A Well Respected Blog

Ho hum

2008-10-30T13:59:00.000-05:00

I'll be over here if you need me.

Take note.

Hitch Unleashed

2008-10-28T08:46:00.001-05:00

Do yourself a favor and take a minute to read Christopher Hitchen's damning repudiation of McCain/Palin's anti-intellectual crusade in Slate:

This is what the Republican Party has done to us this year: It has placed within reach of the Oval Office a woman who is a religious fanatic and a proud, boastful ignoramus. Those who despise science and learning are not anti-elitist. They are morally and intellectually slothful people who are secretly envious of the educated and the cultured. And those who prate of spiritual warfare and demons are not just "people of faith" but theocratic bullies. On Nov. 4, anyone who cares for the Constitution has a clear duty to repudiate this wickedness and stupidity.

Obama Rally in St. Louis, Saturday, 10/18/08

2008-10-21T19:20:00.014-05:00

According to the liberal elite media, a record 100,000 people showed up Saturday to attend to Barack Obama rally under the Gateway Arch in downtown St. Louis. That's a lot of pinko, terrorist-sympathizin' baby killers to congregate in one place! I'm surprised no one called the Army on us... By contrast, McCain only drew around 2,500 patriots to the pro-America suburb of St. Charles two days later.

Jesus Hussein Christ -- the xenophobic, McCarthyite attacks from the far right are starting to drive me a little nuts. I apologize. Two more weeks. I can make it.

Anyway, The Wife and I went to the rally. We brought along a few of her students who were really excited about going, and they were exceptionally well-behaved. I'm a terrible judge of distance, but I'd say we got somewhere between 30-40 yards away from the speaking podium (the zoom on my camera is just worthless). It was pretty cool to be part of such a large crowd, in a Red State of all places, but overall it was a fairly standard stump speech about the economy and health care. Still, at least I got to see the future president in real time. At one point, one of the speakers went silent for a few minutes and the crowd in my area started chanting "We Can't Hear You!", to which the rest of the crowd rejoined with a "Yes We Can!" Kind of funny; kind of annoying. Read about the real event here.

After the rally, we stopped off at Crown Candy Kitchen in Old North, and I ordered a chocolate banana malt and roast beef cheddar melt on sour dough that was out of this world. That was the real highlight of my Saturday.

"I even spilled my soy chai latte over my shitzu"

2008-10-17T08:44:00.001-05:00

This is just too perfect - Obama roasting McCain at the Alfred E. Smith Memorial Dinner:

Show Me Barely Contained Rage

2008-10-16T12:29:00.007-05:00

I've been keeping an eye on the polling data on Missouri, and it's been real revitalizing to watch the state go from blood red to a vibrant shade of purple. In fact, up until a week ago, Obama was maintaining a small but steady lead in the Show Me state. The latest polling data I could find, though, puts McCain one percentage point ahead. Statistically, it's still a dead heat. There is hope.

Nevertheless, it's disturbing to note that road signs as sickeningly offensive as this are being spotted in my current home state. (Please note the completely superfluous use of quotation marks, in case you had any doubts about the sign-maker's mental acuity.) But at least it's somewhat reassuring that Missourians are also responsible for the popular "Rednecks for Obama" signs at the DNC back in August. It also helps that I live in the city, because everywhere I go I see Obama/Biden bumper stickers, yard signs, and T-shirts. On the rare occasion that I do see a McCain/Palin yard sign, it feels endearingly quaint and out-of-place.

Obama's coming to St. Louis this Saturday to give a speech under the Gateway Arch to shore up local support. I got an e-mail from his campaign asking if I'd like to RSVP for the event (as if there's going to be a person at the check point with a clipboard saying, "Ah, I see you're on The List; go right ahead, Sir."). I'm going.

McCain, however, doesn't come to the city; he goes to the county. And whoever wins the counties is going to win the state.

I still have a tough time understanding any appeal McCain might have left with moderates or indepedents. The Wife called me last night as she was on the road running errands, listening to the debate on the radio. "Did McCain just snort?" she asked. Yes, he snorted, guffawed, harrumphed, sighed, seethed, rolled his eyes, jutted his tongue, and gnashed his teeth. Who wants this guy in their living rooms for the next four years?

Side discussion: What's worse - the road sign of Barack "H" Obama in a turban linked to above, or the fake food stamps the GOP is dispersing in southern California that depict Obama next to an assortment of fried chicken, ribs, and watermelon?

Where’s that dumb pig now? Dead, that’s who.

2008-09-26T09:29:00.003-05:00

This already feels like old news, but George Saunders' latest New Yorker spoof on Sarah Palin's unblinkingness and disjointed grammar is just too perfect not to share. Words fail to describe:

Explaining how she felt when John McCain offered her the Vice-Presidential spot, my Vice-Presidential candidate, Governor Sarah Palin, said something very profound: “I answered him ‘Yes’ because I have the confidence in that readiness and knowing that you can’t blink, you have to be wired in a way of being so committed to the mission, the mission that we’re on, reform of this country and victory in the war, you can’t blink. So I didn’t blink then even when asked to run as his running mate.”

Isn’t that so true? I know that many times, in my life, while living it, someone would come up and, because of I had good readiness, in terms of how I was wired, when they asked that—whatever they asked—I would just not blink, because, knowing that, if I did blink, or even wink, that is weakness, therefore you can’t, you just don’t. You could, but no—you aren’t.

Of course, we now know that her story of not blinking may be yet another one of her fanciful fabrications.

But now, re-reading Saunders' bit in light of Palin's cringe-inducing interview with Katie Couric, I think he may have been too generous in following the train wreck of her logic. Try making sense of this excerpt from the interview:

COURIC: Why isn’t it better, Governor Palin, to spend $700 billion helping middle-class families who are struggling with health care, housing, gas and groceries? Allow them to spend more, and put more money into the economy, instead of helping these big financial institutions that played a role in creating this mess?

PALIN: That’s why I say I, like every American I’m speaking with, we're ill about this position that we have been put in. Where it is the taxpayers looking to bail out. But ultimately, what the bailout does is help those who are concerned about the health care reform that is needed to help shore up our economy. Um, helping, oh, it’s got to be about job creation, too. Shoring up our economy, and putting it back on the right track. So health care reform and reducing taxes and reining in spending has got to accompany tax reductions, and tax relief for Americans, and trade — we have got to see trade as opportunity, not as, uh, competitive, um, scary thing, but one in five jobs created in the trade sector today. We’ve got to look at that as more opportunity. All of those things under the umbrella of job creation.

Reducing taxes has got to accompany tax reductions and tax relief?

Oh dear.

Bloggers on Blogging, or, Why the Apocalypse is Near

2008-09-19T09:19:00.004-05:00

I don't even know what to make of this. Apparently, there is a loose collective of eager-to-network St. Louis-area bloggers, nay, a "guild" of bloggers, who are hosting a conference on blogging this weekend. Yeah, you read that right. It goes without saying that this Well Respected Blogger is in no way affiliated with the local bloggers' guild because, as you are all well aware, I am a maverick, a renegade, a lone wolf from the Lone Star state, if you will. In other words, I wasn't invited to the party.

Still, I take it as a rather egregious slap to my chiseled, electronic face that I wasn't asked to be a keynote speaker at this event. Possible topics that I might have lectured on include:

"Solipsism: Why No One Will Enjoy Your Blog As Much As You"

or,

"Music Blogging is Fun! Or, How To Post MP3s and Evade Johnny Law"

or, perhaps the most pertinent topic of all,

"Not All Bloggers Are Virgins (wink!): How To Juggle a Job, Two Blogs, and Still Give the False Impression That You Have a Life"

These events would have been standing room only. Clearly. Oh well, their loss.

In spite of this, the schedule of events that they have pulled together does pique my interest. CSS, vlogging, monetizing, oh my. The inner nerd in me says "Go, henceforth, and embrace your geeky brethren" but the outer nerd in me says, "What? And ruin your perfectly good plans to eat potato chips in your boxer shorts all weekend long?"

The timing is kind of bad (a little advance warning would have been nice), and as far as I can tell you have to purchase a weekend wristband to the whole silly PLAY:stl music fest to gain entry. $15 just to hear a couple bloggers talk about blogging while the audience live-blogs the event! Geez Louise.

I am such a dork for even thinking about going.

I am an even bigger dork for blogging about thinking about going.

I think it's going to be potato chips and boxer shorts for this lone wolf after all.

And I said, "Thanks, but no thanks, to that blog to nowhere"

2008-09-16T09:20:00.006-05:00

People keep asking me about my Well Respected Blog, which is weird because it means that there are some people who actually read it. Weirder still because I get the impression that some people even enjoy it. While I am obviously flattered by the prospect of a small herd of people smirking behind their computer screens at my infrequently updated, self-reflexively asinine comments on increasingly mundane things in the world around me and/or links to things on the Internet that I found to be moderately interesting or worthy of linkage, part of this does cause me to bristle. Mostly due to the unspoken assumption that my other blog, the one I actually put an ounce of effort into, is chopped liver. It's like college all over again - when I poured so much energy and focus into my band, the usual response I'd get from friends not in the band would be, "Oh, *yawn*, you're still doing that? Good for you." Thanks assholes. I love you too.

I jest, of course. But out of respect to the four or five people who have shown a glint of interest in this paltry blog, I suppose I owe it to them to update the darn thing once in a while. And what better segue back into the world of blogging than that of the hilariously under-qualified pro-God VP nominee of the Republican party, Alaskan Governor Sarah Palin! I'm going to bite my tongue on the litany of biblical disasters she would surely rain down onto the world should she somehow ascend to the throne in the Oval Office, and instead thank her for inspiring this video. I LOL every time I watch it (please note: video may not appear in your Google Reader):

See more funny videos at Funny or Die

See? Wasn't that worth the wait? No need to thank me now; I can feel the gratitude seeping through your web browser.

Pop vs. Soda

2008-08-20T08:05:00.002-05:00

I always thought it was just a Michigan thing. I guess not.

Edited to add: I hate the formatting options of Blogger.

The Dogs of War, Redux

2008-08-08T12:13:00.001-05:00

As Russia and Georgia seem poised on the brink of war, may I kindly direct your attention to these fascinating satirical maps of Europe in 1914.

So who else is excited for the Olympics?

Bat blog

2008-07-28T14:29:00.003-05:00

Bruce: We hack the internet.

Alfred: Hack the internet?

Bruce: Yes, hack the internet.

General: No one's ever hacked the internet before.

Bruce: Well, there's a first for everything.

General: Okay, I like it. But which one of the internets do we hack?

Bruce: All of them.

--from The "rejected" Michael Bay script for The Dark Knight.

I watched The Dark Knight this weekend. For an action-adventure/comic book movie, it was pretty fucking incredible. But after reading Michael Bay's proposed script for the same film, I have to say that my mind was racing with the possibilities of what could have been. Recommended reading for film geeks and/or individuals who believe that Michael Bay is a talentless hack. Easily the second-funniest thing I've read on the internet all month.

In other movie news, Wall-E made me cry. No, really, it's that good.

Guys named Todd

2008-06-26T19:33:00.004-05:00

Yes, George Carlin was a hilarious and hugely influential stand-up comedian, yadda yadda yadda. But you know what, I've got a bone to pick with that little weasel. For most of my adult life I've had a complex about my name, all thanks to the following bit:

You're probably laughing now, but try spending your prime adult years attempting to make a good first impression on people when every time you introduce yourself you hear George Carlin going "Taaaahhd" in the back of your head. Yeah, it's not that funny anymore. It kind of takes you down a notch.

Todd. Taaaahhd.

The Mrs., bless her heart, never fails to remind me how ridiculous my name is. There are really only two kinds of Todds in the world, she tells me, ice skaters and the villains from '80s teen comedies, who are typically blond and chiseled. For the record, I don't happen to fall into either category.

But George was right: Todd is a goofy fucking name.

Is it too late to start going by my middle name?

My life is now complete

2008-06-14T13:29:00.001-05:00

How did I manage to go so far in my life without ever having seen this before?

I don't even know where to begin

2008-06-06T08:40:00.003-05:00

What's been going on at the Well Respected Blog? Only one post per month, and the last post was just a comic? Christ, I'm slipping. Okay, I'll try to bring the WRB back up to speed with a quick list of what I've been distracted by recently:

1. Moving.

2. Blogging about moving elsewhere.

3. Making sweet muzak:

3a. Band 1 is off to a slow start, but the tunage is promising. After two months I think we've finally found a drummer, which has really helped because rhythm guitar and bass can only hold your interest for so long. We still need another body or two to help flesh out the sound: lead guitarist, pedal steel guitarist, musical saw-er, something. I think our original goal of having an album recorded by the end of the summer is out of reach, but when the time comes (next summer?) it'll be something glorious.

