Album of the Week: My Head Is an Animal

I was thinking a lot this week about all the Record Club alumni who have released an album since we reviewed one of their previous ones. The number is starting to grow exponentially. Just in the month of May, we got albums from Weezer (ugh), Erika de Casier, and CHAI. The latter was probably why I was thinking about this so much—their new one, WINK, is really good! I know most of you hated that debut album back in March of 2019, so maybe I've just always been more forgiving of chipmunk vocals plastered on pop music, I dunno.

In any case, there's a lot of good music out there, and occasionally, Record Club is able to point you in the right direction to find that good music. A little ironic, then, that you probably didn't need to be pointed in the direction of this week's album. You know a song on the album very well already. But let's see how the rest of it holds up, eh?

If you don't want me to have all the fun reminiscing about the history of Record Club in these introductory paragraphs, you can always check out the archives or the playlist. If not, please plow ahead, because the future of Record Club is just as exciting.

WEEK 122 — May 30-June 5, 2021

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

ALBUM: My Head Is an Animal

ARTIST: Of Monsters and Men

RELEASED: Originally released on September 20, 2011, and rereleased internationally on April 3, 2012 (important below)

WHAT GENRE IS THIS: Indie folk / Folk pop

WHY PAT PICKED IT: After I told Pat he couldn't pick the soundtrack to O Brother, Where Art Thou?, he sent me a list of five albums, in order of preference, that he'd like to check out. This one was at the top. The other four were: To the 5 Boroughs by the Beastie Boys; The Unauthorized Bash Brothers Experience by the Lonely Island (would've been disqualified too, by the way); Mouth Sounds by Neil Cicierega; Lie: The Love and Terror Cult by Charles Manson. Those last two make me personally regret that the list wasn't flipped upside down, but I am just your impartial Record Club editor, I don't make all the picks.

TRACKLIST**:

1. Dirty Paws
2. King and Lionheart
3. Mountain Sound
   
4. Slow and Steady
5. From Finner
   
6. Little Talks
7. Six Weeks
8. Love Love Love
9. Your Bones
10. Sloom
    
11. Lakehouse
12. Yellow Light

**This tracklist is for the 2012 reissue of the album, as opposed to the original 2011 Icelandic version. I checked Spotify, and the reissue's was the tracklist order on there as well. Plus, if I had gone to pick up a copy of this album at a physical record store at any time in the mid-'10s, this is the order I'd be hearing, so it doesn't make sense to get too pedantic here.

LENGTH: 53:47

WHERE TO LISTEN FOR FREE: YouTube (confirmed that this playlist also has the correct tracklist order)

READING SOME SHIT: We're just missing any potential 10th anniversary pieces for "Little Talks" by a few months, so you'll have to make do with this quasi-puff piece from The Guardian from 2012.

Happy listening, fam! Have a great week!

A Year of Blind Spots: Radio City

An album like Radio City makes me question what the point of this blog column even is. I think at this point, I see it as mostly a way to weakly let the readers know of my shallow adventures in music's back catalogue. But the rub is that there also has to be something interesting to write about each week's album, or else then it just turns into a weird show-and-tell exercise. Radio City is a good album, sometimes great even, but it is a terrible album to include on a list such as this.

I am already familiar with Big Star's debut album #1 Record (even wrote about it a little bit, many Saturdays ago). I got into that one because I wanted to know more about Big Star; I was familiar with the name, and knew that some people held frontman Alex Chilton is high regard. I eventually got to know that album pretty well. Had Big Star been my blind spot, I would be filling this space with a "here's what I learned" bit.

But we're talking about the sophomore album here. Radio City was released years later, and it for the most part sounds the same as #1 Record. I'm not complaining, and this isn't even Big Star's fault anyway. The genre of "power pop" is inherently limiting. You mess with the formula, and it ceases to be power pop at all. And Big Star was pioneering the genre at the time, so they were in no position to be fucking with it, especially on their second album.

So Radio City is super-enjoyable, and I had a great week kicking back and relaxing to the chill mid-tempo vibes, but the point is that I didn't even need to listen to it once to know exactly what it sounded like already. If the point of this Saturday blog feature is "what did I learn?", then the answer this week is "nothing."

There are plenty of think pieces to be written about Big Star, don't get me wrong. But those think pieces could not be confined within a space covering Radio City only. Though Radio City could tell the story of power pop, it is also but one piece of the story of power pop. It is the synecdoche of power pop, basically, which is confusing to think about, and also kind of the antithesis of the idea of power pop—that it should be fun and simple and not written about on any blog ever.

The Help Machine, Sunny

Fastball came back in 2017? Why didn't anyone tell me? Truth is I know barely anything about them except that "The Way" and "Out Of My Head" are seminal singles for me. My music app agrees. If Ben/JackFM decide to play either, a "Desperado" moment is near certain. When Sam brought to my attention a pop song in late 2016 sampling "OOMH," it brought forth a deep uneasiness.

So, anyway, it's curious to start The Help Machine and hear what is certainly Fastball, but with a patina of age. The shiny border of production is more muted, and instead they are filling out the center with more texture and guitar riffs. It seems an apt evolution. In the first few tracks, we're talking about false friends, white collar life/crime, and throwing stones from glass houses. These themes have a different flavor than, say, a couple walking bittersweetly towards the end of their lives.

"All Gone Fuzzy" is more of the pop-rock I was expecting and is a fun jammy tune. "The Girl You Pretended To Be," "Doesn't It Make You Feel Small" also feel very Fastball, the mix of high tempo vocals and backing guitar grooves they so enjoy.

But and also there is title track "The Help Machine," which even after n-listens has a Death Cab-ish vibe, between the vocals and the replacement of groove and riff with trill and gliss. But it too has a charm that I've come to enjoy after n-listens, and provides an interesting mid-point for the album.

So, anyway, all's to say this album is certainly Fastball with also a curious mix of songs on it. There are no power singles that I'll be thinking about for 20+ years, but that's okay, maybe that doesn't exist anywhere anymore. However, there are also no real low spots, and the variety precludes boredom, making it all pretty good. Fastball has engendered enough good will that my mind will always round up their grade to the next whole letter.

The Help Machine, Sam

I've been riding this Fastball my entire pop-culture consuming life.

 

Summer 1998. At age twelve, agency is developing. Sports talk radio is not the only thing I consume. The Scott Rolen, Rico Brogna-led Phillies are mired in mediocrity, and the Sixers are done (though Allen Iverson is beginning to come into his own).

This summer, I am introduced to the record feature on my family's Kenwood stereo system, and I fill my days trying to catch my favorite jams on MAX 95.7 and Y100 for inclusion on a mixtape. I successfully catch "One Week" by the Bare Naked Ladies, "Crush" by Jennifer Page, and, supreme among them, "The Way" by Fastball.

Tony Scalzo's velvety voice and Miles Zuniga's surf-guitar solo entrance me, as does the vibrant, escapist music video. Yes, this was a song of the summer, but ultimately it became a song of my life.

