In defense of the Indiana Pacers

Professional sports are a curious enterprise. People expending a lot of energy, emotion, and oftentimes money pulling for grown men, most of which are millionaires, to score points based for the most part on where they happened to grow up is kind of a silly idea when viewed from the outside in. But, I don't care- sports are interesting, entertaining, and fun to invest in emotionally. Yes, even professional sports. There's something to be said for seeing athletic competition at its highest level, and if it's fun to participate in as a spectator too then I'm all for it.

Growing up in central Indiana I've had some interesting experiences following the pro teams nearby, at least once I got past the 'front running little kid' phase of my sports fan experience. I don't really care much about major league baseball other than I generally wish the Cubs and the Reds well. The Colts are king around here right now, and I am enjoying it immensely. The NFL is a great league and having one of the elite teams is a great thing for a football fan especially now that they finally got over the hump, and I can't wait for our season ticket spots to open up next year.

One thing I do have to cop to, which is true really mostly everywhere, is that I share a spot in the fan base with an extreme amount of bandwagoners. Of course, this holds true for almost any good team, but it seems like our ratio is much worse than other places like Green Bay, Cleveland, etc. The last Colts game I went to the fans started doing the wave when the offense was on the field. I get absolutely infuriated by our fans way too often.

Which brings me to the Pacers. I remember feeling the electricity around the state when those mid 90s playoff series were heating up. Reggie. Spike Lee. John Starks. The Dunkin' Dutchman. Boom Baby. Indiana is 'the home of basketball' and no place rocked quite like Market Square Arena during the eastern conference finals. An elite team that always fell just short (sound familiar?) but that always had the support of a great fanbase. Getting edged out in game 7 of the 98 eastern finals in Jordan's last Bulls year was a heartbreaker. But the team made the right moves and persevered until finally it looked poised for a championship run in the 2004-5 season.

Pretty much everybody knows what happened next.

What people don't seem to remember is the stretch after the brawl how large crowds continued to show up while probably the least talented group of players in the league fought (not literally) through every game and still made the playoffs. But the damage was done. The brawl and the subsequent flip out of Artest put a stigma on the Pacers that sticks to this day and will continue for years. After the brawl was a few months old but still a major sports topic the word 'thug' started to pepper more and more conversations involving the Pacers. Reggie Miller retired. Jermaine O'Neal battled injuries. Jamaal Tinsley got a huge contract but struggled under Rick Carlisle. Stephen Jackson fired his gun in the air outside a strip club. Tinsley and Marquis Daniels got into an argument at a bar. The Colts continued to prosper, Conseco Fieldhouse attendance dropped.

Enter 2007- the Pacers are a PR disaster, but they have a new coach who may be just the guy for the roster they have, and the guy with the system to really unleash the talent on the squad, and nearly every game is on tv. Ron Artest is long gone. Stephen Jackson is gone. Jamaal Tinsley is still here, and the fans are not happy about it. But, quietly the Pacers are quietly adjusting to the new system and Tinsley is the centerpiece of the team, playing up to his contract finally. Jermaine O'Neal's purported unhappiness starts to disappear after he rests his knee for some games, and the momentum is building behind the positive play of the team, putting them maybe in position to win some fans back.

And then Tinsley, now a big leader on the team, decides to step out in the middle of a few days off to the wrong part of town. Goes with his brothers, a couple friends, and a pacers employee and Larry Bird's friend (you think he's not there to keep an eye on things?) to an R. Kelly Concert, watches the Mayweather - Hatton fight, and then makes the decision after midnight to head to a west 38th street club where the after party for the concert is being held. When word hits the Tinsley group that a fight broke out earlier, they leave immediately, but when they get back to their cars, some real thugs are waiting, and they want to party with the rich guys. When told they're just heading home, said thugs are reported to have said 'We're going to party with you whether you like it or not.' Words exchanged, high speed chase downtown, Larry Bird's friend shot in the elbow. Everyone lucky to be alive.

In the aftermath, the fan base reaction has been mostly on the level of another club rio incident, when really the only thing Tinsley is guilty of is being out too late and at the wrong club. He and his group made every effort to avoid trouble, and yet is fired on by an assault rifle, but he's 'in trouble again' and the fans around town who haven't seen the turnaround this season and have their mind made up on the guy want him gone. Oh, and trade Jermaine while you're at it! At the very least you probably won't see any Pacers go anywhere remotely sketchy again soon, at least I hope not. For somebody who's been won over by the team's great effort and play on the floor, this is the most frustrating thing that can happen because it'll keep people from tuning in to watch the turnaround. And Jamaal Tinsley did nothing illegal.

