Top 10, for your consideration:
10.Arcade Fire - The Suburbs - We Used to Wait
I never really glommed on to Arcade Fire. I know, that makes my cred as a music critic totally disappear. Not that I have any, because my lists totally deviate from the critics’ lists every year. Anyway, The Suburbs is the first album of theirs that I really think I’ve “got.” Somehow the artwork and the mood of the songs and the lyrics all cohere into an album that is most definitely about the suburbs. The tone swings from melancholy to uplifting, and the album nails a certain “feeling.” My favorite song is We Used to Wait, because I used to write letters, and I used to sign my name.
9.Two Cow Garage - Sweet St Me
After a disappointing release in Speaking in Cursive, Two Cow Garage is back with their most musically adventurous record to date. Like basically every other band, they’ve added keys to the mix, which really doesn’t add as much as they’d probably like it to. What does work is that they’ve brought the guitars more to the forefront and their songwriting has caught up with their southern rock mentality. Lyrically strong and catchy as hell, this is my kind of music.
8. The Like - Release Me - Release Me
Whoever’s idea it was to turn this group from a pretty basic pop punk band into a 60’s girl group with electric guitars deserves a raise. This album is markedly different from their previous release, and undoubtedly for the better. Release Me is one of my favorite songs of the year. Narcissus in a Red Dress is a slow burning groove. Really, every song on here is danceable and really bridges the gap between 60’s girl pop groups and pop punk groups today. This was a perfect summer album.
7.Black Keys - Brothers
It’s unfortunate that the songs from Brothers don’t translate well live, because this is probably the Black Keys’ best album. It’s definitely their most musically mature, moving further away from their straight up blues roots and into more diverse sounds. Dan’s voice is more nimble than ever here, hitting falsetto notes and his usual notes equally often. The addition of more instruments to the mix helps. I just hope they can figure out how to mix it all live. Check out Everlasting Light, Tighten Up, or Sinister Kid.
6.Fake Problems - Real Ghosts Caught on Tape
Each album these guys put out is different than the last, while retaining that certain je nai sais quoi that makes Fake Problems stand out. Their first couple releases sounded like an Against Me! imitator, but with It’s Great to Be Alive, and now Real Ghosts, they’ve moved into much more interesting territory. Intricate guitar work, Chris’s distinctive voice, and some catchy as hell songwriting make this a winner. Songs for Teenagers is a great single, and Grand Finale shows how the band can write a guitar anthem with the best of them.
5.Seven Degrees of Stephen Egerton - S/T
I may have liked this album more than anyone else in the world, but damnit, this record IS my college years. I never thought I’d hear a new ALL song, a new Descendents song, a new Armchair Martian song. But basically, with guest singers like Chad Price, Milo Aukerman, Scott Reynolds, and Jon Snodgrass, that’s what happens here. This is a pop punk tour de force. Every song reminds me of the best ALL had to offer, and every song makes me want to sing along. I absolutely love this album.
4.Gamits - Parts
I don’t know what happened to Chris Fogal between Antidote and Parts, but if I had to guess I’d say he smoked shards of glass and gargled with razorblades on a regular basis. Whatever happened, he sounds a little like Brendan from The Lawrence Arms, and that’s not a bad thing. To match his roughed up voice, the band decided to turn up the intensity and write by far the hardest (and for my money, hands down the best) Gamits album to date. It’s a risky proposition coming back after so many years and a new lineup, but everything clicks here, especially the terrific This Shell.
3.Dillinger Escape Plan - Option Paralysis
Widower, the sixth song on Option Paralysis, is one of the best songs this year. It encapsulates everything that the Dillinger Escape Plan have become, and shows where they’re going. With each album, they’ve grown further and further from their math thrash metal roots. Option Paralysis finally shows the band at what must be their pinnacle. They’re still punishingly heavy, with impossibly fast guitars and drums and ridiculously timed songs. But in the midst of all that, SONGS emerge. Choruses, 4/4 time, singing. This is an absolutely essential album that has something for everyone. Widower starts with a pretty piano line and Greg singing softly before it picks up speed and intensity. As it goes on, it builds and builds until it explodes into an epic handcore breakdown. Seriously, the second best song this year. Also, if you appreciate drums, you’ll wonder how in the hell Billy Rymer is able to play this stuff. It sounds like he’s doing the work of three men behind that kit.
2.Against Me! - White Crosses
I wrote a review for this one already. But to sum up, I was worried after New Wave, because that album was not that good. Even today, when I go back to listen to it, it’s just not great. White Crosses is. Admittedly, Against Me! is probably my favorite band of all time, so I can’t be unbiased. And admittedly, part of me misses the AM! of old. And admittedly, Tom’s lyrics are not as good as they used to be for the most part. But White Crosses is one hell of a rock and roll album, and songs like Because of the Shame and Bamboo Bones cannot be argued with.
1.Gaslight Anthem - American Slang
At first, I was a little put off because this is not The ‘59 Sound. But as I listened more and more, I realized this album is more original, more mature, and better. The Gaslight Anthem really pushed out of their familiar territory with this one, while retaining the excellent songwriting that they’ve always had. They’re not a Springsteen punk cover band anymore. They’re the Gaslight Anthem. They wrote this album, full of excellent songs like Bring It On, Boxer, Orphans, The Diamond Church Street Choir, and really every other song on here. Really, there was never any doubt. This was the best album released this year.
Friday, December 24, 2010
Tuesday, December 21, 2010
Part 2 of my Best Albums list.
15. Cee-Lo Green - The Lady Killer
Fuck You was the best song of the year, hands down. The rest of the album doesn’t consistently hit those heights, but I’d say about two-thirds of it gets pretty close. Lyrically, it’s bland and extremely chorus-heavy, but melodically this is some catchy, catchy stuff.
14. Weezer - Hurley
It’s not really worth recounting the ups and downs of Weezer’s career at this point. Let’s just say that I was skeptical about this one coming out a year after last year’s totally vapid and uninspired Raditude. And, as much as I love Lost, slapping a picture of Jorge Garcia on the cover and titling the album Hurley didn’t really make it seem like much effort was being put into this one either. I was pleasantly surprised though, when I found much improved lyrics (still not poet laureate stuff, but at least no songs about going to the mall) and varied song structures. This is without a doubt the Weez’s best album since Pinkerton. Ruling Me rocks particularly hard.
13. Smoke or Fire - The Speakeasy
More politically charged than usual, The Speakeasy is a nice continuation from 2007’s excellent This Sinking Ship. Smoke or Fire have quietly become one of the most consistent punk bands working today, with strong lyrics and great energy, even in acoustic numbers like Honey, I Was Right About the War.
12. Sufjan Stevens - All Delighted People - Djohariah
The better of the two Sufjan releases this year is this “EP” that is ridiculously long. It features more traditional instrumentation, though Sufjan’s new-found penchant for writing absurdly long and varied songs is on display. Old fans will easily get into the sub-five-minute-long songs on here, but my favorite track is the closer Djohariah, structured like a much longer Sister from Seven Swans, with a long instrumental section that starts the song, only to have it turn into a beautifully simple acoustic song at the end. To me, if Sufjan Stevens wants to keep experimenting with song structure, this EP is the direction he should go.
11. Janelle Monae - The ArchAndroid
The first two-thirds of this album are SO good, so inventive and different and catchy and exciting, that I’m able to forgive the last third for being so slow and repetitive. Structured as two “suites” (parts II and III), this is somewhat of a sci-fi R&B concept album. Suite II should be taught in R&B school for the rest of time as a way to show newcomers what the genre is capable of. Songs flow together, swinging wildly in tone and voice, each one as interesting as the last. Had the album consisted only of Suite II, it would definitely have cracked my top 10. Unfortunately, Suite III has none of the manic energy of its predecessor and leaves the album overlong and ending on a low note.
15. Cee-Lo Green - The Lady Killer
Fuck You was the best song of the year, hands down. The rest of the album doesn’t consistently hit those heights, but I’d say about two-thirds of it gets pretty close. Lyrically, it’s bland and extremely chorus-heavy, but melodically this is some catchy, catchy stuff.
14. Weezer - Hurley
It’s not really worth recounting the ups and downs of Weezer’s career at this point. Let’s just say that I was skeptical about this one coming out a year after last year’s totally vapid and uninspired Raditude. And, as much as I love Lost, slapping a picture of Jorge Garcia on the cover and titling the album Hurley didn’t really make it seem like much effort was being put into this one either. I was pleasantly surprised though, when I found much improved lyrics (still not poet laureate stuff, but at least no songs about going to the mall) and varied song structures. This is without a doubt the Weez’s best album since Pinkerton. Ruling Me rocks particularly hard.
13. Smoke or Fire - The Speakeasy
More politically charged than usual, The Speakeasy is a nice continuation from 2007’s excellent This Sinking Ship. Smoke or Fire have quietly become one of the most consistent punk bands working today, with strong lyrics and great energy, even in acoustic numbers like Honey, I Was Right About the War.
12. Sufjan Stevens - All Delighted People - Djohariah
The better of the two Sufjan releases this year is this “EP” that is ridiculously long. It features more traditional instrumentation, though Sufjan’s new-found penchant for writing absurdly long and varied songs is on display. Old fans will easily get into the sub-five-minute-long songs on here, but my favorite track is the closer Djohariah, structured like a much longer Sister from Seven Swans, with a long instrumental section that starts the song, only to have it turn into a beautifully simple acoustic song at the end. To me, if Sufjan Stevens wants to keep experimenting with song structure, this EP is the direction he should go.
11. Janelle Monae - The ArchAndroid
The first two-thirds of this album are SO good, so inventive and different and catchy and exciting, that I’m able to forgive the last third for being so slow and repetitive. Structured as two “suites” (parts II and III), this is somewhat of a sci-fi R&B concept album. Suite II should be taught in R&B school for the rest of time as a way to show newcomers what the genre is capable of. Songs flow together, swinging wildly in tone and voice, each one as interesting as the last. Had the album consisted only of Suite II, it would definitely have cracked my top 10. Unfortunately, Suite III has none of the manic energy of its predecessor and leaves the album overlong and ending on a low note.
Monday, December 20, 2010
Time for the end of the year lists. Again, there's not a lot of crossover between the actual music critics and what I like. That's what happens I guess when you become a jaded old man who only likes the music he listened to when he was a kid. Today, 20-16 on the Top Albums of the Year list.
20. Brendan Kelly & Joe McMahon - Wasted Potential
Fun for the fans of The Lawrence Arms and Smoke or Fire, the acoustic songs on this album are sloppy and imperfect, but that makes them different enough from their regular versions that this is actually a worthwhile addition to their catalogs. Brendan’s version of Kiss the Bottle is so vastly different (and arguably better) than any other version I’ve heard that it almost sounds like a completely different song.
19. Big Boi - Sir Lucious Leftfoot: The Son of Chico Dusty
My token rap album for the year. This doesn’t get bogged down in the usual mainstream rap tropes (bragging, sex, money, etc). Big Boi is handy with a quick turn of phrase, the beats are fun, and the intensity keeps up throughout, making this a quick hour-long listen.
18. Corin Tucker Band - 1000 Years
I absolutely loved The Woods, the last album before Sleater-Kinney broke up. 1000 Years, from SK’s lead singer, could have been a slightly less noisy continuation of that band, and indeed some songs sound like SK B-sides. What’s much more interesting, and better, are the songs that sound nothing like SK. This album’s biggest strength is its diversity. It moves from balls-out rockers to quiet piano ballads while retaining a solid core, and shows sides of Corin Tucker that I don’t think we’ve ever seen before.
17. Ted Leo - The Brutalist Bricks
For my money, the best opening to an album this year is Ted Leo shouting “When the cafe doors exploded, I reacted too, reacted to you.” Teddy’s always been able to open and close an album. Where Living with the Living was bloated and unfocused, The Brutalist Bricks is completely honed in on rocking you to death. You won’t find any ill-advised reggae songs here, just raw energy. Unfortunately, all that energy created a somewhat one-note album, with the best songs being the ones that deviate from the norm - Bottled in Cork, Bartolomeo and the Buzzing of Bees, etc.
16. Sufjan Stevens - Age of Adz
Sufjan really went off the reservation in the years since Illinois came out. He lost faith in “the song,” wrote an orchestral piece about the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, and generally was a weirdo. The Age of Adz is then even more sprawling than his older albums. He’s embraced the electro-pop that is so popular right now, but he bends it in ways infinitely more interesting than most of his peers. The problem is, he’s so concerned with experimenting with sounds and song forms that the songs often get lost. It’s a very dense album, much easier to admire than to like, although after a few listens some of the greatness of old Sufjan shines through. Futile Devices, the first track, is almost tear-inducingly beautiful. It’s the strongest track on the album, and also the most reminiscent of the older albums. Coincidence?
20. Brendan Kelly & Joe McMahon - Wasted Potential
Fun for the fans of The Lawrence Arms and Smoke or Fire, the acoustic songs on this album are sloppy and imperfect, but that makes them different enough from their regular versions that this is actually a worthwhile addition to their catalogs. Brendan’s version of Kiss the Bottle is so vastly different (and arguably better) than any other version I’ve heard that it almost sounds like a completely different song.
19. Big Boi - Sir Lucious Leftfoot: The Son of Chico Dusty
My token rap album for the year. This doesn’t get bogged down in the usual mainstream rap tropes (bragging, sex, money, etc). Big Boi is handy with a quick turn of phrase, the beats are fun, and the intensity keeps up throughout, making this a quick hour-long listen.
18. Corin Tucker Band - 1000 Years
I absolutely loved The Woods, the last album before Sleater-Kinney broke up. 1000 Years, from SK’s lead singer, could have been a slightly less noisy continuation of that band, and indeed some songs sound like SK B-sides. What’s much more interesting, and better, are the songs that sound nothing like SK. This album’s biggest strength is its diversity. It moves from balls-out rockers to quiet piano ballads while retaining a solid core, and shows sides of Corin Tucker that I don’t think we’ve ever seen before.
17. Ted Leo - The Brutalist Bricks
For my money, the best opening to an album this year is Ted Leo shouting “When the cafe doors exploded, I reacted too, reacted to you.” Teddy’s always been able to open and close an album. Where Living with the Living was bloated and unfocused, The Brutalist Bricks is completely honed in on rocking you to death. You won’t find any ill-advised reggae songs here, just raw energy. Unfortunately, all that energy created a somewhat one-note album, with the best songs being the ones that deviate from the norm - Bottled in Cork, Bartolomeo and the Buzzing of Bees, etc.
16. Sufjan Stevens - Age of Adz
Sufjan really went off the reservation in the years since Illinois came out. He lost faith in “the song,” wrote an orchestral piece about the Brooklyn-Queens Expressway, and generally was a weirdo. The Age of Adz is then even more sprawling than his older albums. He’s embraced the electro-pop that is so popular right now, but he bends it in ways infinitely more interesting than most of his peers. The problem is, he’s so concerned with experimenting with sounds and song forms that the songs often get lost. It’s a very dense album, much easier to admire than to like, although after a few listens some of the greatness of old Sufjan shines through. Futile Devices, the first track, is almost tear-inducingly beautiful. It’s the strongest track on the album, and also the most reminiscent of the older albums. Coincidence?
Monday, November 15, 2010
Thus, I presented you with the latest in our long-running series, Twisted Survey:
1. What time did you get up this morning?
Man, you know I just get down.
2. How do you like your steak?
Like I like my women. You know what that means.
3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema?
Because I have never been to England, or some equally poshy country, I have never seen a "film" at a "cinema." But the last "flick" I saw at the "picture show" was something or other.
4. What are your favorite TV shows?
Say Yes to the the Ghost Hunting, Kardashian Police Women of 90210
5. If you could live anywhere in the world where would it be?
Anywhere in the county of McCrackin, KY.
6. What did you have for breakfast?
Pieces of shit like you.
7. What is your favorite cuisine?
Lean.
8. What foods do you dislike?
I like and dislike foods based on the ethnicities they represent. So, if you know me, you know I love the hard-working Mexicans and Mafia-running Italians, and hate the better-than-me-at-math Asians and the we-try-to-take-over-the-world-every-couple-generations-but-fail Germans.
9. Favorite Place to Eat
At a table.
10. Favorite salad dressings?
I find that a nice mixture of ketchup and mayonnaise really fits most bills, unless there's chicken in the salad, in which case you'll want to add in some bbq sauce.
11.What kind of vehicle do you drive?
A horseless carriage.
12. What are your favorite clothes?
Daisy dukes and a bikini on top.
13. Where would you visit if you had the chance?
1271 Luna Road, Farmers Branch, TX. Or your mom's house.
14. Cup 1/2 empty or 1/2 full?
It's 3/4 full of destroyed dreams and broken promises, and 1/4 empty of hope and love. With sugar on the rim. Shaken, not stirred. Garnished with an orange slice.
15. Where would you want to retire?
My secret underground lair, from whence I will commence my plan to take over the world. I mean, Boca Raton. Which is not where my underground lair is. Muahahaha.
16. Favorite time of day?
12:34:56. Doesn't matter whether it's AM or PM, it's still PARTY TIIIIME!
17 Where were you born?
I was born the son of a preacher man, and a coal miner's daughter, so you figure it out.
18. What is your favorite sport to watch?
Dog shows.
19. Who do you think will not tag you back?
Are we playing tag? Am I it? I think I lose.
20. Person you expect to tag you back first?
I don't know, but whoever tries to tag me is going to get shivved in the face.
21.most curious about their responses to this?
I acknowledge no one's existence but my own.
22. Bird watcher?
I'm more of a bird feeler.
23. Are you a morning person or a night person?
I am Caucasian.
