One day I'll be able to work outside

We all have our own habits and idiosyncharacies at the office. It is one of the challenges of creating a positive work environment: you need a set of rules and guidelines except that you know by nature that no two people have the exact same work style. Some people are morning people, some are afternoon people, some need to be constantly talking while others would prefer it if they could go the entire day without human contact. As much as I might question the field of Organizational Behavior I have to admit that it does have its uses.

Typically what happens is that I try to find my own optimal working style in the framework that is given me. What is interesting is that after a three month experiment in the office I am going to try to go back to my old ways and see if that has a beneficial impact on myself and the company as a whole. It might seem like the most minor of changes imaginable but I really think it is going to have a huge impact and it all focuses on how I have lunch.

See, my office lacks a cafeteria in my building but we have a quarterly lunch program in which we have the food from the cafeteria brought to us. On the surface this is a great idea as it saves you from having to walk out in the cold or the rain or even deal with case on a daily basis as you pay for the entire quarter in advance. And I’m certain for a lot of people in the office it is a great thing. But after a quarter trial (done mainly so I wouldn’t have to walk out in the cold) I’ve come to the decision that it is not for me.

First of all, having an all you can eat buffet that I’ve already paid for sitting directly outside my office is just way too much of a dangerous temptation for me. I can blame the five or ten pounds I’ve put on so far this year entirely to the fact that every day I could go and grab an extra chocolate chip cookie or bag of chips without a care in the world. All of those add up to some additional padding along the waistline that I do not particularly require. Sure I could have a salad but what are the odds of that happening?

The other aspect, and maybe the more interesting one, is that I have discovered that I just need to get out of the office and get some fresh air every day. In a weird way this is why I envy smokers. They can step outside for a smoke break and while emphysema is a rather high price to pay it does have it benefits. I am just not a person who can spend ten hours under fluorescent lights staring at computer screens and looking at numbers. I can do it when it is required but it just takes a lot out of me. For me to be at my best I really need to take a lap once a day. Step away from everything, walk around for a bit, and completely forget about the office for fifteen minutes. I am not sure if that disqualifies me from being an executive but it is just the way my mind works best.

So I am going back to the old method of getting out at lunch even though it will turn out to be more expensive and most likely have me end up spending more time in the office. But I think I will feel better for it and that is what matters at the end of the day. Now if I can just convince my body to get out of bed thirty minutes earlier so I could actually have breakfast then I will be making some real progress. If anyone knows how I could accomplish that little miraculous feat please let me know.

Next on Fox...

From those who wonder if the well of reality shows has been tapped dry we bring you “More to Love” on Fox. A show that mixes “The Bachelor” and “The Biggest Loser” into a smorgesboard of…well, smorgesboards. Yes, someone pitched a dating show for fat people and got it picked up by a major network. Now I am all for reality shows featuring people who are, you know, actually real. We don’t need to see the vapid barbie dolls on the dating shows unless it is The Rock of Love Bus where they really are needed to keep the skank factor at an appropriate level. But can we do it with a little more subtlety and tact? Do we need to identify the contestants as losers at the start?

So when I listed my influential television shows last night I specifically left off Family Guy. That might come as a surprise to some people as I clearly find the first few seasons of the show to be exceptionally good. The problem is, and last night’s episode really showed it, that the quality of the show has just fallen off a cliff recently. There is a pretty good reason behind it. With much of the writing staff siphoned to American Dad (and the horribly ill-conceived Cleveland spin-off) they just don’t have the same group of people working in the pitch room.

But really what the show is doing wrong is that they are going away from the sure fire comedy and trying to be cutting edge but only being offensive in the process.

Last night they had the entire cast of Star Trek The Next Generation on as guest voices and instead of featuring them they were reduced to being a part of the sub plot. Exactly why they were placed in that role, when they were the focus of all the advertising and promotions, is beyond me. If you can’t write a 22 minute plot featuring Stewie and Star Trek you probably shouldn’t be working in Hollywood. I can’t really complain about what they wrote either as those scenes were the funniest of the night. And yes, I do want a McDLT.

But mainly the main focus was on Meg and the classic abuse Meg scenarios that have been taking place for years. And to be honest, if you beat up on a character for long enough it stops being funny and simply becomes mean. Because at some point that character must win and Meg will never win. Peter will just be mean and abusive and at some point in starts being more abusive than funny. Homer can choke Bart because Bart gets the upper hand. Bad things can happen to Cartman because we know Cartman deserves what is coming to him. But Meg’s flaw is being stuck in a show with writers who have no clue what to do with her character so they just abuse her. It actually makes the show difficult to watch.

Add in the times they go over the line with some of the other jokes (yes, the Shatner joke was tasteless) and Family Guy just isn’t nearly as good as it could be. We need more Brian and Stewie. Comedy is really tough to write and it is a fine line you have to toe but I hope the show gets back to being what it used to be.

The Influential 15: TV (Continued)

Yes, I know that I missed a post on Thursday night. That is probably the first post that I missed where I wasn’t a) out of town or b) dealing with a medical misadventure in several years. I do have a vaguely valid reason for it. I was at a Flyers game that night and then came home to watch Duke screw up in a rather epic fashion and was just not in the mood to sit down and write. Over the last week or so I felt that I needed to take a momentary break from the blog and I decided that Thursday night was it. Maybe a long weekend is what I needed to refill my creative batteries after nearly four and a half years of constant writing.

However, I still owe the second half of the fifteen most inluential television shows so here they are.

Monty Python’s Flying Circus: Again, a pretty obvious no brainer for anyone who knows me. The epitome of television comedy and an example of what can happen when you break all of the rules. Did you know that over the entire series that there is only one episode that contains a plot from the beginning to the end? All of the other episodes are made up of the continual switching of sketches where one can start in a barber shop and end by singing about lumberjacks. I include this not just because it taught me everything I know about comedy but also because it represents the wonder that was watching PBS late at night for British shows. Dr. Who, Prisoner from Cell Block H, Red Dwarf, the original Whose Line is it Anyway all of which I found out about by staying up too late on a Sunday night watching PBS.

How I Met Your Mother: I am still contemplating suing the creators of this show for stealing my life and placing it on the air. There was a time when I really felt that there was a camera crew following me at all times to record my every misadventure to be used in an upcoming episode. Luckily an increase in my medication and the strange fact that Ted has become a bit more of a jerk in recent seasons has put a stop to that. Great show for two reasons. One is that it shows what life is really like in terms of being single in your late twenties. The conversations do seem to be taken from bar talk that I have had with my friends and everything seems to have a bit more of a realistic tinge to it. I just could never say the same thing about Friends. The other reason is that Barney may be one of the greatest characters ever created. Not only is it believable that he owns a life size stormtrooper, sleeps in a pajama suit and hires a group of actors to portray his family so his mom will think that he is happily married but when he falls for Robin you still cheer for him to get the girl. Greatness all around.

Junkyard Wars: Sigh. How I miss Junkyard Wars. Still one of the greatest ideas ever where you take two teams, place them in a junkyard and tell them “You have twelve hours to build a hovercraft. Get to it.” For engineers or people who just like to see how things get built or even those who like to study problem solving techniques this show was amazing. I still can’t figure out how some of these teams pulled off what they did. Do you know how hard it is to build a glider or an amphibious vehicle in one day? I wouldn’t even think it was possible but these teams would do it every single time. Honorable mention here to Robot Wars and Battle Bots because I would be remiss if I did not give praise to those shows that honored those upstanding members of our community who spend their free time building killer robots.

3-2-1 Contact: The greatest PBS show ever! Screw Zoom and the Electric Company, though bonus points for having Spider Man as a character, nothing can touch the wonders that was 3-2-1 Contact. I have this show to thank and or blame for my having a degree in electrical engineering. I’m not sure if there ever was a show that so enthralled me in the world of science and nature. Even Mr. Wizard’s World was a little stale in comparison. Mainly because Mr. Wizard didn’t get to go backstage at a freaking Kiss concert to show how the lighting and explosions worked. Also, Mr. Wizard totally lacked the Bloodhound Detective Agency, most likely due to the fact that twelve year olds shouldn’t be placed in harms way in an attempt to solve crime.

Beavis and Butt-Head: Ah, college. Where every night can be spent watching Beavis and Butt-head and laughing like a complete maniac. In my mind the videos were the best part of the show as the two would just rip on every stupid song that MTV would play every five minutes. It was wonderfully subversive: the networks most popular show stating that much of the music that they were promoting was crap. As the show progressed the episodes themselves became better and better and would occasionally have you rolling on the ground laughing. Bonus points for the spin off of Daria, which was one of the few shows that had an intelligent female teenage lead even if it was a cartoon. Oh, and if you didn’t have a crush on Jane you didn’t have a soul.

Head of the Class: Sigh. I wish my high school honors program was like the one in Head of the Class. I would have gladly have had a Scottish comedian or a refuge from WKRP in Cincinnati who could probably score me some pot as a teacher. The interesting thing is that while the show played on the stereotypes of who smart kids in school are they actually got a lot of them right. You do have the kids who are pushed by their parents, the tough guy who happens to be really bright, the sensitive poet girl, the computer expert, and the skinny guy with glasses who happens to be really good at math. Not that I considered myself to be Arvid or anything. Mainly this was an escape show for me growing up as it was the only show about high school where I felt that I could fit in. I would not make the cut on 90210 but here I would.

