October 6, 2004
Michael Stipe: Hopped Up On Goofballs
Went to the Bright Eyes / REM / John Fogarty / Springsteen concert on Sunday. It was a benefit for a ridiculous assortment of Democratically-aligned political groups: The Vote For Change Tour, presented by MoveOnPAC (the PAC arm of MoveOn.org), benefiting America Coming Together. Before this, I'd never been to a concert at Cobo Arena. It feels a lot smaller than the Palace and a lot bigger than Hill. Mostly it feels like one end of an oblong arena was chopped off. The sound guys never had the mix right. There was way too much high end. The wall behind the stage was reflecting a lot of the treble, so that Bright Eyes' set really suffered. Besides the fact that Conor Oberst isn't a precise singer anyway, the chords from his acoustic guitar just jumbled together. Note to Conor: Lay off the cigarettes. They're ruining your voice.
REM played next, opening with "The One I Love". It might come as a shock to some of you, but I've never been a huge fan of REM. I've always liked them, but I've never been to a concert of theirs and the only REM album I own is Monster. Still, I was a big fan of Michael Stipe in The Adventures of Pete & Pete, where he played Sludegesicle vendor Captain Scrummy. To older Pete: "You look like a bona fide Sludgesicle man."
They opened up with "The Great Beyond", which sounded a lot better than the Bright Eyes set. Acoustically, REM fared the best of any of the acts. The warm sound of their guitars and synths were in a low enough register, along with Michael Stipe's voice, that the earlier harshness was filtered out. They played some songs from Around the Sun, including "Leaving New York" and "Wanderlust". Springsteen came out at the end of their set to join in on "Bad Day" and "Man On The Moon", both of which were superbly performed. Throughout the set, Stipe bounced and flailed, perhaps hopped up on goofballs. Though he looks like Matthew on Newsradio shaking out the sillies, somehow it works for him; I have no idea why.
I had no idea what was happening when Springsteen and the E Street Band took the stage. An acoustic guitar sprang up, strummed like a mandolin. The tune seemed familiar, but it just wouldn't resolve itself in my head until " . . . O'er the ramparts we watched . . ." flitted through my mind. Of course; the anthem. Always an easy way to get the crowd to its feet. With that, the band launched into "Born In the USA"; one of those songs that, despite the '80's arena-rock heritage, still manages to come across with real power and authority. A few songs later, John Fogarty joined the festivities for a three-song set, including "Fortunate Son". (Note: If you ever want to hear a tremendously passionate cover of this song, find a bootleg of Sleater-Kinney's live version.) The end of the concert was loaded with great material, including "The Rising", a cover of "Because the Night" with Michael Stipe, and "Born to Run" with all. For the second encore, they rolled out a terrific cover of Nick Lowe's (What's So Funny 'Bout) Peace, Love & Understanding. The Dixie Chicks made it over for the final song of the night, Patti Smith's "People Have The Power", which she wrote in Detroit after being inspired by Diego Rivera's murals at the DIA.
September 30, 2004
Career Fair-to-Middling
Dan: You know, sometimes it's worth it - taking all the pies in the face. Sometimes you come through it feeling good.
Casey: Yes.
Dan: And how was your day?
Casey: Sometimes you just stand there, hip-deep in pie
--Sports Night, "Dana And The Deep Blue Sea"
Career Fair, my least favorite time of the year. There's nothing quite like standing in line for 20 minutes only to be dismissed in 30 seconds when they get a look at your resume. At least this year they're actually hiring. The worst is always talking to GE. They manage to drizzle disappointment everywhere. Rolls-Royce is like that too. "Look on our three-spool turbofans ye mighty and despair." Lockheed is at least always friendly. I wound up talking to the same guy as last year and he actually remembered me. On day one, I made gave out ten resumes. It took three hours and I hated every minute of it, except for the part where United Technologies gave me a t-shirt. I'm not the most outgoing person in the world, so talking to random people is an effort even without the likelihood of the brush-off.
Career Fair was over at 4:00, so I finally got a chance to eat something. I had my ticket for the Sarah Harmer / Josh Ritter show at The Ark, and I wasn't about to go back to Grosse Pointe and come back. To quote Jay Sherman, "To the multiplex!!!" I went to the 5:00 showing of Garden State at the dependable Goodrich 16 out on Jackson Road.
