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We Don't Want Your Fucking Love!

I have a habit of believing that anything I'm listening to at the moment is the best album in the world, ever. And so as I was listening to the Manic Street Preachers' "Gold Against the Soul" this morning, that thought crossed my mind.

I first heard the Manics on "Everything Must Go," and I didn't know quite what to think. I really, really wanted to love them—after all, all of the music wonks I was reading on alt.music.alternative [1] were in love with them, as were all of the people on the Suede mailing list—but I was kind of like, well, they sound like a fucking standard rock band!

Where's the glam? Where's the eye shadow? Where are the fey, androgynous band members?

Oh, right. He disappeared. [2]

"Gold Against the Soul" was one of the last of their albums that I bought, partly just because I couldn't find it anywhere. This was in 1997 or so, and CDNow just wasn't cutting it for finding out-of-print CDs. I would scour the record stores down in San Jose & Santa Clara for this impossible-to-find album.

And then finally, one lovely day down in Los Angeles, after at least a year of searching, I found it used at Moby Disc. Best. Day. EVAR.

So the funny thing about "Gold Against the Soul" is that, at first listen, it sounds like a very traditional hard-rock album. It doesn't have the punk/metal influences of Generation Terrorists, nor does it have the really dark post-punk sound of The Holy Bible.

But I think it's their best album, and absolutely their most underrated. For a lot of fans—at least, back when I was reading the mailing lists, and the album was just referred to in shorthand as GATS—this semed to be the album that the fans were kind of embarrassed to admit existed.

And the album definitely has its flaws. In fact, frankly, 4 out of 5 tracks on the second half of the album—excepting Roses in the Hospital—are kind of subpar. But the first 5 tracks are incredible. And you know how Manics fans are always going on about Richey's tortured lyrics? These are some of his best: they're just as dark as those on "The Holy Bible," but they're humane rather than nihilistic, (relatively) personal rather than (completely) detached.

And because of that, for me, the album has aged much better than THB. It's one of the few albums I still listen to regularly from my college years. And you should listen to it, too!

[1] A set of people who then moved on to I Love Music and Freaky Trigger.

[2] Or, more likely, he killed himself, thus spawning a whole subgenre of pre-LJ emo fan fiction & Richey spottings ("my cousin's daughter's best friend saw Richey in the Canary Islands, and he looked so happy & relaxed! I wish I could just hug him," etc.).

My other blog

Because of the really intuitive URL (http://btrott.typepad.com/test/), I guess you may not have known that I actually have a moblog, where I post photos from my mobile phone. But for a really long time, in fact—basically, prior to last month—the moblog was the only place where I posted.

I've thought about adding the moblog posts directly to my weblog, but I don't want to discourage myself from actually writing real text posts [1].

So instead of adding the photos to my main weblog, I played around tonight with getting the moblog to show up on my weblog sidebar. And not just the titles of the posts, but the actual photo thumbnails. It was harder than it should have been—I really wish I could've used E4X—and it may not work in Internet Explorer on Windows (I haven't tested it yet there, because I don't have a Windows computer at home).

But so otherwise I have it working now, as you can (hopefully) see in the sidebar to the right! I'm using XMLHttpRequest to parse the Atom feed for my moblog, parsing it, then adding the photos to the sidebar dynamically. The really cool part is that I'm using a Notes TypeList to add the necessary Javascript on my blog, without having to switch to custom templates.

Thanks to:

• Prototype, for providing a really nice base for Ajax requests
• this post, for supplying a DOMParser replacement for browsers that don't support it directly [2]

[1] And no jokes about whether my usual posts about TV should be considered "real" or not.

[2] ... which gets around the really dumb "feature" that some browsers don't try to parse responseXML for responses where the Content-Type isn't text/xml.

Know what happened to him? He died!

So I decided tonight to watch the pilot and the final episode of "Freaks & Geeks," one of my favorite shows ever, as evidenced by the fact that we own the special yearbook version of the DVD set. Fuck, what an incredible show this was.

I had planned to watch "Purple Rain" again tonight. But then, I decided on "Freaks & Geeks."

It wasn't really such a whim—it was in part because I'd watched the first episode of Kitchen Confidential tonight, in which John Frances Daley co-stars, and which I feel kind of ambivalent about. I really liked Anthony Bourdain's book, and overall I didn't dislike the show—it didn't completely blow me away, but it had its moments, and I'll watch it again.

But so the other reason why I got into the "Freaks & Geeks" mood was because a couple of weeks ago, we bought the "Undeclared" Season 1 (and only) DVD set at Amoeba. We were really into "Undeclared" while it was actually on TV, but I don't think they ever aired the final 3 episodes (or, probably quite a few others). So as part of buying the DVD set, we got to finally see the last 3 episodes of the show, which were amazing, particularly the last episode, with Ben Stiller. I honestly don't know why this show wasn't more popular. I guess for partly the same reason as "Freaks and Geeks."

