Little Pink Feeds for You and Me:

Smokler on July 13, 2004

At last count I’ve got 78 rss feeds (say what?) in my reader. It’s the only way I keep track of my favorite blogs and online publications without losing my head. Even then I still do sometimes.

However, because I view idiocy as a virtue, I still get angry when I discover my favorite web sites don’t have feeds. I usually then forget they exist for many months at a time 1) because there are too many of them and 2) I have the attention span of a firefly.

Feedapalooza is a new service that may be the answer. It creates custom rss feeds for any site you want for the very reasonable price of $2. $16-$20 seems a small price to avoid waiting for my favorite sites to come into the 21st century, year five, month 7. For me, when it comes to information consumption, the future is now. Now count to ten.

The future is now past. Hurry! Catch up!

UPDATE: How’s this for fast? Eric Rice reports that the New York Times does have rss feeds. Hot damn!

T-Shirt Slogans Seen at Last Night’s Rush Concert:

Smokler on July 11, 2004

*”Killing is my Business”

*”God Hates us All”

And about 10,000 male ponytails, backward baseball caps and a surprising number of women.

Realize that if you go to a Rush concert (and my cohorts Merlin, Greg, Albert, Jish and Leslie agree), you are attending a gathering of the misfits. Few of us have friends or family that share our appreciation for the pretentious Canadian rockers. They say Geddy Lee’s voice is shrieky and thin, Neil Peart is an amazing drummer who writes ponderous, soupy lyrics and the guitaring of Alex Liefson, while virtuouso, is in the service of pointless musicial wankering.

Merlin put it best. Rush will not get you laid. It will not give you hipster cred or a reason to storm the barriciades of the establishment. It might only make you think, which is not a very sexy reason to hitch your wagon to three middleaged prog-ers from Toronto.

Maybe. It’s the only explanation I have for why I’ve loved this band for nearly 20 years, because they make me, make me imagine things I wouldn’t otherwise. They inspire me.

So yesterday I decided to grab a carpool to Concord at the last minute and go. It was my 4th concert and nothing all that different from previous shows. What made it unique was driving to Concord, listening to Rush, and giggling and babbling incessantly about the band no one gets and we haven’t really since we were 15. But we stay on anyway, having a great time and wondering why.

Saturday Morning Shards #2

Smokler on July 10, 2004

What’s been on my mind this week…

John Sayles has got a new movie out in September called Silver City.

A gloriously dorky fun pop band called Mystic Chrods of Memory. Many, many more bands need to name themselves after lines from famous presidential speeches.

Box Office Prophets: A rediculously thorough site about how much green movies make.

Nicholson Baker will have a new novel out next month called Checkpoint. The plot: Two men in a hotel room plot to assassinate President Bush.

I guess Anne Lamott isn’t doing her Salon column anymore. This is her last one “for a while.”

The legend of Curly Oxide, the Hasidic glam rock star (look under the 2004 archive under the show “My expirimental phase).

Books By the Bay is next week!

Washington’s Day:

Smokler on July 6, 2004

Since 1994, I’ve ended every 4th of July by listening to the song “Wahington’s Day” by the Hooters. The tradition began that year in Los Angeles where I concluded the holiday by watching fireworks from the base of the “D” in the Hollywood Sign.

I got the idea from the song’s first verse…

Did you think I could ever forget
The night by the arlington flame
In the silence I heard it
Through streets so deserted
You whispered and called me by name

Did you think I could ever forget
That powerful look in your eye
Where Lincoln stood strong there
You held me so long there that night
On the fourth of July

I wasn’t a typical 4th. Our friends came over for a BBQ then declined to watch the fireworks through the fog. We played board games instead. I also didn’t read Jefferson’s letters, didn’t listen to Aaron Copland’s “The Lincoln Portrait”, didn’t feel any of the benign patriotism that normally marks the holiday for me. It’s a different time, darker, sober, filled with foreboding and regret.

Which is why, at 1:30 AM when everyone had gone home, when it wasn’t even July 4th anymore, I went up the roof of our building and, in fog so thick I could dive into it, I listened to Washington’s Day.

When the wars that men wage are all through
And their monuments put on display
Tell the hungry and stranded
The poor empty handed
We’ll meet them on Washington’s day

I hope and I pray that you’ll be here with me
When the mountains that rise tumble into the sea
And the visions that come are the visions that stay
Hope you’ll be here with me
Home on Washington’s day

Happy 4th of July!

Smokler on July 4, 2004

My absolute favorite holiday. Take yourself flag counting today.

UPDATE: Final tally was 224 flags, aided by an zealous realtor in Daly City who staked about 50 houses with plastic American flags in their front lawns. I called my dad in Israel, just to let him know.