We Know A Place Where No Planes Go

So, the Arcade Fire did not disappoint tonight. All ten members were full of energy and quite entertaining to watch. This was my first time seeing them live so I was surprised to see how much instrumental musical chairs they play; with the exception of the sassy (Adrienne used this word, I would never) violin player who stuck by her fiddle all night, everyone else traded instruments after every song. And they had all sorts of cool instruments too: toy piano, french horn, mandolin, glockenspiel and hurdy gurdy. I love the hurdy gurdy. Love it. I want one so bad.

For those of you who have never seen a hurdy gurdy this is what it looks like:

It sounds like a mix between a violin and a bagpipe and it's played by turning a crank. Super cool. If you have the new Decemberists album, The Crane Wife you can hear the hurdy gurdy in action throughout the song "Sons & Daughters".

ANYWAY. . .

The Civic Center was a pretty cool venue. It's a 4,600 seat theater very much like TPAC in Nashville. The sound was great. And with the exception of some drunk fat girl constantly screaming about her titties in the row behind us (she was singing about them and threatened to pull them out; in fear of being blinded, I did not look), we had a good time.

So, if Arcade Fire happens to pass through your town, you should definitely check them out.

Cheers.

Banale Minutia

I'm incredibly bored right now. Adrienne went to bed at 9:30 tonight because she had been up and working since 6:30 this morning. The NBA Playoff game between the Houston Rockets and the Utah Jazz fails to entertain me. There's nothing on the DVR that I haven't yet watched. The Netflix dvds are currently en route. And in addition, the internet is no longer amusing.

Crap. Time for a blog.

I spent the day cleaning the apartment and doing laundry with occasional peeks at the NFL draft on television¹. I spent nearly five hours cleaning my 1,150sq ft hovel. Once I get going on the cleaning, I like to be thorough. I swept, vacuumed, washed, brushed, shined, dusted, scoured and scrubbed. I even pumiced. . . and I hardly ever pumice.

I can thank my mother for the innate sense of cleanliness I've inherited (although I also blame her for the domineering anal retentiveness, thanks mom!); it's served me well. I've kept every place I've lived in progressively and exponentially cleaner. Consequently, I have to imagine that the last few decades of my life will be spent in an aseptic, sterile environment, relegated from the outside world with crazed, delusional thoughts offering the only company and reassurance. But that's at least another five years or so away, so let's not worry about that just yet.

I do often wonder if I am slightly obsessive compulsive or if I'm just a dude who likes to keep things neat. I mean, I don't completely lose my shit if things are placed in the wrong place or anything, it just kind of bothers me to know that they should be placed somewhere else. I justify this behavior with my affinity for not losing things and always knowing where something is; in other words, I just really want to be on top of my shit, 24-7. Is such organizational excellence so out of the ordinary that it needs to be ridiculed and labeled as abnormal? It certainly shouldn't be.

Let's put it this way, if I ever need a 3/8" hexagonal screwdriver I can have it in my hot little hand in six seconds flat because I know exactly where it is and where it should be. Is this a deplorable trait?

Fuck no.

I don't know who was the first doctor to diagnose someone as having obsessive compulsive behavior but I bet you he was a messy son of a bitch who just couldn't understand devotion to precision. Pity.

All right, I guess I'm off to bed. Brunch at Canoe tomorrow. Yum.

¹The coverage of the draft has gotten monumentally overblown. It's the only thing that has been discussed on any sports media outlet for the last month and a half even though only a small portion of the players drafted will make an immediate impact in the season that is still four months away. Jeez, there's other sports which are actually being played right now, is this kind of coverage really warranted?

The draft was on for twelve straight hours on ESPN today and it will be on again tomorrow morning for the same amount of time. They had a team of at least a dozen analysts there for the duration of the event, as if such massive dissection was really needed.

Who gives a fuck about Brady Quinn's feelings about sliding down to the 22nd pick?! Should you and I really care that this prick will not make as much money as some misguided people thought he should have? Hell no. This douche will still be a millionaire by next week even though he's never taken a snap at the professional level (or won an important game in college, for that matter). Why is he getting so much coverage?!

I blame it on the rise of fantasy football leagues which lately have become the biggest exercise in organized gambling in this country. Any idiot that's part of a league now wants to have a leg up on the competition so we all have to suffer through months and months of speculation and superfluous analysis which is passed off as inside information. Just like in every sport, gambling determines design.

Don't get me wrong, I love the NFL and I've played fantasy football for a few years (never for money), but this is why other sports aren't given a chance to be popular anymore or are disappearing completely (hockey, anyone?). As a fan of most sports, I think this kind of coverage is displacing other worthy pastimes. I enjoy football, but I don't need it covered twelve months out of the year.

Good lord, this was a long footnote.

Everyone's Waiting

I just watched the series finale of Six Feet Under on Bravo. It was sad, emotionally draining and overall, totally satisfying. It's a fine line to tread, the finale that ties up all loose ends; for the most part it never works. But for this show it couldn't have ended any other way. If you've seen it, I'm sure you probably feel the same way.