3b. Band 2 started off with a bang. Nearly a month after being together we played our first show (without a name even). Here's a summation of the experience taken from an e-mail to a friend:

Well, I randomly played my first gig on Friday. So fucking weird. The drummer's other band was supposed to play, but the singer had to pull out, so... we filled in instead. And, surprisingly, it went pretty well. We played 10 songs in about 16 minutes. But what was really strange, and Blanks-esque, was the line-up of other bands playing. Upstairs there was this reggae show going on, and the club had this huge, dreadlocked rasta bouncer. So all the while as we were loading our equipment into the club (we had to park like a block down the street) we had to maneuver past these slow-moving reggae dancers and the strong scent of patchouli. Downstairs, where we played, the first act was this 40+ guy doing a soft acoustic set. We dubbed him "Esteban," but it turns out his name was actually Ken. After Esteban, this Rage Against the Machine-meets-Metallica-meets-dogshit metal band plays (you know the kind, the lead singer has a huge spike through his lower lip and screams into the microphone like an angry Daughtry; the lead guitarist has shaved eyebrows and crazy eyes; the drummer has an insanely huge drumset; the bassist has a Rancid shirt on). After this awesome metal set is... another acoustic set. This time by a sensitive type guy doing covers of songs like "Wonderwall" by Oasis. And then we went on. And then this band that started with a cover of "Kick Out the Jams" by the MC5 and ended with a cover of the Stooges' "TV Eye," during which the lead singer/guitarist, who looks exactly like Mr. Rosso from Freaks & Geeks, tries to solo out in the audience in front of a bunch of horrified women. I mean, wow, you had to be there.

After the strange success of that night, we managed to land another gig at a much more reputable venue, albeit with another confusing line-up. Us, a ska band, and a group that could only be described as Wine Bar music: earthy, groovy noodling on the guitar; lite funk on the bass; and bongo drums. Yyyyeah. The bar owner liked us, however, and asked us to come back a few weeks later. We were going to but... we decided to can our drummer. Bottom line: he had a double-bass pedal. And he used it. Buh-bye. So now we've got a new drummer, and it makes all the difference in the world. We no longer sound like a post-hardcore band, now it's more like a jangly, lo-fi sound, which I think is what we were hoping for from the beginning. The only problem? The new drummer went out and joined a traveling circus, so we'll only have access to her for random weeks throughout the summer.

Let's see... what else have I been up to? Oh yes...

4. Mowing the lawn, or attempting to.

5. Working.

6. Playing with all sorts of neat political statistical toys, like this one.

7. Celebrating Obama's primary victory!

8. Watching the Sex and the City movie. Dan, you must be getting a lot of lead paint chips falling into your salads if you thought this piece of garbage was any good. Atrocious doesn't even begin to describe it. It's like the producers gathered together a focus group of devoted 13-year-old fans with a combined IQ of 87 and asked them to write a script that was as predictable, self-indulgent, and superficial as possible. Oh, and to please throw in a crap-your-pants joke for good measure, because that always gets people laughing. Christ on a stick! I wanted to gouge my eyes out and vomit out my eye sockets. And I'm not ashamed to admit that there were parts of the TV program that I enjoyed, but the movie was just plain bad. And do you want to know the worst part? I got ID'ed. I haven't been ID'ed to buy beer at bars for years now, and yet I supposedly don't look over 17 in order to get into an R-rated movie? Come on!

Okay, that's it for now. Thanks for checking in, and don't do acid.

Please?

2008-05-13T18:24:00.001-05:00

If you've ever been to Cincinnati, you'd find this hilarious.

A Supremely Interesting Blog Post!

2008-04-18T13:29:00.003-05:00

As you may have already noticed, I'm really quite unimpressive when it comes to this whole blogging thing. I mean, damn, if the McCain girls can grab national headlines with their grimace-inducing videos, I'm sure I could hold the attention of one or two of my distance friends at least once a week, right? All these empty days and no updates, it just gets to be a little intimidating after a while, you know.

But not this time! (<-- Credit goes to my dear friend Obama for that phrase.) Instead of worrying about having a "topic" or a "purpose" to a post, I'm just going to barf up a quick list of events that have happened to me recently (which I'm sure just sounds thrilling to you). So, fuck it, here goes:

1. I bought a house. It's a gorgeous two bedroom/two bath rehab in the Benton Park neighborhood, within noseshot of Anheuser-Busch. The best part about it? Now I get to stay positioned by my front door and yell "Git offa my property" whenever anybody walks past. As god as my witness, I am buying a gun to protect my new home. A cork pop-gun, but a gun nonetheless.

2. I survived an earthquake last night. Okay, so maybe "survive" is a strong word, since during my 15-second tussle with the seismic forces of planet earth, I spent the first third of the experience wondering if it was just my crazy cats having a heated duel at 4:30 in the morning. 'Twas not the case. In any event, I have now officially survived a tornado and an earthquake in my time. Score? Todd: 2, Mother Nature: 0.

3. Larry King is an awful interviewer. I simply cannot understand how this owlish man has earned a reputation as a master in his field. Persistence and a vampiric-like endurance are the only two plausible explanations I can come up with. Can anyone else think of a better reason?

4. If there's anything I hate more than magnetic bumper stickers (often of the "Support Our Troops" variety), it's the Live Strong bracelet. So you can only imagine my gleeful reaction upon seeing both trends mashed into one: a magnetic Live Strong bracelet on the back on an SUV. Brilliant! I heart America.

5. I've been trying to curse less. And then I drove to work this morning. Sorry, but since I'm already on a crotchety old man Andy Rooney-style roll here, allow me to make some state-by-state driving comparisons. In Michigan, people just tend to drive fast, and it's OK because the speed limit is typically higher. In southwest Ohio, people are more or less insane when they get behind the wheel, swerving in and out of lanes of traffic for no apparent reason other than to see what they can get away with (it's about as exciting as a drunken game of corn hole). The preferred method of changing lanes in metro Cincinnati is by suddenly cutting off the car behind you with only a few paint layers' distance to spare. The results are even more erratic once you head into ritzier areas like Hyde Park, where these Charles Bronsons in Beamers have no fear of increased insurance rates due to reckless accidents with commonfolk like me. In Missouri, however, people just lay on the brakes for no apparent reason. You can be driving down a perfectly straight road following a Missouri driver with no other traffic around, and then. Stop. They'll just push on their brakes and forget to speed up. It's bad enough when it's just one car breaking in front of you for no reason at all, but when you're surrounded by these oblivious blockheads, curses will fly.

6. Google rules my soul. And I'm kind of okay with that. I recently discovered the simple pleasures of Google Calendar and Google Reader, and - holy cow! - my internetting will never be the same. Sure, it's kind of scary all the data Google probably has on me, but I highly doubt I'll ever be in a situation where I would be important enough to be blackmailed by Google. "We understand you're running for Mayor, Mr. Blogger, but how would you like it if your constituents knew what you were Googling at 8:23 pm, November 14 when you were 21 years old? Bwahahahaha!" I guess I'm just not vain enough to worry.

7. I've been playing my bass again. With other people. With two other sets of people, more precisely, and things are starting to sound pretty good. If you behave, I'll even dedicate a bass solo to you -- Ooh, so smooth! You know you want it.

8. I make no guarantees that I will update this again anytime soon, or regularly thereafter.

Finally, you have to burn the rope. No, really, you do.

You look like a mingler

2008-03-26T12:18:00.004-05:00

So, did you hear, the Kids in the Hall are touring, eh? I already picked up tickets for their May 20 stop at the Pageant and begrudgingly paid the exorbitant TicketMaster "convenience" fee (which is so convenient that it's actually charged to each ticket purchased, because somehow having a computer process a payment is a very costly endeavor). I can't wait.

I watched the sketch comedy show obsessively as a kid, which probably explains why my early teen humor was so bizarrely dependant on highly inappropriate queer jokes, Satan, and sarcasm. But while the show was brilliant for its oddities like chicken ladies, cabbage heads, head crushers, and flying pigs, I think oftentimes the simplest gags were the most effective. Here are a couple of my favorites skits:

Dig it, the dancing bean

2008-03-21T12:12:00.006-05:00

My wife, for reasons unbeknownst to me, thinks I dance like this:

Pfft. She crazy. Everyone knows I dance more like this:

And when I'm feeling particularly frisky, you might catch me busting out a little bit of this:

Oh yes, ahem, and while we're on the subject of dancing prowess, it appears that local St. Louis novelty mop-topped concert goer Beatle Bob has not only been spotlighted by the Associated Press, but that his arrhythmic devotion to the Rock and/or Roll has earned him a feature in Blender, the magazine for men who like breasts and baseless music reviews.

A to Z and Highway 61 Revised have more info on the perplexing presence of this local club fixture. Dude's even getting a documentary. A teaser is now available:

A lot of locals can't stand him, though. An enigma wrapped in a conundrum wrapped in controversy, that one is.

The funnies

2008-02-28T08:21:00.008-06:00

Leave it to people with more creative cynicism (and evidently more free time) than me to turn my least favorite cartoon strips into two of the funniest websites I've ever run across. The first is Marmaduke Explained, which, you guessed it, explains why the daily Marmaduke cartoon is supposed to be funny in 500 words or less. Here's an example with a typically Marmadukian scenario in which the oversized Great Dane is dragging his Owner Man behind him on a walk:

Marmaduke destroyed his owner-family's mailbox (and probably a number of other things) during his afternoon walk with his owner-man. Owner-Man makes light of the mailbox situation to his wife, yet another example of how the bulk of their communication is a numb, disconnected and empty series of weak jokes and ironic understatements deployed in order to distance themselves from the horror and futility of spending their lives as the prisoner-slaves of their powerful, self-serving ogre of a dog.

This site has been a steady stream of amusement ever since I first stumbled across it a year or so ago. It's well worth browsing through the archives to find the tasty bits about Marmaduke, the Owner Lady, and frottage. If my cubicle neighbors were ever wondering why I randomly choke on laughter, this is it.

Another revision of the Sunday Funnies worth checking out is Garfield Minus Garfield, in which someone with access to Photoshop strips every Garfield cartoon of the fat, lasagna-loving cat, leaving Jon looking like a sad, delusional man with predictably humorous results. Check it out:

Been busier than Javier Bardem

2008-02-25T10:14:00.004-06:00

As any long-time reader of this blog can attest to, I don't lead a particularly bloggable life. This past weekend, however, was unusually action packed. The big news is that I'm an uncle! My sister gave birth to her first kid Saturday afternoon at 12:46 p.m., after a prolonged labor that started Thursday or Wednesday. The extended labor had everyone worried, but after several phone calls from my folks (mostly of the "Hi, we're calling to tell you that we don't have any new news" variety) everyone is now happy and healthy. In case you are interested, my new niece has brown hair like her favorite uncle, and also like her favorite uncle she is a Pisces. The extra good news is that little Zoe now takes off any pressure on me to beget grandchildren for my parents for the time being.

While becoming a parent will undoubtedly change my sister's life forever, my life also started down a new, exciting, and irrevocably nerdy path this last weekend. Say goodbye to normal socializing, books, television, bathing, shaving, feeding the cats, or giving a damn what the neighbors think: I got a Wii! The wife won it on eBay, and while it was technically supposed to be a birthday present for yours truly for the following week, when the UPS man finally delivered it on Friday (waiting till the last possible, infuriating minute, I might add) there was just no sense in keeping it locked up. And, O sweet Jeebus, I am never leaving the house again. It is ridiculously fun.

Now, I've never been hugely into video games -- in fact, I haven't owned a new gaming system since I had the 32X adaptor for my Sega Genesis, and even then the only thing that got me going was Road Rash II -- but the Wii has the sort of intuitively fun gameplay that appeals to a wide cross-section of demographics that happens to include both me and my wife. We played it pretty much non-stop this weekend, and already we've almost beaten the final Star Battle in Mario Party 8. My entire right arm is sore from all the thwacking, swinging, shooting, jumping, and sawing. The pain will go down eventually, right?

This was an extraordinarily generous gift from my wife -- especially considering how our early days of "dating" consisted of her coming over to my apartment to watch me and my stoned friends play Soul Caliber -- so this tells me that I was an even better husband than I had realized on Valentine's Day.

Speaking of dating, the wife and I actually had a decent excuse to get dressed up on Saturday night. After a dinner of Persian cuisine and chocolate milkshakes, we indulged in a little musical theatre with the traveling Broadway production of Avenue Q, playing at the Fabulous Fox Theatre (which features an elaborate "Siamese Byzantine" interior that truly is fabulous). The musical centers around a group of Sesame Street-esque puppets searching for their purpose in life, in affordable (read: slummy) apartments in New York City. The songs touched on racism, shadenfreude, closeted homosexuality, masturbation, and, most poignantly, "What Do You Do With a BA in English?" That's something I've been asking myself for these past four years. Despite the unnecessary Gary Coleman jokes (he was the super of the building), it was a really enjoyable production.

All in all, it was quite a weekend. Enough excitement to get me through my first five-day work week in some time, I expect.

Bored...

2008-02-20T12:50:00.002-06:00

...and looking for something to do. Any recommendations?

McClone

2008-02-15T13:40:00.004-06:00

Big day for Senator McCain. Today his former rival Mitt Romney endorsed the old man, with the grapevine also abuzz over a possible endorsement from George the Elder for the ex-POW. My only thought on the matter is this: if McCain wins the general election in November, my dad could have a second career as a presidential impersonator for at least the next four years. Could be interesting.

Happy VD!

2008-02-14T10:48:00.010-06:00

Ah, Valentine's Day. My favorite time of year to pay tribute to the patron saint of generic S-shaped diamond pendants and artificial sentiment. Originally, the wife and I had planned to forego buying each other presents and instead put the money toward our trip in March (why spend Spring Break in Indianapolis when for a few dollars more you can go to, say, Jamaica?). But while she was verbally OK with that agreement, she also managed to drop enough clandestine hints to suggest that I would be a predictably unromantic cheapskate if I didn't get my new wife something to celebrate our first Valentine's together as a married couple. (She will, of course, deny this was her plan but I'm not as slow as I look. Women! Am I right, or am I right?) And considering I had completely skipped out on Sweetest Day, which was apparently a no-no even though as a holiday it's more contrived than Earth Day, there was an expectation to deliver this time around.

