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November 24, 2007

Still haunted by the '86 Mets

Don't you hate it when you have one of those dreams where you're at a party and your wife flirts nonstop with someone who may or may not be Keith Hernandez - even sitting a little too comfortably on his lap for long periods of time - before you finally leave the party in separate cars, and you're standing outside of yours just stewing and bitter and unable to give voice to just how angry and uncomfortable you feel, and then your wife starts to drive past you and you suddenly rocket your keys off her windshield, and they explode out into a dozen different directions, and she slams on the brakes and steps out of her car and just looks at you incredulous, and all you can do is hang your head, swallow your anger and say, "I'm sorry"... and then you wake up, and the dream kind of ruins your entire next day?

(...)

Uh... yeah... uh... neither do I.

Comments

Last night I had the dream where everyone was trying to flush sippy cups down the toilet. (It's so much better when I don't remember my dreams....)

I hate that. I have dreams sometimes that Adam cheats - CHEATS! - and I usually spend the entire next day waffling between anguished heartbreak and raw fury. All taken out directly on him, of course, because he should have KNOWN better, Jesus.

You're really not well - not well at all.

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Do You Hear What I Hear?

  • Aereogramme -

    Aereogramme: My Heart Has a Wish That You Would Not Go
    I never would have expected that my son would start demanding that I intersperse repeated playings of Ra Ra Riot's debut with a song called "A Conscious Life for Coma Boy," but that's what Aerogramme has brought to my life: a realization that my kid loves intricately layered, thematically complex music as much as I do. Or, at least, that he loves singing "I don't know how to get there... I don't know how to get there" right along with me. In any case, Aerogramme is a terrific Scots band who I only recently discovered - despite the fact they broke up several years ago - and this album, their finale, is as solid a summary of their appeal as you'll find: drama-saturated musicianship with arresting lyrics and gorgeous vocals that comes thisclose to going over the top... but ends up being just spectacular instead.

  • Sunn O))) -

    Sunn O))): Black One
    I'm not sure how to describe this other than to say that it is, quite simply, the most nightmarish soundscape I've ever encountered, or want to encounter. In the most tremendously dark, disturbing and unhealthy sense possible, this is a remarkable accomplishment.

  • Mono -

    Mono: Hymn to the Immortal Wind
    I know it's only May, but I have no doubt that this is a strong contender for the best album of 2009: a staggeringly emotional and powerful work that fuses the epic guitar spiral of Explosions in the Sky at their best with great symphonic washes and impeccable sense of drama of Sigur Ros. Yes, it's Japanese post-rock. Yes, there are no vocals. Yes, it's probably outside of most people's comfort zone. And yes: it really is so good that none of that matters in the least.

  • Tom Verlaine -

    Tom Verlaine: Flash Light
    God, I'd forgotten how much I love this album. Yes, the cover is horrifying - maybe not quite Mew/And the Glass Handed Kites horrifying, but awful nonetheless - but the music inside encompasses what may be the single best compendium of songwriting and guitar playing Tom Verlaine ever created. Which, I realize, is heresy: "Ohhh, Television... you can't say the first Television album isn't a classic of edgy 70s NY rock and the twin-guitar blahblahblah." Yeah, well: to be honest, I find Marquee Moon a little on the dull side. But Flash Light? Wow. The album moves from strength to strength, integrating his supple guitar playing with fantastic lyrics and the most emotive vocals Verlaine ever recorded. The high points: "Song" and "The Scientist Writes A Letter" -- both of which are as odd, poignant and lovely as any love songs I've encountered. Outstanding... and no, I can't believe I waited this long to finally pick it up on CD.

  • Mark Kozelek -

    Mark Kozelek: The Finally LP
    I've been a fan of Mark Kozelek's for almost as long as he's been recording music — and over the years, some of his most remarkable work has been versions of other artists' songs. His reworking of The Cars' "All Mixed Up" and S&G's "I Am A Rock" with Red House Painters (and the entire "Tiny Cities" CD with Sun Kil Moon) were more than covers; they were complete, ground level-up reimaginings of the songs that transformed them into something shimmering, strange, wondrous and new. That being said, when looking at a lot of his work as a solo artist... it tends to fall into a trap of homogeneity. It's all very acoustic and pretty and vaguely sad, but there's not much to distinguish his originals from his acoustic covers of, say, AC/DC. His latest - "The Finally LP" - follows suit. This one mixes a couple of originals with a diverse set of covers, some of which work better than others. "Celebrated Summer" has always been my favorite Hüsker Dü song, and while I like his version here... I can't help but wish it was more than an acoustic wisp that slips away largely forgotten almost as soon as it ends. His cover of AC/DC's "If You Want Blood" (the second time he's covered that song, by the way) is similar: quite lovely, and quite easy to forget. For a man capable of making music as astonishingly affecting as Kozelek's... you can't help but feel a little disappointed by that.

