It's so much brighter than the sun is

Today, September 18, is (at least in the United States), the 20th anniversary of the initial release of "Heaven or Las Vegas" by ethereal dream-pop trailblazers Cocteau Twins. It's arguably one of the best and most influential records of the 1990s, across all genres, and one of my "desert island albums". If you own a copy, listen to it today. If you don't, you should buy, borrow or steal a copy immediately.

First, enjoy the videos for "Heaven or Las Vegas" and "Iceblink Luck". Then read my commentary on the album.

Heaven or Las Vegas:


Iceblink Luck:



I'd like to say that on September 18, 1990, I waited outside the record store for the doors to open that Tuesday morning. However, I don't think that would be true. On that day, I probably didn't know about the Cocteaus well enough to anticipate the new album. I'd heard "Carolyn's Fingers" (from the 1988 album "Blue Bell Knoll), but that was about it. I can't be sure when I bought my first copy of "Heaven or Las Vegas", but I know that over time I've bought at least three hard copies of the original recording. I've given at least one away and had at least one stolen. It's the kind of thing, though, that makes me happy to buy another copy if it means that someone else in the world has one of mine.

There's an important distinction here. I specifically mentioned "hard copies" of the album. Anyone can download a digital copy of original or even the 2003 re-mastered version. They can get the fancy lossless files so it's "just like the album". But it's not. In the 1990s, it was a real treat to buy an album on the 4AD label. The jacket artwork was always amazing, and worth the price of the album itself. The liner notes were usually pretty minimal, but who needs a lyric sheet, a photo of the band and a list of acknowledgements when you've got a stunning piece of jacket art? I'll admit that I have started buying digital downloads of music, but I still buy hard copies because I refuse to let go of certain things. It may be juvenile, but I get a rush out of tearing open the cd wrapper and holding the jewel box in my hand as I listen to the music for the first time. I like to admire the artwork and look for the connections between the artwork and the music within.
With digital downloads, we're seldom even aware of what the album cover looks like. And downloading the pdf version of the artwork isn't the same. It doesn't have the smell and tactile feel of real liner notes.

I could go on a tangent about how ebooks and digital downloads are horrible for our local economies, but I'll leave that for another day. I could also go on a tangent about the parallels between 4AD records and Factory Records, but I'll leave that for another day as well.

To get back on track... "Heaven or Las Vegas" was a smashing success for the Cocteaus. It reached #7 on the UK charts and #99 in the US. It was their sixth proper album and by far the "cleanest" to that point in time. The first three records were dark, muddy and dense. They were great, but they were definitely born out of goth and post-punk. The next three, starting with 1986's "Victorialand" started to get that "lighter than air" feel, the production was cleaned up and the overall vibe was getting a bit brighter. Still, there was always a deliberate use of confounding "lyrics". With rare exception, Liz Fraser's singing bordered so much on glossolalia that people wondered if there actually were lyrics. Since the liner notes were sparse and we didn't have internet for that kind of thing, we were left to assume that it was all part of the mystery of the Cocteaus.

The common (mis)conception about "HOLV" is that, for the first time, we could discern the lyrics. They still didn't make a bit of goddamned sense, but at least we could assume that it was English that she was speaking. I've listened to that album probably 2500 times in my life, and I can safely say that I can only pick up about two dozen words in the whole thing. I'll dismiss the claim that the lyrics are more clear. Even using a lyric finder cheat sheet, I still can't pick anything out. What is clear, though, is that the music was getting better. I would argue that "Blue Bell Knoll" (1988) has more lush production and cleaner sound. I would also argue that the "lyrics" are more discernible on that album than on "HOLV". There's still a noticeable shift to something bigger and better. Anyway, "HOLV" was the album that finally put a record in the top 100 in the US and got them on MTV (even if it was only on 120 minutes with Dave Kendall).

At that critical time, 4AD founder Ivo Watts-Russell, who was notoriously difficult for bands to work with, decided to go in a different direction. Despite the success of "HOLV", he and the band both cited personal and artistic differences, and it was the last 4AD record by the Cocteaus. They made two more records, which were both much more commercially accessible before they themselves called it quits in 1996.

The Cocteaus may or may not have been the most profitable band on the 4AD label, but they're absolutely the band that defined that label. Watts-Russell would later say that "Heaven or Las Vegas" was the best album his label ever put out.

It remains in my desert island list, and it always will.

