Closing thoughts for now...

Note #1: For those of you who wonder about these things, I went 0 for 5 in the Notre Dame Football Ticket Lottery, which means barring a very unforeseen circumstance I won’t make it to a game this year. I accept getting a refund for the tickets I tried to purchase but can I ask for a refund on my donation as well? I mean, can’t I get at least one game? Oh well, I knew the year that I got four games would come back to haunt me eventually.

Note #2: Battling the Current Volume 2 will hopefully be put together over the weekend. For those who are new to the blog, this is a CD that basically doubles for the soundtrack of my life. Or the soundtrack to a Cameron Crowe film that hasn’t yet been made, it’s been described both ways. I’ll let everyone know when it is done and I’ll put out the request for addresses and the like so you can all get your free gift for reading whatever thoughts pop into my head on a nightly basis.

Ok, I’ll try to wrap up the New Orleans stories with a bunch of quick points. I’ll probably post more pictures over the weekend but I kind of have the feeling that the masses are just waiting to hear my opinion on the new Paris Hilton single and I can’t deny the crowd what they want. So, some closing thoughts.

1) Here is my description of the new Bourbon Street. Have you ever noticed that when you are in a packed bar with people just completely wasted all around you that you always feel safe. It doesn’t matter how drunk you are, you just feel at ease in the situation. But if you are in an empty bar and there are two guys in the corner who are really drunk you get really nervous about what might happen next. That’s basically the way that Bourbon Street is right now, it’s an empty bar with a few really drunk people in it. Whereas before you felt safe just because of pure numbers now if someone wants to make trouble there are much fewer targets around. It is really disconcerting and it is made worse by having places close at one in the morning.

2) I previously thought that I had done everything on Bourbon Street that was humanly possible and a few things that aren’t. But, I think I topped everything this year by walking down Bourbon Street while talking with a nun. Seriously, through the heart of Bourbon past all the clubs while talking to Sr. Vicki. There were so many opportunities for humor there that I basically couldn’t talk.

3) For those who know the story from last year and are wondering what happened this time: a) I didn’t run into her, b) while I didn’t specifically go out looking for her I did keep my eyes open and c) it does bother me that I didn’t keep my promise when she asked me “When you move down here, look me up.” That said, you can already tell what an ending to a story I’m working on is going to be.

4) Incredibly, if you asked me which stores survived Katrina completely unscathed it would be the tacky t-shirt shops in the Quarter. They are all back up and running like nothing ever happened (while my art gallery is only open on weekends so I was forced to stare longingly through the window at paintings I would really like to buy.) It’s amazing, some of the landmarks like Preservation Hall are still closed but you can still buy the same bad tourist t-shirt that you could a decade ago. Still, the best new shirt has to be “I stayed for Katrina and all I got was this lousy t-shirt, a brand new Cadillac and a plasma TV.”

5) We did hit Café du Monde as a group so I got to have my coffee and beignets like I always do. It does bug me that they actually cleaned the place and replaced some of the ovens post-Katrina since it was the first time that they had ever had a chance to in years. You used to be able to taste the history in that place. You don’t want a clean coffee pot, you want a coffee pot that has been working continuously for twenty years.

6) I’ll post the picture over the weekend but a) my place in Pirate’s Alley is still standing and b) it is still for sale. And yes, I was once again tempted to call up a real estate agent and figure out how many organs I would need to sell to be able to afford it. I mean, you don’t really need both kidneys, do you? Well, in New Orleans you probably would…

7) One of the best ideas of the trip goes to Julie (thanks for the comment by the way), who as we stood around Café du Monde trying to figure out where to go threw out the suggestion of Molly’s, which was awesome. Molly’s is the bar that did not close during Katrina, they stayed open without electricity and served warm drinks to anyone who would walk inside. It is a real place in the Quarter, which is a nice change after spending time on Bourbon Street. Plus, Pete threw a lot of money in the jukebox and that meant that I got to take over at one point and play Social Distortion, Wilco, John Hiatt, the Radiators and the Old 97’s. Man, that was a good night. That was one of those nights where you just got to wander around and talk to everyone as we took over the entire bar. Closest thing to the Backer that I’ve experienced in a long time.

8) I said it before and I’ll say it again, I can solve every problem in my life over gumbo and etoufee at The Gumbo Shop. If there was one place that I was very glad to see open that was it.

9) New Orleans is bruised and battered and much of the city seems to be missing. I spent a lot of time noticing what wasn’t there, like the children and the vendors and the people that gave the city it’s unique flavor. But you caught glimpses of it and you knew that everyone was trying so hard to bring it back. And the place still feels like home to me. It’s not the same city that I experienced last year but somewhere in my soul it is still my home. And I’m happy that that feeling still remains.

Ruins and rebirth...

(Top photo: My team of Megan, Natalie, EC, Julie and Keith. We lacked a fancy name but were universally considered to be the team most likely to be off searching for coffee.)

(Bottom photo: Miss Patty and sons along with a good portion of the Vincentian wrecking crew. EC is hanging out somewhere in the back of the crowd.)

Amy the lead Catholic Charities volunteer: “This is not a feel good mission. It is going to suck.”

Sometimes when you do volunteer work it is more for you than anyone else. It’s along the lines of “Let’s go clean up a park” or “Let’s paint a house” and while those are all very meaningful tasks and they take effort that most people won’t expend it is all a positive effort. This trip wasn’t like that. Our job was to basically dismantle someone’s home while they watched.

Think about that for a moment. You have worked your entire life to own this house and all of your memories are tied to this one place that you called home. You raised your kids here, you expected everything to stay relatively the same. Then you leave before Katrina hits and watch on television the water reaching the level of the overpass and know that your house is flooded. When you return it is still standing but everything inside is damaged or destroyed. And the only way to rebuild is to tear everything out and get back to the base level.

That’s where we came in. Over four days we gutted five houses down to the studs and the base floorboards and while I know that the owners (of which Miss Patty was one) were grateful for our work it must have been the toughest thing in the world to watch. Because we really were tearing out all that they had accomplished and tossing it in a dumpster and that simply was what just had to be done in order to move on.

To give you a sense of what the houses were like I would guess that there was probably a foot or two of standing water in each house post-Katrina and these houses were all raised off the ground to begin with. Each wall had visible mold growing on it to at least four feet and in some instances it reached the ceiling. All that could be done is grab a crowbar and tear out all of the walls to the studs. Which we did and while it was tough work there are always some good moments in the mix.

For example, tearing down dry wall is an awful lot of fun. Just grab a crowbar and start swinging until huge sheets of wall are crashing down to the ground (often smacking my legs and resulting in more bruises than I really want to admit that I have.) It was a nice way to get out some of that latent anger and have the thought in the back of my mind that “Wow, my dad would be really proud of me right now.” On the other hand, one of the houses was old, which meant that the walls were plaster on top of tile on top of more plaster on top of wood slats. It was brutal work just to get to the slats at which point you basically wanted to collapse and hope that someone else would take over.

Because remember, this is July in New Orleans. It is brutally hot out and you are wearing jeans and work boots and one of those protective masks that make it a challenge to breathe. After about twenty minutes you are just one big pile of sweat and are constantly stepping out to catch your breath and down another bottle of water. And while I am proud of myself for consistently churning out 5Ks on the treadmill every week I really have no stamina. That or I really have to ratchet up the workouts.

(That said, I still think I did my share of work. I wasn’t the best worker there, not by a long shot, but I still did better than I had hoped.)

Of course, all of the floors were ruined so we had to tear out the floorboards as well. And here is where I have to mention something about Amy again. Occasionally I mention something that I find that any woman can do to become incredibly attractive to guys. Like having extensive knowledge of the Star Wars universe or being conversant in college football lore. Well, I am going to have to add “The ability to tear out floorboards with her bare hands” to the list because, well, damn. That was impressive. The fact that she was simultaneously ripping into me for a) wearing a Notre Dame shirt and b) tiring out halfway through the room just somehow made it cooler.

I did avoid the job of ripping up the tile floors because, well, I’ve done that job before and it sucks. It sucked when my dad made me do it in our kitchen and if I could avoid it while volunteering I would. There was this fun moment of the women on our team ripping up the tile and I would just look over into the room and see a look of maybe not hatred but damn close to it sent back in our direction for not assisting in the effort. That is when I pretty much decided that I will stick with my trusty crowbar and rip up floors, which involves boards violently cracking and sounds really cool.

So the work was tiring and messy but fun in a weird way. And in the end I didn’t feel bad for what I had done (or really what we had to do) because of something that Miss Patty said. She said that she was certain that they were just going to demolish the house. Just bring in the bulldozer and level the entire place, it was just that bleak when you walked inside the house. But she walked back through when she had seen the work that we had done and for the first time in a long time she had hope. She saw that the roof was still good and the outside walls were fine and there was an opportunity to rebuild. There was still a lot of work to be done but she had hope. She could finally see where that next step would be.

We certainly didn’t solve the problem in a week. Gutting five houses really is just a drop in the bucket given all that needs to be done. But to know that a few people feel closer to being home again, that they have the hope that everything will be ok in the end, that is what made all of the hard work and the sweat and the dust worthwhile. That’s what we accomplished at the end of the day, we provided hope.

Thoughts on the city

Well, I got my ass handed to me again in trivia tonight. I don’t like having to pay to have my confidence rattled. I mean, if I need to be reminded that I know nothing I could just go to work. But, I do take a small bit of pride in the fact that I knew none of the answers to the Sex and the City questions. Not as much pride as I took on Friday night when I knew all of the answers in the pro wrestling category but pride nonetheless.

(Yes, I aced a pro wrestling category and was damn pleased with myself for it. Whenever I complain about the state of my social life remind me to read that last bit over again. It probably explains everything.)

