Sunday, July 8, 2018
PoYB from the Vault: Kicks Komics
All the comics that I, the editor of the fun-and-games section called Kicks, "drew" for my school newspaper, ranked from absolute worst to least worse. (I'm sure there's some missing, I didn't do a very good job of saving newspapers at the end of senior year. But, judging from the content below, maybe that's for the best.)
Saturday, July 7, 2018
The Top 100 Songs of the '00s (Part 1: #100-#76)
What struck me strange in the compiling of this list was how so damn easy it was to create it. Maybe that's to my detriment, like maybe my taste in music from the '00s is stale, like I listen to the same damn songs over and over. True, very rarely do I attempt to discover music from 2000-2009 that I've never heard before (only one song out of these one hundred did I listen to for the first time this year). But it's been almost nine years since that decade ended. Maybe at this point, I just know what I like, and we'll leave it at that.
Here's Part One of a four-part series highlighting my favorite songs from the first decade of the century. The song titles link to YouTube so you can listen to the actual song.
Here's Part One of a four-part series highlighting my favorite songs from the first decade of the century. The song titles link to YouTube so you can listen to the actual song.
100. "Swim" by Surfer Blood
This is surf music from another dimension, violently switching back and forth from reverb-drenched vocal yawlps and breezy calypso breakdowns. I remember streaming this track on Pitchfork over and over during the summer of '09. It's at #100, but it's still a keeper.
99. "Colette" by Langhorne Slim
I'm a sucker for a love song. The best part about "Colette" is that it is able to sound like both types of love separately: the slow, thoughtful love of the opening verses, and the joyful celebration of love in the extended outro jam. Two love songs for the price of one!
98. "Biggest Star" by the Elected
Jenny Lewis is a wonderful musician, but if there was any doubt that Rilo Kiley was a true team effort, check out this track from the solo effort of her rat-faced-Boy-Meets-World-bully bandmate, Blake Sennett. "Biggest Star" is the sound of a gauntlet being thrown down. Who's the bigger star now?
97. "Time Bomb" by the Format
Hey, what ever happened to Nate Ruess? It seems like just yesterday he was casually ripping classic pseudo-dance piano jams like "Time Bomb." Then what? Duets with P!nk?! To quote the best part of this song: "...stop it..."
96. "Intro" by the xx
Usually tracks that begin albums and are called "Intro" are bullshit throwaway tracks. Not here. The xx doesn't fucking play that way. I think this is the only instrumental in the Top 100, but "Intro" is just that catchy. Bizarrely, I first heard this song at a frat party. I guess it works in any situation.
95. "Ragged Wood" by Fleet Foxes
Fleet Foxes' self-titled debut is just a constant barrage of Springtime Sounds. "Ragged Wood" is its Spring-iest. That opening harmony of "woooaaaaaaaaah" is everything waking up from a winter's slumber.
94. "Let's Get Out of This Country" by Camera Obscura
Camera Obscura enters the Great Roadtrip Songs canon with the title track off their 2006 album. It's a tale as old as time. I hate this life, let's fucking escape! Gonna be spinning this track a lot in 2018, daydreaming.
93. "Fake Palindromes" by Andrew Bird
After the first kiss, me and Pam exited the wedding ceremony down the center aisle to the sounds of "Fake Palindromes," so for that reason alone it's a top-tier track. But personal reasons aside, the song holds up as one of the greats.
92. "The Breakup" by Washington Social Club
Washington Social Club is a band from the D.C. area that I know jackshit about. They were a local band to one of my exes from college, and I ripped this shit from her iPod. My love for this song has far outlasted the relationship. Though, is that really all that surprising, when Our Song was a song called "The Breakup"?!
91. "Machine Gun" by Portishead
I'm not sure I'm gonna be able to explain why I like this song so much. There's a creepy lead vocal part, an even creepier backing vocal ghost howls, and the creepiest part of all, a drum machine that loops over and over. Until it starts morphing, melting. There's a bomb shelter siren at some point. There are some Phantom of the Opera-type synthesizers to bring us home. This is the haunted house of '00s indie rock. This sounds terrible on paper. It's not, trust me.
90. "Heimdalsgate like a Promethean Curse" by Of Montreal
Of Montreal's discography is so massive and unwieldy that at this point, the good moments are the exceptions, not the rules. Oh well. We can all just pretend that Of Montreal stopped after 2007's masterpiece, Hissing Fauna, Are You the Destroyer?. We can pretend that Kevin Barnes said, "Wow, there's no way I'm topping 'Heimdalsgate,' guess I better pack it in instead of releasing middling efforts for the next eleven years."
89. "Fidelity" by Regina Spektor
Oh lordy, my high school theater nerd friends were in love with this song, and I was too, because I too was a high school theater nerd. Regina Spektor was the quirky adorkable It Girl before Zoey Deschanel ever even thought to order tomato soup with her phone. "Fidelity" and its burping staccato of a chorus will always have a place in my heart.
88. "Friday Night in Philadelphia" by Pepper's Ghost
This is the only good music recommendation I ever got from my high school newspaper (which obviously is more of an indictment of the quality of the newspaper's reviews than of the state of music in the mid-aughts). I remember me and the boys loved this song so much that we were gonna go see Pepper's Ghost perform at... the FYE at Franklin Mills Mall. But we couldn't find a ride there. Oh my goodness, youth.
87. "Hate to Say I Told You So" by the Hives
The "Return of Rock 'n' Roll" was overhyped by MTV, et al, but the hype wouldn't have happened at all without some solid songs behind it. The Hives, looking back, are kind of also-rans in that whole scene, but fuck, dude, if this song didn't get all us young Catholic school kids fucking PUMPED.
86. "Bohemian like You" by the Dandy Warhols
85. "Don't Lose Touch" by Against Me!
One of my favorite parts about Against Me! as a band is that they are constantly self-evaluating, constantly questioning the meaning of it all. Laura Jane Grace made it pretty clear in her awesome memoir, Tranny, how confused and conflicted she was through most of her life due to her transgender feelings and the self-loathing that came with it. "Don't Lose Touch" doesn't touch on those feelings, but they are adjacent. Here we find her questioning, what the FUCK are we doing? And it's Against Me!, so of course all the angst and hate is wrapped up in a catchy rock and roll song.
84. "Dragon's Lair" by Sunset Rubdown
Hopefully you don't have Krug fatigue after last Thursday, because I present to you now the absolute pinnacle of Spencer Krug's non-Wolf Parade output. It took me years to figure out that this song was more than just about killing a dragon. The dragon is a metaphor, maaaan. This is a song about a make or break situation, and it's about prevailing for love.
83. "Lights Out" by Santigold
Bud Light got it right, this is the perfect song to celebrate in the summer, even if you think Bud Light Lime tastes like fucking trash. I do. Fucking great song though.
82. "Calling and Not Calling My Ex" by Okkervil River
Okkervil River's sweet spot is that potent mix of sadness and nostalgia and regret and joy, and they hit the target here, bullseye. Out of all the ways to let go of past relationships, Okkervil chronicles my favorite in this awesome fucking tune.
81. "Your Ex-Lover Is Dead" by Stars
And speaking of letting go of past relationships, here we have Stars with the most groan-worthy way to do it. Indeed, in the aftermath of the aforementioned college relationship, I mentioned to a friend how much I related to this song, only to be met with an extreme eye roll. "There's nothing to say." Of course, there's always something to say. I agree now, this song was stupid to feel so fondly about, but even now, I love it, because there is such thing as nostalgia of pain.
80. "I Still Remember" by Bloc Party
Do you think there is a correlation between how much I like a song and how closely related the song's subject matter is to what I usually write about? I only ask because I seem to romanticize the past a lot here on PoYB, and "I Still Remember" is about as on-the-nose nostalgic for the past as a song could possibly get. It's a theory that I'm not too interested in exploring, because why ruin the fun? Just let me have my Bloc Party in peace.
79. "I'm Not Gonna Teach Your Boyfriend How to Dance with You" by Black Kids
78. "Fell in Love with a Girl" by the White Stripes
You won't find "Seven Nation Army" on this list. I consider it a monumentally important song. Jack White was the only artist in the '00s who wrote a rock riff that's played in stadiums! That's great! But "Fell in Love with a Girl," in my opinion, is the only untouchable White Stripes song. Not even constant airplay on MTV could kill it. It's an unimpeachably and breathlessly killer song, the banner song of the so-called garage rock renaissance, and rightly so.
77. "Keep the Car Running" by Arcade Fire
Some bands can rock hard, but only certain bands can create an "epic" sound. Arcade Fire, thankfully for all of us, is the latter. "Keep the Car Running" is a chase scene through your ears, with a relentless backbeat and a desperate Win Butler at the mic (or the wheel).
76. "Bicycle Bicycle, You Are My Bicycle" by Be Your Own Pet
My high school garage band disastrously attempted to keep this song in our repertoire. I just could not maintain the energy on drums that "Bicycle Bicycle" requires. Neither could Be Your Own Pet, I guess, since they broke up shortly after. Still, despite the fact I could not replicate it, I can and still do appreciate it. Just kidding! Fuck shit up!
