After months of delays (and backstage turmoil that made Heart of Darkness look like Making the Video: Britney Spears' "Toxic"), the new issue of The High Hat is finally available.  Fine writing on culture abounds.

A notice to all shareholders of the Vitamin B Glandular Show:

There have been rumblings of discontent over the past several months regarding our corporate direction. Rumors of massive stock selloffs, corporate takeovers and (even, shockingly) changes in our managerial structure have set Wall Street ablaze, or at least caused a moderate but persistent inflammation. I would like to take this opportunity to dispel some of the negative impressions that you may have about this blog and assure you that the Vitamin B Glandular Show is the best sorta-humor, sorta-pop culture, mostly self-indulgent blog for your investment dollar. Our shareholders aren't just the suckers whose cash we grabbed at the first available opportunity, you're our family, and like any members of our family, it is important that we recognize your concerns in a way that validates your feelings without forcing us to make any actual changes in our behavior.

First, let me assure you that our financial picture is much rosier than those bastards in the Wall Street Journal continue to report. This graph would seem to indicate that we're worth more money than we were a while ago. (I'm not sure, but the arrow going up is good, right?) And those rumors about profits being diverted for a massive Tecate-fueled Cinco de Mayo celebration  have been overblown by a sensationalistic media. Rest assured that we are cooperating with the SEC and no wrongdoing has been proven in a court of law as of this message.

Secondly, we are sensitive to the needs of our client base. We've conducted extensive consumer research that will ensure that future entries appeal to a broader segment of our readership. (We've found that 97% of the visitors of this site located it via a search for "paris saddam video," so look for a noted increase in videos featuring hotel heiress skanks and/or deposed Middle Eastern dictators in the near future.) And for those of you who have complained about the template, you will be pleased to note that a committee has been formed that will effort to plan to recommend a potential change to the look of this site.

Finally, let me make my personal commitment to our shareholders that we will do our level best to make your investment worthwhile. Even though I have no idea how this Blogshares thing works, or how the hell my site landed on it in the first place, we are dedicated to making your investment a success. We are proactively creating a dynamic environment through streamlining, better efficiency and strategic enhancement to meet the changing, complex needs of today's market base. Also, paradigm.

My great-great-grandfather founded this blog with a few bricks, a container of Testor's airplane glue, and a dream. That dream was to exploit a minor internet trend for personal gain. And while we have failed miserably at this goal, we continue to carry forward with that same simple vision. The Vitamin B Glandular Show and you: a winning team for the 21st century!

The Vitamin B Glandular Show heartily endorses the following products:

- Anchorman. The funniest mainstream comedy since, I dunno, Office Space maybe? (The past four years of movie comedies have seemed like one long Wayans brothers movie to me.) I'm not even a huge Will Ferrell fan, but he has that self-important, self-loving dumb guy character down to a science at this point. And Steve Carell (the only reason I have any hope that the American version of The Office won't completely blow) more or less steals every scene.

- Patton Oswalt's new comedy album Feelin' Kinda Patton. A master at building long, clever riffs of spiraling ridiculousness. And if "Bend over, Abigail Mae, 'cause here comes the gravy pipe!" doesn't become our next national catchphrase, I lose what little hope I have left in this country.

- Crossballs on Comedy Central. Only three episodes have aired so far, but the trainwreck between the straight-faced incredulousness of the fake panelists and the unintentional comedy of the know-nothing self-appointed "experts" has been compelling to watch. It's not exactly news that TV debate shows are no more enlightening than VH1's "50 Hottest Rock Star Ex-Wives," but seeing just how willing these talking heads are willing to ignore basic intelligence and common sense to get face time on television is particularly illuminating.

- Blueberry Boat by the Fiery Furnaces. I may have bored people already with my raving about this, but it's finally out officially this week. More ideas in one song than most bands come up with in their entire career. A band that stripmines the past half-century of music yet comes up with something new sounding in the process. And in this diminished-expectations era of rock music, it's genuinely thrilling to see someone swing for the fences and make a bold statement like this one. Album of the year? Oh, yeah. Album of the decade? Just maybe, hoss. Just maybe.

