Song of the Week: "Rawnald Gregory Erickson the Second"

Let me be your algorithm baby and click HERE

"Rawnald Gregory Erickson the Second"

STRFKR

from Starfucker

2008

Is Pandora still a thing? If so, then it remains one of the worst poxes on American life, at least in the context of music and entertainment. It's one thing to sit slack-jawed and let some fucking boomer in a radio booth decide for you which of the four radio-friendly Pink Floyd songs you're going to hear next, but to replace the DJ with a computer is just a bridge too fucking far for me.

When I worked for Zipcar (circa 2012 to 2013), my boss used to play Pandora on her computer every day. She remains to this day one of my favorite people, so I won't give her too much shit for it on a blog, but yo, I heard the SAME FUCKING SONGS every day for a whole year. The algorithm never changed, no matter what indie rock band she plugged in.

You could type "Wolf Parade," or "The Strokes," or "Foster the People," or "Arcade Fire," whatever, and within three songs, it's playing the same shit it always plays. It was either "Heart It Races" by Dr. Dog, "Two Weeks" by Grizzly Bear, or today's song of the week.

To be fair, all three are great songs, "Rawnald Gregory Erickson the Second" especially (despite it's terrible name). It's got a lax vibe, a laid-back rhythm that just kind of flows. It is pure late-aughts indie rock. I was at first fascinated with this unknown band with the asterisked name. But eventually, after hearing "Rawnald" for the thousandth time, and then quitting Zipcar, I figured I didn't need to hear it ever again.

It took me seven years to get around to STRFKR's then-self-titled album, due to that fact. Pandora had ruined what was a good song.

But here's the funny thing—time heals all wounds, even those inflicted from an algorithm. It had been a long time since I had even thought about STRFKR, let alone heard their most popular song, and so when I downloaded that shit this week, it wasn't painful at all. In fact, it felt great. Starfucker is filled with all kinds of lo-fi goodies in the same vein at "Rawnald."

And the best part is, it's bringing me back to those days at Zipcar, practically on the cusp of real adulthood, just chilling with my friend/boss, selling those Zip memberships and shooting the shit. Pandora didn't kill anything. All I needed was some time, and STRFKR came back stronger than ever.

There's a 50% chance that I'll see that friend/boss tonight (the night after this is published—I'm writing on Tuesday, hence the 50% chance caveat), and the timing couldn't be better. I'll have to bring up "Rawnald Gregory Erickson the Second" with her, see if she remembers. Probably not—the song I used to bug her about in actuality was "Stop Dragging My Heart Around," the Petty/Nicks collab that played when the algorithm was told to take the classic rock route. Now THAT'S a song I still fucking hate. But that's a song for another week.

This Is My Blood: Daisy Cutter, etc.

A few miscellaneous notes on the drinking I did tonight, before we move onto the raison d'etre of today's blog post.

• We had a babysitter tonight, so we had a nice dinner at Royal Tavern, and practiced mindful drinking.
• I drank a Sierra Nevada 40th Hoppy Anniversary Ale with my Royal Burger. I realized something that I never have before—I don't like IPAs that are self-described "juicy" or "tropical." Not that the Hoppy Ale was that; it was the opposite. It was pure bitter in a glass, and I love that shit. I don't need IPAs "bursting with hop aromas" or whatever. That was last night, with the Punch Buggy Up on Blocks. It was too complicated. I want something simple. Sierra Nevada knows what's up.
• Royal Tavern was right around the corner from Friendly Lounge, a bar that Pam would've never in a million years wanted to check out. But it was featured in The Irishman, so we braved the cigarette smoke and looked for Ray Romano. This is a shitty bar, which is great IMO, and I'd love to do some more significant damage here at some distant point in the future.
• I drank a Miller Lite there, but I'm still refusing to write about it until a later date.
• At Garage Passyunk for the main event, I started out floundering, because they have over 300 beers in their fridge. Lawson's Finest Liquids Sip of Sunshine stood out for its high ABV, tall volume, and then fact that I didn't know "Lawson" was a name until I watched A Love Song for Bobby Long (interview coming on Monday!).
• But that would've been too much to drink all night—"mindful drinking" and all that—so I switched temporarily to another All Day IPA. It was 19oz, which is definitely beneficial (shit, I'm doing beer math again, sorry).
• That might've been my first repeat this year? And that's okay! Drinking good beers for its own sake is healthy sometimes! Not everything has to be connected to the fucking blog!!
• After two beers, I settled on Daisy Cutter, and stuck with that for the rest of the night, because it was getting too past my bedtime to be combing through a beer book. I got drunk on this stuff last Christmas, during those halcyon days of wanton drinking. I still like it.

And now, here's what the blog post is actually about.

Tonight, at midnight, it will be the 30th birthday of friend of PoYB, Drew A*******. Drew has a personal rule: whenever he is drinking and listening to music at the same time, and there is a key change in the song, he drinks. 

So Pam and I, for a cheap and personal birthday gift, made him a "Key Change Power Hour." One hour, 55 songs, 61 key changes. Instead of drinking at the beginning of each song, you drink at the key change. Same Power Hour rules apply—a shot of beer every serving. I have to assume it'll get you quite drunk, especially now that we're all IN OUR THIRTIES.

I want to share the mix with you, dear reader. If you're interesting in listening to our Key Change Power Hour, then CLICK HERE to stream or download. Good luck making it through "Love on Top."

The full list of songs:

1. “Perfect Illusion” by Lady Gaga

2. “My Girl” by the Temptations

3. “It's Cold Outside” by the Choir

4. “Penny Lane” by the Beatles

5. “A Whole New World” from Aladdin

6. “Bring It All Back” by S Club 7

7. “Take My Breath Away” by Berlin

8. “Sometimes” by Britney Spears

9. “I Have Nothing” by Whitney Houston

10. “Be Our Guest” from Beauty and the Beast

11. “Miss Misery” by Elliott Smith

12. “My Generation” by the Who

13. “This Is the Moment” from Jekyll & Hyde

14. “Crown of Love” by Arcade Fire

15. “Greedy” Ariana Grande

16. “Massive Nights” by the Hold Steady

17. “Getaway Car” by Taylor Swift

18. “Farmer Refuted” from Hamilton

19. “Always Be My Baby” by Mariah Carey

20. “Without You” by Harry Nilsson

21. “Start of Something New” from High School Musical

22. “Shadowboxer” by Fiona Apple

23. “Welcome to the Black Parade” by My Chemical Romance

24. “Get Outta My Dreams, Get into My Car” by Billy Ocean

25. “You’ll Be in My Heart” from Tarzan

26. “Titus Andronicus” by Titus Andronicus

27. “Under the Sea” from The Little Mermaid

28-31. “Love on Top” by Beyoncé

32. “Thank God It’s Monday” by NOFX

33. “And She Was” by Talking Heads

34. “One More Saturday Night” by Grateful Dead

35. “Masquerade” from Phantom of the Opera

36. “I Just Had Sex” by the Lonely Islands

37. “Rainbow High” from Evita

38. “If I Could Turn Back Time” by Cher

39-41. “A Song That Goes like This” from Spamalot

42. “Here You Come Again” by Dolly Parton

43. “Take Me Out” by Franz Ferdinand 

44. “I Try” by Macy Gray

45. “My Heart Will Go On” by Celine Dion 

46. “Do You Realize??” by the Flaming Lips

47. “I Wanna Dance with Somebody” by Whitney Houston 

48. “Can You Feel the Love Tonight?” from The Lion King

49. “Memory” from Cats

50. “I Wanna Be Sedated” by Ramones

51. “Run and Tell That” from Hairspray

52-53. “Stand” by R.E.M.

54. “Surrender” by Cheap Trick

55. “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” from Mulan

56. “Since U Been Gone” by Kelly Clarkson

57. “Total Eclipse of the Heart” by Bonnie Tyler

58. “Thong Song” by Sisqó

59. “I Want It That Way” by Backstreet Boys

60. “Livin’ on a Prayer” by Bon Jovi

61. “I Will Always Love You” by Whitney Houston

NOTES (Beer #1)

BEER: 40th Hoppy Anniversary Ale

GENRE: American IPA

ABV: 6.0%

BREWED BY: Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.