The Muppet Show: People make such a big deal about Shrek and the Pixar movies and how they were able to mesh entertainment for children together with entertainment for adults as if that is a new thing. Meanwhile The Muppet Show did it earlier and better than anyone in history. We all still know who Kermit and Miss Piggy and Gonzo are even though the show has been out of the spotlight for years. It was almost like Monty Python with puppets in the way the show would break the rules and have Stadler and Waldorf cynically comment on the show from the balcony. Slapstick comedy, interesting guests, Pigs in Space, get this on DVD now.

VR 5: You do not remember this show. Odds are you aren’t even aware this show existed unless you were really into the X-Files as this show aired at roughly the same time. It was a single season show starring Lori Singer as the daughter of this computer science expert with a massively complex plot about virtual reality and government conspiracies. Despite the fact that they were able to access photorealistic worlds via a dial up modem this was the first show that I can recall that hit upon the idea of virtual worlds as a significant plot point. I even felt it went a few steps beyond The X-Files in terms of creating an over arching plot and is more of a precursor to Lost and Heroes than anything. It is one of the shows that I remember and wish that it had a bit more of a following than it did.

Best of 120 Minutes: I’m in the mood for some old school R.E.M. tonight. Here is a video from back in the Southern Gothic era.

R.E.M. MTV Music

The five random CDs of the week:
1) R.E.M. “Reckoning”
2) Joe Ely “Live at Antone’s”
3) Kelly Willis “What I Deserve”
4) The Sundays “Reading, Writing and Arithmetic”
5) The Iguanas “Sugar Town”

The Influential 15: TV

I can finally get back on track and return to doing what I do best: writing about old television shows. Tonight we will begin the analysis of the 15 most influential television shows of my life. I say begin because for ease from a reading and writing perspective I am going to do this in two parts. Again, the idea behind the influential list is that these may not be the best shows of all times or my favorites. They are all shows that influenced the way I interpreted culture.

The Simpsons: Absolutely no doubt that this is where I would have to start. As someone who was called Bart throughout high school (a nickname that predated the show) I was a fan from the very first episode. No question that this completely changed the way animation was viewed in that it was no longer relegated to Saturday mornings or loose plots disguised as advertisements for action figures. It changed the idea of comedy as it worked on so many levels. Some people saw it as the crazy antics of Bart, others caught the subtle political humor while others focused on the incredible literary references. And while the show has gone downhill in recent years they can still knock me over with laughter as they did this weekend with Once jokes. Will you stop sending pianos?

You Can’t Do That on Television: The absolute best after school television show ever. Who knew that Canadians could be so funny? This was Saturday Night Live for the pre-teen crowd but with even more inventive comedy. The fourth wall was broken from the moment the show started and they created enough running gags to fill a pop culture guide book. Green slime, locker jokes, Barth’s Burgers, buckets of water, the firing squad, I could go on and on. Heck, Christine was referred to as Moose the entire show and no one ever thought that it might be really bad from a body image perspective to do that. This show helped form the foundation of my sense of humor.

The Monkees: I have argued that The Monkees should be in the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I will also argue that they should be in the TV Hall of Fame, the Baseball Hall of Fame, and every other Hall of Fame in existence. In essence, this show was as groundbreaking as a show could be. From the opening credits, featuring scenes from episodes that didn’t exist and featured the cast members being jumbled around, to the constant asides to the audience to the quick cuts and sight gags this show set the standard for off the wall comedy. Think about Family Guy’s cutaway gags. The Monkees did it first. MTV videos back when they actually showed videos? Monkees did it first. And don’t forget that the music was a great launching point for country rock and people still love the songs. This is the DVD set I want more than anything.

Sports Night: Back when I kind of lost hope that television was going to turn out to be much of anything this show came along and really made me realize just how wonderful a well written and well acted show could be. The concept was simple, the backstage goings on at an ESPN type network, and most people were confused by thinking that it was a sitcom and about sports except that it was neither. Sports exists in the same way that medicine exists on ER, as something to help out the plot. And while it was a comedy there were no punchlines or wacky neighbors. Just well rounded characters with flaws being witty and urbane. And I would kill to be Jeremy in real life.

Quantum Leap: A science fiction show that did not scare people away by the fact that it was science fiction. That is a rather difficult challenge. When you write a show that features time travel and a wise cracking hologram you are setting yourself up for failure. Instead you had Scott Bakula and Dean Stockwell putting on the best two character show as they were able to subtly build their relationship within weekly plots that could vary from the humorous to the romantic to the dramatic. Also, while a bit overhanded, it was a wonderful show in terms of presenting America in the second half of the twentieth century. As someone who never had a history class get past the civil war a show about the Cuban missle crisis was very enlightening.

Night Court: There are people who will be upest that I do not list Cheers or Seinfeld here. TO be honest, I was never that big of a Seinfeld fan and while I watched Cheers I’m not sure if I can recall that many punch lines. But Night Court I can remember episode after episode. Maybe the best cast of characters ever for a sitcom. Judge Harry, Bull, Dan Fielding, Markie Post (I assume her character had a name), the occasional Mel Torme sighting, the list goes on and on. It was wacky humor in a courtroom, which is something you almost never see. There are a ton of law dramas, some of which try to bring in occasional comedy, but you seldom see it as a setting for comedy. But Night Court worked and was the funniest show out there for a long time.

Real People: The start of reality television. Ok, maybe not (I could probably give that award to Candid Camera) but am I the only one who remembers just how huge of a show this was in the early 80’s? It launched the careers of Sarah Purcell and Skip Stephenson! It consisted almost entirely of badly shot tapes of eccentric people and places across the US followed up by really bad comedy. And Peter Billingsly was also on the show. Never really explained why he was, they just happened to always keep him around the set. Maybe this show was my first indication that if you promote to the lowest common denominator you will never go out of business. The show was stupid and sophomoric and was constantly at the top of the ratings.

How about the girl from Alf? Is she hitched?

Winnie Cooper got married? Why was I just informed of this? Not only was she a teen star but she also has a math theorem named after her (because she created it, not because some mathematician was really, really into the Wonder Years). This is rather disconcerting news. Do you know how long it will take me to teach My Beloved Lindsay advanced calculus? I’m not sure I have enough patience to tackle that challenge.

(Absolutely best survey question I have read in years: What would you pay for a date with the following celebrity? Angelina Jolie won with $2,500 (too much if you ask me). Scarlett Johansen came in at $2,000 (worth it only if she looks exactly like she did in Lost in Translation). Salma Hayek was a freaking steal at $1,000. Seriously, I’d take two and a half dates with Salma Hayek over one date with Angelina Jolie any day of the week. But where did My Beloved Lindsay come in. Survey says that the average male would pay $216 for a date with Lindsay. Sadly, I believe at this point in her career Lindsay would consider that to be a fair price.)

Ugh, wish I had something more interesting to write about tonight but I am dead tired and the inspiration well has run dry. I promise that tomorrow will be the 15 most influential television shows of my lifetime. I was going to write that tonight but my schedule got all out of whack (thank you Mr. President for postponing The Biggest Loser by an hour. Nice to know that you can ruin the nation’s efficiency at your whim.) Tune in tomorrow for all of the fun and excitement. Until then I am going to roll into bed, pull the covers over me and wish that Spring would finally arrive. I saw my breath while I was walking to work this morning. Sometimes I wish that global warming would get here sooner.

And why don't they just name the place BW3 anyway?

Like everyone else I spent a lot of time this weekend watching basketball on television and therefore have much to say on the commercials that I was forced to watch over and over again. This is a yearly feature of the NCAA tournament as a handful of firms decide to buy up all the advertising spots and therefore innundate your subconscious with their sales pitches. The most famous of these is the free credit report singers who if I ever meet on the street will be accidentally pushed into traffic due to how many hours of my life have been wasted by having that jingle running through my brain.

This year’s winner seems to be the Buffalo Wild Wings commercial, which started out being rather funny and clever and now just annoys the hell out of me. They started out with a wonderful concept: basketball players running into objects and being hit in the groin. But on every subsequent viewing I begin to have more and more issues with the commercial. Am I to believe that every BW3 has the ability to influence the outcome of every game? What if one bar wants the game to go into overtime but the other wants it to end so they can watch the UFC fight in peace? Also, are you telling me that in a bar filled with men who have been drinking for hours that not one of them has money riding on the outcome of the game and thus would be incredibly pisssed that the bartender is screwing with them. Wouldn’t some guy who bet the under be going at the bartender’s jugular? And wouldn’t someone notice if players were being targeted by t-shirt cannons during a game? This has bugged me all weekend.

Well that and the NCAA commercial where the guy is performing a chemistry experiment with one hand while holding on to a gymnastic ring with the other. Mainly because I can’t figure out how one could hold their body like that ever. The girl hitting the tennis ball while designing a CAD diagram? Perfectly reasonable. But the gymnast is just silly.

In other pop culture news Ikea is going to be unveiling a new car this week. I am not making this story up. Ikea, best known for affordable furniture with funny names that you must assemble yourself while having three pieces left over, is going into the auto manufacturing business. First off, if there is an industry that I would want to enter right now it would be the auto industry. Second, I have an unnerving feeling that this car will be made out of wood. However, it is nice to know that all repairs could be made simply by using an Allen wrench.

Finally, on a bit more serious note, can everyone just take a second and enjoy life and understand how blessed they are to just be a part of this world. I think with all of the hustle and static and out and out noise of our everyday life we completely miss the fact that we live on a pretty amazing planet with wonderful people surrounding us every day of our lives. I just found out today that another old friend of mine had passed away at much too young of an age and this has happened to me way more often in the past year than I have ever wanted it to. So just take a moment to appreciate those around you, tell them how much they mean to you, and take a few breaths and enjoy the wonder about you. Because it can all disappear and it would be a shame to miss it.