24. Pets?
Pets are domesticated animals that people have and feed and pick up feces for. All pets descended from giant tree squirrels about 17,000 years ago. Oftentimes you think your pet is awesome, but your pet is actually annoying as shit and everyone hates it. Sometimes your pet runs away, which means it hates you.
25. Any new and exciting news that you'd like to share?
BREAKING NEWS! I just called to say I love you.
26. What did you want to be when you were little?
Rich as shit.
27. What is your best childhood memory?
Not getting molested.
28. Are you a cat or dog person?
I am a full blooded human, and I think genetic engineering for the purpose of creating a race of mutant cat and/or dog people is ethically wrong, and totally awesome and where do I sign up?
29. Are you married?
To my job. hyuk hyuk. No but seriously, I can show you the wedding certificate. Republicans and church leaders are up in arms. Where will it end? People marrying jobs, what next? People marrying chairs? People marrying cats? Two loving human beings of the same gender trying to unite under the law and reap the same benefits as two people of opposite genders? It disgusts me.
30. Always wear your seat belt?
I think you meant to put a period after that. Always wear your seat belt. You're welcome.
31. Been in a car accident?
I've plowed into cars, run people over, and ruined several lawnscapes, but I wouldn't call any of them "accidents."
32. Any pet peeves?
I have no pets, but I'm interested in a peeve. Is it a cross between a peacock and a beaver?
33. Favorite pizza topping?
Love.
34. Favorite Flower?
I find that whole wheat flour just isn't the same as your standard flour. Tortillas made from whole wheat do not make delicious crunchy quesadillas like regular flour ones.
35. Favorite ice cream?
Anything melted over a hot cherry pie or brownie, fed to me by servant women.
36. Favorite fast food restaurant
Bonzo's Whipped Cream Pie Emporium will feed you a whipped cream pie faster than anyone else in town, Guaranteed.
37. How many times did you fail your driver's test?
The driver's ed book never said it was frowned upon to drive while doing the crossword, drinking coffee, playing on an Ipad, and applying eyeliner, so while I may have failed once, I maintain to this day that I didn't know I couldn't do that.
38. From whom did you get your last email?
Jesus, just thanking me for such a cool dude. You know how it is.
39. Which store would you choose to max out your credit card?
Circuit City. Circuit City went out of business? Fuck it then, I don't need credit cards anymore.
40. Do anything spontaneous lately?
I was going to say no, but then I thought that would seem lame, so I punched a baby in the face, so yeah.
41. Like your job?
If you read the last two questions together, as in "Do anything spontaneous lately? Like your job?" it sounds a little accusatory, and I'm not sure I like your tone, buster.
42. Broccoli?
Okay. I let things slide on these sometimes. But "Broccoli?" is not a question. In no way, shape, or form is that a question. You can't put a question mark on a noun and call it a question. "Slide?" "Window?" Nope.
43. What was your favorite vacation?
That time I went back in time and thought I shot Hitler, but it was really Charlie Chaplin. We had some laughs about that, boy, did we ever. But then I had to go back in time and shoot myself so that Charlie Chaplin could bring joy to millions again. Time travel, man. It's so complicated.
44. Last person you went out to dinner with?
The Dark Lord Satan. We had a nice time. Went to this very intimate French place, ate some snails, damned some souls. Then Satan had too much to drink and I had to take him home. You know how it is with Satan, that lush.
45. What are you listening to right now?
The voice inside my head telling me to do it.
46. What is your favorite color?
The color of your eyes, baby.
47. How many tattoos do you have?
None, but I do own Tattoo from Fantasy Island. I'm willing to sell or trade if anyone has anything worthwhile.
48. Coffee drinker?
No, I prefer to get my energy the old fashioned way. Cocaine.
49. How many children do you have?
Several. THAT I KNOW OF!
1. What time did you get up this morning?
Man, you know I just get down.
2. How do you like your steak?
Like I like my women. You know what that means.
3. What was the last film you saw at the cinema?
Because I have never been to England, or some equally poshy country, I have never seen a "film" at a "cinema." But the last "flick" I saw at the "picture show" was something or other.
4. What are your favorite TV shows?
Say Yes to the the Ghost Hunting, Kardashian Police Women of 90210
5. If you could live anywhere in the world where would it be?
Anywhere in the county of McCrackin, KY.
6. What did you have for breakfast?
Pieces of shit like you.
7. What is your favorite cuisine?
Lean.
8. What foods do you dislike?
I like and dislike foods based on the ethnicities they represent. So, if you know me, you know I love the hard-working Mexicans and Mafia-running Italians, and hate the better-than-me-at-math Asians and the we-try-to-take-over-the-world-every-couple-generations-but-fail Germans.
9. Favorite Place to Eat
At a table.
10. Favorite salad dressings?
I find that a nice mixture of ketchup and mayonnaise really fits most bills, unless there's chicken in the salad, in which case you'll want to add in some bbq sauce.
11.What kind of vehicle do you drive?
A horseless carriage.
12. What are your favorite clothes?
Daisy dukes and a bikini on top.
13. Where would you visit if you had the chance?
1271 Luna Road, Farmers Branch, TX. Or your mom's house.
14. Cup 1/2 empty or 1/2 full?
It's 3/4 full of destroyed dreams and broken promises, and 1/4 empty of hope and love. With sugar on the rim. Shaken, not stirred. Garnished with an orange slice.
15. Where would you want to retire?
My secret underground lair, from whence I will commence my plan to take over the world. I mean, Boca Raton. Which is not where my underground lair is. Muahahaha.
16. Favorite time of day?
12:34:56. Doesn't matter whether it's AM or PM, it's still PARTY TIIIIME!
17 Where were you born?
I was born the son of a preacher man, and a coal miner's daughter, so you figure it out.
18. What is your favorite sport to watch?
Dog shows.
19. Who do you think will not tag you back?
Are we playing tag? Am I it? I think I lose.
20. Person you expect to tag you back first?
I don't know, but whoever tries to tag me is going to get shivved in the face.
21.most curious about their responses to this?
I acknowledge no one's existence but my own.
22. Bird watcher?
I'm more of a bird feeler.
23. Are you a morning person or a night person?
I am Caucasian.
24. Pets?
Pets are domesticated animals that people have and feed and pick up feces for. All pets descended from giant tree squirrels about 17,000 years ago. Oftentimes you think your pet is awesome, but your pet is actually annoying as shit and everyone hates it. Sometimes your pet runs away, which means it hates you.
25. Any new and exciting news that you'd like to share?
BREAKING NEWS! I just called to say I love you.
26. What did you want to be when you were little?
Rich as shit.
27. What is your best childhood memory?
Not getting molested.
28. Are you a cat or dog person?
I am a full blooded human, and I think genetic engineering for the purpose of creating a race of mutant cat and/or dog people is ethically wrong, and totally awesome and where do I sign up?
29. Are you married?
To my job. hyuk hyuk. No but seriously, I can show you the wedding certificate. Republicans and church leaders are up in arms. Where will it end? People marrying jobs, what next? People marrying chairs? People marrying cats? Two loving human beings of the same gender trying to unite under the law and reap the same benefits as two people of opposite genders? It disgusts me.
30. Always wear your seat belt?
I think you meant to put a period after that. Always wear your seat belt. You're welcome.
31. Been in a car accident?
I've plowed into cars, run people over, and ruined several lawnscapes, but I wouldn't call any of them "accidents."
32. Any pet peeves?
I have no pets, but I'm interested in a peeve. Is it a cross between a peacock and a beaver?
33. Favorite pizza topping?
Love.
34. Favorite Flower?
I find that whole wheat flour just isn't the same as your standard flour. Tortillas made from whole wheat do not make delicious crunchy quesadillas like regular flour ones.
35. Favorite ice cream?
Anything melted over a hot cherry pie or brownie, fed to me by servant women.
36. Favorite fast food restaurant
Bonzo's Whipped Cream Pie Emporium will feed you a whipped cream pie faster than anyone else in town, Guaranteed.
37. How many times did you fail your driver's test?
The driver's ed book never said it was frowned upon to drive while doing the crossword, drinking coffee, playing on an Ipad, and applying eyeliner, so while I may have failed once, I maintain to this day that I didn't know I couldn't do that.
38. From whom did you get your last email?
Jesus, just thanking me for such a cool dude. You know how it is.
39. Which store would you choose to max out your credit card?
Circuit City. Circuit City went out of business? Fuck it then, I don't need credit cards anymore.
40. Do anything spontaneous lately?
I was going to say no, but then I thought that would seem lame, so I punched a baby in the face, so yeah.
41. Like your job?
If you read the last two questions together, as in "Do anything spontaneous lately? Like your job?" it sounds a little accusatory, and I'm not sure I like your tone, buster.
42. Broccoli?
Okay. I let things slide on these sometimes. But "Broccoli?" is not a question. In no way, shape, or form is that a question. You can't put a question mark on a noun and call it a question. "Slide?" "Window?" Nope.
43. What was your favorite vacation?
That time I went back in time and thought I shot Hitler, but it was really Charlie Chaplin. We had some laughs about that, boy, did we ever. But then I had to go back in time and shoot myself so that Charlie Chaplin could bring joy to millions again. Time travel, man. It's so complicated.
44. Last person you went out to dinner with?
The Dark Lord Satan. We had a nice time. Went to this very intimate French place, ate some snails, damned some souls. Then Satan had too much to drink and I had to take him home. You know how it is with Satan, that lush.
45. What are you listening to right now?
The voice inside my head telling me to do it.
46. What is your favorite color?
The color of your eyes, baby.
47. How many tattoos do you have?
None, but I do own Tattoo from Fantasy Island. I'm willing to sell or trade if anyone has anything worthwhile.
48. Coffee drinker?
No, I prefer to get my energy the old fashioned way. Cocaine.
49. How many children do you have?
Several. THAT I KNOW OF!
Tuesday, November 02, 2010
Ah, the political ad. It’s an art form, perfected over years of trial and error. I imagine the first political ads actually described what the candidates were going to do in office. You know, like a product commercial. When you see Oxy Clean on TV, the commercial shows you why you need Oxy Clean. That shit will clean anything! Look at that weird British guy who is not Billy Mays. He is clearly no Billy Mays, but it doesn’t really matter who the pitchman is because the product works. Or look how EXTREME those Mountain Dew drinkers are. Man, if I drank some Dew I could totally surf on the back of a shark. That’s what ads do. They show you the product, tell you why you should buy the product, and that’s it. Makes sense, right?
At some point, even during my lifetime, if I remember correctly, political ads worked the same way. Here’s your candidate, and here’s what he’s going to do once he’s in office, and here’s why you should vote for him, and that’s it. Sure, every promise they would make was a bold-faced lie, but at least they were lying about themselves. Then at some point, someone decided that wasn’t enough.
Let’s say that at some point, Candidate A was at a town hall meeting, and someone asked him “Hey, you’re pro-choice, right?” Candidate A responds “Well sure, but with limitations. I don’t think you should abort everything in all instances.” Candidate B hears this and comes out with:
“Candidate A – baby eater. Can you believe what Candidate A said? ‘Abort everything in all instances.’ Candidate A will kill your kids and eat that shit UP. He’ll take a rock, bash you in the stomach until you discharge that baby, and then make soup from it. Candidate A will murder your grandparents and fuck your mom. Do you want a murderous, baby-eating mom-fucker in office? Vote Candidate B.”
The genius behind this move is that you don’t know shit about Candidate B. Candidate B could be a crack-smoking, abusive, Communist dogfighter, who rapes as a hobby. But his game is to get you to vote for him because at least he’s not eating babies. So Candidate A fires back with his own attack ad, and soon, as the voter, you are left with a choice. Vote baby-eater or rapist?
It may well be that these politicians actually have agendas that they’d like to accomplish in Washington, but you’d never know it from the ads we’ve been bombarded with this political season. And it’s hard to get excited about either party when you know one of them is going to fuck your mom and one of them is going to kill your dog. But you still have to vote.
When you look at the big picture, your choice is made a little clearer. The Democrats have had control of Washington for two years, and they have done very little except whine about Republicans not playing nice. They passed a health care bill that no one understands or knows anything about (don’t act like you do). They spent a lot of money trying to stop the recession, which no one knows if it worked (don’t act like you do) or if it just ended naturally. But no matter what you’ve been told, they did not turn the country into Communist Russia, sell white people into slavery, or make Islam the official religion of the US.
Republicans, if you’ll remember, fucked up so bad in so many ways that we threw them all out of power two years ago. Nothing has changed about them since then. They want rich people to get richer, creationism to be taught in public schools, abortions to be illegal, gays to be treated as second class citizens, pot smokers to be locked up in prison, and to use all these bombs that we’ve been accumulating.
Democrats want to take all your money and give it to lazy worthless poor people, let illegal immigrants take all our jobs, abort all the babies, people to be able to marry their pets, everyone to be high all the time, us to pull our military out of every country while pissing ourselves and asking people to please not hurt us, and to kill God.
Happy election day.
At some point, even during my lifetime, if I remember correctly, political ads worked the same way. Here’s your candidate, and here’s what he’s going to do once he’s in office, and here’s why you should vote for him, and that’s it. Sure, every promise they would make was a bold-faced lie, but at least they were lying about themselves. Then at some point, someone decided that wasn’t enough.
Let’s say that at some point, Candidate A was at a town hall meeting, and someone asked him “Hey, you’re pro-choice, right?” Candidate A responds “Well sure, but with limitations. I don’t think you should abort everything in all instances.” Candidate B hears this and comes out with:
“Candidate A – baby eater. Can you believe what Candidate A said? ‘Abort everything in all instances.’ Candidate A will kill your kids and eat that shit UP. He’ll take a rock, bash you in the stomach until you discharge that baby, and then make soup from it. Candidate A will murder your grandparents and fuck your mom. Do you want a murderous, baby-eating mom-fucker in office? Vote Candidate B.”
The genius behind this move is that you don’t know shit about Candidate B. Candidate B could be a crack-smoking, abusive, Communist dogfighter, who rapes as a hobby. But his game is to get you to vote for him because at least he’s not eating babies. So Candidate A fires back with his own attack ad, and soon, as the voter, you are left with a choice. Vote baby-eater or rapist?
It may well be that these politicians actually have agendas that they’d like to accomplish in Washington, but you’d never know it from the ads we’ve been bombarded with this political season. And it’s hard to get excited about either party when you know one of them is going to fuck your mom and one of them is going to kill your dog. But you still have to vote.
When you look at the big picture, your choice is made a little clearer. The Democrats have had control of Washington for two years, and they have done very little except whine about Republicans not playing nice. They passed a health care bill that no one understands or knows anything about (don’t act like you do). They spent a lot of money trying to stop the recession, which no one knows if it worked (don’t act like you do) or if it just ended naturally. But no matter what you’ve been told, they did not turn the country into Communist Russia, sell white people into slavery, or make Islam the official religion of the US.
Republicans, if you’ll remember, fucked up so bad in so many ways that we threw them all out of power two years ago. Nothing has changed about them since then. They want rich people to get richer, creationism to be taught in public schools, abortions to be illegal, gays to be treated as second class citizens, pot smokers to be locked up in prison, and to use all these bombs that we’ve been accumulating.
Democrats want to take all your money and give it to lazy worthless poor people, let illegal immigrants take all our jobs, abort all the babies, people to be able to marry their pets, everyone to be high all the time, us to pull our military out of every country while pissing ourselves and asking people to please not hurt us, and to kill God.
Happy election day.
Monday, October 25, 2010
Time for the latest edition of Adam Comments on What Everyone Else has Already Commented On.
You know Juan Williams of NPR? He got fired for saying, and I quote, "All Muslims are trying to kill us all the time, and I think we should just nuke the Middle East, gas chamber the shit out of Muslims, and live on in a peaceful world free of the Muslim scourge."
Or he might as well have, the way NPR's knee jerked him out of a job and into right-wing hero status. What he actually said was "Sure, when I see someone in Muslim garb on a plane, I get a little nervous, BUT OBVIOUSLY NOT ALL MUSLIMS ARE TERRORISTS."
It's just that the last little bit of information there was left off of basically all the reporting. This is similar to the Shirley Sherrod thing a while back when she got fired immediately after it was reported that she said she didn't help a white farmer because he was white. In that case, they left off the entire rest of her message, where she realized she was wrong for that, and used the story as a message of racial tolerance.
When I was a kid, I always thought it would be funny to edit together clips of people saying words and making them say ridiculous things. If you can find a clip of someone saying "I hate black licorice," and one of them saying "Hanukkah is a Jewish holiday," and one of them saying "People like to dance," you could make them say "I hate...Jewish...people." But now that this is ACTUALLY happening on the news, it's not nearly as funny.
Oftentimes to make a point in a debate, you have to show common ground with your opponent. I recently volunteered at a food bank, helping people get their government subsidized food to their cars. Right-wingers say government should not do this, and they often point to lazy minorities who have babies and collect government checks and don't look for work. Having seen what I saw, I would say "Yes, there are young minorities with six kids in tow picking up their free food, but the majority of these people were older, often foreign people who didn't save enough money or just need some help to get by, and I would hate to see these decent people punished because of a small number of government assistance abusers."
If that were shown on the news, my statement would be "There are minorities with six kids in tow picking up their free food."
This is not responsible journalism. I suppose there are a few hyper-enlightened individuals who can walk through the inner city past groups of dangerous looking teenagers without their heart rates increasing. I suppose there are a few people who, on September 13th, 2001, could get on an airplane with a Muslim guy and not think, "Well that's off-putting." But I'd wager that most of us are like Juan Williams. We can admit that, though it's wrong, we do have preconceived notions about people and things. His point was, though, that we can feel like that instinctively, but our rational brains can override those feelings.