LOCATION: Chico, CA

PURCHASED AT: Royal Tavern

PAIRED WITH: the Royal Burger (gouda, bacon, fried long hots, spicy mayo)

GRADE: 4.5 pukes out of 5


NOTES (Beer #2)

BEER: Sip of Sunshine

GENRE: American Imperial IPA

ABV: 8.0%

BREWED BY: Lawson's Finest Liquids

LOCATION: Waitfield, VT

PURCHASED AT: Garage Passyunk

PAIRED WITH: water, gotta stay hydrated

GRADE: 3.5 pukes out of 5


NOTES (Beer #3)

BEER: Daisy Cutter

GENRE: American Pale Ale

ABV: 5.2%

BREWED BY: Half Acre Beer Company

LOCATION: Chicago, Illinois

PURCHASED AT: Garage Passyunk

PAIRED WITH: friends from New York

GRADE: 4 pukes out of 5

BEER COUNT: 85

1000 gecs, Nate

In a “more is more” spirit befitting 1000 gecs, my goal in selecting this album was to write a 100,000-word review. That quickly shrank to 10,000 after I realized that 100,000 would be more than I’ve written about anything ever. Today, in the interest of not letting good be the enemy of great, I will settle for 1000 words like the little pissbaby I am. If you’re not interested in reading all that, here are a few shorter reviews for you to absorb before I get into the meat. These reviews, like this preamble here, do not count toward the 1,000-word total. You get an extra 150 words for your trouble. If that’s not value, I don’t know what is.

1 GEC REVIEW:

Sublime.

10 GEC REVIEW:

It's rare for anything to jump light years almost instantly.

1,000 GEC REVIEW:

I haven’t had my perspective so thoroughly uprooted by a pop record since Girl Talk’s Night Ripper.

I recognize how absurd almost every word of that sentence is. You’d be hard pressed to find anyone willing to defend the beatmatching mash-up artist in 2010, let alone in 2020 when his charms and tricks have been all but absorbed into the earth. I’m sure there are still people out there slamming Taylor Swift tracks into the Ying Yang Twins as a way to make college freshmen turn up at dorm parties, but no one is out here calling it art. If that’s what you got out of Night Ripper, you’re in better company from a numbers perspective than I am.

As gauche as it seems in retrospect, that album’s real legacy is revealing something universally true about pop music across genre. What it proved, by inelegantly fist-fucking Elton John into Notorious B.I.G., is that pop songs have a chemical similarity, a spiritual connection with each other. Pop songs want to be heard; they want to move people. The tools used to spark that movement are just aesthetics and preference. The line between James Taylor, Duran Duran, Run DMC, Nirvana, Ludacris, Phoenix, and every other genre’s swing at mass appeal is so small as to not exist at all. These things are in conversation with each other. It is us, the listeners, who are in opposition. Music lives in harmony with itself.

It took a dirtbag producer from Pittsburgh to explain that to me fifteen years ago. It took two hype beasts from the Midwest to remind me of that now. The principle difference between 100 gecs and Girl Talk, aesthetics aside, are the places they find inspiration and the shape of the final product. Girl Talk looked at Top 40 radio’s past and made a collage. 100 gecs looked into the trash cultures of the last 20 years and created a monster truck.

Even without listening all that closely, here is a rundown of the genre elements present on “xXXi_wud_nvrstøp_ÜXXx.”: anime-inspired electronica, '90s European dance pop (those hand claps!), 2010-era drop-forward EDM, mid-aughts T-Pain R&B, trap music, major-label indie rock circa 2008 (the end of this song sounds like something off of Viva la Vida).  This song effectively travels from 1991 to 2012, from Atlanta to New York, to Berlin, to Kyoto, to Sweden, to London, in just under three minutes. This is one of the more straightforward songs on the record.

More importantly though, all of those touchpoints are wildly out of step with what modern pop music aspires to in 2020. Each of those genres are a punchline, or at the very least not the building blocks that come to mind when trying to make trendy or mass-market music in the trump era. 1000 gecs spends its time playing with 2005-era Warped Tour emo core, Cannibal Corpse-like grindcore, roller rink dance music (so much of this album reminds me of Aqua) and early 2000s ringtone rap (someone alert Dem Franchize Boys).

It doesn’t matter if you don’t like these things, because of course you don’t. By referencing them, and using their bones to build their songs, 100 gecs position themselves as the John Waters of music. They’re iconoclasts, pointing to the least cool, ugliest parts of the last 20 years of pop music and pointing at what was willfully or accidentally missed.

Suppose that you don’t see 1000 gecs as a triumph of cultural collapse. Perhaps you will understand them as the sound of a digital life brought to life. There are overt texts in the lyrics that make this point (“ringtone” paints a pretty compelling picture of phone dystopia: “27 missed calls lightin' up my cell phone... 45 group texts, 50 group DMs / Send another text askin' me if I've seen them”), but I’d argue the very nature of the music—the transition-free collision of song styles (say, the grindcore breakdown on “800 db cloud” or the barking dog / sirens inserted in between the dubstep breaks of "745 sticky")—illustrates how we live our lives online.

If a person can jump to any webpage at any time, if a person can learn anything they want, and each of these pages wants to allow push notifications for updates, and if every person can keep tabs on every other person on any number of social media or digital communications platforms, why wouldn’t the youth music of the moment reflect that? The chaos of 1000 gecs reflects the first generation of people born and existing online just as much in the physical world creating music that reflects that dual existence. Of course it can’t focus, why would we expect it to? They world is at its fingertips, and it’s getting bigger and closer all the time.

If that’s true, how does 100 gecs keep its music from sounding like a nightmare? I’d argue there are three things at play: comedy, sincerity and energy. The opening diss of “Money Machine,” besides reminding me of this New Yorker article about how violence and sexuality have become distorted online, happens to contain one of the funniest pieces of shit talk I’ve heard in a long time (“You talk a lot of big game for someone with such a small truck”). It’s important to point, however, that 100 gecs don’t sound to me like they’re making fun of the genres they’re playing with. The sincerity is there, and it allows them to say something like “throw money in the over yeah / fuck sleep and his cousin yeah” without making fun of the culture it comes from. You can hear it in the new-crush innocence of “ringtone” or the frustration of “800 db cloud:” for all the playfulness, this is at its core an expression of youthful emotion, of natural chemicals hitting the brain for the first time, back when people could still feel things. 

I understand if this is review / album is incomprehensible. The future always is to the present.

Final Score: 100 out of 100 gecs

1000 gecs, Meagan

I've been making Meagan listen to 1000 gecs on and off for the last few months, and this week I pressed her to write a review for the blog. I transcribed her comments in the car this morning, synthesized and condensed them for publication here. If the content isn't exactly word-for-word, it captures the overall sentiment pretty clearly. —Nate

I can't tell if I like this or I've just been worn down. I'm tapping my toes, but I would never put this on for any reason. Listening to this makes me feel like I'm listening to "Baby Shark." I won't say it's not art, but it's bad. It's all bad.

1000 gecs, Sunny

I have no idea how to think about this work and definitely have no idea how to talk about it. Not to mean I didn't enjoy it. "stupid horse" is addictive, "ringtone" is relatable, and the drops of "745 sticky" made me laugh out loud.

The album reminds me of lots of things in the aggregate, but nothing in the specific. It's like a Magic Eye where you can't see anything looking right at it, but if you defocus you'll make out a phantom shape. Still, I usually need someone's help to tell me if that shape is a horse, a car, or a plane.

3/5gecgecgecgecgecgecgecgecgecgeeeeeeeeec

1000 gecs, Sara

Thank you to Nate for attempting to broaden my musical tastes. No thank you to this album, 1000 gecs.

I can see the appeal of electronica and I understand why people get into it, but it is truly not for me. The songs were annoying, understandably over-autotuned, overwhelming and exhausting to listen to. At least the lyrics did seem to indicate that the the writers felt some emotions, even love maybe?

When I was younger we had an electric Casio keyboard, and I think we made better music on that, all shade.

1 out of 5 whatevers.