My excuse of "But baby, every day is like Valentine's Day when you're with me" no longer seems to get as much mileage as it used to, if it ever got me anywhere

So while the wife was out at her grad class last night, I headed out to the mall. The mall, if you've ever been, is hell on earth. Everything about it is designed to make you feel inadequate. Out in the parking lot, you're feeling snazzy and confident about your appearance and demeanor. And then as soon as you enter the sliding glass doors you feel like a pig farmer caught on To Catch a Predator. Your hair is a few locks into mullet territory. Your teeth are too yellow. Your skin is shiny. Your fingernails are packed with some undistinguishable grime. Your coat has too much cat hair on it. Your shirt isn't fitted properly and your pants haven't been washed in weeks. Your shoes are scuffed beyond the help of a shoeshine boy. It's a depressing experience, is what I'm driving at. I can see why so many people my age are in mountains of credit card debt - going to the mall to punish their self-esteem and buy expensive items they don't need to feel better about themselves.

I got in, got what I wanted, and got out. Okay, it wasn't exactly that easy. I got lost on my way driving to the mall (the highway is closed and I thought I was being clever with a shortcut; I was not), I parked in front of Dillard's and then got lost wandering around Dillard's trying to find a way out into the mall (hidden behind the perfume counters); and then I got lost walking furiously around the second floor of the mall trying to find the handbag of my pursuit (turns out the store was on the first floor). And then I impulse bought some earrings. I spent way more than my original budget of $0 allowed.

Back at home, I strategically hid a variety of eight different animal Valentine's cards with sickendingly cute expressions like "You're Purr-fect" (kittens) or "Valentine, I think you're fetching" (puppy with a stick), each with a temporary tattoo of the appropriate critter, to be dispensed at various times throughout the course of the day. I stowed away the gifts and the box of heart-shaped chocolates I had bought a long time ago. Last but not least, I finalized the playlist of the Valentine's Day mix CD I had been working on in lieu of actually updating my music blog (sorry Scotter!). The playlist, if you need any help on your own, goes a little something like this:

The Lucksmiths - Adolescent Song of Mindless Devotion
The Magnetic Fields - Absolutely Cuckoo
Sakert! - Sanningsdan
Jon Brion - Knock Yourself Out
Belle & Sebastien - I'm a Cuckoo (Avalanches remix)
The Shins - Strange Powers (Magnetic Fields cover)
Tullycraft - Twee
Brendan Benson - Alternative to Love
Beulah - If We Can Land a Man on the Moon, Surely I Can Win Your Heart
Saturday Looks Good To Me - Ultimate Stars
Hidden Cameras - A Miracle
The 6ths - You You You You You
She and Him - Why Do You Let Me Stay Here?
They Might Be Giants - Love is Eternity
The Unicorns - Sea Ghost
Devendra Banhart - Lover
The Rosebuds - What Can I Do?
Apples in Stereo - Seems So
Go Sailor - Bigger Than an Ocean
Ladybug Transistor - Splendor in the Grass
of Montreal - Nickee Coco and the Invisible Tree
The Rentals - The Love I'm Searching For
Adam Green - Dance With Me
The Mountain Goats - Going to Georgia
The Zombies - This Will Be Our Year

It's not easy making a mix for someone who shares your entire music collection, so obviously there are going to be songs on it that she's familiar with, but I think I managed to sneak in mostly new stuff on there for her. It's a tad twee-heavy, but I needed a theme to work with.

The rest of the day will include kabobs at our favorite neighborhood restaurant, followed by gelato at our favorite dessert place until the Ted Drewe's Frozen Custard stand reopens in the spring. Oh, and keeping the wife away from the computer until after she's received everything she's gonna get.

Do you think this will earn me any romance points? Nah, who am I kidding, I'm just barely skating by on even.

Mystery Kibbitzer

2008-02-12T12:12:00.000-06:00

I saw in the news today that the Coen brothers have acquired the screen rights to film Michael Chabon's novel The Yiddish Policemen's Union. (Okay, not that I consider Variety magazine to be the "news" or that I check it regularly, or ever, but this is exciting news nevertheless.) I can't imagine a better-suited team to handle the mixture of mystery and comedy that pervaded the novel than the Coen brothers. In fact, the entire time that I was reading the book, my handicapped 21st century imagination kept picturing the events unfolding as if it was a movie, from the sour patzers at the Einstein Chess Club to the daring, near-naked escape from Peril Straight. I just can't wait until I start to hear about the casting. Who could possibly fill the role of Willie Dick, the miniscule Indian police chief whose office and motorcycle are built to two-thirds scale? For some reason I kept picturing Mel Brooks as the boundary maven Itzik Zimbalist.

Is it only a coincidence that the publishers of this book originally marketed it with a movie-like trailer?

I started a book club in St. Louis a little while ago, and the first book we discussed was The Yiddish Policemen's Union. Not as many people showed up as I had hoped, but what we lacked in quantity we made up for in quality. Everyone seemed to enjoy the book, even if the ending did go a little too far-our, Law & Order for our tastes. (If you watch Law & Order, particularly the SVU variety, you'd know that I'm not saying the book got bogged down in technical legal jibber jabber, but how solving one murder case somehow spirals into much larger, less believable conspiracies that always manage to implicate well-organized, nefarious criminal entitities. I imagine the Coen bros. could make this absurd escalation more enjoyable.) I selected the book after falling in love with the much touted, Pulitzer Prize-winning The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, which, incidentally, is also being made into a movie.

Sometimes I wish I had a camera on me at all times

2008-02-07T08:41:00.000-06:00

Yesterday, because I was sick and had taken the day off, I was headed to St. Louis Bread Co. (what the rest of America knows as Panera) for some chicken noodle soup to lift my spirits. And lo and behold, what should I see but a make shift stand advertising "Ashes To Go." You cannot make this shit up. There were three individuals standing around in flowy white robes with a synthetic sheen to them, apparently imposing ash marks on the foreheads of busy city dwellers who care about repentance and eternal salvation but not enough to actually go to church.

One of the enterprising ash-givers was a woman, so I knew they weren't priests. One of them was eating a burrito, which I found to be a particularly humorous sight. The last one was engaged in a long, drawn-out transaction with a passer-by. I don't know about you, but if I wanted my ashes in a hurry I wouldn't want to be troubled with excessive chatter. There seemed to be an exchange of money. I couldn't tell if they were charging for the ashes, or simply asking for a suggested donation, but something about a pay-per-blessing scheme seems a little Medieval to me. But what do I know? That's capitalism for ya.

Ashes To Go. God's honest truth. If I only had a camera.

What's today's top story?

2008-02-04T12:14:00.001-06:00

Thanks, Post-Dispatch, for sharing the really important stories.

Only in Grand Rapids...

2008-01-30T20:00:00.000-06:00

Why I don't go out

2008-01-29T18:15:00.000-06:00

This past weekend I had the brilliant idea that instead of staying in, I was going to go out. Thankfully for me, there were two local music shows of interest taking place on Friday night from which to choose. The first show promised to be a standard-fare indie rock show, headlined by the band So Many Dynamos that was featured on the cover of the local alt weekly not too long ago, and generally seem to be regarded in the community as the local saviors of indie rock because they have big bangs and have done some recording work with one of the dudes in the band Death Cab for Cutie (warning signs #1 & 2). This was a free show with free parking in a neighborhood I'm familiar with and, judging from their MySpace page, it was their last show in the city for some time.

My alternate show option was the CD release party for a hip-hop group called Earthworms, and they were apparently once voted the "#1 Hip-Hop Group in St. Louis" by the local alt weekly. This show promised to have live bands, DJs, tee-shirt printmaking, and other things to appeal to my thirst for pop culture paraphernilia. Although the venue's location was about equidistant from my house as the first place, it was in a neighborhood I have yet to explore, and their MySpace made it look like I had plenty of other chances to catch them live in the near future.

So I ended up going with show option #1. Besides, having just returned from a dinner at Applebee's, I was dressed and ready to go to an indie rock show. Here's a breakdown of how my night went:

8:35 - I park and begin wandering around the SLU campus. Not really sure where the venue is, I spot a small group of young folks with angular bangs and brightly colored scarves and retro sneakers. I follow them into the Billiken Club (located in the basement of the SLU student center).

8:40 - Inside the club, I step up to the bar. "I'll have a Bud, barkeep," I said (or something to that effect). He doesn't bother ID'ing me despite the prominent "We ID!!" sign because it's fairly obvious that, after the bartender, I'm the oldest guy in the place.

8:41 - "Hi!" says a perky young man suddenly sitting next me. "Do you see my friend over there?" He points to a young lady in a brown T-shirt. I nod uh-huh. "Well, she thinks you're super cute," he remarks. And then adds, after looking me up and down, "And I can certainly see why she thinks that." Oh brother. "Gosh, well, tell her 'thank you' for me." Seeing how he didn't have a crumpled up note requesting me to circle either "Yes" or "No" to the question of whether or not I found his friend cute in return, I turned my attention to the first sip of my local brew.

8:50 - A woman is talking to me. She's telling me her plan to build up good credit by buying one pair of socks every month on her credit card, and how if she could move anywhere besides St. Louis it would be Texas because the whole state's racist and that's really funny somehow. She's Asian. I'm Texan. I think I missed the punchline. She asks me if I know many people in the city since I just moved here. I answer "my wife." She decides to go to the stage to see if the first band is about ready to play.

9:00 - The first band starts to play.

9:35 - The first band is finishing up their set. Not bad, they definitely got better later on in their set - big choruses, a gawky trumpet player, and two female backing vocalists who looked as uncomfortable being on stage as I was standing in the crowd. They were called Say Panther (I know, indie, right?) and judging from local concert calendars they open for just about everyone just about every week.

9:50 - Band #2 starts. They're called Maps & Atlases (again, tres indie). The lead singer has a(n ironic?) mustache. They play jumpy, frenetic rhythms with wound-up vocals.

9:55 - I begin to notice that there are some really young people here. Like, really young. Are those people standing next to me in high school? Junior high? That one boy can't be any older than 11, 12 max.

10:00 - Overheard: "Have you ever heard the van Kellar?," asks one tall, skinny boy in tight black jeans with greased down bangs, a stud earring, and a black jacket with a fur hood. "The what?," replies a similar-looking tween metrosexual wearing mascara. "The band Hella (?)." "No." "Yeah, they sound just like this band [Maps & Atlases] except they don't have any vocals and the drummer is like three times better." "Oh, cool."

10:35 - The set feels like it goes on forever. I think it ends sometime around here.

10:45 - The headliners So Many Dynamos are setting up the stage for their performance. The 12 year old boy I saw earlier is now howling with anticipation. Actually, it's more like barking. In any case, it's frighteningly mannish for a boy of his age.

10:50 - The group of high school girls is now in a circle, doing some clapping and chanting thing that you probably saw kids do back on the playground in elementary school. I am definitely too old to be here.

11:00 - So Many Dynamos start playing. I mentally commend the venue and the sound guy for running such a tight ship.

11:01 - If I didn't know any better, I'd say this was emo. (I've heard them described as being akin to the Dismemberment Plan, and checking on allmusic... yup, sure enough, emo.) People seem to be into it, though.

11:10 - I coined a new term: emo headbanging. Whereas traditional heavy metal-inspired headbanging consists of moving one's head back-and-forth in a rapid "banging" motion; emo headbanging consists of moving one's head quickly from one side to the next, emulating the directional movement of one's bangs.

11:15 - Uhhh.....

11:20 - OK, so maybe it wasn't the most well thought out plan, coming out tonight. The show was still playing, but I was throwing in the towel. At least there was KDHX's Deep Krate Radio with hosts Fly D-Ex and DJ Iceman playing on the drive home to remind me that in the future perhaps I should opt for supporting local hip-hop over generic, albeit local, indie rock.

Paczki Day!

2008-01-29T08:10:00.000-06:00

Today is Paczki Day and that can mean only one thing: later today I will be foregoing dinner and stuffing my face with a couple of the overstuffed, gelatinous pastry blobs you see above. Growing up in a WASP household in the largely Dutch, Christian Reform stronghold in western Michigan, I wasn't exposed to the wonders of Paczkis. I was, however, fortunate enough to have a Polish-American wife who grew up near certain Polish immigrant enclaves in Detroit where local bakeries carried on the time-honored tradition of pouring all their remaining lard, sugar, and fruit into these delectable confections as a way to celebrate Fat Tuesday before Lent. In fact, her great-grandfather on her mother's side used to work as a baker in Hamtramck where I'm sure they indulged in their annual Paczkis. So, to the residents of Hamtramck, you're welcome.

Now, I know you may be thinking, "But Todd, you don't observe Lent, why do you feel the need to partake in this historical religious and cultural observance?" Well, I may not observe the birth of a Jesus H. Christ either, but that doesn't stop me from exchanging gifts with my family once a year. It's one of the few benefits of being a 21st century secularist: selectively picking the traditions I feel like observing, and weeding out any possible boring or depressing side effects.

Speaking of Fat Tuesday, Saint Louis is also apparently home to the country's second largest Mardi Gras celebration. Seeing how I cringe at the thought of crowds and generally frown upon drunken buffoonery, I'll probably be sitting this one out.

Yeah, intelligent input, darling

2008-01-24T18:36:00.000-06:00

My review of Kate Nash's outstanding new album Made of Bricks is now posted on Playback:Stl. The video below is of the album's debut single, "Foundations." And she's British, in case you hadn't already gathered that much.

