, but I might work in the first couplet as a bridge, or at least a recurring mantra of sorts. There have been some drum and tremolo loops in my head recently, maybe I've got a Grant/Barrymore thing going on here. Now watch me forget about this forever.

Today in Humility

Pitchfork: Once you reach a certain degree of visibility, people assume that things must be more interesting than they actually are. "He put 'Broken Social Scene' on the album title to sell records, but this is just Kevin Drew's big-ego solo project"

KD: But then you hear the record, and does it sound like that?

Pitchfork: It sounds like a Broken Social Scene record.

KD: A ha! Well, then, maybe rather than calling it Broken Social Scene and doing my big ego solo project where I totally take the record away from everybody, I thought I'd make this album and put it under "Broken social scene presents" because we have a lot of stuff in the wings that we don't necessarily want to put it out as Broken Social Scene. We didn't want to cash in on all the work that all of us did together. But because everyone was on the record, it seemed like the right thing to do. It is a huge, fast world and we wanted to make sure that people knew what it was. Everyone else has a band, but Justin, Brendan and I didn't. We sort of wanted to stay in the realm of what Broken Social Scene was.
-From Pitchfork's interview with Kevin Drew

I'm going to just come out and say it. That asshole with the whole, "big ego solo project" thing? That was me. Even hearing the first official cut from the album Spirit If..., "TBTF," I wasn't feeling it. It didn't feel right, it felt too easy. I'll admit it, I'm a douche.

Fast forward a few months, and I've got a ticket to his concert on December 15th. What happened? This did:



Whoa. Seriously, doesn't that just give you a rush? Just watching it? I can only imagine what happens when that happens live, when you're in that room. I've tried to approximate it at jet airplane volume before I leave in the morning. You, a fly on the wall, would see a man transformed, jumping around, grinning and laughing like an idiot, scaring the dog. I get it. It's all about having fun and being that dude. I'm really excited now, I can't wait to jump around and laugh with strangers. Come join me.

Lenny Kravitz at the Grey Cup

The performance is done, but it's still hard to shake a weird, surreal feeling. In a Canadian Football League championship game (peculiarly played indoors), the halftime entertainment was an American singer performing a song by a Canadian artist about rebuffing America. Unironically. Perhaps obliviously. Whichever, it seems odd that in a time when Canada is contributing more to music than it ever has, this would be the choice. There are some local bands that would have probably been just as effective choices.

Ah well. It's still a hell of a game.