HaPhPhy Halloween!

Not an Album Review: Exile on Main Street

Sitting on the sofa on a Saturday evening, waiting for the Phils and Yanks to play. I'm decked in all black except for my violently pink wig that I bought as an impromptu costume for last Tuesday's VOTS game*; I thought the neighborhood trick-or-treaters deserved a little effort beyond setting the bowl of candy out (and putting the dogs up). Just finished grading 100+ essays for the Bio & Society class and only caught one flagrant plagiarizer. Beck's at the ER vet clinic until ten tonight; I am decidedly not in Indio, CA.

* - Which oh-by-the-way was one of the dumber things I've ever experienced. Howling winds, lots of zone, skinny field, and after an hour the score was 5-0. We ended up winning again (!), but only by a tellingly ridiculous 8-1 score. Enough wind can make Ultimate stupid; enough wind can make Ultimate that was already stupid super-duper-stupid. In case you can't tell, no one could throw, it turned into a punt and play Z dumb-fest, and our team was less incompetent than the other side. Poor Justin D. And Ryan had no one to throw to at all. I ran off some nice in-the-wind hammers, but it was otherwise a profoundly forgettable affair.

In case you can't tell from the above photos, tonight Les Vermonsters are covering The Rolling Stones 1972 dirty cellar blues classic Exile on Main Street. They're gonna feature Sharon Jones & the Dap Kings, too (check out "100 Days, 100 Nights" from a Letterman performance if you're unfamiliar). Favorite band plus great album plus horns and soul - in short, it's gonna be shwank. Zach and Ian are there, so I'm sure they'll provide a full report. I'm definitely bummed not to be hearing it in the flesh, but it probably worked out okay. Still bummed, and currently listening to the album proper and next some Phishiness to help hold back the tears.

Fun weekend, grading aside - had a competitive scrimmage this morning with some of the Sprawl guys (and some non-Sprawl guys who may or may not have caused my team's choke-job). Good to get out and play some competitive disc again, even if it means yet another reminder that I am way slower than I used to be. Stupid knees and/or telomeres.

Beck and I had a fun date last night, going to the Biltmore Mall and catching a free outdoor screening of Alfred Hitchcock's The Birds. Chilly evening, dumb audience ("this was so much better in black and white" was repeated some fifteen times), and bad A/V situation aside, 'twas cool to catch the classic. It's definitely not scary any more (though I think I still find the perched birds eerier than Beck did) - I'm not sure if so much of the then-new techniques have been co-opted over the years that it's hard to get startled by the lo-fi version. And, as Beck said, we weren't "really impressed by the lead actress's problem-solving skills." Fun times regardless. In a shocking move, we grabbed some Mojo afterwards.

Okay, looks like the series is getting going here. I've had no trick-or-treater's thus far, so the four bags of candy I bought may be headed directly for mon bellie. We'll see.

As an added bonus, here's my and Beck's awesome costumes from the other night. Keep in mind that we played - and won - in these afterwards. You haven't been beaten until you've been beaten by Waldo and a pink-haired freak.

Screaming toddler booted off plane

In a decision that must have warmed the hearts of frequent fliers everywhere, Southwest Airlines flight 637 from Amarillo, Texas to San Jose, California returned to the gate and deplaned a screaming two-year old named Adam Root and his mom, Pam. The cabin crew after listening to endless top of the lungs screams and crying during boarding "Go! Plane! Go!" and "I want Daddy!" decided it was a no-go. Southwest admits this is very, very rare and only happens in extreme circumstances. It is investigating. The San Jose Mercury News notes that his mother had a hare-brained scheme to keep the kid quiet which included not feeding him until the flight was airborne. It didn't work and when Ms. Root and son re-booked and boarded another flight home the next day she admitted, "she chose a 5 p.m. departure and fed Adam well before takeoff." The Mercury News reported that he behaved, "beautifully."

Read the whole story here.

What are they watching... Episode V

Our weekly look at what the teens and tweens of America are watching. You may have caught our first couple of episodes. This clip is a little racier, not so polite, but it is what it is. It is an except from the Boondocks cartoon series, part of the Adult Swim on Cartoon Network.

The Boondocks

Lyle's Speech

SPOILERS! This is from page 388 or so of IJ; if you are reading it, don't look below this line! Or do, it's a nonlinear text anyways.

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‘LaMont, are you willing to listen to a Remark about what is true?’ ‘Okey-dokey.’ ‘The truth will set you free. But not until it is finished with you.’ ‘Maybe I ought to be getting back.’ ‘LaMont, the world is very old. You have been snared by something untrue. You are deluded. But this is good news. You have been snared by the delusion that envy has a reciprocal. You assume that there is a flip-side to your painful envy of Michael Chang: namely Michael Chang’s enjoyable feeling of being-envied-by-LaMont-Chu. No such animal.’ ‘Animal?’ ‘You burn with hunger for food that does not exist.’ ‘This is good news?’ ‘It is the truth. To be envied, admired, is not a feeling. Nor is fame a feeling. There are feelings associated with fame, but few of them are any more enjoyable than the feelings associated with envy of fame.’ ‘The burning doesn’t go away?’ ‘What fire dies when you feed it? It is not fame itself they wish to deny you here. Trust them. There is much fear in fame. Terrible and heavy fear to be pulled and held, carried. Perhaps they want only to keep it off you until you weigh enough to pull it toward yourself.’ ‘Would I sound ungrateful if I said this doesn’t make me feel very much better at all?’ ‘La-Mont, the truth is that the world is incredibly, incredibly, unbelievably old. You suffer with the stunted desire caused by one of its oldest lies. Do not believe the photographs. Fame is not the exit from any cage.’ ‘So I’m stuck in the cage from either side. Fame or tortured envy of fame. There’s no way out.’ ‘You might consider how escape from a cage must surely require, foremost, awareness of the fact of the cage. And I believe I see a drop on your temple, right…there….’ Etc.

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Tuesday's Game and Other Objay Darts

I forgot to mention, forgot to mention Tuesday, home of a ridiculous upset from Confessions (and the ancient Greeks). The previous week we played against the winless team from Thursday night and were destroyed, losing something like 15-7 and looking pathetic in the process. So when we faced the undefeated Thursday team on Tuesday night, prospects were not good. When Nipar, Hoyt, and Angel didn't show up, our prospects were worse. When Tim and Heart Attack tore hamstrings in the game and we were down to nine players, two of whom had reliable forehands, one of whom was the has-been-playing-for-eight-months-now-Beck... prospects were non-existent.

And yet, somehow, we persevered. We looked terrible; it was fairly windy, and we couldn't complete three passes in a row in our defense-less endzone drill before the game. Our opponents (Town Tricycle, including Nappi, Nicole, Joe, a new stud named Will, Todd, and a see-below-injured Vince) threw a zone that gave us a lot of trouble, and even went zone plus one on us on occasion. It was the usual zone with one player dedicated to covering me. One on one matchups are not a problem normally - it's just like man defense - but when the cup is around our (by definition) inexperienced throwers, it can be hard to get to a place where they can realistically get the disc to me. So all signals pointed to a blowout by the bad guys, even though Vince (oft-mentioned VOTS superstar) was injured in an ATV accident the weekend before.

Fortunately, we figured out our predicament early on re: the inability to complete multiple passes. And anyone can run hard, so... we decided for a broad strategy of huck and play Z. And it worked - we got lots of short field turnovers and converted enough to take the W! Crazy times! Lots of good hard play from everyone on the team, some good catches on long hammers / hucks and/or some good endzone cuts. I had one nutzoid lefty layout grab on a blade for a score, and otherwise threw a whole ton of hammers and hucks (for scores, sure, but a lot of punt-turns, too). It boiled down to a 12-6 win. Incredible. The VOTS universe is still reeling. It hardly means we're now going to march to the championship, but it was good to see us use what we had to steal a win. Yeah VOTS!

The rest of our week was interesting too. One of Beck's friends from high school (whom she hasn't seen in some ten years), Mike, was in town, partially to visit his girlfriend / her family and partially to do some med school interviewing in Tucson. Mike's been working various places in Africa over the past couple of years and decided to take the med school route. He's now living in Brooklyn (I think) up in NYC, has finished his post-bac coursework and is doing the usual 25 applications game. His girlfriend Sharon is from Kenya, and though her mom moved here a few years back, she and her siblings had just come over to the US three weeks ago. Yikes! And to Phoenix of all places! Mike stayed with us out of respect for traditional views concerning premarital apartment-staying, but spent most of his time with his SLF and helping the family get affairs in order - getting Sharon's brother enrolled in high school, getting IDs for everyone, taking Sharon to universities in the area to figure out what she needs to do to enroll, teaching her to drive, etc. Really nice guy and gal in quite a state of flux at this point in their lives; fun to meet them and hope things work out well. We had a fun dinner with them and another Brighton-High acquaintance (Erik?) at a local Mexican dive on Thursday, too.

Played softball on Friday night and split a double header. The only real highlight was when the ump called the batter out for a line drive that hit a players glove and tumbled to the ground. I was on first at the time; I stayed put when the line drive came off the bat, but when it hit the ground, naturally I had to run to second. The guy who dropped the ball picked it up and fired to second for the out - or so I thought, as this was approximately when the ump said "Out!" So I walked to third toward our dugout, even stepping on third on my way. And I was not five feet past the base when the ump called me out again for "leaving the field of play." Double play. Huh? So the ump's defense was that he called the batter out "when the third baseman caught it."

I replied, "But he didn't catch it."
"Well, whether he caught it or it was an intentional drop, either way the batter is out."
"Well, he didn't catch it, and if you thought it was an intentional drop, then it's a dead ball."
"Right."
"So... why didn't you call dead ball?"
"Well, I had already clearly called the batter out, and I didn't call you out on second."
"But that's all beside the point if it's a dead ball..."