Garden State may be the best movie I've seen since Lost In Translation. Most movies that begin with Coldplay's "Don't Panic" are going to get my approval. I also really like the way Zach Braff's character and Natalie Portman's balance each other out; as Braff breaks out of his catatonia, Portman's engine backs off redline. This should be a movie that withstands repeated viewings. There are motifs within the movie that are big enough to be felt the first time through, but quiet enough to warrant further investigation.
Whenever I go to a movie these days, I keep thinking about how much mood and audience play into the enjoyment of a movie. My cinematic high water mark is Amelie; I've never enjoyed watching a movie more. It doesn't mean I haven't seen better movies, I've just never had a better time than when I saw Amelie. I was bleary-eyed from frustrating homework, I'd heard some good things about the movie, I didn't know exactly what to expect. The crowd at the State Theater was big and ready to love the film. The part where Amelie turns around in the movie theater? 80% of the people at the State did the same thing at the same time.
July 30, 2004
Up North, Pt. 1
We take a break from the usual blogging for two weeks of bliss in Northern Michigan and I present this travelogue. Vacation started this year with my brother and I getting into my dad's Pacifica and pointing it north on I-75. Oakland County is still out to get me, so they threw up a roadblock right at the I-75 interchange. Dodging that, we were OK until Genessee County, when the orange barrel brigade was out in force. They dogged us through Saginaw and Bay Counties too, but that was the last of the construction. Of course, my brother didn't mind any of this -- he was watching The West Wing on the in-car DVD system. I didn't get to see any of it, but I was able to listen, which is much better than the radio.
We met up with our parents and my sister in Gaylord just in time to head over to Charlevoix for dinner at Tapawingo, which was quite good. To get there, we passed through East Jordan, a foundry town. The surprising part is that the foundry and the cement plant are both still open. The foundry's owners have made a lot of high-tech investment in the plant in the past few years, so it might even survive this decade. I know it wouldn't be the same to pass by a manhole cover and not see that East Jordan imprint on it.
Mackinac Island
On Sunday morning we went up to Mackinac Island. I took a picture of a freighter belonging to Lower Lakes Towing from our ferry using a pair of binoculars with a digital camera in them that my dad received as a door prize at a golf tournamnt. I couldn't identify exactly which one it is, but I can tell you that it's probably 75 years old and if I had to guess, I'd say the freighter is the Maumee.
We climbed up to the top of the fort to witness a cannon demonstration and I took the middle two pictures. The present fort dates from the 1780's, though most of the buildings are only from the 1870's, due to the ever-present danger of wooden buildings catching on fire. The fort was only taken once, at the beginning of the War of 1812. The American colonel had only 59 men to hold the fort and protect the town, while the invading British and their Native American allies numbered in the hundreds. The British also had the advantage of knowing that war had been declared. No one had bothered to inform the garrison on Mackinac Island.
Empire Bluffs
We made it to Glen Arbor on Monday, the rest of which was spent unpacking and getting settled in. My brother beat me into the lake by about thirty seconds to claim that title this year. Despite the relatively cold year we've been having, the lake was pretty warm. Or at least it wasn't that cold.
On Tuesday we woke up, went into town and played tennis on the city courts. After lunch, we decided to go over to Empire Bluffs and take the hiking trail there to the lake. For the view it offers, the trail is relatively easy (and only three quarters of a mile long). It rises the whole way through a forest that's primarily composed of beech. About halfway through, you get to see a flash of Sleeping Bear Point and South Bar Lake through the trees. Then begins the toughest part of the trail, a long, winding set of earthen steps cut into the hillside, emerging 400 feet above the water. To the north lies Sleeping Bear Point and South Manitou Island. To the south is Point Betsie, site of a working Victorian-era lighthouse.
