Blogger said they were going to delete this if I didn't post. SO here I am. Take that, RSS feeds!

Hah--that'd be really funny if somebody read this as an RSS feed.

I know I'm early with this, but maybe we'll start up a twice-a-month schedule. But that's all you're getting. I pen-and-paper blogged this at my first day of work today (read: I wrote it down to post it later) because, as my boss pointed out, our internet usage will be strictly monitored. Boo.

Like I said, though. I'm early. I'm mostly here because it's my birthday, so I wanted to share with you all my favorite birthday song of the moment: Waving at You by the Mountain Goats. What an excellent song from an excellent guy.

I'm 23 today, which stirs up a few funny thoughts in me: first, I'm the same age Mr. (Boom) Bull was when he started teaching me in the 7th grade. That thought then stirred up the idea that I'm almost twice as old now as I was then. Creepy.

The third thought is that I'm the same age Coolio was when he recorded Gangsta's Paradise, if the line "I'm 23 now, but will I live to see 24?/The way things are going, I don't know." Part of me is sure that that line is a lie, since Coolio couldn't possibly have believed that he would be shot in the next year. It was a rougher time for rappers, sure. But Coolio wasn't going to get popped by anybody. He was the epitome of feel-good rap up until that song. C'mon! Fantastic Voyage? Man.

The conclusions I drew from this train of thought are as follows: when Mr. Bull used to get his guitar out and sing and play guitar while we sang, I always took it as a reward or treat for us. I understand now that I'd give a lot to have my job involve singing praise songs with some kids while I played them. Also, Coolio made Fantastic Voyage when he was like 20 or 21. Holy crap, I'm behind. That song is amazing.

Now, another birthday song, because it's been in my head while I've been writing: Older.

Three tales of interest from the front page of Pitchfork

I read a lot of websites every morning, and Pitchfork is invariably one of them. It's great to have a place where I can see the names and some brief descriptions of a few bands I've never heard of every day, and a place where I can learn that someone I already like (like Denison Witmer a few days ago) already has a new record I knew nothing about.

Today, though, there were three really interesting things on the page that kept me tied up for, like 10 minutes altogether, which is impressive. The first one was this news story:

Babygrande Records has formed a joint venture with Dreddy Kruger's Think Differently Music Group. No one knows exactly what this means, what with that shadowy Wu-Tang Clan involved, but we do know that it means a whole bunch of Clan activity coming our way-- and that can't be bad news.

So far, three projects are lined up, the first of which will be Think Differently Music: Wu-Tang Meets the Indie Culture. Babygrande's official site describes this as "an unprecedented pairing of Wu-Tang artists, producers, and affiliates with some of independent hip-hop's East and West Coast elite. RZA, MF Doom, GZA, Rass Kass, Aesop Rock, Masta Killa, Del the Funky Homosapien, Sean Price, J Live, Tragedy Khadafi, C-Rayz Walz, RA the Rugged Man, Littles, Cannibal Ox, Sunz of Man, Royal Fam, and many more artists, producers, and even award winning filmmaker Jim Jarmusch have come together for what will be a historic moment in hip-hop."

This'll be in stores on October 18, and the first single, "Biochemical Equation" featuring the RZA and MF Doom, will make its premiere on iTunes in August. Further projects will include solo albums from Wu-Tang affiliates Bronze Nazazreth and La the Darkman/Embassy Entertainment.

Of these pairings Dreddy Kruger says, "I learned how to make albums...the whole process of putting a record together from the RZA and Schott Free. It feels good to finally have my own situation to bring my conceptual thinking to hip-hop and I look forward to working with Babygrande to make it happen."

There are a few things to point out here:

There's a rapper named Dreddy Kruger? This only supports my theory from earlier this week that rappers are running out of names. See "Webbie" for further proof. (note: not that I wouldn't make fun of Snoop Doggy Dogg if he was a new guy. I'm not saying I wouldn't. But I bet you dollars to donuts that Snoop makes Dreddy look like Mike Pape. No offense, Mike. You're just, y'know...clearly a non-rapping white guy.)

"Wu-Tang Meets the Indie Culture" sounds like a cartoon special I'd love to see.

Jim Jarmusch doesn't have anything to do with this record. Seriously. What's he going to do with the actual record? In fact, I'm willing to bet that Jarmusch's mic skillz make Mike Pape look like Webbie. Or something like that.

