Lost in Cleveland

They announced the latest batch of inductees to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame this week. As always, I am upset that the J. Geils Band was passed over once again. One day the rest of the world will understand the immense lyrical mastery of the song Freeze Frame. And I still don’t understand how they can call it a Hall of Fame if the Monkees are not a part of it. I am one hundred percent serious on that last part. Name me one other television event (other than maybe Kiss on 3-2-1 Contact) that has resulted in more guys wanting to be musicians? It just doesn’t exist. The Monkees are the origins of music video as well as mainstreaming alt-country music (lots of Byrds influences in their later work). But I thought I should talk about who made the cut.

The Sex Pistols will be inducted and I for one will stand and cheer this announcement. Sure, there is no redeeming quality to their music. It wasn’t even good music. Heck, Sid Vicious could barely stand half the time, much less play bass. But they are one of the most influential and powerful acts ever. Here’s my explanation. Saturday night I was at a bar watching this band The Elders play. The Elders are this awesome Irish band with a killer live show. For some reason, the bar also had one of those punk documentaries showing on a tv set. Given a choice between an awesome live band and watching Johnny Rotten without sound my eyes were just naturally drawn to Johnny Rotten. Just that look in his eyes of mischievousness, where you can tell just how much he despised the establishment, and you can not look away. For making rock and roll dangerous again, for basically being banned for a time for being a threat to the social order, they need to be in the Hall of Fame. And I want to see if John Lydon even shows up for the ceremony, since it is against everything he has ever stood for.

On the other had we have Lynyrd Skynyrd. This one is probably a little tougher and that is because time has been both kind and unkind to the band. They have had a legacy that has lasted longer than almost anyone else in existence but in the process the band has become a caricature of itself. I don’t know if I can see past the cliché of people yelling Free Bird. That discounts a lot of good music in the process and they did bring about a Southern Rock revolution. Well maybe a revolution is too strong of a term but they did open the doors for bands like Alabama. On second thought, maybe they don’t belong…

Probably the other really interesting choice is Blondie. Now from my perspective they had a few hits, one of the first rap songs of any mainstream prominence, and I know they were big in the punk and new wave scenes but they don’t seem Hall of Fame worthy. Which is probably the biggest problem with the entire venture, there are no stats that you can work from. You don’t want to focus on album sales since so many incredible acts were never hugely popular and those that were popular weren’t very good (remember that one of the most popular albums of all time is Boston’s First Stage). But there is no qualitative measure of artistic greatness either. So saying that Blondie is in the Hall of Fame means that a good band should be in the Hall of Fame, which would open the doors to everyone. Or at least everyone who wants to make their way to Cleveland.

Overcharged and underappreciated

(To continue on the theme from last night, I realized that this means when I get old I will apparently turn into Bob Saget. You know, I used to look forward to the rest of my life. Now, not so much.)

I went to see Freakwater in concert last night. You’ve never heard of Freakwater and probably for good reason. Jim DeRogatis, one of my favorite music critics on the planet, once described their music as “sounding like a couple of cats being tortured.” But they play this really neat Appalachian hill country music despite the fact that everyone in the band is from Chicago. Anyway, there were three things that I had to mention about the night. One is that in a crowd of about thirty I knew a good third of them because they were all in local bands that I’ve seen. The second is that the bass player smoked with such a passion throughout the set that he has is own personal fog on stage. I mean, this guy played bass with a cigarette in his mouth and another one lit in the frets just so he wouldn’t have a nicotine free second. That was quite impressive. And I would like to thank the Grand Emporium for the following. On a Monday night, in an empty bar, they charged me six bucks for a beer. And it wasn’t even a good beer. And while I should thank them for limiting my drinking on a school night this officially places the management of the Grand Emporium alongside Ticketmaster as the people who will be first against the wall when the revolution comes.

Have a few other odds and ends to mention here. I know that I constantly rip on personalized license plates but on occasion I am pleased by them. Like the one I saw on a Mini Cooper that had a Union Jack painted on its roof. MIMINI on a car like that is appropriate, you can show off your pride in a unique vehicle. I’m just sick of people with MYTORUS and other statements of attachment to extremely pedestrian vehicles.

Also, I need to give a shout out to my Fighting Illini who went out and beat North Carolina tonight. Just a few months later than I had originally hoped. This means we are national champs now, correct? It’s like boxing, they had the title but we won the rematch so the belt is ours, right? Let me dream at least for a moment. This was the first chance that I’ve had to see Illinois play and they looked pretty good. The team doesn’t have near the talent or chemistry of last year’s squad but they look like a solid top 25 team, which is all that I am hoping for out of this season. If we can turn last year’s run into the formation of a perennial Big 10 powerhouse I will be overjoyed.

Last note, I would like to be the first to publicly welcome Martina Hingis back to the world of professional tennis. I now have a reason to watch Sports Center again. Awesome.

That's me on the tv...

Those of you who read the blog regularly and take copious notes on the details of my life will remember that I am currently writing a novel called Until We Say Goodbye. Those of you with even better recall know that this wasn’t the original title, which was My Life as a Sitcom until I decided that it was a) too much of a rip-off of the movie My Life as a Dog and b) stupid. Well, tonight my life officially became a sitcom. The show How I Met Your Mother has apparently obtained the rights to my life.

You think I jest? Let’s just run through the opening of tonight’s show. Our hero is at a bar with friends as they try to convince him that he thinks way too much and that is why he fails with women. He needs to stop thinking and just do. Sound familiar yet? It gets better. Well, they end up with a plate of shots and our hero embarks on my fabled Level of Optimal Drunkeness experiment, as he does all of the shots to reach the point where he is loose and relaxed and the life of the party. The name of the shot? Red Dragon. Which just happens to be one of my nicknames.

At this point I was officially freaked out.

Somehow it seemed to grow even more similar from there. There was the playing of Cheap Trick on the bar jukebox (check), there was the rampant repeated drunk dialing (sigh, check) and there was the writing full sentences in pen on various body parts (which technically wasn’t me but I was at a bar where we did this one night). There was the talking to friends the next day to try to determine exactly what had occurred because no one could remember everything that occurred. Other than the fact that the guy ended up back at his apartment with a pineapple (something that I don’t recall ever happening to me but may have) and at no point did people start watching Beavis and Butthead episodes this was basically a retelling of my life. We even have Doogie Howser acting as the mentor to get our hero out of his shell and enjoying life. I don’t know if I am supposed to be ecstatic that there is finally a show that I can relate to or upset that my life is apparently a sitcom cliché.

(There were a few problems with this episode. First off, the hero was speaking much too coherently and moving much too quickly for someone who was apparently out of his gourd the night before. Technically, he should not have been able to leave the couch until three in the afternoon. And typically you do not have witty conversations when you wander into the wrong restroom. But the buddy sleeping in the bathtub and the waking up wondering “How in the world did I sprain an ankle?” were spot on.)

Now, I know that like most people I believe the universe revolves around myself (actually, I’m amazed that everyone doesn’t think that the universe revolves around me. Seems perfectly logical). So before I go off trying to find this camera crew that is apparently tailing me around Kansas City providing plots for a sitcom in which Allyson Hannigan can only get a minor role I need confirmation. Will someone please (especially Erik and Super) watch this show and let me know if I am completely out of my mind? Yes, I know it means watching CBS but sometimes you need to suffer for the sake of science. Plus, this is one of the funniest shows around. But that might not be an unbiased opinion.

Job hunting...