I guess all I can do is keep watching the games, and telling people how things are different this year. And watch as Jermaine O'Neal returns to form and looks like a happy player on the floor again now that he doesn't have to carry the whole team on his back. Even Mike Dunleavy is putting up career numbers and looking like a solid player and I hated the guy last season. I guess Donnie Walsh was right to make the trade he did, the ingredients just needed a different chef. And did I mention the games are much more fun to watch now? Give it a shot former Pacer fan, tune into FSN, and read Indy Cornrows. Tonight you would've seen Troy Murphy get half punched in the face and also ejected, and watched the Pacers come from 16 down to winning convincingly. It's hard not to be entertained by that.

Review: The Golden Compass

Last night I got the opportunity to take in a preview screening of The Golden Compass. Since I'm a nerdy enough guy I don't mind a good fantasy movie here and there. Initially I was lukewarm on the movie (may have had something to do with having to sit in the front row).

After a day to think about it I've come around quite a bit on this movie. My major gripe with it is the pacing was way too fast, and a lot of major plot points and settings were packed in together, but it's very difficult to introduce and frame an entire fantasy world in less than 2 hours. I think it would have been better off with an additional 30 minutes to let things breathe a bit.

Part of the problem is that Peter Jackson set the bar too high with the Lord of the Rings movies, but The Golden Compass seems to stand on its own pretty well. The special effects and art direction are unique enough from typical fantasy, leaving the theater we had a discussion about how the aesthetic is reminiscent of the game Final Fantasy III on Super Nintendo if you remember that sort of thing. The Industrial Revolution type fantastical technology meets magic and monsters sort of vibe is a nice change of pace.

Overall I did enjoy this movie and taking a step back from the ending and realizing that there definitely are going to be a couple more movies it works pretty well. They really were heavy handed about wrapping it up there, and there is a pretty neat battle towards the end, despite the couple of GIANT AWESOME BEAR OUT OF EFFING NOWHERE moments. Can't help but smile at those though.

Casting was great, the girl who plays Lyra was good for the role, Nicole Kidman is great as the creepy Mrs. Coulter, Ian McKellen was a good choice for the voice of Ioric the bear, and we'll see how Daniel Craig does more in the next couple of movies I'm guessing. Even though she's not as ridiculously attractive as she was opposite the aforementioned Craig in the last Bond movie, I liked Eva Green as the prominent witch character. Last but certainly not least, I think Sam Elliot plays pretty much the same role in every movie, but I love it every time he's on screen, and his 'daemon' was perfect.

Overall, I'll give the movie 3.75 out of 5 fountain cokes, to Fellowship of the Ring's 5 out of 5. Definitely worth seeing if you're able to enjoy fantasy kinds of movies. I still haven't seen Chronicles of Narnia, I probably should get on that.

SCANDAL RELATED Postscript: After seeing the movie and then reading about the 'Controversy' surrounding it, it all seemed pretty silly to me. I haven't read the series of books that this movie started the adaptations to. Evidently they're known for their themes against 'organized religion,' but in the movie they're really toned down. If anything it's more anti-authority than anti-religion, on a level similar to the Star Wars trilogy (IV-VI anyway). The "Magisterium" in the books is supposed to evoke a church similar to the old church of rome that has strayed from its roots and now seeks to control everyone rather than enlighten them. Kinda Paradise Lost-lite themes of free will in there, but really I don't see what the fuss is about other than they use the word heresy a few times.

Last I checked Christianity did go similarly astray from its roots there in the middle ages, even I received the smoothed over version of those events in Catholic school. There were reasons for the clash between the Franciscan and Benedictine schools of thought, and reasons that Martin Luther went redecorating, and reasons there was a counter-reformation that got things started back on the right track. Obviously things never got even close to as bad as they do with "The Magisterium." But if you're really getting that upset over the comparison then I'm not sure what to tell you, read a history book. But this sort of stuff is really harmless and in no way attacks anybody's faith. Most dystopias are pretty outrageous but still plausible intentionally so as to remind people not to let things even get half as out of hand.

Passion of the Craig

Last weekend I was involved in one of those late night philosophical conversations that pop up occasionally, this one involved the subject of having a passion in life and what exactly that means. As a result of this conversation I realized that I don't really have a capital P level 'Passion' as most people define it, and I also realized I'm perfectly fine with that.

Part of the discussion revolved around how my friend and bandmate's one driving focus is music- it's all he wants to do with his life and monopolizes most of what he's thinking about, and my drive in no single area is anywhere near as strong as that. There was some discussion of 'passion envy,' and while I do admire that sort of singular drive, and recognize that it's responsible for the great art that I love so very much, I don't necessarily wish I had it.

I love to play music, and I'd like to get much better at both playing and writing and learning new instruments, but barring a life crisis or some huge shift of luck it will probably remain a hobby I spend an unusual amount of time and money on. In a way, I'm patterned after Sponge from Salute Your Shorts. I love to read and absorb as much information as possible on every possible subject- music, current events, politics, science, technology, literature, stupid trivia, everything. Like Depeche Mode, I just can't get enough.

