Five Questions, April 2018

Joe answers five questions that he wondered aloud to himself throughout the month.

1) Why did they change the highway signs on I-676, from saying that I-95 North heads toward "Trenton" to saying that I-95 North heads toward "New York"?

I fucking hate New York so it was rough seeing the name of that shitty one-horse town on a Philadelphia highway. But apparently, there is some serious construction work going on up north, where they are "closing a gap" in I-95. When the project is complete, 95 won't go anywhere near Trenton. That strip of highway previously known as I-95 will be renamed I-295, and I-95N will go straight to New York, not to Trenton. Fucking New York.

2) Do pharmacies keep EVERY prescription in the back, or do they have to special order each one as the orders come in??

The answer is boring, and it's a little bit of A and a little bit of B. I mean, obviously, they don't have EVERY prescription in there, but pharmacies know what are the "hot sellers" and keep a bunch of those, and then special order the rest. This guy on the internet seemed to know what he was talking about. I couldn't find anything about the process of pharmacies ordering special meds.

3) What is the story behind the name of the Vegas strip club Spearmint Rhino???

Pam and I always used to laugh when we passed this strip club in Vegas. It's such a silly name for a topless bar. Our theory was that two strippers opened the place originally: a stripped named Spearmint and a stripper named Rhino. Alas, the answer is more pedestrian than that. The original Spearmint Rhino opened in 1989 next to a restaurant called Peppermint Elephant, so they chose a play on words as their nomenclature.

4) Why does the Pearl Jam album Ten have eleven tracks????

I've been making good on a New Year's resolution to listen to more older music this year instead of just music that has recently come out. So last week I got my hands on a copy of Pearl Jam's most famous grunge album, Ten. I was surprised to hear, however, that there are ELEVEN tracks on the album. I always assumed that the name of the album was just a simple description of how many songs the album was comprised of. Not so! Apparently, Pearl Jam's original name was Mookie Blaylock, after the NBA basketball player. To honor Mookie, they named their debut album after his jersey number.

5) What the FUCK is the deal with that lady who keeps yelling "LET'S go PHIL-lies!" in the background of every goddamn Phillies radio broadcast, for the whole fucking game?????

I wish I had the patience to record a snippet of this bullshit on the radio and post it here, but if you wanna hear it, you're gonna have to just turn on 94 WIP during a home Phillies game. There it is, overlapping with Scott and Larry, the incessant squawk of someone yelling the same thing over and over and over. We get it!! Let's go Phillies!! Yes, we know!! It's like fucking nails on a chalkboard.

I went on /r/phillies to try to figure out what this lady's fucking deal was. And... whoops. There's evidence to suggest that the person yelling is not an adult woman, but is, in fact, a special needs child. The person I was yelling "SHUT THE FUCK UP!!!" to in the car while listening to the radio was a child. Now I feel bad. I suppose he can yell whatever makes him happy. I'll endure.

YEAH BUDDY

I just broke my high score on Tetris. Here's my old high score. And now the new one:

Last time I posted here about a Tetris score was the night before I started a new job. It was an important day in my life. I'm posting this now in the hopes that I am again posting the night before a very important day in my life. Let's go baby! Let's do this shit! Daddy beat Tetris, it's time to come out now!!

The Albums That Don't Matter: Trout Mask Replica

Trout Mask Replica

Captain Beefheart and His Magic Band

1969

There are albums out there that are worse than Trout Mask Replica. Plenty of them. But no other terrible album is history has duped more people into thinking that it's actually good. Trout Mask Replica is a bad album, and you are either a phony or you are mentally deranged if you claim that you like it.

Let the record show that this is NOT one of those times where I listen to an album once and make snap judgments. For a great example of that bullshit, check out the "scathing review" I gave a country album that I listened to once and then called it a day. That's not fair.

But I will put my hand on a copy of Infinite Jest and swear to you this: I know Trout Mask Replica. I've listened to this album at least 100 times in my life. I'm not a spring fucking chicken when it comes to this shit. You can trust me when I say that this album is garbage, because I know this garbage well. I've been smelling this garbage for over a decade.

I guess I should explain Trout Mask Replica for the newbies here, before going off on some more hate-filled tangents. Every defense of Trout Mask Replica I've read (and trust me, there are plenty out there) has told the myth of the album's creation, so it's really not that hard to type it all out from memory alone.

Basically, in 1969, some asshole who called himself "Captain Beefheart" locked a bunch of nineteen-year-olds in a house for six months and forced them to perform carefully calculated "freeform" jazz for sixteen hours a day, every day. Like, the drummer, for example, would play this cacophonous mess for every waking moment, and then literally sleep on his bass drum, before waking up and doing it all again. It was a cult. A cult in service of creating some mad "genius" and his alleged musical opus.

Then Frank Zappa got behind the controls, pushed play, and the band banged out almost 30 songs (or, noise experiments, basically), while Captain Beefheart is in the other room, which is soundproof, like he can't even hear the fucking band, and he lays down the vocal tracks, which are only tangentially connected to the music.

Please, at this juncture, stop reading and just go on YouTube. Search "trout mask replica." The whole album is on there, in full. Just press play and see how long you make it.

Look, I don't want to overstate my hand here. I told you at the beginning that there are worse albums out there, and I stand by it. This isn't like Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music, to name one example. That album is literally just screeching noise. There's actual music here on Trout Mask Replica. If I were a Julliard-trained musician, I'm sure I could dissect these songs and tell you the musical theory behind each tune.

But I take music at face value. I don't give a fuck if something that, to my ears, sounds like jarring racket, is *ahem* achtually 15/8 time signature. 15/8 time doesn't sound like music to me. It's just fucking doesn't.

And I'm not even that guy, but Trout Mask Replica makes me that guy whenever I hear it. Remember, I defended the Voids' Tyranny, an album that Pitchfork described as the sounds of a landlord using a flashlight to find the circuit breaker in a dark basement. I'm not necessarily adverse to the idea of a challenging record, one that makes you work for the enjoyment. I mean, clearly I'm not adverse to it, I did say that I've listened to Trout Mask Replica at least 100 times. That means I worked to enjoy this record.

But honestly, the more I listened to it, the more I tried to be COOL in listening to it, the more of a phony I realized I was. I didn't like this album, no matter how many times I listened to it. Not only that, but the more I listened to, the more I started to hate it. There's no value here. Captain Beefheart is just edgy for the sake of being edgy. Trout Mask Replica is the teenager drawing swastikas on his desk in the back of the classroom. There's no purpose, except to say: "Look at what I did." It's empty rebellion.

And what pisses me off the most, the impetus for this very blog post, is just how many people are suckered into thinking they have to like this to be cool. Just this morning, Pitchfork reviewed Trout Mask Replica (because it's being rereleased on vinyl soon, you see). It received a 10/10 score. It make me roll my eyes so hard that my eyes pulled my feet through my brain.

The review is the usual spiel: wow, Captain Beefheart sounds like a genius and an asshole; if you don't like it's because you don't understand it, probably; etc.

The lyrics, which could've been written by a sixth grader, are described as "literary surrealism, yet oddly resonant." The songs that are just Beefheart reading some nonsensical poem are described as "outsider folk a cappella."  Snippets of some asshole just walking through the woods (seriously) are described as "postmodern collage of diverse sounds."

Lots of hard work is done to defend this album, is basically what I'm saying. Oh! And my favorite part of every Trout Mask Replica defense is that they all—every single one of them—mentioned fucking Matt Groening, the creator of The Simpsons. Seriously, google around for "explanations" as to why TMR is "great," and they all mention this asshole, who alleges that it's his favorite album. People have to work so, so hard to convince themselves that Trout Mask Replica is legit that they cling to the one cartoon animator who said it was his favorite, as if this is supposed to legitimize that Trout Mask Replica as an actual good album or even an actual listenable album.

I know how these people operate, because I was once one of them. Again, I've listened to Trout Mask Replica 100 times. I thought I was cool as shit for listening to this album. Like I was above everyone, like I was cultured. Like I had some secret from all the preppy kids on my school bus. But it was all bullshit. I can't make heads or tails of this any more than the football kicker or the basic bitch could. It was just something I did to seem cool.

This album caught me during a period in my life when I actually cared about trying to understand these types of albums. These days, if I had put on Trout Mask Replica for the first time, my thought would immediately be: I don't have time for this shit. There's plenty of music out there that I'll actually like and actually appreciate, why waste my fucking time listening to an out-of-tune trumpet make the sound of a cat in heat? It's stupid.

