A ironic fact about myself. . .

I've discovered that while I broadly dislike consumer culture, strangely I rather enjoy PHOTOGRAPHING cheap consumer items; I don't know why.

Case in point . . . :


I'm really not sure what this says about me but I do have two SPEED RACER McDonald's Happy Meal toy cars which I'll be photographing this weekend. I know you can't wait. I can't either!

Cloverfield

CLOVER-F-ing-FIELD

GO. SEE. IT. NOW.

It's difficult not breathing for the last hour of the movie, but once you get used to it it actually adds to the movie I think.

Seriously, go watch it in the theater. Don't wait for DVD.

Its a big, noisy, messy movie, but despite the hand-held video gimmick that never gets on your nerves too badly.

And when the helicopter goes down . . . Oh my god. Just . . . oh . . my . . god.

Two Things I'm Fuming About Today

Working at Barnes & Noble again puts me back on the front line of the culture war again!

First of all: Happy Holidays! That's the first thing that I'm aggravated about. When I'm at the store (or in general to people I don't know) instead of saying "Merry Christmas!" because it's "religious neutral." I like saying "Happy Holidays" because, I think, it is respectful of the possibility that the person that I am speaking with might not necessarily share my religious beliefs but this year though I'm being met with this amazing backlash. It's the norm this year for my telling someone "Happy Holidays!" to typically be met with "No! Merry Christmas!" and, frankly, its pissing me off.

Now, here's the thing. When I'm Johnny-at-the-Counter at Barnes & Noble, I've just finished ringing out your order and the line is twenty-five or thirty people deep, let's be clear here, my goal in wishing you a "Happy Holidays" is to respectfully wish you a "Happy Holidays" in such a way that won't offend you. That's all. It's not a call to arms against Christmas despite what your pastor, priest or FoxNews may be telling you. Furthermore, I don't really NEED or even CARE if you're Christian, so your insisting that "Merry Christmas!" is the way to go is virtually meaningless to me. I repect your privacy and I respect your relgious beliefs and all I ask in return is that you a) do the same for me in return and b) don't get angry at me because I am catering to a wider group of people than you are willing to acknowledge.

What I simply fail to realize is why, in a country DOMINATED by Christianity, Christians feel the need to pretend that they are being persecuted still. No one is burning you here and I don't see anyone being fed to the lions and this point dovetails with the SECOND thing that is annoying me.

Phillip Pullman's HIS DARK MATERIALS. Specifically, THE GOLDEN COMPASS movie and book.

The sheer volume of these books that I've been seeing returned is actually pretty high. Adults who've been buying them for kids for Christmas and are now returning them on account of their perceived Atheist slant. I've read the books and I'm here to tell you that they are probably worse than you think they are but JUST BECAUSE A BOOK CHALLENGES YOUR FAITH DOES NOT MEAN THAT IT IS EVIL!

Where are the days gone to when people could look at and understand other peoples' points of view and reject or assimilate those views into their own beliefs after some bit of rational consideration. Where's the critical thinking, the empathy, tolerance, and willingness to be openminded? I just don't get it. THE GOLDEN COMPASS was an okay book (the sequels were a little better) but yes, they are at LEAST agnostic, and I'd probably argue that by the time the protagonists accidentally kill God and the Metatron has gone on a rampage and murdered people, the book has probably crossed over into some level of atheism.

But that having been said, some of the things that Pullman pulls out of his hat in those books are more creative than you're going to find anywhere else and to simply label them as atheist is both inaccurate and overly dismissive. I'm not saying that 8-year-olds should be reading them and I would say that if your kids are reading them, you should probably be reading them too because they are definitely books that need some guidance to get through, but screw all the Bluetool soccer-moms out there and their overblown, FoxNews inspired moral indignation. Get down off of your high-horse / SUV and put on your thinking caps before you inspire a flock of mindless Christian clones that can follow real good, but can't think their way out of a bag.

Happy holidays,
Jason

Living Out of Boxes . . .

. . . is really not fun, but thankfully we're almost done with that phase of our moving in. I think that, aside from my library, we've pretty much unboxed everything now and housed it all in a) places typically no longer in cardboard and b) places that aren't the "right" place for it to be in, so I can honestly say now that I can at least find things again, though it may take me a little longer than normal to do so.

It's been a busy week and I have seemed to only be able to journal here in fits and starts for the past few weeks, but NOW finals are over with and school is done for about a month, so things are panning out nicely and starting to calm a bit.

