What you wear, whether you want it to or not, speaks directly upon the type of person you are.
There's no gettin 'around it. So...
Stop wearing the t-shirts of the band whose concert you are currently attending.
Stop it. Just stop.
It's not cool and people who are cool are laughing at you.
If it's casual Friday and you break out your tye-dyed "The Parrot Has Landed" t-shirt from that totally awesome Buffet concert back in '82... fair enough. That's your choice.
It's not a choice I would make, but you're not me.
That concert tee is making a statement of who you are (or wish you still were). It's an heirloom, an artifact, a tiny piece of history.
But listen to me, if you are at a concession stand and you've just purchased a $45 cotton t-shirt, I want you to sling the shirt over your shoulder and go find your spot on the general admission lawn, okay? 'Cause I swear to God, if you put that shirt on, you've lost the battle and your troops will no longer trust you to lead them into war. You will forever be a marked man (or woman).
The problem seems to be that too many people see "concert gear" as some sort of uniform, the way sports fans buy hats and jerseys and hope their garb is so sweet that they might accidentally get called from the stands to enter the game. Professional sports teams wear uniforms and so, it seems - obtusely - in keeping with that spirit to buy incessant amounts of clothing with your team's emblem emblazoned on it.
Musicians don't wear uniforms... well, The Shirelles did. And so did the Dave Clarke 5 and Boyz II Men, but they shouldn't have.
These days, no one besides The Hives, wear uniforms and therefore, you shouldn't wear a damn uniform. Because when you wear the t-shirts that they are selling ten yards away at the concession stands, you are saying one of two things:
1) I'm clumsy, I spilled hotdog relish onto my pullover and I was forced to buy this shirt so as not to have relish on my front while I dance to the music.
2) I'm redundant and I don't care that I literally look like every third idiot with a joint in his (or her) hand.
So what's the big deal? It's easier to just wear the damn hat or shirt than it is to stuff it in your pocket or sling it over your shoulder all night, right? Yes, but you're forfeiting so much else. One guy wearing a Bon Jovi shirt is okay... he must really like Bon Jovi. But four thousand guys all standing in the same place wearing a Bon Jovi shirt? To me that's screaming, "Look at me! Look at me! I like Jon Bon Jovi. I'm a fan of his!"
You're at a Bon Jovi concert, pal. We were already aware of your Bon Jovi fandom simply by your presence here. Stop shouting. Put your collectible poster down, stop moussing your hair (it's 2006), remove your vintage eBay'ed Slippery When Wet parka and replace it with your New Jersey Devils hoodie. You'll be making a much louder statement that way.
The problem, I guess is with the sheer number of people wearing the same type of thing. Strangers coming out from far and wide wearing all the same ecoutrements without discussing it with one another first is unsettling. It's very Roswell.
Very David Koresh. Or worse:
It's like a rock 'n' roll Catholic school. And although that would easily be the most kickass of all Catholic schools and the principal would most certainly have to be Angus Young, it still creeps me out on a visceral level.
And before I climb down from this soapbox (or get shoved from it) allow me to also interject my belief that listening to the albums of the band you're going to see while driving to the show or tailgating before it, seems like a bad idea too.
Like mentioning out-loud that the pitcher has a no-hitter going into the ninth inning.
It's why opening acts never, never, ever play a cover version of a song from the band they are opening for. It seems to take a way a little from the performance that has yet to occur. It's just poor form. That's why the music being piped into the arenas, pavillions or clubs is never, never, ever the albums of any of the bands appearing on stage that night.*
I don't feel as strongly about the pre-concert music as I do about the t-shirts. But I'm serious about these t-shirts, people.
Don't be an idiot.
I'm serious.
I'm trying to help you out.
Just buy your shirts and wear them to work the next day. It's always fun to wear a shirt and have people go, "Whoa dude, The Allman Brothers! I saw them, like three years ago in Charlotte. I bought a t-shirt."
To which your reply is, "Yeah. That's kinda cool. But what's ultra cool is that I was there last night and this is the t-shirt from last night's concert!"
And in your head you will end your statement with, "so eat my shorts, sucker." But he is your co-worker and you have no call to treat him like that, so you leave the sucker part out of it. Instead you get to turn your back on your co-worker and have him find the exact show you were at on the inevitable list of venues and dates throughout the tour.
You'll say, "Go ahead man, look for the show I was at. It's listed on my back. It's under yesterday's date, 'cause that's when I went. I went yesterday."
He'll scan your back and then, "Aw man. The Allman's played at the Kotex Tampon Pavillion last night. Aw man, that place sucks. The acoustics are terrible and they don't let you freely smoke your weed. Bummer for you."
You're initial instincts will tell you to throw your iced-mocha-venti-Chi-half-caff'-Oreo-Blizzard-latte into his eyes, but you won't because, again, he is your co-worker and you have no call to treat him like that.
And also because you will get fired and then you will never be able to make the follow-up payments on that concert shirt you leased-to-own the night before.
=========================
* I once saw a MatchBox 20/ Soul Asylum/ Semisonic ampitheater concert in Wisconsin and before the show began they were playing Zeppelin.
It's a sad thing when the piped in music playing while you're buying your collectible button set is the best music you'll hear all night.
No, I did not buy a Soul Asylum button set. I was simply illustrating a point.
Sunday, May 28, 2006
Sunday, May 21, 2006
Idiot Child-isms, part 1
I don't know what I said exactly, but having spent a great deal of my last ten years around little kids, I am fully aware that they often say what they think and knowing some of the things that I thought when I was their age... my God, how am I still alive?
1) I used to think that anyone wearing sunglasses while walking their dog must be blind.
When I was younger, there was some sort of disconnect between my view of the average person wearing sunglasses and someone walking a dog wearing them. Both my mother and father wore sunglesses regularly (like you know... when it was sunny), but as we didn't have a dog, the juxtaposition of dogs and sunglasses was never forced upon me.
1) I used to think that anyone wearing sunglasses while walking their dog must be blind.
When I was younger, there was some sort of disconnect between my view of the average person wearing sunglasses and someone walking a dog wearing them. Both my mother and father wore sunglesses regularly (like you know... when it was sunny), but as we didn't have a dog, the juxtaposition of dogs and sunglasses was never forced upon me.
My folks didn't own a car until I was five, so we got used to walking to a lot of places. And when we'd walk the streets of Chicago on nice days, I probably spent a lot of time either pitying people who owned dogs or being scared to death that owning a dog in the first place probably meant you were on your way to goiing blind.
2) I used to think the Beach Boys were all homeless.
2) I used to think the Beach Boys were all homeless.
This one makes a little more sense if you understand that I grew up in a mid-western metropolis during the 1980's. I knew much of homelessness and next to nothing about the surfer lifestyle except for old Gidget reruns and Beach Boys music. What I saw of homelessness was gnarly unkempt hair, harsh skin, a life of little movement, little motion, seemingly little ambition. No one ever discussed what surfers or beach bimbos did when it was too cold to hang around the sands. Therefore, I never saw Dick Dale in an alleyway wearing three jackets and a wool hat. It never occured to me that the boys from Endless Summer weren't huddled around a trashcan fire in some city park.
Let's face it, beach bums i nthe summer are the same as honest to goodness bum s in the summer. That same gnarly unkempt hair that I saw in Chicago was described by The Sufaris as "an Ocean Doo". Surferes were outside all day getting tanned, hobos are outside all day getting tanned (against their will).
To a five-year-old boy, sitting around is sitting around. No mother is around to haul the bums off to the grocery store with her and no mother is around to take the Beach Boys off to kindergarten; what did I know outside of that?
This was a mistake that could very well have changed the course of my life, had I not wisened up sooner than I did. I held the Beach Boys in very high esteem as a young child. For me to assume they were homeless could have ruined my life had I decided I wanted to be just like The Beach Boys.
3) I used to think God was a Tyrannasaurus Rex.
3) I used to think God was a Tyrannasaurus Rex.
Alright stick with me here.
When I was little I questioned absolutely nothing. I took in information as it reached me and filed it away without further inquiry. And when I was little everything in my life told me that the King was the highest form of power. Obviously, here in America, the President is the highest form of power, but fairytales and Disney movies don't have presidents they have kings and queens.
So there's that: Kings and Queens were the highest form of being.
Then on top of that, I was fascinated with dinosaurs. It seemed my mother and I would travel to the Field Museum of Natural History once a damn week and we always looked at the old dino bones. What boy wasn't fascinated with dinosaurs? I'm sure there were a few, but I've never met any of them. Anyway, for those of you who shared my fascination with creatures from the jurassic period, I ask you: what was the most common moniker of the
Tyrannasaurus Rex?
Correct answer: "The King of the Dinosaurs".
Now, when a five-year-old is faced with "the past" there seems to be a limited amount of information available to them. Stuff happned before we were born, but how much? And when? And who? The five-year-old me understood this:
*dinosaurs are no longer with us
* dinosaurs were here before human beings were.
* dinosaurs ruled the earth.
* dinosaurs were here before human beings were.
* dinosaurs ruled the earth.
Okay. So basically, there was a period of time wherein dinosaurs were the alpha and omega of species and that the T-Rex was the leader of all of them. The T-Rex was the boss, the president, the king and queen. But they're not around anymore. We talk about dinosaurs, we hear about them constantly, but we'll never see them. They aren't on earth.
Now hopefully you're putting yourself in my five-year-old shoes and connecting how I might confuse God with a T-Rex. We went to the Field Museum more than we went to church, we saw pictures and visual representations of both, but never a living breathing version of either and both were the be-all-end-all. Period. There was nothing bigger and badder than a Tyrannosaurus Rex and there was nothing bigger and badder than God.
Now hopefully you're putting yourself in my five-year-old shoes and connecting how I might confuse God with a T-Rex. We went to the Field Museum more than we went to church, we saw pictures and visual representations of both, but never a living breathing version of either and both were the be-all-end-all. Period. There was nothing bigger and badder than a Tyrannosaurus Rex and there was nothing bigger and badder than God.
Well, the only way that could happen was if they were one-in-the-same.
So be it. Good for God to make good despite those stubby useless hands.
4) I used to think that rats were male and mice were female.
The details of my sexual education remain, to this day, quite fuzzy. According to my recollections of events long past, I used to think that a mouse was a female version of a rat.
4) I used to think that rats were male and mice were female.
The details of my sexual education remain, to this day, quite fuzzy. According to my recollections of events long past, I used to think that a mouse was a female version of a rat.
Similar to the bull and cow scenario.
I also remember believing that two mating mice must both be female and were therefore lesbians.
At nine-years-old, how did I know what a lesbian was? I remember watching the Fievel movies and wondering why some of the mice appeared to be male.
At nine-years-old, how did I know what a lesbian was? I remember watching the Fievel movies and wondering why some of the mice appeared to be male.
Tom and Jerry was also confusing to me.
But then again, those were cartoons. Not real life.
The strangest aspect of this whole portion of my life is that I knew what Lesbianism was before I knew that mice ran in two genders. That, my friends, is a clear-cut case of "putting the cart before the horse". Why I chose to believe my half-cocked theories of gender specific species instead of allowing Timothy the Mouse from Dumbo to prove that male mice existed and that Lesbianism amongst mice was nowhere near as prevalent as my young mind inexplicably believed, is beyond me.
But let's face it, I was a confused youngin'.
The strangest aspect of this whole portion of my life is that I knew what Lesbianism was before I knew that mice ran in two genders. That, my friends, is a clear-cut case of "putting the cart before the horse". Why I chose to believe my half-cocked theories of gender specific species instead of allowing Timothy the Mouse from Dumbo to prove that male mice existed and that Lesbianism amongst mice was nowhere near as prevalent as my young mind inexplicably believed, is beyond me.
But let's face it, I was a confused youngin'.
I can't wait to grow out of it.
Saturday, May 20, 2006
These Albums Save Lives
Chuck Klosterman is a mildly known music writer and editor for the magazines Spin and Esquire. He is the author of three books, all of varying brilliance, and today's blog entry is an unabashed co-opting of a chapter in his first book (which I have recommended at the conclusion of my blog).
It's kind of a spin off of the old "trapped-on-a-deserted-island" hypothetical. But instead of being trapped on a deserted island, you're in the middle of New York City ... wait, no. New York is so cliche. Let's make it the middle of a Seattle street. Nah...
...The Pacific Northwest is too overcast. Let's head south.
We're in San Diego.
We're in the middle of San Diego and a crazed multi-billionaire confronts you and offers you a million dollars to never again listen to your favorite record. Would you never again listen to that record (or any song found on that record) for a million bucks?