As always, life is so much better when it is organzied in a numbered list…

1) One day I will figure out which of these is the more amazing event: that I actually posted on Thanksgiving night, that someone posted a comment on Thanksgiving night or that instead of writing about the importance of being with family or the traditions of the day or even how Roy Williams’ meaningless touchdown helped clinch a win for my fantasy team I instead spend a page writing about Jessica Simpson. I guess I really know what is important in the world.

2) Just so people will stop asking me: no, I am not the guy that Jeff Tweedy is yelling at on Wilco’s new live album. Sure, I have picked up a bit of fame in the Chicago and KC music scenes and the alt-country scene in general but basically all it’s resulted in is “Hey, you’re that guy.” Part of me really wonders what would happen if I decided to become Beatle Bob and spend the rest of my life just following bands. Somehow I would place that as one of those “I’ll go broke but it will be fun getting there” experiences.

3) Started reading Nick Hornby’s “Fever Pitch” today. Note: this is the original book and has nothing, I repeat nothing, to do with the movie. I refuse to be associated with Jimmy Fallon in any way, shape or form. Anyway Nick Hornby, who also wrote High Fidelity, apparently lives my life better than I do. Or at least we are living the same life and he just writes about it much better than I ever will. Seriously, I should just give up now and let him take over. For instance, here is his discussion on being a fan “The truth is this: For amazingly large chunks of the day, I am a moron.” No matter how hard I try, I don’t think that I will ever be able to touch that.

4) The following has to be the greatest help wanted advertisement ever written. I was flipping through the back pages of The Pitch (the local free weekly newspaper) and came across one of those ads that you find in the backpages of your local free weekly newspaper. You know, the back pages where if you actually read them you find out that there is no way in the world you could in any way be considered strange. So, the fine establishment Legs has placed the following help wanted ad. And I swear I am making none of this up. “Dancers wanted. No house tip out. No D.J. tip out. No house mom tip out. Minimum wage guaranteed. Receive check every week. Health Insurance. Dental Plan. 401K. Profit Sharing. Legs (an equal opportunity employer)

5) I’m just going to let that set in for a little bit.

6) Ok, what does it say about your life when a strip club is apparently offering better benefits than your employer? And is this the most progressive strip club in the existence of the planet? I mean, they are offering a 401K for crying out loud. Of course, this just means that corporate beuracracy is now encroaching on every aspecet of our existence. In all honesty, that is a better deal than Wal-Mart offers its employees and they are the biggest employer on the planet. I saw the ad and didn’t know whether to laugh or cheer.

The five random CDs of the week
1) Mike Doughty “Haughty Melodic”
2) Howie Day “Australia”
3) Cowboy Junkies “200 More Miles”
4) Buick MacKane “The Pawn Shop Years”
5) Dave Matthews Band “Under the Table and Dreaming”

But they were perfect together...

So the big news today is that Jessica Simpson and that guy she married (Nick something or other) are getting divorced. I don't know about you but this sure has put a damper on my holiday season. I had to hold a moment of silence at Thanksgiving dinner in response to this tragic occurrence. Or not.

What I really want out of this is MTV to go all out on the reality television bandwagon. I mean, the only, and I mean only, reason that anyone on the planet cares about this is that they had their own show Newlyweds on MTV. For some reason that hit the cultural zeitgeist, mainly because people liked seeing how stupid Jessica was, and became a hit. Well, let's continue with this theme. Let's have a show called "Divorce Hearing" and "Alimony Settlement." Let's show what happens as you argue over who gets to keep the blender. This is exactly the type of entertainment that I need in my life right now.

(Oh, sometime in the next week I will give my predictions for MTV's The Gauntlet 2. Or at least take some time to rip on the cast members who apparently can't find a real job. How long can you live off of getting thrown off the Winnebago in Road Rules? Is this now considered a legitimate career path?)

Oh well at least this will give me something to think about when I get up at five in the morning to do my Christmas shopping. I am kidding about that, as someone with a real dislike of crowds tomorrow is the one day I really avoid shopping. But I have to give props to someone who will get up at that hour just so they could take care of their shopping a few days earlier this year. That's a level of dedication you just can't find in other aspects of American life. And that is a really, really sad statement.

Have a good weekend everyone.

H2G2

So I finally got around to watching the DVD of The Hitchhiker's Guid to the Galaxy this week. And the two commentary tracks. And the making of documentary. And have developed what most people would probably define as a very unhealthy attraction to Zooey Deschanel in the process. (What can I say? I just think that it would be really cool to date a girl named Zooey.) And as a guy who has read every word that Douglas Adams ever wrote five times over, as someone who figured out how to retrieve the Babel fish in the Infocom game, as someone who was genuinely saddened by his death, I have my final verdict on the film...

It's not that bad.

Ok, it certainly is not a great film. In fact, if you are not familiar with the source material I wonder if it would make much sense at all. If you are familiar with the source material you'll find a lot of things that you don't like and a couple nice additions. Let me discuss.

First, let's look at the cast. Martin Freeman makes for a different Arthur Dent than in the previous versions. Previously, Arthur quickly resigns himself to the fact that none of this will ever make sense and decides that his mission in the universe is to find a nice cup of tea. In the movie Arthur is driven by the fact that they finally decided to make Trillian his love interest (something that was hinted at in a couple of the different incarnations). I know that some of the H2G2 traditionalists didn't like this but from a character and plot standpoint it works much better. And Zooey does the best job anyone has ever done on Trillian. Mos Def is a cool version of Ford, though this is the character that probably least resembles the different incarnations (mainly because there just isn't time to explore his character). Sam Rockwell makes a rock star Zaphod Beeblebrox and they finally, after 25 years, figured out how to do the two head, three arm bit and not have it look incredibly stupid. And Marvin the depressed robot was spot on, really hitting Douglas' vision that this should be a state of the art, fantastic machine that just happens to be terminally depressed.

So why wasn't I jumping up and down when I first saw the film?

Because you basically can't turn a 6 hour radio series, a 3 hour television series, 5 books, a computer game and a towel into a 100 minute movie without losing a lot of good lines. It's really obvious at the beginning of the film. The entire opening with the Earth being destroyed has some of my favorite writing on the planet in it and so much was cut because it just wouldn't work unless you wanted a 4 hour film. Plus, a lot of the great parts were these side comments that had nothing to do with the characters or the plot and were just a convenient point for Douglas to start discussing philosophy. Those has to fall by the wayside because film narratives can't allow it. I think that once I realized that on the second time through I really began to understand and enjoy the film a lot more. I stopped looking for what was missing and started seeing what was actually there.

Some good new material as well. The point of view gun is classic as well as the Vogon planet. And John Malkovich plays another extremely freaky character. Or, to put it another way, John Malkovich plays John Malkovich.

I also want to say that the Jim Henson folks did a great job on the creatures. This ties to what I wrote yesterday. This film was actually improved by the fact that all of the aliens were puppets, which gave them a three dimensional weight. I really feel that it worked better than if they had gone out and done everything in CGI. It honestly made everything feel more real.

So, if you are like me and are a huge fan but avoided the film in the theater because you were frightened that it would be awful and ruin your memories of the books, don't worry you can go ahead and watch the DVD. If you've read this far and have no idea what I am talking about, make your way to the science fiction section of your bookstore and pick up The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams. You'll finish it in a day, if you can stop laughing long enough to finish it, and then see the film. And then read the rest of the books and catch the radio series. There's always something new to find.

Happy Thanksgiving everybody.

Too much realism

I still have a few news stories from the weekend to comment on. Christina Aguilera got married to which my local morning news said “Sorry guys she is off the market.” To which I replied, “For the sake of basically all guys out there I would like to thank the guy who jumped on that grenade.” Seriously, I can’t see an attraction her in any way, shape or form. I’ve got to go with the Peter Griffin from Family Guy statement “I find you offensive to all five senses.”

