Archive for the ‘Miscellany’ Category

The Monte Vista is a love it or hate it kind of place, I doubt there are many people in the middle, and a sense of humor is a must.

In the 1920s, the people of Flagstaff got together and decided that if they were going to be an up-and-coming city, they needed a world class hotel. The citizens (including novelist Zane Grey) privately donated, raised, and otherwise scraped up the cash, and it was truly a community project with profits invested back into the city.

It opened for business Jan 1st, 1927, and quickly became the hub of the sleepy little town. Western movies were shot in and around the town, and the Monte Vista was where all the stars stayed. In a town with not a lot of options (not to mention stars to keep happy), it’s not surprising that the lounge became the main speakeasy during prohibition.

Over the years, the hotel has gone from the most modern place in an downtown with bigtime aspirations to being part of Flagstaff’s quirky, funky, historic district, with a bit o’ kitch.

Charlie had done the research, thought it would be a hoot, and we were off. We in room 401, the Lee Marvin room, complete with his boots nailed to the wall. Supposedly the place is majorly haunted, but the creepiest thing we saw was in our own bathroom, staring in horror directly at the toilet:

We were firmly in the ‘love’ category. With this kind of a back story, how could we not?

The photo the hotel had of the room’s namesake was from Cat Ballou- a horror that I just couldn’t get through, and it certainly doesn’t look like the most dignified role the man ever had, but I’d assume that must’ve been what he was filming while there, so…here goes:

I have a soft spot for certain screwiness- the messed up faucet handles, the mismatched lamps in the bedroom, etc. “The Noble Red Man” and “The S*X maniac?” ug. And to think that movie won an Oscar.

More Monte Vista pics here.

It’s sacrilege, I know, but I think I enjoyed this part of the drive more than the Grand Canyon. It was more accessible; huge, but on a scale that left it still comprehensible.

Big skies, impressive formations, but singular and able to be appreciated one by each.

Too funny. In looking at the info at the Con website I found these newsletters- and Charlie and I were scrambling to get the figurine out of the box and get everything set up when the photo was taken. I had no idea, too funny.

Everyone at the Con was entitled to 2 autographs from Pratchett, and it just so happened that tickets were for the first day. The signing session was 2 hours long, and I arrived only 5 minutes after it opened, and there were still over a hundred people in front of us:

We were a little unusual- most people simply had books to be signed, and I think he was a little tired of it, so when we had something a little different, we actually got his attention for a bit.

First off, there was the figurine. Though I was lucky enough to find someone to sell me their tickets, they were heartbroken that circumstances had changed and they couldn’t attend. As small compensation, I offered to have something autographed for them, and they sent a little Lady Ramkin ceramic collectible. He seemed most intrigued by it & said no two are exactly alike, examining it very closely.

Then I had him sign a photo of Pratch, which was also something of some curiousity. I’m not entirely sure what he thought of having a chatty bird named after him, but he was good natured about it, and after finding out where we live added “Does he say ‘show us your knickers’ yet? He’s got to say that, you know!” So now we have a new phrase to work on.

Unfortunately, the signing photos are blurry because we were juggling a whole bunch of stuff, talking with him, and trying not to tie up the line.

Still, even in these chaotic conditions, after he had been signing for over an hour and a half, he was kind and took a few minutes to make us feel special. There was never a moment during the entire convention where he wasn’t a wonderful, witty good natured sport about everything, and we left even more impressed than ever with the man.

I don’t really count PirateCon as having been my ‘first,’ really, since I was more a voyeur than anything else. It was closer to finding your dad’s Playboy stash than your first actual kiss.

As with any blundering virgin, mistakes were made; I didn’t realize, for instance, that the Masquerade was an actual contest, and not a Ball. I saved my most elaborate costume for that night, only to discover that the participants had written up skits and signed up well in advance. Ah well. Next time. Besides, it was nice to kick back and watch the pros do their thing- there were some amazing, detailed costumes out there. It’s definitely something to shoot for going forward.

Despite getting to the party way late (so late in fact winners had already been selected) I got what amounted to a runner-up ribbon the first night, and another ribbon and encouragement the Masquerade night, telling me to keep it up, and be sure to enter for real next time, that I had an excellent shot. So that was nice pretty damn awesome. Charlie said the grin damn near split my face in half when they pinned it on me.

It’s only fitting, then, that that first costume was a Seamstress’ outfit. Again, not knowing all the convention conventions, I took the ‘Seamstresses Ball’ literally- and since Seamstress is a euphemism for “woman of negotiable affection,” I was…uh…not subtle.

