Well, I completed my resolution of 2007 yesterday when I watched my 200th movie. So this year, I'm raising the stakes, in every way. WATCH OUT 2008, you ain't got shit on me!
Resolutions:
1). Gain 5 pounds and make my gut look more beer ravaged.
2.) Watch 201 movies.
3.) Read and finish at least 16 books.
4.) Get a job that pays enough so I can buy more than 3 people X-mas presents next year.
5.) Finally trade in those old NOFX cds.
6.) Finally buy that Gram Parsons collection that I always pick up and then put back on the rack. One day I'll pick it up and I'll NEVER put it down!!!
7.) Record the Atlas At Least full length album with Eric G.
That's about it.
I think I can accomplish this. My mind has been set and so it shall be accomplished. You have been warned.
December 31, 2007
December 24, 2007
My Top Records of 2007
In every publication I read, I was continually reminded about what a great year 2007 was for music, especially indie rock/post-punk/post-polka/anything-from-Brooklyn/anything-from-Berlin/etc.
All year I thought to myself, these critics are wrong. THIS YEAR SUCKS. But upon assembling my list, I found that I indeed enjoyed far too many albums released in 2007, and my constant internal nagging has been dead wrong. Again, I proved to myself, what do I know about [partying or] anything [else] (I'm patting myself on the back for my sly Black Flag reference... 21 years after they broke up... Yey for references).
Top 10 honorable mention albums, in no particular order:
10. Of Montreal- "Hissing Fauna, Are you the Destroyer?
9. Robert Pollard- "Coast to Coast Carpet of Love"
8. They Might Be Giants- "The Else"
7. Deerhunter- "Cryptograms"
6. Blonde Redhead "23"
5. Bright Eyes "Cassadaga"
4. MIA "Kala"
3. Handsome Furs "Plague Park"
2. Circus Devils "Sgt. Disco"
1. The Twilight Sad "Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters"
Best re-release/collection/Thank you Jesus for releasing it from your grasp album:
-Young Marble Giants "Colossal Youth and Collected Works"
Top 10 Records I'm Mad at Myself for Not Listening to Yet, in order
10. PJ Harvey "White Chalk"
9. The National "Boxer"
8. Beirut "The Flying Club Cup"
7. Low "Drums and Guns"
6. Panda Bear "Person Pitch"
5. Life Without Buildings "Live @ the Annandale Hotel
4. Frog Eyes "Tears of the Valedictorian"
3. Boat "Let's Drag Our Feet"
2. Future of the Left "Curses"
1. Radiohead "In Rainbows" (There's is no reason I should not have heard this yet. This is a prime example of my laziness. When the biggest band n the world approves a free download of their hot off the presses album, and I fill out 80% of the info on their website for it, even offering up 30 cents of my money before "X"ing out the page with thoughts of "doing it later," it only proves that I don't deserve to listen to it.)
Top 10 Disappointing albums of the year, in order:
10. Shellac "Excellent Italian Greyhound"- I've grown to have a real love/hate relationship with this album. It's Shellac's first in 7 years and I've listened to it more than almost any album I bought all year. Yet, it's far too unbalanced, chocked full of throwaways, and filled with a barrage of in-jokes. GOD I LOVE YOU, SHELLAC!
9. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah "Some Loud Thunder" - After scoring what I still believe to be a well deserved 2 album spot on my 2006 list (ok, maybe 3 after hearing the rest of LCD Soundsystem's "S/T" collection), this indie blog-wet-dream band followed up their self-titled debut with a hiccup of sporadic hits and misses. I love David Fridmann's (the Flaming Lips) production though, turning this front page, up-and-coming band of stars into a lo-fi, backwoods mess.
8. Love of Diagrams "Mosaic"- After a promising 4 song EP, this full length is far too bland, full of predictable, danceable, modern day post-punk. Only a few likable songs. Boasts production from Bob Weston, of Shellac (see 10), though.
7. New Pornographers "Challengers"- The New Pornos 4th album is full of forced melodies and yawn inducing, anthemic ballads compared to the hyper charged melodies of their 3 previous Matador albums. Their 4 cd box set idea was cool though.
6. The Shins "Wincing the Night Away"- I never liked this band, but Zach Braff does.
5. Thurston Moore "Trees Outside the Academy"- Finally, this Sonic Youth heartthrob follows up his 1995 solo effort, "Psychic Hearts," with a proper album of songs rather than ambient drones or avant-garde earfucking that he's been releasing as half-assed, artsy solo albums for years. Yet, this annoyed me more than it soothed my urge for a listenable Thurston album. This just proves that without the fellow Youth's to help round out the songs, Moore writes annoyingly hooky songs full of simple riffs and lame lyrics disguised as poetic and hip.
4. The Fall "Reformation: Post TLC"- The Fall's 4857th album. What did I expect? Well, after the entire band left band-leader, Mark E. Smith, stranded in a hotel room in Phoenix, AZ on a US tour a week before recording this album, I let my expectations fall below sea level. After hearing it, I should have lowered it substantially.
3. Dillinger Escape Plan "Ire Works"- Dillinger's "Calculating Infinity" may stand as the high water mark of indie metal music/math rock of the '90's but their follow-ups, "Miss Machine", and this piece of head scratching, is a great indication those days are long gone. I do admire the fact that about 7 of the 13 songs are under 2 minutes long. But the Faith No More rip-off songs are downright laughable when juxtaposed to anything off of "Calculating Infinity."
2. Ted Leo/Pharmacists "Living With the Living"- Ted Leo has been one of my favorite songwriters for a few years now. But this man has single handedly managed to give every album a lame album name and cover art. This one manages the holy trinity: lame name, lame art, lame songs.
1. Modest Mouse "We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank"- Remember when Modest Mouse was good? Even as far back to their universe shattering "Good News For People Who Like Bad News" album, I still loved them. When they were "floating on" through dorm hallways across the US, I still found them head and shoulder above many. But with this one, blahhh. I'm sick of Isaac Brock singing every song like he's a backwoods pirate. And stop trying to rip-off Tom Waits. There are other bands that do it much better. Despite listening to this album about 8 times, I couldn't tell you how a single song sounded if you held a dick to my ear.
TOP 10 ALBUMS OF 2007:
10. Liars "Liars"- Their first album was full of angular, Les Savy Fav-esque, dance-punk. Their second album was an eclectic, droning, electro death set of songs with a backbeat. Their third album was European inspired feedback and tribal drums. This one, took all three, gargled them in the mouth of a club DJ on meth and spit it into a child's mouth. That's why I like this album.
9. Bill Callahan "Woke on a Whaleheart" Ditching is moniker of Smog, Bill Callahan released his first official solo album on Drag City Records this year. Recorded by Steve Albini, this record resembles some of Will Oldham's Albini recorded albums. Meditative folk with abrasively heavy drums and strange noises coming out of left field. Fittingly crammed with perfectly pristine and innocent songs, this one flew under the radars of most critics. This is the album to put on while you lay on the hood of your car, drinking Pabst, on an early, cloudless, Spring night. I've never done this, however.
8. Dinosaur Jr. "Beyond"- After kicking out Lou Barlow in 1988, and ditching drummer Murph, in '92, J. Mascis has reunited the original trio from the '80's and released a comeback record. Five years ago, comeback records were fodder for music snob punch lines. But after success the success of Mission of Burma, Slint, The Pixies, etc., Dinosaur Jr.'s "Beyond" found the band falling right in place, somewhere after "Bug" and before "Where You Been." I still hate guitar solos, unless J. Mascis plays it over his saccharine coated garage rock. Barlow's songs are awesome on this one too.
7. Arcade Fire "Neon Bible"- Everyone knows the hype around this band. When their debut, "Funeral", came out, everyone gave their babies to Satan for a listen. I ate it up too. However, I began to loose my love for the album and only purchased "Neon Bible" with a shrug and a "maybe I'll listen to it tomorrow." Tomorrow, the album kicked me in the fucking face. WAY better than "Funeral," "Neon Bible" knows exactly what it's doing, creating mountainous hooks that wash up unexpectedly before turning into a novel idea: actual musical emotion!
6. Spoon "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga"- Spoon, like Arcade Fire, is another band I like, but don't love. With the release of "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga", like AF's "Neon Bible", I showed little interest. Spoon's previous album "Gimme Fiction" left me disappointed and critical of the band's endless pit of praise. Yet, "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga" turned out the be all the potential the band was said to posses, squeezed relentlessly in a juicer, and given to Ethiopian children for X-mas.
5. Les Savy Fav "Let's Stay Friends"- After threatening break-ups and the release of an all-instrumental, ambient, mood music album, Les Savy Fav returned with a true knife in the heart; an album that blows their last one, "Go Forth", out of the bath tub and into the ocean. "Let's Stay Friends" offers a slice of every piece of the pie that Les Savy Fav's been baking since their debut "3/5". Tightly wound bass lines, jammed in between on-the-dime-drumming, stirred in with the explosive vocals of Tim Harrington, equals possibly the best Les Savy Fav album of the eternity.
4. The White Stripes "Icky Thump"- Is it not cool to like The White Stripes anymore? Well then fuck you. "Icky Thump" brings my imaginary friends Meg and Jack White back into my chipped, golden locket that I wear tightly around my neck. From start to finish, Jack White revisits the best moments from "De Stijl" and "White Blood Cells" and injects them with a shot of Stooges fuzz and the clatter of a hardware store falling apart.
3. Battles "Mirrored"- After flittering with us, one EP after another, the band of math/electronic-blip rockers finally released their first full length and it drove me wild. After hearing their single "Atlas", I waited moths to finally buy the album, jumping around like a kid holding in gallons of piss. This impressive super group finally made an album that balances organic rock with Apple computer trickery that tons of pretentious assholes in Brooklyn have been sucking cock to make for years, but never quite achieve.
