November 13, 2002
It hasn't been very long. I just had to put in a word on some other new stuff I've been listening to.
Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot
Wilco rule, end of story.
November 12, 2002
It's been awhile. I might start using it as the opening to my infrequently-updated blog. I tihnk the key for me is to actually sit down and do this every day. For obvious reasons, I didn't much feel like writing after my last upate. After getting out of the habit, it takes a bit to get back into it again, but I'm hopeful.
As those of you in the Metro Detroit area know, Harmony House is going out of business. It's the store where I bought my first musical recording (Weird Al's "Off the Deep End" on CD, if you must know), so it inspires a bit of nostalgia in me. On the other hand, everything is 20% or 50% off to get rid of the stock. I pored over it and came out with a few CD's I hoped would be gems. Here's what I got:
Afrocelt Sound System - Volume 3: Further In Time
If you've heard Volume 2: Release, you've heard a lot of Volume 3. That also means that if you enjoyed Volume 2, Volume 3 is a great record for
you. "Colossus" is sweet, and "When You're Falling" has Peter Gabriel vocals.
Gillian Welch - Revival
The first song on this CD, "Orphan Girl" blew me away. The second, "Annabelle" was astonishing. The rest of the CD is awe-inspiring. It's truly bizarre to hear electric guitar on the Depression-recalling songs of Welch and David Rawlings, but that's T-Bone Burnett's production talking. It doesn't mean I'm about to like it or even accept it, but I can look past it. For a debut, it has remarkably few missteps. "Paper Wings" leans much farther towards jazz than sounds right on this record, but that's a minor complaint. The only real problem I have with it is that Burnett's production interferes to some degree with the intimacy captured on Time (The Revelator), where it's just Welch, Rawlings, and two acoustic guitars playing their tunes live. At least it left them room to grow, for which there is something to be said. The songs are really where it's at on this album, and there's true greatness there.
Whiskeytown - Pneumonia
I have to admit, this isn't the record I thought that it would be. I've heard this called Whiskeytown's "one perfect album". I bought it expecting to here an amped-up Ryan Adams and an album with more rocking sensibilities than Adams' solo release Gold. This isn't that album. If anything, it's more subdued than Gold ever is and fits squarely in the alt-country catalog alongside Wilco from a few years back. It's a lower-key album entirely than what I expected from a band renowned for their drunken stage antics, but that's probably because the band had nearly torn itself completely apart before the record was finished and sat on the shelf for three years. Still, it's a masterful record full of great songs, just not the sort of great songs I was expecting.
The White Stripes - The White Stripes
This record was exactly what I expected. Take White Blood Cells, strip it down even further, give Jack White five packs of cigarettes, give them lousy recording equipment, mix in one part craziness and you have the debut album for the White Stripes. Recorded for a pittance in Southwest Detroit, The White Stripes crackles with an ear-splitting vitality and unpredictability. The limitations of the electrics are painfully apparent in places, but it's raw and powerful, just like Jack's voice. Please Jack, don't scream on every track from now on. Oh wait, that's what you decided to do. Good.
October 16, 2002, continued
Scott Paavola died yesterday. Unless you're from Grosse Pointe Woods or were really into swimming, you probably don't know who he was. In my senior year of high school he was a sophomore. That was the year there were only four trumpets in our band class and Scott was one of two trumpets who actually cared about sounding good. He and I each got our share of soloes in regular band, but Jazz Band was the fun part. That was when we still used the old folders inherited from Mr. Miller. You could find anything in those things, and usually did. One of my favorites was "Stardust" with this written in as a comment "SLOW THE HELL DOWN!!!". We never had a clue who wrote that. There was also a piece called "Cha Cha Cha For Judy" which was obviously ripped off of the "Colonel Bogey" march from "Bridge on the River Kwai" and españolified. The percussion part had been lost ages ago, even though everyone else had their part. Way back in the day (my freshman year) we had a percussion section capable of making up a part.
At the end of every year we went to Club 500 in Detroit. It was a pizza joint / bar with arcade games. It stood across the street from a nursing home that itself was on the site of my dad's old high school. Club 500 has since closed as well. We used proceeds from gigs we used to play or petty cash from the budget to pay for food and unlimited quarters. I ruled the bubble hockey table but had trouble holding my own against Scott and his twin brother Kevin (trombone) in Daytona.