Reading is Fundamental

  • Graham Roumieu: Me Write Book: It Bigfoot Memoir

    Graham Roumieu: Me Write Book: It Bigfoot Memoir
    Pure, naked, hairy genius. By turns hysterically funny and surprisingly sad, this episodic autobiography of everyone's favorite cryptohominid is accompanied by moving and frequently distressing drawings (Bigfoot attempting a creepy Tom Cruise smile is one of my favorites), as well as first-person recollections of his struggles with fame, his search for his father, and his time on the Japanese sumo circuit. This is beyond highly recommended. (Special thanks to FADKOG for making this a part of my life.)

  • Michael Gates Gill: How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else

    Michael Gates Gill: How Starbucks Saved My Life: A Son of Privilege Learns to Live Like Everyone Else
    A mom at my girls' preschool lent me this book, and I have to say that 80pgs in... I'm hating this guy like there's no tomorrow. "Oh, I had a bigtime advertising job that I lucked into because of my Yalie connections and kept for years because of the old boys club atmosphere and I was a complete racist and sexist snob the entire time I was doing it but when agencies started getting lean and mean they realized I was completely redundant so they canned my ass - the nerve! - and then I reacted by cheating on my wife and having a baby (despite the fact that I completely ignored my other 3 kids while they were kids) with my mistress, who then decided she couldn't stand me and left (not long after my wife kicked me out)... so I ended up so desperate and alone that I took a job at Starbucks, where I was the only white employee and I learned: hey, I don't have to be scared of minorities and dismissive of people who aren't privy to the country club lifestyle. And now I'm all sensitive and shit." Fucking jackass. P.S. He may have made his living for decades as a copywriter, but given the hack quality of his writing here... I'm stunned he lasted as long as he did.

  • Mo Hayder: The Devil of Nanking

    Mo Hayder: The Devil of Nanking
    In 1937, Japanese soldiers invaded the Chinese city of Nanking and proceeded to unleash a host of atrocities that claimed more than 300,000 civilian lives. This true, historical event forms the backdrop for this fascinating and frequently disturbing novel. Switching back and forth between a diary describing the events of 1937 with the story of an unbalanced British woman trying to uncover the truth of Nanking in modern-day Toyko, Hayder keeps you riveted and repulsed and completely unable to put the book down. (As is true of all Hayder books: NOT for the faint of heart.)

  • Suzanne Finnamore: Split: A Memoir of Divorce

    Suzanne Finnamore: Split: A Memoir of Divorce
    Wow. Just... wow. In the opening chapter of Split - Finnamore's third memoir - her husband comes home, changes his shirt, throws back a couple of martinis, then announces that he wants a divorce. What follows is her dissection of life after the apocalypse: each brief chapter renders in beautiful, razor-cut detail a snapshot of this new, unwanted life, presented in unflinching detail and with a profoundly dark and bitter sense of humor that leaves me cackling far more often than is probably appropriate or healthy. Finnamore's debut "Otherwise Engaged" was one of the best books I've read in years, and "Split" - incredibly - lives up to that standard. I repeat, with all due force and persuasive intent: wow.

  • Iain Banks: Complicity

    Iain Banks: Complicity
    Banks does some interesting things in this novel, where he parallels the journeys, misdeeds and misadventures of a muckracking Scottish investigative journalist with those of a brutal serial killer, whose chosen victims seem to mirror those targeted in diatribes by the journalist in question. Are killer and journalist one and the same? The title of the novel is key, as Banks makes it clear that by virtue of both the great and terrible things we do in life, we are all complicit and responsible for the events that result, ripple outward and fall away across the years. Ultimately, I think I'm appreciating this more as a conceptual exercise than enjoying it as a novel, but still: that's something.

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