2. LCD Soundsystem "Sound of Silver"- LCD Soundsystem is James Murphy. He's nearing 40. He owns more records than Jesus. He waxed philosophical about Daft Punk playing at his house and how it felt to loose his edge. He recorded a 45 minute song for Nike. He faced an exile from jealous friends and fans. Then he released "Sound of Silver," the only album to that makes me crave the E I've never taken, dance till dawn while sweating bullets, weep in a deep state of blossoming joy, and burn it for my friends with a crazed look in my bloodshot eye. This sounds like the records you always read about that were supposed to be influential in the early '80's.
1. Sunset Rubdown "Random Spirit Lover"- The opening track, "Mending of the Gown", starts up with a riff and Jerry Lee Lewis piano pounding that immediately starts the intensity bar at 7. But the song continues to crescendo. Mounting and mounting. Intensity hits 9. Then 10. Then winds up somewhere around 18. It's the best opening track I've ever heard in my life. A side project has no right to be this good. Solo efforts from band members of great bands is simply not aloud in this solar system. Look at Ringo Starr. But, Spencer Krug has become my new indie rock obsession. A member of Wolf Parade (whose album "Apologies to the Queen Mary", stood as my 1 album of 2005), his solo band Sunset Rubdown (whose album "Shut Up I'm Dreaming" was my number 11 album of 2006), turned 2007 on its ear and made many a bad day worth living. Last year, I voted The Thermals "The Blood, the Body, the Machine" into the 1 spot for its celebration of drums, bass, guitar punk rock, as I complained about the overreaching of indie bands today. Sunset Rubdown is the perfect antidote for the lapse in creative focus and completion in many indie albums today. It's about as grandiose as Mozart climbing Everest whiling repainting the Mona Lisa. Sunset Rubdown takes you on a twisted ride of pirate-folk, haunted house carnival anthems, and jug swigging, accordion fueled, weepy ballads. This is a revolution, so why isn't anyone else listening but me?
All year I thought to myself, these critics are wrong. THIS YEAR SUCKS. But upon assembling my list, I found that I indeed enjoyed far too many albums released in 2007, and my constant internal nagging has been dead wrong. Again, I proved to myself, what do I know about [partying or] anything [else] (I'm patting myself on the back for my sly Black Flag reference... 21 years after they broke up... Yey for references).
Top 10 honorable mention albums, in no particular order:
10. Of Montreal- "Hissing Fauna, Are you the Destroyer?
9. Robert Pollard- "Coast to Coast Carpet of Love"
8. They Might Be Giants- "The Else"
7. Deerhunter- "Cryptograms"
6. Blonde Redhead "23"
5. Bright Eyes "Cassadaga"
4. MIA "Kala"
3. Handsome Furs "Plague Park"
2. Circus Devils "Sgt. Disco"
1. The Twilight Sad "Fourteen Autumns and Fifteen Winters"
Best re-release/collection/Thank you Jesus for releasing it from your grasp album:
-Young Marble Giants "Colossal Youth and Collected Works"
Top 10 Records I'm Mad at Myself for Not Listening to Yet, in order
10. PJ Harvey "White Chalk"
9. The National "Boxer"
8. Beirut "The Flying Club Cup"
7. Low "Drums and Guns"
6. Panda Bear "Person Pitch"
5. Life Without Buildings "Live @ the Annandale Hotel
4. Frog Eyes "Tears of the Valedictorian"
3. Boat "Let's Drag Our Feet"
2. Future of the Left "Curses"
1. Radiohead "In Rainbows" (There's is no reason I should not have heard this yet. This is a prime example of my laziness. When the biggest band n the world approves a free download of their hot off the presses album, and I fill out 80% of the info on their website for it, even offering up 30 cents of my money before "X"ing out the page with thoughts of "doing it later," it only proves that I don't deserve to listen to it.)
Top 10 Disappointing albums of the year, in order:
10. Shellac "Excellent Italian Greyhound"- I've grown to have a real love/hate relationship with this album. It's Shellac's first in 7 years and I've listened to it more than almost any album I bought all year. Yet, it's far too unbalanced, chocked full of throwaways, and filled with a barrage of in-jokes. GOD I LOVE YOU, SHELLAC!
9. Clap Your Hands Say Yeah "Some Loud Thunder" - After scoring what I still believe to be a well deserved 2 album spot on my 2006 list (ok, maybe 3 after hearing the rest of LCD Soundsystem's "S/T" collection), this indie blog-wet-dream band followed up their self-titled debut with a hiccup of sporadic hits and misses. I love David Fridmann's (the Flaming Lips) production though, turning this front page, up-and-coming band of stars into a lo-fi, backwoods mess.
8. Love of Diagrams "Mosaic"- After a promising 4 song EP, this full length is far too bland, full of predictable, danceable, modern day post-punk. Only a few likable songs. Boasts production from Bob Weston, of Shellac (see 10), though.
7. New Pornographers "Challengers"- The New Pornos 4th album is full of forced melodies and yawn inducing, anthemic ballads compared to the hyper charged melodies of their 3 previous Matador albums. Their 4 cd box set idea was cool though.
6. The Shins "Wincing the Night Away"- I never liked this band, but Zach Braff does.
5. Thurston Moore "Trees Outside the Academy"- Finally, this Sonic Youth heartthrob follows up his 1995 solo effort, "Psychic Hearts," with a proper album of songs rather than ambient drones or avant-garde earfucking that he's been releasing as half-assed, artsy solo albums for years. Yet, this annoyed me more than it soothed my urge for a listenable Thurston album. This just proves that without the fellow Youth's to help round out the songs, Moore writes annoyingly hooky songs full of simple riffs and lame lyrics disguised as poetic and hip.
4. The Fall "Reformation: Post TLC"- The Fall's 4857th album. What did I expect? Well, after the entire band left band-leader, Mark E. Smith, stranded in a hotel room in Phoenix, AZ on a US tour a week before recording this album, I let my expectations fall below sea level. After hearing it, I should have lowered it substantially.
3. Dillinger Escape Plan "Ire Works"- Dillinger's "Calculating Infinity" may stand as the high water mark of indie metal music/math rock of the '90's but their follow-ups, "Miss Machine", and this piece of head scratching, is a great indication those days are long gone. I do admire the fact that about 7 of the 13 songs are under 2 minutes long. But the Faith No More rip-off songs are downright laughable when juxtaposed to anything off of "Calculating Infinity."
2. Ted Leo/Pharmacists "Living With the Living"- Ted Leo has been one of my favorite songwriters for a few years now. But this man has single handedly managed to give every album a lame album name and cover art. This one manages the holy trinity: lame name, lame art, lame songs.
1. Modest Mouse "We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank"- Remember when Modest Mouse was good? Even as far back to their universe shattering "Good News For People Who Like Bad News" album, I still loved them. When they were "floating on" through dorm hallways across the US, I still found them head and shoulder above many. But with this one, blahhh. I'm sick of Isaac Brock singing every song like he's a backwoods pirate. And stop trying to rip-off Tom Waits. There are other bands that do it much better. Despite listening to this album about 8 times, I couldn't tell you how a single song sounded if you held a dick to my ear.
TOP 10 ALBUMS OF 2007:
10. Liars "Liars"- Their first album was full of angular, Les Savy Fav-esque, dance-punk. Their second album was an eclectic, droning, electro death set of songs with a backbeat. Their third album was European inspired feedback and tribal drums. This one, took all three, gargled them in the mouth of a club DJ on meth and spit it into a child's mouth. That's why I like this album.
9. Bill Callahan "Woke on a Whaleheart" Ditching is moniker of Smog, Bill Callahan released his first official solo album on Drag City Records this year. Recorded by Steve Albini, this record resembles some of Will Oldham's Albini recorded albums. Meditative folk with abrasively heavy drums and strange noises coming out of left field. Fittingly crammed with perfectly pristine and innocent songs, this one flew under the radars of most critics. This is the album to put on while you lay on the hood of your car, drinking Pabst, on an early, cloudless, Spring night. I've never done this, however.
8. Dinosaur Jr. "Beyond"- After kicking out Lou Barlow in 1988, and ditching drummer Murph, in '92, J. Mascis has reunited the original trio from the '80's and released a comeback record. Five years ago, comeback records were fodder for music snob punch lines. But after success the success of Mission of Burma, Slint, The Pixies, etc., Dinosaur Jr.'s "Beyond" found the band falling right in place, somewhere after "Bug" and before "Where You Been." I still hate guitar solos, unless J. Mascis plays it over his saccharine coated garage rock. Barlow's songs are awesome on this one too.
7. Arcade Fire "Neon Bible"- Everyone knows the hype around this band. When their debut, "Funeral", came out, everyone gave their babies to Satan for a listen. I ate it up too. However, I began to loose my love for the album and only purchased "Neon Bible" with a shrug and a "maybe I'll listen to it tomorrow." Tomorrow, the album kicked me in the fucking face. WAY better than "Funeral," "Neon Bible" knows exactly what it's doing, creating mountainous hooks that wash up unexpectedly before turning into a novel idea: actual musical emotion!
6. Spoon "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga"- Spoon, like Arcade Fire, is another band I like, but don't love. With the release of "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga", like AF's "Neon Bible", I showed little interest. Spoon's previous album "Gimme Fiction" left me disappointed and critical of the band's endless pit of praise. Yet, "Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga" turned out the be all the potential the band was said to posses, squeezed relentlessly in a juicer, and given to Ethiopian children for X-mas.
5. Les Savy Fav "Let's Stay Friends"- After threatening break-ups and the release of an all-instrumental, ambient, mood music album, Les Savy Fav returned with a true knife in the heart; an album that blows their last one, "Go Forth", out of the bath tub and into the ocean. "Let's Stay Friends" offers a slice of every piece of the pie that Les Savy Fav's been baking since their debut "3/5". Tightly wound bass lines, jammed in between on-the-dime-drumming, stirred in with the explosive vocals of Tim Harrington, equals possibly the best Les Savy Fav album of the eternity.
4. The White Stripes "Icky Thump"- Is it not cool to like The White Stripes anymore? Well then fuck you. "Icky Thump" brings my imaginary friends Meg and Jack White back into my chipped, golden locket that I wear tightly around my neck. From start to finish, Jack White revisits the best moments from "De Stijl" and "White Blood Cells" and injects them with a shot of Stooges fuzz and the clatter of a hardware store falling apart.
