For reasons never fully explained, every song is about how awesome the sun is...

Ok, I am going to be pretty quick tonight as a bit of a work / life driven time crunch has limited my blogging time. However, for those wondering where my priorities lay blogging comes in behind forty minutes of yoga but ahead of finishing the dishes. So I have found inner tranquility that will last until someone notices that I haven’t finished the dishes and that is the one housekeeping job that I am trusted with because I am utterly useless at everything else to the point that even I now wonder how I survived on my own all those years. But I am halfway through week four of the Advanced class of DDP Yoga so I’m not going to complain just yet.

Wednesday Night Music Club: I’m going to keep with my plan of using the Wednesday Night Music Club to continue to talk about music that has been released in the last six months or so. But given that I have really fallen out of the music scene compared to where I was before I am open to any and all suggestions of what I should be listening to at the moment. Once you hit forty you fall out of the target demographic (and the Wal-Mart demographic for that matter) at popular music just goes whizzing by you as you wonder “So is Haim a Corey Haim tribute band?”

Anyway, one of my favorite bands released a new album last fall. The Polyphonic Spree is less a band and more of a cult or at a minimum, three separate bands that were apparently booked to play at the same time and decided to take the stage together. It is the only band that I have seen that has had people playing harp and theremin simultaneously with a nine person choir hanging out in the background. Everyone wears matching robes and Tim Delaughter (formerly of Tripping Daisy for those of you who are also fugitives from Alternative Nation) leads the festivities. For as much of a cynic as I am seeing this band in concert was some of the most fun that I have ever had at a show. It is impossible to leave without feeling happy. I have no idea how these guys even make enough money to tour but if you ever get a chance to see them you really should take it.

Will Charlie Junior still get to wear a headset at Arrowhead?

Reason #537 Why I am glad that I no longer live in Kansas City: Charlie Weis is going to be named offensive coordinator of the Chiefs. Well, at least they got the offensive portion right. I don’t think there is enough barbecue in Kansas City to please that man. Plus, at least we now know who is going to be drafting Jimmy Claussen.

Some interesting comments on the resolutions post and one that I want to touch on. I’ve never even thought that it was an option for me to stop improving. Getting married makes me want to be better as there is now someone else in the picture. One of the many things I love about Kim is that she makes me want to be the best person that I could possibly be. I always kind of thought that was the point of relationships: to become better as a couple than you were as individuals.

That said, it is just part of my personality that I must always try to accomplish something. It bothers me that there are books that I haven’t read or skills that I don’t have. I consider myself lucky in that my pursuits have always been intellectual over the athletic. If my life was basketball I would be at the point where every year I would be getting slightly worse at the game I love. Instead I think that my best years are ahead of me. There are so many opportunities out there and so many Shakespeare plays to read and novels to write.

On that note, I am searching for my next January challenge book, which will also be the first book read on my brand new Kindle, and I am opening it up for suggestions. The idea of the challenge book is that in January I read one of the classics (best defined as a book that has Cliff Notes written for it) for the enlightenment, the challenge and the fact that it is too cold to do anything outside so I might as well stay in and read. List some of your favorites in the comments. I’ll probably post the list of books I read in 2009 tomorrow as well as some synopsis. I’ve been keeping track of every book that I have read since 1998 and, wow, that is an awful lot of my life that has been catalogued.

Last bit, congrats to Andre Dawson for making the Hall of Fame. As a kid Andre was my absolute favorite baseball player. Not when he was with the Cubs though. I was a fan from back in the Expos days even getting my parents to take me to a Cubs – Expos game just to see him play. He was just a top of the line outfielder in the field and at the plate and while some of his numbers aren’t as strong when compared to the steroid era he certainly belongs in the Hall. For once they’ve made a good choice.

11th Best Album of the Decade: The Polyphonic Spree “Together We’re Heavy” (2004): In a perfect world The Polyphonic Spree would be the band for my wedding. That said if I had my way we would march down the aisle through an honor guard of Imperial Stormtroopers so I doubt that I will be placed in charge of wedding planning. Still, this is one of the first in a theme on the Top 15 list, which is the band that breaks all the rules. You aren’t supposed to have a twenty plus member band featuring a nine person choir and a harpist. You can’t take the stage in multi-colored choir robes looking like a bizarre cult. You can’t have all your songs about how awesome the sun is. But that is The Polyphonic Spree and I love them for it.

At least I still have my health

I was requested to write about Obama’s policy stance tonight and since my primetime schedule was once again put into disarray by a news conference I thought that it would be best to discuss my views on the subject. I’m not sure how my views fall amidst the political spectrum but here it goes. Time for all of the health care aficionados out there to get their fill of news.

I will start with the points that I feel everyone agrees on. Health care is too expensive, too many people are uninsured to the point that they create an overall tax on the system, and the fear of losing coverage or being denied for a preexisting condition is overwhelming. All of those are issues that need to be addressed. However, I’m not sure the Obama plan is the right way to go about it.

First off, while he backed off the August deadline for a bill I am still upset with the timeline to begin with. Right now I see the overall health of the economy as the major focus and reforming health care is a priority but not the top priority. If this passed next year it wouldn’t be a big deal given the lead time it will take for any changes to go into effect. Given the size of the deficits that we are currently facing (and the fact that we may need another stimulus bill in the near future) this seems to be a diversion we do not need. Though I will give Obama credit for his point that the only way to get anything done in Washington is to force a deadline.

