Dipping into the archives...

As those of you who receive my monthly report know, I wrote my monthly report tonight. This is what is called in some circles as "Stating the obvious". But there is a slight problem as the Report and the blog typically have slightly different tones so I can't just post the report in the blog and call it a night. But, I also have a very limited degree of creativity at any one time so I can't just sit down and write for another hour and try to think of something creative.

So, we're heading into the archives tonight. Specifically, my vacation journal from one of my trips to England and Ireland, where I spent a lot of time drinking with people from all over the world. Just a sample of the overall journal, but enough to make it worth reading. For those wondering, Tina is the legendary Canadian girlfriend. I swear to God, she really does exist....

Flying time: In terms of relative disaster quotient, having a full British Airways flight from Chicago to London ranks just below walking through a southern Wal-Mart. You really get the dregs of humanity in the cargo class, people who don’t give a damn about the no smoking signs and who will walk the aisles during heavy turbulence. Not the best cleaning habits either. So, to my fellow travelers out there, here is what to expect in World Traveler. 1) say goodbye to your knees and you better be able to sleep with a knee in your kidneys, 2) it is apparently a requirement to have both a screaming child and a Jim Carrey movie on every flight, 3) be cautious of any food with a serve by tomorrow date on it, 4) the music selection sucks, 5) the stewardess on Air Italia look much, much better, 6) don’t worry because in case of disaster the emergency ramps turn into rafts. There are worse flights in the world but you have to do some searching.

Foreign relations: This has been the subject of an email already but I might as well try to add it to this missive as well. When you are surrounded by a bunch of foreigners there is one thing that always comes up: Americans always think that they are correct. As Alex the flying Dutchman put it; “It’s not wrong, it’s different.” I tried to explain that mayonnaise on French fries is just plain wrong no matter which country you’re from but it didn’t work. Anyway, here are the list of things not to say to foreigners: 1) Canadians do not like being referred to as being from the 51st state, 2) Don’t bad mouth Canadian beer, 3) Surprisingly, Australians do not have pet kangaroos, 4) nope, no koalas either, 5) Europeans get real pissed if you call it soccer, 6) or try to explain that it’s not a real sport, 7) you can make fun of the Mounties, even the Canadians think the outfit is stupid, 8) the one exchange which actually got me slapped. Somewhere by a peat bog: Tina: “Chris, they’re making fun of North Americans again.” Me: “Yeah, leave the Canuck alone.” I was playfully slapped and called a yankee. Hey, sometimes being insensitive actually scores points when done the right way.

The Gilted Age

Two fun but completely random stories from the weekend. Got my haircut on Saturday. I know, this is shocking news that puts everyone’s life in a state of flux. I’m sorry but when I document my life most of what happens is technically boring stuff.

So, to continue with my new mood of constant change I’ve decided to change who cuts my hair and this is one of those very scary moments. I mean, it’s like getting in a plane. You have no idea who the pilot is, it could be that kid from grade school who believed in Santa Claus until the fifth grade for all you know. All that you know for certain is that your life is going to be in this dude’s hands for the next few hours. Likewise, when you switch the person cutting your hair you are suddenly at the mercy of a complete stranger. Maybe they’ll carve their initials in the back of your head, maybe they’ll decide that a blue tint is what is missing from your life, or maybe they’ll decide to give you a part even though you didn’t have one when you walked in (which has happened to me before). Those are pretty universal fears but I have two more specific ones. The first is that I have to take off my glasses when I get my haircut so for all I know she could be giving me a Mohawk and I wouldn’t know until it was over and I put my glasses back on. The second is that I get my haircut on Saturday morning, which comes after Friday night, and I’m not typically in the condition to be making sound decisions about how I will look for the next month. It’s more along the lines of “Please, could you cut my hair a little quieter?”

Anyway, so I did change my style a bit and really cut my hair short. Shortest it has been in a very long time, maybe ever. Got rid of the pseudo mullet that I’d pick up when I hadn’t cut my hair for a month, which will probably shock a lot of people in this part of the world. And I’m digging it, just makes me feel like I’m ready to go into battle or something. I just get this sleek, no nonsense, take no prisoners vibe when I look in the mirror. Friggin cool.

The second one is that I received the form from Jackson County for my property tax declaration. I can do this, it’s simple enough to state that yes, I still have my car. The thing is that there is a full section on declaring livestock. Remember, I live in the second largest city in Missouri and I still have to declare livestock. And oh, what a declaration it is. Let’s look at some of the categories, shall we?

· Horses/Mules/Asses: Well, given most people’s view of myself, I should declare one very unintelligent ass.
· Calves: Two (ugh, what a bad pun. The lowest form of comedy)
· Barrows/Gilts: I don’t know what the fuck these are. Seriously, when they list sows I understand it but I never remember seeing a Gilt at the zoo. Maybe it’s one of those weird Dr. Seuss animals. That would be cool.
· Slaughter Lambs: Ok, I’m a bit confused here. Are we talking lambs I’ve slaughtered, lambs I will slaughter, or lambs that I bought from Sgt. Slaughter? What if I planned on slaughtering the lamb, but had a change of heart and decided to become a vegetarian? Does that change my tax bracket?
· Replacement Ewes: Replacement for what? I have to state that I lost the other ones? And give a reason? And why do I have to let the ewe know it is a replacement? I mean, it’s got to be bad in the self respect category. Can’t I let it know that it is perfectly good in its own right?

(Nothing against farmers here. It’s just that I was sent this form and I live in a place where if I decided to get a cat the cat would have to pay rent. So, I’m pretty sure that I don’t have a cow lying around the apartment someplace.)

The five random CDs for the week (Best. Grouping. Ever.)

1) Jack Ingram “Acoustic Motel”
2) Jack Johnson “On and On”
3) Alejandro Escovedo “With These Hands”
4) Uncle Tupelo “Anodyne”
5) Cat Power “You are Free” (even though I do no recommend listening to Cat Power and operating heavy machinery to anyone)

Duke lost?

You know, I knew that when I mentioned Duke and Illinois being undefeated that I would be jinxing one of the teams. Kind of surprised that it was Duke, though. Lost to an undermanned Maryland team at home, which is really not that much of a surprise. Duke is not one of the top teams in the nation. They win games but they have no depth. Illinois’ only concern is the fact that they have no solid inside game. But they might be able to survive without one (actually they have three very serviceable big men, just no superstar).

A couple of random notes as the movie review is seriously not happening upon rereading what I wrote last night. Apparently coffee houses do not bring out the best in my muse.

1) While flipping through saw Queensryche’s “Silent Lucidity” on VH1 Classic. Which reminded me that I missed the opportunity a few weeks ago to see Queensryche in concert. It raises a very important question: Who is actually going to that concert? I mean, Silent Lucidity is their only song. If they opened with it everyone would leave immediately and be perfectly pleased with the concert. I’m not sure how you even bring up the courage to tour when your band has reached that point.
2) Still not as bad as the Eddie Money concert that I saw in high definition once on my cable system. It was the most bizarre thing ever. First of all, there is no real need to see Eddie Money in perfect clarity. But the main thing was the sheer bizarreness of the entire thing. I mean, who sat down one morning and went, “Let’s go to the Eddie Money concert tonight.” And who decided, “You know what, we should film this concert in high def.” And who went “I know what our network is missing, an Eddie Money concert.” Seriously, you would see a camera pan from the crowd to the band and you just got the feeling that everyone is going, “Why am I here again?”
3) I will have to say this, the absolute best trend is music today is the adding of DVDs to a regular CD. If you want to make people stop downloading music, you’re going to have to offer something extra. It was worth it for a quick fifteen minute Damien Rice DVD and it was incredible having an hour and a half Rufus Wainwright concert DVD free with his new disc. A great trend.
4) A note to Super Dave: not only is The Frames “Set List” a great album, it is also the album responsible for having me drive off the road, onto someone’s lawn, and nearly into a tree last summer. So obviously that one gets my highest recommendation.
5) If you have digital cable and get Music Choice, check out the Americana channel. It is the equivalent of putting my entire CD collection in an Ipod and hitting shuffle. For me it’s basically the aural equivalent of crack. Followed closely by walking into my favorite bar and finding out that they’ve set their Ipod to play Uncle Tupelo songs for the next hour and a half. I don’t know how they make money but they sure have my business.

Housecleaning time...

This will be a pretty quick post tonight. Spent an hour and a half tonight sitting in a coffee house, writing in my notebook like a good little aspiring writer. Of course, on my way home I had to walk past several bars and I couldn't resist the siren's song so apologies in advance for any spelling errors.

Despite my promises, the movie reviews may not actually be posted tomorrow. Here's the problem, after an hour and a half of writing tonight I have five pages of material (with at least another two that I want to write). The fact that it is long doesn't bother me. The problem is that at some point what I am writing about switches over from what I would post to the blog (meaning: information that I feel like I can share with the world) to what would be better served in my writer's journal (meaning: information that is kept between me and Random House publishing since they've already purchased the rights to my biography). Some parts work, others don't and I really want to do a good job in writing about Before Sunset but I don't want to go too deep into why it means so much to me. So, I might post something tomorrow or I might post it next week. Until then, rent the movie if you haven't. Otherwise my post won't make any sense anyway.