In honor of July 4th, a retrospective on some of John Philip Sousa's lesser known works:

"Break Up That Union Meeting March"
"America: One Swell Place"
"Hurrah, For Only Three of My Children Died of the Dropsy!"
"The Memphis Press-Scimitar March"
"May I Take You to the St. Swithin's Day Barnyard Social, Emmy Lou?" (a rare, disastrous foray into romantic songwriting)
"The Industrialist: A Salute to Our White, Elderly, Bloated Ruling Overclass"
"Hail to Old North Dakota State University!"
"Stomp on a Spaniard's Face"
"Red, Green and Polka Dotted Yellow (The Eagle and the Flag Travel By Wireless)" (written during Sousa's famed "ether" period)

I don't normally do rants in this space. Unless you're very, very skilled at invective, they're generally boring to read, and as I get older I'm becoming less and less interested in strident hatred and somewhat more tolerant towards the billions of things that irritate me. (Admittedly, the Thorazine is also a contributing factor here.) But this noxious column by the awful Chicago Sun-Times columnist Jay Mariotti has forced me to flog one of my favorite hobby horses - the irritating tendency of sportswriters to set themselves up as the moral arbiters of the entire nation. I'm not sure what I loathe most about this piece. The insane overreaction to an unfortunate but common incident in places where alcohol is consumed, with as many shame-inducing adjectives as humanly possible? The statement that anyone who doesn't share the author's hysterical indignation is no worse than the people who physically beat up someone? The general argument that America is plunging into debauchery of Caligula's Rome or Studio 54 proportions because some loons hit a guy at a ballgame?

Mariotti is hardly the only one who does this. The noxious Rick Reilly has been filling the back page of Sports Illustrated with fingers points in a shaming fashion for almost two decades now. And Phil Mushnick of the New York Post manages three columns a week, each of which makes the argument that sports and the society that spawned them has found a deeper and deeper sewer to wallow in. (It should be noted that Mushnick has never mentioned the irony or hypocrisy implicit in writing this sort of column in the FUCKING NEW YORK FUCKING POST, nestled in between ads for Asian massage parlors and escort services.) In fact, scratch any sports columnist (with the notable exception of Ray Ratto of the San Francisco Chronicle, perhaps the only writer in the country who has some a realistic idea of how sports actually fits into society), and you'll find a budding Carry Nation who will never pass up the opportunity to earnestly wring their hands over the fact that athletes and fans are human beings and don't generally act like Wheaties box models every minute of their lives.

Why? I have a few theories. Most of these columnists are baby boomers and the boomer generation is in full jeremiad mode at this point. Combine the boomer generation's stranglehold on the media with the universal tendency to decry the way things are and long for a nonexistent age of past glories, and we'll be hearing this sort of doomsaying until the last one of them retires. And let's face it, everyone enjoys the sweet buzz of feeling morally superior to someone else, and they're just lucky enough to get a public forum to express theirs. But I suspect the main factor is that sportswriters have a hard time accepting or even embracing the reality that they essentially provide the same service as the guy who writes the Junior Jumble. They're providing entertainment, not information that's viewed as important or relevant, and most people will take them less seriously than general news reporters. So, what do you do with those feelings of inadequacy and jealousy? You turn on Barry Bonds, or a couple of guys who get into a fight at a ballpark, and hold them up as examples of a society gone hellishly wrong. Sports is a microcosm of society, after all! (Except that everyone's wealthy, receives massive amounts of public adulation, and has skills that are extremely rare and considered valuable by society. Otherwise, they're entirely comparable to us normal types.)

So, sportswriters of America, I have a simple request. Please stick to discussing trades and demanding that owners fire coaches. Hang out with the people who write the style page, who have a better idea of where they fit into the media spectrum. (Except for Lynn Johnston. I think I'd rather read 100 columns about what a bad guy Barry Bonds is than one "For Better or For Worse" strip.) Providing entertainment is a noble goal. Embrace your "irrelevance": serious news reporting is an overrated gig anyway. Just be thankful that you don't spend your waking hours at city hall meetings or rewriting the police blotter.

I haven't seen Fahrenheit 9/11, nor do I have plans to do so, since the only thing it would really accomplish would be to make me hate the Bush administration more. But, although I'm personally not much for Moore's polemical style, I'm glad the movie's out there and having an enormous amount of box office success. Although it seems to be largely preaching to the converted, if it converts even a very small handful of swing voters or convinces wavering anti-Bush voters that they must vote for Kerry, it will have done a world of good.