Is this something I should be proud of?

2008-01-22T21:33:00.001-06:00

Free beer!

2008-01-18T17:47:00.000-06:00

Wow, I can't believe anybody ever thought this plan would be problematic. Makes perfect marketing sense to me.

Distorted opinions

2008-01-18T17:04:00.000-06:00

This week has been Stephin Merritt mania! First I wrote a fairly standard review of the new Magnetic Fields album Distortion for Playback:STL, which was published earlier in the week here. Then, deciding that wasn't enough, I wrote an entirely new essay (and I do mean essay) and more than doubled my word count for the Post-Rockist, including audio, in this new post. So don't think I haven't been writing lately; I have been. Just not here so much. Keep up!

The new album is a huge change, but it's caused me to go back and listen to their back catalogue all over again. Here's a brief selection of some favorites I found on video. The boys at Better Chatter have posted their own Stephin Merritt playlist worth checking out if you still have any money left on your iTunes gift cards leftover from Xmas.

"Born on a Train"

"With Whom to Dance"

"All the Umbrellas in London"

Writers: Keep On Strikin'

2008-01-10T10:23:00.000-06:00

It may be heretical for me to say so, but to be perfectly honest I'm actually a little relieved that the Writer's Guild of America is on strike. And the reason is quite simple: I'm turning into a political junkie. Now I may enjoy watching reruns of How I Met Your Mother as much as the next guy, but I can't imagine anything providing me with as much sheer entertainment value as this 2008 presidential campaign. This is human drama at its finest. I may not be a sports fan, but I imagine this is how they feel tracking their favorite teams, watching the development of underdogs and budding star talent, witnessing old heroes crumble, predicting potential playoff scenarios, tallying mounds and mounds of useless statistics, and debating the relative merits of questionable wins and losses. When Obama gave his victory speech in Iowa last week I nearly cried, I was so moved. Hearing Tom Brokaw make fun of John McCain's uninspired victory speech in New Hampshire left me in stitches.

So no, I don't need Hollywood's writers to resume work and continue to distract my time with programming that more often than not is tasteless, boorish, and completely unmemorable (even though it's so often hard to resist). I've got enough media to consume these days. My 40-minue commute to and from work is mostly spent tuned in to 90.7 KWMU (St. Louis NPR and Public Radio International); I don't even remember the last time I brought a CD into my car. Throughout the day I'm reading stories from The Morning News, Google News, Daily Kos, and The New York Times. I'll listen to NPR's It's All Politics podcast with Ken Rudin and Ron Elving, even though I wish it was updated more than once a week. I've even been trying to keep up with local news, although St. Louis media doesn't make that an easy task -- the website for the Post-Dispatch is all but useless, and the alternative paper the Riverfront Times doesn't place much of an emphasis on politics at all. Thankfully there are some local blogs that pick up the slack, particularly Pub Def, although Urban Review STL and a few others are doing a good job too. And then to top it all off, MSNBC's caucus and primary coverage has been a real pleasure to watch, even if Chris Matthew's is increasingly becoming a caricature of himself; at least Matthews and Keith Olbermann have more interesting opinions than CNN's Wolf Blitzer, who, let's be honest, doesn't have the chutzpah to be the channel's main selling point.

Now, it may be wrong to consider politics a form of entertainment, but that's honestly what it's come to these days, and it's a far more respectable form of entertainment than the return of American Gladiators. So guilded writer's of America, keep on striking; I've got Ken Rudin and Keith Olbermann to keep me occupied for now.

Grad Programs Considered, Then Re-Considered

2008-01-07T14:55:00.000-06:00

Do you know anyone who’s truly happy with their job? I sure don’t. It’s so strange because, as a kid, everyone asks you, “What do you want to be when you grow up?” as if there are some really great opportunities out there – just use your imagination and you can do it! But it's not so easy, is it. As Jarvis Cocker put it, “Oh we were brought up on the Space Race, and now they expect you to clean toilets.”

I started a new job recently, so I’ve been giving a lot of thought to jobs and careers, hats to wear and ladders to climb. I’ve spent most of my time the past few weeks cutting and pasting different things into different Word documents, occasionally typing a few letters and numbers here and there. It’s about as exciting as it sounds. But overall it’s an improvement over my last job, in that I’m getting paid more to do less work, which, after all, is one of my major goals in life (although perhaps I’m just starting to come to grips with how much my old job overworked and underpaid me).

Still, I’m dogged by delusions that there is a perfect job out there for me somewhere, a delusion made even more ungraspable by the fact that I’m a twenty-something stuck in the Midwest. So it’s no surprise that I’ve given a lot of thought over the years to grad school, the purest form of escapism. The following is a list of graduate programs I have at one point or another seriously considered, and then later decided against (in alphabetical order):

American Studies – What a perfect waste of time. This degree had to have been created by folks who realized that a general “Liberal Arts” degree was a criminally useless waste of money, but who wanted to remain in school even though they still couldn’t decide what they wanted to study, so they just took courses in everything ranging from political history to pop culture (books, movies, music) and called it a specialization as long as it all dealt somehow with America. I’m sure I would love taking courses in this sort of program, but I’m also sure I would be pretty upset when I realized I was deeply in debt after paying for an unmarketable “degree.”

Communication – What the hell is a Communication degree good for anyway, and why did I want to get one for so long? I’ve never met anyone who’s benefitted from having a Master’s in Communication, just folks a few years older and starting out in the same positions as me.

English Literature – Getting a graduate degree in English Lit was one of my primary ambitions as an undergrad, until I realized a few things: (1) Spending two years of my life in a Master’s program wouldn’t help me get any further along than just spending two years working in a career field I was interested in; if anything, it would set me back two years. And (2) I didn’t want to spend seven-plus years in a Ph.D. program that more than likely wouldn’t provide much financial support (shockingly, literature doesn’t fare as well against the sciences when it comes to university grants), and then spending most of my adult life waiting for old, cardigan-ed professors in prestigious universities to die while I wasted away pining for tenure at some podunk school in the middle of nowhere.

History/Archival Studies – Same as above. Plus, I didn’t major in History. I’d be better off reading Jeff Shaara on my lunch break.

Law – If there’s one thing I’ve learned in my years since graduating from college, it’s this: Any ol’ chump can get into law school; they just have to be willing to pay. Seriously, I can’t tell you how many times I’ve been left speechless after learning that someone is a lawyer or law student. If that person can do it, I think incredulously, I know I could kick some major law school ass. But when I hear how most law school grads are unhappy, buried in mountains of debt, and tied to an 80 hour a week job that drains them of their soul, I tend to think twice of this as an option. Still, the fighter in me refuses to rule this out.

MBA – Stop laughing. I have honest-to-goodness thought about joining an MBA program. When you work in large international, multi-billion dollar companies like I do, you quickly realize that having advanced business training can put you ahead of the curve. While I tend to instinctively gag when I click on MBA program’s student profiles and see hundreds of similarly navy suit-clad drones smiling back at me, if my employer was willing to pay for me to go to a part-time MBA program (if they thought I was valuable enough) I would totally consider it a possibility.

MFA in Writing – Would be great, except that I don’t write.

Molecular Microbiology and Microbial Pathogenesis – Still a strong contender for this one.

Psychology (Clinical) – For some reason I am particularly choosy when it comes to Clinical Psych programs. I blame my heavily Freudian psych professor in college for biasing me against most traditional programs. Plus, as my good friend Josh once pointed out when I told him I was going to major in Psychology in college, “Why? You hate people.” The words stuck (and are true on most days).

Psychology (Industrial/Organizational) – I know, I’ll parlay my psych education with my business background! Brilliant! Oh wait, I/O Psych is basically an elaborate HR position. It’s like the worst of both worlds. Pass.

Psychology (School) – Refer to the notes on Clinical, and add to that the fact that I can’t stand to be around children.

Psychology (Social) – God, I’m just grasping at straws here, aren’t I?

While this is a cynical list, dreams die hard with the Well Respected Blogger and chances are good that I’ll be recycling the pros and cons of this list as 2008 progresses. In the meantime, it’s back to the working week for me. To paraphrase Elvis, I gotta do it till I’m through it so I better get to it.

Bee Movie? Try Bee Minus

2007-12-09T17:13:00.000-06:00

Like many a culture geek, I was really looking forward to watching No Country for Old Men this weekend. I've heard so many reviews calling it one of the Coen Brother's best, and I've read one Cormac McCarthy novel with loose plans for picking up The Road one of these days, so yeah, I was about as excited as one could be about catching a dry, tense, music-less, murderous cat-and-mouse thriller. Instead, I saw Bee Movie.

My wife was planning on taking a few of her well-behaved students out as a treat (apparently at a certain young age spending time outside of school with one's teacher is considered a treat), she needed an extra chaperone and I was easily bribed with the prospect of free popcorn. The movie, if you're not familiar with its plot (I realize it wasn't heavily advertised, so it may have slipped past your filmic radar), goes a little something like this:

After a fleetingly brief childhood (humor = bees have a short life span!), the bee voiced by Jerry Seinfeld named Barry (Jerry with a bee! Get it?) is startled by the revelation that adult life consists of picking a career track and working in that field until one's death. There must be more to life than that, thinks Barry, so he ventures out of the hive on a pollen-collecting expedition. Along the way, he gets lost, breaks the cardinal bee law against speaking to humans, and learns that some humans have been keeping bees in cages to extract the honey for commercial gain. The only logical solution, of course, is to pursue an idealistic, knee-jerk lawsuit in which fat capitalist pigs (figuratively) are brought to task for exploiting the labor of bees (literally). This is not so much a plea for the equal treatment of all earthly creatures as it is a rallying cry to return the capital and means of production back to the average working man (or bee, in this case). Unsurprisingly, through a series of courtroom shenanigans that would make Sam Waterston blush, the judge rules in favor of the bees (despite it being a jury trial).

While this ruling is all fine and dandy, and certainly not unexpected given the animated children movie genre's unblinking bias in favor of the likeable underdog, it turns out there is a dastardly twist (and yes, more spoilers ensue). Now that the entire honey supply has been rightfully returned to the bees of the world (somehow a New York district court case involving a non-citizen and a vaguely defined defendant has global ramifications), the bees are left with more honey than they know what to do with, so they react in opposition to what bee culture has taught them to do for the past 27 million years: they stop working. Isn't this every anti-Communists' worst nightmare? You return power to the working class and what do they do, they slag off doing the backstroke in a giant pool of honey. Despicable.

The ramifications of this generalized bee laziness is far-reaching: now that bees are no longer pollinating certain types of flowers, all vegetation on earth (not just the flowers dependant on bee pollination, mind you) is slowly withering away to nothing. Through another series of stunts too ludicrous to recount in this here blog, Barry the bee and his humanoid girlfriend manage to heist one of the last few remaining batches of fresh flowers and re-pollinate NYC, thereby averting global vegetative disaster.

The moral of the story, basically, is to not question your lot in life or else you'll risk destroying your entire civilization, and that's just a terrible message to send to kids. That's all I had to say about it. For shame, Jerry, for shame.

And that, in a nutshell, is way more information than I was hoping to share about this movie.

No more working like a bum

2007-11-21T10:13:00.000-06:00

Working from home is a pretty sweet deal, especially if you're only in your mid-20's and it's a genuine telecommuting opportunity and not a stressful freelance gig or a scam designed to attract lazy, talentless bums or gullible housewives. That being said, however, the work-from-home lifestyle isn't always the cherry pie on cloud 9 dream you might imagine it to be. So today, on my last day working from my remote "office" before I return to the world of dress pants and styrofoam coffee cups, here is an abbreviated list of the things I will and will not miss about working in my underwear.

Things I will miss:

The coffee - Sweet Jesus, I have never gotten as much use out of my Mr. Coffee maker as I have in these past few months. I used to feel that I was rotting away my insides when I subsisted on the watered-down instant Foldgers and off-brand non-dairy creamer my old office offered me on a daily basis. Nowadays I've been spoiling myself with organic coffee beans freshly ground for me from the Hartford Coffee Co. right down the street, with a healthy splash of real half-and-half. I can drink two pots of this delicious black elixir every day if I'm not careful. The downside, of course, is that I have never been as desparately addicted to caffeine as I am now.

The commute - What commute? My morning routine essentially consists of me rolling out of bed, throwing on some pants (optional), switching on my computer, and voila!, I'm at work. Not for one second do I miss being stuck on the interstate hell that is I-71, where I would typically curse until I was hoarse before I even showed up to work. It made me a very angry, irritable person. If you met me today you'd swear I was gellin' like Magellan.

Robin & Co. - Is there a better source for mindless national news in the morning? I think not!

The music - While iPods are essential to getting through the day at a stiflingly quiet office, wearing the earbuds all the time can make you appear stand-offish and jumpy, because you never know when someone (i.e., your manager) might be creeping up behind you. At the home HQ it's a non-stop-rockathon coming out of my speakers. I can sing along to Biz Markie's "Just a Friend" all day on repeat without getting curious looks from my co-workers (I recently rediscovered my love of Biz after watching an episode of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia during my lunch break, which leads me to my next point...)