1000 gecs, Pam

I remember sitting in an intro to music class freshman year at La Salle. The professor played a series of bloops and bleeps and what sounded like water dripping noises and invited the class to contemplate the question: “What is music?” What distinguishes music from noise? One thing I can say about 100 gecs is that they reignited these questions in my mind. And sure, the majority of the stuff on 1000 gecs would objectively qualify as music—really fun music with a lot of energy that definitely pushes limits. Those parts I enjoyed. But I’m sorry, some of it ("gecgecgec") just sounded like noise to me.

Something I’ll tell you about myself is that voice manipulation in music gives me the creeps, and major vicarious (or third party) embarrassment. Even my favorite band, Local Natives, nearly make me cringe during their song "Garden of Elysian." Halsey utilizes this on Manic, and so does music’s it girl of the moment, Billie Eilish. I know it’s everywhere, and it’s difficult to explain my aversion to it. For me, it doesn’t add to the music, but instead it gives the music an almost silly quality. Maybe I shouldn’t take myself or my music so seriously. That being said, an album where pretty much, maybe even ALL vocals are augmented or manipulated to sound weird just makes me feel like I’m listening to hamster dance (Joe—please link) on repeat.

Bottom line: Definitely some cool songs here, but I am not 100 gec’s target audience. I don’t entirely "gec" it. But hey—I’m writing this review on Monday, and I listened to 1000 gecs like three times! (That’s A LOT for me!) The fact that it was short and I didn’t have to apply a lot of concentration to the vocals was a major plus.

1000 gecs, Joe

Sometimes, you get what you ask for. I lamented the state of pop with Hollywood's Bleeding, and came to a reluctant acceptance of pop's confines with Manic. All the while, I asked, why can't pop be more? Why isn't anyone pushing boundaries? Why is this shit so boring? Can no one create pop music that sounds new?

I made my wishes with a monkey's paw, and 100 gecs appeared. Make no mistake about it—if you strip away the seemingly infinite layers of insanity, 100 gecs is pop music. But for this particular brand of pop, the insanity is the point. Whether that means this is good music or not is almost besides the point. It is audacious. There really isn't anything out there that sounds like 1000 gecs, at least nothing that we would cover in Record Club, anyway.

At its core, a song like "xXXi_wud_nvrstøp_ÜXXx" is something that, I dunno, fucking Ariana Grande would sing. "Because I'm crazy / crazy 'bout you baby," etc. You can hear the hook. This would be Top 40 radio if it wasn't for... the gec of it all. All the autotuning and computer-driven manipulated sounds pile up as the song goes on. What starts as autotune as we regularly know it starts to become even more robotic as the song goes on, till it reaches a point where the singer doesn't even sound human at all. The song is pushed to its breaking point. And it somehow remains a two-minute pop song through it all.

There are songs that test the limits even more—"800db cloud" has an absolutely ridiculous death metal breakdown; "I Need Help Immediately" barely even sounds like a song. There are songs that pull back just a little bit, just enough for the entire song to be completely coherent—"stupid horse" has plenty of autotune, plenty of off-kilter energy, but it actually has a verse and a chorus, and so on.

I will argue that the songs like "stupid horse" are the best songs on the album because of its being at least tangential to normalcy. But I will conversely argue that songs like "gecgecgec," songs that are hanging together by a fucking thread, have an important role in shaping this dense and freaky album. I spent a long time trying to figure out how I could like two different and completely opposing aspects of this album, but eventually I came to an understanding:

None of this makes sense. 1000 gecs doesn't make sense. This an album that nine out of ten people would probably describe as "what is this fucking noise" upon first listen, but then it's also an album that literally made Willow dance for the first time in her life.

So I don't know. I don't know if it's "good." Like I said, that might be besides the point. All I can tell you is that 1000 gecs is absolutely worth the listen. It'll make you feel something. You might hate it, you might love it, but you will definitely have a strong reaction to it. Which means it's good art. Which means its existence is worth our time. I don't know what else to say.

GRADE: 4 pukes out of 5

This Is My Blood: Up on Blocks

This is a review of a brewery I've never been to.

Punch Buggy Brewing Company is the 7296th brewery to open in Kensington. PoYB Contributor Brittany G***** has a family connection, so she and Pam checked it out while I stayed home with the kids.

The appeal of a "brewery" is that you're supposed to feel comfortable there. It should feel intimate. There's a certain sense in the best breweries that local folk come together to make a personalized product, and then share that with the community. Brewers are special in that way—it's vertical integration, but with beer and new friends.

Shitty breweries—possibly the majority of breweries?—forget all this, and try to pump out as much beer as they can in the most cookie-cutter fashion possible. Think Yards. That shit's not special. I don't feel at home there. I feel like I'm at some fucking bar. That's not a brewery as I like it!

My point being that Pam stated that she felt at ease at Punch Buggy Brewing. They have been open for less than a year at American St. and Jefferson St. I had never heard of it before Pam explained where she was going.

She painted a picture of coziness and warmth, a small room with passionate brewers and open-mic guitarists and roving magicians. She nibbled on some lovingly made grilled cheese, and washed it down with a flight sampling. She recognized an old friend from high school, and caught up. She was treated to free beer from Brit's family friend. The growler she brought home to her husband to try was issued gratis.

By all accounts, this brewery is a winner. There are a thousand fucking breweries in this city, and it can get numbingly boring after a while. Punch Buggy seems like it might have the potential to shake a drinker from the brewery doldrums. I'll get there one day too to see for myself.

NOTES

BEER: Up on Blocks (seems like there are a lot of car puns in the names)

GENRE: American Hazy IPA

ABV: 7.1%

BREWED BY: Punch Buggy Brewing Company

LOCATION: Old Kensington

PURCHASED AT: the actual brewery

PAIRED WITH: hanging out and listening to Dashboard Confessional

GRADE: 2.5 pukes out of 5

BEER COUNT: 78

PoYB from the Vault: An Interview with Grandmom and Grandpop

My grandparents always kept all their clocks fifteen minutes fast. In their stuffy first floor apartment on Solly Ave., there stood an ancient grandfather clock, slick mahogany wood that shone with polish, a fading white clock face, two squiggly-line metal hands that were, sure enough, always fifteen minutes ahead. It was one of those old clocks that chimes four times an hour on the quarter hour, bells ringing more ornately depending on the time, like, the half hour was a little more complex of a tone than quarter after. We grew up hearing the most rococo bell-tolls sounding at quarter of, because the old grandfather clock had perpetually been tricked of the actual time.

I never thought to ask my Grandmom and Grandpop to explain their logic regarding this steadfast habit. My Grandmom, god bless her soul, probably would’ve said something cutesy like, “It’s so I’m never late!” Which, sure, makes sense if you didn’t know that the clock had been changed. But Grandmom was probably the one who put the clocks forward in the first place. Surely, in the back of her mind, she had to have known the correct time. You can’t trick yourself like that, not for decades, anyway. She, by her own choice, lived her life constantly having to mentally subtract fifteen minutes every time she looked at a clock! Why?! (Grandpop, for his part, when asked about the strange time arrangement, probably would’ve said something like “I dunno, ask Grandmom.”)

Not that any of this fucking mattered when we visited Grandmom and Grandpop’s shindig. Like all grandparents’ homes, theirs was a place to lose track of time. There was always time for another helping of ground meat in a pan served over peppery mashed potatoes (an actual meal, Grandmom’s specialty, surely a holdover from her mother’s Great Depression-era household menu). Time added up quickly when you had to repeat the same anecdote to Grandpop that you just told Grandmom because he was too hard of hearing to listen the first time. Time, as far as I could tell, stopped dead when you watch Grandpop somehow, slowly, move from couch to kitchen table, carefully, leaning full-bore into that rickety walker, tennis ball tips dragging across the thin blue rug, everyone in the room praying that he would again complete the trip successfully, that this wouldn’t be the time he didn’t make it. Clocks had nothing to do with this shit.

I think about my grandparents a lot these days, and their apartment in Northeast Philly, and that damn clock. How it was such a strange fucking thing to do, and yet, at the end of the day, it was pointless, the clock. It told the wrong time and no one looked at it anyway. I’ve been thinking about it a decent amount recently because I’m starting to see that it wasn’t just at Grandmom and Grandpop’s that time was useless. The futility of keeping track of time is a lifelong struggle.

