Now That's Just Unfair

panda
Originally uploaded by rustedrobot.

Washington D.C. and portions of the rest of the country are abuzz over the public unveiling of Tai Shan, the Panda cub born this fall at the zoo in Washington D.C. and debuted to the press yesterday. My wife and I have both been sending the occasional link back and forth as we monitor the panda's progress, taking special delight in one picture where the little panda was sitting in a tupperware container. Ridiculously cute!

However, sinister motives are at play in this picture. The cub is a mere 2 months old, yet they're clearly sending the wrong message to our nation's youth, letting him smoke a big fat joint like that. Poor thing is on an inevitable path to ADD, bad grades and lots of junk food now. I need to go down there and straighten things out.

 

Temporary Threshold Shifting Via Circumaural Cranium Wear

With all the time I spend on airplanes or walking from hotel-to-office in New York City, I'm on the lookout for a good, quality pair of noise-cancelling headphones for my Ipod. Does anyone have any recommendations? It doesn't have to be one of those newfangled deals with all kinds of words like "Open and circumaural!" or "Dynamic Transducer Principle" or anything like that, but I also don't want some cookie-cutter $20 pair, either. I'd probably like something in the $60-100 range that doesn't have huge earphones that make me look like Princess Leia. Any suggestions?

So, one of the major gas/oil players is making a small, but fairly dramatic, move to alternatives/reneweables. BP (British Petroleum) has always claimed to be more forward-thinking in the alternative energy game, but a lot of it felt like BP just taking out full page ads in the major metropolitan newspapers to tell us about it. Now they seem to be acting on it, although James over at the alternative energy blog has the more telling information about the investment than the article in this morning's Boston Globe does. Surprise surprise.

So, I've now learned what I assume are the six most common chords for the guitar and I am able to bounce around semi-effortlessly between the six, with the occasional embarassing screw up, of course. I suppose "occasional" is not the right word, as it's probably more often than that. My confidence was shaken a bit by attempting to learn some fingerpicking via the instructional DVD, though. You can bang a chord out pretty easily, but if your finger is seemingly one centimenter out of place, you'll make fingerpicking sound like you're on the midnight train to William Hung Station. I may be ready to attempt a song soon....we'll see.

 

Damn Right I've Got The Bleus

cordon
Originally uploaded by rustedrobot.

A classic example of my (sometimes) lack of attention to certain details became evident this weekend when I finally took the extra sixty seconds to read what actually makes up a Chicken Cordon Bleu dish. You see, it's the damn French ("bleu") that always turned me off, not because it's French, but because I always just assumed that it meant the dish required blue cheese, one of the only cheeses which I truly despise (sorry Dad).

So upon putting in that "monumental" effort to actually read the recipe, it became clear that it was something I had to make. After all, the combination of chicken, cheese and prosciutto with a breadcrumb coating, all combined into one meal is obviously something I'm going to seriously regret having missed out on for 30 years (I don't count the first four years of my life as I didn't so much choose what I ate back then.

How ridiculously easy is it to make? Very. Think about it this way: two bowls: dry and liquid. For the liquid, take about an inch of butter (that's how I measure butter), melt it, then combine it with two cloves of garlic and about 1/8th of a cup of chicken broth. For the dry, take 1/4 cup of breadcrumbs, grind up some parmesan cheese and throw some paprika on top. Keep the liquid and the dry stuff seperate.

Now, here's the best part: beat the holy crap out of two chicken breasts until they're flat, or about 1/4th of an inch in height. Drop a slice of prosciutto onto each breast and add some mozzerela cheese to it, roll that bugger up, drench it in the butter/garlic combo, then coat it with the breadcrumb combo. Place breasts seam-side down into a greased pan and cook on 350 for 20-23 minutes. Done. Simple and delicious. If you're making four breasts, double the recipe. Thank me later.

To make up for lost time, I will make this every night for four years.

 

People Are Living On Dead-End Street

Egads. There's a country song to be found here somewhere.

