Deadwood and a crush

November 21, 2005


I’ve got two things today,

First, something that has been mentioned before a million times, including on SD Watch’s “Not the Deadwood Pioneer”: Deadwood is a great show. I’m not saying anything that hasn’t already been formulated by critics and fans for the past two years, I know, but I really enjoy this show.

Along with a few friends, Kerrie and I traveled to Deadwood (the city) this past summer on our way to Idaho. I became enamored, for a little while at least, with the rugged history of Deadwood. I found the legend of a mining town that doubled as a sin-filled hole of gambling, prostitution, and general drunkenness to be a quite fascinating story.

Needless to say, the Deadwood I visited was no where near the same as the one on the television show. Today’s Deadwood is a bright, glitzy tourist trap, packed to the edges with degenerate gamblers and overweight travelers. There were parts that I enjoyed, I’ll admit. I liked the idea that beer was free for those at the poker tables, and that there were enough places to go that you could easily get by just watching hundreds older couples push quarters into a slot machine or you could shop and drink and gamble on your own.

What I did not like, though, was the idea of playing live poker. I sat down expecting to have fun, but I found myself trying to concentrate on not losing my money. You can’t do anything at a live poker table unless you have $30-40 in chips (minimum) and you’ve got to be a top notch player in order to stay around long enough to have anything that could be classified as “fun.”

I guess I don’t care much for gambling types. When I play cards, I do it to have fun. I’ll throw in $5 with my friends, but I sure as hell don’t want to throw in $40 and only stick around for 15 minutes.

It was my own fault, though. I know this now. I felt the allure of gambling in a live setting, and I continued to try my hand, so to speak. I kept trying to take on Deadwood, and kept failing.

The people who play poker professionally, or at least do it to make money instead of as a game, are a different breed. I gaze upon these guys in absolute wonder when I see them on television – they are taking the game so seriously that it’s any wonder that they find themselves enjoying it at all. I think anyone that takes poker seriously has something wrong with them, and I’d just as soon not play with them at all.

That’s an aside, however. Deadwood, the television show, is great. Never have I been so happy to watch a show that features violence, sex, and heavy drinking. The good guys are hardly good, and the bad guys are nearly devils. I never imagined getting into it as much as I have, and I especially never imagined Kerrie becoming enamored with the show; she’s ahead of me by about four episodes, and I’ve found myself desperately trying to catch up.

So, with a nod to Jim for letting us borrow it and another to Todd for calling me Con Stapleton, I suggest Deadwood to anyone and everyone.

——————————-

Secondly:

Thanks to Millions: A Blog about Books (one of my favorite new blog finds,) I found this story at Slate.com: “My First Literary Crush - The books famous people loved in college.”

I thought about it for a long time, and there are a few authors that I would lump into the category of my own first literary crush.

First of all, going back to high school, I found that I was reading a lot of Stephen King – an author that is so well known and so predictable that I’d feel embarrassed about it if I wasn’t secure in my own “well-read”-ness. The books? Primarily The Stand, though I was a fan of some of his newer stuff, including Insomniac.

During high school I also latched onto a group of “the future looks bleak if we continue down this road” authors; Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm, Ray Bradbury’s Fahrenheit 451 all adorned my shelves and were read and re-read during my four years at Lincoln High School.

In college I went through a brief “beat” period, though it was mostly just a Charles Bukowski period, and so I guess Bukowski was my first college literary crush. My first post college crushes belong to Bill Bryson and Paul Theroux.

My current literary crush is John Steinbeck. How I never discovered this guy until now is a mystery.

Tags: Books, Literature, Travel |

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The gibberish that serves as a comment

November 17, 2005


I’ve just checked the “comments waiting to be moderated” section of my website, and I found a peculiar thing…

There was one comment, by Eddie Guerrero (one of my favorite professional wrestlers (from back when I watched it) who, coincidentally, passed away in Minneapolis this past Saturday) which had a website attached to it.

This spam stuff is getting out of hand, but it’s hilarious all the same.

“Eddie’s” comment read:

“Eddie Guerrero , much astonished at this reception, backstitched through an soul-suicide into a handsomely furnished apartment distance-annihilating of books and pictures. They strake together the Americans restrapp”

Um… what??