Christmas 1998. I tear open a square, crisply wrapped package to reveal All the Pain Money Can Buy—a.k.a. Fastball's album with "The Way" on it. This compact disc represents my first album owned by me. I poured over the liner notes, learned what ASCAP is, and realized that not only did Scalzo sing songs, but Zuniga (and his ASCAP name Zunitunes) did as well. Thirteen songs of pure '90s nonsense; somewhat catchy hooks; basic ABAB thesaurus rhymes; and PG-13 adult content. Eventually, the song "Out of My Head" became a minor hit due to its inclusion on a Now! compilation. For the first time, I felt ahead of the curve(ball) and snobby ("Yeah, that songs good, but the real Fast-heads dig "Warm Fuzzy Feeling" more).

Later, when a school chum asked me if I liked Method Man, I asked if he was referring to Track 9, "Charlie, the Methadone Man." This was my entry into music and to a certain extent I was in Plato's allegory of the cave—Fastball was all I knew, and I was content with that.

Over time, I acquired more CDs and developed much more refined tastes (thanks to Mark Hoppus and Tom DeLonge). But I never strayed from Fastball. I tape recorded the band's appearance on Conan, when it toured on its follow-up The Harsh Light of Day. I promptly bought that album at Best Buy and was not disappointed. A little bit of diminishing returns (lead single "You're an Ocean" is a rehash of "The Way") but it's all good. A few years later, I even bought a copy of 2004's Keep Your Wig On; it's... not great. 

My devotion to Fastball has become a bit of running joke, but I can stand by the first two albums as influential on me personally and at least tolerable to the masses. If you cock your head the right way, you can see my future love of the Old 97's, the Heartless Bastards, and even Jens Lekman through some of these songs. For that, I am entirely grateful.

When Record Club came around, I contemplated subjecting the group to the original Fastball catalogue. But I don't think I could tolerate a Nate or Rachel S. takedown of my boys. I instead opted for somewhat neutral territory, the 2019 release The Help Machine.

Initially, I am impressed that the same three dudes—Scalzo, Zuniga, and drummer Joey Shuffield—have maintained the same line-up for more than 20 years, and released seven studio albums. Good on these guys for making a living and still being friends. I'd take that life.  

On the album itself, there's a problem of ratios. The aforementioned Old 97's have song-split of about 80/20 between lead singer Rhett Miller and bassist Murray Hammond. Miller writes the pop songs with hooks (the bulk of the songs); Murray croons the country ballads (the refreshing departures). It works. Here, we have about a 60/40 split between Zuniga (the guy who didn't sing "The Way") and Scalzo; the proportion is off and weighed in the wrong way. While all the songs are kind of bad, derivative with poor rhymes, Scalzo's songs are way better. He possesses a peppy inviting voice, writes melodically good hooks, and allows for Zuniga's guitar to shine. Maybe if three Zuniga song are on this album, I wouldn't think they were so bad, but as they are, I have to conclude they are bad and boring.

Ultimately, this album is at best harmless and at worst laughable. If your friend's bar band put this out, it would be charming. I can't really stand by it, but I appreciate Record Club's indulgence.

P.S. Here's a live version of "The Way." Enjoy!

The Help Machine, Nate

Having no working knowledge of Fastball outside of "The Way" and their other, better, single, hearing a song like "Redeem" or "Surprise Surprise" is exactly what could be reasonably expected: a little slinky, a little sweaty, a little bit of a con, a little bit rock and roll without really being rock and roll. Something dangerous, but limited. You might lose $50, but you won't lose your life.

I recommend the Fastball Wikipedia page, which I assume is managed by band member Tony Scalzo, if only because his is the only name with its own subsequent Wikipedia page. The manner in which this band reached its success is so foreign in 2021 as to be comically illegible to a person who does not care about the business side of music / a person who does not remember 9/11. A journalist saw them! At a local show! And suggested them to the record label! And it worked! Beyond that, there's a little bit of feature-writing going on in the success section, which I think I'd better just copy and paste here to preserve its beauty.

"The members of Fastball still had side jobs as late as January 1998. Tony Scalzo worked the graveyard shift at The Bagel Manufactory in Austin. He, Shuffield, and Zuniga would be on The Tonight Show with Jay Leno and Late Night with Conan O'Brien just four months later."

The Pulitzer for "Best Achievement in Wikipedia Stub Writing goes to... Tony Scalzo!

Sorry, I got sidetracked. The Help Machine. So, you get that bar-smoke Texas shit, then there's "All Gone Fuzzy," where that one-night-stand-who-stole-your-wallet energy is replaced by "They Might Be Giants at their most serious" cosplay. There's also "The Girl You Pretended to Be," which is a joyful little piece of cow-punk that would sound perfect on, uh, an alt-rock station that certainly only existed in the late '90s. "Never Say Never" is the kind of "I'm done with that wild life" song that old artists make; I'll defer to you whether or not you think the sentiment is earned.

I'm not the expert—that'd be Sam Clam's Disco a few links away—but I walk away from this record thinking that Fastball is who they were, the house band for a PG-13 Grindhouse wannabe that could punch up, but only a little. It's all a little southern-fried, a little in-between, a little good. The stakes are low, and so is the bar, so when they get over it it feels a little empty, a little sweet.

The Help Machine, Joe

There is something so incredibly sad about a band still trying to make it work literally decades after their one minor hit. That sounds like a criticism, but I swear to god it's not. I'm not saying "sad" as in "pathetic," I'm saying "sad" as in "sympathy-inducing," maybe. I'm sure the temptation with this band is to resent "The Way," because nothing they do or have done after "The Way" is or was as successful as "The Way," but then at the same time, we're only talking about Fastball in 2021 because of "The Way," and without it, the amount of discourse surrounding Fastball drops from close-to-zero to exactly-zero. I'm saying that the internal conflict that this must cause in the members of this band must be pretty rough, and I'm saying that I find a sense of sympathy in thinking about it.

All this, despite the fact that I fucking despise "The Way." I hated it in the late '90s and I hate it now. It's a dull hatred, in that I didn't really even have to think about my hatred for that song until this week, when considering how the band that created this shitty song is faring all these years later.

How are they faring? Pretty decently, all things considered. Fastball seems to have done what most bands of their ilk (i.e. a hit in the '90s and still releasing music in the '10s or '20s) have done, and that is take their sound and sand down the edges until it sounds pleasant and at least a little bit generic. We as a music critic community can't seem to agree on what exactly constitutes "dad rock," but I will personally argue that this is it: it's music made by dudes who were young and popular once, but since then, life has forced them to become a little more mature, take less risks, and so on.

So I don't hate any of this. I like The Help Machine better than a lot of the other music I try out these days. Some of it is catchy in a routine sort of way. None of it is actively offensive. There aren't any, um, curveballs. They've even kept some of that special Fastball sauce in the mix—shit like "I Go South" and "Redeemed" sound enough like "The Way" that you can make a reasonable guess that this is Fastball, but not enough like "The Way" that I would have any residual dislike for them.

The fact of the matter is that I like The Help Machine a lot, but I don't really feel anything for it, if that makes sense. It would almost be more interesting if I hated The Help Machine like I hate "The Way." It's that old theory that passion is better than no passion, even if that passion is in the service of a negative opinion. From this album, no passion was inspired within me.

And that's okay sometimes! Not everything needs to inspire passion. To say that I don't feel much when I hear this album probably says a lot more about me than it does Fastball. The fact that I'd rather passionately hate something than tepidly enjoy it sounds pretty sadistic, the more you think about it. It's like I value the exercise of writing about music more than the music itself, which makes me the least qualified music critic on earth. I don't even know why you are still reading this.

