Five Ideas I’ve Scrapped
1. Giant model rocket Dan and I designed expressly to burn, though we never said that out loud during the planning stages.
2. My Autobiography—Thus far.
3. Treatise on how sideburn size is directionally proportional to ability to rock
4. Biography of Wesley Willis
5. Concept album of the end times where Texas is God’s Promised Land. Though, I only stopped that because I was beaten to the punch.

I was real excited about writing a preemptive review of the new Bright Eyes album. Y’know, stick it to a vocal George Bush critic by eviscerating his newest work “without credible information” for doing so. It’d be funny. And, I was sure I’d be at least 70% right. I wrote the review, for the most part, during my night class last semester, on the night that I first heard the two new Bright Eyes singles had hit #1 on the billboard charts in a single week (they did—though, only the single sales chart, not the Hot #100, which factors in radio play, and is the list most people think of since few people give a shit about releasing singles in America).

The problem with the preemptive review was that it had two main parts: Me saying, repeatedly “I don’t care when bands I like a lot get famous, but generally it’s funny the way the rest of the world reacts to them.” For examples, I pointed out the Cheerleader who picked up the third Ben Folds Five album from my desk in High School and said “Ben Folds Five—they sing that abortion song, don’t they?” and the kid who, at my cousin Ruth’s graduation said “To give our graduates hope in the coming years, I’d like to quote Jimmy Eatworld, and their song ‘The Middle.’ “Just do your best/ Yeah/ Do everything you can.” The real kicker there was the way he said “eatworld” like it was a last name, and the fact that he paused dramatically, looked out at the crowd and said, “yeah” as though he agreed with the lyric and was just coming to that realization now. All completely without irony.

The second half of the review was just me saying why I thought Bright Eyes albums were good, and why the last album was a disappointment. And how I saw the negative things becoming a potential snowball of bad taste on the new records. But, of course, I was going to couch all of my observations in a fake and really snarky review of the new records. I don’t want to do that anymore, I just want to tell you exactly what sucks about the last Bright Eyes album, and what could go wrong on the two new ones. I’ll post it over the course of a few days, as not to drag you all down too hard. So, that’s all I’ve got for today: a promise for a wordier tomorrow.