In other news, the story of the Florida Marlins really saddens me. I mean, I'm glad and all that the Red Sox have partially solved some of their pitching problems, but to have to do it by potentially robbing the Marlins blind of Josh Beckett and Mike Lowell is crap. It just screams classic "big market-small market" bullshit that makes the business of baseball what it is today: a second-class operation. Yeah, yeah, the devil's advocates will tell you that in recent years, teams like the Diamondbacks, Angels and yes, the Marlins, won World Series titles against teams with larger payrolls and that much is certainly true. But those three teams weren't exactly cash-poor either. Improvements have been made, but true parity is still an ocean away in MLB and the problem won't change until there's forced budgets - floor and ceiling - for baseball's owners. They're either too cheap and won't spend anything or too egotistical and overspend. Adopt some kind of hybrid model that takes the best of the NHL deal and the NFL. Do something.

I'm a devoted Red Sox fan, but I can't tell you how much I miss the days when a four-game series with the Kansas City Royals was a frightening prospect. Now the Royals elicit mere laughter and it breaks my heart as a baseball fan.

I've been on an ITunes album-buying spree lately:
Neil Diamond - 12 Songs
Dramarama - Everybody Dies
Wilco - Kicking Television (Live)
Billy Squier - Don't Say No [a childhood favorite!]
Healthy White Baby - (self-titled)

Recently podded:
Son Volt - "Going, Going, Gone"
The New Pornographers - "Twin Cinema"
Fairport Convention - "Who Knows Where The Time Goes"
Elton John - "Jack Rabbit"
Elliot Smith - "Between The Bars"
Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young - "Deja Vu"
David Bowie - "Suffragette City"
Anders Parker - "Tell It To The Dust"
Billy Squier - "I Need You"
Todd Rundgren - "Slut"
Cary Hudson - "Bend With The Wind"
The Doors - "Back Door Man"
The Clash - "I Fought The Law"
Otis Redding - "Cigarettes and Coffee"

 

6 String Belief

Picture 002
Originally uploaded by rustedrobot.

It's obvious if you've read even a week's worth of material on this site that I'm pretty passioniate about music. A lot of people assume that I also play an instrument and when they ask if I play anythnig, I usually reply "not in front of anyone." Truth is, I do not really play any instruments. I think about ten years ago I somehow acquired a classical guitar and Angry Johnny showed me a couple of chords (still unsure to this day if he taught me the only chords he knew, but I still love a lot of his music), so I noodled around on that for a few months, but it didn't hold.

Last week I finally decided it was time to start anew and went out and purchased an Ibanez acoustic guitar. I was also this close (me holding my thumb and forefinger a centimeter apart right now) to also pulling the trigger on a banjo, but I figured, hey, one instrument at a time. It was difficult, though, as a local music store is closing shop and really having quite a sale.

So I bought a couple of books and a guitar-for-beginners type DVD thing and I've been learning the right way: chord by painful chord. In fact, I have not even attempted, nor considered, trying to learn a song yet. I just want to get the chords down and get comfortable with moving from chord to chord. As one might expect, it's harder than you think. And yes, my fingers hurt. Played until my fingers bled, was the summmer of '69, hey!

The jury is still out on whether or not this will be a passing fad, but it's probably more healthy than watching TV. I have no visions of grandeur here, either, just a desire to pass some peaceful time now and again and have a smidge of proficiency. That's all.

 

No Place To Shove Your Sharpened Heel

pavement
Originally uploaded by rustedrobot.

The year was 1994, and Pavement had laid the foundation for years of success with their second full album, Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain. The single "Cut Your Hair," had been a pretty large success on radio, buoyed by the hilarious video which had also been a big hit on MTV (back when they played, uh, music videos).

It was the height of the "slacker rock" era and while it was Nirvana who blew open the doors to it, most fans of indie-rock would take Pavement's first album (the masterpiece Slanted & Enchanted) over the initial Nirvana offering any day, myself included. It bears noting, however, that Pavement sounds nothing like Nirvana. In fact, they're almost complete opposites.

