Mr. Middlebrow, Esq. or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Pass the Bar

Hello, Internet. Yeah, it's been a while. Not much, how 'bout you?

So, for those scoring along at home in their lucky souvenir programs, I sat for my state's Bar Exam on July 27 and 28, 2010.

True to the predictions of Snag and some others who went before me, I came out of the exam absolutely certain that I had failed. In particular, my performance on the second day, the Multistate Bar Exam (MBE), felt so abysmal that I was ready to book a room at the Ramada Inn where I stayed; I was that sure I would be coming back to retest in February. But, I'm pleased to report that (again, as Snag had forseen) I passed. I was admitted to the State Bar in late August.

So now I'm a bona fide esquire. Given the dismal employment picture, I've decided to hang out my shingle; I've even got a TV commercial:

My current job, while not perfect, meets the minimum criteria that I established for myself when I graduated: it doesn't involve me asking, "would you like that with regular or skim milk?" 

Actually, I've been working as a part-time clerk and sometime associate--a "clerksoicate," if you will (which makes me the legal equivalent of Dr. Tobias Fünke's "Analrapist"?) for a solo lawyer whose practice consists mostly of bankruptcy and insurance subrogation debt recovery. On the one hand, it's not exactly the kind of law I'm interested in practicing; on the other hand, it meets the minimum employment criteria that I established for myself when I graduated. Namely, it doesn't involve me using the phrase "would you like that with regular or skim milk?" In other words, it's a real lawyer job. Mostly. And, along with showing me the basics of civil procedure and litigation, he's been helping me get my own practice going. Which means that, in between filing (and occasionally arguing) motions, I'm networking and generally doing what I can to scare up copyright and trademark clients.

My plan now is to get an IP blog going and establish myself as a go-to source for innovators--start-ups, small businesses, and artists--who have IP issues. I suspect half the battle is making them aware that they have issues in the first place. In any case, any and all referrals and leads are welcome and appreciated.

What this means for the future of this blog is uncertain. It's always been a struggle to maintain it and the advent of Facebook and Twitter has removed even more of the incentive to keep it up. I do hope regular readers of A Drinking Song will check out my new digs as they come online. Also, please friend and/or follow me if you're so inclined. I'm also on LinkedIn, though I haven't found that to be of much use, either for networking or entertainment/goofing off.

Trapped near the Inner Circle of Thought

With two weeks of exams coming up, I'm having to pencil in bathroom breaks, so posting will be minimal.* I'll try to get a basic track listing up for The Penultimate Mix soon. In the meantime, please enjoy this little bit o' vitriol... (My "SAT vocab. song.")



*Not that it's been much of a going concern anyway.

What wouldn't I give to be spat at in the face?

My answers to the latest SLIFR pop-culture query: “PROF. BRIAN O'BLIVION'S ALL-NEW FLESH FOR MEMORIAL DAY FILM (AND TV) QUIZ.”

If you love movies and love talking about movies with people who love movies, and you haven't found Dennis' brilliant blog, you're missing out. Follow the link to take the quiz yourself and read other responses (after reading and commenting on mine, natch).

1) Best transition from movies to TV (actor, actress, producer/director, movie/show)
Alec Baldwin, on “30 Rock.” It’s like everything he’s done up to this point has been in service to this.

Runners-up: The troika of Edward James Olmos, Mary McDonnell, and James Callis, on “Battlestar Galactica.”

Martin Sheen was one of the great things about “The West Wing.”

2) Living film director you most miss seeing on the cultural landscape regularly
I would love to have seen more from Paul Brickman.

3) Eugene Pallette or Charles Coburn
Pallette purely on the strength of his addled patriarch in My Man Godfrey.

4) Fill in the blank: “I pray that no one ever turns _____________ into a movie.”
Any Geico TV commercial. Don’t scoff, it could happen.

5) Jane Greer or Veronica Lake
Lake. Better still: Kim Basinger playing a hooker “cut” to look like Veronica Lake in L.. A. Confidential.

6) What was the last movie you saw in a theater? On DVD? And why?
Theatre: Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull; how could I not? The first half hour was a pure delight—everybody was loose, having fun. Lots of great hot-rodder moments straight out of American Graffiti. The rest was pretty serviceable, but eventually it got kind of sloppy (who said “P-O’d” in the ‘50s?) and didn’t really hold up very well. I had to admit after a while that they either A) didn’t write Marion’s part very well, or B) Karen Allen isn’t much of an actress. By the end, I mostly wanted to see Shia LeBouef cast in something as Russell Crowe’s little brother.

