Screw it. I'm a poet. I know it. Hope I don't blow it.

Never mind, I'm just going to go ahead and post what I wrote today.
I don't really care that you all hate it
Plus, while I'm doing this, I'm not working on my paper.
I was listening to Sage Francis' "Makeshift Patriot" EP while I wrote it, so that almost certainly influenced most of what it is, except for the part about my shoulder, which was written while I was listening to Kanye West's "Through The Wire".

Untitled.

Wrote some things some people liked
But they long ago forgot those
An unremembered postseason
MVP like Jose Rijo
The only bling that I got
Holds my shoulder together
The steel pins in my bones
I'm gonna rock forever
I asked for platinum
But they gave me stainless steel
Went under that knife
Suddenly understood what was really real
I had tickets to the show
Turned 'em in for a sling and pills
Supposed to see Atmosphere
Instead I had time to kill
I don't have any tats
Just my hard earned scar tissue
'Cause when your shoulder's pierced
You kinda notice the real issues.
You used to the shadow
Warm yourself with hope of brighter days
Things go from worst to worse
But we keep on rhyming anyway
I ain't gonna sell my soul to you
But I might think about a rental
My problems only seem financial
I'm promising you they're really mental
We all want an eye for an eye
But no one's quite sure who to blind
We're in an existential crisis
But hell, is there any other kind?
All I want is the truth
But the truth is what I really fear
Gonna leave my voice on tracks
Just my way of saying I was really here

Like Eastwood I'm unforgiving
Telling Little Bill what he don't deserve
My front lobe has wild things
Tell me they don't want to stay on some preserve
Tempests in your teapot, yeah
That's why I'll stick to coffee
Starting to wonder just a little bit
Will my time ever be really free?
Swing low and behold
While I burn like a cigarette
Break my heart one more time
It ain't like I won't forget
Big screen plasma TV
But your picture still ain't clear
Give you enough to worry over
So you don't notice what you should fear
Big Brother might be watching, yo
I'm watching the prodigal son and his boys
Playing in the life-sized sandbox
And my neighbors are his soldier toys
When they're playin' they patriot games
They know it pays to load the dice
It breaks my heart that you don't listen
Cause I don't know I'll get to tell ya twice.

You might believe what you can see
But I only trust what the numbers say
Your money is your own I know
But I'll only spend what I gotta pay
You hit em low and I'll hit high
But I don't think that he'll fall
Cause when the shove comes back to push
I'm betting that he felt nothing at all
But the point was never to try and win
The goal was always just make 'em bleed
Just enough red and white cells maybe
To water and nourish this here seed.

Dispatches From Academia Hell- Final Transmission

The papers are coming together, albeit slowly. The Nabokov one might turn out all right, but the poetry paper is good and proper fucked. It's going to be a disjointed mess, and that's optimistic. I've discovered just how little I really think of Kevin Young's "Blues poetry". Nothing he wrote is as well-written or haunting as a Robert Johnson song, or even a good Howlin' Wolf song. I've decided modern poetry critics haven't actually read great poetry, but merely recent poetry. It's the only way I can think to explain how excited the critics sound in these blurbs. His conceit feels more like a dillentante than a clever twist on a great tradition. Franz Wright is actually a pretty good poet, although I've become increasingly convinced that Free Verse is just masturbation. When did meter become a bad thing? Blur was right. The Modern World is Rubbish.

I wrote a whole bunch of lyrics today (with a rhyme scheme!) They're basicly hip-hop lyrics, written in a sort of ABCB DEFE scheme. If Keith likes them, I'll probably post them here. Shit, even if he doesn't I might go ahead and do it. So all of you (both of you) have that Sword of Damocles hanging over your heads.

Only three more exams until I'm done with college. (Until, in about three or four years, I begin begging grad schools to let me in). At this point there is nothing bittersweet of the concept in and of itself. I'll dislike reality, but I really hate school right now. I'm tired of college students (present company excluded, if indeed any present company is reading.)

Memo to David Chase

David, we need to talk. Now, I've following The Sopranos for a few seasons, and I'm something of a fan. Like everyone else, I'm sad that the greatest show in the history of television has to come to an end. At least, you keep telling all of us that it's coming to an end. In fact, according to the "next week on" trailer, there's only five episodes left. I'm glad you had the little reminder, because watching tonight's episode, I'd never have been able to guess that.

Don't get me wrong. It was an okay enough episode. Tony had some good lines, and the scene between Phil Leatardo and Vito Jr. was great. (Speaking of little Vito, I have to say that I never saw that locker room scene coming. In fact, on my personal list of moments that I never expected to see on The Sopranos, the goth kid who's dad was a gay mobster taking a crap in the shower was pretty low on the list, between Bogdonavich capping Christopher because he didn't like Cleaver and Phil telling his favorite Frank Sinatra story to the Chairman of the Board's daughter... wait a minute...)

