Party Ideas

I know that fatherhood has limited my ability to throw parties at this point—not a complaint, just a fact—but that doesn't mean I don't still enjoy trying to come up with good party themes and hoping that I can actually plan them at some point down the line. Here are five party ideas that I want to implement at some point in my life. You are invited, whenever they eventually occur.

Fancy/"Fancy" Food Tasting and Alcohol Pairing Dinner Party

This party takes the idea of a "food/wine pairing" gathering and half-turns it on its head. Everyone has to bring a food that they made or acquired, and an alcohol that goes really well with that food (per a standardized palette). Each person would probably have to talk about each pairing as well, as verbosely and elegantly as possible, before serving the pairing to the rest of the group. The catch, however, is that only one item in the pair should be really fancy, and that the other should be cheap and humorous and ironic. But they also have to actually pair well with each other!

Some examples: A glass of 1987 Bocale Montefalco Rosso sangiovese red wine, paired with a sampling of Little Caesar's bacon-wrapped crust deep dish pizza bites; baked brie with Cranberry-pecan crumble, paired with a dram of Mad Dog 20/20 Mango over ice; Pappy Van Winkle fifteen-year family reserve whisky, paired with Wawa shepherd's pie topped with ketchup; French steak tartare aller-retour, paired with Natty Ice poured over ice with a lemonade mix rim.

The world is your oyster, as long as that oyster is paired with Vladmir Vodka soaked with Skittles.

"Drink Your Song" Party

This is a variation of a costume party, but with two guidelines for your costume. First, you have to dress up like a musical artist (no limitations). Second, you are only allowed to drink any type of alcohol that that artist has ever specifically sung about. It's as simple as that.

Some examples: If you dress up like Afroman, you can only drink Colt 45. If you dress up like Jeff Buckley, you can only drink lilac wine. If you dress up like Jimmy Buffett, well, you have a few options, but everyone will expect you to drink only margaritas. If you dress up like a guy from UB-40, you have to drink red, red wine. If you dress up like LMFAO, or Nick Jonas, or Liam Gallagher, or Lorde, or etc. etc., you'll be limited to champagne. There are thousands of possibilities, but this is a time to get creative, and hopefully drunk too.

"Non-Surprise Surprise" Party

I can't tell if this would be mean-spirited at all. I think it depends on the who the guest of honor is, so you have to have someone in mind who can take a joke. An extended, mostly unfunny joke. This is how it goes.

You create a Facebook event, inviting everyone to celebrate someone's birthday, and you say that it is a surprise party. Make that part explicit—NO ONE SHOULD TELL THE BIRTHDAY BOY, IT'S A SURPRISE! Except, then you go ahead and invite the birthday boy to the party via Facebook. Naturally, he'll be confused. He may even text you, or post on the event page, "Hey, were you supposed to invite me to this event?"

Ignore him. If he leaves the event out of a supposed courtesy, re-invite him. Make sure everyone else is in on the "joke," and have people write things on the event page like, "I CANNOT believe that [he] has no idea about this party yet!" Keep this joke going as long as you can.

On the night of the event, text him and make up a really convoluted and thin excuse to get him to the party. Deny that there is a surprise party, even though he keeps insisting that he knows about the party. Follow through as if you can't hear him say this. Take him to the party. Make sure everyone is there, sitting in the dark, waiting. When the birthday walks in, yell "SURPRISE!" as if every single person there doesn't know that it isn't actually a surprise.

I dunno, it sounded funnier in my head.

Twelve Days of Christmas Party

Your basic Christmas party, except that everyone can only party in one room at a time, and each room has a theme based on the song "The Twelve Days of Christmas." Most of the themes in each room will naturally be drinking related, but not necessarily. The party must move from one room to the other in the same order that the song goes. Each room's theme can be decided by the host, who can get as creative as they'd like. Here is an example of a party I'd throw, if I had the will and the means:

1. A partridge in a pear tree: We start in the living room, where we all just hang out, drinking pear ciders.
2. Two turtle doves: We move to the master bedroom, where this nature video about the mourning dove is being played on the TV, and everyone has to double-fist beers from Naked Dove Brewery.
3. Three French hens: Then we're off to the kitchen, where appetizers are served—chicken salad, lightly dusted with McCormick chicken seasoning, served on Chicken in a Biskit crackers. Those ballsy enough to do so may also pay tribute to the hen by cracking a raw egg into their beer and then chugging.
4. Four calling birds: It's off the basement for the next two themes, where first we play a rousing game of Thumper, except your sign has to be a bird call instead of a hand gesture.
5. Five golden rings: You remain in the basement for a quick beer pong tournament, one loss and you're out, each team has only five cups.
6. Six geese a-laying: Head into the backyard for a midnight picnic, where everyone lays on blankets, relaxing under the stars, and cooling down after a rousing couple of drinking games. Goose Island Brewery beer encouraged, but not necessary. (Winter jackets may be required, as this party will most likely take place in December.)
7. Seven swans a-swimming: We head up to the main bathroom of the home, where the seven biggest losers of the drinking games are given bathing suits and are forced to slap the bag while they stand in a running shower.
8. Eight maids a-milking: Immediately after exiting the bathroom, you open up the hallway closet, where you find a cooler full of pitchers of white russians. Everyone does a shot. There is another cooler full of fancy cheeses, plus a cutting board, knife, and loafs of fresh bread. Another cocktail hour.
9. Nine ladies dancing: Head back downstairs to the basement for nine-minutes of loud club music (preferably Christmas-tinged club music) and a strobe light. Go crazy.
10. Ten lords a-leaping: I dunno, how about in the middle bedroom there is a ten-minute "power hour" of exclusively Lorde songs?
11. Eleven pipers piping: Everyone is getting a little worn out by this point, so we retire to the front porch, where multiple hookas are set up, both of the legal and non-legal variety, as well as a box of cigars (mostly Philly blunts).
12. Twelve drummers drumming: And finally, we all head back to the living room, where the TV is set up with the video game Rock Band. You can either get in on the action or just sit back and relax and chill with friends. Merry Christmas, everyone.

House Crawl

I guess this isn't technically a party idea, but a group of party ideas in one day. Basically, you'd gather some friends, rent a bus, and then take that bus to six different houses throughout the day, all over the city. At each house, the respective hosts, who prepared beforehand (and are on the bus with ya, don't worry), throw an hour-long party with a different, varying theme. One house could have a Polynesian-themed luau. One house could just be a Flip Cup tournament with a big prize. It could literally be any party you would normally throw, the only catch being that you attend that party for only an hour or two, and hop back on the bus to get to the next one.

Don't Tell Me What I Can't Do, Part VIII: The Pool Party

Welcome to "Don't Tell Me What I Can't Do," a new relatively series here on PoYB. Please first read this blog post I wrote in 2009. There, I listed 22 subjects that I would NEVER write about on this website. Here in 2019, I say: don't fucking tell me what I can't do. For a total of twenty-two posts, I will be blogging about these subjects, in striking defiance of my 20-year-old naiveté.

TODAY'S "FORBIDDEN" SUBJECT: "An account of my first boy/girl pool party"

WHY IT WAS FORBIDDEN: Not sure. It was pretty innocuous. If anything, it would almost be too boring to talk about, but I watched Eighth Grade last night, and have been thinking about my own grade school experiences, so this is as good a time as any to write it down I guess.

HOW I WILL WRITE ABOUT IT: A another entry in the "The Night That We..." column. I promise I will try to make this as painless as possible.

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The Night That We... (swam coed)

PART XXIV
The Pool Party
June 2000 (maybe)

Eighth Grade was an uncomfortable viewing experience, because it was the most accurate depiction of being shy that I've ever seen, and I empathized hard. I can sit through the most gruesome horror movies and find myself bored, but I watched in absolute terror as our pubescent protagonist made that long walk across the pool deck into the gaping maw of a coed swim party.

The absolute worst part about being a shy person—I count myself as one, at my core—is that you KNOW how to not be shy. Theoretically, all you have to do is "open up" and "put yourself out there" and "gain confidence" and suddenly you won't be shy anymore. It's so easy to say these phrases to yourself. The tough part is actually doing. Why it's so hard, shy people have never been able to explain. Kayla couldn't explain it in her YouTube videos. I can't explain it either. Some people are just built differently.

