OK, enough already. Should've done this months ago, but I'm finally retiring this blog for now. I might start it back up eventually, but odds are that this will be another headstone in my graveyard of abandoned projects. The livejournal linked on the right is occasionally still updated and any further junk will be posted there. Feel free to de-link if you haven't already. Thanks to anyone who read any of this stuff.

Obligatory April post because I didn't want to break my 26 month streak of posting something in this thing, even if for the past year it's mostly been excuses for not posting. There's an inverse relationship between my productivity at work and my internet timewasting and I have not yet mastered the correct balance between workslack and interwebwritingslack. Read the High Hat Blog, if you haven't already.

Hey, even though there are a hundred million MP3 blogs out there, why don't I post a few MP3s of songs I've been enjoying lately? That will kill a few minutes and fill some space on this blog for sure!

"Program Me," Bruce Haack. From the 1970 album Electric Lucifer, which is some sort of concept album about war (he's against it) and technology (he's for it, maybe? this part is unclear). Electric Lucifer is a electronic psych rock album that's both ahead of its time (heavy use of synthesizers and vocoders several years before it would become commonplace) and extremely dated (simplistic hippie anti-war sentiment). This particular song, with its robotic groove and anthropomorphizing of technology, reminds me of Devo minus the irony. (This MP3 has a skip from the vinyl near the end. Sorry, but what do you want for nothin'?)

"No Escape," Cabaret Voltaire. For some reason, I always avoided these guys until recently. (Their suffocatingly dour public image, which led me to believe that they would be monotonously grim and dull? Dislike of the countless groups that copped from them later in the 80s? My intense dislike of that rascal Ferris Bueller, who had a poster of the CV album Micro-Phonies in his room for some reason?) I was wrong, their early stuff is great: claustrophobic, atmospherically creepy, grimly evocative of bleak late 1970s industrial decay. It's all the good things about watching Eraserhead without having that cow fetus thing rattling around in your memory space forever. This is a cover of a Seeds song that blows away the original, driven by a simple organ riff and a rickety 4/4 drum machine pattern that repeats itself into your cerebral cortex. And like almost all early Cab songs it's got that omnipresent primitive synth squall that sounds like that thing at the dentist's office that sucks out the saliva from your mouth.

"August Morning Haze," Oneida. From the upcoming album The Wedding, half of which is that good ol' dark droning psych stuff America has come to love from Oneida and half is a stab at baroque, stringladen minor key pop in a Zombies/Left Banke style. This is one of those string-adorned songs, albeit one that is dominated by guitar and banjo with the strings providing color rather than carrying the arrangement. The chorus to this song has been stuck in my head ever since I first heard it. This kind of music is a tightrope between pretty melodicism and overly ornate rococo fluff, and Oneida walks it deftly thoughout The Wedding.

"Gone! The Promises of Yesterday," The Mad Lads. This is from the Volume II of the Stax/Volt complete singles box, circa 1971 when Stax's grasp on the R&B charts was starting to weaken. I never heard this until it came up on iTunes Party Shuffle, and it's not hard to hear why it wasn't a big hit - it's kind of a strange song, with the bass singer ominously interjecting the title and one of the Lads repeating the word "away" in a weirdly obsessive manner for the last minute of the song's duration. It's great, though, those incredibly melodramatic soul string arrangements and the "promises promises" chorus swirling around to that catchy yet haunting finale.

"Oh Lord," Brian Wilson. From the infamous sessions circa 1981 where Dennis Wilson would ply Brian with bags of coke and McDonald's hamburgers in a failed attempt to rouse him from his long stupor. This is the one piece from that bootleg that is worth hearing, although it's a frustratingly fragmented and poorly recorded mess. There are elements here that would make a great song if it had been completed: the funereal organ playing a 1950s doo wop progression slowed down to a crawl, the "let me hear their song" verse melody that recalls classic Beach Boys songs stripped bare of all of their youthful optimism, the lilting organ coda. Hearing Brian break the sad tranquility of this song by shouting out "Oh Lord, please let me see all there is to see" in a cracking, pain-wracked voice is one of the most jarring and disturbing moments I can recall hearing in music. Honestly, this song makes me feel uncomfortably voyeuristic, like I'm intruding on someone else's private turmoil. Nevertheless, it's an incredibly raw, gorgeous, moving piece of art.