(Oh, and for the record this is the first time that I've sat in a coffee house and written since my college days, back when I was really trying to be a beatnik poet. Now I'm more of a hack writer who likes hanging out with a younger crowd. It's a bit of reclaiming my past, admittedly, but at least it beats sitting on my couch and watching tv all night).

Ok, my KC observation for the night. The Missouri state legistlature has just proposed a bill that would place the following restrictions on any business with adult materials. A) A five dollar cover charge to enter the premises (which would be turned over to the government) and B) 20% of gross revenues would immediately be turned over to the government. This would achieve the proposed goals of shutting down all adult businesses in Missouri. Of course, this includes every mom and pop video store in the entire state (whose entire profit comes from the back room). So, it's a stupid law just for the fact that it would force me to go to Blockbuster.

But that's not why I want to write about it. The only reason I know about it is because of my local Fox's channel coverage of it this morning. Where they set up a live shot outside of Ray's Video "Located at 29th and Main". (I knew that, it's across the street from Davey's Uptown). Not only did they do a live shot from the adult bookstore, but they gave its name, and address, and mentioned that it is open 24/7/365, and mentioned it by name a half dozen times in a minute spot. So, the business that is not allowed to advertise on a billboard in the state got a ton of free publicity. They did everything short of mentioning the Two for Tuesdays specials. There is something about that I find incredibly funny.

Oscar notes

Another one of those seemingly random, bullet point entries

1) First, I need to give a big shout out and congratulations to some of the Oscar nominees. Huge props to Julie Delpy for getting her first nomination as cowriter of the screenplay for Before Sunset (which I will finally post my review of on Thursday). Also, props to Natalie Portman for securing a Best Supporting Actress nod for Closer. See what being at the top of my Perfect Mate list results in? I’m telling you, at some level I am apparently in control of this universe.

2) On Natalie, when reading critics predicting who was going to get a nomination they mentioned that Closer was her first adult role. And since she is playing a stripper that would count as an adult role. But her role in The Professional isn’t an adult role? Even her part in Beautiful Girls had her be wise beyond her years. Come on critics, I don’t think anyone has ever viewed Natalie Portman as a child star.

3) I also have to give a shout out to the dude who played the dumb guy on Wings for snagging a Best Support Actor nod. I really believe that every reference to him should be made as “that dude who played the dumb guy on Wings.” They shouldn’t even show a clip from the movie, it should just be him in his mechanics uniform on the sitcom set.

4) Counting Crows got nominated for best song. This brings up the legitimate possibility that Alfred Hitchcock might not have an Oscar but Adam Duritz does. Talk about a guy who has seriously overachieved in life. Bad dreads overcome a lack of talent, apparently.

5) Saw this headline on IMDB.com today, “Elton John holds a benefit concert for Tsunami victims in Paris.” Man, I knew that it was a massive wave but I didn’t think that it hit France. Syntax people, syntax.

6) While shopping last weekend I came across what has to be the least popular DVD collection ever. An eight volume collection of Dr. Quinn, Medicine Woman. Wow, I really want to meet the person that buys that. I mean, do you wake up one morning and go, “You know what my life misses? Every episode of Dr. Quinn!” Or is it just an impulse purchase? “Neat. Dr. Quinn is out on DVD. I’ll plop down eighty bucks for every episode.” Who are these people and are they allowed to vote?

7) I want to write this before the Illinois game tips in about five seconds. I am thrilled that two of the last three undefeated teams in basketball are Duke and Illinois. And pissed off beyond all belief that the other team is Boston College. Somebody beat those guys for my sake.

8) Just go out and buy The Shins “Oh, Inverted World” right now. Leave work if you have to, you cannot go another minute without having this album in your collection. Wow, this is just a killer album. The Past is Pending is the best song I’ve heard all year and this album was released in 2001. It is making me rethink my album of the year list.

9) For the record, here are the recent albums of the year from my point of view: 2004: Tift Merritt “Tambourine”, 2003: Jack Johnson “On and On”, 2002: Wilco “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”, 2001: Gillian Welch “Time (The Revelator)”

10) Did I mention that Julie Delpy might win an Oscar for writing? And people wonder why I am so madly in love with her…

R.E.M. Incorporated

(Note for people who wonder what exactly I am listening to when I have headphones on at work. Today I believe I listened to the Garden State soundtrack three times and each of the Shins CDs at least twice. And that made me productive than I’ve been in years so please, I know it might look antisocial but let me keep the headphones on. It’s the only way I can work nowadays.)

A few weeks ago I made an offhand reference to R.E.M. phoning it in for the last decade and since my random number generator had me listening to Fables of the Reconstruction (or Reconstruction of the Fables, no one is quite sure what the actual title of the album is) in my car today I thought that this would be the time to explain my view on what was easily my favorite band on the planet for a long time.

I’ve said for years that if I was placed on a desert island and could have only five CDs R.E.M.’s “Murmur” would be the first one I would grab (followed by Uncle Tupelo’s “Anodyne” and Jeff Buckley’s “Grace” and then a long period of thought for the final two). Murmur is without a doubt the best debut album I have ever heard. A great raw sound from a bunch of guys who aren’t quite sure what they are doing but they know that it works. You’re not sure what any of the songs mean so you could listen to them all day and try to make out fragments of lyrics and start to piece together the meaning of the album. Even the album art is cool, a train tressel being devoured by kudzu as if part of some Faulknerian symbolism.

To me, all of the early R.E.M. albums are incredible. If you made me list the twenty CDs I listen to most often, Reckoning would be on the list. It’s not R.E.M.’s best album from a critical standpoint. It’s probably their worst selling album. It’s not even my favorite. But it always seems to find it’s way back into my CD player just so I could hear Seven Chinese Brothers or South Central Rain one more time. All of those early albums are raw and emotion filled and jangly and sound like they were made by a bunch of kids in Athens just having fun.

Even when they started having hits with Document and Green there was still this Us vs. Them feel to it. The band barely shows up in the video for The One I Love, which when I watched it again a week ago still presented this weird southern gothic feel (along with some really postmodern ironic comedy moments). Or Pop Song 89 with its censored topless dancers including Michael Stipe, which can be viewed as such a swipe at MTV at the time, which was just filled with Poison and Bon Jovi videos.

See, the thing is R.E.M. was our band. And when I say our I mean those of us who weren’t listening to hair bands. The group of kids who you know, read books outside of a classroom. Who understood that while Porky’s is a friggin kick ass movie there is a little more to life out there. In short, there was always this knowledge that when you saw a jock talking about how awesome Whitesnake was you knew that you were listening to R.E.M. and you really knew what cool was.

Then Out of Time came out and the band became really popular and now you had to share. You didn’t realize it at the time, it just kind of happened. They weren’t your band anymore. I don’t have any problems with the music in the Out of Time, Automatic for the People, Monster trilogy period. I listened to them incessantly. Though I will say if you listen to Out of Time now you find out that it hasn’t aged well at all. Think about it, how many times have you heard Losing My Religion? The song was so overplayed that it lost all meaning. That oversaturation really hurt the band.

The other thing is that once Bill Berry left it just wasn’t R.E.M. anymore. They might be the only band where losing the drummer has really destroyed the band. It’s not like no one else could do his riffs, his most memorable role is being the third part of the three part harmony on Fall on Me. But he was just the soul of the group, the one who kept it centered and away from being a caricature of itself. With Bill in the band, they were always the four kids from Athens.

Now it is truly R.E.M. Incorporated, producing the mandated albums and going on a greatest hits tour. Every once in a while they will produce a good album but they simply are no longer required listening. The band that was once the voice of my generation seemingly has nothing left to say. It’s sad, because I think everyone knows what they want to hear one more time.

We all want them to record Murmur again. Not the album, but just that sound and that feeling of not knowing what in the world was going on. The problem is that everyone knows that it can’t happen. That album is now over twenty years old and the band isn’t the same and I’m not the same and you can’t go back to that time. But that is what we all want, just one more moment of knowing that this is our music. To be able to possess something so ethereal as music and know that it is not because of some mass produced pop cultural commodity trading. We just want R.E.M. to give us one more moment of expressing who we are. And I really hope they have that one last great album in them.

A regular life

(First, a comment on a news item from this weekend. It was announced that Audrey Tatou, previously best known for her brilliant performance in the title role of the film Amelie, would be the female lead in The Da Vinci Code. I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, there is no friggin justice in this world. Look, I don’t ask for much. Just a role for Julie Delpy in a film that people might just have a chance of seeing. Seriously, is that too much to ask of the universe? With all that good karma I’ve built up recently something big better be coming my way soon. Oh, and if Ron Howard ever crosses my path on the street I’m breaking both of his legs for this. You better watch your back Opie.)

In a step to try to jump-start my life, I focused on doing things differently this weekend. Specifically, I went to different bars than I normally frequent. Ok, it’s not much of a stretch but it is a start. Plus, it resulted in my getting carded at a few bars, which hasn’t happened in this town for like a year for me. Was pretty interesting, met some cool people, and had an experience that has made me wonder about bar regulars.

I guess this goes back to my time back at Notre Dame. There was always a running joke between my buddies about the regulars at the Backer. Or, as El Ultimo Gringo so eloquently put it, “The guys who when the five o’clock whistle blows slide straight down the dinosaur’s tail like Fred Flintstone and pedal their car straight to the bar.” We didn’t have anything bad to say about them and in all honesty, they were probably at the bar less than we were. But there was always this sense of disconnect, as we were the cool school kids and they were the townie regulars. And you knew that you were never going to turn out to be one of those guys.

