An old friend of mine who we'll call Jilly posted this great link on her website. It's all about indie rock hair, and it's short, but it's funny.
I had a dream last night that I was leaving college and loading up the trunk of my car and after I jammed just about everything I could fit into the trunk, I proceeded to fill the trunk with water to the very top, completely submerging all of my stuff. What does that mean? Any dream-translators out there to help me out?
Oh yeah, baby! You bet I already ordered the new Led Zeppelin DVD. I wouldn't miss it for the world. I caught a preview on Launch.com and it looks just awesome! The Zep were, more or less, my first "favorite band" and while they do not have the distinction anymore, there's still a spot in my heart for that band. They were so much better than the 4 songs you hear on the radio by them over and over and over and over........
Underrated album of the week: Viva Last Blues by Palace. Very sparse, quiet indie-rock, but damn, after like 5 years these songs still resonate in my head from time to time. This morning at the gym, out of nowhere, "Work Hard/Play Hard" bubbled up into my brain and I couldn't get it out of my head, despite the fact that I was listening to the Dramarama "Best Of" collection. The grass is always greener on the other side of my CD collection.
A sad day for the video game business, at least for me. 3DO has declared bankruptcy. They weren't making much noise in the video game business, but they did make the incredible High Heat series of baseball games that are just astounding in its realism. I talked about this game a lot last season, and I was first in line this season to buy the new one, and it doesn't disappoint. I'm playing as the Cincinnati Reds, I'm 48-41, good for 3rd place in the NL Central behind Houston and St. Louis, and just 3 games back in the Wild Card standings. Anyway, nobody is really sure what will happen to this game now. Will this be the last High Heat game we see? Or will another company with deeper pockets purchase the team & assets behind this game? Yet to be seen. High Heat is 3DO's best-seller, so my guess is that some company will acquire that part of 3DO. I hope so.
In other video game news, I can now say with some degree of support behind me, that playing video games is not a brain drain. I have noticed over the past few years that I have been able to monitor complex visual information more easily than non-game players. Yes. Of course.
Finally, I must ask one question: How often will this guy have to stop for gas?!
Song now playing: Neil Diamond - "Brother Love's Traveling Salvation Show" (live)
Do you ever experience or do the following two things......
1. When I take a shower, I always have to keep a part of my body under the water because it's nice and warm. Right? The second you step out of the stream of water, whether it be to grab a shampoo bottle, the soap or whatever, you know that feeling when that first blast of cooler air hits you. It simply sucks. So I always make it a point to keep as much of my body in the warmth as possible.
2. Springtime is when you're finally able to stop putting layer after layer of clothing on. In the winter, I normally put some kind of t-shirt on under my regular shirt and tuck it in, then put a belt on. But now that's it's spring/summer (arguably!), I forego the t-shirt, theefore having no t-shirt to tuck in, but still the belt. The key point: the belt buckle is traditionally very cold, so the first time you bend over to tie your shoes or pick something up, that cold blast against my stomach is totally crappy.
Do these things happen to you, ever? Or am I just insane? Or both?
Underappreciated artist of the week: Tommy Womack. This guy writes some of the best songs I've heard in a long, long time. I have very specific memories of Tommy Womack because the record label I used to run came this close (picture me with my thumb and forefinger just centimeters apart) to signing him. I'll never forget how disappointed and sad I was when we couldn't release his terrific album in 1997 because we just didn't have the money. Of all things......ugh. Anyway, Womack is not only a terrific songwriter, but he's also an author who penned what might be the finest account of a rock band on the road that I've ever read, The Cheese Chronicles. If you even remotely like music, I guarantee that you will absolutely love this book and I strongly encourage you to get it. I might even give you your money back if you didn't like it.
Finally, it was a pleasure to open this morning's Boston Globe and see a nice piece on the great Joe Pernice, one of music's greatest undiscovered treasures. Yes, I still get the daily newspaper delivered to my house and I read it every morning during my breakfast. Call me a creature of pre-internet habit.
Song now playing: Johnny Cash: "Tennessee Flat-Top Box"
I've hit a new low of sorts. Many people who know me are aware of my reaction to hot and spicy food. For those of you who are not aware, let me clue you in: I sweat. I mean, I SWEAT. The slightest hint of spicy food causes my body to launch itself into a complete code blue, and I instantly begin sweating as if I'd run a marathon in stifling humidity or something. It's downright odd. Sure, I could understand sweating profusely after eating a meal's worth of hot food, but my affliction hits the second spicy food hits my tongue. The problem here is that I like the taste of spicy food, but eating it makes me so uncomfortable that I usually have to forego such pleasures. It's either eat, quench my craving and lose 40 pounds sweating, or I don't eat it and I'm miserable because I missed the opportunity. Which is better? I don't know. All I can say is that I usually opt for the latter and skip eating the spicy food.