I'd like to take this opportunity to wish a fond farewell to CBS news anchor Dan Rather on his recent retirement. Even though it's lights out, Katie bar the door, say your prayers Aunt Ethel for Dan's career, his place in journalistic history is assured. Whether digging for the truth on Watergate like a West Virginia coalminer on a meth binge or reporting from Vietnam where danger was thicker than molasses on an old woman's dentures, Dan Rather has been an institution in America's media universe for half a century. Without Dan Rather's familiar presence, the 6:30 nightly news will seem emptier than a pig roast in Tel Aviv. While Rather's critics have been madder than a drowning hen with epilepsy over the Bush National Guard controversy, even the most ardent naysayer would admit that Dan Rather will cast a shadow like a buzzard picking out a hobo's eyes on the highway at high noon. When Dan Rather spoke, you could print it, go with it, take it to the bank, yell it while running down the street, write it on post-it notes and slap it on your cubicle, use it as the tenets of a new religion. Dan Rather's career proved the wisdom of that old Texas adage, "You can take a bag of chicken livers to the old barn dance, but don't ever slap your grandmother on washing day without a permit from City Hall." Dan Rather will be missed like an old whore's lost innocence.

Yesterday was the second anniversary of the first post in this blog. I would post a mock-celebratory tribute to myself here if I wasn't so ashamed of the infrequent and erratic tack that my posting schedule has taken in the past six to eight months. Well, every blog eventually devolves into an endless stream of apologies for not updating and broken promises for new content, mine has just matured a little faster than most others. Instead, let's resurrect an old feature on this thing that I discontinued because I hate almost everything. Here are three things that rule at this particular moment:

1. Safeway's Red Cherry Rush soda. Finally, someone has perfected the art of the cherry soda that isn't too sweet and has a little bite to it - and it's Safeway?!? Yes, believe, skeptical ones. I have a mild addiction to this stuff and spend many an evening soothing my weary soul downing a can of this stuff while listening to 60's garage rock records on Beyond the Beat Generation. It's become my regular regimen after a long, brutal day at work.

2. Netflix + owning a DVD burner. Sorry, MPAA, but I've stolen a ton from the music industry and now it's your turn to get ripped off large. And admittedly, rearranging my Netflix queue is almost providing me as much entertainment value as actually watching movies.

3. "Tribulations," LCD Soundsystem. I was starting to lose interest in the DFA (don't really care for about 75% of DFA Compilation #2) and I'm still undecided about the rest of the LCD Soundsystem album, but this is a killer song. Their best groove since "Yeah" + creepy, vaguely new wave goth synthesizery + great chorus vocal hook = excellence. This is my favorite type of musical pastiche where you can enjoy the song on two levels: on the spot-the-musical-reference level and on the fuck-it-this-is-just-awesome level.

The new restaurant Cereality is taking the nation by storm. (OK, maybe not "taking the nation by storm" so much as "getting a few mentions in various daily newspapers' lifestyle pages." Just play along, thank you.) It's a brilliant idea: take something that even the most domestically unskilled person can make and charge them a huge markup for it on the basis of convenience because young urban types are often unfamiliar with concepts like "preparing food for oneself" or "buying food that can be eaten at home."