I got on the school bus one day, and I somehow ended up sitting next to an old guy who looked like a thin Mandy Pantinkin, I guess he was like training to be a bus driver or something? But anyways, this dude asks me what I'm listening to, and I tell him Captain Beefheart's Trout Mask Replica. I remember, quite vividly, that his response was: "Kids still listen to that shit?!" My interpretation at the time was that he was validating my place in the music listeners' canon. That he was acknowledging that I am carrying the torch for the "cool" music, that kids in the '70s liked this album and in the '00s I did too and that impressed people.

But honestly, looking back, I think I interpret his response differently. I see it now as him being genuinely shocked that people are still listening to this terrible music for reasons that have nothing to do with the music itself. Like, he was surprised that people are STILL wasting their time with a truly terrible album. I'm carrying the torch, sure, but the torch is of the people who care more about how they APPEAR when they listen to certain music, more so than the actual fucking music.

The day I deleted Trout Mask Replica from my iPod was a great fucking day for me. I felt like I had broken free of the shackles of Captain Beefheart, I was free from having to pretend any longer. It's not cool to listen to this album. It never was. Don't let anyone tell you differently. Bad music is bad music. Simple as that.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If this album sounds interesting, try these song to convince yourself otherwise: "Sugar 'N Spikes" and "Orange Claw Hammer" and "Hair Pie: Bake 1"

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Stray Observations

• "The Albums That Don't Matter" is not going to be an ongoing series. I just really fucking hate this album, and I wanted to write about it. Felt good to just dump on an album for once instead of endlessly trying to justify why an album is worthy of your attention.
• The other day, I mentioned that I used to have a blog, whose name I was too embarrassed to say. I'll admit now the name of the blog. "Neon Meate Dream of a Octofish." I was really embarrassed to say it because I didn't want to seem like a poser, having a blog named after a song on an album I really don't like now. But I've explained my reasoning enough above, and so you deserve to know. I even wrote a little Captain Beefheart lyric at the end of every post. It was bad, you guys.
• The story about the guy asking me what I'm listening to on the bus is a true story. It's weird what type of shit your brain holds onto. Like, I barely remember my first sexual experience, but I'm forced to remember a thirty-second conversation I had with a bus driver about fucking Trout Mask Replica?!
• The only other time I was ever asked what I was listening to on the school bus is another memory I recall quite clearly. A very cute girl from the Mount (our sister school) asked me what I was listening to. It was "Green Typewriters" by the Olivia Tremor Control. This particular song is less embarrassing than Captain Beefheart, but still, I cringe all the same. Some chick was trying to make a connection with me, and I blew it by naming some obscure indie band. I should've just said "The Rolling Stones" or something. We probably would've been making out in the back of the bus after that. Instead, she never said a word to me for the rest of my life.
• FRONT COVER: It's a man wearing a trout mask.

NEXT TIME: We go back to "The Albums That Matter" with Animals, promise!

So Appalled

I tried, and failed, to avoid writing yet another internet think piece about a mental deranged musical artist. There's enough of those out there. The world probably doesn't need one more essay about it. Every time the asshole runs his mouth on twitter, everyone runs to their music blogs and begs for clicks. We could've avoid that here on PoYB for a few reasons: no one clicks this blog; I've had the obnoxious dickhead in question blocked on twitter for years; my political opinions have already been made abundantly clear, and there's really no need to keep beating you over the head with my mantra of "trump Supporters = Ignorant Selfish Creatures."

I do have a few questions I'd like to ponder, though, against my better judgment, if you'd like to join me in the pondering.

As always, my biggest concern here is the integrity of my iPod.

The question of "Will I listen to this asshole's new album when it is (or supposedly will be) released on June 1st?" was answered the moment he tweeted #maga. Of course not! Why would I want to listen to the songs of a person that fully supports a racist cheating liar? Why would I even give that person the time of day, or the attention?

I don't even find comfort in the clear confirmation that this person who I've been calling an asshole for years is now, definitively, an asshole. I will take no pleasure in talking to the friends of mine who have spent the last half decade defending him as just being silly or harmlessly outrageous, there's no pleasure to be had in realizing that I was right all along, that this person so revered in popular culture has revealed himself to be, at best, an uninformed bootlicker.

I WANTED to be wrong. I sincerely enjoy this dickwad's previous music. I even adore some of it. LP5 is amazing, give or take a Chris Rock monologue. LP6 is a legitimate classic. LP7 was mildly disappointing but there's still a lot to love. I hated the fact that a person I didn't like was making music that I liked, but up until recently, I was able to compartmentalize it. Character flaws like a staggering lack of humility, his incessant need to steal the spotlight at the expense of others, his wild ignorance on any number of subjects, these were traits that pissed me off on a human level, i.e. they made me think he was a bad person, but I never once thought that he was an actively destructive member of society. Until he came out as a trump apologist.

So my first question, I guess, is: how does this affect my relationship with his previous discography? Should it? There are two schools of thought here. The first is that his current ideology has soiled all that came before it, and I should just delete all his albums from my iPod. As much as it would pain me to never hear LP6 in all its ragged autotuned glory ever again, it would still give me peace to not have to hear anything from this obtuse shitbag in any context.

The second school of thought, of course, is to compartmentalize yet again. There's no way he could have been a trump apologist in 2013 because such a thing didn't exist at the time. I could create two different version of this douchebag in my head, the pre-trump artist and the post-trump artist, and just simply ignore all this artist's output after November 2016.

I honestly don't know the answer here. I think I'm going to need more time. His twitter account is posted on just fucking constantly with all matters of inane nonsense, so who knows, maybe between the time I writing and the time you are reading, the dumbass has checked himself into a psychiatric ward or something, and this will all be moot.

That's another question for y'all to ponder. How seriously do we take the word of someone who is deeply mentally unwell? I'm thinking now about that Sopranos episode, where Uncle Junior is slipping into dementia, and keeps telling Tony, "You never had the makings of a varsity athlete," and repeats it often enough that Tony flips out and doesn't really talk to June for the rest of the series. People try to explain to Tony, that's not Uncle June, that's his dementia talking! He can't help it! But Tony waves that line of thinking away, and can't let go of the grudge.

So, okay, in this hypothetical scenario, we get the news that the artist in question has a mental breakdown, and checks himself into a crisis facility, complete with straightjackets and the like. And he says: "All that shit about trump, that wasn't me. I'm going crazy." What's the reaction then? Do I apologize for this blog post, and for continuously calling him an asshole? Or do I act like Tony Soprano, and say so what? He said what he said?

Again, I don't have answers for you here. I don't really want to go too far down the rabbit hole here as far as hypothetical scenarios are concerned, because music message boards have enough apologists already doing so. As if the possibility of mental health concerns is reason enough to forgive this shitbird for supporting our scumbag president. Let's cross that bridge when we come to it, forget the armchair psychology, and take this grown adult at his word for the time being.

I know. Great. Wow. Another hot fucking take from some nobody on the internet. I totally understand if you feel that way. I don't feel that great about writing this blog post either. Every time I address something even tangentially related to trump, either here or in real life, all I do is end up just getting depressed.

I become so unbelievably sad for our country, to know that the country I love so much is populated so greatly by people who just don't get it, and don't care to get it. To my dying fucking day I'll never understand how people can support such a despicable orange monster. And to know that an artist whose music I actually really liked is just as stupid as some backwoods racist hick? And to get beat over the head with it on every music publication every time he opens his yap on twitter? That depresses me most of all.

The Albums That Matter: Andrew Bird & the Mysterious Production of Eggs

Joe runs through every album on his iPod, mostly in alphabetical order, and offers some brief thoughts. Check out previous columns HERE.

Andrew Bird & the Mysterious Production of Eggs

Andrew Bird

2005

In the past couple weeks I've been doing a lot of copying and pasting, trying to bring home to PoYB every blog post I've ever written on any blog. I stopped short, though, with a blog I had started and quickly abandoned in early college. I won't even write the name of the blog here, it's so dumb. And the writing is truly atrocious. I couldn't bear to copy it all here. But fuck it, I wrote about Andrew Bird in July 2008, and so I'm gonna copy it for you below. It's some of the dumbest shit I've ever written. I'll see you in the Stray Observations for some 2018 thoughts. Good luck.

ANDREW BIRD
July 25, 2008

I've been thinking a lot about what to write for Andrew Bird. I've thought long and hard. It's been pretty tough to come up with the right words, because, frankly, Mr. Bird baffles me so much. Therefore, I'll start out with an anecdote. Bear with me.

In the summer before junior year, I met this pretty cool girl. Let's call her Andrea. Now, I met this gal, and we felt an attraction, and it felt right. I really liked this chick. Our first date was fun, we enjoyed each other's company, and I asked her out. All was well... for a while.

