DAMAGED GOODS FOR SALE: EVERYTHING MUST GO

The Art of Literary Seduction

2010-01-04T22:39:00.003-06:00

Does it get any hotter than this? Surely not. Mind you this was written in Norway nearly a century ago:

She manages so as to arrive late in the evening; all is quiet at Maaneland when she reaches there. See, Axel has already begun haymaking, the grass is cut near the house, and some of the hay already in. And then she reckons out that Oline, being old, will be sleeping in the little room, and Axel lying out in the hayshed, just as she herself had done. She goes to the door she knows so well, breathless as a thief, and calls softly: "Axel!"
"What's that?" asks Axel all at once.
"Nay, 'tis only me," says Barbro, and steps in. "You couldn't house me for the night?" she says.
Axel looks at her and is slow to think, and sits there in his underclothes, looking at her. "So 'tis you," says he. "And where'll you be going?"
"Why, depends first of all if you've need of help to the summer work," says she.
Axel thinks over that, and says: "Aren't you going to stay where you were, then?"
"Nay; I've finished at the Lensmand's."
"I might be needing help, true enough, for the summer," said Axel.
"But what's it mean, anyway, you wanting to come back?"
"Nay, never mind me," says Barbro, putting it off. "I'll go on again tomorrow. Go to Sellanraa and cross the hills. I've a place there."
"You've fixed up with some one there?"
"Ay."
"I might be needing summer help myself," says Axel again.
Barbro is wet through; she has other clothes in her sack, and must change. "Don't mind about me," says Axel, and moves a bit toward the door, no more.
Barbro takes off her wet clothes, they talking the while, and Axel turning his head pretty often towards her. "Now you'd better go out just a bit," says she.
"Out?" says he. And indeed 'twas no weather to go out in. He stands there, seeing her more and more stripped; 'tis hard to keep his eyes away; and Barbro is so thoughtless, she might well have put on dry things bit by bit as she took oft the wet, but no. Her shift is thin and clings to her; she unfastens a button at one shoulder, and turns aside, 'tis nothing new for her. Axel dead silent then, and he sees how she makes but a touch or two with her hands and washes the last of her clothes from her. 'Twas splendidly done, to his mind. And there she stands, so utterly thoughtless of her….
A while after, they lay talking together. Ay, he had need of help for the summer, no doubt about that.
"They said something that way," says Barbro.
Knut Hamsun - Growth of the Soil, 1917

Bedheaded's favorite 25+++ records of the aughts

2009-12-31T11:51:00.001-06:00

Because no one demanded it, here is a list of my favorite albums of the last decade. It's extremely hard for me to rank anything, and at this point the honorable mentions are just ridiculous, but anyway, we move on. It's highly likely I've forgotten something. For artists whose work in the decade merits numerous mentions (Destroyer, Spoon, White Stripes, etc.) I've decided to just mention my favorite. The ranking from #10 on down becomes increasingly subjective.

1. Elliott Smith - Figure 8
2. Destroyer - Your Blues
3. Neko Case - Blacklisted
4. Joanna Newsom - Ys
5. Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton - Knives Don't Have Your Back
6. Jens Lekman - When I Said I Wanted to Be Your Dog
7. PJ Harvey - Stories from the City, Stories From the Sea
8. Antony and the Johnsons - I Am A Bird Now
9. Dungen - Ta Det Lugnt
10. Cat Power - You Are Free
11. Devendra Banhart - Cripple Crow
12. Radar Bros. - And the Surrounding Mountains
13. Sonic Youth - Murray Street
14. Björk - Vespertine
15. Radiohead - Kid A
16. Songs: Ohia - Magnolia Electric Co.
17. Goldfrapp - Felt Mountain
18. The Movies - In One Era Out the Other
19. Sparklehorse - It's a Wonderful Life
20. Interpol - Turn on the Bright Lights
21. Air - 10,000 Hz Legend
22. Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
23. Low - The Great Destroyer
24. The White Stripes - Elephant
25. Beck - Sea Change

Honorable Mentions (because ranking anything after 25 seems totally ridiculous) in alphabetical order:

Arcade Fire - Funeral
Archer Prewitt - Wilderness
The Black Heart Procession - Three
Black Mountain - In the Future
Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - BMRC
Boredoms - Vision Creation Newsun
Richard Buckner - The Hill
Bill Callahan - Sometimes I Wish We Were An Eagle
Comets on Fire - Blue Cathedral
Crooked Fingers - Crooked Fingers
Doves - Kingdom of Rust
Earth - Hibernaculum
Feist - Let It Die
Field Music - Field Music
The Flaming Lips - Embryonic
Fleet Foxes - Fleet Foxes
Jose Gonzalez - Veneer
Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest
Guided By Voices - Isolation Drills
Justice - †
Lambchop - Aw Cmon/No You Cmon
Madvillain - Madvillainy
MF Doom - MM Food
MGMT - Oracular Spectacular
Modest Mouse - The Moon and Antarctica
The New Pornographers - Twin Cinema
AC Newman - The Slow Wonder
Okkervil River - The Stage Names
Phoenix - Wolfgang Amadeus Phoenix
Portishead - Third
The Shins - Chutes Too Narrow
Sigur Rós - ( )
Slumber Party - Psychedelicate
Swearing At Motorists - More Songs from the Mellow Struggle
Richard Swift - The Atlantic Ocean
TV on the Radio - Return to Cookie Mountain
Unwound - Leaves Turn Inside You
Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Brian Wilson - SMiLE
Wolves in the Throne Room - Two Hunters
Yo La Tengo - And then Nothing Turned Itself Inside Out

Photo: http://www.flickr.com/photos/34188922@N00/3873811718/

Crosby & Nash

2008-11-07T16:00:00.004-06:00

Crosby & Nash: Graham Nash / David Crosby (1972)

There have been many musicians that I have taken for granted, only to blithely stumble into their catalog and realize I had been missing out. A recent example is Crosby & Nash, famously 2/3rds (or ½) of CSN and sometimes Y. I would not have known that they recorded as a duo if I had not read Shakey, the notoriously controversial biography of Neil Young. Neil’s involvement with CSN provides some of the most hilarious material in the book. Noting the outrageous circumstances of David Crosby’s life, it’s amusing that he comes out looking pretty good by the end of the book in comparison to Stephen Stills, who, it must be said, refused to be interviewed for the book. Along the same lines, Graham Nash, often derided for the saccharine nature of his songs, is revealed to be quite a mensch, for lack of a better word, never afraid to criticize Young, though I laughed when he recounted being at a meeting with the group and not being able to protest one of Young’s many attempts to manipulate CSN in order to further his own career (see for example the “Living with War” tour) because he was too high on acid and couldn’t say anything.

Anyway, reading the book led me to look up more information about CSN, and while stumbling around in Wikipedia I discovered that the two recorded as a duo. After searching my, ahem, resources, I obtained a copy, and was quite impressed with what I heard.

The record starts off with “Southbound Train”, which bears a strong resemblance to the sound of Neil’s Harvest, a smash hit just a few months earlier in ’72. This is a Nash composition, and while lyrically it borders on nonsense, it’s a pleasant slice of laconic Laurel Canyon country rock. Immediately afterwards is Crosby’s “Whole Cloth”, providing a dramatic contrast to the opening number.

At this point I think it’s appropriate to discuss what’s become for me a mild obsession with David Crosby. Before reading Shakey, my knowledge of him was about the same as the typical classic rock listener: I knew he was the first letter of CSN, that he had been a Byrd, and that he was a prodigious drug user in his time; I vaguely recall watching MTV and seeing that he had been arrested by the Feds, most likely on one of his yachts, and that like Keith Richards, the mere fact that he still breathed in spite of his lifestyle was quite an accomplishment. In other words, he was a living classic-rock punch line. The reputation, though earned, is hardly fair. Crosby’s cadre of heavy friends – Young; Joni Mitchell; and Bob Dylan, who recounts bringing Crosby along to accept an honorary doctorate in his first edition of Chronicles (Crosby wore his cape, and consoled Dylan afterwards saying, essentially, “fuck ‘em”) – can be credited more to the fact that Crosby was in fact a phenomenal musician than the fact that he was, admittedly, the life of the party.

For those doubting that appraisal of Crosby, “Whole Cloth” provides an excellent rebuttal. To call the song minimal would be an understatement. It is the pop song equivalent of poetic blank verse: no chorus or bridge, hardly any chord changes, sparse, almost jazz-inflected instrumental backing. If you listen to this song in the context of the half-known Crosby described above, “Whole Cloth” comes off as pretentious lite jazz; remove that context, and it’s really remarkable. First off, Crosby really has an amazing voice. It is a soulful near-baritone, and he is skilled in using it to make even the simplest notes sound virtuosic. He was never the guitarist that Young or Stills were, yet, true to his folk roots, he does just enough with the instrument to carry along the simple acrobatics he performs vocally. Even though he barely plays any chords in the song, the chords he does play sound to my ears quite complicated, as though he stretched his fingers to the point that he found the melodically dissonant chords possible. The lyrics are elliptical, but to me, it sounds as though he’s looking back on the musical era he and his friends helped develop – the “Summer of Love” was just some 5 years past, and CSN’s high-water-mark Déjà Vu was a mere 3 years old. Seen this way, “Whole Cloth” can be interpreted as another self-important baby boomer looking on his past glories with undue admiration, but with lyrics like the following, there’s definitely more to appreciate than what can be scraped off the surface:

Old man, can you make a mirror for me?
It's got to be clearer than air for me
'Cause you see I can't see me, no
And I always thought that I meant what I said
But you know that lately I've read - We were lying
All of us lying, Just makin' 'it up, yeah
Cuttin' it out of whole cloth, yeah

The next track, “Blacknotes”, finds Nash abandoning his pop-rock tendencies and getting in on the elliptical tone-poem game. At a shade over 50 seconds, it presents a simple recipe for creating a song: just put your fingers on the black keys, sing some words, and that’s it. Nash’s “Stranger’s Room” is more like him: the same Harvest-esque lope as “Southbound Train”, but this time with the kind of show-stopping chorus Crosby & Nash made famous in their better-known jobs. One gets another chance to appreciate how appealing their combined voices sound in Crosby’s “Where Will I Be?”, just as introspective and simple lyrically as “Whole Cloth,” but this time featuring virtuosic humming in place of where one would normally expect a bridge or a chorus. Listening to the record recently, Crosby’s compositions reminded me of Cat Power’s Moon Pix, with its game-like wordplay and jazzy, almost meter-less inflection.

“Page 43” acts more like a pop song than Crosby’s previous numbers, ending with the kind of hippie-friendly message he would later be derided for:

Pass it 'round one more time
I think I'll have a swallow of wine
Life is fine
Even with the ups and downs
And you should have a sip of it
Else you'll find
It's passed you by

“Frozen Smiles”, a Nash composition, seems to contradict the libertine message of the previous song, and prefigures Nash’s role as a sober, admonishing critic of the excesses he saw lay waste to his colleagues later in life:

So my advice to you is not to take advice
From the dealers who are handing out the cards
Take your life into your own hand
Just have faith in who you are
And all your goodness that I'm forced to disregard
Because you make it much to hard.

“Games” and “Girl to be On My Mind” are both agreeable songs that I want to skip over in order to start talking about Crosby’s final show-stopper, “The Wall Song”. First off, it ably demonstrates Crosby’s skill in adapting the most mundane image and turning it into an excavation of his own fractured worldview. It bears an interesting resemblance to an earlier Crosby composition: “Mind Gardens”, from the Byrds’ Younger than Yesterday, though not as instrumentally adventurous (it does, however, feature backing from Grateful Dead mainstays Jerry Garcia, Phil Lesh, and Bill Kreutzmann), Like "Mind Gardens," it seems to travel a psychic landscape, arriving at the metaphorical wall of consciousness, and ending with a riddle:

You are walking
You’ve always been walking
Stumbling half-blinded
And dry as the wind
That strafes you and leaves you
To lie in the sand
And the wall stretches endless beside you to nowhere
This wall that you've been trying to cross for years
This fence made of fears
No one hears

You see a door
Ah, such a great open door
You know that your eyes tellin' lies
Still you chance
A shambling run, a ridiculous dance
Like a scarecrow that's hung up to dry on a fencepole
And there's a space like vacuum waiting inside you
For you to get through
To the blue

You scent the water
Fresh clean grass, food and water
Your breath is scraping your brain into dust
Your rusty old engine is ready to bust
You cannot believe it that they would not trust you
The door is wavering
Is that your eyes?
Are they still telling lies?
What are lies?

Heavy stuff.

The album ends with Nash’s finest contribution, and its most successful in terms of revenue: “Immigration Man”, which peaked at #36 on the Billboard chart. Here Nash does what he did best in CSN: creates a huge, singalong-worthy chorus. I especially the sarcasm in the lines “Here I am with my immigration form, / it's big enough to keep me warm / when a cold wind's coming,” as well as the rhythm that seems to mimic the image of running from overzealous immigration agents – running, of course, while high on grass through some sun-dappled field in Laurel Canyon.

In sum, I think Crosby & Nash’s Graham Nash/David Crosby is an unjustly forgotten gem, much like the two men themselves: overshadowed by their more well-regarded friends. The Rolling Stone review at the time tends towards praise with faint damnation:

“Neither David Crosby, another original Byrd, nor Graham Nash has ever gotten anywhere near as offensive as Stills at his worst. But then, neither Crosby nor Nash has the capacity to catch fire, as Stills is always threatening to do. These two guys are expert harmony singers, but they swing toward the sweet, light side, and a little sugar generally goes a long way….Without Stills or Young along, the problem should be even more obvious, but it's just not. The Nash-Crosby LP is no milestone, but it is something more than merely pleasant in several places.”

I believe it serves as a sturdy document of the psychedelic afterglow of the early-seventies Laurel Canyon scene, and provides a roadmap for the soft-rock decade to come. Though the pop world may have forgotten them, they still soldier on: Crosby & Nash still tour as a duo, and they even have a website (http://www.crosbynash.com/) where one finds that they performed a get-out-the-vote concert with the likes of Tenacious D and the Beastie Boys.

Crosby & Nash - "Whole Cloth"

Crosby & Nash - "The Wall Song"

Crosby & Nash - "Immigration Man"

From Graham Nash/David Crosby, Atlantic, 1972

Bailout

2008-09-29T14:44:00.001-05:00

As I write this, the bailout plan has failed in the House, and the Dow immediately took a nosedive. If certain sources are to believed, a great deal of Republican representatives voted "Nay" at the last minute simply because they took issue with Nancy Pelosi's speech. Who said five-year-olds couldn't serve in Congress?

There's a part of me that wants to believe that the doom forecasted if a bailout isn't reached is nothing more than a scare tactic. At the same time, I sure as hell don't want to lose my job, my house, etc. if they turn out to be right. I'm not much of a post-Keynesian economist, but at the same time, no one else I know is either (well, I did meet one guy in a bar who was, in fact, a post-Keynesian economist, but at any rate). So I'm getting a little worried about the fact that "popular sentiment" seems to be the sole reason why it has been so hard to reach some kind of agreement on a solution.

Look, I'm as wary of "Wall Street" (I use the dread quotes because at this point, Wall Street has become as much of a straw man as "The Terrorists", "The Jews", "The Man", etc) as the next guy. Certainly, the idea that such monumental stupidity can simply be wiped away by the Government strikes me as more than a little unfair. The question is: what happens if we do nothing, to say little of doing the wrong thing? Even the Treasury isn't sure if this thing is really going to work.

As I have followed the happenings of the crisis, I have come to the conclusion that a number of (*cough* Republican *cough*) congressmen decided that, in the wake of an election season that many have predicted will see a number of them lose their seats to Democrats, the only way to survive the blue tide was to strap on their everyman-waders and oppose "handouts to the fat-cats on Wall Street". No doubt a great number of these politicians' constituents have called them and told them they expect just such a stance from their elected officials, but it strikes me as more than a little ironic. I mean, doesn't it blow your mind that when you turn on the news you see Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and Barney Frank bending over backwards to hand in legislation that the Bush Administration is practically begging for, veto-proof majority or none? What neat symmetry that suddenly an army of grey-faced old GOP hacks can suddenly align themselves against the one man who single-handedly torpedoed their job security in a way no other politician ever could and at the same time claim that it's the damned democrats who are trying to give away the farm to those "fat-cats on Wall Street", many of whom could be solidly counted on to vote "deregulate or die" GOP every other November? The mind reels from the vertigo of it all.

Let's not forget the recent timeline for this particular clusterfuck: noted former POW John McCain took a bold stance and "suspended his campaign" to, ahem, help solve the economic crisis", the attention devoted to which would mean he would be unable to debate Barack Obama. So during that suspension, in which he still ran ads, spoke at a major forum, gave interviews to all major networks, and allowed his band of flacks to continue spreading their disinformation campaign wherever anyone cared to hear it, a bailout was tentatively agreed to by both parties in the Senate, the House Dems, and somewhat begrudgingly, the House GOP. Apparently, McCain said little more than "know that I'm with you" to the House GOP, and here we are today, another agreement supposedly reached, the subsequent vote failed, and if you believe in nosediving line graphs, total economic armageddon that much closer to reality.

I really know next to nothing about the economy, but being a big fan of analogies, I see the bailout this way: Say you were a doctor, and you had a patient who smoked 3 packs a day his entire life. Unsurprisingly, he has near-terminal cancer. As a doctor, do you say "fuck off Joe Camel, you should have known those things would kill you", or do you operate and try to save his life, knowing that if you do, he's probably going to go right back to smoking?

Doctors have to take an oath swearing to "first do no harm". What oaths must our elected officials follow?

Did you hear about Barack Obama?

2008-06-23T21:03:00.004-05:00

Disclaimer: the following is intended to be a work of satire, which is a form of fiction, and a branch of comedy, so it's supposed to be funny, and none of it is true.* However, since I know that someone will find this page by Googling some kind of ridiculous nonsense, may I humbly direct the incredulous to http://www.fightthesmears.com. Thank you.

Hey man.

What?

Did you hear?

What?

Did you hear about Barack Obama?

You mean Barack Hussein Obama?

Yeah.

What? About the fact that he was born in a missile silo in Iran?

No.

About the fact that he is Saddam Hussein's 3rd cousin?

No.

About the fact that his wife is the illegitimate love child of Louis Farrakhan and Oprah?

No, not that. That's totally true by the way.

Hmm. Is it that he's a brainwashed sleeper cell agent programmed to convert the United States to Islam?

No, but I haven't heard him deny that.

Is he an android?

No.

A zombie?

I don't think so.

Well what? What about Barack Obama?

You're not gonna believe this, dude.

What?

For real.

I'm listening, what?

OK, get this. Barack Obama...he's from CHICAGO.

Wait, what?

Barack Obama is from Chicago.

Really?

Totally, dude.

How do you know that? Did Hannity and Combs say that?

No dude, it was the top headline of the Chicago Tribune for like an entire day.

No way.

Way, dude.

No WAY.

Total way.

That blows my mind. Whoa.

Yeah, I know. Can you believe it?

No.

Yeah. This is big.

I'll say. Chicago?

Yeah. Well, he says he was born in Hawaii, but he works as a politician in Chicago. You know who's from Chicago?

Who?

Al Capone.

Whoa, really?

You know who else?

Who?

Rod Blagojevich.

Oh.

And Richard Daley.

Oh, wow.

And George Ryan.

Whoa, George Ryan is in jail. Was he a democrat?

Well, no, he was a republican.

Oh.

You know what else about Chicago? They have a machine there. A POLITICAL machine.

Wow. This is big, right?

Hell yeah it's big. Bigger than Jeremiah Wright.

Hey, he's from Chicago too, right?

Hell yeah he was.

Just like Barack Hussein Obama.

Right.

Man. Has anyone ever been elected president from Chicago?

No. The closest was Adlai Stevenson, who was from Bloomington, which is between Chicago and Springfield, which is totally as bad if not worse than Chicago. But Stevenson had the misfortune of running against Dwight Eisenhower. Twice.

I heard that.

That and the fact that the last democrat to serve as president was Harry Truman, and Truman was one of the least popular presidents ever, and is regarded as one of the worst presidents ever, like in history.

Oh. Has there ever been a president less popular and perceived as more of a failure than Truman?

Well, um, there's George W. Bush.

Oh yeah, right.

Right.

Hey, wasn't Abraham Lincoln from Illinois?

Uh, yeah. Well, he was born in Kentucky, but he spent most of his life in Illinois.

And wasn't he a lawyer?

Yeah.

And a state representative?

Yeah.

And wasn't he a congressman before he became president?

Yeah. Well, in the House, anyway.

Hmm.

Yeah.

....

....

Is this the best we've got?

Until someone comes out with a video of Obama performing some voodoo blood ceremony, I'm afraid it is.

Wow. John McCain is totally screwed, right?

Afraid so, dude. Afraid so.

Wow.

Did you hear that John McCain called his wife a cunt in public once?

No way.

Way, dude, way.

*Except for the fact that Barack Obama is from Illinois, as was Adlai Stevenson and Abraham Lincoln, and the fact that John McCain called his wife a cunt.

The Fog that Ate Chicago

2008-06-03T19:17:00.003-05:00

Thank goodness it spared the Art Institute:

A Poem for Memorial Day

2008-05-25T14:40:00.000-05:00

Drummer Hodge

They throw in Drummer Hodge, to rest
Uncoffined -- just as found:
His landmark is a kopje-crest
That breaks the veldt around:
And foreign constellations west
Each night above his mound.

Young Hodge the drummer never knew --
Fresh from his Wessex home --
The meaning of the broad Karoo,
The Bush, the dusty loam,
And why uprose to nightly view
Strange stars amid the gloam.

Yet portion of that unknown plain
Will Hodge for ever be;
His homely Northern breast and brain
Grow to some Southern tree,
And strange-eyed constellations reign
His stars eternally.

--Thomas Hardy

http://www.poemhunter.com/poem/drummer-hodge/

heh heh heh, heh...

2008-05-01T08:53:00.002-05:00

"President Bush is well aware that the banner should have been much more specific and said 'mission accomplished' for these sailors who are on this ship on their mission," White House press secretary Dana Perino told the Associated Press on Wednesday.

Heh heh heh, heh heh, heh.

Heh heh heh heh.

Ha ha ha.

Ha HA ha!

HA HA HA HA HA!

pfffthaa haa haa!

HAAAAA!

K-kkkkkpfwhaaaahhahhaaaa!

Heeeee...heee....heeeeeee......

Huh huh HA HA HA HA HAAAAAHHHH!

Why can't an atheist be President?

2008-03-20T13:43:00.006-05:00

Full disclosure: I'm for Obama. 100%. I voted for him in my state's primary. I almost--almost--cried when I watched the "Yes We Can" video, and I cry approximately once every five years. So keep that in mind if you care to read the rest of this post. If you're looking for fair and balanced political analysis, look elsewhere. (And if you ever find it, be sure to let the rest of the world know about it.)

At the beginning of this week, I was extremely agitated about the fact that Barack Obama's candidacy was in danger of ruin because of remarks made by the pastor of his church. As the week progressed, I got a lot less agitated thanks to the man delivering a truly monumental speech, but I'm still worried, and still a little agitated.

It has been said (though I'm not sure where, when, or by whom) that an atheist could never be elected President of the United States. Why is that? I have no idea. But as long as this country has elected presidents, there have always been three steadfast requirements to fill the position: one must be white, male, and Christian. In this election, the country has a one-in-three chance of gaining a president who is not white, and similar odds for one who is not male, but no matter who wins, the probability that the country's 220-year streak of electing a Christian Commander-In-Chief stands at 100%.

I don't have a problem with anyone labeling themselves Christian. There certainly are worse or more ridiculous belief systems with which one could align themselves. My problem is with the importance that is placed on a candidate's belief system in relation to their fitness to serve as president, and more specifically, how the beliefs expressed by one person in Barack Obama's church have been turned around on Obama himself as evidence that he is unfit to be President.

It's not necessary to rehash the comments made by Obama's pastor, Jeremiah Wright. The ever-diligent media, perhaps fearing in the wake of the writer's strike the significant loss of ratings and thus ad dollars they would face were the democratic primary season to fold prematurely, have been very helpful in parsing down the thousands of hours of sermonizing and public speaking that Wright has engaged in over his decades-long career to the most incendiary 3-second soundbites they could find. And my are they incendiary.

But what does that have to do with the fitness of Barack Obama to serve as the President of the United States? If you believe even the most even-keeled pundits who have predicted the demise of Obama in '08 due to Wright's statements, it has everything to do with it.

As I mentioned before, until this election cycle began, the presumptive qualities one must have possessed to become President have been whiteness, maleness, and Christianity--but not every type of Christian need apply. Until John F. Kennedy was elected President, it was believed that a Catholic could never win the job. Obama's church is protestant, but it seems that his pastor was an expert practitioner of Black Liberation Theology, something a solid majority of non-black people had never heard of until a few weeks ago, but now they've heard it, and if those 3-second bites of Wright are to be seen as typical, they have discovered that Black Liberation Theology is very angry, and, well, very black.

Again, what does this have to do with Obama? Well, I have to theorize here because truthfully I know next to nothing about it, but apparently what you hear in church on Sunday has a lot to do with how you function the rest of the week: what kind of person you are, how you relate to others, what you believe. The traditional definition of pastor is "shepherd", as in a leader of sheep, one who tends a flock. They say "the lord is my shepherd," and the pastor is the mouthpiece of the lord's word, the commandments of which are taken as gospel by the flock. So when Obama's pastor declares "God Damn America," the reasoning is that Obama then takes those words as his gospel.

Forgive me if all of this seems tedious to you, but I'm treading as lightly as I can here, because I don't want to appear intolerant to Christians, as many people who are very close to me are Christian. But for the life of me, I cannot understand how anyone can hear what has been said by Jeremiah Wright and believe that Barack Obama believes anything close to the same thing. Seriously: the controversy over these statements could hardly be as vicious if there were video of Obama himself uttering them. But this is the problem: because those things were said by his pastor, it opens up the window for people to turn those statements on Obama and force him to answer for them.

So finally I return to my opening question: why can't an atheist run for president? Why is it so important for the leader of our country to believe the same things, and believe those things in the same way, as has nearly every man who has served as President before him or her? The reason I began to wonder this week is obvious: if there were no Jeremiah Wright in Obama's life, none of this would have been a problem. Of course, if there were no Jeremiah Wright, there would likely be no Obama, or at least he wouldn't be the same man we know today--I realize that, and I realize that many people's lives have been affected the same way by Christianity...I don't take issue with that. To each their own. But I ask these things in all sincerity. Why does it matter?

If anyone were to ask me, I would say that the President only needed to believe in the Constitution, in the history and latent "goodness" of our country, in all of the third-grade civics class lessons that have turned into tarnished cliches in the waning days of the second Bush administration. Do I think he needs to believe in Jesus, or Moses, or Noah's ark, or Genesis, or Job, or Satan, or Heaven, or Adam, Eve, Cain & Abel, or anything else like that? If you're asking me--no. But if you ask five other people anywhere near me the same thing, you can bet four out of five of them are going to say yes. Would they say they'd vote for a Jew? I don't know, but I think most would say no. A Muslim? I think a pretty wide margin would say no. A Hindu? Half of the people in this country probably couldn't even say what a Hindu was, even though the same percentage of people probably live or work next to one every day. And how about an Atheist? Again I generalize, but I would hazard a guess that unless you asked an atheist whether one would be fit to serve as president, the answer you'd get would be a resounding "No."

But why not? And what good has it done the country that all of its Presidents have uttered many of the same prayers and same hymns as long as there have been Presidents? Our outgoing President once confessed that he talked to God on a regular basis, and felt that he could hear God talking to him, and it was hearing God's word directly in his ear that led him to embark this country in a war now five years old with trillions upon trillions of dollars wasted, thousands of American lives lost, untold numbers of Iraqi lives lost, and no end in sight. In the meantime, the people who elected him into office are losing their houses, losing their jobs, losing their life's savings, while the President continues to thunder that the war was just, the economy is sound, and God is on his side.

Good God, what a load of bullshit.

Thankfully, thankfully, oh so thankfully, Barack Obama spoke out about the controversy that Wright's statements had incited. But he didn't just speak out about the soundbites. He did what he's been doing all this time: He led. He inspired. He was honest. He was nuanced. He made it more than about him. He confirmed all the qualities that made those who support him think the man was born to be a leader.

I've done a terribly poor job of addressing the central question that started this post. I have no clue why an atheist couldn't be president. In my mind, being an atheist would be a benefit for anyone seeking to become President. No one could question from where their beliefs were derived. They would never have to answer to a power higher than the people who elected him or her to office. If they made a mistake, they would only have their electorate to ask for forgiveness, and their penitence would come on November 4th.

That's how I live my life. I don't expect anyone else to gain any insight on their own condition based on the way I live. And I don't feel the need to evangelize my position. I am the way I am--I don't belong to any atheist "religion"; to me, that would be a little like being a member of a group that doesn't believe in groups. I just don't believe. Simple as that. I'm not a spiritual person. When I'm in a forest, or feel a breeze, or enjoy a ray of sunshine, or rejoice in the goodness of my fellow man, I don't chalk it up to a higher power, I appreciate it for what it is, and nothing else.

So tell me: would you want a person like me to be your President?

How about your Mayor?

Sheriff?

Accountant?

Librarian???

Not Safe for Work...

