Gazoo never happened

(I know that people complain about the band being artificially happy and potentially a cult but I just have to say that listening to The Polyphonic Spree while driving to work on a Monday morning is like drinking coffee for your soul. On a day when no right thinking person would be looking forward to spending eight hours in a windowless box those songs made me think that today was going to be a good day. Not bad for a guy who is best known for leading Tripping Daisy, the band that wasn’t the Flaming Lips or Ween.)

(Oh, and first day experiment results: no tv does make me get up. Because now I have to walk to turn on a tv set. Hopefully this just doesn’t result in my just sleeping on the couch from here on out.)

Ok, I should have known on Thursday night that when I mentioned my top ten 80’s sitcoms featuring aliens that I would have to list them out. Do people want to talk about my idols? Of course not. Let’s focus on the fun topics. Here they are, in order of course.

#10: Out of this World: You just cannot discount the directorial vision of Scott Baio. In the pantheon of directors the list is basically Wells, Kubrick and Chachi. I am so looking forward to the VH-1 show starting this week in which Scott Baio asks the question why is he 45 and single. Sadly, it’s because I’m asking myself the same damn question.

#9: The Muppet Show: As was revealed in Muppets from Space, Gonzo is technically an alien. Plus they had the entire Pigs in Space sketch, which may have been one of my favorite pieces of recurring comedy as a kid. Oh and Mark Hamill even did a guest spot as Luke Skywalker. So it was sci-fi and the source of most of my taste in comedy until I grew old enough to watch Monty Python and The Young Ones.

#8: Mr. Smith: Ok, there were technically no aliens in this show. But for crying out loud, it had a talking orangutan as the dramatic lead! You can’t get much more alien than that. And people think a sitcom about cavemen is dumb.

#7: Soap: There was a plot at one point about Richard Mulligan getting abducted by aliens. This was well after the Billy Crystal years and Benson had already left for his own show (with the dude who would end up playing an alien on Deep Space Nine). I’m very upset that when people talk about the greatest sitcoms of all time they don’t mention Soap. Groundbreaking in terms of topics, insanely funny and sorely missed.

#6: The Tomorrow People: The best use of Nickelodeon outside of You Can’t Do That On Television. Vaguely British and Australian children who have superpowers, see the Loch Ness monster, and have visits from aliens from the future. Not your typical afterschool fare to be sure. Oh and it was a sitcom. Go back and look at the special effects. Funny as hell when you look at it now.

#5: The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy: Can’t really match up to the book. Or the radio series. It’s probably on par with the movie, though. As a rule, when one character is said to have two heads and three arms you should probably have technology to make that look at all realistic. As opposed to, I don’t know, sticking a mannequin’s head on an actor’s shoulder and calling it a day. Still, about half of my favorite quotes of all time are taken from this series.

#4: Alf: Surprisingly not as funny as you recollect. It is amazing how much of a cultural phenomenon this show was. It went beyond the typical posters and lunch boxes and became a cultural icon because of…of…I’m not sure why. Maybe it was because Alf always wanted to eat the family cat. There is probably an undercurrent of hatred towards cats in this country. Either that or the fact that the daughter in the show was vaguely attractive. That’s usually worth a few Neilsen points right there.

#3: Red Dwarf: Ok, unless you watch PBS you may never have heard of this show. Either that or spent a lot of time in England. However, this is easily one of the funniest television shows ever made. It’s about a guy trapped in a spaceship, millions of years in the future, discovering that he is the last human being and all he has for company is a cleaning robot, a talking toaster, a senile computer, a hologram of his annoying roommate, and a cat who after millions of years of evolution had effectively turned into James Brown. It’s even funnier than it sounds. Basically this is what you always figured Star Trek was really like. Pick up the DVDs.

#2: Perfect Strangers: No way in hell Balki had a green card. Dude probably swam into the country or something. All he did was take jobs away from hard working Americans. That’s if he had a job, I don’t remember. Hell, the fact that Bronson Pinchot had a job is disturbing enough.

#1: Mork and Mindy: Not even an argument. Sure the show lost a little when they added Jonathan Winters, mainly because they lost focus given that he was an incredible talent, but it was such an awesome show. It’s strange because as a kid I could watch this show and appreciate the life lessons that Mork would give at the end of the show. They weren’t corny, they were actually touching to an 8 year old EC. Today I notice how freaking cool everyone is and wonder where I can meet someone like Pam Dawber. Plus, it’s good to remember when Robin Williams was incredibly funny as opposed to today where I wonder if even he knows what he is doing anymore. Other than working on a script for Patch Adams 2.

Let me know if I missed any. I almost want to add Small Wonder even if she was just a robot.

A double blind life

Note to people who have to deal with me in the real world on a regular basis: I am undertaking a personal experiment this week and I am not sure what the results shall be. I have finally broken down and taken the television set out of my bedroom. Theoretically, this should help remove the clutter from my life, make it easier for me to sleep and force me to wake up earlier as I will no longer be able to lie in bed listening to the news every morning. That’s the theory anyway. There is a real possibility that I simply will not get out of bed and/or even be more bitter and grumpy than normal. Just saying, you might want to give me some space this week.

This isn’t the first personal experiment that I’ve undertaken and hopefully it won’t have similar results to the fabled “Optimal Level of Drunkeness” experiment, which I believe is still discussed in hushed tones at bars around the country. The idea was brilliant though. I’m a naturally quiet and serious guy and while I have a good sense of humor it takes a while for me to show it to people. (Computer screens are a much nicer audience). But there is a point on a Saturday night where after enough beverages I become a very witty and relaxed guy who is really fun to have around. The experiment, and yes this was done with rigor and numerous witnesses, was to pinpoint that exact moment and to time it to coincide with when this girl I really liked was going to join us at the bar. The protocol was top-notch going into the night.

Sadly, the protocols did not anticipate people ordering shots of tequila. As I said later, “I saw the optimal level and decided to run right past it.” Didn’t get the girl and ended up watching old tapes of Beavis and Butthead at my apartment later that night. This is why I warn people when I undertake these experiments.

Anyway, a few other notes from the weekend. Sadly, I did not attend the Redneck Games that the Kansas City T-Bones were holding this weekend. The promotion’s goal, and this is an exact quote, was to “find the biggest redneck in Wyandotte County.” Personally, this doesn’t seem like something you could achieve in a weekend. I’m guessing this would require at least six months, a double-elimination bracket, and several monster trucks. Sometimes I really don’t have to look very far to find humor in this town.

I did make my way to the Lyle Lovett and K.D. Lang show on Friday. I’ll say this about KC, the nice thing about a town that doesn’t believe in culture (or evolution, or filling in potholes) is that I can end up with sixth row seats for Lyle Lovett without any effort. K.D. was fine, given that I didn’t quite know what to expect. Basically I can’t complain about anyone who does a version of Leonard Cohen’s “Halleluiah” to end her set. (If I ever decided to go for a master’s in the history of music my thesis would be on that song and its evolution through cover versions by John Cale, Jeff Buckley and Rufus Wainwright among others.) Lyle was awesome as always. He played a lot of new material as he should have a new album out relatively soon. He’s messing around with bluegrass again, more as a concept than a full blown, old-time sound. Still a good show except with two venue complaints.

First, during a few songs they completely lost Lyle’s vocals in the mix. To the point that you could barely hear him sing. I’ve gone to a lot of shows and losing the vocals is not common. This is the second show in a row at Starlight that this has happened and it makes me wonder who is running their sound board. The other point is that it is very odd to put a rather nice, open air theater right next to the zoo. Because this means that on a warm summer night you sit down to watch a band and the cooling breeze brings with it a smell that is almost, but not quite, like having an elephant sitting next to you. It just adds a bit of surrealness to a night that should be pretty straightforward.

The five random CDs for the week:
1) Cowboy Junkies “Early 21st Century Blues”
2) Toad the Wet Sprocket “Dulcinea”
3) Lyle Lovett “Lyle Lovett”
4) Carbon Leaf “Love Loss Hope Repeat”
5) The Polyphonic Spree “Together We’re Heavy”

More Infrequently Asked Questions...

Haven’t broken out the iFAQ’s for a while. Let’s dip into the old mailbag…

Question: What’s wrong with putting ketchup on a hot dog?
Answer: Putting ketchup on a hot dog goes against all that is good and pure of this great nation of ours. It is an affront to the American way of life and is a sign of moral weakness. The downfall of Pax Americana will be inexorably linked to people who somehow feel that it is ok to put ketchup on a hot dog.

Obviously, I have very strong emotions on this subject.

Basically, it is a Chicago thing. You don’t put ketchup on a hot dog because it overpowers the entire flavor of a Vienna Beef hot dog. The palate just tastes ketchup and you could be eating sawdust for all you know. It’s a trick you use when you’re feeding little kids, they’ll eat pretty much anything if ketchup is on it. To truly experience a hot dog it must include mustard, onions, sweet relish, a pickle spear, tomatoes and potentially sport peppers. You can do some mix and matching but that is your condiment list. Placing anything else on a hot dog is akin to putting mayonnaise on French fries. It’s not having different tastes, it’s just plain wrong.

Question: What is the proper name for a combination of a horse and a zerbra?
Answer: Officially, it is a zebrula, which beat out the more obvious choices of hebra and zorse. Personally, I feel that we should make a concerted effort to rename this animal the horbra just because it will make going to the zoo a lot more fun. I’d be much more willing to go if I knew that I would get to hear little kids plead “Mommy, mommy, can we go see the horbras?” Or civic leaders making grand claims like “Kansas City has the greatest collection of horbras in the United States.” Plus, much like you have a gaggle of geese and a crash of rhinos I think a skank of horbras would be fitting, if you know what I mean.