Anyway, I thought that today I’d give some of my impressions on the city of New Orleans and the way things stand right now. (More pictures tomorrow, it’s too late to deal with a dial up modem and large files.) I have a feeling that most people believe that the city is either a) a barren wasteland or b) perfectly fine. The answer is somewhere in between though probably a bit more towards the former than the latter.

We’ll start on the positive: the French Quarter is perfectly fine. From an architectural standpoint you wouldn’t even know that a hurricane came through town. There is still that sense of decay and griminess but that has probably been there for the past century. Canal Street is a bit of a mess, it always is but this time it is worse. Lots of boarded up store fronts and a sense of nothing has been cleaned up for a long time.

As you move deeper into the city the devastation becomes more apparent. To get to the church that was our base of operations we would go down St. Charles Ave. and as you made your way you would see businesses that haven’t reopened and buildings in various states of disrepair. Certain areas would be fine but there was a general sense of things being off, like the streetcar not running down the center of the road. Then when you made your way into the neighborhoods things just got worse and worse. I started looking for the water line on the exterior of buildings and where we were (mainly Uptown and the lakefront by UNO) the line was up a good four or five feet on the side of the buildings. And you know the water was that high for a week.

I did spend a little time in the ninth ward and I’m still not sure if I can quite come to grips with that. Houses were just completely destroyed, just off their foundations and left untouched for nearly a year. It really just tore at your heart, every direction you looked you knew that all of the houses were unlivable and each one had that dreaded X with the date it was searched and what was found inside spray painted on the side. I don’t think I even tried to comprehend what I was seeing there, my mind found it much better to just shut off at that point.

But the biggest thing that struck me during my entire time down there was the lack of people. It is really disconcerting to walk down a street in the Quarter and not have anyone around you. What got me the most was not what was damaged but what simply wasn’t there anymore. You walk into Jackson Square and no one was there. No painters, no fortune tellers, even the doors to the Cathedral were locked. No street musicians hanging out on Royal, no kids dancing on the sidewalk, no guys coming up to you betting that they can guess where you got your shoes at. All of those things that made New Orleans a unique place and really gave the city its soul haven’t made their way back.

Here’s my best example of the way the city is right now. The good news is that Pat O’Brien’s is open and has no visible damage that I saw. Walk in there and it looks the same as it always did. Except that the piano bar isn’t open, we had a group of twenty walk in and get our own section, and they are closed on Tuesdays. When Pat O’s can stay open seven days a week it tells you how few people are in town.

But there are still good signs. The areas that we worked had people living in FEMA trailers or in houses that had already been rehabbed. I did see some of the street musicians that I remembered from last year, though they were much fewer in number. And many of the stores (including my art gallery) are back open, just in much limited hours. So Nola is coming back to life, just not all at once. And that gives me some hope.

And hope is what I will be writing about tomorrow, when I discuss more of what I was actually doing down there.

What I Did On My Summer Vacation (Part One)

Ok, I lied…

Well, maybe lie is too harsh of a word but I definitely did not tell the entire truth. Let me explain…

See, when I wrote last time that I needed a sabbatical from the blog due to the fact that I had run out of material and could not find a way to write about Lindsay Lohan again and make it at all interesting is undoubtedly true. It was also true three months ago and probably five minutes after I first created the blog. So, while I needed a break that isn’t why I didn’t write last week. The real reason is that I knew that I was going to be spending the week sans laptop and I wanted to create an air of mystery as to what precisely I was doing.

(Why? Because while I have a lot of fun letting the entire interweb know the inner workings of my life I am a little paranoid about letting the universe know when I am out of town. Yes, I do greatly overestimate the number of people who actually read these posts.)

Still, this doesn’t explain the picture or the lack of posts. Here is the story.

A few months back I got an email from the young adult group at my church. A group that I am technically a member of in that I am a) arguably young, b) can questionably be considered an adult and c) too lazy to get off of their email list. In the email they mentioned that a group of people were organizing a trip to New Orleans to spend a week volunteering in the city and helping with the cleanup and restoration efforts.

I read it and I thought, “That is something I really should do.” Then the logical part of my brain went “Dude, it’s doing construction in New Orleans in July and you’ve been injured to the point of an emergency room visit while just walking down a street. This is not a good idea.” But later that night I ended up at the end of the bar in a pondering mood and thinking about how much I love Nola and how I never felt that I did enough post-Katrina. Sure I donated but it never felt like enough. And this was an opportunity that I just could not see myself passing up. So I signed up to work with a group of people I didn’t know and without a great sense of exactly what I would be doing.

Well, last week was my week back in the Big Easy and as you can see, it wasn’t my usual trip down there. But it was without a doubt one of the best things that I have done in years. It was incredibly good for my soul (moving the needle from my being “Pure evil” to now just being “Mostly evil”) and I got to feel like I’ve actually done something useful with my life for once. True, the usefulness involved my proficiency with using a crowbar, which I know that no one reading this is actually going to believe but I am surprisingly effective at taking down drywall. It was an unforgettable experience with some images of devastation that will linger with me along with moments of rebirth and humor and just that sense of the world finally making sense that always comes over me as I walk down Pirate’s Alley on a summer day.

I have a lot of stories to tell and pictures to share, so expect to see them throughout the week. I am back, though I am admittedly bruised and battered and tired as all get out. And while this might not be what most people would do on their summer vacation it certainly was the right thing for me to do.

(Even if it meant that I missed both “I Love the 70’s Part II” and “The World Series of Pop Culture” on VH-1 this week. I am so upset about that, especially when I saw how bad some of those pop culture teams were. I mean, they couldn’t name the dog on the Simpsons? I could win that competition by myself. Oh well, at least Flavor of Love 2 is coming up next month and that will be some quality television.)

The five random CDs for the week

1) Chris Mills “Kiss It Goodbye”
2) Loreena McKennitt “The Mask and the Mirror”
3) Howie Day “Australia”
4) C. J. Chenier “The Big Squeeze”
5) The Insiders “Fate in Action”

Not so good with names...

For the record, if Slugger was arrested for assaulting a police officer I would not consider it a sign of how Kansas City is a cultural backwater. Rather, I would consider it to be the coolest thing to happen in this town since Charlie Parker left. There is nothing better than a guy in a costume taking a swing at a cop and then trying to blend in with a crowd. That is brilliant on so many levels.

Ok, announcement time. After a lot of thought I’ve decided that the posts have been a little lacking in quality as of late. Possibly due to the fact that writing five days a week, every week, for a year and a half is a bit of a challenge in the material department. There is only so much about Lindsay Lohan that one can write without having charges filed against them. So, I have decided to take a one week sabbatical. That’s it, just a week off to recharge the batteries, build up a backlog of stories, and just remember what life was like before coming home from the bar meant that I still had to sit down at a laptop and write. I’ll be back in regular form on the 16th so please come back. I know that for my regular readers (and I thank all of you) that this may be jarring but trust me, it will be well worth it.

Anyway, here is my attempt at humor before my sabbatical. For the past two years or so it has been part of my job requirements to research a bunch of other companies. Yes, despite the fact that the two jobs are so completely opposite of each other I can’t believe that they are in the same company, I still end up looking at lists of company names. And after awhile you begin to wonder just who named these things and did they have any clue about some of the other connotations. Here are some of my favorites.

Hooker Furniture Corporation: I just want to know how the admins answer the phone there. Or the sales staff. “So are you interested in some hooker furniture?” “You look to be someone who needs hooker furniture.” The possibilities are endless.

Bi-Mart: Yes, the convenience store for people who just cannot make up their minds.

Fatburger: Come for the burger, stay for the pound of lard that we ladle on top of it. I assume their company slogan is somewhere along the lines of “Yeah, our product is probably going to kill you but at least we’re upfront about it. I mean, when you eat at Fatburger you know that you might as well sign up for the heart transplant while waiting in line.”

Kum’n’go: It’s a convenience store. Honestly, this is the name of a convenience store. Yeah I know, it certainly would be an appropriate name for a few other types of stores but it really is a convenience store. I just don’t want to know what may be inside that convenience store.

Wang Computers: An oldie but a goodie. A true story from back in my days at the electric company. Back in the eighties when people didn’t have computers and had to use their fingers and toes to count it was up to the secretaries to do all the typing. And since this was an engineering group the secretary was typically the only female in the department. So, it was a big deal when the secretaries got a Wang computer for word processing. It also meant that my boss was told by his supervisor, “To make sure that your secretary has a Wang on her desk.” Add that to the fact that they could drink during lunch and smoke in the office and you know why I sometimes feel like I was born a decade too late.

And finally, my new favorite…

BJ’s Wholesale Club: Because only suckers pay retail…

See you all in a week or so. Have fun and stay safe.

Ribbie and Rhubarb and Leopold and Loeb

Earlier this week I was talking about living in Kansas City versus living in Chicago. Well, there was another event in the news that reminded me why I miss living in Chicago. Benny the Bull, the lovable Chicago Bull mascot (who hangs out with the Luv-a-bulls) was arrested at Taste of Chicago for taking a swing at the cops. And then trying to evade police by disappearing into the crowd in a bright red, fuzzy bull costume. See, you just do not get that type of action in Kansas City. Slugger doesn’t challenge a cop, that Chuck E. Cheese reject that the Chiefs call a mascot never gets taken down by a taser, the Wiz’s mascot, well, who the hell cares about the Wiz anyway.

Incredibly, this is the second Bulls mascot to be arrested in the past year. Da Bull, Benny the Bull’s assistant (and yes, the Bulls require two mascots to keep the crowd occupied), was busted on drug possession charges a few years back. Now that my friends is why I miss Chicago. Even the mascots are hardcore.