Scott and Kevin were often absent due to swim team commitments. I didn't know it then, but they were the best in the school and some of the best in the state. Kevin went off to swim for Carnegie Mellon and Scott went off to Cornell. On Tuesday Scott died at his fraternity house due to a medical condition associated with an enlarged heart. You can read about it here. I'm going to miss him.
October 16, 2002
So Eminem has this new movie coming out called "8 Mile". For those of you who do not call the metro Detroit area home, 8 Mile is the dividing line between Detroit/Wayne County and Macomb and Oakland counties. It's the de facto dividing line between black and white for much of its run along Detroit's border. When Coleman Young was elected, he told all the criminals to go to 8 Mile. Instead, the remaining whites did. There's a similar line in Grosse Pointe. Instead of running east-west, it runs north-south. It's called Mack Avenue, and I'm going to make a movie about it.
Mack divides the upper middle class from the slightly lower upper middle class in GP. It makes for tension in the halls of our schools when the directories are passed out and people find out where you live. The only thing worse than living west of Mack is to live west of I-94. I'm lucky, I grew up on the east side of Mack. But I could still feel the pain of my friends on the other side of the border. My movie will contain this line: "You can't understand me! I live west of Mack and you live east of it! You don't know my life!" Peace out.
October 15, 2002
To continue yesterday's blog, here's more good stuff
Afro-Celt Sound System - Lovers of Light
When I first heard the name of this group, I figured it was just another gimmick to sell records to the curious. They combine Celtic wind instruments with African percussion and aspects of techno and dance music to create an astonishingly good sound. This is one of their best efforts. It's an effortlessly flowing succession of instrumental reels backed by electronica and percussion.
Barenaked Ladies - The Flag
This one just barely makes the age-limit. Released in 1992, Gordon went 10x platinum in their native Canada on the strength of goofy songs like "Enid" and
"Grade 9", thus causing serious songs like "Wrap Your Arms Around Me" and "Blame It On Me" to be ignored. "The Flag" tells the story of an abusive relationship. The boyfriend always calls to apologize for his actions, but seeks to dominate his girlfriend, who refuses to yield her spirit to him, so there's hope yet.
Ben Folds - Still Fighting It
I said only one per customer, so Ben Folds' solo work is eligible. This song is another about the pain of growing up. Told from the perspective of a father working in a lousy restaurant as a waiter, he knows that his son will face a painful road ahead of him and that it won't necessarily lead to a happy ending. The video for this features Ben's own son and was directed by his wife, Frally Hines. Check it out.
Nelly Furtado - Baby Girl
Women have a thing about guys who try to control them, I hear. This song is a blend of traditional fado from the Azores and hip-hop, like much of Furtado's work. It's got a great horn section in the background, too.
Pearl Jam - Daughter
"Daughter" was the first Pearl Jam song I liked. They dropped the massive sound driving much of their other work and gave a song that starts out simply about a little girl and her family, then the picture darkens.
Ryan Adams - New York, New York
Off of his album Gold, "NY, NY" is a song of admiration for the city of New York. Its video was shot on September 7, 2001, prominently features the WTC, and is dedicated to "those who lost their lives on September 11, 2001 and those who worked to save them". It also happens to be a great song, best experienced live. I saw it on SNL recently and the live performance gave it the element of danger it lacks on the album. By the way, the most hard-rocking song on Gold was written by Gillian Welch.
The Strokes - Hard To Explain
This is the best song off of their critically-acclaimed debut, Is This It?. It sounds like the same '70's-inflected rock on the rest of the album, but has an energy that much of the album lacks. It isn't created by yelling, but by the tension in the music. The vocals are at half-speed for much of the song, but break for it in the chorus.
The White Stripes - Fell In Love With A Girl
This is rock and roll in its most basic form. A song about a girl made with one guitar and a drum set that lasts a little over two minutes and tears it up. Jack, don't date Winona Ryder just yet. Oops, too late.
Wilco - Jesus, Etc.
The premise of this song is that sometimes even the Son of Man needs a friend and humanity's love, but it doesn't mean it's there. The song was written in early 2001, but with verses like
Tall buildings shake
Voices escape singing sad sad songs
tuned to chords
Strung down your cheeks
Bitter melodies turning your orbit around
it's frightening in light of what was to follow. A close runner-up is "I'm the Man Who Loves You", a bluesy rock number that's much more cheerful than this one (Yes, yes, how could it not be, etc.).
