My expatriate Australian buddy Jimm in L.A. just sent me this link, check it out.  It’s a hoot!

Wow, I am so shocked about something I just read in my hometown newspaper, I’m almost speechless; and, in fact, jumped over here to write about it while I’m still processing the shock before I finished reading the rest of the paper (or the rest of the article, for that matter).

Yesterday it was announced that the Tennessean is cutting service to ten counties west of Dickson. I probably shouldn’t be quite as surprised as I am, as we’ve been discussing media matters (as in old school vs. current technology) here around the regional blogosphere for some time now, and I guess the writing’s been on the wall - especially now, with these outrageous fuel costs in this country. Still, the actuality of this has me stunned.

I wasn’t all that surprised a little over a week ago when my hometown newspaper announced that The Commercial Appeal, Memphis’ daily newspaper, was going to cease circulation in my home county (and, I would assume, my other home county next door where I went to high school). This is strictly my opinion, but I think the CA shot itself in the foot a few years ago - a foot that was already tenuous, at best, in Northwest Tennessee - when the decision was made to decrease news coverage of most anything north of Jackson.

Initially, that included the obituaries, which was about the only reason I still subscribed to the print version of the CA the last ten years that I did, so I could keep up with things like that that I needed to know back home. A little later - and after what I would assume were many complaints (I know they received two for sure) - they revised the decision a bit and began to re-include that region in the obituaries, but they never did quite get back up to speed with it and they frequently missed a lot, and pretty much the same with the news in general.

It just never did quite get back to speed and return to being the “overall” regional coverage and inclusion of all things not only Memphis but the broad surrounding area that, frankly, to me was always far superior to The Tennessean until maybe seven or eight years ago. I stopped subscribing to home delivery in the early part of this decade, partially due to the rising cost and the convenience of being able to read it online anyway, but mainly because of the decrease in regional coverage from north of Jackson. The decrease in general news coverage was actually pretty gradual over time, but the day they killed the obituaries was probably the death knell for a lot of people with the CA - both those living in Northwest Tennessee and those of us with a vested interest in the region.

So it’s not really a surprise to me that the CA is quitting Northwest Tennessee. I expect there were very few home delivery subscribers - if any - left, and doubt there were many buying it out of what few CA stands were still left around up yonder.

And when it comes down to it, like I said, the CA’s foothold in the region has probably always been tenuous at best because that’s basically a Nashville news area - just about smack in the middle of the two, but just a little closer to Nashville and (more importantly, probably) an area which has been served by Nashville television and radio lo these many years. Before other stations started creeping in and then cable just exploded into a million channels, you had the three big Nashville network affiliates plus the PBS station, and then the alternate network stations in Paducah, Cape Girardeau, Jackson, and the other PBS station in Lexington, and that was it. You had to get closer to Jackson to get Memphis TV stations.

So, being almost all Nashville news towns TV-wise, that area has always been pretty pro-Tennessean vs. The Commercial Appeal as well, so - again - the CA’s demise in that area’s not surprising. You had people who subscribed to both - we did, my family - but we were likely in the minority. We actually subscribed for years to home delivery of the CA daily and Sunday, and only subscribed to the Sunday Tennessean, but then again we had a daily paper in town most of my life. Until about six or seven years ago, anytime I was at home visiting, I went out on Sundays I was there and picked up both the Memphis and Nashville papers. Our preference for the CA was probably partially due to my parents both having gone to college in Memphis, but also I think we just generally all agreed the CA was superior to the Tennessean.

But that’s not at all true of most folks up there; like I said, those are mostly pro-Tennessean towns just west and just east of the Tennessee River, so I’m just really shocked that the paper is going to discontinue all service up there - not even in stores or on the paper racks. And so soon on the heels of the CA’s same decision, and especially when the Tennessean’s always been so far ahead of the CA in popularity (and, one would assume, sales). But in this case, I guess better sales (for whatever that was worth in this day and age) no longer makes up for the astronomical rise in fuel costs, as well as other expenses.

But even though I haven’t actually resided in Northwest Tennessee since 1985, it is kind of freaking me out to think of both those papers not being there - at least the Sunday editions. This is actually a pretty large area we’re talking about and - man. It’s weird to think about, and it’s going to also be really strange not to see newspaper racks around up there (or at least not but a couple).

If I wasn’t so hyper-aware of the issue, maybe I wouldn’t even notice they’re not around anymore, I don’t know. But right now I’m just picturing in my head the sight of outside the post office in downtown Paris, by the door of all the convenience stores in Paris and Camden, the racks by the cash register of dozens of other stores - all those places that I knew, if I wanted (or needed) to run out and get a Sunday Tennessean or CA, they’d be there. And now they won’t be. And that’s weird.

So that pretty much leaves a fairly large area without a large newspaper service, not even on Sunday. Well, there is one large-ish paper - if you could even call it that - not as big as the other two, still around (for now). But if you can’t be nice, and all that, you know. That’s why I’m not going to say anything else at all about that one.

I don’t know. It’s weird. I think we’ve all sort of seen this coming, but just now with this it really and truly seems like the real beginning of the end of an era now, to me anyway, and that’s of course from a total layman’s point of view. But not only am I just freaked out about what if I am back home and want a Sunday paper and have to drive an hour in either direction to get one, of course; I’m concerned for the friends (like this one and this one and this one and this one) and family who are right at the heart of it all too.

No Sunday papers in a ten-county area, gas prices looking like they’re pushing towards five bucks a gallon, and I just noticed my dog’s usual (and previously relatively inexpensive) dog food has gone up nearly an entire four dollars a bag. My salary’s certainly taken a big hit this year catastrophically - and I’m obviously not a “normal” case - but even if I was still working the same job, I’m pretty sure my salary wouldn’t have gone up much (if at all), and I imagine many others are in the same boat. What’s next? I’m honestly beginning to dread to even wonder.