2008-01-30T10:12:00.001-06:00

...if you happen to work in a place that frowns upon one weeping from laughter and spitting out muffin pieces due to hilarity:

And the Best Album of 2007 Is...

2008-01-03T15:11:00.001-06:00

Part 1 ~ Part 2 ~ Part 3 ~ Part 4

I'm tired. Bedheaded Jr. is a finicky sleeper. He usually goes for a couple hours, and then has to burp or something, and then gets upset because he's awake, and one of us has to go in to his room and rock him to sleep, because unfortunately no one told us that if you put a baby to sleep that way, then that's the only way they'll go to sleep until you straighten it out. There are lots of little lessons like that about babies that no one really sits you down and tells you about. Fortunately, one of the best decisions we made before he was born was to forgo buying one of those ridiculously rickety glider/rockers you see lined up at a typical Babies-R-Us and instead purchased an overstuffed faux-leather La-Z-Boy and put it in his room, so that when he wakes up, all we end up doing is pick him up, get him cradled in the arm, and kick back on the recliner, and usually end up sleeping that way for the rest of the night, or until he gets hot or burps again. Seriously, if anyone ever asked me for advice before becoming a parent, that's the best I could give them. Those stupid gliders are overpriced death traps; your 300 bucks are better spent getting a big fat recliner you can pass out on without worrying about the baby falling out of your arms or the whole thing tipping over sideways. Whoever gave me that advice, thank you.

Where was I? Oh yeah, I was going to finally finish up this list of the best albums of 2007. Man what a mess this turned into. Maybe I should have just picked five. I don't think that would have been possible, so we move on.

Before I name the toppermost of the poppermost, indulge me as I bore you with two worthy runners-up to the title....

Patton Oswalt - Werewolves and Lollipops
Sub Pop

To be honest with you, I probably listened to this album more times in a row than any other record this year. The first time I tried listening to it, I was driving on the Eisenhower, which was a bad idea, so I'd recommend not trying to listen to this while driving unless you've heard it about twenty times or you can drive with tears in your eyes and your face contorted in a rictus of laughter. The first bit, where he riffs on KFC's "famous bowls," pretty much finished me before the thing even got halfway started. Stay tuned while he compares Bush and Cheney to Bo and Luke Duke, meets Brian Dennehy, deconstructs why Episodes 1 through 3 sucked, and tells the story of Death Bed: the Bed That Eats People.

VietNam - VietNam
Kemado Records

If you could criticize this band for any reason, the main one is that their name makes Googling them or finding them on YouTube something of a chore. That's about the only criticism I can think of; this is a great old-fashioned rock record and a solid debut. Their lead singer has a memorably whiskey-stained voice, and their sound is all kinds of swampy blue psychedelia done just right. I remember about ten years ago reading a whole lot of crap about how guitar bands were going the way of disco; the harbinger of that sound's doom was none other than Marilyn Manson, who declared "Rock Is Dead," for some mysterious reason doing so at the end of The Matrix, a film I recall engaging in little by way of a debate about the viability of the rock music genre in its preceding hour and a half. Well luckily, folks, it looks like Marilyn was wrong, not least about this point, and rock is here to stay, thanks to bands like VietNam, Dungen, Sonic Youth, Gravenhurst, Brief Candles, man the list goes on and on.

Without further ado, I present to you:

The Best Album of 2007

Picture: http://www.pitchforkmedia.com/article/feature/37709-pitchfork-music-festival-2006

Jens Lekman - Night Falls Over Kortedala
Secretly Canadian

I may be prone to hyperbole, but I think I can safely say that Gothenburg, Sweden's Jens Lekman is poised for international superstardom. OK, maybe it won't be that easy; how successful can a skinny, lovelorn troubadour cut from the cloth of Jonathan Richman and Stephen Merritt expect to be in a world where the biggest pop stars are churned out of the rancid karaoke freakshow that is American Idol? Thing is, Jens Lekman makes it look so goddamn easy. This is a man that constructed a memorable hook out of the couplet "She said it was-all make believe / but I thought she said maple leaves." Lekman's songs are full of great, memorable lines, and damned catchy and hummable at that thanks to his Morrissey-by-way-of-Stockholm croon and ace, dreamy samples from the likes of The Left Banke. I count "If You Ever Need a Stranger (To Sing At Your Wedding)", one of the songs off of his first album, When I Said I Wanted To Be Your Dog, among the most perfect ever written ("I know every song, you name it / by Bacharach or David / Every stupid love song that ever touched your heart / Every power ballad that ever climbed the charts"). There's an irresistible irony between the hangdog image of himself he paints in songs like "A Postcard to Nina," where he recounts having to act as a beard for a lesbian friend, and the tympani-laden bombast of album opener "And I Remember Every Kiss," while the album cover depicts him getting a heavenly haircut by hands emanating from above..not to mention him gazing longingly over some mountain sunset before getting in a red and white Cessna and taking to the sky. Yeah. This guy's got everything figured out. If you've seen him play live with his band of Swedish girls in skirts, you'd think the same damn thing.

Jens Lekman - "And I Remember Every Kiss"
Jens Lekman - "A Postcard to Nina"
From Night Falls Over Kortedala

Jens Lekman - "Maple Leaves (7" Version)"
From Oh You're So Silent Jens

Jens Lekman - "If You Ever Need a Stranger (To Sing At Your Wedding)"
From When I Said I Wanted to Be Your Dog

Buy Jens Lekman Albums Here

(Mmm, Swedish girls...)

As we drool over Jens Lekman's band, I want to take this time to thank you for bothering to slog through this nonsense. You're awesome. I'd also like to list all (or all that I can remember at the moment) of the other records that I enjoyed this year; this is the Honorable Mention section, and this Honorable Mention means a lot more than when you'd win an honorable mention for getting eliminated first in your grade school chess tournament, trust me.

~ Honorable Mention ~

Air - Pocket Symphony
Amiina - Kurr
Bat for Lashes - Fur and Gold
Battles - Mirrored
Black Sabbath - The Dio Years
Blitzen Trapper - Wild Mountain Nation
Blonde Redhead - 23
Boris with Michio Kurihara - Rainbow
Burial - Untrue
Caribou - Andorra
Castanets - In the Vines
Cass McCombs - Dropping the Writ
The Cinematic Orchestra - Ma Fleur
Deerhunter - Cryptograms
Dinosaur Jr. - Beyond
Dr. Dog - We All Belong
Earth - Hibernaculum
El-P - I'll Sleep When You're Dead
Field Music - Tones of Town
John Fogerty - Revival
Gravenhurst - The Western Lands
Menomena - Friend and Foe
My Brightest Diamond - Bring Me the Workhorse
The National - Boxer
Neil Young - Chrome Dreams II; Live at Massey Hall 1971
The Occupants of Six Across - Holding Hands with Prince Vacuum (which you can download absolutely free right here)
Scout Niblett - This Fool Can Die Now
Steven Wright - I Still Have a Pony
Queens of the Stone Age - Era Vulgaris
Wolves in the Throne Room - Two Hunters
Wooden Wand - James and the Quiet

The Best Albums of 2007, pt. 4

2007-12-28T13:35:00.000-06:00

Part I ~ Part II ~ Part III

We're getting down to the wire. The year is almost over, and I'm nowhere near finished telling you about the best recorded music of 2007, at least as far as my ears were concerned. And my, is this thing ever getting unwieldy. OK, let's try to get this thing over with. Here is the last part of the list, before I unveil my pick for the absolute best album of the year. Bear with me....

The Besnard Lakes - Are The Dark Horse
Jagjaguwar

I want to call this the best debut album of 2007. Trouble is, The Besnard Lakes did in fact release an album titled Volume 1 back in 2003, but it only 1000 copies were released, and it was re-released in the U.S. after Are The Dark Horse came out, so...The Besnard Lakes Are The Dark Horse is the best debut album of 2007. And lo, they're on my new favorite record label, who along with sister label Secretly Canadian, have fashioned themselves as the new Matador thanks to a hip roster comprised of acts such as Black Mountain, Jens Lekman, Magnolia Electric Co., Antony and the Johnsons, and many others. As for the Besnard Lakes, they're built around husband and wife duo Jace Lasek and Olga Goreas, and their songs hinge on the eerie Beach Boys-like falsetto of Lasek, as well as a collision between the haunted psychedelia of Syd Barrett and the rocking emotional catharsis of Sigur Ros and Godspeed You Black Emperor! Listen to "Disaster", one of the best songs of the year, or "For Agent 13," and prepare to get chills.

David Vandervelde - The Moonstation House Band
Secretly Canadian

Didn't I just say that Secretly Canadian and Jagjaguwar are the hippest record label this side of Matador in the mid-nineties? Look here, it's another great release from Secretly Canadian. This one's from a wunderkind Chicago multi-instrumentalist whose sound might make you think that Marc Bolan never died.

"Jacket" - from The Moonstation House Band
Buy it Here

Richard Swift - Dressed Up for the Letdown
Secretly Canadian

OK, seriously, think back to when all the best bands in indie rock were all on one label, like Touch and Go, or Sub Pop, or Merge, or 4AD. Now look at this: ANOTHER GREAT RECORD FROM SECRETLY CANADIAN/JAGJAGUWAR. It's almost too good to be true. But it is true. I read someone else describe Richard Swift as some dude wearing a poncho and channeling Harry Nilsson, and since I'm a lazy, plagiarizing music reviewer, I'll just echo his words. Like Vandervelde, Swift is a multi-instrumentalist seemingly transported from a long-gone era. His music is as appealingly old-fashioned as it is touchingly beautiful.

PJ Harvey - White Chalk
Island

When I mentioned Radiohead's In Rainbows earlier in this list, it sparked a little bit of a debate between me, Paul and Jeff about whether that group relied too much on a "formula", and whether that formula had become boring. Though fans of PJ Harvey's music might have some idea what to expect when faced with a new record of hers, she can't truly be said to fall on a formula, and she's certainly never boring. For White Chalk, she forced herself into a creative corner by composing all of the songs on piano, an instrument she had to learn from scratch to play. That challenge paid off in the form of one of her best records, totally different from anything else in her catalog.

Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
Merge

Boy am I repeating myself here, but here goes: you kind of know what to expect when you get a new Spoon record, right? Great big hooks, sparse instrumentation, Britt Daniel's haiku-like lyrics. But goddammit if Spoon doesn't take that formula and make it sound like you've never heard anything like it with each ensuing album. That must surely be a sign of genius in art: taking a limited set of variables, like squares of primary colors or a 12-tone scale of notes, and constructing something new and interesting with it on a consistent basis. I don't know how it's possible, but Britt Daniel has done it again and that's why Britt Daniel is a genius and I am not.

Dungen - Tio Bitar
Kemado

Dungen makes heavy psychedelic music that sounds practically lifted from some foggy meadow circa-1967. Someone might read that and think, "who in the hell wants to listen to psychedelic music in 2007." Let me ask you this: who doesn't want to listen to psychedelic music in 2007? Aren't the times absolutely begging for music that transports someone away from the fucked-up mess that surrounds them? Wasn't that exactly what happened in 1967? The world might not think so (and according to the whispers I've heard on the internet, Dungen's home country of Sweden doesn't exactly think so either). But I look at the turmoil in the world--the quagmire in Iraq, the pending Armageddon in Iran, political assassinations in Pakistan, a tanking economy at home--and I think, why aren't there more bands like Dungen out there right now? The protest movement has gotten off the streets and gone online, but why doesn't it have a soundtrack like the movements of the sixties? Well, for those of you who wonder the same thing, let Dungen be your Jefferson Airplane.

Panda Bear - Person Pitch
Paw Tracks

For those psychedelia skeptics that I imagined into existence in the previous paragraphs, here's a psychedelic record that makes sense in the 21st century, soaked in reverb but built with sampling technology. Others have mentioned Brian Wilson when describing this record, so again, being lazy, I'll do it too: this sure as hell reminds me of Brian Wilson when I listen to it. Maybe if Brian Wilson were born in the seventies and decided to stay in his room and replace his brothers with his Mac, it would sound like Person Pitch. It works, in a way that Panda Bear's other gig, Animal Collective, hasn't worked for me as yet. Now I'll admit that I haven't listened to much of their stuff, but what I have listened too sounds jarring and contrived, whereas this sounds organic and fluid. When I heard about this record, and I heard that Panda Bear was living in Portugal with a wife and child, I thought, well, it looks like this Panda Bear is starting a solo career. I thought that even though I knew nothing about him or his other band, which he has not left, but when I thought it, and then listened to this record, I thought, man, what a great move. This guy is a genius, he doesn't need anyone else. Not being totally versed in Animal Collective, I won't come right out and say he should quit Animal Collective and be a cool solo artist based out of Lisbon (how cool is that?), but I will say this: of all his colleagues in Animal Collective, Panda Bear has the best nickname. I mean, they're Animal Collective: how come he's the only one who is named after an animal?

Man has this list gotten huge. It isn't even a list...I haven't counted, but I think I've named a lot more than 10 albums already, and aren't all lists supposed to come in tens? Perhaps that's just my western mind trying to hold me down. And get this: I'm not done yet. No, I still have to name the best album of 2007. I don't know if you're even still with me, but stay tuned: it'll get here soon (though possibly not in the actual year 2007).

Oh, and if you haven't let me know yet, tell me what you think were the best records of the year. I'm all ears.

The Best Albums of 2007, pt. 3

2007-12-21T14:51:00.000-06:00

Part 1 ~ Part 2

Even though I've mentioned many times that I don't listen to stuff that gets played on the radio, I've realized that some of the stuff might actually get played somewhere on the radio. Big as this country is, there just might be some commercial radio station out there that plays Okkervil River all day long, but wherever that it is, it isn't anywhere I know (unless you're counting college radio, which I'm not...which isn't to say college radio isn't awesome, which it is, especially if you live within the usually short broadcasting radius of your typical college radio station). Ironically, it seems that I often hear cool music being played or talked about on NPR programs such as All Things Considered or Fresh Air; often times they'll profile an interesting group or musician, and plenty of times I've heard cool stuff being played as bumper music on some of their programs. Sometimes, in the more snobbish sectors of music fandom, I hear "NPR Music" being referred to in derisive terms, as in "that sounds like the kind of music you would hear on NPR," ironically (but isn't it always?) being said by people who are in fact the kind of people who would listen to said music, as well as the kind of people who listen to NPR regularly--I guess we can chalk it up to the tendency for "hip" and educated people to engage in self-loathing as a habit (hi, I'm Jake, and I loathe myself...) Ah, if only we could all live in Southern California and be able to listen to KCRW whenever we felt like switching on a radio.

Y'know, on second thought, I think I'll skip SoCal and just listen to Morning Becomes Eclectic over the internet....

Today's segment of the Best Albums of 2007 focuses on music that is just mainstream enough, in some cases more mainstream than others, to possibly be played on the radio, or to be purchased at your local Target, or to appear in a Passat or iPod commercial.

Wilco - Sky Blue Sky
Nonsuch

This is the best album Wilco has ever done. If ever I'm asked what album to buy if someone has never listened to Wilco, I'm going to recommend Sky Blue Sky (then Being There, then Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, then Summerteeth, then A Ghost is Born, no maybe Ghost before Teeth...) I say this with no reservations. This sounds like the album Jeff Tweedy has been trying to make for his whole career. Everything works, everything sounds great. It's that simple. I can hear the self-loathing hipster in me making all the standard arguments against Wilco (actually, now that I'm a homeowner and a parent, that hipster's voice is a lot harder to hear). He's gonna say something about the Volkswagen commercials, something about the band not being the same now that Jay Bennett's not in it, something about them sounding like the Eagles (actually, Jeff heard that one)...WHATEVER, DUDE. Here you go: selling out means nothing anymore. In fact, considering that you essentially never have to pay for music anymore, selling your songs to Volkswagen is about the only way a non-billionaire musician can make money. Jay Bennett: tell you what, I don't really like Summerteeth that much. It's overproduced. I can listen to Pet Sounds if I want to hear Pet Sounds. And have you listened to a Jay Bennett solo album? It's great if you're interested in the production of music, but if you want to hear great songs? Not so much. And the Eagles? Screw that noise. This is plain great music. And Nels Cline's guitar work is beyond sublime; a coworker of mine complained that Cline was handcuffed by Tweedy and never gets the chance to really shred, but if you listen closely to Cline's fretwork on a song like "Impossible Germany," you'll agree that virtuosity sometimes has more to do with what one doesn't play rather than what they do.

Robe rt Plant & Alison Krauss - Raising Sand
Rounder Records

This might be the musical equivalent of stunt-casting. When I saw the two of them on the cover of this album, I just knew I wanted to listen to it. And to know that it was produced by T-Bone Burnett, the Coen Brothers' resident musicologist? Yeah, I was signed up at the gate. Part of my admiration for this has to do with my being a fan of the male/female duet, for instance: Nancy Sinatra & Lee Hazlewood, Johnny & June Carter Cash, Loretta Lynn & Conway Twitty, Serge Gainsbourg and Jane Birkin, and so on. The difference between those duos and this one is the fact that in the rest of them, there was a male voice and a female voice, and y'know, I think Plant's voice might just be higher than Krauss's. We could go on about this, and honestly, this is a record that invites that kind of contemplation and more. There is plenty to like here, and plenty to keep you coming back. Along with this: they've got to be, ahem, "together," right? I mean, if you look at the back cover of this record, I'm pretty damn sure that one of them has their hand down the back pocket of the other's jeans...or maybe both of them do?

Feist - The Reminder
Cherrytree/Interscope

Oh, Feist. There's something about this woman that makes her irresistible; no, scratch that, there's a hell of a lot about her that makes her irresistible, chief among them being her sultry, sexy vocal cords, which are living proof that the best, sexiest voices often aren't the ones that hit the most octaves or do the trickiest acrobatics. Take Al Green, Marvin Gaye, hell, Kylie Minogue, and for sure Goldfrapp and our very own Leslie Feist. Is she the most attractive woman in the world? She may be no Jessica Alba, and that might be a really good thing, but damn can she play guitar, and that voice. Oh man. I'm looking forward to her reading of the Greater Chicagoland phone book I heard she was going to do. Hey, here's an idea for a great vocal duo: Jarvis Cocker and Feist. Could give Serge and Jane a run for their money, no?

"I Feel it All" - from The Reminder
Buy it Here

Radiohead - In Rainbows
Self-released

Gotta hand it to Radiohead: they're the only band I can think of who can make headlines just for releasing a record, and the only ones who can back it up with music that merits the world's attention. Who else does it? U2? Nope, I don't think so. How much did I pay for this record? Erm, the same as I paid for most of the records I listen to...ahem, well, anyway, you could call this a return to form, but Radiohead has never lost its form: it just invents new ones.

"Weird Fishes/Arpeggi" - from In Rainbows

Thurston Moore - Trees Outside the Academy
Ecstatic Peace!

Actually, you might not find Thurston's first solo record since 1995's Psychic Hearts at your local Target. But no matter where you have to go to find it, you by all means should seek out this record. It sounds different from anything he's done lately with Sonic Youth, thanks in no small part to contributions from J Mascis, Charalambides's Christina Carter, as well as from the always rock-solid perfect drumming of Steve Shelley, beyond any doubt SY's secret weapon since EVOL.

Ween - La Cucaracha
Rounder Records

You might call this record a return to form, but only if you didn't like Quebec, which I did, or Shinola, Vol. 1, which I did as well but apparently Dean Ween himself did not. Dean, I'm glad someone else, possible Geaner, has better sense than you. But anyway, Paul says this is their best since Chocolate and Cheese. I'm not sure about that, but it's pretty damn good. It says something when a band who used to be so subversive they improved a Leonard Cohen album cover by adding a Scotchguard bong to it nowadays is subversive for convincing lite-jazz icon David Sanborn to blow his sax over one of their tracks. That would be "The Party," which features the following lyric:

Later on when we were under the covers
I closed my eyes, then I drifted to sleep
I dreamt about me maybe throwing a party
And just how great that would be

And we said
We had the best time at your party
The wife and I thank you very much
We had the best time at your party
The wife and I thank you very much

And that's long after "Fiesta," which opens the album and sounds a lot like Herb Alpert playing the theme to Meatballs, and "Object," which hits all the scary-stalker notes like only Ween can do.

The Best Albums of 2007, pt. 2

2007-12-20T16:24:00.000-06:00

Hi again. Here are a few more of albums I really enjoyed this year. That's all the criteria I have for this ongoing list, which is in no particular order.

The Takeovers - Bad Football
Off Records

I forget just how long Guided By Voices has been "broken up;" perhaps it's enough to say they broke up when Tobin Sprout left the band. Anyway, Robert Pollard soldiers on, just not as GBV, and you can count me as one who gave up paying too much attention after his first post-GBV solo record. Yet somehow I felt compelled to listen to his latest band-of-the-day, The Takeovers, where he's allegedly abetted by Stephen Malkmus, as well as members of Tad, Mudhoney, and the Decemberists. Whatever--this sounds like anything else that might have come out of the Captain's suitcase in GBV's salad years. For those of you who remember those days and still think fondly of them, Bad Football might just hit that spot for you; you know what spot I'm talking about. It might even inspire a whole new audience to discover Pollard's music; unlike most of his one-offs, this one seems like it might hold his attention for more than a few releases. For almost everyone else: well, as Bob himself says, "If you don't want it, don't buy it."

"Molly & Zack" - from Bad Football
Buy it Here

The Avett Brothers - Emotionalism
Ramseur Records

So you hear about this three-piece consisting of two actual, mostly bearded brothers who play guitars, banjos, and assorted other instruments, along with their friend on stand-up bass. And you think, OK, cool, here's another old-timey bluegrass throwback; this might be something I would recommend to my mom, who loved the Oh Brother, Where Art Thou soundtrack. But goddamn, just about anyone who loves great songwriting and good pop music would enjoy Emotionalism, so you can recommend this to all of your bearded and non-bearded friends, as well as your mom. Call it bluegrass-meets-power pop. That sound good to you?

The Best Albums of 2007, pt. I

2007-12-16T13:48:00.000-06:00

So here are the conditions: I am going to tell you about the albums I listened to that had some kind of effect on me this year. Too vague? Put it this way: all of the albums did something to me--got in my head so much that I had to listen to them again, then again; made my jaw drop as soon as they started; made me think "where the hell did this come from?"; etc. Not scientific, but I am not a scientist (unless you're talking about libraries, in which case I am a Library Scientist). Furthermore, since I'm incapable of putting things in lists, I'm going to cite the albums that grabbed me in a nonlinear fashion, devoting a post to a couple of them, and saying as much as I can muster about them. After I'm done and I've done some reflecting on it, I'll attempt to name one of them my "best" album of the year.

Oh, and don't think that you can just sit back and let me do all the work here: I want to know what you think the best albums of the year were. Why? Because I care what you think. Plus, I want to know about all of the good music I don't know about, didn't have a chance to listen to, or haven't get around to listening to on my iPod yet. So give a brother a hand. Send me a comment and let me know if you like, love, or hate the albums I mention, and if I missed something, let me know about that too. Cheers.

Okkervil River - The Stage Names
Jagjaguwar

This album falls under the jaw-dropping category, as well as the "where did this come from?" one. I had heard about them for a while, but never listened to any of their albums. As soon as I heard this, suffice it to say I went and heard all of the other ones about as fast as I could.

This band gets called "literary" about as much as does The Decemberists, but seems to enjoy a far smaller popular audience than that band, which is a shame that one hopes The Stage Names will rectify, but who knows. "Literary" is as useless a label for music as is "alternative" or "grunge," but apparently is meant to signify that a group's lyrics are a tad more complex than "Wild thing, you make my heart sing, you make everything, groovy," but more often than not implies pretension or preciousness. Well, this album suffers from neither affliction. The first track, "Our Life Is Not a Movie or Maybe," rocks harder than one would expect a group of "bookish" lads to rock, and when the closer, "John Allyn Smith Sails," segues into a laughing reprise of "Sloop John B," let me say that even though I'm an incurable Beach Boys nerd, I think it's hard for anyone to hear that and not break out in an ear-to-ear grin. This is a hell of a charming record, and this group deserves to be someone's favorite band.

The Raveonettes - Lust Lust Lust
Fierce Panda Records

I don't think this album has been released in the U.S. yet. That's our loss. This is sexy, downbeat, candy-coated music from the Jesus and Mary Chain's hot Danish godchildren. The track "You Want the Candy" is a mission statement of sorts: they know we want the candy, the dirty sweet candy, so here's the sweet sweet candy. It feels bad, but it tastes real good. This record belongs in the pantheon of great break-up albums.

Not the best albums of 2007

2007-12-12T13:38:00.000-06:00

Looking at the calendar, we are almost smack in the middle of the last month of the year. 2007 is actually coming to an end. Whee. So now we're starting see all kinds of year-end lists.

Yeah. I have real trouble making lists. I can usually pick something I liked the best, but I can't really slot things into subordinate spaces. Plus it's hard for me to remember all of the things that tickled my fancy over the course of 365 or so days, what with the head injuries and all, and especially with the music, which I can hardly even listen to if I wanted to, despite the fact I have my iPod strapped to me for a good three-plus hours every day.

There's bound to be a good debate somewhere about how useless all of these year-end lists are. I don't really have too much to say about that. Stephen King did a list of his favorite albums of the year in the last Entertainment Weekly. He might not be the world's foremost musical tastemaker, but really, how different or more unique or qualified are King's opinions than those of the A.V. Club? They both liked Sky Blue Sky, as well they should. So yeah.

Anyway. I'll have to think about my favorite records of 2007 just a bit more before I subject my verdict on you all. In the meantime, I present to you a topic that's far easier for me to pass judgment on:

Bedheaded's Least Favorite Albums of 2007.

Now keep in mind that even though I said I listen to just about everything, I don't actually in fact listen to genuinely everything. If I had to be more precise about it, I would go ahead and say that the music that I don't like is the kind of music that gets played on the radio. So that's just about everything that is played on just about every radio station. 'Cause seriously, now that radio stations are manned and programmed by robots, there's only really a handful of radio station types: classic rock (Led Zep, the Nuge, etc), modern rock (whatever kind of stuff they play between scenes on The Real World and various CW shows), adult contemporary (stuff you would hear in a dentist's office, intermixed with the latest American Idol castoffs), rap and hip hop (not my kind of rap and hip hop I would care to listen to--let's just say they aren't spinning MF Doom or El-P there), oldies (more Eagles and Steve Miller Band nowadays than Beatles or Roy Orbison), country (Carrie Underwood and garbage more wretched than her), and inspirational (I can't describe this one, because I want to vomit just thinking about it). Lately there's been a rise in stations that belligerently repeat the mantra "we play what we want," and given a single-syllable male name (in Chicago, it's "Jack-FM"; I think Bloomington has one called "Chuck-FM"); the playlist for this station seems to be an exact facsimile of a random playlist circa 1986 to 1991 from an old Peoria station called KZ-93, which all the kids listened to back in the day (you know who you are), intermixed with the odd Wall of Voodoo cut or "Lunatic Fringe". It can be entertaining for a while, but it's still run by robots. Chicago has one station that isn't run by robots, not that it does it any favors not being run by robots; I'm talking about XRT, which I described at the urging of a noted XRT critic as being like that one guy you know who's kind of cool and was into that mix you made him with Sufjan Stevens and PJ Harvey on it who still bores you with an umpteenth retelling of story about how he went to Summerfest and saw Dave Matthews Band open for Hootie and the Blowfish and how great it was. All that's left in this landscape is NPR, which is all I listen to on the radio.

Sorry. I got sidetracked there for a moment. The reason I launched into all that was to say that this list doesn't include Kelly Clarkson, or J-Lo, or whatever else kind of crap I don't even know the name of (Hannah Montana, I guess?), because I don't ever have to listen to it, and I don't bother trying. I guess that's a good reason to never become a professional music critic. I never even think about straying away from the public radio sector of the radio dial, unless it's to flip over to AM to listen to the Cubs.

So for me, the worst albums of the year have all come from artists whose previous work I've enjoyed, and from who I have come to respect a certain level of quality. They're kind of like disappointing sequels to great movies.

Here they are in no particular order:

Arcade Fire - Neon Bible

I don't dislike this this album, but I don't feel like listening to it too often, which wasn't the case with Funeral, which I listened to for a couple of weeks straight. I think it's a case of trying to follow a classic, near-universally revered record with one that couldn't possible live up to its predecessor. And this doesn't really say anything about this record or this band, but the amount of hype surrounding them has drained some of my interest for them; I mean, I love David Bowie, and really like Bruce Springsteen, but I think it's still premature to start trying to shove them into your category, great as their first album was, and OK as this one is. Part of it also had to do with seeing them play Lollapalooza a couple summers ago, at the peak of the Funeral hype, and being put off by the showiness of their performance. I got real sick of the one guy whose whole job in the band seems to be monkeying around on stage and beating up the other guy in the band who looks like Napoleon Dynamite. I thought at the time that they had reached a point where they were going to have to do more by way of playing their instruments than banging them around in order to prove that their fame had more to do with the music than hype. And when Neon Bible came out, I saw a bunch of reviews that trotted out the old saw about them being more of a "live" band than a studio band--hence, you get more out of bloated, overblown anthems when you see a guy beating the crap out of Napoleon Dynamite. See, that stuff doesn't last forever, but it might get you in the hall of fame. This isn't a bad record, but they sound like they've gotten puffed up on richer meals than they could previously afford and the hype that comes along with being David Bowie's favorite band, which by the way, did nothing to prevent The Pixies or Grandaddy from breaking up, and didn't do much to sell their albums either.