The snoopy snow cone machine

It baffles my mind sometimes when I think about the things we were allowed to do when I was a kid and the things that we were forbidden. I guess this thought was fueled when I was playing an arcade game version of lawn darts a week ago. The real thing, of course, has been banned in the United States and Canada since the 1980s, but this is the kind of toy that children were allowed to, and even encouraged to play with when I was a kid.
This is absolute lunacy. Give a handful of kids some sharp metal pointy projectiles, and it's only a matter of nanoseconds before they're throwing them at each other. It doesn't matter whether the object is a lethal weapon or a nerf ball: kids throw things at each other.

I never had lawn darts, but one Christmas I got a pub darts board and a ping-pong table. I resisted the urge to throw the darts at my sister, but within a couple of days, the ping-pong table was perforated by dart hits. Intentional hits. My mother, being the both the disciplinarian of the family and a very crafty person, proceeded to give me a well-deserved beating with one of the ping-pong paddles. It, too, had taken on more dart hits than the dart board had. Her preferred weapon of choice was a wooden spoon, and she broke more than a few administering punishment on me. Her instrument in this instance, though, was the ping-pong paddle. The significance of that deliberate choice was lost on me at the time, but it was brilliant.

I don't mean, even for a second, to paint my mother out to be some beast like Joan Crawford. On the contrary; my mother was and is a wonderful woman. This was, after all, the 1970s, when it was perfectly fine for parents to beat holy hell out of their children when they were acting like little assholes. Even in the middle of the Big Star grocery store. It's not like we were hit with lead pipes or barbed wire, but it's not like we were put in "time out" either. Punishments were fair and just. Sometimes, I even learned a lesson. Most often not, though.

That's not the point here, however. I'm supposed to be talking about the Snoopy Snow Cone Machine. And I'll get there. Trust me.

Parents were allowed by cultural standards to issue physical punishments to their children. Children were allowed to have toys that could easily become deadly weapons. We were encouraged to play tackle football in the street. We were encouraged to play around on open construction sites. Kids didn't wear helmets when they rode their bicycles. Somehow, most of us survived childhood unscathed.

For all the things we (and I've been using "we" in the editorial sense) were allowed to have and for all the things we were allowed and encouraged to do, it sometimes blows my mind what my sister and I were not allowed to have.

My sister, who is almost four years older than I, really really wanted an Easy-bake Oven. All little girls did. The modern easy-bake oven uses different technology and lots of safety features. It's pretty much foolproof and accident-proof. Back in the early days, though, this was a dangerous toy. The original oven resembled a real oven, but used a high wattage incandescent light bulb instead of a heating element. Although the light bulb as heat source was marginally less dangerous than a heating element, there were no safety features. This meant that a clumsy, uncoordinated, or overly-curious little girl had a very good chance of putting her hand directly onto the hot-burning 100-watt light bulb. My mother forbid Laura to have one, saying "If it can cook a cake, it can cook your hand". Again, the modern oven has a tiny slot into which the cake pan is shoved and a tiny slot to pull it out; there's no chance of coming into contact with the heat source. I'm pretty sure that even today, my sister, now aged 42, would be excited about getting an easy-bake oven. If for no other reason, than for the sake of nostalgia.

I usually got what I wanted, and I never really wanted much. Footballs, magic kits, digital watches. Things like that. Although there wasn't really a safety issue (maybe there was, but I can't remember), I wasn't allowed to have a Snoopy Snow Cone Machine. I was obsessed with Snoopy for a while, and while I got things like Snoopy dolls and Peanuts books and Snoopy lunchboxes and Snoopy Halloween costumes, I never got the one thing I wanted the most.

While other kids were getting expensive birthday presents like a trampoline or an Atari 2600, I just wanted a Snoopy Snow Cone Machine, which probably retailed at $7.95. I know I liked the commercial:


Apparently, the folks at Hasbro were merely cashing in on the late '70s pandemic that was Snoopy Fever. They already had a similar snow cone machine in the market with a similar ad campaign. It looks like they simply rebranded it with an iconic namesake. Check out the Snowman Snow Cone Machine commercial:


Until I started writing this post, I'd never heard of the Snow Man Snow Cone machine, and I probably wouldn't have wanted one of those. Proof that this toy is all about the celebrity name. In any case, I never got the machine, and there was never any parental commentary like "If it'll crush ice, it'll crush your fingers". There was just flat refusal. I spent the better part of my late childhood and adulthood resenting the fact that I never got the sought after piece of cheap plastic.

