Song of the Day: "Blood Ghost"

"Blood Ghost"

Science Club

from Aging Punks EP

2013

Some more responses to this thing.

#116 — Nah, that takes too long. Here's what you do. You filter out the extremes first. Go through the list, and cut/paste every item that you think is going to be near the very top. Then do the same for the rock bottom. Then do the same thing for second tier, then the same thing for the second-to-last tier. And so on and so on, until you arrive at the mean. And then, you go through the groups and, one at a time, rank each individual group (switching items to another group after second thought is allowed, obviously). Finally, combine the list again, once everything is in perfect order.

#128 — I like the bit regarding nonsensical rankings. I do! I myself traffic in the bit from time to time. You rank them as quickly as you can and then only after you've spent like three hours on the damn thing do you realize that something you hated is way above something that's actually good. "Too Sweet" sucks, you noted it sucks, and yet here it is some 20-odd spaces above "Sympathy is a knife," which I think we can all admit at this point does not suck in the slightest. Quite the opposite. But I like the bit.

#5 — You know what song should be in next year's Titus Andronicus Bracket? "Drummer Boy" by Titus Andronicus. This was the song that came on my and Pam's homemade Christmas song shuffle just as we sat down for Christmas dinner with everyone. I didn't give my annual speech because I'm sober now and I have trouble with doing that I was too busy thinking about the Titus Andronicus Bracket.

#139 — I am pretty curious as to which Frozen song it was. Here are my off-the-dome Top Five Frozen Franchise Songs (Not Including the Theatrical Production, Which Apparently Has Completely New Songs, and I Very Rarely Go to the Theater): 5) "That Time of Year," 4) "Love Is an Open Door," 3) "Let It Go," 2) "Some Things Never Change," 1) "Making Today a Perfect Day."

#120 — I know the search engine sucks on this here website. I have some extra power as editor, because I can go into the interface and search for keywords while filtering out for tags. So that's how I could find the Sunny blog post in question pretty easily. Blogspot! Still functional in 2025!

#53 — Nah. I know I had casually mentioned seeing the Greep at the Church next week, but I checked the ticket situation a couple weeks ago, and it is completely sold out. I will not be there. The album sticks with me now but doesn't have a decade-long sticking power. Very funny to write about it, though. The guy fucks!

#98 — I didn't check out Will Sheff's solo album, no. I'd be lying if I said I didn't fall off Okkervil in their past couple releases. And then he names his solo album Nothing Special? I mean, that's just asking for a skip. C'mon.

#119 — Something Gilson said about Downtown Struts (more on them some other time) has stuck with me for the past couple weeks. Basically, that it feels sometimes like he's the only Downtown Struts fan out there, but that can't possibly be true because he was easily able to find a vinyl copy of their album, so logically that wouldn't be the case if they were a rare fruit. Say what you will about Be Your Own Pet, but they released a comeback album in 2023! It was okay! But it could certainly never have come to be if I was the only Be Your Own Pet fan out there.

#38/#35 — I want you to know that I appreciate the bit where you purposefully place the "worst song on my favorite album" above the "best song on my favorite album."

#16 — This actually means a lot. Thanks.

#114 — The Crying in H Mart BBBBook Club was the final one in which I partook in the third B (beers), so I don't really remember to much about what we talked about. But I'd say it was a very good book, definitely worth the read for J-Brekkie fans, Cheltenham Pennsylvania fans, crying fans, Little Big League fans. PoYB did a thing at the time.

#49 — This is a lie. Here is the exact text message exchange, the first part / relevant part anyway, pulled up from my phone's archives by searching for "bully."

Nate: I'm willing to admit it now: I was wrong about Bully

Joe: Plenty of room around the keg of Miller Lite for you, Nate!

Joe: To be fair, she's gotten better on each album by degrees.

Nate: I love Miller lite and music music as that does not challenge me, I will be there

Referencing Nate's review back to him hardly constitutes "reminding" anyone that they were "dismissive." Hard to remind someone of something that they bring up in a text sent to me first, unprompted.

#91 — I don't know if I've ever written my theory about that "comeback" Swearin' album in 2018 (only five years after the one before that, but they had been broken up in the meantime). The band broke up when its co-leads, Allison Crutchfield and Kyle Gilbride, broke up romantically. (A. Crutchfield released a VERY GOOD solo album in 2017.) So when they (the band, not the couple) got back together for a new album, I was suspicious. But if you listen to Fall into the Sun, you will hear some VERY VERY BAD vocal performances from Gilbride. My theory is that Crutchfield got the band back together just to expose and humiliate her ex. If so, job well done.

#41 — Sincerely don't know if this is sarcasm. I'm assuming yes. The sarcasm spring forth from the fact that this very good song is made by a pretty good musician who happens to be the brother of the musician that has caused me the most internal emotional strife (re: music) over the past couple of years. Drug Church would never!!!!!

#134 — Gonna join you in running 500 miles, if that's cool. I don't know if you're gonna read this. Probably. If I don't hear anything, I assume that it's okay, and I'll text you in February to make sure that we're holding each other accountable. (Also, this only works if treadmill counts for somewhere between one-half to two-thirds of the total miles.)

#88/#64 — I know you're being facetious about the ska thing, but I need to clarify: ska is fine. Streetlight / Catch 22 are where it's at, mostly. I thought Arrogant Sons of Bitches were pretty good when we did them in RC, but not to the level of Streetlight. The Specials are a different wave of ska than the one you're making fun of me for. I've never heard of Mustard Plug or Skankin' Pickle, they sound made up. I do, however, often yell "pick it up pick it up pick it up" when I'm trying to get my kids to clean up their toys.

#27 — [temporarily deleted]

#77 — Sincere question about Swift re: daughter. Did she ask for those albums specifically? Did she ask for Swift albums generally? Did she ask for albums generally? Or did her dad / Santa make big assumptions that she would like Swift albums under the tree? These questions lack judgment. Sincerely curious, since we don't really have too much physical media in this house.

#68 — Define "into metal." If it's "I can find some good things to say about almost any genre and that certainly includes metal," then I'm into metal (adding in too what we already discussed re: Knocked Loose being pretty good music for the day after election day). If it's "I'm obsessively listening to this one genre because my blogging friend thinks it's funny to get me to listen to it and my brother-in-law has terrible anxiety," then I don't think I'm going to be into metal anytime soon. I do have a couple metal albums on the A Year of Blind Spots list this year, though.

#122 — Let the record show that the most recent words about politics on this blog were written by Nate. I am a man of my word. That's it for me.

#152 — Here's the thing, men. Personality matters. Shitty people are less attractive. That's just how it goes. You gotta be a real fucking sicko to get off on the physical attractiveness of an emotionally ugly individual. Have some more pride in yourself. Nicki Minaj has the physical qualities, but man, she does not do it for me. Because of, ya know, being a terrible person and all. I will not be visiting the Goon Cave.

#59 — I'm writing this little blurb in the immediate aftermath of receiving a call from work at 9 PM on Sunday telling me that I have been deemed "essential personnel" and will not be participating in the snow day. On the one hand, I hate it and I hate everyone and I hate my job and fuck my entire chain of command from bottom to Parker top. On the other hand, I'm gonna get paid to answer a couple of calls and blog tomorrow, so it could be worse. I type directly into Blogger, and do not fuck with Word re: the blog. I am very good at hitting the Windows key plus the down arrow, if anyone comes up behind me.