So today I met up with KathyT, her sister, and her youngest daughter for Huey Burgers (except Melissa had the Huey’s Club, the rest of us had the original Huey Burgers) and just had a fabulous time visiting with them. It’s always great to see Kathy, and her sister Karen is just delightful and funny as well. Melissa’s a really cool kid and is going home with a huge trophy - and is also getting her braces off soon, I hear. (Man, I remember that was one of the best days of my life, getting those things off for good after three long years.)

They had thought about going to Graceland but had decided not to, but they wanted to go to Mississippi since Karen and Melissa had never been, so that was a sort of easily solved two birds killed with one stone. I hopped into the van with them after lunch and we took off down Bellevue, which becomes Elvis Presley Blvd. and then becomes just plain old Highway 51 at the Tennessee-Mississippi state line. (Well, I guess it’s always Highway 51 anyway, but you know what I mean.)

So yeah, we went to Southaven and then even on down into Horn Lake, where Kathy bought a new headlight and the cute guy at Advance Auto Parts installed it for her even though he really didn’t want to.

Then we came back to Memphis, having driven past Graceland on the way down, but since it’s on that side of the road coming back - yeah, we pulled into the pull-off and got out and walked around the wall and gates a bit. Karen took a picture of me and Kathy and Melissa under the National Register of Historic Places sign that I hope will be so bad (because it no doubt will be of me, they always are) that Kathy won’t put it up on her blog. (Haha, just kidding… I think.) And Kathy took a bunch of pics of some of the graffiti on the wall.

Anyway, it was a lot of fun hanging out with them and thanks once again to Kathy for lunch & the company, I had a great time. And my dogs thank her profusely since virtually none of us finished our entire burger/sandwich or fries (I almost ate my whole Huey Burger but not quite), so Kathy sent me home with a literal doggie bag LOADED with french fries and what probably amounted to almost one entire Huey Burger or almost. It was a feeding frenzy the likes of which you usually only see in the wild on the Discovery Channel, Dobie almost took one or two of my fingers off.

What was really funny, though, was Daisy was the only one smart enough to figure out what I’d brought home in the box I was holding when I walked in the door. The boys were completely clueless (*rolls eyes*).

It was a gorgeous day in Memphis today, and since I was in the neighborhood I drove by my buddy Joey’s house thinking if they were outside I’d stop and say hey. But they weren’t, so I just headed on home after a stop off for needed Krogering.

By the way, I actually have a piece of Graceland in my possession - a piece of rock/stone that I think came from a walkway, I don’t think it came from the wall. My mom wound up with it when she was down here in college, I think a friend of hers actually did the actual deed, but yeah, it’s a piece of Graceland circa around 1961-63. Heh.

So I have just returned from one of the most bizarre 24-hour periods of my entire life, I think.

My mom has a cat that I pawned off on her many years ago, having pretty much achieved my limit of foundlings at the time. Snow had originally belonged to a neighbor who moved off and left her to fend for herself, and after a few years of that and never allowing me to get near her, she finally made friends with me. My mom has always been a little partial to “pretty” kitties and Snow was, true to her name, a solid white semi-long haired cat who needed a home, so of course I orchestrated the whole thing and basically she couldn’t refuse, and the two went home together about, I don’t know, 14 or 15 years ago and have been best friends ever since.

I always had an idea of her age because I knew the neighbor who originally owned her fairly well and knew when she had acquired Snow, so she is pretty close to the 20-year-old mark - even older than my elderlies. And has really been in great health all this time until fairly recently when she was having some problems. But she improved and has really been doing pretty well ever since.

But we’ve, of course, known she was really, really old for a cat, and have sort of been in that trying to be prepared for her time to come any time now for the last couple of years or so. You know, you don’t want to think about it, but when I look at my oldest cat now in failing health and knowing that Snow was significantly older than mine in cat terms - well, you know.

So the other night, my mom lets me know (though I didn’t read it until yesterday morning) that she can’t find Snow. Snow has not been outside (nor even tried to go outside again but once, a long time ago) in the 14 or 15 years she’s been at Mom’s, and while she has her napping and hiding places like any other cat, it was unusual for her to not be seen before Mom went to work, when she came home for lunch, AND after she got home from work. And VERY unusual for her not to pop up when I walk in the house as I did yesterday - but I’m getting ahead of myself.

So of course, we feared the worst and knew that time had probably come; that more than likely, she had curled up somewhere and gone to sleep and just didn’t wake up.

What we didn’t count on was the cat just having VANISHED into thin air, apparently.

When I finally read the e-mail yesterday morning and called my mother and confirmed that Snow still hadn’t turned up, I thought about it for a few minutes and then knew I was getting on the road. I didn’t even call her back to let her know I was coming, I just figured I’d throw some stuff together (thinking at the time I’d come back to Memphis later that night) and drive up there and find her before Mom got back home from work. Even though Mom had said she’d already looked all over the house, though there were a few spots she hadn’t checked yet that were hard to get to without a ladder and such like that.

So that was my master plan - I figured yep, I’ll drive up there, I’ll have found her by the time Mom gets home, then we’ll bury her in the back yard or something, and I’ll drive back. Snow’s never been much of a hider and we know all her usual places plus the rare ones she does go hiding in, like underneath my bed up there among the mattress springs. I had no doubt that by the time the sun went down Thursday night, she would have been found. I was just SURE I would find her by the time Mom got home from work, but at the very least, was certain we would find her by the end of the evening.

So I get there and unlock the door and walk in.  No white cat comes out to greet me (which was really what I was hoping most, of course - that me showing up would finally bring her out - though I knew it was unlikely and was pretty sure wherever she was, she was no longer alive). I start searching pretty much ALMOST everywhere, though there were a few places I needed to look more thoroughly but couldn’t locate a flashlight. But after a couple of hours, I had done a pretty thorough search of the most probable places in the house and even some fairly improbable.