In the spirit of Cereality, I'm now announcing an exciting new restaurant venture: Say Tomato and Cheese, the nation's first restaurant that only serves grilled cheese sandwiches and Campbell's tomato soup. Stop in for a grilled cheese sandwich, a bowl of Campbell's tomato soup, or our special combo of a grilled cheese sandwich and Campbell's tomato soup. Too busy to cope with the rigors of dipping your sandwich into the soup? Then try our predipped grilled cheese sandwiches drenched in warm Campbell's tomato soup fresh out of the can! Dieters can try our lighter menu: a half of a cheese sandwich or a half of a can of Campbell's tomato soup. (For those hardy stragglers who are stubbornly clinging to the Atkins diet, we also offer a Atkins-friendly pile of grilled cheese without the bread. Plus, you'll be happy to know that our servers have been specifically instructed not to make fun of you or mutter "that is soooo 2003" when you order it.) Adventurous types can try the Cheesato Tornado, a special blend of grilled cheese sandwiches, tomato soup and special ingredients mixed together in our blenders for an incredible taste combination. (Did I say "special ingredients?" Nah, sorry, it's just Kraft singles and Wonder Bread.) And to simulate the grilled cheese and tomato soup experience, all our meals are served in cracked, unwashed cereal bowls and 1987 Miami Dolphins plastic plates originally offered by the Mobil corporation and washed down with either a glass of near-expiration milk or half a can of flat Pepsi. Say Tomato and Cheese isn't just a restaurant, it's a whole new experience in dining! And coming in fall 2005: Ramental Illness, the world's craziest prepackaged noodle bar!

Rare, unreleased tracks from James Brown's recording studio:

- "Slight Fever (And a Sinus Headache)"
- "Look at That Chick's Cakes (And By Cakes, I Mean Her Ass)"
- "It's a Man's Man's Man's Societal Power Structure"
- "'Funky' Would Be One Word I Would Use to Describe This Song"
- "Grits 'n Gravy 'n Latkes"
- "Funky Secretary of Labor (People, John T. Dunlop is Bad)"
- "Say it Loud, I'm 1/16 Cherokee and I'm Proud"
- "I Got to Put My Thang in a Funky - Ah, Hell, Who Am I Kidding, I'm Not in the Mood for This Today"

For the past three years, I've been posting on the I Spit on Your Groove music nerd message board, which consists of some of the smartest, funniest people on the whole goshdarned interthing. Unfortunately, the board's home teeters on the brink of joining pets.com and webvan.com in that great browser cache in the sky. So, for future generations, here are the better entries I made to the world famous ISOYG riff threads. This is, essentially, what I did with my mid-20s. Note: a failure to get most of these jokes may indicate a lack of focus on stupid pop culture trivia and a balanced, healthy perspective on life.

The Movie Titles Thread:
Tora! Tora! Spelling!
Secretary 2: Sadomasochistic Boogaloo
Atlas Shtupped
Annie Get Your Gun (After a Background Check and a Seven Day Waiting Period)
Full Denim Jacket
Francis the Talking Heroin Mule
Guess What's Crawling On Dinner
Bring Me a Plate of Fettucine Alfredo
Panty Raid on Entebbe
The Phish That Bored Pittsburgh
Andy Hardy Gets Jungle Fever
The Texas Chain Restaurant Massacre (On the menu, murder...with a side order of jalapeno poppers.)
You Can't Take It In You
The Fall of Haim
The Merzbow Incident
The Cook, The Thief, His Wife, The Stable Boy, Two Midgets, The Cal State-Fullerton Womens' Swim Team, The Night Watchman, The Delivery Man, The Naive Co-ed and Her Lover
American Juggalo
The Taking of Jello 1-2-3
The Days of Weinberger and Roses
U.S. News and World Report's European Vacation
Death and the Maidenform Woman
Bikini Savings and Loan
Bikini Pawn Shop
Burn Cambridge Burn - A Village Smithee Film
Bowling for Combines (a documentary focusing on gun violence among Nebraska corn farmers)
Smilla's Sense of Entitlement
Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Yawn
Alice's Texas Chainsaw Restaurant Massacree
Bill and Ted and Carol and Alice
Scream, Chocula, Scream!
Harold Robbins' William Shakepeare's Romeo and Juliet
The Guns of Provolone
Meet Me in East St. Louis
Seven Brides for Seven Samurai
Gimme Tax Shelter
Dead Man Powerwalking
A Panini Ain't Nothin' But a Sandwich
That Third Place Season
Fellini's Troma
Polterzeitgeist
Veto Vito: Bill Kill Vol. 1
The Popeil of Greenwich Village

