bloggy carl

2011-07-14T22:52:00.003-05:00

...and we're back.

It got me to thinking about something that I think about fairly regularly and I've surely discussed with a few of you (as if there's more than "a few" of you reading this) before. This whole obsession of living your life through Facebook is not good. Facebook is meant to be something that complements regular life and is nothing more than a mild distraction with interesting content because you (presumably) know the people generating all the new material. It's just something we "do", but for some, it has veered dangerously close to being who we "are".

Some of what has brought me to this conclusion is nothing more than the same annoying things you see when you look at Facebook (and if you don't have a Facebook, that's fine, so long as you're not someone that spends more time talking about not being on Facebook than those on it spend talking about it). The epic problem comes from people using their ability/right/power to post inane garbage on Facebook to do exactly that. But there's another kind of Facebook garbage that is a little more rare and perplexing than the simply utterly useless garbage. It's the garbage that actually makes you think to yourself, "why are they posting this and what response are they going for?"

These people put way too much of themselves into their Facebook-ing. They divulge relationship details, they bear their heart, they express despair...they filter nothing. There are surely people that see this as a good thing since such strong emotions are best not left bottled up and if Facebook is an outlet for that, so be it. Thing is, there's all of us on the receiving end of this stuff and it's a bit irresponsible of the sender of such messages to just throw it all out there when obviously not all the people we're friends with on Facebook are the kind of friends we want to have this kind of interaction with. For example, I am likely to approach a conversation a little differently if I'm talking to a close current friend that knows me on a day-to-day basis than I would if I'm talking to my middle school social studies teacher.

It's just such a big burden you're putting on the people reading your drama, when many of those people are just on Facebook for casual entertainment purposes. Is that how you want your serious life issues viewed? As someone's distraction from a slow day at work or cure for insomnia? Not that everyone would see it that way. Some people might really see your problems as a cry for help, but oh wait, we haven't spoken to each other in 10 years and live in different states. Or better yet, we've actually never met and we ended up as Facebook friends because you mistook me for someone else with the same name. It's a good thing I now know the sordid details or your life, or at least the sordid details of what you spend your time doing or thinking.

Some of you might be thinking at this point, "dude, you just need to de-friend all these strange overly-emotional types you're talking about." Oh, but that perfectly illustrates my next point. I have been on Facebook for almost 7 years. I have a modest, but perfectly respectable, 600+ friends on there. And I have never once de-friended someone. Why? Because when you start de-friending people, you have crossed that line into taking Facebook way too seriously. Perhaps there are exceptions to this, such as de-friending an ex-significant other as a form of catharsis, but in general the rule applies. If you consciously consider the process of "cleaning out" your Facebook friends list as some sort of statement, you've got much bigger issues to worry about. Why? If someone has access to these deep recesses of your personal being, you're sharing too much on the internet. This should be the first sign you're over-doing it and missing the purpose. At the very least, you just need to set your privacy settings accordingly. I can't tell you what privacy settings to set because I've never checked my own. Why? Because I share nothing on Facebook that there is anyone I wouldn't want to see it. Do I necessarily want complete strangers seeing my profile information? No, but would I be worried if one did? No, again.

This may sound as though I'm ranting in response to someone de-friending me on Facebook. Not the case. Occasionally I'll stumble upon the realization that someone has de-friended me, which is usually the result of me suddenly noticing that there's less inane babbling on my newsfeed than I'm used to. When this happens, my first thought is, "Why did this happen?". After about 0.47 milliseconds of that thought, a sense of relief and contentment settles over me. Why? Because right then I know there are people that obsess over Facebook far more than me and that I'm actually among the Facebook users that have the least riding on it. I cannot even imagine sitting down and making a dedicated effort to prune my friends list. This hardly means that I'm good friends (or even know) everyone on my friends list, but it does mean I simply don't care enough to bother. I would honestly rather spend the time staring at a blank wall (or writing a rambling blog entry) that I might otherwise use going through the mental process of making cuts.

Is there a agreed upon method for that sort of thing? Is there an algorithm that computes if someone is worthy of being your Facebook friend based on how long you've known each other, how often you see each other or whether you were even friends in the first place? This is especially vexing when it was the other person that be-friended you in the first place. It's like they really were just using you for their own satisfaction or self-assurance for a time, then they dropped you from their life, or at least their life as it appears on a computer screen with a log-in name and password. Then again, these are the people that invest far too much in Facebook in the first place.

So, ladies and gentlemen of Facebook, pour your hearts out and feel free to de-friend away, even de-friend me if you wish. Just know that while I may have over 600 friends in the virtual world, I will eventually find out and that sly grin that comes over my face (after 0.47 seconds) will be the look of me realizing that I have just destroyed you.

2011-07-14T22:29:00.003-05:00

One of the big stories this (or was it last?) week has been the launch of Google Plus (or is it Google+?). Yes, I just managed to put four different punctuation marks in a row. I should probably just stop here (shut up, nobody is making you read this), but I won't.

So yeah, this Google Plus thing. I don't really know what it is or what it does. I've heard it's sort of like Google's version of Facebook, but will somehow be better, but I can't seem to recall exactly how or why. This is something I could have researched before these fingers started dancing, but so could you. That is, you could research it using Google (note, not Facebook). Anyway, I can't tell you what it does or doesn't do and how that compares to what Facebook does or doesn't do. I have used Facebook since about August 2004, when grad school began. I don't really remember much else since the beginning of grad school, but Facebook has helped make it a lot less uncomfortable when someone says "remember when such-and-such happened in (a year since 2004)?" Thanks to Facebook's seemingly endless ability to keep my messages, photos, statuses and pokes (do people still do this? you know, on Facebook, that is), I don't have to worry about it. And it is for that reason that I don't really care what Google Plus does or doesn't do. If it's good (and thus warrants the "+"), I'm sure it's something I'll use. Otherwise, I'll let tried and true Facebook keep doing its thing.

That's sorta the point of this entry I guess. At this point, Facebook has become so good at what it does, it has ceased to really warrant much concern from me one way or the other. It is very true that the reason it does this so well is because it's not really following in the footsteps of anything else that came before it. Granted, there was MySpace (most recently) and Friendster (a little older), but nothing has ever "done Facebook" as well as Facebook. That's part of the reason why Facebook is probably a more common word for most people than the words "face" or "book" are combined.

Back to G+ (I'm going to call it that for now, or at least until everyone starts mistaking it for a Gatorade product), I have seen people begging on their Facebook statuses for an invite to this new-found competitor. That's like walking in Domino's just to ask for Pizza Hut's phone number. Don't these people realize that the reason why they resort to Facebook to seek out very specific information is because Facebook is just about the best way to do exactly that?

Well, I got a G+ invite. I didn't ask for one, but a good friend just so happened to send me one, because that's what friends do. I eagerly got myself going (I don't actually remember how you "get it going", but I did whatever you do when you're new to G+) and started adding people to my circles. That was fun for a few minutes, then I realized this was essentially just like Facebook, so I went looking for something different it can do. After about 30 seconds, I instinctively started reading Facebook. That's just how it works.

Now I see that Spotify's music service is finally reaching the US and guess what? People are already on Facebook asking for a Spotify invitation. I have no idea if it'll be the next music-related flame out like iTunes' "Ping" or if it'll be a hit. And G+ (not a Gatorade product, by the way) might be a serious contender for peoples' time that should be spent doing something else. It all remains to be seen, but it's such an odd thing that we are now so enamored with these various forms of social networking that we beg each other for the privilege to use something we never knew we were missing in the first place, especially considering we never really had a problem with the incumbent either.

All this thought about the importance of social networking online got me to thinking...

2011-07-11T22:29:00.003-05:00

Having spent a few hours over the past several days watching the documentaries The Lottery and Waiting for "Superman", I am clearly more capable of making an entry about America's education system than I was before. Problem is, like with so many of today's "big" issues, there is no clear-cut answer. There are facts, however. Granted, facts can sometimes be misleading, skewed or simply irrelevant, but it sure beats hearsay or conjecture.

It might be argued by some that American schools are worse now than they were 10 or 20 or 30 years ago, but is it fact? We sure hear about how bad (mostly public) schools (in mostly impoverished areas) are. This is probably a fair statement. However, these schools were never necessarily great. The problem comes when you consider that there aren't as many decent options for the people coming out of these schools, regardless of whether or not they have a diploma in hand. The formerly "fall-back" jobs provided by the agricultural and manufacturing industries simply aren't there in the same quantity as before. They've either changed continents, or at least countries, or disappeared altogether. This has left many recipients of a poor school system more likely to end up confined to another damaged system, the prison system. If you look at the bright side, though, it means more gainful employment opportunities for those interested in being a prison guard.

Meanwhile, as those "fall-back" jobs have gone elsewhere, the people that took them are living in countries that now have better academic performance than the US on many levels. The leftovers of this "transaction" has been more poorly educated (if educated at all) people who do not even have a "fall-back" job to fall back on. These days the expectation of students is to gain an education that will demand a job and, more likely than ever, a well-paying job. As a result, the gap has widened to wider than ever before. Since you actually have to compete for a "good" job in the US these days, you are more inclined to get a higher degree (or equivalent), thus making you even more likely gainfully employed than those that went down the "fall-back" path.

So, the fact is, American schools are not really getting any worse relative to American schools of the past. The status quo has been very well maintained domestically. When compared to the educations being given and received globally, though, the US looks terrible. Everyone else has gotten better and did not really bother to make the US level of education the goal, but merely a milestone on the way to better. If the US truly wants to be a free market leader of the world, we must look beyond our broad borders for our competition, motivation and justification.

The two fine documentaries named way back in the first paragraph see charter schools as an idea to solve the problems. Although the evidence presented is quite convincing, even if these schools are not a fix-all, their mere existence brings to light much more. The argument here isn't the same as private versus public schools. That is an apples and oranges comparison. While the two ultimately strive to do the same basic thing, the approach, priorities, philosophy and often outcome differ greatly. With charter schools, the issue isn't whether classes are taught by nuns, or if school uniforms are required, or if sports are relevant, or who can afford the tuition. These charter schools are essentially "free" (in the same way other public schools are, which is to say they aren't really free) and are located in the school district which they serve. They also have been shown to often (but not absolutely always) out-perform their local "zoned" counterparts by a huge margin. Oh, but their teachers and administration are not part of teachers' unions. Oops.

What the involved union figureheads fail to realize is that this is not about them. Granted, teachers are (for the most part) underpaid and under-appreciated. That does not, however, make their pay scale or work schedule the focus. The matter at hand is the quality of the education of kids at their mercy. The plain truth is, nobody wants to make life harder for teachers. Nobody wants to tell a willing teacher they can't do their job. It's just a matter of keeping priorities straight and letting a little simple logic enter the equation. It stands to reason if the teachers have nothing to worry about in regard to their job being tied to their performance (like the vast majority of jobs that people actually have to apply for and be hired for), it's easy to see why so many will put their own interests first and do so in a staggeringly reprehensible fashion. Of course, not all teachers will do this, but the ones that will are probably the same ones that got into teaching because of the system in place and it probably wouldn't be a stretch to say they had a teacher or two with the same mindset while they were getting their own education. Right back to the status quo we go.

This union issue is pretty depressing, but not because unions in general are inherently good or bad. Bad teachers can't be fired and the option to avoid the bad teachers can't be exercised by many. As the documentaries state, the system is clearly broken, but that's not to say it's broken everywhere. I had the fortune of attending fine schools throughout my education, including public schools from the first day of middle school to the last day of graduate school. I also had a mother that placed a high priority of academic pursuits, just like many of the parents in the films and parents over the past several decades.

As long as there have been schools, there have been good students and bad students, good teachers and bad teachers, good ideas and bad ideas. It is time to take the good and replace the bad, even if the bad was once good. In other words, it's not just the system that's broken, but those at the helm as well. That is to say, it's not just about what others (be it domestically or abroad) are doing right or better, it's what we're doing wrong or worse.

2011-05-11T22:11:00.000-05:00

Getting old isn't anything new. Everyone does it and, technically speaking, we all do it at the same time, at the same rate. The differences exist in how each person handles this unavoidable fact. Well, there is one way to avoid it, but we won't go down that path. We've just assigned so much value to how long we've been alive and conveniently have units of measure to help us out with the messy details. Seconds, minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, years, decades, centuries, millennia.

Age really is just a number, but so is your blood pressure, and your salary and your grade in pre-algebra all those months/years/decades ago. Numbers matter. Numbers represent so many different things that represent so much of our lives. Phone numbers, street numbers, social security numbers. Age matters as well. Age dictates when you can drive, vote, drink, smoke, gamble, rent a car, retire.

Ok, now that that is all out of the way, the analysis. Hitting a "milestone" age is always a big deal as you gradually get older. When you're 10, you can't wait to be 16, when you're 16, it's 18. When you're 18, it's 21. When you're 21, your perspective starts to change a bit (unless you've always dreamed of the aforementioned ability to rent a car). Those subsequent years just sort of blur together and are largely indistinguishable. Somewhere in there you might earn a degree, fall in love, take a trip or something else equally significant, but those things are not directly linked to your age.

As the years pass, life becomes less about reaching a certain age so you can do something (like drive, drink, vote) and more about doing things before you reach a certain age (like graduate, get married, have kids, buy a house, make a million dollars). Somehow miraculously, the same 365 days that seemed to never elapse as a kid, can't go slow enough as an adult. People start hearing "clocks ticking" and making marriage pacts with childhood friends. Older relatives' eyebrows start raising and stress starts growing. Every deficiency becomes a priority and every goal becomes that much more past due.

So, upon reaching 30, is there a list of accomplishments that should be marked off? If so, what are they? Are they the same for everyone? Does it really matter? Why do you care what someone else's list looks like? It seems like people have decided the only way to feel better about their own age is to compare themselves with other people at that age, be it past or present. A 30-year old might compare themselves to another 30-year old and see who "wins", or maybe to a 40-year old and see if they're "ahead of the pace", or even to a 20-year old just to make sure they've put enough distance between themselves and the next generation.

Why bother? Every age has advantages and disadvantages. The flip-side of feeling "old" is that at least you've lived to feel old in the first place. If you were still "young", you wouldn't necessarily have that guaranteed. You've survived, you've risen to face a lot of days and lived to tell the tale. Even if your tale won't sell many books, magazines of movie tickets, it's still an accomplishment in itself.

2011-04-03T20:42:00.005-05:00

This Trip, Part IX: 29 March 2011

When your home time zone is 6 hours behind Greenwich Mean Time and you’re awake at 5:30am GMT, you know it’ll be a long day. More so, a long day that begins with the usual fretting about getting everything packed and getting to the airport on time. Thankfully all of those worries diminished as the morning progressed and hurdles were cleared. Once I made it to Terminal 4, Gate 14 at Heathrow, I began to notice something odd. There were a few middle-aged men dressed like the band Anvil, complete with long stringy hair, lots of chains, earrings and almost exclusively black clothing. I noticed it, but didn’t really think about it too much until I noticed several more.

Upon boarding, I had to ask the guy behind me the obvious question in the most obvious way possible: "This may seem like an obvious questions, but are you guys in a band?". Of course I knew they were in a band, but it seemed a bit brusque to simply lead off with "What band are you in?". At this point, I was sure this was actually multiple bands, possibly on tour together. Nope, turns out this epic assemblage of rockers was none other than the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, along with their crew and tag-alongs. Most of these tag-alongs came in the form of young girls that could just have easily been their daughters, but there was no hope for such normalcy.

The prospect of a long flight with about 50 grown men on tour was a bit worrisome, especially since they were spread throughout the plane, including directly behind me. I had an exit row seat for this long flight and one of the young groupies was my neighbor, but she made her intent known very quickly that she would be relocating in order to (paraphrasing) "sit next to someone she could fall asleep on". I guess I should consider myself lucky for that little twist of fate and declaration. As it turns out, there were a good many empty seats on the plane and nobody ended up being my neighbor for the flight. Sitting in the exit row without a neighbor actually provides enough space to be comfortable for an 8-plus hour flight.

The most troubling part of the flight was the extremely cold air seeping in the door, next to my feet. I thought it was a little troubling that this air was seeping in at 30,000 feet since the cabin is supposedly pressurized. I finally wedged the little pillow and blanket at my seat in the crack of the door, which helped somewhat. Upon arrival in Detroit, we were very delayed exiting the plane because we didn't have a gate or something. The friendly steward guy was standing next to me, so I mentioned the freezing air coming in during the flight. He just laughed and said that kind of plane (767-400) was prone to do that because there wasn't a perfect seal. I smiled because we were already on the ground.

It was a very bright and sunny day in Detroit, but apparently only about 40 degrees outside. Of course, you'd never know that from the warm confines of DTW, which never fails to impress me as a really nice airport. The weather out of Detroit was also very nice looking, but the invisible wind over Toledo made for a little bit of teeth gnashing aboard the little CRJ200. Nothing against Toledo, per se, but it certainly does not make for a fond remembrance of a place when your stomach is in your throat whilst flying over.

2011-04-03T20:39:00.002-05:00

This Trip, Part VIII: 28 March 2011

The last day someplace is bittersweet because you might not be quite ready for home yet, but you also know you have to get back to pick up where you left off. In a place like London, there is always something else to do, so you feel inclined to keep squeezing as much in as possible, but the fact that there’s more to do is sorta exciting because it means you have good reason to return again. How many times do you want to go someplace and do exactly what you’ve done before? It’s nice to repeat some of your favorites, but at least for me, there has to be some new places and new experiences on each trip. Otherwise, it starts to feel like work and you might as well be at home if you’re going to yield to a routine.

This trip was successful in the fact that I visited new places in great frequency and actually never found myself in places like Trafalgar Square and Piccadilly Circus at all. This is probably a good thing considering the protests that bordered on riots on Saturday night. I was actually cruising underneath Trafalgar on the Tube when all that was going on. On the heels of the Belgian excursion, I was exhausted and apparently missed it all. Pictures of me in the midst of a clash between protesters and police involving tear gas, beatings, smashed windows and spray paint would have been great for Facebook. That’s what Facebook pictures need more of: danger.

Safe to say, my stroll through Kensington, Hyde Park and Knightsbridge had very little danger. Some of the rental bike riders were a little cagey, though. Then there were the exuberant young men running out the back door of a building that I only then realized was the Afghanistan embassy. A little while later a pass-by of the Libyan embassy was even more tense, as armed police officers lined the sidewalk in front of the building and protesters with very intimidating flags were across the street. The embassy, on the other hand, was flying the usual solid green flag of Libya. Nothing wrong with keeping it simple.

By pure chance I saw the Twitter tweet from Okkervil River’s Will Sheff that he would be playing solo at St. Pancras Old Church in London on Monday night. At first blush, this seemed like a can’t miss opportunity. Any debate regarding when to leave London ended when this came up. After buying tickets, I later found out it sold out very quickly and apparently less than 100 tickets were available in the first place. The church is actually a church and not some heroin den that might have been a church in a previous life or simply given a church-like name for effect. No, the previous life of this church, which was built in Victorian times, was as a church, as there has been some form of a church at the site since 361 AD.

The show was great, even though doors were at 7:30pm and Will Sheff went on at 9pm. No opener, no nothing, except the conversations of those around me. Will (can I call him Will?) played several new songs throughout the set, but also hit high spots from throughout Okkervil River’s catalog, including a particularly strong rendition of “A Stone” a capella. Patrick, the Okkervil River bassist, joined Will for several songs, but Will finished solo in grand fashion. The climax of the night was Will coming back for an encore only to walk directly to the back of the room, dislocate a couple of audience members from their seats and sit down at an old upright piano that had been hiding in the corner up to that point. The audience shifted to the back of the room and many people stood in chairs as he went through “For Real”, which was greatly appreciated. The show ended with “Happy Hearts”, with the crowd standing right at the stage, without much regard for the rows of tiny wooden chairs set up. There were some sound problems throughout the night and Will can be a bit of a diva at times, but the strength of the set list, the songs themselves and the setting made it an amazing show regardless.

2011-04-03T20:34:00.004-05:00

This Trip, Part VII: 27 March 2011

Although it may come as a shock to some people that have traveled with me before, it is nice to have relaxation time while on vacation. I truly believe in the benefits of seeing and experiencing as much as possible, but it is also nice to see and experience things that aren’t necessarily in a guidebook. A trip to the playground at Walham Green and the White Horse on Parsons Green are a perfectly fine way to spend a day in London, even if it never requires riding a bus or the Tube. Even a failed trip to the butcher shop was a welcome diversion from the seemingly constant schedule of busy trains and streets.

That said, thanks to the weather, which was excellent by London-in-March standards, both the playground and White Horse were quite busy. Sitting at a playground can be an odd experience if you’re not a parent and/or not used to sitting at a playground. The kids run around and interact in potentially strange ways, and there are parents mixed in at random intervals. Some of the parents are interacting with one another, while some play with the kids. Others still, stand back and observe. As we discussed while being the sort to sit back and observe, you have to be careful to interact with a kid at some point that is friendly in return to you. This way the other parents don’t get the idea that you’re a pervert that likes to just lurk around the playground and watch the kids. Then there’s the issue of fair play. At what point is your child bothering another child, or are they just playing? How do you know the other child’s “style of play”, much less their parent’s? The benefit of playing the role of “friend of the parents” is that none of it really matters, so long as the kids play, burn some energy and go home satisfied.

The adults can play at the White Horse while the kids play on the patio or the park across the street, which is nice and fair. The place had a slightly American feel to it, but it may have just been because it allowed outdoor seating in slightly American weather. Apparently there are a fair number of Americans living in Fulham, but they didn’t seem to be around us. Mostly under- and/or overdressed Londoners and probably some French. Not a particular reason, though, just guessing. Regardless, the White Horse just seemed to make a simple-minded American feel fairly normal, except maybe for the lady behind the bar that seemed deadest on questioning every request made of her, as if people often come in there just to make completely errant requests that they have no basis for. That sentence ended in a preposition. I do no care. Ok, so yeah, the White Horse on Parsons Green, write that one down.

A trip to an authentic neighborhood butcher would have been a unique treat that would probably somehow trump a walk down the aisle at Whole Foods or Kroger. There is something to be said for that sort of place that provides a specific service, but it also a “part of the community”. I use the quotations because “part of the community” seems to be one of those phrases that have become cliché or just filler. Well, either way, I don’t consider the nice guy at Whole Foods’ seafood counter to be “part of the community”, but I guess he is if the old school butcher gets to be. This particular butcher (and the next one) is only 6/7 part of the community, as they are not open on Sunday.

One place that is open on Sunday and shows no ill effects of it is The Hand in Flower. I had dinner on my 29th birthday here and I had a return engagement this time around. It was good before and perhaps better now. A dining experience is always interesting when a 3 year-old is involved. Not interesting because kids and their behavior are unpredictable, but interesting because there is a potentially precise formula to managing small children in public (or private, for that matter) places. I suppose you just have to figure out what your child’s trigger is for discipline and not be afraid to go back to it time after time. Obviously, for some kids, telling them that security cameras monitor their behavior is reason enough to behave. It especially helps when that child is accustomed to traveling and being in public places that are commonly monitored by cameras. Then, of course, there is the epic trump card of the 21st century, the iPhone/iPod and headphones. The ability to transport that child to another universe without leaving the table is matchless, especially if you tell them people are watching them through security cameras and they’ll be in trouble if they make a sound.

2011-04-03T20:31:00.003-05:00

This Trip, Part VI: 26 March 2011

A complimentary breakfast that would normally cost 30 euros is usually something too good to pass up. Unfortunately, such an expensive breakfast, regardless of the quality, would take too long and the return trip to London was already booked and non-flexible. So it was. I returned to the streets of Brussels to find many fewer partiers and carousers as the night before, but quite a few of their leave-behinds on the sidewalks, along with tourists.

A vital piece of the day’s potential success came in the form of Bookoo, a one-day pass for the Brussels Metro. I guess that’s meant to be pronounced beaucoup. Given the honor system set-up of many of the stations I passed through, there must be beaucoup free riders. I missed a fare box or two, but thankfully did not end up in Belgian custody. The use of the Metro probably wasn’t even completely necessary, as much of the parts of Brussels you’d want to see during a one-day visit are within reasonable walking distance. Riding a city’s public transportation is, however, a great opportunity to learn more about the city itself and the people that inhabit it. A few quick pieces of information that are apparent about Brussels based on their Metro: not a lot of English being spoken by choice, a nice mix of old and new, and busy, but not too crowded.

By most accounts, Brussels is a place that prides itself on not taking itself too seriously, as evident by its most celebrated landmark being a 2-foot tall statue of a little boy peeing. Not quite the Eiffel Tower or Big Ben, but just as easy to inspire souvenirs. This little guy, whose name is Mannekin Pis (no, really), can be found virtually anywhere in the old part of Brussels that attracts the most tourists. There are many stories regarding his origins and what he “symbolizes”, but it probably doesn’t really matter at this point. People, although I’m not sure who these people are, have taken to dressing the little guy up in costumes. On the day of my visit, he was wearing a little dress/Cossack/cloak-type thing. However, his “thing”, as always, was still doing its thing, much to the delight of the moderate crowd assembled.