3. Battles "Mirrored"- After flittering with us, one EP after another, the band of math/electronic-blip rockers finally released their first full length and it drove me wild. After hearing their single "Atlas", I waited moths to finally buy the album, jumping around like a kid holding in gallons of piss. This impressive super group finally made an album that balances organic rock with Apple computer trickery that tons of pretentious assholes in Brooklyn have been sucking cock to make for years, but never quite achieve.
2. LCD Soundsystem "Sound of Silver"- LCD Soundsystem is James Murphy. He's nearing 40. He owns more records than Jesus. He waxed philosophical about Daft Punk playing at his house and how it felt to loose his edge. He recorded a 45 minute song for Nike. He faced an exile from jealous friends and fans. Then he released "Sound of Silver," the only album to that makes me crave the E I've never taken, dance till dawn while sweating bullets, weep in a deep state of blossoming joy, and burn it for my friends with a crazed look in my bloodshot eye. This sounds like the records you always read about that were supposed to be influential in the early '80's.
1. Sunset Rubdown "Random Spirit Lover"- The opening track, "Mending of the Gown", starts up with a riff and Jerry Lee Lewis piano pounding that immediately starts the intensity bar at 7. But the song continues to crescendo. Mounting and mounting. Intensity hits 9. Then 10. Then winds up somewhere around 18. It's the best opening track I've ever heard in my life. A side project has no right to be this good. Solo efforts from band members of great bands is simply not aloud in this solar system. Look at Ringo Starr. But, Spencer Krug has become my new indie rock obsession. A member of Wolf Parade (whose album "Apologies to the Queen Mary", stood as my 1 album of 2005), his solo band Sunset Rubdown (whose album "Shut Up I'm Dreaming" was my number 11 album of 2006), turned 2007 on its ear and made many a bad day worth living. Last year, I voted The Thermals "The Blood, the Body, the Machine" into the 1 spot for its celebration of drums, bass, guitar punk rock, as I complained about the overreaching of indie bands today. Sunset Rubdown is the perfect antidote for the lapse in creative focus and completion in many indie albums today. It's about as grandiose as Mozart climbing Everest whiling repainting the Mona Lisa. Sunset Rubdown takes you on a twisted ride of pirate-folk, haunted house carnival anthems, and jug swigging, accordion fueled, weepy ballads. This is a revolution, so why isn't anyone else listening but me?
December 21, 2007
Whopper Freakout '07
What's with these Burger King commercials? You know, the new ones where employees of BK inform the customers they don't carry the coveted staple of the establishment, THE WHOPPER, and we see soccer moms and stay-at-home-dads lay a goose egg. I'm not sure what this commercial is trying to tell me.
The first one I saw, they tell some stoned kid with an Atreyu shirt and a haircut problem that they don't carry the whopper. He is shocked. What is this commercial saying to me? Not all scene kids are vegans?
In another one, some woman in a mini-van at the drive-thru is pissed and wants to speak to the manager, probably because she thinks some teen with a love of Jackass pranks is working the register. Another one shows a man screaming in outrage, "WHAT? NO WHOPPER!?" But I'd yell the same thing too if I went to the A&P and a store employee told me they discontinued Dixie cups and Q-tips. "WHAT? No Dixie's or Q-tips? Let me see your manager," I'd yell if heard such malarkey. This goes for any piece of commerce that's been ingrained in our society. They could film my reactions to the extinction of any mundane piece of American consumerism and make a better commercial. One where I drive a unicycle and juggle while yelling at people.
Nice try Burger King. Very sneaky marketing ploy. I just discontinued my interest in your WHOPPER OF TRICKERY. Film this (holds up middle finger. Mother walks by and yells to stop committing crimes against God).
The first one I saw, they tell some stoned kid with an Atreyu shirt and a haircut problem that they don't carry the whopper. He is shocked. What is this commercial saying to me? Not all scene kids are vegans?
In another one, some woman in a mini-van at the drive-thru is pissed and wants to speak to the manager, probably because she thinks some teen with a love of Jackass pranks is working the register. Another one shows a man screaming in outrage, "WHAT? NO WHOPPER!?" But I'd yell the same thing too if I went to the A&P and a store employee told me they discontinued Dixie cups and Q-tips. "WHAT? No Dixie's or Q-tips? Let me see your manager," I'd yell if heard such malarkey. This goes for any piece of commerce that's been ingrained in our society. They could film my reactions to the extinction of any mundane piece of American consumerism and make a better commercial. One where I drive a unicycle and juggle while yelling at people.
Nice try Burger King. Very sneaky marketing ploy. I just discontinued my interest in your WHOPPER OF TRICKERY. Film this (holds up middle finger. Mother walks by and yells to stop committing crimes against God).
February 27, 2007
Coming Clean in Your Swimming Pool
If you have a pool, and invite me over for a swim, I’ll probably pee in it. There. I said it. I’ll pee in it. To me, a pool is nothing more than an oversized toilet designated for number one, which, occasionally one can perform cannonballs into. After all, the bathroom is arguably the most comfortable place in your home just as the pool is the place to be on a hot summer’s day. For centuries, man has peed in every pool he’s laid torso in. Still, for centuries and beyond, we as a society will deny that we’ve ever opened up the floodgates and added a few stray drop to the 700 plus gallons. I’m sick of the charade. It’s been eating away at me, keeping me up many a humid summer night, and frankly, I think it’s time we all spill our bladders.
I recently read a blog about my niece’s “best day ever“. The nine year old wrote that the apex of her little life was when her friend and her stayed in the pool six hours straight with no bathroom break. An emphasis was placed on the bathroom break font, as if to divert all embarrassing attention away from their seemingly shameful act in which they did perform. Name me one girl under the age of ten who can stay in water for six hours and not relieve herself and I’ll show you a tortured corpse with a urinary tract infection. It’s simply not possible.
This got me thinking of how much I hate the fact that everyone, across the nation, are keeping their pools sterile by always going before and after, but never in the pool. Granted, I do not go around looking for pools just so I can let out my Big Gulp of Fresca. Before going in anyone’s pool, I usually use a bathroom out of common courtesy and comfort. Still, after dipping my body in the chilled waters, I cannot help but let it out. The exquisite, inextinguishable relief and release. There’s nothing like building a warm pocket around your goose bumped body. If a stranded scientist did this in the arctic, he’d be called smart. Me, I’m apparently gross. Still, when wadding next to a pile of dead flies and an overturned water beetle, a little urine never hurt anybody. In fact, urine has been called the “new medicine,” being known to help fight cancers and provide nourishment, and proteins to a malnourished body. Urine has also been known to help fight infections. At this point, I can’t see how peeing in a pool has not become essential one’s summer enjoyment.
Another thing I just can’t stand about swimming pools is the folklore. The myth that has kept kids legs crossed for years. I’m talking about the elusive “urine indicator” chemical that can be added to pools to weed out the serial-pissers that descend upon unsuspecting pools. My own ears have heard many a child and adult churn out such a bullshit balderdash to keep other tiny bladders in line and away from peer humiliation. As the story goes, there is a magical chemical sold somewhere in the world that everyone’s best friend or father has obtained and disseminated in the pool to detect any leakage. The myth was furthered in the early ’90’s when an substance named Wee-Wee-See was added to a public pool in the Nickelodeon show The Adventures of Pete and Pete. Damn you Pete Wrigley’s.
First off, the scientific possibility of such a chemical is not conceivable in such an age. I mean, we don’t even have flying cars yet. To create a chemical that only reacts to the occasional appearance of a body fluid, that, in addition, does not react to chlorine, chemical shock, algae, lifeless insects, saliva, and acid rain is just preposterous. Second, why would any family or pubic pool spend money or tax dollars on something that only benefits in a couple minutes of laughs from a second party and a crying kid who couldn’t hold it anymore. Those waters get cold, dammit.
Once, when I was a Freshman in High School, I almost murdered my one-time enemy with my bare hands for insisting this chemical was real. “My uncle has it. He always embarrasses my brother with it,” he said like the jackass he was. I called him out on this impossibility, having once believed such a fable before reading an official study of it online. “No, it’s real. You’re just jealous ‘cause you want to piss in pools.” Not having the guts to tell the truth in front of a group of giggling girls, I just turned red and called him a jerk. Later, we all went swimming. I made sure I let it all out next to him during a game of volleyball. The front line was extra warm that day.
Also, when babies pee in pools, their parent’s generally hold them up out of the water, letting the stream cascade down as if leaving them partially submerged would taint the water. When this happens, everyone just laughs at how cute the baby is, since they don’t know any better . Well, you know what? I know better, and I gotta go!
Call me a baby. Call me a slob. When it’s your time to go, your privacy is safe under the waters. And why do you think the chlorine’s in there? Just to sting your eyes? So this summer, when you look in the bathroom mirror before diving into your neighbor’s pool, ask yourself if you have the guts to admit you’re human.
I recently read a blog about my niece’s “best day ever“. The nine year old wrote that the apex of her little life was when her friend and her stayed in the pool six hours straight with no bathroom break. An emphasis was placed on the bathroom break font, as if to divert all embarrassing attention away from their seemingly shameful act in which they did perform. Name me one girl under the age of ten who can stay in water for six hours and not relieve herself and I’ll show you a tortured corpse with a urinary tract infection. It’s simply not possible.
This got me thinking of how much I hate the fact that everyone, across the nation, are keeping their pools sterile by always going before and after, but never in the pool. Granted, I do not go around looking for pools just so I can let out my Big Gulp of Fresca. Before going in anyone’s pool, I usually use a bathroom out of common courtesy and comfort. Still, after dipping my body in the chilled waters, I cannot help but let it out. The exquisite, inextinguishable relief and release. There’s nothing like building a warm pocket around your goose bumped body. If a stranded scientist did this in the arctic, he’d be called smart. Me, I’m apparently gross. Still, when wadding next to a pile of dead flies and an overturned water beetle, a little urine never hurt anybody. In fact, urine has been called the “new medicine,” being known to help fight cancers and provide nourishment, and proteins to a malnourished body. Urine has also been known to help fight infections. At this point, I can’t see how peeing in a pool has not become essential one’s summer enjoyment.