David, I'm sure you know what you're doing, but shouldn't the bodies be piling up by now? I had at least three recurring characers clipped by now in the office pool, and all you've given us is Johnny Sack dying of cancer while Sidney Pollack watches.

Didn't you see Godfather III? Don't you know how important it is for mafia epics to end on a high note? You only have five hours left, and no one has gone to the mattresses yet. Hell, we haven't even seen the FBI since the first episode this season. Sure, you've resolved the Junoir storyline, and you seem to have set A.J. up to finally join the big boy storyline, but were still waiting for something big to happen this season. (And the fight between Bobby Bacala and Tony, awesome as it was, doesn't count)

We're all waiting for the baptism montage from Godfather I, and all you're going to give us is Tony gambling too much? Fugedabout it!

You still have time to give everyone's favorite show the ending we all know it deserves, but your time is running out faster than Tony's patience. You know what we all want- we want to see Phil take out Paulie. Or Tony take out Paulie. Hell, I'll settle for Meadow taking out Paulie. My point is, someone needs to kill somebody, and fast. Or you might as well bring Sofia Coppola in as A.J.'s new love interest and have Meadow move to Rome to sing opera.

Third Prize is 'You're Fired'

I spent most of today working the NCSU FOL book sale. It was pretty...yeah. It was a book sale. I sat in a chair for six or seven hours and people gave me money, and then I made change and they left with books. Sexy time. I wound up buying a few books that are pretty boring if you're not me. (Biographies of Billy Martin and Alfred Lord Tennyson, a couple other baseball books, a Doonesbury collection of mid-70s strips, Joan Didion's "Slouching Towards Bethlehem", sundry other books)

Tomorrow's going to be essay writing day. I have a pretty good idea what my Nabokov/suicide essay is going to look like, but no fucking clue what my poetry essay is going to be. I will also be not studying for the exams I have over the next few days.

So, I finally saw "The Departed" this week. It's good, very good in fact, but it doesn't seem like a Best Picture winner, and it certainly doesn't crack the upper tier of Scorsese films. The ending is a little over-the-top, and I had a hard time getting into the shrink who sleeps with both DiCaprio and Damon. Best Nicholson movie since "About Schmidt", easily.

Maybe more exciting- Amazon's selling "Glengarry GlenRoss" for six bucks, so I've got a copy now. If you haven't seen it yet, then you really need to, if only for Alec Baldwin being awesome. The rest of the cast and a brilliant Mamet screenplay is just frosting, baby.

I saw a girl at the book sale wearing a t-shirt with the line "Son this ain't a dream no more, it's the real thing". Which was awesome. The line is from Dylan's song "Senor (Tales of Yankee Power)", a completely underrated track off of his "Street Legal" album.

A belated top 5:
Best Scorsese Films
1- Taxi Driver
2- Raging Bull
3- Goodfellas
4- Gangs of New York
5- The Last Temptation of Christ

This Month's eMusic Downloads (April)

Birdapres- Get It Done. The album he did with fellow Canadian rapper McEnroe, "Nothing Is Cool" is one of my absolute favorite hip-hop albums,

KRS-One - Keep Right- I'm going to see the Blastmaster live on May 12, so I figured it was appropriate to grab an album that Keith assures me is fantastic,

Molemen- Four Songs: My Alien Girlfriend, Life Sentence, How I Won The War, Follow Me. I bought these for the guest stars- Slug, Buck 65, Brother Ali, Sage Francis.

El-P- One Song: Deadlight. By the way, if you haven't bought "I'll Sleep When You're Dead" and you have any interest in hip-hop, you should rectify that.

Poe - Three Songs: Not A Virgin, Trigger Happy Jack, Angry Johnny. I've liked the song "Not a Virgin" for a while, and I had a few spare downloads to kill.

Psalm One- The Death of the Frequent Flyer. I'm seeing her rap at the Brother Ali show on the 8th. It's on Rhymesayers, which is generally a good sign,

The Seeds- Three Songs: Can't Seem To Make You Mine, No Escape, Pushin' Too Hard. The legendary 60s garage band. One I've always meant to get into.

The Fall- 458489 A-Sides. It's a greatest hits collection from a classic punk-era band. One of the glaring holes in my relatively small, but fairly decent classic punk collection.

Wreckless Eric- Wreckless Eric- A minor classic punk rocker. Will Ferrell sings on of his songs in "Stranger Than Fiction"

Some other music stuff:
-The reissue of the Sly & The Family Stone catalog on CD has finally begun. I already bought "Dance to the Music", and I'm excited about getting a chance to fill one of the single biggest blind spots in my cd collection.