NPR didn't think rationally, they just instinctively fired the guy for a misconstrued half-statement. For a news company that pretends to be the rational one, that move was not very impressive.
You know Juan Williams of NPR? He got fired for saying, and I quote, "All Muslims are trying to kill us all the time, and I think we should just nuke the Middle East, gas chamber the shit out of Muslims, and live on in a peaceful world free of the Muslim scourge."
Or he might as well have, the way NPR's knee jerked him out of a job and into right-wing hero status. What he actually said was "Sure, when I see someone in Muslim garb on a plane, I get a little nervous, BUT OBVIOUSLY NOT ALL MUSLIMS ARE TERRORISTS."
It's just that the last little bit of information there was left off of basically all the reporting. This is similar to the Shirley Sherrod thing a while back when she got fired immediately after it was reported that she said she didn't help a white farmer because he was white. In that case, they left off the entire rest of her message, where she realized she was wrong for that, and used the story as a message of racial tolerance.
When I was a kid, I always thought it would be funny to edit together clips of people saying words and making them say ridiculous things. If you can find a clip of someone saying "I hate black licorice," and one of them saying "Hanukkah is a Jewish holiday," and one of them saying "People like to dance," you could make them say "I hate...Jewish...people." But now that this is ACTUALLY happening on the news, it's not nearly as funny.
Oftentimes to make a point in a debate, you have to show common ground with your opponent. I recently volunteered at a food bank, helping people get their government subsidized food to their cars. Right-wingers say government should not do this, and they often point to lazy minorities who have babies and collect government checks and don't look for work. Having seen what I saw, I would say "Yes, there are young minorities with six kids in tow picking up their free food, but the majority of these people were older, often foreign people who didn't save enough money or just need some help to get by, and I would hate to see these decent people punished because of a small number of government assistance abusers."
If that were shown on the news, my statement would be "There are minorities with six kids in tow picking up their free food."
This is not responsible journalism. I suppose there are a few hyper-enlightened individuals who can walk through the inner city past groups of dangerous looking teenagers without their heart rates increasing. I suppose there are a few people who, on September 13th, 2001, could get on an airplane with a Muslim guy and not think, "Well that's off-putting." But I'd wager that most of us are like Juan Williams. We can admit that, though it's wrong, we do have preconceived notions about people and things. His point was, though, that we can feel like that instinctively, but our rational brains can override those feelings.
NPR didn't think rationally, they just instinctively fired the guy for a misconstrued half-statement. For a news company that pretends to be the rational one, that move was not very impressive.
Friday, October 22, 2010
Friday, October 08, 2010
Thursday, October 07, 2010
Concerts are an interesting thing. Most of the concerts I've been to in my life are of the punk rock variety. I've been to a couple of hip hop concerts, and I've been to a couple of bigger, mainstream concerts. Last weekend I went to a Muse concert at the Pepsi Center. This is my review.
The Pepsi Center is not a good venue for music. There's a reason its main purpose is to house Nuggets and Avalanche games. Both of the concerts I've seen there have sounded muted and echoey. I have a feeling the acoustics in the venue are to blame, not the sound engineering, but it could be a combination of both. I realize that in downtown Denver there aren't many places capable of holding enough people for these bigger concerts, but unless the tour is something I'm not willing to miss (such as the Weezer/Foo Fighters tour a couple years ago), I don't think I'll be heading back to the Center anytime soon.
The opening band, Passion Pit, sucks. Their album, Manners, was reviewed very positively, which isn't surprising considering how much people are into synthesizers again. But, for all the fancy terms given to them by critics, they play nothing more and nothing less than disco music. Their stage presence is nonexistant, as they have up to THREE synthesizer players standing on stage, a drummer who I assume is there for show, since they have a drum machine in almost every track, and the world's most boring bass player. I was pleased to see that not many people in the house were really digging them, but their fans were hardcore, singing along and white-girl dancing (it's all in the arms!) to every song.
Muse came on with an elaborate stage set that had them all standing on elevated columns that also played video clips. It was kind of cool, but the stage also made everything seem too rehearsed for my tastes. It was almost robotic. Now the singer will move to the elevated left part of the stage for this song. Now they will move off the columns for two songs. Now they will move back on, and the columns will go back up. They sounded as fine as they could have. Vocals were unclear, but the instruments were rockin. The crowd loved the shit out of them. I don't know that much about them, but they played every song I wanted to hear. A guy screamed in my ear so loud constantly throughout the show that I thought I was going to pass out.
So, in conclusion, big concerts are fun, but I really prefer smaller shows. I don't like to be half a mile away from the band. I don't like the premeditated nature of the bigger concerts. I understand wanting to see a "show" when you go see a show, but I prefer to focus on the music. I like to see everyone on stage together, just playing music, and not making a full-on production out of it. And rap shows are just weird.
The Pepsi Center is not a good venue for music. There's a reason its main purpose is to house Nuggets and Avalanche games. Both of the concerts I've seen there have sounded muted and echoey. I have a feeling the acoustics in the venue are to blame, not the sound engineering, but it could be a combination of both. I realize that in downtown Denver there aren't many places capable of holding enough people for these bigger concerts, but unless the tour is something I'm not willing to miss (such as the Weezer/Foo Fighters tour a couple years ago), I don't think I'll be heading back to the Center anytime soon.
The opening band, Passion Pit, sucks. Their album, Manners, was reviewed very positively, which isn't surprising considering how much people are into synthesizers again. But, for all the fancy terms given to them by critics, they play nothing more and nothing less than disco music. Their stage presence is nonexistant, as they have up to THREE synthesizer players standing on stage, a drummer who I assume is there for show, since they have a drum machine in almost every track, and the world's most boring bass player. I was pleased to see that not many people in the house were really digging them, but their fans were hardcore, singing along and white-girl dancing (it's all in the arms!) to every song.
Muse came on with an elaborate stage set that had them all standing on elevated columns that also played video clips. It was kind of cool, but the stage also made everything seem too rehearsed for my tastes. It was almost robotic. Now the singer will move to the elevated left part of the stage for this song. Now they will move off the columns for two songs. Now they will move back on, and the columns will go back up. They sounded as fine as they could have. Vocals were unclear, but the instruments were rockin. The crowd loved the shit out of them. I don't know that much about them, but they played every song I wanted to hear. A guy screamed in my ear so loud constantly throughout the show that I thought I was going to pass out.
So, in conclusion, big concerts are fun, but I really prefer smaller shows. I don't like to be half a mile away from the band. I don't like the premeditated nature of the bigger concerts. I understand wanting to see a "show" when you go see a show, but I prefer to focus on the music. I like to see everyone on stage together, just playing music, and not making a full-on production out of it. And rap shows are just weird.
Wednesday, September 01, 2010
Someone stole my bike. It was a $350 awesome mountain bike that I got to ride about five times in Fort Collins before I learned I was to come to Denver. That averages out to $70 per ride. It wasn’t that awesome. I just want to put it on the record that I hope whoever stole my bike gets hit by a car while riding it and dies, because anyone who would steal a bike probably isn’t bringing anything good into this world. I doubt he stole my bike and then rode it to his job at the children’s hospital.
California tried to ban plastic shopping bags. On one level, this doesn’t surprise me, as California is notoriously liberal (even to this liberal writer). But really, California? You had to write IOUs to your taxpayers this year, and you’re worried about plastic bags? Your entire state is covered in a layer of smog so thick that you can draw pictures in it by waving your arms, and you think that getting rid of plastic bags is going to help the environment? It’s interesting, the problems we think need solving. Maybe revisit the plastic bag “issue” after you’ve figured out how to resolve your… well… all your other problems, really. Maybe start with the whole “we have no money and no jobs” thing.
Speaking of non-issues, people are upset that someone wants to build a community center with a mosque in it near ground zero. Where there is already a mosque. And porn stores, and fast food, and all kinds of other colorful businesses. It’s New York Fuckin’ City, man! The most diverse place quite possibly in the world. And it’s The United States of Fuckin’ America, man! Where regardless of whether you like it or not, people have the right to say and believe what they want. It’s amazing that these conservatives are rallying against it, when usually all they preach is “FREEDOM! Freedom to carry an assault rifle to the grocery store! Freedom to put the 10 Commandments in schools! Freedom to pray to Jesus Fuckin’ Christ in public schools!” But then some Muslims want to be allowed to worship and they go “Now hold on a second… I mean, freedom is all well and good for the white Christians that this country was built for, but these brown Muslims maybe shouldn’t be allowed to pray to their god here. After all, there are thousands of Muslims around the world who hate America, so excluding them from the freedoms everyone else has should remedy that/teach them a lesson.” I hate election season.
Speaking of hating politics, I guess the war in Iraq is over. Mission accomplished! Now there are no more combat operations, just tens of thousands of troops stationed there for “peacekeeping” or something, which is a different word that means the same thing.
Did you guys go to the Taking Back America rally or whatever that Glenn Beck did? The revolution’s a-comin’. Just as soon as they figure out exactly what they’re taking America back from and what their agenda is, other than racism. Did you know Glenn Beck is a Mormon? Interesting stuff!
I love these “dating shows” or whatever, where some “dating expert” or whatever teaches you how to “date” or whatever. The best one is The Pick Up Artist, in which an 8 foot tall dweeb who dresses like a wizard, whose name is Mystery, teaches nerds how to get girls. There’s a new one that’s a take on the same idea called Plain Jane, in which a snarky British woman teaches girls how to get guys.
Two side notes: 1. I wish I was born a snarky Brit, because I’m pretty sure they are Britain’s number one export at this point, and they’re all rich. 2. I can simplify the Plane Jane show. Step one: Girl puts on a low cut shirt. Step two: girl goes outside. Dates ensue.
Anyway, these shows are awesome, and they teach you an important lesson. They talk about how important self esteem is, and teach you conversational skills, and tell you that with confidence, anyone can be yours. Then they get you an entire new wardrobe, new hairstyle, makeup, etc. so that you look like a douchebag/whore (not gender specific). The lesson is, in the end it doesn’t matter what your personality is like. If you’re not attractive, you have no hope of ever finding someone who will love you. Thanks, TV!
California tried to ban plastic shopping bags. On one level, this doesn’t surprise me, as California is notoriously liberal (even to this liberal writer). But really, California? You had to write IOUs to your taxpayers this year, and you’re worried about plastic bags? Your entire state is covered in a layer of smog so thick that you can draw pictures in it by waving your arms, and you think that getting rid of plastic bags is going to help the environment? It’s interesting, the problems we think need solving. Maybe revisit the plastic bag “issue” after you’ve figured out how to resolve your… well… all your other problems, really. Maybe start with the whole “we have no money and no jobs” thing.
Speaking of non-issues, people are upset that someone wants to build a community center with a mosque in it near ground zero. Where there is already a mosque. And porn stores, and fast food, and all kinds of other colorful businesses. It’s New York Fuckin’ City, man! The most diverse place quite possibly in the world. And it’s The United States of Fuckin’ America, man! Where regardless of whether you like it or not, people have the right to say and believe what they want. It’s amazing that these conservatives are rallying against it, when usually all they preach is “FREEDOM! Freedom to carry an assault rifle to the grocery store! Freedom to put the 10 Commandments in schools! Freedom to pray to Jesus Fuckin’ Christ in public schools!” But then some Muslims want to be allowed to worship and they go “Now hold on a second… I mean, freedom is all well and good for the white Christians that this country was built for, but these brown Muslims maybe shouldn’t be allowed to pray to their god here. After all, there are thousands of Muslims around the world who hate America, so excluding them from the freedoms everyone else has should remedy that/teach them a lesson.” I hate election season.
Speaking of hating politics, I guess the war in Iraq is over. Mission accomplished! Now there are no more combat operations, just tens of thousands of troops stationed there for “peacekeeping” or something, which is a different word that means the same thing.
Did you guys go to the Taking Back America rally or whatever that Glenn Beck did? The revolution’s a-comin’. Just as soon as they figure out exactly what they’re taking America back from and what their agenda is, other than racism. Did you know Glenn Beck is a Mormon? Interesting stuff!
I love these “dating shows” or whatever, where some “dating expert” or whatever teaches you how to “date” or whatever. The best one is The Pick Up Artist, in which an 8 foot tall dweeb who dresses like a wizard, whose name is Mystery, teaches nerds how to get girls. There’s a new one that’s a take on the same idea called Plain Jane, in which a snarky British woman teaches girls how to get guys.
Two side notes: 1. I wish I was born a snarky Brit, because I’m pretty sure they are Britain’s number one export at this point, and they’re all rich. 2. I can simplify the Plane Jane show. Step one: Girl puts on a low cut shirt. Step two: girl goes outside. Dates ensue.
Anyway, these shows are awesome, and they teach you an important lesson. They talk about how important self esteem is, and teach you conversational skills, and tell you that with confidence, anyone can be yours. Then they get you an entire new wardrobe, new hairstyle, makeup, etc. so that you look like a douchebag/whore (not gender specific). The lesson is, in the end it doesn’t matter what your personality is like. If you’re not attractive, you have no hope of ever finding someone who will love you. Thanks, TV!
Tuesday, August 17, 2010
Hey, sports fans. No doubt you've noticed that some people like some sports more than other sports. Since all sports are not created equal, I have decided to publish the first ever official grading of sports, so that everyone knows once and for all what the best sports are. Behold, the ReSPORT Card!
Baseball: Once America's pastime, the sport of baseball has suffered from strikes and scandals over the years. It is sad that we lived in the steroid era and had to put up with the McGwires and Bondses. But now it seems like the numbers are deflating and we're actually watching athletes play a sport again. People who don't understand the sport criticize it for being too slow, but with each pitch having its own strategy, and each pitch having the potential to be important, baseball is an exciting game. Added bonus: they play almost every day, so you always have something you can throw on if there's nothing else happening. It's also really fun to play, since most people have the ability to throw and catch a ball. I think.
Watch: A-
Play: A
Football: At this point, it seems like football is the favorite sport in America. To the point where it's annoying. They play once a week for a few months, but we have to sit through analysis and predictions and speculation for about 11 months out of the year. And the draft, how fucking boring is the draft? And the fans! Nothing else gets drunk fat men to attend games shirtless in freezing weather, or groups of people to act like every Sunday is Halloween. It's all a little much. That said, I like to watch football. While it's true that there's really not much action during the game, every play has the potential to be exciting, and games are often evenly matched enough that there aren't TOO many blowouts. And it is fun to sit around with some friends and watch, because it's got the right mix of action and sit-around-talking-time. It CAN be fun to play, if you have the right mix of people, but it can also be really frustrating if you're, say, 5'7".
Watch: A-
Play: C+
Basketball: There are people who really like basketball. I'll say this about basketball: It has more actual action than football. I'll also say this about basketball: It's super boring. I'm just not impressed by giant freaks of nature stuffing a ball into a hoop. Can I do it? Not easily. But then, I'm not seven feet tall. Watching these men with monstrous 12 foot wingspans stuff a ball in a 10 foot tall hoop just isn't entertaining. Add to that the hundreds of time outs and stoppages of play, especially at the end of the game, and you have something that's just not fun to watch. The WNBA is even worse. Playing it is another matter, as you and your buddies are probably normal sized human beings, and even your little buddy who isn't athletic can probably manage to get the ball through the hoop every so often. Just don't play shirts and skins. Nobody wants to see your moobs flopping all over the place.
Watch: C-
Play: B
Hockey: Before the most recent strike, hockey was my favorite sport to watch on TV. I loved the hits, the amazing goals, the amazing saves, the fights. The sport seemed to move quickly back and forth. It's like soccer done right - full contact, small scale, and fast moving. For some reason, since the strike, I haven't been able to watch hockey. Maybe it's because my teams (Avs and Thrashers) aren't consistently good enough to pay attention to. I still like to watch it, but just not at the same level. That said, they play about every other day, and if there's nothing else on, hockey is still a solid bet for a fun evening. I can't ice skate, so I can't say that I know how fun it is to play. It looks like a blast, but it gets docked points for being more specialized than the other sports on the list.
Watch: B+
Play: C
Soccer: Normally I wouldn't include soccer on a list like this, but since we just got wrapped up in "World Cup Fever" I thought I'd mention again how much I dislike this sport. The pros: It's never on TV, and the World Cup only happens every four years. The cons: It's super boring to watch guys kick a ball back and forth across a court that seems to be the size of Rhode Island. Nothing ever happens. 1-0 is an exciting game. Every so often you have to listen to someone talk to you about why soccer is the greatest sport in the world. Look, all the fancy footwork in the world can't save the sport from the fact that 98% of the awesome tricks don't result in goals. The "amazing" footwork that kept the other team from stealing the ball will just result in an intercepted pass in a few seconds. The header or bicycle kick will sail 30 feet over, to the left, or to the right of the net the vast majority of the time. Just like the vast majority of non-fancy kicks. I'm not saying I can do what these guys do - but my shitty footwork can result in 0-0 ties just the same. Playing it is more fun than watching it, especially since all you really need to be able to play it are the will and ability to run run run run and run some more.
Watch: F
Play: C+
Baseball: Once America's pastime, the sport of baseball has suffered from strikes and scandals over the years. It is sad that we lived in the steroid era and had to put up with the McGwires and Bondses. But now it seems like the numbers are deflating and we're actually watching athletes play a sport again. People who don't understand the sport criticize it for being too slow, but with each pitch having its own strategy, and each pitch having the potential to be important, baseball is an exciting game. Added bonus: they play almost every day, so you always have something you can throw on if there's nothing else happening. It's also really fun to play, since most people have the ability to throw and catch a ball. I think.