This conversation goes exactly nowhere. So dumb. The only funny part is that later on in the second game, we were down by ten runs in the last inning with no real chance of catching up. So i swung for the fences and popped it sky high foul down the 3b line. The third baseman gorped it. I came back to the batter's box and asked, "he touched it, am I out?" in a joking manner. Only the ump didn't get it at all. "No, it's just a foul ball." Either this was an expert-level deadpan counter-joke, or he had completely forgotten about the other call. Whatever.

ASU continues to roll on. I've got a lot of work coming up w/ TAing the Bio 311 course, though this is the second writing run-through, so hopefully things will go more smoothly. We shall see. Other work is subtly piling up. And I've been having trouble getting sleep, sporadic chills and some kind of weird asthma-type issues of late. I feel particularly crummy today. Hmmmm... we'll see how the rest of the semester goes.

Beck and I saw the cute Gervais comedy The Invention of Lying last night. Pretty funny if a bit uneven. I, being a nerd, contest that human history would have included Napoleonic events without lying. I also don't know how the overt Religion = Lying will play in certain circles. Ah, well. It was fun and passed the time.

Anyways, that's enough blogging for today. I am unsure whether I will try to review Dark Side before this coming Saturday; technically it's not a Phish Halloween album (it was covered on 11.02.1998), so I think I've met my quota effectively. Still, I'll give it a shot if other things don't stand in the way. Which they will.

Here's to missing a Phish festival in favor of reading 100 Bio & Sci essays! Have a good week, everybody. Oh, and congrats to Frank for passing his prospectus defense! Keep it up, Geoman.

Dear C(onspiracy) Waitress

I have to mention that at 2:50 MST on the local Fox 10 News station, this Sunday, Oct. 25th, 2009, the news anchor guy just beamed that "The matchups are set; the first game of the World Series is this Wednesday featuring the Philadelphia Phillies and the New York Yankees."

Fox "News" indeed. Do we chalk this up to recording two segments, one for the Yankees and one for the Angels, and some production manager inadvertently airing the segment too early? Or do we proceed to our favorite offshore sports betting site and put the mortgage on the pinstriped boys tonight? What do you know that I don't, local Fox affiliate? Is this the 90th anniversary of something significant?

Good Times Hat Tourney

Played in a charity hat tourney yesterday in west-ish Phoenix. Somehow, despite the allegedly random-according-to-skill-level team assignments, I ended up teamed with Cole, Kaetlynn, Nicole, Cisco, Clint, Brian, Tim from my league team... a little (lot) unfair. We rolled through the tournament, going 3-0 and winning 13-5, 13-6, and 13-7. We had a blast and even managed to sneak in some Dino style points. Beer may or may not have been involved. Good times. The event raised money for Breast Cancer Research (at about 60 x $15 plus donations, roughly $1000) so in typical mature Ultimate culture fashion, all of the team names were plays on terms for breasts. So, sans ado, your FIRST ANNUAL ULTIMATE CHALLENGE AGAINST BREAST CANCER CHAMPIONS, the lovely "Booby Call:"

As you can see, a goofy crew that was up for some good times and great disc. Special props to Kaetlynn's ridiculous butterfly-princess-anime-nightmare costume and Cole's attempt to squeeze into a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle designed-for-an-eight-year-old onesie (he's still got the shell on above). I've mentioned Cole before; he's a superstar young athlete from ASU (though I think he's graduated) who definitely amped up the screw-around factor yesterday. E.g., he ended the day by nutmegging a guy for a score to me. For the uninitiated, that means he threw it through the guy's legs and quite cleanly, an absolute laser backhand, as though he were not there. The antics-side of Ultimate is always a little grey area, particularly if you start doing it when you're up big - are you having fun and goofing, or showing people up? In Cole's defense, he did it pretty much from the get-go, all day long, so it's hard to call it malicious. Still, I don't think the nutmeggee will be sending Cole a Xmas card this year.

I had a pretty good/okay day with some layouts, skyes, Ds and hucks and the usual. 'Twasn't very serious at any point, so it was difficult to stay focused. I definitely dropped a long forehand huck from Cole that came in right along the sunline to me at about 4:00. That stunk; I was operating with the blast-shield down and looked appropriately dumb. But I had one rather nice layout / toe-in grab at the back of the endzone on a lasered throw in the first game, and I actually got a D in the air on a guy who's a good 6 inches taller than me. He goes by the moniker "Big Nate" - I'm sure I've mentioned him here before - and it's appropriate because he's named Nate and rather tall/large. It's easy to confuse "Nate" and "Nyet," so I have taken to calling myself "Nyet the Lesser" in Phoenix Ultimate circles. He's one of the few guys (at 6'6" and ~240+ lbs) that I bounce off of on contested grabs - it turns out "the Lesser" is relative. Anyways, we've gone up in the air for discs a number of times, and he (for obvious reasons) comes down with them the majority of the time. But *this* time, with the shutter clicking, I got a good beat on a not-high-enough disc and made the D. Please ignore the apparent 6 inch vertical leaps involved here; I am sure that aspect was photoshopped. We were sooooo up there, I was feeling atmospheric oxygen effects. Do enjoy the synchronized Nate/Nyet action, though; Nate's a good bud of mine, and this is a fun shot:

I definitely got it; my hand is cocked back in the shot just before I batted it away. Thanks to Stephen for snagging this photo; cool stuff. And again, this was a total rarity; I'm really glad there aren't 19 other photos showing Nate calmly grabbing the disc two feet above me.

Props to ted, too, for putting on an excellent, fun tournament. Looking forward to next year already!

UPDATE: Cole's awesome costume:

AR: The Beatles [The White Album]

The Beatles - The Beatles [The White Album] (1968)

Well, this is just silly. The Beatles has long been my favorite album, making me about as unoriginal as possible, as plain as, say, a white album cover. It all started long ago when my dad made playing "Birthday" a tradition for all of the Jones-Ellis birthday gatherings. Every birthday gathering - and there were lots of them over the years, what with the 8 people involved - featured an impromptu dance party that lasted a glorious 2:43. If I'm not crazy, this was usually followed by an album switch to some more Beatlemania era stuff, typically "Twist and Shout." I essentially have an infinity of memories of my mom and aunt dancing like crazy to that one. Dad always played "Birthday" on his original vinyl copy on our living room stereo, and even after he had switched off to Please Please Me, he would leave the double LP cover out and open to the four famed pictures:

Something about it - the stark pictures, the simple lyrics listed in black font against a vast plain background - gave off an aura of mystique. Plus, sheesh, a double album, FOUR sides of Beatles songs - and my dad so obviously loved it, I didn't know how this could not be the best album of all time. I'm sure we listened to it a lot, as these songs have always felt deeply ingrained in my being. But my earliest memories center around the "Birthday" plays and "Twist and Shout" following it. Sometimes after "T&S," Dad would put the White Album back on with the first side first, order-proper-like. I must have had to go to bed pretty soon after the time "Birthday" was busted out, because I don't remember ever getting past "The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill." I do, though, have a very distinct memory of reading along with the lyrics to figure out what the ridiculous falsetto voice was saying ("But when he looked so fierce..."). So, to sum: I don't know the first time I heard this album; I know we must have listened to it all the time, but my most distinct, episodic type memories focused around birthdays. There ya have it.

Until one time, when I had to have been older than twelve (as this memory is very clear and from the new house), my dad put on the usual "Birthday," only we all got distracted by the candle-blowing and so no dance party broke out. So "T&S" didn't follow - Dad just left record 2, side A (or Side Three, I guess, is the appropriate parlance) playing. And out from the stereo bellowed a reverb-soaked "Yes I'm LONELY ... Wanna Die!" Whoa. Hey and the what now? Surely I had heard the song before, but it was very particular moment - pre-TIP, lonely middle school days, and suddenly it sure sounded like even the freaking Beatles had an urge to scream at the world. I don't mean to portray myself as this little black-clad hipster - I didn't even know who the hell "Dylan's Mr. Jones" was at that particular moment - but that scream, the snarl of that guitar, spoke in very big ways. So I definitely sat down and listened to the album-in-full then, fell in love forever, and even managed to steal my dad's CD copy of The Beatles for the next several years until I was gifted my own for high school graduation.

So that's the background, or at least part of it. Again, part of me feels particularly stupid for trying to review an album that is so fundamental to my constitution and one about which so much has been written already. It's still in the number one overall spot; it's not just Desert Island Recommended but will already be playing when I get to the Island. I don't know, coconut transistors or something. They'll figure it out.

All of which is to say that this is a beyond fantastic album, *even though* it's not a perfect one. Sure, there's some filler. There are two of the worst "tunes" in the Beatles catalog as the big finale. It's totally unfocused, stylistically all over the map, and all reports are that the songs were essentially composed-in-solo; no magic L-M collaboration going down here. Still, somehow the looseness, the quilty patchwork quality all comes together. Even if the songs are solipsistic islands, the sheer talent and ear of the four individuals is most definitely there, and the album-as-a-whole is an excellent "collaboration." I could wax indefinitely, but after all these years, The Beatles are still my favorite band, and the unending variety here still constitutes my favorite collection of their work. I'll give this super-album the track-by-track treatment, and I'll try to recount associated memories as I, er, remember them. Here goes:

"Back in the USSR" - "BOAC" was an NYT Xword puzzle answer recently, and I had to laugh - who in the hey would not know that? There was a time when I believed a rumor that the White Album was a track by track parody of all kinds of other popular bands of the day; this one was so obviously a poke at the Beach Boys and surf-rock bands that the opening track tended to lend the theory some credence, (though it obviously falls apart soon afterwards). But this is, natch, not just a parody - they arguably pull off surf better than the originals, and pepper it with a slew of typical Beatlish witticisms. Love the overhead plane sounds throughout, the supersilly "Georgia's Always on My Mind" nod, and the screaming guitar work throughout. I really like the high pitched trills over the last verse; in typical fashion, they keep each verse unique with a little touch here and there. Great rocker, and an all-time fade-in to start an album. And actually, a great fade-out, too, as plane brakes give way to...