Generally speaking, the Moore-styled brand of criticism is the type of thing that liberals have to do to counteract the rise of the self-styled badass conservatism of talk radio and Fox News that has helped shift American discourse irretrievably rightward. It's clear that as distasteful as this style of communication may be to most left-type folks, it works a hell of a lot better than the liberal strategy does. The current brand of mass media discourse is but one of the many reasons why the left has been on the run in this country for the past 25 years or so: allowing conservatism define the debate, affix labels and generally steamroll over a genial, hapless left that still believes in creating political change with devices like protest marches and public radio panel discussions.

Political debates aren't won by the careful, logical consideration of the facts before the audience, especially with this electorate. They're won by appealing to and manipulating others' emotions and creating some sort of personal stake for the voter. Most people make political choices based on emotional reasons and then use intellectual reasons to justify them. Moore, for all his sins, realizes this, and stacks his documentaries accordingly, creating something that's far more likely to resonate with people than a dry but thorough recitation of the facts. (This leads to the much-documented factual distortions of his prior works, although the fact that Fahrenheit 9/11 hasn't been slammed for this is a rather damning indictment of just how dubious the Bush administration's case in Iraq was in the first place.) Fahrenheit 9/11 probably won't win the election for John Kerry, and it should be regarded as the first blow in a liberal assault on the media rather than the final and decisive shot. But even if it won't shift the national debate, at least it's crammed a phonebook under one of the legs of the crooked coffee table, and that's an important first start.

In honor of Bloomsday, here's a link to a Ulysses parody of sorts featured on this blog many moons ago. In 2004, of course, the use of hax0r lingo is a hackneyed and trite comedic device, so please pretend that you haven't read a million other dopes do the same stupid joke. And as for the other installments in the Culture for Internet Subcultures series, please watch this space in the years and decades to come for the furry version of Emily Bronte's Wuthering Heights and the slash fiction version of Sinclair Lewis' Main Street.

This is my obligatory weekly post to make sure that this blog doesn't go completely dormant. There should be new content here this week, assuming I decide to finish the pieces I've started instead of watching the new, totally kick-ass SCTV DVD set. In the meantime, muffins!



Delicious, oven-fresh muffins! Who doesn't enjoy them? Why not have one today?

Yeah, so. I haven't been updating ye old blog recently, partly because a. I may be involved in an exciting new blog project soon that will change the focus of this page somewhat and b. I have a tendency to gradually ignore any commitments I make to myself. That said, I promise to make a commitment to effort to try to write for this thing on a regular basis. In the meantime, here are a couple of random music thoughts that will fill some space on this page.

- I heard "Summertime, Summertime" by the Jamies on an oldies station over Memorial Day. Has anyone else noticed just how creepy and unsettling that song really is? Despite the surface catchiness, everything about it seems off in a weird way - the just-slightly-of-tune harmonies, the oddly joyless sounding singer (who sounds like she's desperately trying to convince herself just how fun summer is really going to be and failing), the sparse and distantly recorded backing instrumentation and an overall hollow and airless feel from a song that's supposed to be an anthem for the kids who catch junebugs and wrassle down by the old swimmin' hole. I can't believe that David Lynch never used it in one of his 80s era weirdness-in-suburbia flicks - it has that same aura of barely contained turmoil underneath a shiny, happy veneer.

- The hot rumor on the interweb music nerd circuit is that the original lineup of the Gang of Four will reunite soon. As much as I love the Go4's first two albums, and as impressive as all of the post-punk reunions from Wire to Mission of Burma have turned out thus far, I'm kind of nervous about this one. Of all the great post-punk bands, the Gang of Four's music always struck me as the most identifiable to a specific age - i.e., it's one thing to be quoting Marxist philosophy against sputtering noise-funk while in your twenties, but if you're still doing it in your forties and fifties, it's probably time to stop hanging out at the coffee shop and get out of grad school. Most of the great Gang of Four songs were spitballs fired by young men against a social order gone awry; by middle age, these observations don't seem so novel, and you've either chosen resigned acceptance or unrelenting bitterness. I can't see them working again outside of their original context. Besides, the Gang of Four's output post-Solid Gold was widely uneven and suggests that they're less likely to put together a great comeback effort like onOFFon or Read and Burn. That said, of course I'll shell out the money to see them live if they're actually reuniting, because (choose one) a. I'm probably completely wrong b. they're still responsible for some of the best albums ever c. I am extremely gullible.