Then there's those times when I am in a restaurant and I am completely at the whim of the waitstaff. This can have horrendous consequences. I will always ask the waiter if a certain dish is spicy and make it clear that I have low tolerance. Almost all the time, they say, "no, it's not spicy at all," and then it arrives and as soon as the fork hits my mouth, it's all over. Whip out the bucket 'cause I'm drowning! So now I have to be very melodramatic in the restaurants because waitstaff don't seem to believe that this really happens to me. It does.
So, to close out the circle of today's post - back to my first sentence - I've hit a new low of sorts. Today I placed 2 gum drops into my mouth, the color was yellow, and suddenly - WHAM - sweating! I had to immeadiately take off my fleece and strip down to a t-shirt to avoid major problems - possibly death. Imagine my god damn surprise, now, that one of my favorite treats can possibly send me to the stratosphere of sweat?! This is a crushing blow. Nothing will stop me from eating gum drops, but this hurts. Oh, it hurts. One more thing: I can't eat Bar-B-Que Potato Chips either - same reaction. Sometimes the mild taco mixes that you throw into ground beef or chicken makes me freak, too. Fun times.....
Song now playing: Teenage Fanclub - "Ain't That Enough"
Picked up a couple of albums over the weekend, one in particular that brings back sweet memories:
The Georgia Satellites, "In The Land of Salvation and Sin" - it's a damn shame that this band is only remembered for "Keep Your Hands To Yourself," which got the novelty treatment from MTV, but gave them a big hit. The Satellites were a terrific, Faces-like bar rock band with swagger, skill and just fun. Their singer and main songwriter, Dan Baird, has gone onto a decent solo career, but this album has quite a special place in my memories. It was 1989 and I knew everything. I was an 18 year old living in the heart of the city in Boston, just outside of Fenway Park and much like thousands of 18 year olds, I felt as if the world were mine, having recently been freed of the repetitive suburbs and the rules of living at home. I was an eager freshman at Northeastern University and having opted to not live in the dormitories because of the cost, myself and two of my friends from home elected to pile into a one bedroom apartment. That's right - three 18 year old boys sharing a shoe-box sized one bedroom in the guts of Kenmore Square, exploring what the city had to offer, sitting on the roof of the apartment building, drinking beer and just laughing about nothing.
To think about it now, it was pure insanity to have three of us in one bedroom. Back then, though, we knew no different and those first few months were some of the most exciting, liberating and most enjoyable times of my life. This is the album I associate those times with. I had been a fan of the Satellites since 1986 when their self-titled first album came out, so when this new album came out concurrently with the time we had moved, it was a welcome coincidence and a great opportunity for me to push my musical tastes on my two unsuspecting roommates. Before long, they, too, loved "In The Land Of Salvation and Sin" and it seemed like almost every night, we'd crank up "Bottle O'Tears" or "All Over But The Cryin'," flirt with the girls down the hall, hang out with the guys from Berkely School of Music and drink a few (cheap) beers and throw the empty bottles at the rats darting around in the alley below. It was pure, exciting innocence and it was the explosion of our personalities after years of being cooped up in the suburbs and following all the rules of our high-school teachers made. This felt like it couldn't possibly get any better or more free.
To finish the story: Of course, all these things inevitably come to an end; a rite of passage is just that - a passage into another time and place, onto another set of experiences and challenges. After 3 months, when winter reared its ugly head, we started realizing that we had to pay rent (like, every month!?!) and we all had to get jobs. Me, I took two jobs. One was hawking Cokes at the Boston Garden, the other was stocking frozen food at the Star Market. Even then, it was bad: we still had to sneak into Burger King next door to steal their mongo-size rolls of industrial toilet paper. From there, in no particular order: my two year relationship with my high-school girlfriend fell apart, there were mice, rats and cockroaches in the apartment and for god's sake, there were three of us sharing a one bedroom. Also, we gained a fourth roommate who slept on the couch, I was yearning for a real college campus with trees and there were THREE OF US SHARING ONE BEDROOM. By spring time, my transfer to Kent State Univeristy in Ohio was all set, and I was back living at home in March after two quarters at Northeastern. But those first few months were glorious and nobody will ever be able to take that away from me. Listening to this album over the weekend was a great trip down memory lane.
Anyway, this particular album is out-of-print now, but I'm sure you can still find it if you look hard enough - I found mine in a used CD shop in Somerville over the weekend. What a great album.