"Dear Prudence" - the tripping bass and haunting, hypnotic repeated guitar line of a fantastic John ballad. "DP" builds slowly from sparse beginnings and has various sounds join the ranks throughout the tune - you'll notice the bass gets more active as the song rolls on, multiple new electric guitars join the fray, backup vocals crawl on top of the main lines. I am sure I will reiterate this time and again in Beatles reviews, but they unfailingly take simple verse-chorus-verse constructions and subtly alter each part, adding little flourishes in each component to the point that the song takes on a structure that overarches whatever primary structure is happening. The last minute of this song in particular adds a kitchen sink of things to essentially the exact same lines as the song's opening, but the dynamic is wildly changed - what was initially a reserved ballad is an over-the-top triumphant sing-along. Listen in particular for the ever-heightening guitar line behind the last "It's beau-tifu-uh-uhl / And so are you-oo-oo." I've often thought that when people say that a modern indie-pop, chamber-vocal kind of band sounds "Beatles-esque," they really mean, "sounds like the last minute of 'Dear Prudence.'" It is quite a beaming, signature sound, and I've waxed on long enough about this classic.

"Glass Onion" - An aggressive, driving, almost sinister backbeat number. It's famously self-referential - "Strawberry Fields," 'Paul is dead' rumors, "I Am the Walrus," "Lady Madonna," "Fixing a Hole," and "The Fool on the Hill" all make appearances, as does one of the world's plainest marijuana references, "a dove-tailed joint." My favorite part of this song is the wordless bridge, where instead of an additional verse you just get the same vamped chords. It's a plain-faced instrumental break without a solo that just lets the anger simmer; great stuff. "Glass Onion" also joins the long list of Beatles tunes that collapses into a trippy, psychedelic symphonic outro, this time with some strings playing an out-of-left-field, cinematic dirge. They are an abrupt shift from the pulse of this song, and an even more abrupt shift occurs with the intro to

"Ob-la-di, Ob-la-da" - The goofy, bouncy sing-along that splits a lot of opinions. I've always had a soft-spot for the theme song to that TV classic Life Goes On. I mean, sure, the maracas are ridiculous, the lyrics nonsensical, the horn lines (while cool) intentionally whimsical, and the whole thing generally smacks of toss-off camp. It just goes to show, though, that Beatles toss-offs are really good, really catchy, and still interesting. I've heard it suggested that this is Paul's foray into ska / reggae: um, okay (update: this checks out; apparently the titular expression comes from Jimmy Scott, and the "Desmond" is Desmond Dekker. Who knew?) It does pull off a certain carefree vibe, and I do like the toy-piano flourishes towards the end and all the whimsical laughing throughout. This isn't my favorite track by a long shot, but it's still some fine pop craft. And seriously, who doesn't have a crush on Becca Thatcher?

"Honey Pie" - Speaking of toss-offs... actually, I enjoy this trippy pscychedeligoofoff track. Short, self-contained, it's the great-great-grandfather of rap album skits - totally pointless, but definitely makes for a transition.

"The Continuing Story of Bungalow Bill" - one of my favorite White Album tunes to play on guitar, and yes, even including that out-of-left-field classical/Spanish guitar riff at the beginning. It's a campfire kids' song with a goofy narrative of tiger-hunting, Captain Marvel, and some Ono backing vocals, if I'm not mistaken. Has a nice juxtaposition of foreboding verses with the ultra-light sing-a-long chorus. I enjoy that this song appropriately devolves into the single horn line and the campfire self-congratulatory applause which is suddenly interrupted by "Hey-o!" and the majestic piano over guitar chungs of

"While My Guitar Gently Weeps" - George's first contribution is a gorgeous, dark ballad that notoriously features absolute lead guitar devastation by Slow Hand himself, Mr. Eric Clapton. The verses ("I look at you all / See the love there that's sleeping") are wistful, while the bridge (? - "I don't know why / Nobody told you...") sections are profoundly lilting. This is just fine, fine songcraft; everything fits wonderfully. But when you take that and throw one of the all-time sets of raging, passionate guitar solos over it, you have the first of quite a few five star tunes on this album. With all apologies to "Something" fans, this is George's best song for the Beatles, imho.

"Happiness is a Warm Gun" - This sub three minute tune packs a ton - a spooky/ethereal opening ("She's not a girl who misses much..."), an accentuated upbeat guitar attack with some of the odder lyrics you've ever heard ("a soap impression of his wife which he ate and donated to the national trust"), a dirty, dirty guitar lick with drug-fix lyrics, a running guitar bridge ("Mother Superior jumped the gun" ) and - because why not, at this point - a freaking classic '50s ballad doo-wop progression with lyrics about masturbation (see title), complete with doubletime mid section. What? Exactly. This is as pastichey as the already pastichey Beatles ever got, and it created a song with a bizarre, march ahead structure. One of my all-time favorites, btw. (Pause). Guuuuuuuuh-uh-uhn!

"Martha My Dear" - straight from the vaudeville era school of "Your Mother Should Know" comes this quick Paul ditty, the first of two such anachronistic earlier 20th century radio tunes that McCartney put on the White Album. This one starts off with just the piano, adds strings, then a tuba, then a full horn section, then full Beatles band proper. The third verse is an instrumental break that highlights the independent sweetness of the melody. Paul's bass is particularly great, and the song is tight and short enough to serve as yet another pleasant diversion from anything resembling a cohesive style.

"I'm So Tired" - Yet another one of my all-time favorite Beatles tunes, this is a run-ragged, haggard, insomniac John delivering exactly the half-asleep vocal of the song's title. In the verses, anyways; the choruses feature an irritated, sleep-deprived man who is losing his grip and lashing out at the lover (or perhaps really, the Maharishi Mahesh Yogi) whose ill-treatment won't let him get that rest. A nice, thematically divided song, "IST" features a dreamy bass, a snappy, snare-drum driven chorus, some really slick guitar fills (subtle, but listen for 'em during the chorus) and one of the all time great British slang words used to describe "Sir Walter Raleigh / He was such a stupid get." Two minutes and a VVCVC structure make for a tight, excellent song.

"Blackbird" - A fingerpicked classic solo folk song from Paul that is not just impossibly lovely, but one of the few intricate things I can play (an admittedly simplified version of) on acoustic guitar. I was taught WAY back in the day by good friend Caren VW, who busted this number out at an impromptu acoustic session at one of our college nerd-recruitment experiences in high school. Some guy had been pretty obnoxious all day (w/r/t his smarts - I believe he bragged about AP scores at one point) and was playing something, probably "Come as You Are" by Nirvana, when Caren snagged the guitar and lit up the room with this. Nice, and a total destruction of any nerd-fest-nookie potentialities that "rock star" thought he was achieving that evening. Anyways... the original is an intimate tune with twittering birdsong in the background. Plain, pretty, and sedate, with an allegorical set of lyrics that sit inside the quick 2;15 neatly. It was, indeed, wack Charles Manson interpretations notwithstanding, written in response to racial tensions in the US ("black" "bird" = "African American" "woman," allegedly), though obviously without the violence component. It's terrible that this and other songs on the White Album - "Piggies" and "Helter Skelter," notably - were co-opted for such murderous purposes. I'd actually forgotten about that until I looked the album up online, which may speak at least a little to the simple beauty of the song that doesn't really send the listener toward world referents anyways. Keep an ear out for the root G note that is played over and over and over in this song; also keep an ear out for the "foot-tap" percussion which is reportedly a physical scratch on the master tape. You don't get that in ProTools, eh?

"Piggies" - I lack a sophisticated musical vocabulary and so I think anything with a harpsichord and strings sounds "baroque." But this really does smack of Renaissance Festival Faire. It's completely out of left field and is one of the most poorly disguised allegories in the history of pop. Still, the rock bridge keeps it interesting, the pig grunts render it non-standard in a "Good Morning Good Morning"-nod way, and the emphatic, over the top ending is appropriately ridiculous. I'll tolerate it, George :). Especially since straight out of that melodramatic chord we get...

"Rocky Raccoon" - another acoustic folk narrative that I have learned over the years on guitar. It's the same chord progression / picking pattern over and over (though again, the rhythm is subtly altered from verse to verse) telling the love-trianglish story of Rocky, Danny, McGill/Lil/Nancy. My dad has always sworn that this entire song is just a set-up a terrible pun at the end about Gideon failing to "help with good Rocky's revival." The harmonica, saloon hall hoedown/breakdown bridges, sorrowful backing vocals, and the organ-fade into the next tune are nice touches. Great, goofy tune, and one of my favorite to play. In fact, chroniclers of the Nyet legend are sure to know that I regularly played "RR" at Lovett College Musicale events, often inserting the famed (and thoroughly unprintable) Lovett College Cheer for the middle bridge. Matches the rhythm, you see. My friend Brett would accompany me by playing "The Beer" onstage, essentially standing there grinning and occasionally taking a sip. We also had a special affinity for the "called himself Dan" line which I sang in the voice of Christina of D/C fame. These were good times.

"Don't Pass Me By" - another goofy country stomp, this one written and sung by the inimitable Ringo Starr. It's driven by a raging fiddle line and features an oddly sad narrative (given Ringo's beaming delivery) about a girl who was in a "car crash / and [she] lost [her] head." Silly, which seems to be the theme of this part of the album, as the next song is

"Why Don't We Do it in the Road?" - the goof-off, though subtly ominous and murky blues number. It's straight up 12-bar blues and blows by in 1:42. It's also only Paul and Ringo, possibly leaving their personal tendencies unchecked by the, ahem, more serious Beatles. Two lines are repeated throughout the song and get progressively heated. I've always enjoyed the drum opening on this one.

"I Will" - A lovely Linda ballad, this is just a pretty guitar ballad / ode to Paul's wife. Pretty direct and sincere/sappy, I heard this at a wedding recently and it just sat perfectly. It's notable for a vocal bassline behind the jangling guitars and the excellent line "Make it easy to be near you / For the things you do endear you to me" which sounds like it might be syllabically awkward but rolls off flawlessly.