Mine and Camie's graphic novel, Zoinks at the Zoo, was turned in for grading this past Monday and I'm told that once it is available to pick-up from the professor, a pdf version should be forthcoming. When I get it, I'll post it on here somehow for the world to see. I was actually really pleased with how it turned out and have become a little inspired to write some other comics for the time being. So, my creativity is going into those right now.

We put up our Christmas tree over the weekend and Sadie was pretty thrilled by that. I'll post some pictures of our house, the tree, the kids, etc. as soon as I find our camera.

I think most of you know now that I'm working at Barnes & Noble, Florence again for the holidays. It's a good thing I'm only there for the discount because - Good Lord! - my hourly wage is pathetic. At least it is fun and temporary. I like the book culture there and hadn't realized how much I missed talking books for a few hours a week with people who actually really like talking books and another added bonus is that I'm getting wicked-good exercise there.

More later. . . .

UPDATE - It's been a week since I posted a song or anything that I'm obsessing over, so. . . . here's a song I really like right no from The Killers ft. Lou Reed:



with a tip o'the hat to Kara for finding this, though i'm pretty sure I like it more than she does.

Best. Movie. Poster. Ever.

Whoever designed this, I really just want to shake their hand.

Good Charlotte - Dance Floor Anthem

I unabashedly love this song, no matter how "pop"-ey you may think it is:

David Gray's Greatest Hits Streaming FREE

Hi all,

I'm not sure how much longer they'll have it up for (maybe just through the weekend) but AOL Music is streaming all of David Gray's Greatest Hits cd for free here.

This guy makes some of the best music you can find right now and this cd is interesting because most of it is from his early work before he started getting popular really. He's a little Dave Mathews-esque (they toured together for a year) but David Gray is more less jam, and a little more "pop"-y. Good stuff though.

Again, the link is here at David Gray (via AOL Music.)

Best Line from Office Last Night

Kelly to Pam: "So were Jim's parents both first cousins who ALSO sucked at ping-pong?"

and I won't try to capture it here but the whole sequence where Michael's diary revealed how Jan was hot, but in a different way from Ryan and ending with Toby laughing hysterically stands as possibly the funniest moment I've ever seen on television.

The Idea of Order At Key West

So I was wasting some time on my lunch today and found an online version of my favorite poem ever. There have many different poems over the years that I have been assigned or inspired to read, but none have ever been so beautiful to me as this one. In terms of the pure usage of language to express a feeling, I'm not sure if there is anything superior to this, unless maybe something by Dylan Thomas.

In the spirit of my using this page as a catalog of things that I feel are noteworthy, here it is in its copy-free entirety.

Don't ask me for an interpretation of it and don't ask me who "Ramon Fernandez" is either. The first is too difficult for me to presume to explain here and the latter has been the center of debate for years.

The Idea of Order At Key West by Wallace Stevens

She sang beyond the genius of the sea.
The water never formed to mind or voice,
Like a body wholly body, fluttering
Its empty sleeves; and yet its mimic motion
Made constant cry, caused constantly a cry,
That was not ours although we understood,
Inhuman, of the veritable ocean.
The sea was not a mask. No more was she.
The song and water were not medleyed sound
Even if what she sang was what she heard,
Since what she sang was uttered word by word.
It may be that in all her phrases stirred
The grinding water and the gasping wind;
But it was she and not the sea we heard.

For she was the maker of the song she sang.
The ever-hooded, tragic-gestured sea
Was merely a place by which she walked to sing.
Whose spirit is this? we said, because we knew
It was the spirit that we sought and knew
That we should ask this often as she sang.
If it was only the dark voice of the sea
That rose, or even colored by many waves;
If it was only the outer voice of sky
And cloud, of the sunken coral water-walled,
However clear, it would have been deep air,
The heaving speech of air, a summer sound
Repeated in a summer without end
And sound alone. But it was more than that,
More even than her voice, and ours, among
The meaningless plungings of water and the wind,
Theatrical distances, bronze shadows heaped
On high horizons, mountainous atmospheres
Of sky and sea.

It was her voice that made
The sky acutest at its vanishing.
She measured to the hour its solitude.
She was the single artificer of the world
In which she sang. And when she sang, the sea,
Whatever self it had, became the self
That was her song, for she was the maker. Then we,
As we beheld her striding there alone,
Knew that there never was a world for her
Except the one she sang and, singing, made.