-The new Patti Smith covers album is pretty alright. I bought it mostly out of curiosity, and because she covers "Changing of the Guard", which is probably the most underrated Dylan song he released on a regular album (as opposed to releasing on Biograph or in the Bootleg Series). I actually have kind of a warm spot for cover albums, or at least, for the idea of covers albums. It all depends on whether the artist in question knows their limitations. RATM"s album has good covers of "Renegades of Funk" and "Kick Out the Jams", but whoever thought it was a good idea to give them "Maggie's Farm" or "Street Fighting Man" needs to be injured. Patti's song choices are pretty good, but some of her covers are just sort of boring. Which is the last word that should be used about the punk icon.

-I can't stop listening to the new Nine Inch Nails album, "Year Zero", especially the single "Survivalism" (featuring some backup from the wonderful poet/recording artist/actor/genius Saul Williams). It's the best thing Trent's done (that I've heard, anyway) since "The Downward Spiral", and might be better than that album.

Sorry that I seem to have forgotten how to write well today.

Nevermind

So.

I should probably update this, but I'm tired.

So I'm not going to.

Who the hell are we and where are we going?

I had a strange experience today. In film history, while watching the historical film "The Science of Sleep" (2006) lines began coming into my head for a poem. The weird thing was that they were appearing, fully formed, in iambic pentameter. I'm guessing that Nabokov's "Pale Fire" is probably responsible for part of that, but it was odd, nonetheless.

"I am the son and the heir of a shyness that is criminally vulgar". I had always thought that the first line of "How Soon is Now?" was "I am the sun and the air". I'm guessing Morrisey meant for that to happen. Sorry. Sidetracked. I was checking the wiki page for the movie, which was pretty damn awesome, as well as being magnificently weird (it was directed by the same cat who made "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind") and it mentioned that the sleeve for the Smiths single hangs behind the main character's bed.

I've written in iambic before, and it's a lot easier than you'd think. I've never been able to decide if it's easy because we're so used to Shakespeare, or if Shakespeare used it so much because it's so easy. Call it a lit nerd's version of chicken and the egg.

24 was pretty boring tonight. Sopranos was pretty good last night. I don't have to go to work tomorrow, so I might be able to get a good start on my third Nabokov paper (not that you ethereal bastards care). Graduation is less than 20 days away, and I feel like there' s no direction home. Not in a completely bad way, but not in a completely great way either. Actually, when you live at home, then... nevermind.

I'll try and post tomorrow after House is over. Again, not that anyone is reading or anyone cares. I've been thinking this through and I have some ideas for this thing.

Later.

A Hungry Feeling/Came O'er Me Stealing

I haven't been able to watch the news for the past thirty-six hours. It's just too much to handle. Guns are evil fucking things, and when evil fucking people get their hands on them, then evil fucking things happen. Tragedies too intense and immense for anyone to be able to being to deal with. I can't even being to imagine what all of the people in Blacksburg are going through. I...What the hell else can anyone say? Words are the most powerful tool I can imagine, but even they fail sometimes.

I hit Schoolkids today because, for reasons I can't entirely explain, I felt a strange need to buy the album "A Nod Is As Good As A Wink to a Blind Horse" by the Faces. (Allmusic has something to do with it, and after discovering the divine Big Star because of the site, I decided to grab another album they seemed to keep recommending) You might not know who the Faces were, because rock and history is constantly tortured and distorted by the so-called Classic Rock radio stations. The Faces were an English band that grew out of the Small Faces. The lineup included Ron Wood, who would go on to replace Mick Taylor in the Stones, Kenny Jones, who would join the Who after Keith Moon died, Ian McLagan, who did session work for Dylan and Springsteen and the Stones after the Faces broke up, they were produced by Glyn Johns, who worked with most everybody who is anybody in the rock pantheon. The front man was a guy named Rod Stewart, who you might have heard of.

After buying the album, which I have yet to listen to, I felt the need to buy Stewart's "Maggie May" off of the iTunes. (I also bought "Same Old Song" by the Four Tops, which was kind of the theme to the magnificent film "Blood Simple" and Procol Harum's "Whiter Shade of Pale", which just plain kicks ass.) The song is so damned good. How the hell did Rod Stewart go from that kind of genius to being, well, Rod Stewart? It's kind of like how Stevie Wonder went from "Superstition" to "I Just Called To Say I Love You" (although Wonder is far better than Stewart and we should all spend more time thinking about just how great his 70s masterpieces are)

I also bought the re-issue of the Ben Folds Five album "Whatever and Ever Amen", one of my absolute favorite albums in high school. My copy was irredeemably scratched, plus this version has a bunch of sweet bonus tracks. I'm still pissed off that I had to miss their show at the Cradle in 1999 because I was forced into being a "junior marshall" for senior night. The band broke up the next year, and I never saw the local heros.