I never watched Six Feet when it first ran on HBO, but everybody who did would always tell me that it was my kind of show. Now that I've seen it, I'm not really sure what these people saw that would make them say that to me; I don't see why ANYONE wouldn't like this show. . . it's a good show. I'm glad I had a chance to finally see it.

I suspect that the upcoming series finale of The Sopranos will not be quite as conclusive. Something tells me that I'll probably be disappointed with the way it ends. But then again, I may just be fooling myself into thinking this so that any sort of closure will seem satisfying. I'm a tricky bastard like that, I can convince myself of anything. I just have a feeling that the show's creator, David Chase, is a big fan of not pandering to the expectations of the audience and that makes it really unpredictable. And I guess that's part of why I like the show and have stuck with it through its ups and downs. It's easily the best show I've seen on television (besides Mama's Family, of course).

A Couple Of Things

A couple of things that have been on my mind:

-Have you seen the preview for the movie "Reign Over Me" with Adam Sandler? Is it just me or does he look a lot like Bob Dylan with his hair grown out? They both have the Jew-fro going on. I know they're already coming out with a Dylan biopic where Adrien Brody, Colin Farrell, Richard Gere, Julianne Moore and Cate Blanchett all play him at different times of his life (I know, what the fuck?), but they should consider Sandler for the next one. They might want to have someone else sing the songs though, I can't imagine that singing "Masters Of War" à la "The Chanukah Song" would sound very good.


-James Brown's body was finally placed in a crypt at one of his daughter's home in Beech Island, South Carolina today, a mere two months after his death. Where the hell has he been kept all this time, anyway?! How do you think his body is holding up by now? I hope embalming technology can keep up with the demands of feuding family members. And if you thought that it took long enough to get this man buried, just wait. He's just being placed there temporarily while a public mausoleum is being built at an undisclosed location. I hope the Godfather of Soul is laughing at all of this from somewhere because it sure looks like a great big farce to me.


-Have I mentioned how good the new Arcade Fire album, Neon Bible, is? Yes? Well, it is.


-Now, for the record, I want to commit my disdain for the whole "Secret" phenomenon to print. The people I work with already know and share my pain, but for those of you who don't know what I'm talking about, allow me to explain.

The "Secret" is the brainchild of Rhonda Byrne, an Australian television producer who worked on several reality tv shows. Basically it started out as a self help dvd (it has since been turned into a book, another dvd, and any other thing that you can think of that can be sold for money). It claims that the secret of happiness is unlocked through the laws of attraction (if you think positively then positive things befall you, if you think negatively, well. . .you know). It also claims that all of history's great minds lived by and shared this "secret". The book, which I flipped through to see what all the fuss was about, is merely a collection of inspirational quotes and shallow interpretations of them by "living masters of the Secret". Yes, so basically it's the same bunch of new-age bullshit that has been repackaged and remarketed once again. Big on promises, short on substance. It's just lowest common denominator marketing up to its old tricks.

The thing is, people are buying it up like crazy. For months people asked about the dvd at work (it was only available on the Secret's website for a while). We would get questioned about it every day. When it finally came out in stores we couldn't keep it in stock. Oprah, the almighty goddess of commerce, did two shows about it in the span of two weeks. And then we really couldn't keep it in stock. I now know that nothing works better at separating idiots from their money than Oprah.

Housewives everywhere now had a key to happiness, and it was waiting for them at their neighborhood dvd store. Every time we had a new shipment come in they would already all be reserved for customers. Every third person that called the store was wondering if we had it in stock. People were driving all over town seeking a stray copy (and driving around town in Atlanta traffic can take hours and copious amounts of patience). I've never seen such a thing firsthand. I mean, you hear about people coming to blows over Tickle-Me Elmo dolls before Christmas but it always seems like it's happening somewhere else –like in New York or someplace where far too many people live in a far too small space– surely not in your town. But it is happening all over. The book and the dvd have sold well over a million respectively.

And this thing ain't cheap. We sold them for $30 the first week they came out and they're currently sitting at $34.99. But people don't care. I mean, it's the secret to happiness, what's a few bucks compared to eternal happiness? And plus Oprah said to buy it (I wonder if she gets kickbacks because she definitely should). Why can't she ever promote good things on her show? She's got all this influence and all we get out of it is fucking Il Divo and the "Secret" and Dr Phil? Way to go Oprah, those are great contributions to society. I can't wait for her to run for president.

I know I shouldn't be surprised at people's ignorance anymore, but goddamit if it doesn't happen every time. I just want to slap some sense into every person that comes in asking about it. I mean, is it wrong for me to want these people to die? Wouldn't we all be better off for it? And that's not a rhetorical question, wouldn't we?!? Can't we somehow convince all these people to kill themselves (and perhaps take all the Mormons, Jehovah's Witnesses and rednecks with them)?

Maybe if we got Oprah involved……

Neon Bible

So I haven't written a blog in a while, mostly because I haven't had anything of note to bitch about. And I still don't, really.

Mostly I just wanted to boast about how good the new Arcade Fire album, Neon Bible is.

