December 18, 2003
Happy holidays
October 3, 2003
Cornell trip, finally transcribed (11/17/03)
3:30 PM, Friday, October 3: The Cube
Asim shows up first, me second, and Leo and Matt soon after. We head south on US-23. "Detroit Rock City" is on WRIF. I am in no way surprised. Soon after, we run into traffic. Again, no surprise.
Ohio Turnpike
Ohio is hell with better freeways. Packets dull the pain. Near Cleveland we stop at the service plaza. Popeye's Chicken has Po' Boy at which Fishbones would scoff. Matt and I change places and I start driving. We quickly ascertain that we've already missed I-90 and divert up I-71, losing less than half an hour, I think.
~Conneaut, OH, 8:00 PM, October 3
Trucker: Let's say our truck leaves Chicago heading east at 50 mph. A lonely housewife leaves Boston 900 miles away traveling west at 65 mph. Now, that's a guaranteed Bravo Juliet for the both of us. But where and when, Gandhi? Where and When?
Gandhi: (Scribbles.) Let's see . . . Conneaut, Ohio, 5:33 PM. (Looks at watch.) Step on it!
Outside Erie, PA, 8:30 PM, October 3
Gas is procured. Mullets!
I-86, PA and NY, 8:30-11:30 PM, October 3
New York is very different from Ohio. They don't like you going for more than a quarter mile without making a turn. And even in the dark you can tell it's beautiful. New York and Pennsylvania seem to have a disagreement over the spelling of the local mountain chain. In Pennsylvania it's always "Allegheny", but in New York you see "Allegany". We pass the town of Chautauqua, its institute, and Lake Chautauqua and I think about that MST3K episode, "Pod People" where they had their own arts chautauqua. At 11:30 we make it to the Fairfield Inn in Corning, New York. After catching the last half of "Monk" I retire from my 16 hour day on five hours of rest at 1:00 AM so I can get my six hours of sleep before the tournament tomorrow and the eight hour drive home. Hooray.
Cornell, October 4
Minor drama in the morning. One of the freshmen on the B team (riding in the other car) had gone ahead to spend the night with a friend and didn't show up until halfway through the first game. Meanwhile, the A team (my team) rolled through Columbia, Rochester B, Case Western, and Michigan B. For lunch we walked down over the gorge and talked about how many people kill themselves there. We went to a decent pizza joint that showed music videos on their TV instead of, say, FOOTBALL of any sort. And that meant that I had Kylie Minogue's "Love at First Sight" stuck in my head for the better part of a day. After
lunch, things got harder. Swarthmore hung with us for the entire first half of the match after already knocking off VCU in the form of Matt Weiner. Matt himself missed tying us by only five points. Rochester A did beat us, although we could have saved the match if we'd gotten the final tossup. Princeton lost to us on the second to last tossup.
In the playoffs, we faced up against Matt again and it wasn't close. Princeton played a tough match, but we came out ahead. Swarthmore led by over 100 points at the half, but we came back to steal that one. Meanwhile, Matt handed Rochester A its only loss of the tournament. So our records were even going into the playoffs and would only serve to determine who would get a one game advantage going into the best of three final. So Fred Bush said the most sensible thing anyone said all day. It was already 6:00 or so, and both teams wanted to get on the road. He suggested just making this game the one game final. All parties agreed to this and we won the (tight) game.
We walked back to the car just as the rain started. Oh yeah, did I mention thsi was a football Saturday at Cornell? Well, you might not have known it by being there. We parked next to the stadium and walked by the tiny marching band, with never another soul in sight to be connected to football. I'm sure they all yearn for the sweet embrace of hockey.
On the way out of town, we stopped for a victory dinner at Taco Bell and went back down toward I-86.
I-86, ~8:00 PM, October 4
Food coma nearly claims Leo, and that's bad because he's driving. Asim takes over at a gas station near Bath, if I recall correctly. Our football team lost. Crap.
I-86, ~9:00 PM, October 4
Asim is too tired to drive. I take over. So that means it's time for the rain to come. The rear window is opaque when I get in and find the rear defroster. I am elated to find a rear defroster. I am easily amused/elated. The road quickly becomes very difficult to see due to the lack of reflectors in the road. My desired speed of 75 mph is unreachable in some places, as I drop below 55 at times due to a profound inability to see the road and a fear of plunging down the hillsides I'm skirting. Also, the windshield is fogged up enough so that it's really fun going around curves with headlights shining in my faces and wiping out my vision of the road. I've got the heat going full blast to get the fog off my windshield; half of it just ends up in my face and it get the fog down to a minimum, but won't totally remove it, and I end up setting up a sauna in th car. Adding to the ridiculousness of it is the Red Sox / A's game. Miguel Tejada: HA!
