Tuesday Notes

• I am tired of the local media hyping BIG BAD SNOW that never comes. I am also tired of drivers driving like there's BIG BAD SNOW happening when there ain't shit happening. Everybody knows that there are 5 types of road encountered in a Buffalo Winter: dry, wet, greasy, shitty, and ice rink... and guess what folks- today alternated between dry and wet. It did get a little shabby later but I was in for the night and didn't care.
• Heath Ledger is dead. Boy, that is gonna make going to see Dark Knight Returns or whatever it's called sort of weird.
• I won't be getting to the Coachella festival but I will be getting Portishead's next album- their first in what... 10 years? 11 if you don't count the live album? Ah well. Those three albums do qualify as classics- widescreen, titanic soundtracks to movies that couldn't be possibly exist or be as cool as their soundtracks. Trip hop was sort of a tired, derivative genre but Portishead... Portishead transcended their genre and operated on a whole different level thanks to the sci-fi hip hop jazz of Adrian Utley and Geoff Barrow and the spooky, sinister, sexy and cinematic vocals of Beth Gibbons. I can't wait.
• We live sheltered lives as Americans. The uncensored DVDs of Torchwood, with the shagging and cussing left in, are brilliantly exhilirating. There is a virtue to watching weekly television on a weekly basis sometimes because I could only get through 4 episodes thanks to the dense, ambitious, and intense tone of the show... and I haven't even gotten to the real meat of Torchwood's excellent first season.
• The second season of Torchwood begins this Saturday on BBC America. Have I mentioned that? I think I might have mentioned that. My TIVO will be humming.