Question: Hey, whatever happened to Tawdry Amusements at Hourly Rates? Is it ever going to be written?
Answer: Uh, yeah, I meant to be working on that. For those that don’t remember, that is the name of the collection of the best pieces from the blog that I was working on collecting, rewriting and then self-publishing. As opposed to every other writing project I have ever taken on, this one is not suffering from a case of writer’s block. It’s more like I am suffering from a writer’s flood. See, I’ve written 100,000 words in this blog this year alone and I’m pretty sure I’ve broken half a million words since I started up the blog. To try to figure out what is good in that mix and then fix it so that it at least borders on proper grammar is a lot more challenging than I originally anticipated. It’s still on my list of things to do and if I can figure out a schedule I might give it a shot still this summer.

If anything, I need to figure out how to build time in my calendar for a writing project or November will become the worst month ever for me. I promised myself that I would write my novel before I turn 35 so this is really going to be my last chance. If you see me without sleep and muttering about characters named Brian and…shoot, I don’t think I ever came up with a name for the female lead yet. That might be a problem. Oh well, I have a few months to figure it out.

Question: Based on the Chris Benoit posts, who are the people that you idolize/admire?
Answer: This should be an easy question to answer but it is surprisingly challenging, mainly because this isn’t one of those things that I tend to make into lists. Top ten sitcoms from the 80’s that involved aliens? Can answer that one in five seconds. Who are my heroes? That’s a lot tougher.

The first name that popped into my head is Henry Rollins, not as much because I agree with everything he says but more because I admire his style. He just puts himself out there in everything he does and makes it his point to give everything he has. Plus, he isn’t content to be just one thing. He’s not just a guy in a punk band, he’s also a writer and a poet and a performer. It’s his writing that gets me. It takes a lot of courage to publish your journals, especially when you pour your heart out the way he does. He’s someone I try to emulate, though admittedly without the tattoos.

There’s also the people I met in New Orleans who were volunteering for a year or more gutting houses and working towards the rebuilding of the city. That’s work that I wish I could do (or even have the courage to give up so much of my life to attempt). It’s physically tough working, tearing down moldy walls in the heat and humidity of the city. But more than anything it is mentally draining. Every day you go and rip apart a person’s dreams and take everything they own and toss it into the street. It’s not done out of malice and it is done with care and concern but it is still rough. But, it is the only way for that city to come back to what it once was and I applaud anyone working towards that cause.

On the science side I’d have to say that one of my heroes is the late John Bardeen, to my knowledge the only person to ever win two Nobel Prizes in the same field. He was involved in the invention of the transistor and the supercomputer and he just happened to also be an Illini. He might be one of the most important people of the twentieth century and he is pretty much unknown except for us science geeks out there. But can you imagine life without the transistor? It powers everything, it might be the most important invention since the wheel. And after Bardeen (along with Schokley and the third guy whose name I always forget) finished with that project he designed the supercomputer for an encore. That’s what I call making your impact on society.

That’s it off of the top of my head. Oh, and “Nature Boy” Ric Flair. Look, anyone who can look into a camera and say “If you want to be the best you’ve got to beat the best” will always rank high in my book.

Have a fun weekend everyone.

A verse, then a verse, and refrain

“Today’s the fourth of July / Another June has gone by / And when they light up our town I just think what a waste of gunpowder and sky.” Aimee Mann

This is a strange holiday for me and not for any of the usual reasons. This isn’t going to be a post about patriotism or how any product can be sold better by incorporating a picture of Abraham Lincoln or even how somehow celebrating freedom has become equated to getting drunk and blowing stuff up. Heck, I can’t even say that I did any celebrating today. I spent all day doing laundry, cleaning my apartment and basically getting my life in order. And there is a reason why I did that over any other possibilities today.

See, as of today I am two months away from turning thirty four. That doesn’t sound like much as thirty four isn’t one of those momentous birthdays. Heck, when I was in New Orleans a few weeks ago someone asked me my age and I instinctively answered thirty four even though I knew it was wrong. I feel that old. When each haircut is met by more and more gray hairs on the floor you begin to realize that you are of a certain age. And that is why I’ve been sitting around doing some serious pondering the past few weeks.

A few people know about this but others don’t but if you searched my wallet hidden amongst my business cards and insurance cards and student ID’s for schools I haven’t attended in a decade you’ll find three note cards. Four years ago I wrote all of my goals on these cards and put them in my wallet so I would know that if I ever needed to figure out what I was meant to be doing all I would have to do is look. Some goals I’ve accomplished, others are at least planned (I’ll write my novel in November as part of National Novel Writers Month) but there is one that is just sitting there and hanging over everything. And that’s the goal to be married by the time I turn 35.

Barring a major change of events that is not going to happen. I mean, it is still possible and thanks to Vegas it probably is not an impossibility until roughly 11:53 P.M. the night before my birthday but let’s face it, the odds are not in my favor. Now part of me doesn’t want to make a big deal about this. I like being single and being able to do whatever it is that I want to do. I’m beholden to no one and live the life that I find suits me. But the thing is, recently I’ve been really longing for a life that includes a wife, a house and a dog.

(Technically, I could just buy a house and get a dog but stay with me here. Hell, thanks to mail order and eBay I could probably accomplish all three using PayPal but I’d like to do a few things the old fashioned way.)

A few years ago I was pretty adamant about not wanting the house, the wife and the dog. It’s why I live where I live. If I lived by my office it was almost as if I was admitting that I was settled into middle age and I was nowhere near that point. I still don’t think I’m at that point but recently things have been changing. I’ve slowly gotten sick of renting or at least sick of having neighbors who really enjoy testing the bass on their stereo system. The concept of a yard has gone from something that is completely frivolous to something that I think I would possibly enjoy even if it meant paying a neighbor kid to mow it. And you know, part of me is just saying that maybe it is just time to start settling down. Life can’t always consist of Voltron DVDs.

What does all of this mean? I’m really not sure. I’m not the first person to get old or the first person to wake up and wonder just what in the world is he supposed to be doing with his life. It’s just that I am so used to setting five year goals and reaching them effortlessly that the thought of missing one leaves me flummoxed. Life isn’t going entirely according to plan anymore. That’s probably normal to everyone else but to me it’s shocking especially given that I was certain that my equations were correct.

So that’s why I spent the day cleaning and organizing my apartment as opposed to going out and celebrating or doing whatever it is that people do today. Because the only way I can go forward is by making sure that I have everything together before I start. It might not make sense but it’s the way that I work. A clean apartment means that my life is together and everything will fall into place. I’m pretty sure my life is looking at some major changes soon. Growing old and changing all at the same time. It’s a recipe for brilliance or disaster but definitely a novel.

Take me out to the Royals game as long as it's free

(Picture of Paul Konerko seconds before he takes the Royals yard.)

A few weeks ago I won tickets to a Royals game at trivia. Typically this is equivalent to winning a jar filled of pennies as a prize. Sure you know that it technically has some value but the amount of work that you have to perform (as well as the sheer embarrassment of it) makes you wonder if it is even worth the effort. But I was lucky in that the tickets were for the Royals playing my beloved White Sox so I was actually looking forward to the game.

(And yes, Lindsay is not my only beloved. Though Lindsay in a White Sox jersey….excuse me, I need to step away from the laptop for a moment.)

Anyway, I decided to not be a completely obnoxious White Sox fan and show up in my Konerko jersey, especially given that I was sitting in box seats behind home plate. Instead I went with the more subdued 2005 World Series Champions t-shirt just to remind people what a world series trophy looks like. Got there a few minutes before game time and it was salute to the Negro Leagues day with the teams wearing throwback jerseys and several former players being honored before the game including Minnie Minoso throwing out the first pitch. Yes, my first Royals game of the year and I got to see Minnie f’n Minoso. Super cool.

(If I remember correctly, the first Sox game I ever attended was one in which they were honoring Minnie. He was a classic Sox player in that he was incredibly talented but would a) choke in big series and b) be good for one concussion a year due to running into the outfield wall. In Chicago, this results in you becoming a folk hero.)

Now people can get on me for cheering the Sox at a Royals game but I’m sorry that is where my loyalties lie. I’ve been cheering the Sox since birth while I grew up viewing the Royals as the team in the powder blue uniforms who for some reason had fountains in their outfield where any logical human being would have put bleachers. Plus, I don’t feel bad about cheering Konerko and Thome who are legitimately good guys. The fact that I cheer A. J. Perszynski is probably an indication that at my core I am pure evil though.

However, while I was able to cheer my Sox to a 3-1 victory it may have been one of the most boring games that I have ever seen. It took three and a half hours with minimal excitement. It seemed like every count went to 3-1 or 3-2 and no one could seem to drive runners in. Also, one of my favorite players, Scott Podensik, pulled a rib muscle in the first inning and was out for the rest of the game. (Crede was out as well, which sucked and explains the horrible season.) It was interesting being that close to the field as I haven’t been that close to home plate in ages. What really struck me was the sound of a broken bat, which was just this massive crack ripping through the air that made you instinctively want to duck. Otherwise it was a fun day out of the apartment that had me out in the fresh air for a full afternoon. Sadly, that just means I am now suffering from sunburn. Maybe we can just replace the sun with a fluorescent light bulb.

(Oh, and relish won the hot dog race. What the hell is up with that? Only morons pick relish. And I’m sickened by the fact that they even allow ketchup to run in the hot dog race. That is an affront to all that is good and true about this great nation of ours. Ketchup on a hot dog. You know who puts ketchup on hot dogs? Commies, that’s who.)