If anything I don't have a 'Passion' because my passion is spread too thin across too many pursuits, but I like it that way. I love to write even though most of my writing is on this blog that probably gets just a few readers. I love to try and get back into shape even though the past couple years have shown that I'm not very successful at it. I will keep slogging my increasingly bad knees to the gym at irregular intervals. I do have the ability to focus intently on a pursuit, but I'm not as astute at honing that focus on more than one thing at a time. But, I think part of that reason is that my brain is always seeking that next new thing to whet its appetite, and I think for me that'll do just fine. I'm happy enough being a jack of all trades, close to a master of a few.

The other, intertwined subject of this conversation was how we as individuals are going to be remembered. Without a driving passion to create something truly great, how am I going to leave a legacy? I think every philosophy has something to lend to the idea of leaving something behind for those still on this mortal coil after someone is shuffled off of it, and I put a lot of credence in the idea of making a mark and being remembered. However, my thinking on this in the past few years seems to be influenced by two quotes, the first of which is from a speech by Carl Sagan in regards to the picture at the top of this post:

We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That's here. That's home. That's us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam.

The second quote is one that one of my oldest friends likes to use that is actually old Honest Abe quoting an ancient eastern society, although Wikipedia says the origin is attributed in a few different places:

It is said an eastern monarch once charged his wise men to invent a sentence, to be ever in view, and which should be true and appropriate in all times and situations. They presented him with the words, 'And this, too, shall pass away.' How much it expresses! How chastening in the hour of pride! How consoling in the depths of affliction!

Both of these statements have shaped my personal belief that eventually the greatest accomplishments in this lifetime will be swept away, but if anything that drives me to try and accumulate the knowledge and create whatever creative works I can and share them with people I care about while I've got my shot.

I know many people will draw many different conclusions from that sort of an idea and I'm also aware it's nothing revolutionary in a theological or philosophical sense, but it gives me a bit of direction. I am extraordinarily thankful for the creative geniuses, a couple of whom I've written about in previous entries, who often destroy themselves under the weight of their own passion for their art or their science- without them there would be much less love to spread around.

In the end I realized my goal is to end up as a less literal, somewhat higher-brow version of Earl Hickey. I've got a quite a ways to go, but I suppose that can be my 'Passion.' Given how things have been going recently for me, I need to be a bit more proactive, but personally I think it's good to take stock of that personal philosophy occasionally and get re-centered.

this counts as calling three years out

One of my favorite little things about music is certain songs or albums seem intertwined with certain events or time periods in the past. I tend to listen to music in full album form rather than individual songs so for me this makes certain albums seem much better than they are, and other really great albums get tainted (although a couple albums I really liked have risen above this).

For the most part when this happens, various albums just evoke certain memories without affecting my thoughts on the music. Every time I hear any track off of Led Zeppelin IV I get a very vivid mental image of riding a school bus to a cross country meet. Maybe the fact that this record singlehandedly spurred my 'good music' awakening implanted that experience into my brain.

The White Stripes' Elephant and Queens of the Stone Age's Rated R transplant me into the mostly empty apartment Justin and I lived in off campus over the summer at Purdue. Blind Melon's first record and the first Hootie cd take me to the balcony of that same apartment earlier in the year sitting and bullshitting with Cole and Justin Karr, but there doesn't seem to be a real pattern into what ties a specific piece of music in with any specific memory or timeframe.

Oddly enough, my favorite instance of this involves an album that I listened to incessantly during one of the most emotional and depressing times of my life. I was mostly lonely with most of my friends having moved away, and smack in the middle of a transition phase of my life- deciding where I was going post college and consumed with job interviews and final projects. I was in the process of dealing with a genuine heartbreak and in complete denial that I was suffering from any such thing, and maybe that's what helped The Wrens' The Meadowlands become the album that evokes the fall of 2005 more vividly than most other musical memories.

The Meadowlands is a slightly noisy indie rock record made up mainly of retrospectives on many topics, but like most of the very best and worst music, relationships are the main subject. I listened to the first two tracks of this album on my shower cd player nearly every day for a couple of months, and given the subject matter puts me in probably one of my all time great emo states of mind. She Sends Kisses is a track that could probably compete to be in my top five favorite songs. The Boy is Exhausted and Faster Gun are great upbeat tracks, and Ex-Girl Collection and Everyone Chooses Sides have titles that can tell you exactly what they're about- but the lyrics are brilliant.

13 months in 6 minutes is also pretty self explanatory, but it tells a completely non unique story that is so vivid it brings to mind every relationship that started hot and flared out, or even had the possibility to do so. The last track is short, but sends such a piercing and emotional yelling note up your spine it's one of my favorite 5 seconds in rock music, and definitely among the most bitter and sad.

The Meadowlands may have been written in the garden state and about a collection of experiences that occurred there, but every time I hear it I'm sitting in a threadbare apartment on Yeager Road feeling sorry for myself- and I always keep listening.