Interpol - Our Love to Admire

I have to admit that I didn't even finish listening to this one. The formula doesn't work anymore. And "The Heinrich Maneuver" doesn't have a thing to do with a point guard for the Chicago Bulls, who coincidentally doesn't have "it" anymore either. This one bums me out, because I loved their first two albums.

Modest Mouse - We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank

This one wasn't much of a surprise, because I hated Good News for People Who Love Bad News. They say that this band is better because Johnny Marr is in it. I'm not the biggest Smiths fan in the world, but can anyone point out exactly what Johnny Marr adds to Modest Mouse? He's regarded by some as one of the greatest guitarists who ever lived, but all I can hear is Isaac Brock.

Band of Horses - Cease to Begin

Like Neon Bible, I don't really dislike this album, more that it's hard for me to listen to it and wish it was more like its much better predecessor. It may grow on me eventually, but any more something has to grab me right away before I want to move on the tons of other stuff on my iPod that I haven't listened to yet.

The Shins - Wincing the Night Away

Not so much bad as just disappointing. Other than the single, "Phantom Limb," which is stellar and will easily be the third or fourth best track on this band's eventual greatest hits album, the whole thing to me sounds fussy and overproduced. A band that relies on hooks as much as The Shins is in a sorry state when they produce an album with minimal hooks. Put it this way: when they appeared on Saturday Night Live in support of this record, they played "Phantom Limb" and "New Slang," which was a highlight on Oh, Inverted World and the Garden State soundtrack. You could say it was an attempt to kindle interest in people who didn't know the band but remember them as the ones with that one song from that one movie, but what does it say about the album they were supposedly on SNL to promote?

The New Pornographers - Challengers

This was a huge disappointment in my eyes. The whole thing just drags and drags and drags, until Dan Bejar shows up and tries to inject a little of his mojo. But it's too little, too late. Call me a lazy fan, but I don't care who you are: it's OK to change the formula (see Kid A et. al.), but the material has to make it worth your audience's time to try and get used to your "new direction". And if you've got Neko Case on the clock--in my opinion, the finest vocalist working anywhere in recorded music right now--don't beat around the bush and make her a glorified back-up vocalist. Sheesh.

So that's my opinion anyway. What were your least favorite records of 2007? Was it the kind of stuff that gets played on the radio? 'Cause I don't know about that stuff. Snark away, I implore you.

Oh, Hello There!

2007-12-11T19:13:00.000-06:00

Oh! Hi there. Seems like I've been gone for some time. How long has it been? Almost eight months? Whew. Time really flies, doesn't it?

Well, I know it has been quite some time, but I'm back now, and that's all that matters. I would like to promise you that I'll be back again tomorrow, or a week from now, but I can't promise that, so let's just focus on now and worry about later when it's later. OK?

Where have I been? Oh, I'm still here, where I've always been. I still work at New Deal University. It's fine. It's not perfect, but no job ever is. Honestly, I have a job doing what I enjoy doing, and more often than not it feels like I really help people. How many people can say that about their job. Right. So I've got no complaints really. We even started a blog, so you can say that I'm getting paid to blog. But not for this blog.

What's new with me? Well, I'm a father now. I used to think it was weird too, but I can't imagine it being any other way at this point. He's great. He's lots of fun to be around. He can sit up, but he can't crawl yet. I think he inherited his daddy's useless hair, so we'll call him Bedheaded Jr. Hopefully he'll take everything else after Mrs. Bedheaded.

Why did I come back? I missed this, I guess. It's a weird feeling. Sort of like standing in the doorway of this massive, darkened room, like a warehouse or something, and having a boring, one-sided conversation with someone who may or may not be standing on the other side of the room. Plus people I really respect are doing it, so there's a part of me that wants to keep up with people who inspire me. There are even some people who said they kind of liked it. Go figure.

And there's the music. Man, the music. I had to do something. I couldn't keep up with it any other way. I guess I blame the iPod. It seems anymore that my taste in music is defined by the need to get more new stuff in my iPod. It's sad because I only listen to most things once, and sometimes not even once, but I just have to hear it all, and at the very least to have it on my hard drive in case I want to listen to it at some point in the future. I'm really picky about my hard drive. All of the folders need to be named accurately, and I run all of the mp3s through a tagging database that automatically finds the correct track names and re-tags the files, and only after that's been done to I drag it into iTunes. I'd say it has less to do with being a librarian and more to do with OCD. And I want to have the entire album. I'm not interested in single tracks. I don't want to devote an entire folder to a single track. Do I feel guilty? Not really. I consider myself to be a "superconsumer" of music. I want to listen to darn near everything. If you could categorize the kind of music I like to listen to, which I said is just about everything, and consider the fact that I have an insatiable desire to listen to absolutely everything that interests me, then I think I would be in something like the 99.9th percentile of music listeners. If I could make up for it in any way, I guess it would be to write about what I'm listening to here on this blog. It would be hard to write a whole lot about everything, so I'll just write what I can about the stuff that makes a real impression on me. I wish I could say more about the music I liked in a way that made it sound really great and made everyone else want to listen to it, but it's hard for me to do that in a way that's really clever, so I'm going to do the best I can.

Lately I've enjoyed the hell out of the new Black Mountain album. I've listened to it twice, and you can tell I really enjoyed something if I listen to it twice. I know, it's not out yet. But watch for it--it's awesome. It's a shame it won't come out until January, because if it came out now, I think it would be on just about everybody's list of the year's best albums. I know, I can't believe we're already seeing those lists. It feels like Halloween was last week. Well anyway, here's a track from the new Black Mountain album. They said I could share it with you, so here it is.

Black Mountain - "Tyrants"
From In The Future [Jagjaguwar, 2008]

I know, there's so much to talk about. And I really do want to tell you everything. I'm going to do my best and be a good blogger and come back here and tell you everything that's going on with me. I guess the one thing I wanted to say more than anything is that, you know, it's not going to get much better than this. I've come to terms with that. I could say that this is going to make me a better writer, but I've come to realize that this is about as good a job as I'm ever going to do at writing. More than anything else, I've always wanted to be thought of as an "intellectual." I've given up on wanting that, or any kind of thing like that. To be honest with you, I'm not really much of an intellectual, and I'm not really what one could call a "smart person." I think I've sustained too many blows to the head to be really intelligent. I'm not kidding. I've been hit in the head so many times, hard enough to make my think my skull was going to cave in, that I think it's a matter of time before I start twitching and drooling on a regular basis. I wish I was kidding, I really do. It helps that I have a thick forehead, another thing the boy has seemingly inherited from his daddy, but honestly, how much can one person take as far as head trauma goes before that head stops working? I'm getting a headache just thinking about it.

See, now I've gone and said too much. And I haven't even asked how you were doing.

Disgusting

2007-03-20T14:05:00.000-05:00

I have been pretty disgusted with a news story that came out recently here in Chicago. "Allegedly," a woman killed her 5-year-old daughter by punching her in the face and beating her head against a wall, and then promptly gave birth to a baby boy, her eighth child.

Investigators have said that the girl was routinely tortured by the mother; she had cigarette burns on her skin, ligature marks on her ankles from being tied in a closet when the mother felt like leaving the home, burn marks on her back from scalding water and/or oil, black eyes from being punched in the face--a regular occurence, apparently--a broken nose, and marks that investigators believe were made when the girl was beaten with a cord upon her abdomen and legs.

To make matters worse, the other six children were encouraged to beat the girl--something a Cook County public guardian calls "a classic example of an abuse phenomenon where only one child is targeted by parents, but the others pay a terrible price....All of these kids, to an extent, they were abused, essentially raised in a climate of violence, taught violence....From my perspective, all of these kids are in the same boat." One of the girl's siblings explained: "Everyone hit Melanie because she touched our things."

I said it was disgusting, didn't I? It gets worse. The six surviving children were ordered to clean up the house before police arrived. When the police arrived and surveyed the scene, the mother pointed to one of her other daughters and announced, "She did it."

To be quite honest, I have been more disturbed by this story than I have been disturbed by anything I can remember for some time. Part of it could be explained by the fact that I'm about to become a parent myself. Lately, it has been hard for me to even see fictionalized accounts of children in peril.

The whole sorry scene is disgusting enough due to the gory details, but what's also disgusting is the fact that this waste of flesh upon which the word "mother" is wasted is only twenty-nine years old. Yet she had so many children that she popped an eighth out near about the same time she was murdering one of her remaining seven. Here I am about to turn 31, and I'm just getting around to welcoming my first offspring into the world. We want to have more, but it's a safe bet it will be a good two or three years before we start trying for offspring #2. You hear about so many people in the world who want so desperately to be parents but cannot for whatever reason, who have so much love to give to a child, and then there's this disgusting waste of life to make the whole thing even more tragic.

I believe myself to be pretty liberal politically, to the point that I identify with politically liberal stances that I would not choose for myself--for instance, I am pro-choice, but I think that abortion is horrible. I am also against the death penalty, but stories like this make it hard for me to stay true to that belief.

I think that the death penalty is a wasteful, ineffective, morally indefensible anachronism. One of my rationalizations is that it does not seem to be an effective deterrent, nor an appropriate penalty for the often horrendous crimes for which it is enforced. I believe that spending the remainder of one's natural life locked in prison, forced to while away day after day in institutionalized repetition, while people living often just yards away are able to live peaceful, law-abiding lives is far worse a punishment than being humanely put to sleep.

Having this position may make me out to be some sort of forward-thinking, humane person. I think it's probably more to do with my thinking the death penalty, if it is to be an effective punishment, should be less humane. If trading death for death is to be eye-for-an-eye and tooth-for-a-tooth, let it truly be eye-for-an-eye and tooth-for-a-tooth.

It probably makes me a horrible person for suggesting such a thing, but I think that the above serves as a perfect case for such biblical punishment.

After hearing about all of the terrible things this "mother" did to her own child, does it not seem appropriate to wish the exact same damage visited upon her own worthless person? Who would cry for humanity at such a scenario, save for this wicked person's own mother, who in doing so would demonstrate far more motherly humanity than this other "mother" visited upon her child during her bitter, brief lifetime?

Proposing the invention of this kind of institutionalized retribution, it almost goes without saying, would institutionalize brutality on scale dwarfing the brutality currently at work in our own system of capital punishment. But it goes a long way toward suggesting an appropriate punishment for this worthless person, at least in my mind. So consider this: collect a detailed account of the torture and abuse suffered by that poor, defenseless child, and there you would have a schedule of horror ready to inflict upon this vile waste of carbon for the last five years of her worthless life.

Brutal? Inhumane? I think you're right. But again, consider what she'll be facing if she does in fact get the death penalty, and tell me you don't think my proposal fits the crime far better.

In lieu of that Pol Pot-esque scenario ever seeing daylight in this country, the only solace left someone as disgusted by this story as I am is the old folk tale of the hatred other prison inmates feel for those prisoners who are convicted and jailed for abusing children. According to news accounts, this might already be taking place. "[H]er lawyer suggested [the "mother"] is in danger in jail....[She] has been shouted at and given threatening looks by inmates in the Maywood lockup where she has been held since her arrest." One wonders if the prisoners read newspapers or watch the evening news, or even read blogs.

The death penalty, I argue, can never be morally justified, just as a moral society would never endorse the vengeful punishment that I wish would be visited upon this deserving piece of scum. Therefore, a moral society should abolish the death penalty. Let the evil scum of the Earth rot in prison, a place with its own sense of morality and punishment unknown to those who never cross its gates.

Today, I learned a word of Spanish

2007-02-28T22:39:00.000-06:00

Dear hospital complaint person,

On Wednesday evening my wife and I were attending a Breastfeeding class at Illinois Masonic. Our letter directed us to check in at the hospital's main information desk before going to the classroom. This was at about 6:30 - 6:45 pm. The two young men directed us towards the education center, and as we began to walk away, I heard one of them utter the word "cabron," in what I felt was our general direction. Neither of us are Spanish-speakers, so when we went home, we Googled the word, and discovered it had a number of unsavory connotations. This made us upset. I know that if I were to make a similar kind of utterance at my own job in the direction of any of my patrons, I would likely face some sort of discipline in the near future. We are very disappointed that this occurred, and hope that we do not face similar situations as we visit Illinois Masonic in the months leading up to the delivery of our first child.

Sincerely, Bedheaded

The writing and sending of the above is a big deal to me, because whenever something like this happens to me, I spend a lot of time ranting and raving about it. This is really the first time I've decided to direct that anger into a complaint letter. My fear is that from this point forward, I'll be one of those people that writes letters whenever anything happens to them. Maybe the next step in that progression is to become one of those people who calls their lawyer whenever something happens to them.

To prove I'm not that much of a "cabron," here are some choice tracks from Mr. Secret Agent Man, Johnny Rivers, and a bonus cut from my favorite Rolling Stones record (yes, way more than Exile on Main Street, which would come in second for me...what can I say, I'm a sucker for big pop hooks, especially big pop hooks specifically requested by the Lord of the Flies). You know, for having as successful a pop music career as Johnny Rivers had, he sure had a warbly, almost-tuneless voice.

Johnny Rivers - "Whiter Shade of Pale"

Johnny Rivers - "Baby I Need Your Lovin'"

Johnny Rivers - "Summer Rain"
From The Johnny Rivers Anthology: 1964-1977 [Rhino, 1991]

The Rolling Stones - "She's a Rainbow"
From Their Satanic Magesties Request [ABKCO, 1967]

The only thing we have to fear is....AAAAHHHH! FEAR!!!!

2007-02-02T12:03:00.000-06:00

Remember 9/11? Remember how frequently after 9/11 the following proposition would be made: "if we allow X to happen, then the terrorists have won"? Would it be overstating things to say "if we allow a hare-brained marketing campaign for a stoner-friendly cartoon show to bring a major American city to its knees, then the terrorists have won?" I didn't think so, so here goes: the terrorists have won. Which is amazing, because I sincerely doubt the terrorists would be that into Aqua Teen Hunger Force, though their interest in Danish cartoons has been noted by several major media outlets.

Though if you've seen those Mooninites in action, maybe one ought to be afraid...I mean, their vertical leap is beyond all measurement. We should be relieved that it was Ignigknot and not Err....

You know, I don't want to seem like I'm belittling what is obviously genuine panic and fear being felt by Bostonians, but when you hear stuff like the following being said by apparently reasonable people, you have to marvel at the hysteria this little episode has caused:

"Just a little over a mile away from the placement of the first device, a group of terrorists boarded airplanes and launched an attack on New York City," [Boston] police Commissioner Edward Davis said in an interview with The Associated Press.

"The city clearly did not overreact. Had we taken any other steps, we would have been endangering the public," he said. (Link)

Well, not to make anybody panic any more than the already are, but the Chicago Tribune just reported that actual, honest-to-goodness pipe bombs, or as they call them in Iraq, "improvised explosive devices", were sent to offices in Chicago and Kansas City the last few days:

Though [Kansas City Postal Inspector Don] Obritsch described Wednesday's bomb as an "actual I.E.D., improvised explosive device,'' he said it appeared more designed to frighten than kill.

"This was the real deal, but it was not primed to go off,'' Obritsch said. ``To some extent, it was a device meant to scare people.'' (Link)

Are the people of America scared? I should be scared...one of those bombs was sent to a building not one block north of the one I work in. But I don't know, I'm not home to see if MSNBC or any other major media outlet is currently providing blanket coverage of this apparently genuine attempt to strike fear in the hearts of everyday Americans. However, I wouldn't be at all surprised if any of those media outlets are currently devoting precious airtime dissecting the aftermath of the brazen Mooninite terror campaign.

Takin' the El to Hell

2007-01-31T21:53:00.000-06:00

When I last wrote about being glad to leave the city, I don't think I adequately conveyed my distaste for the El. There are so many bad things to say about the el, I don't think that one post would be enough to cover them all. But I'll do my best.

I ride the Brown line during both "peak periods" of the day. In the morning I have a good chance of getting a seat, because I live further north on the line. When I first started riding on the El, I was shy about taking seats. It felt weird sitting so close to strangers, especially if the the car was relatively empty. I've gotten over that. Standing on the El seems kind of romantic if you've seen people do it in movies, but having to stand around ass-to-ass with the general public while the train sits idle on the track for fifteen minutes without explanation is about as romantic as visiting a slaughterhouse in July.

I head straight for a seat when I see one; I prefer the single seats, if there are any, and if not, I try to get an outside seat in the middle of the car. If I have to stand, I go right to the middle-most part of the car. When I used to think standing was cool, I would park myself right near the doors. This seems to make sense at first, because there appears to be the most standing room near the doors. However, whatever space there is near the doors quickly disappears once more people get on, and the space near the doors starts to look like a can of human sardines. If you stand in the middle of the car, you'll still be standing close to people, but you won't be embracing them. I've often been in El cars where the people standing in the middle have a reasonable amount of elbow room--enough to read a paper or book while standing--while the people standing near the doors are entangled in a cheek-to-jowl death-embrace. One time back in my door-standing days I had to ride between stops with some dude literally embracing me: I had my back to the plexiglass divider, and he was stuck without a pole to grasp, so he resorted to grabbing the top of the plexiglass with both hands. So I spent the time with dude's arms wrapped around my head and dude's chest flush with mine. Some people might find that romantic, but I didn't at the time.

One thing I don't understand at all is when people won't take a seat when the train is full. People will be standing shoulder-to-shoulder, and someone will leave a seat, and no one standing around it will take the seat. It could be because the men standing near it feel especially chivalrous, but the women towards whom those noble impulses are directed find it insulting. I don't know, maybe they just happen to be people who really like standing--like I said, I don't understand it at all. All I know is that it is one of the most awkward situations one can encounter on the El. It simply should not happen.

When a seat opens on a train that is packed with people, for goodness sakes, somebody take the damned seat. If you don't have especially strong feelings about sitting, go ahead and make furtive half-gestures toward others if you feel like offering it to someone nearby, but if your half-gesture is rebuked, just sit down in the seat. The reason this is necessary is an elemental reason: just as nature abhors a vacuum, the el abhors empty space. When I ride the El, the unlucky people who live between the Diversey and Merchandise Mart stops have to pummel their way through the glut of people packed in the spaces near the doors, and some of them have to wait until the next train comes. If you are standing near the middle of the train car and you can see this life-or-death struggle taking place whilst a perfectly good seat is open next to you, you must be some kind of sadist, or an agoraphobe, or claustrophobe, or your knees don't bend or something. People, please, do your fellow Chicagaoans a favor, and fill that gap.

Reference Question of the Day

2007-01-29T09:37:00.000-06:00

Today's fun reference question came not fifteen minutes after the library opened. A gentleman called and asked, "Can you use the internet?"

"Yes," I said, "I can use the internet...are you asking whether we have the internet available here?"

"No," he said, "I wanted to find out whether Mayor Daley had 50% of the popular vote in the primary election."

I thought about it for a minute. "Has the primary happened yet?" I asked.

"No, it's February 24th."

"Well, it would be kind of hard to find out if he has 50% of the public vote, because the primary election hasn't happened yet."

"Oh," he said, "oh, OK."

"So you'll want to call us back after the primary election, and then we'll know whether he has 50% of the vote," I said.

"Ok, I will." Then he hung up.

Actually, there are quite a few bloggable things happening to me...

2007-01-25T19:26:00.000-06:00

My esteemed former colleague the Repressed Librarian wanted to know if my minty new layout meant that I would begin posting again. Well, yes, and frankly, I've wanted to put up a lot more than I have, which would be nothing, but it seems that I've got the most inspiration to blog when I'm furthest away from a computer. When I actually do sit down and think about blogging, the inspiration usually evaporates.

Oddly enough, there are quite a few blog-worthy things happening to me these days. The first you already know about: my being hired by the New Deal University Library. The spring semester started this week, so we are busy acting like librarians again.

The second thing is something that RL already knows, but the rest of my imaginary readers likely don't: Mrs. Bedheaded (who would hate being called "Mrs.", but I haven't come up with a clever handle for her yet, and she hasn't provided me with one, despite the fact that she's registered with Blogger...oops, did I just tell the world that?) is pregnant, and we found out that it's a boy. He is due May 22. We haven't come up with a name yet, but we're close.

The third thing happened just the other day. We made an offer on a townhouse in the suburbs, and the offer was accepted--no counter-offer. So I can check off another item on the list of stressful life-changing events that I've had in the past half-year. We're leaving the city, and I for one am glad to go. I've had it with crowded El trains, lugging laundry up and down four flights of stairs, parking a block away from home...it's just not charming any more. Obviously I'll still be coming into town to work at NDUL, but instead I'll be coming in and out on the super-smooth Metra. We're looking to close around my birthday, March 26.

So I've got a lot of things on my plate about which I should be providing regular updates. In the meantime, I've got the Bedheaded Mixtape operational on the sidebar. I tried a bunch of different Flash radio players, but couldn't get any of them to work right. I love how the people that create these cool web apps release them with the most beligerently non-existant instructions this side of a stereo manual. I stumbled upon the one that's there and was pleased to find that it works like any other widget...no coding necessary. It's a little buggy--it doesn't seem to buffer very well--but it does what I want it to do. I put a bunch of tunes in there just to get it started, but from now on I'll put them there as well as put a link to the track in a new post, with a little explanatory info. Here are a few that are particularly tasty:

The Besnard Lakes - "Disaster"
From The Besnard Lakes are the Dark Horse [Jagjaguwar, 2007]

Loney, Dear - "Saturday Waits"
From Loney, Noir [Sub Pop, 2007]

Enjoy them. I promise I'll let you know what's happening.

Buy music: The Besnard Lakes / Loney, Dear

Damaged Goods For Sale Becomes Eclectic

2006-12-28T15:41:00.000-06:00

I hope the holidays find you well, my imaginary readers. To help make it happen, I have a few holiday-themed songs to share with you. At the same time, let me announce the newest iteration of my shambolic internet franchise. From this point forward, Damaged Goods For Sale will be a (sometimes) audioblog. That's right...on a less than regular basis, I will post an audio track or two to supplement the scattershot blog content you have come to not expect to see here.

So without further ado, I bring you the debut selection, themed for the holidays. Of course the holidays are half over, but you've yet to chide me for my lack of punctuality, haven't you, dear imaginary readers?

Radar Bros. - "This Xmas Eve"

Harry Nilsson - "Remember (Christmas)"

Crooked Fingers - "New Drink for the Old Drunk"

The first two tracks have little to do with Christmas, and the third has little do to with anything but drinking, so I've included it as my tribute to the new year festivities.

Buy their music: Radar Bros. / Harry Nilsson / Crooked Fingers

Congress is ours

2006-11-08T22:37:00.000-06:00

This rules. The next two years are gonna be fun.

Believe the Hype...

2006-11-07T21:47:00.000-06:00

...and go see Borat as soon as you possibly can. Every seat in the theater was filled when we went. I am not exaggerating when I say that this is one of the funniest movies I have ever seen. It got to the point where it hurt to laugh. I was in tears. A lady sitting behind me evidently didn't have any clue what she was in for, and sounded like she was experiencing an acute combination of ecstacy and pain. Every next moment she would be going "Ohhhh.....nooooo.....OOOOHHHHH!!!....oh no....." This would have been really annoying if I hadn't been laughing myself nearly to death the whole time. This carried on behind me until a certain part in the movie, and believe me, you'll know what part I mean if you've seen it, where I believe she was stunned into silence and uttered not a peep for the remainder of the film.

Back Da Bears...Grow A Moustache

2006-11-06T23:11:00.000-06:00

There reaches a point in every championship season where something special occurs, a transcendent moment where boundaries are crossed and legends are made. The Chicago Bears, if you ask nearly anyone in the land of Chicago, may very well be in the midst of such a season.

But have the Bears yet reached that threshold of transcendence? One might claim that it was crossed when Rex Grossman started the season with 262 yards against the Packers, firmly closing the door on a dismal preseason. One might claim that it came after that miracle comeback in the desert, a game which featured a number of transcendent moments, from Devin Hester's punt return for a touchdown, to twin fumble returns for touchdowns by Mike Brown and Charles "Peanut" Tillman, to the Cardinals' Neil Rackers, a Pro Bowl-caliber field goal kicker just a season previous, booting a floppy miss to seal a historically improbable comeback win. One might go so far as to claim that a threshold will be crossed in the Meadowlands on Sunday night if the Bears can manage to shake their miserable loss to the lowly Miami Dolphins and beat the suddenly red-hot New York Giants.

Oftentimes it is impossible to pinpoint that exact moment when a team goes from a contender to a champion until long after the dust has settled and the final score goes in the record books. But what is certain is that along the way to the realm of legend, champions must make sacrifices, just as the aforementioned Mike Brown has again sacrificed his body and suffered a season ending injury, and just as Jerry Azumah did, sacrificing so much that he was forced to retire before this potentially legendary season could even begin. What's more, true contenders must elevate their game to a level where only excellence is tolerated. The Chicago Bears, under the wise and watchful gaze of Lovie Smith, will be doing their part to bring the Lombardi trophy back to the house of Halas. In my opinion, it is time for the fans of the Chicago Bears to do their part as well.

To help cheer my beloved Bears along to what I hope will be a Super Bowl win in Miami this January, I have decided to grow a full Superfan-style moustache, and I will not shave it off until either the Bears win it all, or when they are eliminated for good, whichever comes first. I am not doing this out of any sense of irony, although like in most things I do, I am aiming for a few laughs along the way. I truly hope that by this small gesture, I can help supply some little amount of positive energy to raise the Bears' spirit, and hopefully there are more Superfans out there that will do the same.

This is where you come in. I have created three buttons that can be posted in any blog, Myspace, email signature, or whatever. Please, even if you can't or won't grow a moustache, copy whichever of these buttons you like best, paste it wherever you want it to be seen, and link it to this post so that other Superfans will understand and join the cause. If you can grow a moustache and will grow one, by all means let those strands grow. Just as Chicago was full of moustaches in 1985, let there also be a city of moustaches in 2006, and let's ride those moustaches all the way to the Super Bowl!

Disclaimer: The NFL, the Chicago Bears, Mike Ditka, William "Refrigerator" Perry, and Kyle Orton are in no way affiliated with this effort. Any pictures, likenesses, or mojo contained herein are utilized in the spirit of fair use and good clean fun, and anyhow any attention this effort might happen to engender will likely be forgotten as soon as it occurs, if it happens to occur at all.

Soundtrack for quitting

2006-11-05T10:22:00.000-06:00

When I was leaving Suck-Ass Online University after my last day, I heard this song in my car. It was appropriate. The band is called Wolf Parade, and the song is "I'll Believe in Anything." The song's coda perfectly encapsulates my experience in that torture chamber of corporate education:

Nobody knows you, and nobody gives a damn anyway.

Eyebrow revolt!

2006-11-04T13:32:00.000-06:00

My eyebrows are out of control! There are little thatches of eyebrow hair that get a lot longer than the rest, and they are going in all directions. For the most part these thatches grow at the arch points on the top of my eyebrows. These points are very defined on my face, and in the past I have been able to make a dramatic statement simply by raising one eyebrow. Part of me thinks it's cool, but then sometimes they will just be all wrong. Today, after I took a shower, I noticed certain portions of them were hanging like long hair. That wasn't too cool. I've started plucking these extra long ones when they start misbehaving, but they seem to come back pretty regularly. I'm a little paranoid that I will pluck too many of them and they won't grow back, and I don't want to lose that sharp arch in my eyebrows. I'm not sure whether I should be proactive with my eyebrows, or let them grow wild, like Andy Rooney has. It would be a lot cooler if I had white hair, and if my hair grew out in a sort of crazy white-guy afro like Einstein's, or Kramer's. But that's not gonna happen. Hair is such a bother. I wish I didn't have to deal with it.

You Be My Imaginary Readers

2006-11-03T14:22:00.000-06:00

Oh my oh my, I could not be more excited about Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. All the hype has been right up my alley. He doesn't have to even say anything funny, just seeing him makes me laugh. Even the commercial for the soundtrack is funny, especially the part when he plays portable synthesizer on "You Be My Wife":

And don't forget his press conference in front of the White House:
,
I'm so excited about seeing Borat: CLOAFMBGNK that I almost don't want to see it.

By the way, you can expect a lot more of these random, pointless blog posts as I have decided to take part in NaBloPoMo, which rolls off the tongue, doesn't it? The point is to write a blog post every day in the month of November. I'm inspired by my former comrade from Suck-Ass Online University, the Repressed Librarian. I am also two days late from starting, as is my wont.

Oh, I didn't tell you, my fair imaginary readers, that I no longer work at Suck-Ass Online University, did I? To be fair, I never overtly referred to it in any previous posts. The closest I came was this awfully turgid entry, which I wrote after I accepted the job. So many bad things happened there, I could have been making your hair curly on a daily basis. Somehow, I just couldn't bring myself to catalogue the daily horror of helping provide questionable education in a soul-sucking corporate hell-hole. RL did her part, so a lot of our travails are listed there. But were out of there now, which is all that matters.

Now I'm working at an actual academic library in an actual, honest-to-goodness university. In the spirit of anonymity, I will henceforth refer to my place of employment as New Deal University, in light its being the only university in the Land of Chicago named after a President (real hard to figure out which one I mean, right?) Like RL, I don't want to guarantee that all, or even a majority of my posts will be about my work at the New Deal University Library, but I will try and mention it every once in awhile, because goodness knows there aren't hardly enough library blogs out there in the world.