Anyway, I’m bummed because we had another second place finish in trivia tonight and there were about a half dozen questions that we had right but screwed up, any of which would have won it for us. Just a lot of second guessing and misspellings that ended up costing us in the end. Still, it was a good time though if I could just remember who the current Royals are (which was one of the categories) we might have won the whole thing. Oh well, apparently I can’t win them all.

Otherwise this was a rather calm day back in the office. There were probably more people back than expected and definitely more people back than the cafeteria staff expected. I love waiting ten minutes to order my food and another ten minutes to pay for it, it makes eating at my desk seem productive by comparison. Still, I actually accomplished real work today, which for the first day back is pretty astounding. It’s like no one should ever be expected to be productive that first day back from vacation. It should just be “Show up, clean out your email, and try not to spend the entire time wishing that you were still out of the office.” That’s pretty much standard operating procedure.

Sorry, but I’m really short on ideas tonight. Tomorrow will be better and there will be a very important announcement as well. You’ll all find out soon enough.

In the year 2011...

A week or so back I was asked to write up for work where I envisioned myself in five years. I was so tempted to write the following.

“In five years I shall have accomplished the majority of my goal of taking over the world. Nations shall tremble at the very sound of my name. Armies shall be poised to act upon my every whim. Statues of me will be raised in the squares of cities around the globe with celebrations that will make carnivale appear to be a church picnic. Mothers will look into the eyes of their newborn and pray that their child could grow up to be just like EC.

That, or I’d like to have a cubicle with a window. Right now it’s pretty much an either/or proposition.”

Yeah, sometimes honesty isn’t the best policy.

(Why yes, The Brain from Pinky and the Brain is one of my favorite characters of all time. What makes you ask?)

Oh well, the long weekend is almost over and I’m almost looking forward to getting back to work. I said almost because, well, I am human after all. I’ll look forward to going to the office when going to the office implies sitting on my couch and watching ESPN Classic all afternoon (well, except for Arliss, how the hell did that make the programming chart?) But I am running out of things to do in my apartment. I’ve cleaned and organized everything that needs to be cleaned or organized. I mean, you can even see the floor now. Not that that is entirely a good thing but you can now be assured that my apartment actually has a floor. I give it a good forty eight hours before entropy returns.

I was never able to pull off that argument with my mom. “Clean up your room.” “But disorder is the natural state of the universe. By cleaning my room all I am doing is slowing down the inevitable.” For some reason, conceptual physics is not the best tact to take in an argument.

One last random note: last week Pandora.com decided that based on my vast musical collection that I was really in the mood for Shania Twain songs. I’ve never felt simultaneously depressed and embarrassed in my life. Years of searching out the most obscure and talented artists and all that means is that I really should be listening to vapid country pop from Canada. And it’s based on a computer algorithm so you know it has to be right.

Life on the dole...

Given the oddly placed holiday I’ve decided to make this a four day weekend and I’ll have to admit, this has given me a nice sense of what unemployment is like. And all in all, it’s pretty cool. I get to hit the bars on a Sunday night, sleep in on a Monday, go shopping in the middle of the afternoon, get in a nice workout at three and then spend the evening watching wrestling. That’s about as full a life as anyone should ever want to leave. If it wasn’t for the fact that I like having health insurance and at some point I do need an income since for some reason beer isn’t free I would start truly slacking. (Whether I am slacking right now is a whole other post altogether.)

Though even with my immense amount of free time I still am not accomplishing any of the things that I set out to do. Sunday was to be clean the apartment day and specifically, organize the home office. Yes, time to put all of my credit card statements in chronological order and store them neatly by card company for no apparent reason. Well, that was the plan on Sunday but instead I cleaned every part of my apartment except for the office. And I actually like putting things in chronological order so it’s not like I considered it a difficult task.

That’s just kind of the way this weekend is going. While out today I forgot to stop by the dry cleaners (even though I drove right past it) to pick up the shirt they forgot to include in my last order. Well, more like they switched my dress shirt with a woman’s jacket and well, I a) don’t like the pattern and b) I just don’t think it would go with any of my skirts. (Jeez, I hope people realize that last bit was a joke.) So I gave them the jacket back and they couldn’t find my shirt for a day but then they did and I completely blanked about it today and now I’ll have to remember to pick it up on Wednesday or they’ll probably just throw it out. I’m telling you, I need to hire an assistant to just deal with this type of stuff.

(And this is from someone who has already outsourced a good portion of his existence. If it’s good enough for a multinational corporation it is good enough for me.)

Oh, and for those of you who are big music fans there is something that you should probably check out. They just released Richard Thompson’s “1000 Years of Popular Music” concert on DVD. It is a recording of the tour that I saw back in ’04 in which Richard literally covers all the various genres of music from the past millennium, starting with an 11th century liturgical and ending with Brittney Spears. If you like music of all kinds and can deal with a show in which you simply have never even heard of three quarters of the songs then it is a very interesting DVD to pick up. There are some great moments in there and to see one of the greatest songwriters cover “Oops I Did It Again” has a rather forbidden thrill to it.

Time flies when you are attempting to have fun

Mark the Bartender: “So what’s your story?”
EC: “Just moved in to town a few hours ago and my furniture isn’t being shipped for two more days. So tonight I’m drinking until the floor looks comfortable.”
Mark the Bartender: “Let me get you a beer.”

Wow, three years already? That story, which honest to god is true and took place at Kelly’s, just turned three years old. Here is the explanation behind it.

I moved to town on July 1 making the drive from Chicago to Kansas City with a lightly packed car (basically whatever I didn’t trust with the movers). It was a pretty uneventful trip during which you realize that there truly is nothing to see in Iowa other than the wrestling hall of fame and that Iowa is a state that is much too big by a factor of ten. Anyway, I get to town on the first and move in to my place with the slight problem being that my movers and Benchmark Furniture wouldn’t be delivering my stuff until the third. That’s a slight problem in that for the first day I didn’t even have a chair in my place. Hence, off to the bar to get to the point where I figured that I wouldn’t mind that I was sleeping on the floor. And people wonder why I know so many bartenders.

But man, three years in this place. I don’t know if I should be amazed by how fast the time flies or by the fact that I survived three years here. And I know that last sentiment is a little harsh and I had a conversation with Erik about it over the weekend. I’ll readily admit that I give Kansas City and Kansas in general a lot of crap in the blog about things like banning evolution or not knowing how to build a sewer system in which the streets don’t flood anytime it rains or deciding that they should burn copies of The Catcher in the Rye. All of which still make me wonder just exactly what is in the water in this place and which makes me buy a lot of bottled water as a safety precaution.

But that said, I think that I’ve had more fun in this town then I realized or would have imagined. I’ve described this place as a smaller Chicago with everything much more convenient. While it means that there aren’t the crowds that I’m accustomed to (and there are times when you just want to be surrounded by two hundred thousand people in Grant Park) it does mean that I’ve gotten to do more things here than I ever would have back home. I can get to basically any concert I would ever want to attend in forty five minutes and be in the front row for ninety percent of them. I can go shopping or hit the museums in a matter of minutes. And if I want to check out the bar scene that is more than easy enough.

So I guess that after three years I have finally had it pounded into me that how much you enjoy a place is based on what you make of it. And the more I try to make something of it here the better things are getting. So it is nice to know that three years later I’m glad for a few more things beyond the fact that my furniture arrived. There just may be interesting times to be had in this town after all.

The five random CDs for the week
1) The Drovers “Little High Sky Show”
2) Jimmy Buffett “Feeding Frenzy”
3) Coldplay “A Rush of Blood to the Head”
4) Gillian Welch “Hell Among the Yearlings”
5) Sarah McLachlan “Fumbling Towards Ecstasy”

We need another penguin movie...

I was checking out the movie schedule at the Tivoli (my local art house) and they are showing “An Inconvenient Truth” and “Wordplay”, which must be the worst choice of date movies ever. It’s like “Do you want to see the one about how we are living on a planet that is doomed and that civilization as we know it is on its last legs or do you want to see the one about people filling in crossword puzzles?” Not exactly great choices and this from a guy who on a date decided that the best choice of films was “La Femme Nikita.” (No one ever believes me but that was an inspired decision.) So again we can choose between the end of the world or people filling in boxes in pencil.

Of course, there is the third option of Superman Returns, which would be good other than an unnerving tendency of mine to go, “But that can’t happen because in Superman #127 Lex Luthor becomes president of the United States so obviously he wouldn’t need to make his own continent.” And I don’t want Kate Bosworth to play Lois Lane. Not unless Lois Lane is a teen surfer just trying to make a living in Hawaii. I mean, why fix what’s not broken.

Anyway, time for more on the Brittney story: now we all remember how on Dateline she looked like a complete mess. What, you guys didn’t tivo that? Anyway, Brit was distraught after she noticed how people were reacting to how awful she looked and how one of her fake eyelashes fell off while she was talking and how in the world could she decide to wear flip-flops to a television interview. So, she decided to cut her hair into take out her hair extensions, cut her hair into a bob, and dye her hair black (with vegetable dye so it would be safe in pregnancy, thus says the publicist.) Except that she didn’t tell Harper’s Bazaar that she was doing this, which is kind of an issue given that it was right before a cover shoot and she apparently looked even worse than before. Hence, on the famous cover you’ll be looking at an awful lot of hair extensions and many man-hours spent making her look presentable.

(You know, I don’t know what’s worse. That I know all of this or the fact that this story probably got more play in the media than Iraq today.)