Now let's pretend that this crazy multi-billionaire San Diego resident likes to haggle. What is the absolute minimum you would take to listen to your favorite record of all-time? Hopefully it wouldn't be twenty bucks. A hundred? A thousand? Is your favorite record of all-time so priceless that Mr.-Multi-Billionaire simply could not pay you enough never to listen to it again? Because as Mr. Klosterman says, "if you can't buy it off of me, it must be pretty important."
Here is a crack at my top 25 albums and the cost it would take to get me to never listen to them again.
A few rules to consider: Best Ofs, Greatest Hits, Reissues, and Commemorative Box Sets are all excluded. They are more of a marketing ploy than artistic work. So because this is a fantastical hypothetical, if you agree to never listen to a certain record ever again, you are also agreeing to the inability to hear that collection of songs anywhere else. Not on reissues or greatest hits or even the radio.
if you take this crazy old coot's money, these songs are now dead to you, Soundtracks only count if it's all original songs or score. The Grease soundtrack is acceptable, but the Pulp Fiction soundtrack is not.
You can keep the memory of the song forever, but you may never hear it again.
I don't know if the memory thing is a deal-breaker or not, but there it is.
I recommend everyone do their own version of this. Unless you're not really into making lists. If that's the case, I really don't know what you're doing reading anything I've ever written, as it is primarily just a series of endlessly useless lists.
It was the first sunny day in almost two weeks, so I rode around with the window down blasting Whitesnake's Here I Go Again. I am not proud of it, but it felt good at the time. That's about all you need to know about me to understand this list.
And before you get all "Ohmigawd-how-cliche-can-this-list get?" Just remember: There is no Appetite for Destruction (Klosterman's #1, by the way), no Simon & Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water or Bookend, no Nirvana, no Pearl Jam, no Tom Petty, nothing from The Strokes nor Neil Young. No T-Rex Electric Warrior, no Frank Sinatra, no oldies (they used singles mostly and so oldies are hard to gather onto one solid album until about 1967).
Oh and no Beatles.
TOP 25 ALBUMS OF ALL-TIME
25. Pearl Janis Joplin (1971) $59.99
I'm disappointed that Janis was the only female entry on this list.
I considered Joan Jett, but the bulk of her tracks were covers of someone else's work. I would also like to note that Joan Jett is not attractive. To listen to her music, the pre-teen me would have assumed she was the hottest woman since Elisabeth Shue in Karate Kid, but no. She spent the 80's wearing a mullet and blush that made her cheekbones look like raggedy Anne. Patti Smith was too inconsistent and didn't get along with Bruce Springsteen, so she's out. And all the girl groups from the fifties and sixties released singles, b-sides and evolving greatest hits packages. I also considered Sheryl Crow's second album, but then remembered that it wasn't all that great.
So Janis it is. No better female voice in rock. Jack Daniels didn't treat her well, but it sure did wonders for her larynx.
Album Highlight: the tiny giggle after the conclusion of Mercedes Benz
24. At Folsom Prison Johnny Cash (1968) $80.01
A lot of everyday folk were impressed when Johnny Cash chose to travel from prison to prison connecting with the men on lockdown rather than the kindly folks still enmeshed in our society. But that was Johnny Cash. He was filled with demons and he wanted to be amongst those he felt a demonic kinship with.
What impresses me more than his prison shows is the fact that he paraded the woman he would eventually make his wife to each of these shows and have her perform. Is there any doubt after that who was the biggest badass in the room? Would you display the love of your life in front of rapists, murderers, thugs and tax evaders?
The strength of this album doesn't rest in the songs themselves, we've heard them a billion times in a billions different situations, but unlike most live albums there is an energy of fear and tension. It's as if everyone in that tiny makeshift lunchroom was chomping at the bit to riot. On Johnny's word they were willing to rip that place apart. Hendrix and Clapton were outstanding live performers, but I never got the feeling that their audiences were preparing to stomp the aisle attendent on their "go". Johnny never incited a riot of course, but I think he knew he could have.
Album Highlight: The mixture of both gravel and mucus in Cash's throat when he sings Cocaine Blues.
23. Exciteable Boy Warren Zevon (1979) $85.00
Just once in my life I want to have cause to get on a phone, dial a number and say, "Hey it's me... look I'm in a bind and I need you to send lawyers, guns and money." I would then hang up the phone immediately and no matter how much trouble I was in, I would still have at least a few moments contentment for having fit that request into my life.
Warren Zevon is the best humorous songwriter I have ever come across. He doesn't write joke songs like "Wierd" Al Yankovic, nor does he write overstylized songs like someone born from musical theater. Instead he writes life stories told from someone with a slight brain injury or perhaps an undiagnosed autism. It's just not normal and it comes across as a bit madcap.
Just listen to the album's title track. Some little Prozac-ridden hellion rapes and murders the neigborhood folks and no one seems to do anything about simply because he was raised in a poorly parented household.
That's wierd and funny and uncomfortable and kickass.
Album Highlight: "Little old lady got mutilated late last night" from Werewolves of London. The best line to do in karaoke, hands down.
22. Back In Black AC/DC (1980) $99.99
When I was in high school and really just starting to discover what rock music could be, I found AC/DC, a band that I never imagined I would ever like. To me, AC/DC was a part of the 80's metal scene. I lumped Bon and Angus in with Stryper, Tesla and Winger. What I didn't realize was that AC/DC was just a really dirty rock and roll. It was Chuck Berry and The Rolling Stones for the following generation. Chuck got away with salivating over "pretty little schoolgirls", Angus totally got away with dressing like one.
AC/DC was bad. Bad like Elvis' hips and Mick Jagger's penis on the back of Sticky Fingers. Bad. Evil. They have a whole song about testicles, and I'd be lying if I claimed that at 14-years-old, dirty toilet songs weren't wholly appealing to me.
But I grew out of "Wierd" Al Yankovic and I grew out of Salt 'N' Pepa.
Songs that made me laugh in 1994 haven't aged well. But AC/DC for all their rollicking machismo also were really great musicians.
There is nothing unimpressive about the buzzsawing that Angus Young does in Shake A Leg. And as the true litmus test of a song's impact on our culture, I will refer you to any American bar sometime just after midnight. It doesn't matter if you're in Miami or Boston or Los Angeles or Portland, if you are in a bar that plays music loud enough to dance to, you will inevitably run into the four-song rock block that breaks the monotony of all those damn Sean Paul songs. Go ahead repeat them with me:
1. Living On A Prayer Jon Bon Jovi
2. Pour Some Sugar On Me Def Leppard
3. Paradise City Guns 'n' Roses
4. You Shook Me All Night Long AC/DC
It always happens, it never fails, and if I were Poison I'd be a little upset that Every Rose Has A Thorn has been seperated from this rock block and moved to most bars' closing time music block. Closing time music is totally a demotion and the only thing worse is the it's-6:30-and-no-one-is-here-but-in-case-some-loser-starts-drinking-early-we-better-put-some-sort-of-music-on.
In a perfect world, bars would only play Dave Matthews music then.
Album Highlight: The introduction to Shake A Leg
21. The Band The Band (1967) $105.00
Listening to The Band self-titled album is like visiting relatives you don't knw very well but always treat you warmly when they see you. You're never in the mood to spend your time with such different people as yourself, but once you get there, sit down, accept a nice slice of ham and start listening to their tales of southern livin', you can't imagine ever wanting to leave.
Bob Dylan knew this feeling, Martin Scorsese too and if it's good enough for them, well then goshdarnnit, I'm happy to blow on my moonshine jug and slip on my overalls, grow a really scraggly beard and embrace the dirt underneath my nails.
Their first album isn't as well known as their second album Music From Big Pink (or anything they did with Dylan), which I assume to be true for one of two reasons; 1) their biggest hit The Weight is on Music From Big Pink and there is a rich history from Big Pink, similar to how the Rolling Stones came to make Exile On Main Street. But I don't usually hold the manner in which a record was made over the actual music and there is a much wider variety of songs on their first album, so the rest of you can just jump into the swamp if you're not with me.
Album Highlight: the vocal harmony that pushes Levon Helm's chorus on The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down to a damn near legendary level.
20. Frank's Wild Years Tom Waits (1987) $150
What do marimba's, iron trash cans, trumpets, player pianos, broken violins and accordians all have in common? Nothing except for this album. I enjoy the early jazzy years of Tom Waits, but I suspect somewhere between 1978 and 1982, something extremely shocking happened to Waits and it caused him to lose a handful of his marbles. His songwriting continued along the same be-bopping nightmare carnivale that it had always harkened to, but the 80's the instruements accompanying his lyrics were getting stranger and stranger. If it made noise, Tom was going to find a way to incorporate the damn thing onto a record.
Essentially, he makes really good rainy day music or really good music to apply scary face paint to, but that's just me.
Album Highlight: The pipe organ and piano accompaniment on Innocent When You Dream; it makes you imagine yourself on a traveling carnival's merry-go-round if the ride was owned by an unctious old madman. And maybe that's just me, but I find that to be a very cool thing to imagine.
19. The Doors The Doors (1967) $160
Can you imagine how wierd this album must have sounded in 1967?
It's a rock album without a guitar (mostly).
It's a pop album with several songs clearing the 5 minute mark.
It's an album with an organ that in no way resembled surf rock.
How this became a popular band is well beyond me. But that's the mystique of The Doors. For 45 minutes I am willing to make it through the album, enjoy it thoroughly and not be able to explain anything that I just heard.
The End is the best example of what I mean.
My best extrapolation about The End's meaning is that it is about a magical tour bus guide who wants to start a suicide cult out west and has named his bus "the snake". To start this suicide cult, he needs people to follow him (because what's a suicide cult without followers?) and he's telling his friend about it, but the friend really isn't buying it. I've been told there are Homeric allusions within the song, but I'll be damned if I can spot them. And I'll be damned if I can explain what a suicide bus has to do with the Vietnam War (Apocolypse Now), or why it took nearly 12 minutes for The End to end.
Something tells me, all the answers to my questions can be found in opium.
But that's The Doors. I've heard this album fifty times if I've heard it once and it still captivates me, despite the fact that I have absolutely no idea what the hell is going on at any time during it's duration.
Album Highlight: Jim Morrison's four rebellious calls to "break on through" followed by nine "yeahs!" to close out Break On Through.
18. London Calling The Clash (1979) $190
It is primarily my belief that releasing double albums is a bad idea. If, as an artist, your output has suddenly doubled, something is suspect and more times than not it simply means you're releasing a lot of fluff that doesn't really add up to much. The Stones had the entire middle section of Exile On Main Street, Springsteen had the bulk of of the fast songs on The River (which I mostly like, but are seen by most other people as candycoated wastes of time) and The Clash had songs like Koka Kola, Death Or Glory and Lover's Rock. What seperates London Calling from those two other albums is that the sweet meat of this album is humorous, rollicking and somewhat important instead of merely being more of the same from a classic artist in a "lucid period".
And as soon as I can figure out the be-bopping that goes on near the end of Jimmy Jazz and it's connection to the extreme American coolness of Brand New Cadillac and how any of it is tied to believing in Rudie's inability to fail, I'll write a whole new blog explaining it all. For now, just pump your fist to Clampdown and drive faster.
Album Highlight: The dangerous sneering "Yaw's" peppering the beginning of Brand New Cadillac
17. Rain Dogs Tom Waits (1985) $210
There was a period of my life that I will forever refer to as my "Dark Year". It was bad. I was fresh on the artschool scene and felt I had something to prove. I got rid of just about every piece of clothing that wasn't black or brown. I began experiementing with various forms of facial hair, I started reading philosophy tableaus and judging everyone harshly. I wore boots. Big clunky workman boots. It was bad. It was a moody period, a period that very little good came out of, but Tom Waits was one of the few shining beakons of light in my year of darkness.
Tom Waits is a different, but equal type of moody. He's a cracked funhouse mirror type of moody and Rain Dogs is his dark year. Like any good story teller in any medium, Tom Waits doesn't expect you to know his world, he expects you to travel his world with him. Each song takes you by the hand and trolls you through the gritty carnival bazaars and marketstreets, graveyards and abandoned houses. Waits doesn't expect you to have bearings here, he expects you to waft through it wide-eyed and confused. It's a wierd world and a wierd storyteller.
It's a good snapshot of a time and place in my life, now long gone.
Album Highlight: The spoken-word cool of 9th & Hennepin
16. Nebraska Bruce Springsteen (1982) $275
There gets a point, when you become a successful musician where you become too big for pop culture. It seems to consume some artists. Bob Dylan went electric because he didn't want everyone to continue labeling him the conciousness of an entire generation. Neil Young wanted to shake his Crosby, Stills and Nash days, so he went grunge way before grunge was grunge and Paul Simon wanted to prove that he wasn't just friends with Art Garfunkel, that in fact, Chevy Chase was his friend too. In 1981 Springsteen finished up a 16 month tour around the globe and became disenchated with the things he spent that time seeing. Life had become much bigger than his home in Freehold, N.J.