I am a scientist, I seek to understand me

2006-11-03T11:12:00.000-06:00

You Are An INTJ

The Scientist

You have a head for ideas - and you are good at improving systems.

Logical and strategic, you prefer for everything in your life to be organized.

You tend to be a bit skeptical. You're both critical of yourself and of others.

Independent and stubborn, you tend to only befriend those who are a lot like you.

You would make an excellent scientist, engineer, or programmer.

What's Your Personality Type?

Obligatory 9/11 Post

2006-09-12T14:19:00.000-05:00

Even though it's a day late, there are two 9/11-related things that I'd like to spotlight. First is this rather lengthy article from the New York Times about the sad, incompetent effort to redevelop ground zero. It is a super long article, but nowhere else will you read or see as authoritative and complete an account of the all-around clusterfuck that has resulted in ground zero still being a huge hole in the ground to this day, no buildings, no memorial, nothing but politics and bureaucracy at its finest. For the record, I have my own idea for redeveloping ground zero: fill it full of dirt, and plant grass and trees on top of it. It's not flashy, but it gets the job done. Plant a tree for every person that died there.

The Hole in the City's Heart

The second bit comes from Keith Olbermann, who I have a big ol' manly crush on after last night's episode of Countdown. I've only started watching him recently, being that I don't have any good cable channels, but I have been routinely entertained when I catch it. Last night he wrapped up with a withering indictment of our erstwhile "commander in chief," citing the Gettysburg Address and The Twilight Zone like only he can. The result is, let me say, awesome. Enjoy.

Rock Taxonomy, pt. 1: Rhythm Guitar

2006-08-15T15:49:00.000-05:00

You check out Guitar George he knows all the chords
Mind he's strictly rhythm he doesn't want to make it cry or sing
And an old guitar is all he can afford
When he gets up under the lights to play his thing

Dire Straits, "Sultans of Swing"

The guitar is the "prestige" instrument of rock. When seen strapped on any manner of rock performer, it stands as a symbol of credibility--nearly anybody feels like they can sing (witness the popularity of karaoke and its bastard offspring, American Idol), but if you can play guitar, you're a musician, you're cool.

In rock music, guitarists fall into two categories: lead guitarists and rhythm guitarists. Following the idea of guitar being rock's prestige instrument, guitarists who play lead enjoy higher levels of prestige. Just as the violin virtuoso receives more acclaim and flinged roses than does the second chair violin, the rhythm guitarist toils in the shadow of the lead guitarist. In the most typical of rock ensembles, one can expect to hear a solo on every one of the group's songs. One posits that the guitarist who can solo is the more skilled, more gifted guitarist; both the rhythm guitarist and the lead guitarist can play chords in sequence, after all, but if the rhythm guitarist could master scales and modes as effortlessly as the lead, then he or she wouldn't be a rhythm guitarist, would they?

Not necessarily. Rhythm guitar playing is no less virtuosic than playing lead. The very name of attached to this type of guitar playing--rhythm--disproves such reasoning: the difficulty of creating and sustaining rhythm should be easily appreciated by those who have little or none.

The Beatles did many things to change popular music. Though the invention of rock music is often ascribed to Bill Haley and the Comets (incorrectly or not; one could go as far back as Robert Johnson to find the starting point of rock), it goes without saying that the Beatles permanently defined the rules of rock music. After the Beatles, the prototypical rock ensemble would consist of the following makeup: lead guitarist, rhythm guitarist, bass guitarist, and drummer. Any of them could sing, and whoever sang lead was likely the guy who wrote the song. Therefore, as the Beatles are seen as the protypical rock band, John Lennon becomes the protypical rhythm guitarist, and sets many of the standards for rhythm guitar playing to this day. John Lennon never played a solo, but in some songs his rhythm took center stage, notably at the beginning of "I Feel Fine," which starts with popular music's first known instance of guitar feedback on a recording, and kicks off with John's driving rhythm, which nearly sounds like a hard-driving gospel organ. Lennon also establishes the rhythm guitarist as a vocalist. While none of the Beatles could be considered the group's "lead singer," Lennon sets the standard for the prototypical rhythm guitarist needing to, at the very least, serve as a harmonizing or backup singer.

Just as the Beatles defined rock music, it could be said that the Rolling Stones refined the form. While John Lennon sets the initial standard for rhythm guitar playing, it must be said that Keith Richards set the standard by which all future rhythm guitarists would be judged. The reason for this could first be ascribed to the Stones' setting the standard for rock music itself by taking rock away from the polished sounds of white popular music and rooting it in the hard-edged rhythms of electric blues, which again points to blues legends such as Robert Johnson, Leadbelly, John Lee Hooker, and Bo Diddley as the true originators of rock music, and indeed, the unsung legends of rhythm guitar. As the inheritor of that legacy, Keith Richards should rightly be regarded as the greatest rhythm guitarist in the history of rock music. The proof is not only in his rhythmic prowess, but in the importance he forever bestowed on the cornerstone of rhythm guitar playing--the riff, or as the opening bars of "(I Can't Get No) Satisfaction" are forever known, "The Riff." What's more, as the "coolest" member of one of the coolest bands in rock history, Keith Richards established standards of personal style for rhythm guitarists that still endure--silently stalking his side of the stage, idly puffing on a cigarette, piping in harmonizing vocals whenever they're needed, taking lead vocal duty once in a great while.

It seems downright essential that the rhythm guitarist of any band be able to contribute vocals in some fashion, be it as co-lead in a group of singers a la Lennon for the Beatles, backup vocalist and occasional lead a la Richards for the Stones, or as most often seen, lead singer of a group, such as Lou Reed, fronting the Velvet Underground or solo. With Reed, we must note the amount of seriousness he puts into his guitar playing, not letting his duty to the rhythm fall victim to his prowess as a vocalist. As with many things Lou Reed does, his insistence on contributing as a guitarist could be seen as pomposity, but in the context of rhythm guitar playing, it is essential. A lead singer can be a rhythm guitarist, but it is necessary for he or she to do more than contribute the occasional chord progression--rhythm guitar must in some way contribute to the song as a whole, and above all, must carry or contribute to the rhythm of a rock song.

Other noteworthy rhythm guitarists, in no particular order:

Bob Dylan
Black Francis, The Pixies
Izzy Stradlin, Guns 'n Roses
Malcolm Young, AC/DC
Al Jardine, The Beach Boys
David Bowie
Ian Hunter, Mott the Hoople
Wayne Coyne, The Flaming Lips
Thurston Moore, Sonic Youth
Tom Verlaine, Television
Matthew Sweet

Peter Buck, R.E.M.
Robyn Hitchcock, The Soft Boys
David Byrne, The Talking Heads
Nash Kato, Urge Overkill
Tobin Sprout, Guided By Voices
Ric Ocasek, The Cars
Chrissie Hynde, The Pretenders

Did I miss your favorite rhythm guitarist? Leave a comment and post a tribute to them.

The Rock Taxonomy will continue with pt. 2: The Bass Player.

Announcing my spiffy new look, along w/ other useless info

2006-08-14T17:06:00.000-05:00

The main reason I'm writing this is to announce the debut the pretty new look of my blog. (This information is especially useless if you happen to be reading this at my MySpace Branch, where nothing has changed; if you want to see what I'm talking about, go visit the Blogger Branch.) The main reason I decided to change the template is that I screwed up my old one. I was tinkering around with the junk on the sidebar, and went a little too far. Since I don't really know how to work CSS, I just kept dithering around with tags until it looked the way I wanted it, but this time I only served to make it look totally stupid. So, I found a new one, which thankfully was coded much simpler than the old one was, and tailored it to my liking. I hope you find it pleasing, my imaginary readers. If not, well, there's always the MySpace Branch.

I hate to think of you getting upset, to drop by only to encounter such an insignificant announcement. So to whet your appetite, I've decided to give you more insigificant information. This is a meme that anyone who's anyone has already done. I filched it from Sandra's blog Not That Desperate, which is a nifty blog, if you ask me.

Bold = books I've read.
Red = I have no intention of ever reading ever in my lifetime.
Green = I've never even heard of.
Blue = I have on my list and intend to read.
Orange = I might read some day.

1. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown (Too bad intense, molten red isn't an option, to convey my intense distaste for this man and this book. I might read the book he stole his entire plot from, however: Holy Blood, Holy Grail)
2. The Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger (Somehow I've managed to miss this one, even though I did in fact live through an adolescence in the United States of America)
3. The Hitchhiker's Guide To The Galaxy - Douglas Adams
4. The Great Gatsby - F.Scott Fitzgerald
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee.
6. The Time Traveler's Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
7. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (Looks like it's right up my alley!)
8. Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince - J. K. Rowling (I don't have anything against these books; I like the movies, and I have read a book after seeing its adaptation a number of times, but it seems these movies hew too closely to the books, making it rather uninteresting to read after seeing the movie)
9. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
10. Animal Farm: A Fairy Story - George Orwell
11. Catch-22 - Joseph Heller
12. The Hobbit - J. R. R. Tolkien
13. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime - Mark Haddon
14. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
15. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
16. 1984 - George Orwell
17. Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban - J. K. Rowling (I thought the movie was fantastic - the best so far; see #8)
18. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez (Oh, how I loved this book. It messed with my mind.)
19. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden
20. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
21. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
22. Slaughterhouse 5 - Kurt Vonnegut
23. Angels and Demons - Dan Brown (This would be "never heard of", but seeing the author's name is all I need to know)
24. Fight Club - Chuck Palahniuk (I'm afraid of this guy; like, I'm afraid he's going to assault my mind)
25. Neuromancer - William Gibson
26. Cryptonomicon - Neal Stephenson
27. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
28. A Clockwork Orange - Anthony Burgess
29. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
30. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
31. The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe - C. S. Lewis
32. Middlesex - Jeffrey Eugenides
33. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
34. The Lord of the Rings - J. R. R. Tolkien
35. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
36. Good Omens - Terry Pratchett, Neil Gaiman
37. Atonement - Ian McEwan
38. The Shadow Of The Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
39. The Old Man and the Sea - Ernest Hemingway (sort of the same way I managed to live an entire adolescence without reading Catcher in the Rye, I managed to get a Bachelor's degree in English while only reading one book by Hemingway, In Our Time. Dunno, it just happened that way.)
40. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
41. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
42. Dune - Frank Herbert (I just don't see myself making the commitment necessary to read this at any point in the near future, considering all the books I already own and haven't managed to read yet. It's sad, really.)

My Life on Records: A different kind of Moon Safari

2006-08-10T14:56:00.000-05:00

Air - 10,000 Hz Legend
Astralwerks (2001)

When Air first arrived on the pop music scene, their sound was described earnestly by some as elevator music, and fit nicely in the niche of groups making so-called "space-age bachelor pad" music. That term was made most famous by Juan Garcia Esquivel, master of high-fidelity easy listening epics, who enjoyed a resurgence of interest in his work in the mid-nineties thanks to a Matt Groening-approved compilation and an appearance on the soundtrack to Four Rooms, which featured music from Esquivel acolytes Combustible Edison. Stereolab revived the phrase for their album The Groop Played "Space Age Bachelor Pad Music", Capitol Records cleaned their vaults with their staggering 18-volume Ultra Lounge series, and even the Beastie Boys got in on the act with their one-off fans-only disc The In Sound From Way Out.

Air's debut album Moon Safari coasted in smoothly on the ebb tide space-age bachelor pad music's popular revival. It floated on a plush cloud of vintage Moog synthesizers and Fender Rhodes, occasionally trimmed with french horn flourishes cribbed straight out of Burt Bacharach's wet dreams. The French duo that made up Air, Nicolas Godin and Jean-Benoît Dunckel added a touch of icy Euro-cool to their tunes with their gently cooing Gallic voices, often run through a vocoder. The lush, atmospheric sounds and moody instrumentals of Moon Safari sounded perfect for a film soundtrack, and appropriately, Air's next effort was the soundtrack to Sofia Coppola's debut film The Virgin Suicides. The EP Premier Symptomes collected their early singles, showing how they first learned the formula for rocking a french horn and a Moog in the same song, making slow-burn bliss-outs like "Le Soleil est Pres de Moi" sound like an anthem of mellow joy.

Godin and Dunckel strayed sharply from the space-age course with their third full-length album, 10,000 Hz Legend. The cover of the record seemed to depict the two gazing from a literal space-age bachelor pad perched high above Monument Valley, but the songs within could hardly be described as easy listening. The opening track sets the tone: "Electronic Performers" features a voice vocoded so heavily that it sounds less like the mellow tune-bots of Moon Safari and more like a robot grown a little weary from tinkling the mellow ivories:

We need to use envelope filters
To say how we feel
Riding on magnetic waves
We search new programs for your pleasure
I want to patch my soul on your brain
BPM controls yoour heartbeats
We are the syncronizers
We are electronic performers

The next track, "How Does it Make You Feel," would not sound out of place on Moon Safari, what with its softly intoned Fender Rhodes chords, sweetly soaring chorus, and intimately romantic lyrics, that is, if those romantics lyrics did not sound as though they were sung by a robot with the voice of a frog:

I am feeling very warm right now
Please don't disappear
I am spacing out with you
You are the most beautiful entity that I've ever dreamed of

At night I will protect you in your dreams
I will be your angel
You worry so much about not having enough time together
It makes no difference to me
I would be happy with just one minute in your arms
Let's have an extended play together
You're telling me that we live to far to love each other
But your love can stretch further than you and I can see
So, how does it make you feel?

At the end of the track, a female robot voice provides the punchline and the answer: "Well, I really think you should quit smoking."

"Radio #1" is the next track and the only single from this record, sounding like a slightly-off ELO with the chorus "If you need some fun / Some good stereo gum / Radio #1 / Brand new ears at once / Eject musical trash / Radio #1." On the next track, none other than Beck Hansen drops by the bachelor pad, sounding elegantly wasted and moved by the signature moods evoked by Air:

Golden waves
In all directions
I could lose my soul right here
Colour lights
On the runway
Makes a stranger feel unchained

"Radian," one of the two intrumentals on this record, is the only track on 10,000 Hz Legend that evokes the polish of Moon Safari. It does the space-age Moog music thing so well that it effectively answers those who wondered why this record couldn't be more like its predecessors. If Moon Safari and Virgin Suicides established Air as expert purveyors of instrumental space-age pop, then "Radian" was their capstone and ultimate acheivement in the form. It perfectly evokes a mood of quiet seduction, growing rapture, and the reflection and release that comes afterward.

The next three tracks serve to dispel the almost coital bliss evoked by "Radian," and return the record to its dominant themes: weariness, disillusion, and clausterphobia, all antithetical to the groovy vibe so often ascribed to space-age bachelor pad music. "Lucky and Unhappy" has our boys reeling from the antiseptic removal of feelings that is the byproduct of fame. "Sex Born Poison" seems to describe the perils of sex between consenting robots:

Meet my desire sensors
My atom juice of joy
You want to use my affective circuits
Run to the fire exit
Use your cooling system
You'll never reach the 7th sky today

In "People in the City," Air takes a second to step back and look at their surroundings, and they find themselves in a claustrophobic metropolis straight out of Blade Runner:

P.E.O.P.L.E.C.I.T.Y
People in the city
P.E.O.P.L.E.C.I.T.Y
People in the city

Moving, watching, working, sleeping, driving, walking, talking, smiling
Moving, watching, working, sleeping, driving, walking, talking, smiling

On the sidewalk (People in the city)
Near the street lamp (People in the city)
At the bus stop (People in the city)
Down the station (People in the city)

After all that paranoia and malaise, Godin and Dunckel once again gleefully subvert the smooth Euro-cool image they gained from their earlier recordings on "Wonder Milky Bitch", flaunting the same oddball humorous streak that "How Does it Make You Feel" revealed earlier, and replacing that song's romance with naughty innuendo:

This is the story of a country girl
Back in town from her country house
She came to me with her muddy boots
She destroyed all my carpet

You know how to do it
Wonder milky bitch
You never wear cosmetic
You don't like arithmetic

You know how to do it
Wonder milky bitch
Tasting, touching, swallowing me
Drinking me like bloody mary

Pairing a lurid jews harp with a dreamily strummed acoustic guitar, "Wonder Milky Bitch" provides an answer for anyone who ever wondered what it would sound like if Lee Hazlewood ever sang lead vocals for T.Rex.

10,000 Hz Legend goes out with a one-two punch. "Don't Be Light" could be interpreted as a statement of the album's ultimate objective, both by its title and its execution. It sounds as though Air is speeding away from the high-tech nightmare they had surrounded themselves with, alternating a rapid techno-derived synthesiser blips with raucous, overdriven guitar solos. They pause halfway through to observe the second cameo of Beck's Vagabond, returning from mellow cosmic voyage he set off for with Air's earlier help, now intoning an eerie epitaph:

Don't be light, don't be light, a-ha
Wild life
The grey surprises of our days
Singing in caves
Fabricating a new abandon
We don't see the master's hand
We bang on gold tamourines
In the cross hairs of some transient gun
Trading desires on the banquet line
La, la, la, la, la, laaaa....

"Carmel Prisoner" serves as the second instrumental and final salvo on the strange, synthetic voyage undertaken by our French duo. We don't know if they made it out, but the title and the relentless technological throb of the song makes us think they have ended up lost in some endlessly repeating pleasure circuit.

10,000 Hz Legend was greeted with confusion by critics and fans who were once wooed by the smooth electronics of Moon Safari. Rolling Stone called it a "deranged dim sum of sound: Some of it is tasty, most of it is weird and, ultimately, you will never know what your ears are eating." Describing "Radian," it complained, "There's a palpable sense of wistfulness to the track, a moody blues that repeatedly surfaces on 10,000 Hz. Legend then disappears again. But this vague angst is the only thread that runs through every song, and when Beck drops by and ruins "The Vagabond" with the same minstrel-show Prince impersonation he sported on Midnite Vultures, one begins to wonder if this isn't a compilation of electronic performers instead of an album by one band....It's nice that 10,000 Hz. Legend sounds very little like Air's masterworks Premier Symptomes and Moon Safari. Unfortunately, it also sounds like Air trying very hard not to be Air." England's NME, giving the record a 9 out of 10 but seemingly praising it with faint damnation, said "There's nothing like gratuitously trashing your public image. If Air's debut album...established them as a byword for casual style-mag chic, then its successor looks like a brazen attempt to destroy that image for good. 10,000 Hz Legend is nothing like Moon Safari, then again it doesn't really bear a resemblance to much. Instead, it's a glowing, highly ambitious, quasi-concept album that sees Air spiralling off on a wildly idiosyncratic and brilliantly insane tangent all of their own."

While being a huge fan of Moon Safari and Premier Symptomes, as well as their most recent album, the less difficult and more Moon Safari-like Talkie Walkie, I still consider 10,000 Hz Legend to be Air's best album. My reasoning revolves around the concept of evolution, at least as much as one can apply evolution to pop musicians. Popular music is riddled with excellent debut albums. When an album is delightful and effective, it leaves listeners wanting more. What makes a band really great, in my estimation, is when a group takes the expectation and promise that comes after the release of their first records, and does something unexpected: evolves, adapts, and gets better.

Witness the evolution of many great pop musicians from one touchstone album to another: The Beatles from Please Please Me to the White Album; The Beach Boys from Surfin' USA to Pet Sounds; Lou Reed from Transformer to Berlin; David Bowie from Hunky Dory to Low; Ween from God Ween Satan: The Oneness to Chocolate and Cheese; Beck from Mellow Gold to Odelay and Sea Change.Similarly, 10,000 Hz Legend sees Air making a move in the direction of evolution, re-evaluating the sounds, moods, and themes of their earlier work, and in the process making a record that's smarter, more literate, edgier, and ultimately more exciting than the ones they made before.

This is the kind of evolutionary process I want to experience happening to all the bands I enjoy. I want them to go from a great band to one that is truly outstanding. In my opinion, the great bands do this by taking what they do well, turning it around, and doing something totally unexpected with it. It is rare when this process works. On 10,000 Hz Legend, it works better than anyone who ever blissed out to the mellow sounds of Moon Safari could have expected.

Something 'bout books

2006-08-07T15:33:00.000-05:00

I have been tagged by the Repressed Librarian, my comrade in the propagation of book learnin' and author of the frequently moving blog To Know as We Are Known, to take part in a book meme. Because she is my comrade, and because I've never been tagged for this kind of bloggy thing before, I will comply.

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1. One book that changed your life?

I think the book that had the biggest effect on my personality was The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy. It was a major influence on my sense of humor and my conception of life, the universe, and everything.

As far as serious changes go, reading A Tree Grows in Brooklyn in high school launched my love for literature.

2. One book you have read more than once?

I rarely read a book more than once. The only ones I can think of that I have read more than once are The Hobbit and Stephen King's The Stand.

3. One book you would want on a desert island?

If I were on a desert island, I wouldn't want anything, because I can never decide what I would want on a desert island. I can never pick one thing as my favorite of anything. I prefer top-fives. If pressed, I guess I would pick Shelby Foote's three-volume Civil War series. Why? One, because I've never read it, two, because it would take a while to read, and three, because I really want to read it, and look at it often in bookstores, but chicken out all the time. Another choice along those lines would be The Decline and Fall of Roman Civilization. One book that follows the above criteria which I have read is Infinite Jest, by David Foster Wallace.

4. One book that made you laugh?

Recently, it was Pastoralia, by George Saunders.

5. One book that made you cry?

I don't think that a book has ever made me cry. I have cried at a few movies, but never because of a book.

6. One book you wish had been written?

Any book that has my name on the spine as the author.

7. One book you wish had never been written?

Dianetics, or anything by L. Ron Hubbard, for that matter.

8. One book you are currently reading?

Since I've started working, I have not read a single book this year. It's sad, because I am used to reading all the time, and usually go from book to book. Part of it is because of my schedule, but part of it is because I haven't found a book that was interesting enough for me to keep wanting to read it.

This crisis finally ended when I started reading The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem. It's the kind of book that I don't want to put down and can't wait to pick up again.

9. One book you have been meaning to read?

I have a huge pile of books I have managed to avoid reading for a long time now, but I think I'm going to read Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell next.

10. Now tag five people.

I'm not nearly as connected as my comrade RL, so if you are out there, and you just happen to read this blog, go ahead and consider yourself tagged.

The Records of My Lifetime

2006-08-03T14:16:00.000-05:00

This is the first of what I hope will be a weekly feature. I'm planning, optimistically, to profile a different record approximately every Thursday. I think that the title of the feature, "The Records of My Lifetime," is totally pompous, reminding me of some kind of Sinatra-wannabe doing a Vegas revue, but it's all I can think of at the moment, and is likely to change if I think up something more clever. So without further ado, I bring you....

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Frank Black - Frank Black
4AD/Elektra (1993)

There are arguably more fans of the Pixies now than there were when they broke up in 1993. You can break that band's fanbase into two camps by asking a Pixies fan to name the man who served as lead singer, rhythm guitarist, head songwriter, and primary oddball for that highly influential group. The first camp, likely made up of those who were a fan of the Pixies before they broke up, will answer "Black Francis." The second camp, likely made up of those who became fans of the Pixies after they broke up, will answer "Frank Black." To be nauseatingly honest, the man's real name is Charles Thompson, but it's likely only his mother and his wife call him that. I am one of the second camp; whenever I refer to the Pixies, I automatically refer to the man who led them as Frank Black. The reason for this is, following my earlier stated reasoning, I had not heard a single song by the Pixies until a few years after they broke up. My first contact with the off-kilter pop songcraft of one Mr. Charles Thompson came by way of his first solo album, where he reversed his stage name and was known forever after as Frank Black. To reinforce the name change, the album's spine, in a subtle stroke of humor, diligently lists both the artist's name and the album's title in order: Frank Black - Frank Black.

"Ironic" is one of those overused words often thrown at Frank Black and his earlier band, and often used to describe the music that came out of the oft-mislabeled genre his work was herded into: indie rock, college rock, and the hoariest misnomer of all--alternative rock. How else to describe an album whose songs include an appreciation of a distinctive style of facial hair, a travelogue from a UFO convention, an instrumental version of a song that to anyone's knowledge does not have lyrics, and one song that crests on repeated shouts of the word "Jerk"? These songs would be ironic, were there any guile invovled, and if their subject matter were meant to stand in for something other than what they are ostensibly "about". In my mind, Frank Black's modus operandi is less about irony and more to do with his own unique sense of humor, along with an appreciation of the transcendant joy that comes from coupling a good pop hook with a wry turn of phrase.

The album starts with "Los Angeles," but not the one in South California, he warns, "they got one in South Patagonia." This song shifts from a dreamy, acoustic guitar and xylophone-accompanied rememberance of a man, "...he was a good man/Sailing and shoring/He got a betatron, man," and then kicks into a superheavy metal-esque riff, where he again clarifies which Los Angeles he wants to live in, then back to the strummy part about the man, "dancing the beta can-can." It's a highly dramatic tonal shift, and it give the album a rousing start. Next comes "I Heard Ramona Sing," in which "Ramona" is the Ramones, and the song is an appreciation of one of Frank Black's favorite bands.

I had so many problems
And then I got me a walkman
I really liked it a lot and
They walked right in and they solved them
They walked right in and they solved them

I heard Ramona sing
And I heard everything
The speed they're traveling
They are the only thing
Ramona

One of the most memorable tracks is "Fu Manchu," which manages to be both about the mythical crime lord as well as his moustache.

You heard about
A criminal man of virtue
Is there any doubt
His minimal strands would suit you?

Is a hard earned way
Is a hard earned way
I'll never lose
My fu manchu
My fu manchu

Let them grow out
In time you'll feel so better
The vanishing pout
Now you're a real go-getter

Sound-wise, this song represents the production of the album well. Frank Black's vocals sound dreamy, almost effortless, and his acoustic guitar nicely mixes with the bouncy, surf-inspired bass line. Lurid counterpoint is provided by the synthetic, plastic-sounding horn section, which appear throughout the record and help give it a signature tone. Frank Black sounds slick and synthetic, less noisy and organic than the Pixies albums were. This serves to distinguish the record from his more celebrated work, for one, and second, it serves these songs well: the sound doesn't get in the way of the lyrics or the hooks, and while it draws obvious inspiration from a number of things--surf music, punk rock, the Beach Boys--it doesn't sound like any of them. This album effortlessly created a signature sound that groups like Weezer could never improve upon. In a way, the Pixies created "alternative rock" as it came to be known, and on Frank Black, the creator perfected his creation, making it sound as though it always existed.

Frank Black's next record, Teenager of the Year, is considered by some people to be the best work he had ever done, and I remember once that a book was published with its sole subject being that Teenager of the Year was best album ever recorded. I think its massive length makes it less effective than the more consise Frank Black, but the opening four tracks, "Whatever Happened To Pong?", "Thalassocracy", "(I Want To Live On An) Abstract Plain", and "Calistan", come on so fast and so furious that at the very least it qualifies as one of the best album sides ever put to wax. Additionally, "Headache" is a fantastic pop song that in a weirder world, one that was listening to better pop music than Ace of Base, Aerosmith, and Green Day, would have been a massive hit.

Needless to say, Frank Black led me to seek out the Pixies, and without question Doolittle and Surfer Rosa are albums that merit equal or greater contemplation than this one. But Frank Black is where I started, my first introduction to the weird world this man created under both of his altar egos, and more importantly, one of the records that helped show me that there was more to music than the Beatles, more than the hairy garbage being beat to death on classic rock radio, and more than the soulless "product" that continues to make people think of empty fluff when they hear someone refer to "pop music". Without Frank Black, there might not have been a Nirvana, a Pavement, a Ween, or even a Breeders, for me or for anyone else. Like the man said, "they walked right in and they solved them."

This wheel's on fire

2006-08-02T20:16:00.000-05:00

Perhaps I have not been as forthcoming as you deserve me to be, my beloved imaginary readers. If you were to count up the sum of my interests from what I've posted here, and created some sort of doppelbedheaded, you might imagine me to be a peacenik, comic book nerd, classic-rock AM Gold head, liberal, francophile, wannabe writer guy. Well, most of it is true, but it doesn't give you the real me. The real me is much more banal and much less intelligent than this already banal and unintelligent blog would lead you to believe.

I've struggled with how much of the "real" Bedheaded I feel comfortable posting on this already insignificant outpost of the intergalactic garbage dump we call the internets. The problem with being a confessional blogger is that one must necessarily have some halfway significant confession to make in the first place. Well, my life's pretty boring, so there's not much. But there are a few things.

First of all, though my recent rash of peacenik pronouncements might make one think otherwise, I at heart am a solitary, distrustful person, and harbor an overwhelming distaste for human nature that compounds itself daily, even hourly. It seems to be all I can do to keep from devolving into a raving lunatic, spitting out bile at any soul unfortunate enough to cross my path.

It seems the more contact I have with people out of my immediate circle of family and friends, the more I become convinced that the world is populated by insane idiots. That's not to say that I think I'm more intelligent than anyone else, but more that a great majority of people are either really stupid, really crazy, or both really stupid and really crazy. And the more I encounter these people and these situations, the more I feel the urge to rally around those small things I have that remind me of what makes sense in the world: my family, my friends, my interests, and my beliefs, self-isolating as those beliefs may be.

