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1. The Perfect World Was a Dream

As you can tell their image is…annoyingly ironic. This seems to be a manifestations of the the numerous and self-inflicted faults of bands who adopt an overt stoner image – Jaill's album, for instance, is called “That's How We Burn” and every third song has a reference to getting high. Generally, a group will be genuinely good in any number of enjoyable ways and there's just inevitably going to be something about them meriting a facepalm. Another example is the name of worthwhile sludge metal band Bongzilla. I mean, seriously? Bongzilla?

Anyway, it lacks a video, but here's a much better track by Jaill called “Everyone's Hip”:

After nine splendid years of headaches, sore throats and money thrown toward my own demise, I've decided to Stop Smoking. Period. I spent the entire day on campus wearing a nicotine patch and it has been considerably less harsh than I thought it would be. I've “quit” twice before. The first time was a January several years back; it was a month-long group challenge of resolve, inspired by needing a month of recuperation from a December spent in the guise of Hedonismbot. The second time was just a few months ago when I stopped smoking for a week due to being more sick than I had ever been sick before. I was fine, honestly, until I had to actually leave the house and go to school, where I found myself surrounded by the vice. I gave in before the withdrawal tics turned me into a someone's Modern Dance thesis project.

...and now I'm done. Fin. Kaput. I swear that I will not turn into an evangelist and will still be as fervently pro-smoker's rights as I have ever been. I leave you with a small excerpt from David Sedaris' quitting essay “Letting Go” and one of the more bizarre Disney shorts I found while researching for this post on MetaFilter.

It’s one thing to give up smoking, and another to become a former smoker. That’s what I would be the moment I left the bar, and so I lingered awhile, looking at my garish disposable lighter and the crudded-up aluminum ashtray. When I eventually got up to leave, Hugh pointed out that I had five cigarettes left in my pack.

“Are you just going to leave them there on the table?”

I answered with a line I’d got years ago from a German woman. Her name was Tini Haffmans, and though she often apologized for the state of her English, I wouldn’t have wanted it to be any better. When it came to verb conjugation, she was beyond reproach, but every so often she’d get a word wrong. The effect was not a loss of meaning but a heightening of it. I once asked if her neighbor smoked, and she thought for a moment before saying, “Karl has . . . finished with his smoking.”

She meant, of course, that he had quit, but I much preferred her mistaken version. “Finished” made it sound as if he’d been allotted a certain number of cigarettes, three hundred thousand, say, delivered at the time of his birth. If he’d started a year later or smoked more slowly, he might still be at it, but, as it stood, he had worked his way to the last one, and then moved on with his life. This, I thought, was how I would look at it. Yes, there were five more Kool Milds in that particular pack, and twenty-six cartons stashed away at home, but those were extra—an accounting error. In terms of my smoking, I had just finished with it.

Related posts:

1. Moving with Heavy Hearts

The GROW games, of which there are a number, all have a single thing in common: an empty world and things to “plant” on it. You're given a choice between a number of elements: physical shapes and abstract concepts, that you plant in the world to flower. Each piece interacts with all the other pieces, and they grow up each turn, together. There are as many turns as pieces, and you can only place each piece once. It may seem random at the start, but you get to learn how pieces combine, at first by sheer trial and error, and get an idea of how many stages each one has until it is maxed out. The image at the top is a game of GROW Valley that is four turns into seven; I've blurred out which I have used so as not to spoil the fun.

Enjoy, and don't get too frustrated. Because you will get frustrated. I still have not beaten the original GROW, and only conquered the others by means of spoilers. GROW Valley is the first one I have beaten entirely on my own. I'll leave the solution to the puzzle in the comments section of this post, disguised for mouseover. Have fun!

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1. The Most Insidious Prison of All

Co. the official movie site

The film follows the standard routine of a noir: a steely character goes about meeting shady – and occasionally, ruthlessly important – individuals, stirring up what shouldn't be stirred by asking all the wrong questions, getting beat up, all while trying to a very certain and very foul endgame. The only difference is that instead of an introspective middle-aged drunk like Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe, it's Ree Dolly, who despite her age and experience could probably stare down a black bear if things came down to it. Her entire attitude toward her unimaginable situation is summed up in a single scene where, beaten within an inch of her life, she's dragged into a barn full of the cold-eyed, lip-licking, decaying high rollers of the local meth trade. Ordering them to kill her, if they're gonna, she learns her death has “already been set,” and if there's anything else she wants. Replying in the most indignant and impatient tone a battered teenager can muster, she spits out “well, you can help me. Anyone thought of that?”

Co. the official movie site

Having grown up a city-boy, I can't think of any other film I've seen that creates a world so utterly strange as Ree Dolly's Missouri. Everything about the film just stinks of real, even though the characters, with a few exceptions, are static and the pacing is deliberate. The social culture, where one hand bloodies your nose while the other holds your hand on the way toward salvation, is foreign and yet so fully developed that suspension of disbelief was barely even necessary. Check out the trailer below, and see the film if you can.

A few years ago, I went through a time when I listened to The Carnegie Hall Concert and Let the Buyer Beware every time I put on headphones. Below is one of my favorite of his routines; conveniently, it's one of the ones that has held up the best, language-wise. For most of his other work, it take some effort to get past 1950s hipster slang, the media references (speaking of which: this is George Macready,) and his unstoppable delivery, but it is all worth it. Sometimes, the full weight of the humor can come in a single word. There's a part I love, from the middle of a routine, in a conversation between him and some midwestern Jews: “You from New York?” “Yes.” “Are you Jewish?” “Yes.” “What are you doing in a place like this?” “I'm passing.”

If you get a chance (and have Netflix,) The Lenny Bruce Performance Film – a full set from 1966 – is available on Instant Watch. Like I said, it has a bit of a learning curve, especially considering the mediocre fidelity of the recording, but it is amazing performance. Moreover, as he goes into the absurdity of his multiple obscenity convictions, it becomes an time capsule and oral history of 1960s stage culture. That being said, here's a somewhat lighter bit:

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1. A Barren, Godless Eternity

Fifteen:
“Hey, look, that kid is reading ‘Howl,’ by Allen Ginsberg.”
“Wow. He must be some kind of rebel genius.”
“I’m impressed by the fact that he isn’t trying to call attention to himself.”
“Yeah, he’s just sitting silently in the corner, flipping the pages and nodding, with total comprehension.”
“It’s amazing. He’s so absorbed in his book that he isn’t even aware that a party is going on around him, with dancing and fun.”
“Why aren’t any girls going over and talking to him?”
“I guess they’re probably a little intimidated by his brilliance.”
“Well, who wouldn’t be?”
“I’m sure the girls will talk to him soon.”
“It’s only a matter of time.”

If your formative years were anything like my own, that should sound embarrassingly familiar. Here is the rest of his work for the New Yorker:

Who Is Alex Trebek?

Your New College Graduate: A Parents’ Guide

Play Nice

Animal Tales

Hey, Look

The Wisdom of Children