Riding the wave of success a hit single can bring, Pavement was staring at a glorious opportunity to take full advantage of a world chock-full of very ready music fans (some mainstream, some not), just waiting to see what they would do next.

Then they released Wowee Zowee. In the spring of 1995, I was on a cross-country road trip with a college friend, sitting in my 1987 Subaru in the parking lot at the legendary First Avenue nightclub in Minneapolis when I heard the first single "Rattled By The Rush" come across the radio. While the song lacked the instant clutch-and-grab that "Cut Your Hair" had possessed, I was still quite happy to hear that Pavement was delivering the goods - it was a great song.

Upon arriving home from my trip in late April of '95, one of the first things I did was report to the record store straight away to pick up Wowee Zowee. I spent the rest of my day and the next few thereafter listening to it, analyzing it, examining it note-by-note and I came to the conclusion that I was extremely disappointed by what I was hearing. Gone were the 3-4 minute messy pop songs, replaced by one minute crazy interludes or five minute wanderings. It felt uneven and marginally unlistenable. I even remember thinking that Beavis & Butthead got it right when they remarked "uh.....these guys need to practice more."

Good thing I didn't have a job for a month, because it took only a couple of weeks of really giving it a chance before it hit me like a punch to the gut: it was Pavement at its peak in terms of what I call "messy brilliance."

At first, about the only thing I liked was its terribly cool cover art, a painting by Brooklyn-based artist Steven Keene (and the artwork stuck with me, as we hired Keene to paint some stuff for an album we put out on our own label years later). But as the weeks went by I vowed to give Wowee Zowee a shot - and it paid off in droves. In my eyes, it's Pavement's peak, containing a 18-song output so varied, so unexplainable and so calculatingly messy that it completely defied expectations (one could easily argue that there are only 12 real songs on the album). It certainly also sharply stunted any real commercial success for the band, too. Something tells me that was the purpose of the album. Naturally, I welcome that kind of stuff.

Wowee Zowee has so many.....moments. The one-minute long fuzzy-rocker "Serpentine Pad" shows ringleader Stephen Malkmus uttering the snotty "Screw You!" followed by a machine-gun anthem of a three electric-guitar shot across the bow. "Grounded" is probably one of their signatures, kicking off with a nice, mid-tempo piano-and-drums exchange and whose choruses evolve into such a beautiful interplay between a rock band hitting it on all cylinders. "AT&T" starts you off thinking that this could be the closest thing to a radio single the band has on this album, but it ends up right-turning into a total car crash - a mess of electric guitars, crashing drums and Malkmus at one point thanking "Jacob Javits for everything" and then simply screaming "bip-bip-bip-bip-bip-bip-bip-bip-bip-bip-bip-bip!" Complete domination.

As inexplicable as the album is at first listen, it took many repeated listenings to grasp it. The star that shines brightest to me on Wowee Zowee is this week's MP3 Of The Week, the gorgeous Father To A Sister Of A Thought, a meandering and seemingly weed-influenced song with a sweet pedal steel wandering through it and more of Malkmus's too-clever-for-his-own-good lyrics, a trait which makes him one of my favorite songwriters of all time. His lyrics consistently blow my mind to this day, both for their utter mystery and "everyday dude" themes. The song is also timed at 3:30, which is really the perfect time for a rock song, too.

All that said, there isn't a single band before Pavement, nor after, who can match the output they had in the 1990's. Spoon comes closest today - they have the chops and they certainly have the sound, but they lack the personality and they lack the pure fun of it all. Pavement were endlessly inventive, enjoyable, memorable, clever and insanely fun to see live. The band shares the top spot of my #1 band of the 1990's. Take a listen to the song and enjoy!

