Solemn Avalanche

They just played "You're No Rock and Roll Fun" by Sleater-Kinney on Pimp My Ride.  That's fitting.  Allergy season is kicking off, that makes me happy, because I was having a major fucking problem not spending $30 every few weeks on allergy medicine.  Fucking trees.

Robert Pollard has over 1500 songs credited to his name.  This makes him one of the most prolific songwriters of all time.  But that ain't all of it.  He has a huge suitcase in his house that is full of tapes, which are full of songs.  They say they contain somewhere between 10,000 and 20,000 songs.  20,000 songs!  And Pollard doesn't really show any specific drive to get them released.  I guess you wouldn't if you were writing a few songs a day, but who knows.  And the way he writes songs, usually, is by making huge lists of weird song titles, then later writing songs that he thinks would fit with the titles

quickly, an addendum to the death list:

Abe Vigoda:  I love the guy but times up.
Kirk Douglas: Yeah I dont actually like him.  Or his son.
Jimmy Carter:  The only viable president to be on this list for probably a few terms.  Though I dont really think he'll die, he might, and I cant pass up that chance.  I already dropped the ball with Anna Nicole (I tried to think of anyone who was younger, specifically the whole 'vh1 set' that might be a loose cannon.  I really would have put her on it if I thought of her.)  Also feel free to spread the rumor that she overdosed on TrimSpa.  I made it up but I want it to be true so badly.
Paul Harvey:  So I'm guessing you guys dont listen to Harvey, but I used to some drywalling, and we'd listen to him a lot.  Not really my choice but whatever.
Merle Haggard:  My favorite living county singer.  So yeah.


Honorable mentions:  Hank Aaron, Pele, Thomas Pynchon, Stan Ovshinsky (the battery guy in Who Killed the Electric Car), Joel Goddard.  Obligatory rapper:  Keak Da Sneak.

Hi.  So every year I try to make a list of people I think will die in the coming year. Not that anyone cares.  Anyway so over the years I've picked a few, including Hunter S. Thompson, James Brown, and I think Gerald Ford.  Here:

• BB King - Yeah your time's up.  Plus you havent actually released anything I've ever been even remotely interested in.
• Wilford Brimley - Die-uh-beet-us is comin' to getcha!  Besides, I've never liked you, not as the Liberty Medical guy, not as the Quaker Oats guy, not as the guy on that 80s tv show.  And you look like death.
• Charton Heston - This year we're taking the gun "from your cold dead hands." 
  
• Peter Faulk - Feel regretful that I just watched Princess Bride because if I hadn't, you'd still be living in 2008.
• Fidel Castro - Provided you ain't already dead, seriously this is your year.  Not that you are a threat in the least and maybe our government should get its head out of its ass and realize that a trade embargo on Cuba is pretty dumb.  Cuba's bad, but China, the communist nation that actually poses a threat?  Yeah go ahead and deal with them because they can make us some cheap furniture.
• Phillis Diller - I really like her, but she's pretty old.  I'll say she'll make it to her 90th birthday, but that's it.
• Walter Cronkite - I thought he died years ago.  "This just in, Uncle Walter's dead.  And that's the way it is."
• Muhammad Ali - Yeah he might as well have died ten years ago.
• Magic Johnson - You know how people said that he doesn't have HIV anymore?  Yeah I'm here to say not only does he have it, but it's taking him down.
  
• Norman Mailer - OLD. 
  
• Kurt Vonnegut - Great guy, but put in in the same category as Norman Mailer.  Nigga's old.
• Warren Buffet - Literally the only investor I know.  And he's the coolest guy ever.  Lives in the first house he bought, even though he's the second richest man in the world.  He's cool.
• JD Salinger - Back in the day I loved The Catcher In the Rye.  Loved it.  But Salinger went all weird and hasn't really done anything else since then.  I'm hoping he dies, then they find a Catcher In the Rye Pt. II or something.  That's really the only reason I want him to die.
• Sandra Day O'Connor - Really if a Justice has to go I'd rather have it be one that is retired and not one that can be replaced with Harriet Miers or something.