October 14, 2002
Wow, it's been awhile. Be sure to check out Craig Barker's blog. He's running a 128 song tournament (all pre-1992) to find the best of the bunch. He's promised to hold another tournament after this one for post-1992. Early prediction: Not "Smells Like Teen Spirit". It was released in 1991. This gets me thinking: What should one include in this post-1992 extravaganza? Is it about what's good, what's important, or what's big? Are we going to have "Wannabe" going up against "Dig Me Out"? Would "Wannabe" win because people don't know what "Dig Me Out" is? Would "Dig Me Out" win because it's not "Wannabe"? The problem with indie rock is also its reason for being. It doesn't court a mainstream audience and usually doesn't get that audience even if it deserves to be heard. You might get a breakthrough every now and then, but usually that won't happen.
So here's a few songs I'd like to see in a tournament. I'm trying to limit them to one per customer, but it's hard
Aimee Mann - Deathly
If there's one Aimee Mann song I could keep forever, this would be it. It builds from the opening line "Now that I've met you, would you object to never
seeing each other again?". This one also met with some success from the movie Magnolia, so someone might have heard of it. Mad props for the guitar
solo in the middle
Air - Playground Love
The problem with a lot of French house - type bands is that they aren't emotionally attached to the music they're playing. Daft Punk's "Digital Love" is a perfect example. The shimmery disco doesn't make you feel anything. Air, however, have a winner in "Playground Love" from the soundtrack of "The Virgin Suicides". A sleek, cool jazz-type (not to be confused with smooth jazz) number, the intensity bubbles up through the corners of this one.
Beck - Where It's At
Beck doin' his thing. Run with it.
Ben Folds Five - Battle of Who Could Care Less
Perfect slacker anthem. It's filled with disdain for the guy who can't seem to do anything but watch TV and get stoned, but it also has a wistfulness for
that life. If not "Battle of Who Could Care Less", I'd like to see "Underground" on the list.
Beulah - If We Can Land a Man on the Moon, Surely I Can Win Your Heart
Beulah is a band formed by some officemates in San Francisco, they record on the Elephant 6 label and made this horn and string-backed song for When Your
Heartstrings Break
Blake Babies - Train
One of the few songs written by Blake Babies' guitarist John Strohm before the band split, it's also one of the best cuts off of Sunburn. It's the story of a train as metaphor for heroin addiction, managing to quote "Mystery Train" (obvious) and "Melt With You" (not so obvious) within the space of one song. It also holds back the truly delirious ending. At the end of each chorus, there's a hesitation before the next verse with a space for something to be inserted in there, but not until the end do you get the repetition of "runaway train" as the (third-person) subject slides deeper into addiction
Bruce Springsteen - Countin' On A Miracle
Really, this could be half of the songs from "The Rising". The whole record is great. This one and "Worlds Apart" are two of my favorites.
Coldplay - Yellow
Yellow is just awesome. It's not very cool, but it throbs with life and love.
Dandy Warhols - Not If You Were the Last Junkie On Earth
The ironic counterpoint to the Blake Babies, this song also tells of the subject's heroin addiction, this time as the speaker talks to the junkie. The addiction isn't reviled, just surprising because "heroin is so passe". "Shouldn't you have got a couple piercings or decided maybe that you were gay, in a way?"
Elliot Smith - Junk Bond Trader
Any three or four Elliot Smith songs could be found here - "Junk Bond Trader",
"LA", "Son of Sam" just to name some off of Figure 8. "Junk Bond Trader" is specifically aimed at those lowlifes from the beginning of the last decade that created profit from thin air. Everything old is new again.
Fiona Apple - Limp
Off of her ill-titled When the Pawn . . ., "Limp" is a fleet-footed rocker about a woman who won't be beaten down by a man who wishes to dominate her. "You fondle my trigger, then you blame my gun". She won't be blamed if he sets her off. This could be interchanged with "Get Gone" off of the same album. Instead of the anger that explodes in "Limp", "Get Gone" seethes. At the same time there's a reluctance to let go, but a knowledge that this is the only way.