DVD: Out of Sight; This is cinematic comfort food for me. Having just completed my second semester of law school, which included a course in criminal law, I’ve been jonesing to rewatch it with an eye toward all the possible instances of accomplice liability and applications of the felony-murder rule. It’s a testament to the movie’s greatness that I had stopped thinking about law school by the time it got to the first freeze-frame.

Tivo: Tristram Shandy, A Cock and Bull Story: For some unexplained reason, we’ve started getting IFC instead of TCM, and Tivo thought I would enjoy this. I did—especially the way it utterly disabuses the viewer of any thought about the “glamour” of being an actor. Makes kind of a good companion piece to Shakespeare in Love. I’d still rather have TCM, though.
7) Name an actor you think should be a star
Nathan Fillion. I’ve been unconsciously appreciative of him ever since he played the cad boyfriend in Blast from the Past; now, having thoroughly enjoyed his performance in Waitress and recently discovered “Firefly,” via Hulu.com, I consider him and grievously undervalued asset.

8) Foxy Brown or Coffy
Jackie Brown

9) Favorite TV show still without its own DVD box set
“The Six Million Dollar Man.” If the glimpses of similar childhood faves that I’ve gotten from Hulu are any indication (“Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea”) I’m probably much better off with my memories of the show as seen through the uncritical eyes of a ten-year-old.

10) Jack Elam or Neville Brand
Big Jack.

11) What movies would top your list of movies you need to revisit, for whatever reason?
Given the number of answers that I’ve had to pass on for this quiz, it seems like I have a lot of catching up to do before I do any “revisiting.” In another year or two, my son will be old enough to start watching movies, and that should make for some pretty interesting revisitations.

12) Zodiac or All the President’s Men
It’s been a million years since I saw the latter and I have yet to see the former, though given all the praise that’s been heaped on it, that should be rectified soon.

13) Using our best reviewer-speak, what is an “important” film comedy? And what is to you the most important film comedy of the last 35 years?
An “important” film, regardless of genre, is one that challenges the status quo. An “important” comedy would be one that has all the wit and intelligence of a respectable drama, but gets authentic laughs in unexpected ways. Even though it wasn’t a film, I thought this was what made “Arrested Development” so great (if fatally misunderstood and underappreciated). Generally, it seems the most “important” comedies are probably satire and/or black comedies, a la Dr. Strangelove, Three Kings. ‘Course, pretty much everything the Coens have done has defied conventions, proving (at least to me) that even a just-for-kicks comedy can earn a place in the canon. Even though it didn’t quite live up to the hype, I thought Borat went fearlessly where film hadn’t before, though I doubt you could have Borat without This is Spinal Tap. And Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind definitely felt like a paradigm shift to me.

All that said, I think it has to be Monty Python’s Life of Brian (See question 22, infra)

14) Describe the ideal environment for watching a movie.
Not to get too curmudgeony, but it’s really not fun to go to the movies nowadays. Between the general discourtesy that pervades and the fact that my home theatre 5.1 system is pound-for-pound as good or better than the average multiplex, the answer is: My sofa with my wife, some really great cheeses and pâtés, and a glass of Italian red (that, ironically, probably costs less than a coke at the theatre).

15) Michelle Williams or Eva Mendes
Anne Hathaway

16) What’s the worst movie title of all time?
C.H.U.D.

17) Best movie about teaching and/or learning
Fast Times at Ridgemont High. Talk about “everything I need to know I life I learned . . . “ Now that I think about it, this might be a contender for #13.

18) Dracula (1931) or Horror of Dracula (1958)
Pass

19) Why do you blog? Or if you don’t, why do you read blogs? (Thanks, Girish)
I like to think of my blog as a virtual water cooler, around which I and anyone who cares to join me can hold forth on whatever pop-culture ephemera seems noteworthy. I read blogs for mostly the same reasons, though many of my regular blogs have more of a political bent to them. I wish that I spent more time blogging and less time reading blogs, but I have reconciled myself to the reality that I’m a deficit blogger—I will always consume more than I produce.

20) Most memorable/disturbing death scene
Adam Goldberg being slowly stabbed in Saving Private Ryan.

21) Jason Robards or Robert Shaw
Robert Shaw. Robards is no slouch, but was he Quint and a Bond baddie? Didn’t think so. Oh, and Doyle Loneghan. And The Taking of Pelham 123. Yeah, Shaw was a total badass.

