it's a new thing!

I sent a text to Paul a few hours ago, asking him what his 5 desert island albums would be. Though this is a particularly trite concept, I thought I'd test my list (when I make it) by listening to those albums and ONLY those albums for 2 weeks. We'll see how long this will last, once I come up with a list. (It can't be long... the new Dylan'll be out soon.)

Let's see, what else? Let me talk about what I'll be watching in the new TV season.

-Prison Break: already back, still keeping up a decent level of suspense by making it into a manhunt. They sort of disposed of the whole conspiracy plot for now and I'm still interested. Should be good watchin'.

-Heroes: I'm just a sucker for the concept. Paul doesn't seem to like the pilot, but I'm willing to give it a chance anyway, because Paul has bad taste.

-Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip: God, I love Aaron Sorkin. Looks like it'll be a nice cross between the drama of West Wing and the comedy/setting of Sports Night.

(Might I add that Monday is going to be mad-TV-watching day. It's gonna get even crazier once 24 comes back.)

-House: It's not a good show. I watch it because my roommates watch it. It's very formulaic. But it's very enjoyable, mostly because of Hugh Laurie. Even if the rest of the show is shit, Hugh Laurie makes it a solid Tuesday night show. (Things might get a little more complicated in January, what with Scrubs and The Shield coming back.)

-Lost: Dammit, this one isn't coming back until October. I'm looking forward to it, because now that the hatch is gone, we won't have to deal with the dramatic tension surrounding whether or not someone is going to press a button. Damn, that sucked.

-The Office: As far as I can tell, the US version of the series has done no wrong so far. I'm trusting them to keep up the streak and keep comedy alive.

-My Name is Earl: Another almost-perfect first season. Hell, my entire family loves this show, and I do too.

-Battlestar Galactica: I've had to wait since March for this to come on, and there's still a month left. One of the best cliffhangers of last year, and I really like what I've heard of what's coming up.

Will edit this later with the list.

Edit: And here it is!

Bob Dylan - Blood on the Tracks
the Beach Boys - Pet Sounds
Ted Leo and the Pharmacists - Shake the Sheets
the New Pornographers - Twin Cinema
Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream

i could use a nap

I keep telling Kyle that he needs to update but as he seems to be suffering from a medical condition known only as “douche-baggery”, I don’t think that is going to happen. As always, there are several things which could be said, but instead of saying any of them, I’m going to talk about school.

For the first time ever, I’m actually excited to start classes. Why, you ask? Well, girls for one, but also because yesterday I went out to the campus bookstore to see what books I needed to pick up this year. As we headed towards the English section where most of my books would be found, Justin came upon a stack of X-Men comics and said something along the lines of “What the fuck are these? Who the hell would read this for school?”

I quickly realized that the collection of X-Men comics that Justin was mocking were for my class. Adaptation in Film, Drama, and Literature is gearing up to be the best class ever because 2 out of the 5 required books are graphic novels. Not only do I get to read X-Men, I also get to read American Splendor. This is probably something I would have eventually done on my own for fun but instead I get to do it for class and I will get an A and then someone will erect a statue of me.

Aside from the comics, we’ll also be reading Pride and Prejudice and the Maltese Falcon. I assume that we will be watching all four of the movies as well. So, Kyle’s prediction that we would use this blog to talk about Keira Knightley was quite accurate.

I have some more things to say and they mostly concern The Crane Wife. I want to write a track by track review of the CD but I’m too tired for something like that right now. Maybe if you guys spend some time bugging Kyle, he’ll actually write an update. Of course, by you guys I really just mean me because nobody really reads this.

I love you, pretend audience.

a hypothetical situation

I’m a firm believe in strictly adhering to the law. If any album were ever to leak to the internet, I’d be like “Don’t download that album, Jerry.” Even if the album was the new release from your favorite band ever and you were sure to love it, I would tell you to wait because that is what the music industry would want you to do and I firmly believe that the music industry has everyone’s best interests in mind.

However, if an album ever were to leak and you were to come into possession of only half of it, especially when that album was by your favorite band in the entire world, well, that would really suck and I would say “Sorry, dude.”

Especially if the half of the album you did have was really good and was almost guaranteed a top spot on the list of your favorite CDs from 2006.

Yeah, that would be bad.

pop goes the weasel

(See, Paul upped the ante by making an actual long entry. Hmm. Well there's a little something that I've been working on for my lastfm journal, I might as well trot it out here.)


Man, that monkey was a dick. Why'd he have to chase the weasel around the mulberry bush, anyway?

Over the past few years I have discovered something: I am a pop nerd. Though at first I had an incredibly adverse reaction to the very word - it conjured up images of Britney Spears, N'Sync, and all that crap. (also, we in the South generally just call it Coke, or soda if we actually have to refer to Pepsi products. So I never used that definition of the word, either.)

However, as I got into college, I started to realize that the worth of a song was not in how heavy it could be, nor how long a 'singer' could maintain a tortured scream. I started getting more into bands that had some catchy songs; stuff like 'hooks' and 'melody' started to make their way into my music vocabulary. It might have been the fact that I was actually listening to the Beatles at this point - and those fellows made some of the best pop music ever made. Though at first I bemoaned how much I loved The Postal Service, within a few days of owning their album I was unashamed. I still don't listen to Top 40 (though there can be an occasional catchy/fun song from there) but my tastes have definitely gone more along the lines of pop-influenced rock.