Did you also hope for a minute, as I did, that this was an O.C. Fueled idea that was going to mean Ben Gibbard singing over a RZA-led ODB tribute? Or, like, those guys from Pavement reforming to have Method and Red rap over "Shady Lane?" I'm not gonna lie to you, I'd be really maliciously happy if that was the case.

The second thing I learned was that Iggy Pop could easily, and I mean easily, simultaneously be my grandpa and give me the beating of a lifetime. Look at the guy. Plus, I gotta say "millions in prizes" is a fantastic title for an anthology of badass music spanning several decades.

Finally, I learned that the Travolta-esque revitalization of Bill Murray's carreer that Wes Anderson started will now continue in another movie where he plays an older guy looking disgruntled and getting punched. I guess he didn't get punched in most of the other ones, but he's certainly disgruntled and older in all of them. Although, this movie seems to take his Peter Venkman as Lothario persona and shoot it into a Jim Jarmusch movie. Which means it's probably a little wierd, but over all enjoyable. How the heck was Venkman a ladies man, anyway? I never got that. Anyway, the movie looks pretty good. And that's all I got. See you all in another month, right?

This is awesome. Looking gor a good book to read? Want one that's kind of funny, but not too off-the-wall? How about a disturbing book with lots of sex? Here's how to find whatever it is you're going for. You set a bunch of critera with a bunch of little faders, then send it off to find a book. I just set the sliders on "happy, funny and disturbing" on just about full bore, and it returned this for me (among a few backup choices that also sounded pretty dang good):

Ella Minnow Pea
A monument to celebrate the pangram The Quick Brown Fox Jumps Over The Lazy Dog has been erected on the island where it's creator, Nevin Nollop, was born. As time passes the letters, displayed on ceramic tiles, begin to tumble and the Island Council, to the dismay of the residents, sees this as a message from the grave and excludes the letters from all daily use. A very clever and funny, modern fable. Don't be put off by the quirky language - it's well worth the perseverance.

It's identified by a reader comment, which is cool. I checked amazon, and none of their reviews are that succinct (or even made me want to read the book, particularly.) If you live in the British Isles, you can even (apparently) look to see if the book if available for borrowing.

As if I didn't have enough to read already.

I've gotta say, I regularly disagree wholheartedly with pitchfork. As do most people who think and write and listen. I even once vowed to never read another one of their reviews because of something written there. My skin is thicker now, but still...never before have I read a review there and felt like their feelings had been hurt by the record they were reviewing. Until today.

In case you lack the drive to click on all of those review links, I'll tell you that they reviewed that Believer comp I was so excited about. And, frankly, despite any of its suckiness (there is some) I'm still excited about, just due to its concept and decent selection of artists. So, there, Pitchfork.

Is it bad to slightly revile an orginization that I'd gladly move to Chicago to work for? I don't think so.

Greg Nog
At first, I thought Greg Nog's username on the message board he and I frequent was very clever. And then, I realized that he was a cartoonist. Then, I realized his cartoons make me happy in a way very few internet cartoons have. Here's a link. Read them, espeically the "I Am a Host at Olive Garden" series and the "Captain Yaar" strips.

Buy his stuff. It's cheap. Gregnog.com

I'm a Believer

So, just got a copy of the newest issue of The Believer in the mail. It's excellent. For those of you who don't know about Timothy McSweeny's Internet Concern, you should look around. But don't look around too much, because if you don't I can justify linking to tons of that stuff later.

Anyway, believer is a McSweeney's magazine, and while I'm sure it's excellent every month, I splurged on it this month and bought a physical copy of it. It's eight dollars, and currently that's too much money for me to spend on a magazine, really. I got my whole year-long No Depression subscription for that price. What makes this month's believer so awesome is the accompanying CD which contains brand-freakin'-new songs by bands like Spoon, the Mountain Goats (aka Me, maybe) and others. It's great. The theme behind the CD is "everybody just covers what they've been listening to" which is awesome. I don't even care if most of the covers end up sucking, it's just a great idea with a lot of good musicians involved, both on the tracklist and in the song selection. Even if the people behind it seem a little "freak folk" heavy. God forgive me for saying that, but it seemed less esoteric than calling it "golden apples of the sun" heavy. It's certainly that.