22) A good candidate for Most Blasphemous Movie Ever
If “blasphemy” is “an irreverent or impious act, attitude, or utterance in regard to something considered inviolable or sacrosanct,” then my answer is Pearl Harbor. Get thee behind me, Bruckheimer and Bay.

I find it curious how people answered with Monty Python’s Life of Brian. If you really watch it, there’s noting against God or Jesus or even any of Jesus’ teachings. It’s a 90-minute riff on that old bumper-sticker chestnut: Dear Lord, save me from your followers. I like to think that if God exists, and if we’re made in his/her/its image, then a sense of humor is essential to the creator’s divine nature. Jesus would totally get this movie. Seems to me, too, that JC, surveying the landscape of modern religion, politics and pop culture would have much greater quarrels with the self-anointed arbiters of holiness than mischief-makers and gadflies like the Pythons. I suspect God is far more indulgent of fools than hypocrites.

Now, if you want to talk about the most heretical movie ever, Life of Brian is surely a contender. And God bless ‘em for it.

23) Rio Bravo or Red River
Yikes. This might be in the running for #31 . . . I’ve seen snatches of both, but never really sat down and watched either.

24) Werner Herzog is remaking Bad Lieutenant with Nicolas Cage—that’s reality. Try to outdo reality by concocting a match-up of director and title for a really strange imaginary remake.
David Fincher’s Mary Poppins

25) Bulle Ogier or Charlotte Rampling
I have no idea who Bulle Ogier is, but it’s immaterial: it would pretty much be Charlotte Rampling, regardless.

26) In the Realm of the Senses— yes or no?
No strong opinion, so . . . sure, why not?

27) Name a movie you think of as your own (Thanks, Jim!)
Apparently, any movie from the ‘80s that begins with the letter R:

Risky Business came out the summer after I graduated high school and quickly established itself, at least to me, as something more than another teen-sex romp. It had some pretty keen insights into the priorities, anxieties and insecurities of 17-year-olds in the early ‘80s. It certainly struck a chord with me.

The Right Stuff was and remains a perfect synthesis of my boyhood passions—the space age and the movies. It eventually unseated Star Wars as my favorite movie (even though it took a few years for me to acknowledge as such). It also turned me on to the idea of film as literature, complete with themes, allusions, and tropes. “Hey, Ridley, you got any Beemans?”

Raising Arizona was my first date with my then hottie girlfriend (now hottie wife). It also introduced me to a whole new way of thinking about what movies, especially comedies, could be.

A Room with a View was something we saw for the first time while living in Italy. I was astonished that it was recently remade for PBS. What’s the point of remaking perfection?

28) Winged Migration or Microcosmos
Haven’t seen either. I have a feeling I’d be more of a Winged fan.

29) Your favorite football game featured in a movie
I’m tempted to say The Longest Yard (the original), and call it a day. I feel like I should throw Heaven Can Wait some love, even though the actual games are pretty tangential to the whole affair.

30) Wendy Hiller or Deborah Kerr
Kerr for Eternity.

31) Dirtiest secret you have that is related to the movies
Hanover Street and assorted crimes of omission too, too numerous and grievous to mention.

32) Name a favorite film and describe how it is illuminated and enriched by another favorite film.
Monster’s Inc.’s nod to Feed the Kitty. That’s not exactly the question, I know.

Equally lame but more to the point: High Anxiety (which I first saw as a young teen having only seen The Birds) became considerably funnier as I worked my way through the Hitchcock oeuvre. How about the way The Hudsucker Proxy riffs on Cool Hand Luke? “Lose a blue card, and they DOCK ya!”

33) It’s a Gift or Horsefeathers
Can’t say.

34) Your best story about seeing a movie at a drive-in
Best I can do is one of the typical “hide under a blanket in the back,” from the days before they charged by the carload.

35) Victor Mature or Tyrone Power
Man, I really need to get my TCM back.

36) What does film criticism mean to you? Where do you think it’s headed?
Right now, it doesn’t mean much. I’m pretty ambivalent about where it might be headed, though I’m thankful for the role that blogging generally, and Dennis’ blog especially, has played in letting regular Joe movie lovers participate in the conversation.

Whither Shamus? And other mysteries of the blogroll.

For several months now, I’ve been puzzling over a few things.* Namely, what’s become of some of my erstwhile favorite blogs, and how/why have I been getting traffic from sites I’ve never been to or heard of until I started getting traffic from them?

