My name is Rich. That’s all you need to know as far as really personal info about me. Come to think of it, though, you don’t really even need to know that and you can’t really be sure that I’m telling the truth anyway. (Deal with it.)
Below are some likes, dislikes, and general commentary on music, books, television, and movies. I present some lists, none of which should be considered to be complete as I’m sure I’m forgetting certain works or artists simply by virtue of just doing this off the top of my head...
MUSIC
I’m a big Steely Dan fan. Steely Dan is actually the nom de guerre of Donald Fagen and Walter Becker. Their heyday was that wacky decade known as the 70s with a very slight thrust into the 80s with Gaucho (1980). They then took, oh, a couple decades off before 2000’s Two Against Nature which garnered a few significant Grammy Awards® including Album of the Year (much to the consternation of Eminem fans everywhere). 2003 saw the release of Everything Must Go, which garnered much less critical acclaim and popular attention even though to my ears it was just as good an album as TAN.
Of course, Fagen and Becker didn’t really take two decades off between albums. They both dabbled in projects in various capacities including a few solo efforts—The Nightfly (Fagen, 1982), Kamakiriad (Fagen, 1993), and 11 Tracks of Whack (Becker, 1994). This year Fagen completed his musical trilogy with the release of Morph the Cat and even supported it with his first ever solo tour in March. Becker is currently slaving away over a new as yet untitled solo release.
Come this summer Steely Dan will again be touring, but with a twist—ex-backing vocalist (and ex-Doobie Brothers lead vocalist) Michael McDonald will be joining SD on the road (except for a handful of SD-only gigs). Rumor has it that McDonald will perform a set, then Steely Dan, and there will probably be some collaborative performances sprinkled in there somewhere too.
By the way, my online handle of "Dimension Skipper" comes from Everything Must Go's "Slang of Ages," the one and only Steely Dan song ever (so far anyway) which featured Walter Becker on lead vocals. In the song he sings at one point, "Damn, she skipped dimensions..." I just think the name Dimension Skipper has an interesting double connotation to it as either one who skips across theorized science fictional dimensions or one who is in fact a Skipper of dimensions in the sense that "Skipper" can mean be a title meaning "Captain."
But I'm not just into Steely Dan... I like other artists as well:
- The Moody Blues
- Harry Chapin
- Dire Straits
- Sade
- Simply Red (first four albums, then they're hit-or-miss for me)
In 1999, Boy George and Culture Club made a reunion/comeback album—Don’t Mind If I Do—which was surprisingly good. It seemed to me like it was an evolved or slightly more polished Culture Club sound, but still followed right in line with what one might have expected had CC stayed together through the intervening years.
As you can see, my tastes in pop/rock music appear to be somewhat dated. That’s because most of the mainstream music of today seems to be either generic teen-oriented pop without much substance or artists/bands more interested in portraying a certain image and style—a "look"—than creating music with actual melodies or decipherable lyrics.
When it comes to today’s music my tastes run more to country. Yeah, that's right—I said country music. You got a problem with that? A lot of people seem to for some reason, but whatever... I just relate much better to country artists and songs these days. Not that there isn’t also a lot of crap in country music too, but my success ratio for finding stuff I like is much better. I tend towards those artists with a more traditional sound rather than the pop/country crossover types.
Country artists of particular interest include:
- Mark Chesnutt
- Alan Jackson
- Prairie Oyster
- Travis Tritt
- Lee Ann Womack
- Trisha Yearwood
- Dwight Yoakam
- BR5-49
- Foster & Lloyd (only three albums before they split and...)
- Radney Foster (...went on to release notable solo work)
- Merle Haggard
- Johnny Horton
- George Jones
- Toby Keith (first five albums, but some good tunes later also)
- Lyle Lovett
- George Strait
- Aaron Tippin (first five albums)
- Randy Travis
A final word on music before moving on... Some folks tend to like artists who write all their own material, but I'm not one of them. All I care about is the actual music, the recorded (or performed) end product. If it SOUNDS good, then I like it. It's that simple.
BOOKS
Despite my interest in country music, my reading tastes lie almost exclusively in the genre of science fiction (note: NOT fantasy which to me is a whole other genre even though there can often be significant mixing of the two and so book stores categorize them together). I grew up on the Golden Age "big three" of Isaac Asimov, Arthur C. Clarke, and Robert A. Heinlein. From there I went on to Larry Niven, Frederik Pohl, Clifford Simak, Theodore Sturgeon, A.E. Van Vogt, and then to next era writers such as Gregory Benford, Greg Bear, Spider Robinson, Robert J. Sawyer, and Charles Sheffield.
TELEVISION
I’ve often remarked that I may be the only person who would ever have interest in a science fiction show or movie with a country soundtrack. Well, it wasn’t quite that exactly, but Joss Whedon’s short-lived Firefly series was a very enjoyable merging of the science fiction and western genres. I still think that if Fox had promoted it better and maybe even, oh, I don’t know, say, showed the episodes in actual intended order—they didn’t show the pilot until after 8 or 9 other episodes had aired—perhaps it would still be around. Or maybe not. As I say, I may be the only person who’d find such a concept of interest.
Two other fairly recent SF shows I wish had made it are Dark Angel and Jake 2.0. Dark Angel actually lasted two full seasons before Fox pulled the plug just as I thought the show was beginning to smooth out the rough edges and hit its stride (and besides it starred Jessica Alba!). Jake was a show that frankly I was sick of before it even started because UPN promo'd the hell out of it before it ever aired and I just had a negative reaction to the hype. Then for some reason I decided maybe I ought to at least try the show before writing it off and to my surprise I actually liked it. So that alone ensured its cancellation right there. Sigh.
