November 18, 2009
by Geoff Shannon
Comments Off on Muses: An Ode to Grace
The Muses of Greek mythology had to be women. I understand that now, after seeing rock goddess Grace Potter weave gold spindles of inspiration from her stage perch on an unseasonably warm November evening.
Because of her, I’m ready to write a sonnet, or at least a few paragraphs. Calliope, Clio, Erato, Euterpe, Melpomene, Polyhymnia, Terpsichore, Thalia, Urania. And Grace.
November 17, 2009
by Geoff Shannon
3 Comments
Dare to challenge Mr. Boh, the one-eyed beacon of the Land of Pleasant Living? Feature No. 307 in the Natty Boh Bottle Caps Game. First to post will have their name immortalized on this post and in InPraiseOf’s soon to be published Mr. Boh Cap Game Hall of Fame, plus word spread throughout the Facebook/Twitter sphere. Have a cap that you would like to mail for me for inclusion in the game? Shoot an email to inpraiseof@hotmail.com.
Natty Boh Bottle Cap No. 307
November 13, 2009
by Geoff Shannon
2 Comments
The Land of Pleasant Living beckons you. Round 2 of the Natty Boh Bottle Caps Game features No. 85 . First to post will have their name immortalized on this post and in InPraiseOf’s soon to be published Mr. Boh Cap Game Hall of Fame, plus word spread throughout the Facebook/Twitter sphere. Have a cap that you would like to mail for me for inclusion in the game? Shoot an email to inpraiseof@hotmail.com.
Natty Boh Bottle Cap No. 85
November 12, 2009
by Geoff Shannon
1 Comment
Thought it would be fun to try and document every game that is published on the bottom of National Bohemian’s bottled beer caps, the choice of malted beverage in the Land of Pleasant Living. We start the game with No. 109. Can you guess what this says? The first to post in the comments section below will have their name immortalized on this post and in InPraiseOf’s soon to be published Mr. Boh Cap Game Hall of Fame, plus word spread throughout the Facebook/Twitter sphere. Have a cap that you would like to mail for me for inclusion in the game? Shoot an email to inpraiseof@hotmail.com.
Natty Boh Cap No. 109
August 28, 2009
by Geoff Shannon
Comments Off on G. Hunter’s What’s On Netflix-True Stories, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, Night of the Iguana
Now that work has let up a bit, going to get the blog going again, both in long and short form posts. To catchup, here’s a few movies I’ve watched in the last few weeks via my Netflix.
1. True Stories (1986)
Strange but beautiful yarn written and directed by Talking Heads leadman David Byrne, focusing on a day in Virgil, Texas, a small town preparing for the state’s 150th anniversary with a “Celebration of Specialness.” John Goodman stars in the established lead role as a bachelor in search of a wife, but ‘True Stories’ doesn’t much rely on plot. Instead, it’s strengths are in its spacious cinematography and eerie tone, leaning n a haunting Big Sky Texas country as a canvass, populating it with absurd but sympathetic misfits. Not big for people who enjoy linear storytelling, but a wonderful artistic endeavor.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BqCp_cmQ-IE&hl=en&fs=1&]
2. Forgetting Sarah Marshall (2008)
Unlike Seth Rogen, I believe Jason Segel could pull down women like Kristen Bell and Mila Kunis. He’s a few months of personal training from Hollywood hunkdom, ramping up the plausibility. He also wasn’t afraid to 1) pose naked 2) write himself as a big sensitive wuss with enough mojo to still bag the hotties. The Apatow road show cast is all here (Paul Rudd, Jonah Hill, Will Heder) and the jokes are both sweet and manic. The non sequitur jokes I enjoyed the best, especially Segel’s heartbroken rendition of the theme to “The Muppet Show.” This Dracula rock opera song is another good example.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X5ZtwbzUFZE&hl=en&fs=1&]
3. Night of the Iguana (1964)
I’m biased here, since Tennessee Williams is my favorite classic American writer, and this is my favorite of his work. It’s also directed by another great, John Huston. More bonus points, the anti-hero, drunken ex-minister T. Lawrence Shannon, shares my last name. Said Rev. Shannon has fallen from the cloth, and is working as a tour guide, tromping church women around Mexico in a broken tour bus to various locals. On the verge of a mental breakdown, he abandons himself at friend Maxine Faulk’s rustic seaside resort, where he meets fellow traveler Hannah Jelkes and her aging father. The story’s heavy lifting takes place in this local, as Shannon struggles spends a night struggling to discover his sanity, and his soul. It’s vintage Williams, all heat and lust and unfulfilled desire channeled into unhealthy direction. But ‘Night of the Iguana’ also offers a semblance of understanding of all this, portrayed in a confrontation between the Rev. Shannon and Hannah. The movie does justice to the Williams lines (he was actually on set in Mexico to help with the script), and it also captures the sexual subjexts Williams wrote about with just the least bit of censorship.
