January 2008 Archives

I installed Movable Type 4.1 just the other day on my server (yea open source!), just to get the ball rolling on updating my site. I was just going to poke around a bit, export my data, run it in a test directory for a bit. But then I realized that continuing to use MT 2.x was completely silly - it's like driving a Ford Pinto held together by duct tape while you've got a brand new Mini sitting in the driveway.

So I've decided instead to relaunch my site - temporarily. Actually it's a huge relief, at least I can start posting again and not have spammers junking up my site. So for now I'm using a (boring but utilitarian) default design - soon to be remedied - and that will act as another kick in the pants to redo the site like i've been saying for the past two years. And apologies for any files that have gone missing. I'm pretty sure no one's going to miss them much anyway.

Watch this space for more good things to come...with a redesign on the way and more content!

Another embarrassing admission - I totally love Phantom of the Opera. Well, loved is more like it. Yes, the Andrew Lloyd Webber musical that is STILL on Broadway. For twenty years. And when I say love, I don't mean in an active way, I mean in a more, well, nostalgic way. But now love has turned to past tense. A better adjective would be annoyed.

For some reason - probably nostalgia - I put the Phantom of the Opera movie in our Netflix queue and promoted it all the way to the top. I came in the mail last week, and I immediately popped it into the DVD player. I was so excited! I hadn't heard those songs for ages. I know ALL the words. When I mean all the words, I mean that I listened to the soundtrack from the musical for days on end when I was a kid. I'm amazed that my parents hadn't thrown my stereo out the window by then. As soon as it started, Wayne said "no singing along!" That was pretty hard to do. So I just lip synched. He doesn't understand my obsession with certain musicals. Sometimes I don't either.

But I digress. In watching the movie, something changed. The words and music were so familiar - yet - there was something lacking. I knew exactly what was going to happen, but every step felt so disappointing. It was like the curtain had been pulled back. I actually thought about the lyrics and what they meant. Goddamnit the metaphors were so...obvious!!! (The Phantom = dark = evil, Raoul = light = good. meh.) The plot was non-existent! The girl who played Christine didn't have much a voice to enchant anyone! All the songs were ridiculously bombastic! And Wayne didn't help in pointing out that the Phantom would have basically been a pedophile if he had fallen in love with Christine "years ago". Ew.

The realization set in that the only reason that I thought that I liked it was that I had listened to it when I was a child. As an adult, it just made me kind of squirm. All my illusions about how great this musical was were totally shattered. Unfortunately the songs have been stuck in my head for the past week and a half and I still haven't been able to banish them to some deep dark dungeon no matter what else I listen to.

At least I still have the Sound of Music.

I'm sorry, I'm sorry! I'm apologizing to my blog for such serious neglect. It's been so long since I've made a post that comment spam/cruft has totally built up. And you'd think that I would have fixed my blog up by now, considering that my day job involves building blogs (with MT!) for lots of other people. Sigh. And how embarassing is it that I'm using MT 2.64!! geez!

Well, fear not. I'm going to upgrade this whole thing. For now I'm working on a (not so) super secret project to get my paintings up, and I'll be running it with MT4. Until then, this blog will continue to hobble along.