It's come to my attention that I was far from being alone there. Whether they've been re-introduced to the toy market or they never left the market, you can still get them. I've seen a few youtube videos of adults my age unboxing their very first Snoopy Snow Cone Machine and making their delicious treat. All with lukewarm reception. I think this one is a fairly good example of a grown man actually struggling to get the thing to produce one paltry cone.


If it takes that much work from a 30-something man, I hate to imagine how much effort it would require from a seven-year old kid. And now I'm glad that I never had one.

Instant karma

By popular request, I've opted to at least temporarily reactivate this dusty old blog. We'll see how it goes.

I've often thought of myself as a bad (fill in the blank with your choice of: lay, friend, neighbor, son, brother, uncle, boss, boyfriend, writer, customer, etc. etc. etc). I don't usually think of myself as a bad person as a whole package. Yesterday, though, I had one of those moments where I thought that I was a terrible person. And karma came to bite me on the ass. And she came pretty quickly.

For those of you who don't know (and assuming that anybody at all is reading this after more than a year of inactivity), the bar&grill that I manage in on a university campus. From what I've heard, we are the only bar that is actually on the campus of any of the seventeen schools in the University of North Carolina system. Thousands of students pass by our door every day. Some, but not many, are in wheelchairs. Even more, but still not many, are deaf. Some, but not many are blind.

Yesterday, during a moment of downtime, I observed a blind girl who had wandered WAY off the sidewalk and into our parking lot. She kind of walked around in circles for a little while, then went back in the direction she came from. Then she stopped when she almost ran into an ATM machine and did another 180. She continued to walk, off course, though our parking lot, then ran into the fence that separates our patio from the sidewalk and parking lot. She was using a cane, and using it very badly. I was watching her through a window, just feeling sorry for her, but at the same time thinking "she's almost doing that so badly that it can't be real". Still, I just stood there and watched. I could have easily walked out and at the very least guided her in the right direction if not walked her all the way to her destination. Instead, I just watched. Instead of using this opportunity to do something thoroughly unselfish, I only watched her and thought "wow, I hope she doesn't get hit by a car". Eventually, a couple of people did stop to point her in the right direction, but nobody walked with her. Over the years, I've seen a lot of blind kids walk past, and I've never seen anything quite like the way this girl was struggling just to stay on the sidewalk. I kept thinking that it was too ugly to be real.

But who would do that? Who would pretend to be blind and lost? Unless this was some sociological study intended to prove that people don't help strangers or people with disabilities, the answer is that nobody would do that. This girl really was blind, and she, for whatever reason, couldn't keep herself on the sidewalk. And I watched the whole thing as she hopelessly and helplessly meandered around.

I got sort of an instant karmic payback last night. Not anything huge, but a little nibble on the ass.

Late last night, I had to get something from my car, which was parked on the street. I noticed a small dent in the front left fender. A fresh one. Someone clearly backed into my parked car or in some other way gently hit it. The damage isn't enough to make me go out and get it repaired right away. It's so insignificant that I might never get it repaired. It's not much, but it's an unsightly blemish.

Perhaps coincidence, perhaps a karmic message. I dunno. All I know is that I felt rotten about myself after I had time to reflect upon the situation with the blind girl, and by the end of the day, I had something unfortunate happen to me.

A challenge

I want to present you, dear readers, with a challenge. I challenge you... I dare you.... I double dog dare you to get this song out of your head. The R&B/B&R video of the day: "My Year in Lists" by Los Campesinos!.


Seriously, try to get it out of your head. You can't do it. Sure, you might be able to shake it for right this second, but maybe later today, maybe sometime tomorrow, there it'll be. In your head.

I'm a fiend for all the stuff on the Arts & Crafts label, and although I don't own anything by these guys, I like what I've heard. And this damn song, which is just under 2:00, won't leave my head. I can't help but laugh, though, at the fact that they're trying so very hard to look emo, or twee, or whatever you wanna call it. I mean, nothing screams "I am twee as fuck" quite like an office green zippered hoodie. Except maybe a yellow t-shirt under a purple hoodie with a yellow badge pinned to it (especially if it's a badge of your own band). Oh, and a girl with a star tattoo on her wrist playing the bass for you. Oh. And self-reference. They've got that in spades. The only thing that would make this band more twee is if they were all wearing black-rimmed, tiny-lensed glasses.

Another thing that I think is funny about this video is that the drummer, Ollie Campesinos (wearing the green t-shirt in this video), looks alarmingly like a circa 2003- Eric Staal.