Springsteen was not a well-educated boy growing up, but he was instilled with a sense of duty and a sense of community. By 1982, that community grew from New Jersey to the entire globe and he felt a compulsion to sing about the fear, desperation, nostalgia and disenchantment he was seeing. Nebraska is a very small quiet album that narrates about people's lives. It harkens back to his old Jersey stomping grounds but appeals to anyone who listens to it in a way that Dylan and Guthrie before him perfected.
Nebraska was the start of what would later become Springsteen's mania (and not coincidentially "Springsteen MANIA" two years later): the desire to speak to and represent those who are the unspoken. In many ways, Springsteen sought out exactly that which Bob Dylan desired to retreat from in 1969.
Album Highlight: The ominously homicidal howls Springsteen echoes at the conclusion of State Trooper.
15. IV (a.k.a. Zoso) Led Zeppelin (1971) $280
You know what? Led Zeppelin's fourth album isn't as good as many rock fans claim it is. Stairway To Heaven is this big gaudy song right in the middle that seems to give it some cache, but in actuality it's not so great.
It takes to long to get to the good part and thus, the whole is overrated; like Sammy Sosa hitting fourth in your lineup or everything about The DaVinci Code minues the 60 pages of ancient vaginal Last Supper conspiracy stuff.
That being said, Sammy Sosa did hit 500 homeruns and those 60 pages of Dan Brown's book were both unspeakably entertaining and there are few albums that made more of eight songs than ZOSO.
You can tell a lot about a person by which artist they answer did the best song entitled Rock and Roll. Stay away from those who answer Gary Glitter or The Velvet Underground over Zeppelin's version.
Album Highlight: The maniacal drum flurry that opens Rock and Roll
14. Blonde On Blonde Bob Dylan (1966) $281.00
This album is any lesser songwriter's nightmare. It's too good. Too clever. To damn simple. Song one, side one is Rainy Day Woman 12 & 35 (a.k.a. "Everybody Must Get Stoned' for the people that think Baba O'Riley is called 'Teenage Wasteland' and that Bruce Springsteen, Bob Seeger and John Mellencamp are the same person) and there are three or four lines in the first verse alone that seem ample to pluck, change around a bit and pass of as my own clever thought. But by the time that devious thought fully manifests itself in my thoughts, I've already missed five other indecently witty lyrics. It goes on and on like that for fourteen songs. Impossible. I'm ashamed for ever having thought I could even fake being as clever as Bob Dylan.
Album Highlight: The drum and piano build-up before the chorus in One of Us Must Know (Sooner Or Later).
13. Hot Fuss The Killers (2004) $290
I never had an older brother, but I always imagined that if I did he would look a lot like Brandon Flowers, the lead singer of The Killers and although he would let me hang out with him and his friends (the rest of The Killers?), he would never be very nice to me.
I don't know how old Brandon Flowers is, I fear he is my age or perhaps even younger, this fear is what has stopped me from looking up his age. Because when you listen to songs like Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine or Midnight Show, you realize that this guy probably is as cool as he seems to think he is, and that kinda pisses me off. Even his coolness mistepps (like claiming that a tambourine would make the best sole accompaniment to drums in Glorious Indie Rock 'N' Roll) are somehow still kinda slick. I hate when people are correct to think they are cool.
I hate it like I imagine I would hate my older brother; by verbally berating everything he does or thinks but nevertheless emulating everything he says or does.
I can't wait for the new Killers album.
Album Highlight: Flowers' "I've got soul but I'm not a soldier" mantra in All These Things That I've Done. Either that or whoever the girl in the Mr. Brightside video was.
12. L.A. Woman The Doors (1971) $300
"Mr. Mojo Rising". If you jumble all the letters up in that moniker you get "Jim Morrison" and there are two people in this world; 1) the type of people who dig that on some unconcious level or 2) the people that use that as an example of Jim Morrison's idiocy. But I refuse to believe that someone who sat down, jumbled his own name up and created not only a strange nickname for himself but a powerful classic rock chant should so easily be set aside.
But that's not the sole reason L.A. Woman made my top 25 albums list, no that would be silly. I also chose it because the album cover looks as if Morrison, Jonathan Densmore and Ray Manzarek are all having a beard-growing competition and Robby Kreiger is the judge.
Also, it should be noted that if I ever happen to go on a kill crazy rampage, I plan on using Riders On the Storm as my personal soundtrack. Fair warning.
Album Highlight: well c'mon now... "Mr. Mojo Rising" over and over on L.A. Woman.
11. The Wild, The Innocent & The E-Street Shuffle Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band (1973) $349
There'll be more Bruce on this list, so I won't go to long on this one, but Bruce is simply the greatest storyteller around. He's got rock sensabilities with a folk singer's attention to king's english communication. I've never been to any of his New Jersey stomping grounds, but I'd bet a millions dollars I'd know it as soon as I got to one because of how familiar it would be to me.
There are only seven songs on this album, but none of them are under four minutes, which isn't to say the album drags, quite the opposite, it takes us on a long and winding road that feels like an adventure with the restless friend that eventually moves away to Santa Fe and you never hear from again.
Not only does this album have one of the coolest titles in the rock canon, it gives us everything a street urchin could ask for. It gives us arrivals and lost love (Kitty's Back), a snapshot of boyhood friendship (The E-Street Shuffle) and boardwalk puppy love (4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)) and impossible summer romance amongst doomed souls (Incident On 57th Street), and possible love amongst two classes of people (Rosalita Come Out Tonight). Heck we even get wisdom from a garbageman (NYC Serenade) and an entire damn circus rolling through town (Wild Billy's Circus Story).
I ask you, can Elton John give you that!?
Album Highlight: The "Here she comes now" chant from Kitty's Back
10. Some Girls The Rolling Stones (1978) $350
I was thirteen-years-old when I got my hands on this album and I remember asking myself, "Geez is Mick Jagger gay? I mean really, is he?" That guy in Queen was gay, but he had a high pitched voice and sang about poor boys from poor families. Mick kept singing about girls. Even the album's title song was no more than a list of the type of girls he likes having sex with. But he wears the same leotards that Bowie and Freddie Mercury wear and he prances. When he dances, he prances, like a girl. Like my little sister when she's watching Sesame Street. And he wears makeup. My God Mick Jagger is gay. My thirteen-year-old brain couldn't handle it.
Nope. Mick Jagger is far from gay, he's just that cool. He can prance and sway and frolic and he will get more ass on a Wednesday afternoon than I will get for the rest of my life.
THAT'S the Rolling Stones.
Album Highlight: Anytime you can get away with yelling "sex" over and over again as Jagger does in Shattered, it seems like a good idea to go for it.
09. Willy & The Poorboys Creedence Clearwater Revival (1969) $360
Some albums make it's listener want to change their lives, they make the listener want to become different versions of themselves, to be better whatever their individual version of better may be. Willy & The Poorboys doesn't make me wanna do that, but it does make me wanna tap my foot and invest in a washboard to play on hot summer days. And how many albums can oyu say that about?
Album Highlight: Poorboy Shuffle's harmony between the washboard and the harmonica (which I believe should be pronounced "har-mon-ick-eye" for the purposes of this album) .
08. Sticky Fingers The Rolling Stones (1971) $400
The only complaint I can muster about this album is the odd feelings I have toward it's album art. It's a crotch. I don't know if it's Mick Jagger's crotch or some Warholian model's crotch, but it's a crotch. There's no escaping it, and if you do try to escape it by flipping from the front cover to the back, all you get is more exposed crotch. So much crotch. Is this risque? Sexy? It's not sexy is it?
I don't find it sexy.
That's how good the actual material on Sticky Fingers is, any album that gets as much play with me with the outline of a man's penis on the back cover has got to be wicked kickass.
This is the third Stones album that conciously escapes the normal bluesy tone of thie previous records by adding horns and strings. And if you know me, you know that horns in strings in rock music makes that music better. Period.
Album Highlight: The drum build-up and Mick's "Down the ro-oad!" howl 3:30 minutes into Moonlight Mile.
07. III Led Zeppelin (1970) $450
Everyone has to go on their own personal journey to properly discover rock music. The bulk of my journey lasted between 1993 and 2000. It started when I was born and still continues to this day, but the truly edifying period came in that seven-year span. Zeppelin came on later than many other rock bands in the canon for the same reason I still shy away from The Gratful Dead and Pink Floyd... it's too big. It's too popular. It's a drug-addled Beatlemania that requires too much tiedye.
But there are just some aspects of life that refuse to be ignored and it seems Zeppelin is one of those aspects.
I was in film school still, it was the summer of 2000 and I was asked to help a friend on his film by doing a little acting. The gist of the overblown concept was that my character was lost in the dessert, stranded and trying to survive. We packed up a film crew and headed to the Indiana Dunes (the closest thing to a dessert when you're stuck in the MidWest). I won't go into too many details of that day, because that would be boring, but I will say:
1) that no one brought sunscreen,
2) there are periods of 40 minutes where actos aren't required to do anything, they are asked just to wait for the crew to set up the next shot
3) I have never done drugs, but I have hallucinated and being out in the sand on a 95 degree day baking and boiling my skin was the first of these hallucinations.
My only explanation for the tenderness I feel toward Zepplein III is that it was the only thing that got me out of that dessert. My friends had left me for their tripods, and God apparently didn't get good reception at the Indiana Dunes, it was just Zep.
They provided the voice of my burning, blistered body, they harkened my worry in Gallows Pole. I truly thought I was going to die that day and I recall the warmth of Tangerine bringing me back to a place of awareness. Tangerine was the second song I learned to play on the guitar. That being said, can anyone tell me what ANY of Led Zeppelin's song titles mean? You ever ask someone what their favorite Zeppelin Song is? If it's not Stairway To Heaven, I'm always met with a "uh... the one that goes Yeah!HEY!HEY! OH!OH!" To which I always confusedly reply, "Uh, do you mean, Over the Hills and Far Away? A little head scratching and then they repeat, "I dunno. Does Over the Hills And Far Away go "Yeah!HEY!HEY!OH!OH!"? To whch I shake my head and walk away. I mean what the hell is a D'Yer Mak'r anyway!
Album Highlight: The drums that kick in :36 seconds into Bron-Y-Aur Stomp.
06. Weezer (The Blue Album) Weezer (1994) $550
This album makes me nostalgically sad everytime I hear it, like watching a seagull failingly squirm out of beer can rings. This album came out in the spring of 1994, right before my freshman spring break as a matter of fact. I was in-love with a girl who was, at that point dating my best friend. It was a very Jessie's Girl/ My Best Friend's Girlfriend time for me. Ironically, looking back on it now, dating as freshman in high school didn't exist any more than being in-love could have existed. So I don't really know what was tearing me up so much, but believe me when I tell you I was a wreck.
All I did was play this 30 minute album over and over and over and over. It never ended for that entire spring break. All my friends seemed to leave town and I had nowhere to go. I imagined they all conspired to meet in Cancun without me. I imagined my best friend and his girlfriend eloping and coming back all happy to tell me about it. And there'd I be, with no fun stories from Spring Break to share with anyone. Just a lot of Sonic the Hedgehog hour logged in and a lot of agreement that, like Rivers Cuomo, all I wanted was a girl who would laugh for no one else and would also cease to use makeup or leave the house without my consent.
It was all so simple when I was 14.
I can't explain why such a painful time in my life made me love this album more than most others, but I suspect it has to do with the maudlin tone that this first album took. Every song rocks, but every song is sad, which is how I'd like to think of myself even to this day; as someone who is very sad, but rocks very hard.
I loved this album so much that for a solid year I had planned on naming my first born son Jonas and he would go everywhere with a nametag that said "my name is Jonas", but then I got a little more mature and realized that was tupid because Jonas isn't really a very good name, nor do I really have any idea what that song is about.
Is it labor disputes? Whatever.
Album Highlight: that sweet guitar riff at the end of the Buddy Holly bridge. Weezer rocks ass!
05. Pet Sounds The Beach Boys (1968) $625
I'll be honest, I plan on ending up in Heaven (if, in fact, Heaven exists) and if Heaven exists, I plan on hearing this album playing as I ascend (if, in fact, music is playing and ascending is something that we endure in the process of going to Heaven. I mean, maybe we just appear. It is God after all, who knows how he does things?)
No band harmonized better, no band utilized a wider array of instruments (Tom Waits doesn't count as a band) and no band was more emo before emo existed before the Beach Boys on this album.