A return to normalcy

I would like to take this moment to welcome Beth the Laptop to the staff of Battling the Current. Yes, I took the time this weekend to go out and buy a new machine to replace Natalie, who best I can gather suffered a video card failure made worse by the fact that the video card is integrated into the motherboard. I still might try to perform some surgery on her but in terms of efficiency it was simply easier for me to buy a new laptop. Beth is basically a newer version of Natalie in terms of make and design but she already seems nicer and more serene than Natalie (much in the same way that Beth Orton is compared to Natalie Portman.)

I will have to offer my apologies for the abundance of typos over the next few weeks as I begin to adjust to a new keyboard. While I am a forty words a minute typist I’ve never had any training so my typing style is abysmal and dependent on muscle memory so any change in keybpard size makes my typing just bad until I relearn the system. This doesn’t look to be too bad but I’ll just warn everyone up front that my posts may make less sense than normal.

(And yes, this means that I am going to have to rerip my entire CD collection to my laptop once again. Well, I guess I really don’t as I did it the first time to load my Zune and I’ve done that but it was very nice to have all of my music at my fingertips no matter what room I was in. At least when I did it the first time I was unemployed and could easily take care of fifty discs at a time while I was submitting resumes to the infinite void online. Now I will have to do it while I legitimately have better things to do with my time.)

Also for those wondering I finally broke down and put Delaware plates on my car today. Yes, as of this evening I no longer drive a car that is from the state of Missouri. I held off for as long as I could but at some point I just had to admit that I had moved. It is not that I have an incredibly strong attachment to Missouri (great friends from there but no real connection to the geography) but there is some strange reaction I get whenever I begin to realize that I am a resident of Delaware. Mainly because I can’t think of anyone else who lives in Delaware besides Joe Biden. I’m serious about this. I’ve been living here for month and I don’t know who else lives here. I assume that there are at least a dozen or so people in the state but to be honest I have no proof of that fact.

The good news is that now that I have that and my laptop situation salted away I can get back to my usual writing schedule. That means that we will have the 15 Influential Television Shows this week as well as the 15 Influential Pop Culture Moments. Also, a return of the music videos, posts written while I am still awake and all of the other fun parts of the blog. Again, apologies for the randomness of the last week or so. When I am sans computer and high speed internet I tend to lose my ability to write.

Best of 120 Minutes: In honor of Beth I find that it is only fitting that I feature a video from her namesake. If someone can explain to me why Velma from Scooby Doo appears halfway through the video I would greatly appreciate it.



The five random CDs for the week:
1) Ben Folds Five “Ben Folds Five”
2) Damien Rice “Live from Union Chappel”
3) Tift Merritt “Tambourine”
4) Tift Merritt “Another Country”
5) Tori Amos “Under the Pink”

Meet George Jetson...

We now have a flying car. Or at least that is what I have gathered from checking out the internet headlines today. It took scientists long enough to build one. When I started my career as an enginner one of my primary goals was "design a flying car". Sure it would be impractical, dangerous and totally unnecessary but it would be super cool and that was before I installed the top of the line sound system. I'd even put hydraulics in it so it could drive, hop and fly. True, no one can now afford a flying car but it is nice to know that we have one.

Of course, the other internet news story is the tragic and altogether bizarre death of Natasha Richardson. It really does boggle the mind how a fall on a beginner's ski slope could end in someone dying but that is just one of those strange things about brain injuries. Something that seems totally innocuous at the time might be the trigger for a horrible event. It just makes me thank my lucky stars that despite my tendency to fall (and the fact that my bathroom floor in KC held a 2-0 record against me with two knockouts) I have never suffered any significant injury to my noggin. Given that my brain is what makes me unique and/or employable that is a very good thing.

Speaking of the internet, an interesting thing has happened to me this week. Since I am on my backup laptop and on dial up until I pick up a new one I have discovered something very interesting about my time management. Mainly, I now have a lot more free time on my hands. I've seriously gained an hour at least every night because I am not constantly checking my email or spending time on YouTube. Even bigger is that I am now avoiding Facebook and Facebook chat. While that is a wonderful way to stay in touch with people (and at times it is the only thing I do that can be considered social) it takes up an amazing amount of time on a daily basis. It is very interesting to just unplug for a few days and realize that you can live without being on Facebook every minute of the day. Or watching hilarious videos of cats riding Roombas.

That is going to be it for tonight as I want to go back to watching basketball. Enjoy the first day of spring! The long winter of our discontent is finally over. Now on to the spring of mild discomfort.

Insert One Shining Moment Theme Here...

Tomorrow is the big day. Typically the NCAA tournament is reason enough for a four day weekend for me. It is the single male’s version of Spring Break made only better when it directly corresponds with St. Patrick’s Day. Sadly this year I will be spending the first round in my office. There are two very good reasons for this: 1) I now have a much more important task to use my vacation days for and 2) There are like three dozen televisions in my office so I won’t even have to move from my desk to watch the games.

Anyway, as is tradition I will now diagnose all of the brackets for those of you who still haven’t; made your picks. It is interesting to note that since I was flying home on Sunday night this marks the first time, well, ever, that I did not write out the brackets in a notebook as they were announced. Keep that in mind while analyzing my choices.

Midwest Region: I’ve got Siena in the 8/9 game just because I appreciate any school that names itself after a Crayola color. The easy upset selection here is North Dakota State over Kansas. Game is being played early in the morning in Minneapolis and the entire state of North Dakota has tickets apparently. I believe that will fill up a row. While tempting, avoid choosing Robert Morris as your upset selection as I can never bring myself to pick any school whose name reminds me that I should call my lawyer. I have Wake Forest in the Sweet Sixteen thus continuing my longstanding tradition of continually losing money by picking Wake Forest to do well in the tournament. (I’m telling you, I could put a kid through college based on what I lost on Tim Duncan. And don’t even get me started on Randolph Childress.) Really this is Louisville’s bracket to lose as the only team I like is West Virginia and I can’t bring myself to pick a Bob Huggins team because if I do I have to spend the next three hours in the shower and it’s the type of dirt that just doesn’t wash off.

West Regional: I love the fact that we have first round matchups in Boise. For some reason every year there are games in Dayton and in Boise, the land of the multi-color key and freaky bounces. There are always a few good upsets in that town. Take Mississippi State as your upset special (Washington really isn’t anything special) and keep an eye on Utah State, the school that always makes you ask “They need two state schools in Utah?” I would take Cornell over Missouri only if there was a Quiz Bowl held at halftime that would be added to the score. Purdue versus Northern Iowa is one of those games I would always end up having to watch while living in the Midwest based on the fact that television networks believed that we all enjoyed watching rather boring basketball played by teams in states that bordered ours. This is an interesting bracket as you have Uconn and Memphis and then not much of anything. Illinois ran Missouri out of the building earlier this year so I can’t really put much behind them. I’m going with Memphis, they might not have played anyone but I just don’t think Connecticut is that good of a squad.

East Regional: Have to love some of the teams in this region. You’ve got Portland State, which isn’t a state, and Binghamton, which sounds like the name of some snotty prep school whose kids complain because they didn’t get a Lexus for their eighteenth birthday. You also have American, the school you must cheer for lest you be considered unpatriotic. (Ten bucks says that on the American University promotional video they play “Proud to be an American” and “Coming to America….Today!” in the background.) Some of these games (like UCLA – VCU) sound like a good game to watch while others (Wisconsin versus Florida State) makes you wish they were being played in the Capital One Bowl. Who do I have winning this bracket? For the twenty third consecutive year I have placed Duke in the Final Four. I don’t even look at matchups anymore. I just pencil them in. To be honest I’m not even that big of a fan of this squad or any of the recent squads. These aren’t the cool nineties teams anymore. No Christian Laettner proving to be the most awesome human being on the face of the earth. No Trajan Langdon making me think that being from Alaska is cool. They just happen to be better than Pitt and that is all they need to be this year.

South Regional: My Illini made the tournament! And we somehow have a fifth seed which means that everyone on the planet has us losing to Western Kentucky in the first round. I don’t see that happening unless their Grimace cousin of a mascot is allowed to play. I’d even try to write Illinois into the Sweet 16 but they won’t be able to get past Gonzaga in Portland. (Also, when I first when through the brackets I thought that it said that Gonzaga was playing Akon. That is a sign that I really did spend too much time selling ringtones.) North Carolina will make it past their first round opponent in Radford even though Radford is so rad they put it in their name. My favorite team in the entire tournament: “Stone Cold” Stephen F. Austin. I assume that they are referred to as either the Texas Rattlesnakes or the Bionic Rednecks or possibly both. Look for a stunning upset of Syracuse in the first round. Interesting that Oklahoma gets to play in Kansas City but Kansas doesn’t. In reality this bracket looks pretty easy as North Carolina should just walk through it. There isn’t a team in the bracket that I think could match them on a good day.

Final Four: Being held in Detroit this year, which makes me wonder what the shots from the Goodyear blimp are going to look like. “As you can see outside the arena next to the Fan Fest the recently foreclosed residents have constructed a shantytown.” Louisville and Memphis will have one of those classic Metro conference games from back when the Metro conference actually existed along with the added benefit of possible punches being thrown between Pitino and Calipari over who has the better hair. Louisville has the better team and makes it to the finals. Duke and Carolina finally meet in the Final Four (which has never happened) and therefore start a second Civil War in the state of North Carolina. The Tar Heels win this one. I’m a fan but hey, while the race isn’t always to the swift and the battle not always to the strong that is how you should bet. In the championship game as much as I hate to say it I have to go with Roy Williams and the Tar Heels. They are just the best team in the country and they know how to win. I think that is all they need to be.

