Don't Follow Me, I'm Lost Too

[vovat]

I haven't written here in a while, but I have a few things I wanted to mention that I didn't think would fit into my WordPress format. I doubt anyone else cares, but I still try to keep those posts topic-specific, while this entry will likely be all over the place. My last temporary job ended a month ago, but it looks like I'm going to be starting another one in the middle of August. I've also been volunteering, but I'm not sure I'll be able to keep that up while doing the other job. The volunteer work has involved organizing Rube Goldberg cartoons, so far his comic strip Boob McNutt, which ran from 1915 (although it wasn't syndicated until 1918) through 1934. The title character is a well-meaning idiot who routinely fails at various tasks. Goldberg is best known for his elaborate machines that perform simple tasks in overly complicated ways, and the early Boob strips always began and ended with the character in bizarre death traps.

Perhaps feeling bad for his creation, who did generally TRY to do the right thing, Goldberg later gave him a love interest, and one who actually loved him and was pretty in a Gibson Girl kind of way.

Also featured in the strip were Bernice the Siberian Cheesehound and the identical twins Mike and Ike from an earlier Goldberg project. For two years in the early 1930s, Boob joined two professors in collecting and transporting exotic animals, many of them in the style Dr. Seuss would later popularize.


Thanks to Tavie's promotion, Beth and I saw Kevin McDonald twice in the past few days. On Thursday, he did a show that was recorded for a podcast, featuring interviews with Wallace Shawn and Brad Roberts.

Shawn talked quite a bit about My Dinner with Andre (which I haven't seen), and mentioned that he didn't really get the humor in The Princess Bride.

He also played Sherlock Holmes in a sketch about Kevin really awkwardly trying to cover up the fact that he'd murdered his wife. Roberts, the lead singer for Crash Test Dummies, performed "Superman's Song" (which he said was the first real song he wrote) and "Mmm Mmm Mmm Mmm."

My dad actually had CTD albums when I was growing up. In the interview, they brought up Andy Partridge, whom Roberts said was the most nervous person he'd ever met. I know the Dummies covered at least two XTC songs, "The Ballad of Peter Pumpkinhead" and "All You Pretty Girls." Last night, we saw a sketch show that Kevin wasn't in, but he had taught the class that performed them, and did the introduction. He actually told the same story at both shows, about an ill-fated show that he and Scott Thompson did for a fraternity benefit at the University of Toronto back in 1985.

We had considered going to the New York Botanical Garden to see (and presumably smell) their corpse flower, but we never got the chance. When will we ever be able to experience the scent of rotting flesh? The Oz Club Convention in Philadelphia is coming up this weekend, and Monster-Mania the weekend after that, so we'll be pretty busy. I'm also seeing Cracker do an acoustic show at City Winery next Friday.

I've been a little more active on Instagram as of late. My account is nathandehoff, and I'm not really sure why I decided to go with my name instead of one of my usual user names. I've noticed the somewhat odd phenomenon there of people following my account, but if I follow them back, they'll unfollow me. What's the point? Is it just ego, or is there some way to make money by having a lot of followers? I read something last night about Donald Trump buying fake followers on Twitter, apparently to make his account look more popular. I'm not running for president, though, and I'd rather spambots NOT follow me on social media. I have almost 2000 followers on Tumblr, but maybe twenty of them ever like or reblog more than a single post. Most of the others appear to be either spammers or people who last updated over a year ago. It probably helps my follower count on Tumblr that most of what I post is not my original work. My Instagram is just pictures I've taken, which means mostly cats in awkward positions and stuff I saw lying on the sidewalk. So while I like people to follow me, I can fully understand why they don't. Just stop it with the bait-and-switch game. There are better ways to get my attention if you really want me to check out your page. Also, with so many social media outlets, I sometimes wonder where to post any one particular thing.

Comments

[poisonyoulove.livejournal.com]

I just noticed you followed me on Instagram. I hadn't realized I had any followers, that's how little I pay attention to it, I guess. ^_^ I've been just throwing pictures up there because I like playing with the filters. And I like taking photos, but figured I'd stick them where no one would be annoyed at having to scroll past them. I've never been very good at social media. XD

[vovat.livejournal.com]

I think there was some feature there that told me what people I was connected to on other social media had accounts there.