#48 — Fuck yeah, bro. I was going to use "Critterland" on the day when Josh Terry stopped by, but bailed at the last minute to grovel toward him a little more and choose a song that he put me on to originally (the one by the Brights).

#137 — Here's how I found this shit, man: take the name of the only bar that Maeve goes to anymore in Philadelphia, and run it through the google machine with different combinations of "___ songs" and "___ music" until I find one that I can convince myself makes sense thematically, even a little bit. I have not listened to the artist known as Bardot since I posted this song.

#26 — I heard this song on the radio at some point in between you ranking it #26 and me writing these words about it, and when I was listening, I was thinking that maybe it's time to download a Billy Idol album. Rebel Yell seems like the right fit for A Year of Blind Spots. Thanks for the push.

#113 — Don't let my deep, abiding affection trick you into thinking that I am a hardcore Foxygen fan. I can't vouch for basically anything else, though if you do a deep dive, you'll come to the surface with at least ten songs to take home with you.

#44 — The funny part is that your teammates convinced exactly one person each to write a review, and had they gotten even a single other person, you would've won. The funnier part is that I got you a fresh Katy Perry review myself, and it is dropping in two days.

#18 — I think I'd be most interested in finding out what the crossover would be, between your list and mine. Besides "I'll Believe in Anything," I guess, that's been established. If you do ever decide to write such a list, you know which blog you're always welcome to post it on! (That blog is Fatter, Older.)

#13 — I've been thinking about this one a lot over the past week. I think that's one of the lonelier aspects of blogging, even with this crew we have going here. Dude, if one of my friends or even acquaintances shared with me a document that contained four millions words that they wrote, I would eat that shit up whole. I would pore over every word. I love knowing more about people, especially people I already know. It makes me happy to know I have a couple people in my life like that, who want to know other people like that, in this context. It makes me sad to know that the vast majority of people in my life are not like that. They don't want to know people better. They don't want to know me better, is what I think on my darker days. I don't really know how to grapple with that emotional truth, either, besides writing more (see: what I'm writing now), and that's part of the problem, I guess.

#7 — A shame indeed, that Otis Redding was CANCELLED (by an airplane).

#21/#4 — I was going to choose "A Letter Home" by Titus Andronicus for this blog post, until I saw the link for this Science Club song at the very bottom, and figured it was more fitting. The chorus is definitely a swipe of Wolf Parade but not an egregious one. A different energy, which makes it new. For the record, this is a good band, Science Club, I think we can all agree, with the right amount of distance due to conflicts of interest and all that. I am now going to download the Aging Punks EP. To add insult to injury, I am illegally downloading it (but will not reveal my methods here, out of fear that the feds will shut it down). I'll give you the Bandcamp-requested dollar next time I see you, that way you don't have to split it with Bandcamp or with the bandmate who sounds like Weird Al.

Shelter from the Storm: I Wish

Joe is rewriting all his old Xanga posts from 2005 onward, and he will continue at a pace just fast enough that he's writing them before each post's 20th anniversary at the very least.

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

October 8, 2005, 8:23 PM

Here are all the albums on my wish list currently. I know Christmas is coming up, and albums are pretty much the only thing Santa Claus brings me anymore, which is awesome, but still. Figured I'd put this out into the universe now, see if anyone has any CD burning capabilities to save Santa the trip.

• Fun Trick Noisemaker by the Apples in Stereo
• Funeral by Arcade Fire
• Desire by Bob Dylan
• The Basement Tapes by Bob Dylan & the Band
• Greetings from Asbury Park, N.J. by Bruce Springsteen
• Circulatory System by Circulatory System
• The Pizza Tapes by David Grisman, Jerry Garcia, and Tony Rice
• Daisies of the Galaxy by Eels
• My Aim Is True by Elvis Costello
• The Soft Bulletin by the Flaming Lips
• F♯ A♯ ∞ by Godspeed You! Black Emperor
• American Beauty by Grateful Dead
• Volunteers by Jefferson Airplane
• Pink Moon by Nick Drake
• Coquelicot Asleep in the Poppies: A Variety of Whimsical Verse by Of Montreal
• Cacophony by Rudimentary Peni
• Oh, Inverted World by the Shins
• Daydream Nation by Sonic Youth
• Everything Goes Numb by Streetlight Manifesto
• Michigan by Sufjan Stevens
• Wild like Children by Tilly and the Wall
• Pinkerton by Weezer
• The Who Sings My Generation by the Who