Gillian Welch - Revelator
Gillian Welch has to be in there, or there is no justice in the world. "O Brother, Where Art Thou?" opened a lot of doors to musicians like Welch and
collaborator David Rawlings and they delivered a jewel of an album. "Revelator" is a thinly-disguised response to those that question the authenticity of the LA native. I guess if you recapture the sound of the Depression, expand on it and deliver impeccably crafted and affecting songs you can be a phony. Who knew?
Green Day - Welcome to Paradise
Back in the days when Green Day were still relevant, they realeased this song. You know which one it is.
Guster - Mona Lisa
This was a hard one to pick, but if I were allowed to listen to only one wuss pop-rok song for the rest of my life this would be it. It's an acoustic ballad about depression and recovery. It's about the idea that, with help, you can overcome a lot. But you need that help. I'd also suggest "Medicine", "Airport Song", and "Happier".
Liz Phair - F*** and Run
The narrator wakes up to find she's had another one night stand, despite promising herself she'd never do that again. She wants a committed relationship with all that "stupid old s***, like letters and sodas". But her guy claims to have a lot of work to do and promises to call, although both know that will never happen. She feels used by men, even when complicit in their actions, and doesn't see an end in sight.
Moby - Extreme Ways
I think this might be the best song off of 18. The lyrics are mostly nonsense, but most of his are. It's a cool guitar rocker with the edges muted.
Moxy Früvous - Gulf War Song
This song takes a look at the intellectual dishonesty surrounding Gulf War I. This song was written back when the Frü's were employed to write songs for
the CBC. They were asked to write a song about the conflict. No one gets off scot-free here. "He's just a peacenik, she's just a warhawk", but no one really wants to accept that the opinion of the other side is valid. It's definitely tilted away from war ("Fighters for Texaco, fighters for power, fighters for longer turns in the shower"), but not absolutely biased. Other good songs by Früvous - "Michigan Militia", "Laika", "The Drinking Song"
Neko Case and Her Boyfriends - Thrice All American
A love song to a dying city, it really resonates with this Detroiter. Case views Tacoma, Washington as her hometown, one that has seen better days. The timber has petered out and gangs rule the area, but it doesn't diminish her love for the city.
New Pornographers - Letter From an Occupant
A dizzy, delirious alterna-pop song from some north of the border favorites, this song has more hooks than your average tackle box packed into this love song powered by Neko Case's voice.
Pedro the Lion - Simple Economics
From his album "Winners Never Quit", it can be seen as a microcosm of the entire album. A politician who sees himself as the good guy who is the only one who can righteously represent his constituency, he's behind in the polls by 12% as elections loom. "Power can be such a tease, you're always wanting more. It's good to know that just like sex, it can be paid for."
Polaris - Hey Sandy
This is the best theme song for any kids show ever. Polaris performed this great pop song for the quirky series "The Adventures of Pete & Pete" and every time I heard it, I cranked the volume. How could you not, with the band jamming on the Wrigleys' lawn. And Ellen was the best female character on TV at the time.
Radiohead - Paranoid Android
Even if "Idioteque" is the best in pre-apocalyptic dance music, this is my favorite Radiohead song. "Ambition makes you look pretty ugly" and then rock out. Yeah.
Sleater-Kinney - Dig Me Out
This is what Sleater-Kinney is all about. A blistering punk number about a woman feeling buried under the weight of societal pressures. Sleater-Kinney doesn't deal in conventional guitar hooks, preferring that they careen around according to a secret code that makes it sound amazing. Listen to it. Other good S-K: Every album they have ever made.
Travis - Writing to Reach You
This may be the perfect song to open an album. It creeps out of a fuzz to Fran Healy's guitar and expands into a love letter bursting with guitar hooks. This is Travis at their peak. Other stuff: "Pipe Dream", "Happy", and (if you want to hear them tap into their inner U2) "Turn".
Weeping Tile - Westray
The story of a mining disaster one year later, it plays out the Westray accident from the outside as those effected await the news on their loved ones, but can't hold out much hope. It's also an indictment of a government that gave the funds to build a deathtrap.
There are more, but I'm tired now.
October 4, 2002 (00:33)
There's really nothing more discouraging than staying up till five in the morning to finish your homework only to find that the computer code you wrote won't work for a reason that quite escapes you and then you find that the example code that you based all of your work on doesn't even run. It was like that last Friday, and it convinced me to give up on that assignment and pray for the weekend to arrive quickly. Perhaps I shouldn't have.