Then I went outside to look, and locked myself out of the house. House keys, car keys, cell phone, and pretty much anything I would have liked to have had for the next two hours - sitting on a chair in the kitchen. The only possible way I could have gotten back in was through the basement, but I knew the door at the top of the basement stairs was bolted and locked twice because - yeah, go me! - I’d locked it back myself after going down there to look for Snow, even though I knew good and well she couldn’t have gotten down there.

So having nothing better to do for a while, I walked around the neighborhood a couple of times looking for her. We were pretty sure she hadn’t gotten out of the house - there was one single moment she could have, but we thought it pretty unlikely too, or at least unlikely she wouldn’t have been seen doing it. Plus she’s a little skittish around people she doesn’t know. That cat getting out and not winding up practically right back on the front porch crying to get back in - also unlikely.

At some point, I knew what time it was because of something I totally forget about living in the city as I do - the courthouse clock chimed four o’clock. So I watered the lawn and the plants outside, since there was nothing better to do, and looked around for other stuff to do but found nothing else I could really do to make myself useful without certain things that were, nay, inside the house that I’d locked myself out of. So at that point, I figuratively throw up my hands and take a seat in the rocker on the front porch and wait for Mom to get home from work. Once she did, aside from our break to go grab some Italian food for dinner, the search began again.

I am telling you we have looked EVERYWHERE in that house, all places probable as well as totally improbable. I have crawled up in the top of closets with ceilings taller than two of me. We opened doors and cabinet doors that have probably not been opened in three years. After I searched under the aforementioned bed again, we eventually picked up the mattress and turned the box spring upside down and looked again just to make absolutely sure. We’ve looked in the dishwasher, the washer and dryer, the stove, and every other appliance that wasn’t open anyway but just to be sure. We’ve looked in trash cans (under trash that was already in there), toilets, behind and under and top of every single thing there is in the house to get behind or under or on top of. By this morning and totally baffled, we were looking in places a mouse would have had a hard time squeezing into, much less a cat, just to be sure.

We have looked at and in and around every single inch of that house. It’s like she just evaporated.

Now, common sense would tell you okay, she just got out. But we really don’t think so (though going to keep looking). And granted, as much as we love her, if there’s a deceased cat somewhere in that house, it’d be nice to find her BEFORE she’s inevitably found due to other reasons I don’t think I have to describe in detail.

But I am 99.9999999% sure that cat is not in that house. I’m STILL trying to think of places she could be, but I swear to god I have looked at and poked around in and shined a flashlight in every single solitary inch of that house that she could be in.

And I’m almost as sure she is not outdoors. Yes, common sense would tell one that, but you just don’t know this cat. It is so very, very unlikely in her case, but even if she did, it would have just been impossible for her not to have been seen exiting the house by the two people that could have.

We are grieving and sad, of course - she’s been a part of the family for such a long time - but after the last 24 hours and much more than that, we are simply dumbfounded. I have never experienced anything like it. We’ve had a million cats (well) since I was a kid, I know what cats do. We scoured every centimeter of the house, two and three times over in most cases. She disappeared. Vanished. Again - like she just evaporated.

I of course have a LITTLE hope that she did get out and maybe someone found her and took her inside, but that cat is skittish around ALL people but us and certain members of the family - I don’t see it happening. Traffic’s not really a danger in the immediate area - we’re close to downtown, but not THAT close. Other animals - possible but unlikely, besides, she lived on the streets before, she’s not un-street-smart.

I’m just really going with the vanished into thin air thing right now, after expecting a million times to find her any second yesterday and last night, for hours. If she’s in the house, I guess we’ll find out sooner or later (sooner probably). But I can’t imagine where because I’ve been EVERYWHERE in that house now, and beyond. It beats all I’ve ever seen, and I’ve seen a lot with cats in all these years.

I wish I had a picture but I don’t seem to have one on this computer, but she’s just your basic solid white cat with orangey-sorta eyes, medium haired - mostly short, not long - not real big but not that little either.

Well, so anyway, if you’re in or around the downtown Paris, TN area and see a solid white cat - please catch her if you can, and get in touch with me, and even if you can’t catch her, please let us know where you saw her. (PS She is a total fiend for tuna.)

I don’t think she’s out there, though. I don’t know where in the world that cat is - or at least her physical self - but I’ve about decided wherever she is, it’s not anywhere in this plane of existence the rest of us are in. Jeez. Dumbfounded, just totally and completely dumbfounded here.

Remember this?

Guess who failed inspection and can’t get her car registered right now? (Even with the most expensive registration rates in the whole danged state, which is still beyond my comprehension.) That stupid crack is not even in my line of vision.

I hate this city more every day. Having just waded thru posts from ten and eleven years ago when I still loved it here, it’s even more surreal to me how much I hate it.

So I’m trying to get caught up this week on some things that have been waiting to be done for months, so that I can move on to other stuff I need to get to work on and not still have all those pushed-aside projects hanging over my head on the back burner.

In the process, I discovered an old post about one of my cats that shocked me because I had NO idea this cat had been here this long (since 2000) or is as old as he is.  I know how old he is (now) because I know where he came from.  And that means one of my other cats, whose history prior to winding up with me I don’t know, is about the same age.

Which means they are both about 16, and thus the same age as Little, who is 16 or 17 and who recently had a bout of old age-related illness, as did my elderly dog, Dobie.