M.I.A.:

Bad for the Glass
The Shamus was one of the greats. Formerly known as That Little Round-Headed Boy (alias Jack, alias Jackie!) The Shamus had impeccable taste in movies, music, and pop culture generally. That doesn’t mean I always agreed with him, but then he also had an uncanny knack for defending or supporting what from anyone else would seem like questionable judgment, entertainment-wise. I especially enjoyed, and will miss, his kooky lists like “75 reasons to love Burt Bacharach on his 75th Birthday.”

Though incredibly disappointing, his suddenly vanishing without a trace is not that unexpected. He was the unofficial Lord of Evanescence. Hated archiving. Constantly changed his layout. If anyone knows of some new iteration or incarnation, or the story behind his decision to stop enriching the quality of discourse in the blogosphere, please leave a link in the comments.

Look at Me. I'm So Important That I Have a Blog.
Done by Darren McLikeshimself, this was one of my favorite slice-of-life blogs. Every post—whether meditating on the foibles of being a 30-something Hoosier trying to make it in NYC, the sublime joy of guacamole at Chipotle, or the merits and pitfalls of sporting J.E.B. Stuart facial hair—was sharply observed and shot through with enviably wry wit and charming self-deprecation. Last I heard, he and Nabbalicious had loaded up the truck and moved to L.A. He did one post about Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles, and then . . . crickets. Maybe he got a book deal.

NEW:

Deutschland Über Elvis
I occasionally get hits from this site, but there’s no apparent link or reference to me or my blog anywhere that I can find. The only thing I can figure is that that “Next Blog” random thing seems to think that anyone who enjoys reading the observations of an expat, gay, globetrotting marketing guru working out of Munich would like this one. Seems logical.

Wie sagt Man auf Deutsch: Faaabulouuuussss!

Clean Green Slate
Near as I can tell, this blog is relatively new and one of several done by a young attorney from the Midwest who’s getting married in a few months. I have no idea (okay, some) why she linked my site. We don’t seem to have much in common beyond law and an appreciation for The Weepies (abiding in her case; newfound obsession in mine). But I’ll take what I can get and be glad for it.

*Puzzling in tiny little 10- to 15-second bursts. It’s not like I was trapped in the inner circle of thought worried about these things. I’m a 1L with a 3-year-old for crying out loud. I’m lucky if I get to sit down for a meal.

I weep for the future.

Glancing at my site meter referrals, I came across this link. Being from neither a known associate or the ubiquitous Google search for the song from Jaws, my curiosity was duly piqued.

Turns out, it’s a message board used by the faculty to mete out class assignments at Paramus Catholic High School.

While I’m glad to be getting traffic for something other than sea chanteys and tips on pork brining, I’m not sure I’m ready for the responsibility that comes with being an quasi-legit academic resource—for Catholics. Either the teacher is too pressed for time to vet every site, or he’s big into the whole free will thing. ‘Cause, seriously, did he even look around?

I feel like I should do a quick review of Dogma. Or link to the “Every Sperm is Sacred” song from Monty Python and Meaning of Life.

So far, none of the kids has followed the teacher’s link (to be fair, he posted it on May 2, and they have a lot of Shakespeare and Milton and Lewis Carroll to get through). But here’s the odd thing: the traffic that came so far was from the EPA office in Research Triangle Park, here in Cack’lacky. Also, careful readers and conspiracy theorists will no doubt recall that Paramus is the location of our holiday adventure to IKEA. Curiouser and curiouser, indeed.

I find it more than a little quizzical that of all the places to find a W.B. Yeats poem on the interwebs, Mr. Kirschmann chose my humble watering hole. My guess is that, while loaded with distractions, A Drinking Song is otherwise free of anything a kid could crib in the way of poetic analysis. Still, I love the idea that some latter-day Mary-Catherine Gallagher is going to conflate Yeats with Messrs. Quint, Brody and Hooper. Probably a long shot, I know. But then, isn’t that I what real faith is all about?

Goldie's Got a Gun

Be advised: I've added Oklahomeless to ye olde blogrolle. It's the online home/journal of my pal and fellow old-BMW enthusiast Daniel Goldberg. Or, I should say, 1LT Daniel Goldberg, given his current gig as a "Baby JAG" in the Direct Commission Course at Ft. Sill, near scenic Lawton, OK.

Like everyone on the blog roll, he's witty, erudite and prolific to a frightening and envy-inspiring degree. Check him out and cheer him on.

Give the people what they want, YouTube edition.