And now, a summary of my week, in free verse:

wake up
go to work
drive 1 0 0 feetthenstopandslamonbrakes
throw numbers
into
the
technocratichypocriticprotofascist well
that is my laptop
phone call for information
goddamn you, voice mail
lunch break
quiet desperation?
but this sandwich is so good
no
escape
but, like I said, it was a pretty good sandwich
finally leave for home
all part of the
glorioussadhappybroken
suburban struggle
eat again
in front of glowing telebox
before i must start again
assuage my pain
rerun of "Cheers"

According to Blogger's new profile dealie (see the side for the link), I have written 39,222 words in this thing since I started in February 2003. That's roughly 160 pages, or a short novel full of things that are of interest to me and only me.

Unfortunately, I still trail many of the novels whose word counts are listed here. But did David Copperfield have a ton of stupid pop culture references, or did Charlotte Bronte ever write about Jandek? I think not. So I'm making it my goal to keep on pumping out the entries until I overtake Gulliver's Travels around 2007 or so. Let me warn you, Robert Louis Stephenson: in early 2005, you will be my bitch.

I saw Mission of Burma last night at the 9:30 Club in DC. I will try to refrain from too much gushing during this recap, but it will be difficult - it was definitely the best show I've ever attended and an incredible evening that even exceeded the high expectations I had beforehand.

The first opening act was The Hiss. If you've ever wondered to yourself, "Would the Strokes be better if they had a lead singer who sounded like the frontman of a third string arena rock group from the 70s and a drummer who overplayed and inserted the same extraneous fills into every song?" the answer is no, no they wouldn't.

The Fiery Furnaces came out next. I already liked them on the strength of last year's Gallowsbird's Bark and their upcoming album Blueberry Boat (the best album I've heard yet this year, by far), but this set gave me a whole new appreciation for them. I had read that they tended to play much faster live than on the albums, but I wasn't prepared for the all-out intensity of their set - all of the arrangements were at least twice as fast (the "I'm Gonna Run/Leaky Tunnel" section sounded like a hardcore punk cover), while Eleanor Friedberger spat out the words to each song with feverish intensity. They played for roughly 45 minutes solid without stopping for space (or breath), incorporating about 15 songs in what was essentially a long medley of their catalog to date. Even the drummer (who looked suspiciously like a young David Lee Roth) breaking a snare couldn't slow them down. It says something about the strength of the Friedbergers' songwriting that the set was just as enjoyable as their albums even with the massive restructuring of the arrangements. And judging from the genuinely exuberant reception they received at the end and wowed reactions of the people around me, they made a lot of new converts last night.

Finally, what we all came for. What more can I say about the greatness of Mission of Burma? The band was in incredible form - just as tight live as on record, and Roger Miller's explosive yet carefully controlled guitar chaos was particularly inspired during the show. The songs from their new album onOFFon were integrated into the playlist well, "The Setup" and "The Enthusiast" were particular highlights of the show. But, let's face it - most of us were there because their classic albums Signals, Calls and Marches and Vs. blew the tops of our heads open and we wanted to hear those songs live. The benefit of Mission of Burma's 20 year hiatus was that they haven't gotten sick of playing the standards - they sounded spirited on every one they tackled, and the enthusiasm of Miller and Clint Conley was infectious. There's something that's still awe-inspiring about seeing a great performance of one of your favorite songs performed live by the original band, and I had that feeling at least six or seven times during the course of the evening. (The only downside was that they didn't do "Einstein's Day," which is probably my favorite Burma song and one of my favorite songs by anyone ever. But they played everything else I needed to hear and a killer cover of the Wipers' "Youth of America" to boot.) Even the usually reserved DC crowds were hopping up and down and chanting along to "That's How I Escaped My Certain Fate" and "Academy Fight Song." All in all, a great experience. I'm not sure how many bands could've taken a 20 year break and then come back and match their old form, but Mission of Burma have managed to pull it off.