On Saturday, I was at Schoolkids (there's a pattern here, if you look closely) and finally replaced my purloined copy of Radiohead's "Kid A" album. I have no idea why you would want to know this or why I am telling you this. I think I still don't really have any idea what I'm doing with this blog thing, other than killing time and emptying some of the words that are always cluttering my brain. I do have to watch myself a little though- I've discovered that one person actually reads this damn thing, and I'm in danger of repeating my insights in conversation that I had already blown here.


The Braves won tonight- Smoltz is still the man. The Nats (who we beat) wore VaTech caps tonight, so I kind of wish we could have won last night and lost to them tonight. One thing I do love about baseball is that the Nats were allowed to wear the VaTech caps. It seems obvious that a team would be allowed to offer such a simple tribute, but I guarantee you the NFL would never have let something similar occur. After Pat Tillman died, his former teammate Jake Plummer wanted to wear a sticker with Tillman's number on his helmet and the NFL wouldn't let him. Another example- on Sunday baseball withdrew the league-wide retirement of Jackie Robinson's number for any and every player who wanted to wear number 42. In the NBA, Jerry Stackhouse (a hated Tar Heel, but apparently a very good person) who wears the number 42 as a tribute to Robinson wanted to wear the name "Robinson" on the back of his jersey, but David Stern and the Brass turned him down. Further proof that baseball is the one true pro sport. Now if only the AL would get rid of the DH and purity was returned throughout the sport.

The post title is from the first lines of Brendan Behan's song "The Auld Triangle" (Also known as "The Royal Canal") The Pogues recorded a great version of it, and Dylan and the Band played it on the Basement Tapes (it's not on the official ones, but I have it on a two-disc bootleg. I really need to get the complete bootleg, which I think runs to five discs) There is no real reason why I typed it in the "title" space.

Oh, Keith- I just checked Wiki. The Mission Hill pilot aired 9/24/1999.

It's time for another top 5 list.
Something easy.

Top 5 Western Films

1- The Searchers
2- The Wild Bunch
3- Unforgiven
4- My Darling Clementine
5- The Good, The Bad and The Ugly, edging out Red River

I look like Robert Ford, but I feel just like Jesse James...

Why this picture? I guess because I'm reading Blood Meridian, which got me thinking about The Wild Bunch which made me think of Bring Me The Head of Charlie Brown.

Whatever.

I'm just putting something up out of a very, very strange sense of obligation and boredom. I have nothing to say right now.

Sopranos is still awesome. I love that Phil is about to go to the mattresses (I really, really hope they use that phrase next week). Only seven more episodes though, which makes me sad. 24 should be good tomorrow. Or, to put it another way, it needs to be good, since they are turning the plot of the whole season around- no more Fayed, no more nukes, just the ghosts of stuff that happened before I began watching the show. I guess Keifer's dad will be back soon.

I finally got caught up on this season's South Park. So far- eh. Some really funny moments, but no episode so far has been one of the truly great South Park episodes. I don't know that the show is completely out of ideas, but there hasn't been an episode- or even one joke- that really got people talking. Or at least I think that's the case. I'm so far out of the fucking loop at this point I can't even tell.

I thought last week was stressful with the two papers- those were papers I more or less enjoyed- the next two papers, one on a poet I don't particularily care about (I don't know which of the poets from class I'm writing about, but only one of the options wrote stuff that really impressed me- at least I think he's a potential topic. You don't care anyway, you self-centered, glorious nonexistant bastards) The other paper is another Nabokov paper, which could be fun. But it's not the papers per se which are going to suck. It's that my magnificent employers, the NCSU Friends of the Library, (peace be upon them) have scheduled the annual used book sale for the weekend before exams (and when the papers are both due). I'm pretty certain this is later than when it was in the past, but I'm not positive. At any rate, this will be the first year I'll experience the book sale from the other side of the tent (a phrase that might sound like it makes sense until the most rudimentary amount of thought is applied to it) and while I'm mostly looking forward to it (I've put a whole hell of a lot of time in organzing these books) I'm worried about how I'm going to manage the time-managing tight-rope of that much crazy (probably) plus the school crazy.

Anyway.

I did re-read Vonnegut's last novel, Timequake, over the weekend. It had even less of a plot than I remembered it having. I remembered a lot of asides, but I didn't remember that it was almost entirely asides and jokes, with the "plot" only referred to every ten or fifteen pages. Not his worst book (Deadeye Dick comes immediately to mind as a candidate for his worst novel, as does Jailbird, but it's been five or six or seven years since I've read those) but by that point in his career, it was kind of like a shadow of his truly great work. I'm definitely going to re-read Slaughterhouse 5 and Cat's Cradle pretty soon.

I have to re-read those soon because of the massive literary undertaking I have planned for this summer- The complete novels of Thomas Pynchon plus I have to re-read the first six Harry Potter books in anticipation of Deathly Hollows (Hallows?)


Christ, I'm such a nerd.

Shit. Nearly one a.m. and I should probably try and sleep.

