VAGUE SPACE

New Music Tuesday

Sorry for the short post, but things have been a little hectic in my life lately, what with taking 2 classes, working full-time, driving 80 miles a day between work and class, writing, running, writing more, running more, doing research for my grad school thesis, writing, reading, drinking a little, getting drunken calls from crazy girls in Detroit (don't ask), and... oh yeah, blogging.  But here are some new songs that have caught my fancy lately, so check them out.  I wish I had more time to detail them in detail, but I just used "fancy" in a sentence and then "detail" twice in a row, so I'm sorry, that's all I got today.  I really love the Early Day Miners track.  I don't know anything about the band.  The Girls album, I'm still kind of getting into, but that's the new hot blog thing, fueled by a positive Pitchfork review.  And I like the song.   And you can't hate a song about Robot love, so go Dan Mangan, who I think is Canadian, but I have no energy to look it up, hence the lack of write-ups on this post and I've already written too much, so I digress.  Just download.  And let me know if you like these songs.  Later.

• Download Early Day Miners - "How to Fall".mp3

• Download Girls - "Lust for Life".mp3

• Download The Twilight Sad - "The Neighbours Cant Breathe".mp3

• Download The Pains of Being Pure at Heart - "Higher than the Stars".mp3

• Download The Dodos - "Longform".mp3
  

• Download Dan Mangan- "Robots".mp3

• Download Real Estate - "Beach Comber".mp3

• Download Hallelujah the Hills - "Oxus Pagoda".mp3

• Download Islands - "Vapours".mp3

• Download Sea Wolf - "The Traitor".mp3

• Download Monsters of Folk - "Losin' Yo Head".mp3
  

5K Results

I survived my first 5K in 3 years without any further injury to my knees, which is the most important thing.  But inexplicably, I finished nearly 2 minutes faster than my fastest training run and finished 2 seconds from 1st place in my age group.  A guy that finished just ahead of me was the top male performer 35-39, so I finished in 2nd and received an actual real-live medal, certainly the first award I've ever won for running and the first award I've won for anything athletic since high school.  So yeah, that was definitely a major surprise. 

My official time was 26:42, which believe me, is nothing impressive -- the race winner had a 15:47 (I was 10 minutes slower) and the top finisher in the 14-and-under girls competition had me beat.  So I was slow, real slow, but considering all my injuries and surgeries and failed recoveries on my knees, I didn't fare too bad.  In fact, I think I might have had a little left in the tank at the end.  I was dying -- definitely dying -- down the closing stretch, but I didn't feel quite as bad as I've felt on many previous runs, so I could have probably gone a little faster.  My first mile was 8:32, which was right on pace with the time I'd recorded last Wednesday on my best training run this year, but I felt fine, I felt good, and my left knee felt especially spry, so I tried to pick up the pace.  I passed two guys who were around my age, probably a little older, and I was feeling good.  But I think my burst of energy faded fairly quickly and they passed right back by me.  I tried to stay with them, and managed to remain about 10 paces behind for the rest of the race, but their pace was pretty hard on me between 1.5 and 2.5 miles, and I felt myself struggling.  But there were a lot of slowing runners ahead of me, and passing them is a wonderful feeling, each pass giving me an extra burst of energy, so by the time I got around the final turn to the straightaway finish, I had enough left to kick into a full-out sprint.  Unfortunately, my full-out sprint on a damaged left knee, a sore ankle, and a sore right knee, wasn't fast enough to pass too many people, but I knew I was running a great time -- I'd done another 8:30 for the second mile -- and I finished on an 8:36 minute pace, nothing to write home about for any normal runner, but something to be excited about for me.  And I realized how much I missed running 5Ks.  Now I want to run the early November one in my hometown, and I'm hoping that my upcoming knee surgery doesn't interfere with that (I haven't set a date yet).  Because I'd love to try to get under 26 minutes.  I think it's doable.

9 Minute Mile

Back in November 2006, I ran a 5K in 24:46, my fastest time ever to run that distance in my life, including training runs and races.  And although it is far from an impressive time in the grand scheme of running, it was impressive for me.  Unfortunately, I haven't come anywhere close to that time in the three years since, and I haven't entered a 5K since.  The reason for this mostly has to do with injuries, a series of leg injuries that remain unsolved to this point, three years later. 

My knees have always been bad -- I had a torn ACL in both knees when I ran that race in November 2006 -- but either in that race or in the following spring/summer softball season, I must have torn or aggravated the lateral meniscus in my left knee, because it's never been right since that race (of course, it wasn't "right" then, but the ACLs didn't really hurt too much during a straight run).  So my training the following summer was lagging behind, but softball ended, and I was prepared to race the same two fall 5Ks I'd run the previous two years, and hopefully get my time into the sub-25 minute range again.  But on literally my first training run after softball ended, in August 2007, I tripped on a rock about 100 feet from my house, fell to the ground, and tore ligaments in my right ankle.  I just thought it was an ankle sprain, something I'd had before, but it was bad, and it didn't get any better.  X-rays proved negative for broken bones, but I didn't do much to treat the injury other than ice and briefly wearing an air splint, and it obviously never healed.  I played softball that fall despite the bad ankle and knees (F Jan) but attempts to run were too painful and I didn't race in any 5Ks that fall.