Unfortunately, as I got to know her better, her flaws started to show. I started to realize that perhaps we weren't meant for each other. It kept me up all night; what the hell happened? Where did those blissful hours of our first weeks go? What changed?

I guess where I'm going with this is that while the fling was frivolous, everything was sunshine and rainbows and I was happy. Once I dug deeper, though, I realized that this was not what I had bargained for. And I backed out.

Where does Andrew Bird fit in? Well, about two years ago I purchased my first Andrew Bird album, entitled Andrew Bird & the Mysterious Production of Eggs. What a great find! These songs were pretty damn catchy. Bird was different, in a good way; he utilized the violin to its full potential, and boy, could that boy whistle! Good times.

I eagerly awaited Bird's new album, in hopes of finding the same joy that I found in our first fling. No such luck, apparently, because Armchair Apocrypha was just not for me. Try as I may, this album just didn't sink in. It kept me up all night; what the hell happened? Why wasn't Andrew Bird working for me? Where did those blissful hours of Eggs go? What changed?

For the life of me, I couldn't tell you. Armchair was just incredibly disappointing. I even went back into Andrew Bird's past, and tried to discover something, anything, that could salvage our relationship. The Swimming Hour was no good. The rest of his Bowl of Fire work just didn't digest. The only sizable enjoyment I got from Bird was his cameo work in the band Squirrel Nut Zippers, but he only played a small part in that.

I'm sorry, Andrew Bird, I think our time is over. Listen though, it's not you, it's me. Really. And I'll always cherish the time we spent together, but I really do think it's time we part. Good like with everything.

~~~~~~~~~~~

If this album sounds interesting, try this song: "Skin Is, My"

~~~~~~~~~~~

Stray Observations

• Okay, so I guess I didn't talk THAT much about this album in the 2008 passage above. Armchair Apocrypha will be covered here on PoYB in a few weeks, at which point I'll go over exactly why I was wrong to make a snap judgment. Bird's Are You Serious will be right before that. So you're getting a lot of Andrew Bird opinions this spring, don't worry.
• The brief moment that I actually did spend talking about Mysterious Production of Eggs were the only accurate part. Yes, this album is catchy. Yes, he does use the violin well. Yes, the whistling is fun. This music isn't going to be selling out Madison Square Garden, but man, it's something special in its own small, strange way.
• I've never dated or even hooked up with anyone named Andrea. I don't know if this was a pseudonym for someone I actually was seeing, or just a straight-up lie. Clearly I was just vamping for time here, putting any old bullshit in a blog post to fluff my Andrew Bird "thoughts" so it wasn't one paragraph long. (And clearly, the specific choice of name is supposed to allude to the fact that I'm really talking about Andrew, not Andrea.)
  
• By Bird's own admission, most of his lyrics are nonsense. Don't bother asking, "What does he mean when he says such and such?" because you'll hit a dead end every time. "My dewy-eyed Disney bride what has tried / swapping your blood with formaldehyde / Monsters?" There's no hidden meaning here. It just sounds nice to the ears. Pretend the lyrics are just another instrument that Bird deploys, like his whistling.
• "Fake Palindromes" has a great string part that just hits so hard at the beginning of the song and sporadically throughout. So great that Pam and I used it at our wedding; "Fake Palindromes" played while we walked out of the ceremony as husband and wife. It fit so well.
• Couldn't find any interviews from 2005 in a very cursory search, but there was this short fawning review of an Andrew Bird concert, which, to be fair, does sound like something I'd really like to see.
• FRONT COVER: A drawing of a goat in a blanket (?), that, as far as I can tell, has no connection to any of the lyrics in the album. The cover was drawn by "poster maker" Jay Ryan. Yes, his primary descriptor on his Wikipedia page is "poster maker." I guess I didn't know that was a thing. But hey, somebody has to make rock concert posters, right?
• Other albums for which I will be deploying the "here's what I wrote about this album, quite terribly, in 2008" trope: Back in Black, Forever Changes, Searching for a Former Clarity, Strawberry Jam, At Mount Zoomer, and Funeral. Not sure how many of these will consist solely of a 2008 quote. I have more to say about some of those than I do Mysterious Production of Eggs.

NEXT TIME: Animals by Pink Floyd

Free Meek

I feel like I can empathize with Meek Mill.

This is such a white boy thing to do, to even think for a second that I was in a situation even remotely similar to Meek's. But just grant me a moment to explain. You are on my blog, after all. If not for the endless self-pitying college stories, then why are you even here?!

I'll make it quick, though. It's well known by this point how many times I got reprimanded by the La Salle administration for underage drinking. Getting caught with beer in the dorm room, getting caught sneaking forties into the townhouses, getting caught partying with upperclassmen and plenty of booze, etc., etc.

The punishment (as tough as it was to acknowledge at the time) was fair. I was put on probation, meaning that I was expected to not fuck up for a period of time. In addition, I wasn't allowed in any dorm building (besides my own) or any of the townhouses during a certain period of time. This was a pain in the ass, but it was ultimately fair.

I'm not perfect. I kept fucking up. The subsequent fuck-ups were smaller, but they were magnified a bit because of the probation. At one point I got caught sneaking into the Townhouses (I was extremely drunk and thought reenacting Ocean's Eleven was a good idea). At another point, I was caught drinking a single can of Natty Light in the townhouses (after I was allowed back in), and I was 21 years old at the time, but I was in the presence of underage drinkers, so it still counted as an offense.

Both of these offenses are minor, in the grand scope of things. I entered the townhouse courtyard. I drank a beer while I was 21. Stupid petty bullshit.

And you know what? I was fairly punished for those too, believe it or not. After breaking into the townhouses, I had to up my alcohol prevention sessions with my therapist to once a week (and did my best to stop drinking). After getting caught in the presence of under-21s, I was kicked off a planned trip to Ireland. Both punishments, especially the latter, fucking SUCKED.

Look at it this way, though. Mark Badstubner, the de facto Lasallian disciplinarian in both cases, could have easily expelled me from school. That was within his right to do. But it wouldn't have been right from a moral standpoint. Imagine had I been EXPELLED from school for DRINKING A BEER WHILE 21 YEARS OLD. It would have been outrageous. He could have done it! But he didn't, because expelling a student for what is ultimately a minor infraction doesn't make sense on a human level. He could have expelled me, but that would be taking advantage of the system.

You see where I'm going with this. I know the situations are wildly different when you factor in race and when you factor in the fact that you can't really compare the actual U.S. justice system to some lightweight junior college quasi "justice system." But the similarities are there enough that I feel like I can relate in some small way to Meek Mill's situation.

All you Northeast Philly racists, listen up, because here are the facts about the Meek Mill case.

When Meek Mill was eighteen years old, he was arrested on gun charges, and ultimately found guilty on seven charges. He received two years in prison, and was subsequently on house arrest. No one is disputing this as anything but a fair punishment for the crime he committed (when he was eighteen, mind you, but still, fair).

In 2012, police smelled weed in Meek Mill's car. He was held overnight, released, and not charged with any crime. At his next hearing, they ordered him to two drug tests (both clean), but still found him in violation of his probation, and was blocked from touring.

He was shortly after found in violation again for "unrestricted travel," because as a performing artist his schedule can change rapidly, and he didn't do a good enough job telling his parole officer where he was going.

In 2014, he gets a jail stint for testing positive for percocets (after getting his wisdom teeth out), tweeting negative things about his parole officer, and getting a photo taken while holding a gun. Six years were added to his probation.

In March 2017, he was accosted by a fan at an airport, and arrested. He was served summons, but the case was thrown out. No charges. No convictions. Nothing.

In August 2017, he was arrested for, basically, popping a wheelie on a dirtbike "without a helmet." In November, he was sentenced to two-to-four years in prison for "violating probation."

All this on top of allegations that Judge Genece Brinkley, who has presided on Mill's case from the beginning, is biased against him, and the reveal that Mill's original arresting officer, Reginald Graham, is on a blacklist of Philly PD officers who "should not be summoned for testimony" due to their crooked behavior.

So the question is this, when it comes to Meek Mill in 2017-18. Does the punishment fit the crime? Should a man be sentenced to up to four years in prison for riding a dirt bike? (You CANNOT add the gun charges part into the argument, because Mill was already punished for that. He was already in prison and subsequently on probation.)

Can you sentence a man to jail for four years for such a minor offense? Can you expel someone from school for drinking a Natty Light?

Like I said, there are plenty of other factors here that go beyond my stupid comparison here. Issue one: Was Meek Mill treated unfairly because of the color of his skin? Issue two: Was Meek Mill given more support because he is famous? As a white unfamous person, I am unqualified to answer either question.