It must have been awkward for the Beach Boys to record this album. They go on tour leaving Brian Wilson behind to diddle up a few more songs and while the rest of the band is doo-doo-doo-ing their way through a tour, poor Brian Wilson is eating hoagie after hoagie and loathing himself mroe and more and writing this album.
Then the Beach Boys come back and essentially realize that their leader is not doing so hot. I once wrote a song about a girl I knew and tried to sing it to her. I was so embarrassed I began changing the lyrics on the spot so that it suddenly became a song about an elephant with too many friends. She thought it was a wierd song and wondered why I had dedicated it to her.
My point is that it's hard to sing your soul. I'm sure there were better ways to illustrate that point, but I only recently remembered my composition of the socialite elephant and wanted to share. Anyway, this album feels like the most real grouping of songs I've ever heard, which makes the whole thing even sadder than it was already.
Album Highlight: The timpani drums breaking in at the end of I'm Waiting For the Day
04. Cosmo's Factory Creedence Clearwater Revival (1970) $630
Travelin' Band, Before You Accuse Me, Lookin' Out My Backdoor, Run Through the Jungle, Up Around the Bend, Who'll Stop the Rain, Long As I Can See the Light, Heard It Through the Grapevine... those songs make up 73 percent of this album and 40 percent of their first greatest hits disc, an album that everyone is mailed a copy of once they receive their final acceptance letter to college.
Listening to this album three things become stunning when the realization strikes:
1) When you take the amount of songs these guys produced and match them with the percentage of those songs that became top 50 hits... they easily outdid Elvis, The Beatles and Bob Dylan. Those three acts produced more and therefore had more hits, but CCR was nothing if not econmic in their awesomeness.
It's like Fogerty (John not Tom) went down to those same crossroads that Robert Johnson dealt his soul to the devil at and made the same deal only demanded that the devil do his work quickly. By 1972 Creedence had done all the damage they were going to do, which was mainly giving hippies something harder to toke up to then Mungo Jerry and giving women a group to hate ten years down the line when their husband's referused to grow up.
Album Highlight: There is no opening riff more enjoyable to my ears than the first seven seconds of Up Around the Bend. That riff is rock 'n' roll. And if you listen to it and don't understand what rock 'n' roll is, then you need to close the book, go back to the table of contents and begin again, because you clearly missed several important chapters along the way.
03. Who's Next The Who (1971) $715
I can't quite tip the $10,000 mark, but I dance right up to it. There is more dangerously unchecked agression and bravado in the opening song of this album than in the entire Sex Pistol catalogue. By my count, there was only two occasions in which I did not completely blow out my vocal chords by yelling my way through Won't Get Fooled Again, and both instances were while listening to headphones, riding the train and sitting next to someone who looked like they would gladly decapitate me if I uttered even a whisper. How good are the songs on this album? With the possability of decapitation looming large... I STILL considered belting out "I call it a BARGAIN/ the best I ever HAD!"
Oh and also, I've had six speeding tickets in my life. FOUR of them were caused by Baba O'Riley (the other two were caused by Skynyrd's Three Steps and a Garrison Keillor book-on-tape - I can't explain that last one).
Album Highlight: Roger Daltry's second scream after the bridge on Won't Get Fooled Again.
02. Born To Run Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band (1975) $999
A dollar for everytime I've listened to this album in the past and had it mean something to me.
Album Highlight: the harmonica introduction to Thunder Road
01. Born In the U.S.A. Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band (1984) $2,001
For the bulk of my childhood this album was my favorite thing in life. It was released the day after my fourth birthday (which for me, was the real and true start of my life; everything before I turned four is somewhat fuzzy). People often scoff at this album for being to keyboard driven, too popular, to dumbly American, too macho, too 80's, too simple. They may be right. Regan tried to co-opt the album as did Chevrolet as did many Rambo-quoting idiots invested in America's sound and fury of the mid-80's. Maybe anything that popular with the confused populace of that time is dumb and bad. Maybe. But I'll never know and I'll never see it.
As someone who is unabashedly nostalgic and family oriented, this album was the culmination of both. My dad used to be a commercial photographer a job that paid well but sporadically and therefore, nannies and housemaids were never a part of my existence. Sometimes mom watched me and sometimes dad did and when dad watched me it was usually in various lofts and studios while he was working. Essentially, it was in those lofts and studios where Bruce was born. Piped through what I remember being the loudest sound system in the world. The constant thump of Working On the Highway shaking the picture frames on the bare brick walls, the buzz of the bass notes in Downbound Train, the magic of taking a break to dance with my dad in his dark room while he processed his photographs while listeing to (you guesed it) Dancing In the Dark. Fond memories of childhood can never be recreated, at best they can be held onto tightly and this album is the tightest I can possibly grip to those memories.
Album Highlight: The single "WOO" after the drum break in Glory Days.
======================
20 percent of this list is composed of albums released in 1971. 52 percent of this list is composed of albums released between 1967 and 1973. I don't know what any of that means except I was clearly born ten years too late.
Holy crap! Did you really just read this whole list? Whatsamatter with you? Haven't you got anything better to do with your time? Most people just check this blog to make sure I'm not making up lies about them. When they realize they're not mentioned they usually leave my profile and check to see who amongst their buddy list has more friends than them. This is the way it works.
I never expected anyone to read this thing.
It's kind of a spin off of the old "trapped-on-a-deserted-island" hypothetical. But instead of being trapped on a deserted island, you're in the middle of New York City ... wait, no. New York is so cliche. Let's make it the middle of a Seattle street. Nah...
...The Pacific Northwest is too overcast. Let's head south.
We're in San Diego.
We're in the middle of San Diego and a crazed multi-billionaire confronts you and offers you a million dollars to never again listen to your favorite record. Would you never again listen to that record (or any song found on that record) for a million bucks?
Now let's pretend that this crazy multi-billionaire San Diego resident likes to haggle. What is the absolute minimum you would take to listen to your favorite record of all-time? Hopefully it wouldn't be twenty bucks. A hundred? A thousand? Is your favorite record of all-time so priceless that Mr.-Multi-Billionaire simply could not pay you enough never to listen to it again? Because as Mr. Klosterman says, "if you can't buy it off of me, it must be pretty important."
Here is a crack at my top 25 albums and the cost it would take to get me to never listen to them again.
A few rules to consider: Best Ofs, Greatest Hits, Reissues, and Commemorative Box Sets are all excluded. They are more of a marketing ploy than artistic work. So because this is a fantastical hypothetical, if you agree to never listen to a certain record ever again, you are also agreeing to the inability to hear that collection of songs anywhere else. Not on reissues or greatest hits or even the radio.
if you take this crazy old coot's money, these songs are now dead to you, Soundtracks only count if it's all original songs or score. The Grease soundtrack is acceptable, but the Pulp Fiction soundtrack is not.
You can keep the memory of the song forever, but you may never hear it again.
I don't know if the memory thing is a deal-breaker or not, but there it is.
I recommend everyone do their own version of this. Unless you're not really into making lists. If that's the case, I really don't know what you're doing reading anything I've ever written, as it is primarily just a series of endlessly useless lists.
It was the first sunny day in almost two weeks, so I rode around with the window down blasting Whitesnake's Here I Go Again. I am not proud of it, but it felt good at the time. That's about all you need to know about me to understand this list.
And before you get all "Ohmigawd-how-cliche-can-this-list get?" Just remember: There is no Appetite for Destruction (Klosterman's #1, by the way), no Simon & Garfunkel's Bridge Over Troubled Water or Bookend, no Nirvana, no Pearl Jam, no Tom Petty, nothing from The Strokes nor Neil Young. No T-Rex Electric Warrior, no Frank Sinatra, no oldies (they used singles mostly and so oldies are hard to gather onto one solid album until about 1967).
Oh and no Beatles.
TOP 25 ALBUMS OF ALL-TIME
25. Pearl Janis Joplin (1971) $59.99
I'm disappointed that Janis was the only female entry on this list.
I considered Joan Jett, but the bulk of her tracks were covers of someone else's work. I would also like to note that Joan Jett is not attractive. To listen to her music, the pre-teen me would have assumed she was the hottest woman since Elisabeth Shue in Karate Kid, but no. She spent the 80's wearing a mullet and blush that made her cheekbones look like raggedy Anne. Patti Smith was too inconsistent and didn't get along with Bruce Springsteen, so she's out. And all the girl groups from the fifties and sixties released singles, b-sides and evolving greatest hits packages. I also considered Sheryl Crow's second album, but then remembered that it wasn't all that great.
So Janis it is. No better female voice in rock. Jack Daniels didn't treat her well, but it sure did wonders for her larynx.
Album Highlight: the tiny giggle after the conclusion of Mercedes Benz
24. At Folsom Prison Johnny Cash (1968) $80.01
A lot of everyday folk were impressed when Johnny Cash chose to travel from prison to prison connecting with the men on lockdown rather than the kindly folks still enmeshed in our society. But that was Johnny Cash. He was filled with demons and he wanted to be amongst those he felt a demonic kinship with.
What impresses me more than his prison shows is the fact that he paraded the woman he would eventually make his wife to each of these shows and have her perform. Is there any doubt after that who was the biggest badass in the room? Would you display the love of your life in front of rapists, murderers, thugs and tax evaders?
The strength of this album doesn't rest in the songs themselves, we've heard them a billion times in a billions different situations, but unlike most live albums there is an energy of fear and tension. It's as if everyone in that tiny makeshift lunchroom was chomping at the bit to riot. On Johnny's word they were willing to rip that place apart. Hendrix and Clapton were outstanding live performers, but I never got the feeling that their audiences were preparing to stomp the aisle attendent on their "go". Johnny never incited a riot of course, but I think he knew he could have.
Album Highlight: The mixture of both gravel and mucus in Cash's throat when he sings Cocaine Blues.
23. Exciteable Boy Warren Zevon (1979) $85.00
Just once in my life I want to have cause to get on a phone, dial a number and say, "Hey it's me... look I'm in a bind and I need you to send lawyers, guns and money." I would then hang up the phone immediately and no matter how much trouble I was in, I would still have at least a few moments contentment for having fit that request into my life.
Warren Zevon is the best humorous songwriter I have ever come across. He doesn't write joke songs like "Wierd" Al Yankovic, nor does he write overstylized songs like someone born from musical theater. Instead he writes life stories told from someone with a slight brain injury or perhaps an undiagnosed autism. It's just not normal and it comes across as a bit madcap.
Just listen to the album's title track. Some little Prozac-ridden hellion rapes and murders the neigborhood folks and no one seems to do anything about simply because he was raised in a poorly parented household.
That's wierd and funny and uncomfortable and kickass.
Album Highlight: "Little old lady got mutilated late last night" from Werewolves of London. The best line to do in karaoke, hands down.
22. Back In Black AC/DC (1980) $99.99
When I was in high school and really just starting to discover what rock music could be, I found AC/DC, a band that I never imagined I would ever like. To me, AC/DC was a part of the 80's metal scene. I lumped Bon and Angus in with Stryper, Tesla and Winger. What I didn't realize was that AC/DC was just a really dirty rock and roll. It was Chuck Berry and The Rolling Stones for the following generation. Chuck got away with salivating over "pretty little schoolgirls", Angus totally got away with dressing like one.
AC/DC was bad. Bad like Elvis' hips and Mick Jagger's penis on the back of Sticky Fingers. Bad. Evil. They have a whole song about testicles, and I'd be lying if I claimed that at 14-years-old, dirty toilet songs weren't wholly appealing to me.
But I grew out of "Wierd" Al Yankovic and I grew out of Salt 'N' Pepa.
Songs that made me laugh in 1994 haven't aged well. But AC/DC for all their rollicking machismo also were really great musicians.
There is nothing unimpressive about the buzzsawing that Angus Young does in Shake A Leg. And as the true litmus test of a song's impact on our culture, I will refer you to any American bar sometime just after midnight. It doesn't matter if you're in Miami or Boston or Los Angeles or Portland, if you are in a bar that plays music loud enough to dance to, you will inevitably run into the four-song rock block that breaks the monotony of all those damn Sean Paul songs. Go ahead repeat them with me:
1. Living On A Prayer Jon Bon Jovi
2. Pour Some Sugar On Me Def Leppard
3. Paradise City Guns 'n' Roses
4. You Shook Me All Night Long AC/DC
It always happens, it never fails, and if I were Poison I'd be a little upset that Every Rose Has A Thorn has been seperated from this rock block and moved to most bars' closing time music block. Closing time music is totally a demotion and the only thing worse is the it's-6:30-and-no-one-is-here-but-in-case-some-loser-starts-drinking-early-we-better-put-some-sort-of-music-on.
In a perfect world, bars would only play Dave Matthews music then.
