the best ever death metal band out of denton

My dislike for Mitch Albom is pretty well established. Most of you know him from being a commentator on ESPN's "The Sports Reporters". The one with the ears. Still others of you will also know him as a writer for the Detroit Free Press. If you are not in one of these categories, you may still know him as being the author of such books as Tuesdays with Morrie and The Five People You Meet in Heaven. They say these books are good, but I'll never know. I'm still holding a grudge against him for making some idiotic remarks about North Carolinians during the Carolina Hurricanes' surprise run to the Stanley Cup Finals against his beloved Detroit Red Wings in 2002. This grudge will prevent me from buying, borrowing or browsing any of his books.
For some reason, though, it doesn't prevent me from listening to his radio program. I have it on a lot at work. He does a little bit of interesting commentary about sports, then some more about something in the news and then has a guest or two. His pride hubris for his Detroit teams is more than a little annoying, but if he can talk about teams that aren't from Detroit (and more importantly aren't involved in a series with a team from Detroit) he's actually kind of decent. His take on current events is sort of humorous. He spent a lot of time joking about the Michael Jackson trial and the resulting acquittal. The other day, though, he segued from making fun of the Tom Cruise/Katie Holmes engagement to making fun of this guy who does horse racing radio play-by-play. This guy works a track in or near Los Angeles. During a race on Thursday, they experienced an earthquake of 5.0 (or so) magnitude. Albom had a feed of the radio call of the race. They guy was just calling the race, then very non-chalantly said "we are in the midst of an earthquake". The guy continued to call the race as normal, but for some reason slipped in "I just want to say that I love you all, and that horse racing was my first love". That was the thing that Albom wanted to ridicule him about. So he played it again. And again. And again. About 10 times in an hour. I don't know what his reasoning was, other than to ridicule the guy, but it seemed really mean-spirited. Anyway, I do enjoy his show most of the time, but that one stuck in my head and reminded me "oh yeah.... I don't like Mitch Albom."

I had other stuff to write about, but I forgot, and I'm getting tired.

now playing:

This Mortal Coil Blood

when she said 'please raise the roof higher' nobody heard

I have a lot of faults.
I'm lazy. I am given to procrastination. I exaggerate too much. I'm kind of a slob. I'm a bad boyfriend. These are just a few.

Sometimes I feel bad about these faults and that I'm not in a very secure financial state. However, I often feel better about these things when people say nice things about me. I had that happen yesterday.

One of our customers told me that he was really glad that I was working there now. I've seen this guy around one of the other places I worked, and he's sort of a chatty older English gentleman. I don't know him that well, though. He wouldn't shut up, though about how he's glad that I'm where I am. I've also run into some other customers who have known me professionally for years, and have said the same thing. Additionally, I've heard about other people catching wind of my transition and asking the managers or owner of my current restaurant "how in the world did you get him over here? That's terrific!". So it makes me feel good.
Also, last night, one of the managers told me they were glad I'm there, and one of our servers told me again and again that I was "well liked" around there. Okay, so I'm not a millionaire. Heck, I'm not even a thousandaire, but I'm less stressed out than I used to be, and people are pretending to like me. That makes me feel pretty good. I know that doesn't pay the bills, but it puts me in a better state of mind.
Sorry for the self-indulgency. I'll have other stuff to talk about later.

now playing:

Nanang Tatang Muki

did he leave your pretty fingers lying in the wedding cake?

Tonight was the second Bring a Neglected Record to Work Day©. This is a continuing series (once weekly, on Thursdays) that will realistically last exactly two more weeks, but I hope to make it last longer. I'm also the only one playing the game. Thursday is the only time I bring cds to work, because it's the only night I work by myself. I can jam out to whatever I want to. Tonight's Neglected Record was Workbook by Bob Mould. Although it didn't go as swimmingly as last week's Neko Case, it went okay. Although this wasn't it, I know that sooner or later, I'll bring along a record that was being neglected for good reason.
The guitar work is simply amazing. The lyrics.... well... The guitar parts are really good, and Bob was showing us that he could be sensitive and introspective. Not just the angry and violent Bob that showed up a lot in the Hüsker Dü days. Please understand that I am not saying that all Hüsker Dü songs were angry or violent. In fact there are some quite beautiful songs, most of which came in the later years, but when you look back at the early stuff, there's a lot of rage there. Take a song like "Bricklayer" for example, from the album Land Speed Record. This song has an incredibly quick pace, incredibly poor structure, incredibly short running time, and lots of aggression to boot. If I remember right, the chorus goes "Brick out the window on the top of your head / Brick on the head / You are a fuckhead". I've digressed. That isn't the point here.