However, it is important to note that she married a record company executive, which just proves my point that I am so in the wrong line of work. Have you ever noticed how many times this happens. Mariah Carey, Shania Twain, every other week some record exec or producer is marrying the new hot voice. That never happens in my job. And unless being able to calculate the present value of a cash flow stream becomes a really, really attractive trait, I really don’t expect it to happen any time soon. Just another example of how the world is conspiring against me.

On a completely different note, there is an incredibly good article on ESPN’s Page 2 about the new Xbox 360. I’d link to it but come on, like I need to give Disney any more income than they already have. Anyway, the entire gist of the article is that as video games have become more and more realistic they have become much less fun to play. We’re at the point now that you can see the stitching on the uniforms but that has actually made the characters become more unreal and more difficult to relate to than 10 years ago.

It’s actually a really interesting question in robotics and graphics. When images are primitive it is actually easier to humanize the images and relate to them. Case in point: Yoda. Which Yoda do you connect more to the brilliantly animated fighting Yoda or the puppet? It’s the puppet by a huge margin. You feel sad in Jedi when Yoda dies, even though you know it is simply a puppet. The animated character, while much more realistic, never has that emotional tie. It’s like that in video games as well. You look at the new generation games and all you notice is how they are not quite human. In the year of my life that was spent playing Dr. J vs. Larry Bird One on One I never asked that question. All I wanted to know was how to shatter the backboard. I really think that this is going to turn into an important point for the gaming industry. We can produce high definition games, the problem is will anyone really want to play them.

I think that is going to be it for the night. The CDs are being made, for those who are still interested. I’ve had a little bit of an issue in the manufacturing process: apparently the plant decided that The Best of Night Ranger took priority over my work. I tried to explain to them that Sister Christian for twelve consecutive tracks technically doesn’t constitute a best of disc but they weren’t buying it. Oh well, seriously if you’re interested let me know. Sharing music will help out my karma. Of course, doing something for good karma is actually bad karma so I’m screwed either way.

My life really is a sitcom

And away we go…

1) Ok, I really need to get this on the public record. How I Met Your Mother has totally stolen one of my characters. The Doogie Howser character is exactly what I had planned for my novel. Which actually was just taking long-time blog contributor Super Dave and turning up the volume slightly. I’m telling you Super, you really should sue here.

2) That said, any show that features characters in a strip club on Thanksgiving is so going on my Tivo always record list. That is just brilliant.

3) Saw this news story come across the wire last week. Apparently, Oprah Winfrey got the advice on how to go into syndication and become richer than God or Microsoft while on a date with Roger Ebert. The news story focused on the advice and how this created a media empire. No one bothered to imagine the visual of Oprah and Roger on a date. I mean, I can’t say anything bad about fellow Illini Ebert but my God, that visual is going to be stuck in my brain for a couple of decades.

4) Another news story was that there are lawsuits against Match.com and Yahoo Personals for unfair practices. According to the lawsuit, both companies were paying women to go on dates with guys whose contracts were about to expire. Which might be a combination of the most immoral yet extremely logical business practices that I’ve ever heard of. And could you actually sue one of those places for false advertising? Wouldn’t that make 90 percent of the people who place profiles out there felons?

5) Why no, my profile is perfectly accurate. I actually am one half of the former world tag team champions. It was a few years back of course and the records are spotty but I swear that it is true.

6) Was at Best Buy this afternoon and already saw people camped out for the Xbox 360. No, I’m not camping out with them. I hire people for stuff like that. (Yeah, I know that not camping out really hampers my geek credibility. Somehow I feel that I have enough lifetime experiences to allow myself to keep it real from a geek perspective)

7) On a comment from last week on my claim of R.E.M.’s “Automatic for the People” as their best album. Understand that I consider “best”, “favorite” and “desert island disc” to be three completely separate categories. My favorite R.E.M. record is Reckoning, which tends to stay in my CD player for a month at a time. On my list of five desert island discs (which I really must write about someday) is Murmur, mainly because you could listen to that album for years and still never figure out what every song means and you would still want to find out. But from a critical viewpoint, Automatic is their best work. It’s strong lyrically (and actually has words in it, which puts it above their early work) and has some musically grand moments in it without getting overblown. It is the minor songs like Nightswimming that make the album. It might not be the disc you play the most often but in my mind, it is their most complete offering.

8) By the way, Juliana Hatfield’s “Become What You Are” is an incredibly awesome disc to listen to on a Monday morning. I think when we talk about how great music was in the good old days we are really referring to discs like this. There were about a hundred great albums in the early nineties and most of them were never hugely popular. That’s why a lot of people never throw out their old CDs, they just know that they outpace the current supply.

Catching the blues...

(Quick comment on Family Guy tonight. Two quick gags that had me on the ground laughing. First off was the triumphant return of Soundwave, the coolest Transformer ever. The second was the full minute spent on the “It’s Peanut Butter Jelly Time.” That was off the charts funny. Seriously, I hope I didn’t imagine that sketch because if I did then it means I really, really, really out to lay off the absinthe.)

So, I went to see Blues Traveler on Friday night. Ok, technically I went to see Carbon Leaf, who was opening for Blues Traveler. Carbon Leaf put on their classic, extremely sufficient show. I do like these guys, I’ve seen them three times this year and they’ve never disappointed. I’m just not sure if they’ve ever appointed, either. They just put on a really solid show with really solid songs and when they leave the stage you go, “Those guys were really good” and then you immediately forget about them. Not sure if I’ve ever seen anything quite like it.

Anyway, before I even got to see the bands I had to make it to the venue, which was the Voodoo Lounge at Harrah’s Casino. For those of you who were witness to my two week long rant about the venue that didn’t exist and how that was proof that the universe is against me, this is that venue. So, that was a bad sign to begin with. But the bigger problem is that this is in a casino and I’m just not a casino person. Especially when it means that I have to walk past the dinner buffet to get to where I need to go. I’m walking to the show and looking around at the crowd going, “Wow, this is like the saddest thing that I have ever seen.”

Which is probably a very arrogant statement on my part. I mean, everyone there was there for a good time or a cheap meal. It’s just that from my perspective, casinos and lotteries are simply taxes on people who are bad at math. Doesn’t matter how you spin, how much you say, “But you have to factor in the entertainment value”, all I ever see are people losing money they really don’t have to lose. And I have a real hatred of buffets for deep seated psychological reasons that no one other than my therapist would care about (and even in that interest he tends to go, “Oh no, not this again.”) Let’s just say that this doesn’t put me in the best of moods when I actually got inside the venue.

And couldn’t get a drink to save my life. Seriously, I think they had three bartenders for five hundred people. Other than that, it was a pretty nice place. It is built like the House of Blues, which means that it has a really nice stage and a good soundsystem. It lacks all of those little interesting touches that House of Blues puts on the side of the stage to make it feel like you’re in a roadhouse. On the plus side, you get rid of that fake feeling you get in HOB where you know that you are in a place owned by a multinational comglomerate. On the other hand, now it is just a stage, reinforcing in your mind that “I’m watching a band in a casino and if I wanted to do this I would have just gone to Vegas.”

Blues Traveler put on their usual show. John Popper just isn’t the same now that he has lost all that weight. Sure it probably saved his life but part of the fun of the band a decade ago was that they had this big fat guy playing harmonica. Now it’s a slightly overweight guy who doesn’t even wear that ammo vest holding his harmonicas anymore. It was a good show, don’t get me wrong, but the entire night just felt off to me.