Anyway, wow.  I need to try to get a pic of the three of them together ’cause lately they are all hanging out in the same spot (but aren’t right this moment)… I feel like I need to put little kitty rocking chairs there.  Signing off from the Old Folks Home…

SHack: well you were at night court more than me
Lynnster: What? Only because before I met you I used to go there to watch and laugh at people!
SHack: and you never bailed me out
Lynnster: What! I was there every single time!
SHack: but jay always bailed me out
Lynnster: Because I never had money because nobody would have ever eaten if not for me!
SHack: you’d have left me there to rot
Lynnster: I probably should have.
SHack: then you dumped me
Lynnster: Because I was tired of narcissistic sociopath musicians.
SHack: that’s most of your ex-boyfriends
Lynnster: No, you were the only sociopath.
SHack: i played better than all of them though
Lynnster: When you were sober maybe.
SHack: that one night at cantrells
Lynnster: You were banned from Cantrell’s!
SHack: elliston then
Lynnster: You got banned from there too!
SHack: i never got banned from the exit in
Lynnster: Probably only because they forgot to.
SHack: i was never banned in murfreesboro
Lynnster: Well, there’s no accounting for taste.

With a nod to ‘Coma for recently citing two of my favorite movies of all time, if I am stuck on a deserted island with nothing but a TV and a DVD player and only ten DVDs, I believe I can get by with these. In no particular order:

1. River’s Edge - In the Nineties and pre-DVD days, I practically killed myself to get a VHS copy of this off eBay. Crispin Glover is a madman (in real life and on camera) - and was wonderful in the Back to the Future films - but he truly shines here in seriously disturbing and unnerving glory. Say what you will about Keanu Reeves, and yes, he’s played the same role a million times, but it suits him no better than in this film. The film is SUPPOSED to be disturbing and so are the characters. And to boot, it’s based on a true story. Side Trivia: Ione Skye Leitch, daughter of ’60s music icon Donovan, appears as Keanu’s love interest in the film, one of her first (Gas Food Lodging is another good one featuring her). She is also the ex-wife of Adam Horowitz of the Beastie Boys, and had a long-term live-in relationship with Anthony Kiedis of the Red Hot Chili Peppers.
2. Heathers - Quite possibly my fave film of all time ever. Yeah, it’s starting to look a little dated now but that only adds to its charm nowadays. And the setting is Westerburg (sic) High School - need I say more? There are so many fabulous tongue-in-cheek in-jokes in this movie - the Heathers, Betty & Veronica, millions more - it’s just beautiful. Back in the days when I actually used to go OUT to the movies, I saw this one about five times in the theater in the same month. Side Trivia: Kim Walker, who played Heather Duke (the first dead Heather) was dating Christian Slater at the time, but they broke up during filming of the movie. Walker later developed a brain tumor and died in 2001 at the age of 32.
3. Say Anything… - There have been few John Cusack movies I haven’t adored, but director Cameron Crowe’s Say Anything… is THE one. I have referenced Lloyd Dobler on this blog so many times over the years (as well as other Cusack films), I have a separate John Cusack category on the blog. I would have a super hard time picking a favorite scene, but my favorite is probably when Lloyd confronts the guys sitting outside the Gas ‘N Sip. Lili Taylor does a marvelous turn as well in this flick, and her songs about Joe (especially the one - you know the one) always have me in fits of giggles on the floor while watching. Side Trivia: Ione Skye also appears in this one, as Lloyd’s love interest Diane. The Replacement’s “Within Your Reach” is also notably featured in this film, which of course is another of the million reasons I fell in love with it so hard.
4. Gremlins - I can’t even talk about how much I have always loved this movie without crying. I haven’t watched it in many, many years for the same reason. I first saw it while on summer vacation in a theater in Rehoboth Beach, Delaware in 1984. Side Trivia: Judge Reinhold & Phoebe Cates also appeared together in another fondly remembered for me film of the ’80s, Cameron Crowe’s (again) Fast Times at Ridgemont High. It’s not one of my very favorites and it’s certainly gotten dated, but it is still funny, especially if you grew up in the ’80s.
5. Less Than Zero - Another, to borrow a phrase, ’80s “the kids are NOT all right” film, and another I practically paid an arm and a leg for to get a VHS copy of back in the ’90s. This one is akin to a John Hughes movie gone all wrong. It’s got its problems and on the surface would appear to be really out there as far as the whole wealthy and disaffected youth thing, but it’s really not as implausible as one would think. The details of the scenes themselves may have been different, but mainly due to geographics - the base story existed all over the country at the time, including Nashville. Side Trivia: Oh, James Spader, how despicable you are in this film, but how I adore you anyway and have in every film you’ve ever been in.
6. Sid & Nancy - And thus begun the rest of my lifelong adoration of Gary Oldman as well. There are much better films he’s been in (and I love each and every one of them), but Alex Cox’s Sid & Nancy was his first big role, and there was just no one else who could have been a more perfect Sid Vicious. It’s the most disturbing and disgusting and sickening love story and everything punk was, a beautiful film in all its ugliness and has one of the best soundtracks ever. My friend Jen used to do the best Chloe Webb doing Nancy (”SIIIIIIIIID!”) that would have me rolling in the floor. Side Trivia: Look for an extremely young Courtney Love in a few scenes as one of Nancy Spungen’s pals.
7. Drugstore Cowboy - I used to not think very highly of Matt Dillon as an actor until this one came out, and I became a fan of Gus Van Sant’s films on this one. Like many of my favorites, it’s disturbing and difficult to watch, but one of the greatest things about this film is that even though the story is pitiful and pathetic, Matt Dillon is SO funny in it. Under the surface of all the dirty drug addiction tale, this movie is hilarious. Also has an excellent soundtrack of gems from the time of the film’s setting, including The Count Five’s “Psychotic Reaction”, Desmond Dekker’s “The Israelites”, Gary Lewis & the Playboys’ “Judy in Disguise”, and Hazel, KY/slash/Puryear, TN (my home county) native Jackie DeShannon’s “Put a Little Love in Your Heart”. Van Sant’s My Own Private Idaho is also pretty good though a little faulty; this one is better. Side Trivia: Matt Dillon’s first big film role as a young teen was in another big all-time favorite of mine that has become a cult classic of sorts, Over the Edge - another one that has gotten very ’70s dated over time but still well worth watching, plus then-not-so-known Cheap Trick is largely featured on the soundtrack. As a commenter on iMDB noted, Over the Edge was “a teen movie that gets it right”.
8. Dogs in Space - An Australian film you’ve probably never heard of and another disaffected youth mostly on drugs flick, but this time based in Melbourne’s post-punk scene of the late ’70s - and also based on more true stories, and starring - yes - the late Michael Hutchence of INXS. This film is such a favorite of mine I paid an extremely huge amount of money to get the VHS tape in the ’90s, and the last time I checked on DVD prices (which admittedly has been a few years now) it could be had for $200-350 - that price has probably gone down by now. Very much a “slice of life” flick and disturbing in places to watch, but it’s excellent and also has a soundtrack far beyond excellent - Iggy Pop, Nick Cave/Boys Next Door, Brian Eno, Gang of Four, and some more legends of the time as well as the fab tracks done by Hutchence and crew.  An iMDB commenter said, “This is for when you’re feeling like you need some company, but you don’t feel like venturing past your doorstep” - I agree.  Side Trivia: The real Sam Sejavka, who fronted Melbourne band The Ears in the late ’70s and is played by Hutchence in the film, appears in the movie twice and is addressed by Hutchence in the party scene as “Michael”.
9. Quandary: Real Genius or The Doors - I can’t help it, I do love me some Val Kilmer, and if I could take another dozen or so films I’d be taking all the Val Kilmer films as well as the entire John Hughes oeuvre with me. Real Genius is so freakin’ hilarious through and through and I defy anyone to disagree with me. Oliver Stone’s epic The Doors has got its problems but it mostly gets it right and dang, Kilmer did such a dead-on Jim Morrison it’s almost creepy, I can’t help it, I think his performance in this film was brilliant. This was another I saw probably eight times or more while it was still first-run in the theater. Probably in the end, The Doors would win out, but jeez, it’d be a tough call. Side Trivia: Kilmer did most of the singing in the film himself and even the surviving Doors (Manzarek, Krieger, and Densmore) admitted they had a hard time telling the difference. So did I the first time I saw the film; I had no idea it wasn’t Jim Morrison’s vocals. On that basis alone, par excellence. Also look for a fairly large number of Doors associates and other scenesters of the time, including producer Paul Rothchild, Patricia Kennealy, singer Bonnie Bramlett, Eric Burdon of The Animals, and a Door himself - drummer John Densmore - in cameo appearances.
10. Another tough call - Birdy or Platoon? - My decades-long adoration of and obsession with Matthew Modine is only barely outweighed by John Cusack and only slightly precedes James Spader, and having to decide between these two films is awful, though Birdy would probably win out in the end. This also meant I had to toss out another huge Modine favorite and an underappreciated and hugely funny one that probably doesn’t appear on many favorites lists, Married to the Mob. All three are fabulous films for their own reasons. Side Trivia: Having now mentioned Birdy, I also have to mention two more that didn’t make the cut - Valley Girl and Raising Arizona, all featuring Modine’s Birdy co-star Nicolas Cage, also good. Valley Girl, which was really Cage’s big film break, is worth it for The Plimsouls on stage alone. Wow, I first saw that one at the drive-in in 1983.