But I can say that I feel very strongly that the punishment must fit the crime, and that a four-year prison sentence for petty bullshit seems like overreach. It seems like someone is taking advantage of the system. And I don't blame people for being pissed at his imprisonment.

It makes me really sad that there are so, so many racist Northeast Philly jerkoffs calling for Meek's head (or worse, calling him a "thug," which is basically a substitute for the N-word at this point). It makes me sad because clearly they don't know the facts, and just assume that he is a gangbanger who deserves to be imprisoned (and don't care enough to look up the facts because he is black).

And it makes me sad because I know the feeling a little bit, to gain that type of reputation when you're young and stupid, and to be continually judged for it, at every minor fuck up, no matter what.

The Albums That Matter: ...And Star Power

Joe runs through every album on his iPod, mostly in alphabetical order, and offers some brief thoughts. Check out previous columns HERE.

...And Star Power

Foxygen

2014

...And Star Power is a bizarre fucking album. I may be in the minority here, but I believe that that makes it a great album, too. There's no denying that the musical stylings of Foxygen are all over the goddamn place on this album. You want psychedelic freakouts? Here's "Cold Winter/Freedom" or "Brooklyn Police Station." You want tender ballads? Try "Coulda Been My Love" or "Everybody Needs Love." You want probably one of the best singles of the decade? "How Can You Really" is right there, waiting for you on track #2.

Not everything works, but that's how these types of albums go. "Revolution #9" is probably the worst song of all time but you don't see me shitting on the White Album, do you? The sheer heft of this thing, the everything-and-the-kitchen-sink mentality of ...And Star Power, that's what makes it fun! That you can go from the hillbilly stomp of "666" to the sad dirge of "Flowers" at the drop of a dime. It's neat!

The central hook in the narrative of ...And Star Power (and it's a flimsy one, as these things usually go) is that this isn't "Foxygen" playing these songs; they've created a fictional band within the album, called "Star Power." Star Power, you see, plays all kinds of wacky shit on their own radio station (also called "Star Power"). Hence the wide variety of tunes you hear on the album. This is STAR POWER throwing shit against the wall, and if you don't like it, well, that's not Foxygen's fault, now is it?!

The precedent that Foxygen wants you to think about here, clearly, is the Beatles, when they played songs as "Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band." Paul thought that creating an alter ego band would free up the Beatles to have the "freedom to experiment musically." And true, Foxygen pushes themselves sonically in a similar fashion to the 1967 Beatles: out of their comfort zone, creating sounds that may not be familiar to the audience.

But listening to ...And Star Power, I often think of another alter ego band—Pink Floyd's "Surrogate Band" on The Wall. The narrative in that song cycle is that of a band leader who isolates himself from the world. So, if Foxygen is creating an alter ego band in the same vein as The Wall, then the question becomes: From whom is Foxygen isolating themselves? Why are they building a figurative "wall"? Why are they using a fictional band to distract from the real band standing right in front of us?

The answer quite possibly could be that the band's inner turmoil was taking its toll. Here's an old article from Pitchfork, describing a since-deleted blog post from a band member, who wrote in the post that the two leads of Foxygen, Jonathan Rado and Sam France, were having large issues with each other (issues that lead to an onstage meltdown and a cancelled tour, among other concerns).

And the first four or five songs on ...And Star Power all touch on the theme of broken relationships. On a surface level, there's someone hurt by romance gone wrong, but when you look at it in the context of the band Foxygen itself, it's pretty clear that the broken relationship is between Rado and France. They are singing about themselves.

But then on track six, "Star Power" starts their own trip, and the songs of love and loss go away till the two-song coda at the end of the album. Could it be that Foxygen said at a certain point, "Fuck it, Foxygen has too many issues, let's just pretend we are band called 'Star Power' and maybe all our issues will go away"?

Possibly. Not really our business to know. But it's an interesting thought (one that no one touched on during various interviews with the band in 2014, as far as I could tell). I mean, Foxygen is still together, and put out the even better Hang in 2017. So maybe Star Power was a success in more ways than one.

This is a crazy ass album, and even if it sounds like you are going to hate it, you gotta try it at least once.

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If this album sounds interesting, try this song: "Star Power III: What Are We Good For" (I couldn't find a video of just Part III, so you're stuck with "Star Power" parts I-IV in that link. Part III starts around the four-minute mark, I believe.)

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Stray Observations

• I'm obviously not the first person to think that the volatile working relationship between France and Rado had an influence on the album's creation. The new point I'm trying to make here is that the alter ego band created here, Star Power, was itself the distraction they provided to heal wounds.
• Concerns of problems within Foxygen continued after 2014, when they tricked everyone into thinking they were breaking up by announcing a "Farewell Tour." As it turns out, they weren't saying farewell to Foxygen, they were saying farewell to their alter egos, Star Power. Gotchya!
• Does anyone else think about the drinking game Kings when they hear the countdown on "666"? Just me? Okay.
• FRONT COVER: A portrait of who I assume are France and Rado, creating music. This ostensibly to show that, NO, WE ARE NOT FIGHTING, LOOK AT US WORKING TOGETHER LIKE GOOD FRIENDS.
• Despite knowing the bare minimum about Foxygen, I'm just chock full of theories about how they operate as a band. Wait until we cover 2017's Hang, when I'll tell you all about how the scmaltzy, corny (but so, so fun) sounds on that album are a direct response to critic's reactions to ...And Star Power.

NEXT TIME: Andrew Bird & the Mysterious Production of Eggs by Andrew Bird

Click LIKE to Show My Child That You Care

I promise, this is the last time I pontificate my opinions about posting baby pictures on the internet. I know it's probably annoying, and if you are a parent, it might be borderline offensive. And my talking so much about it probably turns hypocritical at a certain point. But for one final time, let's dig in.

I think publicly posting pictures of your child on the internet is wrong. On some level, I understand why you'd want to share pictures of your child with the world. There's nothing wrong with being proud of your offspring and wanting others to feel the same as you. But posting pictures online for everyone to see is the wrong way to do it.

In my opinion, of course. And I've been known, historically, to have wrong and annoying opinions.

First, I don't believe this is fair to the child herself (using the feminine pronouns throughout because that's just easier). Your child is a human being with rights. This isn't the same as posting a picture of your dog, or your car, or your home-cooked dinner. This is a person, an American citizen, who deserves to have a say in whether their likeness is posted for all to see, even if she can't actually "say" her choice at the moment. Posting a picture of your child on Facebook is like taking a photo of a homeless person on the bus and posting it on Facebook. It's not illegal in most cases, but on some level, you know it's morally wrong, because you are posting against their will.

And furthermore on that point, you should be really concerned about what you post online now especially, with the plethora of news stories in the media about Facebook and how careless they are with your data. Even ignoring the ignoble practices of Facebook itself, think about how easy it is for other FB users to get your information and your content. Imagine how easy it would be for someone to get a picture of your child for their own nefarious purposes. Why take the risk?

Which leads me to my next point: why do people take this risk and post pictures of their child on social media? Basically, it's because they do it for the LIKES, i.e. to feel some sort of self-validation in the amount of people who respond and send their digital love. I'm not even claiming that people do this on purpose. I don't suspect many mothers of newborns are saying out loud, "wow, I hope this picture of my child in her crib will get AT LEAST 100 likes, that would be great!" I think it's more subconscious than anything. You feel better about a post, and by extension yourself, the more likes the post gets.

I've been there, I'll admit. Back when I used to post political shit on FB (I'm done, I swear! Probably!), it would sincerely feel comforting when something I would post would get 50+ likes. It made me feel like what I believed was also what other people believed. I felt part of a group, and that gave me comfort. Had that post gotten zero likes, I would've felt emotions such as: isolation, loneliness, self-doubt, etc.

So I imagine that it feels good to post a picture of your newborn child and to receive 200 likes on your Instagram post. That's self-validation. That's your friends and family confirming that they love you, and they love this child, you are not alone in this world, we are all here for you, and so on.

But the point I'm trying to make is that their feelings about your child would not change in the absence of a publicly posted photo. It's a sound assumption that your family and your friends are glad you have offspring, and think you are going to be a good mother, and all those positive feelings. The photo isn't necessary. It would be INSANE to think that if one of your friends didn't click the heart icon, that they don't care. You would literally be an insane person if you thought that. So why the picture in the first place? What's the point if not for some sort of exercise in insecurity?

On top of all this, I don't feel like posting pictures of your child is fair to your audience (though, true, this may speak more to my criticisms of social media in general, not specifically baby photos). It's tough to admit that not everyone cares about the fact that you had a kid, and that not everyone wants to see pictures of her. But these people exist, and they are following you on social media. And they don't give a FUCK.