Ramon Fernandez, tell me, if you know,
Why, when the singing ended and we turned
Toward the town, tell why the glassy lights,
The lights in the fishing boats at anchor there,
As the night descended, tilting in the air,
Mastered the night and portioned out the sea,
Fixing emblazoned zones and fiery poles,
Arranging, deepening, enchanting night.

Oh! Blessed rage for order, pale Ramon,
The maker's rage to order words of the sea,
Words of the fragrant portals, dimly-starred,
And of ourselves and of our origins,
In ghostlier demarcations, keener sounds.

If you're interested in learning more about Wallace Stevens, go here.

30 Minutes of Bull Crap is More Like It

Right now, I would like to punch Steve Niles in the head. I would like to punch him once and then punch him again, just so he knew that the first weak and poorly thrown punch I had thrown WASN'T an accident. Who is Steve Niles? He's the comic book writer (my dream job) who built his career from the comic book series 30 Days of Night (now ridiculously popular, having spun off 4 graphic novel sequels, a book series, and, oh yeah, a Josh Hartnett movie.) And yes, I want to punch him.

Why, you may be asking, do I want to punch him in his stupid head? Here's why:

My graphic novel class voted for our last reading in class to be 30 Days of Night. I'd point out here that the majority of the class did NOT vote for this, but it did receive the most votes of any of the options. I think it got 5 votes out of a class of 20. We didn't have to have it read for a few weeks yet, but as all my books are boxed up now, I was between reading other things, and I got a super-nifty % off any book from Barnes & Noble coupon, I figured I'd go ahead and just buy it and read it now. Oh yeah, the other reason I hurried to buy and read it was because, over the last couple of years, I've heard so many fans rave about the book that I honestly thought it would be, AT LEAST entertaining. I bought it last night.

I started reading it when I sat down on the bus this morning and I finished it when my bus pulled up to my stop, with a hearty "WTF WAS THAT?" that may have actually been out loud.

I would like to tell you that I was so offended by the violence and depravity of it that I felt a chill through my jaded, horror-inundated soul, something that visually would stay with me long after I had turned the final page. But it wasn't.

Here's what 30 Days of Night IS:

• a three issue comic series that should have just been a movie to begin with and by-passed that whole "graphic novel" medium.
• 80 pages of abstractified, minimalist art that showcases gouts of blood and unclear, non-specific imagery at the cost of any real clarity of storytelling.
• a high(er) concept action zombie sotry that needs to call it's zombies "vampires" in order to justify the "hey-I've-got-this-great-idea-for-a-vampire-story" concept.
• a collection of horror stereotypes and cliches as characters, who act out the most ridiculous lines and actions possible.
• really just a flaming pile of poo masquerading as art.

Now, why do I want to punch Steve Niles? Well, first of all, he created this thing and second of all, he is WAY too successful for it. I love horror. I write horror. And I have deep problems with the marketing and popularity of something like this. NOT critical popularity, mind you, but it IS popular and it shouldn't be. He created 80 pages of violence and nihilism draped across the most rickety scaffolding of a plot he could. He made a dumb story for dumb people and rode it to popularity and it pisses me off because, accounting for taste is fine and good, but crap is still crap.

It has splashy, bloody art; hero sacrifice; a bunch of "fucks" thrown in here and there just to be "edgy;" and a faux-"Underworld"-by-way-of-"Dawn of the Dead" premise that he should be apologizing for. Niles seems to have forgotten the "book" in "comic book" and the "novel" in "graphic novel."

Maybe the movie is better. I can't see how it could be worse, but honestly if the movie runs longer than the 30 minutes that it took me to read the book, it would HAVE to be.

Song Found!

You know me well enough by now to know that, while having nearly no musical talent, I'm really quite obsessively passionate about my Music.

This is an interestingly random story. About nine months ago, a coworker and I were getting food from Bruegger's Bagels downtown and I heard the last chorus and ending of a really interesting song playing on the canned-music station. All I caught was the dominant refrain, "This is where I hang my hat" but in the lunchtime-noisy store, I was very unsure of what it was I had heard. But the music itself was really good, and I had heard enought of THAT to know that I wanted to track the song down. However, once I began doing lyric searches, I quickly found that very few songs have ever used that line and, furthermore, what few songs that HAD used that line were not at all like the song I had heard. The song had sounded vaguely John Mayer or Eric Clapton-esque, but I sampled through most of their catalogs on iTunes and couldn't find anything that fit the bill.

That was nine months ago and occasionaly, though I knew it was probably a lost cause, I would still check lyric searches, etc, but came up with nothing for it.

