Friday Night Videos

Most of the videos I post on Fridays are 15-20 years old. That was the golden age of MTV, after all, and coincided with my formative teen and college years when videos were "cool" and my life revolved a great deal around music. Even though MTV doesn't actually air music videos anymore, there are still pretty cool ones coming out every once in a while. Case in point: Fatboy Slim's "Weapon of Choice." I've never worshiped Christopher Walken the way some folks do, but I'll admit "Needs more cowbell" is one of the best lines to come out of Saturday Night Live over the past 20 years and in this video he's just frellin' awesome. Plus, any song that references Dune in such a hip way certainly deserves bonus points.



Previously on Friday Night Videos... The Bangles.

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Too much time on my hands

So yesterday during my lunch break I left the office, walked down eight flights of stairs and proceeded to wander around the Texas State campus with a pocket full of passion flower seeds, which I scattered in likely places I passed.

The campus straddles the Balcones fault, with most of the campus on limestone hills and the rest--including the San Marcos River and Aquarena--on clay prairie. This should be prime passiflora territory. There's been talk of making the campus an arboretum because of all the trees and native plants found here, which make it a very beautiful campus indeed. But I've never seen any passiflora despite looking off and on for the last several years. Passiflora affinis is native to the Hill Country and is found in Hays County, but not on campus apparently. Neither is the more obscure p. tenuiloba. I didn't have seeds of those. Instead, I had seed of p. incarnata, the native "maypop" I collected last spring in Colorado County which has been enthusiastically growing in my back yard ever since. Their western edge of their native range ends at the Balcones fault. There's some overgrown wildscape around the edges of campus on the prairie that should be prime incarnata habitat. So hither and yon I walked, dropping down seeds and covering them with leaf litter in sunny, brushy margins of the campus.

There's a small spring arising from the hills that forms a modest stream that flows into a flood control wetland before draining into the San Marcos river. There's a little island in the middle of this wetland, maybe 100'x100', give or take. Since I didn't want to get muddy reaching it, I instead scooped up balls of black clay the size of peach pits, pressed a few seeds into each one, and pelted the island with several hundred passiflora seeds. It's isolated and relatively unmolested by groundskeepers, with scrubby trees and undergrowth along the edges and open meadow in the interior. Excellent passiflora habitat, in other words. And really, if only two of the seeds I distributed grow to maturity, birds and small animals will scatter seed from the fruit elsewhere on campus.

Just doing my part to improve biodiversity.

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Night at the Museum

The girls both really, really wanted to see the new Ben Stiller flick, "Night at the Museum," because, as they explained, "everyone at school's seen it." So Lisa and I took them--because we wanted to get out of the house more than anything else.

How was it? A lot better than I expected. Stiller plays the same character he plays in all of his films, that is, himself--although there are some clever bits he pulls off during his second night on the job. There's the standard-issue framing device of divorced parents and the father desperately trying to connect with his young son, but clueless about how to do so. There's the obligatory love interest. And a museum in which all the displays come to life from sunset to sunrise. There's not much plot. Dick Van Dyke plays essentially the same character he voiced in the milquetoast "Curious George" movie, and that's not a good thing. Owen Wilson does what he does. Ditto Mickey Rooney and Robin Williams. And the filmmakers are apparently unaware that Genghis Khan and Attila the Hun were two entirely different people.

Overall, the films an over-the-top concoction of anachronisms and joke setups. It is, essentially, "Bill & Ted's Excellent Adventure" remade without all the time travel. Or Bill and Ted. It's a goofy, entertaining popcorn flick that delivers what it sets out to deliver, and nothing more. The kids, naturally enough, are already asking when the DVD comes out so we can buy it.

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Mead update

Remember that six gallon batch of mead I started way back at the beginning of December? It's still fermenting! I'd expected to rack it into separate vessels by now and add the prickly pear, mint and other flavorings to produce a variety of different drinks, but the stuff's still going. It's not fermenting vigorously, mind you, but it's quite steady. I know I used a lot of honey to start off with, but it's got to be running out of fermentable sugar sooner or later...

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Friday Night Videos

Way back in '86, right in the middle of my formative high school years, the Bangles burst upon the scene. They hit it big right away with the Prince-penned "Manic Monday" and had a monster hit with the goofy "Walk Like an Egyptian," but my favorite song of theirs from the period is the often-overlooked "If She Knew What She Wants." It's got sweet harmonies and the subject matter reminds me of more than a few of my relationships from that era. Turns out, this is another song that had an MTV-only alternate video made. The alternate's interesting, but my fave is still the original (there's something about cute chicks and guitars, you know?):



Previously on Friday Night Videos... The Kinks.

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Next generation realization

What's the word for the realization that history--if it remembers me at all--will do so only in the context of being the father of my children? I'm fairly certain, even at this early date, that in adulthood my children will eclipse whatever modest accomplishments I've made. It's not an unpleasant mindset, but it does leave me feeling somewhat inadequate.

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I'm back

Holidays are never good for me, in an "online connected" context. There's so much family stuff going on, I rarely get near the computer. Seriously. But I'm back now.

Lots of interesting things to report, few, if any, having to do with writing. My entire holiday--which stretched to nearly two weeks due to the university being out--was taken up with a huge new project. I spent a disproportionate amount of time and effort converting the second-floor loft of our home into a fourth bedroom for Orion. Lisa's been chronicling the progress with a series of photos, which I may be able to share sooner or later. Suffice to say, it's been an event. Rather than just put up a new wall, Lisa and I decided to put up cabinets/shelving in the to-be hall side of the wall, not unlike what I wrought for my office bookshelves. Which, naturally, increased the expense dramatically, not to mention the time and complication. The tough part was installing new lighting and rewiring. I'm by no means an electrical genius, but I do okay. No, the real bear was getting up into the attic, which was not designed for human access. Between the fiberglass rash and puncture wounds from bumping into roofing nails once too often, I'm seriously considering posting a sign saying "Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter." And about midway through the project, I came down with a nasty intestinal virus. Nice. The room's not finished yet, but all that's left is detail work. Personally, I'm impressed with the results (and the fact that I didn't electrocute myself).

For those of you wondering, yes, I did watch the Holiday Bowl. Both halves. The less said about the second half, the better.

Orion got Lisa a 6-foot palm tree for Christmas (with a little assist from me). I planted it yesterday in the back yard. A major excavation work. Orion didn't offer to help. If the tree lives, it'll look pretty darn cool.

I really cleaned up on presents, personally. Keela, my loving daughter who has in the past given me gifts of Supergirl panties and mouthwash for Christmas, this year went with a pink purse. She's starting to take a perverse pleasure in non sequitur gifts, and I tremble at what the future holds. Calista got me a nice maroon sweatshirt. Orion got me (with help from his mother) the King Kong/Son of Kong/Mighty Joe Young DVD set. Sweet. Lisa, my amazing and talented wife, really outdid herself and plowed through a huge swath of my Amazon wish list, getting me the Farscape season 4 Starburst DVD editions (which I've been watching with renewed glee). I also landed a load of books including Passiflora: Passionflowers of the World by Torsten Ulmer and John M. MacDougal, Trail of Tears by Gloria Jahoda, Stephen Dedman's collection Never Seen by Waking Eyes and James Tiptree, Jr.: The Double Life of Alice B. Sheldon by Julie Phillips. Is that an embarrassment of riches, or what?

Unfortunately, as I said earlier, I haven't done any writing for two weeks. Hopefully, that's going to change pretty soon as I get Orion's bedroom finished up. Stay tuned...

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