Where I'm Calling From and Where I've Been

If I were a mixtape, it would sound something like this at the moment.

1. Nirvana- Aneurysm (Live version from a bootleg I have where the guys who printed up the liner notes thought that the title was "Come On Over") (key line: " Love you so much it makes me sick")

2. Aesop Rock- Commencement at the Obedience Academy "Must not sleep/must warn others")

3. Neutral Milk Hotel- Communist Daughter ("Bends toward herself the soothing")

4. Talking Heads- Take Me to The River ("Love is an ocean that I can't forget")

5.  Neil Young- Tonight's The Night ("As real as the day is long")

6.  Robert Johnson- Come On In My Kitchen ("Babe it going to be raining outdoors")

7. The Refreshments- Interstate ("I don't need a miracle but I could use a push in the right direction")

8. Soundgarden- Outshined ("I got up feeling so down")

9.  Mission of Burma- That's When I Reach For My Revolver ("But all of that is changed now")

10. Love- A House Is Not A Motel ("And if someone asks you/you can call my name")

11.  The Beach Boys- I Just Wasn't Made For These Times ("They say I got brains but they ain't do me no good")

12.  The Jam- That's Entertainment ("Waking up from bad dreams and smoking cigarettes")

13.  Graham Parker- I Discovered America ("Everyone said quit now and that's when I found hope")

14. The Flaming Lips- Waitin' For A Superman ("Well I thought it was already as heavy as can be")

15. Eliot Smith- Speed Trials ("But it's sure as fate and hard as your luck")

16. MF Grimm- Children Of Cain ("Children of Cain just nod to this")

17. Bruce Springsteen- Magic ("This is what will be")

18. Atmosphere- Tears For The Sheep ("The language was primitive, the listener complex")

19. The Replacements- Swingin' Party ("If bein' afraid is a crime we'll hang side by side")

20. Canibal Ox- The F-Word ("I'm more than just a shoulder to cry on")

Sometimes I'm pretty sure that most people don't go about things in the ways that I do. 

What I've been up to:

 

Reading: Dennis Lehane's Darkness Take My Hand and Sacred, The Corner by David Simon and Edward Burns (it's kind of a precursor to The Wire. Actually, I picked up the Lehane books in large part because he wrote for The Wire.)  Slam by Nick Hornby, which was good but not great, and intended more for teenage readers than his other books (although it might have enough cursing to irritate some high school librarians, which I consider to be a point in its favor), I just started Salman Rushdie's The Satanic Verses,  and we'll see if I finish it, as it looks like a fairly demanding read.  Also, there's a slight chance that Islamists might go after me for reading it.  

Listening:  Besides the stuff I mentioned, I've been getting prepared for the Rock The Bells festival later this month by listening to some of the acts on the bill that I'm less familiar with, like The Pharcyde and Immortal Technique.  Beyond that, a lot of the usual suspects.  Plus I'm still working on the music for my sister's wedding reception, which is alternately fun and maddening.  Guests who know me will be able to tell which songs I chose, and which songs the increasingly deranged bride chose.  Also, do you really think Elvis Costello's "Allison" is appropriate for a wedding reception?  I get that my sister's future husband's sister is named Allison, but I can't be the only person who actually understands what the song about, can I?  I mean, why don't we just play all of Dylan's Blood On The Tracks while we're at it.  (Except for "Lily, Rosemary and the Jack of Hearts", which could potentially work.  And on some tv show, there was a wedding where the theme song was "Shelter From The Storm", but I think they only heard the parts about "I came in from the wilderness/a creature void of form/ 'Come in' she said I'll give you/shelter from the storm" and missed the entire rest of the song, which mostly consists of lost loved and Dylan comparing himself to Jesus, which is practically an entire sub-genre of Dylan songs.  But the show got it wrong by using the album version.  I would have used the live version from the Hard Rain album.  But that's just me)

Watching: Wall-E, which I liked, the second season of My Name Is Earl, which I started on Netflix after finishing the fourth season of The Wire.  I think Rome will be next.  I saw the new Narnia movie, which was okay but way too long, and The Happening,  (going to see it wasn't my decision, which I hope I don't even have to say.  As is often the case when I see a bad movie, there was a girl involved.  The only bad movie which I saw in the theaters by choice over the last few years was The Da Vinci Code, which I had to see after it got booed at Cannes.  I was hoping for a true train wreck, but Ron Howard could only produce a mediocre mess.)which isn't so much bad as inscrutable.  It's like a film made by aliens who had seen a few Earth movies, but really didn't understand them.  But it's also pretty bad.  I think I was the only person in the theater who wasn't so much pissed off as impressed by it's essential strangeness (strangeness in the bad way, not the awesome Night of the Hunter or David Lynch way).  I saw Indiana Jones, mostly out of a sense of cultural obligation.  It wasn't really bad, but it was staggeringly unnecessary, and the actors seemed to know this.  I finally caught up with Battlestar Galactica, which I had begun avoiding this season.  The final few episodes of the half-season were pretty decent, so I'll wind up finishing the ride when the show re-starts.  Oh, and The Venture Bros., which is still six kinds of awesome.  And my secret shame is watching Hell's Kitchen on Hulu.com.  I hate the reality show parts of the show (i.e. all of the contestants display sociopathic tendencies, pointlessly dramatic commercial breaks, inane contests) but I'm a sucker for Gordon Ramsay yelling at people.  I wonder if BBC America shows episodes of the British version of the show, which I'm positive is better than the Americanized version.  And if next season is b-list celebrities, then even Ramsay can't keep me there.

Playing: No one game in particular.  Some GTA: San Andreas, some re-playing of the original Half-Life on PS2, some Super Mario Galaxy, some Bully.  But there's no game that I'm obsessed with at the moment.  I picked up Lego Indiana Jones for the Wii, mostly because of how much I love the Lego Star Wars games.  It's pretty good, but by no means is it a must-buy, especially since it doesn't take very long to finish.   

The picture is Neil Young, but you already should have known that.  

Oh, and by the time I finished editing and rewriting this, I looked up and it was Thursday. I am apparently 26 now, which is slightly vexing.  I thought that 25 was a perfectly reasonable age to be.