Belief is a loaded word, too closely associated with religion, which leads to the next revelation: I am an atheist. I don't believe in gods, or in afterlifes, and I'm not really interested in debating anybody about it. It's my business, that's all. I chalk it up at its base to not being a spiritual person in general. I have my own sense of spirit, and my own soul, but at the most essential level, I find myself to be neither spiritual nor soulful.

See, this is why I usually avoid this kind of confessional stuff--it does nothing to enlighten us, and likely causes you, my imaginary readers, to envision me as some really morose kind of dude. I'm not, really. In fact, I think the whole world could stand to be a little less morose. Thom Jurek at allmusic.com wrote a pretty good essay lamenting the dourness of rock music in the past decade or so, though I must say that any cultural commentary that concludes by suggesting that people should mellow out and go listen to some Whitesnake is kind of suspect. But who am I to judge.

Yes is surrender, you got to let it, you got to let it go

2006-07-24T11:30:00.000-05:00

Witnessing the current violence between Israel and Lebanon, along with the escalation of hostility between the U.S., North Korea, and Iran, and the ongoing war in Iraq, proves to me now more than ever that in order to survive beyond this century, to say little of this very decade, this world must take a stand in defiance of war, and fully embrace the cause of peace. The stakes of war have become higher than ever, with the fate of all mankind inching ever closer to the balance of all conflicts. As the world becomes increasingly globalized, interconnected, and interdependant, what was once global becomes ever more local, and all violence becomes local as well.

If the twentieth century was notable for its wars, it was also notable for the moral certainty underpinning its most notorious conflicts. Yet, following the irresolution of the Korean War, and continuing through Vietnam, Israel, and now Iraq, war has lost all pretense of glory, losing the certainty of victory among the growing pallor of ambiguity. Perhaps the true turning point was the destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki under America's newfound atomic might. Never had warfare been more technological, more industrial, more effectively inhuman, and never again would human history rise and fall with the tides of war. In the atomic age, the new certainty was that after war there would only be a fall.

Our current war in Iraq was sold on the bonds of moral certainty, and shamefully, I bought more than my share. I was less concerned by Bush II's chicken-little cries of anthrax and dirty bombs, and more convinced that Iraq would be better off without Saddam running it. Though I had no reasonable evidence to support such an expectation, I expected our incursion into Iraq would be swiftly followed by efforts to support Iraq's infrastructure, and that a new government would soon be nurtured into place. The latter expectation was based on a misunderstanding of the bitter gulf between Sunni and Shiite muslims; the former expectation must have been fostered by some kind of temporary insanity that led me to forget the ribald ineptitude that had been the early days of the W administration. Iraq was stupidly allowed to devolve into a prehistoric state; utilities were shut off, libraries museums and archives were ransacked, and basic safety and security was obliterated by what has become the hallmark of post-atomic warfare--guerilla insurgency.

I was wrong about Iraq. So was John Kerry, apparently, though he failed in articulating his change in stance, which was but one, and a minor one, of his many failings. The truth of the matter was that I was fooled, and the lesson I learned was to never be fooled again. War is a refuge of desperation and weakness, and as it wears along it serves to further deteriorate the bonds of mankind, a gradual erosion that soon will lead to complete and utter decay and destruction.

Those who are lost in the fog of war will tell you that peace is an illusion, a pipe dream. To an extent, they are right, but it is only because of the fog of ambiguity that fosters all of our warfare. One will say, "how can you just sit back if your soldiers are kidnapped and beheaded?" or, "how can you just wait until the next World Trade Centers have planes flown into them?" or, "how can you just stand pat when our trains are bombed?" Such arguments try to paint the cause of peace as an exercise in ignoring reality, where ironically, the cause of war is without a doubt aided by judicious forgetfullness of reality. Then we ask, "if you consider that we are addicted to oil, and then consider that we arm the world, which pits those who stoke our oil addiction against those we arm, and in the process we anger an increasingly dangerous sector who despise us for simply being in their general vicinity, how do we deign to justify war on any grounds of moral certainty?" Or something to that effect.

War is never as simple as "smite me, I smite you back." The initial smiting is the result of eons of festering hatred, and the retaliatory smite strikes more than the intended target, injures more than the initiating party, and fosters ensuing eons of hatred. The cycle of war continues to turn, but recent misadventures in nuclear brinksmanship have me convinced that our current cycle of war may end them all, with the whole world the loser.

The answer to the equation is peace, complete and unequivocal peace. Though our current head of state seems utterly uncapable of it (his latest misfire has him sexually harrasing the prime minister of Germany), diplomacy and statesmanship should be seen as the primary tool for effecting change in the world. Does this mean we should have stared at our shoes after 9/11, and allowed the Taliban to provide safe haven for any and all lunatics in Afghanistan? No, not really. First of all, we shouldn't have armed Mr. Laden and his Talibanisters. Second, assuming a world where all nations band together against war and aggression, the world should turn its back on those who commit acts of war. If you can't play nice in the sandbox, you can't play at all.

I don't have the answer, and it almost pains me to say of all this. The main thing--I have learned my lesson. I won't get fooled again. War is not the answer. Peace is not a negotiation, and it cannot choose sides. Peace is essential. Peace is for all.

While I lack the skill and charisma to effect but the most miniscule part of this worldwide change for peace, one of my greatest heroes, John Lennon, laid out a great, though characteristically off-beat plan for peace in "Mind Games." How do you make peace happen? Have everyone on the side of peace band together as "mind guerillas," or "druid dudes," if you will, and think peace so much that it changes the world. It's not a bad idea....

Mind Games
John Lennon

We're playing those mind games together
Pushing the barriers, planting seeds
Playing the mind guerrilla
Chanting the mantra, peace on earth
We all been playing those mind games forever
Some kinda druid dudes lifting the veil
Doing the mind guerrilla
Some call it magic, the search for the grail

Love is the answer and you know that for sure
Love is a flower, you got to let it, you got to let it grow

So keep on playing those mind games together
Faith in the future, outta the now
You just can't beat on those mind guerrillas
Absolute elsewhere in the stones of your mind
Yeah we're playing those mind games forever
Projecting our images in space and in time

Yes is the answer and you know that for sure
Yes is surrender, you got to let it, you got to let it go

So keep on playing those mind games together
Doing the ritual dance in the sun
Millions of mind guerrillas
Putting their soul power to the karmic wheel
Keep on playing those mind games forever
Raising the spirit of peace and love

Superman Returns, for good

2006-07-05T20:19:00.000-05:00

Superman Returns is more than a film; it is a work of renovation. There is perhaps no pop culture icon as familiar, as pervasive, as universal as Superman. He is a Christ figure, a Golem, an Übermensch who has been alternately fighting for "truth, justice, and the American way" since 1938, when Franklin Roosevelt was starting only his second term. While this film, and this Superman, is unlikely to make anyone forget his earlier incarnations, Bryan Singer does manage to renovate the filmic career of one of America's most enduring, and longest suffering, icons.

Mr. Singer left the thriving franchise he helped create in X-Men and X-2: X-Men United to help revive one of comicdom's more moribund properties. The risks were many, but the possible reward, in both the artistic and monetary sense, was great. How do you resurrect a film franchise whose last entry, nearly twenty years old, reviled and forgotten, was described by its star as "simply a catastrophe from start to finish"? Mr. Singer's answer was to take the whole thing back where it started. Singer essentially hits the Reset button, pretends the third and fourth film never happened, and loosely picks up where Superman II left off.

Singer's reliance on elements from the first two Superman films is so heavy, it lumbers past "homage" and borders on "remake." John Williams' score? Check. Whooshing title sequence? Bingo. Marlon Brando? Correctamundo. It goes even further. When Superman saves a plane from crashing, he tells the passengers the same line Christopher Reeve said to Margot Kidder in the first film, that flying is still the safest way to travel, statistically speaking. When Lex Luthor asks his moll to repeat what his father once told him, she replies, "Get out." When Superman crash-lands in the field behind the Kent farm, his spaceship is the same kind of pointy-star spaceship that he arrived in as a baby, only bigger. When Superman glides past the screen high above the Earth at the end of the picture, Brandon Routh seems to just barely restrain himself from flashing the audience the kind of knowing grin Christopher Reeve once did at the end of his Superman films. All that's missing, strangely, is the "S" on the back of his cape.

The effect of all this is to make Superman Returns a work of cinematic restoration. The Superman film franchise is like a house: it's got some fine craftsmanship, nice woodwork and trim, spacious rooms, a big yard. But the previous tenants painted all the woodwork sparkly gold, put up drop ceilings and track lighting in all the rooms, and installed a tiki bar in the backyard. The Superman franchise has character galore, but it's a fixer-upper.

Previous efforts at revitalizing the franchise have been memorably disasterous. Tim Burton and Nicholas Cage were once slated to pick it up. I remember hearing that they wanted Superman's suit to be all-white, and that he would fly as though he were standing upright. And they were going to kill Superman. Gee boys, aren't you clever? They got about twenty million for their troubles. I remember seeing Kevin Smith on a late-nite show talking about penning a Superman script, and saying that the producers wanted him to throw in elements that would sell Superman toys, so he went and wrote a scene where Superman wrestles some polar bears outside the Fortress of Solitude. Somewhere along the way there came the idea to film "Batman vs. Superman," but the Batman franchise was faring just as poorly, thanks to one Joel Schumacher and his leather fetish. The producers then went and tried to find some of the worst directors they could find to helm the revival: first Brett Ratner, and then McG. Ratner was fired after sinking another twenty million into development, and then ironically, was tabbed to direct X3 after Mr. Singer left to direct Superman Returns. McG, best known for unleashing Charlie's Angels parts one and two on the unwitting public, was all set to start filming, and then backed out because he was afraid of flying, and didn't want to fly to Australia. When the inevitable chatter comes along pointing to Superman Returns as a disappointment ticket-wise, it's important to remember that about sixty million dollars went into a bunch of guys doin' nothin'. One should also factor in the fact that, for expediency's sake, a lot of the preproduction work done by Messers. Ratner and McG was handed to Mr. Singer, which makes his resume as a renovator even more sterling when one studies the results.

Though there's no clear figure as to just how much Superman Returns really cost to make, suffice it to say that the balance is reflected nicely on screen. Superman has never flied as fast as he does in this film. Every setpiece is, in fanboy terms, awesome. If you once believed a man can fly, you'll also believe he can bench-press a small continent.

Singer's decision to recycle so many elements of the first two Superman films is a move that could have been seen as cannibalism. Yet it needed to be done, both to remind us just how awesome it once was to see Superman flying across the big screen, and to help us forget how awful his latter incarnations were.

It features scene-stealing turns from Kevin Spacey and Parker Posey. Kate Bosworth is no Margot Kidder, for what that's worth, but she doesn't embarass herself. Similarly, Brandon Routh seems unable to make us forget Christopher Reeve. I believe that speaks less about the merits or faults of Routh's performance, and more about how great Reeve was as the Man of Steel. Though it haunted him throughout his career, Reeve wore the red cape better than any Superman before or since, and to his eternal credit, played the comedic everyman Clark Kent to clumsy perfection.

Maybe it's because he was the Superman I grew up with, but I just can't think of Superman without thinking of Christopher Reeve. His injury and death were the definition of tragedy, but it is clear that the tarnishing of the Superman image, though no fault of his own, was a tragedy as well for the actor. His ghost hangs over this film, and likely will in all subsequent ones.

On that note, I sincerely hope that there will be another return of Superman. Sure, it could have stood some more stringent editing. Sure, Bosworth's Lane is rather two-dimensional, and Routh's Kent has little more to do than stand around moping and waiting to bust out of his three-piece suit. Again, one should remember the baggage Singer had to carry going in that he inherited from previous, ahem, directors such as one McG. Consider also that X-Men suffered from the same sort of tentative awkwardness that occasionally muddies this film, but never fatally so. Then realize that Singer's X-2 was an unbound triumph, and his work conceiving X-3 was so strong, even Brett Ratner could hardly ruin it. Superman Returns is just less than a great film, but Superman is a great hero who deserved much better than he has gotten in the last few decades, and this film goes a long way towards reversing that injustice. With any luck, Singer will return to prove that Superman, once and for all, is here to stay.

A big obsession with Harry Nilsson keeps me up at night

2006-06-21T19:38:00.000-05:00

I just can't get interested in something--I have to get obsessed about it. That happened in a big way recently with Harry Nilsson. I knew little more about him than most other people did. I knew that he sang the song "Without You," which was a huge hit in the seventies. I knew that he had an album called Nilsson Schmilsson. I knew he was friends with John Lennon, that the two were drinking buddies during Lennon's "lost weekend," and that the two were once thrown out of a L.A. nightclub.

I keep a sort of mental checklist of artists that I want to look for whenever I go shopping for used vinyl. My memory is never the sturdiest of contraptions, so often times I remember not remembering a record I wanted to look for long after I have left the record store, vinyl in hand. Nilsson spent a long time on that list. My vague interest was renewed after getting obsessed with Chicago-based indie pop auteur Plush. I had listened to his album Underfed, then read about how that album consisted of demos for an album called Fed, which was recorded at an apparently extravagant expense and summarily released only in Japan. I snapped up his debut record, More You Becomes You, and then read Forced Exposure's review of it, which compared it to Nilsson Sings Newman. Curious, I started to read up on Nilsson, and my obsession started to grow.

I decided to start with the record I seen most often, Nilsson Schmilsson, and placed it firmly at the top of my mental list. But whenever I went vinyl shopping, I never saw it, or any Nilsson for that matter. There are some records that you just seem to stumble upon wherever you find used vinyl (Carole King's Tapestry springs to mind), but some that are harder to get.

I finally found it in Texas. We were visiting family in Austin, and doing a bit of shopping. We happened upon a record store whose front door was in an alley; there were signs leading to it all around the corner. When you entered, there was a huge room of vinyl. We didn't have a lot of time, yet I made the mistake of trying to be meticulous, searching record by record for interesting stuff. As Heidi started to get antsy, I fell back on my mental list, and Nilsson Schmilsson sprang immediately to mind. No luck in the Ns. I resorted to madly tearing through a bunch of records that were stacked in a sloppy, groove-crushing pile, just looking for something good to take away with me. And wouldn't you know, somewhere in that pile, I found Nilsson Schmilsson.

It would be appropriate for most people's purposes to say that Nilsson Schmilsson is the kind of starting-point record to recommend to curious listeners. It was his biggest seller, and contained his biggest single hit, "Without You," as well as "Coconut," which was recently resurrected for a Diet Coke commercial and was part of the Resevoir Dogs soundtrack, and "Jump Into the Fire," memorably used as the background music for Henry Hill's cocaine-fed meltdown in Martin Scorsese's GoodFellas. Yet this record defies what one would conventionally think of as a mainstream, accessible record. The title is zen-like and self-deprecating. The cover, shot by Dean Torrence of Jan and Dean, is comfortingly domestic but defiantly odd--Harry in his kitchen, wearing a bathrobe, looking like he needs a shower, smoking a hash pipe. The songs alternate from jaunty, Beatle-esque anthems ("Gotta Get Up," "Driving Along") to skeletal mind-teasers ("The Moonbeam Song," "Coconut," "I'll Never Leave You") to off-kilter barroom stomps ("Down," "Let the Good Times Roll"). The modus operandi on the whole is one of minimalism. Even the operatic "Without You" is built around a skeletal rhythm section, with Harry's vocal turn going from delicate to bombastic with balletic grace.

My Nilsson initiation set in motion, I proceeded to listen to Nilsson Schmilsson non-stop, and when I wasn't listening to it, I was thinking about it. Everything about Harry Nilsson, from his music to the man himself, seems manufactured to inspire either befuddled ennui or outright obsession.

Harry Nilsson spent a major part of the sixties trying to sell songs tin-pan-alley style in music business offices during his daytime hours, and spent his nighttime hours working as a bank clerk.

"Got a job at the bank. I took some tests, and I came out very high in the computer area. They were just starting computers. They said, 'Do you have any interest in computers?' I said, 'This is a dream come true. You bet!'

"So I got the job, kept the job. They found out I didn't graduate from high school and they called me in to fire me. I said, 'Look, I've done a good job. You know I have. I haven't been late,' and all that stuff. I cried tears and I said, 'Look, I had to do it, otherwise I wouldn't be able to get a job.'

"They really liked me, so they went out on a limb. They said, 'Okay, you're on probation for six months.' So I said, 'All right,' and I worked really hard for the six months, and they just kept me on and eventually I was in charge of the place when I left."1

Eventually his songs began to sell, and four of them were recorded by Phil Spector; two with the Ronettes, and one a duet between Nilsson and Cher. Soon he had what he called a “magical day” and experienced a creative breakthrough, writing three songs in one night: “Without Her,” “1941,” and “Don’t Leave Me.” Nilsson later recalled the creative surge, saying “…I realized then that I would never write another bad song.”2 “Without Her” was soon recorded by Glen Campbell, and has since been recorded by 13 different artists, including Blood, Sweat and Tears, George Benson, Herb Alpert and the Tijuana Brass, and Telly Savalas.

Nilsson’s biggest breakthrough came rather unexpectedly.

The singer with the looks of a Swedish businessman…burst on to the scene at an Apple press conference in 1968. When asked who their favourite American artist was, the Beatles replied in unison "Nilsson!" And their favourite American group? "NILSSON!"

They were enamoured of his debut album Pandemonium Shadow Show, a mix of vaudeville, classy orchestrated pop and the odd Beatles cover, delivered with Harry's sweet three-octave treatment.

The press were caught on the hop and hurriedly tried to get some info on this mysterious figure—they freaked when they discovered Nilsson had never even played live.

He told callers: "My amateur status is still intact, thank you."

The following Monday morning he received a phone call at 7am: "Is this Harry? This is John."

"John who?"

"John Lennon."

"Huh?"

"Your record is fucking fantastic, man. I just wanted to say you're great."

The next Monday at 7am Paul McCartney called him to rave in similar fashion about the album. Nilsson later recalled: "I got up the following Monday and waited for Ringo to call. He didn't."3

One of the enduring traits of Nilsson’s career is that he was a songwriter’s songwriter—he wrote a number of songs that became hits for other groups (“One” for Three Dog Night, “Cuddly Toy” for the Monkees) while the biggest hits Nilsson recorded were written by other songwriters. “Everybody’s Talkin’”, written by Fred Neil, was the theme of the multiple-Oscar winning film Midnight Cowboy, a pop-culture landmark that helped make Nilsson a superstar and a Grammy winner for Best Contemporary Male Vocal Performance in 1969. Nilsson continued to feature other songwriter’s work throughout his recording career, eventually scoring another Grammy and another monster hit with Badfinger’s “Without You.” One of the cornerstones of his catalog is the 1970 album Nilsson Sings Newman, which featured songs by then-unknown L.A. songwriter Randy Newman, who accompanied Nilsson on piano. "He could do so many things as a vocalist that I couldn't do (like hold a note),"4 Newman said later.

Nilsson’s early-seventies emergence as a recording superstar also saw him gain his reputation as a superstar party-animal. Two of his more notorious buddies were Keith Moon and John Lennon.

Nilsson met wild-man Who drummer Moon on the set of the film Son of Dracula.

We were supposed to be on the set at six, but it was nine before everybody was there. Then somebody brought out a bottle of brandy. Me, I think. Ah-Ha-Ha-HAHAHA! And Peter Frampton said no, no, too early, and some of the others said no. But 'Arry was standing there with an 'alf-pint mug. I knew at that moment it was destiny put us together. AhHhh-HAHAHAHAHA HAHAHA!

So we were drinking brandy at nine and, thanks to Mal Evans, white wine all the rest of the day. Then about six o'clock somebody came 'round and slipped little envelopes into our 'ands. It was a pay packet! I 'adn't 'ad a pay packet in ten years. And 'Arry'd never 'ad one. We were pretty well out of it, and we looked at each other and then tore up one-hundred and seventy pounds in one-pound notes, threw it up in the air and danced about, cackling like schoolboys. AHHHH-HAAAA-HAHAHA-AA-HAAAAHAAA-haaa! Dancing and leaping about, clutching bottles of Blue Nun liebfraumilch in our hands, singing, "We're millionaires, aren't we?"5

Nilsson’s connection with the Beatles retains a strong hold to this day; when discussing Nilsson, fans often reflect upon the Beatles era in general, and Nilsson’s friendship with Lennon in particular. Lennon played a major part in Nilsson’s monetary success, helping secure a 5 million dollar contract for Nilsson after the success of the “Schmilsson Cycle”: Nilsson Schmilsson, Son of Schmilsson, and A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night. Five million dollars was a then-unheard of amount for a recording artist.

“I had signed an agreement with RCA for a new, $5 million contract and they had reneged on it; the new president didn't sign it. I had been saying, "The contract's binding. We'll take you to fucking court, man.' And the president had said, 'It's not binding here….'

"I said to John, 'I just got $5 million, and they took it away from me, like that.' He said, 'Ah, they're all fuckers, Harry. They're all fuckers." He said, "Just go down and tell the guy he's a fucker.'

"So I went down to RCA. We'd been up all night long and it was now 10 in the morning. Both still drunk, with shades, hats, dark jackets. The secretary said, 'Mr. Glancy, uh, Harry Nilsson and John Lennon are here to see you, sir.'

"'What?' Boom! Door opens immediately. We walk in. There we are, you know? In every office, heads are turning to look at us. He said to John, 'Hi! How are you doing, sir? Would you like a cigar?' John said, 'No, thanks. I'd take a brandy.' So we had a brandy, and John said, 'Look, it's about Harry. You know, you've only ever had two artists on your label: Elvis and Harry. He told me what you're paying him. Look, for that money, I'll sign it. You've got an artist! Pay the two dollars!' 'Pay the two dollars' was like saying, 'pay the parking ticket, rather than fight City Hall….'

So he said, 'Well, we'll have to get the contracts together.' I said, 'No, no. They're on the 10th floor. They're in Legal. Ask Dick Etlinger, in Business Affairs. He's the guy.' So he calls up and says, 'Do you have the Nilsson contract? Could you bring it up here?' Because he didn't want to look like an asshole in front of John.

"They brought up the contract. I said, 'All you have to do is affix your signature where it says "President." Just write your name on it.' He said, 'Okay,' and he did it, right in front of John. John made me $5 million that minute. I looked at John for a minute and I almost cried. Then I said, 'I'd like four copies.' I gave one to John, one to me, one in the hotel safe, and I sent one out to California. And that's how I got to be a multimillionaire. Thank you very much, John!"6

The most infamous and, sadly, enduring event of that period happened with Lennon at a performance by the Smothers Brothers at L.A.’s Troubadour nightclub. Albert Goldman recounted the events in his controversial book The Lives of John Lennon. At the time, Lennon was involved with an affair with his and Yoko Ono’s secretary, May Pang.

About three weeks before the show, Yoko had called and told John that on her birthday she had slept with David Spinozza. (Spinozza, a well-known New York studio musician, later denied it.)

John appeared to be unaffected by the news. But Yoko's words set a time bomb ticking in John's madly jealous mind.

When he arrived at the Troubadour with May and Harry 'round about midnight on March 13, well before the second show, he was already half loaded and seething with anger. Ushered into the VIP section, where they found a celebrity clique, including Peter Lawford, Pam Grier, Jack Haley Jr. and Alan Sacks, producer of Welcome Back, Kotter,' the threesome booked their orders for triple milk shakes brandy Alexanders.

When the drinks arrived, John downed his in a single gulp. ''Let's have another round,'' he proposed expansively. Then he began to hum ''I Can't Stand the Rain,'' an ominous sign. Harry joined his voice with John's and soon both singers were performing happily, while accompanying themselves by banging spoons and knives against the glasses and saltcellars.

Having stolen the spotlight with their exhibitionistic behavior, Lennon and Nilsson were surrounded instantly by photographers. John Lennon had an instinctive talent for camera miming. When the spirit was upon him, he could shoot a look, a pose, a gesture into the lens that said it all.

Now he decided to send Yoko a little message, acknowledging the news of her birthday present. Grabbing May Pang by the throat, he pulled her toward him and planted a brutal kiss on her lips. As the flash cubes exploded, the photographers shouted, ''Who is she?''

John smiled at May and crowed, ''The secret is out!''

The Smothers Brothers were an object of liberal sympathy in Hollywood because of the way they had been booted off TV. This night was supposed to mark the beginning of their great comeback. The moment they stepped onstage, they received an ovation. But when the cheering and applause subsided, John and Harry could still be heard singing - louder than ever and without any sign of stopping.

Soon Lennon was alternating between loud singing and shouted obscenities. Occasionally, he'd vaunt: ''I'm John Lennon!'' Soon people all over the packed club were shouting back at John.

Finally, Ken Fritz, a mild little guy who managed the Smothers Brothers, came over to the table. He was hopping mad. ''Look,'' he shouted, ''we've worked hard for this, and I'm not going to let you fuck it up!'' With that, he grabbed John's shoulder.

John reared up instantly, overturning the table with a crash of shattering glass. Spinning around, he caught Fritz with a hook to the chin. Fritz swung at Lennon, as the crowd roared. Before either could throw another punch, Peter Lawford came charging in with a group of bartenders and waiters. Forming a flying wedge, they gave John and Harry the bum's rush. The hecklers were hustled through a furious crowd, whose members threw punch after punch at John Lennon.

In June 1974, John and Harry finished their whiskey-voiced album Pussy Cats. May Pang returned to Lennon's side in New York and Harry Nilsson left it forever.7

The incident at the Troubadour marked a turning point in Nilsson’s life and career. Nilsson later lamented "that incident ruined my reputation for 10 years. Get one Beatle drunk and look what happens….It still haunts me. People think I'm an asshole and a mean guy. They still think I'm a rowdy bum from the '70s who happened to get drunk with John Lennon, that's all….I just introduced John and Ringo to Brandy Alexanders, that was my problem.”8 At a certain level the incident reminds one of the apocryphal story of Bob Dylan turning the Beatles on to marijuana circa-Rubber Soul, but on the other hand the fallout has a parallel with the still-potent ire directed at Yoko and Linda McCartney after the breakup of the Beatles. Apparently, Beatle fans are more willing to blame John and Paul’s wives for the breakup of their favorite band than they are willing to blame John and Paul themselves; similarly, they are quick to blame Harry Nilsson for John Lennon’s “Lost Weekend” dissolution, though it is hard to believe that Lennon had never discovered alcohol before he met Nilsson.

In a cruel twist of circumstance, Nilsson's deteriorating reputation and rock 'n roll history intertwined two more times; Mama 'Cass' Elliott of the Mamas and Papas and Keith Moon both died in Nilsson's London apartment, which he often loaned to friends while he was home in California, Elliott on July 27, 1974, and Moon on September 7, 1978.9

The cruelest twist in the Nilsson saga happened right before the sessions with Lennon for Pussy Cats. Nilsson ruptured a vocal cord, but as legend has it, hid the fact from Lennon out of fear he would end the sessions. Again, it is hard to believe that no one noticed the difference. The proof is in the mix--Nilsson's voice is ragged throughout the record, and hearing him try to reach the upper octaves he once scaled so effortlessly is nearly as painful to hear as it must have been to sing.

The common consensus is that Nilsson's non-stop partying lifestyle caused his vocal cord to rupture, but one could also blame the shift to the rock n' roll vocal style he adopted for Nilsson Schmilsson and exacerbated on Son of Schmilsson. He used to aim for subtlety, deftly creating a chorus with his multitracked three-octave voice, as best demonstrated on Nilsson Sings Newman, but in the Schmilsson cycle, for the first time in his career, he more often than not settled into a mid-range baritone yelp of the kind his buddy Lennon made famous on "Twist and Shout." While Son of Schmilsson's loopy contact-high makes it a quintessential "party record," it gains an unexpected and unintentionally melancholy pallor when one realizes the toll it must have taken on Nilsson's beautiful, signature voice, so triumphantly utilized on "Without You." Because of this, Nilsson's breezy-yet-sincere pop standards record A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night, perceived at the time as yet another bizzare indulgence, gains great significance, for it is the last time Nilsson's classic singing voice would be put to tape.

The Nilsson catalog takes a hard right turn into obscurity after Pussy Cats, perhaps best personified by ...That's the Way it Is, which rock critic Stephen Thomas Erlewine memorably encapsulated by asking "for chrissakes, who wants this album?" The last "proper" Nilsson album, and his last for RCA, was 1977's Knnillssonn, which enjoyed a sincere marketing push from the record label until Elvis died, causing them to abandon Nilsson's record and put a full-court press effort into milking the King's back catalog.10

Nilsson was effectively retired from music for the rest of his life. His last widely-accessible musical effort came when he wrote the songs for the feature film adaptation of Popeye, with arrangements by Van Dyke Parks. Robert Altman said, "Nobody wanted him at first except Robin Williams. Everyone said 'You'll get in trouble with him -- he'll get drunk; he won't do it; he's all washed up.' As a matter of fact I said all of those things about Harry to Robin myself one day. Then I went home and thought about it and said to myself, 'Jesus, that's what some people are saying about me!' So I called Harry Nilsson, because I had never met him in my life, and we got along terrifically."11

The rest of his time was spent trying to operate an independent production company he founded with counterculture icon Terry Southern called Hawkeye Entertainment. Their most notable output was the Whoopi Goldberg film The Telephone, which the two of them wrote. The movie was widely panned, which probably had no little part to do with Goldberg and her cinematographer husband suing the film's distributors to prevent them from releasing it, due to creative differences with the director, Rip Torn, who had never directed before, and has not since. Nilsson had to assume the reins of CEO of Hawkeye when the qualified man who had held the job was released. An L.A. Times story on Hawkeye's troubles took special care to describe Nilsson's deteriorating state:

His appearance has changed considerably from the way he looked on his album covers in the early 1970s, when he was a skinny young man with golden blond hair and beard. The hair and beard are graying, and his weight has ballooned to what he says is a lifetime high of 243 pounds.