Here's what I'm NOT saying in this point. I'm NOT saying that you have a responsibility to these people, like you should shield the fact that you have a child from people who don't care. And I'm NOT saying that it isn't easy as shit to fix this, if you are one of these people who don't care; all you have to do is click "unfollow," and the issue is resolved.

What I AM questioning is this: Why would you, as the parent, want to share you photo with someone who doesn't care? Posting a picture on Facebook is basically the equivalent to standing on a street corner and holding up a picture of your baby in random passersby's faces. You know that their reaction is going to be one of (at best) indifference, or (at worst) outright loathing. So what's the point? Why do it in the first place? Why would you do something that you know is going to elicit a negative reaction from some people? Why do something that is going to unleash negative emotions into the world? What's the point?!

Let me be clear once more: There is nothing wrong with loving your child so much that you want to share that love with everyone. I totally get that. I'm simply arguing against one specific way that people tend to attempt to share that love, because I believe it's irresponsible and morally dubious and plain fucking stupid.

There are other ways! There was a time, years ago, when the internet didn't exist, when people showed off pictures of their children that they had in their wallet. Would people get overzealous with their sharing in this manner? Perhaps sometimes. But by and large, when people showed pictures of their children, they showed them to people who asked to see them. To people who cared. They weren't walking around with a baby picture taped to their forehead.

I would be okay if, in this very specific instance, the world reverted back to how it "used to be," and we all started being a little more private with our baby photos. I think taking many photos, hundreds or fuck it even thousands of photos even, of your child is a great and acceptable thing. Go for it. Follow your bliss. You think your child is cute, so why wouldn't you want to capture her likeness as much as you can? I get it! It's just, as far as sharing those photos are concerned, how about we all calm the fuck down?

I know I have no right to pass judgment at this juncture. I'm not a parent yet. Who knows, maybe when I look into my child's tiny blue eyes, everything will change, and I'll truly feel a strong desire to post a picture of him or her far and wide on the internet. You never know!

But let's be real. I don't think the fact that I'll be bursting with joy will change my stalwart beliefs as a person.

Here's the solution that Pam and I came up with, and I'm actually pretty excited about it (excited, not because it's a novel idea I'm sure, but because it's an obvious solution to all the shit I complained about in the preceding paragraphs here). We created Google Photos accounts, and are going to be dumping all the baby photos and videos there, and nowhere else. These accounts are, by default, private. You can easily share them, though, if someone asks.

My problem isn't the sharing of baby pictures! You do you! My problem is the sharing with people who don't care and people whom you don't know. So when we start adding pictures of our cute little one to a photo album on Google Photos, and, say, my mom wants to see the pictures, then all we have to do is share the album with her, and she can look at them any time she wants (and even add her own pics!). If, for another example, one of my coworkers sincerely wants to see a baby picture, but doesn't necessarily need access to hundreds of them, well then all I have to do is pull a photo up on my phone browser from our Google Photos account, and show them the pic. Simple as that.

I'm going sleep well at night knowing that I'm not shoving baby pictures down anyone's throat, that I'm not leaving my child's photos out in the open and susceptible to various abuses, and I'm not subconsciously using my baby to feed my ego by holding a gun up to someone's head and daring them not to comment a heart emoji on the picture.

So let's let the matter rest for now. I've said my piece. I promise to withhold my judgment of you if you decide to go ahead and post pictures of your little one on Instagram. All I can do at this point is be the parent I want to be, and leave it at that.

Christ I am going to be insufferable as a dad, aren't I?

The Night That We... (bullied)

PART XX
Children Are Conscienceless
Mid-to-Late 1990s

We're in the red zone, here at the K*** household. Pam is very, very pregnant. It could be any day now. I don't know if my recent thoughts about early elementary school are connected in any way with my soon-to-be-fatherhood. Maybe in some way, exploring my early years and my and my peers' behavior as children is in some way a subconscious preparation for raising a child of my own. If I am able to understand the decisions that I made when I was eight, nine, ten years old, then maybe I will be able to impart those lessons I learned on my own child(ren).

There's one specific memory that I can't get out of my head. Probably because I've been listening to Pearl Jam's Ten a lot lately, featuring the song "Jeremy," but I've been thinking a lot about a kid in grade school who was bullied a lot. My memories are extremely vague here, so bear with me.

His name was Matt. I won't type his last name here, even though I remember it clearly. Matt was in my grade school for only the first few years. I don't recall the specific circumstances in which he transferred. It was emphatically NOT because of the bullying. There were a bunch of dicks at my grade school, but it wasn't that bad. I'm sure the kid's dad just got a job in a different town or something.

But anyway, I remember two specific situations. In the first, I participated in the bullying, and in the second, I tried weakly to redeem myself.

The first vague memory is that the bullies in our class were drawing crude pictures of Matt, or maybe they were comics or something, but anyway kids were drawing pictures of Matt in scenarios that would suggest what a LOSER he is. I don't remember specifics. I remember a mother of one of my friends finding these drawings and freaking out (but I don't remember if there was any fallout from this mother). I don't remember if I drew any, personally. I probably did, ashamed as I am to say. I certainly didn't do anything to stop others from drawing them, so that makes me complicit. I don't even remember if Matt ever found out about this shit. Certainly, even if he didn't know about the pictures specifically, we all acted like he was the person who was portrayed in the pictures: a kid you had to avoid, who you made fun of constantly, who didn't have any friends and didn't deserve any friends.

Twenty years later, it horrifies me to think I was a part of this ritual bullying of some poor innocent kid. Children are fucking ruthless and terrible and make unconscionable decisions because they just don't know any better. I didn't know any better, sure. Doesn't excuse my active or passive bullying.

I think I understood this at a certain point. Maybe by about two years after the drawings were made, I had figured out that maybe bullying wasn't the right thing to do. I dunno. The day that's important here, the one that matters in the context of this "The Night That We" blog post, is a day in maybe second or third grade, featuring the only other concrete memory I have of Matt.

We were playing a lunch mom-supervised game in the schoolyard, the one where you put an object (a chalkboard eraser, in our schoolyard) in the middle, and line up students on each side, and each student gets a number, and when the lunch mom yells out a number, one student from each side runs out and grabs the object and brings it back to their side. So I'm lined up on one side, with like ten other kids, and on this day in particular, Matt decides he wants to play.

Matt steps up to the line. In response, everyone else runs away, yelling "Ew!" and etc. I guess it was my guilty conscience, or we had a particularly strong religion class that day or something, but I didn't run away like everyone else. I stood my ground. I walked up to Matt and said "hey, how's it going man?"

I wish I could say that me and Matt became friends, or that everyone else took my lead and came back to the game, or that I continued to ignore the bullying and at least treat the kid like a human being, but the memory ends cold, right there after I approach him and say what's up. I don't even think I got any adjacent bullying from anyone who saw what I did.

I'm not saying this small moment made up for any other heinous shit I did prior. I acknowledge now that I didn't do enough. It's not enough to just stand there and say Hey. If I was truly standing up to bullying, I should've shit on my friends at school who were picking on Matt. But I didn't.

All in all, the picture I'm painting here of the bullying at Presentation B.V.M. seems pretty tame to some of the other shit you see (seriously, just google "bullying" and hit "News" to see some terrible stories). I don't recall physical violence, for instance. I just remember actions that isolated Matt, that were intended to make him feel alone, to make him feel worthless.

And at this point, I don't think there's anything constructive I can do to resolve this issue. I asked my Mom the other day about Matt, hoping that she had some insight regarding the bullying, what had eventually happened to Matt, etc. She couldn't remember much more either.

I tried to look him up on Facebook the other day, and I found someone who I'm 95% sure is him. If it is, then it looks like Matt is doing okay. There's a limited amount of content on his profile that is public, but from what's on there, it looks like he is a normal 29-year-old guy just like me. He talks about hanging out with friends and drinking and etc., all the normal shit that a late-20s white male would usually talk about on social media. I didn't see any scars from the bullying he was at the mercy of in the '90s.

I talked briefly with a good friend of mine the other day about his bullying experiences, growing up far away from Philly. My buddy had been bullied pretty badly too, probably worse than Matt was. I asked my friend if it would be helpful to receive some type of apology all these years later from his previous bullies. It sounds like, in his experience, all that would do is open up some old wounds. It would be helpful to no one.

So my options, at this point, are limited. I will just have to live with the idea that I played a part in making a child's life miserable for a couple years.

There is one important thing that I promise you that I'm going to try to do. I have to make sure my own children don't continue the cycle.