Can you imagine I'm writing about another record I'm not even attempting to review? I can. PS, I "legally" got a copy of that Pernice Brothers record, and I was right to assume that it wouldn't suck. So, there you go.

In light of the recent news of "Dude, even Holly Choppa (wink) reads your blog, you had bett er update" I've decided to give it a shot. They won't be long, wordy posts like before. I'm going to take a page from Aaron "Goldman Frankel and" Weinberg and just post little bits of internet deliciousness.

And, to be a good sport, I won't canibalize Jade's blog. Because Aaron hasn't sucked all the funny out of it, but he should get on that. (edit: Dude, Jade updated her blog 2 hours ago! Wierd.)

This particular post is to tell you that, though I have no idea if it's good, the new Pernice Brothers record is out. (And probably very good. The graphics on the front of their homepage are good enough for me to buy their new record, but I'm...y'know, troubled.) I wanted to link directly to Joe Pernice's blog post here, but since that doesn't work, here's the funny and awesome part.

A Note From Joe

Hello Everyone,
I am a little shaky because I am eight days into an insane, two-week liver cleansing diet. My brother Bob was on it a few years ago and he felt great. Supposedly the best he's ever felt, for what that's worth. Then his house and just about everything he owned burned to the ground which started him on a diet of a completely different kind. There we were a couple weeks ago in Yankee Stadium, stuffing our faces with hot dogs and miniature batting caps full of these kooky ice cream pellets, if you will (the likes of which I have not seen at Fenway), when we decided it was time for a cleanse. Anyway, I have been shockingly disciplined, though as you may tell, food is always on my mind. (Maybe I didn't love it, quite as often as I should have). No caffeine, no booze, no refined sugar, no wheat products, no dairy. I get to eat two eggs a day, eight ounces of meat, some ground flax (see sawdust), some flaxseed oil (see sawdust oil) and anything else a sane rabbit would eat (except carrots and potatoes). I drink about a gallon of water mixed with unsweetened cranberry juice. Why am I doing this you might ask? Because I am a terrible, terrible person. Really, that's the only satisfactory answer I can come up with.

As I mentioned in a previous note, I live right next to a Portuguese bakery. I swear, I dream of bread as often and as longingly as the rest of you dream of sex. My wife and I took my mother-in-law to a movie for Mother's Day. Don Cheadle's voice was so smooth and smoky, all I could think about were those hickory flavored Pringles and a cream soda. Damn them all, including Don Cheadle. So help me, I saw an abandoned McDonalds french fry on the sidewalk and I nearly knelt down and wept. And not one hour ago, I watched a small child being pulled in a plastic Radio Flyer wagon. With his saliva-shiny lips and terrible pick-pick-pick kid fingers, he was abusing a gorgeous plain donut (with chocolate glaze and rainbow sprinkles).

"How dare you?" I growled as we passed in the crosswalk. "How DARE YOU, you fraud?" His mother prudently picked up the pace.

This has got to stop. Six more days.

It just dawned on me. Brother Bob gave me a pasta machine for a wedding gift...Hmmm....It's all becoming clear to me now. He's messing with my head.

Only two things keep me going: Major League Baseball and The Wire. Both are highly recommended.

The band will be out on tour this summer around North America. Don't quote me on this, but I think the first date is sometime in mid-July. Again, it's always best to consult with www.pernicebrothers.com. I truly have no idea when and where I am playing. My wife has joined our mailing list (so can you) just to know where I am.

I think that's about it for now. I will try to write something with more depth, wit and clarity when I re-introduce carbohydrates into my life. Until then (and beyond), keep your hands away from my mouth.

Buy the new Pernice joint here or here. Then burn me a copy, sucka.

Y'know, I just haven't felt like blogging lately. It's part boredom, part slight depression at my inability to find work and a whole other mess of things that have sorta killed my desire to write for other people. Also, I've been focusing on writing my music, which has been making me very, very happy. What brought me back into the blogosphere? Not your nagging. Especially not yours, Magers. Fittingly enough, it was an awesome sandwich.

You ever see that movie, Spanglish? It was pretty good. I went to see it with my friend Amber. When we left the theatre, discussing the movie, I had to admit that I had found it hard to focus during the second half.