And the fucked up part is, you could even push yourself past these boundaries every once in a while, somehow grasp onto that confidence briefly, and the next day it's all gone. You not only KNOW how not to be shy, but you've done it before, and still, still you remain shy. It doesn't make any fucking sense.

I was, emphatically, not one of the cool kids in grade school. Some of it had to do with the inverse correlation between your grades and how much peers like you, sure, but it had mostly had to do with the fact that I just lacked the effortless cool that the popular kids seemed to possess. I wasn't a loser or a pariah. No one bullied me besides the occasional crack or two at my expense. I actually spent a fair share of time on weekends with the group whom I perceived as the popular crowd at the time. But for the most part, I knew I didn't belong. I was an outlier at these gatherings. I was tolerated at best.

Gaining the confidence to overcome my shyness was and is a lifelong process, but I am definitely able to pinpoint the genesis of the quest. It occurred during my first coed pool party.

Here's where this whole essay will start to sound limp. The thing about this pool party, the alleged thesis incident of this blog post, is that I barely remember any of it. Here are the things I do know. I know that it took place on the last day of school, though I don't remember what year (possibly fifth grade). I know that it occurred at my classmate Kate F.'s house. Kate lived on my block, about nine houses up if my memory serves me right. Like Kayla in the movie, I was invited more because our parents were acquaintances, less because Kate and I shared any sort of bond beyond being in the same grade. I know that the "popular crowd" was established by that year, and that most of them were invited.

And let the record also show that the party certainly came nowhere near to the horror-inducing hormonal mayhem that Kayla endured at Kennedy's house. I was nervous, sure, because I was a boy and there were girls present. But I didn't clam up.

In fact, I did the opposite. The only clear memory I have of this party is somehow gaining the confidence to start goofing off while jumping in the pool. Maybe I was yelling in a funny way, or making a funny face, or whatever. But my japes were enough to make a few of the girls laugh. That was it. That's all I remember. But the memory is burned in my brain, because for that brief, fleeting moment, I had made girls laugh, smile, appreciate me, however briefly, however insignificant the reason. I had felt what it was like to not be shy.

Though Kayla gains the temporary confidence to sing karaoke at Kennedy's party, there's actually another fictional teenager who does a better job of depicting this act of temporary non-shyness. In American Vandal Season 1, Alex Trimboli portrays a nerdy high schooler who emanates a false sense of bravado, clearly in an attempt to dispel his inherent shyness. During the Color Wars, he gives a rousing speech (set to the tune of a Drake song) to hype up his team. He said that he felt like a god that day. Yes, the dude was a liar, exaggerating his alleged hook up stories and falsifying criminal reports in order to appear the hero, but all of his actions betrayed a vulnerability at his very core. This was a shy kid who didn't want to be shy anymore. He wanted to be confident. He just took the wrong route in finding that feeling.

I can empathize with the need to escape being an introvert. It doesn't feel good being nervous around other people, being unable to communicate due to reasons you can't even understand. But there are ways to circumvent those feelings, even if it's only temporary. I learned that lesson that day in that backyard on Shelbourne Street.

Of course, it wasn't all parties and laughs and a multitude of friends from that point forward. I was still shy. I was still only an occasional and reluctant part of that social group. I was still left out. I was still unable to shed the constant butterflies in my stomach all the time. And I stayed that way for a long time.

Beyond impressing girls with my hilarious cannonballs at a swimming pool, there have been other attempts to not be Shy Joe, and some successes. For every nerve-wracking Winter Formal with a girl I liked, there were moments of clarity, when I became the "real me" and not the shy me. Those moments came more and more frequently as time went on, but I'll never escape being shy.

Alcohol, of course, eventually became my sole source of shedding the exoskeleton of sheepishness, but it can be a crutch too. Y'all saw a year and a half ago what happened when that crutch was no longer an option. I won't call it a meltdown, but let's call it a crisis of faith.

My sobriety knocked me down so thoroughly because, all of a sudden, I was that fifth grader again, struggling to interact with even my dearest friends without tripping on my words, shunned to the sidelines of even my own parties, due to my own inability to "put myself out there." I was, in other words, Kayla, getting dropped off at a classmate's house, walking across the pool deck, terrified at where I was and who I was.

My first pool party showed me how to escape this. But I can't do it every day. That's not who I am. I am shy.

98% of you will read this blog post and roll your eyes, like I'm fishing for sympathy or something, like, you've seen me at parties, you've hung out with me dozens and hundreds of times, like there's no way I can be shy. The secret's out—I've just gotten really good at hiding it most of the time. I'm constantly doing cannonballs from the deck of the pool, making funny faces, hoping that you will laugh. But in my darkest depths, I know that it's a facade, and that one day you will realize this, and turn away, no longer smiling.

The Albums That Matter: Band on the Run

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

Band on the Run

Paul McCartney and Wings

1973

There's a belief that every young (teenage, possibly angsty) Beatles fan has at some point that John Lennon wrote the badass experimental songs and Paul McCartney wrote the pussy songs that you could play in front of grandma. This notion is false, of course, but I definitely believed it at one point. One Christmas, I received both Plastic Ono Band and a McCartney greatest hits collection; hearing the guttural screams of "Well Well Well" compared to fucking "Silly Love Songs" did nothing to dispel the notion.

I'm well past such reductive thinking when it comes to the two Beatles frontmen, but I still listen to Band on the Run and think, shit man, I wish teenage Joe could've heard this one. Not that Band on the Run is necessarily "the opposite" of the "lame" reputation McCartney has. This isn't a speed metal album or experimental ambient album or anything like that. It's not like he's all of a sudden singing about fucking bitches (no, that wouldn't come until 2018) or masturbating with friends (no, that wouldn't, um, come until 2018 either). Band on the Run is still that definitive McCartney sound.

But more than anything before it, Band on the Run strikes that perfect balance between sweet melodies and biting rock music. If "Martha My Dear" is your favorite Beatles song for some reason, you'll find some shit to like here. If you think "Martha My Dear" is corny as fuck for some reason, then you'll still find a lot to like here despite yourself.

To me, a song like "Jet" is the perfect distillation of McCartney's strengths as a songwriter. It moves along at a brisk pace and might even earn a fist pump or two during the yelling of "JET!", but then after every scraggly interjection of the title, there's that classic soothing "woooo-wooo-wooo." It's catchy as shit, and it's classic McCartney. Fuck the haters.

There's a whole lot more like "Jet" on here. "Nineteen Hundred and Eighty Five" is piano-led bar band blues that's rollicking good fun. "Mrs. Vandebilt" features another McCartney trope with a "Ho! Hey Ho!" hook, but it packs enough of a punch that it ends up being compelling instead of hackneyed. Sure, for every "Let Me Roll It," you have to deal with a schmaltzy "Picasso's Last Words," but this is Paul McCartney. It's not like his reputation for corniness came out of nowhere, nor would is completely dissipate here. I'm just saying that, as a whole, Band on the Run does a great job to display what McCartney can do, and the chaff is a whole lot easier to digest when there's an equal amount of wheat.

Band on the Run is not my favorite album of all time. It didn't make me consider Paul McCartney a god like other people do. But it does a lot to dispel the notion that McCartney was the lesser of the Lennon/McCartney songwriting duo. McCartney can absolutely hold his own, and probably even bests Lennon in his post-Beatles output (i.e. fuck "Imagine"). And it gives me faith that, if I decide to move further into the murky depths of McCartney's solo discography, that I'll continue to find some shit I'll enjoy.