That's it for this planet...

So this weekend was a grocery shopping weekend for me. I’ve ranted about this before but I’m not someone who is very fond of grocery shopping. It is one of the tasks that I would most like to outsource (I’ve had an offshoring offer but the shipping costs from Bangalore are pretty harsh). It’s not as if I’m morally opposed to grocery shopping, more in that it is an hour of my life where I can’t multi-task even though I’ve been buying the exact same things every two weeks for several years.

So, while stumbling through the aisles on Saturday I came across the following and just stopped dead in my tracks. Just stared at it for minutes until I finally decided that I had to take a picture of it, as if to prove that it is not just a figment of my imagination. And yes, there it is, when someone asks me what marked the downfall of Western Civilization I’ll have an answer for them…

They’ve started to sell hot dogs in hot dog buns at the grocery store.

Think about this for a minute. Is the concept of a hot dog that challenging? Is the need to purchase both hot dogs and hot dog buns so confusing that they need to be combined? Maybe people just can’t figure out that they need to go to two separate parts of the store. Or, maybe the entire construction aspect of the hot dog is so mind-boggingly complex. I mean, the instruction manual basically reads Step 1: Take hot dog, Step 2: Place hot dog in bun. That’s obviously one step too many.

Seriously, I’ve never felt so ashamed to be a part of the human species. Apes would have the sense not to prepackage things like this. I know you could make the argument that this is for kids but if a kid can’t figure out how to put a hot dog in a bun he probably shouldn’t be allowed to operate a microwave. Hell, if you have to buy this stuff prepackaged would you even assume that you would have to cook them? I bet you eighty percent of the people who buy this eat it straight out of the package. If you can’t be bothered to take the effort to open a hot dog bun would you even wait the minute for it to heat up in the microwave?

Is there a better symbol for how soft we have gotten as a country than this? We’ve reached a point where even the simplest task has to be prepackaged for us. We can’t act for ourselves and we definitely can’t think for ourselves. Everything has to be pre-portioned into hermetically sealed bite sized packets. There’s no uniqueness anymore because uniqueness would require effort and that is just too tiring. We’ll just go off to the enormoplex to see our movies and the mega mart for our food and having the exact same life experience as everyone else while making the minimum amount of effort possible. If you see anyone buying these things in a grocery store just tell them to stop and look at themselves for five seconds. Encourage people to rejoin the human race.

Ok, I know that I promised that I’d talk about the Royals game as well but we must keep in mind that tonight is the 21st birthday of My Beloved Lindsay Lohan. So I’m off to the bar to celebrate as we must all raise a glass in honor of the greatest actress, nay the epitome of style, of her generation. Appletinis for everyone!

(And just think, now when I meet her we’ll be able to go to the bars without her needing a fake ID.)

The Other Five

Continuing with the theme from last week, here are the rest of my top ten CDs of the decade so far. Remember we still have some time to go so there may always be a new entry. Or who knows, maybe the Avril Lavigne disc will begin to grow on me. At which point I will be working on getting a musical taste transplant but I’m just saying, things do change. Here’s the rest of the list.

Woo hoo! Canada!: I’m not quite sure what type of music goes best with a hockey game. It’s not as if there is an entire genre built around the sport (well, other than The Zamboni Song and probably Five for Fighting’s entire catalog). However, it has to be pretty cool that “Wake Up” from Arcade Fire’s “Funeral” is used to play in the Rangers as they take the ice. Hell, it makes me want to hit somebody.

Arcade Fire is probably the best definition of a band that makes one disc, tours behind it and becomes so successful without being popular that they suddenly become the saviors of music. Seriously, there was so much hype surrounding their latest release for a band that it is amazing to think that two years ago no one knew who they were. But that just shows how incredible “Funeral” is. It’s tough to describe, maybe you’d just call it a rock band with violin and piano, or a rock band that for some reason will start singing in French. What they are more than anything is a band that will get your heart pumping and making you feel alive. I so want to see them live, just based off of the video streams of concerts that I’ve seen it seems to be amazing. You want to know why you should listen to this disc? When they played Lollapalooza two years ago they took the stage with most people not knowing who they were. After performing this album they left to the entire crowd chanting “Arcade Fire”. That’s how awesome it is.

One Disc That You Might Actually Own: Look, I’ll admit to being a music snob. My favorite bands don’t have platinum records. Or gold records. Hell, a few have a hard time staying on a label. Still, occasionally someone becomes popular that I actually like. And I am happy that Jack Johnson has gained mainstream popularity, especially based on the disc “On and On”.

You might think that all of the songs are simple to the point of being sappy. It is laid back surf music after all, a mess of acoustic guitars and good time feelings and songs that will be played over and over again by guys at parties in an attempt to score with those girls who are looking for the sensitive, artistic guy. But lyrically there is some pretty heady stuff going on at times. Maybe not change the world stuff but deeper than what you would find on most pop songs. I mean songs like “Taylor” and “The Horizon Has Been Defeated” are just really cool interesting songs and even though it is a cover “Rodeo Clowns” is awesome. I can be happy enjoying this disc knowing that other people also have it in their collection. It shows that the mainstream isn’t always polluted.

Do Not Operate Heavy Machinery While Listening To This Disc: Of course, not everything in life is rainbows and unicorns. There are a few artists who wish to look into the dark corners of their soul and explore what they find there. It’s daring and challenging and I’ll have to admit, useful to the rest of us when we have to confront what is within ourselves. For times like that I turn to Chan Marshall, better known as Cat Power, and my favorite disc of hers, “You are Free”.

This isn’t jump around and feel alive music. This is turn off all the lights in your apartment, put on headphones, and not move from your couch for an hour music. There is nothing that you could call a band, heck, there are barely any arrangements. A piano here, a violin there, a surprise appearance by Dave Grohl and Eddie Vedder to make things interesting. But talk about lyrics as poetry and expressing life in only a few lines. When I get my novel turned into a movie, for one scene I am going to push for having the song “Good Woman” playing in the background. I always wondered why I’ve had relationships fail without my understanding what the hell just happened. This song explains it better than anything anyone has ever told me. I’m probably going to just end up stealing it for my book and ruining it but buy the album, it’s much better than anything that I’ll ever write.

Pretty Girls Playing Guitar: When I was home for Christmas last year my mom asked me what music I was listening to at the moment. This is a pretty common conversation topic between the two of us. Sometimes she likes what I’m listening to; sometimes she wonders how in the world I became a fan of country music when I grew up in Chicago. This year my answer was simple, “I’m listening to a lot of pretty girls playing guitar.” That’s my explanation of the entire female singer-songwriter genre that I’m pretty enamored with at the moment and the best of the best is Kathleen Edwards’ “Back to Me.”

Yes, it’s female singer-songwriter music but it isn’t wimpy in that Jewel style or inanely poppy in the Sheryl Crow sense or so god awful that it makes you want to rip your ears off in the Paula Cole sense. Kathleen sings about wanting to turn her no good boyfriend over to the cops or taking the upper hand in a relationship by using all of her tricks. Probably the best song is the simplest, “Pink Emerson Radio” which is about what you would do if your apartment was on fire and all you could do is take one thing with you. It is slow and melodic and really touching. Kathleen is rather unknown in that States (she’s another Canadian in a list that is pretty filled with them) but she has talent to burn. I really wished that everyone owned this record. Greatness shouldn’t be hidden to this degree.

What Is Music About, Really?: I was really struggling to pick a tenth disc. I’m not kidding here, I was sitting in front of my collection and trying to figure out what to choose. Not that I couldn’t make a bunch of easy choices, I could have grabbed any disc by Alejandro Escovedo or John Dee Graham or Damien Rice or Josh Ritter or The Frames and written a few paragraphs on how great a disc it is. I wouldn’t be lying either, I love all of their stuff. But there was one disc that caught my eye and reminded me about why I listen to music in the first place.

I have an old joke that when I get depressed I buy books and CDs. This explains the CD collection that is going to take me two and a half years to listen through and a book collection that has overrun its bookcases years ago. But really, it is music that gets me through things and certain albums tie to great moments in my life. And I find myself years later putting in that same disc just to get that feeling back.

Well, back in 2003 I bought Sonny Landredth’s “Levee Town” because I was depressed about something in business school. I can’t recall what, mainly because once I listened to this disc my mood suddenly brightened. It was in my car on my way to the MBA prom, which turned into a surprisingly good night. It was in my car for the months that followed, which became incredible months. And a few weeks ago I played it before going out because I wanted it to be a good night.

It’s Louisiana swamp music. It’s rock with a lot of soul. It really doesn’t need a description. It makes me feel like the world is going to be perfect for a change. What else can you want from a record?

(Tomorrow, the downfall of Western Civilization. And the Royals game. Surprisingly, those two topics are not related.)

The five random CDs for the week:
1) Rachmaninov “Piano Concerto No. 2”
2) Alejandro Escovedo “Gravity”
3) Old 97’s “Early Tracks”
4) Steve Earle “The Revolution Starts Now”
5) Ryan Adams “Heartbreaker”

The best so far (part 1)

Short of a Fat Boys comeback, the announced Spice Girls reunion is the best thing that could happen to this planet. Life will be so much better with the musical stylings of Baby, Scary, that one who looked like she was a big fan of Melissa Etheridge, the one who is like 47 years old and of course, that one who really looks like she needs a sandwich. Talk about a tonic for our troubled times. (I would really like to think that I’m kidding here but I’m about five seconds away from going to YouTube and watching the video for Wannabe again.)

