Three things on my iPod: 4.14.06

I remarked three posts ago that post-iPod I've come to resemble a really happening guy from the year 2004. That's true in multiple ways. If you were privy to my internal thoughts in recent weeks, you'd hear things like "Say, Arcade Fire is a great band" or "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot: fantastic album." I'll be minimizing the number of statements such as those which highlight my out-of-touchitude, but I do want to mention a couple of things which I'm currently listening to.

1. In the golden age of synthesizer movie scores ('78-'85), there are only three that I care deeply about: Goblin's work in DAWN OF THE DEAD, Vangelis's score for BLADE RUNNER and John Carpenter's theme song for ASSAULT ON PRECINCT 13. $.99 at the iTunes store brought me Carpenter's song, and it's rapidly climbing the 25 Most Played chart. I know that it cannot be defended from a qualitative musical point of view. It's far too repetitive, and not terribly complex. I suppose it's partly a nostalgia choice, but not entirely because, unlike other things of my adolescence, this song really hasn't gotten worse when seen through an adult's eyes. I first saw AoP13 when I was maybe eleven years old and it was playing as the four o'clock movie on the NBC affiliate out of Johnstown, and then I didn't see it again until twenty-two years later. During that entire interval, Carpenter's theme song stuck right on the edge of my conscious recall, always immediately there if I cared to revisit it. I suppose the bombastic, triumphant soundtracks to STAR WARS and STAR TREK were the first bits of movie music I latched on to, but Carpenter's simple theme song was the first to have the ability to evoke a visceral dread and fear.

2. Season One of The Ricky Gervais Show is also downloadable now in full. I've had it now for over a month and I'm shocked to say that I am not in any hurry to get through it. A couple of years after the BBC THE OFFICE phenomenon, I'm still of the mind that Gervais's David Brent is one of the most fascinating characters of recent years. His glaring self-possession and insatiable hunger for approval are common enough, but Gervais manages to infuse the character with the ability to generate earnest pathos because we can see, on occasion, that Brent is himself aware that the tired jokes and servile "friend to his subordinates" schtick is just the thick skin of a lonely man. We understand why Brent is who he is, but we also are shown the effects of his habits and delusions. His tragicomic flaws are played out to their logical and necessary ends in a manner that bucks the eternal stasis inherent in much of the disposable sitcoms. It's comedy with consequences.

How many artists have been able to couple unbound hilarity with real and resonant insights into human behavior? Not enough. Not many. So, with all that being said, am I being unfair in saying that Gervais's podcast show is really disappointing because it doesn't appear to be much more than he and Merchant piling on their dim producer?

3. The local library had a set of read-aloud short stories of John Cheever. Cheever himself reads "The Swimmer," while a couple of actors read other stories. If, like me, you're a fan of GILMORE GIRLS, then you've come to appreciate at length the talents of Edward Herrmann. His WASPy, northeastern dignity is, predictably, a great match.

Six years ago I smashed up my ankle on Memorial Day, which put a Death's Head on the doorway to a summer Ali and I were looking forward to even more than other summers. We were set to leave for the beach, where she'd have to keep a seven month-old from eating too much sand, keep a three year-old from being swept away by the undertoad and where she wouldn't get much help from a husband on crutches. She had mentioned an interest in reading Cheever's stories, so I ordered the complete short stories and a copy of Falconer for her to read on the beach. In the ensuing years we both read Falconer and had mixed reactions to it, and we both dipped only slightly into the short stories. I'm glad we didn't. I wouldn't have responded to Cheever's stories the same way six years ago, and maybe things will be different yet in five more years. For now, today, there's something about them that seems vital, even if I wouldn't really describe the stories as familiar. Obviously, I need to think and write more about this, but it seems to me very important to pay attention to the possibilities of sudden and inexplicable threats to domesticity. I can't explain it.

Hello! says the Voicebox of Nature

On Monday I was walking into a meeting and I heard a dog say my name. I suppose that because my name is Russ this is the sort of thing that should have happened to me previously, but I can say with certainty that I have never, until this time, cognitively believed that I was being addressed directly by a dog. There was a looseness in the dog's bark that came out at the end and made me think I was hearing the S sound. How convinced was I (really) that the dog meant to call me? Well, convinced enough that I turned my head in the expectant way I do when a human calls my name, and not merely the sort of nonspecific looking-about that I typically do when I hear a dog barking and care to discover where the barking originates.

After the dog said "Russ!" it went back to ordinary dogspeak. It was locked in a pickup truck cap, and I couldn't get a good look at it without going right up to the rear window. I was late and I went inside the building.

I tried to brush it off as mishearing or an active imagination, but even after a few moments the strangeness didn't subside, so I became open to the idea that I didn't mishear or imagine it. Indeed, after giving it a moment's thought, I revised my response entirely, and now I believe that man's best friend was delivering to me a message from the bough of the natural world. It got my attention and gave me a message on behalf of the remainder of the Great Chain of Being. "Keep your chin up, Russ," the assembled creation says. "Don't let the frauds get you down or make a dent in you. We know the score."

I only wish I had known the dog's name so I could have thanked it in kind.