"Father To A Sister Of A Thought"
rotten device, i'll say it twice
i'm too much
i'm too much comforted here
costs too much too much
we'll leave you
everywhere eyes, nowhere to die
no place to shove your sharpened heel
i'm looking looking for a tired face
in case you wanted to go
i know, i'm breathing in to the end

calling the bluffs, talking so tough
goodbye to the ugly steeple fear
good times for ever after
i'm just a man
you see who i am
i'm binding my hooks
and open the books
dirty black hearts
angel of corpus cristi
you're so misty, tell me what i want to hear
i know i'm reeling in...[x2]
to the end [x4]

i know i'll never know [x2]

 

Quick Reminder

A couple of weeks ago I switched RSS feeds so for anyone who used to subscribe to the old feed, it probably ain't working anymore! Change your feed to http://feeds.feedburner.com/rustedrobot

 

But Oh What A Sin 'Cause She's Oh So Thin That She Lost All The Friends That She Had

That's actually a line from a brilliant old Kinks song, but it applies nicely to yesterday's announcement of baseball's new steroid policy. The policy not only dishes out heavy punishment for use of anabolic steriods, but now also punishes (to a lesser degree) players who test positive for amphetamines. Now - get this - players will actually amass their statistics based on how hard they work, not how hard they work to hide the needle holes on their butts. While we saw some slight downward shifts in statistics this season, I can't wait to see what happens next season, especially when we get into July or August and players aren't able to fuel up on amphetamines!

Democrat, Republican, Oil companies.....what the hell does it matter these days? This morning's article about secret White House meetings in 2001 between Cheney's office and the heads of oil companies while the administration were shaping the recently passed energy bill made me laugh out loud. My favorite part:

Toward the end of the hearing, Lautenberg asked the five executives: ''Did your company or any representatives of your companies participate in Vice President Cheney's energy task force in 2001?" When there was no immediate response, Lautenberg added: ''The meeting . . ."

''No," said [Exxon chairman Lee] Raymond.

''No," said Chevron chairman David J. O'Reilly.

''We did not, no," said ConocoPhillips chairman James Mulva.

''To be honest, I don't know," said BP America chief executive Ross Pillari, who came to the job in August 2001. ''I wasn't here then."

''But your company was here," Lautenberg replied.

''Yes," Pillari said.

Shell Oil president John Hofmeister, who has held his job since earlier this year, answered last. ''Not to my knowledge," he said.

Of course, they all participated. I love this! I mean, was there any doubt? It's like a bunch of 12 year old kids who got caught throwing snowballs at a passing car!

Does anyone think it's strange that virtually no people are truly clamoring for the Red Sox GM job? Does that say something about Lucchino? You bet it does. Something is awry in that organization and despite their trying to smooth it over, it doesn't appear to be much of a secret to these eyes.

 

I Like Dreaming, Closing My Eyes & Feeling Fine

copetas
Originally uploaded by rustedrobot.

Hah. Anyone remember that song? Goodness.

Anyway, now that baseball season is over I had no video games to play, so I thought I'd give NHL '06 a shot after taking a few years off. It's pretty sweet. My favorite part is the loud grunting and huge crash that occurs when you really drill someone hard into the boards. As you can tell by the picture, you can create yourself, too. How vain am I? I'm vain enough to create myself in a video game, but not vain enough to draft myself. You see, I decided I'd play as Philadelphia and I held a fantasy draft, but the New Jersey Devils drafted me. Naturally, when I played as Philly against the Devils, Jeff Copetas scored to beat me. I am such a dork.

Oh! Some pop culture fanatics (guilty as charged) must be pitching tents over the news that Time-Warner is releasing a bunch of old sitcoms via the internet. AOL will be the only place to get them. It's a pretty cool idea, I have to admit, although you won't find me racing to download any episodes of "Growing Pains." What's your favorite old sitcom? I'd have to say "Cheers" is nearest and dearest to my heart.

 

I Think I Can

Dart
Originally uploaded by rustedrobot.

Finally back from an extraordinarily busy but very enjoyable trip to NYC, which is fast becoming my second home. Last night, upon arriving home, the whole week got the best of me - I felt like I'd been pushed through a wood chipper. Fast asleep....