Fast-forward a year and a half to my life, where I woke up one morning to discover that I had somehow found myself in Kansas City. Still not quite sure how that happened, either, it must have been one hell of a night, though. But, here I am, where there are places that I go to where everyone who works there and a number of the regular patrons refer to me by name. And notice when I’ve been away for a few days. And last night when I was at a different bar and seeing the old guy at the end of the bar singing with the jukebox made me wonder, “Oh my God, is that going to be me in twenty years? Or ten, or five, or tomorrow for that manner.”

I guess I don’t worry about it too much. I certainly don’t worry about guys like the guy singing with the jukebox, my view of life is everyone gets to enjoy it whatever way they can as long as it doesn’t hurt anyone else in the process. Maybe it’s just a concern of what the future could turn out to be. When you’re a kid you don’t dream of sitting in a box for eight hours a day looking at a computer screen and trying not to fall asleep. You have much bigger dreams than that and I have a feeling that for some people life is just a narrowing of the dream until there really isn’t anything left except denial that there was a dream to begin with.

I’m still dreaming of greatness and of miracles and of running into the perfect woman one night at a bar. As long as I have that, I’ll still keep going. As they say at the beginning of Waking Life, “Dream is Destiny”

The five random CD’s for the week:
1) Billy Bragg and Wilco “Mermaid Avenue Volume 2”
2) Nickel Creek “Nickel Creek”
3) Tommy Malone “Soul Heavy”
4) R.E.M. “Fables of the Reconstruction”
5) Alejandro Escovedo “A Man Under the Influence”

Public Speaking Tips

Borrowing content from The Onion tonight. Sorry, but I spent most of the night watching Illinois basketball and hanging out at a bar. Yeah, I know I have to be at work in the morning but the inauguration was today and I realized that I have four more years of this shit to look forward to. Or more accurately, four years or until Australia grants me asylum, whichever comes first. To make up for it, I'll guarantee that next week I will post my review of Before Sunrise/Sunset/why I need to marry Julie Delpy. And, if I am really creative, I'll finally finsih my Jeff Buckley retrospective. In short, much more creative postings next week. Until then, notes from a group of guys a lot funnier than I am right now...


Speaking in public can be a nerve-wracking experience. Here are some tips to help you capture an audience.

• Structure your speech to include a strong opening, a memorable conclusion, and at least six references to your wife in the front row.
• Rehearse your speech in front of a mirror, if you are attractive
• Imagining your audience naked is passe. Imagine them weak, emotionally vulnerable and thirsty for a peer-shared breakthrough
• Kids, if you are giving a class presentation, remember not to be fat
• Public speaking is a lot like riding your bike: it's tiring, you get sweaty, and sooner or later you take an iron bar to the nuts
• It's probably best to leave unverified allegations that Saddam Hussein tried to obtain Uranium from Africa out of your State of the Union address
• Your audience is just as afraid of you as you are of it. Don't make any sudden movements
• "Weird Al" Yankovic performs in front of large groups of people all the time. If that freak can do it, you ought to be able to manage
• The oldest, best know public speaking tip still applies: Shut the fuck up, jackass

A long overdue thanks

So, like I do on every Wednesday in January, I just watched Duke beat up on some poor defenseless ACC team. Which tonight was Miami, who shouldn’t even be in the ACC in the first place but that is a complaint for another night. Instead I figured that I would answer the question that everyone at work asks me when they see my Duke Basketball mug, “Why in the world are you a Duke fan?” Well that and, “You mean there are schools other than Missouri, Kansas, and Kansas State?”

(Wait, I promised no Kansas jokes this week so I take that back. Those are all fine institutions. Though I do stand by my claim that Nebraska is the high school after high school.)

The short answer is this. My high school English teacher’s brother in law was one of the assistant coaches at Duke. So, we would talk basketball every day before class and I started watching the team and became a fan. As time went on he would be sent press guides and posters and coaching sweaters from his brother-in-law and he passed them on to me. The team kept on winning and I remained a fan, even though I never attended the school. Pretty simple, right?

Of course, that is not the real answer…

It’s really a lot deeper and more intense than that, obviously. You have to think back to what life was like in high school. I doubt that I was much different than most people in that high school was a difficult time in my life. It didn’t help that I was a really smart, tall, skinny, gawky kid with glasses. I was never the kid who was picked on, mainly because I was friends with all the guys on the football team, but it wasn’t like anyone really knew me or anything. I was just the smart kid in the front row who you never gave a second thought to.

Well, my English teacher did actually give a second thought to me and decided that he was going to break me out of my shell. He started with basketball. Kept on reminding me to watch the team, to be a fan before anyone else was. And I would watch the team and I realized that they never seemed to have the most talented guys on the floor but they always played smart and worked as a team and won. And he would use this to remind me that I could do the same thing, just because I wasn’t the star athlete didn’t mean that I couldn’t outsmart and outwork everyone else and still win in the end.

Here’s a story that explains it. My junior year he had a poster of the current Duke team up on his wall in the classroom. This was the ’89-’90 squad that would get blown out by UNLV in the championship game. I looked at that poster every day in class and was just shell shocked by the loss. At the end of the year I was talking to him after class and he went and took the poster off the wall and handed it to me, saying “Trust me, it’ll be valuable one day.” The next year I watched as those same players went up against UNLV again in the Final Four and pulled off one of the biggest upsets of all time. It was just a complete sense of knowing that no matter how bad things may have been in the past you just know that you can come back and win.

That poster is on the wall behind me right now. I’m pretty sure that in the last fifteen years I’ve never been away from it for more than two weeks. To other people it is a frayed and tattered poster, to me it is a price above rubies.

So I cheer Duke to constantly remind myself that if you work hard and are smart you can be the champion when the last game is played. To remind myself on dark and gray Wednesday nights in January that you can win. And to remember my old friend and teacher who passed away a few years back.

I’ve always said that my first novel is going to be dedicated to two people. I referred very obliquely to the first one yesterday. I promised that my first novel was going to be dedicated to her when I was sixteen and I’m keeping my promise (it’s just taking longer than I expected). The second one is my teacher, who was the first person to really encourage me to write and to show the world just who I really am. So, KLR, wherever you are, thanks man.

Instant past

I have to say, I think I have created something unbelievable out here on the Internet, a unique site. I mean, where else will you find reviews of a Get Up Kids concert, a diatribe filled with existential angst, and the exchange rate of the Thai Baht all in one place. I don’t know what’s more incredible, the sheer variety of topics that I cover here or the fact that within fifteen minutes of asking for an exchange rate I’m getting quotes for it.

It’s another night without a real topic. I could talk about The Amazing Race, where tonight we finally had the elimination of the team of Jonathan and Victoria. Which is good because when watching reality tv I’m not really hoping to see instances of spousal abuse but this team came way too close. As someone else wrote, this wasn’t interesting television, it was disturbing television. But, I’m probably the only one who watches the show so I should probably switch topics.

On my ever-present topic of instant nostalgia, we do have the case of VH-1 doing “I love the 90’s Part Deux” this week. I’ve only watched a little bit of it. I mean, it’s not like they are going to show it once. It’s VH-1, where they’ve also given up on showing music and will instead show specials on Brittney Spears every hour on the hour. I’ll have the marketing logic of that explained to me one of these days. Until then, it’s instant nostalgia all the time.

We’ve got two problems here. One is that it is really tough to do two hours on the early 90’s without stretching. I’ve already seen bits on Cliffhanger, White Men Can’t Jump, Total Recall and Kindergarten Cop. Now some of those movies were legitimate hits and others had some moments of unintentional comedy but do any of these spring to mind when you think of the early 90’s? I mean, off the top of your head can you even name the year that any of those movies came out? I can’t and we are talking about my late high school/early college time of my life when pop culture was my life. (Well, that and circuit diagrams. Sigh. I’m just going to curl up in a ball on the floor for a few minutes. Excuse me for a moment…)

The other problem is this case of instant nostalgia. I can be nostalgic for 1991. For me, that’s starting college and listening to Nirvana and Pearl Jam before anyone knew about them, except for the people in Seattle who had been listening to them for three years. But who is nostalgic for 1998? That’s not the past, that is like last week. A kid in college watching it is going, “Oh yeah, I remember senior year of high school.” You can’t even figure out what has become a cult classic in that time frame. It took Repo Man a lot longer than six years to become a cult classic. Even with a plate of shrimp.

(You know, I have a story about watching that movie at Macalester College that I’m not sure I’ve ever told anyone. And I’m not starting tonight. Just felt like giving Bob Mould’s alma mater a shout out.)

So, please, let’s lay off the instant nostalgia for a little bit. We are rapidly running out of past and have a need to conserve our limited resources of retro.

Jersey story

Things were a little brighter today. Sun was out, work was interesting, got to listen to some good Jayhawks songs in the car. I’m beginning to feel that the world is slowly coming back to its senses…

(Reads a Yahoo news story on how Fox had to blur a naked rear end in an old Family Guy cartoon last night….)

(Sigh…)

(Anyone know the exchange rate for the Australian dollar offhand? I might be looking at real estate pretty soon.)