God, that was awful to try to choose ten and I still didn’t really succeed. Here are a few more - runners-up, I suppose - that didn’t make the final cut:

1. Edward Scissorhands - I love this movie in all its goofy glory so much it makes me cry and it killed me to leave it off the list. In retrospect, I might have to swap one of the above for it. Side Trivia: Speaking of Tim Burton, there’s also Beetlejuice, of course.
2. Pretty much all of the John Hughes Brat Pack-era movies (which you likely knew was coming) and Joel Schumacher’s St. Elmo’s Fire - It’d be a hard call, but St. Elmo’s Fire would be the first cut ‘cos it’s almost too cheesy. Some Kind of Wonderful and Pretty in Pink, I love but could live without. The Breakfast Club is, well, The Breakfast Club, but it’s not my very favorite. It’d come down to a tremendously agonizing tug of war between Sixteen Candles and Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and I honestly don’t know which would win. Ferris would probably win, though. Even though - Side Trivia: John Cusack makes his second film appearance in a small part as one of the geeks in Sixteen Candles.
3. Ciao! Manhattan - As much as I adore this, which is not so much a real film per se but more of a collection of some of the few remaining pieces of film footage of Warhol superstar Edie Sedgwick, as well as many other Factory scenesters, I just can’t justify it being one of the ten. Still, it’d be hard. Side Trivia: I hear the DVD, which I still don’t own, has loads of extra footage and modern commentary by some of the actors from what was supposed to have been the original film, and I’m dying to see it.
4. Ladies and Gentlemen, The Fabulous Stains - Unless you had The Movie Channel or HBO in the early ’80s, you probably don’t know this film; it’s been out of print and unavailable for decades. I had a taped copy for years and the tape finally broke seven or eight years ago. This was one of Diane Lane’s earliest films and also features a very young Laura Dern. It’s an excellent film and, along with the aforementioned Over the Edge, is as responsible for my musical obsessions/addictions as any piece of recorded music is. I was pleasantly shocked and surprised to see co-star Ray Winstone’s name for the first time in years when he turned up in the multi-award winning Nil By Mouth in 1997. The good news is that after years of fans pleading, I got word the other day via MySpace that the film is finally going to be released on DVD and, in fact, the very next day got a notification from Amazon that the DVD was now available for pre-ordering. Side Trivia: Former Sex Pistols Steve Jones and Paul Cook, and former Clash bassist Paul Simonon, appear as the other members of the band in the movie led by Winstone.
5. Pretty much every Kevin Smith and David Lynch film ever made - I can’t decide. I can’t, I can’t. Though I guess Dogma and Blue Velvet. Or maybe Chasing Amy and Eraserhead. Or… I can’t decide. Don’t make me.

