A glacier's patience

I can't stop listening to this song:

Neko Case - This Tornado Loves You

Statistics indicate...

... that Super Furry Animals was (were?) the 3rd best band of the aughts.

Juxtaposed With U



(Drawing) Rings Around The World



Venus and Serena



Moped Eyes



The Very Best Of Neil Diamond



It must be true. Statistics said so!

Current Music: Super Furry Animals - Dark Days/Light Years

Tin and rubber

Ten years ago today, Graham and I got together with some friends to record our very first song, "Edible Rubber". This group -- Graham, Jesse, me, and whoever else was at Jesse's house at the time -- was a nascent version of the unfortunately named Pirkinweed, our band.

About eight "members" came and went before we wrote our third song. About ten songs later I was almost ousted by everyone in the band who wasn't Graham, which I turned around by booting one of them. About ten more songs and we got Eric to play bass for us; about a year passed before my attempted ouster was avenged: our drummer was booted, and Eric became the drummer.

We changed our name to The Asbestos Concern. We thought we were good. We couldn't hold down a bass player. We never played a show. About twenty more songs got written; probably a third of them got recorded before the band bit the dust.

Yet for all those changes, "Edible Rubber" changed remarkably little from its original form, beyond Graham learning how to play guitar on all six strings instead of the top 3 he had been using (in hindsight, the lower three would have been a lot more useful). It was perfect already.

To celebrate the tin anniversary of our band, here's a video of a cat eating rubber:



We still think we were good.

What Wang Watches

The Daily Show, in Berkeley:



(link for those of you reading this on Facebook)

Over the years I've been known to get excited any time I see Vancouver on TV or the movies, in places like: Smallville; Hockey Night in Canada; X-Men 3; and most notably Juno, which gets extra points for including lots of scenes in Port Coquitlam and Coquitlam. This is the very first time I remember getting really excited about seeing Berkeley on TV.

Bonus! In conversation with Dickolas (Random quotes from my past, provided with some context)

me:

[walking by the Army recruiting booth outside the basketball game] So this is the Army's recruiting effort: a Hummer painted with Army logos, a single inflatable free-throw game, and a covered tent? That's like something Pepsi would use... and it's not as good as what Pepsi would have.

Allan:

Well, it's an inferior product.

Vampire Weekend, on SNL:



(link for those of you reading on Facebook)

I'm sure there's all kinds of Vampire Weekend backlash ("more like Vampire Asshole"¹) but hey, I only just found out who they are -- I think I've heard "A-Punk" on the radio but didn't know who it was -- and I love this shit so far. It really appeals to my inner XTC fan, as well as my inner part-that-wants-to-like-the-Police. My first instinct, actually, was that it sounds a bit like what I remember of the bits of Paul Simon's Graceland-era concerts they show on PBS pledge drives. It made me want to check out Graceland-era Paul Simon, but I clicked on one link on YouTube and didn't have the patience to get through the whole thing. I'll keep trying.

Aw heck, more Vampire Weekend on SNL:



(link for you excellent Facebookers out there)

Hawksley Workman's new single:

(link for everyone, because embedding is disabled)

Note to self: buy Hawksley Workman's new album over Spring Break.

Hawksley Workman's old single, featuring an Oscar-winning actress:



(Knock knock. Who's there? link²)

A sporting massacre:



(You know what, Facebookers, that "View Original Post" link at the top isn't there for my health.)

I fully expect the Americans to say I'm an idiot, but the Canadians will appreciate.

Current Music: Vampire Weekend - Mansard Roof

1. also, Vampire Weaksauce
2. Link who?

I'm less curious about "Gitaroo Man"

I wonder if there's a cover band out there that plays nothing but songs from Guitar Hero. They would have started by learning the easy songs and then moved on to the harder ones just like in the game, so that depending on when you saw them over the course of a year (or release cycle, I suppose) you'd be hearing different songs. After they went through the whole list of tunes, they'd have gone back through and started over on a higher difficulty setting. Maybe that means the second time through they got the second guitarist to start playing the lead parts instead of both guitarists just playing the easier rhythm part.

Then they'd have had to do it all over again when Guitar Hero II came out.

When development shifted over to Neversoft, I wonder if the band fractured into two, with one half learning the songs from Guitar Hero III and the other half devoting their efforts to Rock Band.

I wonder if an analogous band exists for Dance Dance Revolution.

Current Music: Crowded House - Time On Earth

What's Wang This Week

This is my favourite clip -- an outtake, no less -- from the excellent documentary I Am Trying To Break Your Heart, a film about Wilco and the making of Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.



I've been following the news about Jim Balsillie wanting to buy the Predators and moving the team to Canada. I of course would love to see this happen, especially if the Preds go on to win the cup the following year, just like what Colorado did to Quebec City. My officemate is from Tennessee and he tells me that the Preds don't have much of a fanbase in Nashville (hell, he's a Pens fan), so I think this would be great. Living in California, I think I have a good understanding of how little hockey means to Californians and most other Americans I have met. It's like sticking a square peg into a round hole. It doesn't work. I imagine it's not much better in Tennessee.

Of course, it's easy to say that as an outsider. However, I was a Vancouver Grizzlies fan, and I still feel jilted by the NBA. I figure it could have worked in Vancouver had they not had inept management and had basketball players actually wanted to play in Vancouver. It would really have helped had the team won more than 22 games in any one season while they were in Vancouver.

Jim Balsillie, if you manage to move a really good hockey team like the Preds to Canada, I promise that I will try not to make jokes about your name ("Bals").

The only thing I have trouble imagining is where they would put the new hockey team. Having never been to Kitchener, Waterloo, Cambridge, or Hamilton, I shouldn't say, but I would never have thought of any of them being real major-league sport cities, much in the same way I wouldn't imagine a hockey team in Burnaby or Surrey; yet that is probably where the team would end up. Another team in Winnipeg might be nice, but they can probably afford to hold out until the Coyotes inevitably get tired of trying to keep ice frozen in Phoenix and move back.

[table of women beside ours]:

[office gossip and chatter]

Jen:

[leans over to me, conspiratorially] Large groups of women scare me.

me:

[thinks this over] ... I scare large groups of women.

Current Music: Wilco - The Thanks I Get
EDIT (12:46AM, June 4/07): fixed the spelling of Jim "Bals" Balsillie's last name

The saddest song

Steve just told me about a study that showed that "The Drugs Don't Work" by the Verve is the saddest song ever. I have only ever known one song to be able to reduce me to tears, and that isn't it.

This is.


Current Music: Golden Smog - Please Tell My Brother

Music snobbery

After hearing Stephen Colbert use the word "prog" to describe the Decemberists, and reading Rachel's friends bitching about the prog direction the new Decemberists album has taken, I checked it out. Prog rock from the Decemberists? Fascinating!

Now I've heard it. While I see where they are coming from and why they might find it to be a bit prog, I still believe that these people have probably never listened to Rush.

Current Music: The Decemberists - When The War Came