What it means to rock -OR- Reflections on guitar hero

Someone at Harmonix is/was a goddamn genius. It was Newton who said "If I have seen farther it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants," but whoever came up with the idea of Guitar Hero by standing on the shoulders of Dance Dance Revolution deserves the highest entrepreneurial accolades possible.

Rhythm games themselves are not new, and Dance Dance Revolution (henceforth referred to as DDR) was the most popular. I remember when I was living in the dorms at Purdue seeing random people in the floor lounges and at the arcade in the union / in the bowling alley wildly convulsing over floor sensors, and having an absolutely fantastic time doing it. However, in order to participate in DDR, you either have to be unaware of how silly you look, or just not care (the recommended choice).

All great ideas seem so simple after they're implemented- basically Guitar hero is the fusion of the fun gameplay of DDR, combined with the common fantasy of being a rock and roll star by way of the mechanics of playing the air guitar, and it is a great time. It still takes a pretty large amount of self confidence to not feel silly playing it while other people are around, but nobody can say it's not a good time.

Every year a staggering number of people take up playing the guitar. Why? Because playing the guitar is effing awesome. It rocks. I loved music when I picked up the guitar at 14, and I love listening to and playing music even more now, but honestly one of the big motivating factors for sitting and shredding my fingers and absolutely sucking for years was to play guitar, rock out, and be cool. Now I play guitar because I love to make music, but it is a nice side benefit to look sort of cool in the process- but this video game taps into that base dream and makes it easily accessible to everyone.

With guitar hero, you don't have to shred your fingers and practice for hours a night for years to be able to rock out. Just plug in the guitar controller, set it on easy and play until you're capable of e-shredding on expert, it's an instant rock star fantasy camp, and it's even more fun when you're among a group of people who can enjoy it too. It's so simple, and they have got to be printing money with the concept even though the game and the controllers cost so much. The original guitar hero developers seem to be releasing a game soon that will incorporate singing and drums along with the dual guitars, so you and your friends can form your own little plastic rock band.

Originally I basically scorned this game because it allows people to tap into an experience that I spent a lot of time and work to get. I may not be the most talented guitarist in the world, but I worked pretty hard to get decent, so why should anyone else get to feel like a fancy pants guitaring person without building up the callouses first? Of course, this is a completely silly reaction as the two activities are wildly different, but it didn't help that I completely and totally sucked at the game the first time I tried it (hint: pretty much everyone does no matter their skill level, although I would like to have somebody like Clapton try it just to see).

In the end, when enjoying the game for what it is, an incredibly fun virtual fantasy camp style experience, there's nothing quite like it. Playing with a group of people who enjoy it makes it an even better experience. *BLATANT PLUG: In fact, if you live in Indianapolis come play with us at halftime of Monday Night Football games, details at IndyMojo.com.

However, even with my small time band that plays covers most of the time because it's the easiest way to get people to listen to our originals (and also because it's fun to play songs that you like from bands people know), the feeling of playing to a crowd of people who are enjoying the music and responding to what's going on up on stage is a million times more of a rush than hitting the star power or getting achievements. That's why guitar hero is insanely fun, but it absolutely, positively does not rock.

I wish I could save her in some sort of time machine

Jeff Mangum is one of the most bizarre individuals this world has ever seen, and while there are many truly great songwriters out there who have made and continue to make great music, something clicked between him and his band Neutral Milk Hotel sometime in 1997-98 that produced what I think is the greatest single musical album ever made.

Sometime around 2003ish, I was in the car with my friend Jeff and he told me I had to hear this cd- that the guy had the best voice he had ever heard and the album was incredible. Having gotten the benefit of some good musical advice from the guy in the past I was listening with an open mind, and upon first listen it seemed to be just some guy who definitely did not have that great a voice singing over an acoustic guitar and some random mess of a horn section. Frankly, I thought it sucked, and so In The Aeroplane Over The Sea got mentally shelved in the 'too out there for me' musical category.

About a year or so later, I had joined an online music community full of people who take their music very seriously, and when people posted their favorite albums, Aeroplane was near the top of a lot of people's lists. Somewhat surprised by this, I put the headphones on and decided to give it another shot, and this time something really clicked.

Jeff's relatively simplistic, sometimes layered acoustic guitar playing is the base of almost every song on the album, but his hauntingly beautiful lyrics and imagery are what really drive every song, backed up by the eerie sounds of his band which seems almost like some deranged 5 piece marching band. Jeff by himself does not have that great a voice, and it definitely takes some getting used to, but he sings with so much emotion if you're really listening it's hard not to feel some of that emotion vicariously.

Obviously the guy is a little out there, as someone who claims to have vivid and meaningful visions frequently, and who claimed that the closet he slept in for a year at the Pet Sounds studio was haunted, but I'm almost inclined to believe him as a result of his ability to translate the bizarre contents of his brain so well into song. Either way the (even minor) spotlight was not his thing, as since this album he has all but disappeared completely from making music other than a collection of Bulgarian folk music a few years back.