Now I don't actually want any of these people to die, but if they did die, I wouldn't be sad, mainly because I have them on my list.

i ain't never embedded no video before. but i enjoyed the SHIT out of this.  it's bob dylan.  and yeah, fuck you lj because i just wanted to embed some video.  sorry it isn't youtube or google or something.  big security risk though.  it's fucking flash.  every website has flash, but yeah, it could ruin the site.  assholes.

fuck me.  it's been a while.  a year, one might say.  so in the next paragraph i'll update on my busy life since last october.

the end.

i didn't do anything, don't worry.  HOWEVER, i have listening to deerhoof's new album.  i liked their last one more than anything else of theirs i'd ever heard.  and this one is quite the same.  go here  to stream the whole thing.  and yeah if you've got firefox, forget it.  because firefox decided activeX is bad so they don't support it.  it's only essential to most audio-centric sites, not to mention a lot banking websites and such.  good fucking idea.  but anyway, it's like the last one, aka more coherent than their older stuff, but shorter.  so you get just as much goodness in half the songs.  because let's be honest:  the last album is a little tedious and you just end up skipping to the really good shit like "twin killers", "spirit ditties" and "siriustar".  obviously there's more than that but i'm lazy and don't want to end up writing the whole tracklist.

in the last six months i've managed to squeeze out one good picture of me.  that's my life.  it's a lot of pain, looking through hideous pictures, but eventually you come across one that is less ugly than the rest, and then you put it everywhere so it leaves a false impression of you.  the thing is the pictures are still ugly, but i got so little to work with here.

james brown died and i called it.  on here actually. 

andrew bird was a pretty sweet show.  luckily i was trying to save money so i helped this along by leaving my ticket at home, requiring me to spend ANOTHER $20.  fucking awesome. 

i've been rocking that family video store.  something like 16 movies for something like $7.  i've also been rocking that bittorrent software.  something like 40 albums for something like $0.  fucking riaa.  i've spent, literally, somewhere in the range of $7000 on cds.  what did that get me?  a bunch of cd's.  prices, as promised oh so many times, did not fucking drop.  remember back when universal said they were going to drop their prices down to $10 or lower on all cds?  haaaaaaaaaaaa.  that date came and went with not so much as a two dollar drop.  i'll say this, if cd's were $7 or so, i'd buy them ALL the fucking time.  so maybe in my heyday i was buying two cd's a week, i would have bought 5 or 6.  because it isn't so much the final cost that gets me, it's the unit cost.  how can i justify paying $18.99 (plus tax!) for an album i've barely heard (if at all).  herein lies the conundrum.  music i buy ain't on the radio, certainly not around this shithole town i live in.  that leaves downloading.  to the riaa that's evil.  but how the fuck else am i supposed to hear the music from this artist?  up until the last maybe two years, it was QUITE hard to find anything legal up for download.  now even with myspace and mp3 blogs and all that, you're lucky to get a song or two.  i can't justify spending three hours wage on two songs.  but $7?  yeah i'll blow that on something i've never even heard before.  because if i hate it, i'm only out a few bucks.  and music store employees could attest that i am way more apt to take risks on something i ain't heard, if they a.) read this, b.) were super attentive, and c.) talked to me about the reason i was purchasing the album.

in final newz, i HATE zanesville.  every single day i think about how much i hate my existence because i'm in zanesville.  so that needs to change.  after i sell a kidney or something.  that's it.

what to watch this week on late night television:

Monday:  toss up.  First I'd watch beck on letterman.  but then it gets complicated.  I'd go with Conan to catch the beautiful chan marshall as cat power.  though you could try to catch the yeah yeah yeah's on jimmy kimmel live.  i've heard they have a new song that's pretty good.

Tuesday: you can sleep.

Wednesday:  check regina spektor.  i dont even know what her own stuff sounds like.  but i do know she sang on a strokes b-side a few years ago.

Thursday: lady sovereign on letterman.  she's part of the whole dizzee rascal/m.i.a./streets london rap dance thing.  plus jayz loves her i guess.