In fact, I was in a dither before I left, and Charlie encouraged me to wear a red monstrosity of a wig which totally clashed with everything I had on, but what the hell. If you’re out there, trolling for business, ya wanna stand out, right? Right? Please? Ah well. Besides, the wig matched the whip. It’s those kind of details you need a pro for.

The strange thing was that there were very few seamstresses in the crowd. Maybe they have better shame mechanisms than I have?

At any rate, I’ll put up several posts on the Con, mostly about the guest of honor, of course, and then there was the side trip to the Grand Canyon, but I’ll kindly spare you the vile grossness I got sick with once we got home.

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Now that I’m coming down the home stretch, it’s time for that breather and explanation.

About a month ago, I found out about NADWCON, the North American Discworld Con through Neil Gaiman’s blog, and things just haven’t been the same since.

First there was the “Charlie ‘talking’ me into it” phase- a farce, really, where he pointed out how it’s likely going to be the only chance to see the man in the flesh, so even though this isn’t the ideal time for a vaca, we need to do it. It wasn’t exactly a hard sell.

Then came the “Great! Let’s book tickets” phase, rapidly followed by the “Oh SHIT I didn’t read the membership page properly- the convention’s sold out!” and the “wheedling, whining and whimpering” phases, which actually ended successfully, with tickets in hand.

And there was much rejoicing.

Short lived rejoicing, however, which quickly morphed into panic as I discovered that costumes are de rigueur. COSTUMES! OMG! The PTSD shakes set in as I had flashbacks to being the worst-dressed pirate EVER at PirateCon.

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Yesterday I had the television on while cleaning and damn if I didn’t get sucked into some god-awful train wreck of an infomercial that I couldn’t pull away from.

I still cannot believe that I actually stopped what I was doing and watched 20 minutes of Romancing the 70s, an honest-to-god Time/Life set they’re hawking on infomercials someone actually paid money to put together.

My first thought was that Time Life doesn’t think much of their audience- and I’m not even talking about their taste in music. The infomercial actually said things like “It would take you years and thousands of dollars to collect all of your old favorites!” and “Take 60 days to preview the collection, and if you’re not completely satisfied, return it to us, no questions asked, for a full refund!” Wow. Way to assume your audience has zero understanding of basic commerce (or downloading, ripping, etc).

I wanted to post a portion of the damned thing to share Tony Orlando’s excitement with you, but it’s just not out there. When I googled the title, I did, however find this description from The Prettiest Denny’s Waitress:

The other one that nearly diverted my attention from the football game entirely last night is called “Romancing the ’70s”, pitched by an aged, bewigged Tony Orlando. The effect of this one is sort of like eating those snot- and puke-flavored jelly beans, where your curiosity about how much worse it can get keeps you involved beyond all reason. I used to be regularly enraptured by the commercial for the soft rock compilation featuring those two guys from Air Supply, but “Romancing” collects the music that is even softer, slower and more gonad-shriveling. Truly, despite the title, I doubt anyone ever got laid while listening to Anne Murray or Neil Sedaka.

I think that pretty much covers it. Also, his post is from January, so obviously I’ve managed to dodge this dreck for awhile, for which I’m grateful. Now that it knows I’m out here, it’ll stalk me and I’ll have weenie pop stuck in my head for days. It’ll be like it was growing up. So I’m watching Tony spitting out one flaccid song after another, and I’m horrified at how many I know from growing up in an AM-centric household. And yes, of course Mom’s chestnuts are well represented in the mix.

But then, as Tony Orlando’s blithering about all the unmatched “soul and romance” of the era, up pops a song from my youth I thought I’d cauterized out of my brain. Naturally it was instantly welcomed back into the cranial folds, which made me want to share the love so I figured I’d find a youtube of it as a fitting stand-in for the lack of actual footage.

Growing up, Helen Reddy’s “Angie Baby” was always a mystery to me. A totally lite, airy song about…uh… an autistic girl who kills/abducts and/or had her radio eat a perv who came to rape her? Wow. I’m not sure whose idea of “romance” that fits, but sure, whatever.

So I was acquainted with Angie, that special child. What I wasn’t used to were people out in tubeland with lots and lots of time on their hands to create little animated videos to go along with songs. Who are these people?

I was torn between* two videos, so I’ll link both of them, both horrifying in their way:

• This is fully animated, and I just can’t imagine how long this took to do (Link):
  
• 
  This one’s much more basic, but creepier. What’s with the suddenly appearing axe? And that black smile? Wow. (Link)

• There’s one more, but apparently it was professionally done, and though the lyrics are the same, the singer’s different. Also…well, there’s a whole lot of phallic imagery in it. It does for sure meet the creeped-out criteria. So I won’t post it, but if you’re a real glutton for punishment, it’s here.

