Martin Short Appreciation Post

A while back someone tried to do a hit piece on Martin Short.  It was weird - the legit journalist spent a day or so with Short and his take at the end was "I never thought Martin Short was funny."  Which is super weird.  

The article was not received well by the general public.  

Multiple generations are fans of Short, and, sure maybe he's not to everyone's taste.  Look, if I want to write a blog post and howl into the wind about something, whatever.  But spending time and energy of a legitimate publication to work through my personal taste in comedy, that's super weird and says more about me (and my editor or lack thereof) than it does Martin Short.

But let it be known, at this blog, we dig Martin Short.  From Ed Grimley where we first found out about Short, to his many movies, to Jiminy Glick, to his current work with Steve Martin, both stage shows and Only Murders in the Building - I've certainly liked him.  

I mean, this is how he responded to his pal David Letterman having a massive heart attack.

 

If you never saw Jiminy Glick, I think Short was oddly ahead of his time on this one

And, of course, his Ed Grimley sketches

It is *hard* to remain as funny as Short has over the years, and to keep it relentlessly fresh.  And to find new avenues for what he does.  I mean, there are multiple levels upon which I appreciate Only Murders in the Building, but certainly I'm a fan of how Short, Steve Martin and Selena Gomez have created some great characters.

Anyhoo, if you've got a favorite Martin Short bit or role or clip, share in the comments!

Twitter is over, and I need a junk drawer

Remember when you'd be over at your friend's house and they'd want to show you the groovy light their parents kept by the water bed in their room?

I have multiple social media accounts, but I don't really want to engage with humanity much on them.  

Engage with people on a topic for a particular issue or topic?  Especially responding to a post on movies or other things I want to talk to people about?  Sure.

But I think we all learned a lesson leaving twitter:  do not actually engage.  Do not start talking to people you do not know in an uncontrolled, anonymous environment.  Do not get into internet fights where you will prove someone wrong.  Do not get mad when someone points out you are wrong.  

But, also, you know, you don't need to live your life out loud on social media.  You don't know those people.

I am currently using my accounts the following ways:

Threads:  a quick scroll and mostly disappointment, but to get the basic gist of what the internet is thinking (last week I pieced together: What does Beyonce know about being Southern? is a racist dog whistle!*  What a time to be alive.)

BlueSky:  I see some Cubs chatter, which is nice.  But mostly I follow it for FilmSky, ie: people who are true weirdos about film who don't give a shit about film twitter, and are opining, posting links and living their best movie-nerd life.  Very friendly, unpretentious and lovely at the moment.

Instagram:  Initially I kind of used it not at all, despite having an account for years.  I am not trying to frame my life as exotic and exciting, and I don't particularly care if actors get to eat spinach salad in countries they don't live in or which fashion company gave them sunglasses.  But I've now followed enough people I know, and I just use dlvr.it it to send Signal Watch blog posts.  I also like to find silly stuff and repost it on Reels.  

Tumblr:  I use dlvr.it to repost stuff from the blog, and reblog funny pictures and some classic film stars.  I also know what people in their 20's who live with their parents and don't seem to have jobs think about the world.  It is wiiiiild.

Facebook (Blog-related):  I use dlvr.it to send Signal Watch posts to the official League of Melbotis page.  People still seem to use it.  I think this page is also linked one way or another, and I'll be looking into that.

Facebook (Personal):  I wouldn't even say this is a curated view of my exciting life.  I do still use it because it's the only way I'm in touch with many people, or the best way for me to reach some people.  A bit like why I still have a landline - because I had one in 2006, and that is where people find me, so I can't get rid of it.  Plus, I do get news, weather and other things there.

I do not do politics, or anything remotely, actually "personal" on facebook.  My parents, relatives, former teachers, bosses, etc... are all on there.  So I used to post things that were intentionally obnoxious and silly, but now I mostly use it to be silly.  Or mark "hey, it's Jamie's birthday!".  That sort of thing.

LinkedIn:  I actually kind of do use this at the moment as I'm between gigs.  I hear from recruiters there, and talk to colleagues, plus see what those colleagues are up to.  It's not all bad.  But I don't read those "thought provoking" articles that get reposted.  You know they aren't.

Slack:  I'm on a social slack.  It's all right with like four people.

But the thing I don't really do that I used to do when I was on Twitter is just put a short thread together, and I don't really have a place for things like "hey, remember the weird fluid and light things our parents had?  That was weird, right?"