Anyway, enjoy the video. Try to keep the song out of your head. Good luck.

moving through the netflix queue

Since the hockey season is over, I have reached the point that I reach every summer where I get incredibly bored. Oh, sure, the Entry Draft came and went, providing me with about two hours of entertainment. The free agent signing period begins tomorrow (July 1), and that should provide me with a couple of days of excitement, but for the most part, the period between mid-June and early October is boring. So I've been putting a pretty good dent in my Netflix queue. In a half-assed effort to keep this thing afloat, I'll enlighten you (all two of you) with some of my recent selections.

• Days of Wine and Roses (1962) Starring Jack Lemmon, Lee Remick, Jack Klugman. Directed by Blake Edwards.
  
  Holy shit! What an excellent movie. Jack Lemmon plays a PR guy who happens to be a drunk. He falls in love with a girl from the office who is a goodie-two-shoes. He converts her to alcoholism. They battle demons and each other. Jack Lemmon is phenomenal in this role. He was nominated for best actor, but unfortunately, it was the same year that To Kill a Mockingbird came out, and Gregory Peck rightfully walked home with the Oscar. The greenhouse scene is sensational. I've got goosebumps just thinking about it. Highly recommended!
  Normally, when you hear "Directed by Blake Edwards", you would think zany sex comedy. This isn't even remotely a comedy.
  This movie just skyrocketed all the way to #2 on my list of favorite Jack Lemmon movies. #1 is, and will always be, The Apartment.
  
  
• loudQUIETloud: A film about the Pixies (2006)
  
  I wouldn't really say that this is a film about the Pixies. More accurately, it's about their short-lived reunion in 2004. It's not terribly enlightening, and certainly not very Edddddd-uuuuuuuuu-caaaaaaaay-shunnnnnnnnn-aaaaaaaaaal, but it's entertaining. It definitely reminded me that the REAL genius in the Pixies was Joey Santiago. Unfortunately, since he wasn't the singer or the girl, he didn't get talked about.
  It was sort of strange to see them all at 40, living responsible lives with families and whatnot.
  I feel like the filmmaker went out of his way to point to the fact that Kim was just out of rehab. Part of her healing is that she demanded that their dressing room be clear of all alcohol and drugs. In an 82-minute film, it seems like 30 minutes was spent covering Kim's nowfound sobriety. The other side of the coin was David Loverling's abuse of Valium and red wine.
  
  I feel like the director set out to make something a lot like I Am Trying to Break Your Heart. He didn't succeed.
  
  It was okay, but I wouldn't see it again, and I can't really say that I would recommend it.
  
  
• Screaming Masterpiece (2005)
  Another music documentary. This one touts itself as a look at the 2000-year history of Icelandic music. Honestly, with that description, I wasn't quite sure how much of the ancient history I was gonna get. The answer : none. There was very very little mention of traditional or "folk" music of Iceland. No explanation of where it came from or why. Only that, just as any other culture, the traditional music is based in poetry.
  As should have been expected, the main focus of this film was Björk, Sigur Rós and Múm. There were dozens of other bands, but all of them were contemporary and none of the others are worth mentioning. I learned absolutely nothing from this picture except these "facts". Icelanders don't consider themselves to be Scandinavian. They are, simply, Icelanders. They have only, just in the past 30 years or so, realized (according to Björk, anyway) their own identity. They just now realize that they are Icelanders rather than Danish colonists.
  Iceland is a country of just over 300,000 people, and there are an insane number of rock bands. Most of them suck.
  As much as I wanted to love this, I actually hated it. I found myself bored to tears, fast-forwarding through bits. Even the live footage didn't do much for me. I didn't imagine this would be the case, but I was really glad when it was over. Even if you're a huge fan of any of these Icelandic bands, I wouldn't recommend this movie, except as a cure for insomnia.

There have been a few others recently, but those are the most recent. The next six or seven will be seasons five and six of Scrubs. I can't wait for those.

If you really like me, you'll buy me this...

I've come out of hibernation only to say that if you were really my friend, you'd buy me a ticket to this.

It's only a little over $400 per person, so if you've got that much extra dough burning a hole in your pocket, feel free. Actually, by now, the whole thing is prolly sold out, but it sure would be sweet.

Sunday night alone would be well worth the price of admission.

I'm in the New York Times!

The New York Times has given my hockey blog some love!

I've been asked to be the Carolina Hurricanes blogger representative in an ongoing q&a thing being hosted by the New York Times hockey blog. Each team has one blogger representing it, and we're all asked the same set of questions. It looks like they'll be posted division-by-division.