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

If this album sounds interesting, try this song: "Let Me Roll It"

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Stray Observations

• Band on the Run was infamously recorded mostly in Nigeria, where the Paul and Linda McCartney were robbed at knifepoint during an evening stroll. Imagine having the balls to mug Paul McCartney. Also, imagine reaching that level of celebrity and musicianship that you decide you want to record music in Nigeria because it sounded "exotic."
• ALBUM COVER: Though a prison break is more implied than outright stated in the title track, the cover depicts nine criminals in a police spotlight, looking to get away. Captured by photographer Clive Arrowsmith (absolutely no connection to the band Aerosmith besides the homonym as far as I can tell) on an old-timey camera, it features Paul, Linda, guitarist Denny Laine, and six other "well-known people," according to Wikipedia. I clicked on the link for each of the six allegedly famous people, and didn't recognize a single one. It's possible they were "well-known" in the '70s and not in the '10s. It's possible that I am ignorant of pop culture history. Probably both. (Actually, okay, I take it back. Apparently the guy who played Saruman in The Lord of the Rings is part of this group. I've never seen those movies, but I am familiar enough with the characters that this guy kind of looks familiar.)
• Band on the Run was nominated for Album of the Year at the 1975 Grammys. It lost to Stevie Wonder, but so too did everyone in the '70s, apparently. None of the songs were nominated, though Barbara Streisand and Olivia Newton-John won for Best Song and Record, respectively, so I'm thinking maybe "Jet" got robbed?! Also, Band on the Run did eventually win for "Best Historical Album" in 2012, which sounds like an honorary award but apparently is an actual competitive award that they give out?
• I thought the show itself was middling, the very definition of Netflix's "quantity over quality" priorities, but Love featured a great scene where the main guy plays a rendition of "Jet." Check it out.
• Band on the Run is the only McCartney solo album I own currently, but maybe I'll try Ram next, since apparently it has a cult following. What can I say, that greatest hits CD that I got for Christmas really, really turned me off to the idea of this guy as a legitimate solo artist. I apologize. I was wrong.
• I barely even mentioned the title track. It's... fine. You know it already. You can hear it in your head even as you are reading this. No need to expound on it.

NEXT TIME: The Wild Hunt by the Tallest Man on Earth, our next decade-best, non-alphabetical pick

TV Review: True Detective (Season 3)

***SPOILERS for all three seasons of True Detective below***

Here's a hot take: Season 1 of True Detective is way overrated. Exactly three things were great about that season of television. The first, obviously, was the acting. The second was how it layered on the gothic, bayou-style horror on top of a rather pedestrian detective mystery. The third was the insane six-minute tracking shot at the end of the fourth episode, probably one of the best moments in television in the '00s. The problem with Season 1 was that it was all downhill from that tracking shot, and what started as a creepy, supernatural mystery story ended with the villain being a mentally challenged dude on a tractor. It totally petered out. It was unsatisfying. It did not deserve the hype it got back in 2014.

Here's a lukewarm take: Season 2 of True Detective is properly rated as pretty bad. It shared with Season 1 some pretty terrific acting (my defense of Vince Vaughn's role in this would have to be a whole separate blog post, sorry) and a pretty decent action set piece (again in Episode 4, this time a crazy shootout, and I don't want to go back and watch it again just in case it was the alcohol that made me love it so much the first time around). But it lacked any type of plot that you could even begin to grasp. It started convoluted, it remained convoluted, and it ended convoluted. There's being obtuse because you want to build mystery, and then there's being obtuse because you have written a terrible script. Showrunner Nic Pizzolatto is guilty of the latter all over Season 2.

Here's my take on Season 3, even though it's only been a day since the finale and I haven't been able to determine what temperature this take is yet: Season 3 of True Detective was pretty good! Yet again, there's terrific acting; Mahershala Ali and Stephen Dorff build deep, integral characters across three different timelines, and Carmen Ejogo manages to not only avoid playing the cliché "antihero's shrill wife" role, but also threatens to steal the show from the boys multiple times.

The opposite of Season 2, this season was written well back to front. The mystery was intriguing but not overwhelming. The dialogue was, for the most part, straightforward and honest, lacking any of the pretense and sheer stupidity of Season 2. And the idea that "our protagonist was the real mystery all along" is definitely a trope, but at least it was a well-handled trope throughout Season 3.

The opposite of Season 1, this season actually ended satisfactorily. I wouldn't say that we necessarily know exactly "who done it," but we know what happened, and we are left intrigued as to whether Wayne (Ali) actually figured it out (he has dementia, you see), and whether his son is going to keep unraveling the mystery. But the best part about the ending was that, as it turns out, the mystery was in service of the character-building the whole time. The final scene acknowledges—we may never be satisfied with the conclusion of the mystery, but at least we have each other. It serves as a commentary on the genre itself. It sounds dumb as I write it out, but trust me, Season 3 handles the cheesiness really, really well.

The only thing Season 3 lacked, in my opinion, was that big set piece that blows everyone away. There is nothing daring or audacious here. There was a semi-large police shootout, sure, but there was no urgency there because, due to the time-hopping nature of the plot, we already knew who would survive. The entire season was all slow burn. Everything was intriguing, but nothing got me all-caps EXCITED, ya know what I mean?

That's probably the most subjective part of my take, though. Ask Pam in December, and she'll probably name True Detective as her favorite show of the year. Pam has never been the type of person to need or desire an action blowout spectacles (when I remember Game of Thrones' "Battle of the Bastards," for instance, I always imagine Pam making jerk-off motions and fart noises). And she's probably right. My desire to watch explosions probably has something to do with some unresolved and embarrassing masculinity issues.

I just feel like True Detective was so close to being perfect in Season 3, so much closer than the preceding two seasons, but it didn't quite check all my boxes, and that bums me out. At the end of the day, Season 3 was unequivocally the best season of this anthology series. Here's to hoping that Season 4 (if it ever eventually exists) can truly reach every height that the first three seasons were able to sporadically hit in different ways.

Album of the Week: This Is Not the End

Welcome back, everyone. Week 4 of the PoYB Record Club, here with a new album for your listening pleasuring. Let's rock out this week, alright? If you wanna check out previous weeks' albums and reviews, feel free to click HERE.

WEEK 4 — February 24-March 2, 2019

What we're listening to this week (Joe's pick):

ALBUM: This Is Not the End

ARTIST: Spielbergs

RELEASED: February 1, 2019

WHAT GENRE IS THIS: Anthemic indie rock

WHY JOE PICKED THIS: I saw them compared to Japandroids and Beach Slang and want to know if they live up to the impossible hype created by these comparisons.

TRACKLIST:

1. Five on It
2. Distant Star
3. NFL
4. We Are All Going to Die
5. Familiar
6. You All Look like Giants
7. Bad Friend
8. McDonald's (Please Don't Fuck Up My Order)
9. Sleeper
10. 4AM
11. S.K.
12. Forevermore

READING SOME SHIT: Here's a somewhat generic interview in Upset Magazine with frontman Mads Baklien, in which we learn that the band hails from Norway—but with a frontman named "Mad Baklien," you clearly knew they were from Norway without having to click on the link, right?

Happy listening, fam! Have a great week!

Song of the Week: "Into My Own Thing"

"Into My Own Thing"

Sly and the Family Stone

from Life

1968

"Sampling" refers to using someone else's music and repurposing it as your own. It happens all the time, and occasionally the technique is used to great effect (think how Beyoncé sampled the Yeah Yeah Yeahs on Lemonade, as one of a million example).

I get that sampling is an irreversible mainstay thing in music now, but what pisses me off is when a song burrows itself into my head BEFORE I know that it's made up of samples. Here's one that caught me off guard the other day.

Middling Donald Glover albums notwithstanding, I've been trying to listen to more funk recently, and I started with Sly and the Family Stone. It's really fun music! I'm picturing summer BBQs when I hear their 1968 album Life (though as I listen to it now, the snow is falling pretty heavily, and it's still fun). But when I got to track #5, "Into My Own Thing," I just knew I had heard that horn riff somewhere.

A quick Google search tells me that I recognized it from that fucking Fatboy Slim song from 2001, "Weapon of Choice." You know the one—Christopher Walken dances a lot in the video, because memes were "funny" even eighteen years ago.

And "Weapon of Choice" does nothing new with the sample; Slim just lifted it fucking wholesale from "Into My Own Thing." That pisses me off. I'm not mad that Fatboy Slim sampled it so heavily (along with additional samples from funk band the Chemical Brothers and hip hop group the X-Ecutioners), because as long as the proper clearances go through, he has every right to do it.

I'm pissed because now every time I hear the great song "Into My Own Thing," I'll hear something completely different than what Sly Stone intended. What was a heavy, horn-laden war chant is now, in my mind, just the song with the riff to the Walken dance. That's technically my fault—I should've been more conscious of the existence of late-'60s funk when I was in sixth grade, I guess—but it still bums me out. At least I have the rest of Life to wash the bad taste out of my mouth.