I-90 ~12:00 AM, October 5
I rejoice when we cross into Pennsylvania. Fog and rain are left behind, for the most part, and we gain lighting and reflectors. We get gas outside of Cleveland, and listen to a bizarre talk show out of Chicago featuring a presumably African-American man trying to be overly erudite talking about the Rush Limbaugh thing. Matt takes over the driving.
Ann Arbor, 3:30 AM, October 5
Home. Sleep. I have a Rover meeting at 11:00 AM and a homework due Monday. I suddenly feel more tired.
November 4, 2003
New Music! Woohoo!
I'd write here more often, but I haven't actually had anything worth saying for a while. But now I have new music, so hooray and all that. I was our at
the local corporate megalith looking for The first thought that crossed my mind after "This is really good" was "This could be Sarah Harmer's follow-up to You Were Here (If you haven't heard Sarah Harmer yet, find a way to make this happen. You'll thank me if you like folky Canadians). And the rest of the album does bear a resemblance, but is a different creature entirely. Kathleen Edwards has a harder-rocking style with strong country leanings, whereas Sarah Harmer's solo album is a folk-pop collection that seams to have country sneaking in around all the corners. Failer kind of reminds me of what might happen if you cut Ryan Adams' budget for Gold by 75%, kicked anyone famous out of the room, and had him start only a month after finishing his Whiskeytown album Pneumonia. And made him a Canadian woman.
The single best song on this record is "Hockey Skates". It has a sort of sublime bleakness to it. It's about imprisonment without bars. Just look at the first three lines: "Going down in the same old town down the same street to the same old bar / And the same old people saying hi and I don't care / Going down in the same old bar and I don't even order anymore." It's as much about being trapped in a small town as "Thunder Road" is about finding a way out of it. But "Hockey Skates" isn't about finding something bigger and better. Look at this chorus: "I am so tired of playing defense / I don't even have hockey skates." You put up a front for the people in the bar and say hi, despite not caring, because they're nice enough people, but then there's that significant other or maybe even a parent ready to lecture you on how you still aren't good enough or presentable enough and I just love the irrelevant relevance of the hockey skates metaphor. Hockey skates don't have anything to do with getting run down by the high and mighty, but it's such a terrific image. And the way it's delivered, almost as an aside, is like "There are forty-two million things wrong with the way you're behaving, and this is what I'm focusing on?"
The leadoff track is "Six O'Clock News", and the music is laid-back yet bouncy country-rock, recalling Weeping Tile's "Good Fortune" if it were reined-in a bit. But the lyrics are absolutely harrowing. It's about a police standoff told from the perspective of the gunman's girlfriend. His family lost the farm, his dad died, his mother has severed all ties to her son, and he doesn't know that his girlfriend is pregnant. It all ends as these things do, as the bright chords move on to the outro and it just makes me wince.
Looking around the internet, it's hard to fathom that I missed her for the past ten months or so; however long this album's been out. She's been written up in The Onion A.V. Club, Rolling Stone, even the Washington Post in glowing tones. And by glowing I mean "blindingly brilliant". I kind of wish I knew anyone else who likes this sort of music, then I might really be able to share.
My other purchase was The Dandy Warhols' Welcome to the Monkey House. OK, how could I not like an album that takes its name from a Kurt Vonnegut collection? Also, the lead singer's name is Courtney Taylor-Taylor, which somehow seems appropriate for a band where you're never quite sure if they're mocking pretension or really are just that pretentious. Case in point: The enhanced CD contains a short film written and directed by Taylor-Taylor, featuring himself, Ione Skye, Scott Weiland, and others sitting in a living room talking about how a nuclear missile is about to kill them all. The lines are all so thuddingly anvilicious, I have to believe that this is parody. The best part is when Scott Weiland says that he was put on this Earth just to bring back pegged trousers, to which Taylor-Taylor responds, "You did a good f---ing job at that, Scott," with a certain satisfaction.
The album itself is imbued with a danceable electronica/new wave atmosphere, for the most part, with the clear high points of "We Used to Be Friends" and
"The Last High", but there isn't a shortage of good stuff in between. The Dandys move within this framework effortlessly and, on the whole, this album is much more consistent than Thirteen Tales From Urban Bohemia, but how much I like this album will end up being closely tied to how much I end up liking this genre. The highs on this album are just as high as the last one, but there are slightly fewer of them. However, the number of skippable tracks has dropped drastically. There's nothing tedious like "Country Leaver", but it's hard to wait seven tracks between "We Used to Be Friends" and "The Last High". Still, I think this album's a grower.