Short CD reviews are a semi-regular feature on this blog. However, I haven't been paying much attention to new music this year and I'm very lazy. So I've asked Today Show movie critic Gene Shalit to contribute a guest column of music reviews. (Please note: Mr. Shalit was awakened from an afternoon nap to write this column, plus he hasn't liked a new album since REO Speedwagon's You Can Tune a Piano, But You Can't Tuna Fish back in 1978, so please excuse any crankiness.)

Kanye West - The College Dropout
Kanye? The answer, after listening to this album: he kant. The title of his debut may be The College Dropout, but I doubt that even a vocational school would take this clown after releasing this report-card-with-4-Fs-and-a-D of an album. West's career is headed south, so dropout this CD from your stereo and put on something better.

Franz Ferdinand
Archduke Franz Ferdinand's assassination helped set World War I into motion, and we can only hope the same fate befalls these Scottish snots. Even four years of global bloodshed would be worth it just to never hear another note from these haggis-chomping hipsters. Glasgow away before I have the whole lot of you kilt.

The Magnetic Fields - i
i hated this tuneless pile of crap. The Magnetic Fields are the polar opposites of quality music, and I am positive that you'll be negative after hearing this CD. And the vocals! There is no Merritt in Stephin's endless droning. Hopefully someone will be killing Fields in the near future so we never have to suffer through another one of these albums.

The Streets - A Grand Don't Come For Free
A grand may not come for free, but even if you get this CD for free, you'll feel like you overpaid. Mike Skinner should be skinned alive for making this grand sham of an album. Even Principal Skinner has better lyrical flow than this Cockney cockhead. The US Air Force should be called in to bomb these Streets to oblivion like the streets of Tikrit.

Yeah. Well. I'm currently in the throes of another debiliating case of writers' block. So while the half-finished blog and online web magazine pieces taunt me in my Recent Documents folder, let's stall for time by listening to another MP3, shall we? This is "I Lost My Dog" by the Fiery Furnaces from their upcoming album Blueberry Boat. The album mostly consists of longish (seven to ten minutes) pop-psych-English music hall pastiche mini-epics, but this is a short, jaunty old-fashioned pop song that's reminiscent of their debut album. Charming, clever and oddly catchy. And please don't miss the surprise ending, with a groaningly awful pun that serves as the song's punchline.

More later this week. Really. Probably.

MP3 - "War Dance" by the inimitable Jandek. Some critical pieces about Jandek might give the impression that his music is nothing but formless, completely unschooled plonking recorded onto a cheap tape recorder. OK, there's that side of Jandek, but this song in particular shows that the guy (whoever he may be) has an idea of what he's doing. The simple tribal/blues riff (which is repetitive without actually repeating the exact same notes) underneath is driving and ominous, while the angular guitar lines throughout jab and dart into strange neighborhoods - part surf/spy instrumental, part free jazz (of a much less skilled variety, granted). But Jandek hasn't forgotten his roots - the vocals are completely tuneless in that trademark half-spoken, half-yelled-and-moaned style.

You've marveled at the revelatory brilliance of The Grey Album. You've been awed by the striking recreations of The Double Black Album. You've sadly shook your head over the mere existence of The Slack Album. But these are just some of the many mashups featuring Jay-Z's The Black Album that have been created by today's groundbreaking copyright violators. Here are some of the lesser known versions:

The None More Black Album - Jay-Z + Spinal Tap. "99 Problems" has never sounded better than when backed by the riff from "Sex Farm."

The Michael Ian Black Album - Jay-Z + Michael Ian Black's comments from I Love the 80s. Don't miss "What More Can I Say (About Wacky Wallwalkers)."

The Brecht Album - Jay-Z + German cabaret. Coming soon - 50 Cent Opera.

The Blecch! Album - Jay-Z + those old novelty records Mad Magazine released in the mid-60s.

The I Want My Baby Black, Baby Black, Baby Black Album - Jay-Z + the Chili's baby back ribs jingle.

The Black-ack-ack-ack Album - every song on The Black Album crossed with "Movin' Out (Anthony's Song)" by Billy Joel.

I saw the Fall last night at the Black Cat in DC. I may be risking my credibility as a Fall-geek here, but I was a little underwhelmed with the show. This version of the Fall is a competent, professional group, but they lack that certain spark that Craig Scanlon and Brix Smith gave to prior incarnations. Live, you could strip away Mark E. Smith's vocals and they wouldn't sound much different from any number of the post-punk revivalists who have copped from the Fall. And MES was oddly subdued last night, although that could be partly explained by the godawful sound system at the Black Cat (which pushed his vocals way too low in the mix and muddied the sound to the point where you couldn't make out much of the lyrics) and partly due to his recovery from a broken leg. (Mark E. was stationed behind a desk all night, which actually enhanced his oddly compelling not-really-pleased-to-be-there stage presence.)