God, that was painful. And it would really suck if there was no electricity on that island.

I’ve been reading for years about Dawn dishwashing liquid (the original, not the “new” kind) and its ability to get rid of fleas and just kind of went “ehhh” about it.  Not that I didn’t believe it worked at all, I just figured it probably didn’t work as well as people claimed it did.

I was so wrong.

We have had an awful time with fleas this year - which makes me want to cry because for years we were flea-less until the neighbor dogs moved in a couple of years ago, but anyway - this year has been the worst ever, and I don’t think Frontline is working as well as it used to, though it does seem to finally be working, or at least I think I’m finally seeing a dent in the cycle because most of the fleas I’m seeing now are juvenile and baby ones (heh, that sounds funny).

I’ve been reading a lot lately where people are saying Frontline Plus is no longer working, or works for a week and quits, or suggesting going back to Advantage a while and then reattempting Frontline, or postulating that the fleas are gaining immunity towards all of that type stuff.  One of the statements I see frequently I tend to agree with most - Frontline Plus just does not seem to work as well as Frontline Top Spot.  I do think the cycle is breaking, but it’s certainly not with the speed and severity that Frontline Top Spot always had.

In any case - before I get off topic any further - we’ve just had a time this year and among some other things I’ve been trying, and trying to avoid spending any more than the megabucks I finally had to cough up for Frontline and other measures, I finally decided to see if the Dawn legend really worked.  It does!

My flea traps are drowning a number of those suckers nightly, all for the cost of a bottle of original Dawn dish liquid (a whole 96 cents at Wal-Mart right now).  I have played around and tried a few different things now with it all (including another dishwashing liquid) and this method seems to work the best and attract the most fleas to drown.  You need:

1. Said bottle of original Dawn dishwashing liquid detergent.  Not the now-regular Ultra or anything else.  Just plain old original blue Dawn.
2. A shallow bowl of water, preferably white.  You can use clear ones, but the white bowls seem to attract them more.  If I use a clear one, I put a piece of white paper under it and that seems to help too.  But my small French White bowls (I call it the creme brulee size) and a Corningware mini-casserole dish I have seem to work best.
3. Best spot to place the bowl is on the floor.  I’ve tried other and higher spots and they’ll work, but it seems to attract more if on the floor.  You can put it in a corner or out of the way otherwise, they’ll find it, believe me.
4. A book light or night light.  Many places you read will say a night light and those may work, but my problem is I live in an old house with few electrical outlets and even fewer where there’s any floor space underneath.  I had a couple of mini-book lights, the kind that clip on the book and have the little bendable arm - you can get them at Walgreen’s lately, two for $3 - I just clip them on the side of the bowl and bend the light where it’s over the center of the bowl, and voila.  I have tried some other little book lights since, such as some that Dollar Tree has right now, but they just don’t seem to attract as well as these little lights Walgreen’s is selling right now do.

I have one bedroom that has been hit particularly worse than the rest (Tojo the Psycho Cat’s bedroom) and my flea trap in there is catching 15-20 or more a night and starting to slow down a little, finally.  The rest in the rest of the house are only catching one or two a night now, but it’s definitely all working.

I don’t usually use flea collars because they really don’t do much other than keep the pests away from their heads, but I did buy one for Tojo - unfortunately it was a cheap one and seemed to be making the fleas WORSE than they were, so last week I got the pricier Adams one.  And last week washed all the bedding in the house, too.

Bombing the house, which would probably have been the quickest and surest way to eradicate all fleas, just wasn’t an option - there’s nowhere for all of us to go for a day - and after having spent a small fortune on Frontline, and other stuff leading up to the Frontline which was wasted money because nothing was working - the fact that the Dawn really DOES work, for 96 cents a bottle, is just WONDERFUL.

It’s all working.  We are not 100% flea-free yet, but it’s better and we’re close, and I will swear by this Dawn method from now on.  The dogs (and quite possibly one very mad cat) are going to have a bath with flea shampoo next week and then it will be time to Frontline everyone again, and after that (fingers crossed) with any luck we can go back to only treating the dogs with that stuff.

But I will be keeping at least one or two homemade Dawn flea traps on the floor at night at all times, maybe all year long but definitely during the warm months, probably one in Tojo’s room and another in some other corner of the house somewhere.  I now highly recommend it for any dog or cat owner.  Even if you don’t really have a flea problem or aren’t seeing any, just one bowl set up like that with the Dawn and the book light or night light ever night will almost certainly assure you don’t see any.  It works!

Why fleas like the Dawn so much more than other liquid dish detergents - and why they prefer it as opposed to the newer, “ultra” Dawn - now that’s something to ponder, but I can tell you for a fact that they don’t like lemon Ajax as much.

So I am working on a couple of projects this weekend that have badly needed completing for a long time, and I just came across an old post from 1999 where I am all excited and happy about getting a new 56K (dialup) modem.

It kind of feels like I just admitted I remember when the light bulb was invented or something. Hee.

I wonder how many times now I’ve told these two stories:

The first PC we ever bought (after the C64, and before that, the Atari 400) is still sitting in my back bedroom, and probably works if I plugged it in. It was an XT, has 4MB of RAM and a 10MB hard drive, which is all “they” said at the time anyone would ever need.

A couple of more computers down the road, I bought my first “big” hard drive. It was a used 976MB (not GB, MB) drive, and I paid $235 for it.

OK, now I feel like I just admitted I was around when they invented cell phones and when cable TV came out. Oh, that’s right… I was.

Since I was compelled to create a new category today called Squirrel Queen Tales, I am equally compelled to add the now-infamous Goosepond Swamp Monster legend to it, and link to the photo of where said Goosepond Monster lives.