Have a few NBA draft notes. Like everyone else online, I also can’t believe that the Knicks drafted Renaldo Blackman especially given that I thought he retired ten years ago. (He and Junior Bridgeman were the two best names outside of World B. Free in early 80’s basketball.) I have to give a shout out to two of my fellow Illini who were picked in the second round. Both James Augustine and Dee Brown were picked and though I wished they had gone higher I really hope that they both get a shot in the NBA. Dee was picked by Utah, which means that he will be reunited with former backcourt mate Deron Williams (who is the guy hitting the three in my profile picture, finishing off the miracle comeback against Arizona.) It will be interesting to see if they let the two guys run wild in the backcourt. That said, Dee gets to go from Champaign-Urbana to Salt Lake City. Some guys just can’t catch a break.

(Last note: Saturday will mark three years for me in Kansas City, so you can pretty much predict what my topic will be.)

In Paris we Trust

Yes, the rumors are true. We came in second at trivia tonight. I know, I know, I am greatly disappointed in myself. I started reading the press clippings, I brought a championship belt to the bar in order to show off our dominance, and in the end the fact that I couldn’t recognize theme songs to Nintendo games killed our team’s chances. That and the fact that I can’t identify a flag to save my life. Seriously, I probably wouldn’t have gotten Canada correct (it has a picture of Maple Syrup on it, right?) Maybe I’ve just killed off one too many brain cells over the years.

(And add to that the fact that I missed the most obvious joke imaginable regarding the Pants Off Dance Off. See, there are people that are funny immediately and people who think of something funny six hours later and write it down. I’m someone who thinks of something marginally amusing twelve hours later, writes it down, and realizes two days later what would have been completely hilarious.)

On the celebrity front, a pregnant Brittney Spears is going to appear nude on a magazine cover (Bazaar I think) in the next month. This means you should probably be inching towards the under on my “When will Brittney do a Playboy shoot?” proposition. The photo actually isn’t that bad though the question of why, clothes or no clothes, anyone gives a damn at this point is significant. If we take Debbie Gibson as an example, no one cared that she sang backup on a Circle Jerks record. She had her pop songs and disappeared into obscurity and/or the touring cast for Les Miserables. Tiffany I believe is still singing in a mall somewhere. Brittney is just a faded pop star and how she was able to parlay that bit of fame into world wide celebrity is the sign of a really good agent. Basically, like Paris Hilton and my beloved Lindsay, she is now famous for being famous and not for accomplishing anything.

(Still, Lindsay does have measurable talent. It would just be better if she weighed more than ninety pounds.)

The sad thing is that as much as I complain about the cult of celebrity I basically make my living, at least the trivia related part of my living, by praying at the altar of celebrity gossip. We all want to know what is going on with Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes (who I believe is now officially listed as a political prisoner), we want to know just how the hell Gwyneth Paltrow decided to name her kids Apple and Moses, and it’s nice to know that Nick Nolte can still get arrested in this town. On the surface you would say that all of that information is completely meaningless but really, it isn’t. In reality, all of our media shows us hyper-successful people living lives that none of us can ever dream of. Even in How I Met Your Mother, Ted has a much better apartment and a cooler life than I do and his entire character is a plagiarization of my life. So every second we look at the tv and go, “God, I wish I can live that life” but can then turn on E! and realize, “Well, I might not have much but at least I’m not as screwed up as Paris Hilton.” And in a strange way, that allows all of us to sleep better at night.

TV on the radio...

Even more thoughts in search of a theme…

1) Best new video game on the market: Coming to you from Rockstar games (the makers of the Grand Theft Auto series) it’s Table Tennis for the Xbox 360. I swear I am not making this up. It’s ping pong in beautiful high definition with fully realized character modeling to the point that you can see the sweat stains on their shirts grow as the match progresses. Which doesn’t change the fact that you are still playing ping-pong on a computer, something that wasn’t that much fun when it was called Pong in the first place. It wasn’t the graphics that needed an upgrade, it was the game of ping pong that needed an upgrade. And how can Rockstar make a game that doesn’t include prostitutes? Somehow the world’s oldest profession and table tennis seems to be a perfect match to me.

2) Best new television show: Pants Off Dance Off on Fuse. They play a popular video in the background and a contestant dances and strips to the song. Once again, I am no where near creative enough to make this up. You really do have average people, very average people, people you really do not want to watch dance or strip, in front of a blue screen bouncing around and trying to be sexy. To say that it is something that you can’t take your eyes off of is an understatement. True, you then want to stick skewers into your eyes but you still can’t take your eyes off of it. Best name for a show in a long time as well.

3) On ABC this evening they showed four straight episodes of According to Jim. I am very confident that while this is not in violation of the new obscenity codes it is certainly in violation of the Geneva Convention. That has to pass the international standard for torture. Incredibly, someone somewhere must actually watch that show. With a hundred digital cable channels available they decide that a bad Jim Belushi sitcom that was past its prime during its pilot episode is the best entertainment choice.

4) It might surprise some people that I am not watching the new season of Queer Eye. It is probably more surprising that there is a new season, given that it is a show that completely disappeared from the cultural radar. Think about it, three years ago it was the biggest show going with everyone going bonkers over guys finally having a show in which they are given advice on how to improve themselves. But, they got overexposed and got too fancy with what they were doing. We didn’t need an entire Texas themed month featuring a frat house makeover. We don’t need weddings and engagements and other themed shows. We really want to see funny twentysomething dudes in messy apartments with no sense of style turning themselves around. That is what made the first few episodes awesome and what has been missing recently.

5) And yeah, I could still use the advice. Admittedly, I don’t need the Home Décor guy and I just need the Food part of Food and Drink. However, I could use the help in finding t-shirts that do not have the names of schools on them or advice on how to properly shave (though the Gillette Fusion with its five blades is surprisingly effective and terrifying at the same time). I don’t know if it is a good or bad thing that I would no longer qualify to be on the show.

Hawkmoon

I am not even going to try to make a cohesive thought out of the following ideas.

1) While at work I found out the following (and I swear to God, I was actually doing something work related when I stumbled upon this fact), there is a wedding chapel inside the Mall of America. This means that there are people, sane people, people who are allowed to operate heavy machinery, who decide that the best place for them to express their undying devotion for each other is… inside a mall. Specifically, a huge mall in Bloomington, Minnesota with its own theme park and aquarium. Maybe that’s how the thought process works, “Well, we’ve already looked at the fish and ridden the roller coaster, want to get hitched?” Vegas I can understand because you can always claim it was spur of the moment but here it’s like you just decided to stop in on your way to Orange Julius.

2) Has anyone ever stopped at an Orange Julius? I mean, in the history of the planet? Or that pretzel shop that is in every other mall? I believe their business model is to find enough people dumb enough to sign up for a franchise agreement. But what do I know, I sit in a box all day.

3) So Erik Johnson was the number one pick of the St. Louis Blues in the NHL draft this weekend. I’m kind of surprised by this pick. Sure, Ah Via Musicom was an awesome album and dude, I could listen to Cliffs of Dover for a good decade and not get bored with it but that still isn’t reason to make him your number one selection. But who knows, maybe he also happens to be a good defenseman.

4) Listening to Rattle and Hum today made me realized just how funny Bono is when he is in earnest mode. You can’t listen to Silver and Gold or All Along the Watchtower anymore without laughing. I know I was impressed by it fifteen years ago but now it just seems so over the top and theatrical that it resembles Spinal Tap more than anything. “Am I bugging you? I didn’t mean to bug you.” That said, look at anything that I did fifteen years ago and you’d be laughing your ass off as well. It might have been a failed experiment, but a failed experiment that contains Desire and All I Want is You is a worthwhile one.

5) It’s been requested that I go ahead and put together Battling the Current: Volume Two, which I kind of promised to do a month ago but then conveniently forgot about. So expect another disc available free of charge in the next month or so. My goal is to not repeat any artists though I’ll admit that I might have to cheat here or there. Here’s a preview of the playlist. It will start with Social Distortion’s “Ball and Chain” (which also happens to be my ringtone) and will end with Sufjan Stevens’ “Chicago”. Where it goes in between is anyone’s guess. Though probably there won’t be another Julie Delpy song.

6) Another housekeeping note: there might be a few test posts popping up over the next few days. I’m playing around with the system a little so if you see something that looks out of place (as in it is incredibly well written and funny), that’s just a test.

Stuck in a time warp

Point to ponder: Is rock and roll really the best foundation to build a city on? Personally, I feel that solid bedrock near the edge of a river is the best place to build a city. Rock and roll would probably rank just above Indian burial ground in terms of city formation locales.

(And it is still the worst song of all time. Seriously, people give “I’m too sexy” crap but don’t mention the monstrosity that is Starship. At least the Alan Parsons Project was some sort of hovercraft.)

I need to make an addendum to the KFC bowls discussion. In addition to it being a bowl of mashed potatoes combined with corn and fried breaded chicken pieces it is also topped with gravy. This is being marketed as a time saving meal, in the “Why wait until you’re fifty to have a heart attack?” sense of the term. This is up there with the Bacon, Egg and Cheese Biscuit at McDonald’s which my buddy in college (who actually managed a McDonald’s) described as “basically a heart attack on a bun.”

I know, I know, I still eat fast food. But I’ve really cut down this year in my weight loss efforts and I’m telling you, it is a good area to eliminate from your diet if you want to lose weight. Other than missing McDonald’s French fries, which have been an addiction of mine since I was six, I can safely say that I can live without mass produced food being served by the lowest portion of the employed society. (Another thing I learned from the McDonald’s manager: you can always tell the strength of a local economy by your service at McDonald’s. The better the service, the worse the economy. Because if you are a go-getter and can only get work at McDonald’s it means that there really are no jobs out there.)