"Julia" - one of John's most haunting, best ballads, this quiet, acoustic solo number is just he. It's contemplative feel brings Side 2 to a great close, and the lines "Half of what I say is meaningless / Though I say it just to reach you" are classic, even if they are stolen.

"Birthday" - I've talked about this one enough in the intro, I think, but it is one of the all-time rockers. I can also crank this one out on electric guitar, too, and it is so fun to run off the signature lick and pretend I'm partying with the Ellis-Joneses or at ShowBiz Pizza or whatever. I love the vocal-less passages (with the screamed 5...6...7...8!!!) and the solo on the bridge is short but divine. This should, obviously, replace all other songs as the official BDay anthem. Duh!

"Yer Blues" - Wicked, existential despairing blues; it's been charged that this is somehow a parody, but for all John's soul-screeching, you'll be hard pressed to convince me of that. It's a relatively standard though absolutely raging blues tune, with thrilling fills and violent breakdowns - perhaps completely unsurprisingly, I LOVE that line that John sings to me that he feels so suicidal "just like Dylan's Mr. Jones" and later that "he hates [his] rock n' roll." The song breaks into a half time party at that point, and the bubbling moog (I assume) organ that comes screaming and the following psychotic guitar solo absolutely KILL. And then a trick which has popped up repeatedly - the first verse is replayed with the vocals barely audible until the song fades out. A quite strange effect, as this spins this angst-song into the realm of the ghostly. One of my all-time Beatles tracks.

"Mother Nature's Son" - a sort of classic Paul tune that does manage to capture the pastoral theme of its title. A simple, pretty guitar part backed by thumping drums and a light symphonic section, this one is highly reminiscent of "The Fool on the Hill." "Doo-doos" and humming fill some of the verses and give off the impression of a Paul solo act. The second acoustic that enters toward the very end provides a really nice harmony. This is about as shmaltzy as I can take from Paul; "The Long and Winding Road" off of Let it Be carries this style just a bit too far.

"Everybody's Got Something to Hide Except for Me and My Monkey" - is one of the more ebullient, frantic and uplifting songs from the John wing. You can practically see him shaking his head jubilantly back and forth through "Come on it's SUCH A JOY!" The track is filled with yelps and screaming guitar licks; even the polyrhythm of the drums adds to the out-of-control party ideal expressed here. The title is, natch, a little goofy, and hearing the vocals ramble on spasmodically is delightful. The instrumental bass rumble near the two minute mark is one of *those* moments for me. This song really sounds like it belong somewhere back in the "And Your Bird Can Sing" part of the catalog, but it's a welcome addition here.

"Sexy Sadie" - definitely a John song, but the multiple passages and all-over-the-map instrumental contributions make his yet another classic "Beatlesque" tune. It opens with a reverberating piano and progresses to John's accusatory lyrics (originally intended, it seems, for the Maharishi) backed by Wah-wah-wah-wah vocals. Keep an ear out for some Beatles-divinity at the 0:54 mark ("One sunny day...") with a subtle guitar ringing and rounding out the sound. There's a ton going on here with countervocals, guitar running against piano, the lead vocal going atmospheric... quite an interesting song.

"Helter Skelter" - I specifically remember making a last-ditch effort at swaying Mike NTPB from his pop music oriented ways by (ironically, I note, this being the most popular band ever) playing this one very loud for him and trying to get him to guess who had written it, when it was recorded, etc. It didn't work, though I think he was surprised to learn that music made in 1968 sounded remotely like this. Famously a response to the Who's effort to write "the nastiest track ever" or somesuch, Paul penned this Black Sabbath-esque metal number and let it absolutely rock out. It's a blast of a song to play, and it is definitely the nastiest thing in the Beatles catalog. I don't know how many times my dad has busted out the Ringo-screamed "I got blisters on my fingers!" line as a joke. This is quite an angry tune, an all time metal classic, and Exhibit 1A in Paul's defense against accusations of just writing "Silly Love Songs." The even more plodding, even darker and bluesier version on the Anthology disc is also a must-hear. Five star tune.

"Long Long Long" - from the loudest, RAWKingnest to a reserved dream tune from George. He wakes up a bit midsong ("So many tears..."), but this is still one of the most meditative tracks on the pair of discs. It's a little tonally mundane, which is fine given its serene aspect, but makes it less memorable (especially considering what it's surrounded by). Weird experimental ending wakes the listener up just in time for...

"Revolution 1" - the doo-wop and original version, this will forever sound very, very slow to me since I was raised on a raging electric lead during Nike commercials. There's a brass band backing the lead in addition to all of the "Shooby-doo-bop" vocals, and the full effect is a psychedelic pastiche. John got himself into a spot of trouble by following the "you can count me out" line with an ambivalent "in?" The song, obviously, is quite anti-revolutionary, but that little vocal flourish gave the Anti-establishment kids an "in" and made this one of those songs that split parents and youth. The guitar lick alludes to simpler "Day Tripper" times, and it's a singular winner. Fantastic song, though again, the single version is forever the "real" one for me.

"Honey Pie" - the other vaudeville Paul tune. The scratchy record effect employed at the beginning is a nice touch; otherwise this is another catchy Paul tune that nails the British 1920s (or so) genre with swelling clarinets and tuba-ish bassline. I don't know if I ever listened to this without picturing Paul in a top hat with swinging cane. Catchy tune, Paul through and through.

"Savoy Truffle"- another raucous, somewhat sinister tune about, allegedly, a wide variety of chocolates. This a great George single in the "Run for Your Life" style with a buzzing horn line providing all kinds of, sorry, delicious runs through the tune. It has another self-referential moment in the "We all know ob-la-di, bla-da / But can you show me where you are?" I've got no clue on that one. Something has always sounded bitter about this song to me; still, it's catchy and energetic and features George's usual punctuated guitar fills and fiery, contained solos.

"Cry Baby Cry" - Simple acoustic ballad with some rather obscure lyrics (e.g., "The king of Marigold was in the kitchen / Cooking breakfast for the queen"), a murky line from what the wikipedia tells me is a harmonium, and a build of piano chords. Yet another lovely melody in this song that swells and adds band members throughout the process; this nursery-rhyme sort of song is the last track on the album that actually features the Beatles as a band proper. "CBC" ends and an abrupt ditty from Paul creeps in ("Can you take me back where I came from / Can you take me back?"). It's a complete non sequitur that adds to the mystery of the song and transitions effectively to

"Revolution 9" - In my junior year of high school, I listened to music right before going to sleep practically every night. One night in particular this album was in my player, and I must've drifted off fairly early on. So let's say I went to bed around midnight. At about 1:20 in the morning, in the pitch black, this experimental tape look number came on. I was snapped awake from the middle of some severely inappropriate sleep cycle in the most disorienting way possible - I didn't know where/who/when I was, all I knew is that a scary voice was stereo-tracking across the room calmly saying "Number Nine." And I specifically remember "Block that kick" and the cackling sounds of laughter popping up, too. And lasers, and TV western sounds, and you get the idea. Understandably, I was terrified, and it took some mad scrambling about the room and the slamming of a stop button to restore sanity to the world. That's one of maybe three times I've listened to this tune in my life (the fourth being at this very moment), and I've never quite forgiven it. As madhat tape-splicing excursions go, it's effective, but it's hardly worthwhile beyond its novelty. Listen - at your peril - for Yoko (I think) saying "You become naked" towards the end; this line had to be the inspiration for the non sequitur "I become naked" from the Pearl Jam experimental oddity "Bugs"from Vitalogy.

"Good Night" - I have listened to Revolution 9 more times in my life than I have listened to this song. I absolutely hate it; it's a terrible lullaby that had no business on this album. Damn you, Ringo!

Phew. 30 tracks, the last two overt stinkers (or one "art track" and "one icepick-to-the-temple-schmaltzy" track). But all of the others make for an exquisite, heterogeneous masterpiece. This review has dragged on quite long enough; suffice it to say that even though healthy portions of this album are goofy or toss off, the whole thing coheres via some still-unparalleled musicianship and songwriting. I'll leave with another view of the White Album classified by my five and four star song rankings; everybody has different favorites off of this, and the variety just lends itself to different faces of the album being loved by different people. What a great pair of discs, and like Tommy Lee Jones in MIB, I look forward to repurchasing it every time a new music medium comes out.

Five Stars: "WMGGW," "HiaWG," "YB," and "HS"
Four Stars: "BitU," "DP," "GO," "IST," "B," "RR," "J," "B," "EGStHEfMaMM," and "CBC."
Three Stars: Everything else except "WHP," "R9," and "GN."

Status: Desert Island Recommended
Nyet's Faves: "I'm So Tired" and "Yer Blues"

P.S. Oh, and since this is in the Phish series, the 10.31.94 performance of the White Album in its entirety was perhaps the truest-to-the-original album cover by the band (though they were pretty true to the original with Dark Side, too). They don't extend or jam on much of anything. But they pulled the cover off off with aplomb and a TON of energy. Some of the notable, um, Phish-nicities: Trey alters the lyrics to talk about Phish animal characters in "Glass Onion;" "WMGGW" smokes in "Trey is a Jedi" fashion, and Phish continued to cover this tune well after the show (I caught it 7.15.2000); "Don't Pass Me By" is played in a wacky doubletime / bluegrass style and appropriately sung by Fishman; "Birthday" is played in a weird minor key repeat of the main riff and features a spoken word birthday wish to one of the stage managers; "HS" is played in a really abrasive, dissonant manner and breaks down into an a cappella "I've got blisters on my fingers" choral close; their take on "Rev 1" is somewhere between the tempos of "Rev" and "Rev 1;" "CBC" is another one that made it into the Phish rotation (you can hear it on Hampton Comes Alive); Rev 9 involved an extended vacuum solo and, supposedly, some Fishman nudity; AND the band had the good sense to skip "Good Night" because it's a terrible, terrible song. This also happens to be one of the original Phish bootleg tapes I got from the very kind Phish community leader Ellis Godard, and I'm forever grateful for that.