A lot of people I know who've listened to the Fall and not liked them have registered the same complaint: "every song sounds the same." I don't get that sense at all from listening to the albums, but I could see their point if you judged them solely on last night's show. With a few exceptions, everything was stuck in the same plodding mid-tempo groove without the dynamics that are usually present on their albums. Nevertheless, there were highlights: the version of "Middle Mass" turned the main riff into insane calliope music, "Mountain Energei" actually outdid the album version with a relentless drum-led attack, "Mere Pseud Mag. Ed." was pounded out ferociously at a level comparable (if not superior) to the original, and "Theme from Sparta F.C." worked perfectly as a barroom chantalong. But overall, it was a decent but unspectacular and uninspiring outing.

Ah, well. No one ever said being a Fall fan was easy. And it could've been a lot worse.

I'm currently suffering from post-tax season burnout, the bane of the accounting professional. Updates to this here thing will gradually return to semi-regular over the next few weeks. (Promise or threat, etc.) In the meantime, a few quick things:

- I realize spam found humor is getting played out, but:
Subject: wellbutrin reduces cocaine craving and is much cheaper!
A drug that reduces the craving for cocaine? What an wondrous age we live in.

- "Everything's Tuesday" by the Chairmen of the Board. My parents had Best of Buddah Records on 8-track, so Holland-Dozier-Holland style pop-soul was part of the soundtrack of my earliest years (along with Waylon Jennings' Greatest Hits - I haven't heard either in years, but I can still remember most of the songs note-for-note). This song encapsulates everything I like about the style - a subtly on-the-mark rhythm section, breezily buoyant strings and a vocal chorus that establishes permanent residence in your head.

- Dear whoever is designing the modern suburban office park: Is it your intention to create the most depressingly uniform and bleak landscapes possible? I know you're probably bitter about getting passed over for the downtown highrise project, so you're just halfassing it and inflicting some of your own turmoil on the rest of us, but seriously - windows? Colors besides that drab slightly-lighter-than-brick-red that every office complex I see uses? Building designs that aren't so damn blocky and square? I'm not a big visual aesthete or anything, I'm just looking for something that doesn't exacerbate my light-deprivation-caused irritability. Most suburban commercial zones are only slightly more cheerful looking than East Berlin circa 1977 or so. So let's vary things up a little. Also - windows. Thanks.

I'd just like to point out the two ads that are currently at the top of my blog (at least, the last time I loaded it):

RE-ELECT PRESIDENT BUSH?
GAS MASKS: $11.95 NEW

That's some uncannily well-designed marketing right there.

Opening Day tomorrow. (I realize that there have already been official games played, but I don't consider the Japanese series to be the real live Opening Day. But call tomorrow Opening Day (Observed) if you're a real stickler about this.) One of my favorite days of the year. Now I can start enjoying the White Sox' two months of pseudo-competiveness before they inevitably fall out of contention, poring over EQA and DIPS and support-neutral win-loss records (the real reason mathematics was invented) and planning another season of fantasy baseball glory.

I promise not to pull any George Will-ian rhetorical stunts here; enough has been vomited out about the lyrical qualities of baseball and the sport as a metaphor for life and a reflection of America and bleepblop. I love baseball, but people who have to invent some sort of deeper meaning for watching a game should really work on becoming more secure in their own tastes and interests. On the other hand, the people who always complain about "grown men playing a kids' game" are even more fucking annoying. C'mon, everyone, join us in the overflowing kiddie pool that is cultural relativism. Baseball is what it is - an entertaining way to kill a few hours, a fine meshing of strategy and physical force and a sport that lends itself to geeky obsession through the ability to document every single action through a series of statistics. And for me, Opening Day also serves as a celebration of the end of winter (which, of course, sucks) and a brief renewal of hope until the inevitable season-crushing disappointments of summer. So hurray for baseball, except for the Cubs (who are overrated this year, by the way, and will surely disappoint) and the Yankees.