England moved on today, in a game that really wasn’t worth waking up for. Man, was that first half brutal. Just some of the ugliest soccer that I’ve seen. But, we did get a goal by Beckham, which meant that we were given numerous Spice Girl shots and references. We also got to see Beckham dehydrate and start heaving on the pitch, which is something you just don’t see enough of in sports. Especially since he kept on playing. Baseball would be so much more interesting if guys were keeling over, coughing up a lung, and then batting in the next inning.

Oh, and I heard this while driving and listening to the Brewers-Royals game. (Yeah, for some reason I didn’t consider it a big ticket series that I needed to attend.) The Brewers have a player named Corey Hart, which brings up the obvious question of whether he wears sunglasses when he plays a night game.

(I’m almost ashamed of myself by that reference. Not as ashamed that I couldn’t remember who sang the eighties hit, “Sometimes I feel like somebody’s watching me” (Rockwell for those who are interested with Michael Jackson on backup), but ashamed nonetheless. To append something I wrote to Super Dave last week, sometimes I feel that at the end of my life all I’ll have to show for it is knowledge of statistical modeling techniques, a mental database of every one hit wonder ever recorded, and the ability to retrieve the Babel fish in the Hitchhiker’s Guide game. And that last one took me months to achieve.

The five random CDs for the week (featuring bands people actually have heard of for once):
1) Coldplay “Parachutes”
2) U2 “Rattle and Hum”
3) Josh Rouse “Nashville”
4) Liz Phair “whitechocolatespaceegg”
5) Robbie Fulks “Couples in Trouble”

Just trying to survive the week...

You know, it is surprisingly satisfying to find out that you’ve lost a trivia contest because you can’t identify a Led Zeppelin song. I know that it is my goal to know everything possible but if I go my entire life without knowing a single Zeppelin song, including blanking out on Stairway to Heaven occasionally, I think that I would consider it at the end a life worth living. God I hate that band.

So after all of my interest in the World Cup both the U.S. and the Czech Republic fail to advance. Apparently you do not want me cheering your team in this tournament. I can’t believe that the U.S. couldn’t even beat Ghana. True, we couldn’t find the country on a map but with two hundred odd million people in this country you think that we could find a dozen who actually enjoy playing soccer. And would it kill us to put Howard in goal? He only plays for Manchester United so there is at least the possibility that he knows how to handle pressure.

On the plus side, the Australians and Mexico advanced. So I still have a few teams to cheer for. And there is always England because any team that features a player best known for being married to the least talented Spice Girl (and wow is that a loaded statement) is a team that you must watch.

We have a new Adam Sandler movie opening this week. In which he gets a universal remote that actually controls the universe, which is plot #7 in the Big Book of Plots. It’s like Bruce Almighty except with a remote and Christopher Walken. Here’s what is more depressing to me, Kate Beckinsale plays Sandler’s wife. Kate, who is on my top ten perfect mate list, stuck in an Adam Sandler film. Sadly, that is basically the way her career is going. Just a ton of mainstream dreck when a decade ago she was doing cutting edge indie work. Sure, she is a lot richer because of it but I liked the old version of Kate; the one who wasn’t hunting vampires in a sequel to a movie that no one gave a damn about in the first place.

Fast food note of the week: I think we have a new leader in the “most disgusting food item ever” race. The KFC bowl, which is basically their whole menu tossed into a bowl and called a meal. Mashed potatoes, chicken, corn, whatever else is left from last night, all mixed together. It’s less of a meal and more of what you yell at a five year old for doing. I think we’re at the point where we don’t even bother considering some things to be healthy, we just assume that it isn’t going to kill us this hour.

Well I think that this is going to be it for the night. I really need for the weekend to get here quickly. My batteries are in great need of refreshing. Sadly, I think I’ll have a two page to do list to tackle as well. Maybe I can just outsource a few more aspects of my life. If it works for corporations it should work for me.

Top of the charts

Ok, so I celebrated the solstice by playing trivia but I did win so that even things out. An insane come from behind victory that involved us acing about four consecutive categories. It was impressive at least for those into trivia. That’s three in a row at the Flea Market and I’m pretty sure that someone is going to throw a punch at me if we win next week. And to be honest, I’ll probably deserve it.

But since it is late I might just decide to stay up all night. Since this is the least night that we have it is a pretty easy challenge. Maybe I should head to Alaska where staying up all night just requires staying awake for one more hour. It’s like heading to the north pole just so you can say that you’ve walked around the world.

I’m kind of bummed that my trivia competitions has caused me to miss a prime opportunity to live blog the Royals-Pirates series. Because when you think of epic baseball rivalries you immediately think of the seething hatred between the Royals and the Pirates. You know, going back to, uh, whenever the last time they played an interleague game. Plus, it is the two worst teams in baseball going at it so the humor potential is off the charts. I’m still going to do it, just so I can discuss every between inning promotion in detail. Being a cynical bastard has to come in handy at some point.

Completely different note: here is a good description of my life. Some people get calls late at night from friends saying “Join us at the bar.” Others are “My car has broken down, can you pick me up?” In my case I get, “Dude, do you know how to run a polynomial regression in excel?” I don’t know what is more frightening; the fact that I can immediately answer that question or that in the entire universe people know that no matter where I am I can be paged and give advice on statistical modeling.

A comment based on the random CD collection: Whatever happened to Veruca Salt? They were the next big thing there for a year and then they totally disappeared. Plus, I had a huge crush on Louise Post, who dated Dave Grohl for a while if I remember correctly. They are one of those bands that ended up being Missing in Action from the Chicago scene. On a similar note, I am very close to picking up a 7 CD, Best of the 90’s collection just so I can have every one hit wonder song of the decade in one place. It’s like I don’t feel like my life will be complete unless I have Snow and The Cardigans in my collection. Yes, that is pretty sad.

Summertime

I saw something rather odd over the weekend. Some birds decided that my deck, which is barely large enough for a folding chair, would be the perfect place to build a nest. Even if said nest would need to be perched on a two by four that isn’t really protected from the elements. Hence the fact that I had to spend some time this evening sweeping up branches from several failed attempts at a nest. I’ve seen these birds try this on numerous occasions and you have to admit, they are persistent little buggers. Maybe not the wisest creatures on the planet but definitely persistent.

And yeah, I can relate to creatures that continue to persevere in the midst of continual failure. I’ve been there, done that, won the t-shirt, wrote the wiki entry…

I’ll also admit to owning the ugliest deck furniture in the history of the planet. See, my deck is pretty much exposed to the sun and the wind and the rain and the decks above me have rather large openings in the planks and I have an awful habit of never remembering to put the chair away when I’m not using it. Hence, the furniture is the worse for wear in perpetuity. It’s on the list of things to fix but admittedly, it’s a pretty long list.

On a completely different topic, tomorrow is another on the list of Battling the Current official holidays. Now, we already have celebrations for National High Five Day and National Talk Like a Pirate Day, which might constitute the two high holy days for this website. But tomorrow is the summer solstice and it must be observed not for some odd pagan ritual but rather because of the great Daisy Buchanan quote in my blog’s namesake. “Every year we look forward to the longest day of the year but we do nothing to celebrate it.”

(Or something like that, my copy of Gatsby is out of reach at the moment and the only other quote that I can recite verbatim is “Her voice is full of money.”)

Anyway, since on tomorrow we will have the most light of any day of the year I call upon my readers to at least do something to relish in the fact that we get to bask in the sunlight for at least a split second longer than any other day. Because we will miss the sun in December when you go to work in the dark and leave work in the dark and when you’re like me and can’t see a window from your cube, basically live your entire life in the dark. So go outside tomorrow and watch the sunset (or for those of you poor bastards who get up early, the sunrise.) Light a candle and curse the darkness. But do something to remember that for just one day, there is more daytime than we know what to do with.

And don't even get me started on Ant-Man

The following post will probably fall into the category of “Things I shouldn’t admit that I can discuss in as much detail as I typically do.” Meaning: this is what happens when you say, “I have no shame” and you are not kidding.

These are interesting times in comic book land as we have had the unmasking of Spider-Man and the new Superman movie unveiling at the same time. Both of these are pretty monumental events that might bring new meaning to the characters and since I am short on topics tonight I’ll go into both.

I’ll start with Spidey and I’ll admit that I haven’t read the comic book, though I did hear a lot about this earlier in the week. I fall into the camp that Spider-Man publicly revealing that he is Peter Parker is a bad idea no matter what the plot line. Mainly because this goes against the reason why he never revealed who he is in the first place: by making himself known he puts everyone he loves at risk. They become targets and he does not want that to happen so he’ll accept being viewed as a menace if it protects those that he loves. Now, even though Peter Parker is older and wiser in the comic books I just can never seeing the character admit “This is who I am.”

I’m also on the side that states that Spider-Man has always been a better character than Superman. And it’s why I’m just not that interested in the Superman movie, which is that Superman isn’t a superhero; he is a god. Think about his powers: the guy is basically invincible and can do everything short of read minds. Writers have had to come up with ways to make him vulnerable like krypton (which is apparently the most abundant mineral on earth) or magic (a comic book geek convention). You don’t even have real villains for him. He’s just a big boy scout who beats people up in the name of good.

(Yes, there is still the fact that in reality he just wants to go back to Smallville and lead a normal life. I’ll ignore that.)

But Spider-Man and to an even greater extent Batman, are true characters. You can identify them because even when you get past all of their skills and gadgets you know that at the end of the day they are just a human being. They have the same foibles and faults as the rest of us, it’s just that they put on a mask to try to hide them. And that’s why people continue to follow these characters and get extremely upset when they are changed. Because in many ways they represent who we want to be and we don’t want to see that archetype changed. So I hope that Spidey puts his mask back on and that Lex Luthor is actually a decent villain in this film. And that we never admit that the film Superman IV was ever even made.

