This week I rediscovered my love of The League of Gentlemen. I suggest that you should do so as well (or discover them, I guess, if you've never seen them before).

The best way I can describe the show to people who haven't seen it is this: If you ever watched Kids in the Hall you might remember that periodically they would do these... well almost short films really that were kind of bizarre and yet funny. Usually they were written by Bruce McCullough. I remember one in particular about a guy who worked in a sausage factory as being particularly good. Well, League of Gentlemen is kind of like that, except longer. And if you've never seen Kids in the Hall... first of all, why the fuck haven't you seen the fucking Kids in the Hall?!... and second of all I suppose a better description of League of Gentlemen would be that it is like a sketch comedy show and Twin Peaks had sex and had weird, deformed babies (see user icon) and those babies would be the episodes of League of Gentlemen.

The new single from The Killers (title is All These Things That I've Done... but I know it as I Got Soul, But I'm Not A Soldier) is fucking fantastic. Why don't I own this album yet?

This Saturday I won $18 betting on the greyhounds at the dog races. Sweet. I also made money off of the Preakness the weekend before last.

Note to self: look into professional race betting as career

My dad and I took a little road trip to the middle of fucking nowhere in south east Kansas on Sunday for a little nostalgic trip to the farm his uncle used to own when my dad was a little kid in the 1950s. He says that some of his best memories are from this place.

If you ever have an opportunity to go to Elgin, Kansas, don't. It's a toilet hole of a town.

The best parts of the trip were the barely on the map back roads we took to get to the farm. At one point my dad turned to me and said,"Do you hear banjo music?" and I'm pretty sure that I did.

Other highlights: a sign in a field with the silhouette of a cowboy kneeling in prayer with the text 'Evenin' Lord'... if ever I were to start praying on a regular basis, this is how I would start all prayers, goat farms, this beautiful stone arch that was built into the side of a wooded hill for no apparent reason... there was a creek running through and maybe at some point it had been a bridge, but it didn't really look like anything had ever been there except for a hill and a creek... I still can't figure it out but it looked really old and pretty.

What I learned is this: I love car rides... like a dog. I just like to be driven places and I like being in charge of the map. Sometimes when I'm at home by myself I like to read maps... I have a lot of them: the World atlas, the North American atlas, the New York City Atlas, the European driving atlas, maps of Cape Cod and New England, Italy and Spain, maps I have saved from old issues of National Geographic of things like the Roman Empire in Turkey and the Mayan empire, etc. I love maps.

But I also like to read the dictionary... so clearly there is something wrong with me.

And then yesterday I went to the book store and as I was casually browsing I came across a book I had loved as a child called The Little White Horse by Elizabeth Goudge. I must have checked this book out of the Valley Center Public Library 15 times as a child, but I had completely forgotten about it. And I'll be goddamned if there wasn't a recommendation on the cover of the book from J.K. Rowling herself. So now I'm re-reading it.

And it's put me in a mood to rediscover books that I read in elementary school. So I'm browsing the past nominees and winners at the Newberry award and William Allen White award sites and.... ahhh the nostalgia: Hatchet; Number the Stars; Sarah, Plain and Tall; The Pinballs; The Riddle of Penncroft Farm, On My Honor, Maniac Magee... God, I could go on and on.

Reading... look into it ; )

I'll do my Monday Night Movie Club review tomorrow... because I am fucking exhausted.




And Chuck Palahniuk's new book 'Haunted' is fucking brilliant.