AR: Loaded

The Velvet Underground - Loaded (1970)

There are two famous quotes that accompany this legendary VU album. The first is from an executive at Atlantic Records who allegedly requested an album "loaded with hits;" hence the album's title and its overt steering toward shorter pop tunes. If you put the noisy freak-out sessions of VU's prior albums (e.g., "Heroin," "Sister Ray") next to the radio-friendly ditties featured here, the contrast is stark beyond belief*. The second quote comes from guitarist Sterling Morrison who claimed of Loaded that "[i]t showed that we could have, all along, made truly commercial sounding records." This is essentially the artist's-intent stamp, that the previous noise jumbles were conscious artistic decisions and not for want of pop-craftsmanship abilities. And, in the end, both quotes are incredibly hard to deny. As little as it sounds like a typical VU record, it is a pop masterpiece that still bears the band's undeniable stamp. Incredibly entertaining from top to bottom, featuring some gen-u-ine five star tunes, and incorporating a variety of styles, Loaded is so good that it made an appearance in a Buffy** episode some 30 years later.

* - Part of this is admittedly a personnel issue - John Cale had left the band by this point - but there is little doubt that Loaded, the VU's most commercially successful disc, was a severe departure from the feedbacky art rock of yore.

** - The dialog:
Oz [looking through Giles's records]: Wow. Either I'm moving in with you, or you're letting me borrow your albums.
Giles: I think saving the world from imminent danger is more important than any record.
Oz: Even this one? [holds up Loaded]
Giles: [long pause] Well, a case could be made, I guess...

I'm severely tipping my hand here, but yes, this is one of *those* albums. Lou Reed threw out some absolutely superb songs here, and the performance is just the right match of tightness (in terms of nothing out of place) and a loose, casual effort that gives a special, authentic-live feel. The greatest thing about it is that simultaneous unity of "let's write some singles" purpose combined with styles from all over the map. And even though these are a kind of pop perfection, the ragged edges and slacker deliveries of the vocals balance that out so there's no impression whatsoever that this is some kind of glossed, mindless tripe. Few albums in my collection make me frankly smile so much. I'll just go ahead and give it the track by track here:

"Who Loves the Sun" - the album kicks off with an interesting misdirected guitar blip that jumps to a chugging guitar number. It's a simple mid-tempo rocker that achieves greatness via its uber-melodramatic, heartbroken teenaged lament - "who loves the sun / who cares that it makes plants grow / who cares what it does / since you broke my heart?" It goes on to basically deny the importance of every mundane thing vis a vis the narrator's broken heart. All of this is delivered with the cheeriest of "Ba ba ba" backing vocals. I can't count the number of times I've heard this song, and it still makes me laugh. It ends with a baroque throw-away passage before hitting the last chorus. Great opener in that it thoroughly establishes what the disc is up to: a standard sort of rock tune, but with a ripping twist injected. Fun times.

"Sweet Jane" - need we even mention this? The opener fades into an intricate multi-guitar, interlaced trebly Valentine's Day fluttering. This stops abruptly, and we get a terrific, classic, and utterly simply four chord riff. Reed's spoken-cool vocal just trips over the top of the guitars and then breaks for the near-yelled "SWEET JANE!!!!" choruses. Tons of classic lines in this one and a superb feel throughout; incredible that something so simple can be so divine. A top all-time rock song.

"Rock n' Roll" - Speaking of, that is followed by another anthemic, upbeat and fairly simple rocker that speaks of the live-saving qualities of R n' R. Besides being utterly infectious with an energetic style, this song definitely speaks to a certain subset of the population, those who have spent a lot of moments alone seeking salvation in the form of music. The guitar solos are iconic, too, alternating between drawn out, single note rings to multi-note blitzes. Another classic tune; this and "SJ" are the ones that found (and find) their way onto the radio.

(Incidentally, this song is routinely covered by Phish in concert, one of the tunes that made it into their catalog after they covered it in '98. They, unsurprisingly, stretch it way out and turn those solos into a Trey-a-thon. At my first Phish show (9.25.99), they launched into this one about halfway through the second set. It was the first song I recognized* (I was completely unfamiliar with their music at that point) and it was followed by a slick segue into "Also Sprach Zarathustra," the second tune I recognized, and THAT was followed by a segue into "Frankenstein," the third and final song of the night that I knew. If I wasn't hooked by the funk-infused "Tube" opener of that show, I was definitely hooked by the time this trio rolled around. It remains one of my all-time favorite Phish passages).

* - Well, I recognized that Sleeping Monkey was a blatant "Let It Be" rip-off, but that doesn't really count.

"Cool It Down" - is sort of a hipster blues bar, piano-rolling, slow-down cool-guy rocker. It features a doubled lead vocal, both of which are spoken-sung, which is kinda bizarre in itself - makes everything *just* off, and that somehow adds to the cool slink of the song. The lyrics are roughly about some illicit sexual encounter with someone named "Linda Lee / Because she's got the power / to love me by the hour / gives me W-L-O-V-E" (parts of which are sung in screeching emphatic falsetto). Good, fun stuff.

"New Age" - a sad slow down, soft-sung, 1950s-era plain ballad about loneliness in the space between a starstruck man and a has-been actress. This pretty, sad tune takes a turn for the transcendent in it s"I'll come running to you" choruses, and this only gets pushed further into redemptive stratospheres with "Something's got a hold on me / And I don't know what." It's a middle of the album slow down that manages to maintain the energy in a different form, providing even more balance to the album.

"Head Held High" - an overt Mick Jagger homage, this is a straight-forward dirty blues rocker that easily would have been home on Exile on Main Street. It opens with a quick vocal "Ahhhhhh" fade in and has a very Who-esque instrumental bridge. Closes with a big, full-party chorus repeat. Great basement kegger tune.

"Lonesome Cowboy Bill" - A quick shuffle country rocker with a yodeling component at the end of each chorus. Fast and catchy, gets the people rodeo-dancin' in its scant 2:45.

"I Found a Reason" - Another way slowed down piece that evokes borderline Doo-wop work, both in its repeated "Ba-ba-ba-ba" opening descending vocals, back-up "oohs" and it's big, harmonized choruses. This also has one of those AWESOME '50s spoken word sections which, among other things, contains the superbly absurd line "I've walked down life's lonely highways / hand in hand with myself." While this is clearly a parody of sorts, it's delivered with utter sincerity, and the ending vocal coda is quite a pay-off. Funny and somehow beautiful, too.

"Train Comin' 'Round the Bend" - Probably the closest thing to a trad VU tune, this is a sparse, pulsing, feedback- and droning-guitar-drenched simple song. The vocals betray pure frustration with failed endeavors, and the tight 3:22 length gives just enough of a taste of this style of bordering-on-spazz guitar work to make the point. Nice.

"Oh! Sweet Nuthin" - the other five star masterpiece on the disc, this is a slowed down space ballad that never fails to evoke a calming, meditative state. It's got a winding lead guitar over the simplest of bass and drum progressions and a perfectly plaintive, devastating lead vocal. It's the only song on the disc that breaks the 4:40 mark, and thus kinda breaks the single-oriented theme, but its epic scale (7:24) is decidedly appropriate. Its position at closer and the lighter-held-high guitar outro are perfect - this is definitely up there in the all-time album closer pantheon. I mean, sure, on some level its ridiculous - this is a "Hey Jude" kind of sin, where "she ain't got nothin' at all" stands in for na-nas. But in context, it absolutely works and gives an appropriate, cathartic sigh of a finish to one beast of an album.

Loaded, in short, gets it done. It's amazing that the same band that blew amps left and right at Andy Warhol's Factory parties was also capable of crafting something this tight and stylistically varied. Exquisitely balanced with fantastic openers and closers, killer singles and nary a dull moment in between - the ballads more than carry their weight - I can't recommend this one enough. It ultimately marked the demise of the band, but if every rock outfit could go out on a note like this, well, I'd have a lot more track by track reviews to write. Sigh.

(Oh, and if "Sweet Jane" doesn't get you, if "Oh! Sweet Nuthin'" doesn't make you want to lie on your back and watch sunsets and clouds pass, then I offer that nothing in rock ever will. Take your limbic system to the mechanic; it's broken. :))

Status: Desert Island Recommended
Nyet's Fave: "Oh! Sweet Nuthin'"

AR: Remain in Light

Talking Heads - Remain in Light (1980)

Talking Heads made a rather overt transition over the course of a few albums in the late 1970s-80 from a quirky, sparse, post-punk sound to a thick, funky, polyrhythmic, groove-infused trance mode. The masterpiece that resulted is Remain in Light, a disc that unfailingly carries the latter set of adjectives in reviews. Every song on the album (with the possible exception of the album closer, the droning apocalyptic dirge that is "The Overload") is a variant on a generic* motif - a repeating introductory line that gets layered upon layered by other syncopated lines of wildly different timbres, David Byrne paranoid-singing o'er the top, and swelling backup vocals filling in choruses. And the lines just repeat and repeat until they achieve utter dance-infused meditation. There's a deftly controlled chaos in every track of thundering off-beat basslines, computer blips, synth drums, real drums, wowsers - it's amazing, but by invoking this spell at varying tempos and with a variety of emotional lift or crush to the singing/lyrics, the band carries an entire album with this singular trick. Of course, there's so much depth and mysticism here, that's akin to calling modal jazz a singular trick - it's formula only in its outermost abstract structure, but each song is a unique gem.

* - Meaning "of the genre," not mundane or commonplace.

As such, each of these gems is going to get the full treatment here:

"Born Under Punches (The Heat Goes On)" - Spastic bass riffs, echoing bird sounds, and David Byrne's best pentecostal-level preach-pleading pepper this gripping album opener. With all apologies to Flight of the Conchords, Talking Heads throw down a bleep-bloop binary solo that predates that former band's by a good 25 years. The multi-faceted, paranoid blend crescendoes to the end as a relatively calm voice arches over top with "All I want... is to breathe." Great opener; powerfully establishes what this tight disc is all about.

