VAGUE SPACE

Still Ill

What a wonderful weekend this has been so far.  Not only are there major issues at my company (which might leave me out of a job), but I've been sick as a dog.  Sore throat, splitting headache, runny nose, coughing, wheezing, not breathing, you know the usual pre-death stuff.  Plus the Raiders inexplicably passed up the chance to draft franchise QB Matt Leinart because he doesn't throw the vaunted "deep ball", which hasn't worked for us in 20 fucking years (I don't remember Rich Gannon taking us to the Super Bowl on his deep passes, nor do I remember Kerry Collins' long throw ability getting us over 5 fucking wins the last 2 seasons).  Ugh.  So we drafted a safety in the first round, continuing a trend of defensive back draft picks in the first round of recent years, none of which has actually panned out (Phillip Buchanan, Fabian Washington, Derrick Gibson, Nnamdi Asomugha).  Let's just keep trying the same things that have failed us for years!  Al Davis, genius!  Ugh.  So anyway, I feel like shit and this song is somewhat appropriate. It's from a British show called "T4 on the Pitch" in which Morrissey and his band appeared back on April 2nd, doing among other songs, this incredible version of the classic Smiths track "Still Ill".  I don't know what's more amazing, how old Moz looks or how awesome it still sounds.   

    It just wasn't like the old days anymore.  No it wasn't like those days...  am I still ill?

Click forward for some Morrissey mp3's from the new CD...

File Sharing

I recently acquired a full mp3 download of Grandaddy's yet to be released Just Like the Fambly Cat, the long awaited final album by one of my top 10 favorite bands of all-time, as discussed here and here.  It isn't available in record stores until May 9th, and I couldn't help but download the tracks, too eager for this final document of a wonderful band to wait another week.  Upon initial listens, it's good, but not great.  Definitely better than Sumday or Excerpts from the Diary of T0dd-zilla, but not on a Sophtware Slump or Under the Western Freeway level.  I'd already heard (and put on this site) advance tracks "Jeez Louise", "Summer... It's Gone", and "This is How it Always Starts", and the Grandaddy myspace site has a sneak preview of the track "Rear View Mirror" (which is fortunately not a Pearl Jam cover).  The bad news (for me at least) is that "Jeez Louise" - which is a great song - is easily the best on the album, so that was disappointing.  And "Rear View Mirror" is probably 2nd best.  There are some other unheard gems, including closer "Shangri-La" and "Disconnecty", as well as some clunkers (opener "What Happened?" is simply a kid asking "what happened to the family cat?" over and over again above a low musical droll).  But the point is, it isn't an instantly great album.  I hope it grows on me, and I certainly hope Jason Lytle continues to make music after this under a different name or format.  But the question is, should I spend 14 bucks at Vintage Vinyl next week to actually purchase the hard copy?  And the fact that I have to ask that question is troublesome.

Fair and Balanced

Fox News anchor Tony Snow has just accepted a position as the White House spokesperson for the Bush administration, replacing Scott McClellan, who resigned last week amidst an 11th-hour shake up inside the Oval Office in a futile attempt by Bush to resuscitate his failure of a presidency.  Congratulations to Mr. Snow, who once worked as a speechwriter for Bush's father, but this has to be a pretty embarrassing thing for Fox News.  Of course, if they had any sense of their own embarrassment, they wouldn't still be touting "Fair and Balanced" in every single one of their ad messages.  Because come on.  And it's not likely Snow was simply a commentator like O'Reilly or Hannity, whose conservative political beliefs are the basis of their programs.  No, Snow was a "news" anchor who filled in regularly for Brit Hume on the cable network's flagship 6 pm news program.  He also hosted their Sunday morning newstalk show, as the "unbiased" moderator.  That's a freaking disgrace.  He was a partisan political hack who dispensed slanted news commentary under the guise of "fair and balanced" for years.  But Snow has been critical of Bush in recent months.  In September, he wrote a column which included the words:

    "No president has looked this impotent this long when it comes to defending presidential powers and prerogatives."