Sunset Rubdown Live -- at Pitchfork

Thanks to Kelly for the heads up, and thanks to Pitchfork for hosting my favorite band on the planet at their Chicago offices (right next to the office fridge!), because, yeah, awesome.  Here's my favorite song of 2009.

New Music Tuesday

Wow, what a horrendously bad week for me and music.  First, the cassette player in my Infiniti inexplicably stopped working, and the cassette player was how I hooked up my iPod to my speakers.  Since then, I've been using an old FM Transmitter that works well, as long as you like a hearty handful of static with your music, which I... don't.  Anyone have any suggestions?  I hadn't been planning to buy a new car due to the troubling financial state of affairs over the past year, but this may have pushed me past a tipping point.  I have a new FM Transmitter and a cassette head cleaner on order, but yeah, if I can't listen to my iPod in my car, really, I can't live. 

And then second, I find out that Sordo is dead.  Sordo, for all you illegal downloaders out there, was an all-in-one database of just about every indie rock album ever released, typically weeks or months before the actual release.  I've only been using it for the past year or so, but I can't remember what I did to get full albums before (torrents?).  Again, any suggestions are welcome.  I did spend $10 on the Kestrels album from iTunes, sight unseen, which I haven't been doing all year (I've been only buying albums that were pre-approved by my listening ears).  So maybe it's a good thing that I go back to purchasing music sight unseen.  Maybe I'll get more pleasure instead of just the mass download action.  But boy, Sordo was fucking great.  Anyway, onto the music.  As always, despite what I just said, I do implore you to financially support the artists you're downloading from here, if you like the songs.  They need to make a living too.  Enjoy!

It's been four years since Sufjan Stevens won my album of the year for Illinois, and he has yet to release a proper follow-up, and while we're still waiting, he is releasing a soundtrack album to a film that he himself directed.  But don't get too excited, the music isn't exactly vintage Sufjan, it's more like movie soundtrack music, which is good in its own right but there's likely not to be a "Chicago" on this release.  Of course, thanks to the owner of the Sordo website deciding to close shop, I haven't actually heard the entire album.  Or seen the movie either.  I feel so naked.  I also don't have time to actually search for it, unfortunately.  So my blogging about new music is probably going to suffer.  I still get the occasional advance release for new albums (thank you Warner Brothers -- of all people -- for the leak of the new Built to Spill -- great, by the way, review coming soon!) but yeah, I could really use a replacement Sordo as a time saver.  Anyway, where was I?  This has been a devastating week.  Bring me some joy, Sufjan!

• Download Sufjan Stevens - "Movement VI: Isorhythmic Night Dance with Interchanges".mp3

Those are People Who Died

With the plethora of celebrity deaths this summer, it's been easy for a few lesser known celebrities to fall through the cracks.  I did a tribute to John Hughes a few weeks ago, but I thought another artist who died recently deserved a tribute, if only because he resides on my list of top 200 songs of all-time.  I didn't really know the history of Jim Carroll (punk rocker, poet, drug addict, Catholic) until I'd seen the Leo DiCaprio film Basketball Diaries in the mid-90s, based on Carroll's  life.  I still don't know much about him but his music was pretty ahead of its time and his song "All the People Who Died," about all his friends who died before their time, landed at #115 on my list of greatest songs ever made.  Carroll died at age 60 of an apparent heart attack last Monday in Manhattan.

I fucked up. I sit here with my liver and kidneys vibrating inside from uncertainty in every direction. Poetry can unleash a terrible fear. I suppose it is the fear of possibilities, too many possibilities, each with its own endless set of variations. It's like looking too closely and too long into a mirror; soon your features distort, then erupt. You look too closely into your poems, or listen too closely to them as they arrive in whispers, and the features inside you--call it heart, call it mind, call it soul--accelerate out of control. They distort and they erupt, and it is one strange pain. You realize, then, that you can't attempt breaking down too many barriers in too short of a time, because there are as many horrors waiting to get in at you as there are parts of yourself pushing to break out, and with the same, or more, fevered determination.