Album Highlight: The introduction to Shake A Leg
21. The Band The Band (1967) $105.00
Listening to The Band self-titled album is like visiting relatives you don't knw very well but always treat you warmly when they see you. You're never in the mood to spend your time with such different people as yourself, but once you get there, sit down, accept a nice slice of ham and start listening to their tales of southern livin', you can't imagine ever wanting to leave.
Bob Dylan knew this feeling, Martin Scorsese too and if it's good enough for them, well then goshdarnnit, I'm happy to blow on my moonshine jug and slip on my overalls, grow a really scraggly beard and embrace the dirt underneath my nails.
Their first album isn't as well known as their second album Music From Big Pink (or anything they did with Dylan), which I assume to be true for one of two reasons; 1) their biggest hit The Weight is on Music From Big Pink and there is a rich history from Big Pink, similar to how the Rolling Stones came to make Exile On Main Street. But I don't usually hold the manner in which a record was made over the actual music and there is a much wider variety of songs on their first album, so the rest of you can just jump into the swamp if you're not with me.
Album Highlight: the vocal harmony that pushes Levon Helm's chorus on The Night They Drove Old Dixie Down to a damn near legendary level.
20. Frank's Wild Years Tom Waits (1987) $150
What do marimba's, iron trash cans, trumpets, player pianos, broken violins and accordians all have in common? Nothing except for this album. I enjoy the early jazzy years of Tom Waits, but I suspect somewhere between 1978 and 1982, something extremely shocking happened to Waits and it caused him to lose a handful of his marbles. His songwriting continued along the same be-bopping nightmare carnivale that it had always harkened to, but the 80's the instruements accompanying his lyrics were getting stranger and stranger. If it made noise, Tom was going to find a way to incorporate the damn thing onto a record.
Essentially, he makes really good rainy day music or really good music to apply scary face paint to, but that's just me.
Album Highlight: The pipe organ and piano accompaniment on Innocent When You Dream; it makes you imagine yourself on a traveling carnival's merry-go-round if the ride was owned by an unctious old madman. And maybe that's just me, but I find that to be a very cool thing to imagine.
19. The Doors The Doors (1967) $160
Can you imagine how wierd this album must have sounded in 1967?
It's a rock album without a guitar (mostly).
It's a pop album with several songs clearing the 5 minute mark.
It's an album with an organ that in no way resembled surf rock.
How this became a popular band is well beyond me. But that's the mystique of The Doors. For 45 minutes I am willing to make it through the album, enjoy it thoroughly and not be able to explain anything that I just heard.
The End is the best example of what I mean.
My best extrapolation about The End's meaning is that it is about a magical tour bus guide who wants to start a suicide cult out west and has named his bus "the snake". To start this suicide cult, he needs people to follow him (because what's a suicide cult without followers?) and he's telling his friend about it, but the friend really isn't buying it. I've been told there are Homeric allusions within the song, but I'll be damned if I can spot them. And I'll be damned if I can explain what a suicide bus has to do with the Vietnam War (Apocolypse Now), or why it took nearly 12 minutes for The End to end.
Something tells me, all the answers to my questions can be found in opium.
But that's The Doors. I've heard this album fifty times if I've heard it once and it still captivates me, despite the fact that I have absolutely no idea what the hell is going on at any time during it's duration.
Album Highlight: Jim Morrison's four rebellious calls to "break on through" followed by nine "yeahs!" to close out Break On Through.
18. London Calling The Clash (1979) $190
It is primarily my belief that releasing double albums is a bad idea. If, as an artist, your output has suddenly doubled, something is suspect and more times than not it simply means you're releasing a lot of fluff that doesn't really add up to much. The Stones had the entire middle section of Exile On Main Street, Springsteen had the bulk of of the fast songs on The River (which I mostly like, but are seen by most other people as candycoated wastes of time) and The Clash had songs like Koka Kola, Death Or Glory and Lover's Rock. What seperates London Calling from those two other albums is that the sweet meat of this album is humorous, rollicking and somewhat important instead of merely being more of the same from a classic artist in a "lucid period".
And as soon as I can figure out the be-bopping that goes on near the end of Jimmy Jazz and it's connection to the extreme American coolness of Brand New Cadillac and how any of it is tied to believing in Rudie's inability to fail, I'll write a whole new blog explaining it all. For now, just pump your fist to Clampdown and drive faster.
Album Highlight: The dangerous sneering "Yaw's" peppering the beginning of Brand New Cadillac
17. Rain Dogs Tom Waits (1985) $210
There was a period of my life that I will forever refer to as my "Dark Year". It was bad. I was fresh on the artschool scene and felt I had something to prove. I got rid of just about every piece of clothing that wasn't black or brown. I began experiementing with various forms of facial hair, I started reading philosophy tableaus and judging everyone harshly. I wore boots. Big clunky workman boots. It was bad. It was a moody period, a period that very little good came out of, but Tom Waits was one of the few shining beakons of light in my year of darkness.
Tom Waits is a different, but equal type of moody. He's a cracked funhouse mirror type of moody and Rain Dogs is his dark year. Like any good story teller in any medium, Tom Waits doesn't expect you to know his world, he expects you to travel his world with him. Each song takes you by the hand and trolls you through the gritty carnival bazaars and marketstreets, graveyards and abandoned houses. Waits doesn't expect you to have bearings here, he expects you to waft through it wide-eyed and confused. It's a wierd world and a wierd storyteller.
It's a good snapshot of a time and place in my life, now long gone.
Album Highlight: The spoken-word cool of 9th & Hennepin
16. Nebraska Bruce Springsteen (1982) $275
There gets a point, when you become a successful musician where you become too big for pop culture. It seems to consume some artists. Bob Dylan went electric because he didn't want everyone to continue labeling him the conciousness of an entire generation. Neil Young wanted to shake his Crosby, Stills and Nash days, so he went grunge way before grunge was grunge and Paul Simon wanted to prove that he wasn't just friends with Art Garfunkel, that in fact, Chevy Chase was his friend too. In 1981 Springsteen finished up a 16 month tour around the globe and became disenchated with the things he spent that time seeing. Life had become much bigger than his home in Freehold, N.J.
Springsteen was not a well-educated boy growing up, but he was instilled with a sense of duty and a sense of community. By 1982, that community grew from New Jersey to the entire globe and he felt a compulsion to sing about the fear, desperation, nostalgia and disenchantment he was seeing. Nebraska is a very small quiet album that narrates about people's lives. It harkens back to his old Jersey stomping grounds but appeals to anyone who listens to it in a way that Dylan and Guthrie before him perfected.
Nebraska was the start of what would later become Springsteen's mania (and not coincidentially "Springsteen MANIA" two years later): the desire to speak to and represent those who are the unspoken. In many ways, Springsteen sought out exactly that which Bob Dylan desired to retreat from in 1969.
Album Highlight: The ominously homicidal howls Springsteen echoes at the conclusion of State Trooper.
15. IV (a.k.a. Zoso) Led Zeppelin (1971) $280
You know what? Led Zeppelin's fourth album isn't as good as many rock fans claim it is. Stairway To Heaven is this big gaudy song right in the middle that seems to give it some cache, but in actuality it's not so great.
It takes to long to get to the good part and thus, the whole is overrated; like Sammy Sosa hitting fourth in your lineup or everything about The DaVinci Code minues the 60 pages of ancient vaginal Last Supper conspiracy stuff.
That being said, Sammy Sosa did hit 500 homeruns and those 60 pages of Dan Brown's book were both unspeakably entertaining and there are few albums that made more of eight songs than ZOSO.
You can tell a lot about a person by which artist they answer did the best song entitled Rock and Roll. Stay away from those who answer Gary Glitter or The Velvet Underground over Zeppelin's version.
Album Highlight: The maniacal drum flurry that opens Rock and Roll
14. Blonde On Blonde Bob Dylan (1966) $281.00
This album is any lesser songwriter's nightmare. It's too good. Too clever. To damn simple. Song one, side one is Rainy Day Woman 12 & 35 (a.k.a. "Everybody Must Get Stoned' for the people that think Baba O'Riley is called 'Teenage Wasteland' and that Bruce Springsteen, Bob Seeger and John Mellencamp are the same person) and there are three or four lines in the first verse alone that seem ample to pluck, change around a bit and pass of as my own clever thought. But by the time that devious thought fully manifests itself in my thoughts, I've already missed five other indecently witty lyrics. It goes on and on like that for fourteen songs. Impossible. I'm ashamed for ever having thought I could even fake being as clever as Bob Dylan.
Album Highlight: The drum and piano build-up before the chorus in One of Us Must Know (Sooner Or Later).
13. Hot Fuss The Killers (2004) $290
I never had an older brother, but I always imagined that if I did he would look a lot like Brandon Flowers, the lead singer of The Killers and although he would let me hang out with him and his friends (the rest of The Killers?), he would never be very nice to me.
I don't know how old Brandon Flowers is, I fear he is my age or perhaps even younger, this fear is what has stopped me from looking up his age. Because when you listen to songs like Jenny Was A Friend Of Mine or Midnight Show, you realize that this guy probably is as cool as he seems to think he is, and that kinda pisses me off. Even his coolness mistepps (like claiming that a tambourine would make the best sole accompaniment to drums in Glorious Indie Rock 'N' Roll) are somehow still kinda slick. I hate when people are correct to think they are cool.
I hate it like I imagine I would hate my older brother; by verbally berating everything he does or thinks but nevertheless emulating everything he says or does.
I can't wait for the new Killers album.
Album Highlight: Flowers' "I've got soul but I'm not a soldier" mantra in All These Things That I've Done. Either that or whoever the girl in the Mr. Brightside video was.
12. L.A. Woman The Doors (1971) $300
"Mr. Mojo Rising". If you jumble all the letters up in that moniker you get "Jim Morrison" and there are two people in this world; 1) the type of people who dig that on some unconcious level or 2) the people that use that as an example of Jim Morrison's idiocy. But I refuse to believe that someone who sat down, jumbled his own name up and created not only a strange nickname for himself but a powerful classic rock chant should so easily be set aside.
But that's not the sole reason L.A. Woman made my top 25 albums list, no that would be silly. I also chose it because the album cover looks as if Morrison, Jonathan Densmore and Ray Manzarek are all having a beard-growing competition and Robby Kreiger is the judge.
Also, it should be noted that if I ever happen to go on a kill crazy rampage, I plan on using Riders On the Storm as my personal soundtrack. Fair warning.
Album Highlight: well c'mon now... "Mr. Mojo Rising" over and over on L.A. Woman.
11. The Wild, The Innocent & The E-Street Shuffle Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band (1973) $349
There'll be more Bruce on this list, so I won't go to long on this one, but Bruce is simply the greatest storyteller around. He's got rock sensabilities with a folk singer's attention to king's english communication. I've never been to any of his New Jersey stomping grounds, but I'd bet a millions dollars I'd know it as soon as I got to one because of how familiar it would be to me.
There are only seven songs on this album, but none of them are under four minutes, which isn't to say the album drags, quite the opposite, it takes us on a long and winding road that feels like an adventure with the restless friend that eventually moves away to Santa Fe and you never hear from again.
Not only does this album have one of the coolest titles in the rock canon, it gives us everything a street urchin could ask for. It gives us arrivals and lost love (Kitty's Back), a snapshot of boyhood friendship (The E-Street Shuffle) and boardwalk puppy love (4th of July, Asbury Park (Sandy)) and impossible summer romance amongst doomed souls (Incident On 57th Street), and possible love amongst two classes of people (Rosalita Come Out Tonight). Heck we even get wisdom from a garbageman (NYC Serenade) and an entire damn circus rolling through town (Wild Billy's Circus Story).
I ask you, can Elton John give you that!?
Album Highlight: The "Here she comes now" chant from Kitty's Back
10. Some Girls The Rolling Stones (1978) $350
I was thirteen-years-old when I got my hands on this album and I remember asking myself, "Geez is Mick Jagger gay? I mean really, is he?" That guy in Queen was gay, but he had a high pitched voice and sang about poor boys from poor families. Mick kept singing about girls. Even the album's title song was no more than a list of the type of girls he likes having sex with. But he wears the same leotards that Bowie and Freddie Mercury wear and he prances. When he dances, he prances, like a girl. Like my little sister when she's watching Sesame Street. And he wears makeup. My God Mick Jagger is gay. My thirteen-year-old brain couldn't handle it.
Nope. Mick Jagger is far from gay, he's just that cool. He can prance and sway and frolic and he will get more ass on a Wednesday afternoon than I will get for the rest of my life.
THAT'S the Rolling Stones.
Album Highlight: Anytime you can get away with yelling "sex" over and over again as Jagger does in Shattered, it seems like a good idea to go for it.