So, initially I thought I'd use a return to League of Melbotis to do some personal journaling, but I don't know how into that I am as a concept.  Instead, I'm going to try to use it for a goofy junk-drawer for a while, which was often how it was used back in the 00's.  Signal Watch can continue on as a media review site, and I'll put other stuff here.

Deal?  

*our friend Bae is from Houston, and if you wanted to raise the collective dander of everyone in Texas, challenge if we know what the fuck country and cowboy culture are

A Total Eclipse of the Sun..!

taken with my Pixel 4

Well, here in lovely Austin, Texas, we were on the edge of the total solar eclipse.  Around 1:36 PM Central, we experienced about 90 seconds of totality.

I was, honestly, pretty excited about the eclipse.  I've seen probably 4 partial eclipses, including one last summer.  And one lunar eclipse back in middle school when my family was on vacation in Mexico and a guy from a restaurant was standing there looking straight up, and because I am that guy, I looked straight up, and me and that guy stopped and enjoyed a lunar eclipse together.

Austin was a big destination for the eclipse, because we are a very hip town for reasons that escape me, but for weeks we've known it was going to be cloudy here.  A month ago, to get ahead of how crazy things would get, local and state government got involved and declared a "state of emergency" so they could handle the influx of people supposedly coming in.  I heard crazy stories about no way to get a flight in or out for days on either side of today.  But I live here, so I didn't really see anything different.

We're expecting usual Austin-Springtime horrible weather over the next 24 hours or so, and so there was a chance we'd all be standing out looking up at the sun getting hit with hail.  

But that didn't happen.  

The weather sort of held on and we were able to head out to the field and retention pond area in our neighborhood where folks brought camp chairs and blankets.  

I will be honest and say, I also brought a box of Moon Pies and distributed them to folks who wanted one.

Folks were kind of quietly excited, and I realized, thanks to my daily viewing of KXAN news and the breathless reporting they'd been doing on the eclipse for what had to have been six weeks in advance, I was quite the know-it-all about the cosmic event.  

Do bats come out for an eclipse?  NO.  It turns out that they work on an internal clock and are not paying attention to the sun.

I tried to take pictures to show the difference in how very dark it did get, but my camera auto-corrected, and you can't see the change.

I've been fighting allergies, so sitting outside was a bit concerning, but given this was a possibly-once-in-a-lifetime event, I girded my loins, and - giving Jamie a headstart to go chat with neighbors, eventually I headed out.

Honestly, it was an amazing event.  Writing it down is a little meaningless.  You've probably seen plenty of pictures or video.  And I'd argue being there with other people to witness the same thing is part of it.  For the people who were at big civic events, etc... I get it.

As the moon got into position, the sky absolutely got darker and the temperature dropped several degrees.  I wouldn't say the birds went completely quiet, but they certainly toned it down.  During totality, a small bird, maybe a finch? flew weirdly close to us, I would guess a bit confused and looking for cover.  I'd argue I noticed when the birds came back to making noise again a lot more than when it went away, which might have been gradual.

Likely because we were so close to the edge of the event, and because clouds would disperse light, we didn't experience the same total darkness I saw in Indianapolis or other locations on the same path.  I'd say it got as dark as twilight during summer when the light hangs on a long time and you can still see a bit down the street.  But the change was *fast*.  I was pulling my cardboard glasses on and off to look around, and every time I did, it was noticeably darker in the minutes leading up to the grand event.

My neighbor, Michelle, and I were pondering "oh, yes, you can see exactly why ancient cultures lost their minds about this" and I need to look into what another neighbor was describing about the ancient mounds built by the First People on North America, because I was vaguely aware of them for ceremonial purposes, but not their astronomic/ astrological significance.  

As the news had said, the totality was brief, maybe 90 seconds.  You can get a rough idea of what the corona or ring looked like in my pics.  

And, of course, these pics do it no justice.  It was genuinely beautiful and unlike even the partial eclipses I'd seen before.  And, due in part to the totality and the clouds, if you weren't just staring, you could look at it with the naked eye.

The sliver of light left just before totality is kind of lovely and almost sad, and then... the ring.  In our case it was white light shining through the clouds, just shimmering around the perfect circle of the moon.  Then, when the event is passing, you get the diamond on the ring as the first real rays of the sun break out at the edge and a spot of light formed on, to my eye, the lower left angle.  And it's really kind of lovely.

Did I eat a Moon Pie during totality?  Friends, you know I did, and it was perfect.

