cause every win on this record's hard won

i was thinking about how much i love the wrens today, and i remembered there's a pre-album version of "this boy is exhausted" -- so, it's history lesson time. take a seat.

pre-album version came out on a drive-thru records comp in 1999. this was a mere 2-3 years after they'd been screwed over, but a stunningly short 3 years from when silver came out (when they used to put records out, you know, pretty frequently). so it's kind of punk rock sounding and wonderful, and some of the lyrics were different, but the main difference between this and what ended up on the meadowlands in 2003 was the chorus: the 1999 version features charles singing "i will never give up / this boy is exhausted," whereas the meadowlands version just has a guitar playing the melody followed by them singing "this boy is exhausted." that and there are a few painful new lines: "a VP's faith is one single long;" "the woven strap wins the galloway girls;" "every win on this record's hard won." yeah, this is a pretty autobiographical song.

check out the difference (ignore the shitty usermade video). 1999:



and 2003:

and, if you dare, remember that THIS BAND HAS BEEN AROUND FOR 20 YEARS. let me repost a great picture of them from 1991 plus the band commentary, from their website:

"Now, we don’t usually condone the zestier language here, but just look at this fucking mess. There are airline disasters less grisly.

Charles has given new meaning to the old sexist phrase ‘nice knobs’. It now means ‘knees’. He’s also going a little heavy on the “She Blinded Me with Rest-stop Sunglasses and Short-Pants” and looks, not so much further back in the photo, as he does much, much smaller than everyone else.
As if Kevin’s imagining him.

Kev has shed the top half of his exoskeleton to reveal the world’s tightest wristwatch and a surprising commitment to ‘Lite’ beer. But that’s all to distract us from a more sinister truth – Kevin Whelan…is a Centaur and the folded jumpsuit hides his bottom horsey half.

Jerry is mulling over an especially tough call on the last corner kick while moonlighting as the most intensely motivated salesperson at Foot Locker.

He in turn, is wearing the Pope Gregory hat – a stunning 28” likeness of Greg rendered in felt and beaver fur.
Water-repellent. Reversible. Sleeveless.
Beautiful.

Good thing there was a camera there at the exact moment the four of us beamed in to lay claim to Least Cool Band in the Universe."

yes. so wonderful. i am going to move to new york so i can take guitar/recording/awesomeness lessons from them.

www.blog.com

...is what i typed in when trying to get here to post about how much i like emily haines. well done, me. i think that says some very interesting things about my subconscious conception of my place in the universe; interesting insofar as they make me feel fucking selfish and stupid.


which is a good segue into how good metric is! (aside: if i had to calculate how many years it takes me to worship a band after everybody else knows and loves them, it's usually somewhere between 5 and 50, with a few outliers [either new bands or brahms, which skew from -2 months to 150 years]. yeah, i'm lame.) i just read an article about how james cameron, in addition to being a huge dickhead and control freak, loves, marries, and makes action heroes of super strong women, which i think is awesome. everybody knows i like emily haines and the soft skeleton, because, duh, basically unaccompanied depressive piano music!, but sometimes you just want to rock the fuck out to somebody who is justifiably acidic, sometimes angry, sometimes vulnerable, and in general a total fucking badass. i love everything she does.

Combat Baby - Metric

"ever since you have been gone, it's all caffeine free faux-punk fatigue." YES. "no one here wants to fight me like you do." DOUBLE YES. maybe jemina pearl is going to grow into a version of emily haines?? one hopes.

Hustle Rose - Metric

great synth riff, great middle that showcases her unbelievably beautiful voice, oh, and a subject matter that huuuurts. "remind me not to feel a thing."

Love Is A Place - Metric

does this not sound like an encore? i love great closing tracks (what people are made of by modest mouse comes to mind) and this kills it. also a great example of the twisty, half-step songwriting that she does so well.