Pyramid Point
Pyramid Point consists of some of the tallest, least stable sandy bluffs in Sleeping Bear Dunes National Lakeshore. When last we trod on the mile-long trail, five years ago, a major collapse had recently sent tons of sand down the 400-foot-high bluff to land in 25-foot piles at the lake's edge. We didn't know about the collapse at the time, so my brother, my aunt, and myself made the descent (slowly) to the bottom of the bluff. The drunk guy in front of us took the quick way down the bluff after losing his footing. Somehow he escaped a broken neck. Our climb back up took quite a while, as a sixty-degree ascent generally would. This time we decided that the hike from the trailhead to the top of the bluff was enough.
The point lies within the Port Oneida Historical District. The port is long gone, but the agriculture that grew up around it still survives, to an extent. Many of the farms have turned to horseback riding to bring in revenue and others have been turned into summer camps.
Alligator Hill
Alligator Hill looms over the north shore of Little Glen Lake, greatly resembling the reptile for which it was named. My brother and I had never attempted this hike before, so this was a new experience. It was different from most trails we've taken in that the hike terminated not at the lake, but wound around the spine of the hill, far from the water.
The trail begins right next to a concrete structure recessed into the hillside, formed from five thick, vertical slabs of concrete with a long, mostly overgrown slab for the roof. What this most reminded me of was a series of World War II U-boat pens, somehow plucked from Le Havre and set down in Northern Michigan. According to the trail marker, these were once charcoal kilns belonging to DH Day's lumber company. Waste from the sawmills was brought here to be dumped into the kilns to be turned into the familiar briquettes. My brother tells me that the Kingsford of Kingsford Charcoal was actually the guy in charge of Ford's lumber company. Since Ford hated waste so much, the company developed the process of creating charcoal briquettes.
The trail moved from the sandy terrain of the trailhead to the firmer hill soil and from a small strip of grassland directly into the woods that have reclaimed the hill. Pines and beeches mixed in a way no lumber company would have sown. Here and there we found evidences of the horses that are allowed to use the trail. Briefly we emerged back into a field of grass, showing evidence of perhaps an old logging road. After rather more than a mile, we climbed the steepest part of the trail to the Lake Michigan overlook. We moved further on and pines took over the landscape as we walked to the Glen Lake overlook. Finishing back at the trailhead, we made pretty good time on the 4.2 mile hike.
South Manitou Island
In our second week, me made our annual trip by ferry out to South Manitou Island. After the 15-mile ferry ride and lunch, we set out on the hike to the shipwreck on the southwest corner of the island. The Francisco Morazan is the most recent and most visible of the approximately 150 wrecks in the Manitou Passage. She came to grief on November 29, 1960 in a blinding snowstorm. The 246' freighter ran straight onto the shoal a short distance from the shoreline. The captain, his pregnant wife, and the crew all escaped the wreck, but the ship was a total loss. Now it's a roost for cormorants.
We walked back along the shoreline. Never have I seen so many schoooners sailing Lake Michigan. OK, so there were only three, but the lake isn't exactly teeming with schooners. The Inland Seas, out of Sutton's Bay, could easily be identified by its dull, red sails. We also saw the vessel pictured above, which may be the Manitou, appropriately enough. Note that she appears to be the same vessel pictured farther above, moored in Mackinac Island's harbor.
We reached the lighthouse at 3:00, in time for the penultimate tour of the day, and ascended the hundred feet to the catwalk around the top. The original lighthouse from this location, built in 1837, burned down. So they built a second one. That one also burned down. But the third one stayed up. This is attributable to the use of non-flammable building materials. I'd say that was a good call, given that it was used to house a big flaming lamp. A third-order Fresnel lens in former times directed the light so that it could be seen from seventeen miles away. After the light was decommissioned by the Coast Guard it stood idle for over a decade before the Park Service took custody, during which vandals broke in and smashed everything they could find, including the priceless lens.
Dune Climb
For the first time ever my sister decided she wanted to hike the dunes all the way to the water with my brother and I. Most people only make it up the first part of the first dune, or to the very top of it (where the first picture here was taken. Note Alligator Hill on the left). Then they see that there are another half-dozen dunes just like it before the water and give up. People taking the trail are advised that it usually takes 3-4 hours to complete, and that it's a 3.5-mile hike over sand. This year, we made it in a little over two hours, including our usual pause at the lake. The trail comes out to the north of the bluffs, so it's only about an eight-foot drop to the shore, instead of 400.