I think "Undeclared" suffered from not being able to find the right demographic—i.e. there's a demographic that likes high school shows, & a different demographic that likes, um, old people shows. And the college students, or people who'd appreciate a fucking awesome show about college freshmen, just spend the whole 4+ years getting drunk & watching unfunny SNL episodes. Or maybe that's just bitterness about my college experience. [1]

But back to "Freaks & Geeks," which was one of the great tragedies of modern television programming. It first aired on a Saturday night, spent about 6 weeks there or so, then moved to (I think) Monday night? I don't even remember. Then it was off for about 3 weeks, while the NFL playoffs, or the stupid March Madness tournament, took over the television. And then finally, it underwent the mercy killing that we all knew it would endure from the beginning—better to burn out, etc.

I really remember watching the pilot, on some Saturday night in 1999, and just being completely blown away. And frankly, I still am. I loved "Freaks & Geeks" so much that I flew down to LA for the Museum of Television and Radio interview with the cast, along with the showing of one of the episodes that never aired. In some sense it was one of the weirder things I've done—as much as I love TV, I honestly can't imagine taking a plane flight just to see an episode & an interview with the cast and the creators.

But that was the thing about Freaks & Geeks—it put the fanatic in fan, for people who liked it. Or the other way round, maybe.

I realize I've said actually nothing about the show itself, but that's because you just have to see it. The incredible cast; the romantically nostalgic & realistic look at high school life; and the absolutely most perfect use of music ever in a TV series. [2] I'm sorry, I just can't do it justice.

I think the greatest testament for this show is that the pilot, in its final scene, made me a lifelong fan of Styx's "Come Sail Away," and it takes a pretty fucking amazing show to do that.

[1] But so then there are people like me, who will watch almost any reality show on television. No judgment!

[2] According to Paul Feig & Judd Apatow, the creators, they originally imagined a show that was completely filled with music the entire time. That proved difficult for licensing reasons, but even so, this show uses music better than any other I've ever seen, and better than most movies I've seen.

Just like mama used to do

Apparently, my liberal use of fuck/fucking/etc in my blog has shocked at least one Frenchman. Only 60,656,177 more to go! [1]

But speaking of vulgarity, I saw The Aristocrats last night and loved it. Going in I wasn't actually expecting that much, partly because the joke in and of itself just isn't that funny. But now I realize I was missing the point—there were a number of funny versions of the joke in the movie, but what was funniest, of course, was just hearing the improvisation & the performances themselves.

Some favorite parts:

• Mario Cantone's Liza Minelli impersonation, complete with that crazy wide-eyed look.


• Kevin Pollack's Christopher Walken impersonation.


• How everyone kept making fun of Gallagher.

[1] As of July 2005.

Je suis la mouche

My love for Serge Gainsbourg's 1971 masterpiece "Histoire de Melody Nelson" is immortalized forever in the default username and password for Movable Type ("Melody" and "Nelson," respectively). I can't state enough how amazing "Histoire" [1] is.

But of course, the only bad thing about "Histoire" is that there's only one such album. Gainsbourg's entire catalog is incredible, of course, but for that mix of psychedelic guitar, deep funky bass, and spooky choirs, there's nothing quite like "Histoire".

Or... maybe not!

Because just last weekend at Amoeba, I picked up the recently-reissued "L'Enfant Assasin Des Mouches" [2] by Jean-Claude Vannier, who arranged and produced "Histoire de Melody Nelson." And it's even more fucked-up and psychedelic than the Gainsbourg album! The story (written by Gainsbourg), basically, is about a child who tortures flies, & who then descends into a fly kingdom where he's tortured and eventually killed by the flies.

Of course, it doesn't have Serge's louche vocals or the lyrical narrative, but musically, it sounds like a mix of "Histoire" and Gainsbourg's 1970 score to the film "Cannabis," in which he also starred along with Jane Birkin (and which Vannier also had a hand in, incidentally). Lots of guitar, strings, and spooky choirs. Very much recommended!

[1] Which I'll call the album throughout the rest of this post, BTW, because it takes too long to write the entire album name, and it's too confusing if I were just to write "Melody Nelson", because there are a number of songs on the album named that or something like it.

[2] "The Child Fly-Killer"

"I'm married! I'm beautiful!": A Scientific Proof for Saturday Night

Observations:

1. Muriel's Wedding is a really depressing movie. Though, to be more specific, it has a lot of really depressing scenes, but in the end, it's actually moderately uplifting & hopeful.