What is in a name

Well, it looks like I will be adding to my laptop collection sooner rather than later. After some checking it appears that Natalie has suffered a rather fatal hardware error. It is fixable, I think, but the time and effort that it would take to completely diagnose, acquire parts and repair could probably be better spent just by getting a new machine and saving myself the hassle. Plus, it would benefit the economy so I could consider myself to be an upstanding American in the process.

However, Natalie's early demise makes me wonder why I didn't name her Lindsay like I had originally thought. She acted much more like a Lindsay: showy, unstable, prone to viruses and leaving the stage much earlier than one would have anticipated.

The most important part of obtaining a new computer is, of course, the naming of it and for that I should give a little background.

My first computer (or at least non-Commodore 64 computer) was a Packard Bell and possibly the only computer that was promoted as having been built out of cheap, second hand parts. I believe a hamster was involved in its operation at one point. What I remember most about it was the fact that when you started it a chipper female voice would say "Welcome to Packard Bell's Navigator". My original plan was to call my first PC Hal (as I am a good Illini) but the female voice required a change of strategy. Hence my first computer (and several after that) were named Helena, partly after Hal and partly after Helena Bonham Carter. This lasted through my first business school laptop (the Helena Mark IV) whose useful existence was cut short by a misplaced bottle of Sprite.

When I picked up the replacement laptop I decided it was time for a change and hence named the new machine Julie (after the lovely and talented Julie Delpy). Given that I am typing this on Julie as we speak I have to say that this has been the best, and certainly longest lasting, machine that I have ever owned. And at nearly eight years Julie outlasts every relationship I have ever had by several miles. Think about it, night after night I sat down at this machine and wrote and surfed the internet and thought. When I bought Natalie to replace her I was actually saddened by the thought that I would no longer be using her.

The obvious question here is why do I name inanimate objects and why do I name them after somewhat famous women (Natalie is short for Natalie Portman.) The naming is pretty straightforward in my mind. When you spend as much time on a computer as I do you begin to develop a rather personal relationship with the machine and it helps if you can speak with it on a first name basis. As for the famous women, while some might argue that it has to do with the screen backdrop I just always view my computers as being female: mysterious, powerful and prone to doing whatever they want to do without my input whatsoever.

So I am putting out a request for ideas on what to name the new laptop. The current leader is Beth in honor of Beth Orton. Any and all suggestions are welcome in the comments. Plus if anyone has any recommendations on what type of machine I should get I would love to hear those as well. Otherwise it will be a trip to Best Buy and a random look about the store and then blindly choosing one. It has worked in the past.

Now boarding group 26

Technical note: Still dealing with laptop issues as Natalie may have gone to a better place. Well, given that she has lived in Kansas City and Delaware that really isn't saying much but let's say I now have less hope for a quick and easy solution. I have gotten Julie back up and running but as an eight year old laptop she has a few quirks. Such as I am not sure how to hook her up to my cable modem so I am on dial up at the moment. I knew I kept that AOL account for a reason. Again, posts may be short and sporadic for the near future. I'll make up for it, I promise.

Now that I live in Philadelphia...well, I don't actually live in Philadelphia. Don't really live anywhere near Philadelphia. More like, "Now that I regularly fly out of Philadelphia I have had to learn to live with the wonders that is the Philadelphia airport and U.S. Airways."

On the surface the Philly airport has a lot going for it. Right off the expressway, on the right side of the city for me, a large parking garage connected to the terminal, and even a Chick-Fil-A inside. However, it still seems to annoy me to no end. First off, can anyone explain to me how the parking works there? There is a remote lot that I a) can't ever seem to find and b) the wait for the buses always seems to resemble the line for the last copter out of Saigon. As a result I pay more to park in the main garage. Every time I go I get a ticket and when I leave to pay I a) hand the cashier my ticket, b) they then ask what state my plates are from (for a reason that baffles me), c) am told that the machine can't read my ticket even though my time is clearly printed on it, and d) that they need to call in a supervisor. This happens every single trip. I was accused of trying to cheat the system this time around. Quite annoying given how freaking expensive it is.

U.S. Airways is the main airline in Philly and as a result is the one I use whenever I need to get anywhere directly. However you should really be careful of any airline where landing in a river is not an uncommon experience. That doesn't bother me (in fact, the actual flying of the planes has been the least of my worries). No, it is the cost cutting measures that are driving me insane.

First off, they charge to check bags. That is not a big deal for me because I just consider that a cost of doing business. It sucks and is horrible but I either need to check a bag or don't and that is never dependent on a company's policy. However that puts me in the minority as now on any flight you have people who have gone beyond bringing on a carry on and have now brought on luggage. This makes getting oberhead bin space a freaking war of attrition and people like me with our wee little overnight bags suffer for it.

This is also an airline that at one point started charging you for that half cup of soda that is three quarters ice. They've cancelled that policy now but I still spend a portion of my pre-flight routine buying gummi bears and Vitamin Water for the flight. (Don't ask why I now drink Vitamin Water. I've been brainwashed by the concept that flavored water is somehow healthy for me.) While they have assigned seats for some reason this makes boarding the plane more difficult than Southwest's Oklahoma Land Rush method. I even think their seats are three inches too short. But they are the one airline I can use to get where I need to go so I use them.

Do I have a point to this rant? Not really. But it makes me wish I had a few more options to get me where I needed to be. Either that or I must really start to work the bugs out of my teleporter.

Please stand by...

We here at Battling the Current would like to apologize for the lack of a post last night. I know many people were looking forward to the 15 influential television shows and whether or not Manimal (he's part man, part animal) would make the list. Sadly, on Wednesday night a vital member of the Battling the Current team was incapacitated. Specifically, Natalie the Laptop had either the screen completey fail or the graphics card explode. All I know is that the failure was massive and spectactular.

As a result I was unable to use my primary laptop last night. I am preparing to go back to Julie the Laptop in much the same way as one returns to an old girlfriend. Mainly a lot of groveling and pleading and explaining that yes, I was tempted by a newer and sleeker model but I have now seen the errors of my ways. It will take some effort and probably a great deal of gifts to get her back online again.

(This would be easier if the computers at my apartment complex would allow me to login to blogger. For some reason that site is blocked.)

So until I address all of these technical difficulties expect updates to become slightly sporadic. I promise that I will finish the influential fifteen. I just have to try to figure out what is wrong with Natalie or see if I need to get a new laptop. Which means we'll have to go through the whole naming process again.

A new type of pain

I am one of those people who will do anything possible to avoid getting out of painful tasks. I guess it isn’t that unusual. That is why people have dishes in their sinks and wait until April 14th to do their taxes. Those are things we just do not ever want to do nor does anyone enjoy doing them. But eventually you are simply forced to man up and take on the inevitable torture.

Hence, I spent the night at the Delaware DMV.

I had put off going for several months because, well, it is rather difficult to make the commitment to actually living in Delaware. It’s not like I felt my Missouri driver’s license and plates gave me some degree of coolness. It’s Missouri for crying out loud. But getting the paperwork done would mean that I am a resident and that I would have to deal with a degree of bureaucracy that even I couldn’t imagine.

You would think it would be simple, right? There are like ten people who actually live in Delaware so there should never be any lines and I could just show up, fill out the paperwork, get my picture taken and leave. But it can’t be that simple. First you have to go to the information desk and be handed a number similar to that at a deli counter. It would have been nice if there was a deli counter there because you definitely need to bring a sandwich. When I got there they were serving number 290. My number? 366. Yep, that made for a fun hour.

Not only did I have to wait but every time they called another number it was announced via this vaguely robotic voice. So not only were you stuck in a room with over a hundred people who just want to get out of there but you also had to hear an announcement every thirty seconds. It was just pure torture. I could feel my life force slowly draining away from me. I have no idea how that was considered better than having a line. Theoretically you could sit down but there weren’t enough seats anyway.

Eventually, after having enough intelligence drained from me that I could deal with the DMV, my number was called and I was able to get my license. What did I need to do after an hour wait? Prove that I could see, show a few utility bills, pay a fee and have my picture taken. How can something that simple take that long? Doesn’t anyone deal with process improvement anymore?

No I didn’t even bother to look at my picture. I probably have the same brain dead look I have on all of my official documentation (how any country lets me in with my passport photo is beyond me.) Getting plates was pretty much the same but had less of a wait and at least there the paperwork made sense. At least the whole vehicle inspection process went smoothly and even though this was an incredibly painful evening I at least have completed the task.

I think that is the one thing about the DMV experience that makes it rewarding: every one has to go through it. Occasionally Bill Gates has to stand in line in order to get his driver’s license picture taken or head over to the DMV to deal with an issue with his plates. There is no way around the process. You have to be there. You have to deal with it. There are no express lanes. It is one of the few places where everyone is equal. Now if it could just be made a little more enjoyable.

Wednesday Night Music Club: Obviously I am in a weird mood at the moment so here is some Arcade Fire. It’s the music I listen to when I feel like breaking stuff.

The Influential 15: Movies

I would like to take a moment to congratulate “The Birdman” Koko B. Ware on his induction into the WWE Hall of Fame. Yes, the guy who brought the parrot to the ring and seemingly lost every match he ever appeared in has made the Hall of Fame. Like everyone else on the internet, I am appalled as to how this makes the WWE look like a sham. If a pro wrestling hall of fame cannot have standards what do we have to look to in this world?