"It was the sandwich, wasn't it?"

She's not normally psychic, to my knowledge, but she was right. Adam Sandler's four-star chef character had made himself a sandwich in the middle of the night that looked so good that I was beside myself. She had guessed it because, well, it's no secret that I love sandwiches, but apparently also Conan O'Brien had been enthusing about it on his show the night before. Anyway, I'm talking to you about it now because when I opened the Spanglish DVD this afternoon, the awesome sandwiche was pictured on the disc. That was funny. Apparently lots of folks noticed how awesome it was. Then I notice the DVD extra feature: How to Make The World's Best Sandwich. Which inspired two things: 1.a top five post 2.plans for a sandwich later tonight.

Top Five Extras/Features I've ever seen on a DVD.
1.The World's Greatest Sandwich (from SpanglishClearly you saw this coming, as I explained it all up above. What a great way to use the DVD to extend my enjoyment of a movie.Here's a link to the recipe (transcribed from the DVD).

2.The Fart Track (from Wet Hot American Summer)
One of the commentaries on this movie is a track that contains nothing more than the regular audio stream from the movie, but with some farts added in where it would be funny to have them. Exactly the sort of bizzare creativity I'd expect from The State folks.

3.Pretty Much the Whole Memento Special Edition DVD, but specifically watching the movie "forward" and the commentary during the final scene.
I don't know if you've ever seen this. It's a DVD that's made up to look like the psychiatric case file of the film's hero, Leonard. The menus of the disc are set up like psychological tests. It's really crazy, and really cool as long as you have something to walk you through it. Otherwise you could spend all night trying to get the movie to play in Dolby or something. But, among the menus and crap of the DVD is a psychological test where the viewer has to put a series of pictures in order. If you put them in reverse order instead, you get to see the movie forwards, which is something I had wanted to see since...oh, about an hour after I started watching the movie for the first time.* Avast, thar be spoilers in the next paragraph.

The other crazy thing about memento (again, skip this if you've never seen the movie. Then go see the movie) is a little built-in trick at the end of the audio commentary. I don't want to explain it, so here are the deets, courtesy of Christophernolan.net:

The commentary has in fact four different endings. If you select the commentary track and the manually swith to a point in the movie after 1:37h the commentary will begin to run different.

But if you pass the point at 1:37:15 in the movie, your dvd player will randomly select one of three different versions. This doesn't work on all DVD Players (mostly Software-Players eg. PowerDVD). So another propability to hear the other version is to select the commentary track and the switch to one of the last three chapter through the DVD's Menu.

The three versions begin to differ as Jimmy get dragged down the stairs. They are edited in a way that they all contain equal elements but differ hughly in what Nolan states regarding Teddy and his realtionship to Lenny.

Differences:
1.This version doesn't really interpret it comments more the action. Note that this version matches the one you hear played backwards exactly.

2.The second version states that Teddy is lying in last scene. Nolan says that the audience sees "Don't believe his lies" through the whole movie, but that they are so desperately in the need for answers that they simply will believe Teddy. This version sounds to me like Chris Nolan tries to trick the listener into believing or maybe considering another solution. But Nolan completely dismisses that Lenny has willing tricked himself and thus written down that Teddy is a liar.

3. This version is the most interesting and worthwhile. Here Nolan states that Teddy says the truth in the last scene.

Whew. How's that for blatant editorializing? It's only worthwhile if the whole movie was a sham? Okay, moving on. Pretty neat, Huh? To round it out, here'a a link that'll give you the power to not fear the second disc of the Special Edition DVD. Dan used to have a handy printable guide that slipped into the movie's case...but I can't find it online. Whoop.

4.The "Greatest Film Ever" Commentary (from Showgirls. I've never seen this, but I love the idea. A guy who loves Showgirls explains why it's awesome, for the length of the whole movie. (un?)fortunately, you can only get this version of the movie if you buy the ridiculous Showgirls boxed set, which contains nothing short of the movie, playing cards, shot glasses, a blindfold and some pasties, if my memory serves me. The only downside is that, well...it's thirty bucks, and the movie in the box is Showgirls. Buy it here.