I had to do some work on Catia so I went home to Grosse Pointe after going to Albion to pick up my brother. The three and a half hours in the car weren’t nearly as bad as last week’s three, and we went an extra 55 miles in those additional thirty minutes. Because I had been up so late, I declined to accompany my brother to North’s football game and just sat around in a semiconscious state after eating something resembling dinner. I managed to stay awake until after eleven, but I retired fairly early.
I woke up refreshed the next day and set off for Radar Industries, the location of my summer job. I parked my car in the lot near the truck wells and walked in past the shipping dock where I found one of the employees I’d known through the three years I’d worked there and he let me into the engineering office. This was at about 9:30AM and I had high hopes of actually finishing before the Michigan-Illinois game started. Fat chance of that, I realized by noon. I kept plugging away and I finished at about 6:15 as the third quarter drew to a close. I shut off the lights and left the computer in its normal state of rest and locked the door to the office behind me. I walked back out through the plant to get to the shipping dock. The lights were still on in the plant, but I didn’t notice anyone around anymore trying to kill me with a forklift (bonus points to any reader who recognizes the reference). I thought it was weird, and wondered if they’d simply forgotten about me. As I neared the shipping office I began wondering if the alarm was on. I decided the only way to find out would be to go up to the alarm box and check. What I didn’t count on was that, due to its proximity to the door, motion detectors protected it. I figured that out as the alarm went off. I grabbed the handle of the door to the shipping office, but it was locked so I had no way of calling to get the alarm code. Since there was no way I would be able to shut the alarm off, I decided I’d have to wait and take the heat. I walked out to my car so that I could at least listen to the game until the police arrived and either believed me or took me in for questioning before believing me.
As I walked to my car I noticed that the gate was closed, so there was another obstacle blocking my way to freedom. I went over to the gate and quickly figured out that it was motorized. There was a handle sticking out from one of the boxes containing the drive mechanism, so I pulled it. I figured if another alarm went off that it would be the least of my worries. That didn’t work, so I used one of those cement pillars, the sort that they put in so that you smash your front end instead of their stuff, to climb up onto the drive mechanism and up over the fence while stabbing myself in the process. I got up and looked back at the fence and the police pulled up. I told them who I was and my story so far as the two puncture wounds on my hand started to bleed. They told me to get in the car and they’d drop me off somewhere with a payphone. I climbed into the hard plastic seat and belted up, noticing the 12-gauge shotgun resting vertically between the two officers. They dropped me off at a convenience store at 9 ½ Mile and Hoover. I walked over to the phone picked it up and listened. Nothing. I flipped the little hang-up switch a few times and still got nothing. I tried dialing. Still nothing. I walked inside and asked where the nearest payphone was. I then walked half a mile to it, made a phone call and waited. I called back and was told I’d have to wait more than half an hour for a ride, so I went across the street to the McDonald’s and got some food while I waited. I had an odd football conversation with the janitor and waited for my uncle to pull up outside. We went back to the plant, parked in the front lot, disabled the alarm with the proper code, walked through the plant, out to the back door, opened the gate from the shipping dock, and I was able to finally leave at about 8:30. That sucked. I went back home and found that my aunt and cousins were there as well as my sister, her friend, and two of our friends from Camp Michigania. I was rather comatose from exhaustion, but I woke up a little as the evening wore on and provided some much-needed stress relief.
October 2, 2002 (08:25)
Yeah, I know I haven't updated in a while. I'm sorry and will strive to do better in the future. But I'll try to make it up to you today.
That stuff about Iowa comes from personal experience. The weekend of September 21, I went to Iowa for my aunt's plane. To prepare for this, I had to retrieve my brother from the hinterlands of Albion that Friday. There was light to moderate rain, so everyone apparently freaked and stood on the brakes. I crawled slowly past the Zeeb road construction, speeded up a little, sloooowwweed near Jackson and resumed a moderate pace to Albion. What is normally an hour's drive took an hour and a half. So I picked up my brother and we headed back out to the freeway. Traffic was fine for a while, but the rain started picking up so we slowed down a bit (to the speed limit). All of a sudden we started going through torrential downpours of rain. This was the sort of rain that looks like a large firehose is being directed at your windshield, blurring everything in your sight. Not being able to see really encourages you to slow down, so we came down to below 50 and made our way back east. I'd say it was that way for 2/3's of our trip. And we still made better time going back then coming to Albion.