A few suggestions!

Electric Light Orchestra - These guys are cheesy as hell, but I love them. Basically they're overblown, ostentatious late 70s/early 80s space rock. There are hooks aplenty, classical-esque music going along in the background, and occasionally one of those robot voice synthesizers singing along. They're heavily Beatles-influenced, but despite what Paul might say, that's not a bad thing. The best part is that I've only heard one of their albums, Out of the Blue, so I still have plenty to discover.

Beulah - Indie rock with a horns section. Their second album, When Your Heartstrings Break, is quite possibly the best summer album in the past decade. The song "Emma Blowgun's Last Stand" is what I define as audio nirvana. Though later on in their career they became a little less happy-go-lucky, they've still got some good tunes even on their last album, Yoko. By then the horns have gone away, sadly.

The New Pornographers - Canadian supergroup with tremendous pop appeal, and the vocal talents of alt-country lady Neko Case. Paul says they sound like 60s and 70s rock, which I can kind of see. They have a very weird, jangly pop sound that I can't place but that I absolutely adore. I'd say their best album is Electric Version, but you can't go wrong with any of them.

Stars - another Canadian group with male and female singers. They're kinda cutesy, which is a mark against them, but they have some great songs. Set Yourself on Fire is probably one of the best albums out today. Just a warning, though: stay far, far away from their cover of the Pogues' "Fairytale of New York". They turn up the cute-factor by ten and it doesn't quite work for an incredibly sad/heartfelt song. (In fact, if you haven't heard that Pogues song, listen to it immediately.)

The Zombies - basically just listen to Odessey and Oracle. Picture-perfect psychedelic pop. (Oh, alliteration.) A real forgotten treasure of the 60s.

The Boo Radleys - Talk about forgotten treasures; this was a band that lived the very dangerous existence of being in Britain in the early 90s - in other words, if you weren't Blur or Oasis, you had to struggle to survive, much less make your way over to the States. (Not like today... seriously, has Britain stopped cranking out shitty Strokes ripoffs yet?) Because of this, I hadn't ever heard of these guys until Robbie burned me a copy of their album Wake Up! It is pretty much what I would call perfection. It's got some weird shoegaze-y moments, balanced perfectly with pop flourishes. Track it down sometime - I'm still trying to find a physical copy of this.

Architecture in Helsinki - another band that treads the 'cutesy' line dangerously close. I would say that they sound like the Fiery Furnaces, only they keep their songs closer to 2-3 minutes than 9-10, and also they don't suck.


Alright, that's a few names that I have dropped. Enjoy my pop culture brain drippings, peons!

Oh no

The other day I was reading Kyle’s LiveJournal and he was bitching about how he’d been saturated with useless pop culture information like Taylor Hicks or Nick and Jessica which really have no bearing on his life at all. Sadly enough, I’m the same way. I probably can’t name half of the state capitals but I’d be totally set if we were talking about American Idol winners and I’ve never seen an episode of American Idol in my life.

So, being awesome, Kyle and I decided to put our knowledge of random shit to use by talking about it to an audience of no one on the internet. We are going to be totally famous.

There are numerous things I could probably talk about right now because I’m really awesome, but I believe I will use my first post to talk about a couple of upcoming TV shows. As you may or may not know, pilots tend to leak (or are sometimes made available through NetFlix) so I shall talk about the two pilots I’ve watched thus far.

Heroes

Heroes is a show about heroes. Thankfully, it’s not about real-heroes; the kind that can fly and break shit. Basically, the show is a lot like the X-Men but the powers aren’t as cool and the dialogue is worse. I’m predicting that it won’t last a season for several reasons which I shall now list.

1) It’s not very good.

2) It’s too nerdy. Genre shows like Lost are popular because they appeal to a larger audience and have attractive stars. The stars of Heroes aren’t nearly as attractive and comicish super-beings are for nerds.

3) There’s a Bright Eyes song prominently featured within the pilot. Granted, it’s probably my favorite Bright Eyes song, but it’s completely out of place. And it’s Bright Eyes.

That being said, I’m going to watch it anyway.

Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip

Studio 60 is Aaron Sorkin’s new show. If you don’t know who that is then you don’t really know enough about television and you should go read another blog. I’ve never really been able to get into Aaron Sorkin before, mostly because Sports Night sucked and The West Wing had already been on for far too long by the time I decided that I might care about it. Fortunately, Aaron Sorkin has come along way since Sports Night and while he is still a liberal hippy, he doesn’t beat you over the head with his liberalness the way he did before.

The best part about this show is Matthew Perry and I don’t know why. I seem to like it when actors that are known for things that suck (like Friends) do things that don’t suck. Either way, it was really good and I hope Kyle has something interesting to say about it.

paul and kyle are awesome!

This is a blog where Paul and Kyle will post what they think about things. These things might include movies, music, comic books, regular books, videogames, Keira Knightley, etc.

Right now we have nothing to review.