The last few days of the trip were made significantly better by a visit from my smarter half, Steph. We crammed a bunch of stuff into the 72 hours she made it down for, including a visit to the Museum Of Modern Art and, as always, some excellent food. Much of that, plus some ramdom shots I took as I walked around the city, is documented here.

Earlier in the week, I had been paging through one of those "what to do in the city" magazines to see if there was anything else interesting going on for when Steph arrived and when I came across Canstruction, it became obvious to me that we had to experience this. Canstruction is an annual design competition where various New York design firms put their creativity to the test to see who can build the most compelling structures completely out of unopened canned food. Last year's winner, for example, was a gigantic hot dog, complete with a jar of mustard and ketchup behind it. How could you possibly not want to see something like this?

The price of admission to the exhibit: one can of food per person, all of which would be donated to the New York City Food Bank (including the art structures after the competition was over). Good cause, good camp! See some of our favorite entries here. Some of this stuff is really creative and amazing....

 

Hit The City

I've got heroin on my mind this morning. You see, there are days when I obsess about music and there are days when I don't care so much about it and consider it mere background noise. Then there's the other days when I am flat-out convinced that out of the 4,500 songs I have in my digital library, there isn't a single one I want to hear.

I'm in New York City this entire week, engaged in what is often referred to as "intensive strategy sessions" for work, typically lasting from dawn to dark. We do this from time to time and it's good on a few levels, most notably the fact that our spread-out team (NYC, Boston, SF) all get to convene in person and work together - a rare occasion and one that should probably happen more. We have a great team of people with varying personalities, backgrounds and interests and we're brutally honest with each other, which is incredibly healthy. As a new member of our team mentioned yesterday, there is no groupthink here. We all have our own ways of approaching things and we respect one another's opinions. On top of that, we get along rather famously outside of the office, too. I would consider any one of them a good friend, in addition to being labeled co-workers.

Anyway, I got sidetracked there. Music often acts as my companion, especially when I am traveling. If I'm ragged on an airplane, I can find songs that match my mood. If I'm working, I can find songs that trigger creativity or the will to keep my foot on the pedal for a few minutes longer. This morning, though, on my ten-block walk to the office, the music found me. Consecutively, The Velvet Underground's "There She Goes Again," Mark Lanegan's "Hit The City," and Mother Love Bone's "Bone China," three completely different songs, made their way into my morning. All three artists are well known for their associations with heroin at one point or another, but it was interesting that the Ipod produced these three songs as I was making my way down the cement walkways of the city.

Of course, NYC is nothing like it was in Velvet Underground's heyday. A city that was awash in trash, controversy and funk has slowly been Reaganized, for better or worse. But it's fun to let the music take you away sometimes - to try and paint a picture of what things looked like in another time. I suspect MTV made me like that....

 

One word:

Duh.

 

There Ain't Nothing That You Got That We Don't Need

cracker
Originally uploaded by rustedrobot.

You know that baseball player? The one whose name you always forget but is always in the mix or consistently the guy who does something positive for his team and always plays a factor in the outcome of the game? Well, David Lowery is that guy. Lowery is the main singer/songwriter for Cracker, definitely one of my top five bands of the '90s.

During the 1980's Lowery headed up the ultimate college band, Camper Van Beethoven, where he saw some minor success, but his days in Cracker brought him some bonafide radio hits in "Teen Angst," "Low" and "Eurotrash Girl." You know all three. "Teen Angst" was the song where Lowery begged that what world needs now is another folk singer, "like I need a hole in my head."

1993's "Low" was probably their biggest single, with the memorable "Bein' with you girl, is like being low" pulsing throughout the gritty chorus. Lowery's super-clever and often very funny and sarcastic, but he still maintains a quite meaningful songwriting touch and his pen is rarely matched by anyone out there. He's just got the sharpest lyrics in the west. If he's not my favorite lyricist of the modern day, than he's number 1A. David Lowery is Stephen Malkmus without the snotty-ness or Ryan Adams without the bitchiness and coming up with a single song to best represent his and the band's style is simply impossible (although a portion of his genius is readily evident on almost every song - take a look at the lyrics to Movie Star or Mr. Wrong). You just cannot do it. Some say "stoner-rock," but that's really only 10% of their total output in my eyes.