I have a feeling that this is going to be a rather brief posting. Other than work (which trust me, wouldn’t interest anyone unless they really want to hear discussions about spreadsheets. And let’s be honest, even I don’t want to hear discussions about spreadsheets) my other highlight of the day was finishing my laundry. But I’m guessing that the intricacies of the spin cycle just aren’t really fitting right now.

I did finally watch the movie Garden State, which had been sitting on top of the DVD player for the last week. A really good movie, definitely worth renting. It’s got that odd Wes Anderson vibe at times but it’s more centered. Sometimes you get a sense of Linklatter’s slacker genre but there is more plot and less discussions on metaphysical topics. It’s a romance for disillusioned twentysomethings. And it has Natalie Portman in it, clearly earning her number two ranking in my book. Some more intelligent comments

1) Props to any movie that can find a way to bring a Nick Drake song into the mix. We’re all bummed that his estate sold him out for a car commercial but this helps to make up for it.
2) Is it me or can you make this movie the sequel to Beautiful Girls? Just consider the Natalie Portman character to be the same in each film. I think that it would make sense that way. I’ll probably end up watching both back to back this weekend and seeing if it works.
3) Zach Braff does pull off an excellent job of writing, directing and starring in the film. From the writing and directing side he does a great job in keeping things minimal. You don’t ever see him trying too hard. He’s not pushing the romance story, he’s not making it sweet, but he’s not making it dark either. There’s no dialogue for the sake of dialogue as in a Kevin Smith movie. Everything serves its purpose. There are a lot of odd moments but they are all real.
4) Plus, he did an unbelievable job of portraying someone who has been numb to the world and is just coming out of it. Really, really memorable performance.
5) I liked the ending. I’m not going to give it away but I liked the way that it makes you think about what will happen next.

I’ll try to write something a little more meaningful tomorrow. Later y’all.

Ants Marching

(From the movie “Waking Life”)

Soap Opera Woman: “Excuse me.”
Wiley Wiggins: “Sorry”
Soap Opera Woman: “Hey. Could we do that again? I know we haven’t met, but I don’t want to be an ant. You know? I mean, it’s like we go through life with our antennas bouncing off one another, continuously on ant autopilot, with nothing really human required of us. Stop. Go. Walk here. Drive there. All action basically for survival. All communication simply to keep this ant colony buzzing along in an efficient, polite manner. “Here’s your change.” “Paper or plastic?” “Credit or debit?” “You want ketchup with that?” I don’t want a straw. I want real human moments. I want to see you. I want you to see me. I don’t want to give that up. I don’t want to be an ant, you know?”


When was the last time that you had a real conversation? I’m serious. When was the last time that you shared ideas and emotions with someone? When was the last time that you were just lost in the moment of conversation, losing all track of time? When was the last time that just the act of talking made you feel truly alive?

I’ve been thinking about this a lot this weekend. This has been one of those cold and gray January weekends where you never feel like doing anything. Honestly, I’m pretty sure that the only people that I have talked to since I left work on Friday have been cashiers and bartenders. No offense meant to my bartenders, who have helped me out of more situations than I can remember, but that just seems so shallow of a life. And when I think about the conversations that I have at work, endless discussions about numbers and spreadsheets and presentations, I keep on feeling that none of those conversations are real, either. I’m just an automaton sitting in a box five days a week, making sense of numbers and creating more data in order to summarize data.

That’s why I keep on thinking about this quote about being an ant and wanting to be more than an ant. Our culture really does run like a massive ant colony. Everyone doing their own thing for some bigger purpose that they don’t quite understand. An ant is digging tunnels not really knowing why; other people are working cash registers not knowing what the end result actually is. That at the end of the day they can simply be viewed as cogs in the great machine of capitalism, faceless and easily replaceable. Even The Onion joked about this once with the great line of buying ant farms as gifts for children since it teaches them about the endless toil and utter meaninglessness and unavoidable death that is all part of modern industrial life.

But the thing is, ants don’t know that they are ants. The ants in the ant farm that I had as a kid didn’t suddenly realize one day that there was no queen there so they might as well stop digging tunnels to nowhere. Much in the same way that the people who wake up on Thursday morning happy solely because it means that there is a new episode of “Joey” that night never realize their fate either. But I do. And there’s the rub.

I have an idea though on how to deal with this and it just might work. I can’t become blissfully ignorant of the world and lord knows that I would never want to. I’ve always feared that society would become Brave New World’s vision of a drugged out populace, merrily oblivious of the situation (and depending on how you feel about Prozac, we may or may not be at this point already). So, I don’t want to retreat and I don’t want to live a life of existential angst. I want something different.

So, I’ve decided that I’m going to make the rest of this year a search for what is real. I’ve done this before, looking for music that comes from the artist’s soul and not a corporate hit making machine. I’ve done it with movies and that is how I come across brilliant pieces of art like “Waking Life”. But now I want to do it for real. To search for reality in my real life. To have real conversations and real interactions and to see meaning and beauty and life in what can otherwise be a cold, bland, preprocessed, pre-portioned world. A buddy of mine asked if I had any New Year’s Resolutions and at the time I didn’t know but this is it. To find real people and real experiences. To stop feeling like I’m just an ant, scurrying around and doing its job, always fearful that a nine-year-old’s shoe is about to drop on his head. I don’t know what this will entail but if I commit myself to the concept, I know that life will become much more interesting.

The five random CD’s for the week:
1) 10,000 Maniacs “Our Time in Eden”
2) Richard Buckner “Devotion + Doubt”
3) Freedy Johnston “Never Home”
4) The Jayhawks “Blue Earth”
5) The Mollys “Only a Story”

Rejected Kansas slogans...

First off, staying on the topic of the Karate Kid, here are two of my strangest work moments last year at the big phone company. Both of these made me go, "And they're paying me to do this?"

1) While sitting in a department meeting listening to a discussion on branding I watched a Hillary Duff music video
2) In a coaching seminar to illustrate various coaching methods we were shown the last five minutes of The Karate Kid. I had to use every bit of strength not to yell out, "Get him a body bag. Yeah!"

Ok, it's late so I'm going to borrow from someone else's blog for the rest of this post. Kansas recently spent a lot of money on consultants for a new state slogan. Which turns out to be "Kansas, as big as you think". Innuendo aside, that must be the strangest state slogan ever. But thanks to Tony's Kansas City (and the Pitch) we've been able to unearth the top ten rejected slogans for the great state of Kansas. Enjoy.

10) Kansas: What's with all the Mexicans around here lately?
9) Kansas, as boring as you think.
8) Fuck Arkansas
7) Kansas: Asses bigger than you'd think
6) Kansas: Beats jail
5) Kansas: The place you pee on the way to Colorado
4) Seriously, our state is nothing like that shitty '70's band
3) Kansas: We won't think twice about building another mall
2) Come to Kansas: The place interesting people leave and go on to do great things
1) Kansas: We'll get you one way or another ... and your little dog too!

(Ok I promise. Next week will be free of Kansas bashing)

Back to the 80's again....

Yes, I know that I constantly rag on society for needless nostalgia for times that didn't technically exist but this website is too damn cool not to post. If you need to burn a few hours at work (and especially if you have some disposable income) check out www.80stees.com A couple of comments on it

1) Yes, I am placing some orders from the site. The Cobra Kai shirt is a definite purchase. How can you go wrong with a shirt that has on the back "Strike First, Strike Hard, Show No Mercy". If they had one with "There is no mercy in this dojo" they'd make more money than God or Microsoft.
2) Staying on the snake theme, can't go wrong with the flaming Cobra logo from G.I. Joe. That's probably also on my list, vague enough that people might not get it, super cool for the people that do.
3) I'm not sure what type of person wears a Say Anything t-shirt. John Cusack rocks, no question about that. It's a killer movie, of course. But a t-shirt?
4) Also, super cool Speed Racer t-shirts. Including the legendary Racer X. True story, I remember watching Speed Racer when I was six or seven and liking the show since it had car races and crashes and a monkey. Come on, I was six, I didn't start reading Shakespeare until I was a teenager. Anyway, when I was at school MTV started to show Speed Racer late at night. That's when I noticed that about a dozen people die in horrible car crashes during the opening credits. The show was still awesome, I just didn't realize that literally everyone who wasn't a named character died in every episode.
5) MTV has come closer to my dream idea of MTV classic. They show Beavis and Butthead episodes but won't touch my dream of doing a best of 88 to 94 channel. 120 Minutes, Remote Control, Aeon Flux, The Maxx, Alternative Nation, Yo MTV Raps, the Grind, the early seasons of Real World and Road Rules. How can this idea not make money?
6) There is a VH1 Classic. 90% of the time they'll play awful songs from the 70's and 80's for people who apparently still want to listen to Rod Stewart. But every once in a while I flip the channel and see a video like R.E.M.'s "Driver 8" or Joy Division's "Love will tear us apart again" and I'll end up staring at the tv for ten minutes until I remind myself that I have to breathe every once in a while.

"Take me to Memphis, Mercury or Mars" Keb' Mo'

Censor This!

You know, when I started this blog two months ago I has a serious concern that I would run out of topics after about two weeks. I knew that I had a good backlog of material in my writer’s journal and could always steal from The Onion but at some point I thought that the well would run dry. Luckily, I live in Kansas City so there is always something to write about…

Saw this on the news yesterday. Out where I work there are a number of parents up in arms about the high school reading list. I am not making this up, check out www.classkc.org. Honestly, I never thought that I would find myself living in a place where they want to keep high school kids from reading The Catcher in the Rye and Slaughterhouse Five. I mean, are these people serious?