09. Willy & The Poorboys Creedence Clearwater Revival (1969) $360
Some albums make it's listener want to change their lives, they make the listener want to become different versions of themselves, to be better whatever their individual version of better may be. Willy & The Poorboys doesn't make me wanna do that, but it does make me wanna tap my foot and invest in a washboard to play on hot summer days. And how many albums can oyu say that about?
Album Highlight: Poorboy Shuffle's harmony between the washboard and the harmonica (which I believe should be pronounced "har-mon-ick-eye" for the purposes of this album) .
08. Sticky Fingers The Rolling Stones (1971) $400
The only complaint I can muster about this album is the odd feelings I have toward it's album art. It's a crotch. I don't know if it's Mick Jagger's crotch or some Warholian model's crotch, but it's a crotch. There's no escaping it, and if you do try to escape it by flipping from the front cover to the back, all you get is more exposed crotch. So much crotch. Is this risque? Sexy? It's not sexy is it?
I don't find it sexy.
That's how good the actual material on Sticky Fingers is, any album that gets as much play with me with the outline of a man's penis on the back cover has got to be wicked kickass.
This is the third Stones album that conciously escapes the normal bluesy tone of thie previous records by adding horns and strings. And if you know me, you know that horns in strings in rock music makes that music better. Period.
Album Highlight: The drum build-up and Mick's "Down the ro-oad!" howl 3:30 minutes into Moonlight Mile.
07. III Led Zeppelin (1970) $450
Everyone has to go on their own personal journey to properly discover rock music. The bulk of my journey lasted between 1993 and 2000. It started when I was born and still continues to this day, but the truly edifying period came in that seven-year span. Zeppelin came on later than many other rock bands in the canon for the same reason I still shy away from The Gratful Dead and Pink Floyd... it's too big. It's too popular. It's a drug-addled Beatlemania that requires too much tiedye.
But there are just some aspects of life that refuse to be ignored and it seems Zeppelin is one of those aspects.
I was in film school still, it was the summer of 2000 and I was asked to help a friend on his film by doing a little acting. The gist of the overblown concept was that my character was lost in the dessert, stranded and trying to survive. We packed up a film crew and headed to the Indiana Dunes (the closest thing to a dessert when you're stuck in the MidWest). I won't go into too many details of that day, because that would be boring, but I will say:
1) that no one brought sunscreen,
2) there are periods of 40 minutes where actos aren't required to do anything, they are asked just to wait for the crew to set up the next shot
3) I have never done drugs, but I have hallucinated and being out in the sand on a 95 degree day baking and boiling my skin was the first of these hallucinations.
My only explanation for the tenderness I feel toward Zepplein III is that it was the only thing that got me out of that dessert. My friends had left me for their tripods, and God apparently didn't get good reception at the Indiana Dunes, it was just Zep.
They provided the voice of my burning, blistered body, they harkened my worry in Gallows Pole. I truly thought I was going to die that day and I recall the warmth of Tangerine bringing me back to a place of awareness. Tangerine was the second song I learned to play on the guitar. That being said, can anyone tell me what ANY of Led Zeppelin's song titles mean? You ever ask someone what their favorite Zeppelin Song is? If it's not Stairway To Heaven, I'm always met with a "uh... the one that goes Yeah!HEY!HEY! OH!OH!" To which I always confusedly reply, "Uh, do you mean, Over the Hills and Far Away? A little head scratching and then they repeat, "I dunno. Does Over the Hills And Far Away go "Yeah!HEY!HEY!OH!OH!"? To whch I shake my head and walk away. I mean what the hell is a D'Yer Mak'r anyway!
Album Highlight: The drums that kick in :36 seconds into Bron-Y-Aur Stomp.
06. Weezer (The Blue Album) Weezer (1994) $550
This album makes me nostalgically sad everytime I hear it, like watching a seagull failingly squirm out of beer can rings. This album came out in the spring of 1994, right before my freshman spring break as a matter of fact. I was in-love with a girl who was, at that point dating my best friend. It was a very Jessie's Girl/ My Best Friend's Girlfriend time for me. Ironically, looking back on it now, dating as freshman in high school didn't exist any more than being in-love could have existed. So I don't really know what was tearing me up so much, but believe me when I tell you I was a wreck.
All I did was play this 30 minute album over and over and over and over. It never ended for that entire spring break. All my friends seemed to leave town and I had nowhere to go. I imagined they all conspired to meet in Cancun without me. I imagined my best friend and his girlfriend eloping and coming back all happy to tell me about it. And there'd I be, with no fun stories from Spring Break to share with anyone. Just a lot of Sonic the Hedgehog hour logged in and a lot of agreement that, like Rivers Cuomo, all I wanted was a girl who would laugh for no one else and would also cease to use makeup or leave the house without my consent.
It was all so simple when I was 14.
I can't explain why such a painful time in my life made me love this album more than most others, but I suspect it has to do with the maudlin tone that this first album took. Every song rocks, but every song is sad, which is how I'd like to think of myself even to this day; as someone who is very sad, but rocks very hard.
I loved this album so much that for a solid year I had planned on naming my first born son Jonas and he would go everywhere with a nametag that said "my name is Jonas", but then I got a little more mature and realized that was tupid because Jonas isn't really a very good name, nor do I really have any idea what that song is about.
Is it labor disputes? Whatever.
Album Highlight: that sweet guitar riff at the end of the Buddy Holly bridge. Weezer rocks ass!
05. Pet Sounds The Beach Boys (1968) $625
I'll be honest, I plan on ending up in Heaven (if, in fact, Heaven exists) and if Heaven exists, I plan on hearing this album playing as I ascend (if, in fact, music is playing and ascending is something that we endure in the process of going to Heaven. I mean, maybe we just appear. It is God after all, who knows how he does things?)
No band harmonized better, no band utilized a wider array of instruments (Tom Waits doesn't count as a band) and no band was more emo before emo existed before the Beach Boys on this album.
It must have been awkward for the Beach Boys to record this album. They go on tour leaving Brian Wilson behind to diddle up a few more songs and while the rest of the band is doo-doo-doo-ing their way through a tour, poor Brian Wilson is eating hoagie after hoagie and loathing himself mroe and more and writing this album.
Then the Beach Boys come back and essentially realize that their leader is not doing so hot. I once wrote a song about a girl I knew and tried to sing it to her. I was so embarrassed I began changing the lyrics on the spot so that it suddenly became a song about an elephant with too many friends. She thought it was a wierd song and wondered why I had dedicated it to her.
My point is that it's hard to sing your soul. I'm sure there were better ways to illustrate that point, but I only recently remembered my composition of the socialite elephant and wanted to share. Anyway, this album feels like the most real grouping of songs I've ever heard, which makes the whole thing even sadder than it was already.
Album Highlight: The timpani drums breaking in at the end of I'm Waiting For the Day
04. Cosmo's Factory Creedence Clearwater Revival (1970) $630
Travelin' Band, Before You Accuse Me, Lookin' Out My Backdoor, Run Through the Jungle, Up Around the Bend, Who'll Stop the Rain, Long As I Can See the Light, Heard It Through the Grapevine... those songs make up 73 percent of this album and 40 percent of their first greatest hits disc, an album that everyone is mailed a copy of once they receive their final acceptance letter to college.
Listening to this album three things become stunning when the realization strikes:
1) When you take the amount of songs these guys produced and match them with the percentage of those songs that became top 50 hits... they easily outdid Elvis, The Beatles and Bob Dylan. Those three acts produced more and therefore had more hits, but CCR was nothing if not econmic in their awesomeness.
It's like Fogerty (John not Tom) went down to those same crossroads that Robert Johnson dealt his soul to the devil at and made the same deal only demanded that the devil do his work quickly. By 1972 Creedence had done all the damage they were going to do, which was mainly giving hippies something harder to toke up to then Mungo Jerry and giving women a group to hate ten years down the line when their husband's referused to grow up.
Album Highlight: There is no opening riff more enjoyable to my ears than the first seven seconds of Up Around the Bend. That riff is rock 'n' roll. And if you listen to it and don't understand what rock 'n' roll is, then you need to close the book, go back to the table of contents and begin again, because you clearly missed several important chapters along the way.
03. Who's Next The Who (1971) $715
I can't quite tip the $10,000 mark, but I dance right up to it. There is more dangerously unchecked agression and bravado in the opening song of this album than in the entire Sex Pistol catalogue. By my count, there was only two occasions in which I did not completely blow out my vocal chords by yelling my way through Won't Get Fooled Again, and both instances were while listening to headphones, riding the train and sitting next to someone who looked like they would gladly decapitate me if I uttered even a whisper. How good are the songs on this album? With the possability of decapitation looming large... I STILL considered belting out "I call it a BARGAIN/ the best I ever HAD!"
Oh and also, I've had six speeding tickets in my life. FOUR of them were caused by Baba O'Riley (the other two were caused by Skynyrd's Three Steps and a Garrison Keillor book-on-tape - I can't explain that last one).
Album Highlight: Roger Daltry's second scream after the bridge on Won't Get Fooled Again.
02. Born To Run Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band (1975) $999
A dollar for everytime I've listened to this album in the past and had it mean something to me.
Album Highlight: the harmonica introduction to Thunder Road
01. Born In the U.S.A. Bruce Springsteen & The E-Street Band (1984) $2,001
For the bulk of my childhood this album was my favorite thing in life. It was released the day after my fourth birthday (which for me, was the real and true start of my life; everything before I turned four is somewhat fuzzy). People often scoff at this album for being to keyboard driven, too popular, to dumbly American, too macho, too 80's, too simple. They may be right. Regan tried to co-opt the album as did Chevrolet as did many Rambo-quoting idiots invested in America's sound and fury of the mid-80's. Maybe anything that popular with the confused populace of that time is dumb and bad. Maybe. But I'll never know and I'll never see it.
As someone who is unabashedly nostalgic and family oriented, this album was the culmination of both. My dad used to be a commercial photographer a job that paid well but sporadically and therefore, nannies and housemaids were never a part of my existence. Sometimes mom watched me and sometimes dad did and when dad watched me it was usually in various lofts and studios while he was working. Essentially, it was in those lofts and studios where Bruce was born. Piped through what I remember being the loudest sound system in the world. The constant thump of Working On the Highway shaking the picture frames on the bare brick walls, the buzz of the bass notes in Downbound Train, the magic of taking a break to dance with my dad in his dark room while he processed his photographs while listeing to (you guesed it) Dancing In the Dark. Fond memories of childhood can never be recreated, at best they can be held onto tightly and this album is the tightest I can possibly grip to those memories.
Album Highlight: The single "WOO" after the drum break in Glory Days.
======================
20 percent of this list is composed of albums released in 1971. 52 percent of this list is composed of albums released between 1967 and 1973. I don't know what any of that means except I was clearly born ten years too late.
Holy crap! Did you really just read this whole list? Whatsamatter with you? Haven't you got anything better to do with your time? Most people just check this blog to make sure I'm not making up lies about them. When they realize they're not mentioned they usually leave my profile and check to see who amongst their buddy list has more friends than them. This is the way it works.
I never expected anyone to read this thing.
Wednesday, May 10, 2006
The Curious Incident of the Bloody Rabbit
Weeks ago, I was tanning.
I admit it.
Tanning.
I don't like paying people to paint me orange, but sitting outside on a nice day, soaking in some rays, reading a book and gettin' myself right for the summer seemed innocent enough.
I must have been wrong.
The sun makes me sleepy. So do cars and airplanes and The Neville Brothers. But the sun was the only culprit in play on this day. So I fell asleep; something you shouldn't do, by the way.
I don't know exactly how long I slept, but it was long enough for me to dream of Gremlins and being toothless and running in place and falling very quickly. I don't know much about dream interpretations, but if you do, then I must have just told you a lot about myself unbeknownst to me.
When I woke up, I was in pain.
It was immediate and violent and angry. It burned.
It screamed at me.
I remained unmoved and my skin was berating me.
There were beads of sweat squating on multiple points of my stomach. They had nowhere to go, the skin had been burned tight around my muscle and bone.
I was red, like the blood was desperately trying to get past my skin cells.
Red.
I saw red. Felt it. Burned red.
In a minute, there would be sharp pain every time I moved.
In a day, there would be blisters.
In a week, white strips of dead skin will peel off me like a rattlesnake hide.
Red.
Blood. It was on my hands.
This sunburn was so bad it made my hands look covered in blood.
I wanted to get a closer look. I would have to bite the bullet, I would have to move my body. I would have to take a deep breath before I dared move my body.
Deep breath. Movement. White hot blinding pain.
I was sitting up and my hands were closer to my face now.
It was blood. Real blood. Holy cow, the sun burnt my body so bad, my vessels popped!
The sun exploded my body. I'm dying. I'm exploding from the inside out and I'm dying.