Anyway, so here we are in June 2007, just a short two and a half years away from the end of the Oughts and the start of the Roaring…Tens?...Teens? We really need a linguist to figure this out. No matter, the real point is that we are far enough into this decade to start discussing what are the best CDs of the decade. Here is my attempt, I’ll do the first five tonight and then the second five on Sunday, barring any major event in my life like, I don’t know, meeting the girl of my dreams over the weekend. Though if I met the girl of my dreams and then she discovered that I called her that in my blog twenty-four hours after meeting her she probably wouldn’t remain the girl of my dreams. That’s one of the occupational hazards of cataloguing your life. Here’s the list.

The Reinvention of Power Pop: This has been a tough decade for being a fan of pop rock. Not the hard edged stuff over the bubblegum songs, both of which have still been well represented though not in a way I would ever want to embrace. What I’m talking about is the music that has you bouncing around, dancing and singing along with songs with meanings that are pretty much impenetrable. And this was done no better than in The New Pornographer’s “Twin Cinema”. The Canadian supergroup, made up of people from bands you have never heard of, play tuneful songs filled with harmony and dark humor. Whether it is the pop sensibilities of Carl Newman or the drunken ramblings of Dan Bejar or the pure beauty that is Neko Case, they all combine into music that can either make you run for miles on a treadmill or jump around all night. Pure energy in a time of darkness and repetitiveness in the music industry.

Going Where No Sensible Man Would Dare: Concept albums are a dangerous thing. First of all, they conjure up thoughts of the late 70’s when enjoying music while high was slightly more acceptable than it is today. Plus, when you enter a genre that includes Styx’s “Kilroy Was Here” you have to wonder if you are making the right career choice. That’s what makes Sufjan Stevens’ “Illinois” such a masterpiece. The album is composed entirely of songs about the people, places and history of the state of Illinois. There is a song about the city of Metropolis, a reflection on the World’s Fair and a rather chilling song about John Wayne Gacy. The songs vary from minimal arrangements (just guitar and piano) to full orchestral numbers featuring string and horn sections. It is truly unlike anything that I have ever heard before. It’s ambitious, daring and probably twenty minutes too long. However, you’ll never find two better songs back to back than “Chicago” and “Casmir Pulaski Day”, which is so beautiful and touching that it will leave you speechless. This album is what it means to be unique.

Simple Pleasures: When you start talking about the top ten discs of the decade the temptation of just focusing on those ambitious, artistic discs that sold less than nothing. It shows off your musical snobbery to be discussing the mastery of obscure Slovakian techno artists. Those albums that you listen to once, go “wow that was great”, and slide the disc back into your collection. I call them Schindler’s List discs, it might be a wonderful movie but you’re not going to watch it on a Friday night.

That’s why one spot has to go to the album that I have listened to for two years running just because it always makes me feel refreshed: Josh Rouse’s “Nashville”. There’s nothing complicated about the music, just some acoustic guitar with a little piano and pedal steel put in for good measure. Lyrically it focuses on relationships and failures but it always ends on the positive. It isn’t a “life sucks” album, it’s a “the past is only prologue” album. And there might not be a song around that I love more than “Carolina”.

The Defining Moment: When people look back at this decade, all attention will be focused on that Tuesday in September when under a perfectly clear sky the world changed. Everything that has happened since then has been colored by that moment. I still don’t feel that we have recovered or moved on from that moment. While people said that we were a cynical nation before then at least we were one that laughed about it. Now, we are more of a nation of grim determination on a glum reality. There isn’t much joy to be found.

Surprisingly, there really hasn’t been an album made since that has captured this. Sure, there were attempts (most notably Bruce Springsteen’s “The Rising” and Steve Earle’s “The Revolution Starts Now”) but they have all been heavy handed at best. In reality the two albums that captured what the country went through in those months were recorded months before anything happened. And they are easily two of the best discs of the decade: Gillian Welch’s “Time (The Revelator)” and Wilco’s “Yankee Hotel Foxtrot”.

There is Jeff Tweedy singing “Tall buildings shake, voices escape singing sad, sad songs” and “I’d like to salute the ashes of American flags and all the falling leaves filling up shopping bags.” There is Gillian Welch, singing as if she was teleported from the Appalachian hills in the last century. Songs of loss and rebirth, about how time tells all and at times how all you want to do is sing rock and roll. If you want to pick the album of the decade it is one of these two. I just can’t figure out which one.

(Have a great weekend everybody.)

Returning to the world of the celebutante

(Last note on the Benoit situation and the comment on the last post. It dawned on me last night that in the past three months I’ve watched news reports on Virginia Tech, the Ward Parkway shooting and now Chris Benoit. All completely senseless tragedies and some hitting much closer to home than others. So much, so quickly can really leave you feeling numb inside. Maybe all I can take from this is that life is precious and that you should do all that you can do to embrace it, relish it and rejoice in it.)

Now, back to our usually scheduled broadcast of pop culture events, analysis and dreams.

Have a great bar story from this weekend that may mark a new high point in my drinking career. I believe that I have set a new personal best in terms of “Famous people ordering drinks over my shoulder while I’m just sitting at my usual seat at the bar.” The new clubhouse leader is Josh Blue, the winner of Last Comic Standing, who ended up at Harry’s on Saturday night after doing a comedy show in town. It’s really strange to just be sitting at the end of the bar, turning and going “Hey, that’s the dude that won the reality show.” It’s not an extremely famous person but please remember that a) I tend not to hang out in fancy nightspots where the elite hang out and b) it’s not like famous people hang out in Kansas City to begin with.

In other celebrity news, they finally let Paris Hilton out of jail. I know, I know, our long national nightmare is finally over (or just begun, depending on your point of view). I’m expecting for her to hit the talk show rounds and then keep a low profile for a few months. Then she’ll come out with a tell-all book detailing her time in prison and discussing how it changed her life. Not a tell-all book that she actually wrote, mind you, though that might set the record for the most uses of the word “like” in a manuscript. Hell, I could probably write the book for her this weekend without even talking to her. I’ll just watch a few women in prison movies and then I’ll be set. It would just be interesting to see if any book reviewers would recognize the relationship between Paris’ time in prison with that served by the character played by Wendy O. Williams in “Reform School Girls.”

(Yes, I got in a Wendy O. Williams reference! That’s how old school I am.)

Finally, I did receive the news that my beloved Lindsay is going to remain in rehab. This means that she will be spending her birthday next week in rehab and as an adoring fan I will be making my way out to California to ensure that she will be able to celebrate her 21st birthday in the proper manner. Hell, I’m even bringing my famous butter rum cake. Well, except without the butter. Or the cake for that matter. But there will be plenty of rum. Look, we have to celebrate the fact that she can now legally drink. Think of all the exclusive nightclubs she’ll now finally be able to enter.

As promised last week, the top 10 albums of the Oughts will be posted tomorrow. I like that name for this decade. It’s been a time where there have been a lot of things we ought to have been doing and lots of things that ought to have gone differently.

My worst fears...

The Chris Benoit story has turned out the way I feared. I didn’t know this to be fact when I wrote last night but I definitely feared that it was a murder-suicide. If it was just Benoit I would have thought that it was another heart attack resulting in a wrestler’s early death. But once I heard that it was his wife and son as well and that they were investigating it as a homicide but were not searching for a suspect there was really only one conclusion. Though I will say I was in line with someone I read on one of the wrestling blogs who wrote “I’ve never wished more to hear the words carbon monoxide poisoning in my entire life.”

This is just horrendous and devastating news. I really can’t come to grips that he actually did this. It seems more like a soap opera, or a bad movie, than anything else. I can’t imagine it really being the guy that I watched and admired for fifteen years. I’ve never experienced anything like this. Kurt Cobain killing himself was troubling, Jeff Buckley drowning was tragic, horrendous might be the right word for this. How can you kill your seven year old son?

If you’re not a wrestling fan, and especially if you’re not part of the internet wrestling community, it might be tough to understand just what Chris Benoit represented prior to yesterday. He had no desire to use wrestling to become a movie star or make the cover of magazines. All he wanted to do was be the best wrestler in the ring at all times. And to those of us who followed wrestling with more of a passion than is probably healthy, we admired him for that. We saw his dedication to his craft, his love for the business, and his desire to give the fans the best show possible night after night and I hate to say it now but we worshiped the guy. Watch old matches and in the crowd you will see signs that read “Benoit is God”. When he finally, after 18 years in the business, won the world title at Wrestlemania XX I knew people who celebrated the same way I did when the White Sox won the World Series. For those of us who loved the craft of wrestling, who followed the sport online and discussed the minutiae of matches on message boards, Benoit represented all that we loved about wrestling.

And now it is all gone. I’ve been on the message boards a bit the past two days, just lurking and seeing what people are saying. The reaction has been one of utter disbelief. Until the press conference this afternoon everyone was looking for just one thread of hope that the worst wouldn’t be true. Now we’re trying to come to grips that someone we have followed and admired and idolized has done something so horrible I can’t even put it into words. And something that was so opposite of what we knew him to be. I know that all we knew was a wrestling character but over the years you came to feel that you knew him. This wasn’t some guy wrestling in a clown costume, this was a guy who came to the ring using his real name and his real personality. And I never in a million years would have expected this.

(A few people have posed a question that I will have to address as well. Sitting in my DVD collection right now is a 2 disc set of Benoit’s best matches. I really don’t know what I am going to do with it. I certainly don’t know if I could bring myself to watch it again.)