*Aargh! I’ve been contaminated by the infomercial! I typed “torn between” and my brain finished the phrase with “between two lovers.” Boy, I’m in trouble.

This is just…uh…
just…
wow.

We just came out of a bitch of a Legislative session. I won’t go into the hairy details, but it was painful, drawn out, and exhausting. Which, I suppose, makes this performance a perfect representation:

(Youtube vid here)

I had to track this down after it was mentioned by the Times-Pic’s Capital bureau chief in a post-session wrap up live chat:

Q: [Comment From Jk]
Why was Hurricane Chris allowed to perform a rap song in the well of the House? Don’t they have anything better to do?

A:in truth a lot of songs are sung at the House podium, lot of performers come by ….it was really nothing that new…Cajun and country music — and patriotic songs… tend to be the norm.

I read that and snickered, figuring it was just some yokel offended by rap in those hallowed halls. But no, it was horrendous on too many levels to be real. Still, I wasn’t quite sure I trusted my ears, so I went and looked up the lyrics.

Classy, y’all:

She fine den a bitch ass and her tits
Thick in tha hips every nig want her
Call her Halle Berry, Halle Berry
Halle Berry, Halle Berry
She walkin like a model
Hands on your knees
Scrub the ground
She aint nothing but a tease
Halle Berry, Halle Berry
Halle Berry, Halle Berry

So, once again, we look like morons. The one upside is that I know Piyush had a heart attack over this, which makes the national scorn almost worth it…

Would someone please explain this to me?

So…let’s see. Toilet paper is ‘archaic’ and this is the first ‘improvement’ since the 1880s? This? This is a ‘modern solution’?

They seem to admit that their market is made up of:

• People who are too ‘big’ to reach around and take care of the deed themselves (and the answer isn’t to lose weight, but, naturally, buy more stuff.)
• People with arthritis who can’t grip or turn properly (If they can’t grip the paper, how on earth would they be able to grip this, turn, push the weird button thingie, etc?)
• People in need of serious therapy who don’t want to go anywhere near their own body.

Everything else aside, from a purely practical point of view, um…ew. Really? If you think toilet paper is ‘disgusting?’ just wait until you have to clean that plastic thing up. Plus, from a purely editorial POV, the woman at 0:41 is hysterical- she starts out serious, then is all flirty about maintaining her dignity- I think it has to do with suddenly letting her native New Yawk accent come out. There’s a Freudian bathroom joke in there somewhere, but I’m going to take her message about dignity maintenance to heart and leave it alone.

Unfortunately, I think they’re right- this is a ‘modern solution.’ Have a problem? Even better, can we invent a problem so we can sell you some crap (har har) you don’t really need?

So we decided to go see a movie this weekend; pickins’ were kind of slim- we were going to go see Drag Me to Hell, but got talking about Will Ferrell’s Land of the Lost. I was trying to explain to Alison what the craziness was of watching the Kroft shows as a kid- how, even when I was little, I knew they were cheezy. But somehow, they were still awesome, and we watched every damn day.

In that vein, we decided the Land of the Lost remake might be fun/nostalgic. (In the end, not so much, but that’s a different story.)

The trailers start, there are a couple things I’ll have no problem skipping, and then this came on:

First off, Tim Burton=”we will go to see it,” so that’s cool.

But, about halfway through the trailer, this music starts to play and I lean over to Ali and ask her who it is- it seems familiar. She looks at me like I’m crazy.

“No, seriously,” I whisper, “I think I know this!”

“Mom, ssssshhhh!” she hisses, looking around to see if anybody’s noticed her Mom behaving badly, not only talking in the theater, but claiming knowledge of some rock-music- something she’s only supposed to know about unless we’re talking Flock of Seagulls-era.

“I mean it,” I ask, still whispering, but annoyed. “Just tell me who it is! It’s driving me crazy!” The music has gotten louder now, and changed tempo- I am more convinced than ever I know it, but I just can’t…

“Hey!” I say, WAY too loudly. “That’s Coheed!”

“Mom!” Alison withers, sinking down, down, down into her seat, looking up at me like I am the biggest, oldest dork on the planet. I beam, unashamed of my essential dorkish nature.

It was all especially fun since- as we all well remember from teenhood- parents live to embarrass their kids, and I’m not sure how many more opportunities I’ll get. I need to remember to savor the ones I have as an ever-scarcer commodity.

And just to illustrate the level of cheez in the Kroft shows, I bring you the intro (yes, it’s just each episode’s opening credits, despite sounding like the entire series arc) to H.R. Puffinstuff. Hope you took your Lactaid: