So This Is XMas

Hey ya. I hope everyone else has had a good Christmas. I feel like I came out ahead. The scalloped potatoes and oyster casserole I made seemed to be popular. And I got the Futurama movie from my sister, a cool spice rack/set of spice containers from my cousin and her husband, the Bill James 2008 baseball handbook from Ralph and Super Mario Galaxy from my mother. So I'm pretty happy with that. Also, no one seemed visibly disappointed with any of the gifts I gave. If my present from the basketball gods hadn't been an injury to State's point guard, I'd be pretty close to actually being merry.

Now I hope that the Kwanzaabot brings me an X-Box 360...

Words in this post that the spell checker does not recognize: Futurama, Kwanzaabot.

This Month's eMusic Downloads (December)

So, the Slick Rick show was actually better than I expected. Opening act Percee P was very good, and although Doug E. Fresh didn't show up, Big Daddy Kane did. So that was cool.

What I downloaded:
Danny! - Charm
MF Grimm- The Hunt for the Gingerbread Man
Masta Ace- Long Hot Summer
McEnroe- The Convenience EP
Spoon- Ga Ga Ga Ga
The Roots (and others)- The Roots: Present
Bonnie "Prince" Billy- "Can't Take That Away (Mariah"s Theme)"
Devendra Banhart & Noah Georgeson- "Don't Look Back In Anger"

Have a good whatever you choose to celebrate, or whatever holiday you claim in the name of presents but do not actually celebrate deep within your soul.

The Most Wanted Man In Apex

So, yesterday I was summoned for jury duty. Again. Since I registered to vote seven years ago, I must have been summoned for jury duty four or five times. This time, it's the feds again. It seems that, unlike the more local court establishments, when the feds give you permission to duck out of one's civil obligations they don't forget that shit. And now I can't beg off because of class. So, on or about the seventh of January I'll be headed downtown to send somebody to jail. (Because the statistics that I've seen on federal indictments strongly suggest that the odds of the poor bastard/evil son of a bitch being acquitted ain't good.) On the plus side, jurors get paid more than I currently do. It's really too bad that I can't make a career out of it.

I went Christmas shopping tonight. At least, on a fairly small scale. I patronized the Best Buy and the Barnes and Nobel at Crabtree, and it was nowhere near as unpleasant as it might have been. (I expect that this weekend the malls will resemble nothing so much as outtakes from Dawn of the Dead). I kept my headphones on the whole time, and rode out the crowds with Atmosphere's You Can't Imagine How Much Fun We're Having album, which is one of my absolute favorite albums of the last five or ten years). I think I'm done with the shopping for this year, (although statements like that invariably bite one in the ass) which makes me happy.

Tomorrow night is the Slick Rick show at the Cradle. If Doug E. Fresh were to show up, it would be like the third coolest thing to happen at a show this year, but I don't expect that to happen. At the very worst, at least it will distract me from NCSU losing to Davidson. Gods, do I hope that they don't show that game on the television near the bar at the show. Kenpom.com's computers predict that State will win, but I'm pretty sure that the computers haven't been watching this team play. This is what happens to State fans when we get optimistic.

While I was making dinner tonight, the news was on. They were talking about the alleged cross in the Mike "We isn't evolved from no monkeys" Huckabee's Christmas ad, and I missed the Daily Show more than ever. With this presidential election so much of a clusterfuck, you'd think that the writers could have given Comedy Central a special dispensation. It's not that I need Jon Stewart right now. America needs Jon Stewart right now. And by America I mean me.

Oh, and finally- Stacey, do you watch Lost? Because I was watching the second disc of the third season, and there was a copy of Nabokov's Laughter in the Dark in Sawyer's tent, and that has been messing with my head all day. Of all the books Vladimir wrote, why the hell did they choose that one? Nothing against the book, but you'd think that they would have chosen one that people who aren't taking seminars on Nabokov might have read. Granted, I could only tell that it was Laughter in the Dark because I froze the frame when I recognized the book design (you know how all of those Vintage published Nabokov paperbacks look the same) and studied the shot like the Zapruder film, but still. It's so weird. Even for Lost.

(Words that blogspot's spell check does not recognize in this post: NCSU, Kenpom.com, Huckabee's, clusterfuck, Zapruder, Crabtree, blogspot's)

Quick Thoughts from the throes of insomnia

Keith's wedding turned out well, on the whole. I was more nervous than he was, as far as I could tell, but I managed to not lose the rings, and I completely failed to trip on my way to and from the front of the church. I could hardly have asked for more. In the end, it was decided that there would be no toasts. I had just about figured out what I was going to say, and I think that the words I had more or less settled on would have been appropriate and even somewhat lovely, even if they weren't particularly profound.

In other news, I heard that Terry Pratchett has been diagnosed with early onset Alzheimer's. This is what we in the literary field refer to as "bad news". I've spent the past few months re-reading the Discworld novels, and I've been very pleased at how well they've stood up to second readings. I think it was a critic for the Washington Post who compared Pratchett to Chaucer, and I'm consistently jealous at not having thought of that myself. Pratchett's clearly not in the same pantheon as Chaucer, and I don't believe for a second that the Discworld novels will be held in anywhere near the same esteem as the Canterbury Tales, but there is a common worldview, and although I never studied Chaucer in the same depths as I studied Shakespeare or Donne or Nabokov in school, I feel like the old master would have appreciated Pratchett's sense of humor. It's just possible that the best of Pratchett's works (Small Gods, definitely, Carpe Jugulum, perhaps) might one day be required reading that undergraduates skim through on the night before the test. We can only hope.

I'm a little annoyed that three movies that I actually really want to see are all coming out on Friday: Sweeney Todd, Charlie Wilson's War and Walk Hard all look excellent, but I'm not sure if I'll get around to seeing all three in the theater, especially since I still haven't seen "No Country For Old Men".

Thursday night Slick Rick is doing a free show at the Cradle. At the moment, Keith and I are still planning on going. Really, the Little Brother show would have been the more poetic choice for the last show of a fantastic year in live music, but the bastards who control the schedules don't agree.

The Johnny Cash picture is just one I like. I guess since Walk Hard is in part a parody of Walk The Line (which was a pretty good movie that never bothered to flirt with greatness, if you want my opinion), I suppose the picture is somehow thematically appropriate.

Notes From The Chapel

Hey Yo.

So, Keith's wedding is later today. I'm his best man (apparently, the term "best" is being thrown around like confetti these days). I don' t really have a toast figured out yet, but I'm not too worried. I'll figure something out. I'm very, very, very tempted to steal Michael's toast from Phyllis' wedding on "The Office" ("Webster's defines 'wedding" as the fusing together of two metals...")

It came to me that the album I forgot to mention in my little list was Nine Inch Nails' "Year Zero". It's my favorite thing Trent Reznor has done since "The Downward Spiral". Actually, if you include his production of the Saul Williams album, and his guest appearance on what might be my favorite song of the year (El-P's "Flyentology", particularly the "Cassettes Won't Listen" remix") it was a pretty good year for Trent.

I finished the second season of "Lost" through the Netflix. I began watching the show mainly because Dwight Schrute likes it, and he was right about Battlestar Galactica. (For most people, that would be a joke, but I sometimes do make decisions based on things like that. I'm not sure if that's a healthy instinct or not). And I like it. But I do want them to, at some point, explain the fucking polar bear that attacked the castaways on the tropical island in the first episode. This show is worse than the X-Files at giving the viewers new mysteries before explaining the last two or three mysteries. I think that when I finish watching the third season I'm going to give "Heroes" a chance, if only because Jeph Loeb writes for the show.

The picture is of everyone's new favorite steroid user. I'm still of two minds about the Rocket being a cheater. On the one hand, it makes complete sense that the guy in his 40s with an ERA below 2 was juicing. It would actually be more surprising if he wasn't, if you really think about it. On the other hand, the notion that the greatest pitcher this side of Sandy Koufax was/is a steroid user is unquestionably jarring. I've accepted that the best hitter of all time who's name didn't start with "George" and end with "Herman Ruth" was/is a user, and to further have to expand my notions about this era and its defining players is vexing. I guess Clemens being an (alleged) user might be described as utterly credible and yet still so...disappointing? That's such an obvious statement that it borders on worthlessness, but it might be the best I can do at the moment. Of the rest of the names, I always disliked Andy Pettitte and Eric Gagne and Paul lo Duca, so I feel like the report just made somewhat irrational emotions suddenly become nearly rational. Which works for me.

No Alternative to Steroids

So last night, when I was trying to fall asleep, I was flipping through the channels. And I happened to come across an informercial for a new boxed set of cds, being pitched by the lead singer from noted shitty 90s band Sugar Ray (you might remember them from such terrible songs as that one about wanting to fly [but not the terrible R Kelly song about wanting to fly] and that one about "every morning there's a something around something" I don't really remember the lyrics to it, but I do remember a not funny Jimmy Fallon parody of it on Weekend Update). The set was being billed as a collection of the best "alternative" songs of the 90s and early 2000s. As you might guess, I took quite a bit of umbrage with the selections being presented. The quality of the songs varied from pretty good songs that most of us wouldn't classify as "alternative" such as Sublime and "Monster" era R.E.M. to insipid one-hit-wonder acts like Fastball. However, the closest to alternative that I noticed was Britpop (Oasis's "Live Forever'" and Blur's "Song 2) and Hole. Granted, defining alternative is problematic (is it just music in the style of 80s "College Rock" like Sonic Youth or the Replacements? Is it stuff inspired by the Pixies? Is Grunge alternative? Damned if I know) but Third Eye Blind was certainly not "alternative".

Now, I realize that it is silly to be offended by something like this (so I'm only a little offended) but it did strike me as an example of how the history of popular music is constantly being shifted and redefined by people who don't really care about it as an art form. "Classic Rock" radio stations have all but written out acts like The Kinks and Sly and The Family Stone and Love and The Seeds in favor of Pink Floyd (nothing against Pink Floyd, but we can all admit they were never as good as people seem to think they were. The Clear Channel computers could at least put some Syd Barrett era stuff on the radio instead of endlessly playing "Another Brick in the Wall part 2" and "Time") and fucking Steppenwolf in their playlists. I'm always intrigued by informericals for 60s music collections, where Time Life or whoever obviously couldn't afford or attain the rights to acts like Dylan or the Beatles, so bands like Strawberry Alarm Clock are presented as the shining examples of what was probably rock music's greatest decade. Call it a form of Wikiality, maybe.

Oh, and the Mitchell report is about to be released. I've seen one list purporting to be the actual roster of names to be released in the next few hours, and Chipper Jones was not on it. Beyond that, I'm mostly just curious. If guys like Clemens (who apparently will be on the list) and Pujols and Bagwell are in the actual report, I'll be a little disappointed, but I can handle it. I think the sheer number of names who used steroids will be a little surprising to a lot of people. Those who want to start tossing around asterisks like so much confetti might be very, very busy this offseason.

Okay. I just watched the Mitchell press conference and read a little bit of the enormous PDF. It turns out to be pretty boring. Most of the speculated names didn't show up (Pujols, Bagwell, Prior and so forth). Clemens seems to be pretty fucked, though.

The picture is of Cash with Nixon. Everyone's seen the pictures of Nixon with Elvis, but this one seems to be less iconic. For obvious reasons, I guess. Something about that Elvis/Nixon shot seems to sum up so much about America.

My favorite 15 albums of 2007, as of the moment I'm writing this (Subject to change)

1. El-P - I'll Sleep When You're Dead
2. Brother Ali - The Undisputed Truth
3. Radiohead - In Rainbows
4. Wilco - Sky Blue Sky
5. Pharoahe Monch - Desire
6. Buck 65 - Situation (But if you include the four Cd's he was selling at his show, it would be higher.)
7. The White Stripes - Icky Thump
8. Common - Finding Forever
9. Little Brother - Getback
10. Bruce Springsteen - Magic
11. Sage Francis - Human The Death Dance
12. Bryan Ferry - Dylanesque
13. Of Montreal - Hissing Fauna, Are You The Destroyer?
14. Aesop Rock - None Shall Pass
15. Saul Williams - The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust (in part because I didn't want to list Patti Smith's barely-above-mediocre covers album and partly because of the fact that Saul covers "Sunday Bloody Sunday" and partly because it really is pretty damn good)

I still haven't heard Neil Young's new album, or Jay-Z's American Gangster album. I'm almost positive I've forgotten something important. Kanye West is not the something important I've forgotten (outside of the two singles, that is). I also think that I might have included the Bryan Ferry out of my desire to make sure that Dylan got a place on the list even though he didn't release a new album this year. Hell, I almost listed the "I'm Not There" soundtrack, even though I've only heard two tracks off of it. Of Montreal's album might actually be better than Bruce's and Ferry's, but I didn't think of it until that point in the list and I'm not passionate enough to cut and paste. I'm still trying to figure out why I can't warm up to the Aesop Rock album. I'm beginning to think that it's not me, but it that is wrong. For the record, I've seen six of the artists on the list live this year: Of Montreal, Sage Francis, Little Brother (twice), Buck 65 (twice), El-P and Brother Ali.

Really, I think 2007 might be described, at least for me, as a truly great year for live music but only a pretty good year for recorded new music.

Oh, and go ahead and put your favorite albums from the past year in the comments. Whatever arbitrary number you see fit.

Since We Last Spoke

Yeah.

Sorry it's been a while since I've posted. I don't have any real excuses. I've just been lazy.

Anyway, last night I was at the Little Brother show at the Cradle. The show was fine, but the venue was way too crowded, and LB didn't take the stage until about midnight. Which meant it was nearly 1:30 when the show ended. Which was not so cool.


I was going to write more, but after watching the ECU/NCSU game, I want nothing more than the end of all existence to come as soon as possible.

Goodbye Brooklyn Dodgers: Buck 65 in Concert

Buck 65 will probably never be a big star. Not even a big star by the standards of underground hip-hop, where guys that the vast majority of Americans will never hear of are considered big stars- Sage Francis or Aesop Rock or Slug from Atmosphere. During his set at the Cat's Cradle on Thursday night, this thought came to me and I haven't been able to mount a rational argument in my head against it. He's too.. too something to make that kind of step, I'm afraid. I hope I'm wrong, because for 90 minutes or so he was the most captivating thing in the world. He didn't have the crowd in his hands in the way that Brother Ali did- the crowd never came close to chanting his name. He didn't win over the unconverted like Mac Lethal did. But while he was on stage, I couldn't take my eyes off of him, even when, during "Rough House Blues" he let the attractive girl that I had seen at the Galactic show, who had earlier asked me to keep an eye on her sweater, dance on stage with her hula hoop. I wonder if anyone else found that they couldn't take their eyes off of our favorite Canadian answer to Tom Waits to watch that alluring sight.

But to begin at the beginning. The first act, added to the bill only a couple of days before the show, was a local rapper who goes by the nom de Rap Crash. And let me tell you something- he might be the most talented local rapper this side of the Justus League. Both his songwriting and his delivery were surprisingly well polished for someone without any merch to sell.

The second act was a spoken word performer called Bernard Dolen, who is signed to Sage Francis' Strange Famous label. And appropriately, both in style and subject matter he reminded me much more of Sage than anyone else (even Buddy Wakefield, the other spoken word performer I've seen at a Buck concert this year). The only part of Dolen's performance that really caused me to pay attention was a "cover" of a poem called "Undertaker" by a poet called Patricia Smith (I think. I should have fucking written it down. I suppose I'll google it later.)

Now, Buck's performance. It was excellent. He played a good mix of songs from his new album, Situation, and older stuff- a couple of songs off of his last album (the aforementioned Rough House Blues and his slight reworking of a Bukowski poem that Buck calls "The Floor"), a handful of songs off of Talkin Honky Blues (a reworking of "Leftfielder", "463", "Roses and Blue Jays" as a request and the mashup of "Wicked and Weird" and the Appalachian folk song "Coo Coo Bird" that appeared on the "Porch" release he sold on his tour with Sage) and even older stuff like "Centaur" and "Bachelor of Science". Bachelor of Science he played after polling the audience. He asked if we would rather hear that or "Heather Nights". I cheered for "Heather Nights", but I was pretty much the only one. He said he would try and play both, and at the end of the show, he kept his promise and did the first verse and chorus of what is one of my two or three favorites of his songs acapella. He looked at me a couple of times while he was playing it, and it was incredibly cool (that sounds way more creepy than I mean it too, I'm afraid). My point is that, this isn't the first interaction I've had with him. Hell, I had an extended conversation wiht him a few months ago. We talked about Arthur Lee, and how great the song "Alone Again Or" is. It's not star-struck, (in part because there are very few definitions of the word "star" that include Buck 65) so much as... something.

Buck 65 will almost certainly never sell out a venue like the Cat's Cradle by himself, not unless he somehow winds up doing something like opening a tour for Tom Waits and rapidly growing his following overnight. (Not that I rule that out completely, but it's unlikely). But for one night, he became the center of my musical universe, overshadowing even the Dylan bootleg I found at the CD Alley (Blood On The Tracks demos recorded during the New York sessions for the album. I could explain the differences between the New York sessions and the Minnesota sessions for the album, but if you cared you would have read up on it by now. And there aren't many good reasons... wait, I'm listening to it right now and the lyrics for Idiot Wind are different. That's so fucking cool. Sorry.)

About Last Night

So, the show last night turned out to be better than I expected. Both Mr. Lif and Boots Riley got several songs (Lif did the "New Man Theme" off of I Phantom, which I had been hoping for, while Boots did "My Favorite Mutiny") and the encore was a jam-band/funk version of Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" which turned into a version of The Coup's "Everythang" featuring Boots, Mr. Lif and the opening act, Portland-based rap group Lifesavas. I spent most of the show leaning against a wall as hard as I could, and so I was only in limited pain at worst. I also learned that if you wear a black t-shirt and stand in one place long enough, people might mistake you for an authority figure. At one point during one of Galactic's endless jam bits a girl asked me if I was in charge. I told her I was not, but she went on to ask me if it would be all right if she bought the band a round of Budweisers and brought them to the stage. I told her I had no idea if that was all right. In retrospect, I should have gone with my impulse to suggest a decent beer. The band at first seemed happy about the beer, but you could almost see their smiles die in real-time as they realized what they had been subjected to. In other beer news, the Lincoln Theater had Magic Hat #9 on tap, which was very, very cool. You should all be drinking that beer right now, wherever you are and whatever you are doing. All in all, the evening was pretty all right, except for missing out on House. I suppose I'll have to watch it from the iTunes.

Buck 65's show at the Cradle is next week, and hopefully I'll be able to walk around the club completely unfettered.

Last Exit To Hollywood

So, I'm a little torn about this writers' strike. On the one hand, I always support writers getting paid fairly, and even though I assume that the writers' union is as completely controlled by the mafia as every other union in this country, I support them. On the other hand, if 24 gets postponed then I might have to offer my services as a scab. Look forward to way more episodes where Jack Bauer waterboards Amnesty International representatives who are helping the terrorists. I also have an idea to keep Law & Order going my simply re-filming scripts from the Michael Moriarty as Assistant DA era with Sam Waterson. It's been, like, fifteen years and I doubt many people would notice.

One thing about the strike I found interesting is that it doesn't include the people who write for pro wrestling. Despite the fact that it's programming featuring fictional characters, acting out fictional storylines and often memorizing scripts to recite on television, it apparently counts as "sports". Go figure. According to the LA Times, House has enough scripts already finished to keep going for a while, which is good. Unfortunately, I also read that a lot of shows began using non-regular writers in an attempt to stockpile scripts, which is probably bad. Colbert is hit doubly hard- first the South Carolina Democrats won't let him on the ballot, and then he doesn't even get to go on the air tonight to make fun of it. In the meantime, I hope all of you enjoy reality shows and game shows. And reality show/game show crossovers. I, for one, can't wait for the harlots on Flavor of Love show up on the Jeff Foxworthy fifth grader show.

T0morrow night Keith and I are going to see a jam band called Galactic. My semi-hippie friend Tanner tried to explain them to me, but I kind of lost interest halfway through his description and began thinking about how awesome Super Smash Bros. Melee is going to be (it has a level editor! And I can finally have a fight between Sonic, Solid Snake and Link!). Anyway, we're going because Boots Riley from The Coup and Mr. Lif are going to be there. I've soon Boots before, and he just might be the most underrated MC working today, and Mr. Lif's album I Phantom was one of the albums that really got me obsessed with underground hip hop. I'll probably post something about the show in the next couple of days, but I don't feel like I know enough about the main act to write anything like a proper review (as proper as my reviews are anyway). I was a little worried about the show, but my back is pretty much 100%, and my leg, which began hurting a few days after I did whatever the hell I did to my back, is feeling pretty alright at this point.

Sign Of The Crossfade

I woke up this morning and my back seems to be getting better. It's not one hundred percent yet, but it's getting close. Remind me never to take being walk upright granted again. Anyway, I have a quick announcement or two. Or maybe five.

1. Six tracks into my first concentrated listen of the new Buck 65 album, and it already feels like the fifth contender for album of the year (if you're taking notes, the other four are El-P's I'll Sleep When You're Dead, Brother Ali's The Undisputed Truth, Radiohead's In Rainbows and Pharoahe Monch's Desire.) This album does seem much more hip-hop then his last stuff, which had more folk/blues/Tom Waits-ey stuff on it, but his writing is still on a completely different level than almost anyone else in music. Buck's ability to recast cliches and idioms into new meanings at times vaguely reminds of Dylan's stuff in the mid-60s. Which is not to say that I think Buck is as good a lyricist as Dylan (Obviously I'm not going to put anyone on the same plateau as Robert Allen Zimmerman) but I think there is a similarity there. If the world was a fair place, he would be the biggest name in underground/alternative music.

2. Extras is probably better than Curb Your Enthusiasm (and this season of Curb is pretty damn good, especially for a show that seemed to end last season). I just finished the first season through the Netflix, and I'm very disappointed with myself for waiting this long to watch the show. If you haven't heard Patrick Stewart's idea for a movie starring himself, you are missing out.

3. If the Dodgers think that Joe Torre is what that team was missing last year, then I don't know how to help them. This is a team that had no one hit more than 20 home runs last year, as far as I can tell. Their (excellent) closer is 37. Juan Pierre starts for the team. A manager is the least of their worries.

4. I like the Sarah Silverman Program, but last night's episode was something of a chore to get through. Actually, now that I think about it, Silverman is probably the one show that I genuinely like that is fairly consistently a chore. Unfortunately, when it is funny, it's brilliantly funny ("I believe the Holocaust was completely uncalled for", for example). But Sarah is probably not the best judge of her own material, at least as long as she thinks jokes about excrement are the height of comedy.

5. House was fine on Tuesday night. But please, please, please get rid of at least one of the unbearable women doctors/contestants. The new Foreman/House dynamic looks to be a good way to go. After about two more weeks I think I'll be done with the reality show/contest angle.

6. Slate has a good piece up about how bad Sports Illustrated become. I'm a subscriber, but it has become a shell of what it once was. For me, things really began going wrong when high school football got a regular section, and the fantasy football coverage began taking up more pages of space than most real sports.

Music Stuff

Saul Williams, a spoken word/slam poet of considerable talent, has taken a page from Radiohead's playbook with his new album. He's offering his album The Inevitable Rise and Liberation of Niggy Tardust (I'm not sure, but I think that just might be a David Bowie reference) on the internet, either for five dollars, or for free. It's produced by Trent Reznor (which makes sense, since Saul was on a couple of tracks on Reznor's Year Zero album).

Oh, and Buck 65's new album is out. I haven't listened to the whole thing yet, just the track I heard at the show and the track on one of the mixtapes he was selling at the show. Which reminds me, Buck is coming to the Cradle in a couple of weeks and everyone should go. If you don't, it's like a hate crime against all of Canadia. You don't hate the Maple Leaf state, do you?

Oh, and I think this post is the actual hundredth post. I thought it had happened earlier, but the little counter I was going by included drafts of things I never posted. So, yeah. Attention has been paid. Right.

Mostly Baseball

The Braves traded Edgar Renteria (pictured, in what would probably have been a better picture if I wasn't so lazy as to grab the first picture on Wikipedia that I could find) to the Tigers for a couple of prospects. We picked up a pitcher named Jair Jurrjens, who made a handful of starts for the team this season, and a minor league outfielder named Gorkys Hernandez. This would make Yunel Escobar, who had a good season as a backup for Renteria and Chipper Jones (119 OPS+ over 94 games), our primary shortstop, which should be okay, but I liked Edgar's time in Atlanta, and I'm sorry to see him go. Still, the team is on a budget now, and if this shores up our pitching rotation it's all to the good. I'm fairly sure that Mark Teixeira gets a pay raise through arbitration this off season, and we need to find a replacement for Andruw Jones.

I'm ecstatic that Alex Rodriguez is all but certainly done as a Yankee. The man more or less single-handedly took the team to the post season, and still got shit from the Yankees fans for not being Scott Brosius (a true Yankee). I'm curious about where A-Rod will wind up. For Ralph's sake, I'd like to see A-Rod with the Giants (I shudder a little at the thought of him in the National League). At least the Yankees are said to have offered their manager job to Joe Girardi instead of the more heart-warming choice of Don Mattingly. Still, without Rodriguez's bat I can't help but think that the last season in Yankee Stadium won't be a pleasant one.

Obviously I don't get too much credit for predicting that the Red Sox would win the Series. The cover of SI described the Series as "The Red Sox have Beckett, The Rockies have the magic", and anyone with half a brain knows which of those to choose. (Although a disappointing number of sportswriters would undoubtedly still opt for "intangibles" over "tangibles".) The Rockies playoff run was unexpected, and unquestionably impressive, but we could all see that the Sox were the better team. It was disappointing to get another boring World Series (the last World Series that was interesting as a World Series, rather than being interesting for external factors such as a supposed curse or Kenny Rogers cheating, was the Yankees/Marlins series, and that one wasn't all that great)

Quick Thoughts

Hey.

My back's been killing me all day (probably having something to do with the terrible nature of my mattress) so I've spent the entire day lying down and watching the second season of the Office. (The American version). Between James loaning me these DVDs and Keith loaning me the first season of My Name Is Earl, I can't help but feel that my friends are conspiring to get me to watch NBC.

Now I'm rewatching Down By Law. Tom Waits' "Jockey Full of Bourbon" is such a fantastic song. You should all be humming it as you read this.

J.J. Hickson is nothing short of a god wearing human form. He will lead all of us to the promised land if we only have faith in him.

I hate Tim McCarver more than ever. In his keys for the game tonight, he said both teams really should try and win. That was the extent of his advice. I really hate this man.

This Month's eMusic Downloads (October)

Despite being irritated at eMusic for losing the stuff put out on Epitah (yes Keith, I read that Wired article you sent me which explains why it's not eMusic's fault, but I don't care. It's easier to hate the ones who are taking twenty dollars of my money every month) I still am affiliated with their music service. Here's what I grabbed this month:

-The new Little Brother album
-Little Brother's Big Pooh's album
-J. Dilla's "Donuts"
-Daniel Johnston's "Continued Story - Hi How Are You"
-Some tracks from Jeff Mangum's live album (Jeff Mangum was the lead singer of Neutral Milk Hotel, who despite having an irritating band name put out one of the best albums that anyone has ever made)

James and I are going to the Red-White game on Saturday,so expect a love letter about J.J. Hickson on Sunday. It simply cannot be avoided, I'm afraid.

Quick Thoughts on House

-Anyone who thought that Foreman wouldn't wind up back at Princeton-Plainesboro doesn't deserve to watch House.
-I'm sad that the old guy is the one who got canned. I was hoping it was one of the insufferable women. Like I think I mentioned earlier, I don't have a problem with the fake reality show angle- it's totally something House would do, but I'm not that into any of the doctors left. Except for the guy who was the terrorist who took the liberal family hostage at the beginning of last season's 24. He can stay, which almost certainly means he'll be gone next.
-Cameron dying her hair blond was a terrible decision. It's just distracting.
-I could use a little more of Wilson each episode. Less creepy blond Cameron, more Wilson.

World Series starts tomorrow, and for some reason I'm thinking that the Red Sox will take this thing in 5. I'm almost certainly wrong- I didn't really expect the Rockies to make it this far. But I can't help but go with what seems like the conventional wisdom which would suggest that the Boston pitching will carry the day.

Living for giving the devil his due...

Hi kids (note that I say "kids" despite the fact that to the best of my knowledge, no one younger than me reads this with anything approaching regularity.)

I've been meaning to put more stuff up, but I've been busy watching baseball (You had to figure Cleveland would eventually remember that they were Cleveland EDIT: I wrote that when Boston had gone ahead early, but now in the fifth inning the Indians have closed in a little. The Indians might just ruin the plans of Fox executives who want a profitable World Series yet), pouring my hours into my PS2 (Beyond Good and Evil, Kingdom Hearts and College Hoops 2K5 mostly- it just occurred to me that I have no idea if one should italicize video game titles. I mean, if you think of video games as art, which I do, [The real question is whether or not video games are good art] shouldn't one italicize the titles? But I can't remember ever seeing someone do that.) re-reading Terry Pratchett novels (in an attempt to slightly brighten my worldview without sacrificing any of my trademark cynicism) and using the Netflix to catch up on movies I really should have seen by now (Walk the Line, Jacob's Ladder and 300 thus far, although I'm halfway through 300) all the while still trying to find a proper job.

James and I went to NC State's embarrassingly named "B-Ballin' at the Old Barn" on Friday night. It was basicly just an open practice for the men's basketball team, along with a few shooting competitions. The highlights were seeing J.J. Hickson for the first time (this kid is going to be really, really good. I just wish that there was a better chance we'd get him for three years) and seeing Chris Corchiani, who is my absolute favorite basketball player of all time. Between that and the ECU game, it's been a pretty good weekend for NCSU athletics, which is something of a rarity this time of year.

However, because life simply will not allow me to go through a single weekend without something that threatens to drive me to resorting to violence, I did read a rumor that Michael Bay is working on a remake of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. Now, The Birds is my least favorite of Hitchcock's major films (hell, I like Spellbound more than The Birds) but still, Alfred doesn't deserve this. Even Tippi Hedren doesn't deserve this. It's bad enough that by the time I finish writing this Hollywood will have finished green-lighting remakes of all of my favorite 70s horror films, but now they're going to start working through Hitchcock? I always figured that the one good thing to come out of Gus Van Sant's attempt to remake Psycho in the late 90s was that it would cure the movie industry of any impulses to touch Hitchcock's back catalog. Of course, this made the key mistake of assuming that Hollywood has the capacity to learn from mistakes. I just can't wait to see how he explains why birds start exploding.