I just love the possibilities that such a list contains. I don't know if I'll actually ever listen to all of these, but I hope to. I don't know if I'll like all of them. Maybe I'll like half. Maybe my favorite album of all time is in this pile of album names. Maybe this is a list of future disappointment. Maybe I'm sitting in front of this same damn computer in twenty years, and 2025 Joe is like "damn, there's one album on here I haven't gotten around to yet, maybe I should make that a priority." Who knows! That's the fun in it! The search. The adventure. The discovery. I know what I like today, but these albums make it so that I have no idea what I'll like tomorrow.

~~~~~~~~~~~

Comments:

MadeFromRecycledPaper: I have Oh, Inverted World And Pink Moon... on vinyl. Sorry that doesn't help.

follow_the_butterflies: ive got bruce on record... u can thank my mom for that...

Anonymous: Check it out with couple people I've interviewer in a last couple days. I hope you enjoyed my latest post because you're an awesome person.

Justin "The Entertainment" Clark

vllyb128: you were too entertaining friday

ImitationGarfield: i can burn you pinkerton, but i dont know when ill see you

Anonymous: awesome songs list, my friend. thanks for the comment on my site. I argree with you we must stick together.

I went to the mall the other day and they were selling couple Fred Sanford t-shirt says "You Big Dummy" and "How about 5 cross your lips". I thought it's really funny though. It almost make me pee my pants I don't usually pee my pants, my friend. My birthday is 3 months away I'll be 20 years old. We should a party someday at my place and rock the party it's like 1969, baby!

Justin "The Entertainment" Clark

tank1189: i have greetings i can burn it for you

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

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

October 12, 2005, 8:45 PM

I am despondent. I am sad and despondent and depressed and all the other words you can find in the thesaurus. I am despondent because I am a student in high school. It comes with the territory. It also doesn't help when you have after-school job commitments on top of that. I like having a paycheck but it's signed in blood, the blood I sacrifice when I forgo doing homework so that I can spend time with the senior citizens for three and a half hours after school.

I mean, I always get it done, eventually. It's just a pain in the ass. Let me be despondent, please. Give me the space for that, okay? Just here, just now.

And now quickly put the despondency to the side: Elizabeth asked me to the Little Flower formal, which is pretty fucking cool. It's on November 11th. I'm really excited. I figure Elizabeth is probably reading these words right now, so maybe it'll be nice to arrive at Joe's Xanga and get confirmation that he is excited to have been asked.

And now the despondency again: I was going to say that I'm excited for this weekend too, but then I remembered that I have work on Friday and Saturday. Which kinda sucks. I hated having mono, but it sure was nice having an excuse to skip work and hang out with my friends (and infect them all with mono too). I am healthy, so the good ol' days are over, I guess.

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

Comments:

inmyimage2: joe k***, do not despair for u have given me a new outllook on life and many shall worship u for generations to come

sgtpepper841: cheer up you whore

Never Seen It, #179 of 200: TRON

Train him for the games... let him hope for a while... make him watch 200 movies he's never seen before... and blow him away.

TRON

1982

Steven Lisberger

We are nearing the end of this movie project. Before today, there were 20 films left, 10% of the original 200-movie list. There have been plenty of movies in the past 190 that have consumed me, made me feel whole, knocked me senseless, held a fire to my ass, put me in tune with the wonders of the universe. There are others that I watch because I forced myself to by making this list, and while I'm watching, all I can think is: "Wait, why am I watching this again?"

In other words, is there really anyone out there who's going to ask me "you've NEVER seen TRON?!"? Yes, a certain type of person. We'll get to that. But first: I didn't like this movie. And I kept wondering why the fuck I would have put this film on such a list in the first place. I don't know. It's been five years since I made that decision. That was enough time to have three kids and for them to grow up just enough that my parents thought it wise to bring everybody to Disney World and for me and my dad to keep our sensitive stomachs safe and watch those kids in the Florida heat while the rest of the adults rode TRON Lightcycle Run. I suppose I would've come away from that non-experience wanting to see what I missed. Though I was more worried about whether my kids and nieces were going to fucking destroy an ice cream shop with $60 worth of spilled ice cream than what I was missing at some dumb rollercoaster, honestly.

Plus, that ride was most likely developed with the sequel in mind, which came out in 2010, almost three decades after the original. This is how I know TRON is a kids' movie that only a kid could like: those same '80s kids who liked TRON because they were young and dumb at the time, then grew up and refused to challenge themselves by watching adult movies and instead continued to cling to a Disney kiddie movie from their youth and clamored for a sequel in adulthood, and Disney, sniffing the money from these nostalgia-burnout dorks, caved in. Don't worry, the final film of the trilogy is coming out this October! It stars Jared Leto! Hopefully doing heroin again!

This is just me being cynical, of course. But I feel like I've earned the right to be cynical about at least some movies. They can't all be good. That would be just as boring as if I came to this space twice a week to talk shit on every movie I saw. I've found a nice balance in Never Seen It. A lot are the certified classics that they've been trumped up to be; some others are TRON. Tack on the usual caveats—I'm glad I watched it! It's important to know the culturally significant movies even if you don't like them! And so on. But man, TRON sucked.

You know what would be even more boring than me just talking shit for a whole blog post? Me going to check my spiritual guide Roger Ebert's review and picking my jaw off the fucking floor when I see this dude gave it FOUR OUT OF FOUR stars and then me attempting to adjust my views accordingly, soften them a bit, bring them just a little bit closer to the guy who—no one is denying this—knows more about movies in the period at the end of his TRON review than I'll ever know in my entire life. That would be boring. I don't fucking kowtow to anyone, even Roger Ebert. I know what I saw. What I saw was an entire hour of Jeff Bridges throwing frisbees and talking gibberish about made-up computer programs while stuck in a green screen.

I gotta assume that the big draw, at the time, was the technology. Okay, look, I sincerely do not have a problem with outdated technology. One of my favorite movies in NSI so far was King Kong, and the technology was extremely primitive, basically amounting to a claymation monkey wordlessly beating the piss out of claymation dinosaurs for 30 minutes. I think the clunky three-color-tone Star Wars facsimile aesthetics would have been endearing, if there was anything in the way of plot. Clerks had even fewer colors in its palette and nothing in the way of "technology" and is still one of my favorite movies ever. Wicked, so goddamn colorful and fun, is chock-full of CGI technology, and all three times I've seen the ending so far with green Cynthia Erivo seamlessly flying in the air and hitting those high notes of "Defying Gravity" have fucking blown me away. I'm saying that there needs to be a fucking movie underneath the technology or lack thereof! "Technology" doesn't mean shit if the magic is missing! It ends up being window dressing! Aged-out technology is a moot fucking point!

What the fuck is even happening in TRON? Here's what I gather. Bridges is a fired employee of a tech company, and he made a video game while he was there, which was stolen by some asshole, so Bridges is determined to prove that the intellectual property belongs to him. Then, due to a mishap at the company, he ends up in the video game, where he has to literally battle the bad guy to win the day. Which is all well and good when you're a children's movie, I guess, but that doesn't mean it still can't piss me off the more I think about it.

What were the stakes in the game? Was Jeff Bridges going to die if his game avatar also died? Why did he put the game that was stolen from him in his own arcade (that he owned and lived above), and why wouldn't he be making money off the quarters that the game earns? Was this the same video game that he was also stuck in, or a separate game? Why did that video game need a protector? Why did the protector's girlfriend immediately cheat on him with Jeff Bridges after the protector died? Why didn't Jeff Bridges just hire a lawyer? How did a print-out that basically just said "this game belongs to the other guy!" in bold 15-pt font prove anything about the game's ownership? Why is there so much political jockeying over the ownership to a fucking video game when apparently this same company has invented the same machine that sent Mike Teevee through the air to get a chocolate bar? Why was that old guy complaining about robots taking over the human race like he's joking, but it should be clear to pretty much everyone with eyes and ears that there really was a self-aware computer program trying to take over the video game and kill Jeff Bridges? And everyone just laughs it off at the end? Does the ending imply a throuple?

These are not questions that children think to ask, or care about. And if it catches you at the right time in your life, then you hold onto it, even when you grow into an adult with critical thinking skills. At that point, it has nothing to do with the quality of the plot or the number of holes in that plot, but instead has everything to do with nostalgia, and remembering the good, simple times you had as a child, watching TRON. Everyone gets like that. Pam was excited for Beetlejuice Beetlejuice, since she caught the original at the right age, whereas I saw it for the first time as an adult and see nothing but flaws. But who's got two thumbs and saw American Reunion in theaters, basically because I saw the first two American Pie films at the exact right age, and wanted to try to relive that experience? This guy. It happens to everyone. It happens to the nerds who watched TRON in the '80s. Nothing I can do about it.