Another thing I just can’t stand about swimming pools is the folklore. The myth that has kept kids legs crossed for years. I’m talking about the elusive “urine indicator” chemical that can be added to pools to weed out the serial-pissers that descend upon unsuspecting pools. My own ears have heard many a child and adult churn out such a bullshit balderdash to keep other tiny bladders in line and away from peer humiliation. As the story goes, there is a magical chemical sold somewhere in the world that everyone’s best friend or father has obtained and disseminated in the pool to detect any leakage. The myth was furthered in the early ’90’s when an substance named Wee-Wee-See was added to a public pool in the Nickelodeon show The Adventures of Pete and Pete. Damn you Pete Wrigley’s.
First off, the scientific possibility of such a chemical is not conceivable in such an age. I mean, we don’t even have flying cars yet. To create a chemical that only reacts to the occasional appearance of a body fluid, that, in addition, does not react to chlorine, chemical shock, algae, lifeless insects, saliva, and acid rain is just preposterous. Second, why would any family or pubic pool spend money or tax dollars on something that only benefits in a couple minutes of laughs from a second party and a crying kid who couldn’t hold it anymore. Those waters get cold, dammit.
Once, when I was a Freshman in High School, I almost murdered my one-time enemy with my bare hands for insisting this chemical was real. “My uncle has it. He always embarrasses my brother with it,” he said like the jackass he was. I called him out on this impossibility, having once believed such a fable before reading an official study of it online. “No, it’s real. You’re just jealous ‘cause you want to piss in pools.” Not having the guts to tell the truth in front of a group of giggling girls, I just turned red and called him a jerk. Later, we all went swimming. I made sure I let it all out next to him during a game of volleyball. The front line was extra warm that day.
Also, when babies pee in pools, their parent’s generally hold them up out of the water, letting the stream cascade down as if leaving them partially submerged would taint the water. When this happens, everyone just laughs at how cute the baby is, since they don’t know any better . Well, you know what? I know better, and I gotta go!
Call me a baby. Call me a slob. When it’s your time to go, your privacy is safe under the waters. And why do you think the chlorine’s in there? Just to sting your eyes? So this summer, when you look in the bathroom mirror before diving into your neighbor’s pool, ask yourself if you have the guts to admit you’re human.
February 20, 2007
QUEST: The Year I Watched 365 Movies
Some people set out to cure cancer, climb Everest, or become a vigilante, fighting the scum of the city with a nifty black cape. I decided to watch movies. And lots of them. 365 movies in 365 days, in fact. Did I prove to myself and future generations that with a little bit of physical laziness and expansive brainpower anyone can run the gamut of movie history? I wouldn't rule out the possibility just yet. In 2006, I decided to cram 111 years of photographed visuals into my head in one year's time. Ridiculous you might say? Yes. Let us travel back in time to see how this exhaustive waste of everyone else's time, but mine, started and how it almost buried me in a grave of celluloid dreams and late rental movie fees.
2005 was dying fast and Father Time was ready to bury it. The New Year waited eagerly in the cold wings of late December, ready to bare the torch of time. With the 2006 just six hours away, most people my age began to dream of throwing back shots while making useless resolutions, like going tanning more often, and figuring out ways to reduce their hangovers the next morning. Me, I thought about a forth-rate get-together I'd be attending that night with a laggardly shrug. To kill time, I decided to pop in Stanely Kubrick's 1957 classic, Paths of Glory, into my DVD player, a film of his I hadn't seen yet. Although I was thoroughly enjoying it, I found myself in an inexplicably bad mood, having always hated New Year's Eve. I shut it off halfway through. Heading out into the night I promised I'd finish it tomorrow. Little did I know, I was about to embark on an adventure of a lifetime…. or a year, to pin it down.
Indeed I did finish the movie the next day. The following day I watched another movie. And on the third of January, I watched another. Things tend to move pretty slowly in the dead of winter. On January 5th, I began watching one of my favorite music documentaries, Killing a Camera, about the criminally underrated band, Braid. In it, their guitarist, Chris Broch, mentioned their singer, Bob Nanna, had watched 365 movies in 1998. Eureka. It hit me. What a remarkable feat. Never in my life had I heard of such a brilliant idea. Jefferson helped write the Declaration. Rodney Mullen invented the flat-ground ollie. And Bob Nanna watched 365 movies. One movie for each day of the year. Not even learning about Kennedy's assassination, the 1981 USA Olympic hockey team's miracle win, or watching FOX's Alien Autopsy when I was nine, got me so worked up. I knew then what I had to do.
I began documenting my work in a notebook, trying to cram in movies day after day. But the harsh depression of the dead winter break, mixed with a redundant substitute teaching job I recently undertook, took its sullen toll. By January 22, I had given up, having only watched 20 movies up to that point. Admirable, but losing its luster fast.
In February, I began dating my girlfriend Kristin, and, naturally, with dating comes watching and talking about movies. If you're like me, and prefer talking about director's work to make-out sessions and sex, then you know exactly how invigorating this can be on several levels.
Sometime around March, I had mentioned to her my original goal.
"What the hell? Why did you give up? That sound pretty cool to me," she said.
"Come on. I've got better things to do, like try to seduce you and get out of this room for a change. Besides, I'm more than 25 movies off pace at this point," I reasoned.
"No. You should do it. That sounds like a really cool idea."
Thinking this was some twisted way of being sexy and impressionable to her, I decided I would continue my conquest, knowing full well this could possibly destroy my newfound relationship from the inside out. I will do it, I decided. I was pretty obsessed with movies anyway and this would do me good. It later occurred to me, maybe this is some sort of demented female test to see what I loved more; her or Alfred Hitchcock. Who knew? With little thought, I began loading up my Netflix waiting list with hundreds of movies. I was armed, dangerous, and ready to sit on my fat ass, a lot!
With the passing Spring semester, I sunk deeper and deeper into my expedition, renting and copying movies onto my computer as if every movie itself contained the secret of the Holy Grail. To gain valuable viewing time, I had to devise plans to cut out the social life I had once mildly participated in. For one, I became a MacGyver of alcohol, researching and concocting vicious schemes in which I'd buy the cheapest, lo-carbonated beers, so my girlfriend would ultimately consume them, not burp, retain the alcohol, and fall asleep before me. Meanwhile, I'd finished up on my dirt cheap six pack of Miller HighLife and would dive into the night with a two-and-a-half hour film and a slight buzz, ready to tackle the dawn and all the omni-present metaphors that lay before me on the glow of my television. When the phone would ring in the middle of a movie, my parents or friends on the other end, I'd hang up. No I don't want to hang out with you. I'm hanging out with Spike Lee and Sergei Eisenstein. Hmm, what a peculiar ménage tiors, indeed.
On Fridays in the Spring, I'd substitute teach, which required little to no brain power. I had to pass out worksheets or quizzes and continually tell ungrateful twerps to "sit down" and "shut up" R. Lee Ermey style. On Thursday nights, when the sleep wouldn't come, and the thought of knocking off a couple movies entered my brain, I ultimately opted to go on little to no sleep. After the film, with an hour sleep under my belt, I'd cursed the phone call from the superintendent in the morning. She'd assign me to my class room for the day. "Fuck off superintendent. What do you know about Ingmar Bergman's films anyway? Do his extreme close-ups mean nothing to you? What about his representation of settings as a reflection on character emotions? I don't think so! And for that matter, I don't need a paycheck," I'd dream of saying. Instead, I'd humbly agree to work, throw the blankets off my sleepless body, pump myself full of coffee, and head over to the school.
After the Spring semester ended, and my substitute teaching job became seasonally obsolete, I headed into a new realm. For the past five summers, I had worked laborious night jobs, warehouse slave tasks, and delivery nightmares. This summer was gonna be different. I became completely obsessive and engulfed in my goal. Catching up to my pace of one movie a day was growing closer as I began consuming two to three films in a 24 hour succession. I scrolled notes on the movies in marble notebooks that began to tatter under my feverish pen. Scratching out the name, director, and a meaningless rating next to each movie, I became fanatical about updating it daily, if not tri-hourly.
To make some money on the side for my CD and dinner collection, I decided to take up one of my old jobs delivering newspapers. This meant my internal clock was again thrown a knuckball of delirium. In my insomnia, and drive to stay awake until four in the morning to be the best newsy I could be, I wrapped my whiskey stained eyes, and caffeine fueled brain around an array of foreign films, soaking up the subtitles like a livid vacuum.
Despite constant threats from my mom to get a real job I never cracked under the pressure.
"Are you just gonna sit here all day and watch this movie. Everyday, I come in your room and you're sitting in this chair watching that television. It's like your eight years old again," she'd say.
"What do you know about film anyway Mom? Go watch Sleepless in Seattle and write me a shot-by-shot analysis and then we'll see who's laughing. And it's not television, it's a movie," I'd say, but only silently in my head. Generally, I'd end up murmuring something like, "Yeah I'm gonna…uh… sit here. I like… this movie thing here…..okay….yeah."
The summer dragged on as I pressed onward. I walked a fine line of cult, contemporary, and classic film, fueling my knowledge with any director or off-beat piece of picturesque narrative that intrigued me. My brain became a cinemaphile's wet dream.
Eventually, when my fall 2006 semester of college started, I had officially caught up, and even surpassed my one-movie-a-day average. By the first day of classes, I was, in fact, two movies ahead of schedule. I began boasting to my girlfriend. She cheered me on as if I had just found a formula to reduce the size of tumors in lab rats. The select few of my friends who knew of my project began saying things like "Good job" and "Wow" instead of an uninspired "Oh, okay." Even my parents began asking me how many I had seen so far, sometimes recommending films like America's Sweethearts, Bloodsport 37, and Dirty Dancing to me. A smile and an "I'll check it out" usually soothed them for about a week.