All I can take from this is that I may be so accustomed to seeing bands in small venues where half the time I know the owners of the place that I am completely spoiled when it comes to seeing music. Maybe I’ve just become so much of a music snob that even the hint of corporate influence sends me off the deep end. Or maybe the thought that I had during the encore sums it up best, “You know, I’ve got a Kasey Chambers CD in my car right now and I’d much rather listen to that.”

The five random CDs of the week:
1) Jimmy Buffett “Off to See the Lizard”
2) Jump, Little Children “Magazine”
3) The Polyphonic Spree “Together We’re Heavy”
4) The Juliana Hatfield Three “Become What You Are”
5) Cowboy Junkies “Studio”

Bowling in KC

It looks like we are going to make it through another week. Just a couple more thoughts that have been running through my head the past couple of days...

One of the goals behind the random CD project has always been to uncover those hidden gems that had been sitting in my collection unopened for years. Came across one today in R.E.M.'s 'Automatic for the People', which I would always claim to be the band's best disc and one that I hadn't listened to in years until today. There are just some seriously good songs on that disc. You forget how good "Drive" or "The Sidewinder Sleeps Tonight" really were. "Everybody Hurts" has been overplayed for sure but the rest of the disc has aged extremely well. It was a nice listen this afternoon, it was like I was 19 and sitting in a dorm room at Illinois again.

Of course, one of the reasons behind the random CD project is I tend to buy a lot of CDs with only a minor interest in ever listening to them. Like the new Liz Phair disc, which is still sitting on my coffee table in my living room. I've at least unwrapped it but still haven't obtained the courage to actually play the darn thing. Is fear an emotion you should have when playing music? How about dread? I really don't want to play this and find out that one of my favorite performers, someone who ranked very high on my original perfect mate list, has just devolved into pop fluff. Sadly, that is where my expectations lie right about now.

(Ok, for the record I am now incredibly pissed at either Blogger or AOL right now. The damn thing just ate half my post and I wrote it in Blogger itself. Something is really goofing up my posting. Here's a retry of the last section).

So there was a really big Kansas City news story today. We are apparently in line to get the Super Bowl next decade. If we pay $600 million to add a retractable dome to the existing stadium. And double the amount of convention space in the city. But other than that it is a done deal. I'm sorry but this is a really bad idea. First of all, adding a dome to a stadium that wasn't built for it always is a turn for the worst (see Olympic Stadium in Montreal). It's better to just build a new stadium from scratch. Second, it's not like we would be added to the rotation of Super Bowl cities. We would join the ranks of Minneapolis and Detroit as places they play once every 20 years at which point they realize how damn cold it is and decide to go back to playing in LA or Miami or (someday soon) New Orleans. There's just no way that having the game one year would justify the huge expense for a stadium that is used ten times a year. We don't even have concerts out there. So, as much as I would like this place to be a big league city (as opposed to the AAA feel it often has), this isn't the way to do it.

One last note before I call it a night. I got an email from a publisher about my blog! Well, more like a form email from someone who got a hold of my email account. Who wants to charge me an awful lot of money to see my work in print. Still, it is a publisher and I'm going to take my victories wherever I can.

Reality bites back

Ok, I'll try to explain what I think happened to my last two posts. For the past year I've been using the same method to post: write the post in Word, completely ignore the spell check and grammar capabilities of Word and fail to edit the post, copy and paste the entry over into Blogger and post. This has worked perfectly fine for a year. For some reason I can't do that now, even though there is text in the post it completely ignores it. There is an add-in that I'll have to download to post from Word (though that still leaves me copying everything over to my writer's journal at the end of the day anyay) but until then I'm going to use a couple of intermediary steps. Just consider it a good thing that I keep multiple copies of everything that I ever write.

(I'm thinking about my response to the comment on religious bumper stickers. Not quite sure where to go with this one. There's a really deep question at the heart of it "What type of billboard does God require?" I'll let you know when I figure out the answer.)

Of course, there was a very serious matter in the news today that I must address. And that is E! has given the greenlight for a new reality series featuring Lisa Loeb as she reenters the dating world and attempts to find a mate. (I swear, cnn.com had the phrase "find a mate", which might be the most clinical description of dating that I've ever come across) You remember Lisa Loeb. She was that girl who had the single "Stay" on the Reality Bites soundtrack. The one with the video that was shown ever ten minutes for all of 1994. You know, the one with the girl with glasses in the empty apartment all shot in a continuous take. So now it's your chance to date the girl in the glasses in that video you saw in college.

Obviously, I need to find a way to be a part of this show. Just think of all the great conversation topics. "What was Ethan Hawke really like?" "Have you ever thought about contacts?" "Where the hell were you from 1996 to 2004? Seriously, was there like a prison stint that no one ever knew about?" But of course the show is being set in New York, which shows a complete lack of creativity. Wow, a show about being single in New York, haven't seen that before. Let's make this more interesting. Let's have her tour the country, going from town to town on a big tour bus and dating along the way. Sometimes it's a big Friday night in Chicago, other times it's a two bit coffee shop in Peoria. Much more interesting concept.

So I must ask you my faithful reader(s), to help me in my efforts at being a part of this show. I am calling for a demonstration in front of the E! headquarters demanding my participation. I want signs reading "Lisa shouldn't just "Stay" in New York." At the very least, I want a human barricade formed that will not be broken until Taradise is returned to the air. It falls to all of us to drive this change. If they want reality, let's give them reality.

Come On, It's Tuesday... (reboot)

I’m not even going to try a topic today…
1) License plate of the day: NVR2OLD. Ok, that one was actually a pretty nice thing to read at the end of the day. Not all of them are horrible.2) Sometimes you have to hand it to your local news crews for really getting to the heart of the story. Earlier this week there was a news story about a school’s playground equipment going up in flames in the middle of the night. The announcer very dramatically intoned “possibly arson.” Thanks for keeping the possibility of it not being arson out there, which would be a much bigger news story when you think about it. I mean, “Children’s slide spontaneously bursts into flames” would definitely be a lead story.3) So I watched How I Met Your Mother last night for the first time in its entirety. That show is just being carried by Doogie Howser. I mean, he’s stealing every scene. Which much be pretty disconcerting to the rest of the cast when you find out that the former child star is stealing your thunder. Plus, any show about single guys trying to figure out what the hell they are supposed to be doing with their life is worthwhile in my book. Well, other than the fact that they will probably steal entire sections of my novel for episodes. Can you charge someone with plagiarism over something you haven’t even written yet?4) One other thing, you have to congratulate a show that gives Bob Saget a job. I mean, the guy had to suffer through Full House and America’s Funniest Home Videos. Would you want to go through with the rest of your life knowing that those two shows would be your legacy? The guy has to do something with his life or otherwise he is going to spend the rest of it dreading his obituary.5) I watched a good portion of the Duke game last night. Team looked ok, but definitely wasn’t playing like the number one team in the country. Of course, complaining about a team’s play in mid-November is being rather harsh. It’s nice to see J.J. Reddick back for his twelfth season as a Blue Devil, originally sharing a backcourt with Bobby Hurley if I remember correctly. For those wondering, my immense fandom for Duke, which has been chronicled here before, isn’t as strong as it used to be. I no longer live and die over the results of a basketball team from a school that I technically never attended. I guess this means that I am really growing old.6) Oh, and reason number three hundred and fifty seven why you should watch G4TV: nightly reruns of The Man Show. Add that with the video game reviews and it is the network that I would have programmed when I was 19. Or 29. Or maybe even 39.