After passing an uneventful night in Ann Arbor, we needed to leave for the airport. Our flight departed at 8:50AM. I set the alarm for 6:15. We woke up at 7:15 and I freaked out. We were out the door 15 minutes later and on the road. I did 85 in two known speed traps and we made it to the airport in time, running through the tunnel to Concourse C to check in half an hour before take-off. Westward bound over Lake Michigan we even saw a freighter heading for Chicago.
Iowa was nice enough, if you're into that thing. After getting to our hotel we went to Finkbine, the University of Iowa's course and rented some decrepit clubs. It was worth it, though, as I hit some decent drives and my brother hit the sand shot of his life. It was about fifty feet from a deep bunker up to the elevated green and straight on in. We went back and changed and went to the church for pictures and watched everyone else freak out. The ceremony itself was very nice and one of the ministers (they had three) was the same one who had married my parents almost 25 years before. I still think they should have had the wedding in Detroit. It would have been so much easier on me. My cousin made the sweetest flower girl. She sparingly dropped the flower petals so that she made absolutely sure that she had enough as she walked down the aisle in perfect step, unlike the ring bearer (my new cousin by my new uncle's previous marriage) who really wanted to run. He just couldn't wait for the whole thing to be over and kept squirming in the front of the church while the flower girl stood perfectly still and refused to join in his shenanigans.
After the reception there was a very big to-do over pictures again and they waited so long that the limo had to leave and they called a taxi service with a van. Now that's classy. The band at the reception played both kinds of music - country and western. They also did a bit of classic rock with a twang. My (history teacher) uncle from Chicago identified some of what they played as belonging to Ken Burns' "The Civil War", and I think he was right.
I mentioned to my parents over the course of the weekend that I had a lot of work to do when I returned, and there was pining on Sunday over not switching me to the early (9:30) flight back to Detroit, which would have made my life a heck of a lot easier. At the brunch, instead of mingling overmuch I cracked open a book on thermodynamics and researched my part of a group paper. Exciting stuff. I also realized that I'd be the one tapped to deliver my brother back to Albion. Joy. Tack another two hours onto this trip. We went to the airport with plenty of time to catch our CRJ and had a pleasant flight home.
After we got home I had to get my suit out of the garment bag, which had been checked, so my brother and I got out of Metro Airport at 8:50. DTW is half an hour east of Ann Arbor, so I was looking at 2.5 hours of driving before I could begin my homework. This encouraged me to bump my speed up by another 5 mph. When we exited the freeway I began to notice some fog drifting across the roadway. It gave the open fields a look more appropriate for October and made the driving a little more interesting and difficult. It became thicker as I drove out and I worried that it might start making freeway driving more hazardous. Not to worry. Some thermal artifact kept the fog off the freeway and in the fields around it. I made good time and was home by 11:10. That meant that I only had to stay up until 2:30 doing homework and I managed a good six hours of sleep.
September 23, 2002 (02:24)
Iowa-It's Flat and Square, Except for the Part by the River That's Sort of Curvy
Iowa-We've Got Cows, Corn, and the Amish
Iowa-It Starts With A Vowel
Iowa-The Full Realization of the Grid System
Iowa-We're Close to More Interesting States
I think that Iowa should consider these when adopting a new slogan to promote tourism.
September 18, 2002 (01:38)
Sometimes when life gives you lemons, it also grinds them into your eyeballs so that you scream, "Ow! Ow! It burns!" It was kind of like that today, and it promises to be like that for the rest of the week. It started when I attempted to create a rough model of the aircraft we're designing in Aero 481. At this university we have access to three CAD packages: I-DEAS, Unigraphics, and Catia Version 5. However, I spent my summer working on Catia Version 4. Catia 4 and 5 have about as much to do with each other as Unix and Windows: They do pretty much the same thing, but take completely different approaches to do it. So I'm pretty much useless on Catia 5, so I went back to I-DEAS, which I have at least some experience on. I-DEAS just isn't nearly as flexible as Catia and I spent over five hours trying to make a relatively simple design. BTW, this is due on Thursday, on which I also have a math quiz and a meeting with the Regents and a homework assignment due Friday and I have to get certified to use the machine shop in between. Oh, and I have to read my lab and write a paragraph on it by 1:00 tomorrow. It's a good thing I have to fly to Iowa over the weekend or I just might get something done.
