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2012

Geographically challenged 211 in progress

I regularly watch 1970s cop shows filmed on location (usually in LA or sometimes San Francisco) with iPad in hand, looking for current views of the locations on Google Street View. I know. I’m a big geek who has no life. We’ve already established that fact.

Sometimes, though, the geography on these shows is out of whack that it makes me laugh out loud. Even worse than a Streets of San Francisco where they make up streets that don’t really exist (e.g. Embarcadero Center being located on something called “Saint Andrews Road”) is the way some shows have used real street names with no regard to their actual locations. Tonight I caught a scene from Adam-12 that was allegedly taking place on Ventura, between Olympic and Washington, west of Melrose. I challenge anyone who’s familiar with LA to locate that particular bit of real estate on a map. It’s kind of like saying Detroit is on the Georgia side of Massachusetts, near Phoenix.

I realize that this probably amuses me more than you. I do not care.

Holiday vacation

Good news at work yesterday suggests that I will actually be able to take a vacation during my holiday vacation and not have to spend it working on my reappointment paperwork. I’m still thinking of the whole “relaxing vacation” thing as a change of pace, but I’m open to other suggestions too. What I really want for Christmas, though, is not to have Christmas at all. Yeah, I was serious about that. It would be great to leave work on Friday the 21st, flee Greensboro that afternoon, and not return until the new year, avoiding all the family stuff and everything else. I probably won’t be able to get away with that, though.

Videolog: D’hôtel en hôtel

Marc Déry
D’hôtel en hôtel (2011)

I’m glad to have finally found this video. I was really quite obsessed with this song when I was in Ottawa and Gatineau last year and when I got home. I guess it was just one of those songs that hit me the right way at that particular place and time. And it still does. Maybe I got hooked in by the fact that it’s about being twenty years old in 1984–which is rather a familiar theme for me. Anyway, once I finally figured out who and what it was (Shazam not being terribly effective with francophone pop) I actually bought the whole album and it was quite wonderful.

I guess this was the start of my fascination with Quebecois rock and Canadian alt-rock and alt-pop in general, which actually got me really exited about new music again for the first time in quite a while.

So enjoy. I did.

Good read…

…and a reminder of why I still have my own website, in case I’d forgotten (via Ed Cone):

We get excuses about why we can’t search for old tweets or our own relevant Facebook content, though we got more comprehensive results from a Technorati search that was cobbled together on the feeble software platforms of its era. We get bullshit turf battles like Tumblr not being able to find your Twitter friends or Facebook not letting Instagram photos show up on Twitter because of giant companies pursuing their agendas instead of collaborating in a way that would serve users.

Charlotte sometimes

I left the house at about 9AM yesterday, headed for Target to pick up a prescription. When I got home twelve hours later, I’d been to Charlotte for lunch, a movie, and dinner at the soon-to-be-defunct Riverview Inn. I do things like that sometimes; Saturdays are more fun when you surprise yourself.

I know I have a tendency to overanalyze my relationships with cities but it’s generally easier and more satisfying than trying to figure out my relationships with other people. Charlotte’s metaphor in this scheme is, I suppose, that of the old friend who sometimes gets on your nerves and with whom you enjoy hanging out but probably wouldn’t want to spend all your time. I don’t have any particular desire ever to live there again–I’ve already tried it twice. I  find Charlotte rather a bland and soulless place, the epitome of a  Sun Belt boomtown, but it still feels comfortable and in many ways feels more like home than Winston-Salem ever really has. Even though I’ve lived here much longer than I ever lived in Charlotte (six and a half years…damn…), I’m always a little surprised to realize that I can still find my way around the back roads of Charlotte better and that everything about it is more familiar than my current city.

It may be because my history with Charlotte is centered around a more period in my life when I was younger and more adventurous and everything was newer and more exciting. Charlotte was the first place I ever lived on my own. There is definitely nostalgia involved. I don’t have a lot of youthful memories of Winston-Salem, though, so I associate it with being older and more settled. That has its own benefits but is not really all that high on the excitement scale.

It also may be due to the fact that most of my life really takes place in Greensboro now anyway. Winston-Salem is where I sleep and buy groceries, and that’s about it.

That’s not to say I don’t like it here. Winston-Salem is fine, really, and it works for me in several ways right now. My neighborhood is convenient (albeit not to work), I like my house (even though it’s way too big), and there are lots of good restaurants here. But I don’t have a big emotional relationship with the Twin City and I don’t imagine I’ll live out the rest of my my days or even the rest of the decade here.

I don’t imagine I’ll ever live in Charlotte again either. My second residence during 2005 and 2006 made me realize that whatever I’d liked about living there in my twenties didn’t translate well to my forties. We seem to get along better from a distance.

Only 48 hours…

…and it will all mercifully be over. But it’s gonna be a long forty-eight hours.

This year, I skipped the whole gift shopping nightmare but there’s no escaping the assorted family pressure. Next year, I’m leaving town for the whole week and I don’t really give a damn how it goes over with anyone.

That said, I have gotten a lot done around the house this weekend and I’m otherwise In a pretty pleasant frame of mind. I’m just really not feeling Christmas this year. Aggressively, even…

I love…

20121226-202155.jpg

…the beach in winter when it’s cold and rainy and deserted. And when I can get an oceanfront room with a balcony for less than I’d pay at the average suburban Red Roof Inn. Decorations optional.

I landed on Virginia Beach because I wanted that whole relaxing beach thing but also wanted a city nearby in case I got bored. Got my books, got my provisions from Kroger, and got my favorite traveling companion (that would be me) along for the ride. See you in a few days, if not before.