Notice there’s no talk of Goosepondery over here.  But I’m still putting my money on ‘Coma.  If anyone can find the GSM, she can.

(Technically I guess the category should be ‘Coma tales, but seeing as how the category was begat of Squirrelly’s now-confirmed ice cream headache remedy that I impudently laughed at when I first heard it, plus Squirrel Queen Tales just sounds funnier…)

So I got one of the new Fruitista Freezes at Taco Hell today because it’s like a million degrees outside in Memphis today. I got the just Strawberry instead of the Strawberry Mango, ‘cos sometimes mango doesn’t taste too good to me.

I give it a pretty enthusiastic thumbs up, even with the half dozen ice cream headaches that came with it.

The Squirrel Queen claims that one can relieve brain freeze by pressing your tongue against the roof of your mouth, adding that it warms the nerve endings there that cause the ache. And Rachel agreed with her. But I dunno about that, that sounds awfully weird to me. I’ll try it next time tho.

Kat Coble posted the other day about the coming release of The Sims 3. I have a love-hate relationship with The Sims. I love playing with Sims because it’s fun and I could sit there for 15 hours straight every day playing with them. I hate it because it’s fun and I could sit there for 15 hours straight every day playing with them.

I actually broke myself of the habit not too long after The Sims 2 came out. My computer couldn’t run it very well, so I never really got it into the second version, and much later on when I had a computer that was sufficient, I just never installed it. I went back to playing with the original edition for a while, but eventually I kicked the habit… not without having spent countless more hours building a couple of new neighborhoods though.

That actually was the best ever Sims period I had because that was when I built the Twin Peaks Sims neighborhood. I had every house populated with Twin Peaks folk - Pete & Catherine Martell and Josie Packard in one (naturally Josie and Catherine hated each other), the Palmers in another, the Haywards in another, and so on… and my best Sims house ever, the Twin Peaks Sheriff’s Department - all of them plus Agent Cooper lived together, and it was the greatest house. I built it on one of the empty lots and made it look very police station-y on the outside, and it had EVERYTHING. At one point, there was nothing left for me to buy for it because I had played that house so much and had bought everything there was to buy and stuck it in there. What a great house. Yeah, I’m twelve.

I think I still have the files on my computer. Hmm… nononononono I better not…!

How ironic - a few minutes after I posted this about Little and Dobie and the vestibular disease, I saw where Ivy had posted a video of Charley the cat at Animal Shak.  Charley has cerebellar hypoplasia, another neurological condition, different from vestibular disease but exhibits very similar symptoms.  The way Charley walks and falls is very similar to how Little was moving yesterday.

Unfortunately vestibular disease is usually relatively temporary and what Charley has is not, but what a great cat!  He seems to take it all in stride.

You’ll never believe this, but remember a couple of weeks ago when my Beagle, Lula, had just died, and while she was sick, Dobie had this sort of stroke-like episode?  Which wasn’t a stroke, but was canine old age vestibular disease, which has sort of stroke-like symptoms, and in any case, was pretty frightening.

Early Monday morning while it was still dark, my eldest cat, Little, developed the same thing.  But the feline version, of course.  She’s 16 or 17 (I can’t ever remember which of those two years she arrived as a baby).

Much like with the dog version, they say it usually improves in 2-3 days to a couple of weeks, and she’s already improved a bunch from how she was yesterday.  Dobie’s a big dog who’s all legs, and Little’s a pretty small cat, but really her situation was much more frightening and her symptoms much more dramatic.

With Dobie, he had been fine all day and evening and then when we all got ready to go outside again that night, he stood up and promptly fell down.  With Little, the first thing I noticed was that she was laying oddly on the floor, and at first I thought she’d died.  Then when she finally tried to get up and walk - and every time she walked after that - she would hurl herself forward and tumble in a pseudo-forward roll and scare me to death.  She even did that jumping in the bathtub, and while trying to jump out of her (relatively shallow) litter box.

She didn’t have the nystagmus (rapid back and forth eye movement) Dobie had for days afterwards, but Dobie didn’t have the dramatic head tilt she did all day yesterday.  She still has a little residual tilt - and may continue to - but god, yesterday it was just pitiful.

Dobie’s still having a little trouble maneuvering eating dry dog food - I practically had to hand feed him for over a week to make sure he was getting enough to eat - but Little doesn’t seem to have much motor skill problem in that regard.  She’s getting around fine today, just a day later, I haven’t seen her tilt or fall at all today.  Dobie is getting around mostly well, except that when he gets in a hurry or has just woken up, he sometimes loses his balance and/or falls.

I’m kinda confused about the fact that in dogs, they say it usually eventually goes away and never comes back, while in cats, most of what I’ve read seems to say they retain some residual effects and that it can flare up again when stressed, so I’m not so sure that might not be true of dogs too.

In any case, I guess it’s a learning process for us all, and I’m glad they’re both probably going to recover just fine more than likely, but gosh, it’s been like a geriatric veterinary nursing home around here for weeks now and I am just plain worn OUT.  And can’t believe two of them were stricken with this at the SAME time, and there’s two more elderly cats here (and one other not much of a spring chicken herself), and I’m just, like, oh please, please - no more catastrophes (or dogastrophes) right now, please.

Way to go, Time Warner, Comcast, and AT&T:

Charging by the Byte to Curb Internet Traffic

Yes, let’s take the future of technology BACKWARDS about about a hundred steps instead of moving forward, why don’t we?

I’m not even likely one of those that would be highly affected, the principle of it all just annoys the techgeekchick in me.

I’ve about decided that one of the best things that could happen is that the United States takes some of the money that gets wasted annually on unnecessary junk, WiFi the entire country, and be done with it all.