September 16, 2002
Weekend Update
This weekend I went on a UAC retreat. For those of you who don't know, UAC is the University Activities Center.
They're the folks who provide our funding to go to a lot of tournaments. We're special because, our of thirteen committees, we're one of a few who can break
even if we have a good year. Also, we're pretty much the only committee that doesn't directly publish, perform, or project something for student consumption. While winning is good, our competitions are an end unto themselves. So at the end of the year we have one shot at winning it all back. OK, so I'm being overly dramatic. We make some money from hosting three tournaments over the year, but they don't make nearly enough to cover our travel expenses. Late in April comes College Bowl's National Championship Tournament. In previous years its carried a $10,000 prize donated by Ford. We're hopeful that Ford will continue to sponsor a tournament, but the lead guy on this from Ford retired, so we're kind of in limbo here.
Other committees on UAC include the Every Three Weekly, Comedy Company, M-Flicks, M-agination Films, Amazin' Blue, Rude Mechanicals, and MUSKET. Some of these committees have much bigger budgets than we do. For instance, MUSKET is asking for well over four times our budget for the semester to build the boat for "Titanic" so that it can be sunk onstage. Weirdly, both MUSKET board members are from my hometown.
Now that you know what UAC is, perhaps I'll actually get around to telling you what I did this weekend. My weekend started at about 7:30, and I reached the Union at 8:55AM. I went to the Wolverine Room and found bagels, muffins, juice, and nobody else. A few minutes later my colleague Ryan ambled into the room. We were justifiably worried, as everyone was supposed to be there by 9:00. I was relieved when Brian, the UAC president, walked in. At least I hadn't been adrift in our departure time, as I'd worried. So we sat around waiting for others to show up. I went out and fed the meter when I realized it wasn't a get people there quickly, get out the door quickly kind of departure. At 10:00(!!!) we finally departed for the Habitat for Humanity site in Ypsilanti. I'm glad that I've picked up at least the rudimentary skill of hammering, as I carried things or hammered them all the time we were there. This was probably the most useful part of the retreat, as we actually did something that will improve someone's life. I helped build a gable by taking a roof truss and nailing large sheets of plywood to it. I also helped carry and put up a half dozen trusses. After leaving the work site, we went to the Copper Canyon Brewing Company in Southfield to watch the football game. I don't think I need to say anything about that.
We went back to the hotel and had meetings till 10:30, which weren't too bad. I gained an understanding of some of the UAC structure, and we found someone to help us with publicity. I'm sure it helped that only six of the thirteen committees were represented. Most just didn't bother to show up, so the meetings went that much faster. After we were done with those, we wnet up to our rooms and decided to get piza and watch a movie. For some reason we ordered "National Lampoon's Van Wilder", starring Ryan Reynolds playing an extension of his character on "Two Guys and a Girl" opposite Tara Reid playing the campus paper's finest journalist, who happens to have the most widely opended eyes I've ever seen. She really gives new meaning to "token resistance", as her swooning over the 7th-year senior begins almost immediately. Maybe it has to do with her current boyfriend, a member of Delta Iota Kappa with a pole shoved so far up his butt it's coming out his mouth who makes the iceberg in "Titanic" look like a fount of emotion and much less rigid. Eventually I began wondering what this movie had against humanity. Everyone was either annoying or brain-dead, except for the nerd frat which seemed entirely composed of dead fish. I was so grateful when I finally saw the inside of my eyelids.
