na na na na na na na na FISHING!

Seriously, are we STILL making movies about Batman?

boring music geek stuff

There was a blog post on The A.V. Club last week that I found intriguing. You pick your favorite album (or an album by some other criteria of your choice) for every year in which you've lived. Obviously I'm doing it now myself. It's interesting before me because half of the years I have to go with were before I was even aware of what kind of music was coming out at the time, and half of the half remaining would be completely different I had picked them during that year. Metallica would have made the 1995 list if you'd asked me then. They're not on it now.

COMMENCE NERDAGE:

1983 - Talking Heads - Speaking in Tongues

1984 - Robyn Hitchcock - I Often Dream of Trains

1985 - Suzanne Vega - Suzanne Vega

1986 - Paul Simon - Graceland

1987 - U2 - The Joshua Tree

1988 - Talk Talk - Spirit of Eden

1989 - XTC - Oranges & Lemons

1990 - Depeche Mode - Violator

1991 - Slint - Spiderland

1992 - Aphex Twin - Selected Ambient Works 85-92

1993 - The Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream

1994 - Built to Spill - There's Nothing Wrong With Love

1995 - Sunny Day Real Estate - LP2

1996 - Weezer - Pinkerton

1997 - Radiohead - Ok Computer

1998 - Boards of Canada - Music Has the Right to Children

1999 - The Flaming Lips - The Soft Bulletin

2000 - Godspeed You Black Emperor! - Lift Your Skinny Fists Like Antennas to Heaven

2001 - Bjork - Vespertine

2002 - Wilco - Yankee Hotel Foxtrot

2003 - Sufjan Stevens - Michigan

2004 - Brian Wilson - Smile

2005 - Animal Collective - Feels

2006 - Scott Walker - The Drift

2007 - Of Montreal - Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer (that album still keeps growing on me)

2008 - Portishead - Third (so far)

Various things:

Years that make me want to choose more than one album (with alternates):

1986 - XTC - Skylarking

1991 - My Bloody Valentine - Loveless

1997 - Mogwai - Young Team, Stereolab - Dots and Loops, Built to Spill - Perfect From Now On

2000 - Radiohead - Kid A

2004- The Fiery Furnaces - Blueberry Boat

Years for which I would rather pick a movie than an album:

1990 - Goodfellas

I got the new Animal Collective EP, Water Curses, recently. Today I put the CD in my computer to listen to it. iTunes could not quite identify it:

"Multiple matches were found for this CD. Choose one:

Ace of Base - All That She Wants [single]
Animal Collective - Water Curses EP"

Uhh... all right.

Mike Myers

Mike Myers.

God, just fucking stop it. Seriously.

For fuck's sake, dude. I used to think of "Sprockets" in my head and recall it fondly. Now I think "Sprockets" and think "fucking Mike Myers sucks." I don't want to look it up on YouTube for fear that I might actually find it funny.

I mean, Christ, if it's not another fucking Austin Powers movie, it's another dip in the ol' cash well for Shrek. And now this Love Guru thing. God. I don't know what the hell that horseshit is, I just know every time I see a commercial for it on TV I want to punch Mike Myers in the throat.

And let's not forget YOU, America! Why on Earth do you people keep giving this idiot money? Don't you know that only lets him keep doing this? Don't you realize that when The Love Guru has a huge opening this weekend, that only guarantees that he'll make another Cat in the Hat movie? Why are you doing this to yourselves? WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS TO ME?

Plastic Ono Band

MAMA DON'T GOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

DADDY COME HOME!

soapbox time!

I usually try, sometimes a little too hard, to play devil's advocate in issues. I fall pretty far to the left of the political spectrum, but if at all possible, I like to acknowledge that on many issues, there is a valid opposing viewpoint, even if I don't agree with it. (This is called being civil, which I know is an unheard of idea on the Internet.) I am pro-choice, for example, but I recognize that some people just think that it is never ok to willingly take a life, even in the form of a fetus. If anybody needs to me to run down the list of reasons why I disagree with that, I will, but that's not really where I'm going with this.

On some issues, though, there's no devil's advocate. If you are against gay marriage, I think you're flat out wrong, and I've said it before, and I'll say it again, in 50 years you will look as foolish and ignorant as you would if you stated today that a white woman should not be allowed to marry a black man. I was reading, in an article about the California Supreme Court's ruling that essentially legalizes gay marriage (at least until this fall), about a lesbian couple in their 80s who have been together for 55 years, who can finally get married (they were married in that two-week window where gay marriage was legal in San Francisco, but it was annulled when it was decided that the mayor had severely exceeded his authority). I would rather appeal to ration and common sense, but emotion will do sometimes, and I just can't imagine how anybody could look at this couple who's been waiting since the Eisenhower administration to tie the knot and tell them they shouldn't be allowed to do so.

Really, if you've got a rational and logical argument against gay marriage that doesn't involve God or your own personal squeamishness, I would very much like to hear it.

whatever makes you happy, whatever you want...

Sometimes I think that for all the amazing things they've done, Radiohead have never really topped "Creep."

Most of the time I don't really think that, but I don't think most people will argue with me if I say they've never done anything so immediate or nakedly emotional since then. Everybody in the world loves that song, with the possible exception of Radiohead themselves.

That song is kind of an anomaly, now that I think about it. It came out in the middle of the grunge era, when mainstream music was dominated by somber bands that were all about pathos and self-pity and nihilism, (for an intolerably boring example, see the Stone Temple Pilots song of the same name, released a year earlier), and along comes this band of goofy-looking British dudes aping REM and U2, and they blow everybody else out of the water, almost by accident. Apparently they weren't even going to put "Creep" on Pablo Honey, which sounds strange, considering that it's basically one of the two really good songs on that album. Eventually Radiohead took a few astronomical leaps forward, but they're always going to be associated with "Creep," whether they like it or not.