 

Anyways, you probably shouldn't let any of this stop you from checking out The Help Machine. It was pretty good I guess. At the very least, it is much better than "The Way."

 

GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5

Insert Popcorn-Eating Gif Here

Because I am definitely not a bandwagon fan, I will acknowledge first that the most important story coming out of Wells Fargo Center last night is told by the final score of the 76ers v. Wizards game: 120-95 in favor of the Sixers, moving them to 2-0 and to the top of the FiveThirtyEight predictions chart.

But to me, the most intriguing story that occurred last night was the fact that Wizards star Russell Westbrook got a bucket of popcorn dumped on his head by a Philly fan as he left the arena due to injury. In a video of the incident, you can see Westbrook being held back by multiple staff members. The fan was later ejected.

Okay, fine: this fan should not have dumped a bucket of popcorn on Russell Westbrook. I'm not going to defend the dude (not wrong of me to assume it was a male who did this, right?). Kicking the guy out of the game was appropriate. Banning the fan from Wells Fargo Center for life is the right move too, regardless of that ban being nearly impossible to enforce.

And shit, if I were Westbrook, I would've been pretty angry too. Imagine being made to look like a little bitch on the court by a far superior basketball team, and then on top of that, injuring yourself enough that you have to leave that same court in shame. I have to further imagine that getting a wig full of popcorn was just one indignity too far.

I think the larger issue I have with how this all went down is that I find the large amount of moral hand-wringing that resulted from this incident to be taking all this a little too seriously, ya know? Here's Westbrook after the game: "To be completely honest, this shit is getting out of hand, especially for me. The amount of disrespect, the number of fans just doing whatever the fuck they want to do—it's just out of pocket... In these arenas, you got to start protecting the players."

Philly fans themselves by and large seem to agree with Westbrook. I've read through a few Reddit threads about this, and here are a few quotes: "Westbrook isn't my favorite player but he's never done anything to deserve that kind of disrespect." "So unnecessary. I just don't get how that idea ever even enters your brain. Dude just got hurt before on top of that. Pure shitbag move." "He’s scum and i hope he steps on a lego."

Again, not that even I disagree with any of this. I can't imagine that a person who would intentionally dump a bucket of popcorn on an opposing and injured and disgraced basketball player would be anything less than a noxious individual who is extremely unpleasant to be around.

But come on. Aren't we taking this a little too seriously?

The subject of the relationship between players and fans is one that is endlessly fascinating to me. In the quotes above and elsewhere, the term that keeps coming up is "disrespect." I would be almost inclined question whether respect is even expected in the athlete/fan relationship. Of course, zooming out and focusing on general human politeness—i.e. don't dump a bucket of popcorn on anyone's head, Russell Westbrook or otherwise—is what causes me to generally agree with the general reaction of "he shouldn't have done that and he is probably a bad person for doing that." All I'm saying is that the unique purpose of sports as entertainment should at least make us chill with the over-the-top moral handwringing.

This theory probably requires everyone to acknowledge how unimportant sports are, which I know is a tall ask for many, many sports fans. We are asked, as fans, to cheer for one group of men, and boo another group of men. There is literally no reason to dislike anyone who wears a Wizards jersey on the court, except for the fact that they want the other people who are wearing 76ers jerseys to lose, whereas we want the people who are paid money to wear a 76ers jersey to win, and so thus we need the millionaires playing a game while wearing a Wizards jersey to lose. It's all very arbitrary.

But we partake in this ritual because it can be fun. It can be heartbreaking too, so I guess a better way to put it is to say that sports can make us feel an intense emotion that we wouldn't normally feel in our dull and unassuming lives. The sacrifice we make to feel something is to ignore the illogical nature of the whole ordeal: that there are people we like and people we don't and the only difference between the two is who is getting paid by whom and where you happen to exist geographically.

Okay, so assume that we're all at that enlightened stage where we can acknowledge the unspoken part, the illogical part, and then truly not speak of it, but instead indulge in the ritual. To take part in the ritual means to, within reason, dislike Russell Westbrook. Because you want the Philadelphia 76ers to win, then that means you must want Russell Westbrook to lose. Not only that, you want to make sure that he knows he's losing.

 

There are many ways to do this. The most acceptable way is to join in the chorus of 20,000 fans packed together in the same arena, cheering and jeering at the appropriate moments, adding your voice to the voices of others, creating a sound loud enough that Westbrook's ears hear your boos and Westbrook's soul hears your boos too.

The most unacceptable way is to personally confront him. That's why it's always been easier for me to yell expletives at opposing players from the 400 section at Citizen's Bank Park than it is to do so in the 100 section—it's kind of uncomfortable to be acknowledged by a player personally (even if it's a player on the team you're rooting for). There's a wall of anonymity you find in a crowd, and the player, by returning your gaze or your yells, is smashing through that wall. By destroying the protection of mob mentality, you are also destroying the illusion that sports points are more important that human dignity. In other words—don't fucking take it so personally. "Disrespect"? Get the fuck out of here with that.

I'm not trying to victim blame here—for the umpteenth time, no one, not even a Washington Wizards basketball player, deserves popcorn dumped on his or her head—I'm just saying that the reaction matters here too. I understand why Westbrook didn't, or couldn't, just laugh the incident off. It makes sense that he didn't, psychologically speaking. But it would also behoove the institution of sports entertainment to laugh off such an incident too. Or, better yet, come out in Game 3 and whip the Sixers in front of a D.C. crowd (better for the institution of sports entertainment, I mean—this would be terrible for Sixers fans, who do not deserve to pay the figurative price for one popcorn-throwing individual's actions).

Throwing a hissy fit is probably not the right way to go about it. Shit, maybe "hissy fit" is too harsh, but I dunno. I just feel like, as a professional athlete, you need to learn how to accept your occasional role as villain with some grace. We're all buying into this illusion of the importance of sports. Of course fans are going to dislike you and show that dislike in appropriate and occasionally inappropriate ways. Relax, dude.

Here's a relevant story, and it even involves popcorn throwing. I was at a Flyers vs. Blackhawks game one day. I want to say it was the Spring of 2009. My roommate Mike C. had an extra ticket, so we took the trip down to Wells Fargo Center. Decent seats. The only thing I remember from that game was that our entire section won a free bag of popcorn as part of some promotion. Like, they handed a bag of popcorn to each individual person who was sitting in their seats during the announcement. We were at Wells Fargo Center, so it was mostly Flyers fans who were getting the popcorn. But there was one single Blackhawks fan right there in the center of the section, and he was proudly wearing a Blackhawks jersey. It couldn't have been much longer after we got our popcorn that the Blackhawks scored a goal. The Chicago fan stood up and cheered. The Chicago fan then had about thirteen bags of popcorn dumped on him simultaneously. His team was winning, so he just stood there, arms raised, accepting the fact that he now had his own personal popcorn cloud above his head, and it was raining popcorn. It was clear to all that this was all in good fun. It's sports, ya know? The vast majority of participants in the ritual are able to acknowledge this fact.

The story isn't exactly 1:1 (the relationship between fans and the opposing athletes is different than the relationship between opposing fans, and worthy of a separate blog post), but I bring it up because the reaction of this Blackhawks fan was important. He was able to acknowledge that the important thing here (or, "important" in quotes, since we were all buying in on the spectacle of sports entertainment) was the competition between two opposing factions. He was wearing a Blackhawks jersey in a Philadelphia sports arena—free popcorn getting dumped on his head was a given.