Alright, time for the 15 most influential movies of my life.

Star Wars (Episode IV: A New Hope): Well, duh. This might be the first movie that I ever saw in a theater and I would have been four or five at the time (I certainly remember seeing it at a theater). If I need to explain to you just how awesome this movie is you really shouldn’t be reading the blog. I mean it’s got space ships, lightsabers, grossly inaccurate stormtroopers, poorly designed waste disposal systems and Darth freakin Vader. Oh, and Carrie Fisher doesn’t wear a bra throughout the entire film. ‘Nuff said.

Monty Python and the Holy Grail: Again, there should be no surprise that this film is on the list. Easily my choice for the best comedy of all time. The amazing thing is how well this film has aged. I could watch it tonight and still laugh my ass off even though the film is thirty years old and I’ve seen it a hundred times already. I mean, the Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch? The Knights that say Ni? Sir Not Appearing in this Film? Just brilliance.

Casablanca: If there is any old school actor that I would want to be it would be Humphrey Bogart. He was hard edged cool. A Cary Grant always carried himself with the air of someone who knew he would get his way because he was so handsome. Bogart looked like a guy who was going to smoke half a pack of unfiltered cigarettes, down half a bottle of whiskey and still steal your woman from you by just being gruff and cool at the same time. I consider this to be the best film ever made. Unbelievable writing and acting and an ending that does not cave into Hollywood expectations.

Before Sunrise / Before Sunset: I have to combine these two into one entry because they comprise one ongoing story. Now it is true that part of my including these films is my complete adoration of Julie Delpy and any film that essentially consists of her walking around and talking has my vote. But what really strikes me about these films is how they really do capture what life is like at least for people like me. I am roughly the same age as the characters and the conversations that they have are the same as I have on dates. These strange philosophical discussions on life and love and wondering if you can ever find the one. Before Sunset is the better film because it is messy, as is life.

Kicking and Screaming: No, this is not the one where Will Ferrell coaches a children’s soccer team. I’m talking about the Noah Baumbach that had Parker Posey in it. This is my hidden gem of a film. Few people know about it, or remember it from the mid nineties, but I feel that I could pop in the DVD and make anyone a believer. It is a film that focuses on what happens in those moments after you graduate college. When you have no interest in joining the real world but are now forced to be an adult. It is one of the few films that really speaks to that phase of your life where you are adrift and still find yourself back on the college campus because that is all you know. And it has one of my favorite endings ever, which I won’t spoil for you here.

The Blues Brothers: The quintessential Chicago film. There are a few people who would say Ferris Beuller is more representative of the city but really that is a suburban view of Chicago where you wander around the Art Institute, see a parade and catch a Cubs game. The Blues Brothers captures the grittiness of the city and the sense of the neighborhoods. Oh and the music, don’t forget the music. As a kid in Chicago this was required viewing whenever it was on television. If it was on cable we got to hear all of the swearing and when it was on ABC we got to hear, oh, maybe half the script. But they kept the car chases and that was all that mattered.

Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory: This is the Gene Wilder version and not the Johnny Depp version. If you ask me what is the scariest film of all time I will answer immediately “Willie Wonka”. I’m not much of a horror fan but none of those films have ever freaked me out as much as this film did as a kid. Again, I’ve always wondered why this was required viewing every year. There may not be a movie that will cause greater psychological scarring than this one. First off, why do we unleash the Oompa Loompas (complete with psychedelic graphics) on eight year olds? And even as an adult I have a hard time watching the scene of the boat going through the tunnel. But the ending makes up for all of it. Come with me and you’ll see…

Joe vs. the Volcano: There are only two people on the planet that like this film: Roger Ebert and me. Every other person I have ever met cannot stand this film. You have Meg Ryan playing three separate roles with only the last one being your typical Meg Ryan role. Tom Hanks is being nebbish and depressed the entire film. There are puns and dark humor throughout the entire film as well as the lesson of buying the best luggage possible. For some reason I just think this is a wonderful romance and comedy. Everyone else hates it. Oh well, I can’t always get the world to agree with me.

Office Space: The film for all of us cubicle drones out there. Swingline actually produced a red stapler to meet the demand that this film created. And you have to love any film that references the plot to Superman III. Not only is this film totally hilarious but it is also one of the few that really captures what it is like to be stuck in a meaningless job that you go to just because it is there. If you have ever had your soul forcibly ripped from your body due to office beauracracy, looked around at your coworkers and just shook your head, or just wanted to say “screw it” and walk away this film is for you.

Metropolitan: Whit Stillman’s film about a group of young adults as they go through debutante season in New York. One of those films that I wish I could have written (and given the way it was written and produced is one of the films that made me wonder about whether I should make a go of it as a screenwriter). It’s a very interesting film about how when you are eighteen or nineteen you speak as if you know everything in the world when in reality you are a total idiot. How that is different from when you are thirty five is beyond me. Best line in film “Playing strip poker with an exhibitionist just takes the challenge out of it.”

12 Monkeys: A completely underrated film by Terry Gilliam. The time travel aspects of the film alone are worth a doctoral thesis (who is controlling the time travel, does free will even exist, what the hell does it mean when she says that she is in “insurance?”) It is also a film that keeps you guessing. Not in that bad M. Night Shamalayn way in which you spend the entire film trying to find the twist. Here you follow the plot but are never quite sure where it is going to end up, which is good because neither do the characters. Also, for the guys you get to spend much of the film watching Madeline Stowe while for the ladies there is Brad Pitt. Equal opportunity for all.

Once: Will you just go see this movie, please? It’s just the best film of the past few years. Yes, you might need to put on subtitles in order to understand all of the Irish accents and it really helps for one scene if you speak Czech but by doing so you will be able to watch one of the best romantic movies of all time. And easily the one with the best music ever.

Baseketball: Sigh. I hate to admit how funny I find this movie. I should put something like Caddyshack or Animal House in this spot. Instead I have to settle on Baseketball. Don’t ask me why the guy who reads Shakespeare finds this film so drop dead hilarious. Or why when I am having a bad day this is what I pop into the DVD player. That is just one of the mysteries of my life.

Garden State: While this film isn’t nearly as enlightening on repeated viewings (you tend to start to see massive holes in the plot) it was the first film in many years that made me actually like watching movies again. There were a few years there where I just didn’t care to sit down and watch a movie. They all seemed to be meaningless and blurred into each other. This one was different. Maybe it was because Natalie Portman is purty. I just think it was a rather interesting examination of what happens when for once in your life you decide to actually live.

The Player: Robert Altman’s brilliant examination of Hollywood and what really goes on behind the scenes. Lyle Lovett gets his best role here as he basically has to play a strange looking guy who lurks ominously in the background. Lyle does a great job of it. Also, Tim Robbins wears the best suits in this film. Not to sound all Barney Stinson here but man, I’d kill for a few of those suits.

I think I’ll take a break tomorrow before moving on to the television shows. Writing these lists is a lot tougher than I originally anticipated.

The Influential 15: Books

An interesting fact was brought to my attention by the person who is directly responsible for this interesting fact. A few weeks back I mentioned how difficult it was for me to write when I am incredibly happy and how I felt that I was a better writer when I was cynical and bitter. The odd thing is now that I am smiling on a pretty much constant basis my blog readership has nearly tripled. So apparently people really like reading what Happy Chris has to say. I just promise to do my best to keep it that way.

(Though I will admit that being happy is not a regular state of existence for me. I’ve said in the past that I really view myself like the main character in Herman’s Head where there are several people in charge of my day to day internal operations. Right now they are all scurrying about yelling things like “What do you mean we don’t have a manual on how to deal with happiness?” and “Are you sure that there is no historical data to compare this to?”)

Anyway, time to continue with the Influential 15. Tonight, the 15 books that most influenced my life.

The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy by Douglas Adams: Not only is this one of my favorite books but it is also the one that is most directly responsible for my writing style. The constant asides and footnotes, the slightly detached view of everything, my complete inability to write a coherent plot, it all stems from the dozens of times I sat down to read this book. It is science fiction and humor and philosophy all tied up into one neat little package. Oh, and in one of the sequels you learn how to fly. That is an incredibly useful skill to have.

Winnie the Pooh by A. A. Milne: The story of Eeyore as he confronts the harsh truth of reality while all of the other characters blindly pursue their immature goals. What? Doesn’t everyone read the book that way? This is the one book from my childhood where I still have the actual book on my shelf. The reason is very simple. Christopher Robin was the first character I ever came across who had the same name as I did. There isn’t much more you want as a little kid than to share your name with a favorite character.

The Great Gatsby by F. Scott Fitzgerald: Simply the greatest novel ever written. The reaching for the green light, Gatsby catching time in his hands, the impotent eyes of Dr. Eckelburg, “her voice is full of money” and my favorite scene of all time of Gatsby flinging his dress shirts into the air to show just how successful he has become. I’ve named the blog and the URL after the book, I find myself turning back to it time after time and sometimes I wonder if maybe, just maybe, that fortune teller was right.

Slaughterhouse-Five by Kurt Vonnegut: I wrote a paper on this book in high school and received an A and an F at the same time. Essentially my analysis of the work was spot on but, in writing a book in which the plot goes from the present to the future to the past, my verb tense also would go from the past tense to the future tense to the present tense often within the same sentence. As a result I learned to not base my master’s thesis on stories that involve time travel. While much of the power of this book comes from the fact that it strips the façade off of the glory of war and shows it for what it is: random, cruel and bafflingly meaningless, for me it was the first book that showed me that there are other ways to write. I didn’t understand that novels did not have to follow a linear time frame, that the author does not have to stand apart from his work, until I read this.

