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ONE: online commenters.

Often when I read a story online, particularly on a site with a known rabble of unbelievably horrible commenters, like, let’s say Yahoo, I sort of accidentally drift into the comments area without really thinking about it.  I certainly don’t think: “Hmm, that was an interesting story.  I wonder what a gigantic anonymous horde of semi-sentient trolls have to say about that?”  I just kind of keep reading, as if the story was continuing, and I’m in a bit of a passive reading trance.  Of course, things go from professional writing to barely-literate cave scrawl, usually in all caps and laced with profanity, so it’s not like I don’t notice.  But it takes a few comments to snap out of my reading trance, as the overwhelming depressing horror of them all pounds me back into active thinking.  By then it’s too late, of course, as I’ve just read something so profoundly stupid I barely want to live anymore.  I liken this to coming to the realization that the room you’re in has been slowly filling with poison gas.  By the time you realize what’s happened, the damage has been done.

TWO: food processors.

Cooking without having a food processor is like going into battle without a weapon. You won’t necessarily die but it sure won’t be easy to win. Even the most basic $20 Black and Decker thing you can get at Target is at least like having a slingshot.  In this analogy my new KitchenAid 700 watt 12-cup food-chopping monster is like having a helicopter, equipped with a rocket launcher, that is invisible to other humans.

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This post means I completed NaBloPoMo: December edition!  Was it worth it?  I really don’t know! But it was fun.  I’m going out of town for a few days so will be breaking my blogging streak immediately.  However, I would like to continue posting regularly (though daily is a stretch, particularly in January, which is busy).  We’ll see how this pans out.

For the last post of the month/year, I thought I would recap 2010.  It was something of an eventful year.  The highlights:

  • Got married.  Holy whoa.  K is awesome and I’m a lucky dude.
    • 2011 follow-up: finish eating cake.  Make sure K continues to like me.
  • Bought a house. It was expensive!  But at least I’ll only have to toil for thirty more years to have it paid off in 2040.  Assuming civilization hasn’t ended.  Although in that case I probably can just have the house and not have to make payments anymore.  Of course, in that case I will have to defend it with a shotgun from hordes of bandits and/or zombies, and it may no longer have power or workable plumbing.
    • 2011 follow-up: do best to remain employed in case of necessity of continued payment-making. Consider obtaining shotgun.
  • New cat: Bea.  That means two cats, and will probably complete the set.
    • 2011 follow-up: possible dog.  Continue to feed and care for cats in order to butter them up for possible dog.
  • Did not fly one time!  I wish that was true every year.
    • 2011 follow-up: ugh, at least two trips requiring flying.  Maybe more.
  • Finally figured out the nuances of my waffle iron and became good at making waffles
    • 2011: make waffles, eat waffles.

Have a good 2011, internet! Come over for some waffles sometime.

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I’ve been trying to identify this particular niche of pop culture interest that I am (for now) dubbing the Stray Cats Zone (or, SCZ).  The origination of this concept comes from a theory I have that no one would ever cite the Stray Cats as their favorite band.  Sure, many people are at least passingly familiar with them, and many people like what they’ve heard just fine, but if asked to name their favorite music, the Stray Cats wouldn’t come to mind.  So similar artists will match similar criteria.

It will further help to define counterexamples:

  • The Rolling Stones are not in the SCZ because plenty of people would identify them as a favorite band right off the top of their head.
  • Dexy’s Midnight Runners are not in the SCZ because a one-hit wonder doesn’t really have the staying power to be widely familiar.  You wouldn’t expect anyone to cite a one-hit wonder as an all-time favorite.
  • Someone pretty obscure (i.e., not even a one-hit wonder) that would not be widely recognized does not qualify.

The Stray Cats happen to occupy this particular niche, to my mind.  They are plenty popular, of course.  They have lots of hits and a few platinum albums.  They were the posterkids for a short-lived rockabilly revival fad.  But for some reason, I have trouble picturing someone who latched onto them and decided that was their favorite band.  Maybe for a short time, but wouldn’t such a person move on to something else pretty soon?  If rockabilly was really your thing, wouldn’t you go back to the actual stuff and get into Elvis or Johnny Cash?  And wouldn’t you eventually like them better?  It seems to me that: yes, you would.  I could be wrong, but a cursory internet search for Stray Cats fan sites didn’t turn up much – a couple of abandoned (and hilariously haphazard) MySpace pages and a few more general rockabilly sites.

So I guess what this comes down to is a short list of artists that manage to maintain a steady but unspectacular popularity.  And it’s been hard to identify others.  I think they have to be things that ultimately didn’t seem too unique in retrospect.  They’re like a great compromise: a little something for everyone but no one is ultimately entirely pleased.  I have been discussing this with K endlessly, because that’s the kind of thing we do.  We can think of only a few others so far:

  • Huey Lewis and the News – I like Huey Lewis.  You like Huey Lewis.  Lots of people liked Sports.  When “Heart of Rock & Roll” comes on, people are happy.  But what happened?  Why don’t people wear ironic t-shirts with the Sports album cover on it?  I think there just isn’t much for people to latch onto that they can’t find in a lot of other places.
  • The Gin Blossoms – a quintessential pleasing but frankly unremarkable 90s band.  I like them.  K really likes a few of their songs.  But aren’t there like a million others like them?  Does anyone wish they’d have put out more records?  Once you’ve got all of them, you don’t go: “What now?  There’s nothing else like this.”  You go: “Well, got all of those.  Hey, here are some more Paul Westerberg albums I don’t have.”
  • Soundgarden – I used to be a grunge nut.  Every time I heard a Soundgarden song I reminded myself to go pick up Superunknown.  Well, I never actually did.  I think maybe Soundgarden fits that compromising criteria particularly well.  You might like their sound but Chris Cornell’s voice bugs you after a while.  You might dig that voice, but then you’d probably just end up liking Nirvana or Metallica more.

(Here is where a dozen Stray Cats lovers write to comment about how wrong I am…)