The worst part is always the return. Nothing to look forward to but more climbs and hotter sand. A couple of years ago we had to turn back after only half an hour because I nearly got heat stroke, in spite of the huge amount of water we were carrying. This year was a lot cooler, thankfully, and the sand didn't quite make it to "glassify".
Miller Hill
The lookout on Miller Hill is the only one my brother and I went to where we were able to simply drive there. At least it was simple on the map. It's another thing barreling down seasonal dirt roads in the middle of the county. It really was a comedy of errors getting there. It started when we had some time to kill before dinner and me wanting some pictures of the countryside. Our parents were gone to Leland to do some shopping, so my brother and I got in the Suburban, grabbed a map, and headed out.
I pulled off of M-22 to take some pictures, but there wasn't really anywhere to park but the shoulder, and that just didn't seem legal. We looked for a sidestreet to put the car on, but there's really not much of that. As we were rambling along, I pulled off on some road I remembered from the map. I asked the navigator if I could get to the Miller Hill lookout from there, and, after some searching, he decided we could. It was a two-lane gravel road, so we weren't going to be doing any more than 30, but it wasn't too bad. We, of course, twice blew by the road we needed to turn on because it looked like someone's driveway.
Pretty soon the quality of that road was well under that of just about anybody's driveway. It looked impassable in any but the driest conditions; a single-track dirt road made of the native sand and clay where you're always looking for a spot to pull over in case anyone's coming the other way. The big Suburban scrabbled up the hillside, down the hillside, and around the curves without even a glimpse of another car (thankfully). Then we came to a spot where what might have been a road seemingly joined with ours, so we kept going, waiting for the next road for us to turn on. Of course, the unmarked sort-of road was really what we were looking for, which we figured out when we made it out of the woods again and back to a blacktop road. So we backtracked, and eased our way up the steep path.
We found the turn-out for the overlook without any trouble. The overlook itself only exists because of the right-of-way for the power lines that feed Glen Arbor, and it makes for a dramatic image as the plunge down the steep side of the hill. Miller Hill is the farthest east you can go and still see over Sleeping Bear Point to the lake on the other side. When we were done, we eased the dusty Suburban down the hill and drove back for dinner.
June 16, 2004
Fever To Tell
Happy Bloomsday, all.
I picked up the latest edition of Spin today and started reading the cover story on the Yeah Yeah Yeahs, which got me thinking about how I fell in love with this band. I'd heard good things about them in the music press, so they were on my radar, and I'd even watched the video for "Date With The Night" on Launch, but they were overly trendy and overly weird. Everything about them screamed "Art school!" and I couldn't quite figure out if they were ever going to say something or get to the point. I mean, it's not like I demand that all rock Mean Something, but that I should be able to discern where they're coming from and what their music is about. Also, getting past the dissonance and yelped vocals takes some doing. Even Sleater-Kinney vocals are more reigned in than this.
As with most breakthroughs, mine came late at night. I was slumped over a dispiriting linear feedback assignment with the TV on as background noise. When VH1 put on something especially nauseating, I flipped down a channel and saw that the Yeah Yeah Yeahs were about to actually get a video played on MTV, so I hung out there for a while.
"Maps" is an amazing, riveting performance video. It's such a disconnect from everything surrounding it on MTV. Starting out with silence in a venue that looks like the local Masonic hall's basement breeds an uneasy stillness and a tension that builds as first Nick Zinner's guitar and then Brian Chase's drums kick in. Here's the best metaphor I can think of for Karen 0's vocals - It's like she's filling up a bucket of water and putting it on top of a slightly cracked door. You know that sometime in the next minute or two that bucket will get knocked over and the water will just spill out over everything.
That release comes when she gets to the second chorus. Zinner's guitar goes up a couple of octaves as the chorus washes everything away. It's such a feeling of exhiliration, like doing 80 out in the country through green fields on the highway with a blue sky and a few scraps of clouds. In the video, the lights come up behind the band, warm reddish-pinks that wash out much of the detail as the camera swirls around a transfixing O. When the chorus ends, the guitar explodes into a solo/bridge as Karen O snaps through a series of poses. The fury of the solo subsides and the camera moves in on her. In a moment you can barely make out, and can't distinguish at all on launch, she sheds an actual tear before going back into the chorus.