The first installment is here, and it'll be a regular thing at least until the regular season ends in early April. Keep checking back to the New York Times: Slapshot blog, as well as my hockey blog for more.

just one cold look from you can knock me down

After a few months of silence around here, I've decided to make another run at keeping this thing up. Like I always do, I'll make grand promises to be more devoted to this blog, but I doubt that I'll hold true to those promises.
I've been thinking about a few different posts for this place, and instead of cranking them out old-school style, I'm mulling them over.

A few months ago, I was "tagged" over at the hockey blog and asked to name my top five songs of all time. I can't possibly do that. I named my top five songs by bands starting with the letter B, and I pledged to do a top five for every letter of the alphabet, but that project ended before it started. I was gonna (and still might) try that over here.

I haven't bought very much new music in a long time. I don't have disposable income, so it's a real treat to buy a new record. When the new Radiohead was "released", I downloaded it and didn't pay anything. I know. I know. Lame. That's not the point. The point is that after probably 40 listens, I keep having different responses to it. Not all of them are good. Eventually, I'd like to write something about that.

Without further ado (or as my friend Kevin says, further "adieu"), I'll use the cheapest of cheap tricks. The old "Here's what's in my cell phone text message inbox before I clean it out"

These are some of the better ones. The names have been changed to protect the innocent

• No no. Yesterday my glasses were only a sign of a hangover. They only look good with a power dyke outfit.
  
• If it was up your ass, you'd know it
  
• We just called my sister to sing "Leaving on a jet plane". Thanks for the inspiration. Hehe.
  
• Cksw
  
• I love waffles
  
• You escaped without a hug. Jerk.
  
• I think you're wonderful. That is all.
  
• That's coz she wasn't raised on irony like us
  
• I'm scared to talk to you because I suck, so I'm doing this instead. Good to see you, love.
  
• mad horseshoes! come on down!
  
• You've got nice eaves.
  
• Did you know that bryan and ryan share a birthday? and that I am kinda into the new avril record?
  
• Move 2 raleigh
  
• You made me cry.
  
• Best cd yet. Hands down.
  
• Lucy fucker.
  
• If we're still doing lunch tomorrow, you better call and wake me up!
  
• Daaaaaaang. the Hardees in Martinsville ain't on fire no more.
  
• Baby pool party at vince and whitney's at 3. bring something to drink you yur swimmin' costume. call for directions.
  
• whisper in my mouth
  
• (you're like an) oak tree
  
• I called you, jerk. What gives?
  
• ...violently erotic
  
• What's your tomato basil soup recipe?
  
• I'm listening to fox in the snow, which makes me think of you
  
• I just got hit on by a 21 year old while studying at denny's. he had to leave when his dad came over to get him.

Many of these are from the same two or three people, and many of them have some reference to some joke, but it's sort of fun to share them with folks completely out of context. For the record, I have no idea what "cksw" means.

Here's my favorite, which came after I failed to return a large number of voice mails and text messages:

• Are you hibernating, watching hockey and drinking guinness, growing a beard and reminiscing about Throwing Muses shows past?

That's it for now. I'm also going to immediately work on a post about my latest Scrabble tournament.

Now playing:

Beta Band The Three EPs

...

...

Ten thousand dancing girls kicking cans across the sky

Yes, I'm still alive.

I haven't been around these parts lately, and I'm hoping that that'll change. I'm not going to make any promises, as all of my promises heretofore have been empty. However, I'll try to keep this thing alive.

The other day at work, we played a fun game that reminded me of something I did on this page a few months ago. Way back in October of aught-five, I played a band name game where you mash band names together to get things like

G Love & .38 Special Sauce
or

Busta LeAnn Rimes

That whole post is here, and it was inspired by a post I read at a friend's blog here.

Anyway, the new game is to combine the name of a band with the name of a fish. Here's some of the better ones we came up with (it helps to say some of them out loud):

Cod Stewart

Koi Division

Tuna Live Crew

Skinny Guppy

Nine Inch Whales

Carp Shoot Carp

No Trout

Backstreet Kois

Squid Vicious

Catfish Power

Eel O

My Life With the Thrill Krill Cult

Belle and Sea Basstian

Ase of Bass

Public Anemone

Betta Band

Moray-ssey

The Housemarlins

Salmon Dave

Barry Minnowlow

Then, because we really wanted to be able to use this one, we stretched the rule to allow the use of an album title. That's a whole nother can of worms, but the one in question was

Flounder Than Bombs

Any additions to this list are welcome.

now playing:

Explosions in the Sky All of a Sudden I Miss Everyone