See you next Saturday for songs #75 through #51!
Friday, July 6, 2018
A Day in the Life
I woke up for the same reason I've awoken for the past two months—the mental patient sleeping next to our bed was struggling against the confines of her straitjacket. Though it was five in the goddamn morning, this was a cause for celebration. She had slept through the night for the first time. Five AM formula sessions are fine, those I can take. It's the half-conscious two AM bouts that kill me. I'm lucky that Willow has a great mother who takes charge more often than not.
I should've insisted that I be the one to feed her at five, instead of giving in and accepting Pam's offer to let me sleep while she held the bottle. It was nice lying in bed. Too nice. I overslept a bit. My salad consists of only spinach and chicken due to time constraints. I did, though, make time to update my iPod classic with a couple new albums, just in case this new Florence + the Machine shit doesn't work out (it's decent so far, I guess).
The Route 60 bus was on time, mitigating somewhat my exasperation at having to take the bus in the first place due to a flat front bike tire. SEPTA dropped me off at the comically trashed corner of Kensington and Allegheny Avenues. Dead-eyed prostitutes shuffled past. Two greasy dudes with homeless-style tans quibbled over money sitting on the steps to the El. There was seriously so much trash that on the sharp NW corner, someone had set up an orange cone barrier around a pile of debris two feet deep (which begs the question, did the barrier surround the trash already there, or did people add to the pile of garbage when they saw a nice orange barrier to hold it?). If this sounds like I'm, um, trashing the way this neighborhood lives, maybe I am, but fuck, I love it too. I feel alive when I'm standing on the corner of K&A.
The El drops me off on the West Market St. side of City Hall, and so from there, to get to my work building, I walk through the new LOVE Park, which has unfairly been maligned at "sparse" and "lacking character" but which I like quite nicely. Construction workers were yet again "fixing" the fountain, which is a full-time job in Philly at this point. As I approached, one of the tall construction workers came up to me and gave me a big hug. I realized it was my old friend Mike from college. Hadn't fucking seen him in about five years. I assumed (falsely) that he had moved to Alaska permanently. This happened at about 7:15, fifteen minutes after PoYB published the Wolf Parade post, which included a small anecdote about Mike in the stray observations. Again, first time seeing this goofy fucking kid in half a decade. Coincidences are fucking strange sometimes. We exchanged numbers, and I'm hoping we can grab lunch at some point before he moves back to Anchorage. I'm hopeful, but also, I know how these types of things usually turn out.
Work starts promptly at eight, which means that when eight o'clock rolls around I'm the only one from my unit here. Working for the city means that being punctual makes you a freak. This freak signed in and awaited his first phone call of the day. The supervisor showed up. She is in a terrible mood approximately 50% of the time. We had a nice conversation about where to get good crabs in the city, so it seems like today might be the other 50%. If you're not a city worker who's angry and bitter by the time you are three years from retirement, you are a freak. I guess I'm glad I don't have a freak for a supervisor.
Summer has made a slow job even slower. I often internally debate with myself during the slowest moments in the day as to whether I made the right choice or not, switching to an office job from my previous in-the-field position. I feel like I sacrificed something, coming here. As miserable as my previous job made me, I felt fulfilled too, ya know? Like I was actually making a difference in my city, head-on. Here, sitting at a desk all day, I feel nothing about my job. It's a nonentity in my life. It's just a paycheck. It doesn't make me unhappy, but it doesn't make me happy. It's just a void. Let's be real here, this is the perfect time in my life for a job that makes me feel like this. I have a lot going on otherwise that I can more than sufficiently fill that void with. The baby does that all on her own, honestly. I don't need a job that completes me. But I will eventually. I will eventually make my way back to being a proper social worker.
But not any time soon. For now, I'm just chilling at my desk, answering the occasional call, and filling my time with reading books and surfing the web and, yeah, blogging a good amount (clearly). So that's what I did this morning. I'm typing this and a couple other PoYB posts that are going up this weekend. I answered a really creepy call from an anonymous person who implied that a child was locked up in a house but literally had no relevant information to back that up. And so on.
My stomach has been grumbling all morning too, if that's relevant, I guess? I'm on a new diet called "intermittent fasting" during which I'm only allowed to eat during an eight-hour time period during the day, and fast the other sixteen hours. So my tummy is waiting patiently to be filled with spinach and chicken and an apple and a no doubt healthy portion of ranch dressing. I don't know if this diet is working, even though scientific studies have shown that it might. I haven't seen a difference yet. Maybe I need to actually consistently eat healthy in addition to the fasting, I don't fucking know. I just wanna get rid of this fucking beer belly.
After clicking on Reddit mindlessly for like the fifth time, I looked up, and it was four o'clock. Time to start packing up. I leave twenty minutes early from work every day. No one gives me shit for it, because like I said, I'm the first one in literally every morning. First one in, first one out—this is my motto. It had been months since I took SEPTA home from work, and in celebration of my homecoming, the El was twenty minutes late. And of course, when that happens, the El shows up fucking PACKED. My car was full to the brim with a bunch of suburban-looking jabronis with "DISCOVERY" on ID lanyards around their necks. Not from around here, eh? Get the fuck off my subway train! They did, one stop later, but it's SEPTA, so it took another fifteen minutes to get from 15th St. to 13th St.
I was supposed to meet Pam and Willow at Greensgrow Farm to pick up our Summer Farm Share produce (god bless urban farming). But since SEPTA was unkind, I missed the trip to the farm. There had been a brief disagreement via text about whether the vegetables would be okay sitting in the car for an hour if we went out to dinner. I didn't think they would, and Pam was more laissez-faire about it. But I've been attempting to get better at choosing my battles in life, and the well-being of cauliflower ultimately did not seem like something I should be arguing with my wife about. So we didn't argue, we compromised, and she put some of the more fragile-looking groceries (red butterhead lettuce, fresh blueberries, Asian Micromix, two pounds of orchard peaches) in a cooler.
To my surprise, Old Richmond's new neighborhood joint, The Pineville, by all internet appearances looked open and ready for business. Their website indicated a menu and hours. Google had the same info. I assumed they were open, based on the evidence available to me. But they say don't believe everything you read on the internet, and Pam and Willow found the doors still locked tight and brown paper covers over the windows. No soft open tonight for the K***s. So we went to our consummate happy hour destination, Bait and Switch. Only this family could have a car full of fresh produce and decide to go out for fried chicken and beer instead. Whatever. Fuck it. It's the weekend.
After we polished off a couple Cape May Brewery IPAs and a Bait Bucket (french fries topped with clam chowder), we headed home. Because of the holiday, trash day was moved back a day, and so, I did my least favorite chore, and took out the trash. I hate it especially in the summer, because I have to squeeze past the white-hot air conditioning exhaust fan to get to the side tunnel, carrying a recycling bin covered in crawling ants. Today it was especially hot. And we had a special piece of trash to deal with! You see, our backyard butts up against the side of a semi-abandoned house from Mercer St., and being semi-abandoned, the house is falling apart. Yet another piece of the crumbling roof was found in our garden the other day. It wasn't bulky or heavy or anything, just a frayed piece of roof tar, maybe two feet wide, thin and somewhat deteriorating. I had placed it along the side of the house, and now it was time to put on some gloves and move it to the trash pile in front of the house.
Except, now, upon further inspection, I'm seeing that this shit is fucking gross. There are all these fuzzy yellowish slug-looking things on there. I don't have the stomach to now research what the fuck they were, but trust me, they looked weird and disgusting and freaked me the fuck out because I am wimp when it comes to that kind of shit. But still, I had to get the damn thing out of the backyard, so I found two creepy crawly-free spots, and picked it up. But THEN as I'm doing so, a larger rodent darts out from under it. It was so quick I couldn't even see what it was, but something went from its spot under its tar shade to the side of the deck, where it jumped off into the neighboring yard and disappeared. I have to believe it was a scurrying mouse, but who knows? It was fast, I couldn't see, maybe it was something more insidious than even that. Pam, thankfully, did not hear me exclaim "JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!!!" and I did not even mention the roof trash at all when I went back inside, so if she's reading this, hi Pam, I saw a mouse, don't be alarmed, it was outside!
I then showered, vigorously.
We've been reading to Willow since she was born, because even though she clearly doesn't understand the words we are saying, its been scientifically proven that babies benefit from hearing a variety of words at any age. Like, they get smarter just from listening to their parents speak words besides "goo goo" and "gah gah." We finished Stephen King's 11/22/63 the other day (barely, through a veil of thick tears), and so today we started the Harry Potter series. It was my first time cracking open Sorcerer's Stone in a long time, and the opening chapter was still as wonderful as ever, complete with flying motorcycles and morphing tabby cats. I cannot wait to read these books when Willow can actually appreciate them. I can't wait to share in her joy while she discovers the wonders of Harry Potter for the first time. (I also can't wait to hear her opinion on the Whomping Willow).