The lunch hour - Nothing's more depressing than your typical corporate lunch (half) hour: grabbing a soggy brown-bag lunch from the communal fridge and scurrying back to your cubicle to scarf it down like a mole man while reading Google News, or worse, eating with co-workers in the break room that invariably smells like microwaved broccoli. The Well Respected Bistro regularly served up oven-cooked meals or panini-style sandwiches fresh from the George Foreman Grill, complimented with an endless stream of snacks and beverages, which were regularly consumed on the couch while watching TV shows on DVD (e.g., the IASIP episode where Dennis and Dee are celebrating their newfound unemployment by drinking tallboys on the stoop of their apartment, singing Biz Markie, before deciding to apply for welfare: "Hello, I'm a recovering crack head, and this is my retarded sister that I take care of. I'd like some welfare, please.")

Things I will not miss:

The cats - Cats jumping on my laptop when I'm trying to type; cats getting into hissing fights when I'm trying to talk on the phone; me turning into the sort of guy who complains about cats.

The sloth - It's a very humbling experience when you're signing for a package delivery in your sweatpants and robe at 1:00 p.m., and you realize that the UPS guy probably thinks you're the most slovenly, lazy, and unhygenic person on his entire delivery route.

The construction - The house next to mine has been undergoing daily construction work for the past few months, and while the sounds of constant hammering and chiseling can be irritating, it's the sleazy workers singing T.I. and Lil John loudly and poorly that really gets to me. No discernable progress has been made on the house.

The space - I'm looking forward to having a dining room that functions as a dining room, instead of an office/dining room that is overrun with books and papers from work. It'll be really nice to leave work at work when 5:00 hits.

The isolation - I mean, c'mon, look at me: I'm a sweatpants-wearing, cat-talking, caffeine-addicted, '90s rap-singing hermit who's developed strong personal opinions about morning cable news personalities and construction workers. I think you'd agree that getting out more on a regular basis would be good for me.

In any case, what's done is done. I dropped off all my old work belongings to the sullen UPS Store employee who only listens to '80s synth pop, and I get to start over in a brand new company on Monday. In the meantime, I'm unemployed and looking forward to Thanksgiving in St. Louis.

Ahem.

2007-11-15T21:31:00.000-06:00

Despite what you may have been thinking, I am in fact still alive and kicking, both in the real world and on cyberspace. As it turns out (not too surprisingly) I am not too adept at this whole computer business, because in a recent attempt to upgrade my blogger template I not only deleted all of my links and other personalized categories, but I am somehow operating back on the "classic" version of Blogger. Technology, you have bested me once again! That will teach me to think twice before messing with you, technology!

In addition to being a poor blog technician, it also turns out that I am an unreliable blogger to boot (as any long-term reader can attest to). Where have I been for the past month or so with regular updates into my exciting, jet-setting life (just returned from spending an extended weekend in a garage in San Diego!) or my unnecessary picks for early favorites on season 4 of Project Runway (the fat guy!)? I have been on the job prowl, looking high and low for a new source of steady income. Despite my utmost faith in my own capabilities (I would hire me, anyway), it was a rather trying time and I felt all knotted up inside as I was fearing the worst and waiting an answer. I was, so to speak, creatively constipated. I am happy to report that this blockage has been successfully cleared and I will be starting my new job the Monday after Thanksgiving. Relief flowed through me like a carafe of coffee and a big bowl of bran cereal in the morning. Before you know it I will be starting my new job in a new company in this new town, and I will be pouring my spare energies back into this shanty blog with renewed vigor (this last part is pure speculation). While working from home certainly has its perks, I'm looking forward to rejoining the real world. I think even my cats are beginning to worry that I've been talking to them too much.

Skeezy Politicians Pulling on Tween Heartstrings

2007-09-30T11:19:00.000-05:00

Has anyone else noticed political advertisers' bizarre obsession with filtering their messages through the unassailably smug guise of well-spoken children? These kids, all of whom are so preternaturally cognizant of the issues of the world at large that they might as well be ripped from the pages of a Don DeLillo novel, are popping up everywhere, and it's high time we put them on "time out."

Okay, I can concede the effectiveness of some of these commercials, such as the "Parents talk to your kids about [choose one: safe sex/drugs/the military]." Not only do those speak to the value of making informed decisions in life, but they also bear an important civic message regarding involved parenting. However, the motivation behind the following "Divided We Fail" commercial seems a little more suspect:

Sure, it's a simple enough premise. Politicians should live up to their promises. Politicians should put the interests of The People first. The People, in turn, will vote for the most principled public officials. Sounds great, doesn't it? But who's naive enough to think that such a rosy, do-gooder paradigm is somehow analagous to our American politcal realities? That's right: children. Dirty, mischevious, pimple-pocked children. The biggest punchline of the whole commercial is the idea that there might someday be a "youth vote" that could influence elections. Come on! We've been fed that line since Humphrey ran for office, and it didn't make a difference then and it ain't gonna make a difference now. Leave it to a group of bored and malicious retired people to attack our facilities of reason by taunting us with children.

Worse yet, the cowardly Democratic majority in Congress decided to bait a 12-year-old innocent from Maryland to publicize their latest health care proposal while simultaneously taking swipes at the already feebled president. Please, Speaker Pelosi, I'm generally in favor of what your party stands for, but must you make me cringe so?

While the above examples have all been matters of poor taste, the CDC's latest bird flu commercial borders on the absurd. "Hey, Dad?" a curious chap asks his actor-father. "I know bird flu is quite rare in humans, but could that change if the virus changes? I guess it would be prudent to be prepared." This has to be a joke. Right? Wrong. Sadly, it appears that the U.S. Government's Center for Disease Control is either:

[a] so out of touch with reality as to assume that there is a growing concern among America's youth regarding a potentially deadly interspecies infection, and that these morbid children are both relentlessly pestering their uninformed parents regarding the possible doomsday scenarios while using words like "prudent" in their everyday conversations; or

[b] they're fucking with us.

I think we both know what the real answer is.

The moral of this blog entry: never trust children or the liver-spotted fiends who set them up. Since when has sex and advertising ever failed me?

Blog pays homage to Simpsons' homage to popular culture

2007-09-24T09:03:00.000-05:00

There's no question that The Simpsons is the absolute greatest thing to emerge from American popular culture in the last two decades, at least. As such, any pop culture junkie should get a huge kick out of (or at least some temporary satisfaction) this lengthy blog post that details scene-by-scene comparisons of parodies played out in the animated sitcom and the movies they're sending up. I'm surprised at how many Hitchcock nods there are, although Kubrick, Coppola, and De Mille all have their moments. The Raiders of the Lost Ark clip is quite nice, too.

While there have been innumerable spoofs and parodies in the Simpsons over the years (as this OCD index makes clear), one of my favorites that always comes to mind is the episode that spoofs Glengarry, Glenn Ross where Marge gets into real estate and Lionel Hutz tells ol' Gil (a recurring Jack Lemmon parody) that "cubicles are for closers." Later on in the same episode, Marge discovers the Flanders all lying motionless in what appears to be pools of blood in the "haunted" house she sold them. Rod comes out muttering "red room," which, if I have to point you in the direction of that reference, then you're just not as pathetic of a pop culture obsessive as I am.

By the way, did anyone catch the 19th season premiere last night? Lionel Richie surprisingly cracked me up.

Emergency helicopter rescue worker to Lionel: There's too much weight. You'll have to let go of your People's Choice Awards!
Lionel Richie (half in the ocean): You let go of yours first!
EHRW: I don't have any!

Well, I can't remember exactly what Lionel Richie said in response, but believe me, it got a good chuckle out of me.

I should never start jokes if I can't remember the punchline...

Fast Food Geography

2007-09-18T10:39:00.000-05:00

With all the talk about mass consumer globalization occurring in the world these days, you would think that at the very least one would expect to find a predictably regular assortment of fast food chains in whichever principality or township you may reside. Alas, such is not the case.

Take, for instance, the case of Wendy's:

For much of the past four years, Wendy's restaurants have been a staple in my white collar working-man's lunch half-hour. Not because it's the best alternative, by any means, but because it's always been right around the corner from wherever I was working. In East Lansing? Just head to Trowbridge. In Mason? Just a short jaunt down Mason-Montgomery, my good man, you can't miss it. Almost invariably, the Wendy's restaurant will be located across the street from a BP so you can fuel up on your way to lunch. You know what we call that in the biz? Convenience. Would I waste my time sitting through another red light just to head to a McDonald's and get a superior-tasting, properly-shaped burger? Not on your life, bub. I'm a busy man. Got things to do. I don't have all day to spend my time dawdling over one mystery beef patty versus another.

But as luck would have it, I move to St. Louis only to find that Wendy's, the internationally renowned fast-food restuarant, does not exist in this fair Missouri city. It's official. It's dead. Deceased. Gone. Vamonos, muchacos. Packed up it's wagon and headed back east. So what's a boy to do get his pre-processed burger fix? McDonald's and Burger Kings are also suspiciously absent from the little part of the city I've explored so far, as they were in Cincinnati, and I'm not about to go headed off into the hellish backwoods of southern Illinois just to get some highway beef.

Therefore, I present to you some advertised alternatives that have largely been off the radar in some of the other towns I've lived in:

1. Rally's. Have you ever eaten at a Rally's? Neither have I, and I'm not about to get started. Their advertising slogan, which is just about the most god-awful marketing campaign I've ever been exposed to, boils down to this: "Rally's - You Gotta Eat!" Yes, that's true, Rally's, I do "got" to eat, but do I hafta eat Rally's? It's like they might as well be saying, "Rally's - Better Than Starving!" And quite frankly, that's a claim I'm not ready to test. Their commercials are equally confusing - showcasing something about skateboarders, BMX bikers, and shit burgers - followed by the ignominious catchphrase, "You Gotta Eat!" I suppose if you are still living in some '90s fantasy about becoming a pro on the Xtreme sports circuit, Rally's fast-food is about all you can afford on your pithy stoner income, and after all, you gotta eat something to maintain that active lifestyle. Pass.

2. Sonic's. Now here's a slogan I can work with: "Sonic's got 'em, other's don't." Aside from the deliberately poor grammar, which I suppose is an attempt to reach out and identify with their apparently illiterate consumer base, this slogan speaks to a unique advantage at dining at a Sonic's over competing fast-food joints. Sure, their fries are junk, but who needs fries when you can order a side of tator tots to go with your remarkably hearty and delicious bacon cheeseburger? You heard me right: tots. And you can forget about ordering a plain Coke when you have 11 different syrup flavors that you can have mixed in. Don't feel like a Coke? Try a cherry-flavored limeade, or a peach smoothie - allegedly made with real fruit! Sonic's, you're moving up in my good book. The whole eating-in-your-car schtick is a little outdated, and probably bad for the environment, but it'll have to do in a city without other big contenders.

3. Jack in a Box. I can't even wrap my head around how many Jack in the Boxes there are in this town. Everywhere you turn: Jack in the Box. Sorry, Jack, but you're still associated with E. Coli in my mind. I'm working up the courage to try you. Slowly.

Haircut

2007-08-31T13:22:00.000-05:00

I got a $12 haircut yesterday and it looks like $10. That's the last time I go bargain hunting for a haircut at a barber shop from a mute, brute dame in a muscle shirt. Hey, Barber Lady, you know how I told you I would call you when I needed to set up my next appointment? Well guess what: I lied.

I could sit on a tombstone and produce baby ghosts

2007-08-29T15:24:00.001-05:00

The boys over at Better Chatter are dedicating this week to pay tribute to the high art and crude humor created by Blaxploitation cinema. On Tuesday, Josh took it upon himself to bring the picture Petey Wheatstraw: The Devil's Son-in-Law back into my awareness. This movie, without a doubt, is one of the crowning achievements of the American film industry. Petey Wheatstraw had it all: poorly choreographed kung fu action, devils in red jogging suits, a deliciously funky soundtrack, easily misconstrued social commentary, rows of buxom ebony bombshells waiting in assembly line formation for the pleasure of the infallible and portly Rudy Ray Moore, and above all else, watermelon gags. This is the plow and field of an American teenager's fertile imagination.

For a small taste here's the opening segment, from Petey's miraculous birth to his coming of age as a disciplined kung fu avenger. Careful viewers will note that this segment features one watermelon for every three minutes of action. It all makes very little sense from the outset, but the thrill is undeniable:

And here we have a clip from the following scene. Now you may notice that this scene appears to have absolutley nothing to do with the preceding nine minutes of the film, but these apparent incongruencies are only further evidence of Dolemite's directorial joie de vivre. And yes, these are exactly the sort of ass and titty jokes that the juvenile mind thrives on. Mr. Moore, you were far too ahead of your time:

And, why the hell not, a fight scene with demons. The look on Rudy's face as they enter is priceless:

I would be selling this film short if I said that it was only its "kitsch" value that gave Petey Wheatstraw its appeal, as if it was merely some gimmicky cultural artefact that I could appreciate from my suburban perspective. No, dear friends, the enjoyment I received from this movie was very real. Pure, unadulterated enjoyment. The kind of enjoyment you can only get from watching a mustachioed man in green Fruit of the Looms kicking some demon ass because said demons were interrupting his private moments with a scantily clad lover. Sure, there are elements working against this film, it was created outside the Hollywood mainstream without the benefit of experienced studio hands or the budget for acting lessons, but it's precisely because of the way it overcomes these limitations with its spontaneity, gusto, and creativity that makes this a classic. You might even say that Petey Wheatstraw: The Devil's Son-in-Law is a triumph of the American dream. Or not, whatever. Your call.

But I could really go for a slice of watermelon right about now.

Loyalty and Justice

2007-08-27T16:16:00.000-05:00

So, were there any big news stories today? I don't recall.

Party!