The camera then pulls away from the band to show the crew and the sparse audience. Some barely-discernable head-bobbing and a girl tapping the beat on her leg are all that come across, but somehow I feel that they're as riveted to this as I am. The song revs up for an ending interplay between the drums and guitar, then the drums fade away and the camera pulls back to where we came in.
The choruses are where that little shiver goes up your spine to let you know you've found something really special, and the bridge is electrically charged. But those still moments just before the third chorus just dropped my jaw when I saw the video for the first time.
One more thing: This issue (June) comes with a free sampler CD featuring a song ("Tick") and the video for "Maps" by the Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Go get it.
June 14, 2004
New music! Woohoo!
The Border's outlet has bestowed upon me many gifts in the last couple of weeks, for the low, low price of $7 per CD.
AC/DC - Back in Black
A hole in my collection has now been filled. Back in Black has certainly supplied the finest Alias teaser ever recorded. This album also reminds me why metal was cool in the first place - the riffs were tight, the songs were fun, and there was a lingering sense of musicality instead of the grind so prominent in nü metal.
Barenaked Ladies - Everything to Everyone
I knew I was going to buy this sometime, so I might as well get it for a good price. I would urge the Ladies to stop writing stupid songs. Wordplay is all well and good, but I draw the line at songs about chimps. It sounds like they recorded it for a children's CD and then slapped it on their album. Fun does not equal good. A song like "Maybe Katie" is infinitely better, and I might grow to like this album more after a few more listens.
Nelly Furtado - Folklore
This album is at least a solid A-. Ms. Furtado backs off some of the annoying traits of her debut and crafts an album where her reach ever so slightly exceeds her grasp. It feels like Folklore pulls in three directions: towards hip-hop, towards more conventional pop, and towards Portuguese fado. On her debut, the songs were often informed by fado; here it stands on its own. The hip-hop and pop elements remain more closely tied together, as one would expect. The first two tracks, "One-Trick Pony", and the similar-sounding "Powerless" kick the album off with a jolt of energy and the best use of banjo this year outside a Del McCoury album. The third track, "Explode" throws everything into an even higher gear, driven by the strings of the Kronos Quartet. Even as the song doesn't quite work, when it spins towards the end, the repeated refrain of "We're counting the stars" rescues it, releasing the built up tension of the last 3.5 minutes. "Fresh Off The Boat" is her immigrant chronicle, and I'm a sucker when she breaks out the Portugés, as she also does in "Força". The album tails off at the end, as the energy goes mainly downhill after "Força". But "Island of Dreams", with Caetano Veloso, a national treasure of Brazil, is a very rewarding listen.
Sigur Rós - ()
() is an otherworldly listen. The strange vocalizations, the bowed guitars, the loooong songs, the inability to tell whether or not they're singing in Icelandic or the made-up language of Hopelandish - it makes for a bizarre experience. Whoever designed the packaging for this album deserves a Grammy(tm). The outer sleeve, made of thin, translucent white plastic, has the band name in small script at the very bottom and the title as a cut-out, through which you can see the cover of the case inside. In this region, the artwork on the case seems to be the negative of a drip painting resembling a close-up of a shock of tall grass. Removing the sleeve and the disc inside, you can see that the entire case and the liner notes are also translucent. All of this lends the album an ethereal air. The liner notes, on their rice paper, consist only of more paintings, with no information on track listings or band members or anything else. The CD itself seems to be a blank white at first, but tipping it to its side in direct light reveals a pair of roughly imprinted parentheses.
Never has the packaging to an album been so in tune with what it contains. The lightness, the fragility, and the cryptic nature of this packaging are also found in the music. This CD is nearly perfect to listen to when concentrating on something else. The soundscapes are recognizable as songs, but correspond more to movements in a pair of avant-garde symphonies. The break between these symphonies comes with nearly a minute of total silence in the middle of the album. The total running time on this album is over 70 minutes for the eight tracks, so these songs are really long, but worth checking out if you like ambient music.