Check this out, though. The website led to a fake blog, set up through blogspot.com. The posts were just as funny as the fake comment was. An excerpt from a post titled XBox 360:

Although it was eleven o’clock, Xbox 360 proceeded in the symptoma of the Xbox 360 Xbox 360, still another quarter of a horsecloth deeper in the Xbox 360. In short, the young Shus-ty Xbox 360 failed at all times to investigate that peons of propriety which should ever stoale the pure in heart, and appeas’d, by many, unversed of immorality. sketch usurp’d, even these simili the c-c-crash incidents that supped on the sacred trestout of the Himavat whistling Russian-american and Sthanu, O insularity of Schamaism.

O! Insularity of Schamaism indeed!

Check it out for yourself — the blog is called Hot Topics. I use Firefox as my browser, so there’s no risk of popups or weird spyware by clicking on the site, but if you’re not trusting enough, just take my word that the posts are brutally funny. The e-mail address given was from the webmaster at poker.da, so you can tell it’s probably not the most legit piece of the blogosphere.

Still, the “post” about Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (which comments that “The wasp’s Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire was the sturdiest of the men of engine-step, for Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire Courage passent unto him“) and Eddie Guerrero himself are well worth the read.

Tags: Meta |

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Crosswords

November 17, 2005


I’ve finally discovered the secret to learning new words and keeping my vocabulary at its peak.

Crossword puzzles.

Hear me out. This activity, which I had attributed to hoards of older men and women who use their weekly newspaper for nothing more than bird cage liner and word games, is not as geriatric as it sounds. In fact, millions of young, able-minded people enjoy, and dare I say complete, crossword puzzles every day.

It all started, with me at least, when Kerrie brought home a crossword dictionary from the First Lutheran Church “come buy our used stuff” bazaar. We had struggled through some simple crossword puzzles earlier in the year, and we found that they were too much trouble to be enjoyable at all. Kerrie found this small reference tool and snatched it up at the wonderful price of $0.50

It changed the way we looked at crossword puzzles. Initially, we tried to do the m without any help, getting frustrated after filling out 10% of the words, and quitting to do something more productive and rewarding, like watching Deadwood. We’d cast a wary eye on most crossword puzzles, believing them to be horribly retched little games filled with information that only the most knowledgeable person – someone with too much time on their hands, naturally – would be able to solve.

Now, however, we solve them with ease. If we’re stuck we just check the crossword dictionary. It’s as simple as that.

There are some who may think that it’s not proper to use any sort of outside resources when completing a crossword puzzle. I think this is horribly close-minded. I’m not old enough to know any 70s era television shows, or who played right field for the 1952 Yankees, so naturally I’m at a disadvantage right off the bat. Instead, my crossword puzzles are solved with the aid of a few research tools; I need to know what a certain word might be, so I peruse the internet (for proper names and titles) and the crossword dictionary (a thesaurus, of sorts.)

Because of this I’ve started to enjoy the occasional crossword puzzle, much to the chagrin of Kerrie, who I suspect is a little upset whenever I begin solving words in succession without giving her a chance to even look at the clues. I now take control of the Argus Leader’s classifieds section at least twice a week in an effort to solve the puzzles held within.

Kerrie, in the meantime, has resorted to sudoku.

Tags: Random |

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A boxed dream

November 15, 2005


levihomerorwellwodehouse

As I wrote back a few months ago, I’m incredibly desirous of a certain book box-set: the Penguin Pockets 70th anniversary collection.

Kerrie presented me with horrible news the other day. It’s going out of print.

Gasp!

Frantically, I’ve been trying to find it for a reasonable price. Penguin UK is selling it straight from their website for only £50 (plus shipping) but they refuse to ship to the United States. My heart sank – there was a while when I didn’t care about having this box set, but at a price of roughly $85 I can’t resist.

I mean, this is a wonderful little selection – there are 70 skinny books by some of Penguin’s most popular authors. It’s more than just a box set. It’s my path to learning more about the world of literature. Each book represents a new short story that I can easily devour — a new author for which I’ll either have an affinity with or will not care about anymore (but still I tried!)