The aggression and rage isn't really there on Workbook, although it would show back up for Black Sheets of Rain. We got to hear songs with structure, some damn fine guitar playing (did I say that already?), and we got to feel bad in a whole different kind of way. Okay, the "feeling bad" isn't a good thing, but it's an interesting thing to have a lushly produced song with textbook jangly guitars make you feel like jumping off a bridge. Unfortunately, after track 5 ("side A") Workbook gets a little less compelling. The listener is rewarded for sticking it out with "Compositions for the Young and Old", which is the one standout from "side B". If you can ignore the lyrics and just listen to the music, you'll like it.

Although I didn't give Blacklisted a rating last week, I'll start the trend this week. I give Workbook 2.5 out of a possible 5 saute pans.


Some things I thought about while I was working:

1. People are crazy enough to be doing one of the following two things: (1) stay in a Greensboro hotel, party all night, then get up mega-early to drive an hour and a half to the US Open tournamentament in Pinehurst, then back to the hotel EVERY DAY of the tournament; or (b) stay in a Pinehurst hotel and drive to Greensboro to party, then drive back to the hotel EVERY NIGHT of the tournament. By the way, the US Open of Golf is being played at Pinehurst #2 this year.
2. The people who are doing one or the other of those things were very quick to tell anyone who would listen that they were going to the US Open, and were therefore being very pompous.
3. While I was cooking for these people, my friend Reid was busy rocking out with his band, who were playing a gig with Bettie Serveert.
4. No matter how hard you try, you cannot wish water into lemonade. Sure, I could have made a batch of lemonade, but that takes effort. I just wanted the instant gratification of a tall glass of cool, refreshing lemonade.

I encourage all of you to listen to a Neglected Record from your collection. It might be fun, and you might develop a newly-rediscovered love for, say, Matthew Sweet or The Catherine Wheel. Give it a shot.

now playing:

Cocteau Twins Blue Bell Knoll

i'm not a telephone junkie

Dang.
I don't have the best eating habits in the world. First off, I don't eat meals as frequently as I should. When I do, they're not the most nutritionally viable meals. Part of this is that I'm accustomed to working in restaurants. Mid- to high-volume restaurants. I'm accustomed to eating on the fly, usually standing up. This means I usually eat a burger or a sandwich of some sort. Something I can eat quickly and doesn't require a lot of effort to make or eat. When I'm at home, I seldomly make a meal for myself. Instead, I'll just snack on stuff. I'm trying to get better about what those snacks consist of. Pretzels and crackers and stuff like that are usually king, but I'm trying to get better.
Apples.
I like apples.
I'm not like one of these apple freaks who eats two or three a day, but I do like them. Unlike many apple enthusiasts or purists, I have to slice the fruit up before eating. I have a rally hard time trying to eat apples out of hand. When it comes to the different varieties, I'm hardly an expert in the matter, as there are quite a few that I've never had or even heard of. In fact, of the 18 US varieties, I'm only familiar with 7. I typically go with Gala or Fuji because of their sweetness, and year round availability. Unlike Golden Delicious and Red Delicious, I like their appearance too. Actually, I never eat the Delicious varieties. Anyway, I familiarized myself with another variety today. Pink Lady. Pink Lady has the sweetness of a Gala, but it's a little more. A little tartness, which makes the sweet really pronounced. I don't think this one is available year-round, but it'll be my new favorite until it goes away. If you haven't had one before, I highly recommend getting one. Now.

now playing:

Godspeed You! Black Emperor Yanqui U.X.O.

i was seriously thinking about hiding the receiver when the switch broke 'cause it's old