I don't know that I'm ready to chase eclipses around the planet, but it was something that will be locked up in my mind's eye, ready to remember.  Glad I saw it with Jamie and our neighbors.  

Birthday 2023 - The Anti-Vibe, Very Good B-Day Week

Wednesday was my birthday.  The celebration lasted a full week as we had some neighbors over last Saturday, and this week we went to see Austin FC play Vancouver.  In the middle was the big day.  I'm now 48.  

Holy cats.

20 Years of Blogging, Part 2 - Together, We're a League of Something!

Editor's note:  This is Part 2 of a series.  You can view the first part with just the click of a button.  

also, this is a cross-post with media review site and PodCast, The Signal Watch.

So, yeah.  

By April of 2003, we were blogging.  For a look at the initial form of League of Melbotis on Blogspot/ Blogger, click on over to The Wayback Machine.  

As mentioned in the first post, soon I was emailing and managing comments from friends and strangers.  But, also, some of those pals already had their own blogs or quickly started one.  It was easy, often free, and gave folks a chance to speak their mind.  People were religious about their choice of platform.  Livejournal people developed quite the mythologizing about themselves that arguably continues to this day. WordPress users constantly complained about what they were using but refused to change.  

JimD started his first blog of many.  RHPT joined in.  Soon I was aware of Maxwell (she of the podcast) starting up Cowboy Funk, which detailed her life as a Texas ex-pat in NYC.  I knew her husband before we met via his own web-presence and mentions on the blog.  

20 Years of Blogging. No, really. (Part 1)

So, twenty years ago Jamie and I were living in the wasteland suburbs of Phoenix, Arizona in a town-turned-bedroom community name of Chandler.  We'd moved out to Phoenix in pursuit of a new job for Jamie.  But, also, we figured we were young and didn't have that many roots down in the years after college and marrying fairly early (2000).  Now seemed a good time for trying new places and things.  

It didn't work out.

You can visit Jamie's occasional remembrances of our time in Phoenix, and that's a goodly part of the story.  But, also, between Jamie's health, the fact I was working crazy hours, and a general lack of opportunity to meet people, we just didn't know many folks in town that we could call "pal".  I either managed or was supervised by the people I worked with, and Jamie mostly worked with men - so she wasn't meeting many women she could pal with-  and everyone she worked with seemed to be at a different point in their lives from hanging our with two 20-somethings.  That, and, man, if you asked me what the culture was in Phoenix in 2003, I'd say "strip malls and pretending you're rich".  We just didn't click with many folks.

So, that's where we were at in some ways.

Jason: Half a Century of Rocking America

I have no recent photos of Jason and Family

March 17th marks my brother's 50th birthday.  

That's a peculiar milestone, because I can remember his birthday parties from elementary school and taking him for a beer while he was just finishing law school and I guess maybe he was turning 25 at the time (we were under the tent at Dog & Duck).  

Jason's birthday was always tricky as it falls on St. Patrick's Day.  In recent years, he's had his own way of keeping his birthday (pizza and beer, essentially) and it's worked well til Covid hit.  Also, he's got kids that went from small and distractable to elementary school age, and I think there's a different gameplan.

Ice Like a Hurricane

We just had a few days of weather here in Austin, Texas.  It's left the city a wreck.  Again.

To understand what happened, my memory of the days as they unfolded went a bit like this:  

Around Saturday January 28th, we knew we were getting a cold front and that the oddly warm weeks of January we'd been experiencing would soon end  (the 28th had a high around 60, but we'd seen the 70's several times during the month).  On Sunday the 29th, suddenly the "it'll be cold and just over freezing, and it will rain" forecast we'd been hearing changed.  Suddenly we were to expect freezing temps, rain and ice.  

I work from home these days, and I didn't think much of it.  It sounded like a pain, but this wasn't the same as the multi-day freeze in the teens and 20's we experienced in February 2021 that took out the city and led to PTSD for almost all of us who sat in the dark, trapped in our houses for days, wondering if we'd die in our own homes.  This would be 24-48 hours of nasty cold and some wet and then we'd be back to normal temps.  We do this every other year or so.

But then on Monday the schools started closing early and planning closings on Tuesday and Wednesday.  

What happened, starting Monday evening and through Wednesday, was that Austin received a tremendous amount of rain, ice, grapple and other precipitation and the temps fell below freezing.  My own measurements tell me we got something like 2.5 inches of moisture.