I was tempted to attempt this film with my own kids, since they weren't tall enough for the Disney World ride and since we already watch a movie together every Friday night. I'm glad I didn't. They would've hated it. Too boring. I totally agree. But I won't knock the idea of passing the nostalgia along to your own kids. Nothing wrong with showing them something you love. Do you think they would've ever seen the CLASSIC 1993 film Super Mario Bros. if their old man hadn't tracked it down on the dark web and shown it to them? Hell no. But now they have a weird fondness for that movie, just like I do. I don't have a fondness for TRON, but that's not really anyone's fault, including TRON itself, as bad as it is. It's just a matter of timing.

Ebert can fuck right off with those four stars though. For fuck's sake. Lucky that dude isn't alive right now, he'd totally be suckered into the Metaverse or some dumb shit like that. Keep your fucking technology if you're gonna be artless about it!!!

GRADE: 1 puke out of 5

NEXT TIME: I have no idea whether I'm going to like Troy any better, but it's double the length of TRON, so hopefully I do.

Monday Morning Mixtape 001: Fuck Yeah, Music!

Welcome to Monday Morning Mixtape, a PoYB Contributor-curated playlist of songs, made just for you at the start of each week.

Here is the inaugural edition of Monday Morning Mixtape, Puke on Your Birthday's newest community activity based on around music. Here's the deal. Each week, we'll announce a theme, and then you send us songs that fit that theme, as well as a short blurb (between 50 and 250 words) that you wrote about (or around) each song. We'll compile all the songs and publish the Mixtapes at the start of each Monday for you to enjoy.

That's it! As is often the case with this type of thing, it might take a few weeks to get our bearings straight. I'll be providing light feedback regarding your blurbs, but I didn't feel the need to make up "rules" for writing or selecting songs at this point. We might get there, or we might just play it by ear for a while.

Here are the playlists, both for Spotify and YouTube (if you make the playlist in any other format, drop a link in the comments!). I put the songs in order based on alphabetization of artist name, but will change up the order week-to-week. Blurbs are underneath the music, and each blurb's author is noted at the end of the blurb.

Spotify

YouTube

"Thank You for the Music" by ABBA

from The Album, 1978

What would life be without a song or a dance? Starting off 2025 with everyone's favorite Swedish pop supergroup, ABBA. Easy listening, karaoke-able, "Thank You for the Music." A quick and easy song about how much we love and need music. A little inception moment, if you will. Essentially is ABBA just thanking themselves at this point? Discuss.  —Sara

"Music Is Worth Living For" by Andrew W.K.

from You're Not Alone, 2018

Lightly scrolling any playlist, one's eyebrows and heartbeat raise a bit when reading "Andrew W.K." Not every song is an absolute banger (or maybe it is), but every song encapsulates the feeling of partying until you bleed out your eyes, the joys of camaraderie, and the extreme ecstasy of music played at 11 and beyond. This song is as literal as it gets—NO SUBTEXT. KEEP PARTYING. MUSIC FUCKING ROCKS. P.S. If you watch this music video, you'll notice he and the band are playing this song at the end of the universe, or something.  —Sunny

"Lowest Part Is Free!" by Archers of Loaf
from Archers of Loaf vs. the Greatest of All Time EP, 1994 

Ok. Not the greatest start if we are talking about music positively, but few bands made a career out of being indie rockers singing about indie rock-ing quite like the Archers of Loaf did. This band is not for everyone, but it is for my people. I think a good New Years Resolution for people who have not already done so is "get into Archers of Loaf," and start with Vs. the Greatest of All Time EP. After those few songs, you'll know whether you want to continue.  —Gilson


"Kick Drum Heart" by the Avett Brothers

from I and Love and You, 2009

Music is so good, it's the beat of your heart. When I hear the Avett Brothers, all I can think of is the Mann Center. I feel like they come around every summer or early fall to Philly, and it is consistently at the Mann Center. Which is a great venue, but is absolute ass logistically to get to and from.  —Sara

"Put Your Records On" by Corinne Bailey Rae
from Corinne Bailey Rae, 2006

In figuring out how I want to approach this project, I thought about many things. How many songs should I include? Three seems reasonable. I don't have to prove my musical knowledge to anyone, but fuck, I have good taste, and you should all know that. I'll try to include one song each week that is a little bit of a curveball and off my beaten path. Make no mistake: this is not some type of performative choice. This song fucking rips. It always has, and it always will.  —Gilson

"One More Time" by Daft Punk

from Discovery, 2001

Before Daft Punk gets into their endless (and well-earned) repetition of the aphorism "music's got me feelin' so free," they first let us know what else music does to us. In the bridge, we get: "Music's got me feeling the need." The need to what? To celebrate. That's it! That's the hook! Music makes us celebrate! It literally does not get any more basic than this. There are a billion reasons why music is awesome, but most of them boil down to this—we celebrate. That's good enough for Daft Punk. That's good enough for me.  —Joe

"Substitute" by Frank Turner
from Love Ire & Song, 2008

Not my favorite song off this pretty solid album from RC last year (that would be "Reasons Not to Be an Idiot" or "Prufrock," probably). It is, however, the most upfront in the Love, Ire, and Song themes from the album. Music may not be a one-to-one substitute for capital-L love, but it's bloody close.  —Sunny

"Girls Like Status" by the Hold Steady

from Boys and Girls in America, 2006

How many songs on this mixtape will be the Hold Steady, I wonder? Knowing my compatriots, the answer should be "a lot," though I'm guessing, like me, they have limited themselves to one song by them, or none, in the interest of sharing the wealth and assuming (rightfully) that we all know the fucking Hold Steady. This is also a little bit self-referential on my part, because this song references my last song choice for the Yearlong Song Challenge (RIP).  —Gilson

"Paprika" by Japanese Breakfast

from Jubilee, 2021

I close my eyes and I see myself onstage and I feel the warm hush of the crowd as the spotlight shines down upon me as I stand there in the center of that stage and I take a deep breath and open my mouth and... Then I open my eyes and I'm back here, at my office job, being told that I am stuck here for the next three decades and if I fuck up then I will lose the ability to feed or house myself in the two decades after that, and no, no, I will never make music, I will never be able to create like that, I will just stay here, and listen, and appreciate, and use the art as a shield against the rest of that bullshit. Music is awesome because it's a self-defense maneuver.  —Joe

"Dance Music" by the Mountain Goats

from The Sunset Tree, 2005

Fortunately, I did not have nearly as traumatic a childhood as John Darnielle did. But we all can benefit from the healing powers of screaming along to songs we love. This is not my go to Mountain Goats song for that purpose, but the lyrics are explicitly about that idea. So this is what the volume knob is for.  —Sam

"Sir Duke" by Stevie Wonder

from Songs in the Key of Life, 1976

I love that conspiracy theory that Stevie Wonder is faking his blindness. You ever see this one? I can't find it now, but there was a video clip of Wonder catching a microphone or something before it hit the ground. This was the "proof." As with many conspiracy theories, there's an easy explanation (good reaction instincts supersede not being able to see the reaction). And, as with many conspiracy theories, they make sense until you ask one simple question: why? Why would Stevie Wonder fake blindness? What benefit would that be to him? Have you fucking heard "Sir Duke"? You think this is a good song because the artist who made it is blind? No, obviously not. "Sir Duke" is a classic, and people with 20/20 vision drop their microphones all the time.  —Joe

"Excursions" by A Tribe Called Quest

from The Low End Theory, 1991

Q-Tip and his father bonded over the shared legacy of two different genres of music—hip hop and bebop jazz. I guess that's somewhat of a throwaway line, but I've never took it as such. I take it as gospel. Music is what binds us together. Yes, sure, we all have different tastes, and arguing over those tastes is what makes this so goddamn fun. But if you step back and get a wide enough vantage point, you can see that it's all related. Why shouldn't I love rap, or jazz, or country, or house, or Broadway? It's all music, isn't it? Just stay open-minded, and you'll get there eventually.  —Joe

"I Love My Label" by Wilco

from The Whole Love (bonus track), 2011

I first heard this song while walking around Denver in January 2012, killing time before the Wilco concert, listening to The Whole Love to get myself ready. This is a bonus track to that album, and so I had never heard of it. Wilco's struggles with its previous labels were well documented. It must be cool to have a label that you like. This is an experience I can't relate to and may never be able to relate to. I do want to know about publishers, though, and what it's like to publish a book. May I know what it's like to hate my publisher, because that would mean I've been in contact with one.  —Zach

"Play That Funky Music" by Wild Cherry

from Wild Cherry, 1976

The specification by Wild Cherry that it is a "white boy" who is playing said funky music is at once the worst artistic decision in the history of music and the best commercial decision in the history of music. It's not inclusive, is the thing. The irony of a "white boy" playing music that has traditionally been shaped by Black communities is the thing that gives me a bad case of the cringe. At the same time, it sure has gotten a whole lot of white boys up out of their chairs and dancing to some dumb '70s funk song. I've literally never known the race of the members of Wild Cherry until the very moment, when I looked it up. They are white. I have no idea if this makes it better or worse.  —Joe 

NEXT WEEK'S THEME: "Jukebox Hero" — It's 7:30 PM on a Saturday at your local dive. Most of the seats are full, but not a lot of standers yet. What are you playing on the Touch Tunes? (chosen by Gilson)

Album of the Week: Fear of Music

Damn, this would've been an even more fitting title for the first album of 2025, more so than last week's The End Is Near. Do you fear music? Hopefully not, if you're here. We don't fear music in Record Club, we embrace it. We let it challenge us. We willingly and mindfully engage. Nothing to fear here, except the fear of music itself. ("Fear of music," in this case, is listening to the fucking algorithm.) 

Record Club:

archives | supplemental

spotify playlist | youtube playlist

choose | writing

WEEK 310 — January 5-11, 2025

Fear of Music

by Talking Heads

LISTEN:

Spotify | YouTube | Bandcamp | Apple

