POP POP POP CULTURE

This is how I know I am really getting to be a grown up. Pop culture is slowly becoming a complete mystery to me. I can get through a SPIN magazine in about 2 hours now because I skip all the articles I know nothing about. Like Xtreme Sports. I can't believe some of these things that they are calling "sports" nowadays and actually putting on TV and people are making money doing and actually getting arrogant and self-important: "I am the champion egg-cup balancing, water-bicycling, bungee jumper of the world!" How do you judge people riding bikes, skate-boards or inline-skates up and down ramps? Or explain snow-board competition. And then someone comes along and "invents" a snowboard only it's shaped like a circle and then a whole new "sport" emerges "snow-disking" and they make up some weird contests and then some other rocket-scientist comes along and decided to attach his snow-disk to a speed boat and go jetting across Lake Mead and another new sport is born.

Also I don't get practically any new music that's out there. I'm not into women folk singers, not into hip hop, techno is tolerable except for the first 2 1/2 minutes, I totally don't get the whole "ska" revival. I heard the SPAWN soundtrack and I thought "I get it! I totally get it!" And then read somewhere in SPIN that it was a repellent soundtrack and big fat waste of time. Oh well. I'm not much into the rock oldies like Hendrix and Clapton. The more modern rock station plays too much Ozzy and AC/DC. The pop station plays stuff like Mariah and Celine which I can't stand. Both alternative station play this random unlistenable stuff like the Wallflowers and bands I've never heard of but can't get into. Oh, I like the Foo Fighters. And whenever there is a song I like, suddenly, that's ALL I hear every day until if I hear it one more time I veer off the road screaming my head off. Mostly all I like are things that came out in the '80's. And I remember at the time I thought I would always have the most slick, cutting taste in music. Sad, isn't it?

PAM PICKS 1997.

TV -- You must watch Austin Stories, I repeat, you must watch Austin Stories. It's on MTV and it's HILARIOUS. Chip, Laura and Howie are like my own personal holy trinity. Even the secondary characters Chloe, Quentin, Mike and Andy are my special friends. Also you HAVE to see Sister Wendy's The Story of Painting. I saw the interview with Sister Wendy and Bill Moyer and I swear I'm in love. MOVIES -- I liked Waiting for Guffman, Austin Powers, Grosse Point Blank and Contact. On VIDEO rent The Little Princess (chick flick) which was incredible charming and Primal Fear. Also Hackers is a pretty entertaining movie for computerheads. My book reading was weak this year. Tim Winton, The Riders is pretty good and The Stone Diaries by Carol Shields was good. If you can find it, read Merry McInerny, Burning Down the House. Also, if you want to read something that makes you think, find The Redneck Manifesto by Jim Goad. The best book I read this year was The Persian Boy by Mary Renault. It was published in 1972 and is about Alexander the Great. I read it while we were in Europe and loved it and cried at the end.

For those of you keeping track of these things, the novel is finished. I repeat the novel is finished. The next step is trying to get it published which is sort of like saying I'm trying to win the lottery so don't run out to Borders Books with your checkbook yet.

Hope you all have WONDERFUL HOLIDAYS and a HAPPY NEW YEAR.

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PHOTO: Cranberries in Long Beach, WA (I think). PHOTOGRAPHER: Bobman

Posted: 4.18.99
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