For some reason, at this point, the Beatles' Here Comes the Sun popped into my head. It was not comforting.
Not both of my hands were bloody, just one of them. The sun must have been hotter on one side of my body than the other.
I am not a scientist. I'm not even good at math, but this sounded like a good on-the-spot hypothesis.
The blood on my hand was streaky; smeared. I wanted to touch it.
I have a history of wanting to touch things that I probably shouldn't. Same thing with tasting. I often taste things I probably shouldn't. I've eaten sand, and live earthworms and toy slime that came in a little plastic container, and Play-Doh and many, many U.S. coins.
So anyway, I wanted to touch my hand-blood. So I did. I may be exploding internally, but this is still a free country and if I want to poke at my bursting appendages, I can.
So I did.
It was blood. It was not my blood...
...One problem solved, one new problem arose.
I used to sleepwalk when I was little. No one has yet confirmed that I ever ended this trend and therefore I am suddenly convinced that as I was shirtless in the park, I fell asleep, began sleepwalking and killed someone.
Or maybe I killed a dog. Or a squirrel. A squirrel would better explain why I hadn't been hassled yet. Someone would surely notice if I had killed a person or a dog in the middle of a park and that someone would surely raise a stink about it.
I gritted my teeth and forced my burned body to stand. It hurt, but not as bad as before. The adrenaline of suddenly becoming a murderer had already made me tougher; able to withstand more pain. I'm ready for Attica.
Sing-Sing.
Folsom.
The Angola Farm.
Chino.
Bring it, maggots. I kill in my sleep (apparently).
Then, I see it. Off to my right. It's not a squirrel.
It's not a squirrel, but it is bloody. Not covered in blood, but oozing; as if it were bludgeoned in the head a lot.
A lot.
It was a rabbit. It was gray. Gray and red from the blood.
The Beatles left my thoughts and Jefferson Airplane entered. But this rabbit was gray, not white, so the next thing in my head was the Bible.
This is a bad omen. Wasn't this the loss of innocence?
Wait. That was a lamb.
The end of humanity?
No. No, that's four horses. Or one pale horse? I can't remember. What was the significance of a rabbit?
Not to cheat on your wife and ignore your mistress?
No. No that was Michael Douglas in 'Fatal Attraction'.
Christ, why did I kill this rabbit? I like rabbits.
Am I positive I killed the rabbit in my sleep? Surely, there is a more logical interpretation of the facts in front of me. I continued looking around for other clues. Where was the mob gathering around me, angered that I murdered a rabbit? What if the blood on my hands was not the rabbit's blood and all of this was a strange coincidence? And if this was all a strange coincidence, would I be happy about it or even more upset?
My keys. When I stood up, my keys fell off my stomach.* I fell asleep with my keys on my stomach and they were still there when I woke up. What were the odds that I got up while sleepwalking, murdered an innocent forest creature, lied back down in the exact same spot in the park that I started from and replaced my keys on my stomach?
Okay, so I must not have killed the rabbit, or if I killed the rabbit, I must not have moved at all while I did it. No, I was willing to bet I was not this rabbit's murderer.
Now remember, much of this stuff may be obvious to you, but I had been lying out in the sun for hours - I was sunslowed. I was sleepy and grogy and sunslowed, so things didn't come quickly for me at that point.
The sun hadn't exploded my skin. I hadn't unconciously commited homicide or.. uh, pesticide or whatever one calls murdering an animal. Is it possible the sun unconciously comitted pesticide and exploded this bunny with it's intense heat?
But the blood on my hands. What's that about?
Wait, maybe the bunny was exploding and hopped over to me in hopes of being saved? **
My assumption is that the bunny was alive and bloody when it crossed my path, maybe rubbed up against my hand, and I was too sun-drunk to wake up and notice.
The moral of this wacky tale? Beats me. Life gives you some weird things to deal with sometimes.
How's that for an ending?
====================
* So, if you're keeping track of the story details, yes, I had an outline of my keys on my stomach. I already told you I had not planned on falling asleep long enough to brand the outline of my keys onto my stomach.
** Boy was that rabbit off if it thought I had the ability to save it from bursting in the heat. Stupid rabbit.
I admit it.
Tanning.
I don't like paying people to paint me orange, but sitting outside on a nice day, soaking in some rays, reading a book and gettin' myself right for the summer seemed innocent enough.
I must have been wrong.
The sun makes me sleepy. So do cars and airplanes and The Neville Brothers. But the sun was the only culprit in play on this day. So I fell asleep; something you shouldn't do, by the way.
I don't know exactly how long I slept, but it was long enough for me to dream of Gremlins and being toothless and running in place and falling very quickly. I don't know much about dream interpretations, but if you do, then I must have just told you a lot about myself unbeknownst to me.
When I woke up, I was in pain.
It was immediate and violent and angry. It burned.
It screamed at me.
I remained unmoved and my skin was berating me.
There were beads of sweat squating on multiple points of my stomach. They had nowhere to go, the skin had been burned tight around my muscle and bone.
I was red, like the blood was desperately trying to get past my skin cells.
Red.
I saw red. Felt it. Burned red.
In a minute, there would be sharp pain every time I moved.
In a day, there would be blisters.
In a week, white strips of dead skin will peel off me like a rattlesnake hide.
Red.
Blood. It was on my hands.
This sunburn was so bad it made my hands look covered in blood.
I wanted to get a closer look. I would have to bite the bullet, I would have to move my body. I would have to take a deep breath before I dared move my body.
Deep breath. Movement. White hot blinding pain.
I was sitting up and my hands were closer to my face now.
It was blood. Real blood. Holy cow, the sun burnt my body so bad, my vessels popped!
The sun exploded my body. I'm dying. I'm exploding from the inside out and I'm dying.
For some reason, at this point, the Beatles' Here Comes the Sun popped into my head. It was not comforting.
Not both of my hands were bloody, just one of them. The sun must have been hotter on one side of my body than the other.
I am not a scientist. I'm not even good at math, but this sounded like a good on-the-spot hypothesis.
The blood on my hand was streaky; smeared. I wanted to touch it.
I have a history of wanting to touch things that I probably shouldn't. Same thing with tasting. I often taste things I probably shouldn't. I've eaten sand, and live earthworms and toy slime that came in a little plastic container, and Play-Doh and many, many U.S. coins.
So anyway, I wanted to touch my hand-blood. So I did. I may be exploding internally, but this is still a free country and if I want to poke at my bursting appendages, I can.
So I did.
It was blood. It was not my blood...
...One problem solved, one new problem arose.
I used to sleepwalk when I was little. No one has yet confirmed that I ever ended this trend and therefore I am suddenly convinced that as I was shirtless in the park, I fell asleep, began sleepwalking and killed someone.
Or maybe I killed a dog. Or a squirrel. A squirrel would better explain why I hadn't been hassled yet. Someone would surely notice if I had killed a person or a dog in the middle of a park and that someone would surely raise a stink about it.
I gritted my teeth and forced my burned body to stand. It hurt, but not as bad as before. The adrenaline of suddenly becoming a murderer had already made me tougher; able to withstand more pain. I'm ready for Attica.
Sing-Sing.
Folsom.
The Angola Farm.
Chino.
Bring it, maggots. I kill in my sleep (apparently).
Then, I see it. Off to my right. It's not a squirrel.
It's not a squirrel, but it is bloody. Not covered in blood, but oozing; as if it were bludgeoned in the head a lot.
A lot.
It was a rabbit. It was gray. Gray and red from the blood.
The Beatles left my thoughts and Jefferson Airplane entered. But this rabbit was gray, not white, so the next thing in my head was the Bible.
This is a bad omen. Wasn't this the loss of innocence?
Wait. That was a lamb.
The end of humanity?
No. No, that's four horses. Or one pale horse? I can't remember. What was the significance of a rabbit?
Not to cheat on your wife and ignore your mistress?
No. No that was Michael Douglas in 'Fatal Attraction'.
Christ, why did I kill this rabbit? I like rabbits.
Am I positive I killed the rabbit in my sleep? Surely, there is a more logical interpretation of the facts in front of me. I continued looking around for other clues. Where was the mob gathering around me, angered that I murdered a rabbit? What if the blood on my hands was not the rabbit's blood and all of this was a strange coincidence? And if this was all a strange coincidence, would I be happy about it or even more upset?
My keys. When I stood up, my keys fell off my stomach.* I fell asleep with my keys on my stomach and they were still there when I woke up. What were the odds that I got up while sleepwalking, murdered an innocent forest creature, lied back down in the exact same spot in the park that I started from and replaced my keys on my stomach?
Okay, so I must not have killed the rabbit, or if I killed the rabbit, I must not have moved at all while I did it. No, I was willing to bet I was not this rabbit's murderer.
Now remember, much of this stuff may be obvious to you, but I had been lying out in the sun for hours - I was sunslowed. I was sleepy and grogy and sunslowed, so things didn't come quickly for me at that point.
The sun hadn't exploded my skin. I hadn't unconciously commited homicide or.. uh, pesticide or whatever one calls murdering an animal. Is it possible the sun unconciously comitted pesticide and exploded this bunny with it's intense heat?
But the blood on my hands. What's that about?
Wait, maybe the bunny was exploding and hopped over to me in hopes of being saved? **
My assumption is that the bunny was alive and bloody when it crossed my path, maybe rubbed up against my hand, and I was too sun-drunk to wake up and notice.
The moral of this wacky tale? Beats me. Life gives you some weird things to deal with sometimes.
How's that for an ending?
====================
* So, if you're keeping track of the story details, yes, I had an outline of my keys on my stomach. I already told you I had not planned on falling asleep long enough to brand the outline of my keys onto my stomach.
** Boy was that rabbit off if it thought I had the ability to save it from bursting in the heat. Stupid rabbit.
Saturday, May 6, 2006
Big Bad Dad
When I was younger, I used to think I was extraordinary because I could hear noise coming out of a dog whistle. All my life, everyone kept telling me that dog whistles were undetectable by human ears. But everytime I heard someone blowing a dog whistle, I mistook the sound of air escaping to be the actual sound that dogs were hearing from miles away.
I can't explain to you how special I felt by my odd superpower. When my excitement overtook me and I could no longer keep my awesomeness a secret, it was my father that I opted to confide in. I told him everything about my acute sense of hearing.
He paused. Looked at me. He smiled and bent down close to me. He told me that the sound I was hearing was just air, not sound waves.
I was not a superhero of the hearing world.
I was just a dumb little kid.
I was just a dumb little kid.
Looking back, given my father's tendencies to mess with my head (see previous blog entitled Poop Dudes (a.k.a. Blog of Awesomeness) ), I'm shocked that he let me in on reality.
Thinking back on it, if it were me, I would have let my stupid son continue thinking he was superhuman.
Thinking back on it, if it were me, I would have let my stupid son continue thinking he was superhuman.
"Dad! Dad! I can hear high pitched sounds like a dog. Humans can't hear dog whistles, but I can. Do you hear that? That man is blowing a dog whistle! I can hear a noise coming from it!"
"Son, I don't hear anything. There is no sound eminating from that man's device." (I plan on talking to my 4-year-old as if he was a college professor)
"But Dad, I can hear..."
"Son, whistles make noise. That man is simply using a fancy metal cigarette, for some inexplicable reason. But as I cannot hear any sound coming from it at all, in any way, I'm quite sure it is not a whistle."
"But Dad, I can hear a little..."
"Nonsense son. Now go ahead and play on the monkeybars and don't tell your mother that we ever had this conversation."
I'm not going to be a very good father.
* * * *
They say that a child learns more in the first two years of their life than all the other years combined. They also say that a parent will make most of their mistakes in that same span of time. And despite the fact that every parent goes through this and a certain percentage of those kids turn out pretty okay anyway, I'm convinved my kid will not be in that same certain percentage.
"Son, I don't hear anything. There is no sound eminating from that man's device." (I plan on talking to my 4-year-old as if he was a college professor)
"But Dad, I can hear..."
"Son, whistles make noise. That man is simply using a fancy metal cigarette, for some inexplicable reason. But as I cannot hear any sound coming from it at all, in any way, I'm quite sure it is not a whistle."
"But Dad, I can hear a little..."
"Nonsense son. Now go ahead and play on the monkeybars and don't tell your mother that we ever had this conversation."
I'm not going to be a very good father.
* * * *
They say that a child learns more in the first two years of their life than all the other years combined. They also say that a parent will make most of their mistakes in that same span of time. And despite the fact that every parent goes through this and a certain percentage of those kids turn out pretty okay anyway, I'm convinved my kid will not be in that same certain percentage.