~~~~~~~~~~

PICKED BY SUNNY

SUNNY'S COMMENTS: "Why? Because I'm afraid of music. Also because some of my initial record ideas were way too inaccessible to start the year of with. Also because there had been a lot of Talking Heads Talk from the song challenges and this blog generally that now I'm wanting to go a little deeper. Also because my high school history teacher said Talking Heads was his favorite band, and he was weird in a mostly good way (also he was a TMBG fan). Also because I've already listened to Remain in Light, and Speaking in Tongues is disqualified."

~~~~~~~~~~

ALBUM DETAILS

GENRE: New wave, post-punk, art punk, funk rock, mutant disco, dance-punk, art punk

RELEASED: August 3, 1979

LENGTH: 40:40

TRACKLIST:

1. I Zimbra
2. Mind
3. Paper
4. Cities
5. Life During Wartime
6. Memories Can't Wait
7. Air
8. Heaven
9. Animals
10. Electric Guitar
11. Drugs

LYRICS: Genius.com

~~~~~~~~~~

ARTIST DETAILS

NOTE ON THE NAME: It's pretty tempting to add the prefix "the" to the band name, but it's just "Talking Heads," and not "the Talking Heads." I will quietly edit all mistakes in the reviews.

PRONOUNS: she/her/hers for Weymouth, he/him/his for Byrne, Frantz, and Harrison

ABOUT: Talking Heads formed in New York City in 1975. Their core lineup was consistent throughout their lifespan. They consisted of David Byrne (lead vocals, guitar), Chris Frantz (drums), Tina Weymouth (bass), and Jerry Harrison (keyboards, guitar). The band included other members of various capacities throughout their existence, especially in the early '80s. Talking Heads were pioneers of the new wave genre. Their concert film Stop Making Sense is one of the most acclaimed films of its kind, and total hipster bait. According to non-Byrne members of the band, "the band never really broke up, David just decided to leave." This was in late 1991. Talking Heads reunited briefly for their RnR Hall of Fame induction in 2002, but further reunions are unlikely due to "bad blood" between David Byrne and the other members. "Burning Down the House" is their highest-charting single (peaked at #9 on the Billboard Hot 100). All members have their own solo/duo efforts, post-Heads, most notably Tom Tom Club, side project of Weymouth and Frantz (who have been married this whole time). All four members are still alive.

DISCOGRAPHY: Fear of Music is the third of eight studio LPs. The first was Talking Heads: 77 (1977). The last was Naked (1988). Critical consensus shifts over time, but at this point, 1980's Remain in Light appears to be the "best" according to that present-day consensus.

~~~~~~~~~~

ADDITIONAL INFO

READING SOME SHIT: interview with Fear of Music album cover designers Spencer Drate and Judith Salavetz

WATCHING SOME SHIT: you should probably just watch the movie, all your cool friends have

RECORD CLUB CONNECTIONS: Lots to get through. Radiohead took their name from a Talking Heads song ("Radio Head") (other heads: Footballhead; My Head Is an Animal). Bernie Worrell was a minor member of Talking Heads and a major member of Funkadelic. "Influenced by Talking Heads," according to Wikipedia: Foals; Danny Brown. Jerry Harrison co-produced Return of Saturn. Fear of Music producer Brian Eno has also produced for Genesis, Slowdive, and John Cale of the Velvet Underground. Frantz and Weymouth did backing vocals and percussion for Gorillaz's debut album. Frantz, Weymouth, and Harrison made a post-Talking Heads album as "the Heads" called No Talking, Just Head, featuring various guest vocalists, and one of those guests from Michael Hutchence of INXS. The 2024 Talking Heads tribute album Everyone's Getting Involved: A Tribute to Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense features covers by Miley Cyrus, the National, and Paramore (who, as we saw on the blog, has also recently worked with David Byrne).

MENTIONS ON THE BLOG: Also lots to get through. Song Challenge selections: "And She Was" (Stephan), "Once in a Lifetime" (Walter), "People Like Us" (Nate), "Road to Nowhere" (Fisher), "Once in a Lifetime" again (Sunny), "Psycho Killer" (Brianna), and "This Must Be the Place (Naive Melody)" (Brianna). As Sunny noted above, Speaking in Tongues was covered in A Year of Blind Spots. Tom Tom Club was also covered in that column. Talking Heads: 77 was my favorite non-2024 album of 2024.

~~~~~~~~~~

RC CLASSIC ALBUM OF THE WEEK

Every week, we give a quick re-listen to the RC album we covered five years ago exactly. Check out the quick retrospective every Friday morning, before the regular reviews. If you have anything to say about this album, send it over, and I'll add it in.