Through casual, but wretched, stomach viruses, sinus crushing colds, and Italian 101 homework, I continued to chisel away at my goal, locking myself in the basement of the Montclair Library, viewing movies in between classes. At night, I began skipping meals and packing pre-made wraps from convenience stores just so I'd have time to scribble down my homework and finish my movies. To better my foreign language skills, I began diving into the films of Fredrico Fellini and Victor De Sicca. Still, I got a D in Italian.
On January 31, 2006, one year after I put Paths of Glory into my DVD player, I watched the last twenty minutes of Herschell Gordon Lewis' drive-in splatter classic Two Thousand Maniacs and I began to ponder. I felt about the same, thinking of a get-together I only wanted to go to so we could sulk over Dick Clark's stroke afflicted voicebox. I thought about the year that changed my life, almost drove me mad, and convinced me to stay an extra semester in college to obtain my film minor. I thought of my girlfriend who inspired me to achieve this goal in the first place and how last New Year's I was wondering how it'd be to kiss her. But most importantly, I thought, Shit, this is that last twenty minutes of the 365 th film I've gotta watch. And Goddamit I did it. As the credits rolled, I lifted my hands above my head and clapped as if I were watching Joe DiMaggio make his farewell speech. In the aftermath, I had gained about 20 pounds from lack of moving all day, run out of money in my checking account, learned how to substitute sleep for art, and forgot most of the good points and great shots I told myself I'd hang onto forever back in the Spring. It nearly killed me. I ejected the movie. With the goal finalized, I realized the future was mine for the taking. I could do anything as long as it didn't involve any accounting skills or strenuous physical activity. I had achieved the impossible. And all I have left was a notebook full of film titles and an expansive bootlegged DVD collection.
BELOW IS A LINK TO A LIST OF ALL 365 MOVIES I WATCHED IN 2006. COPY AND PASTE PLEASE!
http://365moviesin365days.freeservers.com/
2005 was dying fast and Father Time was ready to bury it. The New Year waited eagerly in the cold wings of late December, ready to bare the torch of time. With the 2006 just six hours away, most people my age began to dream of throwing back shots while making useless resolutions, like going tanning more often, and figuring out ways to reduce their hangovers the next morning. Me, I thought about a forth-rate get-together I'd be attending that night with a laggardly shrug. To kill time, I decided to pop in Stanely Kubrick's 1957 classic, Paths of Glory, into my DVD player, a film of his I hadn't seen yet. Although I was thoroughly enjoying it, I found myself in an inexplicably bad mood, having always hated New Year's Eve. I shut it off halfway through. Heading out into the night I promised I'd finish it tomorrow. Little did I know, I was about to embark on an adventure of a lifetime…. or a year, to pin it down.
Indeed I did finish the movie the next day. The following day I watched another movie. And on the third of January, I watched another. Things tend to move pretty slowly in the dead of winter. On January 5th, I began watching one of my favorite music documentaries, Killing a Camera, about the criminally underrated band, Braid. In it, their guitarist, Chris Broch, mentioned their singer, Bob Nanna, had watched 365 movies in 1998. Eureka. It hit me. What a remarkable feat. Never in my life had I heard of such a brilliant idea. Jefferson helped write the Declaration. Rodney Mullen invented the flat-ground ollie. And Bob Nanna watched 365 movies. One movie for each day of the year. Not even learning about Kennedy's assassination, the 1981 USA Olympic hockey team's miracle win, or watching FOX's Alien Autopsy when I was nine, got me so worked up. I knew then what I had to do.
I began documenting my work in a notebook, trying to cram in movies day after day. But the harsh depression of the dead winter break, mixed with a redundant substitute teaching job I recently undertook, took its sullen toll. By January 22, I had given up, having only watched 20 movies up to that point. Admirable, but losing its luster fast.
In February, I began dating my girlfriend Kristin, and, naturally, with dating comes watching and talking about movies. If you're like me, and prefer talking about director's work to make-out sessions and sex, then you know exactly how invigorating this can be on several levels.
Sometime around March, I had mentioned to her my original goal.
"What the hell? Why did you give up? That sound pretty cool to me," she said.
"Come on. I've got better things to do, like try to seduce you and get out of this room for a change. Besides, I'm more than 25 movies off pace at this point," I reasoned.
"No. You should do it. That sounds like a really cool idea."
Thinking this was some twisted way of being sexy and impressionable to her, I decided I would continue my conquest, knowing full well this could possibly destroy my newfound relationship from the inside out. I will do it, I decided. I was pretty obsessed with movies anyway and this would do me good. It later occurred to me, maybe this is some sort of demented female test to see what I loved more; her or Alfred Hitchcock. Who knew? With little thought, I began loading up my Netflix waiting list with hundreds of movies. I was armed, dangerous, and ready to sit on my fat ass, a lot!
With the passing Spring semester, I sunk deeper and deeper into my expedition, renting and copying movies onto my computer as if every movie itself contained the secret of the Holy Grail. To gain valuable viewing time, I had to devise plans to cut out the social life I had once mildly participated in. For one, I became a MacGyver of alcohol, researching and concocting vicious schemes in which I'd buy the cheapest, lo-carbonated beers, so my girlfriend would ultimately consume them, not burp, retain the alcohol, and fall asleep before me. Meanwhile, I'd finished up on my dirt cheap six pack of Miller HighLife and would dive into the night with a two-and-a-half hour film and a slight buzz, ready to tackle the dawn and all the omni-present metaphors that lay before me on the glow of my television. When the phone would ring in the middle of a movie, my parents or friends on the other end, I'd hang up. No I don't want to hang out with you. I'm hanging out with Spike Lee and Sergei Eisenstein. Hmm, what a peculiar ménage tiors, indeed.
On Fridays in the Spring, I'd substitute teach, which required little to no brain power. I had to pass out worksheets or quizzes and continually tell ungrateful twerps to "sit down" and "shut up" R. Lee Ermey style. On Thursday nights, when the sleep wouldn't come, and the thought of knocking off a couple movies entered my brain, I ultimately opted to go on little to no sleep. After the film, with an hour sleep under my belt, I'd cursed the phone call from the superintendent in the morning. She'd assign me to my class room for the day. "Fuck off superintendent. What do you know about Ingmar Bergman's films anyway? Do his extreme close-ups mean nothing to you? What about his representation of settings as a reflection on character emotions? I don't think so! And for that matter, I don't need a paycheck," I'd dream of saying. Instead, I'd humbly agree to work, throw the blankets off my sleepless body, pump myself full of coffee, and head over to the school.
After the Spring semester ended, and my substitute teaching job became seasonally obsolete, I headed into a new realm. For the past five summers, I had worked laborious night jobs, warehouse slave tasks, and delivery nightmares. This summer was gonna be different. I became completely obsessive and engulfed in my goal. Catching up to my pace of one movie a day was growing closer as I began consuming two to three films in a 24 hour succession. I scrolled notes on the movies in marble notebooks that began to tatter under my feverish pen. Scratching out the name, director, and a meaningless rating next to each movie, I became fanatical about updating it daily, if not tri-hourly.
To make some money on the side for my CD and dinner collection, I decided to take up one of my old jobs delivering newspapers. This meant my internal clock was again thrown a knuckball of delirium. In my insomnia, and drive to stay awake until four in the morning to be the best newsy I could be, I wrapped my whiskey stained eyes, and caffeine fueled brain around an array of foreign films, soaking up the subtitles like a livid vacuum.
Despite constant threats from my mom to get a real job I never cracked under the pressure.
"Are you just gonna sit here all day and watch this movie. Everyday, I come in your room and you're sitting in this chair watching that television. It's like your eight years old again," she'd say.
"What do you know about film anyway Mom? Go watch Sleepless in Seattle and write me a shot-by-shot analysis and then we'll see who's laughing. And it's not television, it's a movie," I'd say, but only silently in my head. Generally, I'd end up murmuring something like, "Yeah I'm gonna…uh… sit here. I like… this movie thing here…..okay….yeah."
The summer dragged on as I pressed onward. I walked a fine line of cult, contemporary, and classic film, fueling my knowledge with any director or off-beat piece of picturesque narrative that intrigued me. My brain became a cinemaphile's wet dream.
Eventually, when my fall 2006 semester of college started, I had officially caught up, and even surpassed my one-movie-a-day average. By the first day of classes, I was, in fact, two movies ahead of schedule. I began boasting to my girlfriend. She cheered me on as if I had just found a formula to reduce the size of tumors in lab rats. The select few of my friends who knew of my project began saying things like "Good job" and "Wow" instead of an uninspired "Oh, okay." Even my parents began asking me how many I had seen so far, sometimes recommending films like America's Sweethearts, Bloodsport 37, and Dirty Dancing to me. A smile and an "I'll check it out" usually soothed them for about a week.
Through casual, but wretched, stomach viruses, sinus crushing colds, and Italian 101 homework, I continued to chisel away at my goal, locking myself in the basement of the Montclair Library, viewing movies in between classes. At night, I began skipping meals and packing pre-made wraps from convenience stores just so I'd have time to scribble down my homework and finish my movies. To better my foreign language skills, I began diving into the films of Fredrico Fellini and Victor De Sicca. Still, I got a D in Italian.
On January 31, 2006, one year after I put Paths of Glory into my DVD player, I watched the last twenty minutes of Herschell Gordon Lewis' drive-in splatter classic Two Thousand Maniacs and I began to ponder. I felt about the same, thinking of a get-together I only wanted to go to so we could sulk over Dick Clark's stroke afflicted voicebox. I thought about the year that changed my life, almost drove me mad, and convinced me to stay an extra semester in college to obtain my film minor. I thought of my girlfriend who inspired me to achieve this goal in the first place and how last New Year's I was wondering how it'd be to kiss her. But most importantly, I thought, Shit, this is that last twenty minutes of the 365 th film I've gotta watch. And Goddamit I did it. As the credits rolled, I lifted my hands above my head and clapped as if I were watching Joe DiMaggio make his farewell speech. In the aftermath, I had gained about 20 pounds from lack of moving all day, run out of money in my checking account, learned how to substitute sleep for art, and forgot most of the good points and great shots I told myself I'd hang onto forever back in the Spring. It nearly killed me. I ejected the movie. With the goal finalized, I realized the future was mine for the taking. I could do anything as long as it didn't involve any accounting skills or strenuous physical activity. I had achieved the impossible. And all I have left was a notebook full of film titles and an expansive bootlegged DVD collection.