13th Gen by Neil Howe and Bill Strauss: Ok, odds are you have never heard of this book and it wouldn’t surprise me. It is a non-fiction examination of Generation X written in the early 90’s (the title 13th Gen is in reference to the fact that Gen X is the 13th American generation since the Declaration of Independence and is seemingly cursed as a result.) They were so spot on in examining our generation and predicting what we would face in the future that it is rather amazing. Reading this was the first inkling I had into looking at society from a cultural and generational perspective and I would like to think that this has influenced my way of thinking ever since.

A History of the World in 10 ½ Chapters by Julian Barnes: It begins with the story of stowaways on Noah’s Ark. It ends with a preview of heaven. In between you find insects on trials, a discussion on why you should always travel with an Irish passport, a view of art history that focuses on history as much as art, and stories about people coming to grips with the world around them. I cannot recommend this book highly enough. Every chapter brings you another bit of brilliance that you never expected to find. Sometimes the book makes you stop and think and feel rather ashamed to be part of the human race. But you never stop being awed by how well written it is. I wish I could write something like this.

The Sandman by Neil Gaiman: It’s not a comic book, it’s a graphic novel! In fact, this collection marks the first time that I felt that comic books could legitimately be considered literature. It is the story of Morpheus, Dream of the Endless, who must decide whether to change after millennia of presiding over the universe in a certain manner. If that sentence doesn’t make much sense all I can say is that after reading the 75 issues it will be perfectly clear. Neil creates his own mythology in this series out of whole cloth. You actually begin to believe that you could check sources from 200 years ago and find a story about the goddess Delirium who was born Delight. Get over the fact that it is a comic book and read it.

The Day the Universe Changed by James Burke: I could pretty much link together all of James Burke’s Connections series (in both book and television form) in this one entry. This is the way to teach history and science in a way that people actually understand. What James focuses on is how seemingly unrelated events can build upon each other until suddenly there is a fundamental change in the way we view the world. Like we wouldn’t be able to fly to the moon unless someone had created the raincoat first. Just fascinating stuff and my first understanding that science can be taught without formulas.

The Comedy of Errors by William Shakespeare: The first Shakespeare play I ever read. I was thirteen years old and in eighth grade. This wasn’t because I was in some amazingly advanced grade school where we read Shakespeare. I did this on my own because I wanted to read Shakespeare. That is the type of kid I was. This did start my long relationship with the Bard as since then I have averaged reading a play a year and have now completed all of the romances along with most of the comedies and tragedies. It took a good decade before I could read and understand what I was reading (as opposed to just looking at a lot of words) but now I can follow the masterpiece without much guidance. One day I would like to teach Shakespeare to kids to see if maybe, just maybe, I could get them to see his work in the same way that I do.

Animal Farm by George Orwell: “All animals are equal but some are more equal than others.” I would say this book had a bigger impact on me than 1984 (though Brave New World probably had an equal impact). Maybe it was more effective because the idea of the story being told via talking pigs seemed more realistic than having the government spying on us 24 hours a day. Oh how naïve I was at 14. Again, this was one of those times when my eyes were opened as to what a story could be. Here was political allegory told in the simplest format imaginable. The symbolism and the meaning were on display but you weren’t pounded over the head with them. And poor, poor Snowball.

The Road by Cormac McCarthy: Yes, I know that this was an Oprah Book Club selection. It also happens to be the best written book that I have come across in the last twenty years. I like to fancy myself as a writer but after reading this book I was tempted to give up knowing that I would never get anywhere near Cormac’s mastery of the language. I will also state that this book is, without a doubt, the most depressing work of fiction I have ever read. It is just brutal and heart wrenching page after page after page. I read it on vacation and one should never be horribly depressed while travelling. They have finished filming the movie but haven’t released it yet because I don’t think people want to see the world brutally end right now for their evening entertainment.

About a Boy by Nick Hornby: I actually prefer this one to High Fidelity. I’m not listing this just because it is a great book. This is also the first book I point to when I say, “This is what I want my novel to be like.” I really want to be the American equivalent to Nick Hornby. Partly because it would mean that I would be a great novelist but mainly because it would give me an excuse to write about music and soccer all day.

Life After God by Douglas Coupland: This is one of my desert island books. Despite the fact that every critical analysis of this book completely pans it I just think it is brilliance. Maybe it is just because I like the tone that Douglas takes in it. A very lackadaisical, pondering, introspective style. It is a book that meanders its way through sets of stories. Occasionally there is a glimpse of wonder but there is never a rush. It is one of those books that I like because of the way it reads.

The Straight Dope by Cecil Adams: The first collection of trivia, miscellany and imponderables that I ever purchased. In it I learned why pigeons bob their heads when they walk and why Betty wasn’t included in Flintstones vitamins. This is vitally important information to have in life. For those who wonder why I seem to know so much minutiae on so many subjects it is because I have spent much of my free time devouring books like this one.

Ulysses by James Joyce: Influential if only because I challenged myself to read it and understand it in one month and I succeeded. Easily one of the most challenging books I have ever read and to be honest it is a very satisfying read. It is just a book that requires a great deal of effort and concentration in order to gain anything close to a full understanding. I’m so proud that I have a picture of myself with a copy of the book in hand standing on the very spot where the novel begins. I might not have an English degree but I have proven to myself that I could if I wanted to.

Tomorrow: Movies. And probably some complaining about how difficult it is to come up with fifteen of these things.

The Influential 15: Music

One of the annoying things about Facebook recently is that I have received a barrage of notes by people filling out questionnaires in order to reveal facets of their deeper personality. This is an extension of the ever popular “25 random things” meme that became so widespread that even I put one together. Now it seems to have become more trivial and I can’t find any reason why I would care who some random person from the past first talked to this morning. I know this seems like a strange rant from someone who has spent the past four and a half years posting his entire life to the internet but I have two reasons why I feel my blog is superior: 1) All of these posts are lovingly hand crafted and are not dependent on questions someone else has devised and 2) After years of building a readership the thought of competition in a more readily accessible form frightens me.

Still, one of the latest notes I received caught my interest. It is to simply list the 15 most influential albums of your life. I liked that idea and have decided to expand it. All week I will be posting top 15 lists of the most influential albums, books, movies, television shows and cultural events of my life. Now note that I am talking influential here and not favorite or best. I will be listing a few things that I absolutely hate. This is a list of what changed my view for good or for bad.

Let’s start with the music list.

Men at Work “Cargo”: This is the first musical recording that I ever purchased with my own money. I bought the cassette at the Musicland inside the North Riverside Mall, for those of you who are intent on tracking every moment of my life. I would like to think that now that Colin Hay is this respected, indie artist that this showed my musical cred at an early age. More likely it is an indication that I liked the song Down Under a lot and wanted to get their new album on the hope that it would just contain 12 different versions of that song.

Nirvana “Nevermind”: All you need to know about me is that I had just turned eighteen when this album was released. The first time I heard the opening guitar riffs on “Smells Like Teen Spirit” the entire universe changed. I was never a hair band type of guy and could never understand what everyone saw in Bon Jovi or Poison. All I needed were to hear those first few seconds of intro and I knew that music had changed. Personally I still find Come As You Are to be the high point musically and from a video perspective. That song was the death of hair metal.

Sting “The Soul Cages”: It probably is odd for anyone who knows my musical tastes now to discover that a) this was the first CD I ever purchased and b) Sting was the first concert I ever attended. I wish it was because I was a huge Police fan but it was more that I was a fan of Sting’s rather whiny solo work. I’m listing this here because it is the first CD of what would become a massive collection and it really is the first step on a journey of a thousand miles.

Jeff Buckley “Grace”: What can I say? I found this album fascinating when I first heard it and anyone who was in college in the early 90s and didn’t think that Last Goodbye explained their life is lying through their teeth. After Jeff’s death (and all of the fame that he gained from it) makes it difficult to appreciate this album for what it was. Everyone paints it to be a glimpse of brilliance from someone who didn’t have a chance to fulfill his potential. I just like it for what it was when I first bought it: an album that you would listen to in the dark at two in the morning in order to see if it helped you to make sense out of life.

Spice Girls “Spice”: For the record, I do not and have never owned this album. But it really should be mentioned in the same sentence as Nevermind. While that album marked the end of hair metal the Spice Girls marked the death of grunge. Sure, we all held onto some hope after Kurt’s death that someone would pick up the mantel but the Spice Girls becoming huge was an indication that we had returned to the age of bubblegum pop. To be honest, I’m not sure if we have left it yet. And as much as I hate to admit it, my mood does brighten whenever I hear “Wannabe”.

Zachary Richard “Snake Bite Love”: I’m not entirely certain if this is the first Zydeco record I purchased or not. If it isn’t it was in the first group as I know I bought it while still in college. First off, if you ever want a starting point in learning the music of Louisiana Zachary Richard is a wonderful place to start. This disc is all sorts of brilliance and that is before you get to a song that consists entirely of singing the praises of crawfish. I’m listing it because it marks the start of my becoming incredibly fluent in a style of music that you never hear on the radio and that is something I think everyone should do at least once in their life.

Kelly Willis “What I Deserve”: It is going too far to say that this disc saved my life but it certainly kept me going during a time when things were really dark. There is just something about her voice that digs into my soul and on certain songs I really do get chills up my spine every time I hear them. It is an album by someone who was ready to give up on the music industry and decided to try to just once create the music that she believed in and not what someone sitting in an office thought was listener friendly. By being true to herself she had the biggest release of her career and gave me something to listen to during many a dark day stuck in a cubicle.