"Crosseyed and Painless" - a serious groove riff drops for this one from the very beginning, as this one does not so much build as have four or five voices engaged in diagonal conversations from the get-go. Bubbling organs and syncopated guitar beats (plus a punctuated guitar-synth snarl) back a number of very nice back and forths between the call and response vocal deliveries; the falsetto choruses are particularly nice( "the feeling returns / whenever we close our eyes"). This is an infectious track that not only forces dance, but sticks particular lines in the head with ease. There's a sort of airplanes flying overhead middle instrumental break, followed by "Still waiting... still waiting... HA HA HA," and that is followed by the "facts" bridge, a personal favorite in the all-time solipsistic lyric catalog. I am gyrating in my chair just typing this, if that's any indication of this tune's virulence.

"The Great Curve" - defined by its juxtaposed, simultaneous lyrics backed by a insistent drumbeat, blaring horns and spastic guitar trills. One of the definitive new wave guitar solos screams over the middle and end of this song, and the several competing volcal lines eventually all cram themselves into the same space. It is friggin' EUPHORIC. Probably the most trance-inducing / infectious of the tunes, "TGC" is a aural-visceral experience.

"Once in a Lifetime" - obviously the best known and poppiest tune here - it was even lifted for the title of a movie featuring Nicolas Cage, if I recall correctly - "OiaL" balances a frantic, confused narrator alternating with the theoretically soothing anthemic chorus. If you've ever had that experience of reading a word too many times until it's meaning is destroyed (try it with "proof") or seeing yourself in the mirror and just-for-an-instant failing to recognize your own visage, you know the emotion that Byrne's perfect verse narrator evokes. It is remarkable that such a popular tune has such a weird, jarring, experience-of-the-absurd theme, and yet you'll get all kinds of people smiling along to "Same as it ever was!" at, for instance, Fry's Grocery stores. A definite highlight of the TH catalog, this studio version is great though seriously challenged by the Stop Making Sense live take; still, a great, cathartic closer to Side A.

"Houses in Motion" - Side B slows things down a little, and "HiM" kicks things off with a sort of jazz flair, what with the screaming dark-bar horns, the depressed-cool mood, and Byrne's spoken-word verse deliveries. It's a foreboding twist on the polyrhythmic, groove structure that balances the energy of the first four tracks nicely, and makes for a great downswing, moodwise, in the middle of the disc.

"Seen and Not Seen" - A dreamlike spoken word number that occurs over yet another trance-beat. The bass work thumps on this one, as the album takes the dark turn a step further. This one is the most in the acid house vein, even if it well proceeds that genre.

"Listening Wind" - Things slow down even further as Byrne returns to yearnful singing for this continue-the-trace-theme number. The rumbling beat and syncopated bass lines / drums are still there, but the album just gets darker and darker as it rolls along. "The wind in my heart / the wind in my heart / The dust in my hand..." has its own infectious quality, and the Eastern-sounding solo that flits over top imbue this with a mystical feeling. It's a soundtrack to some kind of ritual, and this is the last rich generic tune on the album before yielding to a severe plodding crush.

"The Overload" - The album closer takes the slow down theme that defines the back half and takes it to the extreme; if anyone ever wants to know exactly what I mean by a song that drones (not in a bad way), this is the one. This number is the only somewhat weak spot of the album, imho. It's not weird that they put this plodder in the anchor slot - given the progressive tempo decline, it entirely makes sense - but everything grinds to a halt, plus Byrne's vocal is fairly flatlined. It's an aesthetic that was aimed for, I'm sure, just not the one I would have chosen.

So, what one gets in RiL is a unified selection of songs with a very natural tempo progression. It sounds like an organic thing, and that's a huge compliment to any album. It's a fantastic display of Talking Heads's attack in this period and an expert execution of this style, entirely owned by the band. The rhythms, on the faster and slower tunes alike, resonate on your kidneys; going along with that "organic" theme, it is easy to sort of live this album despite its new wave modernism / futuristic blares. This deeply-felt energy, this borderline mystic aspect, particularly when combined with the ranting lead man, gives the disc a downright religious feel, one of the many reasons it evokes such a personal connection for so many people.

That first half is just that for me, a quasi-spiritual experience that makes me want to practice some whirling dervish meditation. The opening trio in particular makes for a DI EP. Unfortunately, I don't enjoy the slow down back half quite as much as the front, primarily because of the closer. As such, this one has always fallen *just* short of the desert island suitcase. I can but recommend it: RiL is crazy kinds of unique and contains an incredible slew of moments that will worm-weave their way into your memory. Listen only if you enjoy having fantastic, mind-widening music running through that dome.

P.S. Since this is being written in the "Phish Halloween album" series, I might as well comment that covering this album definitely brought a whole new dimension to the Phish jam. The polyrhythm / funk game most certainly stuck; they covered this beast with strong horn backing in Halloween of 1996, and it undoubtedly influenced the funk years to come. The band still covers "Crosseyed & Painless" frequently, and that song has led to some of their most memorable, full-out gyrate jams. Of course, the original more than suffices for gyration purposes.

Status: Recommended
Nyet's Fave: "The Great Curve"

UPDATE: Check out the song reviews at AllMusic for this album (the Rs to the left of the track titles). Good descriptions there, though you'll notice that we overlap quite a bit - this song-set as an emphatic, unmistakable stamp.

UPDATE 2: I'm really struggling with the rec on this one as it really is a fantastic album. The two sides are starkly different, and I continually appreciate the dark, way-before-ProTools grandfather of techno/house aspect to the back half. In the end, it comes down to the Eno-inspired (and, it turns out, Eno-written closer track). It's cool, sppoky and bleak and all, but I for whatever reason can't have that almost exactly 15% (6:01 out of 40:05) of the album is taken up by the plod. This is a hard line to maintain, as you'll hopefully learn soon; The Beatles is sans doubt a DI album, and there's a healthy chunk of corresponding plod there, too ("Revolution #9" and "Good Night" make up the last painful 11:30 of that set). So what do I know? In the end, I'm forced to rely on that good ol' gut feeling, and perhaps because of the dynamics of the Side A v. Side B - the former really is some of my favorite tune-age on earth - I have to leave this just shy of the mark. So, essentially, I'm repeating myself, though with a repeated emphasis that this is *that close!*

Programming Note

So, just to update an item from several months ago, I made the decision to skip the Phish Festival 8. Too much cash, too much crowd, too much other school work going on in and around the dates of the shows. If some Fairy Godmother of Awesomeness were to drop the necessary cash and tickets on me in the next couple of weeks, I could see myself instantly revising this decision, but barring that sort of miracle, I think I've resolved just to enjoy the shows in post-event, download-from-the-internet medium in the comfort of my own home. Sadness, I know, rendering life a random lottery of meaningless tragedy and near escapes this way, but I really think this is the way to go.

Still, the Phish bug is biting - they've been "counting down" to the festival in a way with a display over at phish.com that features about 100 different albums they claim they might cover, eliminating one at a time in ghastly fashion. It's a pretty cool animation; I highly suggest checking it out. The display has all kinds of goofy examples - a Hall & Oates album, Huey Lewis, Beastie Boys, Appetite for Destruction, the Pork Tornado album, etc. - none of which are real possibilities. Word on the street is that there's a short-list of major contenders:

The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust & the Spiders From Mars: Yeah, this is eminently do-able and in line with the general "cover a classic album" tradition. Plus it's a fantastic disc. A little guitar-heavy, maybe, so it might turn into a Trey show, but you'll get no complaints from me there. Plus these songs BEG for jams, so that's a plus.

Thriller: Sorry, this strikes me as preposterous. Trey can't sing "Free" anymore, let alone "Billie Jean." I sincerely hope this doesn't happen. Plus it would be a little played given recent hoopla, yes?

The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway: This is a Genesis prog classic and again, is in the band's wheelhouse. Big and intricate, so it would require every member, which is cool; on the other hand, it's 1:30+ long, and so tightly composed that it would more or less forbid improv. I'm pretty neutral here.

Hot Rats: Probably my favorite Zappa album, Phish already covers its signature tune ("Peaches in Regalia") and the extended, complex jams/time signatures/ improv chops required are right up their alley. Approved!

London Calling: Somewhere in the back of my mind, I long ago thought this would be the front runner. All of the albums that Phish has covered have featured varied styles (with the possible exception of Remain in Light), and LC certainly fits that bill. Jammable songs, showcase spots for all the members... it seems so perfect that it's virtually guaranteed they won't choose it.

Exile on Main Street: The Stones blues raunch would be good if a little Trey-heavy, and they already cover "Loving Cup." Another great album, though not necessarily my first choice.

Anyhoo, that's just a taste, they have a habit of picking left-field numbers, so waiting to see is probably the appropriate move here. In honor of the upcoming Halloween shows though, I am going to rearrange the reviewing queue and hit some of their Halloween albums - I coincidentally did Quadrophenia recently, so that's already covered, so to speak. I'll try to hit RiL and Loaded in the next couple of days, and if I get really inspired I'll give The Beatles and DSotM* a shot, though no guarantees on those two as they are two of my all-time favorites and deserve more than a rush job. So that's the programming note - expect some ARs of excellent albums in the next few days. And Fairy Godmother, if you're out there... ah, I should probably work on my ethics paper. :(

* - Speaking of, I learned recently that The Flaming Lips are going to be covering Dark Side for an iTunes release? Hmmm... that had better be one serious reimagination, dudes, lest you be aping your wacky east coast brethren. Just sayin'.

As Promised: "The Fumble"

Ahem. At 25:08. I don't know what happened; I clearly caught the disc, and it just goes fluttering forward when I try to move it to my right hand. Barf. Or maybe I hit it against my thigh? Who knows. Note the insta-heckles from off-camera, too. Ughughughughughughughughughughughugh.

Huckalumps 15 Confessions 7 - Vots Fall 09 League - v2 from Kevin on Vimeo.