Wanderer, Laura

I kept an open mind listening to the Cat Power album, but from one song to the next I just couldn’t get into it. After finishing the album and reflecting, I came to the conclusion that Cat Power is just not my cup of tea. I think I might be able to appreciate it more if I were listening to it in the context of a coffee shop or really swanky bar with live music. Hopefully I’ll hear it again at some point, outside of my normal hustle and bustle, and get a different vibe from it.

Favorite tracks: "You Get"

Wanderer, Erin

I actually knew of Cat Power thanks to the movie Juno; "Sea of Love" was a tender song that was a pleasant addition to hear tucked in between a bunch of quirky Kimya Dawson tracks. I liked the song (okay I loved it), so I figured I’d also most likely enjoy this album.

I listened to the album twice from start to finish—the first time was during my morning drive through Valley Forge National Park. It was great music to listen to; her folksy voice made me a little less miserable while I drank coffee and tried waking up and swerved around like four deer.

I listened to the album again the next day to try and pay more attention to the lyrics to see if there was any particular song that I connected to. I’ll be honest, most of the lyrics were forgettable. I definitely appreciated the piano and her voice more than the actual lyrics. Particular favorites were "Me Voy," "Robbin Hood," and "Black."

Bottom line opinion: Solid music to listen to when it’s the slower part of the cross country road trip to the family wedding in Nebraska and everyone is asleep except you because you just washed down a caffeine pill with a black coffee and you need to find a way to slow down but it’s been sixteen hours on the road and you just want to fucking get through Iowa already.

Wanderer, Pam

Cat Power has always been “Sunday music” for me. Sunday, with a nice cup of coffee, pop on some Cat Power and ease into the day. I’ve continued to enjoy Wanderer in the same easy way. Cat Power’s smooth and mature vocals transport me to a 1990s coffee shop (think the music that Starbucks used to sell on CDs... without Starbucks being a huge nationwide coffee chain). Her songs are mostly stripped down, which only emphasizes the beauty that her minimalism provides. The vocal stylings on tracks like "Stay" and "Me Voy" have a hauntingly beautiful quality. "Woman" is reminiscent of the Lilith Fair (in fact, I read that Cat Power did play at the Lilith Fair in 2010). My only complaint about this song is that had I not known that Lana Del Rey was featured, I would have just thought it was Cat Power on her own... maybe they just have similar styles and they blended together really well. I’m wondering if she jams out to these when she performs them live? All in all, I would listen to Wanderer again, probably only on a Sunday though, and with coffee.

Wanderer, Nate

Stick around long enough, you'll receive gravitas by default. Wanderer earns its gravity, wears it well, does much with as little as possible. Does too much, even, depending on how you feel about vaudeville.

Come because you were alive when Garden State meant something to you, stay for "Horizon." The promise of auto-tune is that it will make us technically perfect while plunging us into the Uncanny Valley. Wring emotion out of that glass landscape, you're a champion. Cat Power is a champion.

Wanderer, Sam

Everything is boring. Some things are less boring (i.e., "You Get," "Woman," and "Black"). Some things are pretty. Most things are pretty boring.

And isn't that just fine? Cat Power exists to chill out, reflect, and tap into a certain mood. That's not a mood I want to actively pursue, but what we have here is light, melodic, and inoffensive.

This album could just have easily provided a soundtrack to an episode of Grey's Anatomy in 2006 (when Cat Power released its last album) as it could today.

I'll never put on a Cat Power record, but I'll never take it off either. It's fine. Let's move on.

Wanderer, Joe

Let's start at the end of the album. At the very end of "Wanderer / Exit," there is exactly one trumpet note played. After thirty-seven minutes of mostly slow acoustic guitar, slower piano, and slowest Chan Marshall sad-sack singing, the trumpet player comes in and plays a single note. This only serves to piss me off. You mean that Cat Power is open to the idea of a brass section? So what the fuck was the funeral dirge that we just went through all about?

I know, you're supposed to write a review for the album you have, not the album you want. What I wanted was anything that is going to bring my heart rate above 60 BPM, but that's not what we have here. What we have is a collection of songs that wouldn't sound out of place during those bleak True Detective Season 2 scenes at the dive bar. What we have is a collection of songs that practically put me to sleep, just like True Detective Season 2.

Credit where credit is due, not every song is a bore. There are definitely some tunes that I would call "pretty good" if my mom asked me about them. And I could list them here, like I seem to usually do for a paragraph during every fucking review I ever write (writing about music is tough!). We can make this paragraph into that if you want. We can talk about how "You Get" actually has a fucking pulse (drums always help, kids), and even does the whole "everyone takes a beat of rest at the same time" thing that I love. "Horizon" is a decent song with a bizarre use of auto-tune (I won't elaborate, because I sure Pam will in her review—she has very strong views about auto-tune). Lana Del Ray makes an appearance, which certainly adds a little bit of variety to this whole endeavor, but if you are looking to wake up your listeners, Lana Del Ray is the last goddamn person you call.

The story behind the making of this album has something to do with Chan Marshall fighting with her record label about what her LP10 should sound like. She wanted Wanderer as we eventually got it, and ended up leaving her label because apparently they wanted her to sound "more like Adele." Now, my hatred of Adele's music is well-documented for sure, but am I crazy in wishing that Wanderer did indeed sound more like Adele? At least there would be risks taken on such an album. I would probably hate it, but at least I would feel something, ya know?

I know, I know, I have to write a review for the album we have, not the album we want (or don't want, I guess). But here I am, listening to a shitty Decemberists B-side "Robbin Hood" and a dire Rhianna cover "Stay" and a faint echo from the abyss "Me Voy" and I'm clawing my fucking eyes out. Why isn't there more trumpet in this?!

Wanderer is fine, but that's it. No album wants to be just "fine," but it's the only word that applies here. Or maybe "slight." Or maybe "exhausting." But "fine" is fine too.

GRADE: 1.5 pukes out of 5

Broken Bells, Laura

I've definitely heard this before! Which made me excited to keep listening and, at the same time, curious as to where/when/how I heard some of these songs. I couldn't pinpoint it or find out by looking into it more, but either way that didn't change my review of this album. Although, overall I did enjoy listening and would be completely fine with listening again in the future, I felt that I needed to repeatedly tell myself that this wasn't the Shins and that this was a "different band" (with the same lead singer). Broken Bells is the Shins with a little more (sometimes misplaced) funk. I'm not completely sold on Broken Bells (mainly because I played out the Shins years ago) but would be interested to listen to their other albums to hear if they branch out more from their Shins-vibe or if they all sound the same.

Favorite Tracks: "The High Road" and "The Ghost Inside"

Heard It in a Past Life, Laura

Initially when I started listening to Heard It in a Past Life, I was hooked by the beat. Layla listened to this album with me as well and seemed to feel the same way about the beat as she tapped along to most of the songs. The description of the genre is spot on, but the songs were still a little different than I was expecting.  As I listened, each song seemed to sound a little more pop to me than the last, but it wasn’t necessarily a bad thing. I did not enjoy the instrumental-only tracks. I thought they were a stretch to add something “original” and break up the pop-vibe. I listened to this album entirely while driving, which seemed fitting; it was definitely a good soundtrack for a somewhat upbeat, somewhat mellow (but not sleepy) drive. I can definitely see myself keeping this in my random rotation of music every now and then when I’m looking for something with a good beat.

Favorite tracks: "Fallingwater," "The Knife," and "Alaska"

A Novice's 2nd Annual Guide to the Oscars, 2019

As we established in last year's inaugural Puke on Your Birthday Oscar Roundup, I don't watch many movies. I watched all nine Oscar Best Picture noms last year, and those nine movies totaled probably 80% of my movie-watching through the entire year. I don't know movies. I cannot place movies in a historical context. All I can do is watch Academy-acclaimed films and judge them with my personal, occasional ignorant opinion.

And so, this year, I (along with my beautiful wife) have again watched every Oscar-nominated film up for Best Picture. And again, I am here to tell you what I think of them. My opinion and overall ranking of these eight movies are based on two criteria:

1) The movie keeps you interested throughout its entire length (i.e. is it GOOD).

2) The movie gives you something to think about or ponder after it is over; it stays with you for reasons either tangible or ineffable, or both (i.e. is it IMPORTANT)

If a movie meets both of these criteria, then I consider it to be a GREAT movie, and worthy of an Academy Award. A movie can be good, and it can be important, but it has to be both for me to be okay with it ultimately winning the Oscar.