Well, if you check out the web site they apparently are because they have catalogued every objectionable phrase and questionable topic in every book on the recommended reading list. They did make me click on a button stating that I was 18 and could look at objectionable language before I looked at that list, though. (And I really do wonder who kept the tally for The Catcher in the Rye. Talk about being obsessive compulsive.) You wouldn’t believe how much ignorance like this upsets me.

No, I don’t want a teenager reading Salinger, wouldn’t want them to find a character who is a disillusioned youth (or in other words, an actual teenager). Can’t have them reading Vonnegut’s portrayal of the pure inanity and randomness and meaninglessness of war. That would be putting thoughts into their heads. They of course include books by Maya Angelou and Toni Morrison because lord knows what reading from alternate viewpoints could result in. And that is not the worst one that I saw.

They included Tim O’Brien’s short story “What They Carried”. You probably haven’t heard of it but it is the best short story written in the past forty years. It is a gripping and simultaneously poetic account of what it was like to be a soldier in Vietnam. I read it back in college and it still stays with me, the detailing of the exact weight of each issued item, which is nothing compared to the weight of the picture of the girl that he left behind. A picture of the girl playing volleyball with one knee just inches above the ground. So, a senior in high school, even though they could be off to Iraq in a matter of months, should not be allowed to read this story. That is beyond ludicrous.

Of course, their potential replacement list shows just how off-base they are. So, what should the senior read instead? How about the book that caused one of the most famous obscenity cases in modern legal history. A book that was banned for years. I’m talking about the greatest novel of the 20th Century, James Joyce’s Ulysses. Whoever put this list together obviously has never actually read Ulysses. Or at least made their way to the last chapter, which is one long sexual dream by Molly Bloom. And that’s skipping over the masturbation and alternative lifestyle overtones that exist in other parts of the book. You’d think that whoever would put together a site like this would actually think for a second. Well, actually if they thought for a second they wouldn’t put together a site like this in the first place.

(Side note: props to any kid in high school who reads Ulysses. I waited until I was 25 before I made my way through the book. It is serious heavy lifting and I know that I wouldn’t have understood any of it in high school.)

What really kills me about all this is the reasoning behind it all. The idea that we don’t want to have our kids exposed to this type of material, even if it is literature. Yet you know that all of these people have HBO, their DVD collections are not kept under lock and key, and all of the kids have laptops with high speed internet connections. It’s just so much hypocrisy and it leads to the dumbing down of students. Can’t read anything that might be offensive. Next week, can’t read anything that is difficult, that would make my kid feel stupid. Can’t challenge the kids, we should let them live in this bubble that is completely unlike the real world.

It frightens me that at this day and age I still have to read stories about this type of censorship. What is worse is that the people doing the censoring are the same people that I am working with. Not all of them of course, more like a very vocal by very small minority. Still, it’s one of those things that makes you wonder what exactly is in the water out here.

Heartbroken again...

I’m going to apologize for yesterday’s posting. I mean, it just wasn’t one of my better efforts and the topic deserved better. I do have a reason, of course. I’ve just been completely heartbroken all weekend. How in the world could Brad Pitt and Jennifer Aniston break up? Couldn’t they see how perfect they were for each other? This just causes me to lose all faith in love and relationships. I haven’t felt this low since the time my ex-girlfriend told me that she hadn’t felt alive for the past year, which just happened to correspond with the exact amount of time that we were dating.

(Wow, I think that I just broke the sarcasm meter…)

Can’t have a pop culture topic like this come along and not comment on it. And as always when I’m too lazy to actually write in paragraph form and create connecting phrases, out come the numbered bullet points…

1) People magazine has stated that they are going to publish a special issue on the breakup. Again, if you haven’t lost all faith in humanity, People magazine is going to publish a special issue on the breakup of two movie stars. This after it took a week for the major news networks to send the second team reporters to the largest natural disaster in memory. “A planet where apes evolved from men? Sounds like a pretty good alternative right about now.”
2) I loved hearing the story about how they met. They were set up on a date by their agents. Why can’t I get someone like that in my life? I want to get a phone call one afternoon and hear, “Yeah EC, we’ve just negotiated the advance on your next novel at half a million. We’re actually selling tickets for your book signing in New York. Oh, and after the signing you’ll be having dinner at Nobu with Natalie Portman. I talked with her publicist and we agree that you two would make a nice couple.”
3) Let’s be honest, the best that I can hope for is the following, “I’ve finally found a publisher who will print your next book if you promise to pay for it. We’ve got you a book signing in a Wal-Mart parking lot in Arkansas and set up a dinner afterwards at an Outback Steakhouse with Natalie from The Facts of Life. You’re paying, by the way.”
4) I’m kind of curious what the appropriate reaction to this news actually is. Should I really feel bad that they broke up? Let’s be honest, Brad Pitt felt sad for a night, woke up and then realized, “Wait a minute, I’m Brad Pitt” and promptly went out and called Angelina Jolie.
5) You can use this relationship to test the differences between the way men and women think. Whenever a guy hears that Lindsey Lohan or Kirsten Dunst has broken up with their boyfriend du jour every guy (and I do mean every) immediately goes, “Cool, I’ve got a chance again.” Doesn’t matter what they do for a living, what they look like, or the fact that they will never come close with crossing paths with some young actress. Every guy feels that as long as he has a pulse and the girl doesn’t have a ring on her finger he’s got a shot.
6) Of course, when I explained that to a female friend of mine she went, “You’re out of your mind. You wouldn’t have a clue where to start. That’s such a stupid chauvinistic view of the world.”
7) Which makes me laugh when most of the news stories are along the lines of “Brad Pitt is back on the market.” See, for the most part we do view the world the same way; it’s just that one side is a lot more blunt about it.
8) Makes me feel sad for Jennifer though, since she’s not getting near the attention she deserves. If her agent is looking for another dinner companion for her, I am available.

Super perfundo on the early eve of your day, everybody…

The best band out of Kansas...

Time for another mini-concert review…

The Best Band Out of Kansas Since, Well, Kansas

The Get Up Kids (Opening Acts: Veda, Murder by Death) (Granada, Lawrence, KS)

Last week I complained about going to shows and being the oldest person there. That’s not entirely fair, the real make or break point for me is the type of crowd. If it is the “my first rock concert” crowd, I tend to be more cynical than I need to be. But, going to a college town to see a band like The Get Up Kids makes it easier to except the fact that I’m growing older.

It was a sold out Friday night show, which happens when a) ticket price is five dollars and b) you realize what else is there to do in Kansas on a Friday night. Made my way there after a long week at the office to take my mind off of things and watch some cool bands. Wasn’t quite sure what to expect but as always, there is something to remember from every show.

First band on the bill was Veda, which actually harkened back to the good days of alternative rock. They sounded like a rougher version of the Blake Babies, some good, old fashioned, early 90’s rock. (My god, did I just describe the music I listened to in college as old-fashioned? Excuse me while I bang my head against the wall for a few minutes). They were followed by Murder by Death. They gain a number of coolness points for their name and the fact that they had a girl playing an electric cello. I mean, on the list of things that I do not expect to see from a band called Murder by Death, the cello solo is one of them. Sadly, that was pretty much the highlight of the band because nothing else made any impression.

So that leaves The Get Up Kids, who the critics call one of the great emo bands. This will need some explanation and discussion. Emo is short for emotional punk. Or punk music by suburban kids with lyrics about feelings and relationships and music with actual melodies. Basically, split the difference between John Mayer and Limp Bizkit. Or to put it another way, this is what the kids who listened to Depeche Mode when I was growing up would listen to now.

The problem is, The Get Up Kids aren’t an emo band. They’re pretty much a straightforward rock band with a little punk attitude thrown in the mix. They’ve opened for Green Day and that is actually a good mix. They’re a bit more rock but they still have the DIY vibe and the same “we’re just a bunch of guys having fun” attitude. So, the labels people give these guys really don’t fit. (That said, they’ve also advertised in No Depression and even though that is a genre that by definition is undefinable it doesn’t work either). Anyway, on to the show.

It was their first show in months and you can tell. The band was really loose and I’m not sure if they ever hit their groove. They knew it and we’re joking about it during the set, including a great “Whose idea was it to record a live album at our first show in seven months, anyway?” It was still a really good show. They have a lot of high energy music, the type that does make you naturally jump up and down and cause the more adventurous to crowd surf. And it’s all in good fun, you listen to the song and even if it is about a relationship breaking up you end up smiling in the end. A lot of times, music is meant to be cathartic. Sometimes it’s for the artist, sometimes for the audience. When it is for both then everyone can have fun.

But there was something that was missing. The rumors of this being the band’s last run are running pretty strong. This isn’t the type of music where you can phone it in. (As opposed to R.E.M. who has been phoning it in for the past decade and disappointing me every step of the way but that is another entry). It just wasn’t the same show as I saw last year. Maybe it was because then they were playing new material from their latest album. Or they were a lot tighter from a much more constant touring schedule. Or maybe it was something else.

Like why couldn’t Superargo open again?