My main issue is the focus on universal coverage. The point of this version of health care reform is to get everyone insured, via the government if need be, at a rather tremendous expense to the overall system. I’m against that view because once you start down that path of universal coverage you quickly slide down the slope to socialized medicine. Sure, I’m insured via my company but if the government would also insure me what would stop my company (or any company for that matter) to stop my insurance and force me to the government plan. Pretty soon, everyone is insured by the government and we have socialized medicine.

And please do not tell me about the wonders of socialized medicine. I have been in an emergency room in England in so much pain that I blacked out at one point. I have never been through such a hellish experience as I went through that night. Every single step of the process from the waiting room onward made me wonder if the whole thing was just a massive bureaucratic joke. And what was I given for a severely separated shoulder and significant muscle tears throughout my arm? A handful of ibuprofen and a sling suitable for a Revolutionary War reenactor. Add in the year long waits for surgery in Canada for something that would get done in a week in the US and there is no way I want to go to that model.

In a way I really view universal coverage to be un-American. What we truly want is universal access to insurance. No one likes the idea of being forced to do something in this country, which is one of the reasons why we can’t even have standardized identification cards. But we do want a level of fairness for everyone. So what I would like to see is a level of catastrophic care insurance provided by private insurers but government backed that everyone will have the right to purchase. If you choose not that is your own decision and it may work out or it may bankrupt you. But you would be guaranteed an option.

So what would I want to see? Let’s have the universal access to catastrophic care as well as better regulation on what defines a preexisting condition. Make it easier to transfer coverage from employer to employer knowing that one day we will have to scrap the whole employer model anyway and go to a market based approach. Go after the inefficiencies in the current system that were going to pay for the overall changes and just take that cost out of the system to begin with. Reform the malpractice laws to help reduce the costs as well. And take the time to get it right. All government plans go over cost and we are already at an unstable deficit level as it is. We can’t add more deficits into the system so whatever we do can’t add additional cost into the system.

I’d just like to wait until we had the Dow over 9,000 before we tried to undertake such a massive project. I’d be even happier if the Dow was over 10K at which point I would feel safe in saying that the economy was back in the right direction. But right now our main focus should be on the economy and double digit unemployment. Until that comes back under control we have some much more serious issues on the table.

Wednesday Night Music Club: Also, under my medical plan The Polyphonic Spree will be located in every hospital.

Just wow...

Wednesday Night Music Club: In a change of pace the Wednesday Night Music Club will be on Sunday this week while the best of 120 Minutes will be on Wednesday. Part of this is due to the fact that it is my blog and I’ll do whatever the hell I damn well please with it. Partly it is due to the fact that I feel that calendars and clocks are part of an oppressive regime focused on destroying creativity (though my boss never views it quite the same way). But mainly it is because I really, really don’t want to wait until Wednesday to talk about the Polyphonic Spree.

(That would be the wild band shown above. Typically I hate people who decide to videotape shows from the crowd because I never understood what the enjoyment was of capturing out of focus video with really bad sound. However, in this instance it might be the only way to explain what I saw on Saturday.)

Yep, I went to The Polyphonic Spree show in Lawrence on Saturday night and it was, in a word, insane. I’m not sure if there is any other way to describe the band. I mean, 21 people were on stage at the same time. There was a six woman choir performing orchestrated dance moves that consisted mainly of whipping their hair around. There were two violinists, a cellist and a full brass section. There was a flutist (or flautist I’m never sure which is which) who gave the most energetic performance I’ve ever seen with that instrument on a rock stage. (Though truth be told, I’ve never seen Jethro Tull) For crying out loud, they even had their own harpist. To call this a band gives a disservice to the word band.

Leading it all is Tim DeLaughter, the former frontman for Tripping Daisy. I’m not sure where he came up with this idea or how he convinced everyone to go along with it but he has created something that is so amazing I’m not sure if I can describe it. Basically, this band rocks. I saw them at the Granada, which is not a big venue at all, so you just have 21 people going full energy at all times. If you’re not playing your instrument you are singing along. Tim leads the show somewhere along the lines of a religious revival. Standing on the monitors, leaning into the crowd, just exhorting everyone to relish this precise moment.

(He actually said that. “Remember that you will only have this night, this moment, once in your entire life. Make it one that you’ll remember forty years from now.”)

The songs are vaguely psychedelic and half of them seem to be about how awesome the sun is. That probably explains why the hippie girl who was dancing wildly beside me grabbed my arm at one point, looked me dead in the eye and yelled “It’s the sun!” That didn’t happen at the Drive By Truckers show. The clip is from my favorite Spree song, “Hold Me Now”, which is upbeat and happy and just shows how amazing the band is. I was singing along at full volume, as was most of the crowd. If you know me you probably can’t imagine seeing me sing along with the band. I’m usually hanging out next to the soundboard, drinking a beer and complaining about the band’s lack of proper bridge structure. With the Spree you just don’t care about any of that shit. You just want to sing and bounce and feel alive. Outside of The Frames, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a band that when I left I wanted to go out and change the world.

Some other highlights: 1) They had a red banner across the stage to hide the setup. When they started playing they put a spotlight on it and someone held their hands up in the shape of a heart. Tim then cut the banner, following the heart shape. 2) At one point Tim grabbed someone’s cel phone (who had it up in the air so a friend could hear) and started singing into the phone, 3) For the encore they came out in their traditional choir robes and walked through the crowd, 4) The show only cost $16 so I paid less than a buck per band member.

Seriously, if you ever get the chance to see these guys you have to. There really is nothing like it out there.

The five random CDs for the week:
1) Robert Earl Keen “What I Really Mean”
2) Pieta Brown “Pieta Brown”
3) Richard Buckner “Dents and Shells”
4) Cowboy Junkies “200 More Miles”
5) U2 “Boy”