Which is not altogether flattering.  Of course, if he and his network had some remote sense of impartiality and journalistic ethics, they might have worked to uncover the depths of failures of the administration before November 2004, instead of spending all their time talking about why Kerry was the weakest, most traitorous, evil human being on the planet who would have awarded New York City to al Qaeda on Inauguration Day.  Admittedly, those weren't the exact words that were used.  At least not by Snow.  I'm pretty sure O'Reilly said that though.

Spring Cleaning (with MP3's)

For those who are new to this blog (thanks for coming!), you may not realize that there was once an ambitious attempt by the author to have two sites up at once.  A foolhardy, ridiculous attempt, but an ambitious one nonetheless.  The second site, www.vaguesports.net was shut down back in October and will no longer be operational in the coming days, thanks to me not renewing my godaddy account.  So in preparation for that event, I've brought back all the posts from that site - which was focused exclusively on sports content - into this site, where you can access them from the "Categories" menu on the right, under "Vague Sports".  There you can peruse all the classic Sports articles from the past, from Why I Hate Derek Jeter to Why I Hate Lance Armstrong.  It's a wide variety of hatred.  You can also take a stroll down memory lane and see how I picked the Raiders to make the playoffs last year.  Good times.  Anyway, hopefully there will be more sports content here in the future but for now, I will continue to concentrate on MP3 downloads and reviews of bad television series. 

In that vein, here's some songs to mark the start of your own spring cleaning regimen, specially for the commenter with a dead ear who actually claimed that he preferred Bettie Serveert's O.C. played version of "Lover I Don't Have to Love" vs. the original.  He also said that Bright Eyes sucked.  Blasphemy.  Go away please.  You're not wanted here.

• Download Bright Eyes - "Spring Cleaning".mp3

• Download Explosions in the Sky - "The Long Spring".mp3

And in non spring-related downloads, here's some more rare tracks from Sufjan Stevens, which I believe were recorded during the Michigan sessions.  Enjoy.  And thank you to all my loyal readers.  Growth has been terrific this year and I'd love for it to continue.

• Download Sufjan Stevens - "Borderline".mp3

• Download Sufjan Stevens - "Damascus".mp3

• Download Sufjan Stevens - "Niagara Falls".mp3 

   

Deal or No Deal?

So here's the premise for a television program.  Not one on the Game Show Network that no one will possibly ever watch.  Not one for a 4th grade talent show.  No, this is the premise for a show on prime time on a major network (well it used to be a major network), in fact the network that was once home to cutting edge fare like Seinfeld, Cheers, and Bob Costas' head.  The premise is to do a game show based a person picking a numbered case randomly out of 26 choices.  One of the cases has $1 million in it.  The rest have decreasing dollar values from $750k down to $0.01.  Whatever is in the case, you get to keep.  So you start picking the other cases, one by one, to find out which values you didn't pick.  And in the "glorious" tradition of Let's Make a Deal (minus the wacky costumes and bad '70s decor) a mysterious "banker" offers to buy your case with ever increasing amounts as you decrease the possibilities that your case is holding a large (or small) value.  And at each turn, the question is: "Deal or No Deal?"  Simple.  Elegant.  Retarded.  It's the hottest program on television, appearing in the top 10 on multiple nights a week.  Seriously.  That premise.  That show.  With Howie Mandel as the host.  Yes, that Howie Mandel.  And if I offered you proof that this show's success is a sign of the apocalyse, would you accept it?  Deal or no deal?

Luxury Lounge

For the second straight week, we had basically a "one-off" episode involving minor characters in the lives of The Sopranos, used mostly for comic relief.  It was disjointed in places, and things didn't exactly flow together particularly well, and nothing could top last week's "Finn in the headlights" meeting at the back of the butcher store.  But this week had quite a bit more violence, some celebrity sightings, Christopher falling off the wagon, and a dead bunny.  Happy Easter.  Oh, and the writers haven't dropped the Vito is gay story line.  Or at least Phil Leotardo hasn't.   

    "It's an honor to be joined by men and not faggot ass cornholing cocksuckers like married my cousin.  He should fucking die."

Weekends of Rain

Well it's been raining all weekend here in Jersey, which has ruined my running, gardening, and (potentially) Phillies game plans, but on the bright side, it gave me a theme for a post...