Always known as a heavy smoker and drinker, Nilsson does little to change that image. At a two-hour lunch last week, he nervously smoked half a pack of cigarettes and drank four vodka martinis, each with a twist of lemon.12

Out of the public eye, he spent the rest of his life as a husband and father with his wife, Una, and their six children, plus one grown son from an earlier relationship. This idyll was disturbed by three cruel strikes.

In 1991, he discovered that his manager, Cindy Sims, had been secretly embezzling his and other clients' money, going so far as to remove forclosure notices off of Nilsson's home to keep him unaware. In a letter filed in bankruptcy court, Nilsson wrote "We went to bed one night a financially secure family of eight and woke up the next morning with $300 in our checking account....I'm scared....I never believed this could happen. It was my greatest fear growing up and it's still my greatest fear."13

Nilsson would never see the outcome of his estate's travails in U.S. bankruptcy court. He suffered a heart attack on Valentine's Day, 1993. This spurred him into a flurry of activity, compiling a greatest hits collection for RCA, Personal Best, and beginning work on a new album with his new manager, David Spero. He even began work on an autobiography.

Sitting on a shelf above Spero's desk are several spiral-bound copies of a manuscript titled, "Harry's Book." The largest version contains pages and pages of color Xeroxes of old photos taken at Harry's Bel Air home: John Lennon stands in front of a pool table in combat boots and what appears to be a trench coat; he is without pants. Keith Moon mugs for the camera. Gene Wilder and Gilda Radner are captured in bed.

Spero says Nilsson spent a lot of time at Kinko's, making copies to put in his book or writing down random thoughts he remembered. There was one about the time "Harry and Keith Moon decided to stay sober (and failed hilariously)," another on "the real reason Harry and John Lennon were thrown out of the Troubadour when they went to see the Smothers Brothers."

"For two years, he'd call me every morning and told me stories. Sometimes they took three minutes, sometimes longer," Spero fondly recalls. Nilsson also sent cards and packages. When Spero's wife Ellen was seriously ill right after Nilsson got out of the hospital in '93, he sent a card saying, "What's left of my heart goes out to you."

Spero says Nilsson took quite seriously his doctor's warning that he might have only one to three years to live, but he would still eat three desserts if he felt like it, even with diabetes.

One day, Spero says he kiddingly asked Harry if he still had an old bathrobe he had almost worn out. "Harry said, `Of course, you never throw out old bathrobes.' A couple days later a Fed Ex box shows up with the bathrobe inside and photos of Harry in the yard in the robe,' says Spero, pulling out a color Xerox of Harry in his short blue bathrobe digging with a long-handled shovel. A handwritten caption across the bottom reads, "I Can Dig It."

The bathrobe now hangs next to the bathroom in Spero's office, an everyday reminder of Harry.14

Harry Nilsson died January 15, 1994, of a second heart attack. He was 52.

Nearly all that remains of Nilsson is his extensive catalog, 18 albums strong, yet languishing for the most part in obscurity. He is the quintessential cult artist, known to few, yet obsessed over by his small, devoted fan base. In his heyday, he was as famous as his still-famous friends, but to this day his musical output is either marginalized in comparison to the songwriters he helped nurture and inspire, such as Randy Newman and Tom Waits. Those who give him any credit do so only on the merit of his two biggest singles, "Everybody's Talkin'" and "Without You." To this day he is most often remembered as the drinking buddy who got thrown out of a nightclub with John Lennon.

The sorry state of pop culture's memory of Harry Nilsson may be taking a turn for the better. Son of Schmilsson and A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night have been remastered and rereleased. A documentary film, Who is Harry Nilsson... (And Why is Everybody Talkin' About Him)? premiered at the Santa Barbara Film Festival to acclaim from Variety, the Hollywood Reporter, and Leonard Maltin, and recieved a standing ovation led by none other than Brian Wilson. Hopefully such efforts will renew people's interest in Nilsson.

He was known as a singer's singer, a songwriter's songwriter, and the Beatles' favorite artist, and then he was forgotten. Ironically, the cornerstones of his artistic ouvre were a sincere nostalgia for the forgotten and marginalized elements of the American experience, and most poingnantly, an overwhelming fear of being left alone, abandoned and forgotten.

Such is the cruelty of time, fate, and the fickle tastes of the fans of popular music. Harry Nilsson should never be forgotten. Lovers of popular music, to say nothing of the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, should remember him and his music, always.

:::::

One thing I felt as I waded my way through the Nilsson discography was the need for a good compilation of his music. Personal Best seemed too large, and indeed, Nilsson intended it to be three CDs, not two. The newest greatest hits compliation Everybody's Talkin' is skimpy at 14 songs, and leans too heavily on Nilsson Schmilsson and Son of Schmilsson, ignoring almost all of his earlier catalog. Something had to be done.

This is what I came up with. My personal compilation of Harry Nilsson is called Me and My Arrow: A Little Mix of Schmilsson 1967-1977.

I tried my best to cover as much of his catalog as I could on a single disc, which was hard to do. I had to make a number of difficult omissions. There are no tracks from Son of Schmilsson, which I can hardly try to explain, other than to say "I tried." I tried so many times to fit the caustic "You're Breakin' My Heart" ("you're tearing it apart/so fuck you!"), but in the end decided it to leave it off, thinking that my mother would listen to it with my young niece in the car. (My mother made such considerations moot when she admitted being perplexed at receiving the CD, saying she was going to give it to my brother, who is also the father of my niece.) I also have no entries from Nilsson's catalog spanning between Pussy Cats and Knnillssonn, simply because I don't own any of those records. I would have liked to fit a song on there from Popeye, especially "He Needs Me," used to great effect in Punch Drunk Love, directed by L.A. auteur and avowed Nilsson fan Paul Thomas Anderson, but couldn't find it available for legal download anywhere before burning time.

So this is it, what I intended to be a definitive overview of the great Harry Nilsson songbook, knowing that such an endeavor is impossible. I'll get anyone a copy who wants one, and everyone else, and you know who you are, can construct their own. Those who are hooked are directed to pick up either Nilsson Schmilsson or Nilsson Sings Newman post haste, and after that, it's every Schmilssonian for his or herself.

1. Gotta Get Up (Nilsson Schmilsson, 1971). The first track of his iconic album is the first track of my mix, for reasons of sheer economy. A rousing, Beatle-esque number, which provides a funny counterpoint to the cover's image of a proudly lazy-looking Nilsson.

2. Vine St. (Nilsson Sings Newman, 1970). American pop music in a bottle; from a cod-boogie workout to a wistful rememberance of things past in a few minutes.

That's the take
That we made,
But I'm sad to say we never made the grade.
That was me,
Third guitar,
I wonder where the others are.

This song was nearly the first track of this compilation.

3. 1941 (Pandemonium Shadow Show, 1967). An abstract work of autobiography, done up in baroque trappings. Surely something that "turned on" the Beatles, and struck an early chord of brotherhood in another abandoned son, John Lennon.

4. Daddy's Song (Aerial Ballet, 1968). Completes a doubleheader of missing-dad songs. Originally appeared on the Monkee's Head. Nilsson later recounted meeting the Monkees:

"So I sang seven, eight or nine songs, and Michael Nesmith said, 'Man, where the fuck did you come from? You just sat down there and blew our minds like that. We've been looking for songs, and you just sat down and played an album for us. Shit! Goddammit!' He threw something on the floor. And he went and got Mickey Dolenz and he said to him, 'Would you listen to this man? Listen to that!' Micky gave a surprised laugh, and Davy Jones started laughing over one song, and it was like the three of them were just out of their tree. Only Peter Tork couldn't give a shit."15

This story is even funnier considering Nilsson once tried out to become a Monkee.

5. I Guess the Lord Must Be in New York City (Harry, 1969). The stylistic twin of "Everybody's Talkin'", this track was apparently offered first to the makers of Midnight Cowboy. One wonders if, had it been accepted, Harry would have won an Oscar rather than a Grammy.

6. One (Aerial Ballet, 1968). Nilsson the songwriter's most recognizable tune, in the skeletal form later lovingly recreated by Aimee Mann and Jon Brion.

7. Driving Along (Nilsson Schmilsson, 1971). The liner notes of this record's reissue report that Nilsson wished he hadn't included this song. I'm glad he did; it's one of my favorites.

8. Mournin' Glory Story (Harry, 1969). The most bizarre thing about this record may be how defiantly baroque and vaudville it is, being that it was released in the midst of the sixties' most turbulent and psychedelic year. This song has been on and off of this compilation more times than I can count.

9. Love Story (Nilsson Sings Newman, 1970). One of the most delicate vocal performances on a delicate album. This captures the mood of the record well; it wastes no time getting started, and lingers no longer than a millisecond at the end. In the middle of it all is a simple yet rousing chorus throwing the surrounding economy into stark relief:

You and me, you and me, you and me, baby,
You and me, you and me, you and me, baby,
You and me, you and me, you and me, baby,
You and me, you and me, you and me, baby

10. Early in the Morning (Nilsson Schmilsson, 1971). One of that record's quiet moments; makes me think I'm in Harry's living room some early morning in L.A.

11. Me and My Arrow (The Point! 1970). Anthem from the animated program, written by Harry, about a boy and his dog. It sounds strangely funky, says a whole lot with very little, and barely lasts two minutes.

12. Jump into the Fire (Nilsson Schmilsson, 1971). The rockingest song from Harry's "rock album." His wail is unforgettable.

13. Everybody's Talkin' (Aerial Ballet, 1968). Strange thing is, it's hard to believe that this is Nilsson. For a guy that could do just about anything with his voice, this sounds the most different of anything he ever sang.

14. Without Her (Aerial Pandemonium Ballet, 1971). Harry cashes in and welds together his first two records, rerecording many of the vocals. But it's too late, he's already helped invent chamber pop. Nilsson made a career out of singing sad songs, and this is one of his most teasingly downbeat.

15. The Moonbeam Song (Nilsson Schmilsson, 1971). It is what it says it is, and it is one of the prettiest songs Nilsson ever put to wax.

16. All I Think About is You (Knnillssonn, 1977). The opening salvo of Nilsson's final proper album. His trademark circular lyrics are in full effect, but it is given a haunting poignancy by his latter-era husky baritone. It will give you chills if you let it.

17. Coconut (Nilsson Schmilsson, 1971). Shit is crazy.

18. The Beehive State (Nilsson Sings Newman, 1970). This record won Stereo Review's album of the year award, and it might be because of this song. What sounds like Nilsson's voice being run through a wah-wah pedal is actually Nilsson opening and closing the cups of his headphones in front of the microphone to the beat.

19. Cuddly Toy (Pandemonium Shadow Show, 1967). Another track made famous by the Monkees; Harry flashes his naughty, miscreant streak early on in his career. What do you think this means?

You're not only cuddly toy that was ever enjoyed by any boy
You're not the only choo-choo train that was left out in the rain
The day after santa came
You're not the only cherry delight that was left out in the night
And gave up without a fight, ohhhh,
You're not the only cuddly toy that was ever enjoyed, ha, by any boy

You're not the kind of girl to tell your mother
The kind of company you keep
I never told you not to love no other
You must of dreamed it in your sleep, zop, zop,

Mind you that the Monkees sang this.

20. Without You (Nilsson Schmilsson, 1971). Here it is, the song to end all songs, the tribute to codependence, the world's first power ballad. The key thing is to listen. Listen to this. This song is incredible. It sounds so delicate, just two piano chords, played almost half-disinterestedly, and then in comes Nilsson, crooning so softly you'd swear he was lying in bed next to you.

No I can't forget this evening
Or your face as you were leaving
But I guess that's just the way the story goes
You always smile but in your eyes your sorrow shows,
Yes it shows.

No I can't forget tomorrow
When I think of all my sorrow
When I had you there but then I let you go
And now it's only fair that I should let you know
What you should know.....

....Then Jim Keltner tumbles in on the drums, slowly beating them as though he were lurching forward with all his might against gravity itself, and Klaus Voormann just follows him up the stairs on bass. Have I not mentioned Klaus Voormann yet? This guy was best friends with the Beatles in Hamburg, and very well could have been playing bass for them on the Ed Sullivan Show, but still ended up being on just about every ex-Beatle's first solo record, and here he is with Nilsson. You just can't take the Beatles out of Nilsson, nor Nilsson out of the Beatles.

Hearing Nilsson scale the heights of his dizzying vocal range never fails to thrill. This is, and always will remain, a song that only Harry Nilsson could sing. This fact makes the profound tragedy surrounding the song's writers, Pete Ham and Tommy Evans, only more tragic.

Nilsson heard this song at a party long before he recorded it, and thought it was a Beatles song, but later found out it was written by the Beatles' band of proteges, Badfinger. By the time Nilsson made it a smash hit, Badfinger had already been swindled out of the royalties to their songbook, and suffered due to the collapse of their label, the Beatles' Apple Records, and subsequent mistreatment by Warner Brothers records, which caused Wish You Were Here, which should have been a triumphant comeback, to wither unheard on record store shelves. When "Without You" was a hit, Ham was working menial labor in a factory just to make ends meet, his own song playing on the radio as he worked.16 Ham hung himself in 1975, and Evans did the same in 1983. Nilsson did a stand-up thing when "Without You" hit and presented both of them with silver records (right), but it ultimately did little to forestall the fates of these two doomed rockers.

21. Think About Your Troubles (The Point! 1970). Whew! Good time to just sit and think things over, like how a teardrop can fall into a teacup, then get thrown in the ocean, where somewhere a whale's body is decomposing, 'cause that's what happens to bodies at the bottom of the ocean....Ok, things are starting to gain perspective, until....

22. Don't Forget Me (Pussy Cats, 1974). By default, the most touching song on a gonzo album, made all the more heartbreaking by the broken voice that sings it. Marianne Faithfull, once famous for getting busted for drugs wearing only a throw rug in swinging London with her boyfriend Mick and his buddy Keef, revived the song as she tried to revive her own singing career in 1997. "'I wanted one of my own contemporaries on the record,' Faithfull says of the Nilsson selection. '(The song) had to be something that matched up to the other material. It needed wit, charm, and a real musicality as well . . . In the end, I couldn't find anything other than a Harry Nilsson song that would have fit.'"17 Depite her reverence for her late friend's work, she still found time to bizarrely slander the man and the circumstances of his death. "We used to do drugs together. When I say drugs, I don't mean those modern-day, airy-fairy drugs. I'm talking about narcotics. One day I had to stop because I was going to die. So I went off to this place in Minnesota--I highly recommend it."18 She also claimed that he died in a dentist's chair, and that while his body sat in the mortuary, it was swallowed by a fissure during an earthquake. "Harry's rather large body--I suppose it was all the drugs and alcohol--fell down a fissure and was lost forever. So they buried another coffin that they filled with stones."19

Dawn Eden, writer of the last and most definitive Harry Nilsson interview still available, One Last Touch of Schmilsson, refuted Faithfull's claims about Nilsson dying in a dentist's chair and disappearing through the Earth's crust. Yet a story told by Paul McCartney about a visit he made to Lennon and Nilsson during the Pussy Cats sessions attests to Faithfull's other claim:

"So I went out there and he was doing Pussy Cats with Nilsson and Keith Moon and Jesse Ed Davis, to name but three total nutters. Three beautiful total alcohol nutters plus John, forget it! Even the location is perfect. We went round to a session and sat there for a bit. It was a bit strange, John and I, seeing each other at that time. But then we dropped by their house the next day for a cup of tea or something.

"I remember Harry Nilsson offering me some angel dust. I said, `What is it?' He said, `It's elephant tranquilliser.' I said, `Is it fun?' He thought for about half a minute. `No,' he said."20

23. I'll Never Leave You Alone (Nilsson Schmilsson, 1971). Nilsson ends his touchstone album with a song that says "the album's over, but you'll never get rid of me." Indeed, this haunting coda makes such assurances true.

24. Over the Rainbow (A Little Touch of Schmilsson in the Night, 1973). Ok, I could have cut this to make room for "You're Breakin' My Heart," but I'm a sucker for this song, and I'm trying hard to land this ship safely. Plus, hearing Harry recite his studio wish-list to the control room at the end is hilarious.

25. Living Without You (Nilsson Sings Newman, 1970). More supremely-wrought heartache from one of Nilsson's best efforts, this time providing a fitting end to a rememberance of a great man.

Ev'ry one's got something
And they're out tryin' to get some more
They got something to get up for
Well I ain't about to.
Nothin's gonna happen
Nothin's gonna change
Baby, it's so hard
Living without you

It's so hard
Baby, it's so hard
Baby, it's so hard
Living without you

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1. Eden, D. (1994). One last touch of Nilsson. Goldmine 20(9). Retrieved June 22, 2006, from http://www.harrynilsson.com/page-one-last-touch-of-nilsson-part-1.html

2. Eden.

3. Stanley, B. (2004, February 20). Hit & myth. The Times. Retrieved June 20, 2006, from Factiva database.

4. Wener, B. (2000, June 28). Something gained in translation: Harry Nilsson's lyricism, Randy Newman's lyrics a potent combination [Record review]. The Orange County Register, p. B08. Retrieved June 20, 2006, from Factiva database.

5. Hopkins, J. (1972, December 21). Keith Moon bites back [Electronic version]. Rolling Stone. Retrieved June 22, 2006, from Rolling Stone Web site: http://www.rollingstone.com/news/profile/story/9264343/keith_moon_bites_back

6. Eden.

7. Goldman, A. (1988, August 30). Yoko’s loss is Pang’s gain—briefly [Republished portion of the book The lives of John Lennon]. St. Louis Post Dispatch, p. 1D. Retrieved June 22, 2006, from Factiva database.

8. Eden.

9. Lewis, J. (2006, May 3). It happened here...No. 19 Curzon Place, Mayfair. Time Out London, p. 94. Retrieved June 22, 2006, from Factiva database.

10. Eden.

11. Altman, R. (n.d.). Popeye. Retrieved June 22, 2006 from http://www.harrynilsson.com/page-popeye.html

12. Bates, J. (1988, January 12). Nilsson's talkin': wealthy rock singer shifts attention to making movies; doubters wonder whether he can carry a business tune [Valley Edition]. Los Angeles Times (pre-1997 Fulltext), p. 9A. Retrieved June 20, 2006, from ABI Inform Global database.

13. Bates, J. (1994, November 7). In the end, only creditors talked to Nilsson. The Seattle Times, p. F5. Retrieved June 20, 2006, from Factiva database.

14. Barber, C. (1999, March 1). Memories of Harry: Songs by the late Harry Nilsson popped up in the movie "You've Got Mail" and rekindled interest in the singer-songwriter. The Cleveland Plain Dealer, p. 1E. Retrieved June 20, 2006, from Factiva database.

15. Eden.

16. Turner, R. (2004, December 18). Beatles guitar lands at auction after long and tragic journey. The Western Mail, p. 17. Retrieved June 20, 2006, from Factiva database.

17. Evans, M. (1997, March 21). Marianne Faithfull changes her tune. Portland Oregonian [Sunrise], p. 38. Retrieved June 20, 2006, from Factiva database.

18. Musto, M. (1997, February 11). La dolce Musto. The Village Voice, p. 10. Retrieved June 20, 2006, from Factiva database.

19. Pandora. (1999, June 16.) The Independent - London [Observational column], p. 4. Retrieved June 20, 2006, from Factiva database.

20. Miles, B. (1997, September 28). Yesterday, part 3: Without the Beatles, 'I didn't shave' [Republished portion of the book Paul McCartney: Many years from now]. The Observer. Retrieved June 23, 2006, from Factiva database.

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My apologies to everyone I've bored in the wake of this obsession, and my sincere apologies to the people I've tried so hard not to plagiarize in making this. Please, everyone who reads this, read Dawn Eden's piece, buy Nilsson's records, subsrcibe to the L.A. Times, everything, do it. Maybe now I can just listen to some Nilsson sometime.

Encyclopedias, Cult Flicks, Spider-Man

2006-06-13T16:03:00.000-05:00

From the Stuff That Only Librarians Care About Dept:

Wikipedia Founder Discourages Academic Use of His Creation

At a recent conference, Jimmy Wales, founder of the popular online encyclopedia project Wikipedia, said he felt that his creation shouldn't be used for serious research.

Mr. Wales says he gets about 10 emails a week from distraught students. “They say, ‘Please help me. I got an F on my paper because I cited Wikipedia’....For God sake, you’re in college; don’t cite [Wikipedia].” Mr. Wales even said that the site is considering creating a fact sheet for professors to distribute to students to help them understand why Wikipedia is widely considered not a scholarly or authoritative source of information.

This is a significant development--to librarians and teachers, anyway. It affirms that while Wikipedia is exhaustive, though by volume alone, it suffers because of its essential nature; encyclopedia entries that can be written and edited by anyone, anytime, can hardly be considered as authoritative as an established reference source, like an encyclopedia, which is subjected to rigorous standards of research, peer review, and editorial control.

The admission also puts an interesting spin on the simmering debate comparing the authority of Encyclopedia Britannica to Wikipedia, considering that Mr. Wales has essentially conceded the race.

I will say that there is at least one subject in which Wikipedia may be considered an authority: Science Fiction continuity. Nowhere else can you get as authoritative an explanation of the vast universes of Doctor Who, Star Wars, and Quantum Leap.

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From the Stuff Only Me and a Few of My Friends Care About Dept:

One of my new favorite websites is Not Coming to a Theater Near You, which specializes in reviewing films that, well, are likely not ever going to come to a theater near you. Enterprising subscibers to Netflix will find the information it contains invaluable, while cineastes everywhere will delight in insightful considerations of art films and filmmakers both revered and expected(see Fitzcarraldo, Secret Honor, Morvern Callar, Eraserhead, Caché), and those that are, shall we say, not typically subjected to the hyper-critical treatment (see The Geneaology of James Bond, Joe Versus the Volcano, RoboCop, Die Hard, Back to the Future Part II).

One stand-out feature is their Guide to Twin Peaks, which succeeds in placing the cult series in its proper cultural and artistic context. I ate up each episode's synopsis, especially considering that I only saw many episodes, especially those in the second season, only once, when they originally aired.

The real gem of the Guide to Twin Peaks is their authoritative essay on the series' much-maligned coda, Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. I have never read a more thorough, insightful essay on this film, which the reviewer, Tom Huddleston, calls "the most misunderstood of Lynch’s films, the bleakest and most unrelenting, but in many ways also the most human and understanding."

While we're on the subject, do yourself and everyone else a favor, and get familiar with the movement to release the director's cut of TP:FWWM. Apparently an hour of deleted scenes exist, and the French company that owns the footage is seriously considering giving David Lynch the funds he needs to remaster the sound and edit the stock. Sign the petition to help them make their decision, and then maybe we'll get our GARMONBOZIA!!!

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From the Obligatory Quiz Dept:

Hell yes I'm Spider-Man.

Your results:
You are Spider-Man

Spider-Man 80%
Green Lantern 80%
Superman 65%
Iron Man 60%
Hulk 55%
Batman 50%
Supergirl 47%
Catwoman 45%
Robin 44%
Wonder Woman 37%
The Flash 35%

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

Though I guess I'm about as much Green Lantern as anything.

Question Mark of the Beastmaster

2006-06-06T22:22:00.000-05:00

PREPARE YOURSELVES....

For a completely random blog post.

Today is a significant day, if you're a lazy numerologist. It's 6/6/2006, which people will tell you is the "Mark of the Beast." No wait, the Mark is 6/6/06. REPENT! No, no; the Mark of the Beast is 666. Well, zero is nothing, so it's like the zero isn't there. Zero is like oxygen; numbers just pass through it. Only that oxygen is a substance, and therefore has mass. And it's like a whole number or something. And if you place zero next to another number, they would multiply, and the number next to zero would DISAPPEAR! It would turn into NOTHING, yet STILL HAVE MASS! That's pretty darn evil, turning a whole number into another whole number that is odorless but still has mass. So the equation is 6/6/06, which is like 6 divided by 6 divided by 0 times 6, and 6 divided by 6 is 1, and 0 times 6 is zero, and you can't divide a number by zero. Why? Because IT WOULD CAUSE THE WORLD TO IMPLODE! And that is why today is International Satan Day. So by all means, don't give birth, especially not if your birthing room is number 23.

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I've become somewhat of a regular reader of Neil Steinberg, columnist for the Sun-Times, who is back at his job after doing a bit of time for assaulting his wife. I had never heard of him or his previous troubles, but I think that's to my advantage, because I've been able to take him purely at the level of a columnist writing a column, making a point. As such, I've found him fair, sensible, and often astute.

This recent comment about radical Islam, made in the wake of the recent terror arrests in Canada, struck me as spot-on:

[D]espite its nice-guy international persona, Canada is in the cross hairs of Islamic extremism. Just like us. A reminder that the current spasm of bloody Muslim rage -- about 30 years old with another 300 years left to go -- is not about the United States or what we may have done in the past. Rather, it is all about radical Islam, and the rapidly shrinking, interconnected, global society waking them up and dragging them, blinking and cranky, onto the world stage where, sadly, their first impulse is to kill.

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I went to Paris. This is what it looked like:

If you really want to see all 300+ pictures, let me know.

Paris was charming from start to finish. It never failed to amaze and delight. One thing that America can learn from France: how to make a hot dog. One day we were wandering down the Champs-Elysees, which is just like Michigan Avenue, and we stopped at a Crepes stand. I ordered a hot dog, because I saw someone else order it and it looked good. They take a baguette cut in half and sliced down the middle, put a foot-long hot dog in it, sprinkle shredded cheese on top, and put it face down on the crepes skillet. Man was it a tasty hot dog. I washed down my half with a can of Heineken while we sat in one of the many random gardens that dot the city.

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One thing I especially enjoyed about Paris was going to see Marie Antoinette; the new Sophia Coppola film Marie Antoinette, that is. Paris is notorious for its love of film, and it's no boast. The theater showing Antoinette complimented the showing with a mini-Coppola fest they called "La Saga Coppola." They were showing all three of Sophia's films, and an odd selection of Francis Ford's: Godfather III, Apocalypse Now Redux, The Conversation, Peggy Sue Got Married, The Outsiders, and one whose title I didn't understand, yet I believe was Rumble Fish. Ah, those quirky French.

We were glad we decided to squeeze in the movie, because we both really enjoyed it, and it won't play in America until October, and due to the mixed reviews it has received thus far, is likely to appear in an altered form when it arrives on our shores. No matter how it is adapted, Marie Antoinette is unlikely to meet a sympathetic response in this Frenchophobic country of ours, and needless to say will likely not garner as much popular success as did Lost in Translation.

While I can't speak to the alleged controversy and/or derision this film may or may not have inspired at Cannes, I can say that I was thoroughly charmed by Marie Antoinette. Strange as it sounds, it reminded me of another overlooked period piece that I'm a big fan of: Stanley Kubrick's Barry Lyndon. Like Kubrick in Barry Lyndon, Coppola doesn't really mind if the audience is unfamiliar with the vagaries of the historical period her film examines, because she is more concerned with capturing moods and emotions, however fleeting, mounting and filming those gossamer moments beautifully, and letting it expand at her own leisurely pace. As for the soundtrack that includes Gang of Four and The Cure among others, I attest that it absolutely works; it fits the mood of the times that Coppola captures, and above all, it firmly establishes Coppola as the auteur at work behind the lens. The songs' inclusion implies risk, but also choice. This is a Sophia Coppola film, and above all, choices like these serve to coalesce Ms. Coppola as a confident filmmaker with a distinctive, maverick, unmistakable vision.

Not everyone is going to like Marie Antoinette. One aspect of the film that is sure to invite criticism is Jason Schwartzman's hyper-minimalist portrayal of Marie's clueless husband, Louis XVI. I thought it was funny, and I thought that it fit. Kirsten Dunst is asked to do little more than be winsome and, well, Kirsten Dunst, but really, where's the harm in that? This film won't be to everyone's taste, but neither was The Virgin Suicides or Lost in Translation. Simply put, this film will either work for you or it won't. Some will be charmed, some will be angered, and some will simply be bored. Count me among the charmed.

I hope above all that Coppola resists any pressure to alter this film in any major way. One could certainly make it shorter by removing a shot or two of Dunst lolling around in bed or cutting one of the many supporting characters. For example, Marie Antoinette's hairdresser makes an impressive entrance in the film and proceeds to do little more than, well, do Antoinette's hair, but he reappears in a debauched party scene and helps the tipsy queen avoid singeing her hair on candles, to humorous effect. The introduction of his character is stylish, but unnesessary, and could easily be cut, leaving the latter humorous scene essentially intact. The move would save time, and the funny part would still be funny. But we would lose the key fact that reminds us why this character is so interested in the health of the queen's hairdo. Cutting the hairdresser will not make Marie Antoinette a better film, only a shorter film. I think it's great the way it is, and can't wait to see it again.