If you look at the length of this entry, you might notice I devoted a lot more attention to Kathleen Edwards than the Dandys. She has such a hold on my mind right now, and I'm looking at the Failer cover again, seeing the gray photo of a possibly broken Chevy Suburban on the sort of road you'd find in rural Otsego county, maybe the south side of Old State Road, a two-lane road that's kind of straight, but not quite, with low hills keeping the road on its course, refusing to divulge just what's on the other side, with broken barbed wire hanging onto fenceposts that keep standing because it would be too much change and effort if they ever fell down. The album doesn't have a moment where heartbreak isn't lurking around the corners, like happiness is a reprieve. But no one's giving up, either. The characters in this album are always ready to pick themselves up to try again, and there's a respect for that ethic in the core of these songs. And the fact that there's any sort of ethic is what makes this album more truthful than anything the Dandy Warhols will ever play. So many of their songs sneer at the people who try too hard to be cool, but they don't offer anything else. They have the effortlessly cool vibe going, but that's because they don't seem to know how to do anything else or even believe that they could be anything else. Neither of these albums have much triumph in them, but Kathleen Edwards leaves room for the existence of joy and lovingkindness. The Dandys almost scoff at a joy that isn't really just chemically-induced euphoria. That's why they're cool to hear, but they aren't about to challenge me lyrically.
I'm feeling almost guilty about the way I left the store the other day. I found all sorts of products that I want to buy, but Failer reminds me that it's still just stuff. I won't be a more complete person with that Beth Orton album of remixes, however gorgeous the songs are. I'll be a more complete person when I meet someone interesting with whom I can really interact, or when I challenge myself to do better and make an effort at something. I need to remember the feeling I get when I do something hard and succeed. And get a haircut. Then it'll be all good, yo.
Stuff I Still Want, But Would Need Financing For:
DVD & Video
October 22, 2003 A column in the Michigan Daily has been rolling around in my head today. Joel Hoard argues that "under God" should be dropped. It's a position I agree with, but the author treats the other side so dismissively it makes you wonder why he takes up that much space on the editorial page. The case, to me, raises serious questions of how far the concept of "God" (with a capital or lower case "g") must be from school and the federal sphere in general.
The pledge case itself will probably result in the excising of "God" from the pledge, in accordance with the ruling already handed down by the 9th Circuit Court of Appeal. When kids are forced to acknowledge a deity, it usually and probably should be struck down. Sure, it doesn't specify Jesus, or the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, or Vishnu, but it demands a recognition that atheists shouldn't be required to give. Besides, "God" wasn't shoehorned into the pledge before the Eisenhower administration (1954). But I'll miss the rhythm of "one nation, under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all". At least the good stuff at the end gets to stay.
The column goes on to relate Hoard's fervent wish that "IN GOD WE TRUST" be removed from our coinage. I don't agree on this one. "IN GOD WE TRUST" first appeared on the two-cent piece in 1864. You can read the history of the motto here. It hasn't appeared on every coin since then, but its been in use for almost 140 years. Just because something's old doesn't mean you should continue to use it without question, but you should think long and hard before doing away with it. Constitutionally, I think this case would be a lot murkier. No one is being required to swear fealty to any deity, "GOD" is in all caps, so you can't say it's necessarily a Judeo-Christian form, and the definition of "we" is ambiguous. Sure, a reasonable person might assume the "we" in question to be the citizens of the United States, or the people using the coinage, but nowhere is it explicit. One could also rationally assume it refers to the Congress in 1863 that initially authorized it or the Congress of 1908 that made it mandatory or the 1956 Congress that made it the national motto. I think it would really be a shame to see it cast aside. As the Mint struggles to combat counterfeiters around the world by turning our bills different colors, the greenback becomes less distinct. A way to keep it uniquely American is to retain our motto. I think we should replace our national motto "IN GOD WE TRUST" with "E PLURIBUS UNUM". "Out of many, one" is a much better description of America. Like C.J. Cregg said this evening, "Everybody here came from somewhere else, somewhere less free". You might have come ten or twelve thousand years ago on the Bering Land Bridge or last week on Emirates Air, but someone decided that America offered a better life and chose to entwine their destiny with that of their new land. "E PLURIBUS UNUM" doesn't mean that we don't disagree, or that we act with a single mind, but it means that everyone has a voice, as expressed by someone they and their neighbors chose to represent them.