 

But the other important thing to point out here, in both the Westbrook story and the Blackhawks story, is that the item being thrown is popcorn. It is light and fluffy and doesn't stick to you or soak into clothing or damage your garbs or your body in any way. You can't get hurt by popcorn (unless you choke on it, or you are participating in a WWF Empty Arena match). I could go on about popcorn, but what I'm really talking about is the fact that there is a line, and while I could easily list over 100 items that would be crossing a line if thrown, popcorn isn't necessarily one of them. Yes! Easily over 100!

1. beer
   
2. soda
3. hot dog with ketchup
4. hot dog with mustard
5. hot dog with relish
6. plain relish (it's free at Wells Fargo Center)
7. Crab Fries
8. the cup of cheese that you have to pay extra for to go with your Crab Fries
9. a large pretzel that you bought because it was the cheapest thing to buy (and still like $7)
10. Wiz Wit'
11. Wiz Wit'out
12. boneless breaded chicken wings
13. bleu cheese
14. a shoe
15. a sock
16. a shirt
17. underwear
18. condoms
19. filled condoms
20. condoms that you filled in your seat
21. beard trimmings
22. pube trimmings
23. BBQ sauce
    
24. your three-year-old child
25. a large sign that says "Westbrook Sucks"
26. a beach ball
27. those large plastic sticks that you hit together to make noise and distract players attempting a foul shot
28. a staff member standing near the railing
29. the staff member's underwear
30. the staff member's beard trimmings
31. Joel Embiid's condoms that he filled in your seat
32. a porcupine
33. a badger
34. a service dog
35. Russell Westbrook as a three-year-old child and brought into his future via time machine
36. a cheeseburger
37. Rita's water ice: cherry
38. Rita's water ice: lemon
39. Rita's water ice: mango
40. Rita's water ice: cherry/vanilla gelati
41. Rita's water ice: the attendant at the Rita's water ice stand who is begging you not to throw him over the railing at Russell Westbrook
42. a pen
43. a pencil
44. little wet crumpled-up pieces of paper
45. little crumpled-up pieces of paper that are actually crumpled-up notes that Russell Westbrook wrote in fourth grade asking his crush out, complete with a yes/no option, which his fourth-grade crush checked the "NO" box with very emphatic pencil markings
46. a bucket of crocodile tears
47. an actual crocodile
48. an alligator, which is different from a crocodile
49. an alligator po' boy
50. any po' boy, really
51. a Mario Kart 64 cartridge
52. a Nintendo 64 three-pronged controller, classic gray
53. a Mario impersonator, who is trying to explain to you that he is not actually Mario and that he will get serious injured if you throw him over the balcony onto Bowser Russell Westbrook
54. keys
55. wallet
56. cell phone
57. beeper
58. yes: batteries
59. yes: snowballs
60. hats, I guess, even though that seems to be accepted when the other sport is being played at Wells Fargo Center
61. I mean, actual weapons too, like a knife
62. a gun
63. brass knuckles
64. a bomb?!
65. Dippin' Dots
66. one of those fried chicken sandwiches from Federal Donuts
67. funnel cake with lots of powdered sugar
68. a slice of pizza and then let that douche from Barstool review it
69. a box of Pfizer vaccines—second dose
    
70. sure: more jizz, but outside of a condom this time
71. spicy lube
72. and sure: vomit
73. spit
    
74. pee
75. poop
76. a mixture of pee and poop
77. sweat
    
78. birthday cake
79. glasses
80. necklace
81. earrings
82. wedding ring
83. engagement ring
84. sigh........................ cock ring
85. phone charger
86. more food.... looking at the WFC menu now... oh, how about a milkshake from Shake Shack
87. a severed toe
88. toenail clippings
    
89. tiny little hairs that I pulled out of my unibrow
90. a copy of Evan Almighty on Blu-ray
91. a novelty "Trust the Process" T-shirt from the fan store
92. a framed and signed photo of Marc Zumoff
93. a framed photo of Ben Simmons signed by Marc Zumoff
94. anything involving glass and sharp corners and Marc Zumoff, really
95. Italian sausage sandwich with fried onions from the Labatt Blue Lounge in Section 204A
    
96. Franklin the Dog
97. The Phanatic who looks weird because the Phillies refused to pay the guy who created the Phanatic and instead just changed how he looked so they wouldn't get sued
98. Gritty
99. a condom that Gritty filled up in his seat
100. the receipt from CVS that proves that yes I really did buy all these condoms just to throw them at Russell Westbrook
101. a basketball
     

All of these things are way worse than popcorn, and if it really were any of these items being thrown at Russell Westbrook, I wouldn't be writing this blog post. But again: come on. It's just popcorn. It's against the rules, and the fan will be punished for not following the rules, and it's against basic decorum, in that no one should have anything thrown at them, but all this shit about "disrespect" and "protecting your players" or whatever, it's just a little too much for me to accept at face value. What, you're that weak that you need protection from popcorn?

 

Maybe even that's going too far, calling Westbrook "weak." I dunno. All I saw was a terrible basketball team getting shellacked, a star player on that team getting injured, 99.99% of a Philadelphia crowd politely cheering an opposing player as he left the court, one idiot dumping a bucket of popcorn on that player, and that player flipping his shit (on one ankle). Am I wrong for not wanting to overreact too, in the opposite direction? Am I wrong for thinking that feeling the inherit need to "protect" Westbrook, either literally or just his ego, violates the terms already established between fans and players?

Sports fans in general need to be better at knowing where that line is, and knowing how not to cross it. But in lieu of any line crossing here—it was just popcorn, come on!—I'm inclined to forgo the outrage and just admit that the whole thing was really fucking funny. And if Russell Westbrook and his teammates disagree, well then, I guess we'll just have to see how they respond on the court this weekend. Because this is sports! None of it matters! Especially not some harmless popcorn dumped on a very famous person by some fat fucking Philly slob! Relax!!!

Never Seen It, #48 of 200: Dirty Dancing

I'm watching some movies from a list of 200 movies and I'm writing about some movies.

Dirty Dancing

1987

I mean, shit, is there really much to dig into here? There are movies that I've watched for this project that have surprised me, like, "Oh shit, that's why this movie is well-known?" There are movies that I've watched for this project that disappointed me, like, "Damn, I know it was popular, but based on what I saw, it shouldn't be." And then there is Dirty Dancing, a movie that I knew about already, knew exactly why it was popular—didn't surprise me at all—but I get to the end, and I'm just so fucking satisfied. It was exactly the film-watching experience I expected, and it was everything it was promised to be.

Dirty Dancing is like going to a mixer in high school. Some pop-rap song is blasting out of the DJ's speakers, and you're just grinding on some girl whose name you don't even know. You're not looking for an intimate human connection, and you don't find one. There's no long-lasting satisfaction. But at the end of the night, you make it home, and you think: holy shit, I was grinding my penis on an attractive girl's butt. That was fun.

A crude metaphor, for sure, but also an appropriate one, since the crux of the excitement in Dirty Dancing was just this—our protagonist Baby discovers this whole different world, far away from her parents' foxtrotting, where people her age are dancing to the hippest music by dry humping each other. It's a classic tale of "I've found something completely different than what I'm used to, and I'm in love." And that "something" is simulating sex while dancing. And I just think that's pretty great on both levels (literally, because it's hot, and figuratively, because it's an evocative way to do the whole "we're not in Kansas anymore" thing for our hero).