Which might be a cliché at this point, I guess, but that’s what I’m going to write about here, basically. Time. Fuck it. (If this subject seems tired to you, please, by all means, leave and go watch the ending to Stand by Me again.) I only just turned 31, and already I feel like time gets away from me. I’m sitting here at a dead end job, a desk jockey, a useless member of society, wondering where the fuck it all went. Time. It seems like just yesterday...

Well, it seems like just yesterday I was sitting at Grandmom’s kitchen table, shaving off another piece of crumb cake for dessert, listening to Grandpop talk about “the ol’ days.” Ya know, the usual nostalgic pieces, penny candy at the corner store, hanging out with buddies at the park, constant references to neighborhood pride (“Fishtown! I grew up in Fishtown!”). It was sweet, and I genuinely enjoyed hearing the tales, but at the same time, it was a little much. Sometimes, it was like, we get it, you miss how it used to be. Alright, old timer!

But now it's years later, and Grandmom and Grandpop are both passed away, and I miss them. I think sometimes that I probably blew it, that I had time allotted to me to spend time with them, to really get to know them, and I fucking blew it. Before I knew it, it was fifteen minutes later, and they were gone.

They could turn the clock forward, but unfortunately, they couldn't turn the clock back.

In the Spring of 2008, I had the opportunity to interview a senior citizen for a class project, and after a particularly verbose Laf old guy bailed on me, I drove over to my grandparents' house, and pressed play on the recorder, and found out what Grandmom and Grandpop had to say about their lives.

I consider this a wasted opportunity, honestly. I should've sat there for five hours and learned about their lives. They had so much to share. I was a shitty student and did the bare minimum. This was my chance to really know my grandparents. That chance is gone now.

Still, I think what little I did gather in this interview is worth sharing with you guys. Some memories, as half-assed as they are, deserve to be preserved.

Enjoy.

This Is My Blood: Beerlao

Tasting, Judging, and Evaluating Beer: How Not to Do It, I.e. the limitations of judging beer at the K*** house.

Limit distractions
yeah fucking right
Willow won't stop saying "NO" over and over and over
She's not eating her goddamn carrots
Martha is crying now
Gotta hold her with one hand and drink the beer with the other
100 gecs at full volume
Consider lighting
Bright as fuck in the dining room
The chandelier is eye-level to me when I'm standing
I'm blind
Every light is on in the house
Provide water
Beer is practically water anyway
A six-year-old Britta filter
Now Willow is pouring her water onto her food
Dump it
I drink one beer a day, I'm not fucking dumping it, are you fucking insane?
Mosher calls getting too drunk to evaluate beer "chaos," I say fuck you Mosher
Jot it down
I have a fork in one hand a baby in the other, no third hand for pen
Writing during dinner is annoying and pretentious
Keep score
I do every day, but it's mostly random, I should really use a score sheet
Eliminate unwanted odors
Uneaten boiled carrots smell like boiled carrots
Clean ovens smell astringent
The quiche tastes great even though it smells burnt
Why does it smell like rotten mustard?
n/m Martha just shit herself
Provide a palate cleanser
It takes Pam an hour to drink half a beer, we don't have time fo' that
Consider the glass
We fight over who gets to do the dishes because when you're doing the dishes you're not getting cried at on both sides.
I will never be a good beer taster.

NOTES

BEER: Beerlao

GENRE: Japanese Rice Lager

ABV: 5.0%

BREWED BY: Lao Brewery Co.

LOCATION: Vientiane, Laos

PURCHASED AT: Capital Beer

PAIRED WITH: Homemade quiche (minus the overindulgent nostalgia this time)

GRADE: 2 pukes out of 5

BEER COUNT: 77

The Albums That Matter: Beast Moans

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

Beast Moans

Swan Lake

2006

Swan Lake is a "supergroup," if we stretch the term to its very limits. The underlying implication is that already established stars are coming together to create something new together—think the Traveling Wilburys or the Highwaymen.

I suppose you could make the argument for Swan Lake as well, which is composed of Dan Bejar, Spencer Krug, and Carey Mercer. These are not household names, but if you are deep in the indie rock weeds, then you know who they are. Bejar is Destroyer and a former part of New Pornographers. Krug did Sunset Rubdown and is one half of Wolf Parade. Mercer was the frontman for the now-defunct Frog Eyes.

It's an interesting combination, because an outside could totally place all three artists in the "eccentric indie rock" box without being wrong, but then when you actually do place them in a room together, their differences become stark. So it goes with Beast Moans.

The ultimate question posed when it comes to this sort of thing: Is the sum greater than the parts? Well, I guess you'd have to be familiar with the parts. Let's go through each one and discuss what I think of them as separate artists and what I think of them in the context of this album.

Dan Bejar

The best quality that Bejar owns is his voice, which is reedy and mysterious, and he uses it to sings some bizarrely clever/funny lines (think when he says "cue fake drums" on that new Destroyer release). What's interesting about Bejar is that, while he is clearly a wordsmith, his music soars when he lets someone else get their hands on it. Some of his best songs went through the New Pornographers machine, where A.C. Newman no doubt spruced 'em up a bit with his pop sensibilities. Even with this year's Have We Met, Bejar spoke at length about how he basically came up with some demos and sent them to his buddy, who did whatever he wanted as far as the music went. So while I like Destroyer for the most part (more hits, plenty of misses), Swan Lake may or may not be the ideal situation for him?

Spencer Krug

I can't say the same about Krug, even though most of his best work is indeed with Wolf Parade (including one of the best songs of all time). But if you take the absolute best of all three of these artists' solo work and put 'em head-to-head-to-head, Krug's comes out on top (mainly the first and third Sunset Rubdown albums). And like all these guys, Krug is very idiosyncratic, but I think he is the most committed to actually laying down a hook every once in a while. I won't say that Swan Lake is better for Spencer Krug, but I'll say that Swan Lake is better because of Spencer Krug.

Carey Mercer

Frog Eyes was an absolutely batshit bedroom freak rock project, and they released exactly one great album—Tears of the Valedictorian, which is also the only tolerable Frog Eyes album, in my lowly opinion. So it's kind of hard to say that Mercer does better in Swan Lake. Maybe it's that Swan Lake is great despite Carey Mercer? But even that seems a little harsh. Add this to the fact that Mercer stated he was the captain at the helm for this project—not that he contributed more to the writing or the music, but he made all the "boring" production decisions, while Krug and Bejar flitted in and out when they could. Anything that is just too weird and doesn't work because of that, blame Mercer. On the flip side, anything that is so fucking weird and works despite that, you can probably thank Mercer. Weird dude.

Each of the three artists wrote four songs, and brought them to the group to flesh out. It's pretty clear what songs are whose if you are familiar with their respective signature sounds, but also it's pretty easy to pick out what specific influences the other two non-writing members had on each song. I'm thinking something like "The Freedom," which is a total Bejar song (most Bejar line: "You said 'the truth shall set you free,' / Oh, you lied to me, when you said 'the truth shall set you free.'"), but then has this furiously fluttering coda that is such a Mercer move. Or "All Fires," that is absolutely a Krug tune, but the lyrics are just too delicious for Bejar to have had nothing to do with it. And so on.

Probably the biggest difference between the three artists on this album is where the vocals are in the mix. Krug's are way up front, Bejar's are normal, and Mercer's are absolutely fucking buried. So you have songs like "Bluebird," where Krug is way louder than he probably should be (not necessarily complaining, but still), and then you have "City Calls," where it sounds like the band is playing in one room, and the mic just happens to be picking up Mercer's echo-y yawlp from down the hall. I guess this speaks to how important each artist considers vocals, and the weirder the singer, the more buried the vocals are going to be.

We are at paragraph #10 and you're asking me whether I think you'll like this album, right? Because I've been unclear so far. My answer is this: I don't know. Maybe I've been avoiding the question. I like Beast Moans a lot, despite its slapdash avant-garde nature. But I can definitely understand why you wouldn't like it. I guess try to consider whether you like one of the three artists, and then go by this list:

1) If you really like Spencer Krug, then you're really going to like Swan Lake (it sounds like Sunset Rubdown at parts!)
2) If you really like Dan Bejar, then you're going to kind of like Swan Lake (sometimes it flourishes, sometimes it feels like it would've been less weird and more fun with Destroyer!)
3) If you really like Carey Mercer, then you're probably not going to like Swan Lake (Swan Lake isn't letting him fly his truest freak flag!)

