= April 2006 = Main = June 2006 =
Wow - everyone's favorite laptop indie rock trio, Pants Pants Pants got a mention in the Chron this weekend. Plus, this Friday they open for "pseudo-pitchfork darling" Danielson at Bottom of the Hill. And to think, I played four square with those guys in Boonville.
Pictures from our trip to Birds Landing... now!
I just can't seem to break these week-long blogging silences. A shame, really, because my life is so rich and complex it's a crime to not maintain a running narration for the all the internet to read.
Anyhow, this weekend constisted of multiple BBQs at various East Bay locations. There's another one tomorrow, so I must be nearing some personal, post-college record for grilled meat intake. I saw X-Men 3 on Friday which was outstanding. As someone who's never really bought into supposed literary value of comic books, I haven't expect much from this movie franchise - just armies of mutants going apeshit and throwing bridges at each other. On that front, X-Men 3 delivers the goods. There's still no Gambit (imagine the Katrina refuge sideplot they could have developed!), and I was hoping to see more Sentinels - but I suppose giant robots aren't humanity's best bet when Magneto is in play. Next time, perhaps. You did stay till the end of the credits, didn't you?
So... I turned 26 yesterday, and Marie once again confirmed her Best-Girlfriend-Ever status with a suprise trip to Birds Landing Sporting Clays. Paul, Jon, Marie and myself spent the better part of Sunday morning shooting clay pidgeons with 12-guage shotguns. It was a whole lot of fun, and a great first-shooting experience for yours truly. I'll put up some pictures soon. The only drawback to the day was learning that Paul is a surprisingly good shot, and is not at all hesitant to mouth off about it. He bested us all, hitting 31 of 60 targets in our little mini-golf style competition. Jon, Marie and I were all roughly equal (within error), hitting 18, 19 and 20, respectively.
And as you can probably imagine, several jokes were made at the expense of our Vice President. I wanted to give him the benefit of the doubt, but it turns out to be surprisingly easy to not shoot your friends in the face.
Marie and I picked up a waterproof radio for our shower a while back. It's not the most advanced piece of technology in the world, but it picks up NPR and Live 105 reasonably well. One station that comes in crystal clear, oddly enough, is AM 1310, Radio Disney which I'm ashamed to admit gets a little more play time than it should, (I'll blame Marie for most of this).
Anyhow, the Top 30 countdown this morning finished up with some disposable teen act doing a hip-hoppish retelling of "The Three Little Pigs". It was absolutely bizarre - but if you didn't pay attention to the lyrics it was absolutely indistinguishable from almost every other hip-hop song I've heard on the radio for the past year or so. Maybe Nas is right afterall.
Tommy's right when he notes that "everybody says they're behind the curve on music". I myself have made such claims in the past, and for the most part they're true. But I've been thinking about my current place in the world, and I've realized that my behind-the-curvedness is - like all things - completely relative.
For years now I've gathered most of my new music intell from a handful of blogs penned by my young, urbanite friends. These are people who enjoy live music with some regularity and in a few cases actually play musical instruments, so if they claim to be a step behind that puts me at -2, at best.
The situation seems grim, but I must remind myself to keep things in context. These friends whose musical cues I follow exist in a very different world. Theirs is an urban hellscape of concrete and PBR bottles, forever watched by the Pitchforkocracy's unblinking eye. Keeping up with new bands is tireless work, but that's just what it takes to be cool as a twentysomething.
I, however, am an engineering graduate student. My peers and I have long since discarded all vestiges of coolness, and in this world I'm actually doing okay, musically speaking. Even here in hip-as-fuck San Francisco, we graduate students don't do a good job of keeping up with such things - I wouldn't be surprised if Jack Johnson was still considered "underground" by many of my classmates. So as long as I can stay two steps behind the actual scene, I'll remain one of the more with-it fish in this very small pond. I take heart in that fact - but oh man is it depressing when I catch a glimpse of one of my undergrads' winamp playlists and have no freaking clue what they're listening to.