I actually managed to get something accomplished yesterday. For a while now, I've been getting a lot of warning messages on my computer. To the effect of "You are perilously low on disc space. Do something about it". These were legitimate warnings. I was fluctuating between 200mb and 600mb of remaining space. That's nothing. Given that I like to store a lot of music on my machine, that's no space at all. I pondered some options, and I hope I've done the perfect thing. I got a 200 GB external hard drive. The guy wanted to sell me an internal drive. It would have been a slightly better deal in an out-of-pocket kind of way. However, I don't have a bay available to host another internal drive. This one was easy enough to set up. Certainly easier than it would have been to dismantle my machine and risk putting it back together incorrectly. Actually this was a breeze to set up. As soon as I got it set up, I moved all of my iTunes stuff over to the new drive, did a little tweaking, and I'm all set. I really like that it's external because I'll still be able to use it whenever I get another machine, and it has the super-cool benefit of being portable. Sort of like a ginormous iPod without having the capability to play the music on its own. Okay. It's not quite as compact as an iPod, but it's the size of a 300 page paperback. These sorts of things are designed specifically for backing up hard drives, but lots of people use it exactly the way I'm using it.

After I played around with that a little bit, I watched This So-Called Disaster, on rent from Netflix. It's a documentary about Sam Shepard's semi-autobiographical stage play "The Late Henry Moss". It mostly shows the actors (Nick Nolte, Sean Penn, Cheech Marin, James Gammon, Woody Harrelson) in various stages of rehearsal. We also get some personal insight from Shepard about the play itself and about the events it is loosely based upon. It kept me interested, and it made me wish I could have seen a production of the play. However, I can't give it a high recommendation. I can't even say that it's the best movie about rehearsing a play that I've ever seen. That honor would have to go to Vanya on 42nd Street, closely followed by Looking for Richard. Oddly enough, I noticed that another movie about play rehearsal was on HBO last night. A Midwinter's Tale is about a community theatre trying to put on a production of Hamlet, but it isn't strictly about rehearsal, the way the others are.
After watching my movie, I was pretty tired, and I was passing in and out of sleep as I was watching the TV. I called it a night a little earlier than normal, but I didn't get good sleep. My dumb-ass cat kept waking me up with a bunch of noise she was making. She figured out how to open one of the dresser drawers. I don't know how, but she does it. It takes a lot of effort on her part, and a lot of clamoring, so it woke me up on two different occasions. What she's trying to do, incidentally, is climb inside the drawer so she can lay down. Not that there aren't 2 million other places she could lay down, but that's where she really wanted to be. Fucking cat.

now playing:

The Decemberists Picaresque

better cut off all identifying labels before they put you on the torture table

Once again, we have a blue moon at red and black is the new black and red. The post title has something to do with the post.

I've made some changes to the layout of the blog. First, I moved the list of linked blogs closer to the top of the page. Second, I removed the first names of the bloggers and replaced them with the names of the blogs. Apparently there were some people out there who didn't like other folks knowing their first name. Although most bloggers make their first names readily available, I realize that some people prefer to be anonymous. And so it shall be.

Sadly, I am forced to drop iChunes from my list of linked blogs. You guys have been lazy and haven't posted anything in over three months. Somebody else hasn't posted anything in an impossibly long time and has seemingly given up the ghost. You (you know who you are, and under my newfound respect for anonymity, I'll just call you "Hans") had better watch your ass!

now playing:

Set Fire to Flames Telegraphs in Negative/Mouths Trapped in Static

all day long i guess i had the same thought. wanted to show you all the records i bought

Tonight was a really strange night at work. I was anticipating a really extraordinarilly busy night. Friday night was absurdly busy and we ended up having to eighty-six a bunch of shit. Not because it wasn't prepped, but because we didn't have anything in the house. I think I got the brunt of the business on my station, but we managed to get through it without pissing too many people off. So I was expecting another busy night. The weather was kinda nice and Bob Dylan and Willie Nelson were in town on their tour of minor league ballparks. Events like that usually make the restaurant busy before the event and crazy busy after. I guess it didn't let out until about 11:00, because that's what time I left and there were a bunch of people walking from the ballpark area of downtown to the bar area of downtown.
So we weren't very busy at all.
During one of the lulls, I made the Spaniards smile a lot with my mad anagramming skillz¹. I showed them a Mexican-themed anagram which I learned from the movie Word Wars. It all started when Alejandro was bragging about how much tequila he could drink, so I thought it was the perfect opportunity to show him that

mas tequila

can be anagrammed into

que lastima

For those of you who don't recall your high school Spanish, or never had it, "qué lástima" translates to something close to "what a pity". So it's kinda funny that in Spanish, "more tequila" can be anagrammed into "what a pity". As in it's a pity that you drink so much tequila.
He got a good kick out of that and wasted no time showing the other amigos my trick.