Wilco - Summerteeth
I haven't had much time to form a distinct impression of Summerteeth, but through the one listen I've had so far it seems to validate its reputation as a transitional album. A.M. was a straight mix of alt-country and country-rock, while Being There was a quantum leap harboring elements of country, folk, pop, rock, and even funk in a jumble that sprawled across two albums, a messy sort of masterpiece. Yankee Hotel Foxtrot is an adventure in noise-pop, rock, and straight-up pop. Summerteeth is the bridge between Being There and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot. Mostly a folk-rock record, it hints at the waves of feedback that are to come and looks back at the lilting guitars that made up so much of A.M. and Being There. Through it all, Jeff Tweedy's voice scratches and breaks in an inimitable way. This is a record from which a lot of their concert material has been lifted, and I think it comes across better from the stage. The tension in the slow songs becomes more pronounced, which helps on a quieter record, although the ultimate example of that, "Reservations", comes from Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.
Lucinda Williams - Car Wheels on a Gravel Road
It feels like nothing's ever easy for Lucinda Williams but playing a guitar, that comes across as effortless throughout this record. What doesn't sound as easy is singing. She seems to be stretching for every note more than two steps from her normal speaking voice. It's a strain that suits her material well, as the polish of the instrumentation plays against it to great effect. This record is a classic of alt-country, and justifiably so.
Car Wheels is also a lesson in Louisiana (pronounced Lewzyanna) geography in a ramble through the lower Mississippi. We drive through Baton Rouge, Lake Ponchatrain, Lake Charles, Lafayette, Jackson, Rosedale, West Memphis, Nacogdoches, and through the mythos of the Delta. We meet snake handlers, drunks, suicides, the devil himself, and all sorts of others. The glitz of New Orleans and even Memphis is shunned for the bayous and backroads. It's not so much that the focus of this album is on rural life, but on the spaces in between: in between cities, in between relationships, and in between living and dying. Take, for example, "Drunken Angel". It's clearly about a dead musician, and I think it's about Gram Parsons, after his album Grievous Angel. Williams asks, "Why'd you ever let go of your guitar?", a question that can be laid at the feet of many musicians. He may be dead, but his music still lives, keeping him attached to this life. As an aside, Parsons wasn't nearly the first in his family to die an untimely death. His father killed himself when Gram was 12 and his mother died of alcohol poisoning the day he graduated from high school.
May 27, 2004
That was the TV season that was
Goodbye sweeps, hello summer filler. Unless you're watching FOX. Then you get new crap that hasn't been expressly stamped as filler. "Quintuplets" seems ill-conceived. "North Shore" could be entitled "The Reverse O.C., But Without the Wit". And of my favorite shows on TV, how many will get summer repeats? Just one. And I don't know for how long "Joan" will be allowed re-runs. But hey, we had some season finales. Warning: Spoilers.
Alias
Finally, finally, finally we get to see Lauren die. Or do we? When she fell into the open mine shaft the foley artists forgot the plop when she hit the ground. Or did they? It looks like Syd and Vaughn will be together next season, but the cliffhanger seems to put the emphasis bak on the Spy Family. With a little luck, I think they can recapture the magic of Season 2 (Lena Olin, please come back). With Alias not returning until next January, I really, really hope that they get the time to plot out the season like they need. This season seemed thrown together, like they didn't really think through the consequences of what they were doing. The finale itself wasn't that terrific, and it really wasn't helped by the three week break between the penultimate episode and this one. It was more about getting past this season than setting up the next one or making a great stand-alone episode.
Joan of Arcadia
The craziest season finale I saw this year belonged to Joan. The penultimate episode showed many of the things that make me watch and the finale threatened to turn it all on its head. We reunited with the various avatars (Hooray for Mrs. Landingham God!) and it's clear that Joan's heading for a major crisis of faith. The season was brought full-circle in a way, and major plots were set up next season for nearly all the major characters. Will's atheism has been shaken, Joan's belief in her personal communion with the Almighty may have been caused by Lyme disease, and Helen may be going back to the church. These counter-currents are impressively juggled, although while watching the first half of this episode I was by no means convinced that they'd be able to tie it all together. The ending? Completely awesome, well played. When I saw I Am go up to the rooftop, I thought we were about to get a Neo-at-the-end-of-The Matrix moment.