If I don't wake up I expect each and every one of you readers to avenge my death.

Oh, and yes, the title is another Dylan reference. It's all part of a masterplan, so don't worry.

So It Goes

I got an e-mail from James this morning. The subject line read "sad sad" and the entire message consisted of the word "news". What else is there to say?

Kurt Vonnegut is dead, and the world is a little worse.

In high school and my first year of college, Vonnegut was my absolute favorite writer. It wasn't even close. J.D. Salinger was a distant number two. I bought all of his novels and read and reread them obsessively. Some of them- Cat's Cradle (the first Vonnegut I read, in the form of a disintegrating paperback passed to me in eighth grade by James that I read until it finished disintegrating) Breakfast of Champions, of course Slaughterhouse-Five- I read those at least half a dozen times, maybe more.

It's been a long time since I've read any of his books. In fact, they are all packed away in a box in the crawl space. On Saturday evening I dug out the tattered copy of Breakfast of Champions that Rachel gave me as a Christmas present in high school, because I needed a quote from it for a paper I was writing about characters interacting with their authors.

I still haven't read what turned out to be his last book- Man Without A Country. I'll certainly buy a copy the next time I'm in a book store. It makes me sad that it took Vonnegut's death to motivate me to read it. (Apparently I'm far from alone on this. I was just looking at Amazon, and Vonnegut has two books in their top ten sellers, and five in their top hundred. )

I no longer believe, as I once vehemently did, that Vonnegut was the greatest living American writer (I used to be outraged every year when the Nobel Prize for literature was given to people like Dario Fo [I'm still not entirely sure who he is] instead of Vonnegut. Then I worked out that the Nobel Prize was as meaningful or meaningless as the Oscars.] But there is no question that the books meant the whole world to me at one point. In fact, it's hard to imagine a much more ideal union of reader and writer- two cynical, depressed, joke-cracking, chain-smoking atheists laughing together at a world that never stops trying to bring us to tears. Vonnegut's sense of humor, ranging from Sacred Profanity to the Profanely Sacred will be greatly missed, almost as much as the great man himself.

Without Kurt Vonnegut, I'd be a very different reader, which is the exact same thing as saying I'd be a very different person.

We were lucky to have had him, and to have had him as long as we did.

"I am honorary president of the American Humanist Association, having succeeded the late, great, spectacularly prolific writer and scientist, Dr. Isaac Asimov in that essentially functionless capacity. At an A.H.A. memorial service for my predecessor I said, 'Isaac is up in Heaven now.' That was the funniest thing I could have said to an audience of humanists. It rolled them in the aisles. Mirth! Several minutes had to pass before something resembling solemnity could be restored."
-Kurt Vonnegut, "God Bless You, Dr. Kevorkian"

Destroy All Monsters

So.

I jotted an outline for a post titled "Last Thoughts on Don Imus" (note the semi-obscure Dylan reference), but what's the point? What is there to really say about something so ridiculous and inevitable? I hate the things that Imus said, but I'll miss watching his show in the morning when Sportscenter is talking about Nascar or Jeremy Schaaf is doing a fifteen minute report on something I don't care about. I guess I'll just be watching (or lightly dozing through) the commercials on ESPN from now on. (I'm fairly certain that I won't be watching Mike and Mike on ESPN2 or a cable news channel). Really, this whole incident has just reaffirmed my ever-increasing animosity towards the twentyfour hour cable news cycle. Last thing I have to say is a Rage Against the Machine quote that I haven't been able to get out of my head since I saw the video of people actually bothering to take to the streets about this whole mess,

"Godzilla- pure muthafuckin' filler. Keep your eyes off the real killer"

It's from "No Shelter", which was on the soundtrack for the abominable 1999 American Godzilla movie, which means that a lot of people, even some Rage fans, probably never heard it.

Shit, I didn't even mean to write that much. How cool was Felix Herandez's one-hitter against the Sox tonight? Dice-K will be a damn good pitcher, but this kid in Seattle has the chance to be one of the all-time greats (I say, instantly dooming him to the land of Dwight Gooden, Kerry Wood, Rick Ankiel and so on). I wish the Braves could play the Nationals every night. They are the kind of team every other team wants in their division, except for having to play in the hellhole that is RFK Stadium. I saw a game there last year, and that park is awful- and I saw games in the old Riverfront park in Cincy and Memorial Stadium in Baltimore. You kids need to appreciate how amazing all the new parks are, and how bad baseball/football stadia used to be.

Seriously, why would anyone want to read this?

I just made myself sad.

Who Wants Yesterday's Blog Posts?

Allright, time for whatever clever name I eventually come up with for the post I make every week following the same format.

What I'm Reading: I'm about to start Nabokov's Pale Fire, the 33 1/3 book on Stevie Wonder's Songs In The Key of Life album and maybe Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian.