--It's really good. Really, really good--

And since it's being reviewed by every publication that is currently in print, I'll keep my critical analysis short and sweet:

--It's really good. Really, really good--

So, if you liked their first album, Funeral, I suggest you hop on your bike, jump on your skateboard, lace up your rollerblades or get on whatever-the-hell it is you ride around in and mozy on over to your local record store to purchase a copy for yourself. It'll be good for you.

Post Game Analysis

So since there's going to be plenty of analysis of the game itself, I'll just focus on some of the other aspects of the Super Bowl.

Let's start with the pregame festivities. The "Built Ford Tough" pregame show consisted of what is best described as the shittiest Summer Olympic Games opening ceremony ever. Gloria Estefan kicked it off by making another "Miami=Caliente" reference (first off, Gloria Estefan's cultural importance is being vastly overestimated by someone at the Super Bowl preshow planning committee; she's never been big, and even if she ever was, it was twenty-five motherfucking years ago. Surly there's someone who can represent the city of Miami better than her. And also, I'm incredibly sick and tired of anything even remotely associated with being Latin being referred to as "hot", or "caliente" as it were. Many Latin things are in fact quite "frio" or "insignificante", putas!). Conga drums begin to be beaten loudly and a lame marching band appears.

And then the fucking circus begins.

Yes, the one from Quebec.

Tonight, Cirque De Soleil officially joined American Idol and Fox News as the third part of my Axis Of Evil. These things poison and harm our society to almost incomprehensible levels. I don't see why anyone who is alive finds that shit amusing. Seriously.

After that glob of horseshit was over Billy Joel sang the national anthem quite quickly (which is how the fucking song is meant to be sung, there's no need to stretch every note out to five minutes) and people cheered. At this point, I would like to touch upon how awful the production value is on any CBS game. The sound was awful; muffled and toneless. The cameras constantly had condensation on the lenses (I mean, they knew it was going to rain the whole time; couldn't they send an intern out to buy some Rain-X? That shit works, yo.) and the commentators are by far the lamest on TV. But I digress, on to the half time show.

I was pretty disappointed. Don't get me wrong, Prince has written some pretty bad-ass songs in his day. He just chose not to play a single one of them at the halftime show. What was that?! A bunch of covers? "All Along The Watchtower"? "Proud Mary"? A fucking Foo Fighters song? What happened to Prince? I mean, I know what happened; he found God and renounced what made him cool in the first place -songs about fucking- which he was great at writing. Yeah, he can play guitar, we get it. So can Yngwie Malmsteen but you don't see his bloated carcass being brought out for any halftime shows. Well, perhaps at half time of a pee-wee hockey game in Sweden or Denmark or where ever the hell he was from.

So yeah, at least the game was entertaining for the first half. Then Rexy had to go and fuck it up. Way to choke dude. Now we all have to hear about the legacy of Peyton Manning for the rest of our lives and how he rose above and overcame and blah blah blah. . . . . .I'm sick of it already.

The Bitch Is Back. No, Really.

So yeah, Elton John came into my work today.

And guess who helped him check out? That's right, I was involved in a direct commercial transaction with Sir Elton John.

He came in wearing a black track suit and he was accompained by two gentlemen (bodyguard and assistant, I assume). He purchased things in pairs. Two copies of Rob Sheffield's new book, Love Is A Mixtape; two copies of Lang Lang's Dragon Songs and two copies of a book displaying the worst album covers ever. Those along with an album by Frank Yankovic (the polka guy!!!) and a couple of other books whose title I don't recall. He paid cash out of his enormous billfold which held dozens of hundred dollar bills. And you know what was really funny? He had a Barnes & Noble Member Card (which had expired, by the way, and I happily renewed). That's right, millionaires like to save 10% too.

Apparently he comes by every six months or so when he's at his place in Atlanta. I was told that last time he spent way more money, like two grand. This time he only dropped a couple of hundred dollars. Maybe he'll be back in the next few days. Maybe he'll become a regular; I'll see him every day and say "Hey Reggie, what's new?" and he'll reply, "Ya know, same ol' same ol', buddy!" and we'll talk about the weather or sports or something mundane like that.

I gave him no preferential treatment and did not even acknowledge the fact that I knew who he was. I think that tactic can really go either way with famous people, they either feel at ease and comfortable because you're not screaming "Oh my God!!" in their face or terribly offended that you don't know who they are (so insecure, aren't they?). I couldn't really tell how he responded. He was neither rude nor pleasant, very matter-of-factly all business.

My mother screamed at me when I told her about this encounter; she said that I should have asked him for an autograph, you know, for my dear old mother who was such a big fan. But I couldn't do that. First of all, that's not really a professional thing to do at work. And then, I'm not really the kind of person who asks for autographs from people, it's just weird, I'd rather just take the experience for what it is -a chance encounter with an aging queen that also happens to have been knighted by an actual aging queen.

Soul Brother Number 1

James Brown died today not 5 miles away from where I live. Even though his contribution to music in the last 20-30 years has been kind of dubious, his work in the early 60s through the mid 70s was undoubtedly influential both musically and socially. I had no idea he was sick in any way; he was only 73 years old. I'm sorry I never got to see him perform live.