June 28, 2003
I finally saw Punch-Drunk Love last night, and I actually enjoyed an Adam Sandler movie. He gave a remarkable performance seething with tightly repressed and compressed rage as Barry Eagan and Emily Watson gives remarkable depth to a role with only a bare minimum of personality actually sketched out in the script, supplementing everything through reactions and glances. Whoever it is that plays the motormouth sister that Watson's Lena works for is pitch-perfect as one of the seven suffocating personalities that held Barry's childhood hostage. It's Sandler's tight restraint that makes the scenes when he breaks out of it such a rush, so frightening and wonderful. Tonight SNL was a re-run with him singing the Chanukkah Song as the opening and I was hoping for some restraints to be applied to him. Note to Brittany Murphy: Stop with the coke and/or heroin binges and eat something. Seriously.
The other half of the personalities on display for me this weekend was Jim Carrey in Me, Myself, and Irene. It was markedly inferior to Punch-Drunk Love, but reasonably entertaining due to Renee Zellweger. I still kept thinking how much I'd rather be watching Nurse Betty, but I don't resent the two hours I spent on this movie. Traylor Howard's character just annoyed me. So MENSA girl isn't smart enough or sophisticated enough to understand what her husband actually said versus what the loudmouthed dwarf limo driver / tenured professor at Brown heard? All aboard, the Willing Suspension of Disbelief Train has started rolling out of town. Sloppy exposition always bugs me and turns me against the rest of the movie.
June 20, 2003
I'm always getting in on the action a little late. I'm just behind the curve of cool on good bands, and I find out about great TV shows just a little too late. It happened with "X-Files", and it's happened again with "Buffy the Vampire Slayer". Oh ye of the off-putting title, why did it take re-runs to get me interested? Season 5 just ended on F/X and (thank goodness) Season 6 is now beginning. I love recording the two episodes per day that F/X shows and watching them at night. Not only can I skip the commercials, it just seems like Buffy was meant for night.
I knew there was something about TV that I was missing, and I've realized that it's characters I care about. Outside of "The West Wing", there aren't too many. There isn't a comedy out there with characters that are more than a vague collection of quirks, and that's what I miss. I want to worry about what happens to them, and that goes very much against the grain of what a sitcom seems to be about. Amelie hasn't made it to the screen as a TV show, and if it did it would end up looking like "Dharma and Greg" for the sake of American consumption.
Tonight I got the Season 5 finale and Season 6 opener. After making it through the burdens placed on the characters in Season 5, I got to the cliffhanger, thankful that I wouldn't have to wait three months to find out what happens (like I'm in the middle of for West Wing) and all of a sudden the look of the show has jumped back several years and I'm panicked that Season 6 isn't available yet and I'll have no idea what happens unless I break down and read the Television Without Pity recap and then I realize they're just flashing through five years of episodes and I'm hugely relieved until the episode actually starts. Then the characters move and I worry about people who never existed. After we get to the ending of the episode and another whale of a cliffhanger I'm wired and have nowhere to go with all this. I need something to get me down from this, and network TV at 12:15AM isn't about to help. Ahh, my Sports Night DVD's, all is not lost. The episodes "Louise" and "Thespis" ease me down, and I think I can confront sleep on its own terms. June 19, 2003
Dance Fever
Tonight was my sister's annual dance recital. Half the show is enjoyable, half I live in fear of. It's nearly three hours of only the safest music possible. The little kids always do the same old numbers to the same old tunes sung by people who sound like Megan Mullalley and Joyce DeWitt on helium. I'll denote every song that sounds like this with an asterisk, just because they hurt that much more. The dancing is always very well done when regarding the ages of the performers, and the high school students are always superb, but the music . . .
Sing, Sing, Sing - Ahh, an old favorite. That growl in the trumpet riff is terrific and its a natural for a dance.
Lost Highway:
Lost and Found Volume 1
Beth Orton:
Daybreaker and
The Other Side of Daybreak
Blake Babies:
Earwig or
Sunburn
Juliana Hatfield:
Beautiful Creature
Barenaked Ladies:
Everything to Everyone
Whiskeytown
Stranger's Almanac
Fiona Apple:
untitled new album
Chef! Volumes 1 & 2
The Vicar of Dibley: The
Divine Collection
The West Wing: Season One
Alias: Seasons One and Two
Mystery Science Theater 300
Box Set, Vol. 3, especially.
Buffy The Vampire Slayer,
Season 1 and
Season 3
Pledging Allegiance
A Tale of Two Schizos
Thank you, VCR
Don't Let the Sun Go Down on Me - Not even the Elton John version. Oh well. Time passes without hurting.
Runaround Sue - Way to go Dion. Maybe this won't be so bad.
Boogie Baby* - And then there it comes. And it isn't good. The five year olds seem to be having fun, almost.