WEEK 49: January 5-11, 2020

Hill Climber by Vulfpeck

~~~~~~~~~~

Happy listening, RC family!
Have a great week!

A Year of Blind Spots: This Is Fats

Joe is working through a list of albums that he considers "blind spots," i.e. albums that he's never heard but feels like he should.

This Is Fats

Fats Domino

1957

This year, half of the 100 Blind Spots featured in this space are going to be pulled from the book 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die. I won't be picking them randomly out of the book, but I won't be going in any sort of order either. I will be guided in my listening by how I feel that week and what looks pleasing to the ears. The blog post itself will include the blurb from the book (don't tell anyone about the infringement of copyright law), and then my brief reaction to both the album and that blurb. If I can keep up the pace, this is how we'll spend most Saturday mornings here at Puke on Your Birthday.

What 1001 Albums You Must Hear Before You Die has to say about This Is Fats by Fats Domino:

Six years before Bill Haley recorded "Rock Around the Clock," 21-year-old Antoine "Fats" Domino wrote the blueprint for early rock 'n' roll with 1949's "The Fat Man." From that million-selling debut single, the New Orleans-born vocalist/pianist would produce more hits than any other 1950s-era rocker besides Elvis Presley, including a staggering run of 39 straight singles that charted between 1954 and 1962.

While selling some 65 million records in the decade, Domino was arguably the man most responsible for bridging the gap between R&B and rock—although Little Richard might dispute that claim. What is beyond debate is the influence of the singer's 1950s work, which has run and spread through popular music and influenced everyone from Pat Boone to the Beatles.

This Is Fats, the singer's third full-length album on Imperial, was released at the height of Domino's career and remains the most powerful portrait of his artistry thanks to such boogie-woogie beasts as "Blue Monday" and "Honey Chile" and such mournful masterpieces as "So Long" and "Poor, Poor Me."

Triumphant opener "Blueberry Hill" had been a hit for Glenn Miller in 1940, but despite its characteristic charm and warmth, the track proved surprisingly difficult to record. No one could find the sheet music that day in the studio and Domino kept forgetting his lines. No complete take was ever recorded and the studio had to splice the song together out of aborted efforts. The resulting single would top the U.S. R&B charts and hit No. 2 on the pop charts—the highest Domino would ever reach in pop.

What Joe has to say about This Is Fats by Fats Domino:

You know what's really fucked up? I listened to a different album than the one described in the book. That doesn't bode well for this blog project, does it? Here's the thing, though: the book is wrong, not me. There are two different albums, one called This Is Fats, and one called This Is Fats Domino!, and they each have completely different album covers and tracklists. The book told me to listen to This Is Fats, and I even matched up the album covers to make sure I got the right one. But the description of the album is undeniably for This Is Fats Domino!

That's frustrating as hell, but I doubt it ultimately changes my reaction to Fats Domino in general (and we usually traffic in "the general" during these Blind Spot drive-bys anyway). That reaction: primitive, nice, lame. Anything pre-Beatles is going to elicit this reaction for me. At least I have no reason to hate Fats Domino personally, unlike, say, Elvis Presley. Yes, this bridged R&B and rock, and yes, there's ample room to appreciate this music as immensely influential. I also think that it sounds generic, just due to it being 70 years old, and processed into a fine pulp in that time. (He's old enough, for instance, that an equally old artist Chubby Checker was so influenced by Fats Domino at the time that his stage name is literally a pun on "Fats Domino.")

It's a shame "Blueberry Hill" isn't on the album I have, since I for some reason have a memory of a line of dialogue in the hit TV sitcom Happy Days in which some other characters are making fun of Richie Cunningham for liking that song, ostensibly because it was lame compared to whatever was young and hip at the time. Though maybe the mockery was directed toward the Glenn Miller version, which makes more sense in their timeline, a song from 1940 being lame by the '50s, and the 1956 Fats Domino version coming out after whenever that episode was supposed to take place (and well before Ralph Malph loses his virginity). Still, my point remains! It's been a long time since Fats Domino was considered cool.

But that's why it's important to know this album before I die, and be forced to know it because a book says I should. I wouldn't have bothered anyway. A mid-tempo love ballad like "Thinking of You" or a ridiculous metaphor-for-sex rock song like "The Rooster Song" are songs that I would have never taken seriously, and yet here I am, forced to do so, and I find... it's not that bad. Kinda catchy. Goes by quickly. Fats clearly has some pipes and some charisma to him.

It's just that, at a certain point, you don't have to go back that far. If I'm considering myself a rock historian in this column (I'm not, but let's say I am), then at a certain point, I have all the info I need. It would be like a geologist trying to examine rocks from before the Big Bang—after the big event, everything changed, and the old info is long outdated because of that. I like knowing This Is Fats, but I feel like it would've sufficed to know about it instead.

Still, good times, if you like this kind of shit. Just make sure you get the right album.

Discussion — Week 309: The End Is Near by the New Year

Shoutout to all our friends who listened to The End Is Near this week, even if you didn't have time to write a review. That's okay! Here is a space to talk about the album, if you need that space. I'll drop some thoughts about the reviews in the comment section, but here are questions for anyone.

— What did you think about the album? Good or bad? How did it make you feel?

— Were there any reviews that you agree with or disagreed with?

— Were there any reviews that captured well the music as you heard it? Were there any reviews that did a great job at expressing an opinion that you thought was totally wrong?

— If you had written a review, what would it have looked like?

— Can you see yourself listening to this music after Record Club is done with it?

— Anything else you wanna say about the album or the artist or any of the songs?

— For the third week in a row, I've just used a random band photo at the top of this discussion post. Any better ideas for a picture?

The End Is Near, Sunny

I'm pretty back and forth on this album. Is it fine? It's definitely at least fine. But like, what I'm wondering the whole time, is the End near or is the End not near? This is confusing for a New Year's launch, from which I tend to expect high energy or high morbidity. Sometimes it feels like the end is quite near, and there's some real propulsion, like with "Chinese Handcuffs" or even "Start." I'm a fan of that. 

But then other times the end feels interminably not near, and we have all day to saunter over to said end, like in "Stranger" or, of course, "The End's Not Near." These are alright, but a little sleepy and kind of lost, especially if the end is in fact nearby.

Close to eight-minute "18" pushes this in micro, simultaneously too long and too big a swing right towards the end of the album, but also with a decently interesting chorus and instrumental outro in the latter half. It's an enjoyable enough album to throw on, if not the most memorable. So the End, whenever it is, is full of contrasts, is what I am finding.

The End Is Near, Nate

The thing about slowing something down as a gambit to achieve gravitas and greater meaning is that sometimes it works (like in the instance of the legitimately moving Bieber song slowed down by 800%, essentially turning into Sigur Rós), and sometimes you get a doom-core cover of "Save Tonight" (link not found, you're welcome). On the whole, the New Year stay on the right side of the line, though it's telling that the album's best moments are the ones where the BPMs get up above 60 ("Plan B" especially). You can see how a band like this could create a cult around them, even if you yourself won't be running out to buy white Nikes.

The End Is Near, Sara

A formal apology to the New Year. I listened to the wrong album until about 24 hours ago. This is purely based on vibes and 2.5 listens of the album. The End Is Near, a moderately pleasurable indie rock album, easy to put on and easy to forget. The sound of the band is distinctly early-aughts, which as a side note I heard someone call them "the naughties," and I think I have about six ways that I hate that. In general, I think this album just sounds like something I would have found on MySpace at fifteen, and listened to it to feel like I knew something no one else did. The original hipster intentions. Likely would have been used in the "now playing" section on LiveJournal. Nothing bad about this album, just nothing is standing out. My husband pointed out that they were "lyrically stunted," which I don't really agree with, but like, write a review then, Ryan! Now's your chance.

Listen to this album when you can’t find your Garden State soundtrack in the back of your 1998 Honda Civic. 

2 out of 5 Big Brens 

The End Is Near, Joe