Worst Possible Band Names Thread:
Olivia Newton John Donne (debut album: Let's Get Metaphysical)
Godspell You Black Choreographer!
Hawley-Smoot Overdrive
Hot Pockets of Resistance
Ghostface Keillor
Racially Pure Prairie League (skinhead band covers 1970s soft rock favorites)
Screamin' Stephen Hawking
Bob Marley and the Hartford Whalers
Coagulation of the Filling
Alfalfa Male
Al Kaline Trio
Tayback Machine
Hieronymus Beotch
The Self-Preservation Jazz Band
Camryn Mannheim Steamroller
Dead White Hope (or: Really Really Thin White Hope) (a tribute to then recently deceased Bob Hope)
Flying Reddenbachers
Jews for Deezen
...And You Will Know Us by the Trail of Bread Crumbs (indie rock band whose lyrics all come from Grimm's fairy tales)
Inanimate Objectivists
The Whigga Party
Rage Against Gene Gene the Dancing Machine
Honkeypox
Sucker MC Escher
Kafka Eskimos
Tabitha Soren and the Loneliest Monks
Pop Tarts Will Eat Themselves
Lenny's Reef Installers
Fonzie Scheme
Shock and Jive
Hall and Ass

The "create a reality show" thread:
All Women are Money Grubbing Whores
The new dating reality show that dares to say what "Joe Millionaire" and "For Love or Money" are only thinking.

Survivor: Upper East Side
Twelve young heirs are cut off from their trust funds for a month. The winner is the one who manages to survive without accepting a demeaning minimum wage job, pawning off any personal belongings or moving to Staten Island.

The Pitch
15 strangers are selected by the Fox network to pitch ideas for new reality shows. Points are awarded for the ability to copy existing ideas without being sued by a competing network, the creative use of washed-up b-list celebrities, and avoiding rehab for cocaine abuse.

The Album Titles Thread:
Show Me The Way to the Next Ice Cream Bar - Doors Songs for Kids!
Smith and Wessonality
Love in the Time of Cold and Flu Season
And Cotton Mather as The Beaver
Terror Alert Level Blue is the New Terror Alert Level Yellow
Mavis Staples Teaches Typing
I Get Knocked Up, But I Get Down Again
The Nizzle of the 'Narcizzle'
Two Seven Elevens Clash
Thug a Lug: The West Coast Rap Tribute to Roger Miller
The Law of Joementum Conservation
Dustin Diamond is a Very Funny Fellow...Right!
Flogging Joey Bishop
Roadkill is Manslaughter
Gangster Lean Cuisine
Handbags and Doorags
I Paid For This Coffin (a tribute to the late 40th president)
The Shadow of Your Simile
A Prairie Home Longtime Companion
Persona au Gratin
Douche ex Machina
Will the Circle K Be Unbroken?
Honky Tonkin Resolution
Hussein in the Membrane
Hitchens Brew
Utica Calling

Worst Possible Thread Titles Thread:
One Man Come on a Barbed Wire Fence - The Taking Lyrics Out of Context Thread
Cardinal Tettamanzi or Adolfo "Shabba-Doo" Quinones - Who Should Be the Next Pope?
Down with Toquemada - Protest the Canadian Inquisition Here
He Hate Me, But I Love Him - The Dysfunctional Relationships with Former XFL Players Support Thread

I was going to post something about the much ballyhooed switch of DC's WHFS to Latin contemporary last week, but work is kicking my ass right now. So here are a few disconnected thoughts a week later, now that no one cares any more:

- WHFS never meant anything to me personally, but it is a good thing to see it put to sleep after years of slow decay. Stumbling onto the later incarnation of HFS on the radio dial was kind of like flipping channels and seeing that ER is still on the air: a "WTF, this is still on?" reaction combined with vague embarrassment for all involved.