My two memories of Matt tell me two things. One, children can do extremely shitty things. Two, they do eventually develop somewhat of a conscience. One of my roles as parent, an integral one, is going to be a shaper of consciences. I have to get it through to my kids early and often that all human beings are worthy of love and respect. That's it's not fucking right to treat someone like they are inhuman. That bullying demeans and hurts.

I brought up that second memory, the one where I briefly tried to make peace, only to point out that it IS possible for children to know what's right. I wasn't trying to make excuses or try to paint myself in a good light. I acknowledge my backpedaling during that one schoolyard lunchtime was NOT ENOUGH. But I need to hold on to that shit. That day is an important one in my life because I need the hope that my children are going to see what's right too. And hopefully earlier than I did.

They don't teach you this shit in birthing classes. They don't tell you how to teach your kids how not to be a bully. How to have a fucking conscience. I feel anxious, sometimes, I'm not gonna lie, the whole having-a-baby thing. I feel anxious and worried that I'm gonna be a shitty parent. That I'm going to drop the ball when it comes to teaching my kids the things that matter. I feel like I'm flying by the seat of my pants here.

There's no stopping this train, though. The baby is coming soon. Any fucking day. And the challenge begins on Day One. For all my anxieties and fears and doubts, I'm ready. I'm excited. I'm nervous, sure, but fucking pumped too.

Matt, if you're reading this, I'm sorry. I'm going to do better for the next generation.

Child(ren), if you are reading your dad's blog right now, please take my words to heart. Please don't make the same mistakes I did.

The Albums That Matter: ...And Out Come the Wolves

Joe runs through every album on his iPod, mostly in alphabetical order, and offers some brief thoughts. Check out previous columns HERE.

...And Out Come the Wolves

Rancid

1995

I don't remember where or when or under what circumstances I purchased ...And Out Come the Wolves. It certainly wasn't in 1995. It was probably in like 2009 after I read some bullshit about it online, and I probably had an iTunes gift card burning a hole in my pocket.

But I do remember hearing about Rancid a lot earlier than that. This was almost certainly 1995, or maybe a couple years after, tops. I walked to school every day with a good friend, who at the time was somewhat into skateboarding, I guess, and so he was into the same kind of music as your prototypical punk skateboarding kid. Bad Religion, Green Day, the Offspring, um, basically the bands that are listed on this album's Wikipedia page?

It's possible, even, that I may have heard a little Rancid back in my grade school days from my friend or his skateboarding friends, but if I did, it didn't make an impression on me. Music in general didn't, so that's nothing against Rancid. I just didn't listen to that much music on a serious basis. Also, I couldn't even ollie on a skateboard, so I certainly wasn't listening to that scene's music.

Okay, that's enough flaccid reminiscing. Let's talk about the album, because that's why we're here, right? Here's what happens every time I put on ...And Out Come the Wolves: by the fourth song, I'm ready to declare this one of the best albums ever; by the fourteenth song, I'm looking at my watch, trying to figure out how much more of this I have left.

Yes, this is a nineteen-song album. Often times, there's nothing wrong with that. And it still clocks in at less than an hour, so it's not even overkill or anything. But the overarching issue I have here is that a lot of those nineteen songs sound pretty same-y. I've seen this described as the "London Calling of '90s punk," and I really couldn't disagree more. This album and London Calling have the same amount of songs, but only London Calling does a good job mixing up the sounds and styles and is able to keep it fresh. On London Calling, we go from punk to quasi-disco to reggae, etc. On ...And Out Come the Wolves, we go from punk to punk to punk.

And honestly, there are worse things in the world than nineteen punk songs from the '90s. If all these songs sound the same, at least the one song is a good one!

But seriously, they all start sounding the same the deeper you get into this album. I think the issue is the mostly all have the same structure. Every song starts out telling the possibly true story of life as a punk rocker, and eventually, in every song, we get to the chorus, which is some Bold Punk Rock Statement that is repeated a couple times with gang vocals. It's like every song's chorus is competing to see what's gonna end up tattooed on some seventeen-year-old teen's crusty forearm. Here are some examples of choruses on this album:

• The 11th Hour: "Do you know where the power lies?"
• Time Bomb: "That boy's a time bomb!"
• Listed M.I.A.: "I'm checkin' out / I'm listed M.I.A."
• Ruby Soho: "Destination unknown!"
• Journey to the End of the East Bay: "To the end, to the end, I'll journey to the end!"
• Disorder and Disarray: "Crucifyyyyy me!"
• As Wicked: "As wicked as it may seem!"

It keeps going, you guys. It doesn't end. I'd wager that they could've pulled this trick TEN times on any given album, tops. Any more than that is excessive. Playing basically the same song NINETEEN times on an album is insulting. It's too much.

I guess this is just me, nitpicking. Between this blog post and the one I wrote for Amnesiac, I guess this column is just turning into Joe typing out his minor criticisms and calling it a day. I'm sorry. Let's just say that ...And Out Come the Wolves is a good album in small doses, and leave it at that, before I start to sound any more like an asshole.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~

If this album sounds interesting, try this song: "Roots Radical"

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Stray Observations

• I recently read Tranny, a semi-autobiography by Laura Jane Grace of Against Me!, and she had some very kind words to say about Rancid in the book. Basically, she talked about how, when they all toured together for Warped Tour, Rancid were kind of the oldheads on the tour, but that they looked after the younger bands and treated them kindly and helped them out and whatnot. So based on this very anecdotally-based information I now have, I have no reason to believe that the members of Rancid aren't cool dudes.
• Also, in Tranny, Grace talked a lot about her band's internal struggles when it came to the decision to sign to a major record label, which I thought was some great insight into a part of the music industry that I don't know much about. The album's title, ...And Out Come the Wolves, actually refers to the fact that Rancid, at the time during the creation of this album, was being schmoozed by a bunch of major record labels, and so I guess the band thought of them as wolf-like in their predatory nature. Rancid, according to their Wikipedia, has remained on independent labels their entire lifespan, so I guess they've been able to resist the wolves for decades now.
• The title of the album is also a direct quote from the novel The Basketball Diaries, and the author of that book, Jim Carroll, actually reads his own passage on the album, in the song "Junkie Man." I've always thought that this spoken word passage was by far the dumbest part of the album, but maybe if I ever read (or watched) The Basketball Diaries, I'd feel different.
• FRONT COVER: A mohawked punk boy with his head down around his knees, sitting on the steps. This is apparently a tribute to the punk band Minor Threat's s/t EP.
• I cannot say for sure whether any of the above tale from mid-1990s Joe K*** is true.
• I try not to read any retrospectives for albums online until I'm done saying what I have to say here. And so, now I'm done writing, and I've read the 20-year-anniversary article for Wolves on Stereogum, and the great Tom Breihan pretty much disagrees with everything I've written above, and, as always, says it a lot better than I ever could. Check it out.

NEXT TIME: ...And Star Power by Foxygen

PoYB from the Vault: Joe's New Autumn?

In honor of transferring all my old posts from a now-defunct blog, Joe's New Summer, to my current-and-forever blog, Puke on Your Birthday, I now present you with a draft that I found on that Wordpress account that I never ended up posting. Written the day after Labor Day, it looks like I had the stupid idea to try to continue the blog through the autumn months, continuing to do "new" things each day. Suffice it to say, that project did not get off the ground. It did yield one terribly emo blog post for us, though, so enjoy that while I type away and try to bury this as quick as I can.

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Autumn, Day 1: I Have Never Listened to a Band Premiere Their Album Live via Radio (or, Autumn Begins)

I was sincerely depressed all day today, for many reasons, only a few of them tangible. It happens every once in a while, my self-esteem drops pretty low and I'm moody and my face hangs like a droopy dog. It usually takes crawling into bed and just trying again the next day to shake it.

I could chalk it up to the weather, I guess. Autumn hit Philly like a ton of bricks this week, cool and crisp and not a hint of summer. The figurative idea of summer was gone too, what with Labor Day ending, with all the kiddos back to school (clogging my commute), and with this blog ostensibly ending. I made no mistakes yesterday in reaching the conclusion that I was glad summer was over, but, maybe there was something deeper inside of me that hates this time of year. Summer means freedom (this is a feeling leftover from years ago, when I was actually free during the summer), and summer's end meant the end of that freedom. I guess. I don't know.

It was probably just me being a sad sack and thinking the worst of myself. I was being mostly sarcastic in my Adaptation. piece to (poorly) mirror some of the main motifs of the movie, but that self-hatred was based on something real, for sure. I do feel like my body is deteriorating. I do feel like I'm a worthless asshole sometimes.