Then yesterday, I walked into Barnes & Noble and knew, literally, from the moment I walked into the store, that that song had just started playing over THEIR canned-music station. I found a speaker near-by, whipped out my pen and notepad and started writing down what lyrics I could hear. A friend of mine that works there came by and took the lyrics I had written down and, using his cell phone, was able to figure out which song it was: Marc Cohn, "Already Home." Of course, how could I have been so stupid . . . . no, wait.

I had never heard of Marc Cohn before and neither had my friend. And yet this particular song was popular enough to be piped into the Muzak systems? It was (and sort of still is) a mystery.

It turns out (based on my searching through iTunes) that Marc Cohn was really a one-hit-wonder from the '90s whose only major song was . . . . "Walking in Memphis," but whether his was a cover of it, the original, a reissue, or whatever, I don't know. But "Already Home" was just a back list title from one of his cds. So far as I can tell it was never released to the radio. I have no idea why Muzak has picked it up and, seemingly, plays it, at least, relatively often.

I tried to find a web version of the song so I could share it with you here, but - predictably - neither YouTube nor Deezer have web versions of it.

So I thought I would just share the story.

That's all.

UPDATE - And, in one of those creepy-weird, coincidences, apparently on the day I finally found out that Marc Cohn wrote and sang the song that I've been hunting for almost a year, he was on Ellen DeGeneres' show. That's right. He was on there yesterday according to his website. Things like that simply canNOT be coincidences.

UP-UPDATE - Thanks Debbie for finding a video of this on AOL :

Best Ep of The Office Ever

Yeah. I'm just going to go on ahead and stick my neck out there on this one and say that, while yes some of the jokes may have fallen a little flatter than others, tonights episode of The Office was a) the single best episode of the series to-date, and b) encapsulated everything that makes the show great. Even Andy, whose bits I generally don't care for so much, as the second rate kiss-ass to Dwight is genius. And - surprise - but who saw Angela becoming the new babe of the show?!? But she really pulled it off this episode. The Pam / Jim stuff was really spot-on and was just as peripheral and sweet as it should be, too. So yeah, I was impressed tonight.

Best laugh though was Michael calling Angela "Boosterseat." Ha!

Does anyone know what the first thing Michael called her right at the beginning of the episode was?? It sounded like something "bitch," but I didn't catch it. . . . .

OMG. . . . Radiohead's In Rainbows is perfect.

Let me get this out of the way now: the quality of the Music notwithstanding, there are two outside-the-Music reasons why the album is so good. First, I'm a lifetime Radiohead fan. I've collected them since forever and have compulsively listened to them for just as long, and I do consider them to be one of the rare musical outfits making truly cutting edge Music (and though I don't necessarily care for his style, I would also lump Justin Timberlake into this grouping.) Second, the Music is free and so, frankly, it could be total garbage and I would still be pleased with it.

Now, that having been said, I would still contend that Radiohead's newest album In Rainbows is easily the most exciting album that will come out this year, made all the more impressive by a) the fact that you have to download it ( here ) to purchase it and b) that you can pay whatever you think it is worth (free being one of the options.)

For those of you who don't listen to the Music, Radiohead's ouvre has developed over the past 10 years into a strangely beautiful genre resistant synthesis of rock, hip-hop, blues / jazz, and electronica. I imagine if you haven't grown up on them though that Radiohead could be a little off-putting. But don't be put off by their apparent ecclecticism and the unorthodox nature of "purchasing" the album, because In Rainbows is easily their most accessible Music since Ok Computer in 1998. In fact, In Rainbows is a step backward for Radiohead, displaying a fusion of early Radiohead lyricism and technical instrumentation with recent Radiohead experimentalism and abstraction.

If you like rock and world music and aren't afraid to step into the dark, dreamy soundworld of Radiohead, download it now - for free - and give it a listen or two, and I really believe it'll become a part of your life. Radiohead albums are like that. They are long form by nature and resist most attempts at easily breaking them down into individual songs. They are more like soundtracks, and listening to a Radiohead album is always at first like piecing together a movie that you only have that soundtrack for, but, after you've listened to it a few times, the strangeness wears off and leaves behind in its place very memorable sound experiences.

It's available at Radiohead.com.

Pushing Daisies and Pattern Recognition

Ok, ok. I know. I've been posting a LOT less this past week, but I have a good reason. I've been busy with a) school and b) THE NEW TELEVISION SEASON!!! And of course my wife and children are spattered throughout there as well I think.

But regardless of that.