About a year or so ago, I did a post wherein I marveled at the number of people who happened by while searching for drinking songs. Actually, given the title of my blog, that wasn't so surprising (Yeats be damned). What was surprising--and remains so--is that easily half the drinking song questers were/are looking for the song(s) from Jaws. My ham-fisted analysis of these data suggests that of all the people looking for drinking songs, half of them are shark hunters. And most of them are completely hammered.

Last year, in the interests of cultivating a little good will on the interwebs, I posted the lyrics and a couple lame photos, for the Jaws bit and (because we're all about value) the lyrics to the Monty Python Australian Philosopher's Drinking Song as a special bonus if you click and comment before midnight tonight.

This year, I'm adding moving pictures and sound. Next year, who knows? Could be 3-D holograms or neural receptors that let you taste the beer. You just have to keep checking back. Because we here at A Drinking Song pride ourselves on providing cutting-edge entertainment technology.*

Enjoy!

Show Me the Way to Go Home

Show me the way to go home (bum, bum),
I’m tired and I wanna go to bed,
I had a little drink about an hour ago
and it went right to my head.

Where ever I may roam, (bum bum)
by land or sea or foam,
you can always hear me singing this song,
show me the way to go home…

The Philosophers Drinking Song

Emmanuel Kant was a real pissant
who was very rarely stable
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
who could think you under the table
David Hume could out-consume
Schopenhauer and Hegel
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
Who was just as sloshed as Schlegel.

There’s nothing Nietzsche couldn’t teach ye
‘bout the raisin o’ the wrist
Socrates himself was permanently pissed.

And John Stewart Mill (of his own free will)
On half a pint of shandy was particularly ill
Plato, they say, could stick it away:
Half a crate of whiskey every day
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle
Hobbes was fond of his dram
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart:
“I drink, therefore I am!”

Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed:
A lovely little thinker
But a bugger when he’s pissed!

*Actually, we're just shameless whores for visitors and comments.

A little paint, a few flowers, coupla throw pillows...

It’s no secret that I am a huge procrastinator. If my ability to procrastinate were a physical feature, like a goiter or a isthmus, you could see it from space. It’s not just that I put things off, it’s that I find clever little rationales for avoiding things I should be doing. Even when I find a few precious moments that I could spend on a post, I tend to fritter it away reading blogs or commenting on blogs, which I've deluded myself into believing is a pretty good substitute for actual blogging.

Then, just when I think I’m getting a handle on it—I’ve culled the number of blogs I read every day down to a very manageable 15 or so—two of my favorite wastes of time*, Todd and Fish, sent around a list of unsung and under-appreciated blogs. That’s how I discovered [added to my collection of drug paraphernalia] Hee Haw Marketing, Freelance Genius and Circle Jerk at the Square Dance, which lead me to How I Learned to Love the Bomb.

About this same time, I noticed I was getting visits via a link on The Wrong End of the Telescope, a lovely little cyber salon presided over by a woman whose eclecticism is right in my aesthetic wheelhouse. TWEOTT also makes the third or fourth blog I link to with Francophile tendencies. Zut alors! Light my Gitanes and pass the brie, mes amis!

Returning visitors will note that I finally caved and took up the Blogger folks on their offer of switching to the new format. It's nice, right? Still not as cool or sophisticated as the TypePad blogs, but an improvement over the previous edition. It also seemed like a good time to update and reorganize the blog roll. Along with the above mentioned newcomers, I'm adding Ross and Lizzy, whose blogs I've been reading/lurking on for a while but never got around to linking.

For some reason, I've avoided linking ad industry sites and blogs. There are exceptions to this aversion, though, namely the aforementioned Todd and the lovely and enchanting Irene Done, proprietrix of NotBillable. I include them because they're basically great blogs done by people who happen to work in advertising. Sometimes they blog about the biz, but they're not ad blogs, strictly speaking.

I've also added metacool to the links. It's a blog by design guru Diego Rodriguez. It overlaps with a lot of advertising/branding theory that interests me. Mostly though, I go there for a recurring feature called Unabashed Gearhead Gnarliness. If you're any kind of car guy**, DIYer or mechanics geek, it's pretty much guaranteed to give you a full-on robot chubby.



*and I say that with all due Sheryl Crow-esque affection.

** Non-gender-specific use. Anyone who appreciates cars, motorcycles, airplanes, and the things that make them cool will experience a general tingling in his/her bikini area.

It’s a fair cop.

Fish tagged me. Or, more precisely, fouled off a pitch he’d already been thrown and showed yours truly one of the perils of box seats behind the dugout. His heart was in the right place, though.