We watched GLOW, we decompressed, we let Willow sleep before we woke her up for torture time (a.k.a. bathtime). I keep waiting for social services to come knocking after every bath she takes, her screams are just that piercing. But hey, we'd rather have a loud clean baby than a quiet dirty one, right? I say that to myself every time I have to wipe massive shits off her ass (thankfully my baby momma is a nurse and has dealt with shit bigger than a baby's, and she reminds me of how much of a wuss I am in this context often).
And so, after a day of crowded bus rides, jovial construction workers, wilted carrots, confused muggles, swift vermin, failing diets, and a baby that didn't puke ONCE, we all laid down for bedtime. It was ten o'clock. We stayed up late, my goodness! It's not a school night (I don't work Fridays), so we had allowed ourselves the privilege of being conscious when the sun went down completely. We prayed, not for world peace, but for peace in our bedroom, that maybe the good times would continue, and Willow would let us sleep for more than three hours at a time.
This was Thursday, July 5, 2018, and it was a good ass day in the life.
I should've insisted that I be the one to feed her at five, instead of giving in and accepting Pam's offer to let me sleep while she held the bottle. It was nice lying in bed. Too nice. I overslept a bit. My salad consists of only spinach and chicken due to time constraints. I did, though, make time to update my iPod classic with a couple new albums, just in case this new Florence + the Machine shit doesn't work out (it's decent so far, I guess).
The Route 60 bus was on time, mitigating somewhat my exasperation at having to take the bus in the first place due to a flat front bike tire. SEPTA dropped me off at the comically trashed corner of Kensington and Allegheny Avenues. Dead-eyed prostitutes shuffled past. Two greasy dudes with homeless-style tans quibbled over money sitting on the steps to the El. There was seriously so much trash that on the sharp NW corner, someone had set up an orange cone barrier around a pile of debris two feet deep (which begs the question, did the barrier surround the trash already there, or did people add to the pile of garbage when they saw a nice orange barrier to hold it?). If this sounds like I'm, um, trashing the way this neighborhood lives, maybe I am, but fuck, I love it too. I feel alive when I'm standing on the corner of K&A.
The El drops me off on the West Market St. side of City Hall, and so from there, to get to my work building, I walk through the new LOVE Park, which has unfairly been maligned at "sparse" and "lacking character" but which I like quite nicely. Construction workers were yet again "fixing" the fountain, which is a full-time job in Philly at this point. As I approached, one of the tall construction workers came up to me and gave me a big hug. I realized it was my old friend Mike from college. Hadn't fucking seen him in about five years. I assumed (falsely) that he had moved to Alaska permanently. This happened at about 7:15, fifteen minutes after PoYB published the Wolf Parade post, which included a small anecdote about Mike in the stray observations. Again, first time seeing this goofy fucking kid in half a decade. Coincidences are fucking strange sometimes. We exchanged numbers, and I'm hoping we can grab lunch at some point before he moves back to Anchorage. I'm hopeful, but also, I know how these types of things usually turn out.
Work starts promptly at eight, which means that when eight o'clock rolls around I'm the only one from my unit here. Working for the city means that being punctual makes you a freak. This freak signed in and awaited his first phone call of the day. The supervisor showed up. She is in a terrible mood approximately 50% of the time. We had a nice conversation about where to get good crabs in the city, so it seems like today might be the other 50%. If you're not a city worker who's angry and bitter by the time you are three years from retirement, you are a freak. I guess I'm glad I don't have a freak for a supervisor.
Summer has made a slow job even slower. I often internally debate with myself during the slowest moments in the day as to whether I made the right choice or not, switching to an office job from my previous in-the-field position. I feel like I sacrificed something, coming here. As miserable as my previous job made me, I felt fulfilled too, ya know? Like I was actually making a difference in my city, head-on. Here, sitting at a desk all day, I feel nothing about my job. It's a nonentity in my life. It's just a paycheck. It doesn't make me unhappy, but it doesn't make me happy. It's just a void. Let's be real here, this is the perfect time in my life for a job that makes me feel like this. I have a lot going on otherwise that I can more than sufficiently fill that void with. The baby does that all on her own, honestly. I don't need a job that completes me. But I will eventually. I will eventually make my way back to being a proper social worker.
But not any time soon. For now, I'm just chilling at my desk, answering the occasional call, and filling my time with reading books and surfing the web and, yeah, blogging a good amount (clearly). So that's what I did this morning. I'm typing this and a couple other PoYB posts that are going up this weekend. I answered a really creepy call from an anonymous person who implied that a child was locked up in a house but literally had no relevant information to back that up. And so on.
My stomach has been grumbling all morning too, if that's relevant, I guess? I'm on a new diet called "intermittent fasting" during which I'm only allowed to eat during an eight-hour time period during the day, and fast the other sixteen hours. So my tummy is waiting patiently to be filled with spinach and chicken and an apple and a no doubt healthy portion of ranch dressing. I don't know if this diet is working, even though scientific studies have shown that it might. I haven't seen a difference yet. Maybe I need to actually consistently eat healthy in addition to the fasting, I don't fucking know. I just wanna get rid of this fucking beer belly.
After clicking on Reddit mindlessly for like the fifth time, I looked up, and it was four o'clock. Time to start packing up. I leave twenty minutes early from work every day. No one gives me shit for it, because like I said, I'm the first one in literally every morning. First one in, first one out—this is my motto. It had been months since I took SEPTA home from work, and in celebration of my homecoming, the El was twenty minutes late. And of course, when that happens, the El shows up fucking PACKED. My car was full to the brim with a bunch of suburban-looking jabronis with "DISCOVERY" on ID lanyards around their necks. Not from around here, eh? Get the fuck off my subway train! They did, one stop later, but it's SEPTA, so it took another fifteen minutes to get from 15th St. to 13th St.
I was supposed to meet Pam and Willow at Greensgrow Farm to pick up our Summer Farm Share produce (god bless urban farming). But since SEPTA was unkind, I missed the trip to the farm. There had been a brief disagreement via text about whether the vegetables would be okay sitting in the car for an hour if we went out to dinner. I didn't think they would, and Pam was more laissez-faire about it. But I've been attempting to get better at choosing my battles in life, and the well-being of cauliflower ultimately did not seem like something I should be arguing with my wife about. So we didn't argue, we compromised, and she put some of the more fragile-looking groceries (red butterhead lettuce, fresh blueberries, Asian Micromix, two pounds of orchard peaches) in a cooler.
To my surprise, Old Richmond's new neighborhood joint, The Pineville, by all internet appearances looked open and ready for business. Their website indicated a menu and hours. Google had the same info. I assumed they were open, based on the evidence available to me. But they say don't believe everything you read on the internet, and Pam and Willow found the doors still locked tight and brown paper covers over the windows. No soft open tonight for the K***s. So we went to our consummate happy hour destination, Bait and Switch. Only this family could have a car full of fresh produce and decide to go out for fried chicken and beer instead. Whatever. Fuck it. It's the weekend.
After we polished off a couple Cape May Brewery IPAs and a Bait Bucket (french fries topped with clam chowder), we headed home. Because of the holiday, trash day was moved back a day, and so, I did my least favorite chore, and took out the trash. I hate it especially in the summer, because I have to squeeze past the white-hot air conditioning exhaust fan to get to the side tunnel, carrying a recycling bin covered in crawling ants. Today it was especially hot. And we had a special piece of trash to deal with! You see, our backyard butts up against the side of a semi-abandoned house from Mercer St., and being semi-abandoned, the house is falling apart. Yet another piece of the crumbling roof was found in our garden the other day. It wasn't bulky or heavy or anything, just a frayed piece of roof tar, maybe two feet wide, thin and somewhat deteriorating. I had placed it along the side of the house, and now it was time to put on some gloves and move it to the trash pile in front of the house.
Except, now, upon further inspection, I'm seeing that this shit is fucking gross. There are all these fuzzy yellowish slug-looking things on there. I don't have the stomach to now research what the fuck they were, but trust me, they looked weird and disgusting and freaked me the fuck out because I am wimp when it comes to that kind of shit. But still, I had to get the damn thing out of the backyard, so I found two creepy crawly-free spots, and picked it up. But THEN as I'm doing so, a larger rodent darts out from under it. It was so quick I couldn't even see what it was, but something went from its spot under its tar shade to the side of the deck, where it jumped off into the neighboring yard and disappeared. I have to believe it was a scurrying mouse, but who knows? It was fast, I couldn't see, maybe it was something more insidious than even that. Pam, thankfully, did not hear me exclaim "JESUS FUCKING CHRIST!!!" and I did not even mention the roof trash at all when I went back inside, so if she's reading this, hi Pam, I saw a mouse, don't be alarmed, it was outside!
I then showered, vigorously.