2007-08-26T12:16:00.000-05:00

I went to a house party this weekend. Weird, I know. But hold onto your saddle, Tonto, because it gets weirder. For instance:

1. Dress code - the hosts of this party insisted that the gentlemen in attendance don white apparel. Now, not being a Panamanian diplomat by profession, I am severely limited in my options in white garb. Looking through my still unpacked wardrobe, I found that my options basically consisted of ratty white undershirts, which might work if I had a physique like Brando, or a white button-downed collar shirt, which, when "dressed down" with some casual jeans and sneakers, gives one the unmistakable air of a Jerry Seinfeld clone or a frat boy during rush season. Knowing me, it's no secret that I fell under the former category. Women, in case you were wondering, were expected to wear navy.

2. Age - at only 25, I was easily one of the oldest guests in attendance. It occurred to me that when I lived in Cincinnati, most everyone I would acquaint myself with were either in their late 20s or early 30s, and I felt comfortable in that age range. I shared similar interests with this demographic: early '90s Brit rock, not staying out too late on weeknights, managing pre-tax contributions to your 401(k), vague concerns over the health of one's prostate, Sam Waterston, local news, etc. The crowd at this party was almost exclusively fresh out of college, filled with nubile ideals of changing the world and fully-stocked liquor cabinets. "I remember when I was that age," I remember thinking. Then I thought, "Man, I am not old enough to be starting my thoughts like that."

3. Music - Sublime. Really? Still? C'mon, you're just kidding, right? No, you're not? Sorry, I'm just an asshole. Here I am just harping on the one negative in a sea of Kanye. But to be fair, I missed most of the music as I spent a large part of the night outside near the beer pong table.

Final thoughts: it wasn't half bad. Nice people, nice place. Yeah, I might do it again.

As long as it's on a weekend.

Resurrecting the Well Respected Blogger

2007-08-26T11:46:00.000-05:00

After spending nearly a year and a month on the lam, I think it's about time to resurrect the Well Respected Blog. Take that, Internet.

Hiatus Interruptus

2006-07-19T11:47:00.000-05:00

Devoted readers,

Once again I have neglected this humble blog. If you are eager to hear inklings of my music ramblings in the future, please refer yourself to The Post-Rockist instead. There you will be much better served.

I may continue to update this site with indecipherable mutterings about my daily life, but I haven't made up my mind on how I plan to keep this going.

Best wises,

The Well Respected Blogger

Lovelee Sweet Shields

2006-05-18T18:44:00.000-05:00

Chanced upon this news tidbit this morning. Needless to say, I'm intrigued. We once had a connection, he and I. Eyewitnesses remarked that it was stunning.

Like most reasonable individuals, I'm still patiently waiting for the next MBV album. In the meantime, though, I'm willing to tolerate the remix work he's done for lesser artists. For example:

Primal Scream - If They Move, Kill 'Em (My Bloody Valentine Arkestra)
Lush - Sweetness & Light (The Orange Squash Mix)
DJ Spooky, w/ Kevin Shields - Rapper's Relight
Placebo - Pure Morning (Kevin Shields Remix)
Curve - Coming Up Roses (Kevin Shields Remix)

Sadly, his remix work on Mogwai Fear Satan is much too long to upload. Sadder still, I cannot seem to locate some of his other remixes that I had once worked so hard to accumulate, such as "Autumn Sweater" and "Only the Strongest Will Survive." I suppose Bow Wow Wow will have to do for now.

----

This past weekend Over-the-Rhine played host to the unfortunately named event Jammin' On Main 2.0. Something like 70 local and area bands performed to roaming packs of wristbanded and slightly intoxicated in the historic Main Street district. [Please take note: When I call my neighborhood "historic" I am not simply falling into the come-hither marketing language that pervades these events. I honestly mean that my neighborhood has been recently named one of the 11 most endangered historic sites in the United States, according to the National Trust for Historic Preservation.]

The event I would call a surprising success. With the help of Cinti guru and concert buddy Jilly, we managed to stake out some exceptional regional talent. Outside at Neon's, I kicked off my evening with indie rockers The Turnbull AC's. With cooler weather sneaking in, I headed off to alchemize to catch the magnificent Fairmount Girls, whom I later termed "'60s bedroom pop." They said they had never heard that one before. With that, Jilly sent me along to Jefferson's, where we caught the end of The Swarthy Band's set. I couldn't help but smile at the sweat and gymnastics put into their performance. The real reason we came to Jefferson's, however, was to witness The Sundresses, who were also quite good, but Wussy was playing at the same time in Mr. Pitiful's, so we had to wander across the street to get the best of both worlds. Back at alchemize the night devolved into drinking and dancing and dj's and one final unremarkable band.

Saturday took greater effort to get moving. And for good reason, too. MOTH, who started out my night, are technically from Cincinnati, Ohio, although they would have you believe they were Pete Doherty's buddies from across the pond. At least Dayton's Lab Partners, with their Verve idolism, ended the weekend with a blissful touch of the delay pedal.

As much fun as that was, I doubt it will hold up to this. Anyone planning on visiting the tri-state this June?

We could use the wood

2006-05-10T18:45:00.000-05:00

So, for the past few days - weeks even - I've been scratching my head, wondering why the jackass who runs this website doesn't update his content more regularly, like every other responsible jackass in cyberspace. It was with no small amount of guilt that I realized that the jackass is me. Truth be told, it's hard work maintaining the international presence of the Well Respected Blog bureau. There are all the little things that can easily be taken for granted: concocting my weekly conceit to justify why I'm blogging to you; hand-selecting choice tracks from a variety of tunes I'm currently grooving to, uploading the songs, and making them available for your previewing pleasure; and presenting it all in a package that is informative, entertaining, and at the very least not entirely self-indulgent and boring. I hope you appreciate the labor and criminal risk that goes into this endeavor.

I bleed for this. I lay awake at night beating my chest, ashamed of the neglect this comely corner of the internet has had to endure.

If you get no other satisfaction out of this weblog, please savor the delicate care with which I lay down my run-on sentences.

It is possible, you realize, for me to update more regularly, but with admittedly less substance.

For instance:

Tuesday, 5:40 p.m.
My new spectacles seem to suit me well. However, several people at work asked whether they were only decorative. Do I really seem like that type of character?

Current mood: Ambivalent.
Currently listening to: Os Mutantes, Everything is Possible

Or:

Saturday, 7:02 p.m.
Sanctuary! Relief is finally in sight as the wedding plans are starting to materialize after five months of dawdling and second-guessing.

Current mood: Overwhelmed.
Currently watching: Iron Jawed Angels

Or:

Thursday, 2:36 p.m.
Safely exited my 2:00 conference with Janet Ashcroft. Boy, was she pissed.

Current mood: Flirty.
Currently reading: An editorial that has caused me to lose all respect for Sasha Frere-Jones.

So, there are possibilities. Not that I'll ever fall into that trap.

Two weeks ago (has it been that long? I believe it has) Dan came down to visit. We dallied about rooftops and art galleries and Northside, talking enthusiastically about music and life and rhythm, as if there was a difference. Before we know it, Dan and his little missus will be packing up their covered wagon and leaving behind the fair and fertile grounds of the Midwest for the golden coast. And as much pleasure as I took in warning him of the near certainty with which poverty will meet the pair in Oakland, a small fire in me believes that, like a cat, they will land on their feet.

It's been over a year now since our band released our finest recording to the public at Mac's Bar. Thankfully, for the rest of us, Daniel has kept up with his true love.

Listen, learn, and love:

Fancy Dan - So Long
Fancy Dan - I've Had Enough
Fancy Dan - Plenty

As we parted, we exchanged mix CDs. What else would you expect? He included the Tom Waits track "Come On Up to the House" somewhere in the middle. My strongest memory of that song was when I played in loudly in front of my piano class at State, showcasing Waits as an example of a modern piano player I admired. I smiled smugly at Tom's absurdist humor, his booming voice knocking out lines like "You're singing lead soprano in a drunk man's choir" and violently thrusting in Hobbesian imagery. Listening to it recently, it struck me how powerfully sincere the song is. It's a genuine appeal to acknowledge the flaws in your life and your lack of complete control of those events, and still to not be crushed by those burdens. This song has become my mantra of late - it's so compelling to want to plan everything out, listen to every record that sounds remotely interesting, read every book that you've been told is great or inspirational or enjoyable, constantly explore new territories, make new friends, become a better cook, exercise, learn a new instrument or skill, find better jobs, write everything down, get an advanced degree, and still make time for the Amazing Race, a bowl of popcorn, and a meaningful conversation with someone you care about. It's just too much to keep up with it all; sometimes you just gotta let go.

The world is not my home, I'm just a-passin' thru:

Tom Waits - Come On Up to the House (from Mule Variations)

I knew right away that I had to get my hooks in you

2006-04-25T18:25:00.000-05:00

Iggy & The Stooges - Your Pretty Face Is Going To Hell (from Raw Power, mixed by David Bowie)
The White Stripes - Cannon (from The White Stripes, co-produced by Jim Diamond)
The Blanks - I'm Feeling Bad (from Love You Too, co-produced by Jim Diamond)

This article raises numerous questions, out of which the obvious legal ones I will strictly avoid.

1. Of the numerous relationships played out between producer and musician, is not one of the roles of the producer to accentuate the natural strength of the musican(s) in the studio? Or even, in some cases, to capture the naked talents of the performer? British glam-rocker David Bowie once famously, and sloppily, gave this treatment to a Detroit band known as the Stooges. I don't hear him complaining now that James Osterberg has given that record a heavy-duty remixing in recent years.

2. The Blanks recorded with Jim Diamond. Suspiciously, we were never asked to sign a contract. When asked whether he would mind receiving "co-producer" status on Love You Too, Diamond shrugged and said that it would be fine. In fact, he seemed so uninterested by the prospect that we probably could have titled the album "Jim Diamond and The Blanks Present... Love You Too" and photoshopped his image onto our cover, and he still would have been fine with it. We will see who laughs last, Jim Diamond. We will see who laughs last.

3. By the way, does anyone else notice the East Lansing connection? I think we all know where the real talent lies...

4. Did Jim Diamond have anything to do with this?

5. You say I'm your lover, baby, then why you lovin' Dan?

All I want to do is bugaloo

2006-04-20T20:09:00.000-05:00

My neighbors must be very impressed. For the past hour and a half I have been working myself into a furor over James Brown. Dancing, by myself, until my feet ached and my brows carried big, salty dollops that blurred my vision.

Drivers on interstate 71 must be equally bewildered; watching cautiously as a well-groomed white boy emerges suddenly from their blind spot, pounding his hood until his knuckles purple and spitting rapturously to some inaudible rhymes.

Admittedly, this situation I have put myself in is more than a little absurd. (But don't most addictions begin in private? Who knows, I can't be bothered to follow up on that assertion.) Still, this obsession is nothing to be embarrassed about. Although my discriminating readers may have greeted my repeated offerings of black American music with mute disapproval, perhaps they mistook the brevity with which I introduced soul brother number one, James Brown, as a lack of enthusiasm. How little they realize that sometimes the matters of the heart can't be expressed by words, and only by grunts and squeals. You think I'm finished? I'm only previewing it. This ain't the show I'm only EQ'ing it.

Just to be clear, you're not getting any James Brown tonight. But I have introduced myself to soul singer Don Covay and I thought I would introduce him to you as well. Covay started his career opening for Little Richard, went on to record this little number with an unknown guitarist named Jimi Hendrix, and was later imitated successfully by a Brit named Mick Jagger.

Don Covay - Mercy, Mercy (from Mercy/See-Saw)

I can't explain my recent obsession with '50s R&B, '60s soul, and '70s funk. Maybe the southern heat of this spring is just loosening my joints. Maybe the recent string of drug-related murders and assassination of an outspoken local activist, with the resultant police crackdown in my neighborhood, is causing me to seek an appropriate outlet. Listening to the music is a good start. Shuffling and singing along with the music can be an even better release. Lately I've been getting the itch to get back into performing again. Since I've moved down here my poor bass has been neglected. Nothing's sadder than a solo bassist plucking quietly out of tune. Now I'd give anything for a patient drummer to pound out some simple rhythms - "Give the bass a taste, give the drummer some." Two weeks ago I nabbed a free six-string, minus a few strings. It's still out of tune. I feel like I've been attacking it with clay hands.

I really ought to abandon any notion of playing R&B, soul, or funk, because nothing's worse than white R&B, white soul, and white funk. At work I've been toying around with Pandora and surprised myself with some of the gems you'll now find in the margins of my blog. You can offer suggestions for the type of music you want to listen to, rate it, pause and fast-forward it. The only tune I gave the big thumb's down to was some white gent singing soul. It's unnatural, innit?

"Count Basie just sat there, staring at me."

2006-04-09T19:29:00.000-05:00

The Thelonious Monk Quartet - Body and Soul (Re-take 2) (from Monk's Dream)
The Thelonious Monk Quartet - Bye-Ya (from Monk's Dream)
The Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane - Bye-Ya (from the Thelonious Monk Quartet with John Coltrane at Carnegie Hall)

"He [Thelonious Monk] paints gigantic, colorful pictures with sometimes very few notes, then again with many. His improvised melodic lines remind one of Picasso's paintings: flowing movement, rich textures, striking contrasts. His rhythms are perhaps the most unusual of any jazz player. Sometimes they are jagged, but they are always pulsating and full of rhythmic drive."
-Teo Macero

"I say, play your own way. Don't play what the public want - you play what you want and let the public pick up on what you doing - even if does take them fifteen, twenty years."
-Thelonious Monk

The documentary Straight, No Chaser opens with a bizarre scene, which, for lack of better words, features the "High Priest of Bebop" dancing during a live performance of the Monk original "Evidence." While the rest of the band keeps the rhythm steady, Thelonious Monk moves awkwardly around an invisible axis down the length of his spine, sweating and spinning. As much as you are tempted to write this behavior off as an isolated incident, it turns out to be his signature move, one which he pulls off enthusiastically and at other times mechanically in a variety of settings: night clubs, kitchens, European airport lobbies.