I watched "Jump", episode 12, the other day and I'm more convinced that this episode is a bookend to that one, and thus to the second half of the season as a whole in addition to its role in relation to the whole season. Starting in "Jump", Joan and Adam take a major turn in their relationship following a major revelation about Adam. In "Silence", they take a major turn due to a revelation from Joan. Luke is again pursuing a relationship with Grace, Helen ends up in church, and both begin with a dream sequence in which God talks through Adam or Joan.
This show really is the one I'm most impatient to see back next season. All the characters, except for Kevin, were brought to crossroads by this episode. Joan, it seems safe to say, will be experiencing a crisis of faith. I wonder how she'll handle it. She can choose to say that here interaction with the Almighty was merely a series of hallucinations due to Lyme disease. At the beginning of the series she was an avowed atheist, and this would allow her to return to the way she viewed the world before we met her. I don't think that the show is about to let her linger in that territory for much more than half the season, but a step in this direction could bear fruit by allowing other plot lines more room in which to work themselves out. I think we might first see Joan at the start of next season in full-on God-denying mode, but she'll slowly be pulled back to the flock by her knowledge of the ways in which God's instructions made things turn out for the best.
The O.C.
I really shouldn't admit to watching this show, but I do. This finale was the one that most brought its series full circle: Ryan's back in Chino, Marissa's drinking, and Seth's alone. The end montage set to Jeff Buckley's version of "Hallelujah" was wonderful and, although it's kind of taking the easy way out by using a cover that so effectively conveys a sense of desolation, I fell for it. In a season that raced through story ideas like they were about to get cancelled, it was six minutes of restraint that let the story breathe and allowed the audience to consider the characters. It's a device that can't possibly work every episode, but it was welcome in this one. And I can't mention this montage without calling attention to Kelly Rowan. Her breakdown after Ryan left was a wrenching performance that highlights why she's so valuable to this show.
The West Wing
Poor Fitz, that old so-and-so. It's hazardous to be a secondary character on a John Wells show in sweeps. Just ask Andi and Donna. At least it didn't involve a tank or a helicopter. Maybe next season will be more interesting than this one. If not for two episodes - "The Supremes" and "No Exit" - I might give up on this series. Still, it's not one I'm planning on taping - yet. The good news for me is that The O.C. moves next season to Thursdays, avoiding the current conflict. As for the eternal question "Will Josh and Donna ever get together?" I ask, "Why not?" The shark is long since jumped.
May 19, 2004
Waiting For Regis
Late Monday night / early Tuesday morning I decided to try the phone game before the current edition of Super Millionaire is over. I'd tried several times for the previous edition, but I never got 5/5. This time I did. I credit it this to a couple improvements in my technique: 1.) A phone with big buttons that aren't located on the handset. 2.) I wrote down a list of 1, 2, 3, 4 for each question before dialing. Of course, luck was important (getting questions I knew), but those two little things make playing the phone game a whole lot easier.
So that meant that this morning was spent mostly in nervous anticipation of a phone call that never came. As much as I told myself that the odds were stacked against my getting my shot at it, it still came as a disappointment when noon came around without a call. Of course, hopefully there will be a next time for all this.
May 17, 2004
Sunburn
Yesterday my family and I went over to Comerica Park to watch the Tigers take on the Rangers. It was a great day for baseball. It was warm, but not excessively so, and it was bright and clear with no threat of rain. We came in just as the first inning was ending (which I hate to do), but not a whole lot had happened yet. The Tigers sent the Rangers off in the second after allowing a run, but the Rangers never really threatened after that, despite putting together a decent collection of hits.