Calculation Theme - Metric

my 2nd-most played song on itunes. duh.

oh also here's a playlist: does this work better?

metric blog post 2009 10 24

maybe in a few years i will check out their other records!! DON'T RUSH ME

he hasn't dropped them, forgot them, or anything

i spent seven hours at tysons yesterday shopping for work clothes. have to go back today to make some returns due to either bloodlust or near-brain-death; i can't remember which. also i went to h&m last, which was dumb, because i could probably get everything i needed there. ah, well, feeling like a real person a little bit is kind of nice, even if shopping isn't.

my birthday was awesome, thanks for that; everything after my birthday has been an almost (but not quite) hilarious shitstorm. but, eh. life continues.

tuesday is workday.

i love every single song WHY? does. check this new one. there are so many hooks! and so many crazy, dense lyrics! and piano! sigh. here's an example of one of the better vignettes in this song:

i wanna speak at an intimate decibel /
with the precision of an infinite decimal /
to listen up and send back a true echo /
of something forever felt but never heard /
i want that sharpened steel of truth in every word

THAT is what you get when you have a background in hip hop and a prolific brain full of melodies. and are crazy. with all the other stuff in this song, you could almost miss that startling piece.

i also wanted to post the mokran remix of waitin' for a superman by the flaming lips, but i can't find it anywhere. i know i'm 10 years late to this party, but still, it's amazing, listen to it.

bored of trade part 3

man, that was fun. notable:

-seeing all my friends, or at least a great many, in one place.
-the awesome way lindsay puts these things on. it's not a coolness contest all the time. just art, some tiny wine solo cups, a new canopy in the back yard, and loud, awesome bands inside.
-speaking of: BLDGS and the laughing man were really, really good. obviously i love them as people, but both bands were so good. and punishingly loud. i had paper-towel-ears the whole night.
-sweating all the time! this was not good; it was notable. everyone was doing it.
-meeting my friends' cool friends. for instance, it turns out that the one and only jason has started playing bass for seas, who i liked anyway and know some folks who like, and i finally made the connection between people-i-kind-of-know and people-who-are-in-that-band. good! always a fun realization.
-more music-related fun realizations: ian svenonius came, and i was standing in the entry walkway, and he greeted me as if i were an old friend before realizing he didn't know me. super nice guy. sixteen-year-old me was freaking out a little. he also knows my friends, so i guess we could hypothetically also be friends. sixteen-year-old me is freaking out a little about that, too.
-jason and i orchestrating song-based fistbump cues: we blow it up, magnet it back (like usual), and hold it until we both get done singing the same part of the same song. we tried it with "bicycle" by queen and "help!" by the beatles. mixed results due to shaky execution; awesome idea.
-spaaten optimator.
-bike riding.
-liz professing equal amounts of incredulity and happiness hearing about my new life stuff.
-receiving a text message this morning from dave that read, simply, "canadian girlfriend."

i think this will do fine in lieu of a post bragging about how lots of good stuff is happening in my life. last night was a small, great slice of happy.

i never want to have to get a job

unless i can work for this guy (shown here illustrating the size of my ... ego)


no, seriously. peter "motherfucking baller" orszag. i'm reading the ryan lizza article on him today. it's great, as you'd expect. but here's the cool thing: cartoons!

this article has some of the best cartoons in it i've seen in some time. now, the new yorker cartoons are a constant, easy source of anti-elitist ridicule, because some are either just funny ha-ha or not funny or really priviledged or whatever. most, however, are fucking funny. these in particular reminded me of several people:


steve. duh. also, any drummer i've ever met, pretty much.

badass dudes with moustaches, john d being one. also, this is sort of how i regard myself in my head.




this reminds me of our caps-watching experience on tuesday. we went to bourbon, where they have 3 tvs in the seating area and one behind the bar. we asked for two to be turned to caps so all three of us could watch it, and she said no, they can only have one on at a time for each game. so, whatever, we moved and craned our necks. then, we noticed that every tv in the bar EXCEPT THE ONE THAT WAS CONVENIENT was playing the caps game, and the convenient one was playing fishing or ultimate fighting or some bullshit. talk about inconvenience, am i right?!?



and, last... well. you probably know. this is me, at all times, but most obviously/painfully on every single date i've ever been on.

my basic point is that if i ever get a job, a) i won't be able to write big long sloppy kisses to obama administration officials on my unread personal blog, b) the new yorker cartoons i identify with will be the much lamer office-related ones, and c) working is dumb.