What I'm Listening To: I spent most of today listening to the Stones, partly because of the V for Vendetta paper I should be working on right now. I'm probably about to start listening to the Stevie Wonder album over and over while I'm reading the book. I've mainly been listening to the usual suspects.

What I'm Watching: Sopranos was awesome on Sunday. I missed 24 yesterday night, but I'll watch it on iTunes or something. House looks good tonight. I'm tired of Stranger Than Fiction and V For Vendetta, and I never want to see either again. I might be about to embark on a Kubrick binge, if I can find the time.

Top Five Rolling Stones Songs:
1- Sympathy For The Devil
2- Tumbling Dice
3- Gimme Shelter
4- (I Can't Get No) Satisfaction
5- Monkey Man

I'm gonna be rewriting that list in my head everyday for the rest of my life. And I'm curious if anyone gets the title of this post's reference and connects it to this list and the picture...

Woke Up This Morning...

The Sopranos is back tonight. Which rules everything. Not that I'm raising my hopes to unrealistic levels or anything... I mean, how hard can it be to sum up six seasons of the greatest television show ever made into nine episodes while at the same time offering up epic and deeply meaningful conclusions to a set of characters who mean more to millions of Americans than their acutal family? Eh. At least it only has to be better than Godfather III to satisfy most of us. I wonder if we're going to see a body count rivaling the first half hour of Saving Private Ryan, but I kind of doubt it. I don't know why, but I have this feeling that Tony will someone wind up still standing (even if it's standing by himself in Arizona like Ray Liotta at the end of Goodfellas...)

The Braves won again today. This puts them into first place for the first time since, like, 2005. God it feels good to be back where we belong. If Mike Hampton hadn't hurt himself again I would be pathetically optimistic by now. Johan Santana is still God turned into a lefthander, Pujols broke out of the doldrums that Baseball Tonight (oddly on this morning while I was skipping church) reported on. And I have no fucking idea why Major League Baseball schedules games in Cleveland this time of the year. Why the hell did Tampa Bay get a team if they aren't going to be used for a warm-weather stadium early and late in the season? God knows it wasn't so they could play baseball.

I read that Grindhouse had a disappointing opening weekend. Who the hell did the studios expect to see a three hour inside joke? I mean, I have to personaly represent two or three percent of the intended audience, and I didn't make it to the theater this weekend. (I still have every intention of seeing this movie, but I'm not sure who I can con into seeing it with me.)

Of course I'd like to sit around and chat...

So Kid Koala was pretty fucking awesome on Thursday night. Plus, Mike Patton and Dan the Automater, who were playing at the Cradle that night, showed up for some impromptu staring contests with girls from the audience. If you weren't there you need to go ahead and submit you excuses to me in writing while I decide if you get to keep claiming to enjoy music.

I meant to post like an actual review of the show, but I got sidetracked with avoiding work on some papers, plus it's always seemed to me that reviewing a one-time concert is kind of silly- unlike a movie, this was your one chance to see the show, and me telling you how awesome it was doesn't do you much good unless you live in one of the cities that the artist is going to later on the tour. And since there are about three (mostly imaginary) people who read this and they all live here, that don't help no one.

In other "news", I finished Lolita, and the book is better than any book any of you have ever written and better than at least ninety-nine out of every hundred books you ever read. You should probably go out and buy the annotated version, because that makes the book even more awesomely awesome. (Those are important and precise English Major words that you need years of training to possibly use correctly.) I'm even further into Philip Roth's American Pastoral. It's really great, but not quite as great as the woman who cut my hair today thinking that the book was a textbook for seminary. Not to make fun of her, because a) most people haven't heard of the book, despite the cover's claim that it was a "national bestseller" and won the "Pulitzer Prize" and b) she only got a brief glimpse of the cover, and she got that glimpse from a weird angle, so it wasn't an entirely unreasonable mistake. It was still pretty funny, mainly because she asked me if I was studying to be a pastor. When she saw how incredibly confused I was by the question, she mentioned the book I was reading, and it all fell into place.

What I'm listening to: Right now I'm listening to Radiohead's Amnesiac album while I read the firejoemorgan blog and stare at the stack of books sitting next to me, mocking me about the unwritten papers. I've also been listening to Tony Kornheiser podcasts over and over again while I, for some reason, re-play Lego Star Wars II on my Gamecube. I'm almost done with the game again. Yesterday, I spent pretty much all day reading and playing the game, because it was more fun than these papers which are weighing on me more and more with every passing moment. Tomorrow I have to go to Easter stuff with the family, so I won't get to work on the papers until mid-afternoon. Which sucks. It also sucks that the library didn't have a copy of Vonnegut's Breakfast of Champions, which means I either have to dig out my copy of the book from one of the countless boxes of books in the attic, or do without it. Since I figure that I can probably kill a nice amount of copy with it in the paper, I think this evening I might just be doing some attic-diving. [Update: Finding the book I needed was actually a lot easier than I feared. It was actually in the first box I checked. Emboldened, I also tracked down my boxed up copies of a Philip Roth novel I bought seven years ago but never read, a collection of T.S. Eliot I had been looking for and a film history comic book I had wondered about earlier this year. I had to restrain myself from pulling out all of the usefull books I have boxed up, since I need several more bookcases. Not that any of you really care. By which I mean "not that either of you really care". Back to your regularly scheduled blogcast]