Belief as a bumper sticker (try 2)

The comment from last night has really left me thinking. After two years of living in a red state I have a horrible feeling that I have this conception and possibly misconception of the world. I’ll try to explain.
First, I certainly don’t remember any Phish stickers on the car with the PYITE plates. At least nothing that stood out as a jam band follower. It doesn’t surprise me that I may have missed that sort of reference. I’ve never claimed any great support of that scene. Heck, I’m on record as saying that the Grateful Dead are the second most overrated band of all time (just behind the Doors). But the thing is, it never even crossed my mind that there might have been any other purpose than the following: the person was trying to spell piety and either a) couldn’t or b) there already was one so they were going towards an alternative spelling.
The reason that I was so convinced of this is the sheer number of similar license plates and bumper stickers that I’ve seen in the past two years. I’ve seen plates that read URLOVD. I’ve seen the fish symbols (which I am perfectly cool with) and the fish symbols with the word Truth in them eating a fish with legs with the word Darwin in them (which I have a bit of an issue with). And I’ve seen numerous cars with the bumper sticker “In case of rapture, this car will be unoccupied.” After two years of this, I just assume that everyone is trying to make a religious statement with their car.
It’s tough to explain how unusual this is to me. It’s not that I grew up in some pagan side of the planet. I’m from the Chicago suburbs with twelve years of Catholic education (plus two years in graduate school). It was the type of area where you asked people what parish they belonged to. The thing is, even though religion was a common facet of everyone’s life it was never an advertised point. My favorite line from the Bible is that one should pray in a closet, that faith is a personal connection between you and God. It’s not something that you should make a show of, to proclaim on a bumper sticker your certainty that you will reach the promised land. That’s the one thing that has always bothered me because that always seems to assume that you know what the ineffable plan is and if you do, it isn’t much of an ineffable plan now, is it?
So for those of you who may wonder at times why I seem critical on conservative Christianity that might be the explanation, there style just doesn’t mesh with mine. I don’t question their beliefs, in fact, all I ever ask of people is that they have thought about their beliefs. Believe in something or not, just be able to give a reason other than “This is the way it has always been.” Examine your life at the very least. But to me, I never want my faith to be a saying on a bumper sticker. That is one matter not to trivialize.
(Of course, if we wanted to trivialize things I could take this second to talk about the Aeon Flux trailer, which might not be a good movie but might be a great excuse to watch Charlize Theron for an hour or so.)

System screw ups...

Note to everyone: Ok, I have no idea what happened to my last two posts. Apparently Blogger ate the text that I pasted into the system. I'll repost them when I get a chance. Seriously, I have written and posted the last two nights so I will consider my streak to be intact. I'll fix all of this later.

Come on, it's Tuesday...

Belief as a bumper sticker

Reality never lives up...

CD Update: The above picture is the cover art for “Battling the Current: Volume 1”. It’s called “Play That Funky Music” by Tom Everhart and as some of you may know, it is a painting that I picked up in the French Quarter in June. Honestly, while walking down the street I looked into a gallery and saw this hanging on the far wall and went, “I just have to have that one.” If this doesn’t describe my life I don’t know what does. Also, here is the official playlist

1) Blue Mountain “Generic America”
2) Waco Brothers “See Willy Fly By”
3) Uncle Tupelo “Chickamauga” (live at Lounge Ax)
4) The Frames “God Bless Mom” (live in Dublin)
5) Jeff Buckley “I Woke Up in a Strange Place” (live in Sydney)
6) Alejandro Escovedo “Baby’s Got New Plans”
7) Josh Rouse “Carolina”
8) Neko Case “Train From Kansas City” (which was possibly recorded about me)
9) Beth Orton “Best Bit”
10) Julie Delpy “Mr. Unhappy” (only available on a French import disc)
11) Kelly Willis “What I Deserve”
12) Ryan Adams “Monday Night” (super-ultra rare track)
13) The Shins “The Past and Pending”
14) Josh Ritter “Lawrence, KS” (as close to a theme song as this blog can get)

So please, please, give me your information so I can send this out. Where else are you going to get an entire hour of music delivered for free to your home? I mean, without illegally downloading the tracks, of course. So please get in touch, otherwise I’ll think that no one is reading this and that would make me sad…

A couple of random notes from the weekend…

1) An addition to the weird license plate category. Driving home from my Thursday night poker game I was behind a car with plates that read “PYITE”. Sound it out. I’m telling you, it’s drivers like this that really worry me because they know, deep in their hearts, that if anything goes wrong that they are going to heaven. I much prefer to drive behind the guys with Slayer bumper stickers on their cars because they are betting that this is their only existence so you know they have their hands at 10 and 2.
2) If you’re not watching The Boondocks on Adult Swim, you are really missing one of the best things going right now. We might have a new winner for best social commentary on television. It’s based on the great cartoon strip and it is really well done. It isn’t madcap comedy like Family Guy but it still gives you a couple of laughs. Plus, Adam West provided a voice in tonight’s show and you can’t beat that.
3) That said, great Family Guy episode tonight. If there is a character on television that I relate to it is Brian. Yes, the only character on tv that is like me is a talking dog that drinks martinis. That probably says a lot about me. Still, love the Rocky IV reference tonight and a running A-Team reference.
4) Ran a little bit of a sociological experiment last night. Went to Kelly’s at the start of the night and started keeping a tally of the number of guys I saw wearing untucked striped shirts. The results were astounding. I mean, it’s not that big of a bar and I think I counted two dozen in about ten minutes. This leads me to an interesting quandary. I read over the weekend that the untucked striped shirt look is out of style and for 2006 you should really be going with the solid color, prim and proper look. But the thing is, I live in Kansas City. It is going to take about two years for that to be in style here. So, do I go out and be a trendsetter (i.e. look out of place here but look completely average in the rest of the country) or do I stay in the past?
5) If you haven’t seen it yet, check out the highlights of the Bears game, in which the Bears win on a 108 yard field goal return. Yes, a field goal return, there is such a thing, you just almost never see it. One of those plays of the year and just emblematic of the Bears season. They are winning in ways that you didn’t even know were possible.
6) Have to comment on one piece of sad news from today. Wrestling lost another great today as Eddie Guerrero was found dead in a hotel room at the much too young age of 38. First of all, Eddie was one of the best wrestlers on the planet and I am going to miss his incredible talent. But most of all, I would like to hope that one day people would notice how many wrestlers die young and think that maybe we should do something about it. The numbers that have died in the past few years are really staggering and I would like there to be at least some regulation in the industry or at least for McMahon to show some interest in the welfare of his employees. This just leaves me shaking my head.

The five random CDs of the week
1) Kasey Chambers “Wayward Angel”
2) Robbie Fulks “Couples in Trouble”
3) Lorena McKennitt “Live in Paris and Toronto”
4) R.E.M. “Automatic for the People”
5) Rufus Wainwright “Want One”

One Year and Counting!!!

(Photo of EC as he once again realizes that he has dedicated much of his life to discussing fighting robots)

It’s celebration time!!! And everyone is getting a present! But you’ll have to read to the end of the post to find out what it is.

Beyond all belief and contrary to all predictions, the blog is still up and running one year after I made the first posting. Even I’m surprised about this. I’ve been chronically my misadventures in this world for a long time now and typically I will always hit a patch where I write nothing for about two months and somehow I have avoided it this time around. That is worth celebrating in and of itself.

A couple of days ago I went back and looked at my first post because I remembered that I listed some goals for this site as the ground rules of what I wanted to accomplish. Here’s what I hoped to achieve a year ago.