Friday:  no.

speaking of m.i.a., has anyone heard gwen stefani's new song?  it's fucking horrible.  here.  i'm saying a combination of a bad stefani song, fergie's terrible repetitive rap thing, and m.i.a.'s weird vocal things.  but it sucks.

that's it.

and in case you didnt hear, janet weiss is the malkmus drummer.  the jicks just tightened up that rhythm section.

yeah.  so i was looking for info about joanna bolme on the internets, and i comes across this:  janet weiss joins the jicks!  now i'm obviously a huge malkmus fan, but when i saw sleater-kinney, i came away quite impressed with how good of a drummer weiss was.  and to hear her playing with malkmus, who evidently has "a bunch of ballsy new songs" is just awesome. 

that's all i've got.

i got yo la tengo's new album based solely on the first song.  it's fucking awesome.  the rest of it?  not so much.  actually it probably is, but i was disappointed that it ain't like the first track.  here's the dill: yo la tengo used to be this noise band, then they slowly started moving towards this slower, more mellow music.  i swear a few albums from now they'll be releasing a brian eno-esque music for airports or something.  but anyway, so then i hear "pass the hatchet, i think i'm goodkind" and i'm happy to hear that ira kaplan finally got his balls back.  alas the rest of the album isn't really like that. 

but it's probably still good.  i've been watching various political debates on cspan today.  i didn't work and thus didn't do a damn thing.  i did buy a pair of extremely tight dress pants at gabes today.  that's pretty cool.  i'll probably never wear them, but they were only two bucks.  they're tight even on my legs, and i've got scrawny legs.

yeah.  and i want to do something for halloween.  this will be the first in a while that i aint been to athens, cause i dont know anyone there this year.  but i still want to go badly.  so that's pretty cool.  i'll probably be spending this weekend doing nothing.  hilarious.

I love life right now. I haven't felt this optimistic in a long while, even though I'm going through my typical fall-depression (the autumn doldrums).  I'm in such a good mood I'm even using proper capitalization.

First, I was watching Meet the Press sunday and all four guests he had on, including a brother from the National Review, said the GOP is in big trouble.  That asshole Robert Novak predicts they'll lose 20 seats in the House, maybe more.  The NR dude says probably more.  And the polls they showed were reminiscent of the 1994 elections where the dems lost control o'er both their houses.  Anyway, so that was quite nice.  I'll admit, it felt nice to feel, for once, like someone I'm voting for might win.

Second, tv is finally getting good again.  Ever since the late 90's, television programming has pretty much sucked.  Dig this: 

• Sunday:  Amazing Race - the only reality show worth watching, nice sights.
  
• Monday:  Heroes - surprisingly good drama about people who have evolved to have special powers.  Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip - Aaron Sorkin's latest show.  I've heard it's getting bad reviews, but I think it's pretty sweet nonetheless.
• Tuesday: Nothing.
• Wednesday: 30 Rock - maybe Tina Fey wasn't the reason SNL sucks, because I pretty much like this whole show.  Lost - as usual, I'm a pretty big lost fan.
• Thursday:  The Office - fucking awesome.  It's probably my most anticipated show of the week, taking the title from Lost.

Yeah.  I don't really like watching tv, but whatever.  The fucking ELECTIONS.  I'm so happy now.  They said they've pretty much given up on Mike DeWine.  Dems may take the Senate.  How sweet would that be.  Though it may not be as awesome as it sounds, because, as Novak said, President Bush may find that veto pen he's lost for the last six years.  Sad but true.

Lastly, cool movies and music are coming out.  I think I'll swing by and get Yo La Tengo's lastest album, cause I'm Really liking Pass the Hatchet, I Think I'm Goodkind

yeah.  something else i forgot.  after confidently voting my dogs into office, i can go to the record store and pick up PAVEMENT - WOWEE ZOWEE (SORDID SENTINELS EDITION)!!!!!!!!!!!  pavement are my favorite band ever, and wowee zowee is my favorite album of theirs and maybe my favorite album ever.  it's so awesome.  and they're re-releasing it, re-fucking-mastered and now it's a double and has a booklet with it.  i'm super excited.  they've done it with their first two albums so now wowee's up next.  here's rattled by the rush.  yeah it sounds good.  one might say, remastered.  so that's pretty cool.

speaking of cool music, i'm back into andrew bird in a big way.  now i secretly conjure up images of stephen malkmus (of pavement) and andrew bird going on tour together.  i think i'd travel a heavy distance for that.  here's andrew bird - why?  this was one of the cooler songs he did live cause it's completely solo.  here's a breakdown:  he live-loops all his music, so he'll play a line and then loop it and play over it.  so it sounds like there's a whole band there, but it's all him.  when i saw him he was playing with this dude martin dosh, and he opened for him, and he did the same thing but with drums and keyboards.  then he backed up herr bird.  it was pretty sweet.  here's some dosh.  hell, and here's some dosh and bird Palindromes.