We've been reading to Willow since she was born, because even though she clearly doesn't understand the words we are saying, its been scientifically proven that babies benefit from hearing a variety of words at any age. Like, they get smarter just from listening to their parents speak words besides "goo goo" and "gah gah." We finished Stephen King's 11/22/63 the other day (barely, through a veil of thick tears), and so today we started the Harry Potter series. It was my first time cracking open Sorcerer's Stone in a long time, and the opening chapter was still as wonderful as ever, complete with flying motorcycles and morphing tabby cats. I cannot wait to read these books when Willow can actually appreciate them. I can't wait to share in her joy while she discovers the wonders of Harry Potter for the first time. (I also can't wait to hear her opinion on the Whomping Willow).
We watched GLOW, we decompressed, we let Willow sleep before we woke her up for torture time (a.k.a. bathtime). I keep waiting for social services to come knocking after every bath she takes, her screams are just that piercing. But hey, we'd rather have a loud clean baby than a quiet dirty one, right? I say that to myself every time I have to wipe massive shits off her ass (thankfully my baby momma is a nurse and has dealt with shit bigger than a baby's, and she reminds me of how much of a wuss I am in this context often).
And so, after a day of crowded bus rides, jovial construction workers, wilted carrots, confused muggles, swift vermin, failing diets, and a baby that didn't puke ONCE, we all laid down for bedtime. It was ten o'clock. We stayed up late, my goodness! It's not a school night (I don't work Fridays), so we had allowed ourselves the privilege of being conscious when the sun went down completely. We prayed, not for world peace, but for peace in our bedroom, that maybe the good times would continue, and Willow would let us sleep for more than three hours at a time.
This was Thursday, July 5, 2018, and it was a good ass day in the life.
Thursday, July 5, 2018
The Albums That Matter: Apologies to the Queen Mary
Joe runs through every album on his iPod, mostly in alphabetical order, and offers some brief thoughts. Check out previous columns HERE.
It's easier to write about albums I don't give a shit about. How long do you think it took me to write about Apocalipstick? An hour, tops? That album is pretty darn good, but it means nothing to me. The whole point of "The Albums That Matter" is that I should offer up "some brief thoughts," and so that's what I did. But what about when an album deserves more than that? What about when I feel like an album should have poems written about it, when albums should be covered in gold, should be on a podium in a museum, should be shot into space? Isn't some measly, poorly written, semi-regular music column on an unpopular blog really doing the album a disservice?
Okay, you want thoughts, fuck it, here's a thought about Wolf Parade's Apologies to the Queen Mary—I'm seventeen, and I'm driving to school in my parents' car. The CD player, which is confusingly located in the trunk, has already been loaded with the choice CD of the year. I hit play. I speed up on Cheltenham Ave. The crash of an open hi-hat. The crack of a snare. CHSHHHH-snap. CHSHHHH-snapthump-SNAP. A wobbly keyboard accompanies after a bit. Then that voice... nah, that yelp, all strained at the throat: "I got a number on me..." Apologies to the Queen Mary, in all its strange, beautiful glory.
I could probably do a paragraph like that for every song on the album, because, yo, there's so many goddamn special moments splattered all over this LP. Wolf Parade has a way of maximizing the energy during certain parts of songs; the climaxes reach higher than most bands can dream of (it's fucking wild that Wolf Parade originally used drum machines!). I mean, this shit happens practically every song.
There's the second chorus of "Grounds for Divorce," where Boeckner's guitar somehow is able to threaten Krug's epic vocals for the song's dominance. As if to underline the point on this matter, the very next song, Boeckner's "We Built Another World," starts off in a sprint, and every line of every verse ends with a quick falsetto, signaling that it's now the band's chance to go a little crazy for a few seconds. "Fancy Claps" features one of my favorite musical tricks ever (I will never get tired of it), where the whole band drops out in favor of a few choice—you guessed it—hand claps. It's like the claps are energizing the band past known human endurance. The album is at breakneck speed at this point.
The deep breath of "Same Ghost Every Night" is necessary at the midway point, or else Apologies would just be too exhausting. Did I mention ghosts are all over this album? This is the sound you make when you fight back against your ghosts, and do so with reckless abandon. Let Boeckner's voice at the end of this particular song convince you that I'm right.
Dan Boeckner and Spencer Krug, it should be mentioned now, have two very distinct songwriting styles, and it's incredible that they mesh as well as they do. But maybe people said that about peanut butter and jelly too, at first, but now that sandwich is ubiquitous. Same with Wolf Parade. Though, yes, it's pretty clear just by hearing the first 30 seconds of a song which of the band's co-leads wrote it, they still depend on each other's sound to create what we know as WOLF PARADE. Look no further than the next song, "Shine a Light," which is a Boeckner creation through and through, but the chorus would be NOTHING without Krug's epic screaming keyboards.
I don't usually go through each song like this, but fuck it, we're barreling toward the end now. "The Songs and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts" is Krug at his most relentless. This is his song about "fighting for what's right" and whatnot, which didn't speak to me then, but is fresh on my ears here in 2018. "I got a hand / so I got a fist / So I got a plan" is one of my favorite lyrics ever. And then we seamlessly transition to...
"I'll Believe in Anything." If you had to pick one tune to be THE Wolf Parade song, this is it. Fuck it, if you had to pick one song to be THE song of indie rock in the '00s, it very well could be this one too. I don't know how to listen to this song without choking up. "I'll Believe in Anything" is just one of those fucking songs in which everything about it is just fucking perfect, every piece perfectly complements the rest. Is there any part that stands out? Is it Krug going out of his mind with that trademark alien falsetto? Maybe. Is it the relentless crashing of the cymbals? Maybe. Is it the outro that maintains the energy even while completely changing tempo and time signature? Maybe. Is it something else, something in ineffable? Fuck it, maybe. I don't know. But this is a song for the ages. Apologies to the Queen Mary didn't even need this song, it's strong enough without it. But here it is. "I'll Believe in Anything." A song of a lifetime right there in the middle of an album of a lifetime.
It's not even fair to write about the three songs that end Apologies, because there's just no way to top this. The comedown is inevitable. On its own, "It's a Curse" is top-tier Boeckner, but to have to follow up "I'll Believe in Anything" is just wrong. The song is forever... cursed.
I could go on.
But sometimes an album is more than the sum of its parts. Inspected closely, each song is a gem, but together, the album is a gut punch that brings me back to those high school years. True story, and this was not intentional, but after listening to this album yesterday in preparation for this column, I had a very vivid dream last night about a high school reunion, featuring La Salle guys I haven't thought about in years. The nostalgic pull of this album is that strong.
I know that's a dumb cornerstone for a public reflection of an album. No one else gives a fuck about what I listened to in high school. But it's what's important to me. I don't know how else to explain Apologies to the Queen Mary to the world. This may not particularly persuade you to give it a go if you haven't already, but put it this way: Wolf Parade gave me an opportunity to hold on to memories by providing audio cues, strong ones. Let them do it for you too. Listen, enjoy, let it seep into your consciousness. And even if I'm wrong here, even if Apologies will not become an "important" album to you, at the very least the music holds up on its own.
This is probably the longest "The Albums That Matter" that I've written yet, and I still don't feel like I did it justice. There are some albums that deserve more than "brief thoughts." This is one of them. I'm sorry.
Apologies to the Queen Mary
Wolf Parade
2005
It's easier to write about albums I don't give a shit about. How long do you think it took me to write about Apocalipstick? An hour, tops? That album is pretty darn good, but it means nothing to me. The whole point of "The Albums That Matter" is that I should offer up "some brief thoughts," and so that's what I did. But what about when an album deserves more than that? What about when I feel like an album should have poems written about it, when albums should be covered in gold, should be on a podium in a museum, should be shot into space? Isn't some measly, poorly written, semi-regular music column on an unpopular blog really doing the album a disservice?
Okay, you want thoughts, fuck it, here's a thought about Wolf Parade's Apologies to the Queen Mary—I'm seventeen, and I'm driving to school in my parents' car. The CD player, which is confusingly located in the trunk, has already been loaded with the choice CD of the year. I hit play. I speed up on Cheltenham Ave. The crash of an open hi-hat. The crack of a snare. CHSHHHH-snap. CHSHHHH-snapthump-SNAP. A wobbly keyboard accompanies after a bit. Then that voice... nah, that yelp, all strained at the throat: "I got a number on me..." Apologies to the Queen Mary, in all its strange, beautiful glory.
I could probably do a paragraph like that for every song on the album, because, yo, there's so many goddamn special moments splattered all over this LP. Wolf Parade has a way of maximizing the energy during certain parts of songs; the climaxes reach higher than most bands can dream of (it's fucking wild that Wolf Parade originally used drum machines!). I mean, this shit happens practically every song.
There's the second chorus of "Grounds for Divorce," where Boeckner's guitar somehow is able to threaten Krug's epic vocals for the song's dominance. As if to underline the point on this matter, the very next song, Boeckner's "We Built Another World," starts off in a sprint, and every line of every verse ends with a quick falsetto, signaling that it's now the band's chance to go a little crazy for a few seconds. "Fancy Claps" features one of my favorite musical tricks ever (I will never get tired of it), where the whole band drops out in favor of a few choice—you guessed it—hand claps. It's like the claps are energizing the band past known human endurance. The album is at breakneck speed at this point.