Watch: A-
Play: A
Football: At this point, it seems like football is the favorite sport in America. To the point where it's annoying. They play once a week for a few months, but we have to sit through analysis and predictions and speculation for about 11 months out of the year. And the draft, how fucking boring is the draft? And the fans! Nothing else gets drunk fat men to attend games shirtless in freezing weather, or groups of people to act like every Sunday is Halloween. It's all a little much. That said, I like to watch football. While it's true that there's really not much action during the game, every play has the potential to be exciting, and games are often evenly matched enough that there aren't TOO many blowouts. And it is fun to sit around with some friends and watch, because it's got the right mix of action and sit-around-talking-time. It CAN be fun to play, if you have the right mix of people, but it can also be really frustrating if you're, say, 5'7".
Watch: A-
Play: C+
Basketball: There are people who really like basketball. I'll say this about basketball: It has more actual action than football. I'll also say this about basketball: It's super boring. I'm just not impressed by giant freaks of nature stuffing a ball into a hoop. Can I do it? Not easily. But then, I'm not seven feet tall. Watching these men with monstrous 12 foot wingspans stuff a ball in a 10 foot tall hoop just isn't entertaining. Add to that the hundreds of time outs and stoppages of play, especially at the end of the game, and you have something that's just not fun to watch. The WNBA is even worse. Playing it is another matter, as you and your buddies are probably normal sized human beings, and even your little buddy who isn't athletic can probably manage to get the ball through the hoop every so often. Just don't play shirts and skins. Nobody wants to see your moobs flopping all over the place.
Watch: C-
Play: B
Hockey: Before the most recent strike, hockey was my favorite sport to watch on TV. I loved the hits, the amazing goals, the amazing saves, the fights. The sport seemed to move quickly back and forth. It's like soccer done right - full contact, small scale, and fast moving. For some reason, since the strike, I haven't been able to watch hockey. Maybe it's because my teams (Avs and Thrashers) aren't consistently good enough to pay attention to. I still like to watch it, but just not at the same level. That said, they play about every other day, and if there's nothing else on, hockey is still a solid bet for a fun evening. I can't ice skate, so I can't say that I know how fun it is to play. It looks like a blast, but it gets docked points for being more specialized than the other sports on the list.
Watch: B+
Play: C
Soccer: Normally I wouldn't include soccer on a list like this, but since we just got wrapped up in "World Cup Fever" I thought I'd mention again how much I dislike this sport. The pros: It's never on TV, and the World Cup only happens every four years. The cons: It's super boring to watch guys kick a ball back and forth across a court that seems to be the size of Rhode Island. Nothing ever happens. 1-0 is an exciting game. Every so often you have to listen to someone talk to you about why soccer is the greatest sport in the world. Look, all the fancy footwork in the world can't save the sport from the fact that 98% of the awesome tricks don't result in goals. The "amazing" footwork that kept the other team from stealing the ball will just result in an intercepted pass in a few seconds. The header or bicycle kick will sail 30 feet over, to the left, or to the right of the net the vast majority of the time. Just like the vast majority of non-fancy kicks. I'm not saying I can do what these guys do - but my shitty footwork can result in 0-0 ties just the same. Playing it is more fun than watching it, especially since all you really need to be able to play it are the will and ability to run run run run and run some more.
Watch: F
Play: C+
Tuesday, August 10, 2010
I'd like someone to do a scientific poll to see if people who smoke cigarettes while driving are worse drivers than the rest of us. To me, it seems like people who smoke cigarettes in general are, for the most part, inconsiderate assholes anyway. I just notice that a large percentage of the time I'm behind some jackass driving 10 under the speed limit, swerving, and being a moron, after a couple minutes he or she will flick a cigarette out the window. Not to say that those are the only bad drivers on the road (please see: women in large SUV's talking on cell phones), but seriously. I'd like to know what percentage of smokers get in accidents versus non-smokers.
Now let's get down to business, shall we? Brass tacks, as they say for some reason. Show me the cheese, as I will from now on say. The time is now to commence with the subject of the day, and the subject of the day is decreed to be these new scanners at the airport. Maybe you've seen them.
That's pretty cool, right? A 3d image of a person being scanned that can catch all types of weapons, not just metal ones. It's like a metal detector, but way more thorough. Sorry, terrorists, your wooden knives and plastic bombs will no longer be able to terrorize us in the skies. The only objections to this technology should be that it takes a little longer than the metal detector. You do have to empty your pockets completely and stand in an awesome chamber for a minute in different positions in order to get all the images made. I saw one of these in Atlanta and wanted to go through it, but accidentally got in the wrong line. Luckily, they're coming to Denver, soon!
BUT WAIT! Here come the crazies! They're coming in to protest these magic machines of the future. What's their problem, you ask? That these machines show outlines of naked bodies! Hide the women and children, and head for the hills, because we all know what these new scanners are all about. Free porn for the TSA! Now that you know how raunchy and, well, just plain sexy those pictures are, go back and take a look at them again. And just try to keep your hands out of your pants. Those terrifying glowing aliens with outlines of penises and boobies really turn me... on?
Look, if someone at some point says mandatory strip searches for everyone before they get on a plane, I'll have an issue. And no, I don't necessarily want everyone in the world looking at my junk and fat rolls. But when faced with a choice of having someone see an outline of my body, or being killed in an airplane, I'll take the exhibitionist route. I'm sure that perverts know there are actual naked people available at millions of places online for free, and I don't expect an influx of sex freaks into the TSA. And even if there is, so what? The people who check these images sit in a different room, so they can't glance back and forth between your scary alien body and your real body to try to fill in the blanks. They will see hundreds of these images per hour. They're not going to save and print the hottest images for "review" later. And if they do, you won't know about it, so who the hell cares?
Seriously, people. Priorities. If you are so upset about someone seeing an outline of you naked that you're willing to risk your life and hundreds of others, maybe you should hit the gym.
In other news, Levi Johnson is making a reality show about running for mayor of Wasilla, AK. The only reality show I want to watch about anyone related to the Palin family is one where they get dropped off in the African savanna and get eaten by lions.
Now let's get down to business, shall we? Brass tacks, as they say for some reason. Show me the cheese, as I will from now on say. The time is now to commence with the subject of the day, and the subject of the day is decreed to be these new scanners at the airport. Maybe you've seen them.
That's pretty cool, right? A 3d image of a person being scanned that can catch all types of weapons, not just metal ones. It's like a metal detector, but way more thorough. Sorry, terrorists, your wooden knives and plastic bombs will no longer be able to terrorize us in the skies. The only objections to this technology should be that it takes a little longer than the metal detector. You do have to empty your pockets completely and stand in an awesome chamber for a minute in different positions in order to get all the images made. I saw one of these in Atlanta and wanted to go through it, but accidentally got in the wrong line. Luckily, they're coming to Denver, soon!
BUT WAIT! Here come the crazies! They're coming in to protest these magic machines of the future. What's their problem, you ask? That these machines show outlines of naked bodies! Hide the women and children, and head for the hills, because we all know what these new scanners are all about. Free porn for the TSA! Now that you know how raunchy and, well, just plain sexy those pictures are, go back and take a look at them again. And just try to keep your hands out of your pants. Those terrifying glowing aliens with outlines of penises and boobies really turn me... on?
Look, if someone at some point says mandatory strip searches for everyone before they get on a plane, I'll have an issue. And no, I don't necessarily want everyone in the world looking at my junk and fat rolls. But when faced with a choice of having someone see an outline of my body, or being killed in an airplane, I'll take the exhibitionist route. I'm sure that perverts know there are actual naked people available at millions of places online for free, and I don't expect an influx of sex freaks into the TSA. And even if there is, so what? The people who check these images sit in a different room, so they can't glance back and forth between your scary alien body and your real body to try to fill in the blanks. They will see hundreds of these images per hour. They're not going to save and print the hottest images for "review" later. And if they do, you won't know about it, so who the hell cares?
Seriously, people. Priorities. If you are so upset about someone seeing an outline of you naked that you're willing to risk your life and hundreds of others, maybe you should hit the gym.
In other news, Levi Johnson is making a reality show about running for mayor of Wasilla, AK. The only reality show I want to watch about anyone related to the Palin family is one where they get dropped off in the African savanna and get eaten by lions.
Monday, August 02, 2010
Well, shit. It's August -- wait, it's August? How'd that happen? There were at least two occasions in July when I was all set to post a blog update, but it just never happened. And so, for all intents and purposes for this blog, I did not exist during the month of July. I'm okay with that. Here's what I would've mentioned, had I not been such a slacker:
1. Infinite Jest. Still going strong, though I've slowed down my pace due to other things going on (see point number 2). The goal is to finish the book by August 14th, which is when I'm leaving to go to the Outer Banks. 12 days. About 300 pages. Should be easy enough, hopefully. Still an awesome, awesome book.
2. My off-off-Broadway acting debut. Huh? Yes. Got wrangled into performing in this really really really really really bad one act play. It was fun, but not for reasons that rehearsing should be fun -- instead, it came down to just making fun of how horrible the script was. But yeah, it had a one week run, five performances. Right in the heart of the theater district downtown in Manhattan. Crazy. I'm a superstar now, I should have you know. Part of the reason I was distracted during the end of July was because I was out partying with the likes of Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, and Paulie Shore. Good times!
3. Futurama. I'm glad it's back. It had a phenomenal return episode, then got a little bumpy as it found its feet again, but has steadily improved since episode 2. Last week's episode featured time travel, which is pretty much the way to win me over. (In anything. Entertainment, sci-fi, love.) Here's to hoping they've gotten whatever kinks out they needed to get out, and now they've hit their stride and will continue to go strong. Either way, I'm glad it's back. I do enjoy those characters very much.
4. American Idiot (the Broadway musical). My sister came up here to spend a few days palling around with me in the city before seeing my play and promptly leaving in the very early A.M. the following day. During that time, we got cheap tickets to see the new Broadway-ed version of American Idiot. Consensus? So-so. The good: solid soundtrack that doesn't suffer from too much Broadway-ization. A few songs are Broadway-ed up, but, for the most part, it's pretty good. I never really listened to the album, but it definitely make me want to go back and dig out the old CD. The bad: there's basically no book. It's like they assumed that the songs themselves were strong enough to carry three (!) storylines. The songs are good, but they're not THAT good. Also, don't even get me started on the main dude's talking voice.
5. Inception. I've seen it twice now -- once with friends, the other with my sister. I like it. Quite a bit, even. But I don't love it. It's a great excuse to set up four or five super awesome sequences, but the rest of it seems kind of uneven. Also, can we all agree that Ellen Page's character is hella annoying? And it's totally not her fault -- the script makes her an auxiliary to the story instead of a character. Still, totally worth seeing on the big screen for those cool shots alone. But it's already at the #3 slot on IMDB's top 250, and I don't agree with that. It deserves to be on the list -- somewhere in the top 100, even, for sure -- but #3? (And Toy Story 3 is still up there, at #10. Another movie that's good, but not THAT good. [I just did that "THAT" thing at the end of the last paragraph. Sorry.])
6. Concerts. Haven't been to any since the Josh Ritter one way back when, I don't think. But I picked up tickets to see the Avett Brothers at Radio City. Seems like an odd venue for them, but I'm excited. Show's not until October, though.
Okay, I guess that's about it. If I think of anything else, I'll intend to update this blog, but then put it off for a month.
1. Infinite Jest. Still going strong, though I've slowed down my pace due to other things going on (see point number 2). The goal is to finish the book by August 14th, which is when I'm leaving to go to the Outer Banks. 12 days. About 300 pages. Should be easy enough, hopefully. Still an awesome, awesome book.
2. My off-off-Broadway acting debut. Huh? Yes. Got wrangled into performing in this really really really really really bad one act play. It was fun, but not for reasons that rehearsing should be fun -- instead, it came down to just making fun of how horrible the script was. But yeah, it had a one week run, five performances. Right in the heart of the theater district downtown in Manhattan. Crazy. I'm a superstar now, I should have you know. Part of the reason I was distracted during the end of July was because I was out partying with the likes of Brad Pitt, Angelina Jolie, and Paulie Shore. Good times!
3. Futurama. I'm glad it's back. It had a phenomenal return episode, then got a little bumpy as it found its feet again, but has steadily improved since episode 2. Last week's episode featured time travel, which is pretty much the way to win me over. (In anything. Entertainment, sci-fi, love.) Here's to hoping they've gotten whatever kinks out they needed to get out, and now they've hit their stride and will continue to go strong. Either way, I'm glad it's back. I do enjoy those characters very much.
4. American Idiot (the Broadway musical). My sister came up here to spend a few days palling around with me in the city before seeing my play and promptly leaving in the very early A.M. the following day. During that time, we got cheap tickets to see the new Broadway-ed version of American Idiot. Consensus? So-so. The good: solid soundtrack that doesn't suffer from too much Broadway-ization. A few songs are Broadway-ed up, but, for the most part, it's pretty good. I never really listened to the album, but it definitely make me want to go back and dig out the old CD. The bad: there's basically no book. It's like they assumed that the songs themselves were strong enough to carry three (!) storylines. The songs are good, but they're not THAT good. Also, don't even get me started on the main dude's talking voice.
5. Inception. I've seen it twice now -- once with friends, the other with my sister. I like it. Quite a bit, even. But I don't love it. It's a great excuse to set up four or five super awesome sequences, but the rest of it seems kind of uneven. Also, can we all agree that Ellen Page's character is hella annoying? And it's totally not her fault -- the script makes her an auxiliary to the story instead of a character. Still, totally worth seeing on the big screen for those cool shots alone. But it's already at the #3 slot on IMDB's top 250, and I don't agree with that. It deserves to be on the list -- somewhere in the top 100, even, for sure -- but #3? (And Toy Story 3 is still up there, at #10. Another movie that's good, but not THAT good. [I just did that "THAT" thing at the end of the last paragraph. Sorry.])
6. Concerts. Haven't been to any since the Josh Ritter one way back when, I don't think. But I picked up tickets to see the Avett Brothers at Radio City. Seems like an odd venue for them, but I'm excited. Show's not until October, though.
Okay, I guess that's about it. If I think of anything else, I'll intend to update this blog, but then put it off for a month.
Thursday, July 22, 2010
It’s Summer, and you know what that means: Nothing is on TV. You could go outside, but it’s hot and there are bugs out there. Instead, why doesn’t someone make some of these new shows that I have come up with?
Survivor Bachelor – One man and 12 women are forced to live on an island for 90 days. Instead of getting roses, the women who don’t get eaten are the ones the bachelor wants to continue “dating.” The last surviving woman wins $10,000 and is forced to marry the bachelor, so they have someone who will understand the unspeakable horrors they witnessed and were a part of.
Bottom Chef – 17 contestants from all over the country are picked, who have little to no experience cooking, and go through the same challenges they go through on Top Chef. Expect a lot less purees, souvees, and other French words; and a lot more variations on sandwiches and mac and cheese. It’s like Top Chef, except you can actually relate to it.
VAMPIORS – Since we are right at the crest of the vampire craze in this country, it would probably make sense for someone to try a show about them. They could live among humans, or like in a gated community. They could be teenagers, or middle aged. They could go out in the sun or not. Really, as long as they have slightly elongated canine teeth, that’s probably good. I’m surprised no one has taken advantage of this idea yet.
Oil Spill LIVE with Regis and Kelly – Take Regis and Kelly, or whoever his counterpart is these days, and put them in a robot drilling machine, and have them interview celebrities or whatever they do, but have them do it down by the oil spill. I don’t think the oil spill has gotten enough publicity recently, and this would certainly help people remember what a horrifying and dangerous world we live in, while simultaneously being amazed that Regis is still allowed to be on TV.
Newspaper at 7 – Any local channel could do this show. Have someone read the newspaper on TV. We’ve all been hearing that newspapers are dying out, but TV sure as shit isn’t going anywhere. So what better way to bring newspapers into the 21st century than have them read on TV in glorious high definition? To captivate the young male audience, the presenter can hold the bra ads up to the camera for a few seconds.
The Hills of the City of Beverly Hills 90210’s Real Desperate Housewives of The Jersey Shore – Take all the people who have been on any of these shows and put them into a house with no exit, filled with booby traps and AK-47’s. And just see what happens!
B&A Records – Two wise cracking twenty-somethings who for some reason own a record store that hasn’t gone out of business stand around and make fun of customers for 22 minutes. They work close to a sandwich restaurant which closely resembles Subway, and they go there for lunch. On second thought, that’s a terrible idea for a show.
Survivor Bachelor – One man and 12 women are forced to live on an island for 90 days. Instead of getting roses, the women who don’t get eaten are the ones the bachelor wants to continue “dating.” The last surviving woman wins $10,000 and is forced to marry the bachelor, so they have someone who will understand the unspeakable horrors they witnessed and were a part of.
Bottom Chef – 17 contestants from all over the country are picked, who have little to no experience cooking, and go through the same challenges they go through on Top Chef. Expect a lot less purees, souvees, and other French words; and a lot more variations on sandwiches and mac and cheese. It’s like Top Chef, except you can actually relate to it.
VAMPIORS – Since we are right at the crest of the vampire craze in this country, it would probably make sense for someone to try a show about them. They could live among humans, or like in a gated community. They could be teenagers, or middle aged. They could go out in the sun or not. Really, as long as they have slightly elongated canine teeth, that’s probably good. I’m surprised no one has taken advantage of this idea yet.
Oil Spill LIVE with Regis and Kelly – Take Regis and Kelly, or whoever his counterpart is these days, and put them in a robot drilling machine, and have them interview celebrities or whatever they do, but have them do it down by the oil spill. I don’t think the oil spill has gotten enough publicity recently, and this would certainly help people remember what a horrifying and dangerous world we live in, while simultaneously being amazed that Regis is still allowed to be on TV.