To be clear, Dirty Dancing needed to perfectly stick landing here, for me, because this is one of those movies that I was spoiled to beforehand through various means, and so I was never going to find satisfaction in any sort of surprise regarding how this all ended. There have been too many parodies of THE LIFT to not be generally aware of THE LIFT's existence. There has been too much discourse about "(I've Had) the Time of My Life" to be uninformed going into this.

But Dirty Dancing did it. It stuck the landing motherfucking perfectly. This was exactly what I want in a movie. Simple, fun, gratifying. Doesn't matter that I knew THE LIFT was imminent—when Baby jumps into Johnny Castle's arms and hits that pose, it is heart-stopping.

There's probably something to be said about the pregnancy sub-plot not aging particularly well. I don't know, and I don't particularly care. It's relatively harmless, and for real, by the time everyone is dancing in the finale, any misgivings one might have had are completely forgotten.

No, what I'm thinking now isn't how '80s-ish this movie is, but how timeless it is. I mean, it's literally unstuck in time: it takes place in the summer of 1963, and the characters are dancing to a lot of the music that was popular with the cool kids in the mid-'60s, but then also everyone is dancing in the final scene to a song that could exist in no other year than 1987. "(I've Had) the Time of My Life" might be THE most '80s song in history, but there is no comment from our 1960s characters about it. It doesn't fucking matter when you are having, ahem, the time of our lives.

But even besides that, Dirty Dancing is timeless story-wise as well. Yes, Baby in many ways epitomizes the idea we have in our heads of the 1980s as a decade, but her relationship with Johnny Castle could exist in any time or space. Above anything else, I loved how their romance actually felt like it had a basic reasoning behind it, i.e. they weren't hooking up just because they were the two hot leads in a film. The characters sweated it out to make it make sense. Baby, as mentioned already, was looking to shake things up in her dull life (see: the metaphor of Baby being sawed in half during a magic show), and she found that in Johnny. Johnny, meanwhile, needed someone who was able to see his best self within him, so that he could see it too. There is motive far beyond to sexy people wanting to bone.

Maybe that's just me trying to justify my love of Dirty Dancing, like I'm trying to explain that it's more than just 100 minutes of teenagers humping. But maybe it's not more than that! Maybe it is just pure dumbass fun. Maybe that's what I really like about it. At one point, Dirty Dancing indulges in the 1980s trope of THE MONTAGE, where Baby and Johnny are practicing their dance moves over and over in a myriad of different contexts and locations. This particular montage seemed like it last forever. It had to have been at least like fifteen minutes long, right? But in the middle of it, I turned to Pam and said, "Holy shit, this is amazing." I would've watched 10,000 minutes of Baby and Johnny dancing and gradually losing more and more clothing.

I don't care if this whole film-watching experience basically just amounts to the same feeling I would have if I was back in high school, grinding on a girl from Gwynedd Mercy. There's no shame in saying that that was fun.

GRADE: 4.5 pukes out of 5

NEXT TIME: I mentioned our next movie, Dirty Harry, in the conversation about Butch Cassidy, but only because I thought that Dirty Harry was a western. It doesn't appear to be, though, which was dumb of me. It is instead a cop drama, which, man, should be a real hoot to write about in the context of my beliefs regarding defunding the police and all that. Sorry in advance!

Album of the Week: The Help Machine

We are rapidly approaching Record Club's 500th album review. I won't tell you exactly where we are right now, but I can tell you that we will be getting there in the next couple weeks. Whoever writes our 500th review will receive a $5.00 gift card to Wawa from me in your email. One cent for every little piece of joy y'all have given me over the past 2.25 years. Use it as motivation to write!!

Of course, if you are here just to listen and not to write, then of course you are still welcome—you'll just have to pay full price for your Shorti. For all you listeners and writers and lost internet travelers: the archives are HERE, the playlist is HERE, and the new album is below.

WEEK 121 — May 23-29, 2021

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

 

ALBUM: The Help Machine

ARTIST: Fastball

 

RELEASED: October 18, 2019

 

WHAT GENRE IS THIS: Alternative rock

 

WHY SAME PICKED IT: "It wasn't a question of whether I would pick a Fastball album, just which one." [Editor's note: Sam has mentioned this band at least twice before.]

TRACKLIST:

1. Friend of Foe
2. White Collar
3. Holding the Devil's Hand
4. Redeemed
5. All Gone Fuzzy
6. Help Machine
7. Surprise Surprise
8. The Girl You Pretended to Be
9. I Go South
10. Doesn't It Make You Feel Small
11. Never Say Never

LENGTH: 35:42

 

WHERE TO LISTEN FOR FREE: YouTube

 

READING SOME SHIT: Hmm... I guess I would normally link to one of the first hits on a Google search like "fastball interview 2019," but there wasn't much there. I guess it's been a long time since "The Way." Yes, it is this band that does that song from 1998. So you can listen to that song, or you can read a 20th anniversary retrospective via local Austin press, or you can read an interview from 2017 about the album previous to The Help Machine (though, c'mon, would the answers really be all that different in 2019?).

Happy listening, fam! Have a great day!

A Year of Blind Spots: Things Fall Apart

For today, let's just give the whole "why does hip hop have a higher bar to clear with Joe K***" argument a rest and just assume that, harmful or not, it's true. Did Things Fall Apart clear the bar? No, it did not. There was a lot that I liked here, but through two weeks' worth of spins of this 70-minute beast, I was never blown away.

I was impressed mostly with Black Thought's bars, and unimpressed mostly with Questlove's beats. I dunno, nothing about Questlove's hand in this was actively bad. On the contrary, I found the production to be quite pleasant in an almost relaxing way. It felt too classy, maybe? Nothing about it made me say "wow, this is unique." And Black Thought did his best to bring the heat over these languid beats, and sometimes succeeded! Who knows, maybe the juxtaposition between the two styles is what makes the Roots run. I do know that it's not necessarily for me.

What's really interesting is that, despite this, Questlove is undoubtedly the face of this band. He seems like a cool dude, and smart, and he has a memorable aesthetic, so I'm not saying he doesn't deserve the national recognition. I just think it's weird that he is by far the most memorable part of the Roots, and by far the least interesting thing about this one specific Roots album.

In many ways, this totally makes sense. I might want weirdness and brashness and muscle in my hip hop music, but the general populace prefers safety, and Questlove can provide for that. This is what makes him perfect for Sesame Street cameos and voice acting in Pixar films and DJing a very milquetoast Oscars ceremony and for twelve years now being the bandleader for the most painfully vanilla late night talk show host in TV history.

Which, again, is fucking great. I like Questlove. Go Philly, and so on. But I'm just saying that there is a big reason why Questlove specifically has broken into the mainstream and the Roots' music has not.

Walk Through Fire, Sunny

At first glance, this is just easy listening country/soul. Absolutely nothing wrong with that, there are several earworms here. And at second glance, simple melodies are brought to life by textured lyrics, depth of voice, and full-hearted emotion. There's a three-dimensionality that I'd be remiss to dismiss as "just" easy listening.