The nice thing about Mannekin Pis is that he is located on a seemingly regular street corner in a tightly-packed part of town, not far off the Grand Place. Although he is protected from his admirers to some extent, the public can get within about five feet and he is not locked in a glass case. At the same intersection are a couple of local establishments that have used their location to their advantage, including a neon sign depiction of the statue’s famed activity. Despite this description, the area still maintains historic appeal.

Apparently much of Brussels was torn down and rebuilt in the early 20th century, in an effort to be a “modern capital city”, rather than a “historical capital city” or just an “appropriate capital city”. Much of the newer development includes huge parks, museums and, more recently, headquarters of the European Commission. These aren’t exactly bad things, but it is a relief that a decent amount of the historic parts remain mostly in tact, along with the newer parts. Everything in moderation.
An example of the old and the new coming together is on display at the Musee Magritte Museum, which is a part of Brussels quite immense Museum of Fine Arts. Rene Magritte was Belgian and great, with this museum being probably the best collection of his work anywhere in one place. A museum dedicated to the work of one artist is fairly rare since either the artist isn’t relevant enough to warrant it, or their art has been bought and sold so much that it is spread across many collections, museums and continents. Regardless, the opportunity to see so much work by one great artist in one great place was well worth the 8 euros. Actually the view of Brussels from the hillside museum’s windows was worth that much.

So yeah, Belgium seems to be best known for three things (other than peeing statues): chocolate, waffles and beer. Not exactly a path to enlightenment or a healthy life. The local businesses don’t seem particularly concerned with this, as the opportunities to partake in any of the three come about once every five steps. Apparently diamonds are also a huge industry in Belgium, particularly Antwerp, but that wasn’t as evident in my surroundings. Everyone must have been broke and in a coma from their chocolate, waffles and beer.

2011-03-27T18:24:00.005-05:00

This Trip, Part V: 25 March 2011

It began with one of those weird occurrences, that seem to happen most often when using public transportation in large cities, where you inadvertently find yourself following someone. There was the District Line to Earl's Court, then the transfer, then the Piccadilly train to St. Pancras, then the extremely long transfer to the Eurostar terminal. Opposite sides of a very large city, yet still remaining in the immediate vicinity of the exact same strangers all along. Do they realize what I realize? Are they concerned? Regardless, all of us made it to the Eurostar check-in and then trains would take us to various places, various countries.

And so it was, I boarded the train in London around 7:20am, along with all the others that weren't nearly as overdressed and/or giggly as those waiting for the trains for Paris. The Brussels crowd were a more subdued bunch, a little older and definitely less likely to be wearing sunglasses in a train station barely an hour after the sun had made its initial appearance for the day. Perhaps this string of relatively sunny days has Londoners excited about the concept of actually wearing their purchase whenever possible, given the possibility that a beam of light might actually shoot through a ceiling or window at any time.

The Eurostar was not exactly luxurious, but it was nice enough. Certainly nice enough considering it links three countries, goes underneath a somewhat major body of water, and does so at up to 186 mph. The beauty of internet research became apparent when I noticed my coach/car/whatever, number 5, was roughly half-full, despite being one of only two 2nd class cars with electrical outlets at every seat. This is customary in 1st class, but you have to figure this out for 2nd class. The seats alternate between the UK and Mainland outlet voltages, but thankfully I had a multi-function adapter anyway. Everything felt pretty great once I realized the seat next to me and in front of me were empty. The guy across the aisle was already asleep before the train moved, so it promised to be a nice trip. Then came this guy, talking in a very "entitled" voice to the train employee. It seems they weren't happy with their seats, possibly because the seats faced the opposite direction the train was moving. Mind you, when booking a ticket, this information is readily available to you. However, for whatever reason, this availability must not have applied here. The man, his wife and elderly mother ended up moving to the seats immediately in front of me on both sides of the aisle. Until I could subtly acquire my headphones from my bag (so as to not appear too obvious that my immediate response to their incessant babbling was to do anything I could to drown out their incessant babbling), I listened to some of the most inane and unnecessary chatter perhaps ever uttered, especially since they were unwelcome guests in our peaceful little slice of the universe known as car 5.

Brussels came quite quick, roughly 2 hours, but not too quick to enjoy a nice mix of Wolf Parade and Fruit Ninja on the iPhone. Oh yes, there was also that whole going-under-the-English-Channel-in-a-train thing. That was a unique experience, but only because of what it meant, not necessarily the actual physical experience. That part was basically nothing more than looking out a window into completely blackness for 20 minutes. Not unlike arriving in Brussels and realizing that most people probably speak English, but it isn't exactly advertised. All of the train station signs were in French and Dutch, which is somewhat discernible when you've had two years of French classes in school as recently as 1997, like me. As it turned out, once I stopped looking for the train going to Bruges, but instead for the train going through Bruges, I was set. The train to Oostente would deliver me to Bruges in roughly an hour, with a quick stop in Ghent.

So, just to get it out of the way, I was in fact In Bruges and yes, I did make a point of watching the movie again before this trip. Furthermore, yes, the town is just a nice and charming in that historical way as the movie makes it seem. A few things were slightly different, though. It wasn't snowing. In fact, it was quite mild, probably in the low 60s. Also, there's not really convenient way to jump from the top of the Belfort, as demonstrated by Brendan Gleeson in the movie. However, one thing is for sure, Colin Farrell's character was not unjust in expressing concern for the obese man attempting to climb to the Belfort's top. It is quite a draining experience, despite being less than 400 steps to the top. It gets quite tight and low in some spots too. Doing this in relatively warm weather with a backpack full of important items was quite a workout and produced quite a workout's amount of sweat and gasping for breath. Thankfully, there was lots of natural air conditioning and some very nice views at the top. Looking down on Bruges was sorta like looking down on a little fairy tale place, complete with cathedrals, canals, terracotta roofs and many tourists. Surprisingly (or not, maybe?), despite the movie tie-in and all the tourists, I did not see even a single reference to In Bruges whilst in Bruges.

Lunch was at Cambrinus and it was quite excellent. I can honestly say I'd never had Flemish Carbonades made with Gulden Draak and served with applesauce. I would definitely eat it again, though. I'll have to be on the lookout for that anywhere I am that serves traditional Belgian cuisine other than waffles. It would be nice to have this meal outside the presence of 8-10 extremely loud American fratboy-types that just so happened to be having a bachelor party in Bruges at the same time I was visiting. You go all the way to Bruges and end up in a place with loud Americans and a soundtrack consisting of American classics like Frank Sinatra and...Michael Bolton. Do Europeans actually love Americans that much, or maybe they just like to remind us that we gave the world Michael Bolton and it is our burden to listen to him forever.

The day in Bruges was spent trekking all over this small town, including a first-hand viewing of Michelangelo's Madonna and Childs sculpture, first-hand touching of a sacred relic supposedly containing the blood of Christ and, of course, climbing to the top of the bell tower, which I have only since found out leans about a meter off-center. The historical center of Bruges is so compact that it almost only needed an afternoon to see completely, but a chance conversation with an Englishman at t'Brugs Beertje ended up lasting well into the evening. It was nice to have one of those chance encounter experiences, especially in such a foreign place. It wouldn't have been as nice if it caused me to miss the train back to Brussels, where my points-earned hotel room awaited.

The quick train ride back to Bruxelles Nord deposited me only about 5 minutes from the hotel. It was almost midnight when I got checked in, but I was starving so I walked around a bit. Of course, I ended up on a very busy street in a very busy part of town, yet the best food option I could find was McDonalds. I had an NY Crispy even though I felt like a complete buffoon ordering it by that name. I quickly realized that most of the people around me, including the very many people in the very busy McDonalds, were annoying in the same way as drunken college students might be in the US at midnight on a Friday night. I walked around while I ate the NY Crispy, but never really got away from the noise and crowded streets.

2011-03-24T21:21:00.002-05:00

This Trip, Part III: 23 March 2011

To sum it up, passing through immigration/customs at Heathrow is something I've done twice in the past 11 months and something that I would easily rank among my least favorite things to do. As you may know, there are three basic categories of travelers that pass through this particular area. There are those holding a passport from a EU country and those holding a passport from any other country on Earth, along with those from either category lucky enough to be "invited" to the Fast Track lane. Of course, I have since found out that to receive the Fast Track "invitation", you have to have been sitting First Class on your incoming flight. Don't get me started on that, oh wait, nevermind.

It's just uncomfortable standing in this dreary room with a really odd purple-backlit drop ceiling while herding through like cattle, not knowing who might have decided to pick up your bags after they went around the carousel for the 87th time. Then there's the whole experience of watching the EU folks and the Fast Lane folks breeze through their lines in a matter of a very few minutes, while you are still busy trying to figure out exactly how many times the line doubles-back on itself in front of you. With no other international flights coming in that terminal right then, the EU and Fast Track areas become completely empty, which is apparently the cue for most border agents to go on break at once and the remaining ones to get much more surly.

When it comes down to it, this all-encompassing line of "others" is made up of two major groups: the paranoid Americans/Australians/Canadians and the carefree Middle Easterners/Asians that make them paranoid. Then again, spending about an hour and a half packed so close to so many people, some of whom don't take personal hygiene very seriously, might be enough to make anyone paranoid. This is especially true since there's the "penalty box" along side the "others" line, that always seems to have at least one confused and/or disgruntled looking person in it. Strangely, this person also always seems to have some unique identifying trait, namely a turban, thick beard, sari, or what was a new one for me in this instance, hair curls that are most commonly associated with Orthodox Judaism.

So, after about 90 minutes of standing, leaning, squirming, yawning, staring and eye-rolling, the wait was over. Thankfully, my bag was still on the carousel when I arrived to retrieve it and I made my way to to the train. Of course I immediately went to the Heathrow Express entrance instead of the Underground/Tube entrance, just as I did last year when I was in the same position. Thankfully, memory kicked in and I made it onto the right train in the right place.

There's really only one thing that sticks out about the ride on the Piccadilly Line from Heathrow to Earl's Court and the District Line from Earl's Court to Fulham Broadway: those girls. Wow. There were 4 of them, all in their early-mid 20s, wearing various combinations of wife-beater tanktops, baggy jeans, cargo pants, boxer shorts, thick belts, large belt buckles and sunglasses. In addition, they all were drinking bottles of Budweiser and Corona (remember, this is London at 2pm on a Tuesday) and reeked of cigarette smoke and earlier beers. These scents might have been worse if the apparent "leader" of this posse didn't pull a can of deodorant out of her beer-toting purse and "freshen up" right there in the middle of the train car. I guess I haven't mentioned that these girls were literally sitting directly next to me and across from me. I had been riding in that spot since I boarded and had a good place to keep my suitcase next to me, so switching seats wasn't really an option, as the train had filled up by this point. The parts of conversation that weren't completely unintelligible due to that "nasty" kind of British accent, consisted mostly of heavy profanity and/or tales of lesbianism. What it all boiled down to was an opportunity to spend about 30 minutes in a confined space with what amounted to a 4-headed female version of Kid Rock.

After getting settled in at my wonderful friends' place, albeit 3 and a half hours after landing at LHR, the only thing I had energy for was a shower and a walk. The walk's destination was Craven Cottage, home of the English Premier League's Fulham Football Club. It's not a big stadium, but it was something to see and served a good destination requiring about 30 minutes of walking in each direction. Craven Cottage turned out to be about as expected, including its immediate proximity to the Thames. A nice surprise was sunset over the Thames at Putney Bridge and the adjoining Bishop's Park, which includes Fulham Palace and the very old Fulham All Saints Church. However, once it was dark, finding a quick way out of Bishop's Park from where I was was quite a challenge and one that ultimately ended up with the jumping of a fence. It felt strangely appropriate and made for a good end of the day's adventures.

2011-03-24T19:50:00.003-05:00

This Trip, Part II: 22-23 March 2011

There is no question that flying First Class (or whatever's equivalent) is truly a wonderful thing. The seats are bigger. The service is more attentive. The drinks are plentiful. The drinks are free. Mainly, though, the seats are bigger. This accomplishes two things: Obviously, by being bigger, there is more cushioning, which in theory makes the seat more comfortable. However, this extra size and padding also inherently positions you farther away from your neighbor than usual. This is the key advantage. Elbow space is not shared. Feet don't bump. People who like to look out the window, yet book seats on the aisle, aren't breathing on you.

The drawback of First Class is that, unless you only fly First Class, it is such a tease. You never want to fly anything but First Class after the first time. Problem is, tickets in First Class are intentionally priced at a prohibitively high level and earning enough frequent flier miles to earn status for such perks is also time consuming and, accordingly, quite expensive. Having done a fair amount of travel in 2010 for work, I have managed to get myself just barely into the realm of upgrades. Unfortunately, the only upgrades I have ever gotten are Salt Lake City to Las Vegas (a flight that covers not even the north-south length of the State of Utah), Las Vegas to Salt Lake City (ditto) and Salt Lake City to Atlanta on a red-eye (this may sound nice, but the only reason I was on this flight in the first place was because a delay in Vegas made me miss my direct connection to BNA in SLC, so I had to fly over-night to Atlanta and catch the first flight of the morning to BNA in time for work that day).

So add another trip to my First Class upgrade ledger. Nashville to Atlanta. 35 minutes in the air. 35 minutes of First Class ego-inflating. I was literally sitting in the chair longer while we were on the ground than when we were in the air. However, I suppose sitting in the First Class cabin is better than sitting at the gate in the terminal. Seriously though, First Class on a 35 minute flight is such a tease when you know you've got an 8-hour flight in Coach/Economy/Whatever coming up. I was actually not bothered when we arrived in ATL, only to find out our arrival gate was still occupied by a departing plane, so we had to sit around and wait about 15 minutes. All told, from initial boarding to final disembarking, my trip to First Class lasted about an hour and a half.

Despite being almost 11pm EDT, Terminal B at ATL still had that usual miserably crowded and noisy atmosphere that can only be expected at that airport. Thankfully Terminal E was quite quiet (yep), except for the blaring broadcast of the Hawks/Bulls game (which the Bulls won by about 749 points) on the TVs in the gates. Terminal E just doesn't have that same "Green Hills on a Saturday afternoon" feel to it as the rest of Atlanta, or excuse me, Hartsfield-Jackson International, Airport. It almost felt like something was missing.

At least the long flight was on a 767-400, which uses a passenger entry point between First Class and Coach. It would have really stung if I had to walk through First Class to get to my measly seat 17A. It soon became apparent that our 11:50pm-departing flight to Heathrow was not going to be a crowded one. A collective sigh of relief must have emanated from everyone on board (or at least in Coach) when they realized the possibility of sleeping might be more likely with 2 or 3 seats to themselves and a statistically lower probability of a screaming baby. One baby really tried to prove that statistics lie when we were taking off, but thankfully the statistics won out and the baby was not heard from again.

Sadly, on the opposite end of the age spectrum fell the man sitting directly in front of me. Actually, his assigned seat was 16B, but once he realized 16A was vacant, he became the occupant of both. Not really a problem in itself, especially since I had 17A&B to myself, but he made it an issue with his direct-impact seat movements and flatulence. Each of his seats, plus the armrest in between managed to find one of my kneecaps at least once. Unfortunately, my knees were not the part of my body that felt the most violated. The smells were awful, but mercilessly absent for much of the middle part of the flight.

Not that it mattered since I couldn't get to sleep anyway. I watched Black Swan, I watched Conviction. I played Angry Birds. I played Tiny Wings. I played Fruit Ninja. I skimmed Sky magazine. Meanwhile, after dinner was served around 1am Eastern, the entire plane had turned into one big slumber party, expect for me and the flight attendants, who kept walking by and asking if I needed anything, as if the only thing keeping me awake at that moment was my lack of a glass of water. Nothing was working, so I started playing a trivia game on the personal TV screen in front of me. That worked to an extent, as I found myself dozing off between questions. However, even still, I could only stay asleep a little while before something, usually the smelly knee-banger in 16A&B, woke me up abruptly. Then I'd realize how uncomfortable I was an not be able to get back to sleep.

Since we were flying east, the sun came up pretty fast and breakfast was served, which got the interior lights turned on and most people up moving around again. Of course, within about an hour and a half of London, my body decided it was ready for sleep. So while everyone else was waking up, I was crashing. I tried watching the Matt Damon-narrated documentary an the 2008 economic crash whose name escapes me, but that only added to the complete crash out. Once we were on the ground at LHR, I drug myself off the plane, blissfully, if not drowsily, unaware of what lay ahead.

2011-03-24T19:11:00.006-05:00

This Trip, Part I: 22 March 2011

This trip began somewhat strangely. It was strange because it began at 8 in the evening. Well, it actually began earlier than that because it involved getting on a plane and all the legwork it takes to make that happen. Thanks to wonderful curbside service, I found myself walking into BNA at 6pm. It became immediately apparent that something was different than in my (relatively frequent) previous visits to Nashville "International" Airport.

Being the kind of guy that likes to squeeze every last drop of possible time out of a trip, I seem to always find myself at BNA at 6am (or earlier if the price was get-to-the-airport-even-earlier-than-6am great). The airport is not one of those places that is completely dead early in the morning, despite the best efforts of people like me propping up that notion by constantly booking early flights. It is very likely that you will encounter many people, a disturbingly large portion of whom are large groups of high-school-aged people, wearing flip-flops, sweatpants and in a generally (or completely) incoherent manner. These school trip groups apparently LOVE the early morning departures. Then there are the people that fill the "expert traveler" lane for ID/boarding pass check that are no more an expert traveler than the infant in the stroller they are pushing around in a havoc-wreaking manner. Regardless, it is safe to say that 6am at the airport and 6pm at the airport are two completely different things.

So, as I strode directly up to the Delta self-check-in and baggage drop counter and realized I had the entire Delta customer service universe at BNA to myself at that very moment, I said exactly that to the lady behind the counter. Being at the airport at 6pm feels a lot different than 6am. She agreed, noting that I was on Delta's last flight of the night. To say her customer service was well done and very appreciated would be an understatement. It was almost like it had been so long since she spoon-fed information to a needy customer that she didn't want to miss the chance with me. It was great. SkyMiles card won't scan? No problem, "let me pull it up for you". Your bag is over 50 pounds? No problem, "You're fine". It was weird feeling a momentary sense of sadness that such a pleasant exchange had to end.

The walk around the corner to where the zombie high-schoolers and unfortunate illiterates usually are found was also very different. Not only were neither of the aforementioned population subsets there, nobody was. Just the lane dividers and those signs. In hindsight, I wish I had walked down the lane labeled "I am a complete idiot and am only here to hold up everyone else", just for the experience, but I didn't. I went down "expert" because I wanted to actually walk down that lane and be amazed at how fast I made it through security. And I was. I couldn't resist the urge to share my 6am vs. 6pm thought with the guy checking ID/boarding pass too. Maybe I wanted to make sure that all these BNA employees knew what a stomach-churning experience it is trying to make a flight at 6am. Like they'll go tell their supervisor, "Hey boss, some guy was very happy this evening because we actually were able to do our job in a prompt and friendly manner. Maybe we should try harder to make that happen early in the morning. Maybe?"

All pipe dreams aside, walking directly up to security and not waiting felt like heaven. Like all of sudden, all that is wrong with the world was somehow right. I arrived at the airport 2 hours before my flight and I was at my gate an hour and 50 minutes before my flight. I even realized I had a couple of envelopes to put in the mail before departing, only to find out the airport terminal's out-going mailbox is located "outside" or "in front of" security, depending on who you ask. Regardless, it meant leaving the "secure" part of the building, only to drop two envelopes in the box and then re-enter the secure part. Normally, this would be unheard of. Check ID and boarding pass again. Take off shoes again. Unpack laptop again. Bypass the full-body x-ray scan...not again. I felt like such a conquering hero going through security a second time with literally NO waiting until I paid a price for my good fortune in the form of the dreaded privacy-violating feet-on-the-yellow-footprints-and-hands-in-front-of-your-head thing.

It wasn't that bad. Nobody seemed to be laughing or particularly interested in whatever it was they were seeing, so I moved on through. The rest of the wait was spent calling banks and credit card companies to make sure all of my spending power would be just as powerful overseas as not. Apparently the once-routine practice of making sure your credit cards are "activated" or "approved" for use in other countries isn't so necessary anymore. These calls kept me from fully enjoying my new App Store purchases, Angry Birds: Rio, Tiny Wings and Fruit Ninja. Safe to say, I knew a week-long trip by myself might have a few instances of "down time" needing some quick, mindless entertainment.

2011-03-24T19:03:00.003-05:00

It's about time this thing gets some action, so a quick trip to London, including an excursion to Belgium should be as good a reason as any to consume some internet space. A quick change to note, though. As you may know or have noticed, this blog is never written in first-person. You haven't seen any I's, me's, or my's in this thing before, but that now changes. Why? It's needed. This blog isn't necessarily supposed to be about what I (tada!) think, but more like general observations that could belong to any general observer. However, since there is such a small readership, chances are you (yes, you specifically) know me already and read this as if it is me saying it all to you in my typical long-winded fashion. So yeah, that's why. How about a separate entry to get this thing started? Ok, me too...

2011-02-06T11:41:00.009-06:00

Even though it's February, it is presently "the middle of football season". This will probably come to the dismay/disgust/annoyance of those who try to deny the greatness of football, but rest easy, this current upswing is very temporary. So temporary, in fact, that it will be over by the time the sun rises tomorrow.

Even though college football season formally ended on January 10 with a hideous and foul thud, the past week of football in America has been made enjoyably relevant by:

1)...the great 2011 edition of the NFL Playoffs. This year's playoffs have been full of close games, intrigue, standout performances, trash talk...and foot fetish references. What more could you ask for? The NFL might have asked for more since the established triumvirate of quarterback star power in the league, Tom Brady/Peyton Manning/Drew Brees, went a collective 0-3 this January. These three Super Bowl champs have had the spotlight stolen by younger QBs like the unbelievably impressive Aaron Rodgers and the potentially lucky Mark Sanchez. Of course, there's always Ben Roethlisberger, who already has 2 Super Bowl wins, but whose legacy is already (and justifiably so) defined by motorcycle wrecks and sexual assault accusations in Tahoe and Georgia.

Despite the utterly contemptible nature of Big Ben and some of his teammates, the truly redeeming part of the Steelers is their coach, Mike Tomlin. He's as impressive of a young coach as the NFL has ever seen. It is almost unbelievable to think he could have two Super Bowl victories under his belt well before his 40th birthday, with a potential for 20 or 30 more years of coaching to go. Between Tomlin and Aaron Rodgers, the Super Bowl is definitely worthy of attention this year, even if all anyone wants to talk about are the off-field indiscretions of the Steelers' current QB and the Packers' former one. Oh yeah, there's always the commercials and the Black Eyed Peas halftime show.

2)...College Football Signing Day, clearly the biggest day in college football between the BCS Championship and the start of the following season. Unfortunately, what was once an honest and exciting day of players announcing their intentions, complete with smiling parents, awkward coaches and goofy hats, has turned in a media spectacle, just like everything else. Each February, the ante is upped for who can make the biggest splash with not just their recruitment, but their announcement that culminates it all. Well, as of last year, the big announcement is not the culmination in some cases. There seems to be an emerging trend of top offensive linemen recruits having trouble making up their minds on where they want to play in college. Last year, Seantrell Henderson, from Minnesota, committed to USC, but reneged after the NCAA put the Trojans on probation, as if every single person on Earth didn't see that coming. Regardless, that level of indecision was clearly trumped by this year's #1 offensive line recruit, Cyrus Kouandijo, from suburban Washington DC in Maryland. Although his brother is already on the team at Alabama, he apparently had a great weekend visit to Auburn the weekend before Signing Day, so he announced his commitment to Auburn on national TV in a planned event at his high school. However, the recruiting process isn't over at the announcement. There still has to be paperwork filed and it never came (Jokes about there not being fax service to Auburn notwithstanding) for Kouandijo the Younger. Well, three days later, Cyrus is on board at Alabama and there's paperwork to back it up this time.

That little story is not meant to salt Auburn's wounds (for once), even though it came on the heels of another top-notch recruit, Brent Calloway, initially giving his preference to Alabama, then committing to Auburn on a nationally televised stage, only to switch back to Alabama. The same thing could just as easily happened to Alabama or any other school, but it shows part of what is wrong with the system. Unfortunately there isn't really an easy fix and as the national media (especially ESPN) become more and more enamored with the whole process, it is highly unlikely to get any better anytime soon. This year's edition of Signing Day also featured such sterling subplots as:

-The SEC receiving a complaint from a member school because Alabama used "provocatively" dressed females to post the names of players that had sent in their faxed letters of intent on a webcam. Was this a necessary move by Alabama? Absolutely not. Is this a complete non-story since the girl in the "provocative" outfit was a member of the Alabama dance team that works in the football office and was performing at a basketball game the same night in said "provocative" outfit? Absolutely.

-Ok, here's one that went against Alabama. The nation's #1 running back recruit, Isaiah Crowell, from Columbus, Georgia picked his home-state Bulldogs over Alabama. Not only did he pick the Bulldogs, he literally picked up a Bulldog as part of the process. This goes far beyond the hat or balloons behind the table that have become so played out, but was actually a little endearing...in a way. General consensus would dictate that the puppy is cute, so this was a fairly cute moment. Sadly though, it came just days before the extremely premature death of Georgia's real bulldog mascot, UGa VIII.

-Then there's the story of Floyd Raven, from Louisiana, who apparently was having a difficult time deciding between scholarship offers from Ole Miss and Texas A&M. Since these are still 18 year old dependents, they are not always equipped to make big decisions and the person most likely to step in, usually does. In this case, it was deemed an honest mistake, but it is hard to call forgery an "honest" anything. By nature, forgery is quite dishonest, but all's fair in love, war and big-time college football recruiting.

3)...the NFL labor dispute. Well, given that today is Super Bowl Sunday, this very important issue is completely unimportant for the next 10 hours or so. Try again on Day-After-Super-Bowl Monday.

2011-01-17T00:00:00.003-06:00

19. The Walkmen - Lisbon

The Walkmen do not make bad albums. They have a characteristic sound, defined by lead vocalist Hamilton Leithauser's wails, howls and yelps, but it never gets old. You never get the sense that they've made the same album as before and they always find ways to make great songs fit nicely around Leithauser's distinct voice. Although the vocals will always be the most recognizable aspect of any album by The Walkmen, the vocals do not necessarily always overpower. The diverse sounds that the band have used over the years always comes through, no more so than the surfy/beachy guitars on the appropriately-titled "Angela Surf City".

18. Superchunk - Majesty Shredding

It's weird to think of Superchunk as "venerable" or "legends", but their deserving place among such descriptors is clearly evident. Over 20 years, they've released a number of great albums, but no albums of any kind since 2001 and none this good since probably 1995. Their sound has been "maturing" for quite a while now, but it had maybe become too mature, so a step back to the mid-90s is nice to see and hear. You'll still be hard-pressed to see a more energetic live show than Superchunk's, even in 2010/2011.

17. Stornoway - Beachcomber's Windowsill

Stornoway is a city in far northern Scotland, in the Hebrides. It is also a band from Oxford, England that plays the ever-popular British alternative indie folk music, with vocals that sound not unlike Colin Meloy of The Decemberists at times. The songs have a singalong feel in typical folk fashion, with understated dignity. Electric and acoustic instrumentation, along with some horns, add variety to a steady collection of songs.

16. Menomena - Mines

This album felt like it was a long time coming and while it does not quite live up to the standard set by 2007's Friend and Foe, it is still very good. Menomena make albums with lots of moving parts, lots of sounds, lots of creativity and tie it all together quite well. A lot is made of their instrumentation, but part of what makes this band great is their ability to put it all together into a crisp, clean and cohesive package.

15. Free Energy - Stuck On Nothing

If you've read the posts leading up to this list, you know LCD Soundsystem will not be making an appearance. However, Mr. LCD Soundsystem himself, James Murphy, does, as the producer of this 70s throwback. The album, which is the Philadelphia band's debut, came out just before summer and definitely fits that "summer album" mold. There are catchy hooks in both the music and vocals, but these aren't simply two-minute pop songs. There's enough going on here to hold your attention, but the classic rock sound is straightforward enough to keep even a casual listener interested.

14. Black Rebel Motorcycle Club - Beat the Devil's Tattoo

BRMC have always made great albums, but their last effort, Baby 81, felt like maybe they were past their prime. That's not an awful thing to say about a fourth album when the first three are all excellent, but certainly not an encouragement for number five (not counting instrumental album The Effects of 333). Well, their return to form is truly a return to form that effectively brings together the sound that distinguished each of those first three albums. There's the My Bloody Valentine fuzz, the gospel dirges, the folk strumming and, of course, the easily identifiable dual vocals. Hopefully this album signals a rejuvenation for the band and is the start of another string of excellent releases.

13. Futurebirds - Hampton's Lullaby

This seemed like a bit of a down year for the ever-broadening category of alt-country, which seems to be trending toward bluegrass more and more. Thankfully, a band like Futurebirds released their debut and it was quite good. These guys are from Athens, Georgia and pull together a lot of different sounds, especially having no less than three vocalists sing lead on different songs. One sounds like Neil Young. One sounds like whichever King of Leon sings. One sounds like neither. Despite the vocal schizophrenia, it holds together well-enough to be reminiscent of a Drive-By Truckers album, which is a good thing.

12. Tokyo Police Club - Champ

Despite being their second full-length album, Champ by no means is an example of a sophomore slump. It takes what was a decent album (2008's Elephant Shell) and makes it better. Bands should get credit where it is due and TPC are due. The album has spirit and is almost silly at points, but it never becomes a distraction.

11. Titus Andronicus - The Monitor

What is not to love about a hard and occasionally profane romp through long songs inspired by the Civil War and Springsteen worship? The seeming disarray and wheels-about-to-come-off spirit of this album are only part of what make it great. The spoken word interludes add to the overall theme and feel of the record, but seem unnecessary. The songs do plenty of talking on their own, namely in a voice reminiscent of (primarily Desparecidos-era) Conor Oberst.

10. Male Bonding - Nothing Hurts

This punky British debut took a little while to reveal its greatness, but its brief running length (under 30 minutes for 13 songs) lends itself well to repeated listens. The vocals are buried very deep in the recording mix, which works well on some of the slower/spacier songs, but is almost frustrating during the faster ones with less vocal harmony and more vocal words. Maybe in 30 years this album will be remastered and reissued and the purists will hate it, but until that time, a cleaner recording would have made a great album better.

9. Jonsi - Go

As the frontman for one of this generations most impressive bands, Sigur Ros, Jon Thor Birgisson ("Jonsi") has very little left to prove. His voice is instantly recognizable and the music he plays is greeted with almost universal reverence. However, while the rest of his Sigur Ros bandmates were off taking breaks to start families, he did not take much of a break himself. His solo debut allows him to make and release music that does not really sound like Sigur Ros in many places, while bringing in enough of what makes Sigur Ros great to not be a complete departure. There are fast songs, slow songs, "big" songs, "little songs" and legitimate pop songs, which Sigur Ros has never really put out. Future Sigur Ros releases are eagerly awaited, but it was nice to know that there's always the potential for a welcomed intermission.

8. Frightened Rabbit - Winter of Mixed Drinks

The splash created by Frightened Rabbit's breakthrough, Midnight Organ Fight, would be tough to replicate, so it came as little surprise that this album was kinda slow to reveal its greatness. There are some great hooks and memorable lyrics here, but not the kind that instantly stick in your head like Midnight. As a bit of a slow-burner, repeated listens were needed, but well worth it. It will be interesting to see if the current torch-bearers of the most recent Scottish invasion can keep it up on a major label, but until then, another worthy contribution has been made that would make Billy Bragg (yes, he's English) proud.

7. Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin - Let It Sway

This band might be one cumbersome name away from a much bigger presence. Not that the name should make the band, but SSLYBY is an awfully heavy name for a band to carry around. It barely fits on album covers. It probably can't fit on most venue marquees. It makes them sound like a drunken Russian cover band. In spite of this, they write mostly-upbeat indie rock songs, which is not an extremely common occurrence lately. Maybe a little Shins-like at times?

6. Beach House - Teen Dream

For whatever reason, it took Beach House's third full-length to really make an impact, but better late than never. This degree of exposure and popularity will surely boost sales of those first two albums, though. As for Teen Dream, its not hard to come up with descriptive adjectives that make it so easy and pleasant to listen to the album. The lush instrumentation and truly hypnotic vocals define these songs and its hard to really think of the songs individually, as the album fits together so well. This album will definitely be played for sleeping babies for many years to come.

5. The National - High Violet

Matt Berninger's voice. Either you love it or you hate it. There's no getting around it. If you happen to like his voice and accept the fact that there will never be a great deal of range on display, you can get past that issue and enjoy everything else happening on this record. This album just sounds good, in that warm way and there is always something interesting going on behind the trademark vocals. The National deserve special credit for taking something that might be seen as a limitation (that voice) and managing to release three exceptional albums over the past five years that each possess an individual identity.

4. Wintersleep - New Inheritors

This was definitely the out-of-nowhere album of the year. A virtually unknown band from Halifax, Nova Scotia is not likely to show up on many radar screens and this album is no exception. In fact, you're unlikely to find this one on any other lists (outside the Maritime Provinces, that is). Of course, the internet is the great equalizer (along with an opening slot on a Hold Steady tour). Lead vocalist Paul Murphy's voice might take a little getting used to, as it is nasal-y and fairly dramatic in a Michael Stipe kind of way. Beyond that, this album is full of guitars, layers, textures (whatever that means) and good songs.

3. Arcade Fire - The Suburbs

There is very little that can be said about this band that has not been said before. They are the definitive indie rock band on Earth and they rarely do anything that suggests anything different. This year was clearly "their" year, complete with a sold-out Madison Square Garden serving as their coronation. The Suburbs is obviously a concept album and it is nice to see that this label is not met with a snicker or roll of the eyes, as it might have previously been. Thank albums like OK Computer and Domestica for that. This album might be a little too long and a little too easy-going, but that illustrates part of what Arcade Fire does so well. They can release a bona-fide 15+ song album about growing up in the suburbs (namely The Woodlands in Houston, Texas) and still top many lists.

2. Wolf Parade - Expo 86

This is getting ridiculous. Last year, Sunset Rubdown took #1 and this year, Spencer Krug's "other" band takes #2. Of course, Wolf Parade's songwriting and vocalist duties are shared (very capably) with Dan Boeckner, which gives this album a sense of variation that might be missing from Sunset Rubdown albums. If you're not crazy about Krug's songwriting or vocals, fear not, there's a completely different side to a Wolf Parade record. Regardless of who is singing, the songs are always unique, but no less spot-on. You almost forget there are two different singers with two different styles because it all adds up to another great album.

1. Mumford and Sons - Sigh No More

Yes, this album experiencing a swell of hype and fanaticism that might make it seem too "mainstream" or too "popular" or too "fratty" or too "adult contemporary" or too "lame" or too whatever. Thing is, it is really great and that point has been made here before. The folksy thing is definitely on an upswing and this album might have set the standard by which a genre will be defined. The music is interesting and well-played and the lyrics are obviously thought-out and emotional. There's even references to one of the greatest books ever written, East of Eden, interspersed. The next time you see Mumford and Sons on a high-schooler's Facebook page, just remember you're likely to see Radiohead, U2, Led Zeppelin, The Beatles and The Rolling Stones on there as well. Are you ashamed to like those bands? Find your personal meaning in the songs you're hearing and try to understand what the writer intended. That's what separates you from the squealers.

2011-01-16T23:59:00.000-06:00

Here goes the Top 39 of 2010. Significance of 39? Absolutely none. Enjoy!

39. The Morning Benders - Big Echo : A good album with a most notable song made for television commercials.

38. The Hold Steady - Heaven Is Whenever : Yet another solid album by Minneapolis' finest, complete with a standout opening track.

37. Tift Merritt - See You On The Moon : A very nice girl with a very nice voice...and a very nice appearance by Jim James.

36. Sharon Van Etten - Epic : The new blood of somewhat morose female singer-songwriters.

35. The Autumn Defense - Once Around : Extremely easy-going Wilco side-project that bridges the gap until their next masterpiece.

34. Spoon - Transference : Even more stripped down and less rock-driven than before. It's good, but further movement in this direction could take minimalist to a new place.

33. Band of Skulls - Baby Darling Doll Face Honey : See this blog.

32. Belle & Sebastian - Write About Love : Welcome return of a great band that hadn't been heard from in a while. Interesting guest appearance by Norah Jones. Even more interesting guest appearance by Carey Mulligan (the actress).

31. The Soft Pack - s/t : San Diego band formerly named The Muslims. Probably a wise move to change names...and release a great record.

30. Black Mountain - Wilderness Heart : Not quite on the level of In The Future, but still good.

29. Sufjan Stevens - All Delighted People EP / The Age of Adz : The EP served as a nice transition to the "new" Sufjan, which sounds like a remix of old Sufjan. This new stuff was better than feared, but definitely sad to see the banjo replaced by synth on the full-length. Nice to have Sufjan releasing new material, though.

28. The Besnard Lakes - ...Are The Roaring Night : "Albatross" is epic and the rest of the album isn't far behind.

27. Shearwater - The Golden Archipelago : Once you come around on Jonathan Meiberg's uniquely dramatic vocals, this albums just keeps giving you more and more to like.

26. Justin Townes Earle - Harlem River Blues : A good album with an unquestionably great opener/title track.

25. Josh Ritter - So Runs the World Away : Another solid record from one of the most consistent (and charismatic) artists in the singer-songwriter universe.

24. Phosphorescent - Here's To Taking It Easy : After an opener titled "It's Hard To Be Humble (When You're From Alabama)", it never really mattered what the rest of it sounds like. Thankfully, it's not a let-down.

23. The Fresh and Onlys - Play It Strange : A relative late-comer to the list that starts stronger than it finishes. Hints of the Clearlake albums from a few years back, if any of you remember those on the Best of '03 and '06 compilations.

22. Broken Social Scene - Forgiveness Rock Record : About what you'd expect from a creative group of approximately 47 Canadians, in a good way.

21. The New Pornographers - Together : More large assemblages of creative Canadians, including the three-headed monster of greatness that is Carl Newman, Neko Case (actually an American) and Dan Bejar.

20. Midlake - The Courage of Others : Seemingly forgotten release that might not have the immediate appeal of Van Occupanther, but certainly not far behind on overall quality.

2011-01-15T23:38:00.001-06:00

Ok, the next step in the grand process, the Honorable Mentions. Each of these releases were quite good and very well may have been ranked in another year, but just did not have the extra juice to make the big list in 2010. This past year proved to be pretty deep in great releases, so there's no shame in making this list. Maybe a Top 100 of the year would cover all the bases? No, you're right, that would be ridiculous and you probably would not read the whole thing. Anyway, it would be a shame to let these go completely unnoticed, so here's this quick consolation, in alphabetical order:

Against Me! - White Crosses
Avi Buffalo - s/t
Band of Horses - Infinite Arms
The Black Keys - Brothers
Born Ruffians - Say It
Broken Bells - s/t
Deftones - Diamond Eyes
Engineers - Three Fact Fader
Interpol - s/t
Kopecky Family Band - The Disaster
Kylesa - Spiral Shadow
MGMT - Congratulations
No Age - Everything In Between
Sleigh Bells - Treats
Sun Kil Moon - Admiral Fell Promises
The Thermals - Personal Life
Wild Nothing - Gemini

2011-01-15T15:42:00.006-06:00

Even though 2011 is 2 weeks old, it's time to jump back to the Best of 2010 music. This is the post that may raise the most eyebrows (if anyone actually cares). This is the list of those less fortunate, those that didn't quite make the cut this time around...the NEGATIVE list. These are the albums that seem to appear on most year-end lists, but not in these parts, along with a quite reason why. There are as many different reasons why as there are entries on this list. Without further ado, here goes...

Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy

Obviously, this blog isn't somewhere you come for stirring insight into hip-hop records, so you can't really expect a deep justification here. How about the fact that this record didn't really seem any different/better than West's previous albums, 808's and Heartbreaks not withstanding. Maybe it's completely different and infinitely better than previous efforts, but it just didn't tell everyone this.

Deerhunter - Halcyon Digest

A nice sounding record and the most-enjoyed of any this Atlanta-based band has released. It seems like the consensus places this at or near the top of the list for rock albums in 2010. Again, it sounded nice, but just failed to hold attention and it's hard to rank an album with that cross to bear.

LCD Soundsystem - This Is Happening

If every song could sound like "All My Friends" from 2007's Sounds of Silver, this album could easily be deserving of the esteem it has been given this year. Instead, there's "Drunk Girls". Pass.

Vampire Weekend - Contra

Both of Vampire Weekend's albums have been pleasant listens, with that preppy, jangly, beachy, Afro-Cuban sound. However, this all adds up to records that are remarkably unremarkable. This isn't a knock on the band or their albums, but there just isn't any "edge" to the music and that makes it sorta forgettable.

Gorillaz - Plastic Beach

You know, that "Clint Eastwood" song was pretty enjoyable when it came out and still isn't bad to hear every once in a while. Aside from that fact, it is hard to imagine Damon Albarn's efforts being best put to use with Gorillaz, the first "virtual band" or something like that. Is anyone still fascinated by "the band" being comprised of animated cartoons? Blur kinda-sorta got back together at some point over the past few years, but its too bad that didn't last, but Gorillaz do.

2010-12-18T16:25:00.004-06:00

The past 350+ days have been a fine year for new music releases, but its also been a pretty solid year for music releases that aren't new music per se. This would be the catch-all category that includes compilations, live albums, reissues and the like. Since these sorts of releases are very plentiful each year, this list isn't believed to necessary be exhaustive, but each of these listed are pretty great.

Bruce Springsteen - The Promise

Its not terribly hard to imagine a collection of unreleased material originally written and mostly recorded around 1978 during Darkness on the Edge of Town being great. The opening track, an alternate version of "Racing in the Street", unfolds over 6 minutes and makes the listener completely ready for the remaining 20 tracks over two discs. Across this many songs, there are plenty of opportunities to hear Springsteen's varying styles that have revealed themselves over the years. As good as his last few studio albums with the E Street Band have been, its nice to hear that older sound return to the forefront on this release, including the interesting cover of Patti Smith's "Because the Night".

John Prine - Broken Hearts and Dirty Windows

This is undoubtedly the best tribute compilation of the year. It's John Prine songs, which are already great, performed by a range of musicians that mostly reside in the indie folk/alt-country/bluegrass realm. This includes My Morning Jacket, Josh Ritter, Justin Vernon, Conor Oberst, Avett Brothers and others. This compilation accomplishes what most compilations does not, it actually lends itself to listening start-to-finish. The Lambchop contribution, "Six O'Clock News" kinda plods and Those Darlins' "Lets Talk Dirty in Hawaiian" is almost too kitschy, but these are minor issues with an otherwise excellent release.

The Weakerthans - Live at the Burton Cummings Theatre

The Weakerthans are not the sort of band that seems to necessitate a live album and, honestly, this one might not actually be necessary. Thing is, it sounds warm and fresh, giving that feeling that you might have even been there. The on-stage banter and witty anecdotes are included sparingly and the audience noise isn't distracting or disruptive. The recording was made in Winnipeg (Manitoba, that is), the band's hometown, so there's a certain added effect of reverence and pride, even when the entire room sings aloud in agreement that "The Guess Who Sucked", "The Jets were lousy anyway" and "I hate Winnipeg". It just wouldn't have been right for these sentiments to be immortalized if it were recorded anyplace else.

Weezer - Pinkerton

Do you know where you were on Tuesday, September 24, 1996? If you were laying in the backseat of your mom's car riding home from Magic Platter record store listening to the mysterious follow-up to Weezer's debut breakthrough, you do. There's always something special about buying an album the day it is released, or at least there used to be, before the days of leaks and iTunes (face it, the idea of rushing to your laptop to download an album on Tuesday isn't quite the same as making a special trip to the record store). Tuesdays were almost like a holiday each week and some Monday nights turned into an opportunity to sit in a parking lot until midnight waiting for the next big release. This big release ultimately tanked in sales and reviews, but now, 14 years later, it has been remastered, repackaged and rereleased. Not to worry, though, it is just as brutally honest and brutally uncomfortable as ever.

Rolling Stones - Exile On Main Street

This was probably the most-publicized reissue of the year. There's not a ton to say here other than its always been a great album and now its sound has been brought forward about 40 years. For a great commentary on this release, check out NPR's episode of All Songs Considered featuring Don Was.

Pavement - Quarantine the Past

In the indie rock universe, 2010 was the year of Pavement, despite the band not releasing any new music, be it an album or even a single song. They did, however, tour across the country and the globe playing songs that were all at least 10 years old to legions of fans, old and new. Twenty-three such songs were compiled on this "Best of" album that rolls the songs out in no particular order or theme. That's probably an apt sequence for the band, who somewhat unceremoniously wrapped up their reunion tour (not counting a couple of subsequent South American shows in November) at Matador 21 in Las Vegas on October 1 with sound problems and annoyance. Regardless of the inconsistencies of the record and the band, even 23 old songs were a welcome addition to 2010.

Addendum:

Nada Surf - If I Had A Hi-Fi

It's hard to decide if it is harder to believe that Nada Surf are still releasing albums in a relevant manner or that Nada Surf were once MTV darlings complete with rock-solid "one hit wonder" cred. Regardless, they have managed to navigate past the latter and put together several great albums. That said, they are entitled to put out something like an album of covers. One of the highlights is a rendition of "Enjoy the Silence" by Depeche Mode in full blown Nada Surf mode, but there's also covers of songs by Spoon, Kate Bush, The Moody Blues and a great track by Mercromina sung in Spanish. Maybe there should be an album of other bands covering "Popular" just to take it full circle?

Addendum 2:

Girl Talk - All Day

Simply put, this is good for listening to at the gym. It's interesting and makes for fun while picking out all the different songs mashed up within. That's about as far as it goes since all components of the songs are songs that have already been written, performed and released. It can't really be judged by the same standards as new music, hence its presence here.

Girls - Broken Dreams Club EP

EPs are not usually significant relative to their full-length counterparts, but this is another great effort by San Francisco band that released Album in 2009. The mood of this EP is noticeably restrained and morose, even employing a slide guitar on the title track.

2010-12-04T19:51:00.004-06:00

As you may already know, Sporcle has to be the best time waster on the internet these days. Even their tagline, "Mentally Stimulating Diversions", indicates such. That probably does not go far enough, though. There is seriously a quiz for almost everything you can think of. Most of them are actually fairly interesting and challenging in an enjoyable way, to boot. Well, one of this week's new entries has to be one of the most interesting yet. It deals with naming countries that are the world-leader in fairly random categories on a per-capita basis.

Some of the most interesting results:

-Luxembourg has the highest per capita alcohol consumption rate in the world, 15.6 liters per person per year. That doesn't seem like an extreme amount, but bear in mind, this isn't referring to alcoholic beverages. This is the actual alcohol in those drinks itself. So if an average drink (adjusted for differences between regular beer, liquor and wine) has 10% alcohol by volume, that would be 156 liters of alcohol-containing beverages per person per year. That's over 41 gallons, or 5200 ounces. So yeah, 5200 ounces would be 433 12-ounce beers per person per year, or about 1.2 per day. It definitely adds up.

-If you only consider beer, the Czech Republic is the leader of the world with 158.6 liters per person per year. The math works out roughly similar to the calculations above, except most Czech beer does not come near to 10% ABV. It's closer to half of that, 5-6% (think pilsner, pale lager, etc). That means that an average Czech has about 2.5 beers per day. When you adjust for demographics to exclude children and those adults that don't drink (if such thing exists), the actual average is probably more like 4+ per day. That's pretty strong, especially since most people would probably assume the English, Irish or Germans to drink more beer in the first place.

-If various forms of alcohol are particularly appealing to the Luxembourgers and Czechs, coffee is particularly appealing to...the Fins. The average person in Finland consumes 12kg, or about 24.5 pounds. This is kinda hard to put into practical terms since nobody really quantifies their coffee consumption by weight, but by volume, or number of cups. According to one (of many, many, many) estimations, one pound of coffee can make 2.25 gallons. So, that would seem to indicate that Fins drink over 55 gallons of coffee a year. This number isn't vastly different than Czech Republic's beer consumption, but it stands to reason that, despite Starbucks' best efforts, a cup of coffee is typically smaller than a serving of beer. If an average cup of coffee is defined as 6 ounces, the Fins have 1,173 cups of coffee a year, or over 3 a day. Again, this number doesn't seem too extreme, but not everyone drinks coffee, so among coffee-drinkers, the number is probably at least 4 or 5. That starts to get pretty intense.

-Just for a quick comparison's sake, the leading tea drinkers are the Turks, who consume an average of 2.1 kg (4.4 lb) a year. Apparently 2.5 grams of tea makes a 6 oz. cup, so an average Turk has just shy of 800 cups per year, or about 2.2 a day.

-From a technology standpoint, there are some pretty impressive numbers. Residents of Switzerland, Malta and United Arab Emirates have an average of 0.86 computers, 0.77 televisions and 1.7 cellphones per citizen, respectively. That means an average person in UAE is more likely to have two cellphones than one and a family of 4 in Switzerland has at least 3, but more likely 4 computers among them. Does this mean a poor Swiss family only has 2 computers at home? Of course, these numbers include computers in the workplace and such, but obviously not everyone has a computer at work, so the difference has to come from somewhere. The UAE cellphone numbers seem quite bizarre, though. Based on personal experience, it seems like pretty much everyone has a cellphone and probably some kind of phone number associated with their job, even if they share it with others. However, this is talking only about cellphones, which are largely used by only one person each and not shared among groups. With the average in UAE being 1.7 and there having to be a few people without even one, that means it is not uncommon to see people there with 3 or more each. The Malta television numbers don't really jump out since even the idea of one person having 2 TVs isn't that crazy (right???) this day in age. A television almost seems like standard equipment in a house, like a sink or toilet. The necessary distinction is that Malta has 0.77 TVs per person, not per home.

For the sake of brevity (ha!), here's a quick rundown of some others:

-An average Greek smokes over 3,000 cigarettes a year, or about 8.25 a day.
-The Republic of Georgia has 16.335 library books per resident.
-One in every 690 Argentinians are psychologists.
-One is every 86.2 Norwegians are millionaires (in US dollars).

Hmmph.

2010-12-01T23:25:00.005-06:00

So, apparently only one kind soul got the memo about writing in your picks for the best album of 2010. This either indicates that:

(a) You thought 2010 was an awful year for music
(b) Nobody actually reads this
(c) You're scared
(d) All of the above

2010-12-01T23:13:00.002-06:00

Even after all that, its funny how things just have a way of working themselves out sometimes...

2010-11-12T22:50:00.002-06:00

Tonight, a contender for the national championship of college football is playing a game. The game is being played on Friday night in Moscow in a college basketball arena. All of this is true...strange, but true.

Say hello to the Kibbie Dome, home of the University of Idaho Vandals in Moscow, Idaho.

Sorta cute, ain't it? Or maybe "quaint" is a better word. A Division I football stadium that seats 16,000 is definitely quaint. Either way, the University of Idaho is so proud of this place that it is home to their football team...and basketball team...and tennis team...and track & field team. Quite quaint and versatile, no?

Ok, this post isn't about the shortcomings of the athletic facilities at the State of Idaho's flagship and oldest university. It's a swell place and has been for 120+ years, which is fine. It is, however, a post that further demonstrates why a team cannot be given equal credence when it plays in a conference where a late-season intra-conference & intrastate rivalry road game can be played in a place such as the Kibbie Dome.

A season-opening victory over Virginia Tech is a nice win. So is an early season win over Oregon State. A late season win over Nevada will also be an accomplishment. Problem is, nobody would consider these to be great wins if they didn't show up on the schedule with opponents such as Wyoming, New Mexico State, Toledo, San Jose State, Louisiana Tech and Utah State. By beating VaTech, Oregon State and, presumably, Nevada, Boise State will be no better than the following teams, based solely on head-to-head wins: James Madison, Washington, UCLA and Hawaii. In a major conference, Boise's three "biggest" victories would be considered "getting the job done" and "having a solid season", or maybe nothing more than "halfway to being bowl eligible".

It is a simple fact that Boise State is better than those 4 teams. Look no further than the game last weekend when Boise beat Hawaii by 35. The argument is not if Boise is a good team. They are. The argument is, regardless of who they're willing to play, does Boise deserve a spot in the championship game when they've played such inferior opponents on a weekly basis that their starters don't even have to play (or play hard) beyond 10 minutes into the game? Again, it is not Boise's fault that they are able to jump out to giant leads in many of their games, but it is also not an SEC (or Pac Ten/Big Ten/Big 12) team's fault that they just so happen to be in a conference where almost every game is an absolute battle that requires maximum utilization for a full 60 minutes (or more).

Boise has proven they are capable of beating good teams from major conferences (VT, Oklahoma in the Fiesta Bowl) and other small conference powerhouses (TCU in last year's Fiesta Bowl). They would also have a very good chance of beating whoever they might play in this year's BCS Championship, be it Oregon (who they swept in a home-and-home series in 2008-09, as Byron Hout will remind you), TCU (see above), Ohio State (does anyone really think they're that good?) or Auburn (with or without the blameless one). However, don't let it be forgotten that TCU beat Boise to end the 2008 season and Boise lost back-to-back to Hawaii and East Carolina to end the 2007 season. Just for good measure, the only time in recent history that Boise played a game in an SEC stadium was at the start of the 2005 season and they left Athens, Georgia with a 48-13 loss. That same season, that same Georgia team that was 35 points better than Boise, lost two SEC conference games and narrowly escaped with wins in two more.

So, while their blue turf and blue jerseys can be fun to look at, these Tuesday, Thursday and Friday night games are excruciating to watch because its just further reminders of why Boise is what it is. Even ESPN, who does a LOT to promote Boise, will only give them primetime TV slots on nights that people don't even realize football is on. Football on Thursday nights has started to become more of a common thing and yet still, ESPN put the Pitt/UCONN game on last night and relegated the Potato State showdown to Friday night, when the only football people care about is being played by high schoolers, albeit often in stadiums larger than the one Boise is playing in tonight.

Bus.

2010-11-08T23:24:00.002-06:00

Thankfully, as of 85 minutes ago (as this is typed), Conan O'Brien is back on television. It was a sad and uncomfortable past few months and this period of time will be remembered more for what Conan did off of television than what Jay Leno did on it. His tour, his musical forays, his Twitter and his entire persona transcended a late-night talk show slot, proving that there is more to life than who hosts which show and what time it airs.

Tonight's debut on TBS felt very natural and did not really seem like anything had changed. The show felt like it was truly his own, which makes sense since there's no standard to live up to. No Jay Leno, no Johnny Carson, no Steve Allen, no precedent. The comedy bits seemed to work pretty well, the guests seemed to be receptive to their roles and, perhaps most importantly, Conan seemed OK with what was transpiring. (It's amazing what millions of dollars can make you seem OK with).

Of course, as nice as it was to see Conan on the airwaves again, there always has to be a negative and that negative is George Lopez. George Lopez is painful. Painfully not funny. Painfully awful. Of course George Lopez had to name drop his predecessor and his time slot within the first 30 seconds of tonight's show, as if that would make him somehow funny by association. So far, the most substantive thing out of his mouth on this show has been that he likes Antoine Dodson's hair straight. Yep, G-Lo likes Antoine Dodson's hair straight. Sadly, Antoine Dodson is a more legitimate entertainer than George Lopez. Even sadder, a better night of television would include Antoine Dodson hosting a talk show and George Lopez being a guest that only gets a few brief minutes to be unwatchable.

A small saving grace for what TBS is doing once Conan's show ends each night is that they're repeating that night's episode again after George Lopez's thing goes off. That means two hours of Conan for one hour of G-Lo, which is a step in the right direction. At least this gives people an hour to brush teeth, have a snack and update blogs in between opportunities to see that night's episode of Conan. The only problem is, Glopez comes on again after Conan goes off again. As if you needed any more reminders of exactly how wide the gap between the haves and have nots is in late night talk shows. Mercifully, there is absolutely no reason to be awake at 1am CST, so maybe George's show will go the same route as Arsenio Hall's, Tom Snyder's (RIP), Jon Stewart's, Chevy Chase's, John McEnroe's and (cringe) Magic Johnson's. It really needs to.

Fingers crossed...

2010-11-08T17:47:00.002-06:00

Just a reminder, this is not a football blog or a blog dedicated to any other sport, either. Most of you would probably rather read about something else, so now's your chance to be a part of the magic. Heck, your involvement could actually help create a more informative experience for your fellow readers. With that in mind, your mission is as such:

As the year 2010 draws to a close, the holidays draw near and sunlight past 5pm ceases to be a reality, there are important preparations being made. No, contrary to popular belief, an annual "BEST OF" music list does not just appear out of thin air. That said, your input is welcome here, so leave comments on this post with your suggestions for the Best of 2010. It's been a pretty solid year for new music so far and there are plenty of worthy candidates, but it'd be a shame to leave out a deserving act. Feel free to put in a few supporting words as well.

Just to get the ball rolling, here are a few appetizers...

-The Arcade Fire - The Suburbs
-The National - High Violet
-Beach House - Teen Dream

Your turn!

2010-10-12T15:38:00.002-05:00

At this moment, what is going through the mind of the dude smoking a cigarette on the balcony across the breezeway from this hotel room? Ideas:

1. I love the beach, where visible buttcracks are much more generally accepted.

2. Tuesday is alright for fighting.

3. This cigarette is far more delicious than the one 5 minutes ago.

4. Would a Yosemite Sam or Tasmanian Devil tattoo better characterize my personality?

5. The music of Trapt and Disturbed really speaks to me.

6. I need to talk to my financial planner about a 401(k).

7. Is it still considered "domestic abuse" if your girlfriend is from another country?

8. I wonder what kind of cargo I could fill these cargo shorts with?

9. If anyone told me to put a shirt on, I'd be ready to tussle.

10. Who is this sicko that keeps glancing out his window at me?

2010-10-07T22:36:00.002-05:00

Truer words have never come from the wall of a small barbershop from childhood:

"Poor planning on your part does not constitute an emergency on my part."

On average, how many times could this be said in a given day?

2010-09-11T18:16:00.007-05:00

-There is nothing better than hearing Brent Musberger call an Alabama football game. Ok, there are about 1.9 billion things better than that. In addition to those 1.9 billion another 737.9 billion things are better than hearing Musberger call a game involving any other team. All the more reason to go to games, not watch at home.

-Well, if going to the game isn't an option because you're traveling for work, it is only fair that said work travel take you to the beach. A good beach...and on the beach.

-It's a good thing this game finally started. Watching the soggy noodle fight that was the Michigan/Notre Dame game was a waste of time. Blah. A lot of these "games" on "Monster Saturday" have been blah to say the least. A quick recap:

Michigan = blah, but Denard Robinson is quite exciting...against Notre Dame.
Notre Dame = blah, but at least its exciting when they play Denard Robinson.
Ohio State = appears to be pretty good.
Miami = uh yeah, either not good or Ohio State is better than pretty good.
Oklahoma = good, so long as not playing a team from Utah.
Florida State = ha.

-#42 for Penn State just talked trash after a hit delivered on a punt returner that called fair catch.

-This isn't going to a live-blog of the Alabama/Penn State game or anything like that, although it easily could be. However, sharing with the world (OK, a VERY small percentage of the world) the first thoughts that might come to mind while watching an Alabama game might be offensive and potentially image-destroying.

-Alabama's offensive star so far is Kevin Norwood. Alabama's defensive star so far is Will Lowery. On a team with so many big names, it is always encouraging when a couple of relative unknowns can step up against a ranked opponent in the first quarter.

-Seeing Mark Ingram chasing Trent Richardson down the sideline on a long run, then insisting on getting every last blade of grass out of Richardson's facemask after the run, is great.

-As this is typed, Tennessee is leading Oregon 6-0. For the sake of the SEC and Southern football in general, its sorta nice to see this, but not if it means Tennessee is actually going to be pretty good this year. If that's the case, let the west coast hippies beat them by 50.

-Speaking of west coast hippies, Boise State had an impressive win on a neutral field against Virginia Tech last week. Today Virginia Tech lost to James Madison on their own field. Boise is a great team and among the best in the nation, but don't make too many excuses for them.

2010-08-28T15:58:00.002-05:00

Ok, are you ready for the absolute stupidest article about football that you could ever read? Maybe it's the stupidest article about anything ever written, but that can be left up to you. Before going any further, feel free to read through the article in question.

Ok, a little prefacing. Tennessee's football program has been down for the past few years, both on and off the field. Just a quick summary:

-Franklin County, Tennessee native that led the school to the national championship was unceremoniously run out of his job after the 2008 season.

-The sting of running off a "local legend" was soothed by hiring the epitome of an "outsider", a young and brash California boy.

-The new guy proved to possess more gum-flapping and controversy-creating skills than coaching ones. His first season ends with mediocre results, to put it generously.

-A flurry of off-field problems plague the team. Problems with grades, guns and such become about as common as wins.

-New coach quickly jumps ship when given a chance to return to California and lead another dirty program.

-A new new coach is hired...from Louisiana Tech. At least he has a good name for SEC football.

-Throughout all of this, the SEC has gone from being probably the best conference in the nation for college football to clearly the best. Three different teams in the league have won the last 4 national championships and UT has not even been in the proximity of national championship discussions.

So, back to the present and this asinine article. The author blindly dives into the notion that fans of college football need to read the newspaper in order to form an emotional attachment to their teams. This might be an effective path if you're just trying to reach the least interested fans. However, those sort of people probably aren't the ones reading something like Go Vols Xtra on August 22.

One doesn't have to be a UT fan to acknowledge that UT has a passionate fan base that will gladly fill up Neyland Stadium every time the team takes the field. They already know where their program is and where they want it to be. Furthermore, they are probably football-savvy enough to know that simply hating your opponents, rivals and detractors does not really amount to very much anywhere, much less in the most competitive league in the nation.

At first, it seems like maybe the author is simply trying to remind the reader that things can change and its best to always look forward because, just as Alabama has proven over the past few years, just because a program is down doesn't mean it has to stay there. But then he starts dredging the river of past regrets and failures for whatever he can find. Lane Kiffin? Yes, absolutely hate him. Alabama? Sure. Florida? Them too.

Who else? Charles Woodson? Uh, yeah, go ahead and hate him too because he won an individual award over a UT player when most of the current UT players were barely old enough to hold a football. Kansas State? They must be hated because a player from the state of Kansas chose to transfer there from UT after the most recent coaching change.

And for the kicker...hate all of North Carolina's opponents this year. Not because one of those opponents is an SEC team (LSU), but because UT bought themselves out of a game against UNC each of the next two seasons. The hope is that UNC will turn out to be really great and UT can feel good about themselves for not having to play a tough team next season. Never mind the fact that they can't wiggle out of their usual conference games against the likes of Alabama, Florida and Georgia. But yeah, its better to wish success for North Carolina (by hating their opponents) than think about that other stuff.

Just in case you need a different team to hate for each day of the week, throw in Bowling Green and Duke. Seriously? The only reason a UT fan should even know these teams exist is if they're looking for an easy non-conference game. The reason for hating these teams is because their current head coaches' previous gigs were as UT assistants. How dare they? Don't they know that the pinnacle of coaching is to be an assistant at UT, where they can serve under 3 different head coaches in 3 years and have articles like this written by local newspaper guys? Poor Duke must really feel bad knowing that UT fans should hate them for two reasons now (they play UNC).

As difficult as it seems, this article almost makes you feel bad for UT. Much of what is said is true, but this article was written right in the middle of Fall practice. Surely there are better things that could have been researched and put into words. The fans deserve better. This team might be their biggest "escape" from "real" life and they shouldn't have their heads filled with ideas of who to hate. They need to support their team and look forward, even if all they have to look forward to is another season of SEC mediocrity. The comments at the bottom of article indicate that most of the UT fans that read the article weren't affected by it, at least not in the way it intended.

Maybe there's actually signs of life on ol' Rocky Top after all.

2010-08-10T22:42:00.001-05:00

Some bands are just better than the others.

2010-07-13T21:43:00.002-05:00

Breaking news!

A former member of the Cleveland Cavaliers will be joining the Miami Heat for the upcoming (in November, that is) NBA season! This easily recognizable NBA veteran couldn't quite reach the elusive goal of an NBA Championship during his years in Cleveland, but this guy is so good that he managed to be an NBA All-Star without even playing college basketball! Yes, that's right, Zydrunas Ilgauskas is now a Heat!

After all, what goes better with this...

...than this?

2010-06-25T23:32:00.003-05:00

As that last one make a brief mention of, soccer (there's nothing wrong with calling it soccer in this country) has really grabbed the attention of the world lately. Well, it always has the attention of the world, but right now it has the attention of the world's "leading" country. As the most populous country in this year's World Cup, the US theoretically should have the most support. However, this seems to have only been the case very recently...since Wednesday morning to be exact.

Landon Donovan's goal was truly one of those watershed moments that makes sports so relevant. Yes, it is just a game and yes, it was being played literally around the globe from the US population, but people are looking for something to be happy and proud about these days. Even though oil still gushes into the Gulf of Mexico and generals are still being replaced in Afghanistan, the US has found a reason for this.

Just as ABC's Wild World of Sports extolled, with the thrill of victory comes the agony of defeat. The World Cup has provided striking examples of that as well. To whit:

-North Korean players potentially being sent to work in state-owned coal mines upon their return home after a terrible performance in South Africa?

-The French national team returning as a disgrace to their country and potentially subject to physical violence at the hands of their countrymen?

So yes, the US is riding high right about now, so its important to get this posted before their next match tomorrow against Ghana. All those skeptics that thought soccer was nothing more than 90 minutes of pretty boys not scoring any goals have been trumped by a pretty boy scoring a goal after 90 minutes of play had already elapsed without a single goal. Everyone is OK with that right now and that itself is OK right now.

Finally, let it be known that while soccer might not be able to clean up the Gulf or find Osama, it is trying to start with domestic issues, although with somewhat mixed results.

2010-06-20T23:36:00.002-05:00

Signs you're getting old:

1. True Blood comes on at 8pm, yet True Blood comes on too late because its a Sunday night.

2. Guilt causes you to go for a run in 95 degree weather, even though the guilt was brought on by something as mundane as almonds.

3. Sunday morning trips to the grocery store are quite fulfilling.

4. A perfectly good weekend night can be soured because you insist on checking work email.

5. Hanging out with your boss past midnight is an acceptable way to spend a Friday night.

6. You decide to spend a sunny afternoon watching exclusively German-language films on Netflix Instant.

7. The NBA Finals are over and you could care less, even though the world would be a better place if the Lakers didn't win and validate the celebrity groupies that make watching their games feel like an episode of Access Hollywood.

7b. You know, despite this year's strong ratings, the NBA Finals used to be amazing. It fits with the theme of this list/entry to say that things just aren't like they were back in the day. For pure excitement and showmanship, Kobe just isn't Jordan and Rajon Rondo is really the only guy on the Celtics that is remotely interesting. If only Pau Gasol played on a different team, he could be in the discussion for favorite NBA player.

8. The World Cup is incredibly interesting, but not necessarily because of your past or present interest in soccer, but the political and socio-economic dynamic at play. Not to mention the fact that you can wake up at 7am and watch it live.

9. You voluntarily go into work on a Saturday morning and actually think of the benefits more so than the negatives of doing so.

10. You blog about this sort of stuff.

2010-05-29T18:29:00.002-05:00

You know, with such unfortunate events transpiring around the globe, such as the Gulf oil leak and the deaths of Gary Coleman and Dennis Hopper, it is nice to get a nice deep breath of fresh air. Today's breath of fresh air came courtesy of the greatest baseball team in existence.

The odds were not looking good early on. The Indians have admittedly, yet not surprisingly, been struggling quite a bit this season. They were on the road for a 4-game series. At Yankee Stadium. Against the Yankees, obviously. The Yankees have by far the highest payroll in baseball and one of the best records in the league to boot. The Indians are far behind in both areas.

To add insult to injury (or whatever), the starting pitcher was the Yankees was none other than CC Sabathia, the former Indians ace that, after a half-season layover with Milwaukee, cashed in his excellent years in Cleveland with a ridiculous contract in New York. So, as it stood, the entire Indians' roster makes $60 million a year, while their former teammate, who they were facing, makes about $25 million a year by himself.

Anyway, matters got worse. Already trailing in the 3rd inning, Cleveland's young starting pitcher, David Huff, was struck in the left side of the head by a line drive off the bat of none other than Alex Rodriguez, whose salary of $33 million a year dwarfs even Sabathia's. Huff went straight to the ground, where he lay motionless for several minutes, before being taken off the field on a stretcher, then straight to the hospital.

Well, if you've read this far, surely you can expect what happened next, warranting this entry. Yep, the Yankees scored a couple of runs as a result of Huff's misfortune, then added 6 more runs the next inning and took control of the game...

But, even though the Yankees' lead held at 10-4 in the 6th inning, it was nothing that 9 consecutive runs couldn't overcome. And just as David Huff came out OK after a negative CT scan at the hospital, so did the Indians and their 13-11 victory.

And for just one day in just one ballpark, all was right with the world.

2010-05-23T22:30:00.002-05:00

Here's the first installment of a song-by-song breakdown of a relatively new album. Call it a review if you like. First up is the debut from Southampton, England's Band of Skulls, Baby Darling Doll Face Honey.

1. Light of the Morning - this is the first song and probably the most well-known song on the album, if any of the songs could be classified as "well known". It's definitely a catchy song and does a good job of setting the table for the rest of the album. It sounds like it should be in a TV car commercial, which it is. Pontiac, maybe?

2. Death by Diamond and Pearls - So yeah, by this point, if you haven't picked up on a similarity between this band's sound and Jack White's various bands', you're not listening. It's not a blatant rip off or anything, but definitely present. Be it the vocal styles, the loose and gritty guitars or the prominent drum pounding, it's there.

3. I Know What I Am - Ok, a lot going on here. This song is sassy and while that's OK, this definitely sounds like a song that could get old fast. There's some female vocals entering the picture. None of these people sound British, but they are. The chorus has a very catchy hook and almost sounds disco-ish. Yeah, this song differs from the first two, but not necessarily in a good way.

4. Fires - Ah, so there's the album title in the first line of the song. Kinda strange name that might could have been improved upon. "If you bring the water, I'll bring the matches...'cause we are fires in the night." Not really sure what that means, but it sounds really great in that really great anthemic way. This song does that loud/soft juxtaposition more than any of the others so far and it works quite well. This is easily the best song on the album so far and will probably stay that way through the end.

5. Honest - Female lead vocals and a legitimate softer/slower song. This sorts sounds like a completely different band at this point. That is usually seen as a good thing, but it throws off cohesion a little. This song actually sounds like Marketa Irglova's songs with The Swell Season. That and somber singing girl songs in musicals...like Les Mis or something. It sounds like it's being sung by a girl alone in a garden (or maybe a fire escape), looking at the stars at night.

6. Patterns - More the sass. There's a weird counting thing going on that plays in the "pattern" theme of the song. The dance beats are automatically catchy, but it really does border on 1970s disco at times and that's just not very comforting.

7. Hollywood Bowl - Yeah, the disco-y thing is back and must just be a part of their sound. Since "Fires" has none of that and is easily the best song, maybe they could get away from that. This song has a lot of that "rock n roll lifestyle" element in it. Seems like a lot of innuendo and sleaziness going on. Those "hey"'s are surely quite a hit during a live performance. The end of the song takes on a sort of jazzy/bluesy sound and then rocks out, which is fairly redeeming. Might should have pulled that out sooner.

8. Bomb - A ticking clock starts this song because it's called "Bomb". Not very clever. The song isn't terribly clever either, but doesn't sound bad...except when the ticking clock returns. The album definitely has a lot of guitars in it, which is nice.

9. Impossible - Pretty unremarkable whining at the beginning, until it starts to sound like Queen, which is pretty fun. More nonsensical lyrics, though, like "I am a man 'cause you said I am...Yeah". Thankfully no disco beats on this one and some of those "textures" that seem to often be mentioned in album reviews.

10. Blood - Swampy blues that sounds like it should be on an episode of True Blood. The female vocals seem much more variant than the male vocals on this album. The male vocals just sound like a variation on Jack White all the way through, while the female mixes it up and can't quite be pegged as easily.

11. Dull Gold Heart - This sounds like it should be sung at the Ryman. The album is definitely all over the place, but the good moments outweigh the bad by far. If they can just stay away from the disco dance beat sass, they should be fine. If the whole album could sound like the conclusion of this song, this could be album of the year.

12. Cold Fame - Yes, the epic closer and it's quite epic, as debut albums go. Starts off with a smoky lounge singer thing, but then gets back to some of that "Fires" sound that works so well. More "clever" lyrics with "I know my place, but it don't know me". What does it actually mean for your place to not "know you"? It's a little disconcerting because of the repetition of what sounds like "Cocaine in my veins, it's OK because I know it's the best for me". Clearly, given the name of the song, "cocaine" and "cold fame" sounds too much alike. Regardless, the echoing harmonies work here quite well

Overall, a solid debut. Actually, more than solid. It's pretty good and shouldn't be something that grows stale quickly. That might be where the variety of the album comes in handy. If you like guitars, almost equal parts male/female vocals and almost a little too much sass, you could really like this album Even if you don't like the sass, there's more than enough to make this a worthwhile listen.

Ugh, you probably want a number to quantify this review, right? Well, you won't get tenth-of-a-point precision like on Pitchfork or a 100-point scale like on Paste. How about a 0-10 scale with half-point increments? Does that work?

Let's go with 8/10. Could have been higher.

2010-05-08T14:43:00.005-05:00

Best of London, April-May 2010:

Cadbury Cream Egg McFlurry. Note the sugary sweet deliciousness that is the "yolk":

The Hole in the Wall, 5 Mepham Street, Waterloo, London:

Unfortunately, dinner had already been eaten before this was discovered. Fortunately, dinner was great and cameras exist:

Without question, the absolute highlight of the trip:

2010-04-22T01:02:00.002-05:00

The desire to finish something can lead a person to do strange things. Be it spent finishing the first season of a rather creepy TV show or making headway on some rather exciting job-related tasks, time can just slip away on a Wednesday night.

Once enough time slips by, Wednesday night becomes Thursday morning and Thursday morning becomes another day at work.

It's nice how life allows everyone to finish things on a regular basis. Everyone gets to finish a day, a week, a year, etc. Unfortunately, that is hardly enough to satisfy that urge that leads to Dexter nights and Phase I nights. People like to set out a course for themselves, then attempt to navigate it. If they're successful, it's very affirming. If not, regret and self-doubt take over.

So what will it be? Sleepiness, apparently.

2010-04-01T14:16:00.003-05:00

It's April Fools Day. Sometimes fun things come about on this day, but usually it's annoying. A laugh is a good thing, but scaring/worrying the beegees out of someone is less noble. Regardless, Happy April Fools Day to all. Was that shred of friendliness an AFD trick? The world may never know.

Regardless, here's something fun from AFD2010.

And, just to balance that, here's something that is unfortunately not a part of AFD.

2010-03-30T09:43:00.002-05:00

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?, Afterword

Point...
Counterpoint...

All's fair.

2010-03-27T17:21:00.011-05:00

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?, Part II

Another recent release, Mumford & Sons' Sigh No More, illustrates the shortcomings of a Pitchfork review. Personal preferences aside, it's hard to respect a review that seems more interested in crafting an elaborate allegory than actually exploring the merits of the music itself. Before anything else is mentioned, the review sets out to deride the name of the band. Sure, Mumford & Sons is not a great name, but Pitchfork never found it necessary to dissect the names of Hunx & His Punx, Dinowalrus, Let's Wrestle, New Young Pony Club, or Sunburned Hand of Man in reviews of those act's recent releases. What gives?

So yeah, back to the allegory. The fact that the frontman/songwriter of the band (whose last name is Mumford, by the way) decided to name his band Mumford & Sons, is clearly his way of trying to garner a sense of authenticity and compare himself/his music to family-owned businesses in real small towns run by real people for generations. Right? To be such a simple-minded rip-off artist, as the review suggests, Marcus Mumford sure does craft elaborate schemes when it comes to naming his band! Is it possible that a fairly lame, yet completely innocuous, name got stuck on his act, whether by his own doing or by someone else and he just went with it? Nevermind that Pitchfork calls its annual music festival in Chicago the, wait for it, Pitchfork Music Festival.

As for the music (the point, right?), by "providing value-added products at discount prices", Mumford & Sons have managed to poach material from Fleet Foxes...and Avett Brothers...and Kings of Leon...and Keane...and Gomez. Seriously? Can you really say a band is unoriginal when you cite that many different influences? It seems like the ability to pull together a hybrid of so many bands with so many different origins might actually be a good, diverse thing. Maybe?

The elements of those five bands cited include "group harmonies", "exaggerated earnestness", "rock 'real'-ness", "second-hand drama" and "insistent rusticisms". Since when did music with harmonies (a core musical element), earnestness (believability seems to be a good thing), "real"-ness (whatever that is, would "fake"-ness be better?), drama (it is songs about relationships, after all) and rusticisms (it is folk music, after all) become a bad thing? Couldn't these kind of ambiguous associations be made to any album? What it comes down to is that Mumford & Sons are British (sorta like Gomez) and play a new brand of folk music (see Avett Brothers). They're popular in England (but not as much as Kings of Leon) and seem to be generating some buzz in the U.S. (much like Keane). Then there are those harmonies, not to mention banjos (!), that could have only been written after listening to Fleet Foxes. Clearly both of these bands owe their entire existence to Ralph Stanley, or whoever invented the banjo/harmony combination.

Time for more influences. Don't forget Celtic melodies, Fairport Convention and Pentangle. Wait...did you say Fairport Convention and Pentangle? As in the Fairport Convention and the Pentangle? Midlake thinks they can sound like them too! The mission of Pitchfork has been identified: to protect and preserve the good names of Fairport Convention and Pentangle (both of made great music, by the way). Basically, Mumford & Sons, a British folk-rock band sound like British folk-rock bands. While they might not distance themselves drastically from recent upstarts like Frightened Rabbit, We Were Promised Jetpacks and Frank Turner, or historical acts like Fairport Convention or Pentangle, it's not a particularly egregious offense. Great Britain is not a huge place and there's only so many different ways to sing a song.

Listening to the album, you might at times think something you hear is reminiscent of something else you've heard, but that's part of what makes music fun. It's hard to believe that anyone hears this album and can only think about what an abomination it is that a band could make money off such blatant unoriginality. Like it or leave it, innovation or lack thereof is not what got this album released or into the ears of listeners. On Paul's Boutique, the Beastie Boys said, "Only 24 hours in a day, only 12 notes a man can play." True on both counts. However, since that particular album is primarily composed of sampled music and many sampled lyrics, Pitchfork probably thinks it is a piece of trash. Right?

Back to Mumford & Sons, once the review actually gets around to talking about the songs on the album being reviewed, the contradictions start rolling in and the wheels start coming off. In one paragraph alone, Mumford is accused of being "anonymous", but then "self-absorbed" as well. By this point, the review is completely useless. With a numerical rating at the beginning of the review, you already know what is going to be said and few surprises or interesting insights can be expected. In this case, the review could have gone on for several more paragraphs, but eventually the reader would realize that listening to a bad album is still far more enjoyable than reading a bad review.

2010-03-27T15:21:00.011-05:00

Quis custodiet ipsos custodes?, Part I

One of the overriding themes of Watchmen is "Who Watches the Watchmen?". This same idea can be applied in a vast range of instances, but today the focus is on one singular application: Who criticizes the critics?

Pitchfork Media has done much for the mainstream crossover appeal of indie music over the past several years. What started out as a website where people could go to actually find a review of an album that would never appear in Rolling Stone or Spin has developed into a leading opinion-maker, hype-generator and status-definer in popular music today. With this kind of influence and relevancy, though, come some unfortunate side effects. Has Pitchfork gotten away from its initial role of filling the void in coverage in independent music by creating a new standard that marginalizes and pigeonholes music just like previous generation of mainstream commercial media outlets did?

This is not a new concept and not really a terribly important one in the grand scheme of things. A very small percentage of people who buy music do so solely based on a review they read. If a teenage girl in Nebraska hears a K$sha song on the radio and likes it (somehow), she's going to buy or download it regardless of what some pale dude living in a commune in Williamsburg thinks of the song. If the president of the Bon Jovi fan club chapter in Great Falls, Montana hears that Jon and the boys are putting out a new album, he's not going to pick up the latest issue of a magazine to help decide whether or not he wants to buy it. The people that read reviews most and actually let the review influence their buying/listening decisions are those who buy and listen to the most music anyway: the obsessives.

Regardless, bands in the "indie scene" are inclined to align themselves with Pitchfork in any way possible. For example, the Texas band Midlake released a new album recently that hit store shelves with a sticker on the cover that advertised a couple of the songs featured on the album and some bonus multimedia material. However, on this same sticker, above the information about songs and content, there was a quote that really meant to grab potential buyers' attention:

"...lush, haunted." -Pitchfork

This is all fine, except that Pitchfork gave the album a rating of 3.6 out of 10 on their so-refined-it-needs-a-decimal-point-and-tenth-of-a-point-intervals scale. It is hard to believe that Pitchfork wrote their review with the hope that Midlake would be using this review to promote their new album. Thing is, the "...lush, haunted" reference did not even come from Pitchfork's review of the album. No, it came from the introduction to an interview with Midlake's frontman, Tim Smith, that Pitchfork published last November. In the interview, it was discovered that some of the lushness and haunted-ness was inspired by English folk bands like Fairport Convention and Pentangle, which aren't exactly common names on Pitchfork (or anywhere for that matter). Furthermore, the interview was conducted by one Pitchfork writer, while the review was written by another staff member. Maybe Mr. Breihan, the interviewer, LOVES Midlake's lush and haunting sound, while Mr. Thompson, the reviewer, believes it to be "languid" and "uninterested".

Has anything really been accomplished by using the Pitchfork name when it does not represent a particular sentiment? After all, most people that might actually respect the Pitchfork reference are the same people that likely read the disparaging review on the website back in February. What about the bands themselves? Do they really care? Probably not, as evident by the multiple on-stage references to Pitchfork's ratings by performers at, of all places, the Pitchfork Music Festival. Irony aside, it does make you wonder if there is minimum score required in order for a band to be invited to play that festival. If not, maybe Pitchfork realizes, just like some bands, that (segue) it's all just a business.

2010-03-13T11:40:00.002-06:00

So, it's come to this. A service that plays matchmaker for people who seek to commit adultery. Pretty lame. Pretty sick, actually. It does, however, show that business can motivate seemingly impossible levels of greed and selfishness. It's also lazy. If you insist on cheating, then you should at least have to work for it. That seemed to be a reasonable approach while serving as a graduate teaching assistant at a fine academic institution several years back.

Finding happiness these days is supposedly being made easier and easier by technology. There's Facebook, there's eHarmony, there's Match.Com, there's a million more. You can break the ice with an email or text message, instead of sweaty palms and stuttering. This is great, except that the same technology that helps people find a relationship now helps them destroy it. The same way many people use alcohol as "liquid courage", people can use the internet as "eCourage".

Not only are there "services" such as AshleyMadison, but the amount of information provided on internet websites and profiles has removed the necessary effort in relationship building. Normally it would be seen as good thing that you can find out a lot about someone just by reading their Facebook page. Most would argue that this can be used to make a decision of whether you might be interested in someone before getting the guts to ask them out, but is this a good thing? A Facebook profile is not an accurate reflection of someone, regardless of how much detail is given. You never know when something was put on there or in what context. You might find the answer to these uncertainties by actually meeting the person and talking to them about their favorite music, movies, books, etc. Crazy. After all, even if you do decide you want to go out with someone based on their Facebook page, do you really want to start a conversation with, "So, I was just browsing your Facebook page..."?

The owners of AshleyMadison will surely insist that they are just providing a service to those looking for a service to be provided. They'll say they don't encourage or support infidelity, yet their company slogan is "Life is short. Have an affair." Sounds like a winner. They'd even like to put their company name on a major airport as a corporate sponsorship. If there's one thing a major airport does not need, it's another means by which for road-weary business travelers to consider cheating on their spouses back at home.

Seeing things like this makes a TV show like Millionaire Matchmaker seem almost quaint and charming. At least on the show, the queen matchmaker refuses to help millionaire egomaniacs get exactly what they want if exactly what they want is a trophy bride that will be just another "flavor of the week". The show actually attempts to unravel the complex and sometimes not-so-complex personalities that carry all that money around. All at once the show is enjoyable and disgusting, but at least there is a thread of decency running through most of the episodes. The same cannot be said for other outlets of relationships doomed to be dysfunctional from the start.

2010-03-05T11:06:00.005-06:00

As most of you know, it is often quite amusing to see what Google predicts you are typing in the search box before you type it. Today's example comes from an innocent search at work for the answer to an innocent question, "Is lead a carcinogen?".

It is so good to know that while kids are munching on lead paint chips at the playground and drinking lead-tainted water from old pipes, there is such overwhelming concern and awareness regarding Lady Gaga's anatomy and exactly how illegal it is to participate in illegal file sharing online. At least people have some kind of heart since they want to know if Lil' Wayne being dead is the reason he keeps avoiding going to jail.

Stay classy society.

2010-03-04T21:23:00.003-06:00

Today Tiger Woods' caddy spoke to the media in his native New Zealand today. That's news, but not because of what he knew, but what he didn't. Apparently the media thinks that his adviser on the course is also his adviser off the course. People have even suggested that he is partially to blame for Tiger's transgressions since he could have guided him out this situation just like he might guide him out of a bad lie (the golf kind).

The simple response to this is, where do you see Tiger Woods with your own eyes? Unless this blog reaches farther than ever imaginable, the only answer to that question is "on TV playing golf" or maybe "in person playing golf". Well, that's where the caddy sees him also. Even if he knew some of what was going on, Tiger is his boss. Would you tell your boss he was really letting you down by being a serial adulterer?

Why is it such a problem that Tiger Woods is completely 100% to blame for all of this? Does this mean you have to feel guilty watching him play golf? No. Tiger probably did nothing worse than the majority of professional athletes, famous musicians, hotshot attorneys or business tycoons do. Is cheating with ten (or more) women really worse than cheating with one woman from a moral standpoint? From the very first time, he had betrayed the trust of his wife and kids.

He also set a bad example for other kids, but those kids can now cheer for Phil Mickelson or Sergio Garcia. Tiger's wife and kids don't get to trade their version of Tiger in. Same goes for John Daly's family. While the pubic can watch and be amused, some people are forced to watch and shutter.

In the wake of all of this, every move Tiger makes has become headline news. He spent six weeks at a rehab clinic in Mississippi. He was seen jogging. Then there was that awful press conference. Basically, by furthering his media appeal, the amount of newsworthy developments has to sustain the increased interest. Therefore, stuff that was never interesting is all of a sudden front page material. Nobody really cares, but it feels like you should since it leads the evening news, Sportscenter and every website from Drudge to Gawker. Once everyone is talking about it, the news outlets can feel validated by covering every move incessantly. The machine feeds itself.

2010-03-04T20:20:00.005-06:00

What is going on at Starbucks? The place is already a normal part of a large percentage of the country's population's lives, but it has crossed that line into the realm of celebrities, reality TV personalities and Tiger Woods. Every move they make is news all of a sudden. Not only are people are beginning to use Starbucks as an outlet to express their political beliefs, it has developed the same bad habits as American institutions like McDonalds and GM. You'd think companies might learn that bigger is not always better.

It will be interesting to see how some of this stuff settles out. Across the country there are people bringing their loaded guns to Starbucks, where now they can order almost a liter of coffee at a time. Obviously, the last thing the world needs are some gun owners that are not only proud, but also jittery from their bucket of coffee. The question is, what happens when a teabagger becomes such a fan of a coffee shop? Irony aside, the hipness of Starbucks is likely to suffer.

Part of the benefit of Starbucks is that customers typically come in, order a drink and leave with it. Since each drink can cost up to $5, most people limit themselves to just one. This is a far preferable situation than people sitting at work all day guzzling cup after cup after cup. Now that 3 or 4 normal cups of coffee can come in one serving, the addicts will feel better about getting "one" drink at Starbucks. The challenge is going to be drinking the thing before it gets cold or hot, whichever you don't want it to do.

At least people might now learn that "Trenta" is Italian for "thirty". Since the drink is actually 31 ounces, Starbucks must have thought trentuno wasn't as marketable.

2010-02-18T22:21:00.002-06:00

So, let it be known that Cloudy With A Chance of Meatballs is far more entertaining than Up.

Up jumps the shark a few hundred too many times. Ok, so an old man flies his house to South America with thousands of balloons? That's fine...it is an animated movie and all. But then he inadvertently takes a very annoying little boy with him? Well, it's a good thing that boy has family issues or else someone might actually notice he's gone. Ok, so there's this crazy bird in the jungle? Good thing there's a crazy old man chasing the bird or else it might have been completely pointless. Then, of course, there are the dogs that have GPS collars that verbalize the dogs' thoughts. Good thing the old man and annoying kid befriend one of the dogs that is apparently too nice and dog-like to be a part of the pack. The zeppelin blimp hasn't even been discussed yet, but this is obviously to bring the whole Nazi element into the picture. Yes, Nazis are still bad, even in 21st century animated movies about flying houses.

As for Meatballs, its just about weather that comes in the form of food. Pure genius. There's even the heartwarming story of a charismatic inventor and his dad, the bait shop-owning widower. Does anything else really need to be said?

2010-02-18T21:54:00.003-06:00

Humility is, well, humbling. Everyone has such a high self-opinion and that's generally ok. There's nothing wrong with having a high self-opinion if you're honest with it. If you actually hold yourself to a standard, then living up to that standard could be considered a good thing.

So, this week's life lesson...

Early morning, just beginning the commute. Stopped at a red light, which promptly changes. Traffic starts to move, except the next car up. They sit. They sit more, but with a slight idling roll-back. The only reasonable thing to do is move to the next lane and zip by the sitting car, all the while giving them a shrug of the shoulders and the look that clearly says, "Ugh". It was all going according to plan until the police lights in the intersection became visible. Oh yeah, then the paramedic screaming through the intersection. Brakes were applied immediately, just in time to be next to the object of scorn just a few seconds earlier. Once the paramedic had passed, the driver of the other car gave that exact same "Ugh" look, but instead of the confused shrug of disbelief, they give a highly mocking hand clap with nothing but smugness written all over it.

And it was totally deserved. The rest of the drive to work was a little different than usual. People were allowed to pass. Speed was not the primary concern. Teeth were not gnashed. But for that day at least, a lesson was learned.

Being wrong is such a pain.

2010-02-08T10:14:00.002-06:00

The internet has already brought us such great things as Failblog and FML, but it never stops innovating.

Now there's this gem: Oddly Specific

Twelve pages in and its still quite entertaining. Yes, some are clearly fake or at least staged, but that's ok.

2010-01-25T19:47:00.002-06:00

As everyone knows, Nashville is Music City. This name came about in a simpler time, when relatively few places were known for their musical output. Detroit had Motown, Memphis had the blues, New Orleans had jazz, but Nashville was simply where "music" came from. However, it has become painfully apparent that the days of Johnny Cash, Roy Acuff and Chet Atkins are gone. Nashville can't even claim its hipper transplants, like Jack White and David Berman (Silver Jews), as its own. However, Nashville has become something different, something new: Terrible Music City.

Exhibit A:

Exhibit B:

Exhibit C:

So yeah, if you're a young female singer with major ego baggage, could you find another city's good name to tarnish? Stay out of Birmingham too. The American Idol connections are hard enough to live down.

2010-01-23T10:50:00.002-06:00

You have not lived until you have scoured your local Kroger grocery store looking for wasabi mayonnaise, which you've never been able to find in previous attempts, only to find it, buy it, then have it poorly bagged, causing it to inadvertently roll out of the bag on the counter at home, hit the floor, cracking the sealed lid, which splatters a green glob of nasal-tingling deliciousness across the floor, but mercifully does not crack the jar, allowing the remainder of the product, that cost $4 in the first place, to be salvaged for future use.

2010-01-19T23:38:00.002-06:00

Upcoming nearby tour dates for the Best of 09 inclusions:

We Were Promised Jetpacks
2/18 Atlanta Masquerade
2/19 Nashville The End

The Big Pink
4/3 Atlanta Masquerade

Girls
2/4 Birmingham Bottletree
2/5 Atlanta The Earl
2/6 Nashville Exit In

Wilco
3/26 Atlanta Fox Theater

Lucero
2/5 Memphis Minglewood Hall
2/13 Lexington Buster's
2/27 Auburn The Strutting Duck
3/11 Chattanooga Rhythm N Brews
3/12 Nashville Mercy Lounge
3/13 Nashville Mercy Lounge

If you live somewhere else, check for more dates for these bands by clicking their name above. They'll surely be playing near you if they're playing near here. That goes for all of you in Seattle, Portland, Houston, New York, California, etc.

2010-01-14T20:13:00.007-06:00

Just for the sake of it, how about some honorable mentions?

Neko Case - Middle Cyclone

If given more listens, it might have forced its way into the list. It's just really good, but it doesn't demand you listen to it.

The Dimes - The King Can Drink the Harbour Dry

The premise of historical indie rock might be hokey, but it sounds pretty good here. This one is all about Boston during the American Revolution. Its like the indie rock companion to the HBO miniseries John Adams...or something.

The Low Anthem - Oh My God, Charlie Darwin

Not bad, but just didn't quite take flight as hoped for. The louder songs just seem out of place. There's nothing wrong with making a full album of quiet songs.

Cymbals Eat Guitars - Why Are There Mountains?

That first song is great and then the rest of album sorta just happens and you're left thinking about that first song while the others come and go.

St. Vincent - Actor

If given a proper amount of listening, it would probably have easily made the list. That's not to say it won't be listened to in the future just as much as if it made the list. So yeah, go ahead and pretend it was on the list. If you need a number, consider it number 13.5.

Phosphorescent - To Willie

Maybe if there were a shortage of deserving albums of original material, an album of covers could make the cut, but such was not the case in 2009.

The Decemberists - Hazards of Love

Not a bad album, but not really significant given the band's prolific output previously. This album is one of those that is a victim of the band being so good to start with that almost anything will seem to fall short of expectations.

Camera Obscura - My Maudlin Career

Very good, but painfully reminds the world that it needs The Delgados to reunite.

Andrew Bird - Noble Beast

It just didn't have that "something" that made Armchair Apocrypha so great. Short of covering Ke$ha, nothing Andrew Bird makes would be bad, though.

The Thermals - Now We Can See

Simply put, not as good as The Body, The Blood, The Machine, which, simply put, was not as good as F***in' A.

Frank Turner - Poetry of the Deed

A well-educated British guy singing folksy acoustic songs and doing so quite well.

David Bazan - Curse Your Branches

It was good, just not quite good enough. It probably deserves more listens, though. It was easy to get distracted by all the attention paid to the premise of the album and not the songs themselves. Maybe that's not fair.

2010-01-14T19:20:00.009-06:00

Well, the list is out so now it's time for the second-guessing. It's time for each of you to say to yourself, "How could that idiot have forgotten about...?". As far as critically acclaimed indie rock, the most likely conclusion to that sentence might be one of the following:

Animal Collective - Ok, their 2 releases in 2009 were both great, but hardly life-altering or something that might make you redefine your taste. They definitely make interesting and creative music that is actually pretty fun to listen to, but from a personal perspective, it just doesn't make that strong of a connection. As an earlier post mentioned, "My Girls" is great and some other songs are very good. Honestly, though, it just didn't seem like Animal Collective needed to be on another list and if they had shown up around #17, it might have sparked more attention than just leaving them off all together.

Grizzly Bear - Again, a good album, but just not foolproof. Grizzly Bear just has such a unique sound that if it doesn't grab you, then it probably won't even really make an impact. That seems to be the reason they don't make the list. The album has a good sound, per se, but it just doesn't seem like something you'd want to listen to very often. Furthermore, Grizzly Bear just doesn't seem like it would be anyone's "favorite band". It may seem hypocritical since the Grizzly Bear side project Department of Eagles made the cut last year, but it just seemed better for all these reasons.

Dirty Projectors - Here's where things get interesting. Is it possible this album just wasn't very good? Sure, it's listenable, but even after multiple listens, not a single song sticks out. This might be the most overrated album of the year, which isn't the band's fault, so no ill will is intended toward them. Their music just isn't very remarkable, or at least not to every ear it comes in contact with.

Phoenix - This one was a challenge. This album is very easy to listen to and several songs linger after just one listen. A far cry from Dirty Projectors for sure. Anyway, it may be a victim of its own quality. If the idea is to write insanely catchy songs that make people feel good and make them hum/tap along, then this is easily album of the year. It just doesn't have any teeth and that makes it expendable.

The Flaming Lips - While they've never been bad at all, is it heresy to suggest that they might not be THAT great? Given the choice, The Soft Bulletin seems to be better than anything after it. They're obviously fun to see live and sometimes fun to listen to and even fun for reminiscing about listening to "She Don't Use Jelly" in 8th grade, but that seems to be about it.

Yeah Yeah Yeahs - That "Heads Will Roll" song is really catchy, but so was The Macarena. Maybe if Karen O wasn't so annoying looking?

The Dead Weather - Jack White's third best band. No matter how good it is, if one of the members is already in two better bands, it just ain't happening.

As for mainstream albums, nobody really needs to be reminded that some bands put out strong albums this year. Even if the albums were among the 20 best of the year, it just doesn't flow right to list a great album by Dave Matthews Band or Pearl Jam with stuff like The Silent Years or Fanfarlo. A difficult decision was made on Muse's The Resistance. While they are not mainstream like DMB or PJ, they have made the crossover to the world of being bumper music for ESPN and other such outlets. You don't need to hear "Uprising" in this arena, even though it would sound great in an arena (Atlanta, 2/27; Nashville, 3/15). Muse is one of those bands that needs to be listened to for what they are, not for what list they appear on.

The final group of notable exclusions are albums by metal bands. Again, much like previously discussed, its hard to rank a Converge album alongside an Orenda Fink album. Let the record show that bands like Converge, along with Baroness, Mastodon and Isis made really great albums that could easily be among the 20 best of the year. However, the idea was to have a 20 song CD with 20 songs that people would actually want to listen to. Maybe there should be a companion disc that has only metal on it. If you're interested, make your interest known. Deal?

2010-01-14T02:10:00.005-06:00

Alright, there have already been 13 days to pass in 2010 and still no "Best of 2009" here. Ok, that's changing right now. There'll be a little different approach this year: an actual comparative ranking. Usually it's just too hard to rank one great album to another since different seasons bring different sounds and different genres, but everyone seems to like it that way, so here goes:

20. Orenda Fink - Ask The Night

Ok, so having a song about her home state simply titled "Alabama" made her a lock for this list. There are other good songs on the album, though, including "High Ground", which features Isaac Brock of Modest Mouse. This is an improvement on her previous solo effort, but it would still be nice to see a new Azure Ray album at some point. With Maria Taylor, Azure Ray is greater than the sum of its parts.

19. Lightning Dust - Infinite Light

Another female lead vocalist. Thankfully its not Ke$ha. No, it's the girl from Black Mountain (Amber Webber is her name). She has a very unique voice that makes itself known pretty much anywhere (see #16). This is very sedate music that requires the right time and place for greatest enjoyment, so take heed.

18. Built to Spill - There Is No Enemy

Ok, so this is not on par with Perfect From Now On, Ancient Melodies of the Future or Keep It Like A Secret, but that is hardly an insult. When you put on a new BTS album, you're automatically listening for something like those three albums, but it just can't happen. Once you listen a few times, you realize this is a really good album because the creativity is there, the variety is there and of course the guitars are there. If it weren't Built to Spill, there would have never been a problem in the first place.

17. Pink Mountaintops - Outside Love

Ok, this is only the fifth album on the list and already the second Black Mountain side project. That's not to say that Black Mountain is the best band on Earth, but they're pretty good, particularly on last year's In The Future. Anyway, Pink Mountaintops does that hazy psychadelic thing and does it well. It's the kind of stuff that sounds like it might not be that hard to write yourself, but if that were true, more people would be doing it.

16. Old Canes - Feral Harmonic

This seems to be the year of the side project. This one comes from the once-mothballed side project of The Appleseed Cast's Chris Crisci. TAC also released an album this year, Sagarmatha, but this simply sounded better. It does, however, sound almost identical to the first Old Canes album, 2004's Early Morning Hymns. At least its good.

15. White Rabbits - It's Frightening

Alright, a non-side project. This album was produced by Britt Daniel of Spoon and, appropriately, it sounds not unlike a Spoon album. It definitely falls short of their debut, which happened to be one of the best albums of the decade. There are some good songs on here, but it just doesn't have that extra "it" of Fort Nightly. So long as these guys stick around a while, they'll continue making good albums.

14. Lucero - 1372 Overton Park

The dreaded major label debut. But wait, it's good. Yes, there are horns and yes it sounds more polished, but it works here. Ben Nichols still sings about what a slacker he is and how much whiskey he drinks, so its not like any long-time Lucero fan will be lost. Lucero might never be what they were again, but its not like they're going on tour with Ke$ha or anything.

13. Elvis Perkins - In Dearland

This album kinda falls into the same category that White Rabbits' did. It's a really good sophomore effort, but it remains somewhat hidden in the very long shadow if its unbelievably good predecessor. As compared to Ash Wednesday, this album has more variety, more pop, but less emotion and resonance. That'll happen.

12. M. Ward - Hold Time

If you ever needed a reason why She & Him should be just Him, this is it. Matt Ward is a great songwriter, but his songs sound best when he is singing them, not playing second fiddle to a B-lister that appears to only be an actress because she brings mediocre singing skills to the table and a singer only because she brings mediocre acting skills to the same table. Maybe that's harsh, but this isn't about her anyway. At the very least it should be He & Her.

11. Manchester Orchestra - Mean Everything to Nothing

This album was maybe the biggest surprise of the year. There was absolutely no reason to think that Manchester Orchestra would come back with a strong album, but they're really young and really talented, so maybe it shouldn't be a surprise. Hearing some of these songs for the first time last summer at Sloss Furnace, you would have definitely pictured the new album being much darker and harder to get into, but it ended up being only just as dark as I'm Like A Virgin Losing A Child and very easy to get into. Overall, it rocks very heavy, but Black Sabbath-esque riffs will tend to do that. Some of the songs seem expressly radio-friendly, but who listens to the radio anyway?

10. Wilco - Wilco (The Album)

Wilco gathered a fair amount of mainstream exposure this year, which is of course deserved, and went the somewhat hokey route of putting out a song called "Wilco (The Song)" on an album called Wilco (The Album). In spite of such distractions, this album is quite good. Granted, its not quite the revelation of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot or even A Ghost Is Born, but it more than adequately legitimatizes itself with songs like "I Will Fight", "One Wing" and "You and I".

9. Girls - Album

This was somewhat of a late entrant that quickly found a spot among the best. This album effectively balances grittiness with melody, which can sometimes be tricky. It must be all the drugs that were apparently taken during recording. The guy behind Girls, Christopher Owens, has a pretty interesting life story, but you can look into that yourself if you wish. The opening track is called "Lust for Life", but its not an Iggy Pop cover. That might not have been so bad, though.

8. The Silent Years - Let Go E.P.

So it's just an EP and it shares the name of a Nada Surf album, so it doesn't take long to warm up to this record. It's probably the best thing to come out of Detroit in 2009 in all arenas, not just music, so that's got to count for something. There seems to be a nice little seam of midwestern indie rock coming out these days, including these guys, Envy Corps (Iowa) and The Uglysuit (Oklahoma). Hopefully there'll be more than 6 songs on future releases.

7. The Big Pink - A Brief History of Love

There isn't an immediate description of this band that comes to mind. They're British. They have a huge sound. They incorporate dance beats into some songs. They exude confidence in their music. Despite all of this, they somehow don't really sound like Muse. They did open for Muse in the UK, though.

6. The Kingsbury Manx - Ascenseur Ouvert!

This is the first of those albums which at some point was the clubhouse leader for "Album of the Year". It just sounds good. There's enough of a Wilco thing going on to suit that interest, but with more folk. While it did slip down to #6, that certainly isn't a slight. This album still has that start-to-finish listenability quality, which might cause it to possess more lasting power than the higher ranked albums.

5. The Avett Brothers - I and Love and You

Another album of the year place holder that faded a little bit. Paste Magazine didn't think it faded, though, as it was their clear-cut AotY. There isn't a bad song on this record and Rick Rubin's production makes the Avett Brothers sound like a full-scale professional band for maybe the first time in their career. Unfortunately some of the intensity that marks much of the Avetts' earlier stuff is lost in the crispness. The raucous foot-stomping is largely replaced with ballads, but the album does finish with 2 legitimate rocking songs to leave you on the upswing. All of this and not a single song title that starts with "Girl from...".

4. Fanfarlo - Reservoir

Yes, it sounds like Arcade Fire sometimes. Now that that is out of the way, it cannot go unnoticed how great this album is. Besides, even if you do end up sounding like someone else, isn't it better to sound like Arcade Fire than Ke$ha, for instance? It's not like it's a blatant ripoff or anything. Mixing somewhat operatic male vocals with female harmonies and indie rock flourishes will tend to make parallels easy to spot.

3. Dinosaur Jr. - Farm

It's really nice to laud a band for their release in 2009 without mentioning how, as good as the new album is, it just can't compare to previous efforts. Dinosaur Jr. are old dudes and definitely to the point in their careers where you don't even really expect great albums anymore. They've already broken up for several years and slowly reconvened to make some of the best music of their career over past few years. This is beyond Beyond, though, and seemed like the de facto choice for album of the year a few months ago. J Mascis' moaning vocals and guitars are clearly the focal point, which is what could lead to many more age-defying great albums.

2. We Were Promised Jetpacks - These Four Walls

If this list were being made a week or two later, this might be number one. It has kinda come out of nowhere to make the list and would probably surprise most to see it this high. Thing is, it's just that good. It rocks very hard and very Scottish, neither or which is a bad thing. It almost seems like the Scottish equivalent of a band like Small Brown Bike. So yeah, Glasgow meets Gainesville.

1. Sunset Rubdown - Dragonslayer

It's only appropriate that this list end with what is technically a side project (of Wolf Parade). Its easy to see, though, why people think SR should be Spencer Krug's main gig. There is just so much creative randomness throughout this album that you don't really notice that it's only got eight songs. Each song is like a mini-album in itself, so you certainly don't end up feeling slighted. This album might simply be too odd for mass consumption, but if it clicks, it will click very much.

2009-12-16T21:14:00.002-06:00

As is the case every year, there were some trends in 2009's music releases. This is just a brief summary and not exhaustive, and should not substitute for the actual "best of" that might or might not be coming soon. Heed:

Released Their Best Album in 7-11 Years:

Pearl Jam - Backspacer
Dave Matthews Band - Big Whiskey & The Groo Grux King
Rancid - Let The Dominoes Fall
Dinosaur Jr. - Farm (even though 2007's Beyond was perfectly good)
Built to Spill - There Is No Enemy

Always Great, but On Upswing in 2009:

Wilco - Wilco: The Album
Muse - The Resistance
Norah Jones - The Fall
The Avett Brothers - I and Love and You
Lucero - 1372 Overton Park

Good, but Overrated:

Animal Collective - Merriweather Post Pavilion
Grizzly Bear - Veckatimest
The Flaming Lips - Embryonic
Dirty Projectors - Bitte Orce
The Low Anthem - Oh My God, Charlie Darwin

Somewhat Of A Let Down, But Still Solid:

The Swell Season - Strict Joy
Bruce Springsteen - Working On A Dream
Green Day - 21st Century Breakdown
U2 - No Line On The Horizon

Major Let Downs:

Franz Ferdinand - Tonight: Franz Ferdinand
Cursive - Mama, I'm Swollen
Brand New - Daisy
Poison The Well - The Tropic Rot

The Return of Good Metal:

Mastodon - Crack The Skye
Converge - Axe To Fall
Baroness - The Blue Album
Isis - The Wavering Radiant

Usually Prolific Bands with Nothing Conclusive to Show For 2009:
Okkervil River
My Morning Jacket
Ryan Adams
Radiohead
Iron & Wine

2009-12-16T20:37:00.004-06:00

It's mid-December, so several things are making their annual presence known. That includes Santa, bowl games, Salvation Army bell-ringers, mornings in the 20s and unsightly amounts of candy. More important than all of these, though, are end-of-year music lists. Since 2009 is also the end of a decade, there's the added bonus of end-of-decade lists as well.

Making these lists requires quite a bit of work and that work might not be worth it. People enjoy reading the lists, but 5 minutes later they've probably forgotten who ranked where and the only likely conversation it created was an examination of how wrong the author was. Then there's the whole matter of deciding if the author's opinion really matters in the first place. Would you read a list of some perfect stranger's favorite breakfast cereals? Ok, maybe that wouldn't be so bad, but digression...

Of course, the source of the ranking says a lot about the contents of the list before you even read number 10, 20, 50 or whatever the list starts at. If you're reading a jazz critic, you won't find much heavy metal, or vice versa. Regardless, everyone wants to feel like maybe, just maybe, their taste is similar to someone whose opinion has been deemed viable. This is such a strong pull of human nature that a presumably unintended (negative?) result often occurs.

A sense of group-think come about when all the critics polarize their opinions in similar fashions so that their opinion will still be "relevant" when the following year's best-of lists come out. As a result, a small music blog ends up thinking Merriweather Post Pavilion is this year's best, just like Pitchfork surely will. Although it's not guaranteed, probably the reason that small blog writer liked the album so much in the first place was that they read Pitchfork's review when it came out. It also helps when an album comes out in the first week of January to rave reviews and becomes the standard by which all subsequent releases that year are measured. Then again, it also gives plenty of time for the consuming public to forget about it. Never fear, though, that's where Pitchfork and its lesser-known contemporaries come in handy. In the case of Animal Collective, though, they just released an only slightly less-esteemed EP to bookend all of the inferior releases this year.

Ok, this is not an Animal Collective bash-fest. Both MPP and the new EP are good records and worthy of listening and appreciation if that's your thing. By now, some people have probably made "My Girls"* the anthem of their life, and maybe understandably so. Anyway, the point is, year end lists are great, but #1 isn't always better than #20, or even "honorable mention". It's all about how a particular album struck you and nothing about how a particular review, rating or ranking struck you.

With all of this in mind, keep an eye out for the humble opinions of this blog soon. Some of you have proven to be trusting souls previously, so you're welcome to extend the courtesy again...if that's your thing, of course.

*If you're unacquainted, give the song a couple of minutes. It gets better and ultimately burrows out a cozy place in your memory.

2009-12-12T09:32:00.004-06:00

While spending many hours on interstate highways it is easy to imagine many different metaphors for what is going on around you. As everyone knows, there are times when there's only one lane of traffic and other times there are 6 or more. This should be an indication of how many people want to go where you're going. Depending on how you look at it, this can be either a good thing or a bad thing. If you want to feel like you're making a popular decision, the traffic is a good thing. You're normal, after all. Then again, given the volume of traffic, it may feel like your path as been determined for you. That road was built with you in mind. It's there because you're supposed to be there using it. That might be a little unsettling.

Even once you've decided you're on the right road, the observations don't cease. With all those lanes of traffic come a lot of choices. There are the perceived "fast" lanes and the perceived "slow" ones, then of course there's the lane you need to be in. Obviously, the human factor kicks in at some point. Everyone becomes "self aware" all of a sudden and decides if they're more "left lane" or "right lane". Then the real fun starts.

Once you're between exits and nobody is merging in or merging out, the lane-dancing begins. Everyone is jockeying for position and trying to get ahead or at least not fall behind. Everyone wants to get to their destination first, but the risks of driving dangerously and getting a speeding ticket, along with the limitations of your vehicle start to weigh in. Some cars are simply faster than others and some people are simply more willing to drive theirs faster than others. And there's life.

It becomes clear that not everyone can be in the fast lane at once. It quickly becomes the not-fast lane when everyone flocks to it. This is what happens with almost anything in life. The window of opportunity is only open for a limited time and the first-movers and quick-responders benefit, while those left trying to decide usually get left out. By the time they make the move, they've joined gridlock and have lots of company. Meanwhile, those who made the move first have either zoomed away or already moved to another lane. Either way, you're watching their taillights and they could care less about your situation.

So yeah, if this entry isn't evidence that a long commute is a dangerous thing, let it at least be another indication of how tough life can be. It seems like that's all this blog is about right now. That's no fun. Maybe it's time to change lanes. Hope it's not too late.

2009-11-22T12:58:00.003-06:00

Through one quarter of play, Brady Quinn in on pace for the following statistics in today's game against Detroit:

32 completions
604 yards
12 touchdowns

Regardless, the Browns are still terrible and Notre Dame lost again yesterday. The universe hasn't imploded just yet.

2009-11-22T10:07:00.003-06:00

It is often said to not go to the grocery store when you're hungry. The reason being, obviously, that you'll let your hunger dictate your buying and end up with far too much food bought. This seems plausible enough, but it seems that grocery shopping while hungry isn't the most likely way to buy a lot of groceries unexpectedly. No, it just may be that going to the grocery store at 7:30 on a Sunday morning is circumstance most conducive for overspending.

In a large Kroger in a densely populated area, it is customary to encounter jammed aisle, long waits for check-out and general chaos. This is simply not the case in the early morning on a Sunday, which creates a quite pleasant shopping experience. It is nice not dodging feral children, overhearing numerous "Oh no he didn't" cellphone conversations or fighting for position in the soup aisle. Such peaceful conditions even allows audible strains of the music being played throughout the store such as "Unchained Melody" and "These are a Few of My Favorite Things". That music might not ever be heard by customers during normal business, but it shines through nicely early on a Sunday morning.

For someone that does not spend a great deal of time in a grocery store, it's easy to miss some interesting things. When you're only there in the middle of the day on a weekend or after work during the week, it's basically like rush hour traffic. No peace, no quiet, no decency, no enjoyment. Being there in calm conditions seems to have an effect on everyone, customers and employees alike. There is actually room for everyone to do their business and everyone just seems to be in a better mood. It makes the experience almost enjoyable and encourages more time, and money, to be spent while navigating the aisles.

Something you'd never have the chance to know about by only shopping during busy times is that the frozen food cabinets are energy efficient. The lights in the insulated glass cases are controlled by motion sensors, which allow the lights to turn off when nobody is walking past. Then, as you walk down an empty aisle of cases, the lights illuminate your path. It's definitely a simple pleasure, but strangely pleasing and maybe even a little uplifting.

If none of this makes you want to be at the grocery store early on a Sunday morning, just imagine reenacting the video for Radiohead's "Fake Plastic Trees". Money.

2009-11-17T21:24:00.002-06:00

Blogging is a fun thing, but it usually occupies a pretty low spot in the priority ranking for life activities. It's not intentional, but so many things just seem to get in the way. After all, as a great band once said, life gets in the way of living. For that matter, another great band once said life is what happens while you're busy making plans. Not to mention a band that once said you should be living.

Alright, enough of that. Leisure time seems to have been sucked into a black hole. If so, that black hole is known as work, overtime at work, feeble attempts at physical fitness, sleep, household cleaning, grocery shopping and other such luxuries. Gone are the afternoons of leaving work early, skipping the gym and going home to keep the sofa company while watching three movies in a row, episodes of Ken Burns' National Parks and TV on DVD seasons. Perhaps the greatest casualty has been the reading of books. That just does not happen anymore.

This gradual decline into the "no fun zone" of life has only been helped by what seemed like endless rain in September and October and Daylight Savings Time, which means a special effort is required to leave work before pitch black darkness. All in all, not a fun situation.

But as with the rain and the daylight, eventually things get better. Sometimes you don't realize it, but clouds part and days get longer. Then there might be time for something as inconsequential as committing thoughts to a permanent record that nobody really cared about anyway.

2009-11-01T17:32:00.003-06:00

Daylight Savings Time came along at a good time this year. Halloween night. That way, all the kiddies out partying the night away can have an extra hour of revelry. You're partying until 2am and then, all of a sudden, it's 1am again. Brilliant!

The complete opposite of this viewpoint on Daylight Savings Time is to be in bed before 2am, thus gaining an hour of sleep. While being in bed before 2am is nothing to be ashamed of, there is something exciting about being able to make Halloween Night last an hour longer. However, if Halloween is not a big deal to you personally, that doesn't mean something scary can't result from the time change.

The scariness comes from knowing you're getting older when you awake around 8am on a Sunday and think it just might be time to get the day started. Then you realize it's an hour earlier and you could get back in bed for an hour and feel zero guilt for it. To look this opportunity in the eye and decide to not only stay up, but then do the following activities is completely ridiculous:

-Go for a 3-mile run
-Shower
-Eat a breakfast consisting of no pork or powdered sugar
-Watch a suitable amount of a blockbuster movie edited for TV
-Sweep the floors
-Clean the bathroom (including the under- and backside of the toilet)
-Wash hands with soap
-Cook lunch for two
-Watch NFL and obsess over fantasy football
-Visit the Lord's house
-Watch an independent film at a local not-for-profit theater
-Enjoy a pizza
-Be in bed at a reasonable hour of 11pm

Wow, with all this extra daylight, life can be so rewarding. You only have to be willing to take advantage of the daylight at 6am because there won't be any left by 5pm. This all begs the question, why can't daylight savings time occur during the work week? It seems like most people would appreciate the extra hour of sleep on a weeknight. Then again, people might undersleep, show up an hour early and the world would end.

2009-10-23T12:59:00.002-05:00

So, ABC has this new comedy, Modern Family, and it is amazing. The lead is played by Ed O'Neill, best known as Al Bundy on Married With Children, and his character doesn't really seem like that much of a reach. He sorta plays the same character in everything he does. Even Little Giants. Regardless, he is the core of this show and not just because he is the father, stepfather, father-in-law, grandfather and husband of all the other characters.

The show works by somehow over-saturating and exploiting some of the easiest target demographics in modern society. All of the characters seem to embody a stereotype and no two characters seem to be like one another. Yet they're technically (and legally) a family and thus the premise of the show is born. The Modern Family.

It may be a bit of reach, but this is the kind of thing that might actually open some eyes and lead to more understanding in society. No effort is made to rub your nose into the message of the show. You're allowed to laugh at things that would normally conjure guilt. Yes, there are gay people. Yes, there are Latinos. Yes, there is a grouchy old man. Yes, there is a trophy wife. Yes, there is a teenage diva. Yes, there is a foil in the vein of Lisa Simpson. Yes, there is a geeky dad trying to be hip. Yes, there is a little boy that puts a box on his head and jumps on a trampoline in nothing but his underwear. The jokes are often very suggestive and the interactions are often very awkward. It really feels like watching a comedy on HBO or maybe Comedy Central, but it's ABC. On a Wednesday. At 8pm.

So basically, this show has the potential, based on it's first few episodes, to be the next big thing. It would be so refreshing to hear people standing around talking about how funny something was on primetime network TV the night before, not just how freaky Lost was or how lame American Idol was.

And the best part? No vampires.

2009-10-09T19:14:00.002-05:00

Disclaimer: "Overrated" does not mean bad. Overrated just means that regardless of how great something is, people seem to think it's even better.

These things are overrated:

-The New York Yankees
-Animal Collective
-Bud Light
-Garden State
-Brooklyn
-H&M
-Summer
-The Boston Red Sox
-In N' Out Burgers
-The suburbs
-Clean-shaven faces
-Indian food
-Cats
-Nobel Peace Prizes

2009-10-08T11:30:00.002-05:00

President Oprah and her friends Barry and Michelle couldn't quite squeeze the Olympics out of, uh, the Olympic committee. Those rude Olympics people should be ashamed of themselves for not indulging the most important person in the world, not to mention the President of the United States. It really shouldn't come as a surprise that a panel of foreign dignitaries weren't so impressed with Chicago's main endorser being a TV star. Isn't the idea of a TV star who is constantly linked to bizarre weight-loss schemes sorta the antithesis for the pure athletic competition the Olympics are supposed to embody? Sure, Oprah is an easily recognizable media personality in this country, but it's doubtful that Sydney rested their hopes in 2000 on Crocodile Dundee's influence. However, the Olympic committee had to be appreciative for the free juicer and Desperate Housewives DVD they got just for being in Oprah's audience in Copenhagen.

Wait, that last paragraph ended up being a jab at this country's self-imposed media monarchy. That can't be right. Or maybe it is. If a country relies more on coked-out musicians and reality-deprived actors for its political opinions, there is no reason to think that the same country wouldn't think a TV talk show host is clearly the best person to bring the Olympics to the city from where she just so happens to broadcast. Do you think there could have been some ulterior motive for Oprah in bringing the Olympics to Chicago? Maybe a week or two of special shows where she runs around in a USA tracksuit and eats those little gymnast girls?

Well, there's another paragraph about the failed bid for the Olympics. Remember, we lost. Just imagine if Chicago had finished third. Or second. Or, God forbid, won. It would be the ObamaOprahOlympic Games. Well, maybe not. The games aren't until 2016 and at the current rate, Obama will still be trying to convince members of his own party that he has all the answers for healthcare reform. That's also assuming he is reelected. The ever-influential medium of bumper stickers has already started playing a role in that once-believed foregone conclusion.

So, is Obama kinda like Prince now? Has it come to the point where the President of the United States has been branded by a logo? Of course, the last president was simplified to just a letter. Will future presidents be identified by just a color? A punctuation mark? An abstract thought? How will that translate to car bumpers?

So anyway, back to the Olympics. Since the summer of '16 will belong to Rio, the clever advertising people are left with only two choices for how to brand the last letter of "Chicago" for the time-being. Obviously the Olympics felt like they already had enough O's in their life.

2009-09-21T22:54:00.002-05:00

Muse is a band that has never put out a bad record, but they have gotten a little silly on some of their records with the over-the-top bombast and production. Regardless, nobody can accuse Muse of a lack of talent, creativity and huge sound, which is to be commended. To summarize, they have roughly followed this career arc:

1999: Bashed for being Radiohead rip-offs
2001: Crazy prog-rock that is too crazy and too prog for an American record deal
2003: Reemergence as a stadium-worthy with some political leanings
2006: American relevance from an album that sounds forced, but attention-grabbing
2009: A much more focused effort with a well-deserved opening slot for U2

Then there's this. Muse recently appeared on what appears to be a completely ridiculous looking Italian TV show. Apparently they were told they must lip-sync their performance and they agreed. However, they made it interesting by switching roles. For your reference, in the video, the singer/guitarist plays drums, the drummer sings/plays bass and the bassist plays guitar/keyboard. The entire thing is one big joke and nobody seems to notice, or care.

2009-09-19T13:47:00.002-05:00

It was strange doing the following last weekend:

-Flying on an airplane on September 11. Eight years after that date actually started meaning more than just another day, so much of life has changed. Certainly the increased security and scrutiny at airports is there, but even life on the ground has changed a lot. The price of oil, the White House administration and even tiny Mexican towns are a lot different now than 8 years ago.

-Visiting an NFL stadium on the opening weekend of the season, but not to watch a game. NFL stadiums have a different feel to them, especially one like Soldier Field that is visually interesting on its own, much less when something impressive is happening inside.

-Eating pork rinds at an honest-to-goodness high-end restaurant.

2009-09-05T00:43:00.003-05:00

Ok, there had to be more to that last entry's train of thought than was demonstrated. Time is a weird thing, but hopefully that's not really of interest to anyone. It's just odd how time dictates so much, yet is so abstract. Time is told by atomic clocks and swiss watches, but also the ocean's tide, the moon and the earth itself floating in orbit. Kinda odd.

Once you grasp how and why time is told, there's the confounding matter of time moving fast and slow sometimes. Why is this? Of course a second is always just a second and a minute is always just a minute, but perception of time varies greatly. Eight hours of sleep feels a lot different than eight hours of ditch digging, just like a 5 minute massage feels a lot faster than 5 minutes of holding your breath. Is time actually slower? Well maybe, but most would assume these differences are just the result of how the brain and body respond to different stimuli. This begs, is time really that powerful or important if we can alter it with our simple minds? Time seems have a bit of an identity crisis. People want their week-long vacation to somehow last longer than a week, yet people can't count to ten accurately without saying a 4-syllable, 11-letter word ("Mississippi") in between each number.

Just to further over-analyze and bother, how is it that simultaneously one person could be having a "fast" day and another could be having a "slow" day? What is actually moving faster or slower? Well, it just "feels" longer or shorter, you know? That may be true, but does it mean anything? Is a busy day at work more likely to feel long or short? Some would say long because they were forced to do so many things and when you think about one thing, then another, then another, that implies a great deal of time passing. However, some people feel like staying busy makes time go by faster. For instance, this blog entry has taken about 20 minutes to write so far because SportsCenter is on, but it doesn't feel like its been that long. However, 20 minutes of just typing on this inane topic would seem like an eternity by comparison.

So, in some weird way, are some people moving in fast motion while others are moving in slow motion, but your brain just can't process the difference? Maybe, in some strange space-time continuum kind of way. Thing is, if you stop and think about it, it doesn't really matter if you think about it for 10 seconds if it feels like you think about it for 10 minutes. What is 10 seconds if it feels like 10 minutes and all you have to show for it is a headache. Right?

2009-09-05T00:01:00.002-05:00

"Time" is the name of a song by many artists, including Pink Floyd, David Bowie, Ben Folds, Anthrax, Alan Parsons Project, Hootie and the Blowfish, Megadeth, Sarah McLachlan, Red Hot Chili Peppers and Tom Waits. Clearly, time plays a pretty major role in whatever, be it music, sports, politics or life in general. This shouldn't come as a surprise to anyone, but some people still have a slight misunderstanding of how universal time is and how it is basically a constant in everyone's life, not just their own.

"Time is very important in my life"

These inspiring words were uttered by a client on TLC's highly-esteemed show LA Ink. The specifics of this client aren't really important, although it may have been the overweight stand-up comedienne. Regardless, she wanted to get a tattoo of a pocket watch because of how important time is to her.

It seems that time is one of those things that is kinda important to everyone. This may be nothing more than digging for something to complain about, but it fits the theme of this entry. Would it be silly if someone got a tattoo of money or gravity because of their importance? Why not oxygen or nitrogen?

All of the aforementioned musicians obviously thought time was important enough to write a song about it, so maybe there's something to this. Pink Floyd appropriately started their "Time" with a recording of an alarm clock and metronome, along with other time-keeping devices. Then again, they also have the song "Money" that starts with the sound of cash registers and coins clanking. So, there's the secret to making a historic album like Dark Side of the Moon: just record sounds and name the song after whatever sound is contained. Moving on...

Thank goodness for calendars!

Ok, this entry wouldn't be complete without some ranting about a Facebook status, but try to deal with it. Who says this (aside from the obvious)? In today's technologically-advanced world, is a calendar something that really needs to have its praises sung, as if somehow people might forget about its existence? Aren't calendars just one of those commodities that can taken for granted among anyone with the facilities to read Facebook? Would it be any better if someone expressed such admiration for modern marvels like indoor plumbing, newspapers or peanut butter and jelly in one jar? Clearly some people are just too easy to please.

2009-08-26T22:17:00.005-05:00

While it is certainly old news to anyone that cared enough to pay attention to the story, the Henry Louis Gates fiasco bears discussion. The incident that led to all the mess was certainly unfortunate for everyone involved, but it did illustrate an important lesson: There doesn't always have to be a "right" and "wrong" side of an issue/argument.

A brief recap:

-Dr. Gates, an esteemed Harvard professor that is African-American returns to his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts after a trip overseas.
-Upon arrival, he and his driver struggle to get the door unlocked/open. It is apparently jammed.
-While they (both African-American) try to pry the house door open, a neighbor sees this happening and calls 911 in fear that the house is being robbed.
-Two police officers arrive on the scene and begin questioning Gates as if a robbery had been attempted. Gates explains the scenario and cause for confusion.
-Gates is highly agitated and becomes "disorderly" with the officers, so he's arrested and taken into custody by Officer Crowley (white), with assistance from Officer Lashley (black).
-Boom!

In the end, all charges were dropped and President Obama made a hasty remark about the police officer(s) responded "stupidly". (Incidentally, how that little faux pas hasn't been further scrutinized, the world may never know.) Regardless, it basically was portrayed as a clear-cut example of racial profiling since among the two men trying to open the door and the two police officers, three were black and one was white. If only it could have been all one race or another, this would have never been a story.

Not to sound like a conspiracy theorist or anything, but the media really has taken this story and made it into something it is not. This is easy to assess because the story was nothing to start with, so making it into anything is, by default, making it into something it is not. By presenting this as actual "news", it has made people think they have to have an opinion on it and ultimately take a side. Once everyone chooses sides, it is their duty to defend their position and spit vitriol at the opposing side. Then the media can report on that. Wash. Rinse. Repeat.

Could it possibly be that there is not a "right" or "wrong" side to this story? Maybe Dr. Gates is partially innocent and partially guilty? After all, he was never charged with breaking into his own house (obviously). He was charged with disorderly conduct because he became very aggressive and hostile toward the police officers, both white and black. That's usually what happens when you are aggressive and hostile toward a police officer, regardless of your race or theirs. Officer Crowley can also be held to blame for not being more rational, given the circumstances. He acknowledged that it was Dr. Gates' house during the proceedings, so he had a basis for why Dr. Gates would be so frustrated in such circumstance. Ultimately it doesn't really matter who did what first or to what extent. Among two grown men, one an internationally-esteemed scholar and the other a civil servant, it is sad that the outcome was what it was. It doesn't really say much for society, especially in the cradle of higher learning of this country.

Almost on cue in response to the actions of a couple of grown men that know better, President Obama made his now-famous offer to have a beer with Gates and Crowley. Of course, this was just what the media needed. Was this a new and exciting way to resolve conflict from the brilliant leader? Or was it a lame attempt at appearing harmonious and cool at the same time? Again, couldn't the answer be "neither" and it not really matter either way? Will the Obama/Gates/Crowley beer summit stop a violent act from happening? Will it make anyone legitimately feel better about themselves? Unfortunately, the answer has to be "no" to both questions. But did it give the media something to talk about once they were tired of talking about the incident that led to it? Absolutely.

Geez, hopefully nobody noticed that Gates' beer was darker than the others.

2009-08-26T09:03:00.002-05:00

New favorite Facebook comment for anything:

WOW!...Just WOW!

Find new and fun ways to work it into your daily life...

-When you get cut off in morning traffic: WOW!...Just WOW!

-When you get a ridiculous assignment at work: WOW!...Just WOW!

-When you eat too much for lunch: WOW!...Just WOW!

-When you read a story in the newspaper: WOW!...Just WOW!

-When your obnoxious neighbors make highly inconsiderate noise all night: WOW!...Just WOW!

2009-08-25T11:19:00.003-05:00

So yes, it's fairly odd that a video clip from CBS Sunday Morning would show up around here, but it meets the main criteria of inclusion in this blog. If you're unaware of said criteria, here's a reminder:

1. Involves something ridiculous/annoying
2. Involves people following something blindly
3. Involves boredom
4. Involves the Cleveland Indians
5. Involves Wilco

Aha! Number 5 it is!

a band doing band stuff
by AxYoung

Save your comments about how it's lame for a media outlet that targets old people with hip music. Given that the age range of Wilco's members is about 40 to 53, it's sort of a lost argument in this case.

2009-08-19T17:42:00.003-05:00

Strange things:

-Michael Vick has been signed by a team that used to play in a stadium nicknamed "The Vet".

-Brett Favre has cried in public multiple times and now has worked so hard...to wear purple.

-There are still movies being made in the Final Destination and Fast and Furious series.

-After many long days at work, a box of Wheat Thins is the perfect accompaniment to couch-time.

-Bud Light is already making commercials that are blatant rip-offs of the Billy Mays ad man style. Too soon?

-Usain Bolt is a human.

-Man U lost to Burnley.

2009-08-03T19:37:00.005-05:00

Cash for Clunkers is such a hit. Just like so many other big ideas. Of course the idea is nice and many people are doing everything they can to make the most of it. Why shouldn't they? They got to buy that land-barge several years back and burn tons of gasoline while oil was relatively cheap, which led to new highways being built and old highways being ruined. Since so many of these huge gas-guzzlers were American-made, it gave the domestic automobile industry a false sense of hope and security. Now all that's left are bailouts and the Hummer.

Think of Cash for Clunkers as a "bailout for the people". The benefit being that it will lead people to buy new cars that are more fuel-efficient than their previous models. Yes, that makes the environment happy, but it also encourages people drive a lot more and clog up highways more and get in wrecks more and demonstrate what terrible drivers they are more. Soon though, once everyone has a chance to take their new cars out to see the stimulus money in action, there will be some kind of hip, fun way to encourage people to leave their new cars in the garage and ride the subway. After all, isn't it supposed to be more "green" to use public transportation? What better spokesman to remind you of this than Joe Biden?

Proponents of CARS will argue that this plan is designed so that the poor, huddled masses that can't afford a new car can now experience the joy of a new car that also helps the environment. While some of these less-fortunate people drive old "clunkers" (it's so nice to potentially hear your Federal Government call your car a clunker), many drive small economy-size cars that are really terrible, but happen to be fuel-efficient enough not to qualify because it takes so little gas to power a 1.2-liter engine that only generates 110 horsepower. In the eyes of the government, your 1989 Toyota Tercel with a missing mirror, duct tape bumper and a stripped transmission is NOT a clunker. However, if a few years ago you insisted on a having a gigantic SUV to traverse the suburbs, you're in luck!

Sorry, to be repetitive, but it's just so nice for the tax-paying public to shoulder the cost of bailing out people that made selfish (not to mention, ultimately ill-advised) decisions. Many of the same people that were outraged about the actions of AIG and the sort are probably all to happy to get some easy money for their automobile that doesn't really have any market value in a world where gasoline costs more than $1.50 a gallon. It really does seem like politics is nothing more than an elaborate system of deciding who takes responsibility for whose actions. The answer is more and more becoming that everyone takes responsibility for everyone's actions because that's fair. Ask yourself what the definition of "fair" is and see if it aligns with everything that is going on. If it does and you're happy with the thought, then see how this definition applies to other aspects of your life. Eventually there's a disconnect.

Maybe this opinion on Cash for Clunkers is a little one-sided and the true benefits are being overlooked for the sake of a truly stirring blog entry. Also, maybe not everyone can meet the eligibility requirements, despite driving an 11-year old car built for performance, not fuel efficiency. What a load.

2009-07-26T16:08:00.002-05:00

Ok, now something for the ladies...assuming all ladies are totally into Hollywood lead actors that look suspiciously alike. This was discussed a little last night at the cookout, but not to this extent. Is it really that hard to find a leading man that doesn't look like this? Apparently so. Go ahead and see if you can name these actors just at first glance. Of course, some are more distinct than others, but it really shouldn't be this hard. What happened to diversity in acting? There need to be more guys like Danny DeVito, Arnold Schwarzenegger, Wesley Snipes and Lou Diamond Phillips these days.

Anyway, on with the little challenge, which probably won't be that hard for most of you...especially those of you that frequent Perez Hilton and TMZ (and you know who you are): )

2009-07-26T11:00:00.002-05:00

Sometimes it's easy to "hide" someone on the Facebook newsfeed, but once those initial few people are seemingly gone forever, someone steps in and tries ever-so-hard to take their place. Just as a bit of a primer, here are some things that are almost guaranteed to earn a person a privileged spot on the "hidden" list:

-Status update once at least once an hour, even if just sitting at home or work doing nothing remarkable (this one is often combined with others below).

-Bragging. There's a fine line between being proud and this.

-Too much political/religious talk. Seriously, it's Facebook, not Meet The Press or The 700 Club. Some of the political talk has subsided since the presidential election and there may be several reasons for that, but since politics isn't so hip these days, it has started to fade. Then again, still once in a while, someone will make a completely blind statement about something like centralized healthcare or carbon emissions to restore a complete lack of hope in the Facebook generation's place in history. Who cares if the right decision is made, so long as you sound "informed" on your status update? You gotta do something to get those "likes this" thumbs up. Affirmation is very cathartic.

-Misspelled words. This is simply unacceptible for an adult.

- That whole "John Doe is." status update. OK, apparently this sometimes happens inadvertently when using Facebook Mobile or something along those lines, but it's still lame. Even lamer are the comments that say something like "how profound of you" or "how existential of you".

-People using Facebook as their sole means of social venting and self-analysis. This includes posing some serious emotions to Facebook. This would include stuff like "Jane Doe just doesn't know what to do with my life" or "John Doe is so tired of everyone thinking they can take advantage of me. I've had enough!" Then there's the ever-popular "Jane Doe is tired of all you haters. If you ever give the impression on Facebook that you potentially going to harm someone or yourself, the line has been crossed. It may be a cry for help, but it's also unfair to burden that kid you sorta knew in elementary school with your current issues.

-Booze talk. John Doe is Iam dronk. All this does is make people judge you...in a negative way.

-Excessive profanity. If you're actually taking the time to type it out, you probably need to exercise a little more restraint.

-Lots of CAPITALIZATION, as if to suggest that your status on Facebook is actually so important that it commands the full attention of anyone that reads it. Then once that person reads it, they're left only with the knowledge of what your cat is doing at the moment or how the rain makes to feel or what friend from college you're hanging out with tonight.

-Cheesiness (aka lameness, douchebaggery). This is hard to specifically define, but you definitely know it when you see it.

Ok, so that list got a little longer than planned, but it happens. A lot of other topics are potentially annoying, but you must consider the source. It's hard to fault a new mother for talking a lot about their baby, but there might should be an alternate Facebook for mommies to have mommy talk. That way they can have a place for uninterrupted sharing of projectile poop/puke stories, tips on teething, erratic sleep schedules and the general blessings of parenthood. Then there are newlyweds. It's so sweet that they are in love and excited about it, but nobody really cares about it being 243 days until your wedding if you told them yesterday it was 244 days. That is why you send out invitations to weddings. That way the right people know the right information and everyone else doesn't have to feel guilty for not caring in the least. The rest of the world is only interested in seeing the pictures after the fact so they can judge you and your wedding.

Facebook creates tough decisions inside your head about what you really think of someone. For the most part, you're friends with them on Facebook for a reason. Then you read some of their crap and you wish you weren't. Then you see them in person and you act happy and want to know what's going on. It's like you maintain an in-person relationship despite what's happening on Facebook. You would never say things like "nobody cares" or "you're so full of crap" to these peoples' faces, but on Facebook, you almost get a sense of satisfaction by clicking "Hide" on the newsfeed. It's like you can just make it all go away and in some small way, your own life is better, if for only a little while.

2009-07-23T19:24:00.002-05:00

Mark Buehrle of the Chicago White Sox pitched a perfect game today. It was only the 18th of those in...THE HISTORY OF MAJOR LEAGUE BASEBALL. He didn't give up a hit, he didn't walk a batter and his defense didn't commit an error. That last bit is sort of a great aspect of a perfect game that is often overlooked. His defense also played a "perfect game" and their proficiency went a long way in ensuring Buehrle's accomplishment. They won't get quite the same amount of attention, though.

There is no better example than in the top of the 9th inning when Dewayne Wise caught a would-be homerun above the top of the fence, brought it back into the field of play before bobbling it momentarily and ultimately completing the catch. What makes this all the more remarkable is that he had just been brought in a few moments earlier as a defensive substitute. This catch was made against the first batter after his entrance. That's pretty crazy, but shows that Ozzie Guillen isn't completely crazy all of the time.

It must be nice to have a day at work summed up by the word "perfect". It also must be nice to make many thousands of dollars during that day at work. Buehrle had pitched a ho-hum run-of-the-mill no-hitter before, but nobody said he was perfect that day. Today he was. Nobody says an office worker was "perfect" sitting at a desk all day or a teacher delivered a "perfect" lecture. It's rare to find such a label for waiters, lawyers, spouses or friends, so thankfully Major League Baseball has only tossed the label around 18 times in 129 years.

2009-07-15T20:10:00.002-05:00

Another way to fight the absence of any baseball on this "Black Wednesday" has been Carrie Brownstein's Monitor Mix blog at NPR. She was Sleater-Kinney, which were never a favorite band of this blog, but she's quite entertaining when featured on All Songs Considered and in her blog. This week she has taken on an interesting challenge, which while silly in premise, actually points out a fairly legitimate truth.

She's challenging herself to listen to Phish all week. Yes, this is one third of a formerly seminal indie/hip/fem-lib band listening to Phish for a week straight and not as a joke. She's doing it because she acknowledges that Phish have a very devout fanbase and a deep catalog of music, yet she doesn't really know anything about them, other than she can't really relate to those devout fans. The issue she is exploring rings very true, though. Phish is probably the band most reviled by some segments of the listening public simply because of who their fans are and what preconceived notions people have of a band, even if they've never heard a note of their music. Granted, not everyone can like Phish, just like not everyone can like any other act. But whereas most bands get some radio play or other mainstream outlet for people to base opinions on, Phish is judged pretty much on who wears their shirts and stickers, not to mention that one huge three-letter word: "jam".

It's sorta refreshing to read some of Carrie's posts so far, even though she hasn't really gotten around to talking about the music yet. This is a big of a let down since she is a musician and should be able to listen with a fairly discerning ear. She seems a bit hung up on what people will think or explaining for the 47th time that Phish are best known for their live concerts and live recordings, rather than studio albums. She did start a little bit of analysis in the most recent entry, but it'll be interesting to see if tomorrow yields a fair assessment of what she thinks of just humorous anecdotes about tonight's Phish listening party she's organized in Portland.

2009-07-15T19:55:00.002-05:00

Well, the Major League Baseball All Star Game was last night. It appeared to be a decent game, well-played by both sides, ending at 4-3 in favor of the American League. None of that really matters, though. It didn't really accomplish what an All Star Game should. It definitely felt more like the NFL Pro Bowl than the NBA All Star Game. To clarify, the Pro Bowl is typically a very boring affair with the players that bothered to show up just ambling around the field in a basic haze of disinterest, while the NBA All Star Game is usually more of a spectacle with lots of scoring, excitement and demonstration of skills (other than defense, of course). The baseball All Star Game is pretty nice since it falls in the middle of the season (as it should) and features the Home Run Derby, along with some events that nobody really cares about.

The big problem with the All Star Game isn't really the game itself, it the fact that it falls in the middle of summer and is played on a Tuesday. As a result, Major League Baseball doesn't play games on the Monday before or Wednesday after, thus creating a three-day "All Star Break". The aforementioned Homerun Derby always takes place on Monday evening and the game is always on Tuesday, which leaves that Wednesday night (tonight, ehem) as a complete black hole. It's the middle of July and baseball is the only thing going (besides So You Think You Can Dance? and Harry Potter movies, of course.

The only other sports active right now are golf (the British Open starts tomorrow morning at about 4am local time), tennis (Wimbledon just ended), soccer (still soccer), cylcing (Tour de France currently happening) and auto racing (the biggest story in NASCAR right now is a driver on Meth). These aren't exactly suitable replacements for the sheer delight of spending a weeknight on the couch switching between the local broadcasts of multiple games via the MLB Extra Innings package.

This doesn't even address the matter of fantasy baseball. Three days of no games and no significant roster activity is a whole other nuisance and impetus for boredom. Let the record show that the 2009 version of "the worst day of the year in sports" resulted in a night full of Planet Earth watching.

2009-07-10T20:44:00.002-05:00

Unfortunately a new (or maybe not so new) trend in behavior is taking over everyday life. Although it may sound like something out of Ghostbusters 2, there is an epidemic of negative emotions brought on by what can maybe only be labeled as "irresponsible adult behavior". For the sake of carpal tunnel prevention, you can just call it "IAD".

So yeah, IAD. What makes it unique? Well, the "A" is very important because it distinguishes this behavior from that of a child. Children are not physically, emotionally or intellectually developed, so there's a reason for irrational actions. Adults (for the most part) have lived life, had many varied experiences, been educated, interacted socially, etc. Therefore, it is only reasonable to assume that all of this has led to the cultivation of some amount of decency, consideration and responsibility. Sadly, such is not the case.

It may be too late. Dealing with people on an everyday basis might have very easily jaded many people to only expect the worst out of people and not really harbor any hope for a turnaround. It's not hard to see why this can happen. Basically, for whatever reason, some (most?) people have decided that the only way to be happy and have success in life is to intentionally disregard/disrespect/disparage others.

A typical day affords the opportunity to be the victim of the selfishness of others on many occasions. It can be anyone, from a careless coworker to the white trash in the next lane of traffic. It can be the mother of the uncontrollable child on an airplane or it can be the dude preparing your sandwich at Quizno's. It really doesn't matter and you never really know when someone is going to decide that they want to play the role at any given moment.

If more adults could actually take responsibility for their actions and their lives in general, IAD might not be such a problem. There's no reason it can't be better, but it'll take an unfair amount of humility on the part of those who choose to live up to the label of an adult. It's so hard to defer to the inmates running the asylum lately, but it's a good step toward actually making the situation better. However, that doesn't mean that transgressors should be excused for their actions. Laws still should be enforced (at least the important ones) and people should still be expected to uphold a certain standard of responsibility. So while there may not be a place for "eye for an eye" tactics, there is definitely a place making an example of offenders and pointing out when someone has carelessly failed to live up to their age, education and place in society.

So yes, honk those horns, roll those eyes and pass those judgments. Just be sure that you're right and there's a law or some basic tenet of decency to back you up. Don't turn it into you versus them, but rather them versus accountability.

By the way, there's no specific reason for this rant. Just something that has been coming to mind more than usual lately. That's probably not going to change anytime soon, though. Bummer.

2009-06-29T21:40:00.004-05:00

It's been a pretty heavy past few weeks. The only escapes from talking about the sweltering heat and the poor economy have been the following:

-This rash of celebrity deaths. Nothing new really needs to be said about the lives and deaths of Michael Jackson, Farrah Faucett and Billy Mays. All deaths are tragic to someone somewhere and unfortunately millions of people dealt with the death of loved ones, coworkers, neighbors, etc. this week. It had to be hard to try and escape the sad realities of your own life and be confronted with nothing but idle chatter about the untimely passing of these celebrities.

-The weightiness of the all-too-similarly-named movies Revolutionary Road and Reservation Road. Just remember one is about Leo DiCaprio and Kate Winslet having a bad marriage and one is about Mark Ruffalo running over Joaquin Phoenix's child. Also, one is about bringing tragedy upon yourself and the other is about having it forced on you. Either way, stress makes people do strange things and often the result is unsettling.

-Then, of course, there's this. Why does this seem to happen roughly two out of every three years? It was still good to be there to witness some of the misery, though:

June 13, 2009

2009-06-27T13:08:00.010-05:00

So 2009 is almost half over, it's really hot outside and this blog has been pretty dead lately. The remedy for all of this is a quick rundown of some of the best albums to be released so far in 2009. In case you're wondering and want to save some time, neither Animal Collective or Grizzly Bear are included. Both albums have their moments, but just don't do whatever that "thing" is that it takes to make this list. To be fair, the new Grizzly Bear album is quite good, but just sounds like another Grizzly Bear album. Maybe it'll differentiate itself by the time the second six months of the year roll past. Maybe Animal Collective will also get a second chance, but probably not. Their album and their sound as a whole just don't do it for some people. Thankfully, there are plenty other albums that do (in no particular order):

Dinosaur Jr. - Farm

This album kinda sounds like one really long song with really long J Mascis guitar solos interspersed throughout. In case you're unsure, this is a good thing. If nobody knew who Dinosaur Jr was and they heard this album, there'd be a groundswell of hype like they were Fleet Foxes with scads of distortion. As it is, they're a band almost 20 years into their career still making great albums.

White Rabbits - It's Frightening

Second album from these guys. Much more stripped-down than their debut, but still good, just for different reasons. It definitely doesn't sound like they tried to make the same album again, which is commendable. The obvious thing to say about this record is that is sounds like a Spoon record. The obvious reason for this is that it does sound like a Spoon record because Spoon's Britt Daniel produced it. So basically, if you wish White Rabbits' first album and Spoon had a baby, you'll like this.

Fanfarlo - Reservoir

Endorsed by Sigur Ros, but doesn't sound like Sigur Ros and aren't Icelandic. Get the whole album legally for $1 here. Offer good through July 4, by the way. For some reason, it kinda has a Arcade Fire/Coldplay-goes-indie folk sound. If you don't like that description, go pay a dollar, listen and comment with a better description.

The Kingsbury Manx - Ascenseur Ouvert!

This album is just really good. Just good indie rock with some gothic alt-country undertones. Ok, that's a really bad description and sounds like something from an annoying review. Maybe some Band of Horses and Wilco in this album and that is definitely a good thing, of course.

Sparklehorse/Danger Mouse - Dark Night of the Soul

Unfortunately, the music on this record will probably get lost behind the attention generated by David Lynch's involvement and the legal issues involving its release. Since there are so many different contributors on here, of course it's a little disjointed at times and doesn't necessarily flow like an album should. It's ok, though. You'll get over it.

Iron and Wine - Around the Well

This is a compilation of rarities and such, but it deserves complete attention because of the inclusion of "The Trapeze Swinger". In case you didn't rush out and buy the soundtrack to the movie In Good Company, now you can have this song on an official release. Appropriately enough, the title of this collection comes from this song, which is over nine minutes long and hides out as the very last track. Make sure you get to it, or just start with it.

Isis - Wavering Radiant

Isis doesn't make bad records. This one seems to fall into that whole "trying new things" or "exploring new sounds" kind of thing, but it doesn't fall flat doing so. Chances are if you never have liked Isis before, this album won't change much of your opinion, but there's no reason for you not to have liked Isis before, so whatever.

Mastodon - Crack the Skye

Go read this article, then ratchet back your excitement a few notches, then listen. That's about the only way the album will make any sense. If you're not interested in it making sense, then just listen. The vocals might give some people problems, but try to do that thing where you drown out the vocals by paying attention to the guitar and drum parts. If you can't do that, just turn it off.

Manchester Orchestra - Mean Everything to Nothing

This one came as a bit of a surprise, but surprises can be fun. If you liked their first full-length, this one somehow manages to be crisper, yet dirtier and darker, yet poppier. It just depends on what song you're listening to. Definitely some Sabbath-worthy guitar riffs and vocal yelps.

Mono - Hymn to the Immortal Wind

Kinda like Explosions In The Sky, but from Japan. That automatically makes it interesting enough to check out.

Wilco - Wilco: The Album

Ok, so this one's official release date isn't until June 30, which hasn't happened yet, but definitely falls in the first six months of 2009. While one might assume the album hasn't been heard yet (or at least legally), one would be wrong. Wilco has been so generous as to post the album streaming on their website and now NPR is doing the same. Even if you don't want to listen yet, you must concede that it is probably really good. Even though they may be drifting in some kind of adult-contemporary direction, they do it well. If you only like Wilco for Nels Cline's creative guitar parts, you might need to listen for someone else to like, but don't worry, there's enough there.

Cymbals Eat Guitars - Why Are There Mountains?

These guys do that whole NYC indie hipster thing but they do it well. The band name is strange and so is the album name, so all the key ingredients are there. Thankfully the music is there too and it doesn't suck.

Phosphorescent - To Willie

Phosphorescent is great, even when playing old Willie Nelson and Merle Haggard songs. It's one of those records you can just put on and listen to a few times in a row. Not bad for driving music either. There's probably a lot of things you could do while listening to these songs in their original form or as covers. Try it out.

2009-06-17T12:51:00.002-05:00

2009-06-09T13:37:00.001-05:00

Quick update:

Jimmy Fallon's show got much better last night, but he'll have to do something quite amazing to keep the momentum going. Actually, the worst part about the following clip from Late Night with Jimmy Fallon is Jimmy Fallon. Oops.

2009-06-09T11:14:00.002-05:00

Here's a pretty good little piece from New York Magazine about David Letterman and Conan O'Brien being peers now that Conan has taken over The Tonight Show. It's interesting and definitely redeeming for someone that has been pro-Letterman since childhood and pro-Conan since he came on the air.

It's just another indicator of how much life has been lived to think about staying up late in ELEMENTARY SCHOOL to watch David Letterman on Late Night on NBC. Having a mother that never enforced a bedtime was a blessing in that regard*. It was equally rewarding when E! Entertainment Television (as it was more-often referred to as before "The E! Network" would show reruns of NBC-era Letterman, even after he had made the move to CBS' Late Show. Even better were the days (usually holidays) when E! would run marathons of old Letterman episodes. Pure gold.

Echoing the sentiment of so many, there was never anything wrong with Jay Leno. He's a funny guy and, more importantly, seems to be a good person. As the article relates, he was very steady and smooth (in the non-edgy way), which worked as a counterpart to Letterman's edge or whatever you want to call it. Leno's "Headlines" and "Jay-Walking" are still pretty hilarious.

Conan is the prodigy. He manages to be extremely funny and sickeningly creative while not offending anyone or scaring off viewers. Anyone that doesn't like Conan's stuff could always just write it off as "Well, it is on at Midnight on a Tuesday". That's not the case anymore. The new Tonight Show has been pretty good so far. Granted, most viewing so far has taken place at work the following day via Hulu (since, you know, people that watched Letterman on NBC are so old they go to bed early or simply can't remember to turn the TV on at 10:30pm). There is definitely a sense of homogenization taking place with Conan, but it's not terrible. Terrible is Jimmy Fallon's effort to replace Conan on Late Night.

* The (assumed) purpose of this was to allow the freedom staying up (very) late and watch whatever happened to be on TV, but being held accountable for the consequences. This included being tired at school the next day and repeating the actions/language of the TV shows. Good job, mom.

2009-06-09T09:45:00.002-05:00

The song of summer 2009 has arrived. Maybe it had already arrived, but it just made itself known around here.

Go ahead and try to resist:

For the original version, Myspace it. For a remix, Pitchfork it. Yes, they are called Das Racist.

2009-06-05T21:26:00.002-05:00

Watching/listening to a Los Angeles Dodgers game called by Vin Scully is quite a treat. There is no washed-up mediocre player interjecting their two cents and no lame jokes. It's just baseball and talk about baseball. NON. STOP.

If you've never had the pleasure, here's a sampling of what kind of information you get:

-Jamie Moyer is not only the second oldest MLB pitcher to make his All Star Game debut, but he is also one of only two pitchers to be at least 23 games under .500 in his career and then become at least 23 games over .500 in the same career (duh). He is currently 60 games over .500 and has 250 career wins.

-Ryan Howard is from St. Louis and has an open stance that almost appears like he is sitting in a chair, but not quite.

-The Dodgers lead the league in innings of 3 or more runs. The Phillies are second in the same category.

-Raul Ibanez turned 37 last Tuesday and was born in New York City. His mom was pregnant with him when she, his dad and 2 brothers emigrated from Cuba.

-Shane Victorino was once in the Dodger organization, but has a bad hip, so Eric Bruntlett is starting in his place tonight.

-Chris Coste was just the third major leaguer to hit his first career homerun past the age of thirty. By the way he lives in Fargo, North Dakota (Vin says: "Did you see that movie?") and spells his name C-O-S-T-E.

-Eric Milton's dad was a professor at Penn State and he studied kiniesiology.

By the way, there is one out in the top of the 2nd inning. This game is about 15% complete and Vin has already dug deeper than most play-by-play announcer/color commentator duos could in an entire game. And he's 81 years old and in his 60th year of broadcasting Dodgers games. Awesome.

2009-06-03T15:26:00.002-05:00

People who, upon reading about things like this, comment "Oh wow! That's great!" are pretty much useless in modern society.

2009-06-01T19:07:00.002-05:00

-Wasabi mayonnaise is in strong contention for THE condiment of 2009

-The Honda Ridgeline has to be the most hideous vehicle ever seen on roads. Furthermore, it's a Honda. Has this been covered before?

-Denver is a place worth getting excited about.

-The Cleveland Indians seriously need to get better. Last place is no good.

-Work pretty much sucks.

-Spring lasted approximately 11 days.

-People don't talk about politics any more. It's easier to not talk about it than removing pesky bumper stickers.

-The Food Network in HD is completely addictive. Just like eating.

-Comcast really sucks.

-Buying a new pair of sunglasses is strangely uplifting.

-Buying a house sounds great. Except the process of finding a house, then paying for it.

2009-05-25T14:05:00.008-05:00

Jay Bennett has passed away. This isn't huge news on a global level, but it is terrible news and of significance because it adds another (unfortunately sad) chapter to the story of Wilco (the band). Clearly this blog is a fan of Wilco, but Jay Bennett wasn't in Wilco anymore and hadn't been since 2001. The Wilco of today has very little in common with the Wilco of eight years ago, but Jay Bennett was always present, for better or worse.

A little background for the uninitiated. Jay Bennett was in Wilco when they recorded and released most of their earlier material, namely the albums Being There and Summerteeth. He wrote and recorded with the band during the creation of their critical breakthrough/career-defining album Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Then he left/was forced to leave. All of this is documented in Sam Jones' excellent documentary I Am Trying To Break Your Heart.

Since leaving the band, he continued making music and continued being at odds with Wilco and Jeff Tweedy specifically. Even as recently as a few weeks ago, he filed a lawsuit against Tweedy in hopes of recouping money he felt he was owed from royalties of Wilco's material, including the aforementioned documentary that climaxes with him leaving the band. These legal actions were probably tied to his financial troubles resulting from a combination of physical ailments and lacking health insurance. Maybe all would have been forgiven if Wilco's subsequent success could help pay for his hip replacement? The world will never know.

In the documentary, the viewer never gets any more of a negative impression of Bennett than they might of Jeff Tweedy, the obvious centerpiece/leader of the band. It is unfortunate that bands always seem to need a "frontman" and it is usually the singer, for better or worse. This is definitely the case for the Tweedy/Bennett era of Wilco. They made some amazing records, but ultimately the band just wasn't big enough for both of their egos. The same might be said for Tweedy and Jay Farrar in Uncle Tupelo. The problem isn't necessarily Tweedy, though. Since Bennett left Wilco, they have continued to make great records, although most would posit that the Being There/Summerteeth/Yankee Hotel Foxtrot trifecta far surpasses the subsequent A Ghost Is Born/Sky Blue Sky/Wilco (The Album) one. That may be true, but eight years have passed and the common members of the band (Tweedy and John Stirratt) are both eight years older and eight years further into their musical careers. Certainly it bears mentioning that Tweedy has also exorcised some of his addiction demons in that time and simply seems like a more grounded and happy (gasp!) person. The music was bound to change.

Regardless, this entry is about Bennett (for once). From a personal standpoint, he will always be a solid part of Wilco because he shared writing credits on the song "Can't Stand It", which is about as good as Wilco gets. The "personal" aspect becomes more glaring after waking up early this morning and spontaneously watching I Am Trying to Break Your Heart in full, without knowing anything of Bennett's demise. Being without cable television or internet service at the time meant that this viewing was made without any reaction from having heard the sad news. It was an unbiased observation of the dynamics of what went into the film, the record and the split. From a purely artistic standpoint, it also allowed for what is now an incredibly bittersweet viewing of Jay Bennett's solo rendition of "My Darling" from Summerteeth. If you have any chance to see this for yourself, please do. Today's news of Bennett's death will make it all the more poignant.

Perhaps even more poignant is the inclusion of a post-Bennett performance of "Outtasite (Outtamind)" at the end of I Am Trying To Break Your Heart. It almost seems a jagged send-off to Bennett, but if it makes people feel better, it could just as easily be giving the same farewell to Reprise Records and the difficulties examined in the film. Regardless, Jay Bennett will be missed by some more than others. However, unlike so many people, he created something that will continue to carry his legacy.

Other takes:
Bob Boilen
Greg Kot
Jim DeRogatis

2009-05-13T23:11:00.003-05:00

How does this go unnoticed? Seriously, this is life-altering news and everyone just decided to keep it to themselves. Thank goodness the internet allows those who are behind the times to get their news 6 months late.

Ok, forget the link. You didn't click it anyway. Last season's winner of Survivor (which took place in Gabon) was...wait for it...Robert Crowley.

Nobody must watch this show anymore. Clearly they are too busy planning that week's Lost party. In related news, this season of Lost is almost over. Facebook executives are nervous because they're not sure if anyone will still find a use for their social networking website once people no longer need to use their Facebook status to do the following:

-Count down the seconds until the next Lost episode
-Compare their life to Lost
-Give a detailed breakdown of what they didn't do on a Wednesday night in order to watch Lost
-Complain about some other facet of life (including Presidential addresses) having the audacity to interfere with the broadcast of Lost
-Be the first person to post a spoiler from that night's episode of Lost
-Be the first to complain about other people posting spoilers from that night's episode of Lost
-Find a way to validate the results of a "Which Lost character are you?" quiz
-Express how great their friends are because they all enjoy Lost so much

2009-05-13T19:13:00.002-05:00

Wilco is a great band. They make amazing albums. They sounds great live in concert. They tour regularly. They play cities like Meridian, Huntsville, Knoxville and Mobile...in addition to Birmingham, Nashville and Atlanta. They win Grammy Awards.

Perhaps more telling/important/respectable are things like the following statement from the band, in response to their upcoming album being leaked and their subsequent decision to stream the album for free on their website:

Well, we made it nearly a month with copies of Wilco (the album) floating around out there before it leaked. Pretty impressive restraint in this day and age. But the inevitable happened last night. Since we know you're curious and probably have better things to do than scour the internet for a download (though we do understand the attraction of the illicit), we've posted a stream of the full album at http://wilcoworld.net/records/thealbum/ . Feel free to refer to it as "wilco (the stream)" if you must.

We also have our usual guilt abatement plan for downloaders. If you have downloaded the record, we suggest you make a donation to one of the band's favorite charities, the Inspiration Corporation -- an organization we've supported in the past & who are doing great work in the city of Chicago. Information and donation button here: http://inspirationcorp.org/.

That's all. Enjoy the stream. Tickets for summer shows, etc. http://wilcoworld.net/tours/ Note that we'll be holding a free online midnight screening of the "Ashes of American Flags" film this Friday night (at both midnight US Central time and again at midnight Pacific). So get the popcorn or whatever together and be sure to log on and tune in on Friday.

Wilco HQ

So there it is. Further evidence that there is a right way to do things in life. As simple as that.

PS: Go listen. It's probably better than anything else you've heard today.

2009-05-11T13:16:00.003-05:00

Oh internet, thank you for making life interesting and downright enjoyable for a moment, even on otherwise dull Mondays where a region-wide conference call is the day's highlight and this is lunch:

2009-05-04T11:55:00.003-05:00

In another shocking sign of the difficulties being experienced by Detroit these days, Eminem has attempted to regain the momentum of his career by covering none other than Matchbox 20.

As told by Mr. Thomas:

As told by Mr. 'Nem (warning: sorta violent):

2009-05-01T11:01:00.002-05:00

It is "May Day". Aside from proximity to a birthday, it just always has a certain feel to it. A feel of life being good and hope springing eternal. Maybe this is simply the result of something in elementary school called "The May Day Play Day", where basically there was no class and everyone walked from All Saints Episcopal Church/School to Homewood Park for a full day of fun and frivolity. There were inevitably water balloons and picnics, among much more. Yes, those were the simpler times.

If luck was truly shining down, the day would include a stop at the New Orleans Shaved Ice Company, which became Top Dog, which became Moneer's, which became Oasis (?), which is now Sam's Mediterranean Grill in the Edgewood shopping area. A similar kind of joy can be experienced these days right here in Nashville with the presence of Las Paletas popsicles. The only drawback is when Fido only has Pineapple and Honeydew in stock. Oh, if not for that pineapple popsicle, life would have been so much worse.

So yes, it is May Day, but it is certainly not a Play Day. To be more accurate to the 2009 version, it is May Day Sit At A Desk and Listen to the Torrential Rain Pelt the Aluminum Roof of Your Mid-Grade Suburban Office/Industrial Park Place of Employment Roof...Day.

2009-05-01T10:58:00.001-05:00

Whenever you start thinking that you live in the wrong place or have the wrong friends, just remember, life is ALWAYS worse in Dull.

View Larger Map

This place must make Starkville look downright cosmopolitan.

2009-04-26T12:15:00.002-05:00

You might want to get a pencil and take notes, because this will be the most important thing you read in a long time. This is the true value of blogs such as this one. The ability to share vital information that expands mental horizons and build perspective on life.

Ok, so as the beloved Cleveland Indians play on MLB Extra Innings, it comes to mind: why is their opponent the Minnesota Twins and not the Minneapolis Twins? This is not an isolated phenomenon as it relates to the Land of 10,000 Lakes. Their NBA team is the Minnesota Timberwolves, the NFL team is the Minnesota Vikings and the NHL team (which actually plays in St. Paul) is the Minnesota Wild.

The immediately obvious reason for this is that the city name Minneapolis is not very marketable and might not fit so well on player uniforms. This seams reasonable enough, but are "Indianapolis", "Milwaukee" and "Philadelphia" really any different in this respect?

Then there's the possibility of wanting to be more inclusive of an entire state in order to develop a larger fan base. Again, this seems very plausible, but are people in Duluth or Moorhead really going to naturally cheer for anyone other than Minneapolis' teams? It seems very unlikely. About 70% of Minnesota's population reside in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area, so it seems like those people wouldn't mind if their favorite team represented their hometown rather than their home state.

Minnesota is probably about the most extreme example of a large percentage of a state's population living in one metropolitan area. Many other states have more than one large city or don't have a city as large as Minneapolis-St. Paul. And yes, it is quite large. This notion is further magnified by the fact that Minnesota is a quite large state. Outside of Mpls-StP, there is about 80,000 square miles of Minnesota and about 1.5 million people. That is pretty sparse and definitely more sparse than the Georgia/Atlanta, Portland/Oregon, Seattle/Washington, or Denver/Colorado relationship.

Ok, so now that that's out of the way, you can go ahead and return to your regularly-scheduled lives.

2009-04-19T13:02:00.002-05:00

It's so great when things like this come along. Regardless of what they say, people can't help but see you a little differently with this kind of thing providing some perspective.

Just to sum up, Bruce Dickinson (yes, the frontman of Iron Maiden) wrote a movie and this movie just so happened to be about a university professor that becomes the reincarnation of ol' Aleister. Joy.

Maybe some redemption will come later in 2009 when Harrison Ford stars in a new movie by the same name. That Harrison Ford, he's classy and children's struggles with genetic disorders is downright uplifting.

2009-04-12T11:26:00.002-05:00

This has been a truly exceptional week in sports. Among the highlights:

-Major League Baseball has begun. This is a wonderful thing, in case you were not aware. The wonder is further perpetuated by such glorious things as fantasy baseball and the MLB Extra Innings package. The combination of high speed internet for tracking stats and Extra Innings to watch all those otherwise irrelevant game makes Comcast almost friend for once.

-The NCAA basketball tournament(s) came to a somewhat unceremonious end. Yeah, the women play one also, contrary to popular assumption, save ESPN. It's interesting how ESPN kinda advertises and hypes the women's tournament as if it's exactly the same thing as CBS's men's version. They've even started staggering the games to play a day later than the men's, as if they might lure some viewers in denial that the season is over. Regardless, the teams that started the season atop the men's and women's polls won their respective tournaments without much of a challenge. As it turns out, North Carolina's toughest game may have been the 2nd round matchup against LSU. Go figure. Regardless, UNC's ability to play to their potential allowed someone you know to rack up in tournament pool winnings. Well, if you consider $32.50 "racking up".

-The Masters is being played this weekend. Tiger Woods is playing and doing alright, but not winning. This means nobody really has anything to talk about. You can't talk about how he's dominating and you can't talk about how he's struggling. He's just playing and currently sits tied for 10th place. That's not an insurmountable deficit and actually sets himself up nicely for a dominating Sunday comeback win. Then everyone will have something to talk about.

-A huge shocker out of Springfield, Massachusetts, Michael Jordan has been elected to the Basketball Hall of Fame. Just stop for a minute and let that sink in.

-In less-significant news, unless this dude is on your (clears throat) fantasy football team in a "keeper" league, Marshawn Lynch has been suspended for the first 3 games of next NFL season. This is hardly surprising since this dude has an appearance that lends itself to mugshots. Even when he's posing for a media headshot, he can't help but look like he was just arrested for something in a haze of smoke and booze.

2009-04-03T10:02:00.001-05:00

Once you've conquered the first set of 2009 traffic laws, you might be ready for Round 2. Proceed with caution...

-Every time you change lanes in moderate to heavy traffic, an angel gets its wings. In a perfect world, your steering wheel would never be left in the "straight" position. It should always be veering or jerked in one direction or another. This is a wonderful way to monitor steering and alignment responsiveness for all those times when you are best served by taking someone else's lane, whether you're entitled to it or not. This practice is vital when attempting to reach your destination 7 to 9 seconds faster than if you had just stayed put. Every little helps! Truly words to live by.

-Turn signals are purely cosmetic. The blinking of the light is just for nostalgia. The only reason these items are still included on cars is that people are so used to seeing the orange on each corner of a car. There is absolutely no purpose in notifying the cars around you of your intention. That is clearly a violation of personal liberty and downright intrusive. If those other people would pay better attention, they wouldn't need a blinking orange light in addition to the sudden flash of red when you slam on your brakes to make a last-second turn.

-The previous item may have been somewhat misleading. Turn signals do still play a very important role on roads with at least 2 lanes of traffic moving in the same direction. If you want to be in the other lane, by pulling up next to a car in that lane, then activating your turn signal, you will effectively make that car disappear and you can go ahead. The lane will be yours and that other car that was in the way is now an afterthought. By demonstrating your willingness to use the oft-neglected turn signal, you are maintaining the legacy of a bygone era.

-If you are unsure of where you are going or generally unfamiliar with the area in which you are driving, under no circumstances should you pull off the road and figure it out. The only suitable response to cluelessness is to stay on the road and attempt to figure it out as you go. This is most commonly accomplished by driving very slow and reading every single street sign at every single intersection. If that doesn't help, you can also drive erratically and veer into other lanes of traffic or off the road completely. This should adequately signal the other drivers that you are completely unaware of your surroundings and they should immediately stop what they are doing until you decide what you're doing. If someone attempts to pass you or honk their horn to remind you that you're about to get yourself/someone killed, you should give that person the worst look you can conjure. After all, they aren't the one from out of town and they should be better hosts.

2009-04-03T09:26:00.003-05:00

As a public service, here is Lesson #1 in traffic laws of 2009. Please read carefully and apply in your daily driving.

-It is absolutely vital that you follow the car in front of you as close as possible, even if the car in front of you is in a tight line with cars in front of them. The closer you follow, the more likely that entire queue in front of you will disappear. When the driver in front of you gestures for you to back off, it is your duty to be aghast at their rudeness and shake your head and fist in disbelief.

-When on an interstate or other limited access highway, the larger the vehicle you are operating, the further to the left you should be. The intent here is for you to drive as slow as possible, thus causing a long line of vehicles as mentioned above. You are singlehandedly allowing the previous scenario to happen! Most preferred left lane vehicles are church vans, utility trucks and wreckers.

-Placing an inspirational sticker or tag on your car automatically makes everything you do on the road forgivable. A vanity plate/decal expressing your faith is especially effective in removing responsibility. Of course you are cutting people off because you want them to see the back of your car and be inspired. You are saving souls with your haphazard driving and there is a special place waiting for you in the next life.

-It is absolutely mandatory to talk on your cellphone whenver operating a car. This is clearly a safety matter. If you were in a wreck, how else would anyone know if you weren't already on the phone to tell someone? There is no telling how many lives have been saved by people on the phone with people having automobile wrecks. Someday the cars will drive/steer themselves so that using a steering wheel and watching the road will be a nuisance of the past. Then both hands will be free for not only your phone, but also your cigarette, coffee, make-up, burger, etc. No longer will those important "Oh no he didn't" conversations at 7:30am have to be interrupted by the intrusive horn honk of the car you almost side-swiped. Do those people not realize that it's hard to carry on a conversation while they're making all that racket? At least you've already got someone on the line to tell about the rude behavior of those people who insist on driving without talking on the phone unless absolutely necessary.