Newspaper at 7 – Any local channel could do this show. Have someone read the newspaper on TV. We’ve all been hearing that newspapers are dying out, but TV sure as shit isn’t going anywhere. So what better way to bring newspapers into the 21st century than have them read on TV in glorious high definition? To captivate the young male audience, the presenter can hold the bra ads up to the camera for a few seconds.
The Hills of the City of Beverly Hills 90210’s Real Desperate Housewives of The Jersey Shore – Take all the people who have been on any of these shows and put them into a house with no exit, filled with booby traps and AK-47’s. And just see what happens!
B&A Records – Two wise cracking twenty-somethings who for some reason own a record store that hasn’t gone out of business stand around and make fun of customers for 22 minutes. They work close to a sandwich restaurant which closely resembles Subway, and they go there for lunch. On second thought, that’s a terrible idea for a show.
Monday, July 19, 2010
Dear True Blood,
What has become of you? You were a fun little show about vampires that had gratuitous violence and nudity every episode. That first season, where we were looking for the murderer in Bon Temps, that was some of the most fun I've had watching TV in a while. Remember how you were just like a cool show that just happened to have vampires in it? It wasn't even like you were shoving the vampires in my face, being all like "LOOK AT VAMPIERS!" or anything back in those days. Maybe it was because the vampires had just come out, and thanks to the drink True Blood, they were able to exist without feeding on people. There was this tense, almost cease-fire balance between vampires and humans, echoing the desegregation era in American history. There was mystery, intrigue, and lots and lots of violence and sex.
Our second get together was pretty fun, too. That crazy Marianne with her bull head and freaky horns. The shapeshifters. Sure, we kind of left behind the whole family dynamic that Sookie and her brother and friend had, but it was okay. The whole social commentary aspect was kind of gone, too, but it was still fun to watch all these dummies get corrupted by Marianne. And Jason getting into the crazy church, and Godric, there was a lot of good stuff! A little more ridiculous, sure, but still cool.
But now, on our third date, I feel like I might as well be watching Twilight, what with the vampires, the werewolves, and all the mopey mopeitty moping going on. This is my impression of your new season so far:
SOOKIE: MOPE MOPE MOPE Where's Bill? MOPE MOPE MOPE
BILL: MOPE MOPE I am taken away from my love and held hostage MOPE BE KIND OF AWESOME MOPE
TARA: MOPE MOPE I have nothing to live for because I'm a useless waste of time pain in the ass who never does anything. MOPE MOPE
SAM: MOPE MOPE My family is a bunch of jerks and I wish I'd never found them. MOPE MOPE MOPE
ALCIDE: MOPE MOPE My lady is a whore and I wish she wasn't. MOPE MOPE
You're five episodes in, and nothing has happened with any of these main characters. By this time last year, Marianne was making people have orgies, Godric was missing and Sookie was on the case. At this time this year, Sookie has stopped moping in Bon Temps and started moping in Mississippi. Tara the same thing. Sam found his family and they suck. Bill got kidnapped and is still kidnapped. None of the characters really seem to be going down storylines that relate to each other anymore. The werewolves don't seem fierce. There's not nearly as much good old fashioned violence or nudity. What happened to your edge?
At least your vampires can't go outside in the sun, and they're not sparkly. But still. If I wanted to watch Twilight, I'd throw my nuts in the closet and watch it. But I don't. So how'sabout you get back to what you do best: killing and screwing.
Thanks,
Adam
What has become of you? You were a fun little show about vampires that had gratuitous violence and nudity every episode. That first season, where we were looking for the murderer in Bon Temps, that was some of the most fun I've had watching TV in a while. Remember how you were just like a cool show that just happened to have vampires in it? It wasn't even like you were shoving the vampires in my face, being all like "LOOK AT VAMPIERS!" or anything back in those days. Maybe it was because the vampires had just come out, and thanks to the drink True Blood, they were able to exist without feeding on people. There was this tense, almost cease-fire balance between vampires and humans, echoing the desegregation era in American history. There was mystery, intrigue, and lots and lots of violence and sex.
Our second get together was pretty fun, too. That crazy Marianne with her bull head and freaky horns. The shapeshifters. Sure, we kind of left behind the whole family dynamic that Sookie and her brother and friend had, but it was okay. The whole social commentary aspect was kind of gone, too, but it was still fun to watch all these dummies get corrupted by Marianne. And Jason getting into the crazy church, and Godric, there was a lot of good stuff! A little more ridiculous, sure, but still cool.
But now, on our third date, I feel like I might as well be watching Twilight, what with the vampires, the werewolves, and all the mopey mopeitty moping going on. This is my impression of your new season so far:
SOOKIE: MOPE MOPE MOPE Where's Bill? MOPE MOPE MOPE
BILL: MOPE MOPE I am taken away from my love and held hostage MOPE BE KIND OF AWESOME MOPE
TARA: MOPE MOPE I have nothing to live for because I'm a useless waste of time pain in the ass who never does anything. MOPE MOPE
SAM: MOPE MOPE My family is a bunch of jerks and I wish I'd never found them. MOPE MOPE MOPE
ALCIDE: MOPE MOPE My lady is a whore and I wish she wasn't. MOPE MOPE
You're five episodes in, and nothing has happened with any of these main characters. By this time last year, Marianne was making people have orgies, Godric was missing and Sookie was on the case. At this time this year, Sookie has stopped moping in Bon Temps and started moping in Mississippi. Tara the same thing. Sam found his family and they suck. Bill got kidnapped and is still kidnapped. None of the characters really seem to be going down storylines that relate to each other anymore. The werewolves don't seem fierce. There's not nearly as much good old fashioned violence or nudity. What happened to your edge?
At least your vampires can't go outside in the sun, and they're not sparkly. But still. If I wanted to watch Twilight, I'd throw my nuts in the closet and watch it. But I don't. So how'sabout you get back to what you do best: killing and screwing.
Thanks,
Adam
Tuesday, June 29, 2010
First, the Good Stuff: I've started reading the massive, 1079-page epic known as Infinite Jest. I am currently on page 240. My analysis so far? It's been surprisingly easy to read. I was expecting some intricately dense and complex novel that was going to be somewhat punishing to read; thankfully, it's nothing like that at all. Instead, it's quite reader-friendly. It's also hilarious. Sure, there are parts that are slower/harder to get through than others, but I've been able to plow through the first 240 pages (and about 20 pages of footnotes) in 11 days. I don't know if that's actually a fast pace or not, but the point is: it's going by quickly.
What I do know, and what I wanted to share with you, is that there are passages in this novel that are just stunning. Like, I just want to give up writing forever, because there's no way that I'm ever going to be able to craft anything as good as some of these passages. They're so good, I want to go back and re-read them, even if they're six or seven pages long (which, for this book, can take a while). I wish I could just sit here and transcribe them for you, but not only would that be copyright infringement, it would also not be as meaningful taken out of context. Thus, the best I can do is say: Read this book. It'll take a long time to finish, but I'm already ready to say it'll be worth it. And when you do, I can tell you all about those amazing parts that you'll surely also find amazing.
Now the Bad Stuff: What's up with Rock Band's DLC recently? Pantera, Deftones, Ozzy Osbourne (but Ozzy songs that no one cares about), Miley Cyrus, then, after I didn't think it could get any worse than Miley-fucking-Cyrus, Nickelback? I just hope that next week is something like Radiohead's OK Computer or something. They really need to redeem themselves. It's a good thing those Rock Band Network songs are slowly trickling onto the PS3. If it weren't for those, I would've only bought one song (a Spoon single) since mid-May. Crazy.
What I do know, and what I wanted to share with you, is that there are passages in this novel that are just stunning. Like, I just want to give up writing forever, because there's no way that I'm ever going to be able to craft anything as good as some of these passages. They're so good, I want to go back and re-read them, even if they're six or seven pages long (which, for this book, can take a while). I wish I could just sit here and transcribe them for you, but not only would that be copyright infringement, it would also not be as meaningful taken out of context. Thus, the best I can do is say: Read this book. It'll take a long time to finish, but I'm already ready to say it'll be worth it. And when you do, I can tell you all about those amazing parts that you'll surely also find amazing.
Now the Bad Stuff: What's up with Rock Band's DLC recently? Pantera, Deftones, Ozzy Osbourne (but Ozzy songs that no one cares about), Miley Cyrus, then, after I didn't think it could get any worse than Miley-fucking-Cyrus, Nickelback? I just hope that next week is something like Radiohead's OK Computer or something. They really need to redeem themselves. It's a good thing those Rock Band Network songs are slowly trickling onto the PS3. If it weren't for those, I would've only bought one song (a Spoon single) since mid-May. Crazy.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Allow me to explain why Fahrenheit is the superior temperature scale to Celsius.
First, let’s take a look at the men that the scales are based on. John P. Fahrenheit was a children’s doctor who rode unicorns whilst saving nuns from evil henchmen. Xavier Q. Celsius was a dirty rotten thief, and his mother was a whore.
But those two completely historically accurate facts are irrelevant! Some people like that Celsius “logically” goes from 0 (the freezing point of water) to 100 (the boiling point of water), whereas Fahrenheit’s freezing/boiling points are 32 and 212. That would be logical, if we were water! But we’re not water, we’re people. Therefore Fahrenheit’s scale of 0 (freezing nuts) to 100 (hot as balls) makes more sense for us. 100 degrees Fahrenheit is equal to about 38 degrees Celsius. 38 degrees doesn’t really have the same ring to it as 100 degrees. “Boy, it’s hot out here. It’s almost THIRTY EIGHT!”
Fahrenheit is better because there are more degrees, so it’s more accurate. Between 32 and 100, we have 68 degree options, whereas for the same temperatures Celsius has 38. That means we can be more accurate without resorting to decimals (although the rest of the world that uses Celsius also uses the Metric system, so they probably fucking love the shit out of decimals). We can easily differentiate between 65 and 66 degrees without saying 18.3 and 18.8. And we all know how big a difference there is between 65 and 66 degrees. 18 degrees Celsius could mean literally anything (between 65 and 66 degrees)!
I think I’ve illustrated pretty clearly here why America rules and why Algeria can suck it. Suck it, Algeria!
First, let’s take a look at the men that the scales are based on. John P. Fahrenheit was a children’s doctor who rode unicorns whilst saving nuns from evil henchmen. Xavier Q. Celsius was a dirty rotten thief, and his mother was a whore.
But those two completely historically accurate facts are irrelevant! Some people like that Celsius “logically” goes from 0 (the freezing point of water) to 100 (the boiling point of water), whereas Fahrenheit’s freezing/boiling points are 32 and 212. That would be logical, if we were water! But we’re not water, we’re people. Therefore Fahrenheit’s scale of 0 (freezing nuts) to 100 (hot as balls) makes more sense for us. 100 degrees Fahrenheit is equal to about 38 degrees Celsius. 38 degrees doesn’t really have the same ring to it as 100 degrees. “Boy, it’s hot out here. It’s almost THIRTY EIGHT!”
Fahrenheit is better because there are more degrees, so it’s more accurate. Between 32 and 100, we have 68 degree options, whereas for the same temperatures Celsius has 38. That means we can be more accurate without resorting to decimals (although the rest of the world that uses Celsius also uses the Metric system, so they probably fucking love the shit out of decimals). We can easily differentiate between 65 and 66 degrees without saying 18.3 and 18.8. And we all know how big a difference there is between 65 and 66 degrees. 18 degrees Celsius could mean literally anything (between 65 and 66 degrees)!
I think I’ve illustrated pretty clearly here why America rules and why Algeria can suck it. Suck it, Algeria!
Friday, June 18, 2010
The Gaslight Anthem has grown up. That seems to be the theme of their new album, American Slang. This is an older band. One that's matured since the days they'd blaze through two-and-a-half minute punk (?) songs on their debut LP, Sink or Swim. They aren't the sentimental, reference-filled band from The '59 Sound. There are no Marias on American Slang. No Virginias. They still talk about dancing and friends and the city, but it's not the same. Which is a risky move, considering they could've rested on their laurels and released The '59 Sound: Part 2 and it would've been a huge success. Instead, they take the overall sound of what they did before, revamped it a little, tweaked the lyrical content, and released an amazing record.
(I was going to go into this whole in-depth review thing, but then I realized we aren't Pitchfork [thank god], so I'll spare you. Instead, the highlights.) "Stay Lucky," "Bring it On," "Boxer," "Old Haunts," and "We Did it When We Were Young" are the stand-outs for me. "The Diamond Church Street Choir" is pretty good, but Brian's voice (which, let's be honest, has never been the best voice in the world) kind of loses it. "The Queen of Lower Chelsea" is the only somewhat disappointing tune, to me. It's a slower jam, which I'm cool with ("Blue Jeans and White T-Shirts" is one of my favorite Gaslight songs, plus the aforementioned "We Did It"), but it just doesn't seem to ever reach a climactic point or something. I like it, but that one guitar riff kind of annoys me. Oh well.
So, is American Slang better than The '59 Sound? Hard for me to say right now. I do know I like it a helluva lot. They faced a daunting task, following up an album as strong as The '59 Sound. And they complicate matters even more by establishing a change in tone. Thankfully, they pulled it off. I think American Slang might be a transitional album for The Gaslight Anthem. I wouldn't be surprised if, a few years from now, we get an even more polished, an even more mature band.
(Also, bravo to Against Me! I agree with Adam -- their new album rocks. I have to tell myself it's a different band from the Axl Rose days, but Tom's still got it. He knows how to write a hook, that's for sure. With White Crosses, Against Me! was either going to go by the indie-label-to-major-label wayside, or reinstate their relevance. I'm glad they're still around.)
(I was going to go into this whole in-depth review thing, but then I realized we aren't Pitchfork [thank god], so I'll spare you. Instead, the highlights.) "Stay Lucky," "Bring it On," "Boxer," "Old Haunts," and "We Did it When We Were Young" are the stand-outs for me. "The Diamond Church Street Choir" is pretty good, but Brian's voice (which, let's be honest, has never been the best voice in the world) kind of loses it. "The Queen of Lower Chelsea" is the only somewhat disappointing tune, to me. It's a slower jam, which I'm cool with ("Blue Jeans and White T-Shirts" is one of my favorite Gaslight songs, plus the aforementioned "We Did It"), but it just doesn't seem to ever reach a climactic point or something. I like it, but that one guitar riff kind of annoys me. Oh well.
So, is American Slang better than The '59 Sound? Hard for me to say right now. I do know I like it a helluva lot. They faced a daunting task, following up an album as strong as The '59 Sound. And they complicate matters even more by establishing a change in tone. Thankfully, they pulled it off. I think American Slang might be a transitional album for The Gaslight Anthem. I wouldn't be surprised if, a few years from now, we get an even more polished, an even more mature band.
(Also, bravo to Against Me! I agree with Adam -- their new album rocks. I have to tell myself it's a different band from the Axl Rose days, but Tom's still got it. He knows how to write a hook, that's for sure. With White Crosses, Against Me! was either going to go by the indie-label-to-major-label wayside, or reinstate their relevance. I'm glad they're still around.)
Monday, June 14, 2010
Your pretentious, “worldly” friends who love anything other countries appreciate have probably told you the World Cup is happening, and you probably (hopefully) looked at them kind of cockeyed and went back to not giving a shit about soccer (which, by the way, those friends will call football, even though this is America and the sport is called soccer here, because we speak American English). People who are trying desperately to be cultured by pretending to appreciate soccer will always come to you with their one point – soccer is the most popular sport in the world, so it must be worth liking. “Untrue!” I say. McDonalds is like the most popular restaurant in the world, but does that make the food good? No. It’s popular because it’s cheap and fast. The same reasons soccer is popular.
That’s right. Soccer is the disgusting fast food of sports. It’s popular because it can be thrown together for six cents and anyone can play it. Have a field? Have anything to kick? Then you can play soccer! You don’t need a bat, or a special stadium, or any sticks or any talent, or even a ball! You could play soccer with a chicken, or a rock. Literally all you need to be able to do is run. Or in the case of being a goalie, all you need to be able to do is stand in the way of things. How could soccer not be the most popular sport in the world when it can be played everywhere from the richest cities in the world to the poorest villages? That’s also why youth soccer is so popular. Before kids have any kind of coordination, they’re able to run after a ball and tire themselves out.
But eventually, we grow up and like more complex things. Soccer is just too simplistic. There are some rules, such as:
1. If a team kicks a ball into a goal, they score
2. The team who scores the most wins
3. Don’t use your hands
4. If someone looks at you, fall down on the ground and start crying like a bitch and writhing in pain
Far as I can tell, that’s about it. And as far as strategy goes, it seems to be “run faster than the other guys, and if you can’t do that, then try a pass in front of the goal and hope someone who’s standing there can bonk it with his head into the net” because for some reason you can use literally any part of your body except the hands.
Soccer also blows because its penalties are stupid. Aside from the aforementioned “hand ball,” you can get penalized for touching someone while trying to steal the ball from them. You slide to get the ball, you accidentally touch the other guy, and then we spend 15 minutes watching him cry for mommy, then pop right back up and start running around again. I’d love to see some of these pussies actually take a hit, like in real sports. And to top that all off, if you actually get someone out in front of all his defenders and you pass to him, you get called for offsides! Unbelievably, in the world’s most boring, lowest scoring sport, they actually penalize you for creating a good scoring chance. It’s like soccer fans are really just in it for the running, and not so much the scoring. Soccer is like watching a 90 minute long race that doesn’t have a finish line and nobody wins.
