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.