Sunday was a very mixed bag. I got up at 7 and left the hotel a little after eight to drive the party of early returnees back to Ann Arbor. At noon I left for Detroit, where the Tigers were having a big tribute to longtime broadcaster Ernie Harwell. In the drizzle I sat, listening to glowing tributes from everyone from an old buddy of his from the Marines who ended up a general to Tigers legend Al Kaline. Ernie positively glowed when the Tigers presented him with a statue that stands outside Comerica Park. Most everybody that spoke hit the right tone, but there were some very odd flubs. Detroit City Councilwoman Sheila Cockrel stumbled through the reading of a proclamation in Harwell's honor, reading his famous call "He stood there like a house by the side of the road" as "He stood there by the house by the side of the road." Senator Debbie Stabenow showed that she's not from Detroit when pronouncing "Comerica" as "Co-America". But the people who know baseball really shown through. Paul Carey, Harwell's broadcast partner when I was learning the game, gave a great speech, mentioning that the Tigers actually fired Ernie back before the Ilitches took over the team. He was the only one to speak about that. But the highlight really was the statue presentation and Ernie's speech. He's such a genuinely nice guy. I remember, years back, when he came to speak at a local church and we went to go see him. I don't remember much of what he said, but I remember that it was just so cool to be in his presence. The game was awful. We left after the fourth inning, when the Royals were up 8-1.
September 13th, 2002
That breakthrough thing yesterday? Yeah, it's ongoing. "The Size of Our Love" is the most amazing thing to reach my ears in I don't know how long. It wears its emotions on its sleeve and it's so beautiful that for three minutes it can be your entire world. It's all the more effective sitting on a Sleater-Kinney album. These women have passion and conviction and emotion to burn, and they spend most of their time doing just that. A Sleater-Kinney record is mostly a sonic assault with an astonishing amount of energy, and The Hot Rock is just that way. Guitar lines that can only be described as angular slice through the songs as Corin Tucker lets an enormous voice spring from her somewhat diminutive frame. Coming on the heels of "One Song For You", "The Size of Our Love" proceeds at a glacial pace, pulling the listener even further inside its world. The opening chords are reminiscent of "Lightning Crashes" by Live, but this ballad isn't a slow build to a cheap power-chord conclusion. It draws its power from a deeper vein Carrie Brownstein's turn at vocals keeps its steady pace as she intones
Our love is the size of these tumors inside us
Our love is the size of this hospital room
You're my hospital groom.
When I first heard it, it hit me like a suckerpunch. And with S-K, it's not a cheap, attention-grabbing device. The song continues, with the spare notes of the guitar joined by a very light maraca.
Put the ring on my finger so tight it turns blue
A constant reminder I'll die in this room
If you die in this room
We now know that while the narrator faces a figurative death, her lover is the one with the tumors; the life she's in which she's chosen to invest her own is perilously close to ending. And then the drums kick in.
Sit like a watchdog and patiently wait
Listen for footsteps down the hallways
visit beds like they're graves
The narrator is helpless to change the course of this illness and can only watch passively as it takes its course. She can't do anything, but she needs to be alongside someone who means so much to her. But what's she waiting for? Is it death, life, or the footsteps? The owners of these footsteps aren't made clear. They could be the doctors and nurses of the oncological ward, fighting futile battles and visiting those whome they know haven't got a chance. Or they could be visitors, steeling themselves for an encounter with the condemned, readying themselves for an untimely passing. The word "they're" can also be heard as "their". Confronting someone at death's door opens that door to them, forcing them to confront the limits of a human frame. And now comes the chorus, right? No, this song doesn't have a chorus. It builds further as Corin joins Carrie for the closest this song will come to a chorus
Days go by so slowly
Nights go by so slowly
In a hospital room
In a box built for two
A hospital could be going at the speed of light. Seconds definitely take longer to pass. A brief encounter with someone close to you in so powerless a position stretches minutes to hours. The imagery of "a box built for two" suggests not only the hospital room, but a coffin as well. Tucker drops back to her guitar and Brownstein continues
I fight for air, fight for my own air
Forget all the things I can do alone
I fight for a heart. I fight for a strong heart
I fight to never know this sickness you know
But I know it's my own, I gave it a home
You know she'd fight for someone else's air if she could, but that's beyond her physical limitations. She won't accept the impending death, it seems so disloyal, like such a foregone defeat that she refuses to think about what she has to do on her own. What she will do is fight for a way to remain a caring person in a world that is about to take away the love of her life. But she doesn't know if she can do it when the pain of this illness has invaded her own heart. It's her own because her life is so connected to the person it's taking away.
Our love is the size of these tumors inside us
Our love is the size of this hole in the ground
where my heart's buried now
Sleater-Kinney - The Hot Rock - 10 - The Size Of Our Love.mp3