Then go from there. And if you've never heard of any of these people, then this is probably not a great place to start. How can you guess whether you'll like a supergroup if you don't know the "stars" that comprise it?

If this album sounds interesting, try this song: "The Partisan but He's Got to Know"

Stray Observations

• Oh yeah, I mentioned that each artist wrote four songs, but there are thirteen total. "Petersburg, Liberty Theater, 1914" doesn't have writing credits (Wikipedia says "The writer is currently unknown"). So who knows? My guess is that they all wrote it together, but didn't want to ruin the narrative of "everyone wrote their own stuff and then the group made the music together."
• I learned a lot from reading three separate interviews that a blog called Radio Free Canuckistan—read Bejar's, Mercer's, and Krug's. I wish I lived in a world where Puke on Your Birthday had the pull to interview these legends.
• "All Fires" has the best lyric: "1000 people did what they could / They found a steeple / And tore up the wood. / 500 pieces means 500 float / 1000 people means 500 don't." There's a haunting vividness in its specificity.
• I know I said that Mercer was the one who buried his vocals, but what the fuck is going on with Bejar's closing track, "Shooting Rockets"? Bejar himself claims that it's buried because the vocal take was awful, but I dunno, the whole thing just seems unnecessary. It's over five minutes of indecipherable music! What a bummer way to end the album!
• Treble Zine in 2006 claimed: "I would venture to say that Swan Lake is an even better collaborative effort than the New Pornographers." I love Beast Moans, but c'mon, that's preposterous.
• ("Bejar Swan Lake Song Most Likely to Make Sense As a New Pornos Song" though? 100% "A Venue Called Rubella." Newman could've done some wild shit with that one.)
• Another quote, this from the aforementioned Krug interview. Krug wonders out loud if the "frat boy Wolf Parade fans" are going to like Beast Moans. Does such a thing exist?!
• ALBUM COVER: A naked person (male or female, I'm not sure, though females tend to be the protagonists or muses throughout these songs, so let's assume female) plays a guitar(?) on the side of a cliff during sunset(?). The Swan Lake Wikipedia page says that someone named Daniel Murphy created the cover, but every other source I can find says it was artist Shary Boyle who painted it. Anyone know how to edit Wikipedia?
• ALBUM TITLE: Apparently Krug said the overall aesthetic of Swan Lake's sound was like "a boar dying in a tar pit," and so Mercer came up with the name from that.
• CHARTS AND AWARDS: No. Puke on Your Birthday didn't exist in 2006 so I can't even say it won any local awards.
• As much as I like this band, I'll concede that the name "Swan Lake" is fucking awful. Maybe that's just my frustration at ungoogleable terms speaking. (Apparently they were originally called "Thunder Cloud," which is similarly dumb but probably preferable, if I'm being honest.)
• See you in 2035 for their second and final album, Enemy Mine. It's good too, but in a completely different way—the members made a concerted effort to write the songs together, which makes the songs sound more cohesive, but which also finds them losing some of that manic magic that made 'em so special in the first place.

NEXT TIME: Beat the Champ by the Mountain Goats

This Is My Blood: Perpetual IPA / All Day IPA

We talked about measurements and quantities last week, and if we hadn't, I don't know if I would've had the revelation that I had today when choosing a beer at Good Dog Bar.

I've never even consciously realized that I do this quick math every time I look at a beer menu. I roughly sketch an equation in my head that answers the essential question—well, essential to me, anyway—what beer will get me the most bang for my buck?

Not every drink menu lists ABV% and prices, but when they do, it's a pretty simple estimate. Basically, it works out to "how many dollars for how many normal servings of alcohol?"

$3 cans of 4.0% PBRs are going to be worth it compared to $6 cans of a fancier 7.0% IPAs, right? You expect to pay double the price to get double the amount of alcohol, but the fancier beer is 2x the price and 1.5x the alcohol. You also gotta take volume into consideration. If the PBRs are 12oz cans but the fancier beers are 16oz pounders, then maybe it doesn't matter which beer you get.

This is all in the name of getting the drunkest for the cheapest, mind you, which is the underlined thesis of the revelation I had today. I stared at the Good Dog drink list for a few minutes, and saw that the Tröegs Perpetual IPA seemed to be the best beer to purchase, according to the math. Most of the beers were $6 (but half off, for 1/2 Price Can Wednesdays), and Perpetual IPA had the highest ABV% out of that subset.

I was considering getting a SingleCut Gilly & Weird IPA at first—6.6% and $10—since it's probably harder to find than Perpetual IPA, and plus it was 16oz instead of Perpetual's 12oz, so drinking a rarer, larger beer (this year during this project, at least) would probably be worth the price bump. But then I realized that SingleCut Gilly & Weird was not included in 1/2 Price Can Wednesday, so I certainly wasn't going to be paying $10 instead of $3. The jump was just way too high.

But then I had a second, but related revelation, and it's one that you're probably sick and tired of hearing about at this point in the This Is My Blood project. I spent all this time running numbers in my head, and then it came crashing down... I'm thinking way too hard about trying to get drunk.

Because that's really what it boils down to, right? It's not about the wallet, it's about getting fucked up. I can pretend it's about taste, but if fucking 7oz Natty Bos were being sold for 75 cents a pop or some bullshit like that, then I'd be drinking fifteen of them. And that's the problem! I shouldn't need to do math to try to get drunk in the most efficient way, because I shouldn't need to get drunk at all.

It's not even the end of February yet and I'm getting perilously close to running out of new ways to explain this. I have a problem. I'm working on fixing it without betraying who I am. It's a process.

In 2019 and prior, if I had met up with Mandy at Good Dog Bar for lunch and saw on the beer menu that it was 1/2 Price Cans Wednesday, then I would've done the quick math and ordered at least four $3 Perpetual IPAs, no sweat. But I'm actively trying to change, so I only got one Perpetual, and then switched to a same-price beer that had a lower ABV% for my second (and final!) beer (All Day, a session beer!).

I'm not trying to pat myself on the back or anything—probably shouldn't be drinking at all during lunch, eh?— but these are steps in the right direction. No math required.

NOTES (Beer #1)

BEER: Perpetual IPA

GENRE: American IPA

ABV: 7.5%

BREWED BY: Tröegs Brewing Company

LOCATION: Hershey, PA

PURCHASED AT: Good Dog Bar

PAIRED WITH: Begging Mandy to finally write her goddamn review for Man It Feels Like Space Again

GRADE: 4 pukes out of 5

BEER COUNT: 75


NOTES (Beer #2)

BEER: All Day IPA

GENRE: American IPA

ABV: 4.7%

BREWED BY: Founders Brewing Company

LOCATION: Grand Rapids, MI

PURCHASED AT: Good Dog Bar

PAIRED WITH: Brisket grilled cheese and fries (5 pukes!)

GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5

BEER COUNT: 76

Top Five Tuesday: Dad Meals

My generation grew up with dads who typically could not cook. Chef dads were the exception, not the rule. You hate to say "it was a different time," because that phrase is such a fucking dog-whistle these days, but in this particular case, it really was a different time for their generation, growing up. Dads were the breadwinners, and moms were the bread-makers. By the time our own dads grew up and had families, the reality had changed, and moms were working too. This meant that dads had to put together some semblance of a dinner on nights when Mom was working late.

All this to say that my dad couldn't cook, but had to try anyway when my mom had an evening shift at the hospital. I'm not saying that he tried to make things and they turned out like shit (though it didn't help that his own mother had a tendency to burn everything that she cooked, and so my dad had acquired that taste). I'm saying that the menu was limited by design, and certain meals became standard just because they were easy meals to make. Here are my top five dad meals (from our household, growing up).