Wall-Scraping Dramatics

Beck and I *tried* to watch the ALCS Game 2 conclusion last night, only to be thwarted by extra innings and, especially, an 11th inning blast from his kiss-the-mirror-ness. Upon seeing his opposite field line drive blast scrape the top of the wall over Abreu's glove, I had memories of an AP article I read toward the beginning of the season about the new Yankee Stadium field dimensions. I can't find the original, but here's Rob Neyer's account, and here are the relevant lines:

"The wall structure is slightly different than the old park," AccuWeather said. "The main difference involves curvature. The gentle curve from right field to center field seen in original Yankee Stadium has largely been eliminated at the new stadium. This is due in large part to the presence of a manual scoreboard embedded within the wall. Losing this curvature has resulted in a right field that is shorter by four-to-five feet on average, but up to nine feet in spots.

"Not only is the famed short porch even shorter in the new stadium, but the walls themselves are not as tall. In the old ballpark, the walls in right field stood at a height of approximately 10 feet. At this height, it was difficult for outfielders to scale the wall and attempt to rob a home run over the fence. Fast forward to 2009, and the outfielders have been scaling the wall without any trouble. The result? The new outfield fences only rise to a height of eight feet, adding to the ease hitting a home run to right."

So when kids aren't reaching over the fence to haul in playoff HRs, the fences themselves are moving to facilitate Yankee victories. Ugh. I mean, props to A-Rod - I'm a little sick of the steroid flak he's gotten, and I'm *really* sick of the stupid not-clutch-player accusations* - but in the regular field**, that would have just been a double off the wall or a spectacular catch by Abreu. Boo-urns.

* - This is probably entirely residual from having him on my fantasy team "Ryno-Blasty!," but I find myself rooting for A-Rod lately, even while vehemently rooting against the Yankees. Oh the dissonance!

** - Oh, and btw, last time I checked, 2009 is after 1928. Why are they allowed to build a field with 314 foot walls anyways? Will no one enforce the sacred rules?***

*** - Speaking of sacred rules - dios mio, if that phantom 2nd base force safe-call had cost the Angels the game, I think the baseball universe would have collapsed on itself. What the hey is that umpire thinking? Oh, now that it's the playoffs, we're going to call things strictly by the rulebook? How about enforcing 8.04 a little more strictly so I can watch a game in less than 5 hours and maybe, just maybe go to Mojo AFTER the game instead of in the middle of extra innings? SHEESH.

Texas Two-Steppin' and a Duke Jansen Weddin', Pt. 2

Showered at Aaron's, and when I sat down on the inflatable mattress to put on my socks, I noted the dubious quality of the mattress's adjective. Seems it had sprung a leak. Worth noting. We got ready, Beck in pretty sundress and I in suit, and drove down Mopac to 290 West to head out to the wedding locale. We thought it was going to take us a while to get down there, so we rushed to get ready and left at about 5 for the 6 o'clock wedding... and got there at 5:30. Others who shall rename nameful (Here's to you, Mr. Robertson) made temporal errors in the opposite direction and were lucky that the wedding started fashionably late. All's well in the end; our favorite Elway look-alike father-to-be continues to lead a charmed life.

The plus of getting to the wedding early was that we got a couple minutes to chat to some of our Rice friends. Jason* was a class above us ('99) at Rice, and so the majority of the people there were from that class. So we got to see Charity, Josh, Big Joe C, Marcus, Rayo, Will, Amy, Christy, Laura (Jason's sister) and Angie, all for the first time in quite some while. Carrie and Ryan joined us for the wedding ceremony itself; Carrie was very excited to finally see a Jewish wedding as apparently this is on her life's to-do list. Harrison managed to find a babysitter for the evening, so the Stallings were in full party effect.

* - Jason is a genuinely hilarious guy, a great friend, and the epitome of Jewish computer science major indie-rocker bleeding-heart-on-his-sleeve cool-geek. He's 5'6"-ish and probably weighs 140 lbs. if his Wilco t-shirt is wet, and displays crack-addled flying squirrel levels of energy. He pulled us on campus our sophomore year with his juniority, so we would be in his eternal debt even if he weren't one of the coolest dudes we know. One of my favorite Jason quotes requires a set-up: at Rice football games, there was a dumb cheer that went "Let's Go Rice Owls!" and had everyone put their hands up like, supposedly, Owl's wings (with thumbs interlocked and fingers waving). Jason noted that this hand signal looked a whole lot like 9 candles, and so changed the cheer to "Let's Go Rice Jews!" I am sure this is going to be lost in translation, but the svelte Jewish guy jumping up and down yelling "Let's Go Rice Jews!" at what, success aside, were still Texas football games, was impossibly hilarious. Good times.

Anyhoo, Jason is a super sincere, romantic guy who seems to have been searching for the one - and loudly - since we met him. And he could not have looked happier at his wedding; he really seems to have found her in Phoenix, and is generally living a very great techie kind of life in Austin. If you had lived through some of his comp project deadline shenanigans, you might have spent a lot of time worrying about this outcome back in the day, and seeing him successful and superhappy was a real treat. Props to Jason aka Duke Jansen, thanks a ton for having us at your wedding, and I remain impressed that you remembered our Fresh Prince rip-off secret handshake.

Really lovely ceremony in the (somewhat) traditional Jewish vein, complete with groom-circling, Chuppah, glass-breaking, etc. The pre-wedding music included a mix of the usual (Pachelbel) and pop (Beatles, Once Soundtrack), which was neat (and very Duke Jansen). Phoenix was lovely; we unfortunately barely got to talk to her over the course of the night as she was busy in typical bride-fashion, but she seems appropriately sweet for Jason. But why tell when you can show, right? This is the ADD-age; so here's there save-the-date video:

See? Supercute the pair is. We all yelled Mazoltov to a beaming couple as the ceremony concluded and headed upstairs for a luscious cocktail / appetizer hour. The food was excellent; I'll refer you to Beck for details, but a post-wedding Waffle House was entirely not in order. Stuffed mushrooms, cheese and fruit plates, pasta bar and prime rib, egads. Too good. The party was fun (a Jason-DJed iTunes affair), and we had a good time chatting and dancing. Solid wedding*, all in all.

* - I realized in writing this that I never did write about our New York trip to Andy's wedding or Julliette's wedding. Shame on me. I will recount one thing here - at a certain moment on the dancefloor in NY, the DJ put on Meatloaf's "Paradise by the Dashboard Light," a quite ballsy choice for a wedding. And I look around, and Andy, Josh, and Elliot - all regular couch-residents during Tuftsmen parties of yore - were up and tearing it up. Josh and his SLF Nicole in particular decided to embody pure youthful energetic love; it was quite a sight/ memory. Good times. I'll try to recount more of this in full posts - as promised - time makes the memory grow blonder. Ugh.

Back at Aaron's, we briefly hung out with Kristen and bro before heading to bed. Kristen had noted the deflated mattress and had actually bought another one - only it, too, did not hold its air. Beck and I woke up several times over the course of the night, as there was just enough air such that whenever one of us moved, the other one rolled along the airwaves and onto the solid floor. No one's fault, but that did not exactly make for a great night's sleep. We got up early and had some time to hang out with K&A before going to Jason's place for brunch.

Another excellent meal provided by our hosts - Jason and fam had provided to-die-for breakfast burritos that entirely quenched my go-to-Taco-Cabana urges. Sooooo good. We said adios to Carrie, Ryan and Harrison as they left for Dallas and got a tour of Jason's sweet digs. Nice place, pleasant brunch, and all of our Rice friends had their wee ones scampering about. We got our fill of food, gave Jason and Phoenix our best wishes, and headed back to SA.

Oh, right - it was cold and rainy all weekend in Texas. I think my dad had planned to take us out to the driving range Sunday, but instead we hung out, knitted, read, watched football and baseball. Low key, but after our violent night's rest, it was a welcome chill day. We had turkey- and hamburgers for dinner, and headed to Grandpa's for pie afterwards. Another ten pound delta trip to Texas.

Got up very early the next morning to fly back to Phoenix. Beck had the day off and tried to use her wiles to get me to play hooky; alas, I had class at 12 and a slew of angry students to answer. So i said hey to the pups, grabbed a little lunch, and then fought through the day at ASU like a zombie. And survived! Fun trip home, really glad we got to see the fam and the Rice folks and Aaron's play/ce and everything. And thus ends the tale.

Confessions of a Frustrated-o-holic

Hard-times for my VOTS Fall League team of late. Our captain, Nipar, basically wrecked himself at Southwest Regionals; Alan's been out of the country the last two weeks and missed Thursday's game with Swine Flu; Tom "Heart Attack" has been battling knee issues and is both hurt and out of shape, and of course I'm a walking case study in -itises. On the women's side, Tanya has been AWOL, Angel's, um, "captaining," and Tricia has been dealing with knee issues, too. The rest of our team, with the exception of Tim (who is new to town) and Wes (who plays casually now and then) consists entirely of people who have played less than a year, meaning Beck is one of our more experienced players. Beck has a forehand and can catch things that are thrown upside down, too, which also gives her a leg up on a lot of our teammates. Anyways, we are unsurprisingly struggling BADLY, and a lot of teams are figuring out that there are only a couple of people on the field that need to be treated seriously in order to shut us down. AND we struggle terribly on defense, too, which means that teams are scoring on our turnovers a very disproportionate amount of the time. Ugh.

So, in case you didn't notice, I'm not exactly throwing down the detailed game writeups this season. I lack the adjectives beyond "another" and "bad." So I'm doing everything I can to go out and have a good time, try to teach people a little bit, though I'll fully admit that I'm frustrated. Part of it is just a typical competitive nature that detests getting blown out of game after game and having to do way more than my share for the team; part of it, though, is that there doesn't seem to be a degree of learning here, and we're making the same mistakes in week 6 that we made in week one. It's frustrating, because among other things, I can't even get throws to Beck when people are constantly cutting her off and cutting when it's not their turn. I can't even throw to my WIFE!!!! I'll stop before this turns into a rant, but it gets to be frankly unfun to play uphill game after uphill game where you're not just getting beaten, you're making guys on other teams who are very, very average look like all-stars. And it's not like they're even playing well, they just have multiple people running around the field uncovered. AND you can't even try to get your newer players involved in a good way, because they're either not open or they're cutting each other off left and right. It's even more "not Ultimate" than VOTS is normally "not Ultimate." I'll do my best to keep a good attitude, but it just feels like a pointless farce*.