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I just saw David Lee Roth perform "(Might as Well) Jump" with a bluegrass band on Jay Leno. He had a haircut. He looks like somebody's cool dentist or uncle. How the mightily awesome have fallen. Though I must admit, I was always a sucker for Van Haggar. What can I say? That was the version I heard when I started to "get" Van Halen. For Unlawful Carnal Knowledge was the shit when I was a freshman in high school. I mean, "Dreams"?

So baby dry your eyes
Save all the tears you've cried
Oh, that's what dreams are made of
Oh baby, we belong in a world that must be strong
Oh, that's what dreams are made of

And in the end on dreams we will depend
'Cause that's what love is made of

Gives me chills.

Deride me if you must.

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Nacho Libre looks awesome.

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I've been mulling abandoning the Myspace Branch. The only thing keeping it open is the ability to give those readers who don't mind visiting My-stalkerville-highschool-hijinx-pushing-the-teen-porn-envelope-Space the chance to get their almost semi-monthly fill of Bedheaded blogistry. If you are a reader who prefers to read this High Quality Stuff at MyStalkerSpace and can't bear to see it exist solely in the genteel avenues of Bloggerland, do me a favor and let me know. I'm here for you.

You call that writing?

2006-05-18T12:41:00.000-05:00

Not too long ago, I was talking to a friend of mine. She is a poet, in the literal sense. She has a Master of Fine Arts degree in poetry, which means that she has undergone rigorous study and practice in pursuit of her art. Though I must admit I have never read any of her work, I can safely assume that she does, in fact, work her craft. She has been working for a literacy program in the city where she visits school classrooms and tries to encourage students to engage in the creation and appreciation of poetry in particular and the creative arts in general. She was telling me that I would be a good person for the job, and her reasoning was simple: "because you're a writer."

That statement triggered some heavy contemplation on my part. Am I a writer? If I had been a writer at one point, could I still consider myself a writer? I discussed my concerns with my friend, and she told me that until I convinced her otherwise, she would continue to consider me a writer. Her conviction is heartening, but does little to satisfy my doubts.

The mantle of "Writer" is one of the many creative vocations I have attempted to master, with less than satisfying results. Throughout my life, I have entertained fantasies of becoming a cartoonist, a film director, a TV news cameraman, a photographer, a high school band director, a rock/pop guitarist and vocalist, a professional bass clarinetist, and a novelist. More often than not these ambitions have failed before they could start. The one profession I did eventually acquire, librarian, seemed to happen as a result of pure circumstance.

My wildest ambitions have gone the way of most youthful fantasies, but the allure of the Writer lingers. The closest I have gotten to living the writer's life was my Bachelor's degree in English, where I sat through an impressive amount of your typical undergrad writing workshops, the results of which are a handful of short stories I'm inclined to forget and about five unfinished (read: barely started) novels. In a way, writing is like heroin, or maybe murder: once you get the taste, you can't get rid of it. I got the taste, but I don't have the cure.

Slow dissolve, and cut to a misty montage of a freefall through library school, resume scene, and you find me here. The only thing I do that could be considered writerly is this: blogging. It's here that I indulge all of my writerly impulses. And the conditions are perfect. No intolerable workshop mates to savagely castigate my exquisitely overwrought prose. No agony wondering if I'll get published. No second drafts.

Allow me to be to first to question the quality of the prose product being offered here. I've turned in a profanity-laden tirade against harebrained Christian bigots; a hearty defense of Katie Couric; a missive concerning my troubles with wine; numerous insults lobbed in the general direction of radical Islam; and perhaps most memorably, a passioned appreciation of one utterly forgetable second baseman from Canada. Oh, I almost forgot my critical investigation of the Dean Martin Mystique. All of which fails to paint a portrait of consistency.

Immaterial, you might argue; such is the nature of blogging. The typical blog chronicles little more than what crosses the mind of the blogger at times when they likely have much better things to do than to chronicle their whims for the world. The best blogs are consise, maintain a consitent theme or set of themes, and establish a distinct, memorable voice for the blogger. The best blogs are the ones you check on a regular basis, to see what's new, and to hear something you likely wouldn't hear anywhere else.

So can blogging be considered writing? I don't know, and regardless, I'm the last person to ask. While my experience in the "legit" writing world tells me otherwise, my gut tells me that this feels like writing. And really, that's good enough for me.

Barring the unlikely chance that I pick up any of those unfinished novels, my writing is exactly where it belongs, for now and the forseeable future. Until I regain my nerve and attempt to play the writing game again, I'm comfortable here.

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This post was inspired in part by Paul, who recently told me to "Write something new, goddamn it. But not about fucking baseball; I'm getting enough of that shit from DeLillo."

Funny you should mention baseball! I've been plotting a big post about Barry Bonds, and about Hank Aaron's original eclipsing of Babe Ruth's fabled home run record, but I just haven't had the energy to start it.

However, during my research, I ran across this neat app: the Oracle of Baseball, which links any two baseball players by a shortest possible list of teammates. It's a sort of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon for baseball players.

For example, here's a list connecting Joe Tinker, who played shortstop for the last Cubs team to win a World Series and was a third of the famed "Tinker to Evers to Chance" double play combination, and Ronny Cedeno, the current Cubs shortstop:

Joe Tinker played with Bob O'Farrell for the 1916 Chicago Cubs
Bob O'Farrell played with Phil Cavarretta for the 1934 Chicago Cubs
Phil Cavarretta played with Minnie Minoso for the 1954 Chicago White Sox
Minnie Minoso played with Steve Trout for the 1980 Chicago White Sox
Steve Trout played with Greg Maddux for the 1986 Chicago Cubs
Greg Maddux played with Ronny Cedeno for the 2005 Chicago Cubs

Fascinating, isn't it?

Useless info dept.

2006-04-07T16:36:00.000-05:00

Count this as one of the posts in which I have absolutely nothing notable to say--but that's never stopped me or any self-respecting blogger before, so it won't now.

I'll grant you one tidbit of nearly-revealing quasi-factualness to start out; a truly personal insight to try and counteract the disappointment that's sure to come to those who happen to get to the end of this thing. Ready? Here it goes....

The one dream I ever had for a career, for a vocation in life, and that I continue to have, even though the chances of it happening now are slimmer than they ever were, was to be a rhythm guitarist in a recording and touring rock/pop act. That's the guitar I'd play, my dream guitar: an antique white Les Paul Custom. The closest I ever came, aside from American Legion shows in Peoria, was cutting a seven inch and piling in a van with my friends and our ska band to play a whopping two shows in Michigan. Pathetic as it sounds, it was one of the best, most enjoyable experiences I've had in my life, and it remains that way. While I've updated my gear, there are few opportunities for me to start to again realize some small part of the enjoyment this dream once gave me, and regardless, I do little by way of practicing. But as long as I still enjoy music, and my voracious appetite for music seems unlikely to taper off anytime soon, I'll still cling to the ever-dimming but undying dream of contributing to the art form that has brought me the most enjoyment.

So there's your maudlin confessional blogistry for you. Now for the pointless ranting and random shout-outs.

There's been a notable event that's been all over the news the last few days. It's inspired some impassioned debate, and I simply had to add my two cents. That's right; I'm talking about Katie Couric taking over Dan Rather's old anchor chair on the CBS Evening News.

You can say that this is hardly newsworthy, and you'd be right. But for my part, I am glad that Ms. Couric is taking this job. I haven't been a fan of the Today show for quite some time, and I agree with all the wags that have belabored the ridiculousness and vacuity of the format during the waning years of her tenure there. Yet I've always liked Ms. Couric, and part of me has wished that she would jump ship and resurrect her career in a more worthy setting. The recent trifecta of departing anchors presented a sort of perfect storm to make this particular event possible.

Let me make it clear: any claim that Katie Couric lacks the credentials or gravitas to helm an evening newscast is utterly ridiculous. Dan Rather was a doddering fool when he left, but his sterling, anchorly image persists nevertheless. The reason for that lies behind the word "image". The evening newsanchor is little more than a face that speaks. For nearly as long as there has been television, there has been haircuts with voices reading the news. Television, especially television news, has always been guilty of inflating their own importance, and nowhere is this more evident than in the tired, decaying image of the anchor. Anyone who has worked in television will tell you, Will Ferrell's Anchorman got it exactly right.

As for her credentials, as much as they are needed in a job that requires you to read about seven minutes of text five days a week, Ms. Couric's journalistic experience is well-established, diffused as it may seem in the fog of Today. For what it's worth, the same concerns were raised by the same worthless pundits when Brian Williams took over Tom Brokaw's job, and Mr. Williams just won a Peabody award for his coverage of Hurricane Katrina. So much for credentials. Much was made of Peter Jenning's disastrous first foray as the anchor of ABC Nightly News, and the fact that when he returned to the seat, his image had been burnished by the interim he had spent covering war in Beirut and terrorism at the Munich Olympics. What's forgotten about Jenning's initial flop is the fact that in his first go round, he was even more of a smug bastard than he was anyway. Beirut and Munich didn't make him less of a smug bastard, but it made it clear he'd been in the shit.

Belaboring this admittedly over-hyped event (and consider that it's just getting started!) runs the risk of embarrassing myself, but I can't help it. My first, or actually more like first-and-a-half attempt at attaining an actual livelihood had me angling toward a career as a TV cameraman. Television people are strange ducks, and that part of me has never left. Much as I can try to spout wise about the ridiculousness of the anchor image, my devotion to that image is made apparent by my obsession with it, and it is impossible and pointless to try to conceal it.

Shout-out time; as a result of my birthday, I have a brand new stack of books that I really should get around to reading:

Carter Beats the Devil by Glen David Gold
The Fortress of Solitude by Jonathan Lethem
In Cold Blood by Truman Capote
Kornwolf by Tristan Egolf
Where Have You Gone, Vince DiMaggio? by Edward Kiersh

I recently saw The Libertine; Johnny Depp's performance is one of the best of his recent jag of excellent performances, and he carries the show, which was unexpectedly moving at points, but would you believe I wished it contained more debauchery? It's better than anything else out there, except perhaps Thank You for Smoking and Brick.

Destroyer's new record, Destroyer's Rubies, is characteristically dense, yet strangely more accessible than anything he's done. The same could be said for Neko Case's Fox Confessor Brings the Flood, which may actually be her best album yet, but I'm not entirely sure.

I'd hand out an asshole notice or two, but it's getting late.

The world may or may not be watching

2006-03-30T16:38:00.000-06:00

Various news reports claim that Myspace is being increasingly monitored by police and employers. Police are now able to find evidence of wrongdoing simply by entering their jurisdiction's zipcode and surfing profiles, and employers are consulting the site to check out the after-hours predilections of current and potential employers. This Orewellian gambit is ironic considering that potentially incriminating information is willingly posted by Myspace users.

This scenario can only be painted in shades of grey. Police can hardly be faulted for busting people who willfully post evidence of crimes; law enforcement have committed full-time resources to tracking down potential pedophiles through chat rooms, so trolling MySpace for evidence of grafitti and drug use can be seen as an extension of the same method of police work, though the crimes may not be comparable. Background checks, even credit checks, are now regular features of being considered for a new job.

Using willingly offered information on MySpace as evidence of crime seems par for the course, even though the seriousness of the crimes can be debated. What is more discomforting, and more difficult to prevent, is the potential for people will pass negative judgement about you, especially people who may become directly responsible for your financial well-being.

There seems to be no easy answer to this issue. It would seem obvious that if one were to post a picture of themselves toking on a forearm-sized blunt, one might resonably expect that such a picture would produce a less favorable impression on the law firm one is attempting to join than it would one's forearm-sized blunt-toking buddies. It's not as easy to determine whether gathering such information in a pre-employment screening is ethical, or even if doing so provides a good barometer to that person's employability.

Even more disconcerting is the potential for simple speech to cast a negative impression on employers. The world of blogging and personal promotion seem built on the foundation of free expression, but the straight world remains less than impressed. If you make a nuissance of yourself by endlessly promoting your personal misconception of the universe while you're in the workplace, you can expect to find yourself less than welcome there, but take it home, and you can fly your freak flag in peace. But when you fly it on MySpace, you're increasingly doing so in the public square, and less so in the darkened den of your own personal hidey-hole.

As a librarian, I value the freedom of expression highly. We have a saying: "information wants to be free." If information wasn't free, libraries would have none to collect or distribute. The internet has flown wildly out of our keep, try as we might to tame it. What appeals to me most about internet self-promotion is the democracy it seems to embody; online, you can represent yourself as the person you see yourself and wish to be. Seeing such information getting turned back on its consentual distributors seems a troubling subversion of one's basic right to speak and think freely.

Again, there is no easy answer. One could easily withdraw completely; remove themselves from the grid and avoid Big Brother's pernicious gaze. However, the maverick side of me wishes more people would go the other direction. If you go, go all-in. Publish yourself completely. Put as much of yourself out there that you can bear to produce. That way, no one may need to feel ashamed of who they really think they are. Nobody's perfect, after all.

Until such a utopian, or perhaps distopian, scenario comes to pass, it seems the best advice is some that I got from my mother when I thought that Kool Aid was a food group and all pants were manufactured with built-in booties:

"If you don't have anything nice to say, don't say anything at all."

Spring cleaning

2006-03-08T16:39:00.000-06:00

Spring, wonderful spring. Baseball is back in all its glory, along with some shame.

The World Baseball Classic appeared ready to join the latter category, but now that it's underway, it is shaping up to to perhaps live up to its name. Most prognosticators predicted it would be a flop, or worse, a disaster. No one seemed to agree when exactly it should take place. No one liked the pitch limits or the mercy rule. No one wanted to see their best players get hurt for a game that just didn't seem to matter -- that is, for a game that wasn't played for their own favorite team.

But baseball, it can be argued, is hardly America's pastime any longer. And frankly, I would argue that the best thing that could happen for the sake of the World Baseball Classic would be for team USA to get eliminated in the first round. Imagine the uproar! The disgrace! America beaten at its own game! Surely it wouldn't happen, not with the light schedule the US had to face in round one.

Game one went according as planned, but barely. The US beat Mexico 2-0, both runs coming by way of solo home runs, the first by everyone's favorite first baseman, the above pictured Mr. Derrek Lee, the second by Atlanta's Chipper Jones, who I personally can't stand. Next up were the Canadians, whose team consisted of the Pirates' Jason Bay, and...well, some other guys, Canadians for the most part. No problem.

Well, until the US actually played the Canadians. Starting pitcher Dontrelle Willis, he with the funny wind-up and the 2003 World Series ring and Rookie-of-the-Year trophy, got positively shelled. The scoring got started thanks to a triple by Canada's second baseman, Stubby Clapp. Yes, there is a baseball player whose name is Stubby Clapp. You've never heard of Stubby Clapp? He exists, you can look him up. He's the quintessential cup-of-coffee minor league also-ran; played 23 games for the Cardinals in 2001 and racked up an awful .200 batting average, knocked around the minors until '04, and thus would have logically ended the sorry story of Stubby Clapp. Much as at seems the fates should smile on the baseball career of a player with a name as old-school perfect as Stubby Clapp, baseball success for Stubby was just not to be.

Until the maligned, misnomered World Baseball Classic came along, and Mr. Stubby Clapp re-wrote the script baseball karma had handed him and made himself a surefire hero in the hockey-obsessed nation of Canada. These allegedly unintimidating Canucks beat the snot out of Dontrelle Willis and stormed to a 8-0 lead behind the aforementioned Stubby Clapp, an inside-the-park home run by Adam Stern, who did little to distinguish himself for the Red Sox last year, and a gutsy start from pitcher Adam Loewen, who spent all of last year playing for Baltimore's Class A minor league team, who if you were wondering play in Frederick, MD. This against a team boasting a generous helping of future first-ballot Hall-of-Famers and the World's Premier First Baseman, Derrek Lee, star of Chicago's Favorite Baseball Team. And they resisted a 6-run surge by the Americans and held down a save behind, you guessed it, a not-ready-for-primetime minor league pitcher.

Much as America would like to see its chosen heroes reassert its dominance in the sport it invented, the sad truth is that the rest of the world has way more passion invested in America's former pastime. A Cinderella story like Canada beating the world's finest with such endearing baseball never-weres such as Stubby Clapp would just the kind of improbable outcome that just may make the World Baseball Classic truly classic.

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Unfortunately, the other notable baseball story of the week adds another page to the growing story of shame that is the sport's stubborn resistance, up until last year, to sever the sport's sick fascination with the deathly cult of performance enhancing drugs. Steroids have cast a sorry pall over the greying glory of American baseball, seeding doubt among those who want so badly to believe in the sport's glory, and calling into question so many milestones in its recent past. Forget the dishonor in danger of being served to to Willie Mays and Babe Ruth, someone needs dig up the bones of Roger Maris, cast them in bronze, and encase them in plexiglass for permanent enshrinment within the hallowed hall of Cooperstown.

Yes, Barry Bonds is back on the front pages, and no, no one's surprised with the central allegations of the upcoming tell-all book Game of Shadows.

Much as so many who love baseball would just wish Barry and his grotesque ilk would shrivel up and go, the shame of cheating with drugs can only be eliminated by getting tough and turning a back on those who put themselves above the game. Baseball doesn't need Barry. It's got Derrek Lee, Chipper Jones, Dontrelle Willis, and Stubby Clapp. Guys like them play for the glory of the game and the glory of the team. Barry only plays for Barry, and everyone loses.

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No more on this. Let the following article by ESPN's Buster Olney stand as the last word on Barry, on all that Barry's ruined, and on all that Barry's lost.

Welcome to the Hall ... of Shame

By Buster Olney

The recent fuss made over Barry Bonds' forthcoming reality show is confusing, really, because it appears that this venture went into production years ago. The first script was rejected, and we discovered the last pages of its proposed series-finale.

July 25, 2010. Barry Bonds sits near a podium in Cooperstown, N.Y. Willie Mays walks slowly to a podium, and the applause is loud, fading slowly, as the crowd waits to hear his words.

"I'm here to talk about the past," Mays says, "and to introduce this young man sitting over here to my right."

The fans roar. Bonds smiles, looking up.

"This is what you all know about Barry Bonds. Winner of three Most Valuable Player Awards. Eight-time Gold Glove Award winner. Led the National League in RBI once, in 1993. Led the National League in home runs once, in 1993.

"But let me tell you something you may not know about Barry Bonds. He made choices. The right choices. And that's part of the reason why I can say to you, without qualification or reservation, that this young man is one of the greatest players of all time."

More cheers. Loud. And then Mays continues.

"Everybody who spent time around the game knew by the early '90s that the players were changing, and what they were putting in their bodies was changing. Something more than Wheaties, although none of us knows exactly what.

"Maybe it was those strange words. Winstrol. Stanozol. Deka. Andro. By the summer of 1998, the bodies were huge. Looked like offensive linemen, and everybody in the game knew why. We didn't know for sure, but we suspected. These guys were changing the game, the way the game was played, the numbers.

"And it was that summer that Barry had to make the same choice that all the players in baseball faced. He could change what he was putting in his body, and get bigger and stronger -- freakishly bigger and stronger -- and you know what? There was a chance nobody would find out, or even care. Baseball didn't test for steroids then, and there weren't any penalties. Seemed like the whole industry looked the other way.

"But you know what? This young man sitting to my right felt good about what he had accomplished, in the first 13 years of his career. Four hundred and eleven homers. Over 1,200 RBI. Hell, we already knew he'd make it here one day. He was a great player and we all knew it. And Barry Bonds kept eating Wheaties instead of that other stuff.

"See, my Godson was smart. Remember how he said all along that he didn't care what other people thought about him, and the writers got on him for that? Well, that's how he lived out his career, wasn't it? He didn't let the expectations of others drive him into doing something unnatural, did he? He didn't worry about the numbers that those other big guys were putting up, did he? He was smart enough to realize he didn't need artificially-enhanced greatness. Barry Bonds already had greatness.

"And look at him. Same smiling mug. Same skinny-framed guy he was when he started in 1986, except for that little tire that's growing around his gut, now that he's 46. All natural.

"Sure, the end of his career got a little ugly, as it did for the rest of us. Barry's knees were killing him, but he played through it, for the last five years of his career. He wasn't hitting 70 homers, like some of his peers, but he played the game with the highest possible integrity. Those 25 homers he hit in his last year, in 2004, we can take those to the bank. We can take everything he accomplished at face value.

"He didn't finish his career with as many homers as Henry Aaron, or Babe Ruth, or myself, or Frank Robinson. But Barry was the best player of his generation -- one of the greatest of all time."

The crowd cheers loudly.

"In recent years, you have seen a lot of the stage behind me empty, and you know why. A lot of the Hall of Famers won't come when they presume that the inductees put something in their bodies that wasn't supposed to be there.

"But now look behind us. The stage is packed. Look, we all know Barry has been a bit prickly from time to time. But we all know the choices Barry faced, and the choices Barry made, and because of that, there is no player from his era more respected.

"With that, I want to introduce to you my godson, Barry Bonds."

There are cheers, and as Bonds rises from his chair, the Hall of Famers behind Bonds rise, as well, and clap.

http://sports.espn.go.com/mlb/columns/story?columnist=olney_buster&id=2358746

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A life on film

2006-03-01T16:43:00.000-06:00

Do yourself a favor, and do it soon: set aside six hours, sit back, and marvel at The Best of Youth, which is quite seriously one of the best films that I have ever seen, and may ever hope to see.

The two prominent discussions about this film are helplessly reductive: the discussion of its length, and the discussion of its plot. It is a hearty six hours long, and it is about the lives of two Italian brothers born after World War II. The Best of Youth transcends both of those basic discussions.

Its six hours seem a pittance in that it gets better and better as it goes along, and that it gracefully traverses nearly half a century. When its time has passed, you will wish it would not end.

It is an epic in which not much happens. It is a simple film that reaches beyond the profound. It is wonderful.

Another boy genius, f***ing gone

2006-02-19T16:45:00.000-06:00

We had just seen a movie the other day, and were poking around a nearby Barnes and Noble, idly wasting time on a day off. On the way out of the store, I paused to peruse the table of "New Paperbacks," and noticed to my surprise and pleasure a book called Kornwolf, written by Tristan Egolf. I was a fan of his debut novel, Lord of the Barnyard, and like most of his admirers, eager to track what would surely be a promising literary career.

The synopsis on the back of the book started on an ominous note: "Tristan Egolf was one of our most promising writers...." Wait a minute, I thought, "was"? Mystified, I opened it to the bio, and my fears were confirmed; Egolf had died in 2005. Further searching online reports that he died May 7, 2005, of a self-inflicted gunshot wound--suicide. He left behind a fiancee and a young daughter.

News of his passing had escaped me until this point. It puts a subtle lie to my portraying myself as an "eager follower." I was aware of his second novel, The Skirt and the Fiddle, but never developed more than a trifling interest in fulfilling my desire to "follow this growing talent". Now such an endeavor becomes painfully simple to undertake. Barring any discovery of a stash his of nearly-finished manuscripts, Mr. Egolf's growth can be charted in the span of three novels.

Much was made of Mr. Egolf's appealing backstory upon Barnyard's publication: the daughter of a prominent French novelist discovered him barefoot and playing guitar on a bridge in Paris, initiated a dialogue between the busker and her father, who encouraged Egolf to finish his manuscript, which was quickly published to some acclaim in France. It is a story almost too perfect to believe, evoking images of elegantly urban European bohemia, and a culmination of the stock fantasy of legions of aspiring ecrivains everywhere. Mr. Egolf dropped out of college, quit his punk rock band, split for a shabby room in Paris to devote his attention to finishing the book that he knew he had to write, tending bar and strumming his guitar to keep bread and water on the table. All that's missing are a bickering group of threadbare intellectuals sent from central casting.

The only deviation from this shopworn plot is the niggling fact that for Mr. Egolf, it all worked out exactly right. He finished his book, won the respect of those threadbare intellectuals, and got himself thrust to the upper crust of the literati world. It must certainly have worn on the brittle feelings of those for whom such dreams were never realized, for just as Lord of the Barnyard gained praise for its inventiveness and fevered exposition, it gained an equal amount of scorn for what some perceived as amateur's luck and an accompanying lack of a veteran hack's ability to self-edit. It was called unwieldy as much as it was called triumphant. He garnered all the troubling comparisons: Faulkner, Robbins, and the like. And now that he's gone, there are too many self-satisfied comparisons to another artist whose meteoric brilliance was cut tragically short, John Kennedy Toole.

Such is the nature of contemporary literature in a world that has little time and scarce interest for a diversion as anachronistic and self-important as contemporary literature. Succeed at your peril, yet succumb under the hypocrite clucking of tongues.

Now that Mr. Egolf is gone, complaints that he couldn't put a filter on his restless imagination, take an editor's ruthless scythe to his labyrinthine plotting, are rendered obsolete. Now that there will be no more, what's left will never seem enough.

Go out and get a copy of Lord of the Barnyard now, if not simply because it's a ripping good yarn, then at least to stem off the disappointment and ennui that's sure to come when it gets transmuted into an insufferable, toothless Brad Pitt/Leonardo DiCaprio vehicle .

Spill the wine

2006-02-15T16:48:00.000-06:00

Wine and I, we don't get along. Wine has its own agenda, and I have mine, and rarely do our agendas match. I want to drink and be merry, and wine wants me to contemplate death.

I don't get drunk when I drink wine. I feel dizzy and nauseous, and I feel like I'm going to die. I feel like my brains are going to slowly bleed out of my eyes, in a mellow, wine-drunk kind of way. I can't trust myself to not collapse on the ground and flap my arms like some prehistoric arm-flipper creature from the sea.

The irony is that I really want to like wine. Who doesn't? There are so many varieties. So many pretty bottles, and so many indelible shades of grape. It's a lot of fun to go to a restaurant and order a bottle of wine. There's no way you'd order the cheapest ten-dollar bottle on the list, but you don't have to feel cheap when you splurge and aim for the low-twenty dollar range. You can ask the waiter what's good, and they'll suggest a bottle for you, and when you drink it you can feel like you got the best bottle on the list. When they serve it, it's fun to watch the routine of uncorking the bottle, and be offered the initial pour, as if you're going to reject the bottle and send it back. In Chicago, every other restaurant is BYO, so you can feel boho and carry your five-dollar Riesling in a sack to your corner Thai place, and sort of imagine that you're in some boho Thai place in Bangkok.

But all of those little peripheral, ritualistic elements to drinking wine become irrelevant once I actually drink the wine and start realizing my inner psychopath. That brain-dead psycho nearly set off an international incident once.

When I was in college, I took two years of French, because I needed to have that much proficiency in a foreign language in order to graduate with a bachelor's degree. I had taken two years of French some six or seven years earlier in high school, but I quickly resolved to forget every word of it on my last day in French class. I was certain that I hadn't retained enough to test out of it in college, so I decided to start from scratch, now that I wasn't such a callow youth and actually saw the value in appreciating a culture other than my own. Why I didn't direct that newfound international bonhomie towards Spanish, a language I might conceivably get some use out of, I don't really know.

All of the French professors at the college took part in something called French Table, or le table Francais, for those grading at home, every week at a local pub called Charlie's. Basically it was a chance for all of the French professors and a few students to get together, get drunk on wine, speak French and listen to accordion music. So one night I actually decided to go to the French Table, mainly because a couple friends of mine were going.

Things started well enough at the French Table. I was speaking tortured French with my friends and drinking wine. I don't know what kind of wine; I just kept asking the bartender for white wine. The more I drank and the longer the night wore along, the better I felt I was speaking French. The atmosphere quickly reached that fever-pitch of the most frenzied kind of intoxicated evening. The whole thing took a turn when I decided to dance with one of the professors, a slightly kooky middle-aged lady with white hair who was actually French. I have no idea what prompted me to do so, but she said something to me, and I said back to her, "that's a very French thing to say."

I meant well, but long story short, it wasn't received well. The way I knew I had lost the favor of the aforementioned French professor was whenever I met her in the hallway of the foreign languages building; when previously she would pass me with a congenial "bonjour, Jacques," she would thereafter meet me with a terse "hello, Jake".

I spent the remainder of that evening lolling around blazing-drunk and paranoid. The drunkenness was easily explained--glass after glass of anonymous white wine--but the paranoia was subtler, though certainly warranted. When the evening had begun, they were heatedly discussing an incident that had recently put the French Table in the local paper. Seems one of their students had fallen over dead soon after an evening with le table. It turned out that he had some rare heart disease that quickly grew fatal after an evening of allegedly copious wine and song. Something about wine made his heart simply stop beating. The group was concerned, and quite rightly so, about the negative image that the incident would cast over their collective. But in hindsight, I do not remember equal concern being waged over the recently departed.

Thereafter, and following many other surreal incidents, the drinking of wine has become entwined in my mind with death and mayhem. There was once a time when I longed for the invocation of such qualities in concert with the ingestion of intoxicants, but too many times staring cold-blooded at death has convinced me that there will never be a way that wine and I will be drinking buddies.

Getting drunk, getting wasted, getting high, getting stoned, those are all things to reckon with, things to do, and those all have their qualities. But getting your brain strangled by death is another thing. Hand me a can of Pabst, split a fifth of Seagram's 7 with me, pass me cool Manhattan, sure, I'm game. Let's drink until we aren't thirsty. But when it's time to envirez-vous, I'm afraid I'll have to pass. It's for everyone's good.