Speaking of 90 minutes, the clock in soccer anticlimactically climbs upwards to 90 minutes, never stopping, before some arbitrary amount of “stoppage time” is added by a referee. So when they’re resetting the ball after it goes out of bounds for the 750th time that game, or some wiener is laying there acting hurt, the game is technically still going on, so there’s no kind of strategizing with the clock. Just kicking the ball back and forth lazily until 90 minutes has gone by. There’s a half time so these distance runners can adjust their shin guards, but aside from that, nothing. And just to sap any excitement that might be left out of the sport, you don’t even get thrilling countdown moments where the clock has entered the last minute of play and it’s counting down…ten…nine…eight… Nope! After the clock counts UP to 90 minutes, the game goes on for a few more minutes and then it just ends when a ref has decided he’s ready to go home.
If you like your sports played in binary, soccer is the score for you. Let’s take a look at the scores from the first round or whatever of the World Cup. 1-1, 1-0, 1-1, 0-1, 0-1, 1-0, 1-1, 0-0 (!!). Granted, every once in a while you get a blowout like South Korea over Greece (2-0), or you’ll have a game where a continent forgets to send players (Germany’s 4-0 over Australia). But the vast majority end in some variation of 1-0, with some games even ending with no score, which would make a normal person feel like they’d just wasted hours of their life watching it. And that’s another thing. Ties!? In a tournament!? I mean it makes sense in that if we had to play to a win, games could take months, years even. But I feel like the World Cup is essentially the playoffs of soccer, and what other sport lets a game tie in the playoffs?
Look, even if we ignore the God-awful fans of the sport, soccer blows. It’s engineered to be as boring as possible, with penalties for anything exciting and a clock that counts up. If you love watching people run, just watch track and field. At least someone wins every time.
That’s right. Soccer is the disgusting fast food of sports. It’s popular because it can be thrown together for six cents and anyone can play it. Have a field? Have anything to kick? Then you can play soccer! You don’t need a bat, or a special stadium, or any sticks or any talent, or even a ball! You could play soccer with a chicken, or a rock. Literally all you need to be able to do is run. Or in the case of being a goalie, all you need to be able to do is stand in the way of things. How could soccer not be the most popular sport in the world when it can be played everywhere from the richest cities in the world to the poorest villages? That’s also why youth soccer is so popular. Before kids have any kind of coordination, they’re able to run after a ball and tire themselves out.
But eventually, we grow up and like more complex things. Soccer is just too simplistic. There are some rules, such as:
1. If a team kicks a ball into a goal, they score
2. The team who scores the most wins
3. Don’t use your hands
4. If someone looks at you, fall down on the ground and start crying like a bitch and writhing in pain
Far as I can tell, that’s about it. And as far as strategy goes, it seems to be “run faster than the other guys, and if you can’t do that, then try a pass in front of the goal and hope someone who’s standing there can bonk it with his head into the net” because for some reason you can use literally any part of your body except the hands.
Soccer also blows because its penalties are stupid. Aside from the aforementioned “hand ball,” you can get penalized for touching someone while trying to steal the ball from them. You slide to get the ball, you accidentally touch the other guy, and then we spend 15 minutes watching him cry for mommy, then pop right back up and start running around again. I’d love to see some of these pussies actually take a hit, like in real sports. And to top that all off, if you actually get someone out in front of all his defenders and you pass to him, you get called for offsides! Unbelievably, in the world’s most boring, lowest scoring sport, they actually penalize you for creating a good scoring chance. It’s like soccer fans are really just in it for the running, and not so much the scoring. Soccer is like watching a 90 minute long race that doesn’t have a finish line and nobody wins.
Speaking of 90 minutes, the clock in soccer anticlimactically climbs upwards to 90 minutes, never stopping, before some arbitrary amount of “stoppage time” is added by a referee. So when they’re resetting the ball after it goes out of bounds for the 750th time that game, or some wiener is laying there acting hurt, the game is technically still going on, so there’s no kind of strategizing with the clock. Just kicking the ball back and forth lazily until 90 minutes has gone by. There’s a half time so these distance runners can adjust their shin guards, but aside from that, nothing. And just to sap any excitement that might be left out of the sport, you don’t even get thrilling countdown moments where the clock has entered the last minute of play and it’s counting down…ten…nine…eight… Nope! After the clock counts UP to 90 minutes, the game goes on for a few more minutes and then it just ends when a ref has decided he’s ready to go home.
If you like your sports played in binary, soccer is the score for you. Let’s take a look at the scores from the first round or whatever of the World Cup. 1-1, 1-0, 1-1, 0-1, 0-1, 1-0, 1-1, 0-0 (!!). Granted, every once in a while you get a blowout like South Korea over Greece (2-0), or you’ll have a game where a continent forgets to send players (Germany’s 4-0 over Australia). But the vast majority end in some variation of 1-0, with some games even ending with no score, which would make a normal person feel like they’d just wasted hours of their life watching it. And that’s another thing. Ties!? In a tournament!? I mean it makes sense in that if we had to play to a win, games could take months, years even. But I feel like the World Cup is essentially the playoffs of soccer, and what other sport lets a game tie in the playoffs?
Look, even if we ignore the God-awful fans of the sport, soccer blows. It’s engineered to be as boring as possible, with penalties for anything exciting and a clock that counts up. If you love watching people run, just watch track and field. At least someone wins every time.
Wednesday, June 09, 2010
I had been thinking about writing this article on Against Me! for about a week now, but I decided I'd wait until I had the new album in my hands. From the songs I'd heard from it, I expected to be writing about how another band hand been claimed by the soul sucking major label curse, writing songs that are 90% chorus and 10% verse. But, I thought I'd give the new album a listen before I started to prattle on about how great they used to be and how mediocre modern rock they are now.
Against Me! has undergone quite the change musically and lyrically since they started as Tom Gabel and a drummer. "Crime," their first real, non-shitty release, was blistering acoustic folk-punk, with Tom screaming through songs like What We Worked For, and Impact, which is one of the single greatest songs you could ever hope to see live (especially in a tiny hot room in Houston after the band hasn't played it in years).
"Crime" segued easily into "Reinventing Axl Rose," which long-time readers of this blog will know is one of my absolute favorite albums of all time. It's all dirty anarchistic punk rock. It sounds like it was recorded at a party in the basement, and its lyrical content is absolutely some of the best I've ever heard. From "Pints of Guinness" about Tom's grandparents' deaths ("If we're never together, if I'm never back again, I swear to God that I'll love you forever") to We Laugh at Danger ("And I cannot help but hold on to a handful of times, when what was spoken was a revolution in itself, and what we were doing was the only thing that mattered. And how good it felt to kill the memory of nights spent holding your shirt for the smell. I heard you used to cry when you made love to him. This band will play on. Because all we can do is what we've always done"). From I Still Love You Julie ("Last night a room full drunk sang along to the songs I never had the courage to write. Given the chance I'd stay in this chorus forever, where everything ugly in this world is sadly beautiful in our desperate memories") to the title track ("We want a band that plays loud and hard every night. That doesn't care how many people are counted at the door. That would travel one million miles and ask for nothing but a plate of food and a place to rest. They'd strike chords that cut like a knife. It would mean so much more than a t-shirt or ticket stub. They would stop at nothing short of a massacre. Everyone would leave with the memory that there was no place else in the world and this was where they always belonged"). The entire album captures what every young outcast feels. The EP "The Disco Before the Breakdown" (AKA: The Single Best EP EVER!) then gave us three amazing songs, including Tonight We're Gonna Give it 35%, which at various points in my life has been the best song ever written by anyone, ever.
In hindsight, now that Against Me! is on a major label, their production is glossed up, and people know who they are, songs like Baby, I'm An Anarchist and Reinventing Axl Rose have hurt their credibility with the punk scene, because they've changed their opinions and musical style so much. No more acoustic guitars and screamed vocals, no more songs about playing basement shows and feeling out of place. But first, there was "...As the Eternal Cowboy," which plugged AM! into an amp and turned that amp up to about 30. "Cowboy" is an amazing punk rock album that starts with the headbanging right out of the gate and continues that momentum to the end, even though a couple of pretty breather songs.
The next album, Searching for a Former Clarity, was the album that first started to divide their fan base. To me, it's a sprawling masterpiece that is the most diverse set they've put to tape to this day. Not every song works (Justin), but most do, and some (the title track, Violence, Even At Our Worst, etc) are some of the best songs they've made. But it's a rock album, not a punk album, and the "scene" started getting worried.
The "scene" left when they heard "New Wave," the first major label release. Partly, I can't blame them. The anarcho-punks who screamed against the system were now a part of it, so the kids who care more about ethos than music had to bail. And partly, I can't blame them because the music wasn't as good. There were a couple absolute winners (New Wave, Thrash Unreal), but overall the quality of songs here isn't as strong. I don't think anyone's going to be counting Piss and Vinegar or Americans Abroad amongst the great songs that this band has done. Another concerning thing about the album is that lyrically it's pretty weak. They did songs about the music business on Clarity, and they retread that theme here to less effect.
Which brings me to today. Going into "White Crosses" my expectations were low. Having listened to it constantly since yesterday afternoon, I am pretty much blown away. It explodes out of the gates with "White Crosses" and "I Was A Teenage Anarchist," both chorus heavy songs, but both faster and harder and more straightforward than the majority of "New Wave." Then - a piano - and my heart sinks, until the guitars kick in and Because of the Shame blasts out at me and it's one of the single best songs AM! has ever done. An emotionally honest and touching song about going to an ex-girlfriend's funeral and the memories it brings back. Suffocation follows, and it's a pretty straightforward rock song with a simple chorus, but it works. We're Breaking Up is a forgettable mid tempo ballad that would have been better left off. High Pressure Low picks things back up for another straightforward rocker before Ache With Me takes us into a middle of the road acoustic jam. Spanish Moss then rocks, and Rapid Decompression becomes the hardest song they've done since Cowboy. Bamboo Bones as the closer deserves its own sentence, because it is the most inspirational song AM! have done in years, and maybe one of the ten best songs they've ever written ("What god doesn’t give to you, you’ve got to go and get for yourself").
There are also four bonus tracks on my album that are all good additions, and really should have replaced We're Breaking Up and Ache With Me on the album proper. "White Crosses" really surprised me. The middle sags a bit, but it is a far, far stronger effort than "New Wave." The production is too polished for a punk rock band, but then, this isn't really a punk band anymore, and the music sounds very "full." Lyrically and musically it's a step up from "New Wave," and I find my love and admiration for these guys renewed in full. Well done.
Against Me! has undergone quite the change musically and lyrically since they started as Tom Gabel and a drummer. "Crime," their first real, non-shitty release, was blistering acoustic folk-punk, with Tom screaming through songs like What We Worked For, and Impact, which is one of the single greatest songs you could ever hope to see live (especially in a tiny hot room in Houston after the band hasn't played it in years).
"Crime" segued easily into "Reinventing Axl Rose," which long-time readers of this blog will know is one of my absolute favorite albums of all time. It's all dirty anarchistic punk rock. It sounds like it was recorded at a party in the basement, and its lyrical content is absolutely some of the best I've ever heard. From "Pints of Guinness" about Tom's grandparents' deaths ("If we're never together, if I'm never back again, I swear to God that I'll love you forever") to We Laugh at Danger ("And I cannot help but hold on to a handful of times, when what was spoken was a revolution in itself, and what we were doing was the only thing that mattered. And how good it felt to kill the memory of nights spent holding your shirt for the smell. I heard you used to cry when you made love to him. This band will play on. Because all we can do is what we've always done"). From I Still Love You Julie ("Last night a room full drunk sang along to the songs I never had the courage to write. Given the chance I'd stay in this chorus forever, where everything ugly in this world is sadly beautiful in our desperate memories") to the title track ("We want a band that plays loud and hard every night. That doesn't care how many people are counted at the door. That would travel one million miles and ask for nothing but a plate of food and a place to rest. They'd strike chords that cut like a knife. It would mean so much more than a t-shirt or ticket stub. They would stop at nothing short of a massacre. Everyone would leave with the memory that there was no place else in the world and this was where they always belonged"). The entire album captures what every young outcast feels. The EP "The Disco Before the Breakdown" (AKA: The Single Best EP EVER!) then gave us three amazing songs, including Tonight We're Gonna Give it 35%, which at various points in my life has been the best song ever written by anyone, ever.
In hindsight, now that Against Me! is on a major label, their production is glossed up, and people know who they are, songs like Baby, I'm An Anarchist and Reinventing Axl Rose have hurt their credibility with the punk scene, because they've changed their opinions and musical style so much. No more acoustic guitars and screamed vocals, no more songs about playing basement shows and feeling out of place. But first, there was "...As the Eternal Cowboy," which plugged AM! into an amp and turned that amp up to about 30. "Cowboy" is an amazing punk rock album that starts with the headbanging right out of the gate and continues that momentum to the end, even though a couple of pretty breather songs.
The next album, Searching for a Former Clarity, was the album that first started to divide their fan base. To me, it's a sprawling masterpiece that is the most diverse set they've put to tape to this day. Not every song works (Justin), but most do, and some (the title track, Violence, Even At Our Worst, etc) are some of the best songs they've made. But it's a rock album, not a punk album, and the "scene" started getting worried.
The "scene" left when they heard "New Wave," the first major label release. Partly, I can't blame them. The anarcho-punks who screamed against the system were now a part of it, so the kids who care more about ethos than music had to bail. And partly, I can't blame them because the music wasn't as good. There were a couple absolute winners (New Wave, Thrash Unreal), but overall the quality of songs here isn't as strong. I don't think anyone's going to be counting Piss and Vinegar or Americans Abroad amongst the great songs that this band has done. Another concerning thing about the album is that lyrically it's pretty weak. They did songs about the music business on Clarity, and they retread that theme here to less effect.
Which brings me to today. Going into "White Crosses" my expectations were low. Having listened to it constantly since yesterday afternoon, I am pretty much blown away. It explodes out of the gates with "White Crosses" and "I Was A Teenage Anarchist," both chorus heavy songs, but both faster and harder and more straightforward than the majority of "New Wave." Then - a piano - and my heart sinks, until the guitars kick in and Because of the Shame blasts out at me and it's one of the single best songs AM! has ever done. An emotionally honest and touching song about going to an ex-girlfriend's funeral and the memories it brings back. Suffocation follows, and it's a pretty straightforward rock song with a simple chorus, but it works. We're Breaking Up is a forgettable mid tempo ballad that would have been better left off. High Pressure Low picks things back up for another straightforward rocker before Ache With Me takes us into a middle of the road acoustic jam. Spanish Moss then rocks, and Rapid Decompression becomes the hardest song they've done since Cowboy. Bamboo Bones as the closer deserves its own sentence, because it is the most inspirational song AM! have done in years, and maybe one of the ten best songs they've ever written ("What god doesn’t give to you, you’ve got to go and get for yourself").
There are also four bonus tracks on my album that are all good additions, and really should have replaced We're Breaking Up and Ache With Me on the album proper. "White Crosses" really surprised me. The middle sags a bit, but it is a far, far stronger effort than "New Wave." The production is too polished for a punk rock band, but then, this isn't really a punk band anymore, and the music sounds very "full." Lyrically and musically it's a step up from "New Wave," and I find my love and admiration for these guys renewed in full. Well done.
Monday, June 07, 2010
So I had Crazy Heart from Netflix for about a month and finally decided I’d watch it. Here’s my review: It’s The Wrestler, except instead of Mickey Rourke as a washed up wrestler, it stars Jeff Bridges as a washed up country singer. Instead of Rourke trying to reconnect with his young daughter, Bridges tries to find love with a young reporter. And… that’s about it. Bridges was very good, just like Rourke was. The movie was deliberately paced and not a lot happened, just like in The Wrestler. The end actually had a resolution, kind of, unlike The Wrestler, which really didn’t. So, in the end, if you want to make a movie that will win you acclaim and get your lead actor an award, cast an older actor in a role where he has to play a washed up (insert profession here), have him try to create a relationship with a younger woman (lover, daughter, whatever works), have two or three bad things happen, and then end the movie on a note of redemption (but not too strong, just enough to make you feel like maybe there’s a reason he shouldn’t put a bullet through his brain quite yet).
I got a few new CDs over the weekend. A couple albums by Metric (Grow Up and Blow Away, Live it Out), Anchors Aweigh by The Bouncing Souls, Boys and Girls in America by The Hold Steady, and Good Views, Bad News by Broadway Calls. Here are my thoughts: Metric consistently has really cool album art. The Bouncing Souls album is surprisingly punky, where for some reason I was under the impression it was going to be less punky. Yes, I know they’re a punk band. The Hold Steady are a strange band but I like them. I can’t decide if I like this one or Stay Positive better though. Broadway Calls takes me back to a simpler time, when I would listen to poppy punk rock on a sunny day, and I really like it. It also features the catchiest song about Obama’s election that has ever been written, “Election Day,” which effectively takes me back to when we were all swept up in Obama fever and the history that was made when he was elected. That was before he became president and we all went “Meh.” But yeah, “Election Day” has really been stuck in my head for three days now, and I want it out.
Cam and I went to see The Black Keys at the Fillmore last Thursday, and this is what I thought about it: The opening act was called Brian Olive. Which makes you think that it will be a guy named Brian Olive playing an acoustic guitar and singing, or something. Well, we did get Brian Olive, and he did play a guitar and sing, but he also had a backing band of FIVE PEOPLE. So this guy has the nerve to go on tour as a six piece and not even mention the fact that he has a lead guitarist, an acoustic guitarist, a drummer, a keyboardist, and a bass player backing him up. I feel like he should at least go on tour as The Brian Olive Band, or The Brian Olives. There’s just something about guys named Brian, though, I guess. Anyway, they started off okay, but the third song was the slowest, most boring song any band has ever dared play live, and they never really recovered from that. The female backing vocals were annoying, but it did give the girls a chance to shake every instrument that is allowed to be shaken (two kinds of tambourine, maracas, a couple kinds of sticks and rattles), and play a keyboard that you blow into, whatever the hell that was.