TOP FIVE DAD MEALS AT 7024 SHELBOURNE STREET

5. Fishsticks

Fish mush in a crispy bread crumb tube slathered with ketchup is a meal that only a six-year-old could acquire a taste for. This is probably the only food on this list I can't imagine enjoying today, but let the record show that we loved this shit growing up. Kids are weird.

4. Chicken Nuggets

Chicken nuggets can be done right, or they can be dry and slightly burned and, again, slathered in ketchup. I think you know which ones we usually got. It's all good though! They were shaped like dinosaurs! YES!!!

3. Breakfast

Being a dad who is also good at cooking breakfast myself, I wonder if this ability is something that is a natural part of male DNA. Then I remember that breakfast is a lot easier than dinner to prepare, and it's probably not enough to pat myself on the back over. Nonetheless, I'll always appreciate breakfast for dinner, even if my dad is heating up frozen french toast sticks in the toaster oven and microwaving the bacon on a T-shaped rack.

2. Grilled Cheese and Soup

It's a classic pairing, soup and grilled cheese, but in my house, soup was given the mercenary role of masking the extremely burnt flavoring of the hastily prepared grilled cheese. Black-crusted grilled cheese tastes bad; black-crusted grilled cheese coated in savory tomato soup? Pretty good!

1. Beef Pot Pie

Take out of the freezer, place in the oven for 30 minutes, then flip over on a plate (and yes, pour on the ketchup). Can't get simpler than that. And honestly, I can't name many meals that were tastier—no need to separate dad meals from mom meals, I'm saying one of the tastiest FULL STOP. I'm saying that there is no way to improve on the classic frozen Banquet© Beef Pot Pie recipe. I don't even know if I would like homemade beef pot pie. I don't know because I've never tried it. Frozen beef pot pies forever. Thanks for the tip, Dad.

(Sidenotes: Dad has improved in the intervening years. And not that I'm any better now than he was then! I just lean on that crockpot and hope for the best.)

Should I Watch This? Derry Girls

Should I Watch This? Sam S******* wades through the glut of television content to offer his view on whether a TV show is worth your time. The only connective tissue for this column is that Sam watched it.

Show: Derry Girls

Season: One (released 2018)

Episodes: 6; each between 23 minutes and 25 minutes (very consistent!)

How to Watch: Netflix

Genre: '90s nostalgia comedy but during an unending religious civil war

You'd Enjoy This Show If You Like: Irish humor (it's like British humor, but bleaker); characters that play their one note well; an incisive and cynical look at Catholicism; actors making choice and faces (see the Erin collage above).

You'd Hate This Show If You Dislike: watching a show with subtitles even though it's in English; not taking yourself too seriously (I think I made that double-negative work).

People Involved: Lisa McGee created and wrote this autobiographical tale about growing up Catholic in the border city of Derry, Northern Ireland during the "Troubles" (i.e., the unending Catholic-Protestant fight that may become relevant again due to Brexit). Originally produced for the British station Channel 4, Netflix picked it up after Season 1 got a 100% on Rotten Tomatoes.

The Pitch: 100% on Rotten Tomatoes is hard to argue with, but I'll try to give some further justification. The show depicts a well-trodden story (coming of age comedy but set like 20 years ago (Happy Days, The Wonder Years, That '70s Show, and the more recent PEN15)), adds the extra layer of the existential Irish conflict, and tops it all off with a cast that totally embodies their characters. The last element is why the show succeeds: no gimmick needed, these actresses know who they are and what they are supposed to do.

Seldom does a show know itself as well as Derry Girls does. Every episode portrays the four principal (and kind of stock) characters getting into some small trouble that escalates into a Curb Your Enthusiasm-esque eruption. And the situations are stellar: Jesus crying; competitive Jazz-ercise; fostering Chernobyl refugees; smuggling IRA members. Throughout the turmoil, the characters do their jobs: Erin tries too hard and fails; Clare gets all wound up and rats them out; Michelle attempts to fuck some dude; and Orla bounces around, dancing with fairies. None of these descriptions capture what the ensemble does when unleashed in a situation. It's a sum of the whole is greater than the individual parts situation. Four female characters also work well in a "Which Sex in the City character are you?" kind of way (I want to be an Erin, but am probably a Clare).

Other Fun Stuff: Though the show mostly focuses on the teen girls, the ensemble have some of the bigger laugh lines. Sister Michael exudes annoyance in a "I picked a bad day to stop sniffing glue" fashion. The Grandfather endlessly shits all over the son-in-law (named Gerry, a Park and Recreation nod?), and the girls dunk on their English cousin James, who everyone knows is a dick.

Should I Watch This? Yes. Derry Girls features a joke a minute and is a breeze to watch. The English force concise, tight shows with only six episodes, and this show packs it all in. Other than Fleabag, this is one of the most enjoyable shows I've recently watched.

This Is My Blood: Plaid Habit

Here's something I didn't expect—today, I had a beer that I disliked so much that I dumped the rest of it down the drain. I'm wracking my brain for a clear memory of disposing a beer over its taste, and I'm getting nothing. I don't think there was ever a beer that I took sips and said "I don't like the taste of this," and then got rid of it. Fucking rarely, if ever.

Maybe there were some warm beers in college that I dumped. Maybe there were some rough cheap beers sitting on the bar at 1 AM, barely touched. Maybe I tried to drink a Lionshead about three years too late and I dumped it down my esophagus and then dumped it up through my esophagus. But these are the exceptions. I've never had a nice, fancy beer where I've said "Ehhhh.... no, sorry," and then chucked it. Fucking never.

So here we are, in uncharted territory. Plaid Habit, you were bad. Bad enough that I poured at least $3 worth of beer down the sink. Wild.

Make no mistake, according to my typical beer-drinking (ahem) habits, I leave no beer behind. Like the foam thing I talked about the other day, finishing your beer is an ancient responsibility that was passed from kid to kid in the Great NEast. If you didn't finish your beer, then you were a PUSSY. Cleaning up the next morning after a party, every half-drank soldier was a stake in my heart. "You coulda been something, kid."

I was going completely against code, dumping the Plaid Habit. But I suppose that's what happens when a beer is "Canadian whisky barrel-aged." It's like, what did I think was going to happen? Did I think I was going to taste hints of whisky on my tongue and enjoy it? Enjoy whisky for the first time in my life?

Fuck no. There's a reason that I'm focusing on drinking beer this year—I like beer. I don't like whisky. Never have. The idea of an "imperial brown ale" sincerely sounds appealing, but if that brown ale is going to taste like whisky, then it can go fuck off.

I feel like I need to visit Burholme tonight, to pay my respects to the drinking gods that I let down so decisively tonight. Generations before me have finished their beer. Tonight, I could not. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry. Oh god.

NOTES

BEER: Plaid Habit

GENRE: American Strong Ale

ABV: 12.5%

BREWED BY: Boulevard Brewing Co.

LOCATION: Kansas City, MO

PURCHASED AT: Capital Beer

PAIRED WITH: An episode of This Is Us, which I love, and I was going to write about here if Plaid Habit hadn't gone awry (also, in retrospect, maybe writing about TV on Tuesdays wouldn't make any sense, since Sam already does that).

GRADE: 0.5 pukes out of 5

BEER COUNT: 74

Coloring Book

Willow has a Minnie Mouse coloring book that she quite enjoys. Each page has different pictures to fill in with color, and plenty of simple puzzles and games to be completed with a crayon. I've been thinking about making my own version of the book for her. Here are some of my ideas.