I also spent a good deal of time telling Alejandro that the word "SPRAY" isn't pronounced "spry". Nor is "SPACE" pronounced "spice". He kept saying "es similar", and I had to explain to him that he was pronouncing a word that was quite different from what he thought he was saying. Yes, I knew what he meant, but he got on someone's case for pronouncing "TANGO" (the dance) as if it was "TENGO" (to have) and also for pronouncing "HOMBRE"(man) as if it was "HAMBRE"(hunger). Quite different. In every case, the listener will most likely understand that the speaker mispronounced, and will get what they mean, but if he's going to get picky about it, we should be picky right back.
At the end of the night, just before I left, the amigos described a chainsaw and asked me what the English word for it is. I have no idea why they wanted to know that, but I told them. It took a really long time for them to get anywhere close on the pronunciation, but I think they had it down. I'm really curious about why they wanted to know, but I don't suppose it's all that important.

Now Playing:

Elvis CostelloMy Aim is True(thick dick version)

¹Anagramming is rearranging all the letters in a word to form a different word. A simple example is that the four letters O-P-S-T can be arranged to spell OPTS, TOPS, STOP, POTS or POST. These are all anagrams of each other. This is a really good way for competitive Scrabble players to practice game strategy. The best players will rapidly anagram 8- or 9-letter words or even multiple word phrases. There are dozens of software programs and websites that can be used to build anagramming skills or to simply get anagrams.

it looks a lot like engine oil

I had a decent night's sleep, so it looks like I'm not headed into another extended spell with insomnia. I'd like it if I got tired earlier and didn't have to sleep till noon every day, but that's sort of the deal when you work late nights. I've always been a bit of a night owl, but when I don't even get off work until 2:15 am, I don't have any chance of getting to bed before 4.

I guess the good thing about not being able to go to bed until late is that it gives me time to catch up on all my TiVo programming. For instance, I didn't get to watch the season premiere of "Six Feet Under", but it was waiting for me on TiVo. Amanda had told me that "not a lot happened", but I thought it was plenty. I mean, there wasn't lots of tension and anxiety like in the David being carjacked/doing crack episode, but I liked it. I kinda wish that Lisa would just go away though. I thought we were done with her when she died, and then when Nate found that shit out about her weird ass family, but she keeps popping up. I'm really hoping that it doesn't get lame, seeing as how it's the final season. It really saddens me that this will be the last. I don't know the details of why it's ending, but I don't get how HBO runs shows like "First and Ten" for like 10 seasons, and "Arli$$" for what seems like it's been 15 seasons. I can't stand Arli$$, but I will give it credit for being better than "First and Ten" ever was. Remember that shit?

Crap! I just noticed the time. Work is beckoning me. No time for a serious post.

Now playing:

Jeff Hanson Son

come on. i'll let you borrow my four leaf clover.

Ahhh. Thursday.

I'm all out of whack now. I slept like a goddamn champ last night, thanks in part to Xanax. I reckon I got damn near 13 hours of sleep, but I really needed it to make up for being deprived the previous two nights. That, and the fact that I didn't leave work until 2:15 am mean that I'm still a little wound up. No sleeptime yet.

Tonight was kinda fun at work. Actually, it was slow, but not painfully so. I got to share a laugh with one of the guys when he sang "Holla back girl" Sinatra-style. It was mildly funny until he got to the "this shit is bananas. b-a-n-a-n-a-s" part. I damn near lost my shit at that point. Obviously, this wasn't one of the Spaniards¹.

After all the other kitchen guys left, and I was flying solo from 10:45 to 2:00, I brought in my cds. Normally there's the radio, tuned to top 40. So I put in Neko Case's Blacklisted, which has been the victim of recent neglect. Since I only have that one record of hers, I can't say that I'm even in the top 10,000 of Neko Case fans, but I like her a lot. As I was listening to it, a couple of thoughts came to my mind. You should be cautioned that some sappy material is to follow.