Song now playing: Cypress Hill - "I Ain't Going Out Like That"
I have very little to offer today from a personal level, so let me offer you these stories as solace. After all, that's what blogging is all about:
- One must appreciate an up-front and honest politician. I mean, this guy is doing the same type stuff every politician does in secret (buys votes), but he's bringing it right to the people and hitting them in their favorite place. I like that.
- Interesting story here about uncontrollable vegetation near the San Francisco airport. The story itself isn't anything crazy, but the fact that there's a company called Goats-R-Us makes me giggle a little bit.
- Wait, you can still do this if you're in a coma? I had no idea....
One final point to make: I'm happy to see bands like The Strokes and The White Stripes making some noise and some money in the mainstream rock world. While I'm not particularly enamored with either one of the those bands, it's a bit refreshing to see some honest music make it to the airwaves. But damn, how quick can the rip-off bands proliferate? Suddenly we've got dozens and dozens of these lookalike, soundalike bands and now I can't tell the different between any of them. Which leads me to this question: is this little fad no better than a boy-band or pretty-girl-who-lip-synchs fad? The saturation we're seeing already indicates it's certainly possible. Oh well. I can't say I honestly care either way. Just an observation.
Song now playing: The Rolling Stones - "The Spider and the Fly"
Last weekend we went to Brookline, MA to see the author and humorist Bill Bryson speak on the first stop of his national book tour. I have enjoyed Bryson's books for quite a while now and I have a specific memory of being on a beach in North Carolina one summer, laughing so hard while reading "A Walk In The Woods" that people started to look at me. The best part is that I haven't even come close to reading all his books, so there's a lot of great catching up to do. It's similar to when you listen to a specific album and from a great band you haven't heard before, and then you realize they have another four albums!
Anyway, they had Bryson speak in a theatre that held about 175-200 people and it was packed to the gills. Bryson walked in and it was obvious that he was flattered and slightly overwhelmed that so many people showed up. He arrived to the front of the podium, got settled, and as soon as the applause started to wane, he skillfully waited a few moments - that exact point where the appluase dies down entirely, slowly glanced around as the theatre got completely silent and simply said "fuck." Great start! He ended up speaking and keeping us dutifully entertained for about 45 minutes, reading a passage from his new book, A Short History Of Nearly Everything, along with a couple of older passages from past books, and then took some questions from the audience. One particular question was the highlight of the hour:
Audience member: "Do you have favorite or memorable criticisms of any of your work?" Bryson, tongue-in-cheek: "Are you saying there's been criticism of my writing?" Audience member: "I was just wondering if you had ever read any reviews of memorable or humorous criticism?" Bryson, dismissive: "No. Next question."
In looking at the guy who asked the question, I could tell he was a little steamed at Bryson's utter dismissal of his question, but it was handled wonderfully by the author. I mean, who wants to talk to a sold-out theatre about people who don't like your work? My favorite moment!
Yesterday Howard Dean laid out his plan for national healthcare. We've been hearing about these plans from every politician for years now, so it's really hard to gauge how this compares to all the other plans without some more detailed investigation (don't expect that to happen on this website), but Dean struck a chord with me with this quote: "If you operate a business that can afford to pay its executives large salaries and provide them with generous bonuses and benefits, then you ought to be prepared to pay for health insurance for your employees." Damn straight, my man. Anyway, in a nutshell, Dean's plan calls for healthcare for every American under the age of 25, and tax punishments for corporations who don't offer ALL their employees healthcare. Part of the funding will come from rolling back the portion of Monkey Bush's tax cut aimed at people making more than $300,000 annually. Read the story. It's a good start, and I continue to admire Dean for his honesty - I do believe he's as honest as a politician can be. Not saying much, I guess, is it?
Just back from a relatively minor dental procedure that included novocain. Dental procedures, no matter what shape or form are simply never fun, but novocain just kicks total ass. The fact that they are digging around your mouth, cutting, pressing, poking, etc and you can just sit there and hum to yourself and not feel a single thing is amazing. I'm so glad I live in the age of novocain. Now, since I knew I would be in the dentist's chair for about 45 minutes, I figured I'd bring my Discman and tune out during the procedure. So I turned up the tunes, closed my eyes, and rocked. Problem is that now and then the dentist barks instructions at you to turn your head, open or close your mouth, blah blah blah. So I would be sitting there, and I would hear *something* but I just figured it was the dentist talking to his assistant. Then I would hear it even louder and I knew he was talking to me. Fun stuff. But hell, if I'm going to be bleeding, the least he can do is put up with saying shit twice. Right?