- Longing for the old, diverse HFS is a pipe dream. People who value music and want to hear a variety of things are already being served by iPods and/or satellite radio, so commercial radio will most likely become even more tightly formatted as it tries to appeal to the 12-CD owner who wants to hear the same general songs during their workday. And freeform radio sounds great in theory, but in practice almost no one listens to it and it's commercial anathema. (Even WRNR, which many former HFS listeners tout as some sort of alternative, is a. programmed to an extent and b. apparently devoted to an ongoing experiment to see how many different times Jack Johnson can be played in an hour.)

- Rock radio is in a death spiral of confusion and irrelevance right now. Rap-metal seems to be sputtering out (praise be to Odin), the Killers/Franz Ferdinand school of slicked up dance post-punk is doing OK saleswise but isn't really a commercial juggernaut, and there's nothing else really filling the gap. Hip-hop radio has displaced rock for the most part, with a dwindling number of fading classic rock stations and confused-sounding "modern" rock stations raging against the dying of the light. I'm not a "rock is dead" guy; a majority of my favorite musical stuff right now could probably be filed under "rock," but Animal Collective or the Fiery Furnaces or Destroyer isn't the kind of stuff that fits comfortably beside beer ads or inspires 17 year old kids to blare out of the windows of their parents' station wagons. The era of rock dominating everything is long gone (for the best, I'd say), but I worry that complete and total disengagement from the rest of the culture will just create an artform of museum pieces endlessly recreating the same moments in time. Clearly, what is needed is rock protectionism! Subsidies to our hard-working (and -rocking!) bands! Tariffs on hip-hop CDs! Dick Gephardt smashing crates of Lil Jon CDs to the cheers of a bemulleted crowd in Des Moines!

- The alternative rock station of my youth (which, in retrospect, kinda sucked but was a revelation to 14 year old me on Maryland's Eastern Shore) switched formats all the way back in 1997 to fucking sports talk radio, which was even more appalling (although, again in retrospect, this occurred at almost the exact same time that mainstream alternative rock radio went from "kinda sucks" to "completely sucks goat balls"). For once, the Eastern Shore was on the vanguard of culture! But maybe not; amusingly, x107 has apparently come full circle and is now playing bad modern rock again! Maybe there's hope that rap-metal will rise again on WHFS! As Karl Marx (who had the 2-6 slot on Seattle's famed KJET during the mid-80s) once said, "History repeats itself twice, first as retro, then as ironic mocking of retro."

Once again, Google unlocks a mystery of my childhood. I remembered seeing this weird-as-fuck Christmas special when I was a kid and after a little Googling, I found the title: The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus. I mainly remembered that creepy "IMMORTALITY, IMMORTALITY" chant that the immortal tribal whatever council continually intoned in that faux-Gregorian chant style, but Jesus Christ, read the fucking plot synopsis of this thing. This council of immortal tribal whatevers has to decide whether Santa Claus should die or be granted eternal life (WTF THIS IS A KIDS SHOW ENOUGH WITH THE EXISTENTIAL DILEMMAS KIERKEGAARD). In the course of explaining this, they show that Santa was initially an abandoned child (his parents murdered by Cossacks before his very eyes, no doubt) raised by a lioness and a fairy (why was Donald Wildmon asleep on the job here?). Santa Claus is motivated to become a giver of toys when one of the immortals shows him (AND THE TELEVISED AUDIENCE) all the miseries and hardship of the world. (Hey kids, people are dying all over the world! Why, your president is sanctioning bloodshed in Central America even as we speak! Little children your age only wish for a end to the unendurable suffering of their lives! Merry Christmas, and back after a word about Mattel's new GI Joe Battle Command Center!) And yes, this ends with a huge battle between the good and evil immortals in which SANTA KILLS HIS ENEMIES. (That explains why Santa's always dressed in red; his clothes were soaked with the blood of the massacred heathen horde. "Ho ho ho, kids, I've got a taste for blood now!") I think the good side won in the end, but the damage to countless childrens' psyches was already done well before that moment. (Also, another site about this special informs me that this thing featured a scene where two puppets make out. WHAT THE FUCK, RANKIN-BASS)