Honestly, lately I've been starting to feel a new sensation. I've been starting to feel like a supporting character in my own life. I don't know if those feelings are legitimate, and I'm not going to debase myself and ask my friends if they even give a fuck about me, because I don't want to put them in uncomfortable situations. I just feel like I'm drifting apart from everyone. I feel rudderless. I feel like I lack purpose in my life.

Okay, I'm taking a step back off the ledge. Don't be alarmed. I really do feel these things, but I'm self-aware enough to at least know that there's a chance this is just me being an idiot. Just because I'm too sad today to open my eyes and see the goodness in my life doesn't mean it's not there.

If this all just seems like me ranting, then you're probably right. I'm just trying to paint a bigger picture of my day today. It sucked. Nothing happened at all except that I went through my whole work day in a malaise and then I got home and laid on my couch and I didn't get up.

So it was a good day to listen to the National.

The National are one of my three favorite bands all-time. I always felt like Matt Berninger, the lead vocalist and lyricist, was always a half-step ahead of me in terms of where I am in life. He offers a little preview of my life to come, if you will. I listened to Boxer, an album about walking around feeling useless and trying to find a purpose in life, right before I started to reach the end of college and really experienced those feelings for the first time. I listened to Trouble Will Find Me, an album about being disillusioned by the concept of domestication, and trying to find joy in what you previously thought was tame or boring, right before I got married and started a family.

And now here we are with their new release, Sleep Well Beast. I usually wait until the actual release date to listen to an album, but I felt like the circumstances required me to listen to this album today. I needed it.

On top of that, the National were playing Union Transfer (for my money, the best venue in Philly), and XPN and NPR were co-hosting a free streaming event for all those who wanted to listen to the band perform on their computer (and you can still listen to it if you want!) And this would be the very FIRST time the band performed the album in full. It was pretty cool!

It was great hearing the National play live, as I had never had the opportunity before. The band was tight, and Berninger was modest and bashful at times, but killed every song.

It made me feel better. And worse, I guess. It fit my mood just right, is what I'm trying to say. I needed to hear this album on a shitty day such as this.

And there will be plenty of shitty days in the future! Because hey, the blog continues! I know I made a huge fucking deal yesterday about ending this blog, but I can't bring myself to do it. Those feelings of being directionless, of feeling I have no purpose? Writing here would sometimes temporarily fix that. As much as I hated doing new things after a while, it still kind of felt good to write about them. It gave me something to do. It gave me a purpose for each day, at least. So I'm gonna keep going.

What's different after summer is over? Well, only two things, really. First, I'm not really gonna tell anyone that I'm still doing this. It's not like I'm gonna try to hide it or anything. If Pam comes on here months from now and is shocked to find 40 new blog posts (hi, Pam!), then good, I'd be happy for her and for anyone else to read. I may not be the prototypical millennial, but I still crave attention online, and so if people want to read this, even though not many will, well then great. I'm just not gonna spend all autumn talking to everyone in person about how I'm still doing new things, ya feel me?

Secondly, and more crucially, I'm not going to take my "New Things" as seriously. Whereas during the summer I attempted to make each day's new thing special, and new in a very broad way, there will be no such attempts in the Autumn. If I get to the end of the day, and I have to pick something that happened to me randomly, or pick something that I usually do but did today differently, or otherwise just have to force that square peg through a round hole, I'm gonna do it.

For example, by Thursday I should be able to finish the first season of BoJack Horseman. Who knows, that might be what I write about on Thursday. During the summer, I wouldn't have felt that that was good enough, because I've finished first seasons of TV shows before, just not specifically this particular show. I wanted to do things that were new on every level. I didn't always succeed, but that's what I tried to do.

No, this autumn, the new things are a means to an end. In other words, the blog comes first, and I am doing things because I want to write about them. This, as opposed to doing this because I want to do them, and then having to write about them afterwards.

So I guess that makes another difference in Summer vs. Autumn. This season, you'll probably see a lot more words in every post, since the whole point of my blog, now, is to write. And since I presume no one will be reading (and no faux pretense that anyone is reading), there will be less variations as far as how my posts are constructed. Gone (probably) will be posts that feature a single youtube video, or posts like the Spin Class one where I wrote very little for (attempted (failed?)) humorous effect. Nah, if this slowly just becomes a public journal for me, then I'll be writing a lot. Even if what I write about is only barely tangentially related to the "New Thing" of that day (like my Candy Crush post, for example, I wanna do more shit like that).

So anyway, alright, fuck it, thanks for reading. We'll see how long this blog can go. At least I'm getting some writing in, and ultimately, I do enjoy writing, even if no one is reading. If you are reading, for some fucking reason, thanks for doing so.

Love,
Joey

Am I a Bandwagon Fan?

I'm asking this question during the NBA playoffs, which our hometown 76ers are a part of for the first time in a while. I consider myself a fan of the 76ers, because they are from Philadelphia, but I maybe watched three full quarters of basketball through the whole season. I'm not a diehard fan, to be sure. When the playoffs started, though, I started to actively watch the Sixers games (the two so far, anyway). It's not like I didn't care about the team before the playoffs, but once the playoffs started, I CARED.

So does this make me a bandwagon fan? There's nothing fucking worse than a bandwagon fan, and it's something I'd like to avoid being if I can.

Urban dictionary, our go-to source for all slang, defines this term as: "a fan of a team simply because they are the reigning champions/have the most championships/doing the best at the moment. The second these fans notice that they're team is starting to do poorly, they'll jump ship and hop on the bandwagon of a different team that is doing well. As a result, they will have little to no knowledge of their current team and the true fans of said team will hate them for it."

There's a lot to unpack there. It's basically stating that three things have to be true in order for a fan to be a "bandwagon fan." 1) There's no history in your fandom, you are just rooting for a team because they are good, you weren't with them when they were bad, i.e. you didn't EARN the right to root for this team; 2) Your fandom is weak, so much so that when the team is bad again, you start rooting for another team that is doing well; 3) You don't know much about the team, all you know is that they are performing well, you don't really know the intricacies about what is MAKING them win.

I think this definition does a good job at explaining the extreme examples of bandwagoning. Here's one of those extreme examples: A guy in New York, whose parents are Mets fans, gets wrapped up in the hubbub when the Yankees make the World Series. He doesn't know much about baseball, but he goes out and buys a Yankees jersey (an official MLB jersey, not a knock-off). He's there for the parade. His Facebook statuses are Yankees this and Yankees that. He can't name a single starting pitcher. The next season, the Yankees finish 3rd in the AL East, and he hasn't watched a single inning.

Clearly, in this case, this guy is a bandwagon fan. But according to the Urban Dictionary definition, there are a couple things he could've done to avoid being a bandwagon fan.

Say if he didn't give a shit about baseball before September, before the Yankees won the pennant, but when he finally did commit to the fandom, he learned every player's name, read about the history of the Yankees, became familiar with the pros and cons of each player and how they should be used in certain situations. If he did all this, even though the history isn't there, he's caught himself up, and is no longer a bandwagon fan.

Or, let's say he did the opposite. His whole life, gun to his head, he'd say he was a Yankees fan. He doesn't really watch baseball too much (life gets in the way, you know?). He doesn't know what a balk is, he can only name two starting pitchers and the star first baseman and shortstop. He owns a T-shirt with the Yankees logo on it that he wears to bed sometimes. His support is there. It's moderate at best, but it's there. And so the playoffs start, and there are the Yankees, in prime position to go to the World Series. He decides to watch every game of the ALDS series against the White Sox. He isn't a bandwagon fan, because it's not like he all of a sudden became a Yankees fan. He's just decided to care a little more.

I could keep going here and name infinite examples of people how are probably not bandwagon fans. The more examples I name, a central idea starts to form. My theory on avoiding bandwagoning:

It's okay to be as much a fan as you want to be. It's okay to increase or decrease how much you are a fan in certain scenarios. It's okay, this fandom adjustment, because throughout a season, there are times when the sport calls for an increase or decrease in your intensity of fandom. But in order to avoid bandwagoning, your change in fandom must directly correlate to what the sports team is currently calling for.

An example, maybe a long one.

I've always been an Eagles fan, but moderately. I watch them on TV because there aren't too many games in general, and because of that, the games always feel like an "event," like you should be watching with a group of people at a friend's house or a bar. But in August of 2017, I committed myself to watching or listening to every Eagles game that season. And last year, I missed maybe three or four quarters total (I work Sundays, I did my best). I enjoyed doing it too! I didn't follow them super intensely. Like, I actively disliked discussing them during the week because I felt it was overkill, and I definitely didn't plan on reading every Philly.com article about them in the off-season. But if a game was on, I was there.