Many of the songs are overtly about love (the rest just not overt), which fits the musical themes. Yola does a nice job putting forth a thesis in the title track. Part of the dimensionality of this album is her ability to convincingly sing about the various facets of love: the joys, the pains, the longings, the drives and desires. Often in the same stanza. The feelings are relatable because of the universality, but the depth must be coming from someplace personal. "We" might be going into a summer of actual-human-socializing, and as such, love might be back on the table with all its excitements and dreads.

There is a certain mollifying capacity in this music. Yola has the ability to melt away the bs of "work life" and give you earworms to hum even as someone is chewing you out ("work all daaaay"), bringing you ease where maybe before there was dis-ease, and that in itself is worth something special.

P.S. I don't have anything to say about the Dan Auerbach involvement in the album other than I noticed it. In a way it's an easy narrative explanation of how a Bristol singer is doing Americana blues, but that would be far too easy.

P.P.S. A real tragedy is that Yola is the second result for a Google search (and yes, I know Google results are personalized, so ymmv) behind a Squarespace clone.

Walk Through Fire, Nate

Great voice, is the first thing.

Came into this with the wrong energy, isn't much of a country album at all, sounds much more like something akin to "big band" or "classics" to me, someone making their stab at all that Great American Songbook shit that my grandmother really loved. Album really goes out like a lion, which is a refreshing piece of counter-programming from a sequencing perspective. "Love is Light" is the kind of song that makes you wish the album had three more songs on it, which, if you listen to the extended version on YouTube like ya boy did, there are. One is an Elton John cover, which whips ass. The other one sounds less like a modern take on post Dap Kings americana and more like a legitimate cover of an old southern soul song. In general, Walk Through Fire mostly sounds like the kind of record one buys at Urban Outfitters and puts on when they want to have an adult party, but it does hit moments in which it actually becomes adult party music. If this is how the Black Keys want to spend their cache, it's well-spent.

Walk Through Fire, Sam

My first time through, everything Yola belted out struck me as gold. This lady could sing the phone book and I'd be hanging on through Z. But the more times I listened, the more zzzs I encountered. She's still quite the singer, but the lyrics are basic, and the production flattens her out. Every time she goes for it, I'm in; the in-betweens, I'm out.

PS—white listening at dinner, my wife Hannah said Yola sounded like JC Penny's music. My mother-in-law said it was like Shania Twain.

Walk Through Fire, Keelan

I really liked this album. While there was a definitely souly-country theme, I found myself being more reminded of different TV and movies throughout mid-20th century decades than other artists specifically. For example, "Shady Grove" immediately reminded me of The Wonder Years as something Kevin Arnold’s parents would slow dance to in the kitchen while Kevin looked on from afar, both hating and loving what was happening. "Lonely The Night" reminded me of something I could see Meryl Streep singing out her window in Greece to the one that got away in Mama Mia. I enjoyed the throwback theme, and will definitely be adding some of Yola's jamz into the everyday music playlist.

Walk Through Fire, Rachel S.

Adding Yola to my rotation has proved a VERY POSITIVE experience. Defying genre is the new genre, plebes. We got '70s grooves, big country/Americana/bluegrass twang, folk, soul, classic rock, you name it. And that VOICE. SHE. HAS. THE. RANGE. Sure there's a bit of a formula at play with some of these tracks, but it WORKS. I get swept up every time. I was an emo/pop-punk kid in high school, no genre is as egregiously formula-based. Yola can do whatever she wants.

Breaking it down (Deluxe Edition):

• "Faraway Look" — Dreamy! Swooning! A gut punch hidden in a booming, beautiful symphony of sound!
• "Shady Grove" — I would like to slow dance to this in a barn wedding under twinkling string lights, thank you very much
• "Ride Out in the Country" — Takes the traditional "driving in my pickup truck" trope and makes it not suck. Bless her for this.
• "It Ain't Easier" — This makes me feel like I'm in an intimate, dimly lit bar, on my last glass of wine, with a lump in my throat just from listening. (I adore the orchestrations in this song to no end.)
• "Walk Through Fire" — Sticky hot summer. The air thick, yet boundless. TAKE ME ACROSS THE COALS, YOLA.
• "Rock Me Gently" — Is it me or is there a hint of Bowie / otherworldliness about this song?
• "Love All Night (Work All Day)" — There's something so traditionally masculine about this song, and the way that Yola oozes femininity on top of it... mmm yes yes.
• "Deep Blue Dream" — This should be in the soundtrack to a Barry Jenkins film.
• "Lonely the Night" — Couples' Skate at the roller rink tune!
• "Still Gone" — I am bopping in my office chair! Y'all know I love a song about heartbreak that's hidden by upbeat grooves!
• "Keep Me Here" — This is on your parents' favorite easy listening station. Delilah is sending this out to someone special tonight!
• "Love is Light" — Taylor Swift tried it. That's all I'm gonna say.
• "I Don't Wanna Lie" — This has big "Opening Song to a Concert" energy!!!!!
• "Goodbye Yellow Brick Road" — It's the live version for me. Defines "bringing down the house." (Again, the raaaaange.)

What I love most about this album is every song makes you FEEL something. There's nothing flat here. All peaks and valleys. Big booms and quiet whispers. Crescendos on crescendos. Yola's music is an important lesson in "country music can and should be for everyone." The whole album is so universal in its appeal and its content. It's a genre that's so white, so male, and still behind so many gatekeepers. But look what rises out of it when the light gets through. This joyous, heartfelt, glorious album by a Black British woman. I can't wait to hear what comes out next (soon!).

Walk Through Fire, Joe

Cut to the side yard of some nondescript Northeast Philadelphia home, and it's late afternoon in the dead heat of spring, and someone pushes play on a bluetooth speaker, where the sweet sounds of Yola start to emanate and soundtrack the evening.

Cut to two parents, a little tired (normal), cocktails in hand (normal), sitting on lawn chairs as the kids run around the lawn playing (getting along? abnormal), and "Shady Grove" is hitting a nice groove, with some lush strings on top of a little shuffle, something about it just feeling right.

Cut to bubbles, chalk, tripping into the kiddie pool, swatting away bees, "It Ain't Easier" waltzing, the steel pedal guitar and fiddle dueling like the kids are now dueling over the last orange slice.

Cut to the last dregs of a vodka/seltzer as the shade from the house finally covers this section of the yard from the orange setting sun, "Walk Through Fire" calling for a circling up of kith and kin, music bringing us together, a big stomping country rhythm, more fiddle, more bees chasing the kids and breaking up the circle.

Cut to a brief flash of excitement, "Lonely the Night" like a clarion call across the roofs of the horse stables in our corner of the "Great" Northeast, a bona fide guitar solo cutting through Pennypack Woods, waking squirrels from their slumber.

 

Cut to that moment when it catches you off guard, those vocals, a powerhouse, immediately, right from the first, on "Faraway Look," towering over everything, Yola an instant icon, snapping you out of daydream just in time to catch a kid as she tries to each a piece of chalk.

Cut to the realization that this might be the most relaxing night we've ever had as parents, I mean, not relaxing like we ever let our guard down because the kids are still too young for that, but relaxing in that there was actually time to sit in our lawn chairs for more than 30 seconds at a time because the kids were running around in the yard and appeared to be at least touching some semblance of autonomy, however fleetingly, and it was a goddamn beautiful night, and it was just one of those nights when the day-to-day frustrations of living with young children kind of melt away, again probably fleetingly, but then you hear Yola confirm that there "ain't nothing wrong with living day to day," and you realize that you gotta take the good days with the bad, and this was decidedly a good day.