The deep breath of "Same Ghost Every Night" is necessary at the midway point, or else Apologies would just be too exhausting. Did I mention ghosts are all over this album? This is the sound you make when you fight back against your ghosts, and do so with reckless abandon. Let Boeckner's voice at the end of this particular song convince you that I'm right.
Dan Boeckner and Spencer Krug, it should be mentioned now, have two very distinct songwriting styles, and it's incredible that they mesh as well as they do. But maybe people said that about peanut butter and jelly too, at first, but now that sandwich is ubiquitous. Same with Wolf Parade. Though, yes, it's pretty clear just by hearing the first 30 seconds of a song which of the band's co-leads wrote it, they still depend on each other's sound to create what we know as WOLF PARADE. Look no further than the next song, "Shine a Light," which is a Boeckner creation through and through, but the chorus would be NOTHING without Krug's epic screaming keyboards.
I don't usually go through each song like this, but fuck it, we're barreling toward the end now. "The Songs and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts" is Krug at his most relentless. This is his song about "fighting for what's right" and whatnot, which didn't speak to me then, but is fresh on my ears here in 2018. "I got a hand / so I got a fist / So I got a plan" is one of my favorite lyrics ever. And then we seamlessly transition to...
"I'll Believe in Anything." If you had to pick one tune to be THE Wolf Parade song, this is it. Fuck it, if you had to pick one song to be THE song of indie rock in the '00s, it very well could be this one too. I don't know how to listen to this song without choking up. "I'll Believe in Anything" is just one of those fucking songs in which everything about it is just fucking perfect, every piece perfectly complements the rest. Is there any part that stands out? Is it Krug going out of his mind with that trademark alien falsetto? Maybe. Is it the relentless crashing of the cymbals? Maybe. Is it the outro that maintains the energy even while completely changing tempo and time signature? Maybe. Is it something else, something in ineffable? Fuck it, maybe. I don't know. But this is a song for the ages. Apologies to the Queen Mary didn't even need this song, it's strong enough without it. But here it is. "I'll Believe in Anything." A song of a lifetime right there in the middle of an album of a lifetime.
It's not even fair to write about the three songs that end Apologies, because there's just no way to top this. The comedown is inevitable. On its own, "It's a Curse" is top-tier Boeckner, but to have to follow up "I'll Believe in Anything" is just wrong. The song is forever... cursed.
I could go on.
But sometimes an album is more than the sum of its parts. Inspected closely, each song is a gem, but together, the album is a gut punch that brings me back to those high school years. True story, and this was not intentional, but after listening to this album yesterday in preparation for this column, I had a very vivid dream last night about a high school reunion, featuring La Salle guys I haven't thought about in years. The nostalgic pull of this album is that strong.
I know that's a dumb cornerstone for a public reflection of an album. No one else gives a fuck about what I listened to in high school. But it's what's important to me. I don't know how else to explain Apologies to the Queen Mary to the world. This may not particularly persuade you to give it a go if you haven't already, but put it this way: Wolf Parade gave me an opportunity to hold on to memories by providing audio cues, strong ones. Let them do it for you too. Listen, enjoy, let it seep into your consciousness. And even if I'm wrong here, even if Apologies will not become an "important" album to you, at the very least the music holds up on its own.
This is probably the longest "The Albums That Matter" that I've written yet, and I still don't feel like I did it justice. There are some albums that deserve more than "brief thoughts." This is one of them. I'm sorry.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If this album sounds interesting, try this song: I mean, there isn't really anything else I can put here besides "I'll Believe in Anything," which is most assuredly in the Top Ten All Time Songs list. But there's a lot of other songs here that are vying for #2 on the album. Let's say "Dear Songs and Daughters of Hungry Ghosts" if you don't want to start at the pinnacle.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Strays Observations
- Is Boeckner v. Krug a true rivalry? I'm not sure. But if it is, then these rivals bring out the absolute best in each other. And if it is a rivalry, then there must be a winner, right? If we're talking about this album specifically, then I gotta give the win to Krug, even though it pains me to give the loss to Boeckner, who just brings his fucking all to this shit. If we're talking about overall careers, though, Krug has released at least one stone cold classic of a solo album (Sunset Rubdown's Dragonslayer), and a bunch of good-to-middling other albums. Boeckner just about fucking kills it with every new band he starts (Handsome Furs, Divine Fits, Operators), so I gotta give him the victory there.
- I spent a lot of time talking about each individual song up there, and for good reason. Every song is fucking great. But sometimes I'll get into a musical argument about "albums as perfect collections of songs," trying to determine if there is an album out there in which EVERY song on the album is either a 9/10 or a 10/10. When thinking about this concept, I often run past Apologies to the Queen Mary, because in my mind, this album comes closest. But it's not quite there. "Dinner Bells," I have to admit, does not reach that benchmark. It's a good song, but I don't think I can call it GREAT. It's maybe a 6/10 or maaaaaybe a 7/10, at best. So close!
- I also spent a lot of time talking about how goddamn energetic this album can make you feel. My anecdote related to this involves my old friend Mike C., for whom I burned a copy of Apologies in college. The first time he ever attempted to listen to it, he was in his car, and promptly crashed the car. He has refused to listen to Apologies ever since (to his detriment!). He believes the album is cursed (and, as previously noted, there are a lot of ghosts on this thing). But it's my opinion that Apologies to the Queen Mary is the PERFECT album for crashing your car. Your adrenaline spikes so high during these tunes, how could you NOT crash your car? Do you know how many times I almost crashed my parents' car in high school?
- ALBUM COVER: I couldn't find anything about why Wolf Parade chose a pattern of pink/purple/blue diamonds and circles for their album cover. I guess it just looked cool? (Indeed, this was my FB cover photo for a while.)
- I haven't even mentioned yet why the album is called Apologies to the Queen Mary. According to band member (at the time) Hadji Bakara, the band got drunk on a cruise ship called "Queen Mary" and kicked down a door at one point to "stage a séance." Again with the album's haunted connections.
- Look for "I'll Believe in Anything" on PoYB again by the end of the month as I start detailing the Best Songs of the '00s.
NEXT TIME: Are We There by Sharon Van Etten
Wednesday, July 4, 2018
Book Review: Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
Puke on Your Birthday reviews entertainment every Wednesday, taking a
break from the usual inane nonsense and inconsequential bullshit
typically posted here. This week, we discuss the 21st century classic Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk.
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
by Ben Fountain
Published by Ecco Press / Harper Collins
Released May 2012
With all the bickering we do in this country about what's good for it, what direction we should go, where all the money should go to, I figured it was time I considered it all from a perspective I haven't considered nearly enough. The soldier. As it happens, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk was the perfect book for this endeavor.
In it, we find Billy Lynn and the rest of the Bravo platoon taking their "Victory Tour." This means two weeks respite from Iraq, unlimited booze, and a trip to a dozen cities around the country. The "victory" they are "celebrating" is that they came under extremely heavy gunfire in Iraq and won the battle, all while Fox News crews were taping and disseminating the footage to the American masses, who lapped that shit up.
Billy Lynn is nineteen years old and our third-person narrator, and we see constantly throughout the book his extremely conflicted thoughts about the war and the general public's treatment of it. Often, Billy gets stuck listening to the empty platitudes of the football fans (oh yeah, the whole book takes place at a Dallas Cowboys game) surrounding him, and their words wash over him like the nonsense they are "...the war on terrRr... nina leven...." etc. Brief flashes of homicidal thoughts stir perilously close to teenage love and lust for a receptive, born-again Cowboys cheerleader. It's never stated plainly as this, but, basically we're getting an inside look at a case of PTSD that's tearing apart a whip-smart, philosophical nineteen-year-old.
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk never gets outright political (the biggest George W. Bush hater is relegated to the sidelines for the majority of the novel, for instance). I didn't want a book to tell me my staunch anti-war stances are right, but I usually don't like being told I'm wrong, either. This novel cuts down the middle successfully and gracefully. Billy's response to most of the outward, showy patriotism from private citizens is... malaise? Like, he feels bad for the people who keep telling him that he's a "hero," because he doesn't feel like it, and plus they have no fucking idea. I have no idea either. Being able to get inside a soldier's head was a fascinating experience, one I cherished on every page.
Of course, it doesn't hurt that Ben Fountain's writing is the type of literature that makes me know I'll never fucking be an author. Most of it has that breathless quality; whether he's describing what it feels like to witness a man being murdered or how big and creamy a cheerleader's cleavage is, the words keep flowing and put the reader at the edge of his seat consistently. I fucking love books like this, the kind where nothing really happens in terms of plot (like I said, 90% of the book happens during a football game, with the cadets hanging out, sneaking beers) but where by the end of the book you feel like EVERYTHING has happened. Some authors are just that good at making lexical mountains out of narrative molehills. Fountain has the gift.