Watching him at the piano - loafers scuffling arrhythmically on the floor, sustaining notes long enough to reach one hand into his pocket to grab a kercheif for his damp brow and drag on his cigatette with the other, only to resume by pecking at the ivory with a crooked claw - is an altogether other sort of mesmerizing experience. While I won't claim to know much about jazz music, it is a project I have unwittingly taken on by means of slow immersion. It would seem that Monk was more concerned with the personal, meditative aspects of his music than what the audience would understand anyway. When I first listened to Monk's Dream, I thought my speakers were so damaged from blasting Jay-Z and Liars on my commute that they were rattling with the lightest of bass touches. It turns out that what I thought sounded like a track of distorted kazoo mixed way down was actually Monk murmuring the melody to himself, which was being picked up in the bleed.

Also, it occurred to me while watching John Ore that I would love to own a double bass. If anyone knows of someone who is selling one for dirt cheap, or who is willing to take an apprentice, please let me know.

Now that's what I call holy writ

2006-04-07T20:37:00.000-05:00

Loose Fur - The Ruling Class (from Born Again in the U.S.A.)
Loose Fur - Thou Shalt Wilt (from Born Again in the U.S.A.)

First, consider the evidence, here and here.

Now, as you read these articles, gnashing your teeth and recoiling more from the shame of self-recognition rather than from the fear of improbability, becalm yourself. Breathe, think, look around - everything's the same as it always was. Before you kick this poor, emotionally wrangled creature from your doorstep, please be so kind as to break the subject down into its parts before you renounce it in its entirety. To begin, ask yourself if there is anything new and/or unusual about adults exhibiting persistent traits of childlike behavior. Surely, if you have ever spent any time in the bleachers of a Little League game, it should come as no surprise to you that growing old has less to do with grace and wisdom than with back aches and body spasms.

To be fair to this new, and evidently comfortably affluent, demographic, there is no written rule that states that in growing older one must renounce their better taste and cling steadfastly to the moral code of a bygone era. Perhaps, to a generation raised on New Wave and post-punk, this is a form of rebellion. The best revenge, it is said, is to live well.

Well, whatever the case may be, it is suffice to say that this brand of armchair sociology is of little import. There has always been a noted resistance against the docile assimilation of the iconography of cultural movements. To be sure, at least since Malcolm McLaren it has become something of a sport, much like pheasant hunting. The much more intruiging question, ripe with possibilities of heady, stout hypotheses, boils down to this: what about me? I've always considered myself a far more interesting specimen for examination than your typical, modern researcher has given credit, as far as my unbiased opinion will hold. Yet, time and again, the subject of me is often overlooked in favor of the Tiktaalik rosea or the gossipy rumors about the Gospel of Judas. So you say that your typical "yupster" or "grup" wears designer jeans and listens to Bloc Party in a feigned effort to pass as a person half their age; so what. The subject of me is 24 years old, and he prefers to labor under the illusion that he is twice his actual age. While executives at his company are wearing jeans to important meetings, he prefers to iron his shirt, stiffen his collar, and present a crisp crease in his slacks on the way to his cramped cubicle. Rather than calling sick from long nights of bourbon hounding and tail chasing, he prefers to calculate his monthtly 401(k) contributions and learn about the current state of affairs from his local news anchors. When asked about his latest musical fascinations, he regales his increasingly disinterested friends with stories of Lord Kitchener and other post-Roosevelt-era calypsonians.

I can see that I'm not entirely convincing you. Perhaps some examples from my days in the University might shed some light on my subject's place in the universe.

Scene 1, me, walking. Enter a group of meaty fraternity brothers, exhibiting their curious courtship behavior.
Them, to me, "Hey! Emo faggot!"
Me, to them, "Me? I'm not 'emo.' Do you even know what that means? Faggots."

Scene 2, me, at a party with long-hairs.
Generic partier, eyeing me suspiciously as a narc, "We get it. You like Bowie. Can you please pass that shit to the left?"
Me, sheepishly coughing, "Sorry."

"But," I can imagine your increasingly frustrated voice whimpering, "aren't you basically just a junior yupster? A cadet grup?"

"What?" I would retort. "I can't understand what you're saying. You really ought to work on e-nun-ci-a-ting your con-so-nants and vo-wel-s. By the way, have you heard the new Loose Fur record? It's that new side project between the versatile Jim O'Rourke, Jeff Tweedy of Wilco fame, and some other guy, Kotche, I think." I would then go on to explain how you can never get old of Jim O'Rourke side projects. Did you know that he did work on the Grizzly Man soundtrack, I would inquire. He played the prepared piano. Neat, huh? Of course I would casually drop the bombshell that I was one of the few and the proud who received more sheer listening enjoyment out of O'Rourke's Insignificance than Wilco's critically acclaimed (and yupster approved, wink) Yankee Hotel Foxtrot, and how it sure is nice to hear ol' Jim writing traditional song arrangements again.

But if you had the audacity to corner me into a "serious" discussion about the religious overtones of Loose Fur's Born Again in the U.S.A. I would curtly instruct you to visit this instructional website about southwest Ohio's most remarkable landmark, that of the giant sinking Jeeebus.

I sweat all day and half of the night

2006-03-27T16:52:00.000-06:00

Three autobiographical facts torn from the good book on Universal James:

I'm a Greedy Man
I Got Ants in My Pants (And I Want to Dance)
I Got a Bag of my Own
(all selections from Make It Funky - The Big Payback: 1971-1975)

Ladies and Gentlemen,
Fellow Americans,
Lady Americans,

I present to you the Minister of the New Super-Heavy Funk, Soul Brother Number One, Mr. James Brown.

For more information, please go here, here, and here.

All you got to do is get your living down

2006-03-25T19:40:00.000-06:00

Sly & The Family Stone - Life (from the Greatest Hits)
Sly & The Family Stone - Thank You (Falletinme Be Mice Elf Agin) (from the Greatest Hits)
Sly & The Family Stone - Thank You for Talkin' to me Africa (from There's a Riot Goin' On)

It's hard to make it these days. Not that it was ever simpler before; but these days, it certainly ain't easy. A lot of people I know are all scattered about - not really certain where they're going to land and entirely clueless about what they'll grow into. By day we scurry about going to work and running errands, and by night we loaf out, thinking about how things could be different. And, hey, if we haven't accomplished anything great yet, it's alright, we've got time; plenty of people hit their stride later in life. Fifty is the new 30, right?

Trouble is, we were all raised on success stories. We read novels about young artists who soar above their home towns with a few lines of paltry verse; we scarf down movies about gifted or chosen individuals who accomplish great things from humble beginnings. It's so easy to empathize and identify with a Harry Potter-type character. Is there any particular reason he was bestowed with these fantastically important powers and charming cast of friends and supporters? Nope, just cuz. He was born that way, I suppose. And of course it's not fair, but you know what, if that jerk can do it, why can't I?

It's natural to fantasize about greatness - it gives us something to look forward to. And yet, most of us choose to put our heart and mind into much less dramatic pursuits: data entry, radiography, timber. It may not always be enviable, but at least it's reassuring. And so you’re not the president, or an NFL quarterback, or a timpani virtuoso; nobody's going to hold that against you. Who could resent somebody who drives a Toyota?

But the worst part, our terrible little secret, is that we half-hope for the stars we idolize to meet some sort of just and cataclysmic failure. How cruel and hearty our laughter is when tween Louisiana pop sensations become bloated caricatures of success; train wrecks in platform heels. Who did she think she was, anyway, walking around like she owned the place? And what would we make of our icons of rock’n’roll if they met some fate other than drug-related heart failure in the bathroom of a distant hotel? It becomes a perfect parable. Well, they should’ve known it wasn’t a stable career path. We need artists and creative risk takers to have outstanding failures because it validates what we’ve chosen to do with our lives. It’s not an easy job, being a wanton fan.

So you have Sly Stone, the star-spangled explosion of the American dream incarnate, chicken-strutting across the globe with his multi-ethnic Family band, laying healthy, free-range eggs of hope and funk wherever they traipsed. What a paroxysm of style and substance and free will! This is what the world is coming to, or at least where it ought to be headed, why not stop what you’re doing and come on and join in the party? But for all the good cheer he spread, Sly was a victim of his own success. Nobody really took the sentiment that “Everybody is a star” too seriously, it was just some cool shit to say when you were feeling groovy. He gave us what we wanted, but nobody actually meant anything by it.

By 1970 Sly was expressly ambivalent toward his mainstream success - television appearances were usually conducted under a cocaine cloud and he become increasingly absent from his own live appearances. 1971's There's a Riot Goin' On (a cynical rejoinder to Marvin Gaye's What's Going On?) was recorded almost entirely by Sly, while the Family Stone began to fracture under the duress of Sly's manic behaviors. Something was not quite right. For all he had done to help everyday people see themselves as stars, he began to see himself through their eyes and by what they expected of him.

Flamin' eyes of peoples fear, burnin' into you
Many men are missin' much, hatin' what they do

The promise of the American dream is so great, so spectacular, that its denial is almost too much to bear.

What happened to Sly Stone? He used to be wrasslin’ with the devil, struggling with his own authenticity and coming out on top, and then he retreated from the lime light. Even at his recent and unusual appearance at the Grammy's, he left the stage before the song was finished and took off on a motorcycle he had stored out back.

Like Sly, I too have wrassled with the devil. However, it remains to be seen whether or not I will come out on top.

**

Clearly, I am rambling tonight in an effort to compensate for how long it has been since I last updated. But to continue with a musical theme of the greats reworking what made them great in the first place, here's James Brown with a brand new (1975) twist on a dance floor classic. Good night.

James Brown - I Feel Good (from Make It Funky: The Big Payback: 1971-1975)

When it rains it shines

2006-03-11T10:46:00.000-06:00

BockFest was last weekend. It was a celebration of drunkards, druids, and polka music. I didn't really understand it, but I certainly enjoyed it.

**

In a completely unrelated series of events, while I turn to bock beer to cope with the stress of paying my bills, the man who lords over the corporation I work for happens to be the ninth richest man in the world, according to Forbes.

***

Although it's too gray and moist and miserable outside right now for me to grab the Sly Stone I wanted to share with you this week, here are some topical cuts.

Django Reinhardt - Stormy Weather (from Django in Rome, 1949-1950)
The Beatles - Rain (from Past Masters, vol. 2)
Nina Simone - Here Comes the Sun (from The Essential Nina Simone, vol. 2)

Pensive Draculas and Pancakes for One

2006-03-04T07:37:00.000-06:00

Marbles - Out of Zone
Of Montreal - Jennifer Louise (from Aldhils Arboretum)
Of Montreal - Old People in the Cemetary (from Aldhils Arboretum)
Of Montreal - Wraith Pinned to the Mist (from The Sunlandic Twins)
Brian Eno - The Paw-Paw Negro Blowtorch (from Here Come the Warm Jets)

Overheard in line while waiting to see Athens, GA-based band Of Montreal perform Sunday, Feb. 26, 2006 at the Southgate House in Newport, KY:

Stoner with Ironic Bling (SwIB): Dude, I'm so stoked to see this show tonight. Check out this bling I busted out just for tonight. This is serious stuff, man, I don't bust this out for just anything. Man, this shit is for real! (Bites into gold dollar sign medallion.)

Bearded Stoner (BS): Yeah, man. Yeah yeah.

SwIB: I was just so afraid we wouldn't even make it here tonight. My car is haunted you know? I've got a haunted car.

BS: Wha-at?

SwIB: Yeah dude, everytime I pump on the brakes it goes, "Whooo-ooo!" (Holds up spooky fingers.)

BS: (Laughs.) Right. (Pause.) Hey, you reminded me, I brought my parachuters. They're little draculas. We can drop them from the balcony for the encore.

SwIB: Why does Dracula need a parachute? I mean, he's got a cape. Draculas can fly, right?

BS: Yeah man, I don't know. This little guy must be afraid to fly. He's a pensive Dracula.

The college stoner crowd was out in full effect Sunday night. Maybe it had something to do with me hitting my official mid-twenty-something status this week, but I felt like I was already becoming that old guy who goes to young rock shows. For instance, when a young college student with black X's on her hands asked if I wanted to hang out with her and her friends, I had to reply, "Uhm, I'm going over to the bar, actually. Sorry."

Thankfully, I'm still a few years shy of the grandfatherly attributes of the portly, balding, and bespectacled Robert Schneider who opened the night up with acoustic renditions of brand spanking new Apples in Stereo songs. Also, by popular request, a version of the Apples' "Ruby," which has too many painful connotations for me to enjoy.

His acoustic set was short, graciously, as I don't think I could have handled much more of the teddy bear affectations he takes up in an effort to be a sweeter John Lennon. "Thanks for listening," he said, "Marbles is up next." Little did I know what was about to happen next. Schneider whipped the drapes off a stand behind him, revealing anntenaes, stereo equipment, and circular neon lights. He hit a button and loud, droning interlude music started pouring out the speakers.