Two things I wanted to post on tonight.

First of all, Pushing Daisies. It's great. It's on ABC Wednesday nights at either 8-9 or 9-10. I'm not sure which and don't feel like looking it up right now. It's really fresh and different from most of the other crap you'll ever see on t.v. and honestly, after watching an episode of it, I feel about it almost as strongly as I feel about The Office. It's going to be one of those shows that will just make your life happier because its in it. The website is here and apparently they are rerunning the pilot episode this Friday at 9PM. TAPE IT. WATCH IT.

The second thing I wanted to write about is a quote I found today in a book I'm reading. The book is Pattern Recognition by William "Neuromancer" Gibson. It's good so far. For you readers, it's an SF-ish Crying of Lot 49, heavy shades of Pynchon throughout, but not quite as PoMo. Good stuff though. Not very dense. But here's a quote that I found that rather struck me:

"Of course, we have no idea, now, of who or what the inhabitants of our future might be. In that sense, we have no future. Not in the sense that our grandparents had a future, or thought they did. Fully imagined cultural futures were the luxury of another day, one in which 'now' was of some greater duration. For us, of course, things can change so abruptly, so violently, so profoundly, that futures like our grandparents' have insufficient 'now' to stand on. We have no future because our present is too volatile."

It's a modern day, post-9/11 SF novel - I can't sum it up any better than that without giving plot details - but there's something in that that rings very true to me and speaks toward our current condition. Maybe we all thought Y2K would just wipe us all out, but does anyone really have a clear sense of where we're heading in the next 50 years? Most of my ideas of what the future is going to be like are rooted in the 1950s vision of tomorrow. . . .

Just a small note here . . . .

So, it seems that, for me, Rilo Kiley has sort of been a "gateway" band, through which I'm discovering a good share of new music that I've never really paid much attention to. Here are two songs that I've recently discovered, that I am really fond of and that are both . . . . songs featured on Apple commercials:

And their videos:

I have returned to The Office

~SPOILER!~

So, yeah, tonight was the first new episode of The Office for the season and I'm really, really happy about that. It was a good installment, I thought, and the kiss was exactly what it should have been.

Best lines of the episode: "You don't know me. You've just seen my penis . . . " and "I didn't see where it started, but I saw where it ended."

If you're not watching The Office by now, you really should be.

Rilo Kiley and Under the Blacklight

No one will ever accuse me of being avant garde, I know, but finally had presence of mind and the time last night to look into a band I've been hearing about for awhile now, Rilo Kiley. I guess they're supposed to be "underground" or "indie" but, so far as I can tell, they just make really good music.

In another case of "Hey, it's really a small world after all . . . . ", it should be noted that Jenny Thompson, the lead singer of Rilo Kiley, was probably my first ever full blown crush when I was a kid. Its likely that you've never seen her in anything before . . . . but if you're a guy, almost 30, and saw The Wizard (starring Fred Savage, Super Mario Bros. 3, and the Game Glove) then you remember the girl that Fred Savage had a crush on in the movie (and you did too! admit it!) and that girl grew up to be Jenny Thompson.

Provided that all the internet widgets and do-hickeys are working correctly, below you should see a player loaded with all the songs from their newest cd, Under the Blacklight. If you've got a little while, I recommend it.

UPDATE - I'm told by one of the few people I know of that is a bigger dork than I am - Andy - that what I referred to above as the "Game Glove" was, in fact, called the "Power Glove." He also told me he's a jackass and, since he's right about that, I'm sure he's right about the "Power Glove." He "loved the Power Glove."

What has gotten into me?

I mean really! What has gotten into me? Since school started this semester, my lifestyle has completely changed.

First of all, Guild Wars and I are taking a break. We're seeing other people and just really taking some time off. Is it permanent? I don't know. I'd like think its not; that our separation is just a temporary thing what with the added preasures of my school load this semester and all. We have really become very different from one another and our relationship had really just become a matter of going through the motions. Maybe in time we'll find one another again, but for now I'm living the life . . . .

. . . and trying out new things. Like hiking. I've sort of taken up hiking now that the weather has finally shifted from Summer to Autumn and it has given me an opportunity to get some needed exercise as well as get into the landscape of my area a lot more (mixed mesophytic forests in case you were interested.) So far, we've gone hiking at Cliffs of Boone and England-Idlewild, and this next week we're strongly considering Tower Park as another local hiking option, though I'm kind of excited to "make a day of it" a little more and head up to the Miami Whitewater area.