Their styles range from fast-paced rock to turtle-paced ballads (you'd be hard pressed to find a better cover version of the Grateful Dead's "Loser"), from accordian-inflected circus-style romps to alt-country flameouts. They do it all and they do it extremely, extremely well.

If I were to recommend a starting place, I'd say go buy 1993's Kerosene Hat, an amazing collection of styles all brought perfectly together by Lowery's brand of genius. I spent so much time with this album in 93-94 that it is downright obnoxious. However, in choosing an MP3 to offer up, I went with a cut from Gentlemen's Blues (1998) called Seven Days, which is a pretty accesible tune, but really only a fragment of what Cracker is really all about. Enjoy. And remember, you can right click and "save as" if you want to download the song.

Cracker - "Seven Days"
So we were standing, like the last rock band on the planet
On vapor trails and alpine skies
It's all green fields, yellow flowers, and brown liquor
Oh brown liquor!

Bug's got a job in the Catskills
Met some fraulein along the way
Took her home, but then she had an episode
Though it did disturb him, he was strangely compelled

Seven days well I've been waiting
Seven days and seven nights
Seven days well I've been dreaming
Of the real thing...Of the real thing

So we were standing around,
fading in and out of fashion
While Amerikids dug Eurobeats
Well we know all of the doormen
and other bartendresses
And there ain't nothing that you got that we don't need
Did I say that right?

Seven days well I've been waiting
Seven days and seven nights
Seven days well I've been dreaming
Of the real thing
Of the real thing

 

Just Sayin'

einstein
Originally uploaded by rustedrobot.

 

Now's The Time, The Time Is Now

• Oliver Stone, never one to shy away from woefully inaccurate storytelling of real-life events, has commenced filming the first large-scale Hollywood film about the attacks of September 11th. While I have enjoyed quite a few of his films ("Platoon," "Nixon" and my favorite Stone film, "Talk Radio," to name a couple), there are plenty that sully up the name. "Natural Born Killers" was simply horrendous, "The Doors" was an abberation and "JFK," while compelling and well-made, may have stripped any trust we may have had of Stone with its lack of facts and inexcusably left-wing slant. I mean, I'm a Democrat through-and-through, but even that was ridiculous. Ah, but it's just entertainment. I need to keep telling myself that. Anyway, whomever made the decision to put Stone at the helm of a 9/11 movie is either a A-list idiot or a total genius. Time will tell.
  

• Remember a while back when I spoke of the effects of video games on children? In case you don't remember, I'm not against letting children play video games, but I am in favor of heavy policing and time restrictions. Well, I read this earlier and I think, perhaps, we oughta to be rethinking who's affected by video games more:

Tyrone D. McMillian, 33, who was arrested after a high-speed chase through three New York towns in August, told the arresting officers: "I've been playing a lot of Grand Theft Auto and NASCAR on PlayStation. I thought I could get away." [Richmond Times-Dispatch, 8-27-05] [Times Union (Albany), 8-12-05]

• Also, if you've heard one "stupid criminal" story, you've heard them all, right? Since I lack any creative juices tonight (um, see all text above), I'm stealing a page out of Jay Leno's book and letting this one speak entirely for itself:

In September, Anthony R. Martin, 52, of Belleville, Ill., became the latest person to call the police and complain that someone had stolen his illegal drugs. But there was more: Martin told the investigating officer that a hostile neighbor had taken his marijuana plants, but when he showed the officer the room where he usually kept them, the plants were actually still there. Martin then said whoever took them must have returned them. He was charged with growing marijuana. (He also admitted that he had been drinking that night.) [News-Democrat (Belleville), 9-10-05]

• Finally, here's a good topic - we all have bands we really love, but for one reason or another, we've never seen live. So come on, fellow music nerds, tell me what two bands you absolutely love but can't believe you've never seen live in concert. Mine: R.E.M. and Guided By Voices.