I think it's helpful to be excited while you're doing something. Excitement goes a long way to explain what you're doing, even if you (the observer) don't necessarily understand why anyone would do that thing. I saw a short video clip of people running through Times Square to get a good spot for the ball drop as soon as they were allowed in that barricaded area, people sprinting to the front barricade to get a good spot and stand there for, I dunno, eight hours, until midnight. I hear some of them wear diapers, which is fucking gross. But still! Those folks looked excited! I can't really begrudge 'em for doing something that I wouldn't normally do, because being excited feels good.

The New Year seem the opposite of excited throughout their sophomore album, The End Is Near. I don't know what the deal is here. This is a new band to me. I think I assumed that it was going to be a good time because New Year's Eve is usually a good time? I guess the naming of the band was ironic. Or maybe just reflective of the direction New Year's Eve trends as we get deeper into adulthood (so I'm finding, anyway—I was in bed by 12:10 AM the other night).

I care less about genre these days. I don't have a problem with whatever you call this, and in many ways prefer these genres—indie rock, slowcore, slacker rock, whatever—but I'd rather listen to music from genres I don't like by artists who are happy to be there than the New Year, who are playing a slow, listless version of everything I've ever liked in the past. They kinda remind me of Pavement but even slower and without the snark. Or possibly a foursome who really, really doesn't want to be a Death Cab for Cutie cover band but ends up sounding kinda like them anyway. I am not a huge fan of Pavement or Death Cab to begin with, so the returns are even further diminished here.

I think what the New Year are going for is "dark." Most of the lyrics are poetically vague or vaguely poetic, so I can't point to any song and say "this is a dark narrative!" Something like "Age of Conceit" seems creepy, with what the title implies and lines such as "But legs can't stay uncrossed for long" adding to the implication, but it's all interpretation. I guess I'm interpreting it to be a macabre album for whatever reason. I suppose that reason could be a lot of it seems to point toward the "we are getting old" tropes that I find so effecting (since I too am getting old). Maybe more specific details would've helped to get me into all that, just through a simple understanding of what exactly they are trying to say, instead of inferring based on the fact that none of these songs have a tempo above a funeral dirge.

That's not technically true, I suppose. Not "none." "Plan B" reaches maybe medium tempo, which is something! (Should've been the New Year's Plan A, amirite?!) And then there's "18," which is the best song on here by default. I feel passion in that guitar-solo outro. There's real longing there. Again, it's all interpretive, especially since there are no lyrics, just guitar noodling, but man, if the New Year could've done something like this in most of the songs instead of just one of them, I'd be dropping a positive review here.

As it stands, I am pretty disappointed by this. I am not excited, because the New Year are clearly not excited. It's about expectations too—here at the start of a new year, checking out an artist that nominally fits very well with the season, wanting this album to feel good and to mean something and to inspire excitement... and then it just lands with a thud. Maybe if this is a random June deep-cut album, I'm cutting it some slack. Here at the very beginning of 2025, it's a dud.

FUCK, I hate writing reviews like this. I want to be excited about music! Don't you get it, the New Year? I want to like your music. Music is great because it can be a conductor to transmit emotions. What the fuck is wrong with you, calling yourselves "the New Year" and sounding like Tuesday, January 17th at 2:57 AM?! Don't you understand your responsibility here? Don't you understand the power you wield? And you choose to piss it away with some sluggish bullshit like this? We coulda had sumtin here, man. We coulda started our year right. We coulda blasted off into 2025 and never touched ground. Instead, I'm over here falling asleep. No excitement whatsoever.

GRADE: 1.5 pukes out of 5

RC@5: Better by Caracara

Record Club covered this album exactly five years ago. I gave it another listen this week. Here are some thoughts.

Better

Caracara

Week 48: December 29, 2019-January 4, 2020

In many ways, Better was the ideal EP. It sharpened the potential of the band's preceding LP (Summer Megalith), and acted as a legitimate holdover for the band's next album (2022's New Preoccupations). Plus, the title track is one of the best songs we've ever covered here. Not too shabby for some three-song nothing that we covered at the end of Record Club's first calendar year.

Not only is a great song that I have held onto for these five years very tightly and listened to many times in the interim, but also, I think "Better" speaks to one of the best functions about this blog—connecting through the music. Examining the two other reviews, it looks like Sam and Nate both spotlit the title track as the standout. I know for a fact Nate listened to and liked New Preoccupations, maybe even more than I did. It's not a significant share, but it's something to share nonetheless, and those little connections add up over time. As we saw in YSC this year, if you connect through the music, the connection lasts.

So, yeah, man, listening to "Better" for the 1000th time (and Better EP for maybe half as many spins but still) was a great experience because it yet again pinpoints a good reason why Record Club exists, why Record Club exists every single week (i.e. or else we would've missed "Better" because of New Year's), and why I'm still doing these RC@5 posts even though they seem to be retreads more often than not. It's all about the music. I listen again, and I remember.

A Year of Blind Spots: Discovery

Joe is working through a list of albums that he considers "blind spots," i.e. albums that he's never heard but feels like he should.

Discovery

Daft Punk

2001

A blind spot can look like blank space. A blind spot can also look like a sore, something you assume from the start that you should stay away from. Addressing a blind spot can be filling a hole. It can also be treating a wound, giving it space to heal.

I've always seen Daft Punk in negative terms, and I don't think I could really tell you why now without sounding like a pretentious asshole. We don't start our musical journey liking everything—this is well-worn territory in this column as it enters its fifth year—but liking everything is possible, with a lot of work. At the beginning, though, pretension. I thought Daft Punk was kinda lame. I thought it was party music for kids who weren't invited to parties. In many ways, it probably still is; maybe I just needed to stop getting invited to parties to like it.

I just spend a lot of my time sitting around listening to music, is the thing, and Daft Punk's French house music was not something to sit around and listen to. Or so it seemed, for a long time. Discovery ended up on this Blind Spots list years ago, before I was ready to listen but around when I was starting to commit to listen to anything that has been deemed important, just to know. In the meantime, YSC featured a couple songs, and "Around the World" especially engaged me. This seemed artsy and fun.

I wasn't cringing as much as I thought I'd be. Must be getting soft in my old age.

I think I'm also more in tune with the idea of repetition in music. House music generally is built upon loops. I found myself drawn to certain sounds found on this album—a fat synth, a ringing ride cymbal hit—and found joy when they were rhythmically repeated over and over. I was still sitting around listening to music, but the music made me feel more connected with whichever situation I found myself in. The gym felt communal, even though I'll never say a word to anyone while I'm there. Playing with Barbies felt like a celebration, even with Daft Punk simply on in the background. Riding the bus and listening to Discovery felt like I had a destination worth getting excited for.

That feeling of pretension will always follow me, though. It will lurk in the shadows, and it will strike at strange moments. I was just about ready to accept Daft Punk as our saviors, when my oldest daughter says to me: "Isn't this song from Trolls?" Indeed, "One More Time" opens Trolls World Tour, the trolls are playing it in Techno World or whatever the fuck they call it. There is nothing lamer than this. Nothing.

But that's me worried about the blind spot again, the blind spot that looks like a festering wound. I recoil, but then I manage to look and I find that I have the courage to bandage that wound. It can be saved. And it will heal and it was feel better than ever. I feel good now. I was wrong about Daft Punk. We can be saved. (I also should have tried harder to use the album's title as a pun, something about how I discover music and that's what brings me joy, oh well, get 'em next time Joey.)

Song of the Day: "Good Time"

by Zach

"Good Time"

Carly Rae Jepsen and Owl City

from Kiss

2012

I forgot about "Good Time" by Carly Rae Jepsen and Owl City until Joe used it for his gym-focused YSC post. 

It's absolutely a song that would play at the asscrack of dawn as you lumber up on the treadmill. It's a song that's meant to go into the next song, and the next and the next, as the televisions show ESPN talking heads and CNN shows images from terrible thing happened in the world the night before (I imagine this morning they're showing endless stills from the exploded Tesla in front of the Trump Hotel and shots of an empty Bourbon Street).