Also, for those of you who’ve never been to the Fillmore in Denver, let me describe it as a big empty room with a stage in the front. Technically there are raised portions along the side, and a balcony WAAAAAY back in the back, but if you want to be able to see, you have to stand on the floor, which is great for the seven foot tall monsters that feel like they have to stand in the front of the crowd, but not so great for me. I can never really see at the Fillmore. Every other venue in town has different levels, and since we usually get to concerts early, I can go stand at the front of a level and be able to see over people. Not here. I do not like the Fillmore. On the plus side, there was a girl standing next to me who kept asking everyone who came by for weed, which really amused me. Eventually her friend was able to con some horny guy into giving them some weed. They promptly smoked it and disappeared, leaving the guy behind. Nice.
Anyway, The Black Keys were really good. The band is two people, drums and guitar/vocals. They make an astonishing amount of noise for being two guys, and that guitarist can really shred. It’s deceptively good guitar, as it’s not all technical solos, but goes from ambient to riffs to solos effortlessly. Cam described it as like “water” and I think that’s a good way to put it. It flows all over you. People were swaying and dancing all over. The drummer looks like he’s in excruciating pain the whole time, and looks like a freakishly tall and stretched out version of Christopher Mintz Plasse (McLovin). He also looks like he really hates the drums and is trying to beat them to death with sticks. They rocked through about every song I wanted to hear in a nice long set. The only issue was, strangely, with the new album material. The new album on record is really strong, but it requires more than two people to play live. This causes two problems. First, they have to play the new material in a long “new album” segment, where they bring two other people on stage for a group of new songs. This is the only time they play the new stuff, and as such it keeps it from integrating into the rest of the set. Second, the two other instruments (bass and keyboard) actually take away from their sound. It muddles together and distracts from the guitar and drums. The new songs really lacked the energy that the two-piece songs had, which is a shame, because I really do like the new album. Overall though, it was a solid show, and I got to see my friend Sarai there, which was a nice treat.
I got a few new CDs over the weekend. A couple albums by Metric (Grow Up and Blow Away, Live it Out), Anchors Aweigh by The Bouncing Souls, Boys and Girls in America by The Hold Steady, and Good Views, Bad News by Broadway Calls. Here are my thoughts: Metric consistently has really cool album art. The Bouncing Souls album is surprisingly punky, where for some reason I was under the impression it was going to be less punky. Yes, I know they’re a punk band. The Hold Steady are a strange band but I like them. I can’t decide if I like this one or Stay Positive better though. Broadway Calls takes me back to a simpler time, when I would listen to poppy punk rock on a sunny day, and I really like it. It also features the catchiest song about Obama’s election that has ever been written, “Election Day,” which effectively takes me back to when we were all swept up in Obama fever and the history that was made when he was elected. That was before he became president and we all went “Meh.” But yeah, “Election Day” has really been stuck in my head for three days now, and I want it out.
Cam and I went to see The Black Keys at the Fillmore last Thursday, and this is what I thought about it: The opening act was called Brian Olive. Which makes you think that it will be a guy named Brian Olive playing an acoustic guitar and singing, or something. Well, we did get Brian Olive, and he did play a guitar and sing, but he also had a backing band of FIVE PEOPLE. So this guy has the nerve to go on tour as a six piece and not even mention the fact that he has a lead guitarist, an acoustic guitarist, a drummer, a keyboardist, and a bass player backing him up. I feel like he should at least go on tour as The Brian Olive Band, or The Brian Olives. There’s just something about guys named Brian, though, I guess. Anyway, they started off okay, but the third song was the slowest, most boring song any band has ever dared play live, and they never really recovered from that. The female backing vocals were annoying, but it did give the girls a chance to shake every instrument that is allowed to be shaken (two kinds of tambourine, maracas, a couple kinds of sticks and rattles), and play a keyboard that you blow into, whatever the hell that was.
Also, for those of you who’ve never been to the Fillmore in Denver, let me describe it as a big empty room with a stage in the front. Technically there are raised portions along the side, and a balcony WAAAAAY back in the back, but if you want to be able to see, you have to stand on the floor, which is great for the seven foot tall monsters that feel like they have to stand in the front of the crowd, but not so great for me. I can never really see at the Fillmore. Every other venue in town has different levels, and since we usually get to concerts early, I can go stand at the front of a level and be able to see over people. Not here. I do not like the Fillmore. On the plus side, there was a girl standing next to me who kept asking everyone who came by for weed, which really amused me. Eventually her friend was able to con some horny guy into giving them some weed. They promptly smoked it and disappeared, leaving the guy behind. Nice.
Anyway, The Black Keys were really good. The band is two people, drums and guitar/vocals. They make an astonishing amount of noise for being two guys, and that guitarist can really shred. It’s deceptively good guitar, as it’s not all technical solos, but goes from ambient to riffs to solos effortlessly. Cam described it as like “water” and I think that’s a good way to put it. It flows all over you. People were swaying and dancing all over. The drummer looks like he’s in excruciating pain the whole time, and looks like a freakishly tall and stretched out version of Christopher Mintz Plasse (McLovin). He also looks like he really hates the drums and is trying to beat them to death with sticks. They rocked through about every song I wanted to hear in a nice long set. The only issue was, strangely, with the new album material. The new album on record is really strong, but it requires more than two people to play live. This causes two problems. First, they have to play the new material in a long “new album” segment, where they bring two other people on stage for a group of new songs. This is the only time they play the new stuff, and as such it keeps it from integrating into the rest of the set. Second, the two other instruments (bass and keyboard) actually take away from their sound. It muddles together and distracts from the guitar and drums. The new songs really lacked the energy that the two-piece songs had, which is a shame, because I really do like the new album. Overall though, it was a solid show, and I got to see my friend Sarai there, which was a nice treat.
Sunday, June 06, 2010
Here's a post that, if I still updated it, I would've put on my That's Fucked Up blog. I'm gong to tell the story backwards, just since it's so weird. Here goes: A guy died falling off a cliff. He died falling off a cliff because he got tased by police officers. He got tased by police officers because he had been "[keeping the police officers] at bay for eight hours." He had been "[keeping the police officers] at bay for eight hours" because he had attacked three of his coworkers. He attacked three of his coworkers with a samurai sword. He had a samurai sword because it was a prop on the set of the movie he was working on. The movie he was working on was a porno.
Yeah. Porn star uses samurai sword to attack three coworkers, flees, stands off with the police, gets tased, and dies. The story, which doesn't offer many other details, is here. And since it's CNN, you can expect all sorts of lucid, well-argued statements in the comments section.
First up, a slew of stupid/crude puns, such as:
Look. I like cops. I have a friend who's one. Maybe that's why I show them a bit more empathy. They're not perfect -- far from it, in some cases. But you can't go around hating all police. That's ridiculous. They also do good work, too. Again, maybe because I happen to live in New York and they've had some good PR recently. Some of them may bust kids for doing pot, which is dumb, but they're also doing meaningful work, too.
And can we please leave religion out of this, for once? Jesus. I didn't plan on tackling the issue of pornography when I started this off, but hell, here goes: Porn is a part of our society. It's lucrative. People like it. Therefore, it's not going anywhere. If you don't like it, that's cool. Porn can definitely be degrading to women. But not all porn is evil. There's stuff I don't like, sure, but I know to avoid it. So why does everyone else who doesn't like porn have such a problem doing the same? (Boom! Blatant generalization while dismissing people who make blatant generalizations? Well done, Brian!)
This is long and rambly and I don't know if I ever made a point. But here's what I'll leave you with: Some voices of reason from the comments section of the article.
Yeah. Porn star uses samurai sword to attack three coworkers, flees, stands off with the police, gets tased, and dies. The story, which doesn't offer many other details, is here. And since it's CNN, you can expect all sorts of lucid, well-argued statements in the comments section.
First up, a slew of stupid/crude puns, such as:
Hugh G. Rekshun: This probably wasn't the kind of money shot this poor chap was expecting!!Those are, for the most part, tasteless and unfunny. Just people mocking somoene's death. Next up, people who apparently have a vendetta against our justice system:
SmarterThanYOU: Another million and a half saved by keeping him out of prison... hey FINALLY learning how to save the states money... Samurai Sword $100. Tazer and batteries $400. Seeing the schmuck fall off the cliff while being electrocuted PRICELESSThis kind of scare me. They're apparently so fiscally conservative that they're willing to cut spending on things like, you know, trials. Whatever. Next up are cop haters:
Jeff: This should happen more often. No courts, No Jail, NO $$$$$$. California just SAVED over $1,000,000 or more. Give that officer a bonus.
Matt: Cops really are complete morons. It's like watching the circus every time I see a video of the bumbling idiots. Cops in the United States are completely out of control, militarized, roided up, and psychotic. Honestly, I think the answer is to get some new, non-military minds involved in policing and make being a police officer an elite accomplishment. If we're going to have people making life and death decisions they should be paid well, educated, and not from a military background.Let the sweeping generalizations begin! But if all cops are pigs, what are all Californians?
Matt [responding to someone who tries to rationalize with Matt]: Oh please save me the over dramatic BS. Seriously. I don't think our forefathers envisioned jack booted gestapo thugs kicking down the doors of people for small amounts of hemp and executing their family dogs in front of 7 year olds. Save it. I'm not an idiot, you can't spew you're "going home to their kids", or "brave men and women" ridiculous rhetoric at me. You can't pull the wool over my eyes.
kelley: Give someone a badge and a little power and look what they do with it ...
vinnie R: Another one of the loose people of California meets an appropriate end. Serves him right!Oh, right. Godless, amoral heathens.
Patrick: Just desserts.
peter: and hore mongers and fornicators will God judge...the bible
Look. I like cops. I have a friend who's one. Maybe that's why I show them a bit more empathy. They're not perfect -- far from it, in some cases. But you can't go around hating all police. That's ridiculous. They also do good work, too. Again, maybe because I happen to live in New York and they've had some good PR recently. Some of them may bust kids for doing pot, which is dumb, but they're also doing meaningful work, too.
And can we please leave religion out of this, for once? Jesus. I didn't plan on tackling the issue of pornography when I started this off, but hell, here goes: Porn is a part of our society. It's lucrative. People like it. Therefore, it's not going anywhere. If you don't like it, that's cool. Porn can definitely be degrading to women. But not all porn is evil. There's stuff I don't like, sure, but I know to avoid it. So why does everyone else who doesn't like porn have such a problem doing the same? (Boom! Blatant generalization while dismissing people who make blatant generalizations? Well done, Brian!)
This is long and rambly and I don't know if I ever made a point. But here's what I'll leave you with: Some voices of reason from the comments section of the article.
Its Da Poleece: It's only a short story right now while the details haven't been released. Once we find out what the coworkers were discussing before he snapped, find out if he had been having problems with his coworkers, or in other aspects of his life, we'll find out more. And why the hell is the word "karma" being thrown around, like we know what prompted this assault? Thank God you people are NOT the judicial system throwing around the word 'guilty' and 'karma' and 'poetic justice'.Then, of course, three responses to Kevin:
Kevin: Once again CNN opens up a story for commentary that there is no discernable reason for it. Only to further evidence the idiocy of the general population which winds up being fun for all I guess . CNN show a little class(tall order I know) and exercise a little discretion in what stories warrant public comment.
Ryan: who the hell are you or anyone else to decide which stories can be commented on? are you communist or something?
kelley: Yes your highness!!!!
Matt: Cop, I can smell you from here.
Thursday, June 03, 2010
To further add to the "this blog isn't about TV shows, but we're gonna talk about TV shows a helluva lot" (Firefox's spell check is super cool with "helluva," by the way, but still not "Barack" or "Obama." WTF?), what's up with America's Got Talent? I've never seen this show, but apparently I'm missing out on THE MOST AMAZING TV EVER. I've seen a few commercials for a few different seasons, and each promo features the judges with near-teary eyes, mouths agape, and saying how "that was the most amazing thing I've ever seen." Hey, judges: The compliment kind of loses its effect when every single thing you see is the most amazing thing you've ever seen.
But, moreover, why do we even need a show called America's Got Talent? It's the whole Susan Boyle thing all over again. (Did I talk about that before? Or Adam? I've forgotten.) You mean that people from diverse/adverse backgrounds also possess some demonstrable skill? But that can't be! They're just supposed to be poor and stupid and sterile (if only!). Any time I meet someone who's different from me, I immediately assume they have absolutely nothing worth contributing to society. And certainly not a skill of some sort. God, no.
Look. It's cool that you're showcasing how people are neat in their own ways. But come on, do we really need to make a show out of it? Or a contest? (It is a contest, right?) But hey, I'm clearly not part of their target audience, so they probably don't care.
So that's the bad TV. As for the good TV, I've started watching Party Down, which is streaming on Netflix. Pretty funny show. Not amazingly hysterical, but funny. Some great guest stars, too. The 25 minutes go by very quickly. So check out a few episodes -- that's my recommendation.
My goal this summer is to read Infinite Jest. I really think I can do it. I'm attempting Nabokov's Pale Fire first, as a warm-up. It's going well so far. Liked the Forward and the poem itself, now it's on to the Commentary. I'm expecting it to get really weird and wacky soon. "Weird and wacky." I'm sure that made the book's dust-cover blurb.
But, moreover, why do we even need a show called America's Got Talent? It's the whole Susan Boyle thing all over again. (Did I talk about that before? Or Adam? I've forgotten.) You mean that people from diverse/adverse backgrounds also possess some demonstrable skill? But that can't be! They're just supposed to be poor and stupid and sterile (if only!). Any time I meet someone who's different from me, I immediately assume they have absolutely nothing worth contributing to society. And certainly not a skill of some sort. God, no.
Look. It's cool that you're showcasing how people are neat in their own ways. But come on, do we really need to make a show out of it? Or a contest? (It is a contest, right?) But hey, I'm clearly not part of their target audience, so they probably don't care.
So that's the bad TV. As for the good TV, I've started watching Party Down, which is streaming on Netflix. Pretty funny show. Not amazingly hysterical, but funny. Some great guest stars, too. The 25 minutes go by very quickly. So check out a few episodes -- that's my recommendation.
My goal this summer is to read Infinite Jest. I really think I can do it. I'm attempting Nabokov's Pale Fire first, as a warm-up. It's going well so far. Liked the Forward and the poem itself, now it's on to the Commentary. I'm expecting it to get really weird and wacky soon. "Weird and wacky." I'm sure that made the book's dust-cover blurb.
Thursday, May 27, 2010
Not to make this a TV show blog, but my American Idol experiment has ended, and I have to say, I’m not impressed. People tell me I should have seen earlier seasons, but I didn’t, so yeah. Let’s start at the beginning.
In the beginning, there are months and months (maybe not) of audition episodes, where a few good singers, a lot of mediocre singers, and several horrible singers parade themselves in front of the judges in order to get a golden ticket. This is fun for about two episodes before everyone starts sounding the same. The bad singers stop being funny, mostly because you know they just showed up to get on TV. They can’t possibly think they can sing, and their badly acted tantrums when told they can’t sing aren’t funny after about the third one you see. Because we only get back stories for a few people a show, it’s hard to care about most of the people who show up, especially since many of them look and sound the same. Also, it’s impossible for the judges to look at hundreds of thousands of contestants, simply because there’s not enough time in the day, so the ones we see in these “audition” rounds have already auditioned for various groups of producers, and those who don’t have an interesting enough story or good enough looks are sent packing because they wouldn’t make good TV. Sure, it’s supposed to be a talent show, but who wants to watch a boring, unattractive person with an amazing voice when we could see hideously ugly people or continue to enforce the rules that in order to be a pop star in this country, you have to be pretty?
So after what seems like an eternity, we’ve shuffled through all the audition episodes and we go to Hollywood, which is where we’re bombarded with episode after episode of subpar singers taking the stage for a few seconds. Again, we don’t get to know anyone, because there are still hundreds of contestants here. There’s a karaoke bar right by my house I could go to to have a better time if I wanted to watch people with fine voices sing. We’re shown a few heartbreaking clips of the girl whose grandma has Alzheimer’s or the guy who was in a car accident and hurt his leg a little (yeah, the stories are always played up with dramatic music but they’re not always really interesting), and sometimes they’re sent home because they can’t sing. Then there’s this thing called “group sing” which is where like five people get on stage together and do a bad New Kids on the Block routine. Anyway, somehow the judges cut down this group to like 24 or something, and then we go to the next round.
Amazingly, the top 24 are still bad. You’d think that if you seriously held hundreds of thousands of auditions, you might be able to come up with 24 people who can do a pretty damn good job singing. You’d be wrong! Anyway, now they get to sing some more bad songs and they get booted off. It’s hard to watch pretty, delusional people cry because they thought they could sing. The judges are still making decisions as to who goes home at this point, so there’s really no reason to watch still, because you have no control over anything that’s going on. So if you liked that dude with the fucking huge ass giant ridiculous chin who thought he was Jim Morrison, I’m sure your heart felt crushed when he went home and you were powerless to do anything but scream and fling things at the TV. The contestants are divided by genders here, and one man and one woman goes home each week so they can ensure that there are six men and six women in the final 12, just in time for the little girls who watch this show to vote off all the girls, I assume in order to eliminate dating competition.