This week’s five random CDs (and if you know any of these five acts consider yourself a hardcore music fan)
1) Blue Mountain “Homegrown”
2) Keb’ Mo’ “Keb’ Mo’”
3) The Corn Sisters “The Other Women”
4) Sally Timms and Jon Langford “Songs of False Hope and High Values”
5) Jump, Little Children “Vertigo”

2004 Book List (Kind of...)

Well, I was originally going to list all the books that I read in 2004 here today. Until I looked at the list and figured that doing so might be interesting to me but certainly not to anyone else. And there are more than a few books on the list that I would never want anyone to know that I’ve read (there hidden in one of those lower shelves on my bookcase as well). But since I am otherwise out of ideas on what to write about tonight I figured that I’ll just list a couple of the more interesting books. Consider it a reading list.

“The Professor and the Madman” by Simon Winchester: Great reading for those of you who want to find out how they put together the Oxford English Dictionary. Yeah, that is a pretty limited audience.

“Dubliners” by James Joyce: See, every January I try to read an incredibly challenging book and this was last year’s effort. If you’re going to make an effort to read Joyce start here, at least these stories have plots. Right now the only major work of Joyce I have left to read is Finnegan’s Wake, which is not on my list since I’ve been told it will take a good two years to read if you do it right. (Oh and this year’s challenge by the way is Kerouac’s “On the Road”. Was in a beatnik type of mood.)

“The Devil and the White City” by Erik Larson: The true story of the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago and the simultaneous creation of the nation’s first serial killer. And you thought that my blog changes topics on a dime.

“The Road to McCarthy” by Pete McCarthy: The author has provided me with one of those unbreakable rules in life “Never walk pass a bar with your name on it.”

“About a Boy” by Nick Hornby: When I finally write my novel in the next year or so I hope that what I write is one tenth the quality of what Nick Hornby has done. If I can do that I would be happy with myself. Combine this with High Fidelity and Fever Pitch and I’m not sure if you could ever find someone with a better grasp on what it is like to be a twentysomething slacker with no real idea on what to do with his life. Me in a nutshell, basically.

“Mr. Commitment” by Mike Gayle: In the concert review I explained how every time I see Pieta Brown something good happens to my life. Well, every time I read a Mike Gayle novel my life turns upside down. Without fail I will get an email within a week of opening the book that changes everything that I thought I understood about life and relationships. Which is why I still have one more of his books to read, I’m scared to death of opening it. Anyway, for those who are interested in a guy’s Bridget Jones, this is your man.

“Positively Fifth Street” by James McManus: Some day I’ll explain how even though I view everything in life in purely statistical terms I am an unbelievably crappy poker player. Until then, best book on what it is really like in Vegas during the World Series of Poker.

“Peace Kills” by P.J. O’Rourke: Despite the fact that I am moving farther and farther to the left I still am a fan of P.J. O’Rourke. I wish all Republicans viewed the world like P.J., which is honestly. If you haven’t read this book yet you really should. You’ll get a much better view on what we are doing in the Middle East right now and whether it will ever work out or not.

“The Tipping Point” by Malcolm Gladwell: Read this for work. To correct something I heard as they discussed this book at a meeting, the idea isn’t that all you need is a few people to act a certain way to create a major change. You need a few very specific people, well respected, well connected trendsetters, to make a change and be vocal about it. There is a big difference.

“The Dogs of Babel” by Carolyn Parkhurst: A great, unbelievably depressing novel. Read it on the plane one night, which was probably a really bad choice. If there is one thing that I’ve learned in the past year is if the novel has a “recommended questions for book clubs” section in the back, expect the characters to die in the most tragic ways possible. Even with that, a recommended read.

“America (The Book)” by Jon Stewart: Dude, it’s got naked pictures of the Supreme Court justices. Do I need to say anything more?

“The Life of Pi” by Yann Martel: A great example of one of those undeniable rules of life: once you’ve figured out how to survive on a life raft that you are sharing with a Bengal tiger, then come the meekrats.

“The Know-It-All” by A.J. Jacobs: Guy reads the entire Encyclopedia Britannica and writes a book about it. Why didn’t I think of that one? Would have to be easier than reading all of the books on Cliff Notes in alphabetical order.

“Titus Androndicus” by William Shakespeare: Sex! Murder! Cannibalism! The first recorded “Your mother” line in the history of English Literature! If you ever wondered what a teen slasher movie written by Shakespeare would be like, this is your choice.

Happy readings. Next post in a couple of days. Later.

All over the board...

Some thoughts that are all across the board tonight…

1) For those of you who are glued to the weather channel (or in other words, stoned), you might have noticed that KC got hit with a bit of an ice storm the past day or so. Nothing major, I made it back and forth to work without a problem. I’m only bringing it up because the entire town freaked out about it. I’m not making this up, I listened to one guy on the radio talking about preparedness “as this can be a life or death situation and being prepared can help you survive.” I’m sorry, my friend who is in Sri Lanka right now helping out with the relief efforts he is the one dealing with life or death situations. A quarter inch of ice means you’ll have to spend fifteen minutes scraping the ice off of your car and you’ll have to take your time driving. At worst you’ll lose power and maybe have to throw out the food in your fridge. Please don’t talk about it being a life or death situation where a week and a half ago people woke up on a sunny day and ended it having lost everything they owned and half their family.
2) On that, having heard some first hand accounts from Sri Lanka, really try to donate to the relief efforts. The scale of this is beyond anything that I remember seeing before. I’ve seen earthquakes destroy cities but nothing like this. So, if you haven’t donated yet, please think about it.
3) Back to the weather. I’m from Chicago, I can deal with weather. My fear is that the longer I stay in KC the more I start thinking that this weather actually is bad. I have to keep on reminding myself that I used to drive snow covered roads for weeks at a time back in the old days. I hate feeling like I’m losing my skills. It’s like the fact that I have a hell of a time parallel parking now after growing up putting a ‘77 Chevy Impala in spaces that other people couldn’t fit a Camry into. It’s nice having a garage but it just makes you soft.
4) A couple of other notes on the concert. I don’t have a problem with the teenyboppers for the most part. There is still a part of me that is bugged because when I was 19 I would have done anything to have been able to go up and talk to one of these girls but didn’t have the confidence or a clue on how to do it. Now I have a small amount of skill and I’m yelling at myself for missed opportunities.
5) That said, when you’re listening to Nirvana’s “Come as you are” over the soundsystem before the show and you look around and go, “So when I first heard this, you were what, seven?” you can’t help but feel old.
6) This of course raises the question why in the world was I at the show in the first place. Well, with an unstated goal of going to fifty concerts this year I have to lower my standards somewhat. I can’t wait for the dream shows, sometimes I go just because I’ve heard of the guy and figured that it would be an interesting show. Which is why I’m going to be seeing Social Distortion in a few weeks (as well as to reconnect with my punk roots). Of course, even I have limits. Which is why I will sadly be missing the Queensryche show that is coming to town. Look, shouldn’t they be on VH1’s Band Reunited as opposed to actually touring?
7) To answer the obvious question, the reason it is an unstated goal is that my real goal is to get to the point where I have enough other stuff going on in my life that going to concerts every week is not always the right thing to do. If that doesn’t happen though, I’ll continue in my efforts to become a music critic.

“The idea is to remain in a state of constant departure while always arriving”

Quick observations...

Some quick notes from the Gavin Degraw concert that I just returned from (which now wins the award for youngest crowd ever)

1) I'm not sure what is more disturbing: the girls that dress like Lindsey Lohan, the girls that dress like Tara Reid, or the girl who was apparently channeling Ashlee Simpson. Isn't dressing like Ashlee Simpson the equivalent of being in a tribute band to a tribute band?
2) It's not much better on the guy side, as every nineteen year old in KC tries to look like Ashton Kutcher. In a way, I really hope we do evolve back into apes. I don't have much faith in humankind after this.
3) You kind of have to question humanity after watching a crowd cheer the guy in the opening act covering a 4 Non Blondes song. Let's face it, the only 4 Non Blondes song. I mean I'm standing there watching it going, "Is this what my life has come to?" I can't imagine what the guy must be thinking while playing it.
4) I've said this before but every college kid in KC dresses like my buddy Starzan did two years ago out in LA. Pretty much get the sense of how long it takes fashion to disperse to the masses when you look at it that way.
5) Yeah, I know, even I go to Urban Outfitters and pick up the retro t-shirts. But the weird thing is they are retro to my past and I remember that time and we didn't have those shirts. Sure we had some bad, ugly vacation place shirts but there was no irony to it. It's that weird sense of being nostalgic for a time that didn't actually exist.
6) Still probably a better night than watching the USC-Oklahoma game (which had two of my least favorite schools playing). It's almost as if I'm happy that one of the schools lost. And that Auburn will at least be ranked ahead of Oklahoma.

2004 Concerts (Part Two)

Continuing the 2004 concert season in review…

City Market (Kansas City, MO)
1) O.A.R. (Opening Acts: Howie Day, Matt Nathanson): This is the epic show where Howie shows up for a nine P.M. outdoor gig wearing sunglasses and being unable to sing and play guitar at the same time. Or one at a time. Or form a cohesive sentence. This was his saying to the record label, “I hate the band. If you’re not going to let me play my music the way I want to I’m just going to get high all the time so there.” O.A.R. took the stage to U2’s “Beautiful Day” thus making the entire rest of their set a letdown from their intro music, which might be a first.