The Braves got their asses handed to them last night by the Mets. Today, it's Smoltz vs. Glavine, so that should be pretty sweet, espcially since Smoltz is better than Glavine at this point. I'll almost certainly have the game on while I either procastinate or write. It's on Fox, so I guess Joe Buck will be calling it. Which I don't have much of an opinion on. (Blogs with sentences like "i don't have much of an opinion" are awesome, aren't they?) Matsuzaka struck out ten Royals in his debut, which is awesome, but leaves open the question of how he will pitch against a Major League team. (I've been keeping that line in my hip pocket for days now). Oh, and Paul Byrd got positively fucked over yesterday when the Umps called his no-hitter off because of snow one out before the game would have gone official. I know M's Manager Mike Hargrove was only doing what was the best for his team when he bitched at the umps until the game was called, but he still needs to spend a thousand years apologizing to Byrd for screwing him from a bite of immortality.

Right. If any of you photogenic bastards know who has my copy of Kid A, let me know. I can't afford to buy another copy of it at the moment, and it's glaring omission from my Radiohead collection is irritating.

A Cry For Help, Plus: My Baseball Picks

So, a week or so into this gig, and I'm still not sure exactly of the who, what or why. A few of my friends were nice enough to lie to me and claim that they will seriously think about maybe reading it, but I can't shake the feeling that there's something unpleasantly egotistical about this whole scene. Which might be the entire point. I don't know. If anyone stumbles across this, let me know what it is you want? Drunken political rantings? Lectures about how music was better before anyone in my generation was born, complete with references to bands that none of you listen to? Arrogant literary analysis and put-downs of books that people without degrees in literature read and book clubs discuss? Sports discussions that invariably dissolve into vitriolic diatribes about why I hate UNC and Duke so much, with some bashing of sportswriters' obsession with RBIs and my fanatical, bordering on Oedipal dislike of cricket? Imaginary readers, the ball is in your court.

Try not to act quite so excited.

What I'm reading: Nabokov's Lolita for class, Philip Roth's American Pastoral, the 33 1/3 book on R.E.M.'s Murmur album.

What I'm writing: Papers on Intertexuality in V For Vendetta (the comic and the inferior movie) and the depiction of author's relationship to their creation in Nabokov's Bend Sinister and the film Stranger Than Fiction. I haven't written any bad poetry lately (bad poetry is pretty much the only kind I write. If you fictional vainglorious bastards don't behave I might take the Vogon route and start posting it. Not afraid? You will be.)

What I'm Listening To: Big Star, R.E.M., a bunch of ESPN related podcasts (my new favorite is Tony Kornheiser's radio show, which is so entertaining I don't skip over the analysis of American Idol. That's saying something). The new El-P album. And, like I mentioned, I'm going to see Kid Koala tomorrow night.

What I'm watching: House was pretty good last night, not outstanding but solid. This pretty much clears up my prime time tv schedule until Sopranos makes it's triumphant return on Sunday. I need to keep reminding myself that I have to record it for my friend James, who doesn't get HBO. I really should probably start watching Entourage, which I think also starts up again on Sunday, but it seems like too much effort to get caught up and all. On the other hand, I took the plunge into 24 this season, so that's a lame excuse.

This week, in place of what I hope will be my regular weekly top five list, I give you my (undoubtedly horrible) picks for the new baseball season:
AL East- Red Sox
AL Central- Tough one. Indians, maybe
AL West- Athletics
AL Wild Card- Yankees, although in reality it might come out of the Central again

NL East- Braves
NL Central- Cardinals
NL West- Dodgers, I guess
NL Wild Card- Mets

AL MVP- Alex Rodriguez, Yankees
AL Cy Young- Johan Santana, Twins
AL ROTY- Daisuke Matsuzaka, Red Sox

NL MVP- Albert Pujols, Cardinals
NL Cy Young- Roy Oswalt, Astros
NL ROTY- I have no idea. I think the Rockies have some kids who are supposed to be good.

World Series- Red Sox over the Dodgers in six games.

Enjoy mocking these in November. Hell, if there's anyone who does mock me for these in November I'll be fucking psyched.

Live Hip-Hop Goodness

So, I hit Schoolkids today and bought tickets to a bunch of shows at the Cradle.
Thursday night- Kid Koala scratching at the Carrboro Arts Center

May 5- Brother Ali and Psalm One on the last night of exams

May 12- The Blastmaster KRS-One- I get to spend time with The Teacher the day I graduate.