If the record itself has a theme at all, it seems to be mostly obsessed with the idea of the spirit of Anne Frank, and that sort of innocence, love, and hope in the face of incredible tragedy and horror. All of the songs seem to be inspired by bizarre visions, and from the shorter simple songs like the opening track The King of Carrot Flowers Pt. 1 to the 8 minute epic Oh, Comely Mangum seems to be speaking some other language in plain english, but somehow I understand some of it and fill in the blanks myself. Sigur Ros produces a similar effect, mainly because they actually are speaking another language (and on one album a language they just made up). But, nothing quite measures up to this 40 minutes for me, or even comes that close.

Every time I try to describe this record to people I usually just get edgewise stares, so I think even if I win no one over, at least maybe I can get some people to listen to a song I think is the most accessible, and possibly one of the best songs ever written. It also happens to share the title of the album- if you can't find it to listen to it, I'll find a way to play it for you.

Ok fine, but keep those stupid white headphones away from me

I feel dirty. Not necessarily the ironically dirty feeling I respond with whenever the internet asks me what my mood is, but the kind of feeling you get when you finally give in to a phenomenon you somewhat despise.

I bought an iPod.

Yes, I now own a pair of the iconic white headphones, and they quickly found a place in my trash can. One vestige of my technology snobbery I won't be letting go along with my taste in mp3 players is my taste in better headphones. However, I do have to admit that I am begrudgingly beginning to accept and own up to the fact that this device is just about perfect for what I intend to use it for.

For a few years I've owned an iRiver H320 'multi codec jukebox' and it has been adequate for my mp3 player needs, in that I haven't really needed one. It stored 20 gigabytes worth of music, had a color screen, and half-passable navigation. However, the battery on it has recently become less than reliable, and I realized recently that it is literally 3 times thicker than a new hard drive based iPod.

Also, I recently purchased a new car. It didn't come loaded to the brim with options, but it did come with a decent stereo, and I didn't pay more for the super fancy stereo because the base one comes with an auxiliary input jack right there on the front. Hooray! Welcome to choose my own musical entertainment device shopping.

As I did the research and various web buzz started swirling around, I realized two key points-
1) pretty much everybody besides apple has given up on producing a high capacity hard drive based music player
2) probably because there really aren't too many people who require more than a few gigabytes of storage space for their music.

Not me- if I'm driving more than 10 minutes, I want to have every album I own on hand to pick from. This mp3 player will be automobile based only, and not really used for video watching outside of a random few occurrences. Therefore, the new iPod Classic was pretty much the only choice, and with 80 gigs of storage for 250 bucks, I decided to give it a shot.

For my purposes using it in the car is great, scrolling is fast and easy- worlds better than the 4 directional navigation on my iRiver, and the audible clicking you get when using the scroll wheel is helpful, sound quality is more than good enough just out of the headphone jack into the aux input, so long as you don't crank the volume all the way up. Once I get to cleaning up all my tags on my music files, it should be a snap to pick whatever album suits my fancy.

I may not like you Steve Jobs, but damn it I respect your product.

4.5 out of 5 fountain cokes

this cat is a landmine

I'm not really sure what "Post-Rock" means as a musical genre. According to Wikipedia as of tonight, it's:

a music genre characterized by the use of musical instruments commonly associated with rock music (typically a line-up of two electric guitars, an electric bass guitar and a drum set), but utilizing rhythms, harmonies, melodies and chord progressions that are unorthodox in rock and roll.

65daysofstatic evidently fits into this genre, but labels like this always seem a little silly. Really, compared with other Post-Rock bands I've listened to they seem to be almost a part of their own genre. I've also heard them described as "Math Rock" which is even more bizarre, and seems to be a clever term for "uses atypical musical time signatures."

When I first happened upon this band almost completely by accident, I was thrown off by the first noisy track of their first album The Fall of Math, but I left it playing based on really strong word of mouth from my favorite music forum, and from the second track on I was completely hooked.

I don't listen to a whole lot of instrumental stuff, and before Kid A I really never listened to anything that was driven significantly by electronic music other than the occasional Prodigy song and the token soundtrack to The Matrix, both mostly when I was in high school. It may be because they're conveniently located alphabetically speaking on my playlist, or because it's great music to put on and get a lot of work done, but I listen to a significant amount of this band and get a surprising emotional pull out of it for instrumental music.

The off beat electronic drums have diminished slightly since their first album, but they're still there and used to fantastic effect along with a lot of spooky / awesome atmospheric sounds. I've just now gotten around to listening to their new album that was released this year and it's a fitting addition to the collection.