BELOW IS A LINK TO A LIST OF ALL 365 MOVIES I WATCHED IN 2006. COPY AND PASTE PLEASE!
http://365moviesin365days.freeservers.com/
February 6, 2007
This Party is OVER!: An Cranky Listener's Observations of Bloc Party's "A Weekend in the City"
When I was five, I found a gigantic empty cardboard box in my garage. Immediately upon discovering it, I almost pissed my shorts with uncontrollable excitement. It looked just like an airplane! My mind began to sculpt a joyous ride through the clouds as I waved to the ones I loved below. So, I got out some scissors and tape.
All afternoon, I went to work, cutting a hole in it so I could fit my Hostess-Twinkie saturated body out the top. I taped fake wings to the side. I wrote Eric Airlines on the side. Pure poetry indeed. When I was done, I looked at my plane. It was beautiful. Placing it on the sidewalk, I made airplane noises and got lost in the high altitudes of my young mind, intoxicated with imagination. "Come look at my plane!" I yelled. My dad continued to caulk the cracks in our front steps, periodically looking up with a forced smile. My mom peeked out the window, waved, then disappeared back into her chores. My best friend, and neighbor at the time, came over and told me the plane was stupid. It was at that point, I reexamined my construction of fantastic aviation and thought, "Darn. All that work and this is what I get?" Point being, I invested a whole afternoon just to fuck up a perfectly good box. And in the end, no one remembers this pointless shit but me.
This was one of the first things I thought about when listening to Bloc Party's newest album A Weekend in the City. The lame title alone is enough to send up a red flag. However, after enjoying their full-length Silent Alarm, this hunk of far-reaching aural boredom falls hard on it's face, like me, the fat kid trying to get his foot out of that damn box airplane.
Bloc Party used to a far above average post-punk influenced group of young punks, displaying a impeccable balance of sincerity for both lyrics and music with a desire to get themselves and the listeners moving. Throughout the duration of A Weekend in the City, I wasn't moved in anyway possible, with the exception of my bowels.
Instead of pressing on with the formula that worked so damn great in the past, Bloc Party have taken the path every "serious" group of musicians seem to in their career. And that is reach beyond the capacity of their capable songwriting. There's this inexplicable desire that often plagues some of the most promising bands. I've seen it happen with The Mars Volta and The Flaming Lips' last album. Frankly, I'm sick of it. It's like watching your favorite extended family members die off in unnecessary kitchen remodeling accidents. The oak cabinets were fine Aunt Stella! WHY? These bands feel some need to flash moments of brilliance and show musical maturity. Still, the brilliance on these albums generally come off as purely forced and pompously grandiose. Bloc Party is no exception. It's as if they sold their early Gang of Four albums to Coconuts for store credit and bought Coldplay CDs full of yawn rock.
Towards the end of this album, it hit me. Almost every song starts off relatively the same. Sensitive ballads, full of layering synths, and useless beeps. Bloc Party, again, seem to be following the ever growing trend of the digital advantages of the studio. Leave your guitars at home fellas. There's a perfectly good laptop and piano in the studio. Give me a break!
Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of guitar outbursts on this album, but by the time they generally show up, I'm already sleeping behind the wheel. Other times, I'm trying to get over the fact that singer, Kele Okereke's voice doesn't match this type of music. His desperate melodic chants on past tracks like Banquet and She's Hearing Voices sound downright out of place in this space-dance context. Even the studio compression and voice alternators don't help. But even that is like trying to get off methadone by undertaking a heroin addiction. It just adds to the mounting problems.
The album isn't all cracked foundation and chipped stucco though. I found myself turning my ear to I Still Remember, wondering if it was lifted from The Wedding Singer soundtrack, smiling, remembering the early part of a decade I didn't live through. Waiting For the 7.18 also works for the most part, utilizing well placed guitar swelling mixed with danceable drumming of the Bloc Party I used to appreciate. But on songs like Sunday, where Okereke swoons and croons over a perfectly good waste of syncopated toms, I find myself asking "what's the point?" And how long must we wait until Bloc Party gets back to it.
Like my box plane that I invested so much time into, this album is similarly made little impression in the scheme of things. It may have been the ultimate goal for Bloc Party to conquer the world, expand on their sound by adding ambient noises. But they ran before they could walk, breaking their legs and falling into territory they weren't ready for yet. Stick with what works. Leave the box intact. Don't mangle what you've got. I don't understand why band's are so concerned with keeping a workable sound these days. They're like major networks axing off sitcoms after four episodes. So what if they'd make a Silent Alarm part II and don't end up jerking off the critics?Make what you can, while you can, and then over time, you might evolve into the band you where meant to be. At least, eventually, we'd have something to move us in anyway possible. Until then, I'm not attending this party again anytime soon. Let the cops shut it down.
All afternoon, I went to work, cutting a hole in it so I could fit my Hostess-Twinkie saturated body out the top. I taped fake wings to the side. I wrote Eric Airlines on the side. Pure poetry indeed. When I was done, I looked at my plane. It was beautiful. Placing it on the sidewalk, I made airplane noises and got lost in the high altitudes of my young mind, intoxicated with imagination. "Come look at my plane!" I yelled. My dad continued to caulk the cracks in our front steps, periodically looking up with a forced smile. My mom peeked out the window, waved, then disappeared back into her chores. My best friend, and neighbor at the time, came over and told me the plane was stupid. It was at that point, I reexamined my construction of fantastic aviation and thought, "Darn. All that work and this is what I get?" Point being, I invested a whole afternoon just to fuck up a perfectly good box. And in the end, no one remembers this pointless shit but me.
This was one of the first things I thought about when listening to Bloc Party's newest album A Weekend in the City. The lame title alone is enough to send up a red flag. However, after enjoying their full-length Silent Alarm, this hunk of far-reaching aural boredom falls hard on it's face, like me, the fat kid trying to get his foot out of that damn box airplane.
Bloc Party used to a far above average post-punk influenced group of young punks, displaying a impeccable balance of sincerity for both lyrics and music with a desire to get themselves and the listeners moving. Throughout the duration of A Weekend in the City, I wasn't moved in anyway possible, with the exception of my bowels.
Instead of pressing on with the formula that worked so damn great in the past, Bloc Party have taken the path every "serious" group of musicians seem to in their career. And that is reach beyond the capacity of their capable songwriting. There's this inexplicable desire that often plagues some of the most promising bands. I've seen it happen with The Mars Volta and The Flaming Lips' last album. Frankly, I'm sick of it. It's like watching your favorite extended family members die off in unnecessary kitchen remodeling accidents. The oak cabinets were fine Aunt Stella! WHY? These bands feel some need to flash moments of brilliance and show musical maturity. Still, the brilliance on these albums generally come off as purely forced and pompously grandiose. Bloc Party is no exception. It's as if they sold their early Gang of Four albums to Coconuts for store credit and bought Coldplay CDs full of yawn rock.
Towards the end of this album, it hit me. Almost every song starts off relatively the same. Sensitive ballads, full of layering synths, and useless beeps. Bloc Party, again, seem to be following the ever growing trend of the digital advantages of the studio. Leave your guitars at home fellas. There's a perfectly good laptop and piano in the studio. Give me a break!
Don't get me wrong, there are plenty of guitar outbursts on this album, but by the time they generally show up, I'm already sleeping behind the wheel. Other times, I'm trying to get over the fact that singer, Kele Okereke's voice doesn't match this type of music. His desperate melodic chants on past tracks like Banquet and She's Hearing Voices sound downright out of place in this space-dance context. Even the studio compression and voice alternators don't help. But even that is like trying to get off methadone by undertaking a heroin addiction. It just adds to the mounting problems.
The album isn't all cracked foundation and chipped stucco though. I found myself turning my ear to I Still Remember, wondering if it was lifted from The Wedding Singer soundtrack, smiling, remembering the early part of a decade I didn't live through. Waiting For the 7.18 also works for the most part, utilizing well placed guitar swelling mixed with danceable drumming of the Bloc Party I used to appreciate. But on songs like Sunday, where Okereke swoons and croons over a perfectly good waste of syncopated toms, I find myself asking "what's the point?" And how long must we wait until Bloc Party gets back to it.
Like my box plane that I invested so much time into, this album is similarly made little impression in the scheme of things. It may have been the ultimate goal for Bloc Party to conquer the world, expand on their sound by adding ambient noises. But they ran before they could walk, breaking their legs and falling into territory they weren't ready for yet. Stick with what works. Leave the box intact. Don't mangle what you've got. I don't understand why band's are so concerned with keeping a workable sound these days. They're like major networks axing off sitcoms after four episodes. So what if they'd make a Silent Alarm part II and don't end up jerking off the critics?Make what you can, while you can, and then over time, you might evolve into the band you where meant to be. At least, eventually, we'd have something to move us in anyway possible. Until then, I'm not attending this party again anytime soon. Let the cops shut it down.
January 30, 2007
Billy Joel Stole My Life
My parents are rock fans but fans in the barest and most conventional sense of the term “rock fan.” They completely date themselves. They wholeheartedly, without knowing it, believe in generationalism and ironically laugh when I tell them I like bands such as The Byrds, (to this day my mom will walk into my room when I’m playing Beatles albums and say something like, “Oh wow. Getting into the Beatles now?” forgetting that I’ve had their entire discography since I was 11.). They believe there are only about three good bands in the history of rock music (Fleetwood Mac and John Melloncamp reign supreme over The Beatles any day in their book). If my parent’s knew the date of their impending deaths, they would be utterly content knowing they would die with only ten different band’s Greatest Hits c.d.’s sitting in our living room. To their credit, they have expanded their musical tastes. However, these expansions tend to drift down the dark alleyways of Bed, Bath, and Beyond Easy Listening compilations and Enya singles off Barnes and Nobles Café rack. That is their life and they enjoy their limited knowledge of the powerchord. Still, my mother, whether she knows it or not, turned me into the person I am today (a music nerd). This, in turn, I credit for morphing me into a book and film nerd, which in turn kept me indoors for most of my life. This has made me the happiest man alive. But just how did this happen? Billy Joel.