• A picture of Minnie and Daisy holding hands
• Minnie has to choose which hat to wear
• Color Minnie's pot of flowers
• Four bows, color each a different color
• Minnie smiling with a hands-folded-under-chin pose
• Minnie's in her new car
• Minnie and Daisy are high-fiving
• Draw Minnie's eyelashes
• Play tic-tac-toe against Minnie
• Color in the words that rhyme with "mouse"
• Minnie is a doctor
• Get Daisy to the end of the maze
• Minnie and Mickey get married
• Circle the letter M where it appears in this letter jumble
• Color the shoes that Minnie will wear
• Get Minnie to the end of the other maze
• Minnie is curtsying, with a plethora of bows surrounding her
• Minnie's cat is playing in a box
• Pluto is chasing the cat, but the cat is smiling
• Jungle Boat Minnie in safari hat
• Minnie playing guitar, large musical notes in the sky
• Minnie with blank speech bubble to fill in
• Minnie with chef's apron
• Minnie made dinner, color in what she will eat
• Full-page picture of Minnie
• Three pictures of Minnie, and three matching silhouettes; pair them appropriately
• Minnie in a large field with flowers
• Circle the bows in the scene
• Items of Minnie's clothing next to different plain shapes; pair them appropriately
• Find Minnie's missing shoe
• Use the grid to help color a picture of Minnie
• Minnie and Daisy riding a tandem bike
• Minnie in her living room, and there are color words in each blank space to guide in the coloring
• Makeup for Minnie
• A maze shaped like Minnie's cat
• Color the words that start with M
• Minnie looking in a mirror at her reflection
• Color the buttons on Minnie's dress
• Minnie holding her cat
• Minnie wearing a bonnet
• Match each posed Minnie with the outline of the mirrored pose
• Color in the word "Minnie" in large-font bubble letters
• Minnie rollerskating
• Minnie dancing
• Minnie's cat purring
• Match the Minnies wearing the same clothes
• Minnie and Daisy having lunch
• Find Minnie
• Minnie under a rainbow
• Help Minnie get through the maze to find her cat
• A large picture of Minnie
• Minnie and Daisy laughing
• Minnie staring at the audience
• Minnie mouthing the word "help"
• Frowning Minnie surrounded by 12 cats
• Minnie pulling lint out of her pockets
• Color which uncomfortable heels Minnie will wear
• Minnie with unrealistic expectations of beauty
• Tear Minnie's hair out
• Minnie and Daisy stare at each other, a friendship soured
• Minnie can't stop shaking
• A large pair of eyes look down at Minnie from above
• Sweat pouring down Minnie's forehead as she attempts to cut the right wire
• Daisy on top of a tall building
• Minnie's cat's litterbox is full
• Minnie stares blankly at a life insurance form
• A craggly hand points toward a tombstone engulfed in fog, color in the words "Minnie Mouse"
• Minnie is Beelzebub
• Daisy google searches "reasons to live"
• Every inch of Minnie Mouse
• Daisy in a vat of goo
• Minnie's cat sires thousands, the Toontown revolution begins
• Color in Minnie's black eye after Mickey came home late
• Willow reads this blog post, horrified, in like the year 2037
• Daisy screams but no one can hear her
• An ax smashes through the wooden door and Goofy's face appears
• tear this page out it's useless just like me just like me
• Minnie counting the seconds
• Daisy says that vaccinations cause autism, color her duckling's measles
• Minnie puking on her birthday
• Color in Daisy's empty vodka bottles on a Tuesday afternoon
• Minnie tears the universe to shreds
• Minnie comes unstuck in time
• Minnie, not Minnie
• Daisy spectacularly flames out
• Minnie's cat eats her remains
• Minnie Mouse always is and never was
• Minnie reaches through the page to throttle my neck
• Minnie's existential crisis
• Minnie not fulfilling her potential
• Minnie wondering what it all means
• minnie minnie minnie minnie minnie minnie from beneath the floorboards
• Death by bows and bonnets
• Minnie is gone
• Minnie violently yells into the abyss
• kill minnie kill kill
• God judges Minnie unfavorably
• walt disney was a nazi so minnie must be too
• help minnie help me minnie minnie i'm drowning minnie help help help help
• Minnie petting her cat

This Is My Blood: Clear Skies

Since I finished another chapter of Tasting Beer, I'll do what I did after Chapter 3—take a random beer, and try to apply all of that chapter's knowledge to the understanding of that beer (with questionable results, because I am dumb).

River Horse Brewing Co. made this Clear Skies IPA, and true to its word, it was light and refreshing. Probably the perfect beer to pair with a a warm-weather salmon dinner. But how does it measure?

GRAVITY: Clear Skies is made with pilsen malt—which is the lightest malt can be, apparently—and carapils malts—which are mainly added to improve carbonation and mouthfeel, it looks like. While the Gravity Units (GU) are not listed anywhere on the can or online, the ABV% is at 5.8%, so we can assume that the Original Gravity is around 1.058, assuming that nothing crazy happened during fermentation.

COLOR: Clear Skies was a nice solid yellow/golden color. Looking at my beer color chart, I'll estimate that it was between 4 and 6 SRM (between "pale gold" and "solid gold").

BITTERNESS: Unfortunately, I couldn't find the IBU for Clear Skies either, but there was a nice balance of hop and malt. It was only moderately bitter. Let's estimate that it was 18 IBU(????), and go with that until anyone tells me otherwise. The beer is "dry-hopped," which means that the hops were added during the fermentation, and were mainly added for flavor and aroma (as opposed to bitterness).

HAZINESS: This beer was clear, for the most part. It wasn't crystal clear, and I think that's probably because I tend to drink my beers colder than they should be drank. Was this chill haze? Maybe!

CARBONATION: I've never seen any beers with Volumes noted, so I don't know the exact measurement for carbonation either. But Clear Skies had a nice foamy head to start, and it settled, leaving a little bit of lacing. Typical ales are between 1.5 and 2.5 Volumes CO2, so I'm comfortable estimating 2.0 based on all the evidence.

In a perfect world, all these measurements would be printed right on the can/bottle, but the beer world is decidedly imperfect, and shrouded in mystery. So we are left to make our best guesses. Even though this chapter focused on how to mathematically measure beer in ways that I will never actually do myself, that might not even be the point. I think the general purpose of learning all this is to understand what factors affect each measurement, and to understand why the numbers are what they are. I'm cool with that.

NOTES

BEER: Clear Skies

GENRE: American IPA

ABV: 5.8%

BREWED BY: River Horse Brewing Co.

LOCATION: Ewing, NJ

PURCHASED AT: Capital Beer

PAIRED WITH: Salmon and mixed veggies

GRADE: 4 pukes out of 5

BEER COUNT: 73.5

Album of the Week: 1000 gecs

Nate's been waiting in line patiently to explain to y'all why this album was his favorite album of 2019, so let him have his week, and please understand that we allow ALL types of music here at Record Club.

Check it out below, and check out the playlist HERE, and check out old albums in the archives to your right, and check yourself before you wreck yourself.

WEEK 56 — February 23-29, 2020

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

ALBUM: 1000 gecs
ARTIST: 100 gecs

RELEASED: May 31, 2019

WHAT GENRE IS THIS: experimental / electronica

WHY NATE PICKED IT: 

TRACKLIST:

1. 745 sticky
2. money machine
3. 800db cloud
4. I Need Help Immediately
5. stupid horse
6. xXXi_wud_nvrstøp_ÜXXx
7. ringtone
8. gecgecgec
9. hand crushed by a mallet
10. gec 2 Ü

LENGTH: 23:07

READING SOME SHIT: The Fader profiled 'em a few months ago.

Happy listening, fam! Have a great week!

This Is My Blood: Golden Monkey

In a never-ending life's quest to find all that is worthwhile, I discover myself following the dark, bougey trail of "cheesesteaks before you die," as curated by Philadelphia Magazine. Consider it a bucket list within a bucket list. Until I find a better cheesesteak list from a more reputable source, I'm stuck with this one.

In order to kill two birds with the same stone, I wrapped a can of beer in a paper towel, and then conspicuously held it together with packing tape. For the grueling five hours between clock-in and lunch, it sat in the back of a full fridge in an empty office. Then I brought it to Reading Terminal, where I sat cloaked by the throngs of tourists who couldn't give less of a shit whether some fucking jerk-off was drinking a single beer with his cheesesteak.

Here are the cheesesteaks on Philly Mag's list. I've crossed off the ones that I've eaten already.

