Brandon's Buzz

A pitched a hissy fit over the Michael J. Fox quotation, so let’s see how this one grabs him.

From one of American cinema’s great classics, Romy and Michele’s High School Reunion:

Romy: “All right, according to this chart, if we wanna lose a pound a day, we have to burn twice as many calories as we eat. So that means if we wanna burn 4000 calories, we only have to run twenty miles a day!”

Michele: “Oh! Hey Romy, remember Mrs. Shivitz’s class? There was, like, always a word problem. Like, there’s a guy in a rowboat going X miles, and the current is going, like, you know… some other miles, and… how long does it take him to get to town? It was like, ‘Who cares? Who wants to go to town with somebody who drives a rowboat?!'”

To quote Joanne Woodward, my heart. Is full.

Upon reading the Buzz’s inaugural post, A’s first question: “Yeah… but when are you gonna tell us about you?”

So, me.

NAME: Brandon (Like you couldn’t guess that from this blog’s title!)

AGE: 31

DATE OF BIRTH: July 21, 1976

PLACE OF BIRTH: Ochiltree Memorial Hospital, Perryton, Texas

FAVORITE RECORD STORE: The Record Rack, Amarillo, Texas

SECOND-FAVORITE RECORD STORE: Waterloo Records, Austin, Texas

THIRD-FAVORITE RECORD STORE:
Amoeba Records, Hollywood, Calla-forny

FOURTH-FAVORITE RECORD STORE: Cheapo’s, Austin, Texas

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It may strike all you cynics in this crowd as a wee bit Pollyanna-ish for its own damn good, but I recently read an Entertainment Weekly interview with Kimberly Peirce (the director of Boys Don’t Cry and the new Stop-Loss), and weeks after the fact, its climax continues to resonate with me. In a summation on the frivolity and fickleness of fame, Peirce offers this:

“You’ve got to let go of the fear of failure. You’re going to fail and you’re going to succeed, and you’re going to fail and succeed again. Someone doesn’t take the score and then you’re done… You’re done when you’re dead. Until then, the game is still on.”

All we need, sometimes, is something simple to cling to.

So, Carly.

I never really cottoned to you or your pretentious tattoos. (As one of the three hundred (!) people you bought your debut album seven years ago, I have yet to forgive you for your wobbly, pitchless cover of Danielle Brisebois’ shamefully underappreciated classic “Just Missed the Train.”) And I found your thoroughly atrocious desecration of “Total Eclipse of the Heart” a few weeks back to be unconscionable. And I mistrust entirely anybody whose singing accent is diametrically opposed to their speaking accent.

Still, strangely, seeing you go this evening broke my heart into eighteen pieces, especially since your too-early exit means that foppish Jason survives another week. If that dreadlocked fool subjects us to a sleepy take on “Red, Red Wine” or “Love on the Rocks” during Neil Diamond night next Tuesday, I’m personally holding you and your Judas complex responsible.

Bye bye bye, Carly. You’re already missed.

(I swear I have other topics beyond my all-time favorite Brit. Nevertheless…)

“I’ve done too many stupid things for there not to be movies made about me when I’m dead. So I might as well write the script.”

— George Michael, speaking to Entertainment Weekly about his forthcoming memoirs

No doubt it’s already all over YouTube and any number of other online video portals, but, to commemorate the long-awaited domestic release of the divine George Michael’s new comprehensive greatest hits set TwentyFive — about which a blog post is imminent — VH1 Classic is airing in a regular rotation Michael’s landmark 1996 appearance on “MTV Unplugged.” If, like myself, you were horrified and outraged by (the usually dependable) Carrie Underwood’s heinously overblown performance of Michael’s 1990 tour de force “Praying for Time” on that “Idol Gives Back” special a few weeks back, you must check out the masterfully intimate way George reinvents his own smash live: using a deceptively plain piano accompaniment, a string section worthy of the Met, and a viper’s parched precision, Michael takes what began as a bitter slam against greed and gluttony and transforms it into a wrenching, impossibly riveting elegy for ceded innocence. It is haunting, spectacular theater, and nothing short of same.

the original video, from 1990:

the Unplugged performance, from 1996:

from one Michael J. Fox:

“If 2 + 2 = 4 every time… what good is it?”

Preach it, brother.

I recently (and completely unintentionally) offended — and to the very depths of his captivating, baying soul, no less — the love of my life.

He’ll no doubt post a comment under this — the inaugural post of my spankin’ new blog — and emphatically deny all of what I’m preppin’ to tell you, but you have to trust me here: he didn’t speak to me for a solid week over this incident.

Back up.

His name is A. (That’s a lie, of course, but in the choppy wake of said incident, I have been forbidden from using his real name, even though I’ve repeatedly (and futilely) insisted that the only people who are going to be reading this and taking it anywhere close to seriously already know and love him profusely, faults and all.) He is a fixed income analyst out in Calla-forny. Lives right in the heart of downtown La-La Land. Rollerblades from the boardwalk in Santa Monica to the southern edge of Venice Beach, and back, for fun. Goes to CPK and orders salad. Possesses the most gorgeous, most eminently kissable dimples on either side of his criminally sculpted abdomen. Is gorgeous and eminently kissable (Lord Jesus, can that boy buss!) in ways irrespective to his trunk and its musculature.

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