Cut to the clean-up, cut to stacking plates and cut to gathering utensils and cut to packing leftover grilled chicken, cut to the incredible groove of "Ride Out in the Country," cut to the hosing down the patio so the ants don't show up, cut to feeling good about all this for once, for this situation in this part of the city, for this music genre, honestly—cut to listening to country music and feeling fucking good about it for once in my life.

 

Cut to "Keep Me Here" slow dancing as the sun finally sets and the day is done, and you realize that the country-soul tunes you heard all day perfectly soundtracked everything that just happened, like, the sequencing on the album was perfect, like, it would totally make sense that this sweet sultry ballad would be here, in the penultimate track, in the penultimate hour of the day, when the sun is set and everyone is getting ready for bed, just everything, man, everything is just perfect, just for now—and it won't be tomorrow, not this album and not this life, not anything, but cut to the realization that it is possible to occasionally touch it, that perfection, just for a little bit.

 

Cut to the next morning, and I'm sitting at my work desk, and I'm trying to write a review for Walk Through Fire, and I start to purposefully misremember the previous evening, which was actually soundtracked to almost the entirety of Led Zeppelin's discography, but the fact that it could have been soundtracked to Walk Through Fire on repeat should show you what kind of album this really is—music for a sunset, music for side yard BBQs, music for dipping toes into kiddie pools, music for parents who don't want to think about anything besides the sangria, music for horses and bees and squirrels and humans existing together in some Northeast Philly approximation of nature, music that is occasionally perfect just like life is occasionally perfect, music that reminds you of this fact even when the music is decidedly not perfect and life isn't either.

GRADE: 4 pukes out of 5

Top Five Tuesday: Cousins

A little drunk writing this, in honor of my paternal cousins, who were always a little drunker than I was ("drunker" meaning "cooler" for the most part, since there was definitely a little bit there when I was trying to overcompensate and drank more than most of my cousins, but really that's only because my cousins instilled in me the idea that "drinking = cool" and so I went from there).

Top Five Coolest Things That My Cousins Used to Do, Growing Up

5. Drank from the Keg

I have a pretty distinct—and prepubescent—memory of one particular cousin putting his mouth around the spigot of a keg in the basement of his parents' basement. I don't know if this was the same party in this same Lawncrest house that featured a karaoke machine—probably not, because how could he get away with sucking beer out of the keg if all the adults were down the basement too? I think we can wipe away context and say, unequivocally: seeing my four-years-older cousin eschew all normal statutes and take a drink straight from the keg was probably the coolest thing I had ever seen at that point in my life.

4. Fart on Command

You know how sometimes you dream that you're falling, and then you wake up because you are "jumping" and it's mostly just your body bracing itself for impact? There is a theory that this is some brain trickery—basically, that your body tenses up, and then your brain retroactively tricks you into thinking that you had a "falling dream," but really, you didn't. In any case, this is my theory about my cousins' ability to fart on command. Was it really a matter of a supernatural flatulence, or did they just have a really good sense of comedic timing, making jokes about farting during those precious pre-fart moments? I guess I don't really need to know.

3. Occupied Space

This is the most silliest entry on this list, and may or may not exist because I needed to fill up five spaces, but! It's true! I have many memories of tagging along as my cousins left the family party and decided to take up space at some other, unspecified area. Mostly, I'm talking about whatever playground or whatever the fuck was near whatever aunt/uncle's house we were at this time. There was always this sense of belonging, ya know? Like, we were on public property, but no matter where we all went, it felt like ours (or theirs, I guess, depending on how much of a tagalong you considered me).

2. Philly Slang

My balls have been busted more than once in the past decade or two regarding my Philly accent. I'm not saying it's illegitimate. It's certainly not affected, and most/all of the moments that have been called out by peers have been stressful moments, i.e. moments when I would never fucking even have the opportunity to "purposefully do the accent" or whatever. I'm just saying that I have an accent, and I'm further saying that I remember exactly where and when (kind of) I picked up this classic accent. I remember being at a Shelbourne St. family party. I remember my cousin *** saying words kind of weirdly. I remember thinking that the way he pronounced those words was the coolest motherfucking thing I'd ever heard. I remember consciously trying to emulate it. I do not remember my Philly accent becoming "normal."

1. Capture Rules

Before the whole drinking thing (see #5), there was the immense opportunity to play schoolyard games. The most prevalent game was Capture (if we were outside, and Hide and Seek if we were inside). The rules stipulate that there are two teams, and that the "capturing" team should give the "captured" team X amount of time before they went on the hunt. If I was with my friends at home, then that amount of time was closely adhered to, i.e. we'd literally count out loud "One, two, three..." and so on, until the limit was reached, and then we'd go try to "capture" the opposing team. But my cousins never counted. The capturing team would just hang out at the base until someone said "I think that was long enough?" and then off they'd go. That seemed so goddamn badass to me, that there are no rules in the world that deserve to be taken too serious—even the rules of Capture. 

I haven't seen my cousins in like fifteen months, and I have a feeling that shit's going to be a lot weirder / more awkward between them and my own shy-ass self when we finally get together again. Regardless of what happens in the future, I will never stop being thankful for growing up around a bunch of cool ass motherfuckers as cousins.

Dirt Biking — Baseball — Allergies — TV Shows About Crime

I told a friend, partially in jest at the time but as I reflect on it there's a lot more truth to it than I first thought, that these four topics are the only things I read about online. This friend told me that, surely, there must be a website that speaks to these niche issues at the same time. WELL THERE IS NOW, BABY.

DIRT BIKING

I don't know if I'll be able to coherently explain why this particular article in the Northeast Times got my goat so thoroughly, but I can try. It's probably because it's a pretty potent mix of a lot of things that I have varying degrees of pessimistic opinions about. There's the obvious fact that I was the target of these types of police plans when I was the one drinking in Pennypack Woods as a youth, and so I empathize with those who wish to let loose in the darkness of the park, not really bothering anyone. There's the fact that this fucking jabroni doesn't even live in goddamn Philadelphia, and I'm getting pretty tired of suburban assholes having asshole opinions about my city. There's the Nazi Blue Lives Matter flag right there in the fucking article photo. There's the fact that police have a documented history of lying to media and there's small-potatoes newspapers like this one who lap it up without questioning the source. There's the fact that I'm just a little burned out from hanging out with anti-Krasner family members yesterday (that one's on me I guess). There's the residual discomfort from moving back to this goddamn corner of the city in the first place, where trump posters still hang on telephone poles along the main arteries, where the dream of a monochrome half-breed utopia of racists still exists, where fat fucks like DeBlasis sit behind desks and dish out orders, where I find myself living, again, against all odds.

And there's the fact that, out of any legitimate issue that the Philadelphia Police could use their immorally large budget to address, this loser is choosing to spend the money on buying dirt bikes for his officers so that they can chase teenagers through the woods. In what world is this applauded? In the world known as Northeast Philadelphia, evidently.