Above any band or artist, the boxing pianist who once drank a bottle of furniture polish before striking gold rules my mother's world. As the tortured songwriter. for every bell-bottomed, satin short clad rock fan from the '70's, this man represents all that is right with song writing in the history of music. Bob Dylan and Beethoven never existed in her eyes. When I was three years old, my mom would put her Billy Joel tapes in my Teddy Ruxpin doll. To the syncopated bass drum beats of Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway), Teddy would blink his eyes in time with the music. I fell asleep listening to Songs In the Attic and The Nylon Curtain albums as the toy’s gears wound noisily to the fury of safe piano rock. During the seemingly endless car trips to my Grandma’s house in Allentown, PA (a city of same name as a 1983 Joel Top 40 single), my mother would blast The Piano Man’s Greatest Hits Vol. I & 2. I played air piano on the dashboard. It was during these long drives I became fascinated with the concept of rock albums as an entity, song structure, and a musician’s career. An hour and a half in a car lasts three weeks when you’re four.
Although completely unconscious of the fact at the time, I was becoming a rock snob, cataloging all the Billy Joel tapes we kept in the glove compartment of our Toyota Corolla.
“Mom, do you have all of the Billy Joel tapes?,” I asked one day.
“Yes, I do. All of them so far except Kohuept,” she informed me. I later found out Kohuept was an unnecessary live in Leningrad album recorded when Mr. Joel became one of the elite few to play in Russia during the dwindling years of the Cold War. See. All you need to spearhead world peace is 88 keys and Christie Brinkley for a wife. “I even have two of his albums on these new things called CDs” my mom added.
I began to stack all the tapes on top of each other, reading the liner notes. I became fascinated that the sax player on his second album was not the same as the one on his sixth album. I noticed the name Phil Ramone showed up under the title of something called Producer on a few of them. Song titles began to intrigue me more than episodes of Eureka’s Castle. I was hooked.
“Mom, one day I’ll buy you Kohuept and you can have all the Billy Joel albums,” I told her once, trying to be mommies little hero, even though I probably only had six dollars in my Dick Tracy wallet and knew not where these tapes were sold.
As I got older, I began to find out exactly where tapes were sold. My musical tastes shifted from kid rap groups who wore their clothes backwards to radio safe alt-rock singles before I knew what “alternative” music was. Still, I never forgot about Billy Joel. And as my mother began to replace her tape collection with CDs, the impression had already been cast upon me. I knew that if I did like a band, you MUST, under all circumstances, collect everyone of their albums ever made, whether the album fell hard off the edge of mediocrity (Billy Joel’s Cold Spring Harbor and Storm Front) or equivocally ended world hunger upon repeated listens (Glass Houses and The Stranger). And this is where I expect a check of compensation from Billy Joel. Through his albums, I learned that a songwriter or band goes through phases, releases chunks of brilliance and moments of uninspired filler. I learned that creative growth occurs through experience and so does commercial complacency. This fascinated me and has since cost me thousands in music related purchases. Still, after all this, I never seemed to notice that my parent’s never owned all of The Moody Blues’ or Genesis’ albums. If they did, who knows, I may have become a politician or a driving instructor?
Instead, I became a slacker. The same mother, who once told me she never liked Jimmy Hendrix, The Doors, and more than six Rolling Stones songs, turned me into a music hoarding geek, spending every dollar I could on shiny 5 inch pieces of plastic in square cases. In fifth grade, when I finally got my first c.d. player, I went to Tower Records and bought all of the overpriced They Might Be Giants albums available, because that’s what I thought you were supposed to do. Then, I repeated this process with the next band, and the next. Eventually, my action figure/comic book fund became an all out conquest to obtain every cool band’s complete musical history.
It wasn’t until eighth grade when I was chatting to my friend about NOFX that I realized everyone wasn’t like me.
“I don’t really like their third album, S&M Airlines. How ‘bout you?”
“Uh…. what’s that?” my friend said.
“Oh, never mind. How about the album Liberal Animation? Do you like that one?”
“No. I guess not?” he said.
“What the hell? You said you thought they were fucking awesome!?”
“Dude, I’ve only heard three songs by them.”
It was then I came to the conclusion the term, “I like that band,” did not mean you had to own all of their albums. Or did it? Still, I could not fathom this concept. How could one wholeheartedly devote themselves and study the emotions and maximum guitar riffage of a band without listening to every song you could possible wrap your ears and mind around?
I once watched a television special about a two year old girl who got stranded in the woods. A pack of wild dogs ended up raising her. When she was discovered as a young teen she walked on all fours, growled incoherent gurgles, and ate dirt and berries off the ground. It seems that we are inherently nurtured through the nature that surrounds us. In which case, I accidentally became a record collector, going into over draft protection several dozen times on the debit card I didn’t ask for when I turned 18. I’ve spent my brother’s birthday present money on new Pavement re-issues from Matador Records. Weeks of running on fumes and canceling social plans because I had spent all my money at the Princeton Record Exchange the week before is now a way of life. All because my mother, a women who knows way more about baking than rock music, kept all the goddamn Billy Joel tapes in the car.
Today, I now look at all of the NOFX c.d.’s on my shelf and ask my-eighth-grade-self, “What were you thinking?” I also have 13 awful c.d.’s from The Queers, all of The Ramones useless late 80’s albums (including 4 live albums), and plenty of forgettable audio yellowing in the dustbin of my mind and left wall of my bedroom. These were not the best purchases, but at the time, it was the only means to an end. These were dire times of consuming, listening, memorizing, filing, and shaping my true identity. Some kids go out for sports. I spent hours in my room hitting the repeat button, memorizing liner notes incase anyone I talked to would ever want to know that Keith Richard’s co-wrote the last song on Tom Waits’ Bone Machine album. Did you know that? Did you want to know that? Oh well, now you know. So what if I became a fat kid who didn’t get much sun? Vitamin D is overrated anyway. Especially when you’re the first kid on your block to know all of Minor Threat’s lyrics and own The Clash’s god-awful Cut the Crap album. Billy Joel, you stole my life, and I don’t want it back any time soon.
Above any band or artist, the boxing pianist who once drank a bottle of furniture polish before striking gold rules my mother's world. As the tortured songwriter. for every bell-bottomed, satin short clad rock fan from the '70's, this man represents all that is right with song writing in the history of music. Bob Dylan and Beethoven never existed in her eyes. When I was three years old, my mom would put her Billy Joel tapes in my Teddy Ruxpin doll. To the syncopated bass drum beats of Miami 2017 (Seen the Lights Go Out on Broadway), Teddy would blink his eyes in time with the music. I fell asleep listening to Songs In the Attic and The Nylon Curtain albums as the toy’s gears wound noisily to the fury of safe piano rock. During the seemingly endless car trips to my Grandma’s house in Allentown, PA (a city of same name as a 1983 Joel Top 40 single), my mother would blast The Piano Man’s Greatest Hits Vol. I & 2. I played air piano on the dashboard. It was during these long drives I became fascinated with the concept of rock albums as an entity, song structure, and a musician’s career. An hour and a half in a car lasts three weeks when you’re four.
Although completely unconscious of the fact at the time, I was becoming a rock snob, cataloging all the Billy Joel tapes we kept in the glove compartment of our Toyota Corolla.
“Mom, do you have all of the Billy Joel tapes?,” I asked one day.
“Yes, I do. All of them so far except Kohuept,” she informed me. I later found out Kohuept was an unnecessary live in Leningrad album recorded when Mr. Joel became one of the elite few to play in Russia during the dwindling years of the Cold War. See. All you need to spearhead world peace is 88 keys and Christie Brinkley for a wife. “I even have two of his albums on these new things called CDs” my mom added.
I began to stack all the tapes on top of each other, reading the liner notes. I became fascinated that the sax player on his second album was not the same as the one on his sixth album. I noticed the name Phil Ramone showed up under the title of something called Producer on a few of them. Song titles began to intrigue me more than episodes of Eureka’s Castle. I was hooked.
“Mom, one day I’ll buy you Kohuept and you can have all the Billy Joel albums,” I told her once, trying to be mommies little hero, even though I probably only had six dollars in my Dick Tracy wallet and knew not where these tapes were sold.
As I got older, I began to find out exactly where tapes were sold. My musical tastes shifted from kid rap groups who wore their clothes backwards to radio safe alt-rock singles before I knew what “alternative” music was. Still, I never forgot about Billy Joel. And as my mother began to replace her tape collection with CDs, the impression had already been cast upon me. I knew that if I did like a band, you MUST, under all circumstances, collect everyone of their albums ever made, whether the album fell hard off the edge of mediocrity (Billy Joel’s Cold Spring Harbor and Storm Front) or equivocally ended world hunger upon repeated listens (Glass Houses and The Stranger). And this is where I expect a check of compensation from Billy Joel. Through his albums, I learned that a songwriter or band goes through phases, releases chunks of brilliance and moments of uninspired filler. I learned that creative growth occurs through experience and so does commercial complacency. This fascinated me and has since cost me thousands in music related purchases. Still, after all this, I never seemed to notice that my parent’s never owned all of The Moody Blues’ or Genesis’ albums. If they did, who knows, I may have become a politician or a driving instructor?
Instead, I became a slacker. The same mother, who once told me she never liked Jimmy Hendrix, The Doors, and more than six Rolling Stones songs, turned me into a music hoarding geek, spending every dollar I could on shiny 5 inch pieces of plastic in square cases. In fifth grade, when I finally got my first c.d. player, I went to Tower Records and bought all of the overpriced They Might Be Giants albums available, because that’s what I thought you were supposed to do. Then, I repeated this process with the next band, and the next. Eventually, my action figure/comic book fund became an all out conquest to obtain every cool band’s complete musical history.