Jim Carroll, "The Price You Pay"
from Forced Entries © 1987 Penguin Books

• Download Jim Carroll Band - "People Who Died".mp3
  

• Download Jim Carroll Band - "Catholic Boy".mp3

Summer TV Reviews

As we begin to embark upon the  fall television season, which has me excited for tonight's premiere of the 5th year of It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, I wanted to write a quick review of what was easily the best summer season of television series in a long time, maybe ever.  There were a half dozen or so shows that I made appointment viewing in the past couple months, and with True Blood's wacky and somewhat disappointing finale Sunday, only Entourage remains as a summer series that is continuing into fall.  But Ari and the gang are nearly over, so without further ado, here are my rankings of the top series in the summer of 2009 (that I watched).

1. Nurse Jackie (Showtime)  This new show that followed Weeds on Monday nights seemed a little shaky to me at first, but I was paying $10 a month just to watch Weeds so I stayed with it, and I couldn't be happier.  Edie Falco of Sopranos fame plays the eponymous star of the show, a night nurse at a New York City hospital who (1) has a massive prescription drug habit, (2) is cheating on her husband with someone from the hospital, (3) has two young children, the oldest of which has anxiety issues similar to her own, and (4) constantly bends the hospital rules to preserve all her secrets and to provide better nursing for her patients.  So yeah, she's really fucked up.  Like really, really.  But as played by Falco -- who is absolutely brilliant in the role -- she's also incredibly likable and vulnerable and even sometimes hard to watch as she digs herself further into self-made traumas that only dramatic actions can get her out of.  When she can't get her wedding ring off in an episode late in the season (no one but her closest friend at the hospital, a hilarious but also well-rounded doctor character played by British actress Eve Best, is aware that she's married, including her lover), she has her doctor friend cut it off and then, in a painful scene to watch, ends up smashing her finger in the bathroom with a hammer for an excuse for her husband about what happened to the ring.  The show is a half-hour long, but in the mode of Weeds, it's not a comedy, nor is it a drama -- it's certainly far from melodramatic -- but there are funny parts, some outright hilarious; there are serious parts; there are amazing parts; and mostly, it's just about these flawed people living their flawed lives, and failing, but holding my interest in a way that no new show has captured my interest since, well, True Blood last September.  By the end of the season, I would watch the taped episode of Nurse Jackie before the taped episode of Weeds.  Which makes it #1 in my book.

New Music Tuesday

Built to Spill are back and releasing their 7th full-length, There is No Enemy, on October 6th, their first new album since 2006's You in Reverse.  Since they are on and evil major label Warner Bros. (and probably making no money from their involvement -- sorry, Doug, come back to indie labels!), I won't be able to post any new tracks from the album here, but you can stream the first song below:

• Stream "Hindsight"
• Built to Spill Website
• Download Built to Spill - "Now and Then".mp3

The Worst Movie Ever Made

I've seen a lot of bad movies over the years -- the boring art film that never goes anywhere (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind), the tearjerker that gets ridiculously overwrought, the campy bad film, the truly bad film (Gummo), and the overly celebrated by the feeble minded cattle whose emotions are swayed by a mildly retarded man with pithy sayings.  Now, I've always called Forrest Gump my most hated movie, because it was horrible and over-praised, but I don't know that I've ever designated what the worst movie ever made was.  Or at least the worst movie I've ever seen.  Because as bad as Forrest Gump was (and it was bad, seriously), I know I've seen worse films.  I just couldn't name them.  That is until today. 

M. Night Shyamalan's last movie, 2008's box office bomb The Happening, starring Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel, was on cable the other night and I started watching.  I am -- or I was -- a huge Shyamalan fan.  I loved The Sixth Sense, but so did everybody, but I also loved Signs (less people did) and I liked Unbreakable and I even thought The Village was a cool concept that kind of worked.  I never saw Lady in Water, which was universally panned, but when The Happening came out last summer, it really looked like an intriguing idea for a movie, so even though it was also universally panned as well, I started watching it on cable and I couldn't stop.  Even though it was clearly the worst movie ever made.  Seriously.  You owe it to yourself to see just how bad it is.  And it's not bad as in "fun bad" that you can laugh with friends about.  It's more like horrifyingly bad in every aspect of filmmaking, especially shocking when made by talented (or formerly talented) people.  Wahlberg is usually good -- he was the best part of The Departed, outshining DiCaprio, Damon, Baldwin, and Nicholson -- and I freakin' love Zooey Deschanel.  And Shyamalan I've discussed.  How did it go so horribly wrong?  Let me count the ways.

Another Reason to Love Cycling

Cyclists Brett Lancaster, Heinrich Haussler, and Thor Hushovd are caught on tape here celebrating the end of the Tour de France at a bar in Belgium.  Stage winner Haussler is the second man to go, and he chugs a liter of beer in impressive fashion.  Green jersey and stage winner Hushovd goes third, but doesn't quite complete the chugging, to the chagrin of the crowd on hand.  Good stuff.  You don't see baseball players doing this, at least not on video in Europe.