Uptown Theater (Kansas City, MO)
1) Guster and O.A.R. (Opening Act: Toothpick): Classic concert moment: Toothpick yells, “Because you know what man? Conformity sucks.” Which causes a huge cheer from the three guys behind me. Who I turn to and see that they are all wearing Abercrombie and Fitch shirts. If they were more ironic they would need to avoid magnets. Guster wins for the youngest crowd of the year; I think they were all sixteen-year-old girls. Apparently I am the only one who has a problem with that. O.A.R. is a band with one good eighteen-minute song and the rest of their set sounds like a bad Police cover band. They also have the weirdest choice in songs. They covered “Sunday Bloody Sunday” with no intro, no reason to the song and really no interpretation of it. It sounded like any bar band doing the song if they had more talent and a good sound system.
2) John Hiatt (Opening Act: David Lindley): Killer tunes by an unbelievable songwriter. For this concert I was seated in the balcony, which after seeing so many shows from the front of the stage made me feel like I was on Mars. I can’t imagine what it would be like if I actually saw a show at an arena one of these days.
3) Nickel Creek (Opening Act: Howie Day): This time it was just Howie on stage, looping the hell out of everything and spending a quarter of his set grinning like an idiot as he did nothing but listen to all of the music loop around him. I saw this after the Ashlee Simpson debacle but you can’t fault him because all of this music is his. Best show I saw of his in the year. Nickel Creek is pop bluegrass and is a really good fun band but at some point it is the same thing as Bela Fleck; I recognize that there is technical mastery going on but I just can’t take two hours of fiddle solos.

Beaumont Club (Kansas City, MO)
1) Big Head Todd and the Monsters: Remember the Simpsons episode where Bachman Turner Overdrive was playing? Where they start playing new material and Homer yells, “Just play Taking Care of Business. No new crap. Just Taking Care of Business. And get to the Working Overtime part.” That was this show. Band playing new material for a crowd who couldn’t care less. Here’s a new song. Silence. Here’s Resignation Superman. Watch the yuppies and the aging hipsters cheer. I’m not saying I agree with it and I’m guilty of it but that’s what I remember (and I’m seeing them again in a few weeks).
2) Lucinda Williams (Opening Act: The Bottle Rockets): Really cool show by Lucinda who is more of a poet than a songwriter. But man can she belt out a song with the best of them. One of my CD recommendations to everyone on the planet is “Car Wheels on a Gravel Road”, which you need to own if you ever want to claim you understand music.
3) Gomez (Opening Act: Augie March): Man, Gomez is cool. There wasn’t a big crowd for the show (actually, it was criminally small given how talented the band is) but they can just make you feel alive. I’m also a sucker for any band where the lead singer is whoever feels like it at the time. My one complaint is another one of my concert pet peeves: the middle aged white guy whistling at full volume straight into my ear. Look, if you’re a sixteen-year-old girl and the Beatles are on stage, maybe that makes sense. But you’re an idiot with high cholesterol who drives a Volvo so just sit down and shut up. Dumbass.

Grand Emporium (Kansas City, MO)
1) Yo La Tengo: Ah, back to the days of good old indie rock. With songs that don’t exactly make sense or even have a melody but are cool nonetheless. I never really got into the noise rockers like Sonic Youth but this was a fun Saturday night, watching the band just pound away like there was no tomorrow and making guitars do things that I had never imagined. Plus, it was my first time at the new, cleaned, homogenized, fun size portioned, completely ruined Grand Emporium.
2) The Neville Brothers: I’ve already written about this show in the blog. They’re showing their age, which is acceptable given that Art Neville has been touring for 50 years, and they’ve made up for it by bringing in Ivan Neville and a few other Neville children and grandchildren. Music was good, though like the Bela Fleck show as well I’ve discovered that placing aging hippies in a confined space is not always good from an olfactory point of view.
3) Charles Robison: Good Texas bar rock from one of the best out of Austin. I’ve now seen in concert Charlie, his brother Bruce, his sister-in-law Kelly Willis and one of these days I’ll probably see his wife Emily who is in the Dixie Chicks. When people talk about the close knit Austin music scene that is what they mean.

Davey’s Uptown Ramblers Club (Kansas City, MO)
1) Patrice Pike (Opening Act: Kristie Stremmel): Absolutely true story. All I knew about Patrice Pike before going to the show was a one paragraph preview that I read in the paper calling her a good voice out of Austin, which was enough to make me go to the show. Get there, pay my cover and look around and see that it is 90% women. Which is cool until I realize just why 90% of this crowd is made up of women. And in my infinite wisdom I go, “Oh well, I paid my cover. Let’s see what happens next.” Which turned out to be an excellent set by Patrice with some killer songs from her old band Sister Seven. But yeah, I did feel that I was how should you say, unnecessary, to a large part of the audience.
2) Richard Buckner: Originally, after this show I was going to run to Lawrence and catch the last half of Mary Lou Lord’s set the same night. Until I realized that I was meeting with the CFO at 7:30 the next morning and felt at the time that my job mattered more than seeing two shows in the same night. Answer might be slightly different today.
3) Jack Ingram’s Acoustic Motel: I had seen Jack a few times before but this show was just amazing. He had a set backdrop that looked like the worst, seediest motel you had ever laid eyes on and he had it set up to look like he was sitting on the edge of a bed. He then proceeded to play two hours where he would stop singing half way through a song and just start telling stories and jokes while continuing to play the melody of the song. It was the complete opposite of trying to be a rock star, it was just a guy sitting around, shooting the breeze and sharing a couple of stories and a few songs. He also provided one of the cornerstones to my concert going experience, “I don’t mind if you guys talk at my shows. You guys are paying me to do something that I’d do for free so you can do whatever you feel like. But, remember that you’ve also paid to have a good time and if someone is ruining your good time by talking while your listening go ahead and tell them to shut up.”
4) Pieta Brown and Bo Ramsey: Whenever I see Pieta Brown in concert my life improves. I meet interesting people, my mood lightens, and good things just seem to happen. That is probably the best compliment I can give anybody.
5) Rex Hobart and the Misery Boys (Opening Act: the Pembertons): See entry 13 for my discussion on Rex and the Boys.
6) Martin Zellar and Brent Best: After a long time I’ve listening to Martin (who I knew of through the most roundabout fashion as it included both a) the first girl I ever fell in love with and b) a longtime drinking buddy) I finally got to see and meet the man. Did a great combination of his solo stuff as well as old Gear Daddies tunes. Talked to him after the show and thanked him for all of the music over the years and he was genuinely touched. He joked that it’s knowing that there are guys like me who will go to shows and listen to and appreciate his music that brings him back out on the road every year. Super nice guy, stayed and drank with a group of us in the crowd for hours after the show. Completely ignoring the fact that his set was followed by a Burlesque show. I kid you not. Best double bill ever in my mind.
7) Dave Alvin and the Guilty Men (Opening Act: The Moaners): Wasn’t able to get back to Fitzgerald’s for the American Music Festival this year but getting to hear “Fourth of July” in late June was close enough.
8) John Dee Graham: John is finally getting some of the respect he deserves after playing guitar in so many great bands in Austin. He’s just coming into his own as a songwriter and a performer, a little later in life than most but he’s got a lot of great music out there that people should check out. While Martin was followed by a Burlesque show, he was followed by a band called “Sex Slaves” thus leading to the great line, “We’ll play a few more songs and then the Sex Slaves will be out here.”
9) Eleni Mandell (Opening Act: Jen Appel): I’ve been told that if you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all, which means I can’t talk about the opening act. Eleni is cool and sultry and I should probably listen to her CD more than I do.
10) Robbie Fulks (Opening Act: The Gaslights): I think Robbie is getting crazier and funnier as he gets older. Not to many people would play Shania Twain songs just to simultaneously a) piss off the Shania fans and b) piss off the other half of the crowd that hates Shania. For people who want to get into alt-country, Robbie is a good place to start. Lots of fun country songs tied in with a lot of classic, old-timey stuff. He’s one hell of a guitar player to boot. And will cover ABBA’s “Dancing Queen” if the show is really going well.
11) The Meat Purveyours (Opening Acts: Tony Ledeschi, The Gaslights): Like about half the bands I see, there music is available on Bloodshot Records. No real reason I’m saying this other than hoping they find the mention on a Google search and decide to start sending me free CDs.
12) Michelle Anthony (Opening Act: Spill): Michelle is a Milwaukee girl who is originally from Kansas City who has gotten some good press recently. Worked with Jay Bennett (formerly of Wilco) and got a full page write-up in No Depression. Which as Chris the Bartender at Davey’s joked with me, “Means a lot to the two of us who read No Depression from cover to cover and nothing to anyone else.” But I always support people starting out. Good show even if I was one of the few people in the crowd who didn’t technically know her.
13) Rex Hobart and the Misery Boys (Opening Act: Outlaw Jim and the Whiskey Benders): The answer to the question “What did EC do on New Year’s Eve?” If you’re going to be by yourself on New Year’s Eve you might as well spend it with the Misery Boys, singing tales of loss and woe and ruined relationships and alcohol and well, whatever else you might want to sing about. All done in an incredibly upbeat and funny manner. Just a show where you get to be reminded that everyone has been in the same situation that you are in so don’t worry about it, laugh it off and move on. Something I needed to hear on Friday.