Despite the great music, probably my favorite thing about this band is the collection of wonderfully bizarre song titles that show up on their albums, like the one I used for the title of this blog, or "I swallowed hard, like I understood" (check it out on the linked myspace page), "drove through ghosts to get here", and "the conspiracy of seeds".

This is a lot of words basically saying "Hey, check this band out!" I'll even help, here's an unofficial video for "radio protector" off their second album:

Melonhead

Blind Melon has a new singer and is releasing a new album and I'm not really sure how to feel about it.

The lead singer of my favorite band died when I was 13, well before I was aware of them in any capacity beyond the band with the catchy bee girl video, which is probably how most people continue to remember them now. It wasn't until I got to college that I rediscovered the band and really listened to the first album and got completely hooked, and then discovered their other two albums, with Soup probably making my top 5 favorite albums of all time.

I can only imagine how good Nico could have been had Shannon not pushed his drug use too far, but then again his apparent excess in just about all areas of his life may have been what drove his songwriting and lyrics. The other musicians in the band are very talented guys, and a lot of what attracted me to the music was the guitar work inspired by a lot of classic rock bands that I was very into at the time- but it was also very unique, and a pretty stark contrast to the grunge and then 'alternative' sound popular at the time their albums were being released. But, having tried to find music from the other band members after the breakup, it was always missing the element that Shannon brought.

Now, the band has gotten back together with the addition of Travis Warren, a guy with a similar vocal vibe to Shannon, and the guy is pretty good, from sampling tunes they've been posting on their myspace page, I get a vibe very similar to the first album, which is good, but living up to the second two is a really tall order.

I'm not sure whether they decided to revive the name for easier promotion, or because the music has the same vibe or what, but I feel like it's even more egregious than say, Alice in Chains reuniting without Layne Staley. If they can put out an album that is on par with the old releases then I'll be happy to accept it. In the meantime the purist in me is feeling a little uneasy.

Feed me!

Over the past 10 years or so, my day to day life has been almost completely changed by the presence and evolution of the internet. I feel guilty for not reading as much as I used to, but really I read so much more- it's just spread out over countless topics and discussions and articles on the internet. It's a testament to the quality of Newsweek that I continue to subscribe to it despite being able to get almost all the news related and hell, anything related information I need from a computer.

Now, of course it's obvious my web habits have changed over the past 10 or so years, everyone's have I would imagine. Email, instant messaging, discussion forums, and now social networking have all shaped and changed the content I view on the internet. Now over the past 6 months or so and escalating recently I've finally jumped on the bandwagon of feed syndication (through RSS, and Atom, although the specific protocol isn't really the main idea here). While this hasn't changed the way I use the internet in the same way things on that previous list did, it has streamlined the way I absorb content remarkably. I'm already having trouble imagining using the internet without my feed reader.

Any time I find an interesting or funny article on a site or a blog, I immediately look for the feed to add. If they post infrequently, I don't have to remember to keep checking back. If it was one gem in a sea of crap, then I just remove the feed.

While the main use for this is syndication of articles, it's great for other things like web comics I enjoy, and keeping up to date on craigslist listings (I keep track of the musical instruments) and almost any other items of interest you can think of. I even have a feed that syndicated content on the frontpage of digg.com so I can browse over it and not miss interesting stuff that hits the front page, but the feed just gives me the link itself so I don't have to mess with all the mob mentality and general idiocy that goes on with sites like Digg.

Between social bookmarking sites, discussion forums, social networks, and my subscribed feeds, surfing the web is virtually dead for me. I don't have to go surfing, the ocean of the internet is pumped through a pipe right to me, and through those other social gathering places I can continually find new and interesting things to discuss, laugh at or just read and think about. My only concern is that eventually I'll build up too many feeds and not have time to blow through them all. As long as I still take time to focus on singular things like individual books and et cetera I don't think it's too big of a problem.

For those of you who havent heard of or looked into using feeds, or have and are just lazy like I was, I recommend using an online feed reader. Personally I use google reader (http://www.google.com/reader/) but I'm sure there are plenty of other options out there. There are also some great local readers, but I like having all my feed subscriptions available from wherever I am if I choose.

Also, the personalized google homepage (http://google.com/ig) allows you to add whatever feeds you want and arrange them how you like along with all sorts of other widgets for checking email, keeping track of notes, etc. I love it.

It'll be interesting to see what the next great phenomenon is that comes along and changes the way we use the internet, but I'm certainly happy to have the current experience streamlined a bit more in the meantime.

I've got issues

Political issues that is! This post began its life as a comment posted over at Jim Brown's Myspace blog, but as I started typing I got a little carried away (this can sometimes happen with me and politics) and it transformed into a big long post. But hey, more material for my shiny new blog.

What issues are important to me in the 2008 presidential election and who do I support? Currently I support and have donated money to Barack Obama's campaign- and a group from the political discussion forum I frequent recently hitting our fundraising goal of $10,000. Now, only $50 of that was my contribution, but it's still fun to be a part of that. Obama is not perfect however- he's doing a good job of talking the talk, but walking the walk is going to be a long, hard road.