Uncle Tupelo “Anodyne”: The number of chances that I had to see Uncle Tupelo while I was in college and didn’t go astounds me. I really didn’t become a hard core music fan until well into my twenties and by then the band had broken up and I realized that the best music I have ever heard was being played three blocks from my dorm room and I didn’t go. For those less into the history, this is the band that resulted in the formation of Wilco and Son Volt and pretty much paved the way for much of the alternative country scene. This is their final album and is pure brilliance the entire way through. Why does this disc make the list? Because ever since I heard the song “Chickamauga” I have always contemplated the meaning of the lyric “Catch yourself in midair thinking your dreams can never be bought.”

Josh Rouse “Nashville”: For the life of me I am not sure exactly how I ended up buying this disc. At best I may have heard a song from it on the Americana music channel on my cable system. That is a really tenuous start for a trip to the music store to plop down some money on something you are not even sure you will like. But I don’t believe I have ever become a fan of anyone faster than I have of Josh Rouse. I can’t explain what is so wonderful about his music. It’s rather simple singer songwriter stuff but there is something about it that really speaks to me. And for some reason if I listen to his music good things tend to happen to me. He’s my good luck charm.

R.E.M. “Life’s Rich Pageant”: Like every other suburban kid R.E.M. was my entry point into the alternative scene. You really can’t diminish the importance of that; the fact that there was a world beyond Top 40 radio was mind blowing as a 17 year old. Of all their recordings I have to say that Life’s Rich Pageant is the one that best represents the group. There are lyrics that you can comprehend (or at least have words), jangly guitars that stood apart from the rest of the music scene, and one of my favorite songs of all time in “Fall on Me”. It really is the band at its pre-widespread popularity best.

Neko Case and Her Boyfriends “Furnace Room Lullaby”: This record got me into business school. Ok, that is not entirely correct. My GMAT score got me into grad school; this was what I listened to night after night while writing entrance essays. Even the music snob in me is happy that Neko has gained a real following after my first seeing her as one of maybe a hundred people in a bar. Her voice, which is best if heard in a smoky, slightly dingy club, really does sound like Patsy Cline after a tortured love affair. She has my favorite voice on the planet.

The Frames “Set List”: Tough to choose a Frames album that really works for this list so I will go for this one. When I first started listening to them in 2004 it was really difficult to get a sense of their back catalog and this live album was the best in introducing me to their music and give me a sense of just how powerful they were in concert. Given that they have become, in all of their various incarnations, my favorite band I just have to list them here.

Lyle Lovett “Joshua Judges Ruth”: This was the first disc that I purchased that would unequivocally be considered a country record. Lyle was always viewed to be a country act and slightly strange looking. But I was able to get over that hurdle of “Country = Horrible” and start myself on a journey into music that is much closer to my own tastes than I ever imagined. The talent of Lyle cannot be doubted either. This album contains one of the best lines written by any person in any medium, ever: “There is nothing as unwavering as a woman when she has already made up her mind.”

Tori Amos “Little Earthquakes”: Yes, I had to get one of the “Alternative Female” records on the list. The amount of music that I purchased in the 90’s by female singer songwriters was stunning. Some I still count amongst my favorites (Liz Phair), some haven’t aged as well (Sarah McLachlan) and some I really wonder just how drunk I was when I made the purchase (Paula Cole, I am looking in your direction). But much like Nirvana broke the mold so did Tori. No one was making music like this, or at least not that you ever saw on MTV. Imagine seeing Motley Crue’s ode to strip clubs “Girls, Girls, Girls” and then have it be followed up by a song like “Silent All These Years”. It marked a sea change in what music could (and really should) be.

Arcade Fire “Funeral”: There are a lot of discs I could put in this last spot. What I wanted to do was list a more recent one that made me stop what I was doing and go, “You’re not supposed to be able to do that.” Sufjan Stevens and The Polyphonic Spree both fit the bill but I felt it better to acknowledge Arcade Fire because, seriously, no one should be able to make music like they do. It breaks so many rules but in the end you are mesmerized by it. I probably listened to Rebellion (Lies) a dozen times the first night I owned the disc. That is the sign of an influential album.

Tomorrow: My 15 most influential books. See you then.

Best of 120 Minutes: Since I mentioned it, here is the video for Come As You Are.

Nirvana MTV Music

The five random CDs for the week:
1) Air “The Virgin Suicides”
2) Mike Doughty “Haughty Melodic”
3) John Mayer “Any Given Sunday”
4) Bob Dylan “The Essential Bob Dylan”
5) Richard Buckner “S/T”

Now a McRib I could understand...

I will start tonight with a Battling the Current Public Service Announcement. I would like to remind everyone in the United States (including those residents of Indiana who have finally decided to embrace the rest of society) that we are to spring forward this weekend and turn our clocks ahead one hour. Yes, despite the fact that there is still snow on the ground and I am still wearing a heavy winter coat every day we have officially declared it spring in order to get people to either a) use less electricity or b) do more shopping. The government will tell you that the reason is A but in reality it is B. The entire reason behind daily savings time is that it makes it easier to have evening barbecues.

Though do I have to lose an hour of sleep this weekend? I’m so sleep deprived at the moment it is not even funny. All I want to do is lie down and sleep for the next twenty hours except that now it will be nineteen hours because the man has an issue with the ways the clock works. And you know this extra hour of sunlight is just going to increase global warming.

Ok, I’m going to switch gears and talk about our constitutional right as Americans to have McNuggets. Or more accurately, I will discuss the woman who called 911 three (3) times to complain about the fact that they were a) out of McNuggets and b) they wouldn’t give her her money back. Let’s examine this in detail, shall we?

First of all, how the hell does a McDonald’s run out of McNuggets? We’re talking about an item that takes up little storage space and can be stored indefinitely. It’s not like they are making fresh batches of them in the back every day. There is probably a McNugget closet somewhere that contains numerous boxes of the chicken like items and the staff was just too lazy to go back there and get the next box.

Also, the “all sales are final” rule seems to be bizarre even for a fast food restaurant. Times are tough but I can’t imagine a franchise needing to hold onto the four dollars of revenue that they made from the purchase. If times are that tight why can’t they do what every other restaurant does: Add more ice to the soft drinks and cut back on how many fries you put in the bag.

But as much as the employees are in the wrong here (and given the crappy economy I would expect a better level of McDonald’s employee at the moment) we do have to face the fact that a woman called 911 three times to complain about her order of McNuggets. That can be worth one call at most. We’re not talking about a Shamrock Shake here. We’re talking McNuggets. They can barely be described as food. I’m not sure how a four dollar food item can be considered an emergency. Or that she felt the need to call repeatedly and is surprised by the fact that this resulted in her both being arrested and becoming a minor celebrity.

The interesting fact is that this is not that unusual of a story. These stories cross the news wires at pretty regular intervals and it tells you something about our society. We immediately seek retribution from a third party. We can’t solve our own problems, we must always ask for help from someone else who should know what to do. We feel as though the universe owes us so that even a few dollar dispute at a restaurant becomes a capital issue. If we don’t get what we want we will go to war because it is our right to get everything we want. I just don’t think that is a healthy attitude for a society. At some point we must take some responsibility and be at least a little bit zen about the fact that not everything goes as planned. Especially not a food order.

Charlie Brown had a Pencil Pal

I had something very simple, yet rather profound, strike me this morning. One of those thoughts that crosses your mind and you can’t believe that it is in fact true until you spend a good five minutes contemplating it. But after a lot of thought I have come to the following conclusion: I don’t think that I can write in cursive any more.

Mainly because outside of my signature I have not written in cursive for almost twenty years. In college I started to write by printing because I found it more efficient and much easier to read while studying at two in the morning. My handwriting is notoriously bad. Even my printing is difficult to decipher and causes many people to question how I ever received an engineering degree. (The reason behind that is that electrical engineering was the one engineering major at Illinois that did not require a drafting class. I refused to take a class where one could lose points by how they wrote their name on the test.)

Here is a true story about my handwriting (and myself in general). When I was in second grade my mom went to a parent teacher conference and asked what the teacher was doing about my penmanship given that it was so awful. The teacher said, and this is a direct quote, “Someone is going to get paid to read Chris’ handwriting someday.” This tells you three things about myself: 1) I’ve never been able to hold a pencil correctly, 2) I was frighteningly intelligent as a child and 3) It’s highly questionable that I have ever lived up to my potential unless hanging out at bars is now considered an even more noble profession than I previously thought. Though on the last point after reading the New Yorker’s profile on my idol, the late David Foster Wallace, I’m rather happy that I did not take the tortured genius route.

But it is true that I have never been able to hold a pencil correctly. I’m right handed but when I write my hand twists inwards. I have been told that this is a sign that the right side of my brain (the creative side) is struggling for control with the left side of my brain (the logical side). This means that I am one of the few people who can be very mathematical and very creative, which when you look at my life is pretty spot on. I’ll take my writing being illegible as a cost of doing business.

The interesting thing though is I can’t think of a moment in my life where writing in cursive would be a useful skill. The only time I write anything longhand is when I take notes for myself. The last time I wrote a letter, meaning using an actual paper and pen letter, was in college. Everything in my entire life is now computerized with only the rare Christmas card and wedding invitation showing proper cursive print. This makes me wonder just why writing in cursive was considered so important when I was in grade school. Months of my education were taken up learning how to write all of the letters and I really wonder just how much of that muscle memory is still with me. Maybe it is a little sad that in the future kids simply won’t know how to write longhand other than by printing. That the only people who learn how to read cursive are historians studying past documents. That is what happens as slowly the western course of the empire makes its way.