So. Five Things About Me You May Not Already Know (and Have Never Before Revealed on This Blog).

1. My first live “rock” concert was Styx at Veteran’s Auditorium in Des Moines, IA. I think it was the Paradise Theater tour. “Tonight’s the night we’ll make hiiiissssstoreeeeeee…”

2. I have congenitally crooked pinkies. (Imagine a little finger that’s a little too needy-clingy with a ring finger.) The left more than the right. The person in my family who had them before me was my maternal great-grandmother. But I passed them to my son. Go figure. So far, this genetic mutation has yet to translate into anything resembling a super power. Although it’s good for one-fifth of a blog post, and that ain’t nothin’!

3. I was an Armed Forces Radio DJ. Yes, like “Good Morning Vietnam” only 15 years later and about 85% less funny. I must've done something right, though; I managed to woo my wife, who applied for a work-study job at the station so she could stalk me. So far, it’s worked out pretty well. I have to say that being a military broadcaster is (or was) about the least military job you could do and be in uniform. What attracted me to the Army life, you ask? The thought of moving around only once every year or three was somehow strangely appealing. Maybe it was because...

4. I went to five high schools in four years. One in Oregon; four in Iowa. Go Millers! Rail-splitters! Indians! Cardinals! Tigers! My sophomore year, I was the new kid three different times. Which blew every bit as much as you can imagine. But wait, there’s more: I also went to five middle schools in two years. The fact that not one had the Nomads as their mascot is, I think, a sign that the universe has no sense of irony. It just enjoys fucking with me.

5. I’m pretty handy in the kitchen.* When we lived in Seattle, I came up with a recipe for salmon with blackberry sauce that got me into the finals of in the first Sunset Salmon Cook-off. The magazine flew five finalists and their guests to Palo Alto for a weekend of food, drink and conviviality that remains a gustatory high-water mark for me. Still, I can’t believe I came in second behind a guy from Phoenix. The shame! The ignominy! Don't get me wrong. It was a really good dish, but still. Phoenix!

*Actually, ADS regulars and pork-loving googlers know this, but I thought some elaborating evidence might be nice. If you ask nicely (maybe in the comments section [nudge, wink]), I’ll consider sharing the recipe.

As I understanding these things, this being my first tagging and all, I'm supposed to spread the love to five other unsuspecting fellow-rubesbloggers. So I nominate:

Ed, who despite being an old friend and a founding inspiration for A Drinking Song, is always good for something unexpected.

Tammara, who's probably weary of these things and will be hard pressed to come up five things she hasn't already blogged about with great eloquence and wit.

That Little Round-Headed Boy, the hardest-working, most underrated arbiter of the zeitgeist.

Irene Done, about whom I know only that we share the same job title and the same shameless zeal for Battlestar Galactica.

Mr. Seed, who seems to be having a little trouble getting out of the gate.

And, as a special holiday bonus, I'd love to know more about Aunty Christ, the second coming of one of my all-time faves.

I'm Thinking...!

So there's this old Jack Benny bit, where he's accosted on the street:

Mugger:
“Your money or your life!”

Benny: (after a beat)
“I’m thinking, I’m thinking!”

That’s me. Not because I’m cheap (though I am, a bit). It’s because I’m an over-thinker. A hyper-analyzer. A hand-wringer.

This is harldy news to anyone who's tuned into this space over the last year. It's painfully obvious to even a wayward visitor or would-be drinking-song-singer who might have popped by during the the marathon cricket concert that comprised the last three months: I'm more thinker than doer.

It's taken me a while to figure that out, but there it is. I'd rather read than write. What's worse, I'd rather read pop-culture critiques that write them. I mean, I love the idea of writing them; I have the ideas and the inclination. Somehow, though I just can't seem to pull the trigger. Consequently, I tend to consume far more than I produce when it comes to anything creative. Not atypical for the average joe, but shameful for someone whose ostensible job title is "creative." And now that every other average joe has a blog--and blogs more reliably that I--it's all the more shameful.

One of the reasons I started this blog (as if it were some great calculated move in the first place) was to rejigger my thinking/doing ratio. To be just a little more impulsive and shoot-from-the hip on whatever I found interesting and noteworthy--movies, TV, music, the ad biz, politics, punctuation, food and drink, you name it. It was supposed to be a virtual watercooler where I could talk about the things that interest me with IRL friends and vitual aquaintances. Trouble is, instead of busting out with a post whenever I had a thought or observation to share, I somehow got it into my head that every blog post had to be this epic multimedia thing.