Seasons of Love - From Rent, a decent show tune. I could go for these all night.
Angels Standing By - Jewel, we need to talk. This is pretentious crap. I'd much rather have pop tune type crap. You vocalizing in a duet with
yourself over acoustic guitar makes me wish you still lived in a car.
Animal Crackers - In the twelve or so recitals I've gone to, this has been in more than eight of them. Been there, done that, have the endorsement on my passport. Can we move on?
Crawling - Can we go back? Linkin Park sucks, aggressively. The tempo and dark tone would make "Angel" by Massive Attack so much more appropriate. You still get distorted guitars and thumping bass, but with a decent song attached to it.
Dancing Queen - Oh good, Abba. Wait, hold on. Yes, I'm glad it's Abba. Wow.
Wishin' and Hopin' - This is so the opposite of a female empowerment song. It's message seems to be "If you pretend to like what your boyfriend does and make him the center of your universe and be all around passive, maybe he'll fit you into his schedule, if you're lucky."
Kids In America - This song should have been covered by Hole a long time ago. Courtney Love could give "We're the kids in America" the sneer it
demands to make it subversive.
Coppelia - Standard classical ballet number. Whee.
Black Magic - Rosemary Clooney, with a bit of zip. More than passable.
Reflection - Bland pop from the Disney movie "Mulan". You can tell it's not from "Pocahontas" from the random pseudo-Chinese flourishes.
Sonata No. 2 - No, not Tesh, please! Sonatas should not sound like a lousy opening theme! Did you know that he's an evil space alien?
(Let There Be) Peace On Earth - Vince Gill wants peace, but where's his roadmap? I mean, it's a wonderful sentiment, but he gives no suggestions
as to how we should accomplish this. This song hurts to listen to because it's so bad.
The Sound that Makes the World Go Round - Electronica / World Music blend. I like it! It's got a beat, and you can dance to it . . . in outfits
that are vertically divided into black velour and shiny silver halves.
Aria - Yanni too? What kind of sick, sadistic person came up with this?
I'm Just a Little Black Rain Cloud - Woohoo, it's Pooh bearing acceptable children's music!
Big Man On Mulberry Street - Billy Joel, if you are in fact the Big Man, shouldn't you have more than one horn riff at your disposal?
Walk This Way - Alas, no Run-DMC. Still, they should have turned up the volume a bit on this one.
Adiemus - So New-Agey that I believe it must have Enya in here somewhere. No artist is given in the program, and I don't remember what the announcement is, but it's got plenty of panflute.
Pretty Little Ponies - Kenny Loggins is nowhere near the danger zone. He's aiming for Scarborough Fair and ends up in Scarborough, Ontario where he catches SARS and dies and everyone is happy because he can't ever play this song again.
Boogie Woogie Jitterbug* - Children dance. We clap. Jazz is mentioned.
Shelter - Nowhere near Stonesville, this sounds vaguely like a bad Sarah McLachlan track.
Charleston Pearls* - More children. They're adorable, but they need a better soundtrack than warmed-over '20's-type pop.
All That Jazz - Wow, it's a pride of Catherine Zeta-Joneses! Quite entertaining. Thanks, "Chicago".
Heaven Hop* - From "Anything Goes", it would go down much easier without the hideous singing. I mean, the dancers are 13+. I think they deserve it after being in the program for seven years or so. And could we please exit the '20's?
Mack the Knife - Now THIS is a terrific song. The crazy lyrics about Stabby McStab with the hep cat music, yeah there you go.
Real Live Girl - I got out my program to write in it "Manilow must die!" and "This hurts so much". I wished for the gift of temporary deafness at that moment. I hate, hate, hate, hate, hate this song so much. It should be banned as audio torture.
Smooth Criminal - I hated the last song so much that I enjoyed Alien Ant Farm's version combined with modern dance. Yes, that's how bad it is.
Under the Sea - Not the delightful version from "The Little Mermaid", but some sort of remake that sounds like the Baha Men drafted the singer from the Vengaboys and Shaggy's production team.
Invincible - Michael Jackson makes a welcome entrance. This song wouldn't find its way onto one of his albums in his prime, but it's decent.
My First Ride - To paraphrase MST3K ("Squirm"), "Before this song I had a generally favorable opinion of white people." It's hideously awful.
Aaron Carter steals rap and rock (directly from "Purple Haze", no less) from the black man and gives him squat in return but this crap. I weep.
You Should Be Dancing - And now I'm happy it's the Bee Gees. At least it's almost over.
Moondance - Hooray for Van Morrison! And it's all over! Yes! I'm alive! But my poor ears . . .