There Was Supposed To Be A Picture of Morbius, the Living Vampire, next to this post.

My point is that Hollywood needs to find a song besides Pete Townshend's "Let My Love Open The Door" to use. It's in the tv commercial for the new Steve Carell movie. It was used in the commercial for the Adam Sandler remake of "Mr. Deeds Goes To Town". It was used in Grosse Point Blank. According to Wikipedia it was also used in "Click", "Along Came Polly", "Evan Almighty", "Jersey Girl" and "Look Who's Talking". I like the song as much as the next guy, but this is getting silly. I'd complain that they never use my favorite Who song, but it was the title for a movie earlier this year...

Anyway, I went to a whole bunch of shows lately. As I alluded to earlier, I was disappointed by the Ninth Wonder album release party, but I enjoyed the Michael Franti and Spearhead show on Friday night (and well into Saturday morning) and the Del show on Saturday was good, even if Del's set was almost indistinguishable from his show last year.

Flipping through the channels, Master P is complaining about the negative image of hip hop in regards to T.I. being arrested. There's like 3 things wrong with this.

I've been really lazy about reading lately (blame the backlog of games for my PS2and the general failure of any books I've picked up lately to really grab me), which is why I haven't mentioned it lately. I have, however succeeded (I think) in getting my mother to start watching my DVDs of Arrested Development. These facts have nothing to do with one another. Neither fact has anything to do with my amazement that the announcers are still talking about Dice-K's alleged "Gyroball", which I thought we had finished discussing in early may. Of course, no one ever accused McCarver of being on top of things.

Oh, and I'm still waiting for credit for correctly calling Al Gore winning a Nobel prize. I don't care if I read the rumor on the internet and then merely retyped what I had just read. I still deserve dap for that. In a completely unrelated digression, I don't believe all that much in omens (at least, not all that much for a sports fan) but I can't help but think that Sidney Lowe beginning to wear his National Championship ring is a good sign.

Bah

Another year, another Nobel Prize in literature, another wrong answer from Stockholm.

Doris Lessing (pictured) won, denying Philip Roth the award once again. In an interview, she admitted she "couldn't care less" about winning the award, which actually kind of makes me respect the decision a little more. According to a rumor I read, apparently Al Gore is a front-runner for the Peace Prize, instead of the clearly more deserving Chipper Jones. (I'm just saying what we all know is true).

The Emmys now officially have more credibility.

The bad news keeps coming. Super Smash Brothers Brawl, the Wii game that I've been looking forward to the most has been delayed until February.

John Schuerholz, probably the second greatest General Manager in the history of baseball (behind only Branch Rickey, who invented the farm system and brought Jackie Robinson into baseball) is stepping down as GM for the Braves after a tenure that included 14 straight division titles, five pennants and one World Series championship. He's staying within the organization, but will no longer be GM.

Oh, and the big Ninth Wonder show at the Cradle last night was something of a train-wreck. We wound up waiting for the doors to open for more than an hour because all of the talent felt the need to make a grand entrance in limousines. Jean Grae's set was only one song. Murs only did 2 and 2/3 songs. The whole evening had the potential to be something really special, but wound up being something less.

But there's hope for the future. Buck 65 is headlining a show at the Cradle in November, the Yankees lost in the playoffs, and it looks like any possible World Series matchup will be good baseball. Oh, and the new Radiohead album is pretty damn good. And the Boondocks is back on television. And we might be getting a new puppy. Everyone loves puppies. But it turns out we might not be getting a new puppy. The comment on the essential lovability of puppies remains valid.

100 posts. Meh.

What just happened is funny. A-Rod just hit a home run, which should silence his critics, right? But here's the thing, because he hit it with no one on base and when the Yankees were down four runs, this home run will be used against him if and when the Yankees lose this game. The critics will accuse him of not being able to hit the home run when there are runners on base, and call this a "selfish" home run. You laugh now, but just wait...

Baseball and Schadenfreude

These playoffs have the chance to be among my favorite ever. The Phillies are being beaten down. The Yankees were humiliated today (although this means that A-Rod will continue to be abused for his own excellence, which is vexing). If the Cubs lose tonight, things will be well on their way to returning to the natural order. For the kind of baseball fan who is only happy when much larger groups of baseball fans, especially casual baseball fans, are unhappy, this is great so far.

Moving Picture Shows Are More Popular Than Ever

So I wound up back at the closing Hollywood Video store, and my self-control vanished. Here's what I wound up buying:

Don't Look Now- One of my favorite movies (and one of Nicholas Halpern's favorites), a British horror movie that you should model your life on.

The King of Comedy- A Martin Scorsese film that I've been looking for for years.

Down By Law- Criterion Collection 2-Disc version. Jarmusch (pictured) and Tom Waits and John Lurie and awesomeness.

Peeping Tom- Another Criterion Collection offering, another British horror movie.
Tokyo Drifter- A third Criterion Collection, a Japanese gangster movie, what the French New Wave would have looks like in Japan.

A 2 disc collection of Bruce Springsteen videos.

Too bad tonight is House night, so I can't really dive into them yet.

New Radiohead Album

Or at least half of it. On October 10. And it costs whatever you want it to cost. Go here and you can pre-order the mp3s of the new album. Apparently, you can put in 0 for the price, but I didn't try it. I'm paying slightly more.

Way of the Future

The Hollywood Video in Apex is going out of business (I can't say for sure if it's because of Netflix and downloading movies from the interwebs, but I'm guessing that's part of it) and they sold me a new copy of The Aviator for eight dollars. Martin Scorsese is better at making movies than anyone else. When all is said and done, only Hitchcock might wind up with a better life's work in cinema. But, I think I read his next movie is another music documentary, this one about George Harrison. This would be the fourth such project of the decade (The miniseries about the Blues that he oversaw and directed one or two parts of, the Dylan film and the upcoming Rolling Stones doc, Shine A LIght are the others) (oh, and if you had all bought Exile On Main Street like I'm sure I've told you to, then you'd know that "Shine A Light" is a track off of that album, which is better than almost anyone else's album.) George Harrison is probably my least favorite Beatle- he always struck me as being the most unpleasant Beatle, and the second most unpleasant Traveling Wilbury (I'm assuming that Jeff Lynne is as unpleasant as ELO's music is.) I wish Scorsese would make something different, like the Teddy Roosevelt movie he's supposedly working on. Of course, if I misread the Harrison thing, I apologize to all the parties involved, especially the late Mr. Harrison. "Within You Without You" only kind of ruins the Sgt. Pepper album...

So, my baseball picks weren't that great. I got three of the AL teams right, but I was 0 for 4 in the NL. I do claim credit for predicting that Alex Rodriguez would continue to be better at baseball than everyone else. That was a bold pick, if you ask me, and when he wins his third MVP, I like to think that I get part of the credit. At least my World Series team, the Red Sox, still has a chance to win the whole thing. And I'm really pulling for the Rockies to win their play-off game and make it into the postseason. I have no idea why. I also can't explain why I find the idea of them winning a World Series (which seems amazingly unlikey, even now) so fascinating. David Nied is somehow involved in this thought process, and that would take longer than anyone cares about to explain.

It looks like I'll finish the Cormac McCarthy book tomorow, so I need to pick another book to read from my pile of shame. I'll let anyone who cares know when that is done.

I Shall, I Do

That pretty picture is William Blake's etching of Isaac Newton. You get the feeling that Blake wasn't a fan?

Of Montreal turned out to be a really cool show, despite the fact that I had only heard a fraction of their music (and that fraction only once or twice) and the audience seemed to have a lot of people you wouldn't want to be stuck in an elevator with while they claimed they never listened to "popular" music. I kid because I love (or because I'm a sad, bitter soul who resents happiness and contentment in others). I never expected to enjoy a show that includes costume changes but not David Bowie.

