Station Identification
I feel like I’ve got a bunch of new followers recently, so perhaps I should introduce myself.
I’m Graeme McMillan, a writer for Wired.com’s Entertainment section and the Hollywood Reporter’s Heat Vision blog, as well as other places on a not-so-regular basis. You might have seen my work at Time.com, io9.com, Comic Book Resources, Newsarama, Playboy magazine and Comics Alliance, amongst other places.
In addition to all that jazz, I also co-host a podcast every two weeks called Wait, What? that can be found here. For that site, I also write weekly reviews of comic books.
If you’re on Twitter and don’t follow me, I’m @graemem.
I like chocolate chip cookies, pizza from Dove Vivi and you. Well, maybe; I don’t know you well enough, just yet, but you seem nice enough.
Housecleaning
You’ve possibly noticed I’ve been a little quieter than usual on the Tumblrs and the Twitters. There’s a simple reason for this – I’ve had something that’s almost like vacation, except that there’s been a lot of work happening because I don’t do vacation well. Expect normal service to be resumed tomorrow, including a bunch of links I owe people. JULY! It’ll be better!
366 Songs 208: Circle Sky
There’s a lot to love about “Circle Sky.” Where to start…?
Let’s go with the bassline, Peter Tork happily bobbing up and down the scale and keeping the whole thing grounded – There are times when it’s the clearest thing in the mix by far, weirdly enough – while Mike Nesmith outjangles the best of them and Mickey Dolenz drums his little heart out in the background (Davy Jones, as you can see in the video, doesn’t contribute that much, all told). Or Nesmith’s epic, half-yodel vocals as he sings about some kind of 1960s psychopolis that is “a very extraordinary scene to those who don’t understand” and yet, somehow, seems quite appealing the way he puts it.
It’s a song from Head, which for my money is the best ’60s band movie – Yes, better than any of the Beatles’ efforts – and one of the most interesting counterculture movies ever made, but also something that’s home to some of my favorite Monkees music; “As We Go Along,” “Long Title (Do I Have To Do This All Over Again),” even the version of “Daddy’s Song” – They’re all really good songs, and examples of the weird music hall psych pop(corn) that the Monkees offered at their best. None of the above, however, is why I chose this song for #208 in this series. No, instead, I chose it because – after something like three months of running behind, this entry finally means that I have caught up with the number of days in the year to date, meaning that I am – for the first time since February, I think – back on track for a “One Song A Day” plan for this series. “It looks like we’ve made it once again,” as Nesmith sings. Let’s see if I can keep up this pace so that I can get to the next line, “It looks like we’ve made it to the end!”
#Humblebrag
This will never, ever happen again, I’m sure, but here’s the current list of top 10 stories on Techland:
The ones that aren’t blurred out? They’re mine. Somehow, I have four stories in the current top 10, and three of them are the top 3 currently. This is a somewhat boasting post, I know, but hopefully illustrates my point about what a weird week it’s been.
As I said in email to someone earlier this week, this week has been crazy; I’ve had weird (and amusing) passive aggressiveness with PR folk for work things, semi-quasi job offers that I really really wanted to accept but financial and time realities prevented me from doing so, amid personal stuff and a cleanse that has kicked my ass in ways that I would never have imagined having previously done other cleanses that have seemed so much more hardcore (Seriously, on Monday I could’ve killed someone for looking at me the wrong way, I was so pissed off and unhappy). Considering how last week went, it’s possible that January is fascinatingly shaping up to be the month that tries to kill me before I make it through to what is hopefully going to be a much better Rest Of 2012. If what’s happened in the last couple weeks is an omen for how the rest of the year is going to turn out, I might just consider hibernating and starting over in 2013.
Get Ready
I found this photo in my Flickr account from years ago; it’s a very blurry OMAC Lego figure (custom, of course; a gift from Jeff Lester of Wait, What fame unless I’m entirely misremembering) against the trees out my office window, and titled “Get Ready For The World That’s Coming.” I couldn’t resist putting it here, obviously.
No-One’s Listening
There’s something to be said for blogging in anonymity, like this; I’m so aware of “the audience” (or the potential audience, or the need for an audience) in my work that it makes me far too self-aware at times, too self-censoring or second guessing whatever I’d initially wanted to say – even if all I really wanted to say was oh please I have to do x number of posts still and there’s nothing to write about oh god – and, ultimately, that’s a weirdly depressing thing. Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that there’s an artistic muse to my blogging that must be followed or else, woe, disaster; I’m too much a believer in Bill Drummond’s idea of pop and the requirement of an audience for that, if nothing else, and too much a cynic and pessimist when it comes to whatever artistic value I can offer the world with my writing. But there comes a point, eventually, when you start to write what people expect or what you think they want with so little of yourself or your interests in there that it feels not just like “work,” but like the worst, shittiest work imaginable, and that’s never fun.
Here, however… I genuinely don’t know if anyone is reading this, because I haven’t really told anyone about this site yet; I made a passing reference to it on the old iamgraememcmillan site, but that’s it. I haven’t tweeted about it, or linked it on Facebook or wherever. I should, I know that, because I’m selfish and want an audience to hang on my every word and all that, but for now, I’m writing this honestly thinking that no-one is going to read it. And while part of me thinks that that’s very self-indulgent, I think that’s good, in a way; I think we all need to remember to be a little self-indulgent sometimes, if we can keep it in perspective. And, after all, isn’t that what a blog is supposed to be, just a little?