These metrics are subjective, so you'll find no pondering here about which movie WILL win. I don't know anything about how the winners are chosen and what advantages certain movies have over others. Last year's ultimate winner, The Shape of Water, was #6 of 9 in my ranking, so clearly I don't know shit.

But it's still fun to talk about the movies that everyone watched, and so I will do that, here, now, in alphabetical order by film title (with a final ranking of the eight movies at the end). Enjoy.

***SPOILERS, OBVIOUSLY!!!!***

Black Panther

Directed by: Ryan Coogler

Wikipedia description: A "superhero film" in which the titular character "is crowned king of Wakanda following his father's death, but his sovereignty is challenged by an adversary who plans to abandon the country's isolationist policies and begin a global revolution."

You will like it if you like: every other superhero movie made in the past fifteen years; Michael B. Jordan's abs; superheroes who don't turn to dust at the end of the movie; seeing a panther on every first grader's backpack in North Philly

Is it GREAT: I will mostly be saying the same thing that I said about Get Out last year, except for the fact that I'm more optimistic about Black Panther as a movie. This was an important film, no doubt about it. When superhero movies rake in billions and billions of dollars annually, it's nice to have a black-acted and -directed movie out-earn them all. And it's awesome that some little kids finally have a superhero they can cheer for and say "he looks like me!" Based on the importance of the film alone, I'm okay with the fact that it is nominated for Best Picture.

But is it any good?! My answer to the question is: "...sure." Look, I'm in that cynical camp that believes that every MCU movie is the same fucking thing, so the fact that Black Panther was even marginally different than the rest of those films is an achievement. But at the end of the day, it wasn't that different. So I enjoyed it, sure. It was fun watching Black Panther. But I'm not going to say it reinvented the wheel or anything.

BlacKkKlansman

Directed by: Spike Lee

Wikipedia description: A "biographical crime comedy-drama film" following "the first African-American detective in the city's police department as he sets out to infiltrate and expose the local chapter of the Ku Klux Klan."

You will like it if you like: racists getting made fools of; Adam Driver doing his whole Adam Driver thing; the doctor from New Amsterdam dropping N-bombs; being legitimately unsure whether you should laugh or be horrified

Is it GREAT: BlacKkKlansman takes a pretty good premise and stretches it as far as it can, Did it stretch credulity at certain points? Sure. But maybe everything I felt was a little off (e.g. not being able to tell the difference between John David Washington's and Adam Driver's voices? e.g. the evil villains conveniently dying in a car bomb explosion of their own making?), maybe all that really was how it was. Maybe racists really ARE that stupid, ya know? As scary as the movie was at points (scary in a "that's how it really was?!" sort of way), BlacKkKlansman also mined a lot of humor from its premise.

And yeah, the movie seemed like it was going to end a little lamely. It seemed like the story just kind of... ended. It was based on a true story, and that's how true stories go sometimes. But then! Then the movie absolutely gives the biggest gut punch imaginable. After laughing at the exploits of the police and the KKK members, the movie pulls the rug out from under you so fast that it's giving me chills just writing about it now. What was a good, if modest, movie becomes absolutely essential in its final frames. Everything you just laughed at? It's happening RIGHT NOW. And it's not fucking funny.

Bohemian Rhapsody

Directed by: Bryan Singer (FUCK THIS GUY)

Wikipedia description: A music biopic that tells the story of "[Queen] singer Freddie Mercury's life from when he joins the band in 1970 to their 1985 Live Aid performance at the former Wembley Stadium in London."

You will like it if you like: false teeth; not thinking about AIDS too much; music biopics even after you've seen Walk Hard; uh, the music of Queen I guess

Is it GREAT: Let's start with some positives. I will at least moderately enjoy any movie about music, no matter what it is about specifically. I do not like Queen's music, but I sincerely enjoyed learning about the story of Queen (even though the veracity of the story as presented here has been questioned, but I'll save that whole discussion for Green Book). And I thought that Rami Malek put on a fascinating performance, even though it was pretty much all camp and probably does not deserve an Acting Oscar.

But I thought Bohemian Rhapsody was otherwise a shitty, shitty movie. Seriously, fuck this movie. It was generic and clichéd. It was every biopic ever made, with lame music to boot. You know the movie trope where band members are arguing and there is a commotion, but then someone is heard playing something cool in the background, and the commotion stops, and everyone is wide-eyed at how good that sounds, and then the movie smash-cuts to the band playing that same riff in concert, to the applause of thousands? Yeah, that trope was done at least THREE TIMES in this movie.

It was pathetic. It made me hate Queen even more. All this not even mentioning that the director is a rapist. Fuck this shit. It's not only the worst movie of the eight noms, it's the worst movie I've seen in at least the past five years.

The Favourite

Directed by: Yorgos Lanthimos

Wikipedia description: A "historical period drama film" that "examines the relationship between two cousins vying to be court [favorites] of Queen Anne."

You will like it if you like: getting your thighs rubbed; when two separate sides of English Parliament old white men yell at each other across the aisle; rabbits as a metaphor; sneaky Emma Stone

Is it GREAT: I went into The Favourite with the lowest expectations, because I'm so fucking tired of period pieces. So I'm not sure if I enjoyed it so much because it was actually a good movie, or just because it so exceeded my expectations. All the political backstabbing and subterfuge was pretty fascinating, especially in against the backdrop of secret LGBTQ affairs in medieval England. The three female leads did a great job of amping up the drama throughout. And that final scene absolutely gave me enough to chew on. I'd say that I enjoyed the movie enough and have thought about the movie enough since I've seen it that I can definitively call it GREAT.

Green Book

Directed by: Peter Farrelly (with cum in his hair)

Wikipedia description: A "biographical comedy-drama film" inspired by the alleged story of "a tour of the Deep South by African-American classical and jazz pianist Don Shirley and Tony Vallelonga, an Italian-American bouncer who served as Shirley's driver and bodyguard."

You will like it if you like: eating fried chicken without a napkin; Carmine Lupertazzi, in his youth, beating the shit out of everyone; your racism stories fed to you like warm milk; white people clapping to classical music and black people clapping to the blues

Is it GREAT: There's a whole controversy about Green Book, because there always is about at least one Oscar nominee. The controversy is that Don Shirley's family has come out and said that the whole movie is bullshit, that Shirley never even had a friendly relationship with Tony Vallelonga, that the "True Story" aspect of Green Book is an absolute lie. I don't doubt that, but I dunno man, that whole thing doesn't really perturb me. It's not really any of concern whether a movie is truth or fiction. It's not like my opinion of Black Panther was affected by the fact that Wakanda PROBABLY doesn't exist.

No, what concerns me is that weird, uncomfortable feeling I had at the end of the movie. I enjoyed it while I was watching it, for sure, but I also felt a little uneasy too. Setting out to find out why that is, I did some research into some other controversies for this movie. There's the idea of the "Magical Negro," that Shirley's character exists solely to help the white characters. I agree that this might be part of the problem, but I think too that the movie takes a clear effort to make it so that the two men are helping each other (Tony accepts others, Don accepts himself).

I think what bugged me the most specifically was the final scene on Christmas, when Shirley shows up at Vallelonga's family dinner, and after a brief pause, a hitherto racist as fuck family members yells "fix him a plate!" As if Don Shirley's mere presence solves racism. I'm certainly not saying that I don't wish racism could be solved by such a simple gesture. I'm saying that the scene is unsubtle and unearned. And I think that the final scene is only one example of this issue. The Root described it as "palatable racism for white people," and I tend to agree with that.

I don't think there's anything wrong with a feel-good movie, one that shows the good in people, and condemns the bad in people. That is Green Book. It also unfortunately means that Green Book is light and fluffy and irrelevant. I liked watching it, but I don't like thinking about it too much, and I feel dirty watching it, like I'm enjoying it even though I shouldn't.

Roma

Directed by: Alfonso Cuarón

Wikipedia description: A "semi-autobiographical take" following "the life of a live-in housekeeper of a middle-class family."

You will like it if you like: cleaning up dog shit; a camera that pans slowly from right to left; not having to spend an hour trying to bootleg an illegal movie stream like every other goddamn movie on this list

Is it GREAT: Hooooooly shit. Maybe this is recency bias, because we watched this movie last (and only about twelve hours ago as of this writing), but again: holy shit. Roma was a masterpiece. Should I count the ways?