As to whether they should have had the tribute show last night, I’m a bit torn on that one. In the WWE’s defense they had only learned of this an hour or two before the show was to begin and did not have the full story. However, I’m pretty sure that they knew the direction this story was headed. I watched most of it and I could tell from the interviews that the wrestlers gave that this wasn’t just a tragic accident. They knew what had happened, they just couldn’t explain it on television. Which made honoring his memory feel odd even while I was watching it. I turned it off at points less because I felt saddened and more because I feared that doing this was wrong. I even wished last night that they just would have said that Benoit, his wife and son were found dead and that due to the tragedy the show would be cancelled and that a tribute would be scheduled for later. USA could show reruns of something else for once. That would have saved me from seeing wrestlers talk on camera about how they found out that one of their best friends died an hour ago.

That said, this is Vince McMahon who has always held the belief that the show must go on. To the point of having The Undertaker win the world title in the same ring where Owen Hart had fallen to his death an hour earlier. It’s one of the aspects of pro wrestling that I can’t stand.

I know that I can’t make any sense of this act. I can’t even make sense of what I am feeling right now and my only connection is that this is someone I have watched on television week after week for years. It’s just more senseless death in a year that has seen more than its fair share. My thoughts and prayers go out to the family and friends. At the end, maybe that is all you can say.

Don't know what to say...

I’m not sure if I know how to write this entry.

That wasn’t the plan tonight. This was going to be a pretty simple night for me. Get home, have some dinner, maybe head out and see Once again. Come back and tell some stories from the weekend. All I wanted was a quiet, simple night. While I was getting ready to go out I decided to flip on the TV and since Raw was going to be three hours tonight I thought that I’d catch some wrestling before I go. I was confused when I saw that they were at a commercial a few minutes in to the show. And then I was confused when I saw an empty arena and the announcers speaking in hushed voices. And then I saw the tribute message at the bottom of the screen reading “Remembering Chris Benoit”.

And I just sat there stunned.

(For those who haven’t heard, Chris Benoit, his wife and his young son were all found dead in their home this afternoon. There are a lot of theories and rumors floating around and I don’t want to think about any of them right now.)

See, I haven’t hidden the fact that I still watch pro wrestling. I even realized a few weeks ago that I’ve been a fan for over 25 years now. Usually I explain my interest as that it is an escape from the real world. For an hour or two a week I can sit back and watch controlled mayhem, intense interviews and at the end of the day see good defeat evil. It’s safe, enjoyable and you know how the story ends. But really I watch because there are a few performers who I feel are the best around and who can make me forget that what I am watching is choreographed. And Chris Benoit was at the top of that list.

He may have been the best technical wrestler of the past decade. The second he stepped inside that ring he told a story that emphasized that what you were seeing was completely real. It was intense and athletic and exhilarating. Add to that the fact that his story was one that had always inspired me. Here he was, a small guy in a business of giants, who through pure hard work and dedication made his way to the top of his profession without stepping on anyone along the way. He didn’t play politics, he was just the best at his job and in the end that couldn’t be ignored. I know it sounds strange but I truly admired the guy. There was a reason that in every wrestling video game I own I always wrestled as Chris Benoit.

That’s why I can’t believe that I’ve just watched a tribute show to him. I don’t think it’s even sunk in what has happened. I’ve watched this guy wrestle for fifteen years. I can still describe a move he did in his first match that was unlike anything I had ever seen before. And now he’s gone. And joins Eddie Guerrero, Owen Hart, Brian Pillman, Road Warrior Hawk, Curt Henning, Rick Rude, and sadly a host of others who all died before they even reached middle age.

I’m not sure if I want to be a wrestling fan anymore. It’s tough to watch your heroes die. My thoughts go out to his family. I fear that this story is only going to get worse.

A moment to hold on to

There are a handful of moments that define your life. It’s amazing when you think about it. I am fairly certain that ninety percent of who I am and what has happened in my life can be traced back to a few chance encounters and rash decisions. It wouldn’t even make a top ten list, there are so few transcendent moments in your life. While those moments are few they stay with you for the rest of your life. And one of those happened to me seventeen years ago tonight, half a lifetime ago, and I still think about it to this day.

I’ve written about being in high school before but I still don’t know if I’ve ever been able to describe what my life was like growing up. It is easy to just use the shorthand phrases of being a nerd and a geek but that really isn’t accurate. Yes, I was a top student and too smart for my own good but it wasn’t like I was being picked on. Never got into a fight and while people made fun of me I did so myself. Heck, I was officially a two sport letterman (though that was for being a football trainer and a baseball manager). In the end I think it could be summed up like this, at school everyone knew me and liked me. The second I left school property everyone forgot that I existed. As I’ve often said, the only time anyone ever called me was when they needed the answer to problem number seven.

But like I said, it wasn’t a bad life. Not a great one, but it became an acceptable level of solitude. I could always fall back into books and music and movies and use that to fill up the hours when everyone else was hanging out. That might explain why I was looking to do something prior to my senior year of high school. As all of these colleges were sending me brochures trying to recruit me I would occasionally get one from a school offering a summer program. Usually a few weeks of sample classes and I thought it would be good to go to one. Plus, it would be great on the college applications and just might be what I needed to get into Duke. (That debacle is a story for another day.)

The one I ended up choosing was at DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana. Not exactly one of the top schools in the country but it was close by and I was thrilled by the courses that I was going to take. One was on planned communities and what happens when you try to structure a society. The other was on poverty in a world of plenty and how do you define and address a problem that large. I’d still like to take classes on those subjects today but that isn’t what changed my life.

No, what changed my life was walking down to the game room in the dorm we were staying in for the first time and joking around with some of the other people in the program. Playing ping pong and laughing was this girl with short blonde hair and a cute smile. I noticed her, not sure why but I did. And I was thrilled when I found out later that night that we were in the same classes. I remember sitting on the grass next to her, just talking and cracking jokes (she told one about a dyslexic atheist who didn’t believe in dog). The thing I remembered most about her was that she was wearing orange shoes. That struck me for some reason. Maybe it was because that made her unique or original or maybe it was because I was too shy to look her in the eye so I focused on her feet. Either way, I had a voice in the back of my head telling me that I needed to get to know this girl better.

And over the course of the two weeks we certainly did. We were pretty inseparable at times, me the smart, quiet kid from Chicago and her the funny artistic girl from a small town in Minnesota. I could spend pages telling some of the stories, including one that involved someone mistaking us for a couple and a client when we were helping out at a health clinic. It was tough to say goodbye and we promised to write, which for you young kids out there is what you had to do before they invented e-mail. I wrote her the day I got back home. Four nights later I was sitting in my bedroom watching MASH when my brother told me that I had a phone call from some girl. And I was just floored by the fact that someone could tell me that they missed me.

Most of my memories of my senior year of high school are of sitting in the basement on Sunday nights and talking to Meg. Sitting on the floor of my bedroom and writing letters while listening to a tape of U2’s “The Unforgettable Fire”. It was a long distance relationship but it was a real one. We truly cared about each other and I’ll always say that she was the first person who liked me for the fact that I was me and she always encouraged me to see in myself what she saw. She was, without a doubt, the first love of my life.

But it was long distance and we went our separate ways. Occasionally we’d get back in touch with each other and we’d fall right back into our old routine. I lost track of her a few years ago and now it seems silly that I’m writing about a girl I haven’t talked to for a decade. But honestly, last Thursday night I had a dream about a girl with short blonde hair and a cute smile. And I knew who it was and for a moment I wished that my dreams could come true. I don’t know where you are in the world Meg but thanks for coming into my life. It was one of the best moments of my life.

The five random CDs for the week:
1) The Elders “Pass It On Down”
2) R.E.M. “Live Collection”
3) The Young and the Sexy “Stand Up For Your Mother”
4) U2 “October”
5) Sting “The Soul Cages” (My very first CD! Bought over 16 years ago.)

The promise of youth and the truth of near middle age

Just in case I wasn’t feeling inadequate enough, I read today that a fifteen year old in India performed a caesarean section in order to become the youngest surgeon ever. Yep, I’m more than twice this kids age and the highlight of my day was looking up biographies of pro wrestling referees on Wikipedia. We’re nearing the point where I feel ashamed to share a room with a plant. At least the plant provides oxygen.

(On the other hand, what do you think the woman thought about this surgery? Would you want to have a fifteen year old as your OB/GYN? Though in some way that might be every fifteen year old boys dream. Well, that dream world where every woman is a supermodel at least. Still, would you trust your pregnancy to Doogie Howser?)

It’s been strange that in the past few months it has really begun to dawn on me that I am no longer the child prodigy that I once was. I know I’ve written about this before but for some reason I always view myself as a sixteen year old kid, someone with a lot of potential and a seemingly endless amount of time in front of him. Even with my gray hair I still thought that I’m just this punk kid making a name for himself in the world. Except that now I look around and realize that I’ve been working for a decade and have consistently slouched my way towards middle management. Even I can’t view myself as the young hotshot anymore.

That’s a real challenge. I know part of this is just growing up and admitting that I am now an adult, which is something that someone in his mid-30’s should probably not have an issue with, but it is a real change in my world view. I’ve always taken a me against the world view of life. I liked being the underdog, the guy with something to prove. It fed into my belief that while I might not ever be able to outsmart anyone I could always outwork everyone. But now it just feels different. You can’t stay intense all the time when you are my age. People look at you funny and say things like “He’s really bitter.”

So instead I’ve somehow come to the conclusion that it is best to view the world in a manner of befuddled amusement. I’m now the grizzled old-timer who knows that this isn’t his first rodeo and can just sit back and point to other’s mistakes. I’m not really happy with this change as it seems that I’ve given up on life before it has ever really started. It’s just that I still haven’t come to grips with being an adult. Part of me still wants to go back to a simpler time and just live life without a concern about how this is going to impact my career or my investment portfolio.