1) Daily updates composed of whatever interests me at the moment
2) Have people actually read this
3) Have people I don’t know actually read this
4) Finally do something significant so that I’m not lying when I say that I’m a writer

Amazingly, I went four for four. I really want to thank everyone who has read the postings and commented on them. Especially those people who have never met me, it really is a thrill to realize that someone has stumbled across your page and felt compelled to enter a comment. I have some new goals in mind for the next year but I am going to wait a little bit before I post them. Have to make them actionable and measurable and all of those fun MBA terms. I will promise better grammar (an ever popular request) and thanks to my acquisition of one of those handy dandy picture phones, more pictures. The focus is still going to remain the same with equal doses of music reviews, pop culture analysis, philosophical musings, and making fun of Kansas. I mean, why fix what isn’t broken. As always, I am more than open to requests or ideas.

I really do want to thank everyone who has ever taken time to read this site. When I started this it truly was a lark and I doubted that I would be writing it past New Year’s. Now I wonder if I’ll ever be able to stop. So, since reading thanks doesn’t really carry much weight in the world I’ve been wondering how to best show my appreciation. While I still want to do t-shirts at some point in time I didn’t think that really tied to what this site has been about over the past year. If there has been one constant theme throughout it is how music shapes and defines my life. And as a result, I would like to offer everyone reading this “Battling the Current: Volume 1”.

If you enjoy my taste in music, this disc will be for you. If you ever wonder “who the hell are these bands that he keeps mentioning”, then this disc will definitely be for you. It is going to be a sampler of a lot of the songs and bands that have been referenced over the past year. A partial listing is The Frames, Josh Ritter, Neko Case, Uncle Tupelo, Jeff Buckley, Kelly Willis, Julie Delpy (yes, she actually has a CD), Ryan Adams, the Waco Brothers, and many more. I’ll post the full track listing on Sunday and hopefully the image of the cover art. Yes, this is going to be a full CD with cover art and liner notes and everything. Because if Battling the Current is anything, it is a high class organization.

All I need from anyone who is interested is an address. Send an email to kcgatsby@aol.com with your information and it’ll be on its merry way in the next week or so. For those of you who know me personally (or at least know my other email addresses) feel free to get in touch with me anyway you feel like. This is my way of celebrating and hopefully introducing people to a lot of great music to boot.

I’ll close with this. I’ve had a couple of people ask me why in the world I am writing a blog, that it seems like an awful lot of effort with no real purpose. As always, Kurt Vonnegut put it best:

“The arts are not a way to make a living. They are a very human way of making life more bearable. Practicing an art, no matter how well or badly, is a way to make your soul grow, for heaven’s sake. Sing in the shower. Dance to the radio. Tell stories. Write a poem to a friend, even a lousy poem. Do it as well as you possibly can. You will get an enormous reward. You will have created something.”

That’s all I’m trying to do out here, create something. Maybe what I write is enlightening, hopefully the postings are at least funny, but the one thing that no one can take away from me is that they are mine. Thanks everybody and have a great weekend. I’m off to Harry’s for a toast…

Life in the arcade

I had this thought when I first brought up the Pac Man discussion but didn’t have the time or the space to expand it further since the fact that Kansas has decided to not just encourage ignorance but actually legislate it took precedence over everything. (By the way, one last comment on that front. I was thinking about what I would do if one day one of my kids was in a class where they were teaching intelligent design. I decided that I would do one of two things A) take my kid out of class for that day and take them somewhere more enlightening or B) encourage them to get up and walk out of class in protest once the teacher started rattling on about nonsense. In either case, this would be maybe the only instance where I would want my child to answer questions wrong on a test. Like “Intelligent design is…” “really, really stupid.”)

Anyway, back to a completely less important topic. Thinking about Pac Man and the many hours spent at Haunted Trails made me realize that the children of today are really missing the wonders of the video arcade. I know, I know, there is a subculture around Dance Dance Revolution but the kids I am talking about would never play something like that. Mainly because I am talking about kids like me who were so uncoordinated we couldn’t play Dance Dance Revolution without blowing out a knee. Without the arcade, I think that life has lost one of its most simple pleasures.

Because arcades were the ultimate escape for a thirteen or fourteen year old. You were too young to get into any real trouble but old enough to know that trouble should be gotten into. So that is why you spent your time playing video games, checking out the scene, and basically getting into mischief one quarter at a time. Now kids just sit at home and play online and it can’t be the same. You don’t have that sense of “I could get in serious trouble any moment now” or “I wonder if it is possible to cheat at Skee Ball to get a better prize” by playing World of Warcraft.

Plus, there are some games that cannot be touched by a Playstation. Like tabletop hockey with the USA vs. USSR. Probably some of the most fun that you could have was a hockey war that started with a fight over who got to play as the Russians. There was even a “Boo” button on the one I played, which was used constantly as a taunt. And no matter how good the graphics are on your home system, you could always garner a much bigger thrill by having a crowd surrounding you while you played Dragon’s Lair. And don’t forget about Outrun, where you actually got to sit in a car while you raced. For a while, that was the ultimate in coolness.

So please, encourage the return of the arcade. Because life just isn’t complete until you’ve spent three dollars in quarters just trying to make it through the next level of Virtua Figher.

Kansas Devolves...

You know, it means something when the comments to my postings become more random than the postings themselves. It means I should probably be frightened. But, since I did watch the Pac Man cartoon series as a child, I must clear up some misconceptions on the Pac Man family.

We started with Pac Man, a cheerful yellow little fellow haunted by paranormal phenomena that could only be vanquished by eating a certain pill. Basically, the entire game was a metaphor for the benefits of lithium in today’s psychotic society. Then you had Ms. Pac Man, which shows that an amorphous cartoon character can be made female and attractive just by adding a bow. Now, it is correct that it was Ms. Pac Man. But, if you played the game sufficiently long enough you got a cut scene in which Pac Man makes an honest woman out of Ms. Pac Man and gets married. Soon later you have Baby Pac Man, which was this video game/pinball game abomination that resulted in Pac Man hanging out at bars, staying out all hours and finally hooking up with Lara Croft and becoming a deadbeat dad. Basically, it’s a Greek tragedy that goes “wokka wokka wokka”

(See, I knew all those hours at Haunted Trails miniature golf course and video arcade would come in handy someday.)

Anyway, we have some important news from the great state of Kansas today. By a 6 to 4 vote, the Kansas Board of Education decided to add language questioning the theory of evolution and to start teaching intelligent design. Excuse me for a moment while I bang my head against a wall.

(Bang. Bang. Bang.)

Hey, if I do that enough maybe I could make the school board. I mean, you can’t fault them too much since they are in Topeka which means that the members of the school board are, by definition, too dumb to get out of Topeka. But it is great to know that part of my taxes are going to be spent on teaching kids a theory in intelligent design that isn’t just wrong but ludicrously wrong at that.

I can’t respect a state that is basically going to teach children “Science is really hard and we don’t feel good about trying to explain all of it so we are just going to state that some mysterious outside force did it. Could be God. Could be that giant flying spaghetti monster. We’ll leave that up to you to decide.” It’s just really bad science by people who don’t appreciate the power of randomness. That’s part of their complaint, that life just couldn’t occur through random events. The thing is, randomness runs our lives and creates incredible patterns as it is. Study fractals and you’ll see beauty out of pure chance. Probability makes great things happen.

This stuff just angers me to no end. When I was growing up I was raised to want to be a scientist and to learn all about what makes the world work. Now it seems that we are spending all of our time questioning them and putting everything on faith, which really doesn’t create new inventions or cure diseases at the end of the day. Before someone uses that last sentence to question my beliefs, here is my philosophy in a nutshell. We were given incredible minds and deductive ability and free will to make the most out of life on this planet, not to sit around and say, “Don’t worry, someone will come and save us.” We’ve already been saved, the tools have been in our hands from the beginning.