I blame Ixtab. And Dennis. And TLRHB. Ed shares some of the responsibility. Oh, and fish--that miracle of evolution who eats and blogs and makes little fish--he's crazy culpable. In fact, my entire blog roll should now be regarded as a kind of rogues' gallery. All those people, those witty, prolific, insightful blog-o-maniacs who started out as glorious inspiration are, I now realize, the cause of my ignominious cranial constipation. They're just too good; they set a standard I simply can't reach.

Now, the last three months have been something of an aberration, even for me, in part because I'm (wait for it) thinking seriously about a fairly major course change. (More on that later. Maybe.)

So, in an effort to jump-start (maybe defibrilate is a more apt metaphor--CLEAR!) this electronic beached whale, I'm going to try something a little bold and daring: Seven consecutive days of blog entries. I figure if I can just get some forward momentum built up, I can overcome the fear or the need to edit on the fly or whatever it is and just blog.

I'm just going to warn you now: It's not going to be pretty. My guess is that, over the next week, things around here resemble something between a car wreck and the inside of a sausage factory. If nothing else, it should be entertaining. I think.

Give the people what they want

UPDATE: Looking for the words to seafaring/philosophizing drinking songs? You've come to the right place. Want moving pictures you can sing along with? Go here.

Ever since I installed my site meter (thanks, fish!) I’ve noticed that, with the exception of the five people who actually come here on purpose, most of the traffic to my blog is from search engines. The first few times that I saw 'Google' or some such listed in the ‘referring URL,’ I had a Navin R. Johnson “The new phone books are here!” moment: Wow, people are actually looking on Google to find out what I think about stuff. I am so important. So relevant. Things are going to start happening for me now.

Turns out, though, that they’re mostly looking for the words to drinking songs. Primarily the drinking song from Jaws. The hell? Don’t get me wrong. I love Jaws. It’s on my list. (What? It’s not? Okay, now it’s on my list.) Jaws is a lot of things--a wunderkind director's ambitious big-screen debut, a genuinely great summer movie, a rollicking seafaring adventure--but I just don’t think of it as the source of drinking-song lyrics so famous or obscure that they merit, y'know, googling. I mean, are the people looking for this song doing a paper for school? Do they need something to sing while they sit around with their pals comparing scars and knocking back rot-gut rye? Just strikes me as a bit odd, is all I'm saying.*


In any case, I saw this as a chance, given lemons, to not only make lemonade, but set up a virtual lemonade stand. I get an easy way to feel validated about having updated my blog (I’m beginning to think that if Ben Franklin were alive today, he’d lump blog posts in with houseguests and fish, vis-à-vis, their respective shelf lives) and ostensibly to perform a public service for the random passers-by, whom I hope to spare a few mouse clicks. We here at ADS welcome you with a laurel and hardy handshake, and hope you enjoy your stay. When your blog is called ‘A Drinking Song,’ apparently it's reasonable to presume a certain level of hospitality, a higher standard of service, if you will, than your usual, everyday blog content of me, me, me, all day, all night, in stereo.

Here then is the song from Jaws and, as a bonus for those who order before midnight tonight, the Monty Python Philosophers Drinking Song. Cheers!

Show Me the Way to Go Home

Show me the way to go home (bum, bum),
I’m tired and I wanna go to bed,
I had a little drink about an hour ago
and it went right to my head.

Where ever I may roam, (bum bum)
by land or sea or foam,
you can always hear me singing this song,
show me the way to go home…

The Philosophers Drinking Song

Emmanuel Kant was a real pissant
who was very rarely stable
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boozy beggar
who could drink you under the table
David Hume could out-consume
Schopenhauer and Hegel
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine
Who was just as sloshed as Schlegel.

There’s nothing Nietzsche couldn’t teach ye
‘bout the raisin o’ the wrist
Socrates himself was permanently pissed.

And John Stewart Mill (of his own free will)
On half a pint of shanty was particularly ill
Plato, they say, could stick it away:
Half a crate of whiskey every day
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle
Hobbes was fond of his dram
And Rene Descartes was a drunken fart:
“I drink, therefore I am!”

Yes, Socrates himself is particularly missed:
A lovely little thinker
But a bugger when he’s pissed!

*So, if you've found what you were looking for, how about a little something, y'know, for the effort? Leave a brief explanation in the virtual tip jar otherwise known as the comments section and you could qualify for that most coveted holy of holies: total consciousness. Which is what I suspect brought you here in the first place.