I realize that this is an adaptation of an L. Frank Baum novel, but I can only imagine that this project was spearheaded by some deeply depressed tv executive desperately trying to lash out at a world whose darkness and cruelty mocks and frustrates him. "I know," said the wasted shell of a man. "Let's make an animated Christmas special that spews venom into the sweet, syrupy face of Christmas cheer! A special that mocks everything people hold dear about the holiday season and exposes the sick, morbid core at the heart of our rituals! A special that will warp the fragile young minds of every young child who happens to view it!" And he succeeded. I don't think it's a coincidence that depression, SSRI prescriptions and gothic death fixations spiked exponentially among the youth of America after the broadcast of The Life and Adventures of Santa Claus. And even though the special has been banished to the far reaches of basic cable and 4:00 am UHF broadcasts, its horrific legacy continues to this very day. Thanks, Rankin-Bass. Yukon Cornelius weeps in bitter, stop-motion shame from his grave.

My ten favorite albums this year. (Please note that I'm not counting Brian Wilson's Smile, because it was essentially a 1967 album reconfigured and completed in 2004. But slot it in at #3 if this explanation isn't satisfactory.)

10. RJD2, Since We Last Spoke
In which an entire cutout bin's worth of decades-old musical effluvia is reconfigured into some wonderful musical utopia where stadium rawk, new wave pop, cop show theme music and hip-hop backbeats all coexist in perfect harmony.

9. Comets on Fire, Blue Cathedral
Comets on Fire distill the heavier-than-heavy riffage of early Black Sabbath and Blue Cheer, the free jazz stabs of the Stooges' Fun House and the screaming of early grunge pioneers like Mudhoney's Mark Arm into stoner rock par excellence. Ridiculously loud, overwrought, heavy and ass-kickin'.

8. American Music Club, Love Songs for Patriots
Mark Eitzel's best set of songs in eleven years was an unfortunately appropriate soundtrack to America's continued descent into theocratic fundamentalism.

7. Espers
One of the best of this year's wave of psychedelic folk albums, full of gorgeously entrancing harmonies and instrumentation and a hauntingly dark and lonesome edge.

6. Ghostface, The Pretty Toney Album
The officially released version was good enough, but program out the skits and plug in some of best of Ghostface's unclearable mixtape songs and you have one nonstop barrage of classic soul samples and Ghostface's inimitable, shove-six-minutes-of-rhymes-into-three cadence.

5. Oneida, Secret Wars
Oneida draws from the psychkrautgarage well without sounding chained to their influences, investing repetitive drones like "Caesar's Column" and the one-chord bashfest "The Winter Shaker" with hypnotic power. And the epic "Changes in the City" works over one riff to dizzying effect, subtly reshifting a simple theme for over 14 minutes.

4. Destroyer, Your Blues
This, on paper, should not work - a set of songs that sound like the score of a regional theatre musical, built sonically around the fakest synthesized orchestra imaginable and Dan Bejar's quavery nasal voice. But it's a sweepingly grand (and grandiose) work filled with insistently memorable songs and oddly moving performances.

3. Madvillain, Madvillainy
My favorite of the ultraprolific MF Doom's three releases in 2004 - Doom's offhanded brilliance combined with Madlib's endlessly flowing soul/jazz beats and the overall late night/low budget feel made for an endlessly addictive listen.