So now I get to spend a lot of time in a state that is going to intentionally raise its children to be bad at science. And drive off pretty much any biotech company that would ever think about stepping foot in the state. And making us the laughingstock of the U.S. Thanks school board. It’s nice to know that incompetence rises to the level where it can do the most damage.

(Seriously, if I knew this was going to be the case I would never have left the trees in the first place.)

A blah Monday

So, like many of you I awoke this morning to read one of the most interesting stories of the year involving two Carolina Panthers cheerleaders. Here are my quick thoughts on the subject. 1) This either says something about our society or my lifestyle but I read a story like that and it doesn’t even phase me anymore. Seriously, I don’t know if it is possible to shock me. 2) What magazine is leading for the first pictorial of the two girls? We’re talking Maxim at a minimum here. This could be the ultimate “famous for committing a crime and ruining your career” moment. 3) You know what the most amazing thing about that story is? The fact that the only reason that anyone knows about the story is because the two women are Carolina Panthers cheerleaders. Not members of the team, not involved with anyone from the team, just cheerleaders. That apparently gives you just enough quasi-celebrity that when you make the police blotter, you will be remembered. Of course, I’m not sure that this is how all of us would like to obtain our fifteen minutes of fame.

Sadly, I think that may have been the best topic I had to write about today. It’s Monday and I am still trying to catch up on all of the errands that I failed to run over the weekend. You know, like going grocery shopping because you have absolutely no food left in your apartment. That point when you look in your fridge and go “I’ve got beer and hot dog buns and that’s about it. I don’t even have hot dogs. Why can’t they make those in equal numbers anyway?” Yeah, that’s pretty much the level of excitement in my life right about now.

However, all of my time traveling did allow me to finish Jonathan Carroll’s latest novel “Glass Soup”. In which you discover that God is a large polar bear named Bob. I think that comes up in chapter five. You know, in all of my theological studies I’ve never had that theory explained to me but hey, you learn something new every day. This isn’t the book of his to start out with (especially since it is the follow up to White Apples) but as a fan I enjoyed it. It is a really out there book, the polar bear is just the beginning, and I was impressed at just how creative the story was. There was nothing formulaic about it. In fact, it confused you by being so non-linear at times. But sometimes it is nice to read something that isn’t straightforward.

More interesting material tomorrow. Consider this the prelude to the anniversary.

Cynicism defined...

(“How in the world did you end up in a corn field?”
“You wouldn’t even begin to believe how many times I ask myself that same question.”

Thanks to whoever posted the cool comment Friday night. For the record, I ended up in a corn field as a result of my job. That’s the how part of the question. When I figure out they “why” portion of the answer, I’ll let you know.)

I had an interesting revelation come to me as I was leaving the airport this afternoon. I had just made my back to the western Midwest (or eastern Great Plains, take your pick) after spending the weekend at the Notre Dame-Tennessee game (best t-shirt: “Catholics vs. Clampetts”). Incredibly, what hit me has nothing to do with football or any of the stories that come about from tailgating outside the stadium but they have everything to do with the way people are. And it all stems from this bus ride back to the airport parking lot.

While sitting there waiting for the chance to get back to my car and forcing myself to listen to the rest of that damn Joan Osbourne CD this woman got on the bus and she had that look on her face of someone who was angry. Not angry at a specific event or a person, just angry at the world. You know this type of person? Those people who are so bitter that it permeates their entire existence. You can smell it on them, there is nothing in the world that makes them happy and the only thing that brightens their day is when someone else has something bad happens to them and they feel good because life is better as long as someone else’s life is worse.

Here’s what struck me. A lot of people would consider me to be a cynic. Ok, let’s be honest. I’ve posted about two novels worth of material in the past year that prove beyond a shadow of a doubt that I am at times a cynical bastard. But I don’t think that anyone would ever consider me bitter. I’m definitely not angry at the world or anything. I’m just trained to look at everything with a critical eye and when I look at this planet I’m the type who comes up with the ten point action plan to correct things. I don’t think that I’ve ever looked at anything with hatred, it’s more of a sense of amazement at how stupid people can be and how we can be given a wonderful gift of a nice planet with beauty all around it and free will to appreciate it and basically throw it all away because we are too damn lazy most of the time. I’m not upset at the world, just bewildered.

So while I could definitely be more upbeat (as opposed to trudging along in life like I sometimes do) I do enjoy my view of the world. At the heart of it, I look around and see what this place could be if we all just focused our energy for a little while on the important things. And I get bummed that no one else seems to notice this. That what leads me to be cynical. I’ll never get angry at the world because it always surprises me. How can you go through life angry when you can randomly flip on the radio and catch a Celtic song that you heard at a festival months ago? If happenstance can make you smile, imagine what life could be like if you actually worked at it?

The five random CDs for the week:
1) Blue Mountain “Homegrown”
2) Various Artists “New Orleans Party Classics”
3) Sally Timms “Cowboy Sally”
4) Jump, Little Children “Between the Dim and the Dark”
5) Beth Orton “Best Bit” (Yes! I finally get to listen to Beth Orton while driving to work. This week is going to be awesome.)

One last concert note

(A lot of people have criticized my, well, criticism of this part of the country as being a result of a slightly negative personality. Which may very well be true. But then I spend part of today wandering through a corn maze and I begin to wonder just how I ended up out here in the first place. I like to imagine that I have that jet set, big city lifestyle. It’s not true of course, but it’s fun to pretend. The thing is, you can’t even pretend to be living the high life in a corn field. Just a thought.)

Got one more concert review from this week. Caught Cracker in concert on Halloween night in an acoustic set. Or at least they called it an acoustic set, one guy played an electric guitar and they also had a laptop on stage with them. That would place it solidly in the MTV Unplugged category in which all the instruments are plugged in and the vocals are sweetened. Anyway, Cracker is a band you know and love or at least know if you went to college in the 90’s. You know the band with the song “What the world needs now is another folk singer like I need a hole in my head.” Those guys.

Cracker should be better known than that. They have some really solid songs, especially when you dip back into the Camper Van Beethoven catalog. This was a pretty interesting show. Got there and it was like there was no one at the show. It was a Monday night, but once again I found myself alone by the stage. That’s not entirely true. There was also the girl with the bunny ears. I have to say, that was a surprisingly good look. (On the other hand, is it a surprise that I saw someone dressed as Dorothy? Does that even count as trying in the state of Kansas?) But, in the end they did garner a pretty nice crowd.

I should define “they” since it was just David Lowery and another guy. I was impressed by how they reinterpreted some of the catalog. Teen Angst was turned into a slow blues number and I completely understand why they changed the style of the song. They’ve probably played that song every night for over a decade and at that point you need to change things up. Low stayed that driving crowd interaction song with one of the best choruses ever. And in something that I didn’t think possible, they pulled off a two man version of Camper Van Beethoven’s classic “Matchstick Man”, a song that would typically need an eight piece band to work.

In all, this was just one of those fun shows I hit during the week. It didn’t change my life but it sure beat watching television. On some nights, that is all that you can ask for.

(Big announcement. Next week we will be celebrating the one year anniversary of Battling the Current with some major events. Look for the return of some of your favorite topics and definitely check the site this time next week. Trust me, you’ll want to be a part of this. Enjoy the weekend.)

Moving time

As a couple of people out there know, I switched jobs a few weeks ago. Same company, just moved on to a different position. It’s something that I am supposed to do every year anyway so it really isn’t that big of a deal, even if I am now doing as different a job as humanly possible from what I was doing before. And while I will continue to uphold my standard of never writing about work there are a few aspects surrounding changing positions in a massive company that need to be addressed.