A rather pedestrian weekend...

Ghana? The Czechs lost to Ghana? They lost to a country that I couldn’t find on a map (which shows that I’m not dominant in all aspects of trivia)? I did watch the game on Saturday and it wasn’t just that Ghana won but that they basically demolished and demoralized the Czech side. It could have just as easily have been 4-nil.

I’ll have to say that I was impressed by the US in the game against Italy. Sure our only goal came when an Italian player, who I believe was technically smoking a cigarette at the time, kicked the ball into his own goal in one of the worst plays I’ve ever seen by a soccer player over the age of six. That did help us get a draw and given that Italy didn’t score while having a man advantage for the entire second half you’d have to say that the U.S. put up a very good fight. It will be interesting to see what happens on Thursday morning as any of the four teams can make it to the next round. And hey, Mexico drew with Angola showing that you just can’t look past the Angolans.

Switching gears, there is still one more aspect of Slugger’s (the Royals Mascot) tenth birthday party last week that has left me perplexed. They had a number of other baseball mascots (the Phillies Phanatic, Billy the Marlin, whatever the hell the Devil Rays mascot is) in to celebrate along with Slugger. I find this rather disconcerting as it means that the mascots do hang out together, which means they probably also hit the bars together while in full costume. I really don’t want to imagine Billy the Marlin as a mean drunk, or the Phanatic macking on some chicks, or Mariner Moose chainsmoking camels. And I don’t even want to know what type of connotations you can make from the phrase “a moose smoking camels.”

It was a pretty quiet weekend this time around. Saw Richard Buckner in concert yet again and he did pull off eighty minutes of uninterrupted music where his only statement to the crowd was “Thank you and goodnight.” I’ve been watching him try for the past three years to pull it off and he has finally made all the transitions seamless and you really don’t know where songs end or begin anymore. It’s probably not the first concert that I would take someone to but if you are into music it is a rather amazing performance.

Otherwise this was one of those weekends when I had to accomplish all of those dumb things that seem to take up most of my life. Like grocery shopping and doing laundry and shopping at Bed, Bath and Beyond. Yes, as much as it pains me to admit it that last one is true. Look, even I get to the point where I am forced to go “I can either get a new shower curtain or hope that I will win a Nobel prize for whatever might be potentially growing in there.” But I did like the fact that I was asked at the register “Is this from a bridal registry?” only because that would be the coolest wedding present ever. “Here’s a shower curtain, hope you live happily ever after.” Can a shower curtain be symbolic of your undying love?

The five random CDs for the week
1) The Jayhawks “Rainy Day Music”
2) Gomez “In Our Gun”
3) Tori Amos “Boys for Pele”
4) Veruca Salt “American Thighs”
5) Wilco “Summerteeth”

Not that innocent

Another week done gone…

1) Continuing on yesterday’s theme: I would like to challenge those who are more musically inclined to write a love song for oboe and bass clarinet. I just want to see if such a thing is possible. And yes, I played bass clarinet for my grade school band. You get to lug around something that is as large as a saxophone just without any of the coolness factor. Not like there is much of a coolness factor associated with grade school band to begin with but trust me, no one goes for the guy playing bass clarinet.

2) Your Brittney Spears update for the week and I swear I am not making any of the following up. I even have reliable sources. So, Brittney was out shopping with Sean Preston in tow and decided to hit Victoria’s Secret in order to pick up a couple of purple thongs. (Yes, I know that she also happens to be pregnant and somehow pregnancy and thongs just don’t seem to mix. Incredibly, that is not the punch line to the story.) Now, being a baby Sean Preston occasionally needs to be changed and at this moment he did so Brittney being the good mother that she is decided to take it upon herself to change the diaper. On the floor of Victoria’s Secret, directly in front of the register. And after changing the diaper she handed the uh, older diaper, to the cashier to dispose of. And the cashier, in a moment I so wish I got to see, politely refused.

3) I’m still not sure what is the most amazing part of that story: A) that Brittney knows how to change a diaper, B) that she felt that the floor of the store in full sight of a slew of witnesses was her best option or C) that the diaper hasn’t yet shown up on eBay.

4) I might as well go on record with my prediction. Within one year of giving birth to her second child Brittney will be doing a Playboy spread. It’s not like she is going to have a music career at that point, especially given that no one cared about her music in the first place. No acting career to fall back on so it will be off to Playboy for a quick buck and a last gasp of fame.

5) That’s going to be it for tonight. Have a happy Bloomsday tomorrow and remember the greatest book in the English language. “…and his heart was going like mad and yes I said yes I will Yes.”

Notes on notes

(Celebrating yet another trivia victory. Here is the frightening part: while I was out today I was thinking “Do I need to go to the ATM?” and my response was, “Nah, I’m playing trivia tonight so I’ll just win the money instead.” At some point I will receive my comeuppance. I mean, given an infinite amount of time a monkey will write Hamlet so it shouldn’t be out of the realm of possibility that I’ll lose at trivia. I just wouldn’t bet on it.)

While listening to NPR yesterday I heard something that has been bouncing around my head for the past day. They were talking to this guy who had just released a classical CD that reinterprets Elliot Smith songs. (Elliot Smith was the guy who was nominated for an Oscar for “Miss Misery” from the goodwill hunting soundtrack and who “allegedly” committed suicide a few years back in a case that is still really, really fishy.) Anyway, the guy was discussing how he wrote the songs and started by talking about the chord structure and how you couldn’t tell if he was using happy chords or sad chords and that is what has been occupying my mind.

Isn’t it odd that we can describe a musical chord as being happy or sad? He played an E minor and I immediately went, “Yeah, that is a morose type of chord” but that makes no sense at all. A chord in and of itself really shouldn’t mean anything. All it is is a group of notes being played simultaneously. More accurately, it is simply the aural equivalent of a numerical pattern and I don’t think that anyone would look at a set of numbers and have an emotional reaction.

Correction: no regular person would look at a set of numbers and have an emotional reaction. I’ll hold off judgment on myself on this point other than, man are fours depressing.

But the thing is, we can all agree that certain chords are positive and others are more downbeat even though by themselves there is no context for us to place those emotions. There is simply some hard wired part of our brain that connects certain sounds to emotions, which may at one point of time have served a purpose but now is just a point of fascination for me. This also probably explains why people so often misinterpret songs. People play “Every Breath You Take” at weddings on the fact that they feel it is a wonderful love song completely missing the fact that if you listen to the lyrics it’s about stalking someone. “Every breath you take, every move you make, every single day, every word you say, I’ll be watching you.” Or the Green Day song “Good Riddance (Time of Your Life)”that is played at every high school graduation because people think it is about remembering good times but is really about telling someone to go to hell. We’re connecting to the notes and not the words.

I know that I’m not the first person to make this point. Hell, it shows up in Spinal Tap. But it just amazes me how universal a reaction to a sound can be. To the point that it influences our views on instruments. Piccolos are upbeat, oboes are the most depressing instrument known to man regardless of what they are actually playing. Maybe this just shows that despite how much we have evolved at the end of the day there is a lot about of us that is still instinctual.

Static and Silence

Explanation of picture: I received a request from a member of the mafia that I was, uh, upsetting the family by not having included a picture of the mafia in the blog. Typically I’m a little hesitant about fulfilling requests but a) these guys know where I live and b) while my knees aren’t in the best of shape they can definitely be made worse. So, here is a sizable portion of the good old mafia at Gabriel and Ale’s wedding.

(And yes, this marks the first time that I’ve posted a picture of myself where you can actually see my face. Of course, I’m not going to mention which one I am in the picture just so I can hold on to at least a shred of mystery.)

There’s one news story out today that I just have to comment on and that is J.J. Reddick being pulled over on a DUI charge. Yes, J.J. shows once again that he is only a three point shooter with no idea how to drive. To make matters worse, if you check out his mugshot he is wearing a polo shirt with half of the collar popped. Now, wearing a polo shirt is bad enough but if you’re going to pop the collar it is an all or nothing deal. It’s just that type of indecisiveness that has caused Duke to underachieve in March the past few years. But, it just goes to show what Zima will do to you.

(Thanks to Deadspin for all of the info and jokes on this today. This just makes it tougher and tougher for me to workout while wearing a Duke basketball t-shirt. Seriously, it is just embarrassing right now. I have to now couch myself by saying that I support the old school Duke squads, back when all you had to do was deal with how much of a dick Christian was half the time.)

I have one other bit to write about tonight. As you know, the random CD project is well underway and I’m sticking to my promise that I will not repeat a CD in my car until I have listened to every disc that I own. Well, that means that today marks the last time I will listen to a Sundays CD in my car for a very long time and that is worth a special mention.

You may or may not remember the Sundays, a British band from back in the heady days of Alternative Nation. You’ve almost certainly heard them as their cover of the Rolling Stones’ “Wild Horses” was used in a Budweiser commercial for years. The one with the female singer with the mystical voice. And that is what is memorable about the band, Harriet Wheeler’s almost otherworldly voice. It’s what causes me to still play the discs from time to time.

But what I really want to mention is how this ties back into what I wrote about Jeff Buckley a few weeks ago. The Sundays had what might be the tiniest but most significant careers of any band that I have followed. They recorded three albums and then Harriet decided that she would rather be a mom than a musician. But those are three perfect albums that hold up more than a decade later. They didn’t have a huge stadium tour, they didn’t outstay their welcome, they didn’t end up playing state fairs, they just recorded their music and moved on. Sometimes it is best to leave people wanting more, that way they never forget you.