In other news of only limited appeal, I bought a PlayStation 2 today, which brings me up to date with technology circa 2000. The Wii is a cool system, but the limited library of games that anyone would possibly want to play was dragging me down. I'd talk about the games I picked up, but I can already feel Stacey's attention waning.

Oh, and I've started a screenplay. Right now it's titled "Fellow Travelers: A Postmodern Love Song" and theoretically begins with a quote from Allan Bloom's pretentious Jeremiad "The Closing of the American Mind". I'm having a hard time coming up with a description of it that doesn't sound like the scenario for High Fidelity, but I really don't think I've stolen too much from it. Some of the characters are very loosely (read: not particularly loosely) based on friends of mine, so the upshot of the whole deal will probably involved shopping around for new friends.

Notes From The Other Side

So I got my new eMusic downloads. eMusic has apparently lost their deal with Epitah records, which sucks. No more of Tom Waits recent stuff, the Coup or Sage Francis. Anyway, among the stuff I picked up:
-The new Rob Sonic album
-Of Montreal's Hissing Fauna Are You The Destroyer and the accompanying EP, in preparation for the show Friday night.
- C-Rayz Walz's 1975- Return of the Beast
- Graham Parker's covers of "Substitute" and "I'm Into Something Good"
-Mike Watt's cover of "Burning For You"
-Moves & Birdapres' Alleged Legends
-C-Rayz Walz and Parallel Thought's Chorus Rhyme
-Tortoise & Bonnie "Prince" Billy's The Brave and the Bold
-A Smithsonian/Folkways collection called Bound For Glory: A Young Dylan's Folkways Roots

I did write most of a review of the Atmosphere show, but what I wrote was mostly shit, and I don't want to put it up. I might try again tomorrow, but the short version is:
-Really crowded show
-Mac Lethal nearly stole the show
-Atmosphere played a bunch of new stuff, but did play "Angelface" and "Always Coming Back Home To You", so very cool.

I don't imagine that I'll do a write-up for the Of Montreal show, since I don't think I know enough about the band to really give anything resembling an informed opinion.

I'm going to watch Gordon Ramsey's reality/cooking show tonight. Hopefully there's more cooking this week, and less reality show angst this week, but I'm not confident. This might be the show's final chance with me. I have better stuff to do than watch a one hour program for about seven minutes of content I'm interested in*




*(Disclaimer: Rob might not actually have anything better to do)

House is Back

Tonight's episode was pretty decent. This search for the new team has the chance to either be awesome, or really annoying. It doesn't matter, though. Once again we're all basking in Hugh Laurie's warm glowing warming glow.

Nothing But Sunshine

I just now finished Philip Roth's I Married A Communist, and in doing so I finally finished Roth's 1990s Nathan Zuckerman trilogy (the other two books being The Human Stain and American Pastoral, but not in that order.) The book was very good, although not quite as awe-inspiring as the other two (at least in my opinion. Halpern called The Human Stain one of Roth's worst novels. Which makes me wonder if Halpern has read The Plot Against America which was essentially a noble failure.) Roth has another Nathan Zuckerman novel coming out soon, and I'll probably wind up putting it on the list of books I ask for at Christmas. I really want to read the earlier Zuckerman novels before this one. It's probably not necessary- I read these three books all out of order, but I kind of want to go about this next one the right way, especially since I'm now pretty sure that Roth is the best living writer I know of (sorry Cormac McCarthy, Salman Rushide and Thomas Pynchon).

I'm still reading Woody Guthrie's autobiography, but I'm not entirely sure what "literary" book I'm going to pick up now. I have an enormous stack of books on my bookshelf that I haven't gotten to yet, and every night they sit there and mock me while I watch television or play video games. It's somewhat hard to intellectually justify rescuing the princess yet again when one still hasn't bothered to crack open Beckett's trilogy. At least, that's the way it feels to me sometimes. And then I really want to pick up Ulysses again, and there's that stack of books that the other James gave me a couple of weeks ago, and I still haven't opened the latest Pynchon 800 page era-defining opus that I got for Christmas last year, and I really should start in on Proust while I have no real responsibilities, and people like me really are supposed to have read more than one Jane Austen novel (and that one novel should not be Persuasion) and...it goes on and on.

Anyway. Tonight, unless catastrophe strikes again, I'll finally get to see Atmosphere play the Cat's Cradle. Two years ago I had a ticket to see the Twin Cities' finest non-Albino hip hop act, but then I broke my fucking shoulder and instead of seeing Slug and Ant (plus P.O.S. and Blueprint as the opening acts) I wound up with my arm in a sling, watching Six Feet Under reruns while comfortably doped. This show tonight should be good, but I'm curious about what the crowd will be like, or rather, how many people there tonight will be like some of the cats I spoke with at the Sage Francis and El-P shows- people who aren't really into hip-hop per se, but rather into one or two specific (and usually white) hip hop act. The kind of people, I think, that Sage had in mind when he wrote "This is hip-hop for the people./Stop calling it emo". Or maybe not, and I just like that line and wanted to quote it. I'm curious how many people at the Cradle tonight will also be there for the Ninth Wonder show in a few weeks, or when Little Brother returns to the Cradle in December, as compared to how many of them are more likely to be at the Of Montreal show on Friday. (Please take note- I'm not judging these people- after all, I'll be at both Atmosphere and Of Montreal myself. I certainly don't think that you have to be a hip hop head to like almost any given specific hip hop act. I'm just kind of morbidly curious about people who only listen to one or two hip hop acts, and seem resistant to the idea of branching out into all that the music has to offer. Hoom. I'm guessing that I've put my foot far enough into my mouth now, so I'm just going to stop.) At any rate, I really hope Atmosphere plays "Angelface" and "Always Coming Back Home To You" and maybe "Pour Me Another" and "If I Was Santa Claus", and I hope that I don't somehow give myself a catastrophic injury between now and 9:30 or so tonight.

Expect a review of the show in a day or two. Expect more bullshit hand wringing about my reading habits. Expect NC State to win maybe one or two more games this football season, and expect to be happy with that. Expect something good from the basketball team. Expect whatever you like, really.

Helpful Tips For Modern Living

What's up, party people?

Did you know that gatorade mixed with rum is a little better than you might expect? I'm torn between calling it a gator bite or a Spurrier cocktail.

This Game Could Be Your Life

Hi kids.

I saw "King of Kong" today. It's a documentary about the struggle for the top score in Donkey Kong, and it's really quite good. If you have 80 minutes to kill, you should think about seeing it, even if you don't really care about video games. Before the movie they showed the trailer for the new Wes Anderson movie, which I'm looking forward to (mainly because it's the new Wes Anderson movie, and even if Life Aquatic wasn't as good as his first three films, he still deserves your unquestioning respect). There was also a trailer for a new movie co-written by Seth Rogen and produced by Judd Apatow and starring Owen Wilson, called "Drillbit Taylor", that has the pedigree to be good. At least, I hope it's better than the trailer made it out to be.

I'd try and write more, but I'm watching Donnie Brasco at the same time, and Al Pacino is demanding my undivided attention.

But the post office has been stolen and the mail box is locked

I applied for three jobs at the UNC library today. Or yesterday, rather. If the dice finally roll my way, that would be cool enough that I wouldn't even mind working in the belly of the beast for a while.