Then we’re down to the final 12, and now we can start voting the prettiest girls and the ugliest guys off. The final 12 is where the show goes from a singing competition to a beauty pageant. Now I know that in seasons past some guys have won like Ruben Studdard and the gray haired fellow who weren’t particularly attractive, and maybe back in those days actual music fans watched the show. But this season you could almost see the tween girls voting over and over to keep the pretty girls away from the pretty boys by eliminating the girls right off the bat. This left Crystal Bowersox, who was by FAR the best singer this season, as the only girl throughout most of the competition. Then we had to sit through weeks of her beating the singing shit out of everyone else as we were forced to say goodbye to the cute little 16 year old, the doe eyed mop haired guy, the muscular black guy, and the cougar bait with the long blond hair, none of whom could really sing particularly well, but all of whom could have been on the cover of Tiger Beat. Now we’re left with Crystal, the living embodiment of a cross between Janis Joplin and Alanis Morissette, and Lee DeWyze, a guy blessed with a cockeyed smile and a natural rocker’s voice. Unfortunately, Lee decided he would sing pussy songs like Fireflies by that guy who sounds exactly like The Postal Service, and a bunch of other “rock” songs that barely have a pulse.
Crystal Bowersox’s song in the finale or whatever, the last singing show, “Up to the Mountain” was amazingly good, by far the best performance of the year, and cemented her as the clear winner in the eyes and ears of music fans all over the country. Unfortunately, not many music fans watch AI, so Lee won because… he… has a goatee, I guess. I guess that’s coming back around. Or it’s because the American public has no taste, as evidenced by the state of music right now. If Lady Gaga is hailed as an innovator because she wears weird outfits, that’s not a good sign for any innovation coming soon, because her music is indistinguishable from anything else that’s been on the radio for the past 20 years. Anyway, now we’ll soon have another Jack Johnson kind of guy on the radio soon in Lee DeWyze, which is a shame because Jack Johnson is SO fucking boring, and Lee really could have a great voice if he had ever been introduced to real rock and roll music growing up. Fortunately, winning this show doesn’t really guarantee you’ll be a bigger star than anyone else on the show, so Crystal will probably put something out too. I’m actually tempted to buy it, I liked her so much. Hopefully losing this show won’t convince her that she needs to drop the folk rock thing and go pop star on us.
Overall, American Idol is a waste of time. The judges say the same thing every week (“Dog,” “It didn’t work for me,” “Sound younger,” “Make it more current,” “It was pitchy,” etc). The audition shows are boring after the first one. The Hollywood Week shows are boring after the first minute, the top 24 is pointless because the public has no say in who stays or goes, and then when the public does vote in the top 12, they pretty consistently vote off the wrong people. It also doesn’t help that there are only three or four people in this group that legitimately have a shot at winning, so that automatically means there are going to be eight weeks of painfully obvious cuts, and they’re not even going to be the first eight cuts, so really the show’s not worth watching until the final episode, when the two best people are left, and even then it’s not worth watching because whichever guy is cuter to the most girls wins. On the plus side, Simon Cowell is gone now so this show will probably be off the air in a couple of years.
In the beginning, there are months and months (maybe not) of audition episodes, where a few good singers, a lot of mediocre singers, and several horrible singers parade themselves in front of the judges in order to get a golden ticket. This is fun for about two episodes before everyone starts sounding the same. The bad singers stop being funny, mostly because you know they just showed up to get on TV. They can’t possibly think they can sing, and their badly acted tantrums when told they can’t sing aren’t funny after about the third one you see. Because we only get back stories for a few people a show, it’s hard to care about most of the people who show up, especially since many of them look and sound the same. Also, it’s impossible for the judges to look at hundreds of thousands of contestants, simply because there’s not enough time in the day, so the ones we see in these “audition” rounds have already auditioned for various groups of producers, and those who don’t have an interesting enough story or good enough looks are sent packing because they wouldn’t make good TV. Sure, it’s supposed to be a talent show, but who wants to watch a boring, unattractive person with an amazing voice when we could see hideously ugly people or continue to enforce the rules that in order to be a pop star in this country, you have to be pretty?
So after what seems like an eternity, we’ve shuffled through all the audition episodes and we go to Hollywood, which is where we’re bombarded with episode after episode of subpar singers taking the stage for a few seconds. Again, we don’t get to know anyone, because there are still hundreds of contestants here. There’s a karaoke bar right by my house I could go to to have a better time if I wanted to watch people with fine voices sing. We’re shown a few heartbreaking clips of the girl whose grandma has Alzheimer’s or the guy who was in a car accident and hurt his leg a little (yeah, the stories are always played up with dramatic music but they’re not always really interesting), and sometimes they’re sent home because they can’t sing. Then there’s this thing called “group sing” which is where like five people get on stage together and do a bad New Kids on the Block routine. Anyway, somehow the judges cut down this group to like 24 or something, and then we go to the next round.
Amazingly, the top 24 are still bad. You’d think that if you seriously held hundreds of thousands of auditions, you might be able to come up with 24 people who can do a pretty damn good job singing. You’d be wrong! Anyway, now they get to sing some more bad songs and they get booted off. It’s hard to watch pretty, delusional people cry because they thought they could sing. The judges are still making decisions as to who goes home at this point, so there’s really no reason to watch still, because you have no control over anything that’s going on. So if you liked that dude with the fucking huge ass giant ridiculous chin who thought he was Jim Morrison, I’m sure your heart felt crushed when he went home and you were powerless to do anything but scream and fling things at the TV. The contestants are divided by genders here, and one man and one woman goes home each week so they can ensure that there are six men and six women in the final 12, just in time for the little girls who watch this show to vote off all the girls, I assume in order to eliminate dating competition.
Then we’re down to the final 12, and now we can start voting the prettiest girls and the ugliest guys off. The final 12 is where the show goes from a singing competition to a beauty pageant. Now I know that in seasons past some guys have won like Ruben Studdard and the gray haired fellow who weren’t particularly attractive, and maybe back in those days actual music fans watched the show. But this season you could almost see the tween girls voting over and over to keep the pretty girls away from the pretty boys by eliminating the girls right off the bat. This left Crystal Bowersox, who was by FAR the best singer this season, as the only girl throughout most of the competition. Then we had to sit through weeks of her beating the singing shit out of everyone else as we were forced to say goodbye to the cute little 16 year old, the doe eyed mop haired guy, the muscular black guy, and the cougar bait with the long blond hair, none of whom could really sing particularly well, but all of whom could have been on the cover of Tiger Beat. Now we’re left with Crystal, the living embodiment of a cross between Janis Joplin and Alanis Morissette, and Lee DeWyze, a guy blessed with a cockeyed smile and a natural rocker’s voice. Unfortunately, Lee decided he would sing pussy songs like Fireflies by that guy who sounds exactly like The Postal Service, and a bunch of other “rock” songs that barely have a pulse.
Crystal Bowersox’s song in the finale or whatever, the last singing show, “Up to the Mountain” was amazingly good, by far the best performance of the year, and cemented her as the clear winner in the eyes and ears of music fans all over the country. Unfortunately, not many music fans watch AI, so Lee won because… he… has a goatee, I guess. I guess that’s coming back around. Or it’s because the American public has no taste, as evidenced by the state of music right now. If Lady Gaga is hailed as an innovator because she wears weird outfits, that’s not a good sign for any innovation coming soon, because her music is indistinguishable from anything else that’s been on the radio for the past 20 years. Anyway, now we’ll soon have another Jack Johnson kind of guy on the radio soon in Lee DeWyze, which is a shame because Jack Johnson is SO fucking boring, and Lee really could have a great voice if he had ever been introduced to real rock and roll music growing up. Fortunately, winning this show doesn’t really guarantee you’ll be a bigger star than anyone else on the show, so Crystal will probably put something out too. I’m actually tempted to buy it, I liked her so much. Hopefully losing this show won’t convince her that she needs to drop the folk rock thing and go pop star on us.
Overall, American Idol is a waste of time. The judges say the same thing every week (“Dog,” “It didn’t work for me,” “Sound younger,” “Make it more current,” “It was pitchy,” etc). The audition shows are boring after the first one. The Hollywood Week shows are boring after the first minute, the top 24 is pointless because the public has no say in who stays or goes, and then when the public does vote in the top 12, they pretty consistently vote off the wrong people. It also doesn’t help that there are only three or four people in this group that legitimately have a shot at winning, so that automatically means there are going to be eight weeks of painfully obvious cuts, and they’re not even going to be the first eight cuts, so really the show’s not worth watching until the final episode, when the two best people are left, and even then it’s not worth watching because whichever guy is cuter to the most girls wins. On the plus side, Simon Cowell is gone now so this show will probably be off the air in a couple of years.
Monday, May 24, 2010
Lost is over and the series finale was a pitch perfect ending to the show we’ve all come to love and hate simultaneously over the years. I can see how the episode would frustrate a lot of people, especially those who spent the series more focused on the island than the characters. It is easy to get wrapped up in the mythology of the show, but let’s not lose sight of the fact that without an outstanding ensemble cast portraying characters we’ve all gotten to know incredibly well over the past six years, the island mythology wouldn’t have been interesting. If the show were full of cardboard cutouts of stereotypes who were discovering all this mystical stuff, the show would have been canceled after the first season. Regardless of what you’ll read from comments about Lost in other places, the show WAS always about the characters. The setting provided an intriguing and different location for the action to take place, and the island itself was basically another character, but when it came time to wrap up the series, it had to be about the characters.
The answers simply weren’t that interesting! People for whatever reason seemed to lose sight of the fact that this was a TV show. They had outlandish expectations for answers, so when we DID find concrete answers, they weren’t satisfied. The whispers being the souls of the dead trapped on the island. Jacob and the Man in Black being regular people with their own problems and insecurities. Adam and Eve being the bodies of Jacob’s brother and mother. The island literally being a cork that keeps evil at bay. The list goes on and on. It seemed like fans of the show expected answers that would blow our minds away and reveal some hidden truth behind the veil of reality. But now, the show is over, and we will never find out where the island came from, who its original protector was, who built the statue, what was up with all the hieroglyphics, why Walt and Aaron were so important, how the magic lighthouse worked, how Jacob learned to be the protector of the island, the science behind the donkey wheel that disappears the island and travels people to Tunisia, what would have happened if the island were “uncorked,” why Desmond could survive cataclysmic electromagnetic events, or tens of other questions. And I assert that it doesn’t matter. Part of the appeal of the show all along was its mystery. To have everything unraveled in such plain terms as they had explained things this season would take away from the mystical aspect of the show and hurt it.
Now that the show is over, I can actually tell people what it was about. Up until last night I had to say something like “Well these people get stuck on an island and all kinds of crazy shit happens to them.” But Lost was the story of an island that needed a protector. The island is a stopper for an evil that, if unleashed upon the world, would end life. There are forces at work on the island that are actively trying to unleash the evil, and the island’s current protector, Jacob, knows his time is coming to an end. He brings a group of people that he has chosen to the island to find his replacement. These people are all flawed, handpicked because their lives off the island are full of sorrow. They crash on the island and learn to survive, and throughout six seasons they grow as people more than perhaps on any other TV show I’ve ever seen. They are oblivious to the reason they were brought to the island for most of the series, though they quickly get a sense that this island is not normal. While we watch the small picture drama in the group play out, the pieces are being moved in the larger game – the search for the island’s new leader. And in the finale, the island finds its new leader. And the show ends. The finale’s on-island plot satisfactorily resolves the main plot of the show.
Now that it’s over, looking back at these characters’ story arcs cements just how amazing the show was. Jack, the doctor, the man of science, who wants more than anything to leave the island and never look back, transforms into a man of faith, willing to become Jacob’s replacement and sacrifice himself for the island.
Ben, the leader of a group of “native” inhabitants of the island, goes from being a lying, manipulative murderer who believes he is next in line for the throne, to a disillusioned and defeated shell of a man, misled into killing Jacob, and back to a place of redemption in the end when he is offered a job as the right hand man of the new island leader.
Every character on the show goes through an unbelievable arc, so much that when you look at these characters now, in the series finale, and look at them then, in the pilot, it’s hard to fathom how far they’ve come. The process of character development was so organic that watching the show you didn’t really notice. Instead, the Sawyer that jumps from a helicopter so that it can safely carry his friends to rescue is the same Sawyer that wouldn’t give sick people medicine three seasons earlier, and it seems natural, not forced. I have never seen a show with such well-rounded, realistic, believable, and fully-developed characters.
I wasn’t thrilled with everything about the series. At times during seasons two and three, the show stalled for time too much. Part of me does want more answers, despite myself. This final season wasted too much time on the “flash-sideways” plot device that was revealed in the finale to be a form of purgatory. While it served as a way to show us the highlights of the past six seasons, it felt, and feels, divorced from the main story on the island, and I don’t honestly think Lost would have lost much by leaving that out. But, in the end, the show was an overwhelming success, and the finale resolved the on-island storyline that we had cared about for so long. Leaving out the flash-sideways and a couple of minor missteps this season, it was a fitting cap on the series as a whole. I’m sad that I’ll never have another new episode of Lost to look forward to, but I’m happy that the series ended on such a high note.
Finally, the direction of this final episode was amazing. In the first shot of the first season, Jack opens his eyes in a field of bamboo, Vincent the dog runs over to him to wake him up, and he finds that his plane has crashed. His whole transformative ordeal is in front of him. Six seasons later, when he has finished sacrificing himself to save the island, he finds himself laying in the same field of bamboo, looking up at the sky. He sees the plane carrying his surviving friends to safety flying overhead, away from the island forever, and he knows his work is finished. Vincent comes and lays next to him, and he closes his eyes. Beautiful.
The answers simply weren’t that interesting! People for whatever reason seemed to lose sight of the fact that this was a TV show. They had outlandish expectations for answers, so when we DID find concrete answers, they weren’t satisfied. The whispers being the souls of the dead trapped on the island. Jacob and the Man in Black being regular people with their own problems and insecurities. Adam and Eve being the bodies of Jacob’s brother and mother. The island literally being a cork that keeps evil at bay. The list goes on and on. It seemed like fans of the show expected answers that would blow our minds away and reveal some hidden truth behind the veil of reality. But now, the show is over, and we will never find out where the island came from, who its original protector was, who built the statue, what was up with all the hieroglyphics, why Walt and Aaron were so important, how the magic lighthouse worked, how Jacob learned to be the protector of the island, the science behind the donkey wheel that disappears the island and travels people to Tunisia, what would have happened if the island were “uncorked,” why Desmond could survive cataclysmic electromagnetic events, or tens of other questions. And I assert that it doesn’t matter. Part of the appeal of the show all along was its mystery. To have everything unraveled in such plain terms as they had explained things this season would take away from the mystical aspect of the show and hurt it.
Now that the show is over, I can actually tell people what it was about. Up until last night I had to say something like “Well these people get stuck on an island and all kinds of crazy shit happens to them.” But Lost was the story of an island that needed a protector. The island is a stopper for an evil that, if unleashed upon the world, would end life. There are forces at work on the island that are actively trying to unleash the evil, and the island’s current protector, Jacob, knows his time is coming to an end. He brings a group of people that he has chosen to the island to find his replacement. These people are all flawed, handpicked because their lives off the island are full of sorrow. They crash on the island and learn to survive, and throughout six seasons they grow as people more than perhaps on any other TV show I’ve ever seen. They are oblivious to the reason they were brought to the island for most of the series, though they quickly get a sense that this island is not normal. While we watch the small picture drama in the group play out, the pieces are being moved in the larger game – the search for the island’s new leader. And in the finale, the island finds its new leader. And the show ends. The finale’s on-island plot satisfactorily resolves the main plot of the show.
Now that it’s over, looking back at these characters’ story arcs cements just how amazing the show was. Jack, the doctor, the man of science, who wants more than anything to leave the island and never look back, transforms into a man of faith, willing to become Jacob’s replacement and sacrifice himself for the island.
Ben, the leader of a group of “native” inhabitants of the island, goes from being a lying, manipulative murderer who believes he is next in line for the throne, to a disillusioned and defeated shell of a man, misled into killing Jacob, and back to a place of redemption in the end when he is offered a job as the right hand man of the new island leader.
Every character on the show goes through an unbelievable arc, so much that when you look at these characters now, in the series finale, and look at them then, in the pilot, it’s hard to fathom how far they’ve come. The process of character development was so organic that watching the show you didn’t really notice. Instead, the Sawyer that jumps from a helicopter so that it can safely carry his friends to rescue is the same Sawyer that wouldn’t give sick people medicine three seasons earlier, and it seems natural, not forced. I have never seen a show with such well-rounded, realistic, believable, and fully-developed characters.
I wasn’t thrilled with everything about the series. At times during seasons two and three, the show stalled for time too much. Part of me does want more answers, despite myself. This final season wasted too much time on the “flash-sideways” plot device that was revealed in the finale to be a form of purgatory. While it served as a way to show us the highlights of the past six seasons, it felt, and feels, divorced from the main story on the island, and I don’t honestly think Lost would have lost much by leaving that out. But, in the end, the show was an overwhelming success, and the finale resolved the on-island storyline that we had cared about for so long. Leaving out the flash-sideways and a couple of minor missteps this season, it was a fitting cap on the series as a whole. I’m sad that I’ll never have another new episode of Lost to look forward to, but I’m happy that the series ended on such a high note.
Finally, the direction of this final episode was amazing. In the first shot of the first season, Jack opens his eyes in a field of bamboo, Vincent the dog runs over to him to wake him up, and he finds that his plane has crashed. His whole transformative ordeal is in front of him. Six seasons later, when he has finished sacrificing himself to save the island, he finds himself laying in the same field of bamboo, looking up at the sky. He sees the plane carrying his surviving friends to safety flying overhead, away from the island forever, and he knows his work is finished. Vincent comes and lays next to him, and he closes his eyes. Beautiful.
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