Dancing in Prague

See, I told you. You do not mess with the Czech Republic. We might not have an economy and we decided that the best person to lead us out of communism is a playwright but damnit, we are surprisingly good at sports. Or specifically, soccer, hockey, women’s tennis, javelin and the decathlon. I have no idea just why it was decided that those would be the sports but hey, we take what we can get.

Oh, and we have a large number of supermodels. And incredibly large number of supermodels, which makes me wonder why my grandfather left there in the first place. I mean, other than that whole escape communism thing.

Back to the world cup. Basically this means that the United States has to beat Italy on Saturday to have any chance of advancing and that is highly unlikely. This will continue the streak of the U.S. just playing horribly in European competition, which just shows a bit of their inexperience. When they play in front of a very hostile crowd they just play incredibly tentatively and can’t seem to put anything together. I’m still hoping for a better showing but it looks like I won’t be worrying about American soccer after next week. Maybe in 2010.

Got to offer a big round of congratulations to the Chicago Rush for winning Arena Bowl XX. Apparently Chicago football teams can only win the twentieth championship game and no others. The good news is that since the White Sox won we are not celebrating this victory like the greatest accomplishment in Chicago sports history. There would be a precedent for that, when the Chicago Sting won the NASL championship (behind the leadership of Karl Heinz Granitza) the city celebrated because it was the first sports championship in nearly twenty years. You know you are looking for an excuse to celebrate when you focus on your soccer club back before every kid played soccer.

Oh, and I should discuss the fact that the latest basesball steroid scandal revolves around a former Royal whose trainer (and at least in some circles, alleged supplier) works with other Royals and Albert Pujols. All I can say is this, the Royals can’t even cheat properly. Think about it, how can you lose a hundred games a year every year while cheating? How bad would the team have been if they hadn’t been on the juice? Do I even want to contemplate such a thing?

Of course, I could just give up on watching baseball and turn my focus to the national Rock, Paper, Scissors championship. I am not making this up, they broadcasted the U.S. championship on A&E tonight. I believe that this means that we have officially run out of original programming. Also, it is a sign that we as a nation have used up every possible way of amusing ourselves and are now down to playing guess a number between one and ten on national television. And with Deal or No Deal, we have probably already done that one. Toss in the competitive eating circuit and I think I have the basis for my doctoral thesis on the downfall of American society.

Slugger: Threat or Menace?

Lots of topics for a Sunday night

1) So I was at the Royals game this weekend where they were celebrating Slugger the Royals mascot tenth birthday. Given that Slugger is the best thing going for the Royals right now it was a pretty big celebration. That said, someone did raise the following point. The Royals have had one winning season in Slugger’s ten year reign as mascot and, well, you just have to expect more out of your mascot. So since we’ve already fired coaches and general managers I’m now thinking that Slugger should make sure that his resume is up to date.

2) That said, it’s got to be tough to be the upbeat mascot for a team that is competing for the worst record in the history of baseball. It’s got to get tiring. You can even tell it in the voice of the Royals announcer, who seems to start drinking in the second inning. I’ll go into more detail on this in a few weeks when I go to live blog a game at the K. The idea is I’m just going to take a random Tuesday night game and go to the park and keep notes. No, I will not be bringing my laptop though I expect people will wonder who the guy with the notebook is. I’ll just claim that they closed the press box for lack of interest.

3) Watched a good amount of the World Cup. Watched England score their only goal by having Beckham hit a guy on the other team with the ball. And Mexico beat Iran, which I know makes my friends in the mafia happy. They are probably also looking forward to Mexico’s next game against Angola. Personally, I’m holding off on judgment on Mexico’s team until they play a nation that I’m confident actually has grass.

4) Still, best moment so far were the shots of the crowd after Sweden and Trinidad and Tobago played to a nil-nil draw. (Trinidad and Tobago are one squad, which seems to be entirely unfair. Can any country decide to compete as a tag team). Anyway, after the final whistle they show the stadium and you see the Trinidad fans jumping up and down in celebration while the Swedish fans are crying in disbelief. This despite the fact that the game was a zero-zero tie. Yes, you can have exhilaration and desolation in a game in which technically nothing ever happened. This is why American’s will never get soccer.

5) Forgot to mention this about game 1 of the NBA Finals. Jack Ingram sang the national anthem, which was really disconcerting to me since I was in a bar at the time and looked at the TV and went, “Wait a minute, I’ve drank with that guy.” Again, people I am fans of should not be allowed to become famous. Or at most be like Liz Phair and sing a horribly off-key version of America the Beautiful at the World Series.

6) Finally, I picked up The Ditty Bops new CD and it said “Catch their Bicycle Tour 2006” on a sticker so I hit their website to find out what was up. And they are going to tour in support of their new album by riding cross country on bicycles and playing in cities along the way. I am not making this up, go to www.thedittybops.com and see for yourself. I’ve heard a lot of touring stories over the years but this is a new one. That said, if someone asked me to name a band who would decide that cycling across country would be a good way to promote their new disc my answer would probably be: The Ditty Bops.

The five random CDs of the week:
1) Richard Buckner “Impasse”
2) The Dirty Dozen Brass Band “Open Up: Whatcha Gonna Do For the Rest Of Your Life”
3) Scott Miller and the Commonwealth “Thus Always to Tyrants”
4) Bruce Robison “Wrapped”
5) The Sundays “Static and Silence”

Who was Strawberry Shortcake's arch-enemy?

Time to close out the week…

1) Back to back trivia wins the past two nights. Admittedly we probably shouldn’t have won tonight (two other teams made poor betting decisions) but hey, I’ll take excellence any way that I can get it. It helped that the final category was “Supreme Court Chief Justices” and three of the people on my team are attorneys. The two questions that I most impressed people with my knowledge of was “Who is the only U.S. president who wasn’t a U.S. citizen when he died?” (John Tyler) and “In the cartoon JabberJaw, what was the name of the band?” (The Neptunes)

2) Ok, knowing that the band was The Neptunes was acceptable since JabberJaw was that big shark who played drums. However, I have no idea how I knew that the other answer was John Tyler. We had seconds to come up with an answer and when in doubt on a question about a president apparently my first instinct is to go with John Tyler. The odd thing is that even when I wrote it down I thought that I was right. I had no idea but somehow that was the first name that popped into my head when I heard the question. I’ve come to the conclusion that my subconscious is sometimes a lot better at answering questions than my conscious mind.

3) Though I have to say, it is strange that even in a trivia contest I’ve been a) called a nerd and b) told that “Dude, you really need a girlfriend”. Somehow that is like going to a comic book convention and being told by a guy in a Green Lantern t-shirt that you lack social skills. And then arguing with him over which version of the Green Lantern is better, which is Hal Jordan obviously.

4) Pandora is now deciding that I should listen to Trey Anastatio and again I am bummed by the fact that I really liked the song. But just to show that I am not entirely into hippie jam bands I have decided not to make my way to Wakarusa this year. For the most part, the band list just isn’t that strong this year. There are a group of bands that I’ve seen in the past year or so (Cracker, Gomez, Keller Williams, Bela Fleck, Robert Randolph and the Family Band) and one band that I should see at some point in time (The Flaming Lips). None of that is enough to make me stand in a field with hippies for a few days. Especially since the state troopers had set up a checkpoint on the expressway leading to the site, which must be really upsetting to the crowd. Plus there is going to be more security this year and well, in some instances that is not always a good thing.

5) Finally, the World Cup starts this weekend and I’ve decided that since the Irish didn’t qualify this year I am going to put my full support behind the Czech Republic team, which has somehow made it’s way into being one of the best in the world. Sure, they are also playing the U.S. but you’ve got to cheer for the small countries. Of course, it is three weeks of games just so Brazil can win again but hey, it’s the only time you’ll need to worry about soccer for four years.

It's all about the hair...

It dawned on me this morning that I have previously mentioned that my dream girl is an outgoing, energetic, life of the party type who also is a performer and is tall with red hair. That means that Ronette McDonald is the embodiment of my perfect mate. You really shouldn’t have to go to work after coming to that conclusion. It’s like you should just be able to call into work and say, “I’m sorry but I have to come to terms with the fact that my entire understanding of the universe is utterly flawed. I should be back by Friday.” Can you call in sick due to existential angst?

(Though I was made aware of the official company policies regarding blogging today. This just reemphasizes just why I never write about work because that should give me a legal basis for being able to enjoy the greatest gift that this country has ever created, which is the freedom of speech. Of course, I also realized that for a year and a half I had the excuse of “Oh, I didn’t know there was a policy about blogging” and didn’t take advantage of it. Missed more than a few jokes in the process.)

On to this morning’s comment. Battling the Current has very few rules but rule # 27 clearly states that “No one shall ever, ever, make fun of Lindsay Lohan on the blog. Except during those times when she goes from being a redhead to a blonde at which point she is fair game.” Because do you know how few redheads there are in Hollywood with any sort of talent? As someone with a stated weakness for that particular hair color I try to protect what is already an endangered species.

That said, I may or may not go and see A Prairie Home Companion. There are a few things on the plus side. It’s a Robert Altman film and I’m a fan of his work (mainly The Player and Short Cuts). Since I started to listen to NPR I’ve also listened to A Prairie Home Companion and I enjoy the show, a fact that makes me feel like I’ve suddenly become very, very old. And there is a slight chance that this will show that Lindsay can actually act and not be just blown off the screen by Streep and Tomlin and the rest of the cast.

Twenty years from now someone will do a study on Lindsay’s meteoric rise in popularity because it has to say something about society. She was a child star but not a huge one. She had The Parent Trap in her early years and then Freaky Friday and Mean Girls but I don’t know if any of those were box office mega hits. I think she became more famous for being 18, good looking and not super skinny. She looked like a real human being, which was a huge shock, and she did seem to have some legitimate talent. Somehow that now translated to being a main tabloid topic, losing a frightening amount of weight, and becoming a blonde, all of which takes away the things that made her interesting to start with. We don’t want to see her partying with Paris Hilton; we already have a Tara Reid and we really don’t need another.