It wasn’t until eighth grade when I was chatting to my friend about NOFX that I realized everyone wasn’t like me.
“I don’t really like their third album, S&M Airlines. How ‘bout you?”
“Uh…. what’s that?” my friend said.
“Oh, never mind. How about the album Liberal Animation? Do you like that one?”
“No. I guess not?” he said.
“What the hell? You said you thought they were fucking awesome!?”
“Dude, I’ve only heard three songs by them.”
It was then I came to the conclusion the term, “I like that band,” did not mean you had to own all of their albums. Or did it? Still, I could not fathom this concept. How could one wholeheartedly devote themselves and study the emotions and maximum guitar riffage of a band without listening to every song you could possible wrap your ears and mind around?
I once watched a television special about a two year old girl who got stranded in the woods. A pack of wild dogs ended up raising her. When she was discovered as a young teen she walked on all fours, growled incoherent gurgles, and ate dirt and berries off the ground. It seems that we are inherently nurtured through the nature that surrounds us. In which case, I accidentally became a record collector, going into over draft protection several dozen times on the debit card I didn’t ask for when I turned 18. I’ve spent my brother’s birthday present money on new Pavement re-issues from Matador Records. Weeks of running on fumes and canceling social plans because I had spent all my money at the Princeton Record Exchange the week before is now a way of life. All because my mother, a women who knows way more about baking than rock music, kept all the goddamn Billy Joel tapes in the car.
Today, I now look at all of the NOFX c.d.’s on my shelf and ask my-eighth-grade-self, “What were you thinking?” I also have 13 awful c.d.’s from The Queers, all of The Ramones useless late 80’s albums (including 4 live albums), and plenty of forgettable audio yellowing in the dustbin of my mind and left wall of my bedroom. These were not the best purchases, but at the time, it was the only means to an end. These were dire times of consuming, listening, memorizing, filing, and shaping my true identity. Some kids go out for sports. I spent hours in my room hitting the repeat button, memorizing liner notes incase anyone I talked to would ever want to know that Keith Richard’s co-wrote the last song on Tom Waits’ Bone Machine album. Did you know that? Did you want to know that? Oh well, now you know. So what if I became a fat kid who didn’t get much sun? Vitamin D is overrated anyway. Especially when you’re the first kid on your block to know all of Minor Threat’s lyrics and own The Clash’s god-awful Cut the Crap album. Billy Joel, you stole my life, and I don’t want it back any time soon.
January 24, 2007
Has-Been Comedians and Your Grandmother's Favorite Show
I hate this show.
This show is the canker sore of prime time television. You know the kind of sore that hurts so bad to acknowledge, yet you find some twisted private pleasure in poking it with your tongue. Yeah. That‘s what this show‘s all about. Deal or No Deal is the epitome of American laziness. It sums up where we, as an American society, are in our meaningless lives. And this show could not have come at a better time, or era. Here, you have a show that takes skill out of the game show, the very show that has required, since the beginning of cavemen, the use of some semblance of skill.
For those of you who don’t know about the hottest (no wait, ugliest) thing to hit your television screen since Janet’s tit fell out of her dress and hit the back of the boob tube with a nauseating thud, here’s a quick rub… ahhh, rundown. Contestants stand up on a stage that looks like a mix between a sterile art gallery and a main showroom from some tacky, suburban dream store like Pier 1. Then, over-the-hill, obsessive compulsive, comedian, Howie Mandell, stands up their with a mobile phone looking like a creepy Mr. Clean at a sweet 16 party. He then asks the contestant, who has a suitcase next to him or herself (generally a stocky soccer mom or a loudmouth, greasy Italian guy), if they’d like to accept a set amount offered to them by the good people at CBS, or try to win the amount in the case. To win the amount in the case, the contestants must continually choose the “no deal” option and take a gamble by opening a variety of suitcases guarded by a swarm of matchstick models. Never have I seen so many anorexics in one place. Anyway, the ultimate goal is to hope the case you’ve chosen contains the one million dollars, the amount all Americans seem to strive for with religious fervor, and, for some reason, only seem to be able to achieve by being on some sort of ratings staggering game show. I don’t think anyone’s going to work anymore (well, at least stocky soccer mom’s and loudmouth, greasy Italian guys aren’t).
As I watched this show, which I generally don’t do out of sheer boredom, just like Flavor of Love, it dawned on me why this show is the worst thing sucking on the brains of us lazy fuckers. The game show requires no skill what so ever. There is no questions, besides “do you feel lucky?” and “what does your husband/wife do for a living?” which come up as small talk from Mandell. It’s simply people opening suitcases. If I wanted to watch that, I’d go over to
Where other ratings raping shows like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? and Greed used to draw a huge American viewing audience, with the possibility to win a million dollars, those shows, at least, provided a challenge and cranial skill. In general game show tradition, the contestants had to apply some arcane knowledge to questions only a certain demography of nerds tended to know, as they hoped they might fall into that demography, just for the night, in hopes of winning the million. But Deal or No Deal offers nothing like that. The only time the brain has to function is when the contestant wonders if they can get a big enough hot tub in their suburban home if they win big. At a time when God-awful sitcoms arrive on the scene with a dagger already lodged in their chests, Deal or No Deal breaths a breath of rank air into the chests of primetime television. And at a time when we can only be bothered with loading more songs onto our iPods (only listening to the first thirty seconds of the song, so you can show you’re friends what other killer tunes you jammed into your digital fortress of eternal music), incoherent MYSPACE bulletin posts full of phrases like “U R DUM“, and the little conflict in the Mid-East we can’t fully view on our television, there’s no better time not to think in America. I mean, they’ve figured it out didn’t they? Who the hell has time, or the drive, to think on or about something as trivial as a game show?
Don’t get me wrong. There have been other terrible, parasitic game show which followed similar standards. There have been shows like Let’s Make a Deal where contestants had to make a life-or-death choice and choose what happened to be behind the door. They would then often get “zonked” when the door would open and a small, shit stained donkey would he-haw out on the stage, ready for the contestant to take home. This show worked well in the drug fueled era or the sixties and finally folded in the cocaine dust cloud of the late 70s. However, throughout it’s run, this show justified itself by humiliating these greedy guests for the low-life’s that they were on a game show that acknowledge that it was useless, trashy, and pure primetime pulp. Meanwhile, Deal or No Deal is purely safe. This show just promotes greed as contestants push themselves to the edge of their luck, endorsing needless material want and gambling. And we wonder why the kids on Super Nanny say things like “I want to be the pussy queen” and “Fuck off and die mom” at the age of four. I mean if you’re gonna watch some gambling on television, at least tune in and watch Rosie O’Donnell throw inedible chips on the table next to Jason Alexander, and his dead career, as they throw around poker lingo like censored sailors on a hokey celebrity poker game. Shit, even the in The Gong Show you had to be able to do something.
Deal or No Deal is too classy, too safe, too shallow, and too hopefully hopeless. It’s just what
Where's Bobby's World on DVD anyway?
-Eric Truchan
My Top 10 (...no wait....11), albums of 2006!
(The following has aged a few weeks but still holds true.)
2006 Year End Review- Best and Worst of 2006 (according to Eric Truchan)
Hello music lovers,
First of all, my opinion doesn't mean shit in the scheme of things. Who am I? A nerd who spends too much money on c.d.'s and Netflix? Yes, that's right. But here is my tiny voice screaming in a sea of know-it-all snobs and fashion-core kids. In the spirit of Spinal Tap, here are my top 11 albums of the year.My Top Eleven Albums of 2006:
11.Sunset Rubdown "Shut Up, I Am Dreaming"-Lo-fi side project from Spencer Krug, member of Wolf Parade (the best band to come out and temporarily disappear from 2005), delivers an enjoyably stripped down effort of Canadian creativity.
10.The
9.Built to Spill "You In Reverse"- Not their best but much better than "Ancient Melodies..." Just happy Doug Martsch isn't dead or a gimmicky recluse like Jeff Mangum (who am I kidding... come back Jeff).
8.The Hold Steady "Boys and Girls in
7.The Blood Brothers "Young Machetes"-A migraine headache stuffed in a blender full of poisonous coffee. One of the most forward-thinking, spazztastic bands today that get written off for not being "cool" to like anymore. Challenges "Burn Piano Island Burn" for best album.
6.Yo La Tengo "I'm Not Afraid of You and I will Beat Your Ass"- Terrible album title but the band tackles every style in the vain of "I Can Hear the Heart Beating As One" A nice recovery and return to form.
5.Islands "Return to the Sea"- No more Unicorns? SHIT! Then check out
4.Sonic Youth "Rather Ripped"-Their catchiest album to date, still filled with cacophonous guitar meandering and lusciously rich, feedback induced melodies.
3.Mission of
2.Tom Waits "Orphans: Brawlers, Bawlers, and Bastards"-Not quite an album but the best fucking collection of songs gathered into a box set this year. Everything is worth hearing. Everything! Tom Waits should be the next Santa Clause or Jesus, when either one of them resign.
1.The Thermals "The Body, the Blood, the Machine"- No synths, programming, or ego. Just guitar, drums, bass, and the best album of the year.
Biggest disappointments of 2006:
Cursive- "Happy Hallow"- Useless horns (that sound like they're from a dimestore synth), and filler dominate over usually great Curisve quality songs.
Yeah Yeah Yeahs "Show Your Bones"- "Maps" was a fluke, not a career change.
The Decembrists "The Crane Wife"-Sill boring and overrated. BORING.
Jay-Z "Kingdom Come"- Ego doesn't rhyme with shitty. That's why this new album blows.
Beck "The Information"- How many years in the making versus the number of great songs? The math doesn't add up.
Robert Pollard "Normal Happiness"- While his Jan. 2006 release, "From a Compound Eye" may be in my top 20, this October album was boring, embarrassing, and full of aged confusion rather than Guided By Voices type hooks.
Make Believe "Of Course"- The over abundance of beating off totally fucks up the amazing music found on this c.d. Should have been a really good six song EP rather than a so-artsy-you-won't-get it full length.
Thanks. Let's hope 2007 is better.
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