Quite the contrary, I'm convinced my kid is going to be either the prom queen-type who sleeps with the entire football team, and purges every meal she has from 10th grade to her college graduation, or that I'm gonna have the long-haired trench-coat kid who constantly carves the anarchy symbol into his lunch table (which he will no doubtedly be sitting at alone).
Currently, this is my greatest fear in life. Not whether I will succeed in graduate school, nor my progress on becoming a rock god, not even in finding a girlfriend who isn't wildly crazy; nope.
I'm horrified that my unborn, unconceived child is going to be a tramp or a maniac.
I stay up at nights wondering how in the hell I can possibly prevent dirty high school boys from slurping all over my daughter or how I can keep my son from murdering me because I bought the wrong type of peanut butter.
Currently, this is my greatest fear in life. Not whether I will succeed in graduate school, nor my progress on becoming a rock god, not even in finding a girlfriend who isn't wildly crazy; nope.
I'm horrified that my unborn, unconceived child is going to be a tramp or a maniac.
I stay up at nights wondering how in the hell I can possibly prevent dirty high school boys from slurping all over my daughter or how I can keep my son from murdering me because I bought the wrong type of peanut butter.
Seriously. I'm almost 25-years-old and I'm already horrified that my 18-year-old son is going to commit patricide.
In an effort to assuage my worry, I have developed a list of the three most important things that are going to have to happen if I'm going to have any chance at raising a successful family.
It is as follows:
1) My wife will not mind being the "bad cop".
I don't mind being the heavy artillary when the going gets rough; the strong silent, wait-'til-your-father-gets-home-type, but I'm really gonna need my wife to do the bulk of the daily nagging.
It is as follows:
1) My wife will not mind being the "bad cop".
I don't mind being the heavy artillary when the going gets rough; the strong silent, wait-'til-your-father-gets-home-type, but I'm really gonna need my wife to do the bulk of the daily nagging.
I'm afraid I just ain't got it in me.
Also, as an aside, I'd really like it if she cooked the bulk of the dinners. I don't mean "cook me my dinner" in the caveman shauvenistic type of way. I'll be happy to do the dishes and take out the trash and drive the kids to school. The problem is that I'm a very bad cook, nor do I enjoy the process of cooking in any way shape or form. I do enjoy eating food , nor am I a picky eater.
But if dinner was left up to me, our family is looking at many a night of mac & cheese and pizza.
But no, nevermind that. It's most important that she be the bad cop.
2) If I have a daughter, she cannot be named Jenna. If I have only one contribution to the manner in which we raise our daughter, this is my contribution.
But if dinner was left up to me, our family is looking at many a night of mac & cheese and pizza.
But no, nevermind that. It's most important that she be the bad cop.
2) If I have a daughter, she cannot be named Jenna. If I have only one contribution to the manner in which we raise our daughter, this is my contribution.
I have a long-standing belief that any child born a "Jenna" is doomed to both beauty, popularity and trampishness. Let me ask you, have you ever met an ugly Jenna? You haven't.
I want my daughter to be smart and well-balanced. And if that means I have to trade a pair of big green eyes for a fuzzy upper-lip, then fine.
I want my daughter to be smart and well-balanced. And if that means I have to trade a pair of big green eyes for a fuzzy upper-lip, then fine.
Her name will apparently be Beatrice.
3) When I was little, I enjoyed three things; my green blanket (which was essentially a soft dish rag that my grandmother gave me and that I cleverly named "green blanket" based on it's color and comparative size to me), 'Sesame Street' (no explanation needed - I hope), and rock 'n' roll music.
3) When I was little, I enjoyed three things; my green blanket (which was essentially a soft dish rag that my grandmother gave me and that I cleverly named "green blanket" based on it's color and comparative size to me), 'Sesame Street' (no explanation needed - I hope), and rock 'n' roll music.
The first two are normal little kid things, but the third is a direct result of my parents' accomplishing what I hope to one day. Both my mom and dad loved rock music. Growing up in the 80's I'm sure they felt it their duty to shield me from Oingo Boingo and Culture Club.
So instead of Ah-Ha, I got the Beach Boys.
Instead of Bananrama, I got Chuck Berry.
And instead of Devo, I got Creedence.
Instead of Bananrama, I got Chuck Berry.
And instead of Devo, I got Creedence.
I'm sure there are quite a lot of parents out there who would toss their limp bodies in front of a speeding bus in order to save their offspring. But how many of them would have the forethought of mind to shield their child from the horrors that would be music in the 80's? *
I'm not sure how they did it, but I am convinced that I am a better person because I don't like Dave Matthews or Morrissey and I'm gonna have to load both guns if I am to repeat what my parents did with me with my own kids in this age of instantaneous media and free downloading of crap in just about every outlet imaginable.
I'm not sure how they did it, but I am convinced that I am a better person because I don't like Dave Matthews or Morrissey and I'm gonna have to load both guns if I am to repeat what my parents did with me with my own kids in this age of instantaneous media and free downloading of crap in just about every outlet imaginable.
I think I'll start by playing guitar for my kids from the start. From infancy, I plan on serendaing them to sleep. I've even got a playlist that I occasionally practice when I am alone in my apartment.
SET-LIST FOR BEATRICE'S NIGHTY-NIGHT TIME
1. Chicken Lips and Lizard Hips (originally written by Bruce Springsteen)
2. Wonderful Word (originally written by Sam Cooke)
3. Hushabye (originally sung to me by my dad)
4. Pony Boy (originally sung to Springsteen's kids by Springsteen)
5. Q'est Seras-Seras (originally sung to me by my mom)
6. Don't Fear the Reaper (originally written by Blue Oyster Cult)
That last one might not make the final cut, but it seems like a good idea to keep my kids alert at all times. Besides, if Beatrice isn't asleep by the sixth song, then she's probably not going to sleep at all that night and so I might as well give her something to think about.
* * * *
I feel cool now.
SET-LIST FOR BEATRICE'S NIGHTY-NIGHT TIME
1. Chicken Lips and Lizard Hips (originally written by Bruce Springsteen)
2. Wonderful Word (originally written by Sam Cooke)
3. Hushabye (originally sung to me by my dad)
4. Pony Boy (originally sung to Springsteen's kids by Springsteen)
5. Q'est Seras-Seras (originally sung to me by my mom)
6. Don't Fear the Reaper (originally written by Blue Oyster Cult)
That last one might not make the final cut, but it seems like a good idea to keep my kids alert at all times. Besides, if Beatrice isn't asleep by the sixth song, then she's probably not going to sleep at all that night and so I might as well give her something to think about.
* * * *
I feel cool now.
I'm in the middle of my twenties and I feel cool.
I look around and people older than me seem less cool. And people younger than me haven't figured out how to attain full coolness yet. But when you are a dad, you can be Keith Richards or Brad Pitt and to your own kids, you are not cool.
I don't look forward to that status. It's not attractive, but it's true. Being a parent automatically warrants that everything you do, say, wear, watch, or touch is suddenly and tragically uncool. I consider my parents to be at the tip-top of the "Bell Curve of Cool", but inescapably - despite my feelings - my father is to blame for ending Will Smith's street-cred in the autumn of 1997 when he casually used the word 'jiggy' in a sentence.
There was nothing to be done about it. My dad couldn't have seen it coming. He just forgot his powers of geektitude.
The teenage years are going to be tough for me, because teenagers are contrary. They seek out what is normal and do whatever is 180 degrees different from that norm, no matter how inexplicably assinine such actions and interests are. It takes a rare Rory Gilmore-type kid to identify and embrace what they are truly interested in.
The teenage years are going to be tough for me, because teenagers are contrary. They seek out what is normal and do whatever is 180 degrees different from that norm, no matter how inexplicably assinine such actions and interests are. It takes a rare Rory Gilmore-type kid to identify and embrace what they are truly interested in.
One of my good friends has a brother who is six years younger than she is. He is a typical punkass skater kid:
Blue hair.
Oddly painted fingernails
Blink 182 patches on his backpack.
A chain connecting his wallet to his board shorts.
You get the idea.
The funny thing about this kid is, he's constantly sneaking downstairs into the basement, alone, to watch old musicals from the sixties. All of his friends would ostracize this kid for watching 'Singin' In the Rain' and 'Seven Brides For Seven Brothers' if they knew, so he hides it.
But those musicals are a part of him, a part of how he's been raised.
Blue hair.
Oddly painted fingernails
Blink 182 patches on his backpack.
A chain connecting his wallet to his board shorts.
You get the idea.
The funny thing about this kid is, he's constantly sneaking downstairs into the basement, alone, to watch old musicals from the sixties. All of his friends would ostracize this kid for watching 'Singin' In the Rain' and 'Seven Brides For Seven Brothers' if they knew, so he hides it.
But those musicals are a part of him, a part of how he's been raised.
It used to be, teenagers had to hide what they hated most about themselves, now they hide the things that make them happy.
Now everyone knows that each of his friends were sneaking into their respective basements as well watching... who knows?
Reruns of 'Knots Landing' or Raffi videos or Oprah. It could have been anything.
What I'm trying to illustrate is that people very rarely feel comfortable being themselves in front of the people they call their friends. Teenagers are the most obvious case of this and I expect nothing less from my own kids. I just hope that when they sneak down into the basement of our house that they listen to old Who or Sam Cooke records instead of making bombs.
Not that my kids would get very far in their bomb making endeavors. My kids will never be alone long enough to get away with any of those shenanigans. By the time I have kids smart enough to trick me, our nation will have enough satellites up in the sky to keep tabs on them no matter where they go.
What I'm trying to illustrate is that people very rarely feel comfortable being themselves in front of the people they call their friends. Teenagers are the most obvious case of this and I expect nothing less from my own kids. I just hope that when they sneak down into the basement of our house that they listen to old Who or Sam Cooke records instead of making bombs.
Not that my kids would get very far in their bomb making endeavors. My kids will never be alone long enough to get away with any of those shenanigans. By the time I have kids smart enough to trick me, our nation will have enough satellites up in the sky to keep tabs on them no matter where they go.
And I plan to.
Oh boy, do I plan to.
I fully admit that my kid will have no privacy. If a kid has privacy, you can damn sure bet he or
she is gonna take advantage of it. But I also know that I'll be raising a rebellious little turd if I'm smothering. So my breech of privacy has to come sneaky-style.
Essentially, I will be forced to utilize CIA tactics.
When inspecting my kid's bedroom, I am free to observe anything in plain view... that's including diaries and photo albums. If those goldmines of a teenagers thoughts and actions are out... place your bets now on how often I'll be perusing them. Also, if there are any guests being entertained inside my kid's bedroom, you can rest assured all antannae will be raised and humming. There ain't no program on television as riveting or important as an inter-bedroom discussion.
If there is a member of the opposite sex in there... well there won't be, not without the door open and industrial flood lights shining through the windows and doors, anyway.
And if it's a member of the same sex, and they're in my child's room, then that means it's gossip time and that's even better than my child's diary.
And if it's a member of the same sex, and they're in my child's room, then that means it's gossip time and that's even better than my child's diary.
It will be like my own personal 'Laguna Beach'.
Wait... wasn't one of those girls on that show named Jenna?
Hmm... I'll have to look into that.
Wait... wasn't one of those girls on that show named Jenna?
Hmm... I'll have to look into that.
I just hope I'll be able to create a tolerance for the word "like" being used in-between every third word.
Plus all that giggling. Oh Christ, the giggling.
I also plan to track my children's whereabout on the On-Star satellite automobile tracking system the family car will have installed. If Beatrice says she's going to the movies, she better damn well go to the movies.
The thing is, I really want kids someday (just check my MySpace profile if you don't believe me) but I'm horrified of it. Everything about it makes me skittish. Everything from the big turtle-shell reading glasses I'm sure I'll have to wear when I'm older to the high-rising mom-pants my wife might start wearing without telling anyone.
The thing is, I really want kids someday (just check my MySpace profile if you don't believe me) but I'm horrified of it. Everything about it makes me skittish. Everything from the big turtle-shell reading glasses I'm sure I'll have to wear when I'm older to the high-rising mom-pants my wife might start wearing without telling anyone.
All of it. It's all one big horrorshow. Nevermind the kids themselves. How can I make a good life for them when it seems so much out there is designed to corrupt them? Allowing my kid to believe he is superhuman is nothing compared to sex, drugs and the inevitable interest my kid will have in music from the 1980's.
Oh what jiggy times we live in.
====================
* That's right, I said it. Music from the 80s was not good; it was kitch, and very rarely is kitsch good. Not everything from it was bad, but it is by far the worst decade of music in the last 100 years.
Oh what jiggy times we live in.
====================
* That's right, I said it. Music from the 80s was not good; it was kitch, and very rarely is kitsch good. Not everything from it was bad, but it is by far the worst decade of music in the last 100 years.
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