DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN" "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"> DC Viking

Tuesday, July 24, 2007

I hate it when I'm right

posted by DC Viking at 3:00 PM 0 people of discerning taste are saying

Tuesday, March 06, 2007

Top 5 things I daydream about while I’m riding the Metro

5. Playing center field for the Minnesota Twins.

4. Surviving a Zombie apocalypse and being forced to flee into the ruins of the Metro system before finally enacting my plan of vengeance against the undead hoards that stole my life.

3. Going back to bed.

2. Sharing a car with Dick Cheney and stealing his metro-pass, forcing him to beg for release from the station.

1. Neko Case.

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posted by DC Viking at 12:33 PM 4 people of discerning taste are saying

Sunday, December 17, 2006

Random thoughts with some guy that isn't Jack Handy


- The Decemberists new album is pretty great. It's got a lot of the "pop for lit majors" that I liked about the last one, with something new thrown in. It took me a while to figure it out, but I think they might be channeling Pink Floyd on a couple of songs.

- Blood Diamond was a decent flick and I've always thought that Leo was a pretty good actor. Between The Departed and Blood Diamond, it's been proven once again that I'm usually right. Unless I'm not. The last ten minutes of the movie could have been left on the cutting room floor as far as I'm concerned. Hollywood sucks most of the time.

- Roamed the National Museum of Natural history this weekend. Dinosaurs are cool no matter how old you are. So are sharks in IMAX 3-D.

- Is it just me or are kickers in the NFL missing a lot more field goals this year?

- I have to admit that the National Christmas tree was impressive, even to a heathen like me. They could have toned it done just a bit, though. I'm not positive there was a tree under all those lights. And why wasn't Goldy Gopher anywhere to be found on the Minnesota tree?

- My first live hockey game in over 15 years involved a lot more Jack Daniels than the last. I don't know nearly as much about the NHL as I used to, and I still miss Neal Broten.

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posted by DC Viking at 9:19 PM 2 people of discerning taste are saying

Thursday, October 26, 2006

Tore down Babylon and put in a parking lot

I was in Las Vegas for a bachelor party recently and upon returning from this long weekend three truths regarding the existence of a place like Las Vegas occurred to me;


1. Las Vegas might be the city most representative of America in the U.S.

2. The “Disney-fication” of Las Vegas is changing the city into an image of how Americans expect Las Vegas to be.

3. Statements 1 and 2 are in no way opposed. In fact, they are related.


Truth #1: Las Vegas is representative of America

Tourists in Las Vegas are the physical manifestation of how Americans would act everyday if social morays and basic concern for physical well being were tossed out the window. This is not a particularly original idea, but that doesn’t make it any less true. If it were socially acceptable, most people would engage daily in the kind of hedonism that makes Las Vegas so popular. Think about it. Who doesn’t want to eat too much, drink too much, and chase a shot at the big score while being surrounded by members of the opposite sex possessing those attributes most prized in members of the opposite sex? That’s the core of the American Dream right there. Hunter Thompson knew what he was doing when he took his Easy Rider trip to Vegas.

Here’s a little anecdote that illustrates Vegas = America. One sunny afternoon in Las Vegas I found myself strolling down the strip with a friend of mine. We were more than a little drunk and since it was noon we were looking for a place to have a late breakfast. We wandered along, commenting on the strangeness of Las Vegas in full daylight and considering the hundreds of options we had for a truly exceptional brunch experience. Literally overwhelmed by the possibilities, we walked around until we became lost. Intoxicated, hungry, and disoriented, we found ourselves in front of one of the gigantic new malls that have helped to add shopping to the list of possible excesses that can be indulged in Vegas. Knowing that there was sure to be a food court inside, we went in and had cheeseburgers at Wendy’s. Bombarded by choice and excess we chose the least cosmopolitan and most familiar. If that’s not America, I’m not sure what is.

Truth 2: Because of the Disney Effect, Vegas is morphing into how people expect Vegas to be

Standing with my friend, waiting for the Las Vegas Monorail, I watched people line up to drive cars on a closed track next to the Sahara hotel. People were paying twenty dollars to take three laps around a track that was laid out in a configuration that was similar to the driver’s ed courses I’d navigated in high school. I expected to see Formula One race cars or at the very least some high end exotics, maybe a Ferrari or a Lamborghini. Instead the car that came off the line and swerved surprisingly carefully at the first turn was a new Cadillac. The next was a Pontiac roadster. I did see one or two Corvettes; but these were all cars that I could have rented by the day for little more than what people were paying to drive them slowly around a track. I saw no squealing tires, no near misses. With full coverage and the right stretch of Paradise Road, I’m fairly certain I could have pushed the performance envelope of the new STS harder than the people puttering them around the track.

So that’s what is being passed off as entertainment. Twenty dollars that could be spent on a couple of bourbons or a less-than-reputable dance, wasted on test driving your neighbor’s new car, brought to you by the same people that created the Tea Cups. Don’t get me wrong, you still have the requisite drunks and compulsive gamblers trying to experience a purist Las Vegas. But slowly and surely, Vegas is turning into a place that looks down on the guy with a beer in each hand wading through the fountains in front of the Paris Hotel.

Las Vegas has started to cater to this kind of thinking. We all think we want choice and excitement. What we really want is the familiar disguised as adventure. In Las Vegas there are dozens of really nice Holiday Inns that are disguised as the best hotel you’ve ever been in. Getting lost in the MGM Grand for two hours doesn’t mean that you are in an exciting and adventurous place; it just means that the most efficient way to keep people gambling is to make it impossible for them to leave. Most of the hotels are visually impressive based on their sheer size and the amount of neon used; they don’t really have much to offer in the way of architectural innovation. Vegas has always been about giving the people what they want, and what people want just happens to be the safe disguised as the greatest bachelor party ever.