As with books, my TV interests tend more towards science fiction, though not nearly to the same level of exclusivity. Joss Whedon’s "other" shows of note, Buffy, the Vampire Slayer and its spinoff Angel, are two of my all-time favorites.
Then there’s Star Trek in all its incarnations (original series, NextGen, DS9, Voyager, and Enterprise) although I can understand how the more casual viewer might have gotten tired of the seemingly endless ever so slight variations on basic plots and characters.
Classic Doctor Who is another biggie. My favorite lead was Tom Baker, followed closely (both in actual linear time and quality) by the Peter Davison years. William Hartnell, Patrick Troughton, and Jon Pertwee all brought significant charms to their earlier interpretations of the role too. The series began to run out of steam, though, with Colin Baker, whose interpretation of the role it took me a long time to learn to enjoy on some levels. The series then came grinding to a rapid halt with Sylvester McCoy when it devolved into pretty much constant "us vs. them" chase/battle scenes and all aliens were out to usurp power and/or wipe out civilization.
Thankfully the newly revived Doctor Who has re-invigorated the concept by providing effects and acting that are light years ahead of anything the classic series ever offered (though that was part of the charm of the original) with imaginative storylines as well. They’ve already switched Doctors after only one season and it remains to be seen whether David Tenant will adequately fill Christopher Eccleston’s shoes, but I remain optimistic.
Current TV fare of interest includes:
- Desperate Housewives (though IMO quality fell off dramatically from first season)
- 24 (though it stretches believability too far at times)
- 2½ Men (sometimes gets too heavily into sex jokes for me)
- House
- Veronica Mars (the best show nobody's watching)
- Boston Legal
- Lost
- Monarch of the Glen
I only recently started watching Monarch when I found out that one of my local PBS channels was beginning to run the season(s) which featured Tom Baker of classic Doctor Who fame (as I've already discussed). Baker was the hook to get me to try it, but I've found I really like it. While the show couldn't possibly be farther from the concept and style of Doctor Who, Baker brings his usual natural charisma and charm to the role of eccentric Uncle Donald, part of a small group of family and friends living on and around a very rural Scottish estate. And now Anthony Stewart Head (Giles in Buffy) has begun to play a recurring role as a neighbor! (Your local PBS channel may very well be airing different seasons of Monarch.)
A few all-time favorite dramas include:
- Hill Street Blues (do we ever need another cop show?)
- St. Elsewhere (to medical shows as HSB was to cop shows)
- Remington Steele
- The Honeymooners
- The Dick Van Dyke Show
- Mary Tyler Moore
- The Bob Newhart Show
- M*A*S*H
- Barney Miller
- The Odd Couple
- All in the Family (before Gloria and Meathead moved out)
- Taxi (except the last season when ABC picked it up)
- The Nanny
- Cheers (the Diane years)
- Frasier
- Friends
- Fawlty Towers
Other popular shows I never "got"... Saturday Night Live (even in the early Belushi years), Sex and the City, and The Sopranos.
Game shows are OK, but usually not for me. I would like Jeopardy! if it wasn’t for the gimmick of framing responses as questions. I mean, it’s just a trivia game, that’s all. Simply have the contestants identify what the clue is about. The new Deal or No Deal does absolutely nothing for me since I’m not entertained by contestants randomly picking briefcases. And Who Wants to be a Millionaire? should have just eliminated the ridiculously easy questions and started beyond the $1000 or $8000 range.
I generally dislike reality shows because they’re almost always reflective of anything but reality. I certainly don’t understand the popularity of American Idol. It’s OK, I guess, and better than shows like Fear Factor or Survivor, but even the performers that make it deep into the competition usually don’t seem all that special to me. And they’re all too overly prone (and encouraged) to bombast. The early rounds when they show the really bad performers is somewhat attention-getting in a "traffic accident" kind of way, but I find it hard to believe that many of those performers really and truly believe they have talent. I’m sure they just want to get on TV for their 15 minutes. But if I wanted to see that, then I think they should just revive The Gong Show which had much more fun with the concept.
MOVIES
I’m not as into movies as I am TV shows. I go to the movies with friends and I watch an occasional movie on TV, but I don’t live my life by movie quotes or anything. There are many classic and/or wildly popular movies I’ve never seen such as… Titanic!, The Godfather I, II, & III, Animal House, The Blues Brothers, and The Wizard of Oz. I actually have seen Citizen Kane, but I didn’t like it and certainly don’t understand why it’s considered by so many to be possibly the greatest movie ever made. Oh, and Gone with the Wind was way too long.
As with the Elvis vs. Sinatra music scenario I’ve often observed that SF fans usually exhibit a distinct preference for either Star Trek or Star Wars. Me, I prefer Trek. The original three Star Wars movies were very good. However, the first two movies of the latest trilogy were so bad (wooden acting, stilted dialogue) that I never even bothered to check out the last installment (which I gathered from reviews was actually better, but too little too late for me).
Some favorite movies are… The Matrix trilogy, The Terminator trilogy, Speed, Star Trek II, III, IV, & VI, Chicken Run, Toy Story I & II, A Bug’s Life, The Incredibles, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Spider-man I & II, and Crazy/Beautiful.
IN CLOSING (FINALLY!)
That’s probably waaaaaaaaaay too much info about me (and yet without actually giving out any real info at all). If you’re still awake by this point, I just want to finish by noting that I have no plans to restrict this blog in any way as to topics. Future posts may be serious or whimsical, but I promise they'll be shorter. I’m just gonna go with the flow and write about anything which happens to strike me as worth noting on any given day. This is all experimental on my part, but if anybody out there is along for the ride (you might want to seek therapy, but) I hope you find something of interest or enjoyment in my random prattlings. Till next time...
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