Picking the Winners

2006-02-04T16:49:00.000-06:00

Oh the pain, the agony, of writing it all out in overwrought detail, just to lose it by hitting the back button. Hell with it, here it is in less detail:

Best Supporting Actress

Michelle Williams, Brokeback Mountain
Possible spoiler: Rachel Weisz, The Constant Gardener

Best Supporting Actor

Jake Gyllenhaal, Brokeback Mountain
Possible spoilers: Paul Giamatti, Cinderella Man; George Clooney, Syriana

Best Writing, Original: The Squid and the Whale

Best Writing, Adapted: Brokeback Mountain

Best Actress

Reese Witherspoon, Walk the Line
Possible spoiler: none

Best Actor

Philip Seymour Hoffman, Capote
Possible spoiler: Heath Ledger, Brokeback Mountain

Best Director

Ang Lee, Brokeback Mountain
Possible spoiler: none

Best Picture

Brokeback Mountain
Possible spoiler: Crash

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This is the end: A Personal Retrospective

2006-01-10T16:53:00.000-06:00

Finally, the most dramatic of changes comes to pass, and its passing is so quick, banal, and uneventful, the words of an eternally prophetic song come to mind: "Is that all there is?" Is this all that I've lived for, all that I've seen, all that I've experienced and been? Have these been the faces of my friends and family, and how have those faces looked upon me? As an ally or an enemy? As a confidant or confessor? And what has there been that can be called an accomplishment? What victory? What quality or virtue? For what ends, and for whose amusement has this spectacle been staged?

All around me have been reminders of the person I have always wanted to be. Two guitars and an amp, subject to fickle usage, standing in stubborn opposition to the volume of worthy examples laying in slipcovers and jewel cases, a volume of testaments to the peril of creating something possibly imperfect, something decidedly unlike that perfect golden mean that sings forever in your brain in the voice of a million singers yet with a chord progression that can never correspond with the disappointing reality of clumsy fingers. The unfurling balladry of history's unceasing drama, filing itself neatly on dusty shelves, flirting with and occasionally inspiring a complementary turn from your own unfocused, unpracticed instrument, wanting so badly to whip unpolished thoughts into a pleasing theme, a universal emotion, a balanced progression, a fulfilling denouement. Ideas, left barren by inaction, grow fat and dissolute, gradually being replaced in the wake of the practical regime of the everyday, the common, a fearful battle in which the spirited dreamer is routinely trounced by the cynical march of the everyman and his dreary concerns.

And so it goes, what once inspired you to scale the heights of imagination now stands to remind you of the stupid, impetuous child you tried so hard to bury in the shallow graves of your subconscious. But he's there, spazzing out hard as you try to move gracefully through the austere hallways of the adult world you've fought so hard to earn harbor within. His rash immaturity takes a constant bow during the near constant flashes of anger you fear you may never learn to control. But once and a while his innocence appears, miraculously unsoiled, delighting in the fragile good of life, the small joys of a warm breeze, of cold sunlight on a winter's day, of unforced kindness encountered when the world demands totalitarian focus on the getting of one's own, all else be damned, I'm gonna get me mine and the rest can go rot.

There is only one life, though at the beginning there appear many paths. All roads narrow into a rutted trail, burrowing deeper into a darkening wilderness. Glancing back, one may see his fellow travelers fighting bravely into the woods, but ultimately every one is left behind, even one's self. All of the light compounds itself until it resembles the darkest, most enigmatic shadow.

On Friday I was offered a position as virtual reference librarian for an online university, and today I accepted the offer. My quest to begin my career took well over half a year.

The most I personally feel I can expect to live is ninety years, and that may in fact be an optimistic estimate. Therefore, if my life can be divided into thirds, the first third of my life will come to an end on March 26 of this year. Though I will technically begin my life as a professional career-type person within that first third, the great whole of that career will take place in the second and last third.

So neatly, so succinctly does my time of divulgent paths and untamed wilderness come to an end.

Oh my God, it's been such a long time!

2006-01-06T16:54:00.000-06:00

Oh my god, how are you doing! It's so great to see you, I just can't believe it! I mean, I haven't seen you, in what, it's gotta be like ten months, hasn't it! You look so great! I love what you've done with your hair! It looks like a Prince Valiant haircut in the front, but in the back it's got this little rat tail! That is so original-looking! And what a neat t-shirt! I've never seen a wolf riding a unicorn through the clouds at midnight before!

This last year has been so great, you wouldn't even believe it! I've done so many exciting things, and I've met so many interesting people! Everywhere I went, I met a new person, and every one of them knew twenty more interesting people that they told me everything about, and now I have about three thousand really great new friends! And every one of them is always going out and doing really fun things, and whenever they go out and do those really great things they make sure to call me and make sure I can go with them and do really great things too! It is so much fun! I have to carry three cell phones, so I can keep all their numbers and receive all their calls! They are all fantastic people, and I am very lucky to have them as friends!

My career is simply out of this world, out of this world! It is so good, in fact, that I'm working two jobs! I'm working so much that I barely have time to spend all of the money that I'm making! But I do my best! The work I do is so rewarding, I wouldn't even mind if they paid me a little bit less! If you told me eleven months ago that I would be working two really great jobs that were intellectually and creatively stimulating every second of the day, I wouldn't have thought you were telling the truth! But it's true, boy is it ever true! Every day when I go home, or I ride to my other job on the bus, I say to myself that what I have done today has truly served as a benefit to not only myself, but to humanity as well! And other people tell me too! Oh, the people! The people I serve never stop telling me just how much they truly appreciate the great service I am doing for them! It seems like every third person is telling me that they're lucky that I'm around! And my coworkers are equally as great, if not a little bit more! I can tell that they appreciate my personality and my sense of humor, and I know they look forward to when I show up to work!

You know that I'm a gentleman, but you'll have to pardon me when I let you know that my love life is hot, not to put to fine a point on it! My love life is running a slight fever! It's building froth! It's flying off the shelves! The people I've dated all think that I'm the best thing that's ever happened to them! They thought they were unlovable, but then I came along, and if they haven't necessarily felt loved before, now they at least feel highly esteemed!

I hope I see you sooner than ten months from now, because rest assured, as exciting as my year has been, this next year will probably be more exciting!!!

Give us our Garmonbozia!!!!!!!!

2005-12-20T16:54:00.000-06:00

Garmonbozia!!!!!!!!!!!!!

I could give a flying fuck-all who the goddamn Carver is, where he she or it is, what he she it is carving, and whether he she it is observing proper sanitary procedures.

But I do care about the Extended Edition of Twin Peaks: Fire Walk With Me. Read about it here, and sign the petition to get it released here.

The Onion wrote a story about me.

2005-12-12T16:57:00.000-06:00

Might as well be about me, anyway.

Dope Just Galumphing Where Life Takes Him

December 14, 2005 | Issue 41•5

Another day in the life of directionless oaf Jeff Koegle.

SPIRIT LAKE, IA—On an ordinary day, amiable dim-bulb Jeff Koegle wanders into many places: his den, the bowling alley, maybe the local Spee-D-Kustard, which is only a three-block dawdle from his house. For as long as anyone in Spirit Lake can remember, this burly goof has schlepped along the road of life with neither purpose nor reason.

"I like to whistle sometimes when I'm going along," Koegle said. "Or maybe hum a tune that was on the radio last place I was."

Koegle added: "Once, I heard a meow outside by the dumpster by Hardy's. It was a box of kitties. They let me keep one. I named him Yellow."

In his 34 years, Koegle has plodded his way through high school, two homes, an eight-year marriage, a series of mindless jobs, and the occasional boat show. The easily distracted boob has left no lasting legacy, save for an occasional knocked-over cup or upset magazine rack.

"I accidentally slapped a guy's soda out of his hand in line at the movies once," Koegle said. "Now he's a good friend."

Koegle's aimless blunderings occasionally trigger major developments in his life, which isn't saying much, because if it weren't for sheer happenstance, he would have no experiences at all.

"Once, when I was getting off the bus, I saw some little TVs in the window of a store," said Koegle, his doughy mitts hanging limply at his sides. "I went into the store, and I had a nice chat with a salesgal, and she asked me out on a date. Now that gal's my wife."

Longtime friends and associates say Koegle's oafish good cheer is as constant as his characteristic outfit: a sweatshirt, jeans, and a Salem windbreaker.

"Sometimes Jeff will come by, hang out for a bit," said friend Dan Werner, who graduated from high school with Koegle in 1989. "We'll maybe watch hockey or go get a bite to eat if one of us is hungry. After a while, he'll say, 'Well, guess I ought to get going,' and he'll take off."

Local merchant Evan Rasmussen Jr., proprietor of Rasmussen Dime & Drug, sold Koegle gum throughout the '90s.

"[The lummox] wouldn't come in with any regularity, but once in a while he'd amble through," Rasmussen said. "When he'd grab the gum from the display, he'd muss up all the other packets of gum on the rack. I would always have to straighten them out after he left."

Eventually, Rasmussen asked Koegle to straighten the gum himself. Koegle has been working at Rasmussen Dime & Drug ever since.

Koegle's wife Jeannette, 30, shared a more intimate view of the shambling clod.

"Yesterday during breakfast, I told Jeff to try taking charge of his life more, because I know he has it in him to make it happen," Jeannette said. "I could tell he was considering what I said, but then he seemed to forget all about it when the potato pancakes were served."

At home on his recliner, Koegle said he is "just fine with" his directionless life. He added that he "pretty much fell into it."

"I guess I wouldn't mind working a few more hours at Rasmussen's here and there, but Jeannette and me are doing fine," Koegle said. "My cousin Jerry [Morris] wants us to move out to Wisconsin and work with him at the window-blind factory that's always hiring, and I think that might be nice, but to be honest, I don't give it a lot of serious thought."

Minutes after this confession, Koegle was fast asleep.

At the close of another day, the stumblebum once again failed to conceive of a single quest, great or small. Yellow in his lap, he remained on the recliner through the night, his unconscious mind doubtlessly dancing with images of found sawbucks and crab apples.

The Onion is not intended for readers under 18 years of age.

The Greatest

2005-12-11T16:58:00.000-06:00

1940-2005

What they meant by "Kill Your Idols"

2005-12-02T17:00:00.000-06:00

These are not my idols. I once admired them, but then I found out that my parent's generational idols and ideals need not be my own. These people must be stopped, for their and our own good:

Billy Joel.

John Mellencamp.

Eric Clapton.

James Taylor.

Mike Love.

Mick Jagger, Keith Richards, Charlie Watt, and whatsisname.

The list is endless.

These people will not go away, and frankly I bet they wish they could. I've seen Eric Clapton on TV commercials lately, but I'd be hard pressed to hum a few bars of his latest "tune." In fact, I'd be hard pressed to point out one truly significant, transcendent, or magnificent moment from this man's entire career since the dissolution of Cream. "Tears In Heaven," I guess. Yeah, it is transcendent, in fact, but christ, the man's kid fell out of a twenty-story window.

I just saw Billy Joel on Conan O'Brien, and it was one of the truly sad moments I've ever witnessed. Here's one of the most successful recording artists in history, pushing a "career-spanning box set" that, poor guy, has to compete with a three-volume greatest hits set that already exists. At one point he would have commanded the entire show, but tonight he got second billing to, umm, I don't remember who, although who was on only ten minutes ago...but anyway here's Billy Joel, more known these days for crashing ridiculously expensive and fetishisticly rare collector cars whilst hopped up on sleeping pills than he is for crooning "bottle of reds, bottle of whites." And he couldn't look more bored or aware of his own pathetic irrelevance.

A contrasting list.

Jimi Hendrix.

Janis Joplin.

Jim Morrison.

Richard Manuel and Rick Danko.

Brian Jones.

John Lennon.

Who knows how it would have turned out for them. But we're painfully aware of the decaying and declining arc that is the careers of their contemporaries. Really, people, just let it come to an end. Somebody has to fire the first shot. Retire. Quit. Get thrown in jail. Or....or worse things that I'd better not list here. This is the generation that wasn't ever gonna die, and by god, they sure as hell ain't dyin'. Although they are joining the American Association of Retired Persons. So there you go, retirement isn't just for old people anymore, O ye eternal youth. Go away, sip cocaine-laced mimosas in Santa Barbara. Allow us to miss you.

pps: Honorable Mention is served to Bob Dylan, Bruce Springsteen, Brian Wilson, and Levon Helm. Hell, even Neil Diamond. But Robbie Robertson can just go to hell.

Poor Kids!

2005-11-12T17:00:00.000-06:00

NFL Discontinues "Take Your Daughter to Work Day"

In which all of your questions are answered.

2005-10-28T17:03:00.000-05:00

Just kidding. I don't have an answer for anything. I've said it many times, all of the times I've given unwarranted advice to anyone who seemed remotely interested in gaining my opinion...I'm nobody's guru. I haven't even met my own guru yet, so I can't be anyone else's. That would be sick.

Hip Hop Violinist?

2005-10-19T17:04:00.000-05:00

Ok, who in the hell's blunted ass thought releasing an album by a "Hip Hop Violinist" was a good idea? Kanye West, right? I know this guy was all underground and hip when he was just "blowin up," but now that he's bigger than Jay-Z doesn't he seem just as pointless as all of the rest of the cash money millionaires queefing thier craptastic hits all over the pointless-ass radio? I mean, what was there about this guy that was so cool in the first place? The record store he shopped at to find all the soul samples for his first album? The fact that he's probably read books? But a hip hop violinist? I just heard her playing on the Tavis Smiley show, and I'm sorry, the MC sounded hip hop, but this girl's violin had to be the least hip-hop sounding thing going on during the track. OK, scotch-tape some classical violin over a rap track and whaddya got? Something like that disco version of "Beethoven's Fifth," to my ears. Give me a freaking break. Where's the Wu Tang when you need 'em? Where's Chuck D? Where's Ice Cube for chrissakes? How come every hardcore MC straight out of wherever gotta turn into a bonehead millionaire muttering about his rims whenever he breaks big?

Damn.

Sox Mania

2005-10-14T17:06:00.000-05:00

Believe it or not, I do have better things to do than to be blogging right now. I know, it doesn't happen too often. I've got to go to the store and gather ingredients for my famous chilli, which for the first time ever will be vegetarian. I've got to, ahem, apply for jobs. But things are getting out of control, and good ol' Jeff, aka the person least interested in baseball in the entire world, has summoned me to wax expansive on one of my favorite subjects to wax expansive. Yes, I'm going to talk about the Chicago White Sox, and Yes, I'm going to talk about "the play." Or "the scandal." Or, "Oh my god, baseball is so screwed up, the world is coming to an end, run for your lives." Y'know, whatever the kids are calling it.

First, some background. Everyone knows I'm a Cubs fan. Even the FBI knows. You read my letter to Luciano, right? Well, you did, Jeff, and you're the only one reading this. So, what is my job as a Cubs fan? To hear most Cubs "fans" tell it, I'm supposed to feign total disinterest in the goings of the Major League playoffs. I mean, think about it, who am I supposed to root for? The Angels, I guess. According to popular opinion, there's no way I can root for anyone else: the Cardinals or the Astros, both hated division rivals of the Cubs, and the Sox, mortal enemies of all things Cub. There's this guy who writes for the Tribune, which, total disclosure, owns the Chicago Cubs, like "duh," who has compared rooting for the Sox to cheating on one's wife. So if I care at all about baseball, all I have are the Angels. And I do like the Angels; when the season started, I thought they had as good a chance as anybody to make the Series. Vlad Guererro is amazing with a bat, and he's the model of a superstar in baseball's brand-spanking new post-steroid era.

But call me a cheat, call me a philanderer, or whatever you want to call it, I'm pulling for the White Sox. I mean, I absolutely can't root for the Cards or Astros, but if pressed, I guess I'd rather the Astros to win, just because they aren't the Cards. But I live in the city of Chicago. I've heard about the Sox all season long. I know who every player is on the team, down to the guys in the bullpen who rarely take the mound. Even though the idiots on both sides of town are dismissing the "civic pride" concept as ridiculous sentimental junk, I think that there's no way you can live here and not have a rooting interest in the Sox' success. Unless you're so bitter, so twisted, so...well, unless you're a Sox fan, I guess. Yes, I can say for a fact that the Cubs didn't enjoy this kind of civic support from the southsiders in 2003, when they got within three outs of the fall classic. It's a fact that the majority of Sox nation that live in this city were wishing for worse than what actually happened to the Cubs that year. So along those lines, it's an eye for an eye and all that garbage, right? Well no, not only am I Cubs fan, more importantly I'm a baseball fan. Sox fans typified by the aforementioned Journal Star "columnist" will tell you that no such thing exists in the United States of Cub. But whatever. That's the kind of thing that makes most "normal" people think that baseball fans, or sports fans in general, are touched in the head.

So yes, damn it, I'm pulling for the Sox to go all the way. I think it would be neat. And if you want to lord it over the Cubs when you win, go right ahead. They'll deserve it, and perhaps it will convince the front office and the Tribune tower to start running the club as though it were a baseball team and not a marketing brand or a cartoon character.

OK, about that play. The ball hit the ground. It looked like the ump called Pierzynski out. Josh Paul, who it should be known is the Angel's third catcher and a career third catcher at that, should have tagged him out or thrown to first, no matter what. All that's at issue here is what the home plate ump called, and no matter what he called, Paul should have tagged the runner. Call it a third-string catcher's mistake. The right call was made the wrong way, essentially. The same thing happened when the Yankees were playing the Angels in the Division Series. Yank second basemen and Rookie-of-the-Year candidate Robinson Cano swung at strike three, the ball got away from the Angel catcher (one of those ubiquitous Molinas this time), and Cano ran for first. Molina's throw to first went wide of the first baseman, but Cano was called out because the umps said he was blocking the lane to first, hence "getting in the way" of a throw to first. Interference, third out.

So a lot of complete morons, i.e. the morons that were calling the Sox/Angels game, one of whom is Lou Pinella, who up until a few weeks ago was the manager of the Devil Rays, and that guy McCarver who's just an idiot period, look at this play and say it calls for instant replay in baseball. This is complete and utter bullshit. The NFL adopted instant replay and officially-reviewed plays some years ago, and many around the league still claim it should be removed from the game. Major League Baseball has no such need, and should forget about insant replay. This whole issue is being attributed to the vague call made by the ump, so baseball is already taking care of the problem by attributing it to an individual's error.

But any talk of this play "changing the game" is patently ridiculous. The last major change to baseball in the proceeding century was the implimentation of the designated hitter in the American League about twenty years ago. People still think the DH should be taken away from baseball. Putting instant replay in baseball would be the most egregious change to take place in baseball since the DH, and arguably would be worse. People thought that playing baseball under electric lights was scandalous, but all that happened is that baseball took place at night, when people could see it on TV, rather than during the day, like it's still done at Wrigley Field, who nonetheless installed a tasteful bank of lights above the grandstand. Technological changes like lights and TV cameras have not changed the game itself, but instant replay would be a direct encroachment on the game as a pure and unchanged phenomenon.

Bad calls have always been made, and there have been plenty worse calls and plays throughout baseball's history. This play is nowhere near as significant as Merkle's Boner, which by the way led to the Cubs winning their last World Series. Blown calls, scandalous plays, and just plain human error are part of the fabric of baseball's history. To our great benefit and pleasure, baseball is being played just the same way as it's been played since a bunch of Knickerbockers took root on Elysian Fields, and that's the way it should stay. If it were technically perfect and scientifically sound, then it wouldn't be baseball.

Would you believe?

2005-09-26T14:57:00.000-05:00

RIP Maxwell Smart.

Catalog of maladies

2005-09-26T13:27:00.000-05:00

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.

§

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.

§

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.

§

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.

Rub it in...when you win

2005-09-22T17:10:00.000-05:00

So there's this guy, Phil Luciano, who writes "opinion pieces" for the Peoria Journal Star, and he just wrote a piece about how Sox fans are better baseball fans than Cub fans. He writes this in Peoria, Illinois, where paradoxically a majority of the residents are Cardinal fans, and where the minor league team is a Cub affiliate. His arguments were the usual Sox vs. Cubs drivel, read it here if you haven't heard it all already. I just couldn't help but respond. I do this because I'm feeling good, really I am. I am good, I assure you.

:::::

Since you were kind enough to point out to your eager readership, if in fact such a thing exists, the characteristics typical of Cubs fans, at least from the addled, bitter point of view of the typical Sox fan, I find it necessary to offer this addendum. There's one thing about Sox fans that makes them easy to spot: no matter how bad or good the Sox are playing, their fans can't help but compare their joys and/or woes against those of their hated rivals, the crosstown Cubs. This would make sense if the Sox were enjoying any sort of success in comparison to the Cubs. But the truth of it is, in the last century or so, the Sox haven't won a heck of a lot more World Series than their hated rivals; in fact, the last time the Sox had a chance to play in the Fall Classic, they decided to throw it for about a grand a man.

If the Sox win, take all the lumps you want on the Cubs--you'll deserve it. But the Sox aren't winning much more than the Cubs, especially not now, nudge nudge, so who do Sox fans have left to hurl their spitballs at? Why, the Cub Fans, of course. Here we have the second easily-discernible trait of a Sox fan: if Sox Nation has an enemy worse than the Chicago Cubs, that enemy is none other than the United States of Cub Fandom. And considering that those fans make a considerable showing at any ballpark the Cubs play at throughout the country, one can easily determine that the U.S. of Cub is large indeed.

So what's wrong with this teeming mass? Well they drink beer, for one thing. Since we're playing apples and oranges, there's no way we can call Sox fans hypocrites, unless we admit that the each concession stand across Commiskey--excuse me, U.S. Cellular Field, sells a different kind of beer. What would a stadium full of teetollers need with such a wide variety of beers? Especially in the American League, which used to be known as the "Beer and Whiskey League" in the halcyon days before prohibition?

Before we try to answer that unanswerable, let's consider what else is wrong with Cub Fans. In the eyes of Sox fans, it's the cardinal sin: Cub Fans are way too loyal to their team. They just keep buying tickets and showing up at Wrigley Field every day as though there was some sort of notable public event going on there--like a Major League Baseball game or something. Only a Sox fan, the most bitter, hateful, angry lot one can possibly encounter in baseball, would utter such incomprehensible drivel as this:

"When the Sox play lousy, their fans say so - and stay away from the ballpark. That's how capitalism is supposed to work." Phil Luciano

You're right about that--the Sox can hardly give away tickets to their games, much less fill their man made chasm of a ballpark. They have to resort to all kinds of base gimmicks to get people through the doors: half-price Mondays, dollar-dog Thursdays, fireworks on Fridays, and the upper deck, or as most people call it, the ozone layer, still sits empty. I bet Jerry Reinsdorf or Ozzie Guillen don't think this way, but you can bet that the few Sox fans that do show up on a typical night, or at least the ones who aren't jumping onto the field and bum-rushing umpires or opposing coaches, are pleased as punch that there aren't a whole lot of people hanging around at their ballgame. Because normal people just wouldn't "get" their baseball team. They wouldn't "understand."

Maybe if there were more "baseball fans" showing up at Sox games, then maybe the people of Peoria wouldn't have had chip in their own hard-earned tax dollars to help build that intimate little hang-out spot on the South Side of Chicago, U.S. Cellular Field, which of course was built solely for enjoyment of those few sensitive souls that give a darn about the Chicago White Sox, that little team that apparently can't. Hey, even Cub fans had to chip in tax money to build your monstrosity of a ballpark--that's money that could have been spent on beer, something Sox fans wouldn't know about, or spent on a ticket to a Cub game, which would be an expression of loyalty to the team they love, ultimately putting uniforms on players and players on the field. But Sox fans wouldn't understand that sentiment much, either. Sox fans are far too mature and austere to feel unabashed loyalty for a matter as trifling as baseball, although unlike Cub fans, Sox fans are "real" baseball fans.

Anyway, these days, as the leaves start turning and the Boys of Summer start leaving for points south, Sox fans have bigger things on their mind. They're too busy consoling themselves with the fact that although their team is well on their way to completing what will soon be known as the most notorious and tragic choke-job in baseball history, at least they're not Cub fans. They're "real" baseball fans.

Bedheaded, Cub Fan
Chicago, IL

I Should Care

2005-09-21T17:12:00.000-05:00

I should care a lot more. I should care about my appearance. Look at me. I'm almost thirty, but how old do I really look? Thirty-five? And I'm not upset about anything, I look like that all the time. People have often said, "you should smile, it's not that bad." To which I've said, "I am smiling." The older I get, the more pissed-off and consigned I look.

I should care about all that, and I think about it a lot, but damn it all, I just don't care about it. That camouflage hat I wear is my favorite hat. It cost me three dollars. It's comfortable as all get-out. But it looks like shit, and it makes me look like a redneck. Well, number one, let's not harbor any illusions, I am a redneck. I was born and raised in central Illinois. The smell of pigshit wafting over the cornfields surrounding my neighborhood was a familiar smell, easy to become accustomed to, and encountered regularly. I know redneck when I see it, for I know from which I come. Is this hat a flag, some sort of come-uppance to the polite society I've gotten used to as I've mellowed and grown sophisticated? No, it's just a comfortable hat. And redneck is not something I feel the need to defend and flaunt. I hate redneck. I am redneck. I have grown to accept both of these statements as fact. I cannot and should not hate what I am, but I can accept it and move on.

But damn, I should really care a lot more about all of it. Everything. But there's only so much that gets through, here in my comfortable ensconsment in this corner of hip urbanity. I should be maintaining myself better, not only for this time, which like it or not appears to be my prime. And there's a problem in itself. If this is my prime, why is it so goddamned disappointing and boring?

Requiem for Dino

2005-09-19T17:14:00.000-05:00

You know what bothers me about Myspace? The uncanny feeling that I'm stalking people, coupled with the more troubling feeling that no one is stalking me in return.

Now that my internet empire is in ruins, I will turn here to satiate my neverending desire to hear the sound of my own voice. Even when it's in html, it still sounds the same to me.

I haven't updated my website or my legit blog in a long time, and at this point I feel it's best to abandon them altogether. I do feel that certain posts on my old blog lost me a few job interviews, if not a few jobs. So take a look at me now...just another empty statistic. Since I just can't make the voices in my head shut up, I'm going to have to do my blogging here for the time being. It feels safe and obscure here, as though no one could find me here unless they really tried, and if they did, then enjoy yourself, you deserve it. But a word to the wise: if you take blogging seriously (and if you do, don't worry, I won't look down my nose at you), whatever you do, refrain yourself from adding the link to your blog to your resume. 'Cause they'll check it out. You'll be asking for it. Remember above all that the you being sold in a job interview is worlds apart from the real you, which like it or not the real you is getting a fair showing on your blog. Like Kenny Rogers said, "You gotta know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em."

Have you ever listened to Dean Martin's music? Have you ever watched a Dean Martin film? Ok, have you ever seen the infomercials selling tapes of "The Dean Martin Celebrity Roast" or "The Dean Martin Variety Show"? I saw Regis Philbin hawking the latter when I got out of bed this morning. I have been tempted many times to bite on these offers, and of the million different infomercials out there, these are the few that I stop and linger on whenever I encounter them. But this morning I got to thinking, what is it about Dean Martin that endures, if in fact there is anything?

First the music. Quick, name some of his songs; "That's Amore," ok, "Volare," check. What else? Well those are at least two hits, and certainly he was no one hit wonder. Take a listen to those songs, and what stands out to you? Great voice? Well there's not much wrong with it, but to these ears there's not a lot there to take with you, though certainly I always know it's him when I hear him sing. But listen to "Volare" in particular and tell me he wasn't just phoning it in. And the contrast between the ubiquitous and barbershop-perfect backing chorus appearing on most of his songs next to his own half-interested croon is often creepy, if not cringe-worthy. If forced to identify Dean Martin, I daresay that most people on the street would identify him as a "singer," but as a vocation it seems that the music of Dean Martin is quick on its way to the obscure dustbin of history.

How about the films? I'm sorry, but I can't do much better than name "Ocean's Eleven" without cheating for others...oooh, other than "Cannonball Run" I and II unfortunately I'm lost. I've heard of a bunch of these, but barring a month-long binge of Turner Classic Movies in my future I'd have to say I'm going to miss out on a lot of these. And I can say definitively I've never seen anything of his apparently legendary partership with Jerry Lewis, but if anyone can recommend one to me, be my guest.

Yet Dino does endure, and it seems that the only explanation available is the fact that, well, he was Dean Martin. He was in the Rat Pack. He wasn't nearly in the same league performance- or talent-wise than fellow charter Rat Frank Sinatra, and let's face it, he was light years away from matching the brilliance of Sammy Davis Jr, and you better believe I'm not kidding about that. One need no more evidence than from the recording known mainly as "The Summit," but here you can probably get the best evidence of Martin's legend. Here are the three of them: Sinatra, the superstar; Sammy, the super-talent; and Dean Martin as himself. Dino holds his own, and the legendary nature of this set bleeds from the speakers. Watch "Ocean's Eleven," but "The Summit" is something you can keep.

All of this is over. Say goodbye.

2005-07-19T17:14:00.000-05:00

Go on, see for yourself.

News Corporation to Acquire Intermix Media, Inc.; Acquisition Includes World's Fastest-Growing Social Networking Portal, MySpace.com; Intermix's Network of Sites to Join Newly Formed Fox Interactive Media

Now, somebody get crackin' and develop a new place for us to go and waste our time. We're waiting.