Truth #3:

If Las Vegas = America
and
Vegas = Disney World; changing to meet expectations
then
America is slowly becoming Disney World

So not only is this kind of mentality destroying a city that used to stand for sin, drunkenness, and debauchery (all things I support 100%), its changing America into TGI Fridays. “Hey everyone, look at all the fun you should be having! Isn’t this re-creation of a small town main street in the middle of suburbia wonderful and authentic? I bet they have a suitably benign ethnic restaurant that we could frequent! Let’s go!”

But I still love Las Vegas. Where else can I wander drunkenly into a Wendy’s with a lit cigarette without being invited to leave?

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posted by DC Viking at 10:57 AM 5 people of discerning taste are saying

Tuesday, May 02, 2006

Zen, aquatics, and a fate worse than death

I love working out at the pool on Saturday. No work related stress to burn off. No need to feel rushed. It’s just me and the water, I jump in and everything disappears. External stimulus is reduced to the sound of my arms hitting the water and the occasional bubble going past my ear as I exhale. All I can see is the black line down the center of my lane. As I cross into the area of the pool under the skylight, the world is all blinding light and reflection. When I cross back into the shade it’s cool and calm. I perform a well executed flip turn and head back up the pool again, turn and come back, turn and return. After a while my brain starts to shut down non-essential functions. I stop counting the laps. I become a perfect swimming machine. There is no past. There is no goal. All my faculties are devoted to perfecting my movement through the water and unnecessary thought ends.

On the rare occasions that I reach this Nirvana-like state; when I’m not thinking about what I’m going to have for dinner or if I have work to finish, it can take me a moment to acclimate myself when I’m done swimming. So imagine my surprise and alarm as I finished my workout one Saturday morning to the sound ‘Achy Breaky Heart’. I stood panting at the end of the pool, confused, as the warble of Billy Ray Cyrus echoed weirdly around the swimming pool.

What’s happening? Where am I? Who am I? Have I crossed over? Oh God. I’m dead. And if 90s contemporary country is playing in the afterlife… I must be in Hell. Crap. I knew I shouldn’t have eaten my roommate’s last slice of pizza. That was the final straw and now I’m stuck listening to this for the rest of eternity. I’ll bet they’re going to play Brooks and Dunn next. I hate the ‘Boot Scootin’ Boogie’.

And then I glance very slowly to my right. There, in all their spandex glory, are 15 large aged women with buoyant foam tubes wrapped around their gargantuan waists. They are bobbing back and forth in the water, two lanes over from me. These monstrous women wave their arms back and forth to the beat of this satanic music. A slightly older, slightly slimmer, woman is pacing back and forth on the deck next to the pool, shouting directions at them. “Feel the burn! Work harder ladies!” OhdearGodinheavenIaminhell. It’s all I can do to stifle the screams bubbling up in my burning lungs. Oh no, the leader sees me. There are only two plastic lane dividers between me and the pack of “Whopper Demons”. Any minute now they are going to tear across the pool, beat me senseless with those foam tubes, and chew the tasty, exercised, flesh from my body while flames shoot from their eyes. NoooooOOOOOOOOOO!!!!

Someone splashing the wall in the lane behind me snaps me out of it. Slowly, reality creeps back in. It’s only a water aerobics class. The music has changed to Lionel Ritchie. They’re not going to devour my delicious flesh. I’m not dead. These women are just doing as I am, getting some exercise. But they do it to Billy Ray Cyrus.

They exercise to ‘Achy Breaky Heart.’

And that’s when I realize that there are places worse than hell.

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posted by DC Viking at 10:07 AM 2 people of discerning taste are saying

Thursday, April 27, 2006

Previously on Lost...


Is there any concept in the entertainment industry lazier than The Flashback Episode? Other than reality TV, I mean. TV producers get together and decide to wring another week of new episode ratings from material that viewers have already seen. Some people may have even seen the shows twice, if they watched the reruns during the breaks in scheduling designed to put all the new stuff on the air during sweeps. Granted, these are sad and lonely people that have neither access to the myriad of quality programming on digital cable nor the capacity to make friends and influence people.

But my point here is not to make fun of pathetic shut-ins being forced to choose between Alias re-runs and The Daytime Emmy’s, easy as that may be. I want to know how the networks get away with this. There’s no other area in life that tolerates such an egregious display of chutzpah and lack of originality. We wouldn’t stand for a novelist cutting and pasting the best parts of his previous books together and slapping a new title on it. Even the lowliest-of-the-low recording industry will deign to include one or two crappy new tracks when it inevitably puts out the oxymoron that is the Best of Coldplay album.

I know that big media corporations rely on the fact that the intelligence level of the American Public is on par with a bag of Cheetos, but this is one step too far. Do you know what would happen if I tried this at work? I’d get fired. You don’t want me to get fired, do you McFly? Do you!?!

In addition to pissing me off, the networks are treading a dangerous line with copyright infringement on this one. Pulling crap that would never be accepted in the real world is the exclusive territory of the U.S. Congress. The Senate won’t take this lying down, either. As soon as Trent Lott finishes crafting a bill calling for the construction of the world’s largest outdoor ice skating rink in downtown Jackson, he’s going to be coming after them. And if there’s one thing that big media doesn’t need, it’s a cantankerous southern senator who’s still pissed that Matlock was cancelled.

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posted by DC Viking at 1:42 PM 0 people of discerning taste are saying