1. Max's, North Philly (made plans to go there soon HERE)
2. John's Roast Pork, Pennsport (part of PoYB's cheesesteak round-up)
3. Woodrow's, Bella Vista
4. Joe's Steak + Soda Shop, Fishtown (part of PoYB's cheesesteak round-up)
5. Charlie's Roast Pork, Pennsport
6. Mike's BBQ, East Passyunk
7. Dalessandro's, Roxborough (part of PoYB's cheesesteak round-up)
8. One Pound Cheesesteaks, Kensington (ordered on a food delivery service, not sure if that counts...)
9. Gooey Louie's Deli, Pennsport
10. Hog Island Steaks, Phoenixville
11. Spot Gourmet Burgers, Brewerytown
12. Donkey's Place, Camden
13. Cosmi's Deli, East Passyunk
14. Saad's, University City
15. Mama's Pizzeria, Bala Cynwyd
16. Steve's Prince of Steaks, Northeast (part of PoYB's cheesesteak round-up)
17. Geno's, East Passyunk (part of PoYB's cheesesteak round-up)
18. Pat's, East Passyunk (part of PoYB's cheesesteak round-up)
19. Chubby's, Roxborough (same day as this)
20. Little Sicily II, Pennsport
21. Tony Luke's, South Philly (part of PoYB's cheesesteak round-up)
22. Oregon Steaks, South Philly
23. Pastrami and Things, Center City (just ate this the other day, but I had no reason to write about it on the blog)
24. Phillip's, South Philly
25. Barry's, Roxborough
26. Gojjo, University City
27. McNally's Tavern, Chestnut Hill
28. Beck's Cajun Cafe, Reading Terminal
29. Jim's, South Street (part of PoYB's cheesesteak round-up)
30. V Street, Rittenhouse

Notes: 1) I took Barclay Prime off Philly Mag's list, because I'm not spending $120 on a cheesesteak, not fucking ever, fuck Philly Mag for even suggesting it. 2) McNally's Tavern's Schmitter isn't really a cheesesteak, but it might be better than a cheesesteak. 3) They actually listed a different Jim's, apparently one in the suburbs? Fuck that noise, South Street Jim's is still a classic all these years later.

I ate #28 today, the Trainwreck at Beck's. It was fucking great. Basically, there's the steak and cheese, and they add on salami, sausage, and creole sauce. Golden Monkey, full of spices, was probably a shitty pairing, but I still felt great afterward—full, a little tipsy, content with life. Sunday mornings suck ass, but I found peace among the chaos at the Terminal.

I'm sure I will be reporting more about cheesesteaks in the future.

NOTES

BEER: Golden Monkey

GENRE: Belgian Tripel

ABV: 9.5%

BREWED BY: Victory Brewing Company

LOCATION: Downingtown, PA

PURCHASED AT: Sam actually left this one in my fridge many weeks ago, glad I finally got around to it

PAIRED WITH: a Trainwreck

GRADE: 2 pukes out of 5

BEER COUNT: 73

Song of the Week: "The Harder They Come"

Hey mon listen to the previous songs of the week HERE.

"The Harder They Come"

Jimmy Cliff

from The Harder They Come soundtrack

1972

This is the title track off the soundtrack for the movie The Harder They Come, a movie I've never seen, and more than likely never will (though I guess you never know). I didn't know anything about the soundtrack's music or the movie it was based on before I downloaded the album last weekend; I kind of assumed maybe it was going to be a funk album? Is that racist?

In any case, I've given it a good deal of spins over the past week, and I've enjoyed it. It's reggae music in its most basic form. You know this music already (but I already wrote about that in my Johnny Nash review last May, so let's no belabor that particular point).

As much as I like it, I don't particularly find anything "special" about it. It just sounds like "another reggae album" to me. Which is fine, don't get me wrong. But it didn't bring anything new to the table for me. Many people would disagree with this assessment. Rolling Stone, for instance, said it was the 122nd best album of all time. Pitchfork said it was in the Top 100 of the 1970s. I mean, there's a lot of praise for this thing online.

There's a couple possibilities for this. I'll explain them in order from least cynical to most cynical, and then you can go ahead and listen to the whole soundtrack and decide for yourself.

First, it's possible that this really is one of the best albums of all time, and I'm just not getting it. Maybe I need to watch the movie. Maybe I need to be in Jamaica, or at least listen to it in warmer weather. Maybe I just don't know shit about music, and what seems "same-y" to me is really some deep fucking gem that I just completely overlook. It's possible. I dunno.

Second, it's possible that the album is better than I say it is, but also that many critics overrate it because it "brought reggae to America," or whatever the claim is. When I say that "everyone knows what reggae is," maybe that wouldn't even be true if The Harder They Come soundtrack wasn't compiled and released here in the states. Maybe critics, when they make lists like RS's Top 500 Albums, they are more thinking about "important" albums than "really fucking good" albums. That's fair, even though I don't know if I would agree with the process.

Third, it's possible that the soundtrack is a token choice. Like, maybe someone said, "Oh fuck, we can't have a list of 500 albums and let Legend be the only reggae music on there, we need something else," and then over time, this album collectively became the go-to choice. I don't even mean it in a way related to race or whatever. It could be similar to when I ate a kimchi cheesesteak last week because PhillyMag said I needed to before I died. Did it really deserve to be on such a list? Or did they just need some non-traditional cheesesteaks for the list, and Pastrami and Things was the closest sandwich shop to PhillyMag's office?

I'm getting way off track here, especially because I seem to be working really hard to downplay a song that I really like. Don't believe the hype—reggae is just fine. But you'll appreciate it better that way!

This Is My Blood: Narwhal

Okay, let's wrap up Chapter 4 of Tasting Beer. For those of you not following along, the chapter's title is "The Qualities of Beer," and it discusses the finer points of how we measure beer. There was gravity, color, bitterness, clarity, and now finally CARBONATION. It may seem like the simplest of those qualities, but when I think about it, I realize how disparate my outlook on carbonation is from how it actually exists in the context of beer drinking.

First, the how—beer foam is the result of beer's unique protein structure (we touched on this before). Beer is like a really, really thin jello, in that it's a liquid, but not quite. The proteins form a matrix, and that allows foamy beer to pile up on top of the denser liquid.

The measurement for carbonation levels is "volumes CO2" (I'm not going to waste my time trying to figure out subscript for this blog, but just know that the "2" is supposed to be in subscript). The higher the volumes, the higher the foam is going to form during a beer pour. Normal ales are about 2.0 volumes CO2, give or take 0.5 volumes. Lagers are more like 2.5ish. There is a whole range of volumes for different types of beer. Belgian abbeys are like 3.5. Imperial stouts are lower, at like 1.5ish.

Which means that the Narwhal Imperial Stout that I drank today was probably a bad choice to experience high volumes, but even so, it had a nice head of foam on it. I used one of my parents' fancy pint glasses (we were at their house for my mom's birthday), and I should've taken a picture of the damn thing. The beer was jet black, the foam was a caramel-colored brown, and it sat about an inch above the beer.

That part didn't interest me a whole lot, though. What interested me more was the fact that I grew up thinking that FOAM = BAD. Think about it. You get a warm-ish case of Lionshead, and pour it into a glass, and those things are going to foam over. We were instructed to wipe our foreheads and use that oil to beat back the foam. Foam was the sign of a shitty keg, and it felt like a rip-off when you'd pay $5 for a cup at a frat party and they handed you a foamy beer. And what do you do when you want to embarrass a friend drinking a beer out of a bottle? Slam your bottle on top of theirs, and watch as their beer foams out of the bottle and all over the floor.

After having the motto FOAM= BAD beat into my brain for fifteen years, now suddenly I'm being shown this whole new world, where foam is an art form. The old way of pouring a beer along the sides of the glass is dismissed; Mosher says to pour your beer directly into your glass. You want it to foam a little. A beer with no foam is boring.

The crazy thing is, I get it. Having a picturesque beer with an inch-high head of foam is a great fucking feeling. Having a pint glass with all foam, and then getting to watch it turn into liquid, is fucking exciting. The aromas are more potent with foam. I feel like an adult with foam.

Okay, I'll stop saying the word "foam." Sorry.

NOTES

BEER: Narwhal

GENRE: Russian Imperial Stout

ABV: 11.8%

BREWED BY: Sierra Nevada Brewing Co.

LOCATION: Chico, CA

PURCHASED AT: Capital Beer

PAIRED WITH: Chinese food (birthday girl's choice)

GRADE: 2.5 pukes out of 5

BEER COUNT: 72 (I also had a margarita, since it a birthday party. I'm still 7.5 below par.)