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uC4-3-xgqGc&hl=en&fs=1&]
July 8, 2009
by Geoff Shannon
Comments Off on InPraiseOf: Rewind – Joe Bob Briggs’ “MonsterVision”
Note: Busy busy at work right now, though hopefully I’ll get to an original essay soon. Anyways, here’s a piece from my backlog, about an old late night TV hero of mine:
[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zRACxPTaX3E&hl=en&fs=1&]
If you were a loner like me back in the late ’90s, you spent most of your Saturdays chillin’ at home, with maybe a book or the TV to occupy your time. Luckily, Turner Broadcasting, TBS and TNT respectively, would hit full bloom during those times. Continue Reading →
June 15, 2009
by Geoff Shannon
Comments Off on InPraiseOf: A Honfest Rewind
I attended both days of Honfest this year. This is a revelation for me, since for the past decade and a half I’ve protested this event as a classest exploitation of a dying culture. Now, indifference has set in. The neighborhood has gone through an evolution in that time, and the festival itself has emerged as a spring Mardi Gras for women, who can dress up all glamorous like and strutt in their hairbobbed confidence. Add a couple Natty Bohs and it ain’t so bad.
I’ve expressed my thoughts about all this before in an essay I published in ’06, titled “Revelations of Hampdenfest 2006”. This article is about Hampdenfest, the neigbhorhood’s fall festival, but it applies to Honfest as well:
Ever witness an ideal come together, a pure moment occur, and for one brief passing the world was perfect from your vantage point. And then, watch as that ideal faded into the vapor, into nothingness, and your heart almost broke? Had a moment like that this weekend at Hampdenfest.
This story actually originates at Hampdenfest 2005. I’d been in Baltimore for less than a week post-Katrina evacuation, making it to town just a few days before following the exodus from Texas through Tennessee to home. Ashley and I arrived in Baltimore tired from our drive and depressed from our ordeal. Continue Reading →
June 7, 2009
by Geoff Shannon
Comments Off on What I Read: Of Federer and Yiddish Jokes
Two good links from me today. For those of you who are about to watch (or have watched) Roger’s Federer’s attempt at his first French Open, please read the late David Foster Wallace’s essay “Roger Federer as Religious Experience,” originally published in the late, great Play Magazine of the New York Times. One of the best sports essays of the ’00s that set up the Federer-Nadal 2008 Wimbledon showdown.
Also, was pointed this brilliant site, OldJewsTellingJokes.com. The skits are funny in a “Take my wife, please” way, and it’s actually a solid archive of a unique cultural history. Enjoy.
June 5, 2009
by Geoff Shannon
Comments Off on Thoughts on Drinking
I usually don’t drink on Mondays. No matter your tolerance, it’s a rough way to start the week and Tuesday morning hangovers stopped being cute sophomore semester.
But my friend J.R. was celebrating his birthday, and I hadn’t stepped into a bar with him since 2002, so I made an exception on this particular evening.
J.R. and I connect back to our high school days, when our parties usually consisted of the gang sharing a handle of Bacardi and a half case of Boon’s Farm at the house of vacationing parents. J.R. lived go hard or go home, so by the time the party would just start to simmer, he’d already be passed out in the nearest free bedroom, usually with a female friend nursing him through his latest journey to oblivion. Continue Reading →
May 11, 2009
by Geoff Shannon
Comments Off on Poem: Plumbing
Worst ever, what I blurted
her plumbing didn’t work.
I bit my cheek, broke skin.
Your plumbing doesn’t work.
I am unskilled day labor
and the caulk I lay doesn’t hold.
Heart palpitations glisten through saline
But your plumbing shouldn’t work?
Bolts hold down the toilet,
Tears and blood stains porcelain.
Buried, blurred, my resolution,
bourbon and my salted armpits.
You bleed inward, gush it.
My waterworks twisted.
The piping unfit, and my hands
smooth, adverse to hard labor.