I'm often careful not to immerse myself too deeply in politics. I sometimes believe that whoever is in office doesn't really matter. Our current president, however, has me changing my opinion about such things. I skew toward being a Democrat, but by-and-large, I'm often simply a neutral and amused onlooker when it comes to politics and campaigns. A heavyweight boxing title fight is more on the up-and-up than a political campaign. So it was with a hint of my own standoffish-ness when my friend Clay mentioned this guy Howard Dean, the former governor of Vermont. Always one to brush it off when people try to push politicians on me, I dismissed it, knowing that there's a long way to go until I really have to make any decisions.
The eye opener, though, came when Clay forwarded me Howard Dean's speech to the California State Democratic Convention (please, please read it), which, from what I've read, is still being talked about as one of the more passioniate and moving speeches by a politician in recent memory. I wish I had seen it instead of just reading it, but I'm on board 100%. I'm not ready yet for the Dean Meetups, but I've already decided that Dean is going to win. Maybe. I mean, I thought Frenchie would win American Idol, right? She would have if she hadn't posed topless for some two-bit magazine. Which supports my prediction: as long as Dean doesn't pose topless, he's a winner.
Finally, just imagine one of those overly, annoyingly cheerful waitresses at Applebees saying to you: "Uh, would you like our "special surprise salad?! I'm so happy and annoying!"
50% props out to my friend Matt Hickey today, who turned me on to what has become my favorite album of 2003 so far. The band is called Nada Surf and the album is called Let Go. They're a pretty straight-ahead rock-pop band, but the songs are written and performed several notches above the norm. If you can check out the sound clip for "Happy Kid," which could be the best song of the decade so far. Heady compliments, I know. Naturally, this qualifies it for nearly no radio play, for it seems that if you make too good an album these days, it's withheld from the scummy grips of Clear Channel. Arf. Anyway, I'm (and Matt's in Chicago) to tell you that this album is well worth your money. Or it's well worth downloading, I suppose, for you kids out there who read this. Get it get it get it.
So why only 50% props, you ask? Well, Matt also runs the fantasy baseball league that he got me into. Despite the fact that my team appears to be loaded, I'm hovering near the bottom of the league, much like last season. It's still early, but.........damn.
Finally, I wish I could be in Taipai, Taiwan these days to see things like this
As advertised in this space on Friday, I attended the Roger Williams Zoo in Providence, Rhode Island on Sunday. It might have been the first time I've ever been to the zoo. If I've been to a zoo before, I cannot remember. The word is that the Williams Zoo is one of the nicer ones in New England. Having nothing to compare it to, I would say it's a nice zoo, although it's a little odd to see a Zebra grazing in a field with the backdrop being a very visible and very busy Interstate 95. Nonetheless, I saw some animals that I've only previously seen on television - Giraffes, Cheetahs, Leopards and Gibbons. Gibbons were cool - they're essentially mini-monkeys.
I had some reservations about feeling sad to see animals locked up and I did feel a little bit sad about it. However, the overwhelming feeling for me was that the zoo was doing good by keeping these animals around, most of which were severely endangered. Additionally, the educational value of learning about these animals is also a positive thing. Of course, seeing children gawk in amazement at the creatures was a great thing to see. All in all, a nice time!
There was one thing about the zoo that was a total drag. Apparantly there's an animal that got loose and was able to disguise itself as a wooden post with gorilla hands. Believe me. The zoo announced over the loudspeaker that everyone must quietly and efficiently exit the zoo until they caught the escaped animal. Naturally, with my luck, as I was quietly but efficiently following directions, the damn wooden post got to me.....
Today's topic shall be meat. That's right, dead animals. Yum. Last night I was sitting in my living room, voraciously cutting, forking and ingesting slices of leftover lamb from a weekend dinner. I hesitated momentarily, glanced up and realized "Dammit, Casey Fossum just got thrown out of the game." Turning my attention back to my dinner, I realized that I love meat. So now I present to you my five favorite meats:
This list is, by no means, based on volume. For example, I probably eat lamb 1-2 times per year. If I ate more lamb, I wonder if it would retain it's number one standing on the meat list? Not sure. I eat duck once a year - if that. The fat content in duck is a major turn-off, but of course it's delicious. That being said, the following is my list of ingested meats by pure volume (what I eat the most):
Obviously today's topic is not very vegetarian friendly. Let me be the first (and only) to tell you that I eat my fair share of vegetables, too. In fact, I love animals. I refuse to kill them, but I will eat them. I love animals so much, in fact, that I am going to the zoo this weekend in Providence, RI to gawk at all the animals and take pictures. I'm not sure if I've ever been to a zoo - or at least I can't even remember ever going to a zoo, although I am sure I did at some point in my life. I'm pretty psyched, dudes. The zoo. I promise to not kill or eat any of the animals there, because they will be too cute.
Song now playing: Electric Light Orchestra - "Don't Bring Me Down" (no no no no no, eww-whee-hoo! great song!)
