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Such a tease.

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Football is the world’s most important unimportant thing.

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Posted by my friend Michael:

“Sweet America, I am not unpatriotic, I am an American. I was born in this county and I grew up in this county, I feel privileged to do so. I have never lived in any other county. I love the fact that I live in diversity in a County of immigrants, though I do deeply weep for the fate of our beautiful Native Americans. I wish history could be re-written. So, why the flag in distress? Because I grieve each day for the current condition of our sweet home. I have no respect for our leader or his pack of lying hate-mongers. I hang my head in shame for what our face in the world has become. I cry for the families destroyed, lives senselessly ended and people of color and diversity miserably repressed by an old worn-out “White is Might” pack of fools with nothing but hate in their hearts. I pray that this regime of madness is short and that the damage caused heals quickly. I am not unpatriotic, I am an American.” ~ @monster.poodle on Instagram

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Ben: They will fuck! They will fuck hard in the next 7 days.

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“The computer scientist Jaron Lanier reckons that social media, by its nature, makes you into an arsehole. It encourages arseholey behaviour by rewarding it with more notifications, engagements, and all the rest of it. His new book, discussed at a recent Idler evening with the Guardian‘s John Harris, is called Ten Arguments For Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Now.”

Ben and I were discussing earlier how there is going to eventually be a backlash against technology itself, but long before that happens, there will be a huge, pervasive backlash against social media. I believe we’re seeing the seeds of that already. I get the sense that people are just flat out disgusted with what they’re seeing online via Twitter, Facebook, and other platforms: the lies, the unabashed hate, the wanton, willful ignorance.

I haven’t been on Facebook in half a decade. I’ve uninstalled Twitter from all my devices, meaning I have to go through the website if I ever want to step into that cesspool, and that’s more trouble than it’s worth. I’m almost ready to give up on Instagram as well, but I’m not quite there yet (too many hot menz and other interesting images).

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Comic actor Stephen Stucker would’ve turned 71 years old today. The man who played impish Johnny in Airplane! (1980) and Airplane II: The Sequel (1982)—a character who relished sales at Penney’s and who noticed Leon’s fluctuating largeness—became one of the first public figures to announce that he had AIDS. Stucker relied on metaphysical healing, vitamins, a positive outlook, and a healthy diet to combat the syndrome, which he suspected he had as early as 1979 and which he somewhat questionably attributed to past blood transfusions and intravenous drug use. He passed away in 1986 at 38.

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Obviously, this show is a little out of step with its misanthropy. It’s a little out of step with where we’re at culturally where it’s a time of great optimism and we’re all just knocked out daily by the warm bath of humanity that we find ourselves in these days. [Pauses, and then reveals he was being sarcastic.] No, it’s a fucking disaster. It’s a fucking total disaster. And every time I turn on the news I’m provided with fodder for our discontent. I think our timing might have been exactly right on.

Listen, I’m surrounded by the wonders of the creations of human beings. I have children and [series co-creator] Lisa Joy and I are reminded daily of how much beauty there is in humanity. But yeah, you turn on the fucking news and it’s a shit show. And I’ve been reading a lot of history this season, a little bit connected to the show, but also just following the train of things I’m interested in, and it’s depressing to realize how familiar some of these problems are, right? It’s like we just can’t figure these fucking things out. We come back to them again and again. It’s as if there’s a flaw—and this is very much the premise in our second season—there’s a flaw in our code and it follows us around. Wherever we go, there we are. And we just can’t get out of our own fucking way. All the beauty and incredible things we brought, and we just consistently find a way to fuck it up.

Much of the dramatic storytelling across the ages has concerned itself with “how will we overcome?” and personal growth and change. At a certain point you gotta fucking call it. We’re not going to fix this shit, we’re not going to figure it out. But there’s an opportunity for the things that replace us to do so. And that’s the dream of every parent, right? That their child doesn’t face the same things they do, that they make better choices? But there does seem to be a pattern of behavior that follows us, that history echoes from the past, the same mistakes, the same foibles. So you say: At what point does this fix itself? Or are we just stuck this way?” ~ Jonathan Nolan, co-creator of Westworld on HBO, speaking to Entertainment Weekly

Maybe this just mirrors my general mood these days, but it sounds right on.

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Squee!

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“You know, the old man himself hired me. So many years ago I can barely remember it. But he was very clear about my role here, about who I was supposed to be loyal to. I guess you could call it… my core drive. And this project the company started blurs the lines. You know? I’m just not sure who you’re supposed to be loyal to in a world like that.” ~ Ashley Stubbs, Head of Park Security letting Dolores/Charlotte know he knows what’s going down here, Westworld (2018).

I squealed. The writing this year has been brilliant.

This season got off to a slow start, and I wasn’t completely sure they would be able to match the excellence of Season One, but I was oh so wrong. IMHO, this season was equal to—if not actually better in places—than Season One.

It’s going to be a long eighteen months until the arrival of Season Three…

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Prior to my temporary loss of employment, Ben and I had planned on taking a mini vacation to Los Angeles. He had CPI training scheduled in San Bernadino and we decided a few days away from Phoenix would do us both good.

After last Wednesday however, we knew we’d have to cut our plans to conserve money. So while we still had to go, it was now a micro-vacation. Ben had to attend the training to maintain his CPI credentials, and we’d already volunteered to drive a friend’s car over (she’s moving to Encino at the end of the week to join her husband) so we were stuck doing the bare minimum. Three overnight stays were cut to one, and there would be no “fun” money available to spend, pretty much cutting out most everything we’d wanted to do in LA.

Monday morning we headed west from Phoenix.

Lots of memories tied to this route and the countless times I took it to and from San Francisco. I hadn’t been back to California in any capacity since I left in 2002.

The trip was uneventful, taking the expected five and a half hours. We checked into our motel in  (I’ll link to my Yelp review at some point, but AVOID the Super 8 in Redlands at all cost), grabbed a bite to eat, and then headed west to Encino, neither of us realizing until we mapped it out how much longer we’d be on the road to deliver the car.

And speaking of mapping, how did anyone survive before GPS?!

Before I lost my job, of the things I originally wanted to do while we were there was to pay a visit to Amoeba Records. I hadn’t visited it (or perhaps it was Tower I was thinking of—the memory’s a little vague right now—since 1999). We’d pretty much axed all our previous plans of places to visit, but since it was actually only a brief detour on the way back to the motel, we made a quick visit and stopped for dinner. I loved Amoeba in San Francisco. I was not so impressed with the Hollywood location. I also remember it being on the northeast corner of an intersection, not the southwest, so I may actually be remembering a visit to Tower. It was nearly 20 years ago…

There was one record I wanted to buy, but I was an adult and didn’t grab it: Grace Jones’ Slave to the Rhythm 12″ picture disk. It was only $7.98 and I should have thrown caution to the wind and grabbed it because the cheapest copy on Discogs I could find is going for over twice that—not including shipping.

Sadly, since we’re in Redlands for the remainder of the day I’m not driving two hours back to get it.

I had one brief celebrity spotting: George Stults (@boraborageorge). Just as cute in person as his Instagram.

After finishing dinner we got back on the road.

Approximately two hours later, after stopping at Target to pick up some Febreze air/fabric freshener, we arrived back at our ashes-found-in-the-bathroom-sink “non-smoking” room. I actually slept pretty well, thankful that the place was at least quiet.

This morning we grabbed breakfast and I dropped Ben off at his training. We met up again for lunch and I’m currently sitting in the Redlands public libray waiting for his training to finish up so we can head home…

Apologies to any of my readers who live in LA or environs and love it, but I can’t believe I ever wanted to live here.

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