When I was in high school I remember telling someone who told me that this was the best time of your life, “Dear God, I hope not.” Partly that is just my usual bitterness at high school and not being one of the cool kids (I was the guy who gave the cool kids answers on the test.) But really it was because I didn’t want my life to peak when I was 16. I also don’t want my life to have peaked when I was 29 either but right now that seems to be the case. It isn’t going to be, I just need to find that next huge challenge and adventure. There’s still a place for me out there where I’ll be the new kid on the block who changes everything. I still have that hope.

Have a great weekend everyone. Two features for next week: CDs you don’t own but should and The Top 10 CDs of the Aughts. Or whatever the hell we are calling this decade.

Star, star, teach me how to shine

So I saw Alison Krauss and Union Station at Starlight Theater last night. As its name suggests, Starlight Theater is a nice, outdoor amphitheater in Kansas City. Typically I don’t go to many shows at outdoor theaters because, well, you know, that implies that I would have to spend several hours breathing fresh air. Seeing the sun for more than fifteen minutes a day is a rarity for me, thanks to my working in an office where I can’t even see a window if I was standing tall with a pair of binoculars.

Still, it was a beautiful night to sit outside and listen to some great music. Alison performs bluegrass though I still can’t bring myself to call it true bluegrass. It wanders into adult contemporary much of time, though it is adult contemporary with fiddle and dobro (in the same way that the Dixie Chicks are a pop band with a country base). Musically though, they are probably one of the tightest bands that I’ve ever seen. I’m not sure if I heard one misstep the entire night and they can coordinate everything with just a glance and a nod of the head. It was quite impressive.

Alison is an amazing performer and she reminds me of a question I posed to long time blog contributor Erik back when we spent many a night getting drunk at the old flower shop. The question is rather simple, “If you could be married to Alison Krauss or Shania Twain who would you choose?” And as always, when I say marriage I mean to death due you part, you will spend every moment of the rest of your life with this person, to the point that you will be sitting in matching recliners watching Matlock: The Next Generation night after night.

It’s an interesting question and it tells a lot about someone. Do you choose beauty over brains? Do you take obvious riches if you know that you will have to spend the rest of your life with a diva? Do you take pleasure now or defer it until the future. My choice in this situation has always been Alison Krauss. While not listed as one of the most beautiful women in the world she is still quite pretty and she just seems to be the type of person you would want to grow old with. Incredibly talented, nice, sweet, just the type of woman who would make you smile knowing that at the end of every day you’d get to see her.

(If I remember correctly, Erik chose Shania for a brilliant, if more obscure, reason. His view is that he couldn’t deal with being with Alison knowing that she is more talented at everything than he will ever be. At least with Shania you are assured of being the best musician in the family.)

It is an incredible show if you ever get a chance to see it. No fancy lights or explosions or even sing along moments. Just beautiful music being played as well as it can ever be played. While I’ll always be happier when I’m sitting in a small club, listening to someone with an acoustic guitar singing as if their soul is going to explode if they don’t express what is in their heart, sometimes you just need to sit under the stars and listen to beauty. It doesn’t make for a bad night at all.

Life in the front row

I’ve been in a concert kind of mood the past couple of days. I’ve gone to three shows in the past five nights featuring several bands that you have never heard of and one that you probably have. Since I don’t have much else to write about I guess I’ll do a few quick concert reviews.

Saw Garrison Starr and Abra Moore on Friday night. I’ve been a fan of Garrison’s for a few years now. She is another in a long line of female singer-songwriters that I find interesting. In Garrison’s case it is because of her Mississippi accent and sweet nature combined with a tough exterior. And cool tattoos. Sometimes all it takes is a show of confidence to make me interested in a performer.

She had one story that really struck me. She had played in Memphis the night before (and a Memphis to KC trek in one day is not fun) and she happened to run into someone she went to grade school and high school with and hadn’t seen since graduation. The guy went up to her and went, ‘Saw you were playing and I thought I’d come out and see the show.” To which she was grateful but she also thought, “Where the hell have you been? I’ve been doing this for ten years and I’ve released four albums.” Bear in mind that she was playing to forty people at Davey’s when she told this story.

That’s what makes me think of the music industry as an incredibly difficult gig. Garrison has been doing this for a decade, loading up her car and hitting the road and playing to small crowds. She’s made a little bit of a name but still only plays to a small crowd. That has nothing to do with her talent. It’s just the nature of the business. By the time Abra Moore, who had mainstream success at one point, took the stage the crowd was down to twenty five people and hell, even I left before the end of the set. That’s why I try to support artists whenever I can, it has to be tough to sing your life’s work to an empty room.

Saw Vedera on Saturday night and they are probably my favorite local band. They used to be known as Veda, but thanks to another band claiming that name they had to change theirs and lose a whole bunch of recognition in the process. In my mind, they are a group that suffers from the current state of the music industry. I know that people claim that the long tail helps out these small bands and provides them with better distribution but if this band was around in 1994 they would have been huge.

Because Vedera is a band that is made for videos. The lead singer (Kristen May) has a killer voice and stage presence and just happens to be very beautiful. She’s also not just that front voice, she also plays guitar and leads the show. The songs are bombastic and powerful and really sound as if they were taken from an episode of Alternative Nation. A decade ago you would have seen their videos on MTV late at night and they would have built a mainstream following. Now it’s actually tougher for them to make their break as there just isn’t a large outlet for their music.

Finally, I just came back from seeing Allison Krauss and Union Station. I’ll talk about this more tomorrow but if you want to talk about a band that is tight from the moment they take the stage, this is the band. They’ve been playing together for more than a decade and all of the musicians are at the top of their game (Jerry Douglas is freaking insane on the dobro.) It’s just an amazing show, so much talent in one place. Enough so that I’ll write a full post on it tomorrow.

Cooking all day and all night

Just a few random topics tonight…

Topic # 1: On the comment from the weekend, I did know that Tim DeLaughter, the frontman for The Polyphonic Spree, used to be in Tripping Daisy. Mainly because I constantly get him confused with Wayne Coyne from The Flaming Lips and have missed trivia questions because I can never remember which one leads which band. For all I know they really are the same guy. Add to that the fact that I can’t ever recall who recorded “Push the Little Daisies” and somehow always credit that to Tripping Daisy just because of the name Daisy. The early 90’s were a very confusing time for me. All of these bands were popular right when I broke up with a girl just so I could date her roommate. It made mix tapes and phone calls surprisingly difficult.

Topic # 2: That’s something that kids today never have to deal with: calling a girl and having to deal with her roommate. Now you’d just call the girl’s cel phone and she’ll glance at the caller ID and let it go to voice mail. It takes all the fun out of it as you have to try to impress the roommate more than anyone because if she becomes your advocate it is smooth sailing. I’m not sure if I can even imagine what it is like as a college student anymore.

Topic # 3: Back to The Polyphonic Spree. I haven’t heard their new disc yet but I’ve heard some good buzz surrounding it. Historically, they have been one of the most insane acts out there. Imagine twenty people taking the stage in Technicolor choir robes and resembling in all aspects a cult who then go on to sing about twenty songs about how awesome the sun is. That’s pretty much the band. It’s as if they fell into a time warp and ended up thirty years into the future.

Well, except now the talk is they are taking the stage in these quasi-military uniforms. That would completely change the vibe of the band. Still don’t know if it matches Sufjan Stevens equipping his entire band with butterfly wings for a performance. This is what you get on the indie scene. When you can’t afford high end light shows and pyro you make up for it with costumes.

Topic # 4: For some reason, over the past few days I’ve watched Top Chef, The Next Food Network Star and Hell’s Kitchen. This from someone whose dinner was whatever I could shove in the microwave. It is a strange new world of reality shows where there are three separate “I wanna be a famous chef” shows. Top Chef has the most talented chefs as they tend to make dishes that look vaguely expensive and occasionally edible. It always seems the toughest show to make sense of because you watch it and you have no idea if the food actually tastes good. At least on Project Runway you can go “Dear god, that is the ugliest dress ever.”

The Food Network show is just bizarre. They have all of these people who are meant to be new hosts but they seem to have a complete lack of personality, emotion or ability to cook. You wouldn’t want to spend time with them in a bar, much less have them show you how to cook. At least Hell’s Kitchen matches peoples inability to cook with an incredible amount of profanity. That’s the way you should cook, by swearing at the food. Or, as one contestant did tonight, taking food out of the garbage and preparing it again to serve. Even I’ve never done that.

Movie Review: Once

At times I feel as if I’m a mystery to most people. At the least I have a tendency to resemble an iceberg, ninety percent of myself is hidden beneath the surface and I drunken sea captains run into me with surprising frequency. But mainly there are parts of my past that most people have no clue about. Such as the fact that I was raised with a great appreciation of musicals.

This is entirely a result of my mom, who is as proud of her true original Broadway cast recordings as I am of my CD collection. Growing up I often had Rogers and Hammerstein or Lerner and Loewe as my background music and whenever PBS had a pledge drive and would show clips from the classics it was guaranteed to be on our tv. To this day I still like musicals and the drama within them and if you get me drunk enough to honestly list my five favorite films of all time Singin in the Rain would be on the list. That said, it always was a little contrived to see people walking down the street suddenly break into song with an orchestra that had apparently been travelling with them for the past five miles.