5.There's no way to sugarcoat this. "Carrot Top Commentary" (From The Rules of Attraction Apparently the director of this film wanted to get someone who had never seen it, then show it to them and see what they had to say during the movie. A few things are wrong with the idea, one being that you can't really talk through a movie you've never seen unless you're just going to make fun of it. Second, if you could hire anyone to make fun of something, why would you pick carrot top? Anyway, I like the idea of someone so random and stupid recording a commentary track for a movie. So, there you go.

Now, that's not a great list or anything--please, keep it up in the comments, and tell me about ones you like. Because, hey. The Blogging Street runs both ways.

Finally, a post where I don't even mention drinking or being in a place I normally wouldn't be, unless you count Indiana.

Lately, almost everything I hear new-record wise sounds boring to me. Even stuff by bands I used to like: the new singles and albums by Oasis, Stereophonics, Nine Inch Nails and Radiohead* sounds boring as crap to me. In December, a friend brought me new ash album from London. It was unreleased stateside, and came in a fancy package with a bonus live CD. I stuck to the live CD more often than the studio album, for no real reason. Until I put the studio album on this weekend in my car and I found it....boring. *gasp.*

I don’t get any particular pleasure out of saying that a new record I’d like to like is boring. Though I’m frequently the guy saying “their old stuff is better,”—the de facto mantra of any “real” hip music fan—I mean it when I say it. It’s got such a stigma that not liking the new records as much makes me feel like an arrogant asshole. It gets even worse when the call is close—for example, Summerteeth by Wilco is awesome. But I’d be right for saying “Being There is better.” It’s so debatable that I just look like past-humping elitist. It’s a big problem for me theoretically, since I may not care what people think of me as a reviewer, but I also don’t want to alienate people at parties with my views on Modest Mouse—which has happened to me. More than once. More than once since 2005 started.

Am I too judgemental? Have I lost it completely? Maybe. Who cares. The real meat-and-potatoes of this post is that after I got sick of Meltdown, I went straight for 1977. It was like a tall glass of KoolAid after a day of swimming at Magic Waters. That is to say, it hit the spot like nothing else could have. Then, it left me wondering if I’d love this record so much if I got it today, or if everyone should be handed this record sometime in around the summer after their Sophomore year of high school, just to set them on the right track and give them the best possible soundtrack for the next year or so.

The album brings to mind so many ridiculously incongruent vital things: learning to play “Kung Fu” on a guitar in Tony Schaeve’s basement the night John gave me the record, which was also, I believe, the night we saw The Big Lebowski for the first time. Trying to convince Nathan that the sound at the beginning was a TIE Fighter, not a guy screaming (he’s come around since then.) Talking to Paul Mannone about the record in study hall, since it was one of only two albums we both owned at the time**. Hell, the first song I ever wrote was practically a pastiche on Oh Yeah when you listened to it hard enough.

I don’t think there’s any avoiding it: the albums you listen while you’re growing into a real person with discerning taste always sound awesome to you, even if they’re not the greatest. This makes me a little sad, because I just can’t see loving The Startling Line as much as I like even the crappiest of Ash B-Sides***.

With that said, I resolved in my car that afternoon to make a list of all the things that are awesome about 1977. Then I decided, once I started rambling them off, I’d limit the list to maybe the best 25. I’m open to the idea of submissions here, if you have one that’s your own. I know there’s gotta be a readership out there somewhere, and since I probably know you I’ll give you a 50% that you own 1977.

Anyway, all that’ll be in the next post, as I am currently getting ready to go to Indianapolis for the third Star Wars Celebration, hopefully in anticipation of a movie that doesn’t blow. See you in Indy!

Wow. Sorry about that “see you in Indy” thing.



*I know that in the traditional sense, Hail to the Thief isn’t new. But it is boring.

**The other one was Turn The Radio Off by Reel Big Fish

***The crappiest of Ash B-Sides, BTW, is probably “A Message from Oscar Wilde and Patrick The Brewer” which isn’t even a song, really. It’s similar to their other ‘hardly a song’ B-Sides, “Astral Conversations with Toulouse Lautrec” and “Luther Ingo’s Star Cruiser,” the latter of which is elevated to greatness by its hypnotic repeated lyric, which is…Ahem. “First I’m gonna gamble, then I’m gonna fuck you/I’m gonna fuck you in the ass.” Now, that’s from memory, but I’m pretty sure that’s how it went. I love B-Sides.