How about that this was a black-and-white movie with subtitles, and I didn't even notice either of these challenges by the time we were thirty minutes in. How about that this was probably the first movie I've ever seen that I thought "wow, the direction is really good," with Cuarón constantly panning the camera to take in the entire scene. How about every scene, how every fucking scene was absolutely overflowing with life and activity; it was a masterclass in world-building; it was a slice-of-life drama, but every slice was very, very hearty.

How about having to watch the extended, excruciating birth scene while my daughter sleeps soundly on the smaller screen below the TV. How about almost crying then. How about almost crying again after the ocean rescue scene. How about almost crying yet again as I'm typing this.

It doesn't happen often, but every once in a while I watch a movie that so wrings me out emotionally that I can't do anything but stare at the credits in shock. Roma was that movie this year. So, yeah, to answer your question, it was great.

A Star Is Born

Directed by: Bradley Cooper

Wikipedia description: A "musical romantic drama" featuring "a hard-drinking musician who discovers and falls in love with a young singer."

You will like it if you like: Gaga doing her thing; picturing Jack White doing Bradley Cooper's thing; remakes of remakes of remakes of movies; impromptu weddings organized by Dave Chappelle

Is it GREAT: Yeah man, it was great. There is probably a reason this is the fourth time someone made the same movie. The plot moves, Gaga and Cooper are phenomenal, and the songs are mostly pretty great. I don't have anything bad to say about the movie, except, ya know, damn this movie for making me choke up a bit at the end and whatnot.

It gave me a lot to think about too. What I took away from it is probably the least important aspect of the film in general, but it most interests me personally, and that is the discussion of "what is 'real' music?" Jackson and Ally argue about Ally's burgeoning music career in the pop industry, and Jackson (drunkenly) argues that Ally is "selling out" to sing SNL-style butt-popping music. Whether Jackson Maine is correct in his assessment could power more than a few think pieces (I think he is wrong and I don't think the movie is making the argument that he's right either).

But you could ask one hundred people, and you'd get one hundred answers about why A Star Is Born is a special movie. There's the mental health aspect (and the foreshadowing throughout the movie of Maine's demise), there are lessons about romance in the face of domestic violence, there's the meta-narrative of Lady Gaga herself doing her own thing throughout her career and winning over everyone with a world-conquering performance, just like her character does in the movie. It's everything, and it is great.

Vice

Directed by: Adam McKay

Wikipedia description: A "biographical comedy-drama" about "[Dick] Cheney on his path to become the most powerful Vice President in American history."

You will like it if you like: stroking your liberal ego with some good ol' confirmation bias; "witty" political commentary from the man who brought you Step Brothers; smash cuts to loud noises of bombs; Christian Bale not caring that he will die young if it means just one more Oscar nod

Is it GREAT: There's a bit at the beginning of this movie in which the narrator says something like: "Americans are working harder than ever for less pay, so the last thing they want to do in their free time is to talk about politics." The movie's point was that villainous politicians like Dick Cheney use Americans' apathetic nature to take advantage of them without their knowing. But I saw it as a self-indictment—you're right, Vice, I don't want to think about you in my spare time.

What's worse is that the movie took something that was actually boring, and tried to spice it up in the clunkiest, most cringe-worthy ways imaginable. So not only to I have to get beat over the head with the fact that our country is fucked, but now I have to learn about HOW fucked we are while withstanding sophomoric Ferrell-esque humor. It's fucking embarrassing.

Yes, it was enlightening at times, but it was enlightening in the same way The Passion of Christ was enlightening—we know how this story goes, and we know that it ends in death.

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

FINAL RANKING

1. Roma
2. A Star Is Born
3. The Favourite
4. BlacKkKlansman
5. Black Panther
6. Green Book
7. Vice
8. Bohemian Rhapsody

The Albums That Matter: Torches

Joe runs through every album on his iPod, mostly in alphabetical order, and offers some brief thoughts. Check out previous columns HERE. Obviously, Torches does not fall in line alphabetically, but as previously explained, I'm also using this column to talk about the best albums of the 2010s. This is the first album I am discussing. Come back in December to find out where it falls in the rankings.

Torches

Foster the People

2011

I have a working theory that there are exactly three ways to listen to music, and for a while I was planning on writing a whole separate blog post to explain this dumb theory. The theory even has a name, called the "Three K*** Siblings Music Theory," because the "three ways to listen to music" are personified exactly by my and my two sisters' listening habits.

My sister Jenny was mentioned the other day as being a big Post Malone fan. She represents that faction of the music-listening population who doesn't really give the whole idea of being a "fan of music" the time of day. The radio tells her what is good, and so she listens to that. Call it "Mainstream Top 40" if you want. "Music" as an idea is background noise, not an art. Jenny represents the majority of America.

My sister Brianna (who wrote a review last week) takes music a little more seriously (I should say now that I'm not indicating that any of these three ways to listen to music is necessarily better than the others, just that, ya know, people listen to music differently as a fact). "Seriously" in that she chooses who to listen to instead of making the radio gatekeepers her sole musical curators. This is a choice I personally make as well. However, Brianna's goal in curating her own music is to achieve oneness with fellow human beings, i.e. in concert. Let's call it "festival indie," even if Urban Dictionary refuses to do so. The bands and artists Brianna and her crew listen to connect to their audiences through music festivals and concerts. Music is, in a sense, a means to forge bonds with other humans. Firefly and Bonnaroo are times to experience something together, ya feel me? Brianna is literally and figuratively the girl who walks around the festival grounds with a sign that says "If you're lost, come dance with us" in psychedelic font.

And I, the elder brother, represent the musical hermits, those for whom music is a life and death pursuit to be enjoyed between two ears only. I spend my days trolling music websites and trying out new music and thoughtfully considering whether I should add this particular music to my "collection," i.e. my iPod (having an unexciting job helps in this endeavor). The music itself is considered the prize, as opposed to a means to an end. Any communication between fellow music listeners (e.g. PoYB Record Club) is akin to passing notes between jail cells. Sure, I go to concerts very very occasionally, but I tend more to get annoyed with the fact that I have to share this experience with the rest of the crowd than anything else. When I went to see the Hold Steady last summer, for instance, and some random fucking dude, drunk and euphoric, grabbed the scruff of my neck when the band hit those opening notes of "Chips Ahoy," I did not consider him my brother in arms. Instead, I told him to not touch me again or I'd punch him in his goddamn face. I love music more than any other nonhuman thing in this world, but I'm a fucking miser when it comes to sharing that love.

Okay, so I'm four IPAs deep, now let me explain why I buried the lede so fucking badly. Torches by Foster the People is THE album of the 2010s that hits all three K*** siblings' sensibilities when it comes to music. It is an album that we can all share. This is not the sole reason that makes Torches special, but it's the most important reason.

Torches, in a sense, exposes my "Three K***s Music Theory" as just a means of describing the different types of gatekeepers that provide different music to people with different music needs (or lack thereof). Torches was loved by everyone—the radio listeners, the concert goers, the musicophile recluses. There is a very basic reason for this. The reason is that Torches is a simple, catchy album that couldn't be ignored. The term "earworm" was thrown around a lot when the LP was released, and it's the best description I can think of now. Every song on the album—every fucking song—has the capability to burrow itself in your brain and stick with you for the rest of the day.

Yes, that is true for the most popular Foster the People song, "Pumped Up Kicks." I would do a poor job of trying to dissect "Pump Up Kicks" if I tried, but y'all know there was something "earwormy" about this song from the get-go. Every radio station played it (104.5 might as well have been renamed "The Pumped Up Kicks Station, Presented by The Most Annoying Radio Personalities You'll Ever Hear"). Kids at the Laf, kids with whom the only other thing I had in common with was the amount of Milwaukee's Best we drank each weekend, were singing this song under their breath as they busted tables. "Pumped Up Kicks" reached #3 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, which is fucking insane for a ramshackle indie rock ditty.