* - Mayhaps this is reason #2476 we should run this league by autodraft - granted, there are a lot of unknowns that go into it, injuries and foreign travel and bad self-ratings, but man do we have a weird team. Affected badly by injuries, sure, but DAMN.

Alright, enough whining, let's have a game account. I played pickup on Wednesday after taking a week off in Austin/SA, and I was gasping for breath more or less the entire time. This combined with some lightheadedness I had in SA while playing freaking HORSE w/ my dad made me more than a little concerned that something was wrong, but fortunately, I seemed to have my lungs back under me on Thursday night. All of the above-mentioned factors came into play, and despite the fact that we were playing the winless cellar-dweller from the other league, we got absolutely destroyed. They won 15-7, and it was never in doubt. We just can't cover anyone, and when the other team has Kuda, Bonnie, Bill, Tricky, and Cisco, plus a new 6'10" guy, plus other moderately athletic peeps, we're doomed. We tried throwing some Z at them, but our cup was super loose and it was entirely ineffective. Perhaps you are starting to see why I don't write these games up; I am way too negative.

I personally didn't play well. Or really, I'll be fair to myself - I realized that we can't really complete four passes in succession, and so I took more chances than usual and had to play cutter rather than handler. And things were just off - I missed a trailing edge grab on a huck where i had to navigate through three guys; I couldn't figure out where I was on the field after a swilly huck traversed the entire width of the field and couldn't decide whether I needed to greatest it or just catch it; I actually had a disc fall out of my hand for no apparent reason while trying to go to a forehand grip, and that hasn't happened to me in more than a decade. On the throwing side, everything I put up either hit people in the hands and was misread/dropped, or I put out perfect throws... for people who were just a hair faster. Basically, I think I let the "carry the team" mental state get to me, tried to do too much, and had an unspectacular day. So... yeah. Enough of that.

I did have at least two decent plays, and I'll let you SEE them rather than describe them - wahoo! Kevin Hatch, father of one of the players in our game (for the other side) and a VOTS-oldtimer, shot some video of our game and just posted it on the interwebs. It's twenty minutes long, so I hardly expect you to watch it, but I'll list some highlights and you can do what you will. Hopefully I'm not imagining all of the above, and you can see some of the things (our team dropping hammers, their team running around sans defender, etc.). And full disclosure - this edit is missing my idiotic, right-in-front-of-the-camera disc drop, so I'll post that if Kevin tracks it down, too. Alright, here are some things to watch for:

3:10 - Nyet flies by Beck and scares the crap out of her. Nyet is sorry!
3:40 - Streak deep by the Nyet and the floater-flick for the score.
6:20 - One of the hammer drops I was talking about.
7:15 - Still can't believe I didn't come up with this, but note that I shouldn't have had to run around the crowd back there.
8:40 - Good chance to play "you make the call." She claimed I hit her arm... I continue to contest.
11:00 - Tim throws a hammer shot to the back left corner. Some dude poaches off and runs into me from behind. I fall, I tip it, make the circus catch. Gratuitous spike. All in good fun.
13:15 - Bonnie makes a really nice huck to a super tall guy, and I poach off and sprint across field to try for the D... only to get skyed. Don't worry, I'll get my revenge.
17:10 - Another one.
19:08 - Revenge! I sky the 6'10" brand new player. And show him the disc, of course. Whilst wearing my devil horns from last year's Halloween costume, no less. Please ignore the bad-languaged heckling from the sideline...

Huckalumps 15 Confessions 7 - Vots Fall09 League from Kevin on Vimeo.

Anyways, fun times, and thanks to Kevin for taping. Here's to improving next week.

Texas Two-Steppin' and a Duke Jansen Weddin', Pt. 1

Finally, a moment's reprieve from fetus=slave arguments and students griping about their essay grades*, and now I can recount our trip to South Central Texas. Last Thursday, Beck and I got a ride to the airport from friend Xtina (of D/C fame) and headed down to the balmy 95 degree tropics of San Antonio, TX., where my dad picked us up and took us back to good ol' Shavano.

* - It's time to play our favorite game, "Was That Ironic?" A student turned in a 1400 word essay for an assignment that was explicitly restricted to a 800-1200 word range. He heartily contested his grade when he received a C- for his essay; he thought he had written an A paper that was docked to a C- solely for missing the restrictions (more accurately - he was docked from a C to a C-). He requested an explanation of his grade. I wrote him an e-mail detailing the mistakes in his paper, documenting the times and places when/where he could have learned about the word restriction, and explaining all the ways in which he could have been more succinct in his paper. The e-mail, largely focused on the ways in which brevity is superior to gratuitous floridity, was itself 1600 words long. Now, WAS THAT IRONIC?

We hit up the Cafer aka Alamo Cafe the first night, meeting up with Deb, Pat, Ron, my mom and dad for the traditional authentically suburban Tex-Mex fare. Good times, and I got to explain the vagaries of the Bio&Soc program at ASU to a nacho-munching audience. Pat was very excited about a "Yarn Crawl" she was going to be doing in SA and Austin over the next few days; this is the same as the sport of "extreme bar-hopping" except that the product is wool socks rather than vomit. Yeah! This enticed Beck, of course. Deb and my mom are reading Infinite Jest, which I am very excited to learn; I reread it this summer and just finished going through its study guide, Elegant Complexity. Of course, now I am probably under some sort of obligation to not spoil things for them, so I'm not sure how I'll approach my long-promised-not-yet-delivered commentary. Considering I bought the book for my mom in 1999, she's now on page 70 or so, AND the book is roughly 1400 pages (if you consider the 6 pt. font of the footnotes) all told, it'll be a brief 190 years before I can post something without fear of spoilage. Hmmm... maybe I'll just put a warning at the top of the post. I think this was also the night when Matt Holliday took a flyball off his crotch and cost the Cardinals a playoff game; Grandpa swore off baseball immediately.

Friday was our faux-Thanksgiving; Beck and I made a quick grocery trip in the AM. On the way, we went to the yarn store to pick up some 3-gauge needles; we were a bit pressed for time, so Beck swore she was going to go in and out in two minutes. She told the people at the counter that she only wanted needles, her poor husband was in the parking lot breathing SUV-dioxide, and she didn't have time to talk shop, and they STILL tried to sell her cashmere yarn laced with caviar and Faberge eggs. I think the debate over whether knitters are evil capitalist bastards can be safely concluded. Beck and I then hit up the new wannabe Wegman's HEB superduper market and grabbed ingredients for Beck's caramel-tinged pumpkin pie. We ran home so Beck and my mom could get pedicures.

My dad and I had planned on going to the driving range, but between the unreasonably hot* Thursday and Friday evening, a Nor'therner blew through and dropped things down to the rainy low 50s. Ugh. My dad and I opted for a trip to the JCC instead, where he thoroughly mangled me in a couple of games of HORSE (though, to be fair, I haven't touched a basketball in 10 months, and my game was entirely oriented around lying-on-the-floor shots. And I did hit an unanswered half-court shot, so phbbbbbbt). Fun times, though the little jogging around I did did a number on my knee. I am in knee (I am in) pain (I am in love) for something new.

* - That's right, a Phoenician complaining about hot Texas. There had been highs of 85 in Phoenix the week we left, and we don't have this BS "moisture in the air" thing. Yeah, my blood is thin in a way that can't handle humid hot or cold of any kind. If I sit perfectly still, I'll be fine...

Later in the afternoon, Aaron and his girlfriend Kristen rolled in from Austin to enjoy our Faux T-Day. She's a children's lit-focused librarian, in case you're one of the few people who read this blog who doesn't already know that, and a great gal taboot. I mean, seriously, into Guided By Voices AND Dave Eggers? AND tolerant of the A-child? APPROVED. Next topic. No, seriously, it was great to meet / get to know Kristen over the weekend; she's a welcome addition to the clan.

Deb and Beck had made a variety of rubs and marinades for the turkey-substitute pork tenderloins. The menu for dinner Friday included those 'loins, stuffing, green bean casserole, cranberry-Jello salad, dinner rolls, and scalloped potatoes. My brother also made some ridiculously good pesto for an appetizer, and I'm pretty sure some of it found its way into the main meal as well. Delicious stuff, and 'twas followed by Beck's delicious pumpkin pie, a chocolate satin pie, and a chocolate-pecan pie. I ate way too much, which is a general truism about time spent at my parents' house; I always leave a greater person.

Saturday, we all, at separate times, headed up to Austin. Aaron was headed up early to get ready for his play, my fam was meeting Kristen's fam for an early lunch, Pat was headed up to get intoxicated on lamb fur before the play started, and Beck and I were meeting Carrie, Ryan, Harrison (the toddler not the Ford), Brett, Matt, Ebit, Ben, and Noah for lunch at Rudy's. Yeah, more eating! Great BBQ, great seeing old Rice friends, and I even had the privilege of playing a whole lot of the "drop the toy truck on the ground over and over and over and over and over*" game with Harrison. We went straight from there to Aaron's play, the Tom Stoppard classic Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. The leads were AWESOME; especially Rosencrantz (no, wait, Guildenstern). Seriously, I spent a lot of the time wondering what precisely the difference between this high school production and any community or professional level production would be, and with few exceptions (cough cough The Player cough), I saw no difference. Bang up job by Aaron et al., even if the vast majority of the audience was left clueless by the goings on (hint - it helps a lot if you've read Hamlet recently, and it helps even more if you've been reading a 1400 page novel loosely based on Hamlet, too). Thoroughly enjoyed it, and we booked it out of there to Aaron's apartment to get ready for the wedding. Which is as good of a place to take a break as any.

* - And over.