By the way, Comcast, you’ve got a lot of nerve even proposing such a thing, seeing as how you lost thousands of the customers you inherited from Time Warner (both Internet and cable TV customers), and most everyone (in Tennessee anyway) agrees that your service sucks. I know people who had RoadRunner accounts from practically Day One, and for YEARS, that jumped ship soon after you moved in. I’d back off if I were you, but hey, that’s just me.

(No offense to the one unnamed friend of mine who works for Comcast, of whom I am certain does a standout job amongst a sea of ineptitude.)

HT: Newscoma via Twitter

UPDATE: In browsing links to blogs talking about the NYT article, I just read the most perfect comment about this whole situation from someone in Canada, I believe:

The internet providers were given massive tax breaks to improve their networks (fiber to the home and whatnot). Now they not only haven’t done that with the money, but the inferior networks they’ve built instead are reaching capacity.

Somebody should make your ISPs sleep in the bed they made.

Well said.

UPDATE #2: And oh yeah, no offense either to my other friend in the Metro Nashville area who works for AT&T, even though I wouldn’t call that the sea of ineptitude Comcast is.

Oh, I forgot the best parts/slash/salt in the wound about that last post about me being short $1.16.

1. I had to spend $2.68 on a flea collar today, which was the first flea collar I’ve had to buy in at least 10 years, maybe 15. I’ll spare you the yucky details, but (of course) it involves Tojo the Psycho Cat.
2. I actually did receive a check in the mail for $9.50 today. Unfortunately, my wonderful mailman I’ve had for years (and always came in the morning) has apparently either retired, quit, or is on an extended vacation, and in his place is a creature who it would seem does the route in reverse - therefore being late as all get out, sometimes after business hours no less. And is about the unfriendliest sourpuss of a postal worker I’ve ever seen, though that’s beside the point. Anyway, the check arrived too late to get it in today’s deposit at the bank.

The hits just keep on coming and my luck continues to suck. But again - California!

I am exactly $1.16 short of being able to pay my already overdue car insurance payment. Don’t that beat all, as they say? (Well, they do say that down here anyway.)

Car payment’s due tomorrow. Going to have to be a few days late, obviously.

This might all be just a little bit easier to tolerate were it not for the fact I had to put nearly $5 of gas in the car the other night just to be able to drive the 15.4 miles from the Wal-Mart in Olive Branch to my house.

But hey, I guess it could be worse. I could be living in California.

My pal CeeElCee brings up a good point about all the flood of e-mail marketing preceding Father’s Day (and for that matter, Mother’s Day, for the same reasons) that I’ve been thinking about myself in recent weeks, and have in the past.

We are all mostly taking it in stride and being tongue in cheek about it over there in comments, but obviously all of us whose fathers are deceased have had pretty much the same thoughts about it all, as I’m sure folks who have lost their mothers thought the same in the flood of e-mail marketing preceding Mother’s Day.

My mother’s alive and well, thanks (and a frequent reader & commenter here, and regular Internet user).

But what if she weren’t? Not to mention the fact that HER parents have been gone for ages; one for nearly as long as I’ve been alive.

I had a long conversation for the first time in several months with my former longtime co-worker, who lost her very elderly and extremely ill dad last summer. One of the things she and I have always had in common is that our fathers’ birthdays and Father’s Day always fell on the same week (as does her birthday). So this year, she is experiencing the June double whammy I have been for the last four years.

I get that it’s all about marketing, I understand it. And I know you can’t please everyone. I mostly - like I said - take it in stride and just overlook it. Normally it doesn’t bother me THAT much.

But it ALWAYS gets my attention, because of the circumstances - and it’s NOT the kind of attention marketers are striving for with those Mother’s Day and Father’s Day suggestion e-mails.

And I guess what kind of bugs me is that it seems like those holiday marketing e-mails are greater in number at Mother’s Day and Father’s Day than most other holidays, even Christmas. And while I do realize it’s all about the marketing, and I understand why it’s a necessary evil - it just seems like it might be a little better if many of these e-mail marketers scaled back their holiday marketing pummeling for those two holidays for the very reasons I bring up.

You hit someone like me on a bad day in a bad year - last year, not so much; this year, every day is a bad day - and tick them off, the results are never going to be good.

Again, I don’t have that big a chip on my shoulder about it, really. Generally, I’m pretty laid back and easygoing and not all that touchy about most things, I just have to work a little harder at it when it comes to this. And for the most part, the ones that come from Amazon and places like that, I mostly just overlook and hit the delete-delete-delete without much more of a thought.

Though the point is, there IS a thought… and it’s not the one they want me to have, that they’re intending with their marketing campaign of those holidays.

I have many, many e-mail boxes so I get TONS of these mails, and even more tons that aren’t coming from more traditional Internet marketers and are coming from the mega-spammers.

So it’s there that I take out my frustrations when I feel like it - which, this year, has been rather often. So depending on what kind of mood I’m in at the moment - well, let’s just say there’s several e-mail spammers that have been getting “My father’s been dead for almost four years, go away” e-mails back.

Not that they care, the mega-spammers. I can’t really say I haven’t thought about doing the same with some of those Amazon and other e-mails though.

Marketing’s marketing, and there’s no simple answer, I know.

But fair warning, marketing e-mail spammers and marketers of the non-spammish kind: Today would have been my father’s 66th birthday, so I might be a little less nice than “go away” today. Apologies in advance.

Just got word - Scarce’s Deadsexy album is now available via iTunes! Yessssss!

Thanks mucho grande bunches again to everyone who threw in some help getting the album released and out there! Joyce and Chick appreciate you guys all so much! (And I do too!) Thanks!

UPDATE: A PS from Joyce:

Wanted to share some wonderful news. Deadsexy is officially up on itunes! please thank everyone for helping us… It worked!!! I am so stunned…

We cannot thank you enough. Thanks for helping us get back on our feet.