As a side note, I personally believe that if you want things to change that directly affect you, getting educated about local politics is the best way to do so, because while the president and congress get all the attention, the politics that really affect the average American go on right in your figurative backyard.

Without further ado, the issues that matter to me in the upcoming election would be mostly the opposite of the Bush administration's views- not just to be contrarian, they really do just fall on the other side of my views almost every single time, except for the philosophy of giving out tax breaks. They just happen to be distributing them in a way I don't like.

It is important to me first of all to right the ship on our foreign policy, which has been a disaster, and end the politics of fear. Terrorism is a part of our world, and will continue to be that way for a long time- we cannot reduce our vigilance, but no 'war on terror' is going to address the root causes. I want a presidential administration that will do everything to keep us safe, but also set an example of not pandering to fear of terrorism to score political points. A president and administration that leads the country with confidence, not arrogance. One who can work within the boundaries of the law and civil rights, and restore Habeas Corpus.

Of course, there's Iraq. We're in kind of a lose/lose situation here and it's the guys on the ground and their families that are suffering right now. We need to start formulating a plan to get most American troops the hell out of there, but have forces nearby to assist in what the US Military is actually good at- striking quickly and with overwhelming force, rather than counterinsurgency. We cannot allow Iraq to become a new home base for terrorists (oh by the way the way Afghanistan is going we're going to have to make that a priority there too). We need to have a plan in place for the huge refugee crisis that will result, but things are not going to magically get better. However, even if President Bush woke up tomorrow and had a change of heart and signed the order to withdraw, it's still a long battle to be fought just to get all the troops out, not to mention the millions of tons of equipment that we can't leave behind for insurgents and extremists to get their hands on. No matter what course of action we take as a country, it's a long, long road ahead.

Health care is another huge issue. Normally I'm for fiscal conservatism in the government, but the health care system in this country is approaching a crisis. Costs are skyrocketing every year with no end in sight, and no manner of band aid is going to stop it. We need a comprehensive solution involving a single payer system of health care to provide base (and especially preventative) care along with private insurers providing supplemental coverage. The costs reduced by a single payer basic system of healthcare would be enormous, so long as they can keep the bureaucracy in check, which is always one of the great challenges of large government programs. However, the longer we wait the bigger and more expensive this problem is going to become.

On immigration I'm relatively ambivalent. Any large group of immigrants legal or not has faced a period of xenophobia and a backlash, and this wave will be no different- within a couple of generations they'll assimilate and blend in and it'll never be an issue again (until a new group of immigrants starts to flood in from somewhere else), that's the great thing about America. Some effort does need to be made to at least come to a stopgap solution, however. These people add a lot of value to the economy and it would be hurt tremendously if the flow of migrant workers was suddenly halted. They are here illegally yes, but there needs to be some method maybe not of amnesty, but of at least opening a path to citizenship for people who just want to come here and work minimum wage and send that money back home, just like many other groups who came here before that a large amount of people in America are descended from. We do need to secure the border, but we need immigrant workers too more than most people realize.

On energy policy, we need to form both a pragmatic and hopeful solution. Oil is the biggest concern, as it is the cheapest way we have to easily have portable energy, and there isn't a real replacement for that. We're going to need to devote a lot of resources in this country and around the world to solving that problem, but given how infrastructure in America is built on the foundation of cheap oil, we're the ones who need to take the lead, and fast. People also need to get over their fear of nuclear energy- it is by far the best option we have in the near term until solar, wind, and other new sources of power can be made effective, and we just don't have the technology yet. Nuclear is here now, produces ridiculous amounts of energy, and modern nuclear power ironically releases less radiation into the environment than coal. Waste disposal is still a problem, but a much smaller one than not moving back towards modern nuclear energy soon. The Japanese and the French are absolutely killing us on this front- and if hypothetically some new battery technology is invented that allows for electric cars on the level of internal combustion ones today, where are we going to get the additional energy from? We have enough coal here in the US to last us a long, long time, but increasing usage is a bad idea, and not just because of pollution and climate change, which is an important issue to get on top of, but I'm not even going to bother getting into here.

My pie in the sky issue is ending the war on drugs, one of the most wasteful programs in government. We waste so much money as a country investigating, prosecuting, and incarcerating minor non-violent drug offenders in this country it's offensive. I'm not much for drugs myself, because I know (and have seen) the destructive power they can have over people. But, no matter what you do, people are going to find a way to self medicate. You might as well de-criminalize it, regulate it heavily, and tax the hell out of it. Use a chunk of that tax revenue to fund programs to help people suffering from addiction. Prosecute violent offenders that are drug related just like you would other violent offenders that had nothing to do with drugs. Save billions of dollars, and cut out a huge reason for a black market and drug trade and all the violence that results from it to exist. Also, watch the Wire for a good dramatic representation of reasons that specifically is a good idea. That, and it's the best show on tv by far.