I could even get into the especially thick irony of having the issue of the month (and every spring month) be outrage over dirt bike riders acting foolishly on busy streets in the city—legitimately scary, sure, but it's ironic that the same people who pop veins on their foreheads twisting this issue into another form of racism would be the same people who want the police to have the same "dangerous" vehicles so that their own teenage sons can get arrested in the park (and then get it wiped off their records after attending a class and paying a fine, a form of privilege that deserves more discussion that this parenthetical aside can provide).

Defund the police, please, jesus christ.

BASEBALL

I haven't been to a baseball game in almost two years. Most dishearteningly, my youngest kid Martha has never been to a game. I am on the fence about whether I want to take a family trip to the park this year (and it has nothing to do with COVID—if scientists are saying it's safe with vaccinated parents, then it's safe). I think it's more of the fact that it's a pain in the ass bringing the kids anywhere. That ass pain is worth the price if the outcome is gonna be, for example, a pleasant hangout with friends at their house with their kids and a few beers. But is paying admission to schlep down to the stadium only to not be able to do the thing I paid money for (watch the game) because my one-year-old and three-year-old behave exactly like a one-year-old and a three-year-old typically would? Probably not. Why pay $100 to not be able to focus on a baseball game when I can do that at home for free?

Willow's been to five games in her life. For the first half of that, I was able to convince myself that it was worth bringing an infant to the game because she was a good luck charm. Her first three games were all wins:

June 30, 2018 — Phillies 3, Nationals 2 — Went with the K*** family on our annual trip for Pappy's birthday (a full-time Nationals fan and part-time Phillies fan). It was very hot, and we spent some time feeding and changing W in one of the air-conditioned corporate boardrooms that double as breastfeeding areas during games. The domestic abuser homered, and the bullpen hung on to a one-run lead (we listened to the ninth-inning save in the car on the way out of the parking lot).

August 2, 2018 — Phillies 5, Marlins 2 — Far removed from the halcyon days of 2008-11, Phillies tickets were cheap, and we had a whole section to ourselves (good when you have a three-month-old). Pretty boring game, until the bottom of the ninth, when the Phillies walked it off. We were in the car listening to Franzke make the call over Willow's tired cries.

September 19, 2018 — Phillies 4, Mets 0 — We had tried to attend the game on 9/10, but it got rained out, so we switched to this one. Eflin pitched a good game, we saw a couple homers, probably still left early, but ya know what? We can't go to 7 PM games at all these days, so this seems like another lifetime. Also, Willow said her first words ("fuck the mets").

We went twice in 2019, and we lost both games, so Willow is now lifetime 3-2, which doesn't look as good as it did in the 2018 off-season, but what can ya do. I really do hope that the kids like to go to games when they get older, but honestly, at this point, I know that they do not like it, so why force it on them? It would only be to my own personal detriment.

ALLERGIES

I guess allergies are getting worse and worse for certain people as the years go on, and scientists aren't, or can't, do much about it. I am one of those people. The last month has been absolutely brutal for my nasal cavities and tissue budget. My coworkers have utterly exhausted their supply of god-bless-yous. Mowing the lawn has been torture for reasons not even having to do with the fact that it's been seven years since I last mowed a lawn at all.

The weird part is that there seems to be no logical reason why I wouldn't just take allergy medication and not have to worry about it. It doesn't mix poorly with alcohol. No major side effects at all. It's certainly not a conspiracy-related concern (e.g. "Who really knows what's in those pills?!"). For the most part, I trust science. I don't even think it's some bullshit macho thing, like, "I don't need those PUSSY allergy meds!!!" Maybe it's more about my belief that pain is your body's way of letting you know that something is wrong, and any medication that masks the pain instead of addressing it should be used sparingly? But that doesn't make much sense if the thing that's wrong is the trees pumping out pollen, not my body itself.

Nah, it's probably just money. Why pay for a clear nose when you can blow snot rockets into stolen Wawa napkins for 60 days straight for free? Also, at least I don't have COVID?

TV SHOWS ABOUT CRIME

Alright, so Pam and I finally started watching Mare of Easttown. Everyone is right in that this is a good show, worth the hype, and definitely worth finally dipping back into the idea of "prestige television" if you're like me and are kinda tired with that whole thing (like, I'd rather just watch a movie or a Seinfeld rerun at this point, honestly).

There was only one single thing about the first two episodes that annoyed me, and everything else was impeccable. But the accents! So fucking annoying. It's annoying on two levels, really. The first is that it's not good. As someone who personally has a variation of the accent in question, the fact that I'm noticing the actors' attempts means that it is a failure. Kate Winslet is one of the best actresses of our generation, no doubt, and she's amazing here, but c'mon. She's not doing great with the wooter.

The second qualm is that it is because of the accent and all the other heavy Delco references that this show was so hyped up to someone like me in the first place. I dunno, it just annoys me that I have to see news stories about Winslet drinking Wawa coffee. It's half missing the point—the Delco stuff is nothing more than amusing window dressing for a pretty great crime/domestic drama—and half unearned praise—the accents suck! Just speak how you normally speak, I won't hold it against you, promise.

INDIE ROCK

I find myself listening to fewer and fewer of these semi-twee emo-pop indie rock bands these days (maybe because I have fewer and fewer interesting insights into them, and usually just tend to use them as background noise as opposed to actively participating in their art), but I will always find room for some exclamation-point-fueled mid-aughts throwback bangers.

Album of the Week: Walk Through Fire

I think at this point, I could just fill this introductory space with news about past Record Club artists if I wanted to. I don't, because even that would become a little boring after a while (or at least as boring as these introductions usually are anyway). But we could check in every once in a while, ya know?

 

Like, I could tell you that Tinted Windows reunited recently to honor their frontman Adam Schlesinger, who died of COVID in April of 2020. They played a cut from Tinted Windows that wasn't written by Schlesinger, which is almost as dumb as the Academy Awards forgetting to include Schlesinger in their In Memoriam montage (the man fucking wrote the classic Oscar-nominated song "That Thing You Do!" goddamn it!!!).

But like I said, let's not do this every week. Though, this week's artist is about to release her follow-up to this week's album in like two months, so I'm sure we'll be catching up with her over the summer, right here in the Sunday introductory paragraphs.

In the meantime, we have the usual shit to explore if you want it—the playlist, the archives—and, of course, this week's album below. Thanks to Rachel for picking, and thanks to all of you for tuning in.

Week 120 — May 16-22, 2021

What we're listening to this week (Rachel S.'s pick):

ALBUM: Walk Through Fire

ARTIST: Yola

RELEASED: February 22, 2019

WHAT GENRE IS THIS: Americana / country / soul

WHY RACHEL PICKED IT: "I went down a women-in-country-music rabbit hole over the pandemic, as the Chicks' Gaslighter was a seminal album of this year for me. My friend Andrew, a more avid country fan, introduced me to Yola, as I said I was looking for 'not white dude honky tonk nonsense,' and well, this couldn't be farther from that."

TRACKLIST:

1. Faraway Look
2. Shady Grove
3. Ride Out in the Country
4. It Ain't Easier
5. Walk Through Fire
6. Rock Me Gently
7. Love All Night (Work All Day)
8. Deep Blue Dream
9. Lonely the Night
10. Still Gone
11. Keep Me Here
12. Love Is Light

LENGTH: 41:15

 

WHERE TO LISTEN FOR FREE: YouTube

 

READING SOME SHIT: Variety makes the surprisingly correct assertion that "genre is dead" in this interview with Yola from late 2019.

Happy listening, fam! Have a great week!