Omar Infante's solo home run in the bottom of the second put the Tigers up for good. If, however, the Tigers had lost by one run I would have blamed Alex Sanchez. He led off the third with a hard bunt down the first base line and outran the throw to the pitcher. Of course, being Alex Sanchez, he then immediately tried to steal second and was thrown out. Carlos Guillen then got a long single to the outfield which would have advanced Sanchez to third, in all probability, at which point the Tigers would have had two men on, no one out, and Pudge, Rondell White, and Bobby Higginson coming up. Instead, we managed to get only Guillen home before ending the inning. It was such a waste of a single. Anyway, for the rest of the game neither team could put together enough hits to get a man home, but that's not to say it was a pitchers' duel either. Perhaps the most impressive part of the game was its brevity. From start to finish, the game took only 2:35. There were few time-outs or conferences, which really helped move the game along.
I was also happy to see the Pistons pull out their game in New Jersey, despite a tight finish. I missed the tip, so when I finally got a chance to watch the game the Pistons were only down to New Jersey by a pair, instead of the 13-2 they started out at. After that start, they played great basketball for the remainder of the first half, building a 14-point lead at the half. New Jersey wasn't nearly out of it, and they caught fire in the third quarter, leading to a neck and neck fourth quarter until the Pistons put the game away in the final minute.
May 7, 2004
April and Everything After
Back at work, once again. Much has changed in my absence. Four of my co-workers from Engineering left between February and today (including one today). This from a six-person department. One of them used to be the welding manager before he got tired of that and migrated to engineering. I first worked here back in the summer of '99 in the IT department. About the second task I ever did in IT was to set up a new computer for him before he joined the company, so this seems like something of a milestone. The department seems a lot calmer these days. Ego-based clashes are now restricted, for the most part, to butting heads with the commercial managers, instead of last year's intra-office battles.
Since April passed without a blog entry, it must be time for a (brief?) recap:
April 2-4, St. Louis, MO: NAQT Inter-Collegiate Tournaments. I played on Michigan's B team, for which I am eminently qualified. The A team is not for me. The Division I questions this year were everything a nationals set should be. They were more academically focused than regionals and very well written. Of course, the academic focus hurts my personal stats since there's less general knowledge/crap for me to answer, but the fewer times my teammates groan the better. Bonus: At some random little restaurant in University City I sampled the Theakston's Old Peculier, a traditional Yorkshire ale I'd heard heralded on The Gunroom, and found it to be a wonderful brew that tastes like a deeper, darker Newcastle.
We nearly didn't make it out of St. Louis on Sunday morning. Our ride didn't to check his phone for messages Saturday night, so he never found out we wanted to be picked up at 6:45AM for our 8:30 flight out of Lambert International. The hour rolled around and we started to worry, so we called a cab and made it there in time to get on board.
April 9-11, Chicago, IL: Easter was spent in Chicago. I drove out on Friday afternoon/evening from Ann Arbor, picking my brother up in Albion on the way. It was such a battle just to get to Albion. Construction had sprung up in Chelsea, less than ten miles from Ann Arbor. It took me an extra half hour to get through the one-lane stretch. After that, though, I had no troubles. On Saturday we went down from Grayslake to the Art Institute of Chicago to ramble through that museum. I was on Impressionist overload by the time we finished. I've never seen so many Monet, Cezanne, Pisarro, and Degas paintings in such a short time. After Easter services and brunch on Sunday, we started back for Michigan. Other than an annoying interlude in Indiana, we didn't have any problems when I dropped my brother off in Albion. Of course I had yet to deal with the Chelsea construction. It took me an hour and a half to make it through this time. It's a good thing I had a phone with me, or I would have run mad.
April 16-18, Chattanooga, TN: TRASHionals 007: LAZENBY!!! was a tremendously fun experience. My team, the Charles Taylor All-Stars, proved that last year's seventh-place finish was no fluke by moving up the ladder to finish fifth this year. While in Chattanooga we went to go see Kill Bill: Vol. 2 and it was well worth the price of admission. The Best Girlfight Ever has some serious competition now. I flew down to Chattanooga on Friday, but we drove back on Sunday after the tournament ended at about 1 pm. Apart from some construction in Knoxville, TN, nothing really impeded our drive. I took over in southern Kentucky and drove for about 7.5 hours until I made it back home by 11:05pm, a ten-hour drive. This means that, even stopping for two meals plus an extra gas stop, we averaged 62 miles per hour. Not bad.
The Rest of April: Studying. Finals. Other things that sucked. Moving out of my apartment.