Kanye West's new album is somewhat underwhelming. So was Aesop Rock's new album. New Springsteen album is on the horizon- hopefully that won't be underwhelming. Right now I'm listening to Brother Ali, Johnny Cash, Graham Parker, Bob Dylan's early 90s folk albums, El-P, a Smithsonian Folkways Classic Mountain Music collection, video game podcasts and the Minutemen, mainly. Right now I'm reading Philip Roth's "I Married A Communist" and Woody Guthrie's autobiography. I just finished a biography of Cash, and a couple of 33 1/3 books, one on A Tribe Called Quest's first album and one on Sly and the Family Stone's "There's A Riot Going On". I have another 33 1/3 in my bag, about Jethro Tull's "Aqualung" album, which I'm going to be reading pretty much entirely out of a sense of completism. I'm seriously considering re-reading Ulysses. I can't quite say why. I finally saw "Superbad", which was quite good, although I liked "Knocked Up" more. I'm planning on seeng the documentary "King of Kongs" on Wednesday. "House" is back on television in a week, which is a good thing.

The other day, I was sitting in the Brickyard, reading, and a would-be Christian missionary was attempting to use Occam's Razor to prove that Jesus rose from the grave. He didn't use the term "Occam's Razor", but that was the thrust of his argument. I'm still not sure if I think that he just sucks at logic, or if he has real chutzpah. At any rate, that's the kind of weird thing that rattles around in my head for days on end.

Nevermind.

No mention of the Wii in this post

Stacey- You can tell how much Halpern wormed his way into our brain. I was at Barnes and Nobel on Monday, and I held a copy of Swann's Way for about ten minutes (before I went with my natural instinct and bought a copy of a biography of Johnny Cash). I've felt a very strange guilt lately that I'm not reading Proust. I'm pretty sure that normal people don't have these emotions. Right now I am also reading Nabokov's Real Life of Sebastian Knight, another example of how much of my psychic real estate Halpern laid claim to.

I liked Harry Potter, although I wasn't blown away by the epilogue. A little too clean and neat. I did take a slightly preverse pleasure in Rowling sneaking the word "bitch" into what is ostensibly a childrens' book.

Dillon, a rapper that Keith and I saw at the Cradle a couple of weeks ago, put some pictures of the show up on his blog, and Keith and I are more prominent in the photo than the rapper Akrobatik, who is theoretically the subject of the photo.

I don't want my brother coming out of there with just his joystick in his hand

So I just got The Godfather game for the Wii. I had a coupon from Amazon for pre-ordering Harry Potter, and I had to spend twenty bucks to get the rebate/discount/whatever, so the game wound up costing me about twenty-three dollars. Which seemed worth it. I'm still just begining to play around with it, but I do love using the wiimote to punch people. It's just cooler than simply pushing a button. I have no idea if I'll get tired of this (either mentally or physically) after a few hours, but thus far I dig it. At any rate, it looks like it is more respectful to the Godfather legacy than number 3. (Zing! GF3 jokes are the cutting edge of cinema humor)

Metroid Prime 3 also comes out today, which I want. And I needs to get me a classic controller so I can play some SNES games with a more appropriate controller.

Also, there's a new Aesop Rock album out. I need more money to keep up this lifestyle.

"And maybe Adil has point about the machinery of capitalism being oiled with the blood of the workers" (Sorry. I'm watching season one of The Simpsons while I'm typing this up)

This Month's eMusic Downloads (August)

The Magnetic Fields- 69 Love Songs- The third and final volume. Mainly so I can read the 33 1/3 book about the album.
Smithsonian/Folkways- Classic Mountain Songs
MC Shan- Down By Law
Rev. Gary Davis- Pure Religion and Bad Company
Graham Parker- Don't Tell Columbus
Aesop Rock- "Coffee" and "The Next Big Thing"
Nick Lowe- "I Trained Her To Love Me"
The White Stripes- "Death Letter"
Jimi Hendrix- "Like A Rolling Stone" Live at Monterey Pop

A weird mix, really.

Some TV thoughts, apropos of nothing

So, the tenth season of The Simpsons came out recently, and of course I bought it immediately (even though my back account was perilously low after the Wii purchase). As most of you should know, by the tenth season the show had begun the decline that continues to this day (although the movie was a welcome oasis of non-disappointment). Watching the episodes again, there were a few more laughs and good moments than I remembered, but my opinion really hasn't changed. Plus, the commentaries were some of the worst yet. I don't know if this is because of A) The realitive low quality of the episodes, B) The fact that I've never been a huge fan of Mike Scully or Ian Maxtone-Graham (Yes, I know that having opinions about individual Simpsons writers is incredibly nerdy. I don't care. Actually, Scully wrote some good episodes, but was a relatively terrible show runner) or C) The huge amount of work that the entire staff was putting into the movie at the same time as they were producing the DVDs. Al Jean, who is one of my favorite commentary personalities, only stays for about 10 minutes on one commentary track, and Matt Groening is absent for a number of episode commentaries.

Anyway, in order to cleanse my palate, I've been watching the third and fourth seasons on DVD, and I'm becoming increasingly convinced that the Simpsons might be the best television show of all time. Usually I have it ranked second or third with some combination of The Sopranos and Seinfeld. If you throw in South Park and Six Feet Under, you have a pretty impressive top 5 of shows all starting with the letter S. Just something that always struck me as odd.

Sorry I have nothing more interesting at the moment.

Some thoughts on the Wii

I saw Stardust tonight. I really liked it. Go see it, and find other ways of giving Neil Gaiman your money. He really deserves it more than you do, if you stop and think about it for a bit. (Other people who deserve your money more than you do include Shigeru Miyamoto, Mark Teixeira, Paul Westerberg and the late William Blake).

But that's not what I want to talk about as I try to get to sleep. I want to offer a few thoughts on the Nintendo Wii after about 10 days or so of owning one. (See how the Miyamoto reference earlier made the segue way more smooth? That's the kind of extra value you get here.)

I've been thinking about video games way too much lately (this is partly to blame on a podcast I came across called Retronauts that talks about old video games and I've been listening to obsessively) and it struck me that all three of the current generation of consoles has some key flaw. The PS3 costs way, way too much to even consider owning for someone like me, the XBox 360 breaks down way too much, and the Wii needs a bunch of good games to come out pretty soon if it wants to escape the spectre of being simply a fad.

With Metroid Prime 3 about to drop, and new Mario and Smash Brothers games on the horizon, the problem of not enough quality games might be solved soon, but I am curious if game developers will be able to make use of the whole wii remote thing, instead of being handcuffed by the unique controls. For example, being a big fan of the X-Men Legends games, I want to play the Marvel:Ultimate Alliance game, but the reviews for the Wii version pretty much all bitch about the control scheme. I've seen similar complaints about the new Madden game for the Wii.

The good news, theoretically, is that since Wiis are still flying off the shelves there will be a lot of incentive for game developers to produce games for the system. One of the key problems with the Gamecube and the N64 was the lack of a lot of quality non-Nintendo games, and the Wii should be able to avoid that.

Right.

I guess I don't actually have any insights.

Broken Guitar Strings, Bullets and Bible verses: Searching for the new old America

Thirty years after Elvis died and we've lost our way. How do we find our way back, or is that impossible?

Liner Notes for a mix cd that isn't done yet.

Tame a new land and you will wind up with dusty, bleeding knuckles. The blood stays on the strings, like Liam Neeson's blade in "Gangs of New York". The new scriptures were simply waiting to be written, just as the fourth of July was always a day waiting for a revolution.

The land was simultaenously explored and created, by patriots and pioneers and prophets, slaves and martyrs and saviors, gunmen and sailors and confidence men and salesmen and glorious charlatans and disgraced true believers. The sounds that Nick Carraway heard when he saw New York with the same eyes as the first settlers and the voices that Ahab heard are the same sounds and voices we hear when we listen today- that wild thin mercury sound of "Stuck Inside of Mobile With The Memphis Blues Again". The sounds of traveling Highway 61 with Woody Guthrie and Tom Joad riding shotgun (even if Tom Joad never rode that highway, he still did, you know?) as you plunge deeper into the bayous haunted by Jesus and Katrina. The music that Arthur Dimmesdale tried to lash out of his own body, equal parts Anne Hutchinson and Kim Deal. What the Redcoats heard when they found themselves face to face with Mike Watt and the Minutemen, who met them with muskets and promises that their band could be your life. The kind of music that coud only come from a country where Jerry Lee Lewis is cousin to Jerry Falwell. Where we drink wine Spo-Dee-O-Dee, and pour coca-cola just like vintage wine. The kind of a country where Johnny Cash wears the black to atone for the sins of Thomas Jefferson. To navigate these wilds you need Lewis and Kerouac to guide you, a compass and a Hank Williams album.