dept. of hero-worship

i've been waiting to read this article about rahm emanuel for almost a week now, like some sort of impossibly self-denying smack addict. it came out online on monday, and my hard-copy new yorker didn't come until yesterday. so, here i sit at murky coffee, full of love for my fellow man and woman, tremendously pleased with the greatest substances on earth (classic cappuchino, big glass of un-iced cold water, pistachios, everything bagel with cream cheese), and the first three pages are so fucking good.

that's right.

i haven't even finished it yet. i came back to the internet to tell you how much i love it. also, i came back to the internet, though i never fully left (life has been busy). so, deal with it!

other things, other things, before i get back to reading/basking:
1) happy birthday yesterday, steve; come to his house tomorrow for a fun show of covers
2) new song up on the myspaces; sent in macrock application; with absolutely unbelievable help from matt, i'll be putting together some tours (YES tourS) in april and the coming months, as well as record label demos and a band and that kind of thing. for actually real this time. i think anytime i play with a band it'll be called hello, babies so if you didn't know that was me before, you know now.
3) going to texas next week. yeehaw!
4) the same people who read this blog already know, but i'm obsessed with this song.
5) i'm fully committed to applying for phd programs this fall, so, phew. talk about life plan.

so much else, but i mean, i can't tell everyone everything individually, so, blog blog blog.

barney motherfucking frank

oh, barney. how i love you. let me count the ways.

1) you make the case for how a government works (you see, it collects taxes from its citizens and uses them to pay for things like education and roads and public safety).

2) you point out how asinine it is to continually preach tax cuts as the panacea for everything even though the supply-side economics underlying that theory has been thoroughly and lustily debunked.

3) you state these basic economic and public policy principles with just the right mix of clear explanation, exasperation at how simple they are and how elected officials should understand them, and pure, unadulterated derision. i will cite this anytime anyone thinks i should consider living anywhere other than the northeast, as this tone of voice is native and withers in warmer climates.

4) you bring it back to the war in iraq, which is SUCH A GOOD POINT and one that not many people have the balls to point out, because republicans have loved to keep it out of official budget resolutions so as to not have to pay for it through the normal ways. PS GUESS WHERE WE GET THE MONEY TO PAY FOR BOMBS, IDIOTS. not from selling the golden eggs that milton friedman laid during his life.

5) you do all of this while sounding like george stephanopoulos just interrupted you in the middle of lunch and you still have half a turkey sandwich in your maw.

for more supporting evidence, see this new yorker profile (amazing, long)

three people who are way more awesome than we have any right to expect them to be

first: shaq's twitter. seriously it is genius. scroll down to the ones he did before christmas about portland, and just enjoy his overall mastery of misspelled hilarity.




second: tom ricks' blog on ForeignPolicy.com. tom ricks was the military affairs correspondent for the Washington Post for eight years, wrote Fiasco (which you should read), took a buyout last year, and now has this blog. dry, right? nope! check out a few selected moments of greatness: tom ricks pissing on harold pinter's grave; calling out blog censorship, linking to a hilarious rebuttal, and daring nyt publisher pinch sulzberger (not his editor, i was wrong) to try it on him; not trusting monkeys. in between these gems are also serious, insightful gems about foreign policy like this one, about how the panda-basher's tendency to get the vapours every time china talks about getting an aircraft carrier is sort of irrelevant. maginot line, zing!!


third: teri garr. best known for work in tootsie and as inga in Young Frankenstein ("What knockers! -- "Vy zank you, Doctor!"). her interview is THE BEST. she is THE BEST. she would probably ask why she's third on this list and call me sexist and then go "oh i'm so bad!" but you're SO GOOD, TERI GARR.

"I was down on one knee and my eyeballs looked like novelty-shop eyeballs."

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/08/20/sports/playmagazine/20federer.html

this article is geeky, technical, digressive, fanboy-ish, and two years old. it's also phenomenal. something about the story of the little boy and the context of dfw's recent suicide makes it that much more moving. and somehow life affirming? weird. i think my life is affirmed by reading a great writer who compulsively uses footnotes. there are dozens of us... dozens! thanks for everything.