Is it enough to get me to go see a movie about a radio station in Minnesota? Who knows. But as Brandon Davis said, Lindsay’s poor since she only has seven million dollars. I might as well help her out.

What's a Grimace anyway?

Don’t know about you but I can definitely get behind this new healthy image that McDonald’s is trying to project. If I am forced to eat salads and refrain from ultra-sizing my value meal in order to have a rather smoking hot interpretation of Ronald McDonald as the new corporate mascot I will gladly oblige. Much better than a rather untrustworthy clown.

In jPod, Douglas Coupland proposes the following situation. He has programmers create a game in which Ronald McDonald is basically this violent monster who reeks havoc on this fantasy kingdom and it is up to the player to try to defeat him. Ronald of course gets the best lines like “Taste the scorched fruit inside my pies” and “Die, you seedy little elves who refuse to accept any new menu items added after 1975” and the ultimate “You shall wander the wastelands in search of fishwiches fallen from the sky, frozen and plump with weevils and sauce of the fiercest tartar.”

(Somehow I now feel that my blog will prevent me from ever getting a job in OakBrook. Oh well.)

Actually, my blog is probably the least that the fast food companies need to worry about. I am very interested in the screen adaptation of “Fast Food Nation” by Richard Linklatter. First, I want to see how the director of Slacker, Dazed and Confused and Before Sunset decides to interpret a non-fiction book about working and sanitary conditions within the fast food industry. I’m not sure how you go from Matthew McConaghuey going “The best thing about high school girls is that I get older and they stay the same age” to “Tired illegal immigrants having serious injuries on the night shift at meat packing plants.” Got to admit that Richard doesn’t take the easy path on projects.

But I’m more interested in whether or not this is the movie that really starts waking people up to what precisely we are eating. “Super Size Me” did to a point but at some level you realized that it was basically a huge setup. Eat only one thing of anything for a month and you would be the worse for wear. But “Fast Food Nation” is based off of an incredible book by Eric Schlosser in which he goes into great detail on all aspects of the fast food industry. From the way franchise agreements work in order to put the hurt on the franchisee to the engineering of the food to a well, better understanding of how your food gets to you. It’s fascinating and disturbing at the same time. You read about how there are chemists who create scents that mimic French fries or hamburgers and how they add those to the food and the science geek in me goes “Awesome” while the neglected part of my brain in charge of my overall health goes “Are you sure that eating something like that is a good idea?”

It’s been interesting that since I’ve started to try to lose weight and actually focused on what I was eating you determine just how many junk calories are in your daily intake. I used to drink Gatorade a lot on the basis that it was healthy. I mean, it’s for athletes. It also meant that I was downing 200 calories after working out for 300 calories, which isn’t much of a net benefit. Or the fact that a Tombstone cheese pizza is two servings while a pepperoni pizza, which is the exact same size, is three servings and therefore the same amount of calories per serving. You can have lots of fun with math when you work at it.

I’m not recommending becoming vegan and lord knows I still have my store of Twinkies in case of disaster but it’s been nice getting away from fast food for a while. Even if it means that I might wreck the business model behind Ronette McDonald.

Question 2: Who is cooler: ninjas or pirates?

First, I need to remind everyone that Tuesday is National Beat Up an Emo Kid Day. I’m not kidding, there really is a day for everything. So remember that when you come across some schmuck listening to Good Charlotte you have the right, nay you have the responsibility to punch him in the face and yell, “Listen to some real music you idiot!”

(Of course, today Pandora decided that I should listen to Morrissey. You know, it’s really sad when a computer algorithm looks at your favorite music and goes, “God this guy is depressed. Might as well just play Morrissey and The Smiths for the next hour.”)

Honestly, I did come across National Beat Up an Emo Kid Day on Wikipedia. I also came across the best question that has been posed to me in years: Who would win in a fight Skeletor or Mumm-Ra? Answer at the end of the post.

I might as well discuss Cirque du Soleil as I did attend last week. How, why and where are less important than what it was like to place good old cynical me in the middle of magic and wonder. Now I am a cultured guy who reads Shakespeare, has classical musical in his CD collection and can discuss musical theater to a degree that I really do not like to admit in public. That said, I truly believe that you can’t call it a circus unless you have sad looking elephants, untrustworthy clowns and a sideshow that involves someone biting the heads off chickens. Because as a kid that is what I learned that the circus is about.

Yeah, it was not your average childhood.

Anyway, Cirque du Soleil was incredible. They are masters of having numerous things going on at once so that you are in a constant state of sensory overload. Wherever you look there is something going on in the background and the foreground. The music creates this strange mystical sense to all of it, mainly because you can never figure out what language they are singing in or how much of the music is live and how much is prerecorded (I met one of the guys in the band though and yeah, it’s live). And the acrobatics are just astounding. There are very few things that make me gasp but there were a few moments where I was like, “Jesus Christ, there is no way you should be able to pull that off. Or have the guts to do that 20 feet above a stage.” Really, really impressive. And in the end I think I figured out what the plot was. If there actually was a plot. A lot of the time it was hard to tell. Still, while going to it meant that I missed Nickel Creek I have to say that it was a unique experience.

(Oh, and on the Nickel Creek thread the new Ditty Bops CD comes out tomorrow. The Ditty Bops, part band, part sideshow, and the only stageshow I’ve ever seen to incorporate someone on stilts. Why that equates to buy the CD I’ll never know.)

(Ok, and after much deliberation I’ve decided that Mumm-Ra would totally kick Skeletor’s ass. Here’s my reasoning. There is no way that Mumm-Ra would allow someone like Beast Man to be his main henchman. After about the third time Beast Man bumbled away a chance to defeat either He-Man or Lion-O Mumm-Ra would decide that Beast Man would be best served by being turned into a throw rug. Instead, you have Skeletor and Beast Man forming this codependent relationship that was much too nuanced for an afternoon cartoon. Hence, Mumm-Ra would just destroy him.)

The ultimate random number generator

Back to your regularly scheduled blog postings. I apologize for the break in the schedule but I was sidetracked on a work trip where I couldn’t bring myself to say, “Sorry, I have to get back to writing in my blog” at any point in the week. I’m trying to figure out how to set up Blogger to go into “Best of” mode when I know that I’ll be out (like preprogram some posts to launch at a given time) but until then at least know that I won’t stop posting without giving full warning. Given that I will at some point need to go on vacation and go off grid for a while, if just to restore my own sanity, this might be something to be aware of.

(Some people will view this next comment as random and others won’t but here is my review of Cirque du Soleil: I don’t think you can consider it a circus if no one is ever at risk of being mauled by a tiger.)

Anyway, so I spent a lot of time in planes and airports last week, which meant that I was able to finish Douglas Coupland’s latest book “jPod.” This is another in a line of good comeback books for Douglas as he is now back to his mid-nineties style. The book is about a group of computer programmers at an Electronic Arts like company and if you have ever spent any time in the IT industry the events in this book will be very familiar to you. Not all of them, but certainly the work environment is reminiscent of much of my previous life. Still, there are a few plot points worth discussing.

First, Douglas in this total meta move wrote himself into the novel as Douglas Coupland. With the Douglas character being a money grubbing, obnoxious, lying asshole. I’ve never seen an author take that tact with his own public persona, taking what a lot of people think of him and turning it up to eleven. The interesting thing is that it works and you start wondering if these are characters in a book who are self aware that they are characters in a book or if Douglas has just taken real events and slapped a “novel” label on them.

Also, at one point in the book he lists the first 100,000 digits of pi with one of the digits being wrong. I’m probably the only person who enjoys page after page of random digits sitting in the middle of a novel. Everything makes so much more sense when you read that list. (Oh, and yeah I found the wrong digit. It was so obvious.)

Finally, there is another line that will be in my .sig file for the next several years “The drivers of the new global economy are catchy ring tones, search engines and grocery store loyalty programs.” The incredible thing is I’m pretty sure he is right.

Otherwise, spent the weekend trying to get things back in order. Won another trivia contest but given that there was a Simpsons category it really wasn’t fair. “After the Ramones performed at Mr. Burns’ birthday party he ordered the band killed but named another band. What was the band?” No flower shop question though, which was a total bummer. Plus, it was Crawfish Fest this weekend so I got to sit down and listen to some zydeco with a big old plate of crawfish in front of me. That makes for a happy EC going into the work week.

The five random CDs of the week:
1) John Wesley Harding “Trad Arr Jones”
2) Trent Summar and the New Row Mob “Trent Summar and the New Row Mob”
3) Beth Orton “Central Reservation”
4) Robbie Fulks “South Mouth”
5) Jon Dee Graham “The Great Battle”

Off the schedule...

Quick explanation for anyone wondering. For the first time in a year (literally to the day), I missed a blog post. Two actually, but who is counting. There's an explanation and it's work related and it involves my no longer being able to say that the farthest west I've ever been is Lawrence. Maybe I took a little too much pride in that fact. Anyway, that left me incommunicado for a bit so apologies to those of you who rely on my posts to remind you of what day it is. Anyway, to make up for this, here is something from Douglas Coupland's new novel "jPod". I'll discuss it more on Sunday "You feel chilled because you have no character. You're a depressing assemblage of pop culture influences and cancelled emotions, driven by the sputtering engine of only the most banal form of capitalism. You spend your whole life feeling as if you're perpetually on the brink of being obsolete - whether it's labor market obsolescence or cultural unhipness."