April Words of Wisdom

What people commonly call fate is mostly their own stupidity. --Arthur Schopenhauer

 

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate. --Carl Jung

Close some doors. Not because of pride, incapacity, or arrogance, but simply because they no longer lead somewhere. --Paulo Coelho

I restore myself when I'm alone. A career is born in public, talent in private. 

--Marilyn Monroe

There is something at work in my soul, which I do not understand. --Mary Shelley

Good music is back! May Dance Party

Was actually pretty happy to see this pop up on my Facebook feed even though I was previously unaware of this account:

I was never much of a dancer, but I do remember when great music like this was the norm. A lot of these I already have, but iTunes will be making some $ off me in May while I fill out this calendar. Good times.

I've gone dark in the past year

 

Happy Gothic German Expressionist Easter.

 

Hockey Humor, Logo Division

The NHL playoffs are upon us. In other news, someone decided to categorize NHL team logos and it's actually pretty funny.

 

In addition to being entertaining, this also gives me a chance to air my grievances about the "Utah Hockey Club". The NHL and its teams are notorious for constantly introducing new and "special edition" jerseys and logo designs because they know fans will go out and buy them. Look, being a hockey fan is expensive. Tickets are an arm and a leg and jerseys are pricey. We're not talking a few extra t-shirts here. Even the replica jerseys are expensive and the pro-weights are hundreds of dollars. I've felt for years that the league takes advantage of the devotion of hockey fans to soak them financially every chance they get. 

 

Which leads me to the TOTALLY LAME Utah logo and the failure to establish a team logo/mascot in their first season. If you had time to relocate the team from Arizona on supposedly short notice, you had time to come up with a name for the team. But they knew the fans would buy up the first season "Utah Hockey Club" jerseys (and tons of other swag with this logo as well) and then they could soak them for all new team gear when they actually named the team going forward. Twice the cash flow at the expense of the fans. And make no mistake, Gary Bettman signed off on this. If the NHL had a proper commissioner Utah would have been required to establish who they were before a single one of their players touched the ice. Yet another example of why the NHL is often regarded as amateurish compared to other major sports leagues. *End of rant*

 

"Portrait of the Perfect Hockey Fan". Artist: Gary Bettman.

One of the commenters pointed out that the Nordiques and Whalers should have been included in the gone but not forgotten. Totally agree.

 

Also my reaction:

 

The end of NaNoWriMo

I'm a bit late to the party on this, but National Novel Writing Month is no more.

 

 

There are a lot of YouTube videos that can explain what happened in more informed detail than I can since I haven't participated in NaNo for a few years, but in a nutshell NaNo basically imploded due to a couple of bad decisions. First, and worst of all, they were apparently not terribly responsive when stories of predatory behavior toward minors in their forums surfaced. Eventually their solution was to simply shut down forums, which were a huge part of the NaNoWriMo experience because it was a way for participants to interact as a writing community. Their forums were expansive, and shutting them down instead of dealing with problem participants didn't help foster the community or make them look like they were addressing the actual problem people in that everyone suffered when the forums were shut down.

Then, they decided to promote the use of AI in writing. This is a serious sore spot in the writing community, and NaNoWriMo's response was typical of what you'd come to expect from the current ownership (which is a big part of the story, since these weren't the originals), and that was that NaNo touted the use of AI to, get this, level the playing field for non-typing participants. That was their pro-AI stance, and they weren't backing down from it. This may have also been a response to the drop in funding after their bungle of the predatory problem turned off a lot of people, and AI companies stepped in to "sponsor". NaNo wasn't about to bite the hand that funded them. 

National Novel Writing Month (or NaNoWriMo for short) began in the early 2000's and for years was a catalyst for aspiring writers who just couldn't figure out how to discipline themselves to power through their writing. The idea was to simply crank out 50,000 words in the month of November - no editing, no hesitation, just write. Get words on the page. This worked out to 1,667 words per day, and keep in mind in the US we have a four day holiday (for Thanksgiving) in November, plus it's the month before Christmas, so a lot of people are focusing and looking forward to that. 

The really sad things about this, besides the loss of community, is how much NaNoWriMo changed the lives and careers of so many writers. I've read and heard countless interviews with published authors who mentioned that their book started life out as a NaNo project.

After 20+ years of inspiration, this is what you see today when you go to nanowrimo.com:

It really is gone.

RIP National Novel Writing Month.

RIP Jed the Fish

I've said it before and I'll say it again - could somebody PLEASE invent a time machine so I can go back to the 1980's and stay there?

One of the best things about living in L.A. in the 80's (and there were many things) was The World Famous KROQ, the ROQ of the 80's. The music was great, of course, and KROQ - our alternative music station - blasted our soundtrack with a lineup of DJs and on-air personalities that was an embarrassment of riches: Rodney Bingenheimer, Richard Blade, The Poorman, Dusty Street (and her gloriously raspy voice), Raechel Donahue, Tami Heidi, Swedish Egil, Freddy Snakeskin, Sluggo, and Jed the Fish. The AM drivetime Kevin & Bean show alone hosted a boatload of talent over the years, among them: Adam "Mr. Birchum" Carolla, Jimmy "The Sports Guy" Kimmel, traffic reporter Lisa May, news reporter Doc on the Roq, entertainment reporter Ralph Garman, and Michael the Maintenance Man (an actual maintenance man in the building who became part of the show).

So it was crushing to see the news that Jed the Fish passed away this morning at the age of 69. He had recently been diagnosed with lung cancer. Jed was at KROQ from 1978 to 2012. And another part of my early adulthood is gone. RIP Jed.

The voices of 1980's Los Angeles.

 

Daaaaamn, Dodgers!

Wait, I thought the Dodgers were supposed to be an invincible machine, especially once they snagged Shohei. It did get them a World Series last season. This season?

 

LOL the look on Ohtani's face. He's used to dominating, not being dominated.

 

The Cubbies absolutely destroyed the Dodgers yesterday, and they did it at Dodger Stadium. I can't remember ever seeing an MLB score like this. It was the worst home loss in franchise history. I wonder how many fans stuck it out until the bitter end. My guess is that the living nightmare that is the Dodger Stadium parking lot was a lot easier to get out of than usual by the end of this fiasco.

What's really crazy is that it was a perfectly close 2-0 game through six innings. Then Chicago proceeded to crank out 14 runs in three innings. Look at this boxscore:

 

The Dodgers started the season with a scorching 8-0 record, but since then only won three of the next eight games. As of this morning they are in third place in the NL West behind the Padres and Giants. Don't feel too bad for them, though. There's still a lot of season left.

Embrace your cray-cray

 

Horror humor

This cracked me up:

Loved these responses:

"Shine." Get it?

Twice Upon a Time in Hollywood

Didn't have this on the bingo card: A sequel to Quentin Tarantino's Once Upon a Time in Hollywood is in the works. 

 

I'm a sucker for anything historic Hollywood/L.A., plus this was a great film, so I'm totally onboard for this. It's so nice to see Hollywood announce something I can get excited about.

 

The sequel will focus on Brad Pitt's Cliff Booth character. Apparently Tarantino couldn't get past the idea of the further adventures of the aging stuntman, so here we are. 

While Tarantino is writing, the project will be directed by David Fincher, who directed Pitt in the immortal Se7en. Leo DiCaprio's involvement is apparently up in the air, but given that Cliff is the focal point here, Rick Dalton may be off on location in this one.