2. Animal Collective, Sung Tongs
At first, this sounds like a field recording of some back-to-nature hippie cult sect's tribal rituals. It takes a few listens before you realize how ingeniously the songs here are constructed and how insidiously catchy these songs are at their core. A perfect balance of insane inspiration and compositional strength.

1. Fiery Furnaces, Blueberry Boat
I have annoyed everyone I know this year with my unconditional love of this album, so here's one more rave before I let it go already. The mini-epics contained here throw out a dizzying array of melodic ideas spiraling on top of each other and delivered with the enthusiasm and lack of patience of a bunch of ADD-addled kids. There are more brilliant hooks, choruses and throwaway lines here than most bands or performers manage in their entire careers. And despite the rambling nature of these songs, they're brilliantly constructed with hardly a wasted minute or gesture in the entire set. Rock music is too full of bands with modest aspirations that actively eschew pretensions; the fact that the Fiery Furnaces set out to create a big classic album and actually succeeded is worthy of all the applause that a humble, little-read weblog can create.

Other albums I liked almost as much: Dizzee Rascal - Showtime, Mission of Burma - ONoffON, Panda Bear - Young Prayer, TV on the Radio - Desperate Youth, Bloodthirsty Babes, controller.controller - History EP.

A response to William Carlos Williams' "This Is Just To Say":

I put my
name on
those damn
plums

first my
ben and jerry's
now this
enough already

You're a doctor
for god's sake
stop mooching
my produce

Business law terminology that doubles as sexual innuendo:

- "2-for-1 stock split"
- "Joint tenancy"
- "Respondeat superior"
- "Issuing a dividend"
- "Attachment of the security interest"
- "Piercing the corporate veil"
- "Hardcore boning"

OK, let's try this again. New blog rules from this point forward:

- No personal guilt about updating this thing. If I come up with something, great. If not, whatevs.
- No filler entries to update for the sake of updating.
- MP3s only when I can find something rare/unique/weird that isn't covered by one of the eleventy billion MP3 blogs out there.
- No more boring meta-entries like this one that no one could possibly care about.
- No more lists of stupid personal resolutions I have no intention of keeping.

Blogger was down most of today, which is probably a good thing in my case as it spared the world another embittered liberal rantfest. (My 3,000 word essay, "The Voters of Missouri: Slackjawed Clinically Retarded Morons or Scabies-Riddled Pigfelching Degenerates?" will have to go unread.)

So, anyway, any of our overseas readers in need of a manservant? A poolboy? Someone to do errands and sleep in a corner of your storage closet? I'm not in a position to be picky here, people.

Special election eve MP3 - "Youth of America" by the Wipers. An appropriate soundtrack for America Chooses 2004: Dystopian Nightmare or Slightly More Promising Future.

OBLIGATORY ELECTION POST

I'm voting for Kerry. (Yes, this is the long awaited endorsement that will send that influential swing voter group, the "confused googlers," directly into the Kerry camp.) And I'm not just voting for Kerry because I hate Bush (although, god, do I hate Bush so very very much), but because I think he'll provide the combination of pragmatism and the ability to hire people not completely blinded by ideology and hubris. This will likely be a cleanup administration rather than an activist administration given the incredibly fucked up mess that is America 2004, and Kerry will at least be willing to address the problems that the Bush adminstration would rather ignore. And I'm pretty confident that he won't start unprovoked wars just to increase his popularity. I don't expect miracles from Kerry, just an end to the high-school-kids-hopped-up-on-tequila-crashing-Dad's-station-wagon style of governance of the past few years.

I had to break the posting hiatus to post something about the Jandek live show at Instal in Scotland earlier in October. (Yeah, I know this was a couple of weeks ago, and the blogosphere has moved on by now. The Vitamin B Glandular Show: closing barn doors after the horses have escaped for almost two years!) Hearing the news that Jandek played a live show (!) in Scotland (!!) produced one of those indescribably cool moments when everything you once thought you knew about the way the world works is instantly turned on its head. Once one of the most notoriously reclusive cultural figures ever broke his veil of anonymity for one unannounced show halfway across the globe, everything seemed possible.