It looks like this:

The ENTIRE set

The titles alone make me salivate – many of my favorite authors are present:

In Defence of English Cooking - George Orwell
Happy Birthday, Jack Nicholson - Hunter S. Thompson
Murder - John Steinbeck
Something for the Weekend - Jamie Oliver
Short Short Stories - Dave Eggers
Jeeves and the Impending Doom - P.G. Wodehouse
Otherwise Pandemonium - Nick Hornby
A Taste of the Unexpected - Roald Dahl
The Bastille Falls - Simon Schama
Three Trips: The Short-Story Writer as Tourist - John Updike
Two Stars - Paul Theroux

Each book has a unique fascinating cover, which for Penguin books is a feat itself. I want it. I want it very badly.

I searched Amazon.co.uk, a seller that I know would ship to the U.S. It was £80.48 ($139.79) with shipping included. At Abebooks.co.uk the price for the cheapest retailer was £77.01. I was beginning to think that there would be no way to acquire this unique set without spending my monthly book budget for the next three years.

Then, finally, I found a price I could handle on Ebay: £25.99.

Of course, this is depending on whether or not my bid continues on until the end. If I’m lucky, no one else cares about this set and I’ll be living with seventy new pocket Penguin books. If I’m not lucky, I guess I’ll save us 65 dollars or so.

Unless, of course, the faithful readers out there want to start up a collection.

hornbyfraudeggershunter

Tags: Books, Literature |

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Brilliance in numbers (with even more friends!)

November 14, 2005


Ultimately, I’d say my friends are brilliant.

Of course, everyone says that. Everyone has that group of people that they grew up with, know inside and out, and is convinced that everyone involved will become incredibly well known at what he or she ends up doing. I’m no different – I believe my friends are all wonderful and they’re all smart and funny and they’re all politically on the right side of the fence, etc. etc.

We grew up together – since the early years of high school for some of us – and we’ve all watched each other move away and slide into different fields and customs. We were an anomaly to begin with – there’s no reason the people I called my friends would have ever joined together except in an effort to create some weird sub-society in Sioux Falls. Considering how close we all are and how things ended up, we succeeded in creating a sub-society. I’ve added smart friends as time has gone on that haven’t “joined” the group, and I’ve added acquaintances that would be friends if time and space were drastically changed.

Jim’s an aspiring filmmaker, with the knowledge, if not the background, to become a film critic if it falls through. Eric’s an acoustic guitar monster – a man who’s created his own sound that can be both intense and commercially viable; the sound of punk fused with the sentimentality of folk to create music that will blow your ass out. I’ve got other friends in music too: Mary’s band is a local phenomenon, while Zach’s music defies category and would be much more well known if he had more than a MySpace account.

Tim is helping Democratic governors win states away from the Republicans. Cody’s getting his doctorate in chemistry at USC (and he didn’t even know their football team was any good) while planning to become a university professor. John’s writing a screenplay. Alan’s writing and studying French. Andy’s an artist, as is Sam, though one uses different types of media while the other uses just paper and pencil.

The jobs don’t even have to be glamorous: Russel is a chef (which is as sexy a job as you can get, I’m sure) and Amy, Doug, and I are all playing the management game at a young age while Kerrie’s writing magazine articles and creating newsletters. Steph and Katie are going to medical school. Ryan is going to teach special education. Les is aspiring to be a video game programmer.

I know I’m not the only one that can voice these kinds of opinions about their friends. We’re all protective of our friends – we would say they were smart and funny and ground-breakingly clever even if all they did was play video games all day. I’m no different. I see more in my friends than I’d ever notice in them as a stranger.

Maybe that’s the key, though. I don’t know them as a stranger – I’m privy to their thoughts and their history and their goals, even if they hardly mention them. I’m able to look at them and discover their secrets; the things that drive them to succeed.

Sure, some of these things are pretty commonplace, these days. I still think they’re great, though. I still think that having friends that are as varied in their occupations/career paths as they are in their musical tastes is a pretty neat thing to experience. Regardless of what happens with each of them, I’m positive that I’ll always consider them to be not just friends but brilliant purveyors of whatever they plan to do with their lives.

Hell yeah, my friends are brilliant.

———-UPDATE———–

Of course, upon completion of this post, I was nearly positive that I had forgotten someone. As our friend Roberta pointed out – yes, I did. She is included with the “brilliant people.”