The lyrics are bad, the video is lame, it's not a very sophisticated song.

So why do I find myself playing it over and over again, and crying to it on a Thursday morning?

Maybe I've worked two overnight shifts this week and I'm just tired. Maybe I slept in my office last night and I'm just tired. 

I don't know. I feel like there's something deeper than that. When I look back at my life, I'll miss the '90s and the '00s, but there will always be a special spot for the simplicity of the '10s. The Portlandia era, the Obama era, things just a little more hopeful and twee and cute. Carly Rae Jepsen and the Owl City guy not trying to do anything too amazing. Just putting out a song, and having fun with it.

Now everything is heavy. There's no way out. I fear the world will be heavy for a very long time.

Song of the Day: "New Year's Kiss"

"New Year's Kiss"

Casiotone for the Painfully Alone

from Etiquette

2006

New Year's Day is always the toughest. I honestly don't blame the Mummers for getting blackout drunk at 7 AM. Who wants to face the harsh reality of a new year? Not me. Change is bad. Give me the same. Let me wrap same around me like a warm blanket, and protect me.

It's a lot easier to envision change while it's all still hypothetical. "Yes, I'm going to do this" is not as difficult as "Yes, I'm doing this." Your hand is forced toward the latter on New Year's Day. Isn't this when you said that you were going to change? Another arbitrary timeframe shattered as you enter a new year kicking and screaming.

I tried my best to avoid the trappings of New Year's Day this year, but life has a way of making things difficult. My perennial Resolution is something along the lines of "losing weight," and I did my best to lay the groundwork for that hopeful success in the month and a half leading up to 2025. I was hitting the gym. Not losing weight, per se, but building healthy habits so that the trigger could be pulled on a better diet in the new year and it wouldn't be that hard because it's just a mild tweak on top of a gym routine instead of a wild change. But I got all pukey these past three days and couldn't do much of anything, let alone go to the gym. So I'm holding on real tight and hoping that I can readjust yet again, on January 2, 2025.

That's as far as I'm at with Resolutions, at the time of this typing (which, I'll admit, is actually December 31st). Pam and I usually write some down and put them in a wooden box and reopen the box on New Year's Eve to re-examine the year and all its successes and failures. (We used to include a bottle of wine in the box too. So it goes with those successes and failures.) It's low-stakes, more so a prompt for discussion about our hopes and dreams. It's nice to want the best out of yourself.

But all that to say that I don't really have to many snappy, catchy New Year's Resolutions this year. The usual bullshit about listening to X number of albums and watching Y number of movies and writing Z number of blog posts, that kind of thing, shit that would happen with or without the placement of such a thing on a list. And then the really fundamental shit, all that stuff about being a good husband and dad and and citizen and human, the real basic ideas that have no place here, because they are just done, day in and day out, no concerns for the calendar on that one.

I think life is pretty good right now. Just gotta be more healthy, that's all. I'll get there. Either that, or I'll die, and then health won't be much of a concern at all.

An idea I've grappled with more and more lately is the idea of change being tied to grief. Even positive change can feel like an intangible loss sometimes. We improve and we feel great about improving but at the same time we grieve for our past selves, knowing that we can never go back to how it once was. I speculate that this is why so many of us lapse back into the same cycles—because we are seeking comfort, we are seeking an escape from the grief of the loss of our old selves, and simply become our old selves again, no matter the cost. Change is hard because change is painful, and no one likes pain.

In this way, let us examine the pain of the last year. In what ways did I experience the pains of change, and in which ways did I experience the pain of not being strong enough to change? Here are my Resolutions from last year:

1) See 199.9 on the scale. This didn't happen and I think I'm at the point that I am finally going to acknowledge that it ain't ever happening, at least not in a healthy way (i.e. maybe if I get really sick or something, but that's not what I'm trying to manifest here). Also, if I'm basing my 2025 health around strength training, then the expectation is to lose some weight from cutting fat but also gaining some weight by building muscle. So I think, if such a Resolution were to be rolled over to next year, it would look something like "achieve a healthy weight and physique," which isn't necessarily tied to the scale.

2) Exercise once per day. I certainly didn't do this in 2024, but the irony is that I ended up doing this during the year's final 40 days (more or less—let's ignore the fact that I've been vomiting and *other* for the past four days, making a gym trip out of the question). Actually, strip those parentheses away, this is a good point: exercising EVERY DAY is untenable. If we're going to make a Resolution for 2025, let's say something like "every day except for twice a month, saved for unforeseen circumstances." In other words, let's have some grace for all of life's twists and turns. The baby crying in the night, and all that.

3) Install the Little Free Library. I didn't do this, again. But here's the thing—it's not that I don't want to, it's really just a money thing. Looking at our finances makes me pretty nauseous a lot of the time (we are fine, but only because of the nausea, a manifestation of my anxiety about it, which forces me to get shit done, and so on). I can't stomach the idea of dropping hundreds of dollars on an unnecessary expenditure. That's all it is. I can't even imagine how I would roll this one over to 2025. I don't like the idea of "saving $5 a week" or some shit like that, because I'm already doing that. I'm doing things like "putting an extra $25 per week toward our mortgage" and "taking $XXX pre-tax from my paycheck and investing it in deferred compensation" and all that shit. Finances are tight in the here and now because we're spending money and we're saving money. Can't imagine spending more on a library for our backyard. But ya never know, I guess. I will not Resolve, I will just dream about it a little longer.

4) Read ten books. I read twelve books! This is one I'm not really worried about. I'm reading, I'm writing, I'm engaging with art, I'm critically thinking, I'm imagining worlds, I'm creating. I'm finding space for all that shit. Reading books is good, but it's just one piece. I'd like to read a few more in the new year, but let's not set limits.

5) Watch at least two movies each week. If the phrase "on average" is implied, then I did it, and then some. There were some weeks when I only watched one movie. There were some weeks when I watched five. There were some days when I watched two. It all evens out. Pam and I watched fewer movies than we probably wanted to together, mainly because our social lives kinda went haywire in the back half of the year (in good ways). But to even that out, we started Family Movie Night, which guaranteed at least one of the two movies per week as required by the Resolution. So we're all good here. I think my resolution for 2025 would be simply be "watch more movies than in 2024." Doable!

6) Listen to more music, but listen to less new music. Confident that this happened. You don't need the raw numbers (even though I could provide them). I listened to a lot of music. I calmed down with the needing to listen to all the new music. My system for new music was that I would invest in an album only if 1) a band was following up on an album that I previously loved, or 2) at least two entities (friends or trusted websites) highly recommended it. I listened to less new music, I listened to more good music. The system works.

Okay, so what's that? Three out of six? The three success all being tied to arts and entertainment, and the three failures being tied to personal self-improvement? I suppose there's something to say about that. I don't know what, but there definitely is. 

Here is what I've decided it means, 90 minutes before the ball drops (while Pam puts the kids to bed after we watched Wicked and they somehow stayed away for all of it): it means that I need to readjust what it means to find "self-improvement." I am wiser than I was 366 days ago. Stronger of the mind. Weaker in body, perhaps, but that comes in time, with dumb persistence and numb repetition. Feeling stronger of mind and of heart requires exploration of ideas, via my chosen entertainments of music and film, and I'm already fucking doing that. It's the one part of my life that is never painful, never causing any grief whatsoever.

So if I had one New Year's Resolution this year, it would be to stay the course. There is ample room for improvement, but no longer a need to find a new path. Let me wake up on New Year's Day with a clear conscience, no need for guilt or shame. I face the day knowing that there are things I want to do, yet for most of those, I'm already doing it. My New Year's Resolution is to keep doing this. Let's meet back next year and discuss whether I did.