I guess it was pretty natural that, after starting hiking, we would turn to mountain biking as the next logical step, but bking requires a bit more gear than hiking and I am fickle, so, while I'm interested in trying biking, I'm also a little hesitant. I've basically got a bike on donation for now (though it needs some work) and I guess all I need is a decent helmet before I can go flinging myself into trees and creek beds in the name of health and recreation. It seems fun though, and whatever gets me moving some is a good thing.

Another big change lately is that Julie, the kids and I have been going out to the farm a lot more, so I've been doing everything else a lot less (like posting on here.) We've been out there 6 of the last 7 days by my figure. Not all day in most cases, but a good portion of the days nonetheless. Obviously, part of the reason for this is my starting to buy my horse from my father-in-law, though honestly I'm not sure if I'm more active outside now because of the horse or if I got the horse because I'm trying to be more active outside. I think part of it is just that activity begets more activity and it IS hard work. Just riding around on a horse for 45 minutes when you're not used to it can be hard on muscle groups that you're not used to working out.

Now, I'm only going to sing one virtue of this new lifestyle. Over the course of the weekend, I was stung by ground bees, stumbled upon a snake, went riding 4 separate times, went out to eat at Longhorn, FORGOT to eat 3 separate lunches and/or dinners, watched 2 movies, went hiking for 4 hours, rode a bicycle for the first time in 1o years, fed and watered horses, mucked out a horse stall full of manure, almost got kicked in the head by my horse, beat my horse with a broom for almost kicking me in the head, helped take care of the kiddies, did homework, and bought a supercool toy! I can tell you what I ate at every meal over the weekend and what I did everyday in the order that I did it. Oh, and I bought a pair of hiking boots too.

Over the summer, many (dare I say "most"?) of my weekends were spent only playing Guild Wars, reading books and eating, though honestly it all ran together into a blur.

I'm not sure why any of this is the case, except to say that something during this semester has clicked for me. Video gaming has been on a downhill slope for me for a long time now. I love my Wii and spending a blood-spattered hour or so every couple of days killing Andy online is actually pretty cathartic for me, but beyond that who knows? As my loathing of my job gets worse and my relationship with NKU continues to change, I'm finding that I need some new releases in my life. I've also boxed up about 3/4s of my books and placed them into storage for me to get to later one if/when I need them again.

I still read of course, but I savor what I read a lot more now and, for some reason (I don't know why,) I'm digging in a lot deeper to the books I'm reading. I've been spending a lot of my computer time researching the contexts of the books that I'm reading. I guess school mode agrees with me.

I'm also finding that the role I play in my life has needed to change. I don't know if this is the same for anyone else, but I think the person that I get tired of being around the most is myself. It's stupid to say, but I annoy myself more than anyone else annoys me. And I think its really difficult to break out of behavior patterns that you have made for yourself. But I also think that the rewards that I personally gain from how I'm living now are better than the rewards I gain from the type of lifestyle I've been living previously. There WERE rewards there.

More later. . . .

Current Song Obsession: Silverchair's "Straight Lines"

So how many of us remember who Silverchair are?? Anyone? Anyone at all? Since I stopped listening to WEBN, I can honestly say that I've only maybe heard their 1 memorable, major American song once or twice. For those of you not remembering it, here's Silverchair's "Tomorrow:"


~~~THIS SONG IS NOT MY CURRENT OBSESSION!~~~~
~~~~~~~~~~THIS ONE MOSTLY SUCKS~~~~~~~~~~~~

Yup, despite the fact that it was a HUGE hit in 1995 (feel old now,) personally I don't think that it's aged very well. It plays out like a bunch of 15 year olds trying to copy Nirvana which was pretty much exactly what it was.

I guess because I've always sort of labeled them as pretty derivative, their new album (Young Modern) comes as a bona fide surprise to me. It's pretty experimental stuff really. Sort of glam-rock-ish, sort of post-grunge, a little Coldplay mixed in. But what's interesting about it though is that for a group that used to sound like a harder-edged Hanson, this is a real paradigm shift forward in their music.

The entire album is streaming here and if you have a little while to sit and take it in, I highly recommend it.

On the other hand, if you'd just like a little taste of their new stuff, here's the video for "Straight Lines:"



I guess its been out for a little while now, but the cd just came out in the U.S. on July 27. It's good.

If you DO take time to listen to it, please take a minute or two to tell me what you thought of it here in the comments.

Too. Freaking. Cool.

My Nintendo DS Nerf Armor

This is why Nintendo rules.