But what's kind of more insane is that "Pumped Up Kicks" isn't even close to being the catchiest song on the album. The most insane part of this whole thing is that every single song is catchy. There isn't a bad song in the bunch, and I'm not fucking exaggerating. Go ahead, name the worst song. It's fucking impossible. Also, go ahead and name other albums that don't have a less-than-great song on them. That's a pretty difficult task as well. Every Apologies to the Queen Mary has a "Dinner Bells." Every Cardinal has a "Waveform." Torches doesn't have that song. They are all really good. They could all be a successful single.

Like, if I wanted to, I could go through every song and tell you the moment that makes that song great. Let's start—"Waste" has a falsetto call-and-response chorus structure that tickles me. Let's continue—"I Would Do Anything for You" is a pseudo-disco track that somehow uses an "ooh la la" as the foundation of its chorus without being corny. Let's continue—"Houdini" has a towering, pounding drum beat over skittering synth sounds, and even though those two sounds don't sound like they would work together, they really fucking do. Let's end—because these are only the songs that I was listening to while writing this paragraph. I could seriously do it all day.

As I start moving forward through the best albums of the decade—and make no mistake, Torches is unmistakably one of the best albums of the 2010s—there will probably be a lot of sloppy tipsy assessments of albums I love. This is one of them (both one of the albums, and one of the sloppy tipsy assessments). But I don't know if there will be another album on that eventual list that warrants a spot on the list due to catchiness alone. And I don't know if there will be another album that reaches across the musical divide as effortlessly as Torches does. It's an album that all siblings can appreciate.

~~~~~~~~~~~

If this album sounds interesting, try this song: "Call It What You Want"

~~~~~~~~~~~

Stray Observations

• I don't know if this was common knowledge or what, but Foster the People is basically the musical project of a guy named Mark Foster. Foster bounced around LA for a while, writing commercial jingles. "Pumped Up Kicks" started as one of those jingles. Luckily, it ended up as an actual song, and not like a fucking Honda ad or some bullshit.
• The gap between "Pumped Up Kicks" being released as a single, and Torches being released as an album, was sizable, apparently due to fears from the record company that audiences would start to dislike the band due to "over-exposure." Based on how many times I heard "Pumped Up Kicks" in 2011, I'd say that this attempt was a failure. Luckily the album's strengths ultimately saved it.
• I mentioned above that "Pumped Up Kicks" peaked at #3 on the Billboard charts. In case you were wondering, it was blocked from the top spot by "Party Rock Anthem" by LMFAO at #2, and fucking "Moves like Jagger" at #1. The Billboard Hot 100 is very often a fucking travesty, and this is no exception.
• And since I guess I'm going to talk about Grammys more now that I bullshitted about them a couple weeks ago, let's talk Torches at the 2012 Grammys. It was up for Best Alternative Album, but eventually lost to Bon Iver, Bon Iver. I won't comment on these results here, as I don't want to risk spoiling PoYB's eventual Best of the 2010s list.
• And at those same Grammys, "Pumped Up Kicks" lost Best Pop Duo/Group Performance to a Tony Bennett / dead Amy Winehouse collaboration. As much as I love Winehouse, that award seems pretty egregious to me.
• ALBUM COVER: The artwork was created by Young & Sick, an LA art/music collective. If you are looking for an album cover that absolutely fucking screams early-'10s 104.5 festival band bullshit, you found it here.
• Originally the "Three K***s Music Theory" was the "Five K***s Music Theory," and included my parents. But I couldn't articulate the way that Jenny, Dad, and Mom were different; they all took their cues from the radio, and the only difference was the specific radio station that they took those cues from (Q102, 88.5 XPN, and a mix of XTU, B101, and WMGK, respectively).

NEXT TIME: Band on the Run by Paul McCartney and Wings

Don't Tell Me What I Can't Do, Part VII: The Meet-Cute

Welcome to "Don't Tell Me What I Can't Do," a new relatively series here on PoYB. Please first read this blog post I wrote in 2009. There, I listed 22 subjects that I would NEVER write about on this website. Here in 2019, I say: don't fucking tell me what I can't do. For a total of twenty-two posts, I will be blogging about these subjects, in striking defiance of my 20-year-old naiveté.

TODAY'S "FORBIDDEN" SUBJECT: "That time Mike was totally coming on to me"

WHY IT WAS FORBIDDEN: For starters, it never happened. I guess that was part of the joke (gay panic jokes were a lot funnier back in 2009, I regret to admit). And part of the joke was that, out of all my friends, Mike would be the one to get the most rankled about being made fun of. It's just how he operates. And part of the joke was that any guy would be hitting on ME; that was a sarcastic part of the joke. It was supposed to be self-deprecating. They all add up to a not-very-funny "joke" that one of my friends made a pass at me, and that I was "forbidden" to blog about it to "protect his reputation" or whatever. Hilarious. Am I over-explaining myself? Probably. But within the next year, Mike, a PoYB founder, would end up deleting all his previously published blog posts, in a lame attempt to protect himself from getting disqualified from law school admission, so don't tell me that I don't have to over-explain this inane stupidity.

HOW I WILL WRITE ABOUT IT: So in the absence of such an occurrence actually coming to pass, I am forced to bullshit something. I wrote a very dumb fictional story about a convoluted platonic meet-cute between two people, and I recently found this fictional story buried in the archives. So I'm going to rewrite the story, putting my and Mike's names in it (gotta reverse the genders too, and OH BOY does this totally not work). It's gonna be bad, and I will probably bury this fucking blog post so fast it'll make your head spin. But I am committed to this project, and I have no idea how else to fulfill this particular commitment without being homophobic. I will write about ALL 22 "FORBIDDEN" SUBJECTS, even if they result in the dumbest blog posts I've ever written. Even if it kills me.

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

Mike slammed the door of his 1998 Chevy. “Yo, seriously, fuck this! I do NOT want to go camping this weekend.” His girlfriend, henceforth known as “Katie Highburger,” was hearing none of it. “I think it would be nice to get outdoors for a bit,” she calmly reasoned. “I mean, I get it. The cabin we’re staying at looks a little creepy...”

Mike rolled his eyes. “Try A LOT creepy. It’s a practically a horror movie cliché from the 1980s. What, am I going to find rusted butcher knives hanging on the wall?! I feel like Bruce fucking Campbell.”

“Chill, dude. What’s to worry about? We have a case of Sammy-brewed IPAs, plenty of firewood, and if an antagonistic axe murderer, an exacerbated undead, or otherwise bloodthirsty being happens upon our little cabin here, I have my trusty nine iron, and... I’ve been working on my swing.”

She looked left, then right, in faux shiftiness, then let out a little giggle. This was going to be a good weekend, she thought quietly to himself, and if her pussy boyfriend couldn’t handle it, then so be it. That's his problem.

***********************************************

“I just don’t see what the big fucking deal is,” Chelsea yelled over the languid percussion-less melodies of Carole King over her cheap-ass car speakers. “Are you seriously going to make a big deal out of this?”

“Yes, yes the fuck I am,” shot Joe right back, defiant, as he always was. "Dickish," one might deign to call it. He wasn't afraid to call the fucking shots, and Chelsea knew it. He backed down a bit, fearful of his rage:

“Well... alright. I mean... I get how you feel. Not that I agree with it—”

That stare again, sharp like ice, piercing the skin thousands of times like a tattoo. He wouldn’t back down.

Chelsea finally reneged. “Alright! Fucking christ! I’ll leave my paintball gun in the car!”

“Thank you,” Joe said, a subtle smug smirk on his face now, facing forward. “You know how I feel about that shit. One of these days you’re going to—"

”—you’re going to shoot somebody’s eye out, yeah, I heard you the first ten fucking thousand times. Ya know, you’re not the only fucking person who’s seen A Christmas Story, I hope you understand that.“

"Whatever. Fuck you. As long as we’re on the same page.”

The car drove lazily up Route 275, westward, toward Bumblefuck, PA. Their trunk was packed to the brim with the essentials—tent, trail mix, backpacking stove, sleeping bag. They had been planning this weekend for a while now, ever since they had read My Side of the Mountain together in Miss Penny’s class, tenth grade English at ol’ Central High.

“Let the weekend begin!” yelled Chelsea out the window, yelling like a Woo Girl, narrowly avoid a pothole as she swerved the Kia Sportage violently. “Okay, alright, that was a close one. Whew. Yeah, um... let the weekend begin.”