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk is a book for anyone in America. If you think being a patriot means wearing a U.S. Flag bathing suit to a pool party, come get slapped by this book. If you feel angst and anxiety about where our country is headed, come hear your concerns dismissed as petty. If you are considering joining the Army, come read Ben Fountain's giant neon red warning sign. If you couldn't give a shit about politics or war or anything like that, come bath in the soothing literature that stuffs these pages. Come read musings about whether we have souls and whether Beyoncé has a nice ass. Come enjoy Ben Fountain's wonderful fucking novel. I couldn't put it down.
GRADE: 4.5 pukes out of 5
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk
by Ben Fountain
Published by Ecco Press / Harper Collins
Released May 2012
With all the bickering we do in this country about what's good for it, what direction we should go, where all the money should go to, I figured it was time I considered it all from a perspective I haven't considered nearly enough. The soldier. As it happens, Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk was the perfect book for this endeavor.
In it, we find Billy Lynn and the rest of the Bravo platoon taking their "Victory Tour." This means two weeks respite from Iraq, unlimited booze, and a trip to a dozen cities around the country. The "victory" they are "celebrating" is that they came under extremely heavy gunfire in Iraq and won the battle, all while Fox News crews were taping and disseminating the footage to the American masses, who lapped that shit up.
Billy Lynn is nineteen years old and our third-person narrator, and we see constantly throughout the book his extremely conflicted thoughts about the war and the general public's treatment of it. Often, Billy gets stuck listening to the empty platitudes of the football fans (oh yeah, the whole book takes place at a Dallas Cowboys game) surrounding him, and their words wash over him like the nonsense they are "...the war on terrRr... nina leven...." etc. Brief flashes of homicidal thoughts stir perilously close to teenage love and lust for a receptive, born-again Cowboys cheerleader. It's never stated plainly as this, but, basically we're getting an inside look at a case of PTSD that's tearing apart a whip-smart, philosophical nineteen-year-old.
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk never gets outright political (the biggest George W. Bush hater is relegated to the sidelines for the majority of the novel, for instance). I didn't want a book to tell me my staunch anti-war stances are right, but I usually don't like being told I'm wrong, either. This novel cuts down the middle successfully and gracefully. Billy's response to most of the outward, showy patriotism from private citizens is... malaise? Like, he feels bad for the people who keep telling him that he's a "hero," because he doesn't feel like it, and plus they have no fucking idea. I have no idea either. Being able to get inside a soldier's head was a fascinating experience, one I cherished on every page.
Of course, it doesn't hurt that Ben Fountain's writing is the type of literature that makes me know I'll never fucking be an author. Most of it has that breathless quality; whether he's describing what it feels like to witness a man being murdered or how big and creamy a cheerleader's cleavage is, the words keep flowing and put the reader at the edge of his seat consistently. I fucking love books like this, the kind where nothing really happens in terms of plot (like I said, 90% of the book happens during a football game, with the cadets hanging out, sneaking beers) but where by the end of the book you feel like EVERYTHING has happened. Some authors are just that good at making lexical mountains out of narrative molehills. Fountain has the gift.
Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk is a book for anyone in America. If you think being a patriot means wearing a U.S. Flag bathing suit to a pool party, come get slapped by this book. If you feel angst and anxiety about where our country is headed, come hear your concerns dismissed as petty. If you are considering joining the Army, come read Ben Fountain's giant neon red warning sign. If you couldn't give a shit about politics or war or anything like that, come bath in the soothing literature that stuffs these pages. Come read musings about whether we have souls and whether Beyoncé has a nice ass. Come enjoy Ben Fountain's wonderful fucking novel. I couldn't put it down.
GRADE: 4.5 pukes out of 5
Tuesday, July 3, 2018
Jack Is Not Dead
This Is Us is a ridiculous show. It's absolutely the corniest, most saccharine show I've ever watched. And the weird thing is, I fucking love it. There's a never-ending joy in the show's obsession with providing surprise twists. It's practically a soap opera. But somehow, some way, This Is Us manages to stick the landing with each and every twist. The plot bombshells just barely stay on this side of believable. The show yanks the audience around, but does so gently, which I appreciate.
Will This Is Us ever jump the shark and provide a plot curveball that just goes a little TOO far? Yeah, probably. It may even happen in Season 3, which debuts twelve weeks from today. PoYB is here to give you some potential Jump the Shark moments that This Is Us could try out. Consider these official This Is Us predictions, even though if any of these predictions come true, the show will have officially gone completely off the rails.
Jack and Rebecca's third biological kid didn't actually die
We never actually see Kyle come out stillborn or pass away after delivery or anything, we just have to take Dr. K's word for it. And is Dr. K trustworthy?! We don't know! Maybe we'll see a flashback episode where the "good" doctor steals the child, and lies to Jack that the child "died." The Big Three will soon be The Big Four after a big reveal! Kyle lives!
Better yet, Toby is actually Kyle all grown up
This Is Us is about to get all Game of Thrones up in here and reveal that Kate is actually married to her biological sibling! You see, Dr. K realized, after stealing the baby, that there's no way he could actually take care of a stolen child, so he put him up for adoption. That's when the dad from Wonder Years adopted Toby (we'll see all this in another flashback episode), and eventually, coincidentally, Toby met back up with his long-lost sister and started dating her! Weird!
Jack's brother faked his own death
According to some brief flashforwards last season, Kevin is about to take a trip to Vietnam, where his father served and his uncle died. Allegedly! Even though Jack was convinced that his brother was dead, it seems plausible that Uncle Nicky actually faked his own death, and has been living a secret life in Vietnam. When Kevin finds his Uncle Nicky in a mud hut, hilarity ensues, and eventually Uncle Nicky moves back home and lives with Kevin and has to reacclimate to American life. He might even marry Rebecca in Season 6 (after Season 5 deals with Miguel's fight with cancer)!
William and Jack actually knew each other
Randall has had dreams where William and Jack were hanging out, but wait till it's revealed that William and Jack actually were friends in real life. They met in AA, you see, and boy, did they talk a lot about Randall. (First, Beth will find a picture of Jack and William hugging while she's going through an old box of William's things, and she will struggle for a few episodes whether it would be okay to tell Randall about it.)
Deja is William's kid, and thus, Randall's sister
That bisexual William sure did get around! It's almost as if his pet tomcat was a metaphor for his virility. In a stunning twist, it's revealed that William was actually the person who got Deja's mom pregnant, and after a blood test scene set to a very sad Sam Smith song, it's confirmed that Randall and Deja are biological siblings, which only serves to strengthen their bond.
Miguel killed Jack
We don't know much about Miguel's past. All we know is that his best friend Jack died, and then he married Jack's widow, Rebecca. I'm a huge Miguel defender, but even I won't be able to defend him when it's revealed the lengths that Miguel went to in order to finally get Rebecca to fall in love with him... Miguel poisoned her husband!!!
Kevin actually becomes a real nanny
When we first meet Kevin, he is playing the fictional character of "The Manny," on the titular sitcom. He hated it, though, and eventually quit to follow his bliss and become a respected actor. How heart-wrenching will it be, then, when Kevin ultimately falls at achieving success in Hollywood, and ironically becomes an actual nanny to three lovable rapscallions. He eventually realizes that this was what he was meant to do. Even though he hated working on The Manny, it eventually led him to find his true passion.
There is a whole episode about Ron Howard, and none of the main characters make an appearance
This Is Us is known to shake it up and present episodes that follow supporting characters (like the one about the baby-snatcher Dr. K and the firefighter who saved Randall), showing how we are all interconnected in life. Leave to This Is Us, then, to stretch this concept to its breaking point, when we follow auxiliary character, director Ron Howard, as he goes about his day, filling out paperwork, picking up dry cleaning, etc. None of the main actors or actresses will be billed or make an appearance. The climax of the episode will be Ron Howard cashing a check at Beneficial Bank. This Is Us will truly become the avant-garde television experience it always threatens to be.
Rebecca is in a coma
At the tail end of Season 2, we are left with a minor cliffhanger, showing a senior citizen Randall and a grown-up Tess talking about going to see "her" and being uneasy about it. Who is the "her" mentioned? In season 3, we find out that it's Rebecca, and she's in a coma. During the tear-jerking scene where Randall and Tess finally come to terms with the family matriarch being this close to death, we suddenly cut to a vision of what Rebecca is seeing while in the coma. It is revealed that everything that has happened so far—Jack's death, Randall reuniting with William, Kate losing some weight, Kevin banging the AT&T chick—has all been made up in the mind of comatose Rebecca. It was all a dream, basically. Season 4 then catches us up to speed about what the Pearson have REALLY been doing while Rebecca has been in a coma.