So there is the list. 40 shows in one year. We’ll see how many I can bring myself to this year.

2004 Concerts (Part One)

As most people have probably figured out by now, I’m one of those people who chronicle everything about his life. I actually keep track of every book that I’ve read that you can buy Cliff Notes for, with an unstated goal of one day reading them all (and when I’m feeling incredibly compulsive, thinking about reading them all in alphabetical order. Which, for the record, is not going to happen). Anyway, it shouldn’t be a surprise that I’ve kept track of every concert that I attended in 2004. Here’s the list by venue with comments on the show and anything else that strikes my fancy. (Concerts that made my personal top 10 list for the year are in bold). I’ll post this over two days. First, the shows on the Kansas side of the border.

Granada (Lawrence, KS)
1) Howie Day (Opening Act: Stereophonics): It’s always weird when people leave after the opening act, which was the case with this show. I wasn’t complaining since I ended up with a much better view. First time seeing Howie with a full band as his record label tried to convince him that “You’re the next John Mayer. Start acting like it. Here’s your band. Now go out there and try not to suck.”
2) The Get Up Kids (Opening Acts: Superargo, The Minus Store): Wow, where to begin. Superargo was more performance art than band but come on, they had a guy in a skullface mask dancing on stage and playing a tambourine! You really don’t expect that deep in red state country. The Minus Store had the beginning of the film 2001 playing behind them, which is a mistake because you really shouldn’t have something cooler than you on behind you. I’ll talk more about The Get Up Kids next week since I’m seeing them again on Friday but they put on a heck of a set.
3) Cowboy Junkies: Languid pop on a summer Sunday evening. Margo Timmins has just an unbelievable voice and this laid back sense of humor about everything. The show also provided me with one of my moments of the year, standing next to the stage before the show next to a security guard who I have to tell, “Dude, it’s a Cowboy Junkies show. Nothing is going to happen. At worst we’re going to tell someone to be quiet.”
4) Mindy Smith (Opening Acts: Tift Merritt, Garrison Starr): For someone who is as stuck in the alt-country gutter as I am, this was pretty much a dream bill. Everyone should own Tift and Mindy’s new records; there really is no excuse here. And yes, this is the only show in my life where I’ve ever taken a set list from the stage. That’s how cool it was.

Liberty Hall (Lawrence, KS)
1) Ani Difranco (Opening Act: Noe Venerable): There was a reason I went to this show that I won’t bother writing about here. The fact that I have tickets to see her again this year gives a pretty good indication that it was a fun show. I’ll have to post my review of this one at some point. Here’s one of my best lines from it, “It’s always fun to be at a show where you feel that to about 75% of the audience you are, in fact, the enemy.”
2) Rufus Wainwright (Opening Act: Jane Wasser): I think this show wins my award for exceeding expectations. Really didn’t think it was going to be much of anything and then Rufus with a full band puts on one of the most amazing sounding two hours that I’ve ever seen, bouncing from just him at a piano to this full orchestral sound. If you pick up his “Want Two” CD, you’ll get a DVD of this tour, which is worth checking out. Bonus points for covering Halleluiah and personal bonus points to me for spending an hour waiting in line talking to the wife of one of the KC sports radio talk show hosts.
3) Henry Rollins (spoken word show): Funny as hell. The aging alternative icon with tattoos that are fading with age at his best. Props to the parents who brought their ten-year-old daughter to the show because “She likes his voice.”
4) Damien Rice (Opening Act: The Frames): Ties for concert of the year. I swear that I’ve seen The Frames before but I can’t place the time or place. They’re a band out of Dublin that just had more fun on stage than I’ve seen in years. This was probably the only time I’ve ever seen a band break into a song from “Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory” and it worked. Damien Rice was just absurdly good. Sometimes it would be soft acoustic moments, other times blaring feedback. The show was just transfixing. During “Woman Like a Man” you had Lisa Hannigan sitting on the stage, rocking back and forth with the music. “Amie” ended with all of the lights fading to the ceiling with Damien looping the music into this incredible whirl, staring at the sky as if the spaceships were about to land. They covered the White Stripes “Seven Nation Army” with a cello. And The Frames came back on stage for the encore where they sang Jeff Buckley’s “Last Goodbye”. Check out everything and anything you can from either band.
5) Patty Griffin (Opening Act: the guy who produced her last album): Honestly, all I can remember about this show right now is that the opening act wore these horrendous purple shoes and that there were these bird-like kites above the stage. Music was fine, just not mind-blowing like the other shows.
6) Bela Fleck and the Flecktones: Props for being the first band ever to take the stage with a theremin (the only musical instrument that you play without touching anything). In a sign that I’m not as much of a musical geek as I could be, I can appreciate the technical mastery of the band but you know, after the fourth bass solo it’s pretty much time for me to leave.
7) Robert Earl Keen (Opening Act: Kevin Montgomery): Best interaction with the crowd. “This song is going to be on my next album. Haven’t figured out a name for it yet.” “Hell yeah.” “Actually, that would be a good name for the album. ‘Have you heard the new Robert Earl Keen album? ‘Hell yeah!’”
8) Gillian Welch (Opening Act: Old Crow Medicine Show): This show really should be in my top ten. Old Crow can only be called a punk bluegrass band and were just a blast to watch. Gillian (with her partner David Rawlings) just stuns you with the simplicity of her music. What you have are two people playing guitar and singing with just two guitar pick-up mikes and two vocal mikes. The show was great except for the following: 1) an entire bank of speakers was going in and out for the entire set. So, you’ll be listening to this subdued song and suddenly it was like you went deaf in your right ear. And then someone shouted in it. 2) In what should have been the greatest concert moment of the year, Gillian and David stepped in front of the mikes (so they were truly unplugged) and sang ‘Long Black Veil’. Until the idiot in front decided to take a picture, which since the rest of the crowd was silent meant that everyone could hear the click and the film winding, causing David to almost beat the guy to death with his guitar.
9) Richard Thompson: Easily the most ambitious show of the year as he covered ‘1,000 years of popular music.’ I mean, he started with some Gregorian music, covered some Shakespeare lyrics, a few operas, a Squeeze tune, Brittney Spears ‘Oops I did it again’ and finished with Bowling for Soup’s ‘1985’. All with just two other musicians and it worked. That’s genius.

Bottleneck (Lawrence, KS)
1) Hank Williams III (Opening Act: Scott Biram): A crowd that consisted of hardcore country fans, hardcore punk fans, and a few aging hipsters like myself. Hank III grew up listening to the Sex Pistols and looks and sings like his grandfather. It is a dangerous combination.
2) Cowboy Mouth (Opening Act: some no name rock band): Maybe I just expected more but this show didn’t match my expectations. I guess when you’ve heard for years that the band will save your soul it’s got some pretty high standards to live up to. Or maybe that I’m now too old to be ordered by the drummer on a Saturday night in February to jump around and have a good time, using the same spiel as on the live album. I don’t know, I think I caught the band on a cynical night for myself.
3) Richard Buckner (Opening Act: the worst guy I’ve ever seen): Words really can’t describe how bad the opening act was. Along with a couple other people, we were trying to convince the guy working the soundboard to just kill the microphone and put the Husker Du CD back on. Richard is still the most intense guy I’ve ever seen on stage. He’ll link his songs so he can play thirty minutes non-stop and then as he switches guitars he’ll glance up at the crowd and says ‘thanks’ and then proceeds to play for another thirty minutes. Incredibly, I’ve talked to him a few times and he is always this upbeat guy, as opposed to his music, which seems to have the word “death” in every other line. I still don’t know how Volkswagen used one of his songs for a commercial.
4) Jay Farrar (Opening Act: Anders Parker): My other winner for concert of the year. I set it up as a tie because if you asked me what show I thought that anyone else would like best I would say Damien Rice but for me personally Jay Farrar topped it. It’s tough to explain without knowing my whole story. I’ve listened to Jay Farrar solo and with his bands Son Volt and Uncle Tupelo for ten years. There probably has not been a week in that time where I didn’t listen to something this guy wrote and this was the first time I ever got to see him in concert. And I got to stand right in front of the stage for the show. First incredibly cool moment: nearing the end of his set he broke out an old Son Volt song, “Tear Stained Eye” and the entire audience started singing with him. It wasn’t a, “Hey everybody, let’s do a sing along” rock star moment. The entire crowd organically joined in with him as he made his way through the song. Then the topper. Standing on stage alone, he looked at the crowd and went, “When I left home all those years ago I think that this is one of the first places that we played. And this was probably one of the songs that we played that night.” And then he started playing the Uncle Tupelo song, “Still Be Around”, which I never expected to hear performed live again. As much as what I try to write in this blog is me as a small time music critic this moment was entirely me as a fan. Getting to listen to one of those songs that has been part of the soundtrack of your life for so long it is a part of you. Just one of those transcendent moments one can achieve through music.

17 concerts down, 23 more to go. Come back tomorrow to see what I saw on the Missouri side of the border.

For those interested, the random CDs for the week.
1) Tanya Donnelly “Lovesongs for Underdogs”
2) They Might Be Giants “Flood”
3) Ryan Adams “Love is Hell Part 2”
4) The Be Good Tanyas “Chinatown”
5) Various Artists “Saturday Morning Cartoon Classics” (I’ll have to write a post about this CD)