Victory!

Well, not so much victory as I bought a Wii today. I also picked up WiiPlay and Super Paper Mario. It's cool.

Some Kind of Truth Emerges

I've been reading Greil Marcus again, which is never a great thing for my thought patterns. The man is one of my true heros, but his idiosyncratic, all-encompassing ways of thinking are infectious, especially for someone who harbors fantasies of writing the new version of "Mystery Train". (The fact that I just recieved a hardcover copy of his most recent book, "The Shape of Things To Come" from amazon for 5 bucks suggests that I'm once again failing to look at the economic angle of things in this ambition). But, having just finished reading "Double Trouble", which collects Marcus' articles of the 1990s, I'm now begining to think way too much like Marcus. I was watching Gojira (the original Japanese version of Godzilla, and a damn fine film, if you haven't seen it- I promise it's way better than you think) I began thinking of the relationship between our favorite giant lizard monster and Elvis Presley. The timing nearly works perfectly- mid 1950s. Both figures started out revolutionary and legitimately "artistic" (whatever that might mean given our subject) but during the 60s and 70s both were softened and declawed and made safe. I'm pretty sure normal people don't think this way. Then, when Bonds hit number 756, I started thinking about Godzilla again, and Elvis, and how Bonds was like both in weird, more or less meaningless ways. I think this is the kind of thing that gets worse before it gets better. You have to go through to get out.

Right now I'm listeing to a lot of Gram Parsons and Graham Parker and the Byrds and Sonic Youth. I'm trying to write something that sums up all of the ideas about Elvis that have been kicking around in my skull for two or three years. I'm still looking for some kind of proper job (or at least something that looks enough like one to avoid the real thing). I'm planning on buying a Wii on Friday. I'm cautiously optimistic that the Braves series with the evil Mets will continue to go well. I'm in slight shock that last night, when I was flipping through channels during the commerical break for a rerun of Law & Order SVU I heard an Aesop Rock song (Food, Clothes, Medicine) on an episode of Dog: The Bounty Hunter, of all fucking things. I spent the weekend re-watching the last two seasons of Arrested Development for the Jagger only knows how many times. I'm reading rock criticism and Nabokov. Everything is different and nothing is different. Like Roger Clyne sang, I don't need a miracle, but I could use a push in the right direction. Or maybe not that drastic. Things have often been much worse, just more clear. When the music is this good, who really cares? And when you can convince yourself the most pressing issue is whch game or games you're gonna buy on Friday for your new system, and Gram Parsons is singing "She", things are good in a wicked and weird sort of way. A friend of mine told me today that what I really need to be doing is writing my first novel right now, and you know what? She just might be right. I might even have an idea for it, even better than my bizaare conviction that what the world really needs is a screenplay inspired by Boogie Nights about the creation of Pong and the formation of Atari.

Waiting for the gift of sound and vision, I abide.

Playlist

Nirvana- Oh Me (Unplugged)
The Byrds- Going Back (Notorious Byrd Brothers)
Replacements- Alex Chilton (Pleased to Meet Me)
Buck 65- All There Is To Know About Love (Cretin Hip Hop Mix Tape)
Kanye West- Stronger (New Single)
Big Star- Thirteen (#1 Record)
Bob Dylan- Blood In My Eyes (World Gone Wrong)
A Tribe Called Quest- Can I Kick It (Peoples Instintive Travels...)
Sonic Youth- the first four tracks off of Daydream Nation
Talib Kweli- Going Hard (The Beautiful Struggle)
Elvis Presley- King Creole
Elvis Costello- Tokyo Storm Warning (Blood and Chocolate)
Ramones- Pet Semetary (Brain Drain)
Neil Young- Shots (Re-Ac-Tor)
The Pretenders- Back On The Chain Gang (Learning To Crawl)
Bauhaus- Bela Lugosi's Dead

Oh. And if you've read any sports coverage lately, you might have noticed that every article about Tom Glavine winning his 300th game (I'm glad Tom made it, but every Mets win is a small dagger in my heart at the moment) mentions the possibility that Glavine will be the last pitcher to win 300 games. Do not believe this. This is not true. Another pitcher will win 300 games. It might not be very soon, but it will happen, and in most of our lifetimes. People said the same thing when Maddux won his 300th (and it just kills me a little that both Glavine and Maddux hit this milestone in uniforms that were not Braves uniforms). Yes, it is harder to win 300 games in the era of specialized relief pitching and the five-man rosters, but it is not impossible, especially as we see more and more pitchers going strong into their forties. If I had to pick a current pitcher to win 300, I'd take Dontrelle Willis, especially if he winds up with a team that is consistently good (we'll see if the Marlins ever enter a period of sustained winning, instead of the sporadic championship success surounded by periods of low budget overacheiving mediocracy that has characterized the franchise.

Anyway, that had been bothering me.

Let The Lamp Afix Its Beam

And lo, let it be written that those who have held fast to the true faith of Chipper Jones and John Smoltz will be rewarded. So it was written of old and so the covenant has been upheld. Today, true believers, we have truly been rewarded- Mark Teixeira has left the sweltering plains of Texas and joined the chosen flock in Atlanta.

With his career OPS+ of 127, Brother Mark is exactly what Atlanta needs, especially since it seems that brother Andruw is about to depart our flock for wealtheir pastures. And the best rumors also suggest that the Braves are on the verge of maybe acquiring Octavio Dotel from Kansas City to further solidify our Bullpen. Suddenly, another NL East title seems to be within our grasp. The fact that Mark has Atlanta ties, being a former Yellow Jacket, suggests that this is nothing less than destiny.

Update: Atlanta just traded Kyle Daives for Octavio Dotel. This should be good.

Sad News

Just heard that Wake Forest coach Skip Prosser died today. Obviously this is a tragedy, but even worse is that it comes when Skip seemed on the verge of bringing in an amazing class that would bring the program out of the funk it's been in since Chris "Cockpunch" Paul left.

Workingman's Blues

You can hang back or fight your best on the front lines...


Anyway, I'm once again staffing the FOL office at NCSU. Thus far, this has mainly consisted of re-reading a Nick Hornby novel (A Long Way Down, which is not his best book, but better than what most of the critics I read made it out to be). I'm not complaining about being here, though. Ever since the desire to purchase a Wii at the earliest conceivable date sprung up within me with an evangelical furor (around 6:00 on Sunday, I think) work has become more philosophically bearable. Hopefully, no one will come by the office or call the office looking for assistance, especially since now I'm pretty much able to offer said assistance, which takes away my ability to plead ignorance honestly.

I don't know if I've mentioned this yet, but if you haven't heard the latest Dylan song, you're missing out. It's called "Huck's Tune", and he recorded it for the soundtrack to a movie called "Lucky You" that spent about twenty minutes in the theaters. The soundtrack, actually, looked a lot better than the movie- a couple of Springsteen songs, and a couple of Dylan songs- "Like A Rolling Stone", which is of course one of the three or four greatest songs in all of popular music ever, and the new one, which he wrote for the movie, apparently. (Quick trivia question- what song did Bob Dylan write for the movie "Midnight Cowboy", but not finish in time to include in the film, and was therefore replaced by "Everybody's Talkin"? Bonus points if you know who wrote "Everybody's Talkin"- it wasn't Harry Nillson)

You can really tell how bored I am.