I’ve switched buildings on campus in the move. Pretty basic, right? Well, except for the fact that this requires me to switch parking garages and as a result my commute is about five minutes longer now. I’m not kidding. I’m on the same campus, just on the other side and it takes me forever to leave company property at night. Maybe that is a sign that your office complex is just too damn large.

The even bigger concern is that my desk is different. On the surface it is just another cubicle. Same old box, still no view of a window, still have to walk about half a block to look outside and see if it is raining. But previously I had what could best be called a right handed cubicle. Trash can on the right, file cabinets on the right. My cube has been set up that way for two years, you get into nice morning habits that way. Well I’ve now found myself in a left handed cubicle and it is the most disconcerting thing imaginable. I seriously have no clue where anything is in the morning. Every day it is like, “Who the hell stole my trash can?” and “Who moved my shelves?” I would never have thought that something as simple as that could have such an impact. It’s going to take a month before I feel comfortable in this cube and by then I’ll probably move again.

On the plus side, a new parking garage means I’ve gotten to see new personalized license plates on my drive to work. This week’s highlight was “FLATTAX”, on a car with a Rush Limbaugh bumper sticker on it (what a surprise). You know, while sitting behind that car a red light I really began to wonder how much nicer this world would be if I was able to get that flamethrower attachment for the hood of my car. Seriously, political leaning aside, would you want that to be your license plate? Is that supposed to impress someone? Or influence someone’s opinion? Like someone was just driving to work that morning and went, “Wow, if it is on a license plate it just has to be correct. You’ve completely changed my mind on the U.S. tax code.” I’ll never know what scares me more, the fact that these people are allowed to drive or the fact that they are allowed to vote.

Musings of a Creek Dipper

Every once in a while it is nice to know that there is some popular music out there that isn’t Toby Keith or Shakira. Where you can be part of a crowd listening to talented musicians. And have the band just thrilled to be playing music for a living. Well, tonight I had one of those experiences, catching Nickel Creek in concert.

I made my way this evening to the new and continually improved Uptown Theater. In a much appreciated move, they replaced the incredibly harsh tile floor with carpeting and yes, I’ve reached the point in my life where things like that are very nice amenities. Got there a few minutes to spare and in what seems to be a tradition now, I run into no one from work but am greeted by bartenders I know. But as a general rule, I just say hi to them and let them have their night off. I mean, they have to deal with me while I’m working; there is no way in the world that they should have to deal with me in their free time.

Anyway, when I saw Nickel Creek last year Howie Day opened. This was when Howie was doing a solo bit, which consisted of him looping everything and grinning being moderately less high than he had been in previous performances. This time the opening act was the Ditty Bops. Who were…who were…

Ok, let me put this in perspective. Tonight was my 40th concert of the year, tying the number I saw last year. I’ve seen a lot of bands over the past two years. I’ve seen a Norwegian punk band, I’ve seen one guy loop twelve instruments together to a group of cheering Deadheads who were ten when the Dead played their last show and I’ve seen a band from New Zealand play an entire song while wearing Mary Kate and Ashley Olsen masks. But, the Ditty Bops may have been the most unique act yet.

They sounded like a band from the 1920’s. It was like listening to one of those old female harmony records, like the Andrews Sisters or something like that. Well, the Andrews Sisters if one of them had fluorescent pink hair. And incredibly cute to boot. Plus, the band had somehow combined itself with a circus act at some point. One member of the band was on stilts at one point during the set. It was one of those things where you didn’t know where the music stopped and the performance art began. And I mean that in the best possible way. Seriously, these guys go up there with Superargo as “Best examples that you can still do something new in music.”

By the time Nickel Creek took the stage I really wondered what would happen next. I’ve always had a bit of mixed feelings about the band. I’ve never doubted their skill as musicians; they are easily some of the most talented people out there. It’s just that I tend to shy away from technically perfect music and go more for the pure emotional stuff. That’s why I preach the wonders of the Old Crow Medicine Show; a bunch of guys who play bluegrass the way the Clash would play bluegrass. I’ve never seen Nickel Creek show that side, that emotional rush of not caring what happens next. Until tonight.

The band was simply on. Chris Thile was bounding around the stage while playing mandolin (losing points for wearing a Cubs shirt while gaining some back for mentioning the Jayhawks and making it clear that he was referring to the band and not the school.) Sara Watkins has always been great on fiddle but now seems to have gained more confidence in singing and stage presence. And Sean Watkins still plays a great acoustic guitar without much complaint, given that he has to provide the melody while everyone else gets the solos. He’s probably in the only band where the guitarist gets mentioned last.

What was incredible about the show was just how much fun it was. There was a constant interaction with the audience and it wasn’t forced or rehearsed, just a natural banter with a few thousand people. The most impressive part was how they never take themselves too seriously. They covered Britney Spears’ “Toxic” along with Counting Crows songs. Hell, they played Roger Miller’s “Kansas City Star.” Literally played the song, halfway through the set they said that they were thinking of covering it but figured there was no way they could improve on it so they just played the song over the speakers while the band walked into the crowd and joked and danced with people. You don’t see that every day.

If anything, it is something like that which makes me have a lot of respect and admiration for Nickel Creek. They’ve been called the future of bluegrass music for the past few years, which is an unbelievable amount of pressure to put on a group of kids. A lot of people would like them to play really traditional music but that isn’t who they are, they’ve grown up listening to the same songs on the radio that I have. But they haven’t decided to reinvent themselves and try to do some ambient fusion bluegrass either. They’ve stayed true to their roots but their songs truly are theirs. And in the process they’ve grabbed a fanbase in which I was probably the oldest person standing in front of the stage but I would have been the youngest person sitting in the balcony.

I’ll have to say that tonight was some of the most fun that I’ve had listening to music in a long time. Lots of laughter and all of it in time to some incredible tunes. Not bad for a Tuesday night in Kansas City, don’t ya think?

Forgotten Television Shows: Volume 8

(Continuing the series…)

Every once in a while, MTV tries to do something different in the realm of reality television. Like put a bunch of kids in a Winnebago and see if anything interesting happens. Or show how insane sweet sixteen parties have gotten. But a few years back, MTV tried to base a reality show on a reality movie. And the result of that effort, my friends, was Fear.

(Also known as, The Blair Witch Project but with worse acting)

Does anyone else remember this show? The premise was actually pretty cool. Take five 18-22 year olds and drop them off in a haunted location. Or at least some place that they said was haunted. Basically, you just needed a building with a lot of dark corners and plaster falling off of the walls. You had your paranormal experts explain in deadly serious voiceovers what happened in each location just to create that sense of “No human being should ever walk this piece of Earth again.” Of course the show consisted of sending the teenagers into these areas.

And they weren’t just sent into the haunted prison or ship or insane asylum. No, they had to carry this humongous camera on their back to give that grainy, headache inducing, Blair Witch style point of view shot. Including the camera shot looking straight back into their face for when they screamed. Which happened a lot. They even had to perform experiments, though I am still at a bit of a loss as to how they had apparatus that was tuned to detect hauntings. I mean, what is the base case that they are using here? Is there a place on the planet that is definitely not haunted? Over millions and millions of years, you’d think there would be the ghosts of dinosaurs everywhere at the very least.

At the end of the day, I still consider this one of the more interesting shows that MTV ever put together. There was no attempt to set the show up so that castmates would be trying to hook up every second of the way. It was a gameshow at heart (I think for going through everything you got five grand). But there was always this general level of creapiness that existed while watching the episodes. Like you never knew what was going to happen out there. That’s a pretty big accomplishment, creating a reality show that makes you suspend your belief in reality.