Starting with a semi-rare song from Bright Eyes off their Home (Volume IV) split-EP done with Britt Daniel of Spoon, which includes the great lines:    

    I know I'm lazy with the little things, I mean I never held a door
    But I still loved you more than anyone since or before
    You are always saying that I owe you one, well, let's consolidate this debt
    Get on a payment plan, I'll pay you compliments, you can still treat me bad

• Download Bright Eyes - "Spent on Rainy Days".mp3

And here's a rocker from Superchunk off their last (final?) album, from back in 2001...

• Download Superchunk - "Rainy Streets".mp3

Really old Modest Mouse, off their first ever collection of singles Sad Sappy Sucker...

• Download Modest Mouse - "It Always Rains on a Picnic".mp3

Brand new Dirty Three, off their latest release Cinder...

• Download Dirty Three - "Rain On".mp3

And last but certainly not least, the immortal final track off Bonnie "Prince" Billy's legendary I See a Darkness CD, a song that provides the following hopeful message: "Oh it don't rain anymore. I go outdoors, where it's fun to be.  And I know you love me."

• Download Bonnie 'Prince' Billy - "Raining in Darling".mp3

The Oprah's Vagina Monologues

There have been many disgusting and disturbing episodes of South Park in the past.  The Gerbil episode.  The Paris Hilton episode.  The Woodland Creatures episode.  The Mr. Garrison sex change episode.  I could go on.  But it is possible that Matt and Trey have reached a new low this week.  Or high, depending on how you look at it.  And apparently high is the best way to look at it, because certain people I know who viewed it in a "heightened" state were much more receptive to watching 15 minutes of Oprah's snatch than I was.  Not that I'm encouraging drug use.  I mean if we learned anything from this episode, it was that you shouldn't get high just to come up with ideas.  You should get high after you come up with an idea, as a reward.  And you should definitely get your hands on whatever the fuck Matt and Trey were smoking when they came up with an idea to film almost an entire episode in Oprah's vagina - and to give it a British accent.  Read on for the disturbing details...

Rock Action

Looking at my recent mp3 posts, and my recent interests in indie rock (Sufjan Stevens, Bright Eyes, Okkervil River), there's been a lot less 'rock' in my music.  Which is all fine and good; believe me, a good singer-songwriter to while away the winter hours is soothing to the soul.  But sometimes when it's beautiful out, you just need to rock out, and this spring has brought no shortage of new music that takes you on a ride.  Here's some of my recent rocking favorites...

New artist Birdmonster.  You can buy their incredible new album No Midnight at their website and here's a couple tracks from it. 

• Download Birdmonster - "Balcony".mp3

...when from the balcony, she said - she said, I'm not yours my friend...

• Download Birdmonster - "'Cause you Can".mp3

Another hot band at the moment is Band of Horses, and I'm sure you've heard "The Funeral", which is ok but a little played out, and I like this song better.   Buy Everything All the Time here.

• Download Band of Horses - "Bass Song".mp3

From Pretty Girls Make Graves' new album Elan Vidal, this song shows how well "girls" can rock too...

• Download Pretty Girls Make Graves - "Pyrite Pedestal".mp3

And here's one of my all-time favorite hard rocking tracks from the mid-90s, that I recently heard on Sirius L.O.C. and it really brought me back... "Hey angel, whatever position we consider fit to put you in... you'll protest your complicity."

• Download Jawbox - "Savory".mp3

Thank You for Smoking

About five years ago, when New York was considering a city-wide ban on cigarette smoking at all restaurants, including bars, I got into a huge prolonged debate at a NYC bar whose name I don't remember.  Fueled by alcohol and a defense of individual freedoms, I took on what ended up being pretty much everybody else, including the bartender, in declaring the injustice of the new law and the need to preserve the rights of smokers.  Which was a bit odd, seeing as how I didn't smoke.  Not then, not now, not ever.  And as my home state of New Jersey has much more quietly passed a similar law that went into effect over the weekend, I can't help but be reminded of that warm summer night when even the smokers felt defeated by the overwhelming crush of public sentiment against them.  This time though, I wasn't nearly as indignant, and perhaps welcome the opportunity to not have to hang my coat outside after a night at a bar just to air out the damaging smell of cigarettes.  Had my mind changed?  Did I now join the majority in just wanting what was best for me, easiest for me?  I wonder.