Catalog of maladies

Unfortunately it seems I've got carpal tunnel syndrome in my right wrist and hand something fierce. I have not gone to a professional medical practitioner to receive this diagnosis. Like all of my many maladies, this one is self-diagnosed. I've been feeling this for at least a year now; for the most part my hand feels sore, but when it contracts to any sort of mouse-holding posture, pain shoots up from my knuckles. Sometimes I can't grip things with this hand without feeling pain, like when I try to open the jar that I keep the cat's food in.

My other current maladies include:

Sore lower back,
Sore shoulders (both of them,)
Sore neck,
Sore achilles tendon (right leg).

So for the past couple weeks, I've been feeling like I spent my previous sunday playing free safety for the Chicago Bears. In actuality, I'd say that I'm more built like a fullback or a tight end, but no matter. I'm in pain. Though I occupy the body of a twenty-nine year old man, I feel more like what I imagine a seventy-nine year old man to feel on a daily basis. I might go dip myself in a vat of muscle relaxant later. Mmm, muscle relaxant.

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From the Not-So-Guilty Pleasures department:

The new Gorillaz album, Demon Days, is really great. I mean it. Yeah, they're the cartoon band featuring the voice of Damon Albarn, among others. The first Gorillaz album was produced by Dan the Automator, but "Demon Days" was produced in full by Danger Mouse, the man responsible for the notorious Jay-Z/Beatles mash-up The Grey Album, which if you didn't download it for free from everywhere on the web, you should get it from whatever illicit location you can find it, 'cause it's freakin' awesome. Although I'm sure you've already heard it, Jeff, sophisticated fellow that you are.

Anyway, Demon Days is a highly appealing and effective amalgam of international spy soundtrack samples, ipod ready breakbeats, british indie pop croons, moog-happy hooks, and backpack-rap flow. It just works, and how can it not, if you think about it? I mean, if you're not caught right away by the David Axelrod-esque bass clarinet fugue that opens the album, you're probably not going to be impressed by anything on here, least of which the smooth glitch-groove-pop of "Kids With Guns" or the hot 'n' heavy neo-soul flow of "DARE," to say little of the heavily-loaded hook fest that is "Feel Good Inc." So go listen to some doom metal or something, or whatever makes you feel funky.

Note to Damon Albarn: if Graham Coxon doesn't want to rejoin Blur, you should just retire that group for good. And let's just concede the tired Blur v. Oasis battle to Blur, although I'm hopelessly biased. Gorillaz is infinitely more interesting than anything you've tried to do as a "straight" songwriter in the past decade or so. Although I can't deny the power of "Tender," the leading track on 13, which just shouldn't work, damn it, but against all logic it does. Oh does it ever.

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Phil Luciano responded to my letter with one sentence: "Thanks for the note." It hasn't appeared in print yet. Oh well. The undeniable force of my unimpeachable logic will remain confined to this perhaps thankfully unnoticed corner of the world of information. Where only Jeff will subject himself to its power. Thanks, Jeff, for being my bestest imaginary reader ever.

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On the subject of Jeff, let me take this opportunity to give shout outs to my some of my favorite bands currently in operation, and mysteriously most originate from good ol' Peoria, IL.

Super 88
Probably the best time you'll have with liquor and rock in about a week. So there you go, Jeff, go check yourself out. And get to work on that solo LP.

Two Girls
A group in possesion of insatiable heavy metal grooves and a voice that could wilt a hardy sunflower, all in the guise of one guitarist with three amps that all play something different, a drummer that makes his two arms seem like eight, and now an auxillary percussionist that makes the whole thing dance-ready. Like Kyuss jamming with Kraftwerk, or "ZZ Top on Mushrooms," (and there's Mr. Hyde again, Sir Ubiquitous).

Brief Candles
The hardest working shoegazers in the world. When that album gets done, whenever it gets done, it will make ears cry everywhere. They will actually cry.

Subspace Platform Recordings
Home of the Occupants of Six Accross, the Hushdrops, and the Migration, which sound like a cyberpunk ZZ Top. Who knew those guys were so influential? Pretty soon, I've been assured, you can go here for an archive of Dollface, Peoria's erstwhile favorite sons.

The Bugs
How can I neglect to mention this guy? I mean, he steps over from interstellar space to Peoria, and for what? To create perfect pop for the unwashed masses of Central Illinois? Get with a cult classic before everyone else tries to join.

OK, enough of stroking my friends' egos for today.