That is what makes the film “Once” such an interesting take on the idea of a musical. It’s a musical where the songs are entirely natural. There is no contrivance there, the music is a part of the characters’ lives the same way it is in mine. The plot is simple to the point that the characters don’t even have names (they are referred to as Guy and Girl). In essence, Glen Hansard is a busker on Grafton Street in Dublin, playing Van Morrison songs during the day and his own songs at night. He meets Markeeta Irglova, a Czech immigrant and pianist, and they talk and make music and maybe fall for each other. They decide to rent a recording studio for a weekend and record some tracks. That’s pretty much the entire movie.

It might not sound like much but when you see it on screen it can be as touching as anything you will see in a summer filled with high explosive sequels and remakes of the cartoons from my youth. The emotions are real as the songs really are performed by Glen and Markeeta (I’ve been listening to their album The Swell Season for most of the past year). There is no acting to be seen, this is Glen living his life through his music with a camera just happening to be nearby.

What I love about the movie is that it highlights something that I deal with on a constant basis; it is easier for me to communicate through music than anything else. Even though I write every night I still feel that I can get my emotions across better in a mix tape than an email or a letter. There is a segment of the population where music and emotion is so intertwined that we can’t express one without the other. For most people that seems to be a little foolish and there is one scene that really shows it and it is my favorite from the film.

At one point Markeeta is listening to Glen’s music on a Discman and writing lyrics to the track and the batteries die. So she walks to the corner store, basically in her pajamas, buys batteries, and sings the song on the way back to her apartment. Now some may call this a musical moment, a girl singing on the street. Except that I do that all the time. I catch myself singing to myself in a parking lot or on the way to my apartment. I’ve overheard people mentioning it with a tone of voice indicating that they feel like they should try to keep their distance. But really it is just that when a song is good you don’t want to let it go for a second and that is what she is doing in that scene.

This is a brilliantly simple movie. No explosions, no stars, nothing except music and Dublin and hopes and dreams and maybe a hint of love. And a wonderful, unexpected ending that makes you smile to no end. Maybe I’m a fan of this movie because I’ve met Glen and his band is my favorite in the world. Maybe I’m a fan because these songs have been a part of the fabric of my life for the past year. Or maybe it is just because a story about an Irish guy meeting a Czech girl on the streets of Dublin touches me on more levels than most because of my heritage. No matter what, this is a beautiful movie with wonderful music. You owe it to yourself to see it. Just to hear the line “You have suffered enough and warred with yourself. It’s time that you won” in song.

The five random CDs for the week:
1) Emmylou Harris “Spyboy”
2) Cat Power “The Greatest”
3) R.E.M. “Monster”
4) Bruce Robison “Long Way Home From Anywhere”
5) Cowboy Mouth “It Means Escape”

The Coolness Bell Curve

I have a very interesting job in that it is partly my responsibility to determine what is cool. That’s pretty amazing given that most people upon first meeting would never think, “This is the guy who exemplifies cool.” Typically it’s “I bet this guy could do my taxes” or “I think he spends twenty hours a day staring at a computer screen.” Still, I have somehow found myself in a position to present to people what is cool in the online world, even though I wear t-shirts that not only are older than MySpace but are older than most of the people on MySpace.

I mention all this because I read an article today that had the best phrase I have seen in ages: The Law of Diminishing Coolness. The idea is pretty simple, there is a point at which an item’s popularity has grown so much that it becomes less cool for each additional person who jumps on the bandwagon. Here is a simple example. I first knew of the Dave Matthews Band in 1994. This was within weeks of Under the Table and Dreaming being released. I had the fire dancer t-shirt and was wearing it around U of I with people going, “Who in the world is that?” That was being on the leading edge of cool. Now fast forward a few years and DMB is the biggest band in the world and I stop being a fan. Because I don’t want to be a fan of a band that everyone else is a fan of. You don’t want to be in the same row at a concert with all of the people who made fun of you in high school.

Now I’ve talked about this concept before but when you place it in the context of the modern internet (and especially social networking) it becomes a very interesting concept. Basically, it ties into the fact that if I’m doing something it probably isn’t cool anymore. I mean, how cool and cutting edge is MySpace if even I have a page? Doesn’t that mean everyone has a page? Would you want to be on MySpace if you knew that your mom also had a page? Social networking needs scale to be successful and at too large of a scale you get collapses like Friendster but even if you survive the technological limitations you still have to deal with the fact that at some point all of the people that you don’t want to talk to are using the service. And at that point it is time to leave.

That’s what I’m wondering about when I think about MySpace. I remember a few months ago seeing Chili’s advertise their MySpace page. If you started using the site when it was just you and your friends talking about music how does it feel to see it being overrun by people trying to sell you overpriced potato skins? Isn’t there an inevitable collapse? I know people say that there is a critical mass but doesn’t that just mean at some point new users would simply go somewhere else?

The other point this article made is that everyone points to sites like MySpace and Second Life as the future when in reality it is not as if we are gaining more time in our lives. I have a hell of a time taking care of my job and my vague semblance of a social life and still have time to write, even though I am more passionate about writing than anything else I do. I’m going to be stealing hours come November to get my novel done and that is going to be a top priority of mine. Now how in the world am I supposed to fit in a virtual social life in Second Life? Something has to give and I’m not sure that people are going to choose digital interactions over the analog kind. At some point you have to wonder if even though technology is cool it might not necessarily be better.

Have a great weekend everyone. If you are in KC, go see the movie “Once”. I might just not leave the theater. Glen Hansard is already getting talk about Oscar nominations for his songs in the movie and that is just incredible.

Now all we have left is Dr. Bunson Honeydew

I’m going to stay on the science beat for another day as today we lost another one of my heroes. Don Hebert, better known as Mr. Wizard, passed on to the other side today. One where the oil can rockets always fire and you can reach the end of the mobius strip. That isn’t meant to be ironic, I’m really bummed by this news. Mr. Wizard was one of my heroes growing up.

See, I have been a science geek since…since…well, I honestly can’t remember when I wasn’t one. I grew up in a house where the news was always on and we had a subscription to National Geographic. I was six or seven looking at all of these pictures of outer space and going, “That is awesome.” I’d steal my older siblings books on the planets and study them, read about how with a nuclear powered spaceship we could fly to Mars by 1999 and discover the mysteries of the planet Pluto. Ok, I can’t claim that they were entirely accurate textbooks but they got me excited in science.

Then, we got cable and I got to see Mr. Wizard’s World on Nickelodeon, which was the best thing since I outgrew 3-2-1 Contact. And to be honest, I was slightly older than the appropriate age range (it fit in much better for my younger brother) but it was still cool to watch science experiments every night. I still understand the concept of friction best by the experiment involving a paint can tied to a swingset. You pull the paint can up to your face, let go, and if you believe in science and don’t flinch it won’t hit you on the way back because friction will never let the pendulum get back to its starting point. I think I used that info on a college physics test. Also, it was always cool to see the nine year old kid flinch the first time that paint can went flying back towards her face.

It was just a fun show for growing scientists. You had your usual mix of physics and chemistry and biology. Chemistry would typically get a bit of a short thrift as they didn’t want kids at home playing around with deadly chemicals. Incredibly, we have no problems with fifteen year olds doing experiments in school, including the time I decided to see what would happen if you introduced a flaming piece of wood into a tube filled with hydrogen. And to be honest, that isn’t even the worst thing I ever did in a lab. I don’t know if I ever mentioned the circuit board that I put into the ceiling when it exploded or the time I got shocked so hard I could feel the muscles in my arm contract and once I broke free from the current I stepped back from the circuit board and didn’t stop until I was three blocks away. Those are the experiences that I had only because of Mr. Wizard.

I wouldn’t be who I am today without those experiences. Shows like Mr. Wizard and 3-2-1 Contact made me think like a scientist when having Velcro on my shoes was handy because shoelaces were too challenging. I learned more about the universe and the world around me by watching those simple shows every afternoon. While I have moved away from my days of experiments and manipulating electricity for fun and profit I still think that I will always be an engineer first and foremost. It’s why all of these posts are from EC. At the end of the day, I will always be Engineer Chris.

(Oh, and a mobius strip is created by looping a piece of paper while giving it one half turn in the process. If you do that and trace along the side you’ll discover that the piece of paper now only has one side and you end up right where you started from. This stunned me when I was ten and confuses me still to this day. I’m highly confident that it truly is magic. I don’t know any other way of explaining how you can turn a two sided piece of paper into a one sided piece simply by looping it in an odd way.)

Join the club

Best work graffitti ever. Who's up for joining the Apathy Club? Anyone? Anyone? Ah, screw it.

Science is like magic, sometimes good, sometimes bad

(Sorry for the delay in entries. I’ve been rather out of sorts the past few days. There will be explanations at some point in time. Right now I’m more focused on catching up on sleep.)

So I’ve just spent the past hour or so rewatching The Andromeda Strain. For some reason the HD channels always show this movie, though I’m not quite clear how a movie that was filmed in the 70’s could be considered to be shot in HD. Or even why it is one that you would want to show in HD as it mainly consists of a lot of people walking around a lab. Which is what I want to discuss right now.

This movie is incredible as it shows how what was state of the art thirty years ago is now so archaic that it is laughable. The entire film seems to be a parody of science and technology. All of the scientists are forced to wear matching white jumpsuits despite the fact that most of them should not be wearing tight jumpsuits. All of the computers use that wonderful greenscreen that those of us with mainframe experience remember so well. Hell, one of the major plot points is that a sliver of paper from the print roller got stuck in a bell mechanism and resulted in the failure of a buzzer to be heard. Today that seems like the dumbest thing in the world. Like you immediately go, “Why wouldn’t you just email the information? And get a real monitor?” But the fact is, at the time that truly was state of the art.