As he started to undress, his accomplice - a svelt blonde in Barbarella garb - started hoisting cardboard cutouts of Darth Vader and the robot from "Lost in Space" on to the stage. A key-tar was elegantly draped over Darth's shoulders. Schneider, now in his underwear, quickly put on what appeared to be a thrift store astronaut outfit - with a cape, because no astronaut outfit is complete without a cape. The second band, Marbles, was now ready to perform.

With another push of a button the stereo started to play melodious '80s synth pop, which Schneider sang over, karaoke style. Guitar solos were noted by him picking up a guitar and pumping it in the air; while he gestured over to Darth for the more prominent keyboard parts. Although this set was short as well, it required another costume change into a silvery varsity jacket bedazzled with the phrase "I Heart Math" on the back. Too cute to boot, Mr. Schneider.

Not to be outdone, Kevin Barnes of Of Montreal walked on stage in a full bridal gown and veil. "We love you Newport!" he yelled. "And we want to make love to you all night long! But we're kind of old-fashioned, you see, so we're going to have to get married first. Newport - will you marry us?" "Yeah!" "Well come on then!"

Since I wasn't familiar with Of Montreal's back catalogue, I expected to casually enjoy the few songs I could identify (i.e., "Wraith Pinned to the Mists" from The Sunlandic Twins), and casually listen to the rest of the unfamiliar set. But from the very first song I was enraptured with the whole psychedelic dance party energy. I'm still buzzing from all the good vibrations. Thank goodness for online recommendations. (Here's looking at you, Scout.)

While waiting for the encore, I noticed that a short, plump lady draped entirely in black was staring at me. Apparently she also suffered from anterograde amnesia. Every time she opened her mouth she sounded completely bewildered: "How old are you? When did you say your birthday was? Do you play in a band? Are you playing next? When was your birthday again? God you're so cute. I must be at least ten years older than you. Oh, I'm sorry, I must be flirting with you." Excuse me, do I know you??

After a period of uncomfortable and prolonoged staring, the lady in black drifted back into the darkness of the crowd. Another man, who looked strikingly similar to me - conservative sweater, Scott Baio hair - approached me. "Do you have any idea who that lady is?" It turns out this lady had a certain type of man-child she liked and was making the rounds this night. This stranger told me how the mytery woman came up behind him and rubbed his back, telling him how cute he was. We shared a hearty nervous laugh.

For the encore, Of Montreal asked Robert Schneider to join them on stage for an Apples in Stereo cover of "Seems So." Afterwards, Kevin Barnes asked the crowd, "Do you like Brian Eno? Yeah? Ladies and gentlemen, Brian Eno!!" He gestured toward stage left and started to applause. "Actually, Brian Eno couldn't make it tonight. Wouldn't it be great if he was here though?" They closed the set with a cover of "The Paw Paw Negro Blowtorch," which segued into another song I had never heard before.

By this time I noticed that the mystery lady was standing suspiciously close behind me and my clone. I quickly grabbed my jacket, closed my tab, said my goodbyes, and dashed to the door. I had to work in the morning.

***

For the record, I finally fixed my comments box so non-bloggers can let me know they care.

Don't call it a comeback

2006-02-26T08:58:00.000-06:00

The Mountain Goats - The Best Ever Death Metal Band in Denton (from All Hail West Texas)
The Robot Ate Me - Regret (from Carousel Waltz)

Biographers take note: this past week signified a distinct break from my musical past. The Blanks, popularly known as the world's greatest rockity roll band, fumbled in a last quarter attempt to tack on their first ever reunion show. Jim Dandy, the band's vocalist and greatest cheerleader, had helped to put something together for us in Salt Lake City with the help of his fire-jumping cousin Nolan. The old dreams and desert visions were all there: putting down their typewriters and wheelbarrows for one extended weekend, the four Blanks would trek across distant locations in America's mid- and south-west to meet somwhere in the middle and casually knock off a show so good, so pure it would keep the audience members' grandchildren awake with wonder for years to come. Perhaps this would become a habit, and we would mysteriously reappear in dusty western towns with all the regularity and enigma of a Yeti sighting. But what made the prospect of this show so intriguing was the rumor that the people were actually down for it. There must've been something in that Utah water, boys, 'cause they were thirstin' for it.

The reality of the picture painted a very different landscape. The cost and stress of traveling to an unfamiliar location, playing with unfamiliar instruments, and - get this - opening for another band with no payment guarantee all seemed to dampen the funness of the idea. Worse still were the growing burdens of everyday adult concerns: limited vacation hours, wedding planning, credit debt, taxes, savings for furniture and real estate. It all seemed too much. So, after several extended man-to-mans with Brother Daniel and Jim Dandy, we bunted. (Attempts were made to contact Mr. Ried; however, given his superhuman schedule, he was unavailable for comment.)

The disappointment here isn't just that we're young and in debt; that would be easily enough explained. And it certainly wouldn't be the first time we've had to abandon an opportunity because of personal schedules and other responsibilities - lord knows we were only ever ambitious in rhetoric. The Blanks, for all our failures, always meant something greater. For three odd years the band was a vessel for our collective fantasies and it provided some defense against the fact that most people don't care about your fantasies - collective or otherwise. As they say, time consumes us, and this decision feels like a large chunk of the past has just been bitten off.

But as much as the band tied us all together, it also tied us up. Hopefully this will signal an opportunity for us start focusing on our own endeavors. The Blanks will always be a part of us, and may very likely rise again to set some small western town on fire, but it's not the only thing we can pour our dreams in. (If nothing else, the Blanks were always great sentimentalists.)

**

Here are two songs from one-man bands I've been listening to a lot lately. John Darnielle's Mountain Goats sings about underappreciated death metal bands in west Texas. Ryland Bouchard's The Robot Ate Me plays another delicate bedroom melody. Carousel Waltz was amazingly listed as the #1 album of the year by a long time friend and critic of mine - amazingly because he typically prefers down tempo Russian dance music and post-shoegazer instrumentals. I once interviewed Bouchard; he seemed like a pleasant fellow.

***

Ironically, after all this talk of Lansing rock music, I saw Detroit's The Sights perform last night. My opinion of these rats can be found here. I was going to a neighborhood bar because I knew the bartender working. I was pleased to see that the crowd reaction was overwhelmingly unimpressed by their extended organ solos and midget rock'n'roll posturing. Boo.

Shiver the whole night through

2006-02-20T18:21:00.000-06:00

Jane's Addiction - Been Caught Stealing (from Kettle Whistle)
Leadbelly - In the Pines (from Where Did You Sleep Last Night: Leadbelly Legacy 1)

After I returned home on Friday evening from an awkward work Happy Hour in which I spent a good deal of time not making conversation with the VPs and other executives who were letting off a little steam and listening to unprovoked marital confessions from my co-workers, Kim was distraught. The story, in brief, involved wayward ex-cheerleader sister Nikkole (sic) pawning off family valuables with the result of being temporarily excommunicated from the already dysfunctional family. A story in two parts, as captured in the two songs above. For greater detail of these events, please refer to Kim's blog.

Perry Farrell opens this week's edition with, what I presume to be, a psychotropically-enhanced sense of self worth, lecturing faceless audience members on the virtues against "stealing another man's girl." The song, meanwhile, seems to give high praise to the rush associated with stealing other people's property. As we learn in the case of Nikkole, being caught stealing at the age of 18 is nowhere near as enjoyable as being caught stealing at the age of 5.

Leadbelly (Huddie Ledbetter) shares our anxiety over the consequences. I had always assumed this song was about infidelity, judging by the macho threat and anguish present in Kurt Cobain's voice in the popular Unplugged version. However, with age and some quick history lessons, I learned that this song has been around since the late 19th century and probably falls into the same category of traditional tunes like "Swing Low Sweet Chariot" that are meant to provide guidance and instruction to escaped slaves who are hoping to make their way up North ("where the cold winds blow").

The question on everyone's lips, then, is the same: Nikkole, damn girl, where have you been sleeping these last few nights?

In other news, back on planet normal, I'm attempting to prepare a homemade beef stew.

We're having fun

2006-02-16T18:56:00.000-06:00

Neu! - Lila Engel (from Neu! 2)
Iggy Pop - Funtime (from The Idiot)

I'll admit it, I've been in a bit of rut lately. I commute to and from work at about the same time every day; I get caught in about the same goddamned traffic every day; perform the same set of tasks at work; eat the same things for breakfast, lunch, and dinner; and, with the gracious exception of the Winter Olmpics, I watch the same schedule of television programs every night. I don't go out as often as I first did when I moved to Cincinnati, but when I do, part of me wishes I had just stayed in to avoid disrupting my comfortable monotony. This is the result of no one's work but my own. In other words, I'm an 80-year-old shut-in.

Maybe that explains why I've been listening to Neu's second album, appropriately titled Neu! 2, so religiously this past week and a half. The songs pound and swirl and fly and sputter with astronomical simplicity. Klaus Dinger's locked-down, methodical grooves and Michael Rother's spaceshuttle atmospherics only seem to grow more powerful and more necessary the more I hear them repeated. It's not for everyone.

If you do choose to write a song with only one note, there's only so much you can do: speed it up, slow it down, layer different tempos, play it louder or quieter, or simply repeat that perfect note ad infinitum. The gambit, of course, is that in doing so you're forced to walk a very fine line between bravery and boredom.

Neu!, more often than not, made it sound like that one note was all it ever took. But here's the catch: while half the songs on Neu! 2 are masterpieces of stripped-down, soul-scraping rock music, the other half literally takes the same handful of songs, and plays them faster, or slower, or takes the tape and chews it up. This can be maddening, especially if you insist on playing the entire album on repeat as I did, out of habit. Although some people make the mistake of calling this the first "remix" album (it's not), the real reason is that the Dusseldorf darlings simply ran out of money and their label refused to foot them any more funds. As a result, or in proto-punk defiance as it's been remarked, they made do with what recordings they had in Conrad Plank's barnyard studio and four songs and some odds and ends and created a full length.

The track here, "Lila Engel" (Lilac Angel), is Neu! at their most cavemannish. While Rother was known for pulling the band's strings toward ambience and melody; Dinger ran toward abrasive and confrontational sounds. "Lila Engel" is a Dinger song. I imagine if Animal from the Muppets ever went solo, it would sound something close to this.

As I listened to this, I couldn't help but notice the similarities to another song recorded around the same time in the mid-1970s in a politically divided Germany, but I couldn't quite put my finger on it. I kept hearing the screams grow louder until I finally heard the observant words of a detox Iggy Pop: "Baby, baby, I like your pants." Click.

After the Stooges' combusted, Iggy fell into some unfashionable squalor. Lucky for him, as legend has it, David Bowie saw his old chum lying in the streets and said something to the effect of, "Iggy, you're a wreck. Let's get you cleaned up and we'll head on out to Berlin where there are trannies and anonymity and make beautiful new music." Bowie also inquired whether Rother would be interested in doing some guitar work with them while they were in Germany. Rother declined. Thankfully for us, imitation was never one of David's ethical qualms.

honey funny sunny morning

2006-02-13T21:42:00.000-06:00

Syd Barrett - Love You (take 1) (from The Madcap Laughs)
Elvis Presley - I Love You Because (alternate #5) (from the Sun Sessions)
Lou Reed - I Love You (from Lou Reed)

There are some benefits to being a recently engaged individual. Namely, that I got a little leeway this Valentine's Day in putting off my gift shopping until the very last minute. And when I went shopping, she drove. Kim has extraordinary patience to put up with me. What? You need more examples? Try this on for size: after we returned with the heart-shaped box of chocolates, she knitted in front of the TV while I compiled a mix CD of silly love songs and then painstakingly drew a card of her fantasizing about an amorous Todd posing in the Michael Jackson Thriller/tiger pose. If that's not every woman's dream, I don't know what is.

Before I was in this relationship, I always figured love had to be something grand and spellbinding. I now realize it can be much more simple and endearing than that.

The Captain and I

2006-02-12T11:30:00.000-06:00

Guided By Voices - Captain's Dead
Guided By Voices - Game of Pricks
Guided By Voices - Things I Will Keep

--from Human Amusements at Hourly Rates and Alien Lanes.

Last night two of my fellow co-workers and I crossed the Ohio River to witness aging song-writing factory Bob Pollard sweat and dance and sing for us for three hours in Newport, Kentucky's Southgate House. We got there early so we could sit on the balcony to observe the show - and I'm calling him old. To me, Bob had always represented the Great Midwest Hope: that I could reasonably expect to work a drab, middle-class job well into my 30s while writing songs with my drinking buddies on the side, and then, by a stroke of sheer luck, be catapulted into a cult-like rock stardom. Easy, right?

I expressed these sentiments to Bob at a book signing for the Guided By Voices biography, after which I gave him a copy of Lansing, Michigan's greatest rockity roll record. It ain't easy dreaming of being a rock'n'roller growing up in these parts. Bob smiled, told me he knew where I was coming from, and slapped me five. Oddly, I never heard from him again.

Well, anyway, the old man's still at it. And, judging from appearances, mildly more sober than usual. There were none of the embarassing collapses on stage, or brazen proclamations like, "Hello, we're Guided By Voices and we're the Best Fuckin' Band in the World! Better 'n the White Stripes; better 'n fuckin' Bright Eyes, that's for sure!" Of course, he isn't GBV anymore; he's just plain Bob. Still chugging out buckets of songs in the same old formula, hoping that by simple statistical probability a few of them will really knock yer socks off. And some of them did. He even managed to knock out a few old man jump kicks before the GBV-exclusive encore. Two of which are included here. The first song is just for my amusement.