Jack never existed, they were just dealing with 9/11 fallout
Throughout the entire series, the specter of Jack has hung over the rest of the family, haunting them in every walk of life. However, in the series' biggest shock of them all, we flash back to 9/11, where we see single mother Rebecca Malone working at the World Trade Towers as a secretary, and her three adopted children with her for take-your-children-to-work day. Then the planes hit, and the family of four just narrowly escapes. It's a harrowing experience, to say the least. So much so that the family gets some sort of collective PTSD, and to cope with the bitter internal struggle, they collectively invent a patriarchal figure that never even existed. This "Jack" person was apparently the best dad ever, and he died heroically in a large fire, just like all the victims of 9/11. This helps the family cope, to be able to blame all that's wrong in their lives on "the death of their father." It gets so bad that the family is assigned live-in psychologist named Miguel, who has been working tirelessly to shed the family of this harmful delusion (but it's only getting worse, you see, because now Rebecca thinks Miguel is her husband!). Watch in Season 4 as the Pearsons come together as a family and put this fantastical hallucination to bed and admit once and for all that JACK. NEVER. EXISTED.
Monday, July 2, 2018
PoYB's Incomplete Guide to the Unknown Philly Neighborhoods
Recently, Pam and I finally hung up a map of Philadelphia that I was gifted a couple years ago. It looks great in our living room, despite the fact that the map itself is pretty primitive, only sectioning off the twelve main areas of the city. Check it out (and shout out to Rachel C. for the great Secret Santa gift!):
What's cool, though, is that below the map, it lists between seventeen and 20 neighborhoods in each of those sections. The only thing is, some of these neighborhoods sound outrageous and, like, totally made up. Is there really a neighborhood in Philly called "Texas" in Upper North Philly, for instance? I have no clue. I've never heard of 50% of the neighborhoods listed here.
But I can't just accept it as fact—you know me better than that. I can't have something hanging up right there in my living room and not know everything I can about it. So I figured today on PoYB we could use this as an opportunity to learn something about our fair city. Here are the 20 weirdest sounding neighborhoods listed above. We'll figure out where they are, and educate ourselves about the best city on earth.
A lot of these are probably outdated; not that the areas themselves don't exist, but that absolutely no one calls these neighborhoods by these names anymore. Fuck it. I'm calling these neighborhoods by their real names from now on. Let's do this shit.
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| Click to enlarge! |
What's cool, though, is that below the map, it lists between seventeen and 20 neighborhoods in each of those sections. The only thing is, some of these neighborhoods sound outrageous and, like, totally made up. Is there really a neighborhood in Philly called "Texas" in Upper North Philly, for instance? I have no clue. I've never heard of 50% of the neighborhoods listed here.
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| Click to enlarge! |
But I can't just accept it as fact—you know me better than that. I can't have something hanging up right there in my living room and not know everything I can about it. So I figured today on PoYB we could use this as an opportunity to learn something about our fair city. Here are the 20 weirdest sounding neighborhoods listed above. We'll figure out where they are, and educate ourselves about the best city on earth.
A lot of these are probably outdated; not that the areas themselves don't exist, but that absolutely no one calls these neighborhoods by these names anymore. Fuck it. I'm calling these neighborhoods by their real names from now on. Let's do this shit.
Asoepek
Riverwards
Per records, this was a Native American village, "West of Frankford Creek." I'm doing a little guessing here with the map, but let's say it was around where the red circle is, near or below Erie Ave. near Frankford.
Explore it on the map.
Bath Town
Northern Liberties
This one was a little tough to figure out too. But according to records, it was near Germantown Ave. in Northern Liberties, near the old Cohocksink Creek, which no longer exists. But this map from Wikipedia seems to indicate that the creek ran to where Germantown Ave. ends, near the Piazza. Let's call that Bath Town.
Explore it on the map.
Chingihameng
Old City
The description reads "Parts of Society Hill and Northern Liberties" which doesn't really make sense. I know, we're having a great start to this project! I blocked out Society Hill with the bottom rectangle, and extended the rectangle to the bottom portion of Northern Liberties, so I guess most of that? Christ, this is harder than I thought it'd be.
Explore it on the map.
Cowtown
Oak Lane
Finally, a fucking intersection we can work with. Cowtown, no doubt named because someone had a bunch of cows milling about here, is near and around the intersection of Chelten Ave. and Morton St.
Explore it on the map.
Dogtown
Germantown
Dogtown is also known as "Bebberstown," named for a reverend of a Mennonite Church in the area. (Absolutely zero indicated as to why the nickname "Dogtown," and maybe I'm too afraid to research further.) It's along Germantown Ave. between Gorgas Lane and Cliveden Street.
Explore it on the map.
Flat Iron
South Philly
This one is a little confusing. According to city records, Flat Iron is located south of Devil's Pocket, so south of Washington Ave. and east of 27th St. However, there's plenty of evidence to suggest that parts of now Olde Kensington were once also called "Flat Iron." I'm siding with city records, but I'd be happy to hear more arguments from toothless oldheads around Kenso.
Explore it on the map.
Goat Hill
Germantown
Here's some more guesswork. City records say that Goat Hill is east of Fenian Hill. City records say that Fenian Hill and Goat Hill are both part of Somerville. City records say that Somerville is at the intersection of Church Lane and Limekiln Pike. So my map indicates that Goat Hill is the area east of that intersection.
Explore it on the map.
Good Intent
West Philly
There was apparently a mill at 46th and Market called "The Good Intent Mill," and so, that's the neighborhood too. This is a similar neighborhood name to "Nicetown." Very positive-sounding name for a very... not positive area.
Explore it on the map.
Harper's Hollow
Olney
This should go to show you how often we explored the neighborhoods around La Salle when I went there. I lived two blocks away from a park called Harper's Hollow Park for four years, and yet when I saw "Harper's Hollow" below the Philly map at my house, I didn't recognize it at all.
Explore it on the map.
Hell's Kitchen
Old City
Yes, apparently there is a Hell's Kitchen in Philadelphia. According to Philadelphia, this neighborhood was first named "Hell's Kitchen" in 1750, over 100 years before Manhattan's Hell's Kitchen got its name. As always, fuck New York. Philly's Hell's Kitchen is north of Arch, west of 3rd.
Explore it on the map.
Hugh
Upper North Philly
I'm pretty sure this is supposed to be "St. Hugh"? At least, that's the only neighborhood I could find in Philly close to just "Hugh." No fucking clue. Anyways, according to PlanPhilly.com, St. Hugh has borders comprised of Allegheny to the south, 6th St. to the west, B St. to the east, and the train tracks to the north. Yes, these are adjacent to, if not a part of, the fabled Badlands.
Explore it on the map.
The Neck
South Philly
City records say "The southernmost part of South Philadelphia, below Moore St." This covers a lot of land, so let's dig some more. According to Hidden Philly, The Neck covered all the marshland and swampy areas along the Schuylkill as it dumped into the Delaware. Basically, FDR Park and the sports complex. So let's leave it at that.
Explore it on the map.
Nya Vasa
Southwest Philly
On the other side of the Schuylkill from The Neck is Nya Vasa, an old Swedish settlement. Apparently they had a fort there and everything. The Swedes were all over the place around here in an effort to colonize. Hence the Swedish History Museum near the stadiums currently, where I made the worst mistake of my life last year.
Explore it on the map.
Paradise
Upper North Philly
Unlike a lot of these neighborhoods, city records give us a lot of clues as to the boundaries for Paradise, Philadelphia. It's at Hunting Park and Ridge Avenues, east of the Schuylkill, North of the Strawberry Mansion Bridge, and near the Laurel Hill Cemetery. Let's see if I captured all that in the map above.
Explore it on the map.
Poor Island
Riverwards
City records: "Along the Delaware River, near Shackamaxon." So... basically Sugar House Casino. Yes, folks, they build a casino in a neighborhood called "Poor Island." That's amazing.
Explore it on the map.
Price Knox
Germantown
There's fucking nothing about any neighborhood called "Price Knox" anywhere online. I'm starting to suspect that the makers of our map made up some neighborhoods. There IS, however, an intersection in Philly at Knox St. and W. Price St., so I am going to assume this is where Price Knox would be, if it were to exist.
Explore it on the map.
Sunnycliff
Manayunk
There are plenty of sharp declines in Manayunk, so any of them could be considered a cliff. City records say this neighborhood is "along Green Lane." There's a park-type thing on the map along Green Lane called "Sunnyside Cliff," so let's assume it's around there.
Explore it on the map.
Swampoodle
Upper North Philly
Okay, I've heard of this one before, but I had to include it, because the name is so ridiculous. It's a well-known one too! Connie Mack Stadium was located in Swampoodle, at 22nd and Lehigh. I can't fucking imagine going to see a Phillies game in that area of the city right now.
Explore it on the map.
Texas
Upper North Philly
Alright, I am definitely getting the feeling some of this bullshit is made up. Texas, Philadelphia? I dunno. City records claim that, yes, it did or does exist, "in the vicinity of Swampoodle." No other directions other than that. So who knows. All I know is that I am never buying a house in Texas, whether that's the state or the Philly neighborhood.
Explore it on the map, again I guess.
Wheat Sheaf
Lower Northeast Philly
Again, not much, though records do give an intersection of Bustleton and Cottman. So the Roosevelt Mall is in Wheat Sheaf. Time to start a petition to rename it the Wheat Sheaf Mall.