But enough of the loner/recluse image, what about the actual quality of the show? It sounded much like Jandek's electric albums, but with a heavier guitar sound and a more forceful vocal style. (Jandek actually sounds like Nick Cave or a more nasally, drawling Tom Waits in spaces live.) The rhythm section (if it could be termed that) was content to lay in the background, punctuating with arrhythmic cymbal crashes and bass interjections at seemingly random times. One of the most riveting qualities of Jandek's music is its intensely private and solitary nature; at times it's like overhearing something you weren't intended to hear and soul bearing to the point of inspiring discomfort in the listener. To hear Jandek being taken out of hothouse isolation and into a live crowd situation is a weirdly moving and riveting listening experience. Once you get past that, however, the concert environment takes away one of the things that make Jandek so unique - the idiosyncratic, almost alien nature of the music. Jandek on record sounds at times like something otherworldly, like what a reticuli gray might play if you forcefed him Jimmie Rodgers and Skip James albums; Jandek live sounds like a weird avant-garde rock band playing mutant blues. But at least this debunks the Chusid-style presentation of Jandek as some detuned, mentally ill freak clanging away purposelessly on a detuned thrift store guitar - the man isn't just an idiot savant, he clearly has a musical vision to carry out.

Obviously, Jandek's not for everyone, or even many people, but it's the type of thing that will inspire cultlike devotion in a small amount of people. Jandek's performances and recorded works are more about spilling out raw emotion and conjuring an intensely concentrated mood of sadness, loneliness or anger; traditional songcraft or musicianship is neglected in the quest to create as undiluted a meditation as possible. And despite the fact that Jandek's image as the invisible unknown loner has now evaporated somewhat in the wake of this live performance, it doesn't dim the fascination with his work: there's resonance in Jandek's search for absolution that goes far beyond the outsider mystique.

This blog is on temporary hiatus while the author undergoes a one-third life crisis. I hope to resurrect this thing eventually for our devoted readership (OK, a handful of people googling for "paris hilton saddam video"), but for now it'll have to slide into dormancy while some shit gets straightened out. Thanks to anyone who took the time to read any of the 45, 018 words (wow, has it really been that many? only felt like 35,000 or so) I have spewed out into the ether in the past year and a half.

(SCENE: SHOT OF ACTOR WALKING THROUGH WAR-TORN, POVERTY-STRICKEN VILLAGE)
ACTOR: Hi, I'm Denzel Washington. Here in the poorest villages of southern Zambia, conditions are rough. Food is scarce, medicine is in short supply, and the basic living conditions are intolerable. For just a few pennies a day, you can make life better for a suffering child.

Not through food or supplies or education. That would cost thousands of dollars a year, and let's face it - one small charity advertising on late night TV isn't going to put a dent in the problems of a third world country. At New Hope Children's Fund, we're changing kids' lives one day at a time. For a simple donation of $50 a year, we'll throw a pizza party in the honor of one lucky boy or girl. Your donation will buy a young child a pepperoni pizza, a slice of cake for dessert, enough party favors and noisemakers for his or her entire family and memories that will last a lifetime. And we'll send you pictures commemorating your child's special day.

Just listen to this testamonial from young Antare:

VOICEOVER: "My village was destroyed by the ongoing guerrilla war. The water supply is tainted and we often go days without food. But thanks to New Hope, I had a really fun time at my pizza party. Everyone sang songs and played crazy party games. I never saw my little brother laugh so much! Although it's over now and the gnawing pains in my stomach are back again, I'll treasure the memories of that one special day for the rest of my life. Thank you, New Hope."

ACTOR: Support New Hope Children's Fund. We're doing what little we can to fight poverty. I mean, at least it's something, right?