1. I owe some gratitude to Mr. James Reid Dossinger for turning me on to her. Unlike some of the other music that Reid's gotten me into, I probably wouldn't have found Neko Case without his introduction. Thanks, buddy.
2. I was reminded of seeing a Neko Case show on my 31st birthday. Further, I was reminded of how I've spent my last 4 birthdays doing cool stuff with girls who I had enormous crushes on. Sadly, only one of these ladies remains close to me. 30 was with Dawn, who I now talk to about once every three months or so. 31 was with Kari(at the Neko Case show), who I still really relate to, but seldomly talk to despite living just a few miles away. 32 was with Eleanor, who I was dating at the time. For the record, I have nothing against her, but I haven't spoken to her in about a year. She lives in Wisconsin now. Wisconsin is just like Czechoslovakia. 33 was in Canada with Amanda. She's the one out of those four who I'm still close with. She's actually my best buddy.
3. Neko Case is fucking brilliant. It's been said so many times by so many people, but as I stood there and listened to "Deep Red Bells" like four thousand times in a row, that's all I could think about. If I could do something that was even one fifth as brilliant as that song, I'd be thrilled.

Okay. Now I'm pretty fucking tired, so I'll go to bed. I'll post more later.

Now Playing:


Neko Case Blacklisted



¹ I work with a whole slew of men and women who are, in fact, Mexican immigrants. As part of an ongoing in-joke, I refer to them as Spaniards.

and here's to you mrs. robinson

We're running out of room here at the red and black is the new black and red memorial gardens. You've all heard by now. Anne Bancroft. 73. Uterine cancer. I won't make a big stink about it.

I'm fearful that I'm heading into another one of my insomnic phases. Monday night, I didn't sleep very much. Actually, after struggling with it all night, I was finally getting some decent sleep, but I had a dream that I was at my parents house, and my mother woke me up to tell me I was going to be late to my sister's wedding. Never mind that my only sister has been married for 13 years. It's just a dream. But even in the dream, I wasn't able to sleep. That's a bit of a bad break.
Last night, I actually stayed up all damn night. No sleep. Not one wink. I wasn't sleepy when it was time for me to go to bed, so I played PlayStation hockey. I was able to improve my Hurricanes season to something like 27-0-0-0. I've been experimenting with different strategies and taking deliberate penalties to practice penalty killing. Even after upping the difficulty setting, I'm winning every game by at least 20 goals. So I played a few more games in the season, then since I still wasn't tired, I decided to play some exhibition games as the US National team. France was much tougher than they seemed like they should have been. Same with Japan. Then the strangest thing happened, and made me make the decision to forgo the bed-going portion of the night. I lost to Italy. And it wasn't even close. I was frustrated as hell because there aren't even any NHL'ers on the Italian national team. Should've been a cake walk. Again and again, they would beat me.
After getting pummeled by Italy like three times, I just gave up. 5:45 am. Then I had the choice of going to sleep and risking sleeping through the alarm clock, or just staying up. I chose the latter. I finally got around to watching Into the Arms of Strangers, which I've had from Netflix for probably two weeks. It's a documentary about the 10,000 Jewish children who in 1938-9 were transported from central Europe (mostly Czechoslovakia) to England to escape Nazi persecution and gain refugee status. There were several people who are in their 70's or 80's who told their first-hand stories. Most were warmly taken in by foster families who treated them like their own. I didn't even know that there was such an effort to grant refugee status, so it was nice to learn that historical information. Also to learn that there was such a display of magnanimity in such wretched times. I'm not doing it justice, but it really is worth a watch.

One of the glorious things about having a pig sty for a car is that sometimes you find stuff you forgot about or gave up on. Today, I found my one and only Lucksmiths record (Why that Doesn't Surprise Me) in there. I'd been thinking about it a lot lately, but I couldn't find it anywhere. What a sweet, sweet feeling that was. Like when you find the $20 bill you left in your suit pants last time you wore them. See, I've been listening to Badly Drawn Boy a lot lately, and he has this one song that sounds like it ought to be the Lucksmiths. You prolly wouldn't think so if you heard it, but I do. And that's all that matters.

By the way, feel free to make your donations to send me to Reno for the Scrabble Nationals. I won't win anything, so I can't reimburse you right away. In fact, I'll probably never pay you back. I'll accept cash, check, money order, coins, paypal. No barter system. No "gifts in kind".

I'm getting rather tired. I hope I sleep like a motherfucker tonight.

Now playing:
LemonheadsIt's a Shame About Ray