Well, okay then.

One of the things I like most about being aboard the blog train is checking out other people's blogs. Makes sense, considering that it was my pal Ed Flores' blog that spurred me to get one of my own. From there, it was a natural progression to scoping other blogs for style, organization, etc. Long story short, I developed a mild addiction to the Next Blog>> button. So thanks, Ed, for that. Besides being a whimsical slice-of-life meditation on the wonders of everyday minutiae, Scorpion Sandwich is also, apparently, my gateway drug.

Trouble is, I spent too much time kissing frogs, then even more time savoring the very occasional prince. (Wow, not sure how I painted myself into such a gay [not that there's anything wrong with that] corner there, metaphorically speaking.) Seriously, though, I'm up to, like, twenty-some bookmarked blogs, about eight of which I visit regularly. And each of them has anywhere from four to fifteen links to equally worthwhile blogs. Combine all that with a tendency toward fevered overthinking and overanalysis, and, big surprise: I'm doing precious little actual blogging of my own.

What's worse, I seem to be falling into precisely the pattern I was hoping to avoid:

• Hand-wringing post about what to post and feeling all angsty and self-aware.
• Overlong, overwrought, self-indulgent observational post about movies or fatherhood or barbecue. (One of which is fermenting on my hard drive even now. I mean it's gonna be a doozy. Stand back, Eve, I don't know how big this thing gets.)
• More meta handwringing.
• More overdone blogwanking
• Repeat ad infinitum.

Well, fuck.

No wonder the TWoP message boards had such a strident prohibition against talking "about the boards on the boards." Because it's boring. It's tedious. And it's not really content.

That said, this is my blog and I'll cry if want to. God knows I need a place for some occasional meta handwringing and unfettered brain dumping. I just want it to be worthwhile. Because that's the common tread, really, among all these sites that I keep revisiting. At least the ones I've linked in the sidebar. They're vastly different, but each is an interesting and unique insight into that blogger's world.

And not to go all Five People You Meet in Heaven on you, but this seems (so far, at least) to be a way of connecting with people that I otherwise never would have. It certainly outstrips any expectations I ever had for Al Gore's brainchild.

So summing up: I get my interests and point of view validated by finding like-minded/consciousness-expanding folk in blogsville, but the flipside is I also am forced to confront (and hopefully deal with) some of my baggage.

I guess I can live with that. And now, on with the countdown.

A thumbprint on a skyscraper.

Like most things in my life, I've gotten into blogging kind of quasi-accidentally. It wasn't entirely random; I didn't trip over something and fall on my computer and spawn a blog. But it definitely wasn't really planned or deliberated over much, either. It's the way the zeitgest was blowing, I guess.

So I'm at what I imagine is a pretty typical point in the new-blogger process: what now? Why am I here (on the train to blogsville)? What do I want to do when I get there? Should I eat on the train or find a coffee shop later? What kind of bird was that? How long should I try to extend this metaphor?

Point is, I'm just a little stuck at the moment. Because what is a blog? It's an online journal, a Web log, right? So I'll just do all the same things I'd do in a journal (which, historically, means making some half-hearted entries for about three weeks, then "losing" it under a sofa cushion), only with photos and links and such. Then there's the whole 'online' thing. No one ever read my journals before. At least they weren't written for anyone but me. This, though, this is out there. So it's really more like a scrapbook left on the water cooler for all to peruse at their leisure.

So, I guess that's the approach I'll take: I'm just gonna hold forth on things that I care about--my family (whose request for anonymity I'll honor), my work, movies and TV, old German cars, food and drink, worthwhile reading, lefty politics and minor-league baseball--and see how it goes. See if anyone notices. If they do (and I hope they do, 'cause, y'know, if a tree falls in the forest and all that) then, great. If not, I'll just quietly slide my laptop under the sofa, I guess.

Huh. That wasn't so hard.

I look at you, and I sigh.

Despite some initial misgivings rooted in the me-tooness of it all, not to mention my irksome tendency to not stick with things, I am now a-bloggin'.

I've christened my little cyber-nook after the W.B. Yeats poem, which was not only the basis of my wedding vows but serves as a handy abstract of my personal philosophy, for better or worse. Seems fitting somehow. I hope you enjoy.

A Drinking Song
By William Butler Yeats

Wine comes in at the mouth
and love comes in at the eye;
That's all we shall know for truth
Before we grow old and die.
I lift the glass to my mouth,
I look at you, and I sigh.