There are many other issues I care about, but those are the big ones. In summary, no candidate is perfect, but the one most palatable to me is Barack and Roll Obama. Whoever is nominated, I hope it's someone who will right the ship on foreign policy, roll back the authoritarianism, find a decent solution for health care, and generally be someone I can stand behind (Hillary does not fit into this category, even though I don't find her too offensive policy wise, and I just plain don't like John Edwards, he seems like too much of a pandering ass and not very genuine, but I would hold my nose and vote for him as well unless a Republican candidate surfaced more in line with my views, but right now this seems very unlikely). The rest would be a nice bonus, like reducing size of government and knocking off the nanny state crap. I plan on being wildly disappointed, but hey- I'm a political cynic.

All Time Top Five Vol. 1

Inspired by the one and only Todd:

One thing High Fidelity is good for besides creating a window into the relationship mind of the modern male is inspire dorks like myself to rattle off top five lists the way Rob and his record store employees do. While this isn't exactly the most original idea for a post ever, responding with my own list was a good motivator for getting this blog started, and gives me an excuse to write about things I feel strongly in favor of. Also, in case anyone is wondering (hint: nobody is) yes I know it was a book, but I saw the movie first.

Top Five Side One, Track Ones

5. Privilege - Incubus - Make Yourself:

One of the best ways to start off a rock album is with a catchy hook that still rocks pretty hard. this song fits that bill like few others and kicks off a pretty surprisingly good rock album despite being from and slightly contributing to the rap-rock era. I wonder what their DJ does all the time now.

4. The Best Ever Death Metal Band Out of Denton - The Mountain Goats - All Hail West Texas

There's nothing quite like a song about a teenage two piece death metal band recorded in low fi and performed on an acoustic guitar. Great songwriting and the almost monotone but very emotive singing of John Darnielle make this probably the best song on the album.

3. Welcome to the Jungle - Guns & Roses - Appetite for Destruction

Not really the best song on this record, but a great way to start off probably the strongest debut album of any rock band ever, and to let loose a war cry that basically told all the hair metal guys to grab their mascara and get the hell out of the way, G&F'nR are coming to blow you off the stage. Also works as a great way to imagine what it must have been like moving from West Lafayette, Indiana to LA in the 80s.

2. Whole Lotta Love - Led Zeppelin - Led Zeppelin II

From Robert Plant's laugh at the start of the track, to the opening riff, to the thumping bass that quickly follows, to the crazy aural simulated sex, to the jackhammering drum fills, to the blistering solo, this opening track stands out to me as the best of all their record openers, and they have a LOT of good ones (Immigrant Song, Black Dog, Good Times Bad Times, etc). This song is just dripping with overpowering sexuality and energy. There's a reason why a huge number of 15 year oldish males think Zep is the best music ever created.

1. Everything in its right place - Radiohead - Kid A

This song is like being wrapped in an aural cocoon. Radiohead managed to not only continue to bring in electronic instruments and influences into their rock sound, they went full steam ahead, and the result makes for one hell of an opening track, along with the rest of the album. I hated Kid A at first, but with all due admiration for OK Computer, it's now my favorite Radiohead album. This development seems to coincide with me buying a really good pair of headphones, and a chapter out of Chuck Klosterman's Killing Yourself to Live wherein he makes a very convincing argument that the album is accidentally about September 11th despite being released in 2000. It's one of my favorite chapters of any book, and just another reason why this song is my favorite album opener. And also what Todd said.

Chasing the Rennaissance

My entire life I've had two great loves outside of my interpersonal relationships, science / technology and the arts. Both have encompassed a lot of different areas that expand in some areas and wane in others, but both remain constant on a base level.

Since I have chosen to make a career out of a specific aspect of technology (software development), I have been neglecting the arts a bit. Not completely, of course. I wrote the occasional myspace blog, I go through the occasional reading binge, I play and listen to an awful lot of music, etc. But, the goal of this blog is to step outside of the walled gardens of social networking and write about things that I find interesting just for fun, mostly falling under the umbrella of the technology and / or the arts.

I've always wanted to be a renaissance man before I knew what the term meant or before I had any idea who Danny DeVito was. This new blog is an attempt to brighten up my slightly tarnished writing skills indirectly, as well as maybe providing something interesting to somebody somewhere, but I'm aware of the odds of that. I'm hoping to level out my personal see-saw a bit even if not a single person subscribes to my feed.

Anyhow, I'll probably be writing about my occasional tech projects, my band, books I'm reading, movies, television, a little bit of sports, the occasional excitement and intrigue associated with the glamorous life of a software engineer, an odd bit of amateur punditry, and who knows what else. I'll try to keep the echo chamber crap to a minimum, but I'm mostly a doofus so who knows.