Wednesday Night Music Club: I had someone mention Keane to me today and I don’t think I ever had a chance to post this video. I totally dig this song.

Keane MTV Music

Still needs more secret ingredients

(Yes, I know that the last post should have said seven years and not seventeen years. You can stop emailing me about it. Especially those of you who threatened to call up the University of Illinois so that they could reclaim my engineering degree. When you do complex calculus for a living sometimes simple math can become rather difficult.)

I apologize to those of you who look to this space for coverage of all things relating to reality television and are shocked to find no reference to the events on The Bachelor. I’m sorry but that show does not make my DVR cut. If I want to watch a show about numerous women vying for a guy’s attention I prefer to watch The Rock of Love Bus with Bret Michaels. At least on that show the former porn stars are up front about admitting to being former porn stars and they get to travel to such exciting locales as Indianapolis and Peoria.

Still, The Bachelor dumped his fiancée on national television and pretty much immediately started macking on the girl who came in second? That is pretty incredible (and sleazy) even by reality TV standards. I’m trying to think of worse ways to be dumped and that one may beat the current clubhouse leader of text message while in the office. Though I still feel that singing telegram or person in a gorilla costume carrying balloons might be even worse ways of getting the point across.

Since I am on the reality TV swing I might as well talk about the finale of Top Chef. First off, props for them doing the last two episodes in New Orleans and having the chefs stay at Hotel Monteleone, which is one of my favorite hotels in the city just because of their revolving bar. You have to love any bar that is already spinning before you even start drinking. Plus, they did a really nice job in promoting the rebirth of the food portion of the city and John Besh was able to make an appearance and that guy is simply brilliant with food. Even Emeril’s appearance was well done and spot on with his commentary.

As for the crowning of Top Chef, based on what was shown I have to say that Hosea was the right choice in winning the final competition. I think that his meal was better overall than Stefan’s and was cohesive even without a dessert. (Poor Carla. She just fell apart at the end even though she overachieved like mad and probably has a long career ahead of her as a result of this show.) The interesting thing is that this season is a complete reversal of the ending from two seasons ago. In that one the super efficient and clinical Hung beat out the more expressive Dale. I bring this up because it asks a question about what makes a Top Chef. I would hire Hung and Stefan to be the head chefs at my restaurant but I would want to eat at Hosea’s and Dale’s.

I think that is what makes Top Chef such a good show when it works properly. We all know what good food should be like and we all would like to think that we could run a restaurant properly. Of course, most restaurants crash and burn in the first year so you shouldn’t let that be taken into account. But it is a competition that we can all appreciate and at least have a sense as to who is the best. And it is a real skill as well, as opposed to being able to convince the guy you met two weeks ago on a soundstage that you should be life partners. Well, that is a skill in a sense but not one you can openly promote.

Let's all be rational tomorrow

First off, I would like to wish everyone a safe and wonderful square root day tomorrow. Especially given that we will not have another one of these for seventeen years. What is square root day you may ask? Well, tomorrow is 3/3/09 and if you don’t understand it now then I really think that you should file a lawsuit against your high school math teacher. It still doesn’t match Pi day in two weeks, which I will celebrate in my typical fashion by reciting pi to ten thousand places while drinking a beer after every thousandth place, but it has its moments.

(Sigh. Math humor. I’ve been making these jokes since I was sixteen years old when I came up with math pick up lines during a math contest. Sadly no woman has ever fallen for either “Want to see my slide rule” or “I bet I know where your critical points are.”)

So the Mega Storm (as it was referred to by the local news media) hit last night and….it took me all of an additional five minutes longer to get to work this morning than usual. For the first time ever I would like to thank all of the various DOTs who did a great job in cleaning the roads. Admittedly we didn’t get the foot of snow that was forecast (it looked like four to six inches when I woke up this morning) but the roads were pretty clean. In fact, it was the type of weather that I really like driving in. It wasn’t bad enough that you were in any danger but it was challenging enough to make the drive interesting.

Now as a good Chicagoan when I stepped into my car this morning I was prepared. I had supplies. I had a bottle of water and granola bars for sustenance in case the trip took several hours. I had a full tank of gas in order to place more weight on my rear tires and to provide me with hours of warmth in case I was stranded on a snowbank. And I have my hours of survivor skill training earned from watching Survivorman and Man Vs. Wild. Not only do I have a multi tool and I know how to use it but I also am more than willing to devour whatever small, disgusting insects I may find.

Oh and this just skirts my don’t talk about work rule but it is something that has struck me at several companies. We were officially dismissed early as long as we had a) manager approval and b) were non-essential employees. Now I wasn’t planning on leaving early anyway. Typically driving while it is still snowing just puts you in a worse position. Better to stay later, let all the idiots who got on the road during the storm make their way home, and drive home leisurely on an empty road. But on a day when the market dropped to its lowest level in twelve years do you really want to admit that you are a non-essential employee? It makes me tempted to stay to midnight just to show my belief that the entire company would implode if I was not at my desk. It’s not true of course but it is a nice image to have.

But I am really hoping that this is the last gasp of winter. One of the many reasons I went to New Orleans is that I have just gotten sick of spending several months in the grey and cold every year. Even though I grew up with this weather and there is nothing I love more than a city after a snowfall my body is slowly telling me that years of below zero wind chills have done a number on me. I just want it to be warm again and to be able to walk outside without worrying about hypothermia. That is not too much to hope for, is it?

Every dog has his day

I’ve been promising this story for two weeks now. I figure that I should write it now before various people become so upset at my lack of writing it that they begin to remove some of the less vital organs from my body.

As I mentioned before I spent Valentine’s Day in New Orleans this year with an amazing woman by my side. What was interesting was that leading up to the trip neither of us would admit that we were going to be there on Valentine’s Day. We continually referenced the fact that this was a President’s Day weekend trip. It was easier to justify that we were there to celebrate the man, the myth, the legend that is Millard Fillmore than just saying, “Wouldn’t it be incredible if we ended Valentine’s Day by sitting across from each other at Café du Monde eating beignets and drinking really good coffee?” It’s amazing the way we need to craft every moment of our lives.

But it was Valentine’s Day as well as the start of the major Mardi Gras parades. So on Valentine’s Day we decided to catch one of the ones that runs through the Quarter (Krewe Shangri-La for those who are interested in those sorts of things. It wasn’t exactly one of those things we planned on seeing. More like we knew it was going to happen and while wandering the Quarter we ran into the parade route. So as you always do in New Orleans, when you see a lot of people waiting for something to happen you join in with them.

It wasn’t long before we noticed that we were joined by a small, unleashed dog and his rather interesting owner. Interesting in the ways that only people in Nola can be. She would make her way through the crowd, start conversations with anyone, go up to people in the parade and ask why things weren’t moving and be oblivious to the fact that her dog is just wandering amidst the crowd. She was just one of those women who you know is simply referred to as a character.

My traveling companion views dogs as superior to humans in most aspects so she just immediately took a liking to the little guy and tried to make sure that he was ok. From that we learned his story. The dog’s name was Valentine and he was one of the many pets that survived Katrina. Even she wasn’t sure exactly what he survived on or what he went through but he made it through that mess. She didn’t intend to take him to the parade that day but when she left the house he jumped the fence and followed her. I mean, you couldn’t blame him. It was his day and who wants to miss out on a parade?

The parade itself wasn’t one of those massive ones that go down Canal Street with the huge floats. This was more of a neighborhood feel to it even if it was in the Quarter. You had high school marching bands and dance squads and various people being pulled on horse drawn carriages throwing beads to the crowd. Best was the motorcycle rider in drag who was dressed as “Mary Tyler Ramone.” With all the noise and the crowd though you could see that Valentine was getting a little frightened and without a leash we weren’t sure where he was going to go. So, my traveling companion reached into her bag, undid one of her camera straps, and improvised a leash for the little guy. Like I said, she is a rather amazing woman.

The reason our friend was at the parade was that the king of the parade was a friend of her from work at the fairgrounds. When he came by in his carriage she went up to him to say hi and get a hug. In the Mardi Gras tradition he gave her something special, which was his arm garter that read “Krewe of Shangri-La”. When she came back to the sidewalk she immediately handed it to us as a gift. I was happy to get beads and whatever other trinkets were tossed our way. To get something from the king of a Mardi Gras parade? That is pretty special.

When the parade ended we all went our separate ways. Valentine was released from the Canon leash and he went off with his owner, jauntily walking through the Quarter like he owned the place. Which in a way, he did.

Later that night while walking through another part of the city we came across a guy holding a little puppy. When we asked him his story he explained that he had just picked up this dog from a litter of pups that had been born that morning. The dog’s name? Valentine, of course.

People still wonder what I love about New Orleans. It’s a dirty, smelly, crime ridden city with the ever possible threat that the levees may fail again. But that is what I love about the place. Because the people who live there are there because the city speaks to them. This is their home and they could be whoever they want to be. And all you have to do to experience it is go there and open yourself to the moment.

Best of 120 Minutes: Let’s rock out to some Morphine tonight, shall we?

Morphine MTV Music

The five random CDs of the week:
1) The Postal Service “Give Up”
2) Continental Drifters “Better Day”
3) Nora O’Connor “Til the Dawn”
4) Beth Orton “Pass In Time”
5) The V-Roys “All About Town”