June 1- Buck 65 and Sage Francis

June 7- El-P (pictured) and Hangar 18

With all of this live goodness, and new albums coming out soon by Sage and Ali, expect a fair amount of hip-hop talk, you tenacious imaginary bastards

Napoleon in Rags, and the Xanax That He Took

Well, Florida just repeated as National Champs, and I'm having a hard time caring that much. I mean, it was pretty clear once the final game was set who would win, and this year's tournament has been about as boring and conventional as any I can remember. The fact that the Gators now hold back-to-back hoops hardware plus the football crown is pretty insane though. I guess there's something to that Gatorade after all.

The Braves won their opener today, and except for Smoltz getting a no-decision I couldn't be happier. Renteria homered twice, the bullpen seems to have done well, and things look bright again in Atlanta after a year best forgotten in 06. The new streak starts this year- I can feel it.

24 tonight wasn't particularily great. I have no idea where they are going now that Fayed and the Russian guy who sold Tom Cruise his costume in Eyes Wide Shut are down, and Palmer seems to have lost his fucking mind. I can't quite figure out why this season, after never watching a single second of it before, I'm so captivated by it- especially since veterans of the show tell me that this year's not great. At any rate, with House back every week and Sopranos about to start its end run, I'm gonna be watching way more tv than usual.

Wow, this must be so boring to all of you reading this, by which I mean no one. I think I'm just posting in order to make a habit out of it.

The new band I'm obsessed with (and I'm using "new" in a sense that has nothing whatsoever to do with reality, since the music is from 30 years ago) is called Big Star. It's really good power pop from the early 70s- these guys learned every last good lesson from the Beatles and The Kinks and The Byrds except for how to sell records. Tomorrow (hopefully) Amazon will deliver a book about them that I ordered while I was drunk off my ass and only barely recall ordering. If anyone was actually reading this I would demand that all of you go out and buy their first two albums- you can get them from eMusic (except for one track- undoubtedly some weird copyright thing- that I had to buy from iTunes) or on one CD. This album will improve your live. I've had it for a week and I'm entranced. The only song I had heard from the first album was in the form of the theme to That 70s Show (which was a better show than it had any right whatsoever being, and I found myself somewhat addicted to in syndication) the first verse, covered by Cheap fucking Trick of all bands, was the opening credits song. Life is unfair, art is more unfair, and the music industry is the most unfair.

Speaking of which, Amazon is preselling a "new" Elliot Smith album. For those of you keeping score this is the second album he's put out since he fell on his knife. I saw Elliot play in 2000 at the club that's now called Disco Rodeo (I can't remember what it was called then). I was a senior in high school and I had three AP exams in three days with the concert in the middle of it, but it was fucking worth it, especially since it turns out I wouldn't have had another chance. I have no idea if this new album will be any good at all, but I know deep down inside I'll buy it the day it comes out, I guess as a way of saying something to his memory. I'll let y'all know (all none of you) if it's any good.

The only other songs from my earlier eMusic downloads that I've digested are the songs for the comic V for Vendetta that David J did, and I liked them, although I would only recommend them to people who've read the comic and love the comic (which I would hope to be the same thing). The only new album I've bought recently is the new one from El-P, and it's damn fine, although I need to listen to it some more before I work out its place in the highly esteemed Def Jux pantheon. El-P is coming to the Cradle in May, I think, in a period of about two or three weeks that will also include Brother Ali (who I saw opening for Rakim and liked, especially since his DJ's gear was busted and he brought a beat boxer out to perform with) Buck 65, who is a legitimate genius, Sage Francis, who I really like and the Blastmaster himself, the Teacher, KRS-One. KRS is someone I've wanted to see ever since I really got into hip-hop- the others are just gravy. Kid Koala is also coming to the area pretty soon, and I wouldn't be surprised if I wind up at that show too, provided money works out. My dear friend Keith, who will one day be both a PHD and the next underground rap sensation as MC Lease Def, is a huge fan of Kid Koala, and I know he wants to see the man spin.

A different kind of DJ, the original kind, Kelly, has updated her blog, which I highly recommend to all none of you who are reading this. Once again, mzkelly.blogspot.com. Read it and give her the love she so richly deserves. And if you love baseball, which is another way of saying, if you love life, you should be reading firejoemorgan.com, which is both funny and brilliant.

I think I've got most of my paper on V for Vendetta written out in my head, which is a relief, since I need to really get to work on my paer about Nabokov's Bend Sinister and the movie Stranger Than Ficition. If, by any chance one of you nonexistant bastards are familiar with either work, I'd love to hear some insights.

Well, I've got to go to work tomorrow morning, and I'm sure that I have something Dantean in store in PE tomorrow, so I'm going to try to go to bed now.

Later.