Explore it on the map.
Sunday, July 1, 2018
The Albums That Matter: Apocalipstick
Joe runs through every album on his iPod, mostly in alphabetical order, and offers some brief thoughts. Check out previous columns HERE.
There was no revelation today like there was for Antisocialites. I overlooked Apocalipstick too when I ranked my favorite music of last year, and that was probably the right decision. I like it a decent amount, and I have no qualms either giving it a deep dive like today or when a song from the album randomly pops up on shuffle.
But to me, Apocalipstick sounds like a missed opportunity. Maybe that's just how I've been trained the past few years, to expect badass women to sing badass songs. I guess it's not fair to set such high expectations for women in rock, that they all have to be rock stars who can fire off an epic riff all the while singing about fucking the patriarchy. Some women just want to sing about making a fajita. That should be fine, and fuck me if I think differently.
This can't possibly be sexist, right, to think this way? Expecting more out of women in rock? Sexism would be expecting less because they are women, okay? Someone back me up on this. I can list the badass women in rock for days whom I love dearly for their music. Listen to what Alynda Segarra is doing with Hurray for the Riff Raff, for example.
With Cherry Glazerr, I hear some good songs, fun riffs, music that bites. It's pretty solid! But there's almost nothing behind it. Cherry Glazerr should be a band kicking ass and taking names, and instead they are singing about, yeah, cooking steak fajitas (and drinking margaritas, you see, because of the rhyme) on "Humble Pro." "Lucid Dreams" is literally about a dream frontwoman Clementine Creevy has. "Sip O' Poison" is a snarling rock song with a relentless rhythm and a transcendent synth solo, but the only actual content it packs is some weak metaphor about staying away from boys. Apocalipstick is an LP that is fun at first glance, but the more you stare at it, the more it withers under the scrutiny.
And the recipe is even reversed a couple times on the album, where the lyrics actually hold up under the bright lights. "Nuclear Bomb" is an intimate piece about love and loss. "Only Kid on the Block" tells of that universal emotion of feeling out of place. The only problem is, as far as the music goes, those two songs are probably the weakest on the album. They are both slow, mopey slogs, totally out of step with the rest of the album (well, okay, "Only Kid on the Block" does get a bit restless during the chorus, but it's very temporary). It's like they can't get both wheels spinning at the same time.
I almost don't even want to bring it up, but in the name of honest critique, I'm not the biggest fan of Creevy's vocals either. The best word I can come up with is "shrill," though I'm bending over backwards here trying not to be sexist, and plus there are plenty of other women in rock that have technically shrill singing voices (Frances Quinlan?) and I enjoy the hell out of them, so "shrill" isn't the word. "Robotic" at times, perhaps? Like, compare Creevy's voice to Alvvays' Molly Rankin (since we just discussed this last week). Rankin does a whole lot of heavy lifting to get the chorus to the heights they need to (and do) reach. Creevy just can't pull it off. It's almost bored, sometimes, I guess might be the best way to get at this, which I get is totally a thing that vocalists (male or female) can do, but it just doesn't work all that great here, is all. It's almost to the point where I'm relieved that the sludgy final song on the album is an instrumental.
But enough about the negatives, let's look positively. Because I do want you, humble reader, to listen to these albums as I write about them, and I'm sure there are thousands of you doing just that, so let's not stop here with this band and this album. I will say this. I honestly think that Cherry Glazerr has a breakout album in them, but Apocalipstick isn't it. Decent, all the same.
Apocalipstick
Cherry Glazerr
2017
There was no revelation today like there was for Antisocialites. I overlooked Apocalipstick too when I ranked my favorite music of last year, and that was probably the right decision. I like it a decent amount, and I have no qualms either giving it a deep dive like today or when a song from the album randomly pops up on shuffle.
But to me, Apocalipstick sounds like a missed opportunity. Maybe that's just how I've been trained the past few years, to expect badass women to sing badass songs. I guess it's not fair to set such high expectations for women in rock, that they all have to be rock stars who can fire off an epic riff all the while singing about fucking the patriarchy. Some women just want to sing about making a fajita. That should be fine, and fuck me if I think differently.
This can't possibly be sexist, right, to think this way? Expecting more out of women in rock? Sexism would be expecting less because they are women, okay? Someone back me up on this. I can list the badass women in rock for days whom I love dearly for their music. Listen to what Alynda Segarra is doing with Hurray for the Riff Raff, for example.
With Cherry Glazerr, I hear some good songs, fun riffs, music that bites. It's pretty solid! But there's almost nothing behind it. Cherry Glazerr should be a band kicking ass and taking names, and instead they are singing about, yeah, cooking steak fajitas (and drinking margaritas, you see, because of the rhyme) on "Humble Pro." "Lucid Dreams" is literally about a dream frontwoman Clementine Creevy has. "Sip O' Poison" is a snarling rock song with a relentless rhythm and a transcendent synth solo, but the only actual content it packs is some weak metaphor about staying away from boys. Apocalipstick is an LP that is fun at first glance, but the more you stare at it, the more it withers under the scrutiny.
And the recipe is even reversed a couple times on the album, where the lyrics actually hold up under the bright lights. "Nuclear Bomb" is an intimate piece about love and loss. "Only Kid on the Block" tells of that universal emotion of feeling out of place. The only problem is, as far as the music goes, those two songs are probably the weakest on the album. They are both slow, mopey slogs, totally out of step with the rest of the album (well, okay, "Only Kid on the Block" does get a bit restless during the chorus, but it's very temporary). It's like they can't get both wheels spinning at the same time.
I almost don't even want to bring it up, but in the name of honest critique, I'm not the biggest fan of Creevy's vocals either. The best word I can come up with is "shrill," though I'm bending over backwards here trying not to be sexist, and plus there are plenty of other women in rock that have technically shrill singing voices (Frances Quinlan?) and I enjoy the hell out of them, so "shrill" isn't the word. "Robotic" at times, perhaps? Like, compare Creevy's voice to Alvvays' Molly Rankin (since we just discussed this last week). Rankin does a whole lot of heavy lifting to get the chorus to the heights they need to (and do) reach. Creevy just can't pull it off. It's almost bored, sometimes, I guess might be the best way to get at this, which I get is totally a thing that vocalists (male or female) can do, but it just doesn't work all that great here, is all. It's almost to the point where I'm relieved that the sludgy final song on the album is an instrumental.
But enough about the negatives, let's look positively. Because I do want you, humble reader, to listen to these albums as I write about them, and I'm sure there are thousands of you doing just that, so let's not stop here with this band and this album. I will say this. I honestly think that Cherry Glazerr has a breakout album in them, but Apocalipstick isn't it. Decent, all the same.
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
If this album sounds interesting, try this song: "Sip O' Poison"
~~~~~~~~~~~~~
Stray Observations
- I gave the lyrics a lot of shit above, but sometimes they are just not a priority for bands, and I have to be okay with that. Creevy went so far as to spell it out in a DIY Magazine interview last year. In reference to the song "Nurse Ratchet": "I don’t think I really plan ahead with the writing, or map out ideas. The lyrics tend to sort of flow as I write the guitar part, and then I’ll jam it in the studio with the full band."
- Also, it's pretty rich that I wrote about just this type of mindset the other day in my Westworld review, how I hate when critics wish a piece of art was different than how it actually is, as opposed to accepting the art for what it is and trying to love it for that. Maybe I'm guilty of it when it comes to Cherry Glazerr, I dunno.
- Fuck it, no, this is different. I'm not shitting on Cherry Glazerr just to have something to criticize. I say the negative things that I did because I want Cherry Glazerr to be great. I'm saying that I think they can be better, I know they can, and here's where I think they can improve.
- From what I've read, this is Cherry Glazerr's first album as a full band. Previous efforts were of the bedroom rock variety with just Clementine Creevy creating it all. If you want to look at it this way, Apocalipstick might be the sound of a band stretching to see what they are capable of, and perhaps the next effort will be the band finding what they are good at and perfecting that shit.
- Apparently Creevy plays the frontwoman in the fictional band featured on Transparent. I don't recall seeing a band perform in that show, but then again, me and Pam only watched the first couple seasons, and our interest declined even before Jeffrey Tambor was revealed to be a big creep.
- FRONT COVER: See what I'm saying? This band should be so much more fucking badass than they actually come off on this album. Even the cover says so! There's an Egyptian goddess playing guitar high above a futuristic city! The music should be a lot cooler to reflect this!
- "Instagratification" is about being addicted to our phones. I feel like I've been hearing a lot of songs about that this year (MGMT, Jack White, etc. etc.). Do we think the subject is played out yet?
- I dunno, am I too harsh in any of this? I feel like I was shooting for what I was trying to say with Widowspeak as well. Like, I don't want bands to fail, ya know? I want bands to be their best selves. This album is fun as hell well over 50% of the time, but I just fucking know Cherry Glazerr can do better. I know it!
NEXT TIME: Apologies to the Queen Mary by Wolf Parade
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