My intensity of fandom increased an appropriate amount because the need for this increased as well. The Eagles went from playing bullshit preseason games to playing meaningful regular season games, and I went from not caring at all to caring enough to watch every game.

Had I gone out and bought an authentic NFL Eagles Wentz jersey last July, THAT would be being a bandwagon fan. That would have been increasing my fandom WAY more than what was called for at that juncture.

The Eagles continued to do well, and kept winning, and I kept watching. There reached a point when I enjoyed watching the Eagles games so much that I was also enjoying reading about the team on the weekdays in between games. I was comfortable understanding why certain players did certain things on the field, got a sense of certain plays and certain positions, learned most of the players' names. And it became clear, the more the Eagles won, that they would have a legitimate chance at making the playoffs and possibly going deep. So Pam bought me an Eagles hoodie, and I felt comfortable wearing it.

The purchase of the hoodie was appropriate at this point. The Eagles regular season was only going up up up. The Eagles' performance on the field dictated an increase in fandom. And so I increased my fandom an appropriate amount; I went from a fan who listened to every game to a fan who listened to every game while wearing an Eagles hoodie. This was not bandwagoning. The increase in fandom correlated to the amount that it SHOULD increase.

I moved up a step. Bandwagoning would mean, in other words, if you skip steps. If you didn't watch a single game until Week 14, and then only when the Eagles clinched a playoff spot did you go out and buy an Eagles jersey, at THAT point, you'd be a bandwagon fan. But if you didn't watch a single game until Week 14, and then at that point you simply started watching the games because you wanted to root for the Eagles, then you would NOT be a bandwagon fan. You appropriately moved up a step. The Eagles were calling for your attention, and so you gave it to them in an appropriate (i.e. not overstepping) way.

I could keep going with this overlong example, but I think you get the point. You can adjust how much you are a fan, but only in the appropriate amount.

All this to finally answer the question presented in the title of this post. Am I a bandwagon fan? Before I overthought it here while typing all this out, I was presenting myself to friends as a bandwagon fan of the Philadelphia 76ers. But if you're going by what we discussed here, then I don't think that's necessarily true. I have watched the 76ers a little bit in the past. I have read about them a good amount on CrossingBroad, to the point where I am familiar with the players on the team, and the value of their respective contributions on the court. I'm not clueless. And since the 76ers are in the playoffs, the situation calls for an increase in my fandom. So I did that, and I started watching the games. I'm not presenting myself as a diehard fan. I didn't go out and buy an Embiid jersey just to do it. But I care, and I think I earned that right without be considered a bandwagon fan.

I'm not saying that anyone even accused me of being one, besides myself. Calling myself a "bandwagon Sixers fan" was, I see now, just a defense mechanism. I'm not a Sixers encyclopedia, I didn't watch too much this season, I certainly didn't watch ANY game when they were a ten-win team. And I didn't want to get called out for any of this, and so I preemptively called myself a bandwagon fan.

But that was just typical Joe K*** self-deprecation. I'm comfortable to admit now that I'm just a regular fan. I want the Sixers to succeed. I shouldn't be embarrassed to root for the team. And you shouldn't either. Let's root for the home team.

You just don't have to go overboard.

The Albums That Matter: Amnesiac

Joe runs through every album on his iPod, mostly in alphabetical order, and offers some brief thoughts. Check out previous columns HERE.

Amnesiac

Radiohead

2001

Is it fair to say that Amnesiac is an also-ran, a glorified B-side compilation, the ugly stepbrother to one of the most revered albums of the 21st century? I honestly don't know. But the fact remains that Amnesiac will always be viewed by many as a compare/contrast exercise with Kid A.

Both albums (Kid A in 2000, Amnesiac in 2001) compile music created in the same studio session with the band. Since Kid A was released first, you wouldn't be wrong in assuming that Amnesiac is left with the songs that weren't good enough for Kid A. The band vehemently denies that this is the case, that Amnesiac is its own thing, and the albums shouldn't necessarily be compared that much.

But, c'mon. There really isn't that much different between the two albums, on a macro level at least. Both albums are peak internet-modem-sounding Radiohead, both showcasing Radiohead as less a rock band than as a collective of musicians making bleeps and bloops come out of their instruments.

This might sound like a harsh description, but it's one I've always felt was accurate. I'm actually pretty fond of Amnesiac, and I sincerely enjoy hearing it as a piece of music in general. But I also sincerely believe that the musical sounds that Radiohead started fully leaning into here (and the music they still make today, give or take the best parts of In Rainbows) does this band a disservice.

It would be one thing if this is how Radiohead always was. But fuck, man, listen to The Bends. Listen to how hard that shit rocks. It's still a completely Radiohead-esque sound, no mistaking that, but they are able to be their weird selves and still jam. OK Computer dips a big toe into the experimental music pool. Kid A and Amnesiac cannonball right in.

There are still some genuine ROCK moments in Amnesiac (and, no surprise here, they are my favorite moments): "I Might Be Wrong," "Knives Out," the chorus of "Dollars and Cents." It's the old Radiohead, peaking its head out for some fresh air, before resubmerging into the murky technobabble deep.

But for every "I Might Be Wrong" guitar lick, there's a song like "Pulk/Pull Revolving Doors," in all its sliced-up, distorted, autotuned glory. It's fucking frustrating, is all, because I know there's a different band here, but they refuse to be what they were, what they could be.

I know! How dare Radiohead not adhere to my personal specific musical tastes?! I get that I'm wrong here. I get that Radiohead is being the version of themselves that they want to be, and they have to keep pushing in that direction, even if it isolates Bends stans like myself.

And like I said, it's not even like I dislike this album, despite the hard work I'm doing here to convince you that I do. I seriously like Amnesiac! I think that it's an album whose whole is greater than the sum of its parts. We can nitpick all we want about how trite, like, "Hunting Bears" sounds when taken on its own, but all together, Amnesiac is an interesting musical experience that really comes together the deeper you put yourself into it.

Okay, so let's answer the question we skirted around at the beginning. What's better, Kid A or Amnesiac? Because there's no getting around it; the comparison is inevitable.

I like Kid A just as much as I like Amnesiac, but I also acknowledge that Kid A is one of the most overrated albums in history. Best album of the decade? Give me a break. But it's also probably better, from a musical standpoint, than Amnesiac. BUT Amnesiac is in no way overrated. It is typically properly rated. Which in an immature way, makes me like Amnesiac more. It has less of the baggage of "this album is amazing!" that Kid A has. Amnesiac is just a weird little underdog of album. And in Kid A vs. Amnesiac, as with any other fight, literal or figurative, I'm gonna put my money on the underdog. Team Amnesiac here.

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If this album sounds interesting, try this song: "Pyramid Song"

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Stray Observations

• I didn't include "Life in a Glasshouse" in the paragraph where I named songs that "rocked," because it doesn't, really. It's jazz, not rock 'n' roll. But I want to take this bullet-pointed opportunity to say that I love "Life in a Glasshouse" and it might even make me question whether my "Rock Radiohead is the best Radiohead" theory is true.
• If anyone gets offended when you refer to Amnesiac as a B-sides compilation from the Kid A sessions, remind them that Amnesiac literally has a redo alternate version of the Kid A song "Morning Bell." And this version isn't as good. Smells like B-side to me.
• FRONT COVER: A picture of a "weeping minotaur." Yes, correct, I have no idea either. But don't worry, Radiohead always has a surface-level silly explanation for their work: "Likening London to the mythological labyrinth, [cover artist Stanley Donwood] saw the city as 'an imaginary prison, a place where you can walk around and you are the Minotaur of London, we are all the monsters, we are all half human half beast. We are trapped in this maze of this past.'" Okay, man.
• I've mentioned this before, but I fucking hate genius.com lyrics notations that just take wild stabs at a lyric's meaning. This is useless to me. It's one thing to notate what the artist themselves think the words to mean. It's another to just read the interpretation of some fucking jabroni on the internet. Amnesiac's lyrics are plastered with crackpot theories about what Yorke's obtuse lyrics truly mean. I'm not interested.
• JOE K***'S OFFICIAL RADIOHEAD LP RANKING places Amnesiac at: #5 (of 9).

NEXT TIME: ...And Out Come the Wolves by Rancid (note: SUSTO's & I'm Fine Today would've been next if the ampersand was replaced by the word "And," but it's an ampersand. Why does this punctuate mark fuck up its place in the alphabetical order, and other punctuation marks like, say, ellipses do not? Short answer: because I goddamn say so. And because that's how my iPod lists them, and it's just easier following the iPod's lead. And honestly brah if you really need to read about SUSTO that badly, I just wrote a fucking paragraph about the album four months ago.)