So is Sara, our resident grade school teacher, and Nick who’s in and out of work but is gutsy enough to be an intrepid traveler. Chris not only hosts this site (for which alone he’s brilliant for knowing a good thing when he sees one) but also drinks Grain Belt and aspires to do the computer stuff I’m to dumb to figure out. Hell, I’d even call Matt brilliant, simply because he had the foresight to get paid to do karaoke while the rest of us dutifully pay for the enjoyment.

An oversight, yes. But unforgivable all the same. Everyone deserves his or her “props,” and for forgetting you I apologize. To those I’ve forgotten still, let me know – we all deserve our 15 minutes in the Internet sun.

Tags: Friends |

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Getting physical

November 14, 2005


We are all aware of the cliché things that are mentioned about doctor’s offices: the long wait, the horrible magazines, the cold rooms and the scratchy smocks. There’s nothing more frustrating, I found out today, than living out those clichés and realizing that, perhaps, they’re not really clichés at all. They’re true to life annoyances.

It was requested that I arrive at 8:45 am for my physical, an appointment that was scheduled for 9 am today. I showed up at 8:40 am, stood in line for 15 minutes, and then met with a receptionist who promptly took my insurance card and charged me a $20 co-pay.

This happened to be the only thing that was timely all day.

At 9:30 am my name was called. I tried to keep up with the nurse, an older woman who was trying to have a conversation with me while walking towards the exam room. This presented a scene that looked incredibly strange, I’m sure, since I was chasing in an effort to both keep up with her and answer her questions about the weather at the same time. She weighed me, measured me, and eventually grilled me on my medical history. After going through these motions, she told me that the doctor was on his way in. As she left the room, she told me to take all of my clothes off.

This was awkward – not because I had to strip in a cold doctors office, but because I didn’t know the proper procedure for doing so. It’s been a long time since I’ve been in for a physical. Was I supposed to keep my boxers on, or go straight nude? There was a robe on the examining table – was that for me? Who would be coming in next? — the nurse gave no indication that she’d be back in to check on my state of undress, but I couldn’t imagine the doctor walking in and exchanging pleasantries with his naked patient.

I opted to stay in my boxers. For ten minutes I stood, arms crossed, staring around the room. I wasn’t sure what to do next. I didn’t want to pick up my magazine (a Sports Illustrated which I brought after perusing all of the October 2004 editions of every woman’s magazine in the lobby on my last visit) because I didn’t feel like reading much, considering my current state of undress. Finally, the doctor came in, spoke to me a while about a group of cancer tests that I wouldn’t need to worry about until I turned 40, and then, with a smirk, invited me to finally sit down.

It was at this time that I realized that I had been continuing to stay locked in my cross-armed stance. I sat on the table. We went over my blood work. I got the usual ears, nose and mouth check. He told me to exercise more. I mentioned a mole on my chest, and he said we should do a biopsy, a ten minute procedure – “would I have time?”

Thinking this would be a short ordeal, I said “sure.”

It was 9:50 am. The doctor left me. At 10:15 (shortly after finishing my Sports Illustrated) the nurse came in and moved me to another room. I sat on a chair and waited for the doctor. I started re-reading my magazine.

At 10:30 am, the doctor showed up. He removed most of the mole for a biopsy, stitched the hole up, and told me to come back next week to get the stitches out. Total time of operation – about 10 minutes. Total time waiting for doctor today: about one and a quarter hours.

And to think I always thought the dentist was the one to fear. The homicidal way that Sioux Valley killed my time today makes me wary of ever coming back.

That is, until next week.

Gotta get those stitches out.

Tags: Vilhauer |

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Site Update: 11.12.05

November 12, 2005


Just made a quick site update, so let me know if anything is “whacked out,” as they say on the streets these days.

There isn’t much that’s noticeable — I changed my “blogroll” to be my current NewsGator selection — if it’s not brought to me via NewsGator, it’s not present on the side.

Additionally, I added a little aggrigator feed to the right and below. It shows the most current posts on the sites I usually read. It’ll usually be filled up with posts from Crooks and Thieves and SD Watch because those two sites seem to find time to blog around the clock.

Anyway, let me know if anything is messing up. Sorry that the side panel is so packed full of stuff…but I can’t pass up the opportunity to add new toys to my blog every once in a while.

Tags: Meta |

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