Attention liberal blog-O-sphere: I am ready to be told for whom I should vote in the upcoming gubernatorial primary. Phil Angelides has the slickest TV commercials, but I don't have the energy to slog through the details myself.
So let's hear some arguments.
Marie and I have received quite a few wedding invitations over the past couple years, but Anant has set the bar pretty high by summoning us vis scroll:
If Seinfeld has taught me anything, it's safe to say that at least one member of the bridal party gave his or her life to bring us this invitation.
Our trip to the Boonville Beer Fest was by all accounts a success. A good amount of people made the trip, including plenty of first-years. So I suppose we can consider that torch, passed.
The highlight for me was being woken up at 5:30am by Matt, sheepishly asking, "Are you my friends?" to our cluster of tents. He spent the night elsewhere (ahem), and couldn't quite remember where we were.
Skimming the Express Blog this morning I was somewhat suprirsed to see a picture of Bob Peck Chevrolet. Apparently, the space is closing down after all these years, to be quickly replaced by a mixed-use twelve-story building. Bob Peck was a something of a neighborhood landmark, and being raised just a few blocks away it holds an important place in my childhood psyche. One of my first car-related memories was of the Nye family driving off their lot in a brand-new nineteen-eighty-something Chevy Nova.
More important to my childhood memoryscape, though, was the Putt-Putt golf course which used to live across the street from Bob Peck. It was one of the best in the area, with the windmill and the loop-the-loop and everything. It was also one of the first things to be destroyed from Before-It-Was-Cool Ballston, to make room for a giant hole which somehow facilitated the construction of a retirement high-rise in an adjoining lot. My fifth-grade mind couldn't fathom why the Putt-Putt had to be demolished when it did. I still don't, I suppose. But it marked an important turning point in my life. I grew up that day.
Later, my father would tell me -- and I'll always remember this -- "Jeff, someday you'll be driving by this interesection and you'll tell your kids that used to play mini golf right there, and do you know what they'll say? 'No way there could be a minature golf course on such a valuable piece of real estate!'" A wise man, my dad.
Mr. Jaeger sent me an email asking if records were kept of past Albums of Summer, or if that information had been lost to history. After a few hours sifting through the Nye Doctoral Vault (think Scrooge McDuck's money bin), and we have unearthed the answer. Prepare to dwell on my mispent youth.
Reminder: the Album of Summer is generally recognized as the most appropriate musical offering for such summer activities as sunny barbeques, windows-down driving and lawn beirut. It's usually released between March and July of that year, but it's hardly a dealbreaker.
1998 - Dave Matthews Band - Before These Crowded Steets
1999 - American Pie Soundtrack
2000 - Phish - Farmhouse
2001 - Pete Yorn - Musicforthemorningafter
2002 - Red Hot Chili Peppers - By The way
2003 - Linkin Park - Meteora
2004 - Franz Ferdinand - Self Titled
2005 - Beck - Guero
You may notice that the list presents some anthropological curiosities. I won't defend my teenage musical tastes, nor do I wish to revisit the controversy swirling around the 2001 selection. 2003's selection was made without supervision or consent of the normal governing bodies, (if Greeley and Jaeger had websites I would have hyperlinked them there), but I stand by it.
So what's on the docket for 2006? I think the smart money is on the Raconteurs, but as I mentioned before I'm wide open to suggestions.
Once again, I feel compelled to sing the praises of Nashville Star vis-a-vis Fox's somewhat more popular televised karaoke competition. Look at Cowboy Troy's belt buckle for crying out loud! Let's see that steaming turd Seacrest pull off something like that.
I get nervous about my first post after a long lapse of bloglessness. I feel like I need something to jump back in the game with something interesting to say. This, clearly, is not that post.
* Boonville is this Saturday, and with the weather being as it has we're all very excited.
* School's almost over, so morale is high around Berkeley, CA. It's got me interested in 2006's Album of Summer. I have absolutely zero ideas this year, so I'm wide open to suggestions. BBQ season is almost upon us.
* Speaking of music, will somebody please alert me to some new, horrible-but-enjoyable pop music? I can listen to Breakaway only so many times.
* I guess that's it.