2. As a general rule, any ABBA song can be both depressing and uplifting, but in a certain context, even Dancing Queen is depressing (this may be a corollary of #1, actually).


3. Contrast that to the Go Betweens' 16 Lovers Lane, which is an incredible, incredible album, but is actually depressing all the way through.


4. Hey, it's Saturday night!

Conclusion:

Saturday nights are good for sitting around, watching depressing movies, and listening to depressing music.

Q.E.D.

Breaking update: Counterpoint!

Watching Brain Candy is a much better way to spend Saturday night! "That's not a gift! You freakin' stoled it!" Best movie ever.

New conclusion:

Brain Candy is the Gleemonex for any Saturday night.

MINDFREAK!

I was watching Criss Angel: MindFreak the other night. And I guess this is an old episode—to my credit, I think, this is only the third time I'd watched the show—but I was watching the SUV Nail Bed episode.

In case you're not familiar with the premise: Criss and his crew constructed a nail bed with 8-inch spikes, spaced 3 inches apart. He then lay down on the nail bed, and an H2 Hummer drove over his fucking chest.

Anyway, it was a pretty ridiculous episode. But the show in general is kind of interesting, because he'll do these levitating things, and teleportation things, and it really freaks me out.

BTW, the only thing better than Criss Angel: Mindfreak? Websites debating the realness of his magic (or "magic," as the case may be)!

A sample quote: "your a sad little man wanna know why because criss angel is not a wannabe". I couldn't have said it better myself!

Time you put behind you

I know that I'm always writing about Scritti Politti, but I'd love everyone to realize the brilliance that is Green Gartside. Everyone needs a little Scritti Politti in their lives!

Take today, for example. I'm listening to Anomie & Bonhomie, which is one of the unlikeliest candidates for best album of the 90s EVAR. And it's making me so happy.

You wouldn't think that this—a fey popstar from Wales like Green Gartside, teaming up with Me'shell Ndegeocello, Mos Def, & others, in a rock/pop/hip-hop collaboration—could possibly work. But if there's one thing you can say consistently about Scritti Politti, it's that they've always surprised—and the surprise here, for me, is that this could have been a disaster (as most other rock/hip-hop collaborations inevitably have been), and it isn't. At all.

And so I've listened to Anomie & Bonhomie hundreds of times, and amazingly, it does work. In fact, it's in some sense Scritti's most consistently good album. It's also consistently cheap in used & clearance bins, so you should pick it up. And then pick up all of the other albums, too.

Rails developers kill kittens!

Let's get this out of the way up front: I actually really like Catalyst. And I also really like Rails [1].

But if you'd like to read something really funny, take a look at the history of the Catalyst vs Rails page on the Catalyst wiki.

Leaving aside the fact that this page—that is, the Catalyst vs Rails page—used to claim that Catalyst was more mature than Rails because its version number was, what, 8 times higher than that of Rails—leaving that aside—take a look at this amazing entry on the changelog of that page:

Removed comment about Java programmers dying to be full-time Ruby programmers.

Wow! Finally, a balanced critique of two different—and, presumably, not that highly competitive—development frameworks!

[1] Note, BTW, how much better Rails is at marketing than Catalyst (and I mean this as a compliment for Rails, though I'm sure some may take it as a compliment for Catalyst).

Rails: "Rails is a full-stack, open-source web framework in Ruby for writing real-world applications with joy and less code than most frameworks spend doing XML sit-ups."

And Catalyst: "Catalyst is an Elegant Web Framework, supporting the MVC pattern, as well as a number of experimental web patterns."

I know which one I'd pick if I weren't already a Perl developer. [2]

[2] That said, I have a lot of respect for the technical framework the Catalyst team has built, and I am a Perl developer, so there you go.

No more rock and roll for you!

Muni is slow, inefficient, inconvenient, etc, but I rode it to work today anyway. I've done this a couple of times over the last couple of months, and on the whole, I don't mind it too much, because I'm able to walk & listen to music.

But today, the Muni railcar took 25 minutes to arrive! And when it did, it was packed for the entire 20 minute trip. So that was a lot of standing & jostling.

It all turned out for the best, though, because my iPod Shuffle is a fucking genius! Look at the amazing playlist it picked out for me this morning:

1. Sufjan Stevens, Flint (For The Unemployed And Underpaid)


2. Orange Juice, Poor Old Soul (Part Two)


3. The The, Bluer Than Midnight


4. Crowded House, Weather With You


5. Television, Carried Away


6. Jean-Claude Vannier, Danse Des Mouches Noires Gardes du Roi


7. MC Solaar, La La la, La