********************************************

“What is the sound?!” That had to be rodents scattering, that sound of a thousand little rat claws, those claws connected to flea-ridden rat bodies, those bodies dispersing from a central location as fast as their little flea-ridden rat bodies could carry them.

“That was definitely the sound of mice.” Mike was convinced of it. He wasn’t fond of rats (what person would be?). He hated all those little disgusting creatures. Rats, mice, their cousin the cockroach, their relative the bedbug, all these things he despised, as any normal person would.

Not that he disliked all of God’s creation, not by a long shot. He had raised guinea pigs as a child with his two younger siblings. He adored the birdies and chirpers that frequented his little wooden Collingswood birdhouse. He was especially fond of those little woodland creatures with bushy tails—beavers, squirrels, chipmunks, and what have you.

But the moment he turned on the light in this dank fucking cabin, he knew exactly what he had heard. It wasn’t a squirrel or a chipmunk, it was—rats. Plenty of ‘em. Scampering. Scattering. He didn’t seem them, per se, but she still fucking knew, ya know?

And this was the cabin he was staying in for the weekend, like it or not.

"The Rat Cave." Maybe he'd carve a plaque later.

"Ah, we’re home,“ said Katie Highburger, apparently unaware of the grotesque crew of creatures that had just moments before scrambled for cover. "This is the goddamn life.”

“We’ll see,” said Mike. He always tried to look on the bright side, but this could be a bit of a challenge.

*********************************

“CHELSEA!” Joe told himself that he sincerely hated being the bad guy, but his beautiful but dim girlfriend was making it hard on her already. She had—absentmindedly, maybe—started to lift the paintball gun from its spot in the backseat.

“Sorry, sorry!”

Chelsea was a great gal, that much must be said. I mean, it’s not like Joe was the type of guy to date assholes. She wasn’t an asshole (he probably was, but whatever). She was good and decent. But there were flaws in Chelsea that neither she nor his boyfriend understood at the tender age of seventeen.

For one, she had a deep, incessant appreciation for the male body in all its shapes and forms. While this certainly made her fit to appreciate the work of art that was Joe's physical being, this also made her susceptible to the wandering eye. Nary a boy would pass that she did not stare at with a blank, hangdog look on her face, pussy pulsing, nipples hard.

She was faithful, for sure, and her hand was steady. But her mind often wandered. Don’t get me wrong, dear reader. She never fucking strayed. But her mind was fucked up, and she couldn’t help but stare.

Strangely... some women have this weird ability to separate these contradictory impulses, to remain faithful truly and fully and without question, and yet to stand dangerously close to the precipice of unfaithfulness on many an occasion. Of course, this may have been the seventeen-year-old hormones speaking too, because what seventeen-year-old girl doesn’t want to have her cake and eat it too?

All this to say that Chelsea was looking forward to spending some time away this weekend from the real world, from temptation. It was just her and her man, alone in the forest. Sure, there are some cabins a bit up the way through the dense Pennsylvania wood, but they wouldn’t be bothered. They would be spending some quality time alone, and it was going to be fucking glorious.

Also, it would help, she decided, if she kept the paintball gun in the car.

*************************************

Three beers in. That’s all he was, three beers in. It wasn’t that much, in retrospect, but remember that Mike and his peers were still in eleventh grade, and three beers at that point in your life is enough to make you ineligible to drive, and a great candidate to puke by the end of the night.

He stared at his fourth brew. “Fuck,” he mumbled. And it’s not like he was never drunk before either! He was tipsy before. He and his best friends (they called themselves "the Jedis," and no one, not even them, were sure if this was supposed to be ironic) had plenty of parents between them who kept the liquor cabinets unlocked, so sips of vodka were had here and there, rum had touched his lips for sure, and even whisky had made an appearance on the late-night menu every once in a blue moon.

Three beers though, and he was feeling fucking fine.

Better than he was earlier, anyway. He was almost starting to forget about how shitty the cabin look and felt and smelled. With its decrepit windows, its peeling snot-green wallpaper, the moldy carpet... and then there was that sneaky feeling that there were so many goddamn rats.

But that was hours ago. Now, he was three Pale Ales deep, and he was feeling on top of the goddamn world.

Katie Highburger was in her bathrobe already, and they were both chilling on the musty couch in the cabin’s living room. “Whatchya wanna do, babe? Go fishing?”

Katie Highburger meant this ironically. She was strictly vegan, and he would never dare to send a sharp hook through a fish’s lip, because that would be cruel and sadistic. She loved all of God’s creatures, but he loved fish especially (Mike would often repeat this mantra in mocking tones behind Katie Highburger's back). Some people were birdwatchers. She was, Mike was convinced, the world’s first and only fishwatcher.

“Haha, right,” he said, somewhat distractedly. He had agreed to this weekend at her uncle’s cabin, sure, but you must know at this point, humble reader, that he probably did so more than a bit reluctantly.

Katie Highburger was nice, but she was, how should I say it? Boring? He was the vanilla in between the chocolate and strawberry. She was the Parvati Patil of her Gryffindor life. She was the bag of chips that come with your sandwich.

The unusual and constant use of her full name notwithstanding, Katie Highburger was plain, and Mike needed some excitement in his life, he thought as he stared into the distance. Life might provide in due time, because at that moment he looked up and saw a squirrel staring back at her through the window.

***************************************

That’s all, folks. That’s it. Joe tried to be cool about it. He tried to keep himself calm and enjoy the goddamn camping weekend as it was meant to be enjoyed, what with all the alleged relaxing opportunities and whatnot. But he was fed up. This was it.

He had walked into a clearing of the woods right next to their campsite, and his eyes happened upon three distinct sights you normally wouldn't see in nature. The first was a big piece of white paper, a lipstick-red circular target crudely drawn on it with heavy duty magic marker. The second was a paintball gun, sleek and dangerous, propped up on a tripod made of firm black metal. The third was his fucking girlfriend, clenching the fucking paintball gun between her thick, meaty palms, after he had made it perfectly fucking clear that she was not to mess with that fucking thing this fucking weekend.

And yet there they all were, the target, the gun, the girlfriend, not to mention the fucking betrayal. Joe had walked in the wooded area eastward from her campsite. She stopped, observed the scene, and simply continued eastward.

“Joe, wait! Stop!”

It was no use. He kept walking. It was time for Chelsea to grow the fuck up—maybe this would send the message (the message that his words were obviously inept at sending).

**************************************

“I'll be right back.” Mike stood up as he said it, and Katie Highburger stood up as well, surprised and a bit caught off guard. “Woah, what? Where are you going?”

“Don’t worry about it, I’ll be right back, promise.”

This isn’t something Mike would normally do, but there was something—how should I say this—different(?) about that squirrel on the windowsill. It was like he was staring at Mike with a great burning intensity. The squirrel was beckoning him, telling him to follow. And as bizarre as it may sound to a third party, Mike saw the little squirrel, and heard its call, and obliged.

Out the old oak door Mike went, darting to the left where the squirrel stood, waiting, before sprinting toward the thick brushes of the densely wooded areas of the campsite. Mike followed, light-footed and energized.

Over brambles, tangled weeds, and thick tree roots, Mike pursued this elusive mammal. He wasn’t sure what he was chasing, exactly. It was just a squirrel, after all. And yet, he knew it was something more. He knew in his heart of hearts that he wasn’t just chasing a squirrel; he was chasing the very idea of excitement, excitement that he so lacked in his life. The squirrel wasn’t a squirrel at all, but a metaphor for a hypothetical that could fill that big fucking hole in his soul. How he would fill the metaphorical hole, perhaps, he could find out at the end of the chase.

Through the babbling brook, leaping over a thick old willow stump, and sidestepping a natural garden of daffodils, he screeched to a halt, in front of the squirrel, which had halted as well, and had since turned around to stare right back at Mike.

But it wasn’t just Mike and the squirrel present.

*****************************************

The boys stared at each other for a brief moment.

The silence was finally broken by Mike. “Hey.”

“Hey,” Joe replied.

The connection was immediate, and they both knew it. Maybe it was the fact that they had found each other at similar times in their lives—young, hope for the future, malaise about the present. That feeling that something, anything else was out there, it was a mutually shared, if ineffably, feeling that resonated between them. That meeting in the forest was the beginning of a beautiful friendship.

Then Mike broke the silence once more: "Wanna fuck?"