It’s pretty amazing how far we have come in just a few decades. I have much more computing power at my fingertips than the astronauts in the shuttle do right now. Hell, I think I’ve had calculators with as much power as the shuttle onboard computers. I’ve gone from writing in Paperclip 3 on my Commodore 64, a wonderful word processor in that it could only hold six pages of text at a time due to memory constraints, to now I’m at 150 pages for this document without even blinking. I’ve gone from 2400 baud dial up modems to, well, 56K dial up modems. Sorry, I’m still too cheap for broadband. But you get the point, where we have gone in just my lifetime is astounding.

It makes you wonder what the future might hold. There is a part of me that thinks that all of the wonders have already been found. That most of the glory of science has passed. It is possible that there actually is no better energy source than oil. Not all diseases can be cured. But then I think back and remember when the computer mouse was a glorious invention and think that we have very, very far to go. And that someday people are going to look back at what we are doing now and laugh at how quaint everything was back then. How low tech they lived their lives. Hopefully the world will be a better place by then.

The five random CDs for the week (delayed by a few days)
1) The Freddy Jones Band “Lucid”
2) Cowboy Junkies “Miles From Our Home”
3) Lyle Lovett and his Large Band “Lyle Lovett and his Large Band”
4) Beth Orton ‘Trailer Park”
5) Henry Rollins “Talk is Cheap Volume 1”

Maybe we could bring back the stockcades...

There is just no justice in this world. Not even within the criminal justice system. How the hell did they let Paris Hilton out of jail? Don’t they understand the threat that she poses to society? All of this work, all of this effort to put her behind bars so that we can film the best women in prison movie ever all goes away in a matter of days. It is just sad.

Personally, I like the fact that the official explanation is “medical reasons”, which is rumored to be that she was refusing to eat the prison food. I should remember that, it may prove useful in the future. It’s great logic, “Welcome to jail” “I don’t like the food here, can I go home?” “Sure.” The other thought was that she had broken out in a huge rash though that could possibly be the shock of her seeing her actual skin without three inches of makeup on it. She’s someone I wouldn’t touch without wearing a hazmat suit.

(Now my beloved Lindsay, on the other hand, is someone I would welcome with open arms. Especially since she has occasionally left rehab to workout. That’s the type of devotion that I like to see in someone, screw the group session I need to do pilates. Also, there is no truth to the rumor that I am forming a rescue party in which we will all be equipped with bolt cutters and bottles of peppermint schnapps. But as a proud member of the Lindsay Liberation Front I just have to ask for her to stay strong. We’ll still make sure her 21st birthday will be off the hook.)

Hey, did anyone notice that the Mighty Ducks won the Stanley Cup? Anyone? Ok, anyone other than Emilio Estevez, who is probably sleeping on his dad’s couch right now. I don’t know what is worse, a) the fact that no one paid attention to the Stanley Cup, b) that I didn’t even bother watching hockey due to it being on Vs. or c) that freaking Anaheim gets a Stanley Cup before the Blackhawks. They don’t even have ice in Anaheim. I think they practice in the same place they keep Walt Disney. The only good thing about the hockey playoffs is that it led Vs. to show Youngblood three thousand times and there is nothing better than the second best hockey movie ever made. Well, I guess that would technically make Slapshot better but still, Rob Lowe and Patrick Swayze running the power play is a sight to behold.

Vs. is a rather strange network. Right now they are showing all of the America’s Cup qualifying races. The Americans (mainly that prick who runs Oracle) have all been eliminated and therefore we will not be able to reclaim the cup from the evil Swiss. Yes, the America’s Cup is currently held by Switzerland, a nation that has no access to water to speak of. We have two oceans and we can’t even beat the freaking Swiss. That’s just sad.

That’s it for this week. Have a fun weekend everyone.

Mustard: Always the Best Choice

At some point I am going to have to determine whether it is really worth winning twenty bucks at trivia by knowing that the sequel to the game Maniac Mansion was called Day of the Tentacle. It doesn’t show a bar full of people that I am the smartest person around. It just convinces them that I never got out much as a child. Now I’ve embraced my inner geekdom to the point that the casting agents at Beauty and the Geek have decided that I wouldn’t work on the show because I already get the joke. Still, I wonder what pride one can take for remembering every game that was ever produced for the Commodore 64.

(That said, the best news that I heard today was that they have given the go-ahead to make a Thundercats movie. Finally. If they are going to bring back every franchise, hell if they are going to make a Ghost Rider movie, how can you not make a Thundercats movie. I’ll already place The Rock in the role of Panthro though I’m not sure who should play Cheetara. The entire movie will rest on that casting. That and making sure that Mumm-Ra kicks all kinds of ass.)

Ok, so I was out on Sunday night and I saw something that I’ll just have to try to explain. Two women were walking towards me and one had ketchup on her shirt. Not the condiment but the actual word “Ketchup” printed across her chest in red letters. Those of you who are familiar with Kansas City will know that this is a t-shirt given out at select Royals games in honor of the hot dog race, where you cheer the hot dog with the condiment of your choice. The hot dog race is typically the highlight of a Royals game and also goes to prove that only morons pick relish.

That said, while it is cool in a post-modern ironic way to get a shirt that says “Ketchup” on it, I’m not sure if it falls into the category of funny on a Sunday afternoon. At that point you are showing the world just how proud you are of tomato paste. It also didn’t help that this woman was, how can I put it lightly, well she wasn’t putting it lightly. It made it seem much less of an ironic statement and more of a firmly held belief.

(Though I can’t talk as I put on a shirt I wore in b-school this evening and my first reaction was “I don’t remember this being so tight in the waist before.” Time for yet another diet.)

Anyway, what is your reaction supposed to be in a situation like this? Should you be an asshole and go “Hey look, you’ve got ketchup on your shirt.” Do you nod knowingly? Do you avoid eye contact as if they have the plague? I mean when I wear my Speed Racer t-shirt I expect people to bow to me in awe of my awesomeness. But what respect do you show someone who really, really appreciates the Heinz family of products?

(Yes, I own a Speed Racer t-shirt. And a Cobra Kai shirt. And one with the Cobra logo from G.I. Joe. And another that simply states “Nobody Reads My Blog”. Irony is essentially my main emotion. That might not be a good thing.)

Welcome to Faceless Spending

(Here is what I love about the 120 Minutes block on VH1 Classic. They just showed Soul Asylum’s “Black Gold”. I immediately remember two facts about this song 1) it freaking rocks and 2) for some reason Norm from Cheers is in the video. Again, why they don’t do this every night is beyond me. It would be classic rock radio for Gen X.)

I found myself in a Wal-Mart today. I am not proud of this fact at all. I pretty much make it my goal to never shop at Wal-Mart, less as a political statement and more due to the fact that I can’t step into the building without being incredibly depressed. It’s like their motto should be, “You can purchase any item under the sun while simultaneously losing all faith in modern society.”

(For the record, I needed to pick up another memory card for my MP3 player and I forgot that there wasn’t a Best Buy around where I was going and hence the only way I was going to put a checkmark next to the task on my To Do list was venture into Wal-Mart. I would much rather have ventured into a Venture.)

I’m not alone in stating my dislike for Wal-Mart and again, it is not due to some well-honed belief that Wal-Mart destroys independent businesses. I mean, they do but that isn’t why I avoid them. It’s more like their entire design focus is on emphasizing consumerism and nothing else and I just find that disturbing. I’ll gladly pay more to shop at another store just because shopping at Wal-Mart makes me feel dirty.

Here’s my reasoning. You park in a massive parking lot next to hundreds of identical cars, many of which are fuel inefficient to the point that they waste a gallon of gas when you turn on the headlights. Then you walk into a faceless box of a building to be faced with harsh fluorescent lighting and a seemingly endless sea of stuff. There isn’t anything that you would define as sections, nothing where you feel like you are shopping for clothes that will make you look good or new furniture for your apartment. It is just aisle after aisle of UPC codes, piled up for your benefit. And just that massive amount of stuff, much of which really isn’t necessary, just seems to go against my very nature. I remember hearing stories of people leaving Russia and being brought to tears by going to a grocery store and seeing all of the choices in front of them. A Wal-Mart would probably give them a seizure.

But while choice and cheap prices are nice it doesn’t make you feel good. Because at it’s core Wal-Mart turns you into a consumer, nothing more and nothing less. You are just another cog in their value chain and even though they might have someone greet you at the door they don’t give a crap about you other than you go in, find your pile of stuff, and leave. There’s nothing in there that makes you feel human, that makes you feel part of a community as opposed to a walking wallet. And it’s that dehumanization that causes me to avoid the store.

Admittedly, all this shows is that I am a classist at my core. I can afford to pay more and I can wax philosophical about people buying paper towels. But there is still something quite disturbing about consumerism being shown at its purest form. We don’t like to be shown as a people who only seek to fulfill their basic needs. There is no poetry in that image and without poetry all we are is highly intelligent monkeys who for some reason decided that guilt was a useful evolutionary development.

(Note: Posts may be intermittent over the next two weeks. Apologies in advance, especially to the people I begged to comment. The good news is that I should have a lot more material when my life returns to normal.)

The five random CDs for the week:
1) Arcade Fire “Funeral”
2) Blue Mountain “Homegrown”
3) Blue Mountain “Tales of a Traveler”
4) Cathy Richardson Band “Fools on a Tandem”
5) Terrance Simien and the Mallet Playboys “Zydeco on the Bayou”