And when the dam bursts we'll all float back to from whence we came.

Ok, I usually avoid the news during election years, but the other day I stumbled across more evidence that New York City and its denizens are not of this earth. Yeah, crazy. I suppose that after you make it illegal to smoke in bars (Earth to New York and its wannabes: they're BARS!), this was the next logical step. The only thing left for them to do is to have social workers sitting in bathrooms to make sure we wipe our arses and wash our hands (Incidentally, this is what my girlfriend does for a living, heh heh). I don't think this will really go through this time around (wait a few years), but all the same I'd check the campaign funds of NYC politicians for money soaked in Canola oil, or whatever is you substitute for hydrogenated oils. On the other hand, I might be too cynical. Maybe they're not actually trying to grease their palms with campaign funds and they're not actually insane. Of course, the only option that leaves is that they're just trying to prepare the way for the mother ship. I'm pretty sure that I don't want some politician on a mission telling me what they think I should be eating. All I have to say is that they can have my fragel... when they pry it from my cold, dead fingers! By the way, it has come to my attention that not everybody knows what a fragel is, or why it is the best thing ever invented by man. All I can say is that if it's been more than a week since you last had a fragel, go get one.
In other news, I'm afraid we have seen the public disgrace of yet another once-beloved hero of our childhood. I'm never surprised to see another very unflattering photo a messy-haired movie star or athelete with a cocaine mustache staring at me from the cover of a tabloid in the supermarket checkout isle with some headline about spousal abuse while driving while under the influence of drugs, but I expected better than this from Paddington. Where did you go so wrong, old friend? Anyways, that's all for now. I don't want to overwhelm you with the lack of paragraph breaks and the overabundance of Links. Ok, I'm sorry about that one. If you don't get that joke, I have more respect for you than I have for myself.

Being For The Benefit of Mr. Cous.

Hello, friend. I don't suppose that you've been pining away for another post on this thing, but since you can't have too much of a good thing, you can probably put up with a pretty hefty amount of a bad thing, too. Am I wrong? I thought I'd take this time to fade out, having nothing really to talk about, but as the post has only just begun and my last post was a long review that you won't want to read, I'd better throw in some filler that you'll read and wish that you hadn't. Yes. On with the filler! I've been following the headlines about the Pope's supposedly "inflamatory" comments, but have been too disgusted to actually read what's going on. I suppose that you might call it irresponsible to not actually follow the details, since you never know when I might have to defend His Holiness or my faith in general against someone who reads the New York Times like most Christians don't read the Bible, but I really don't see this as even being that relevant. The media's jumping on the Pope for saying something politically incorrect. No kidding. Is the Pope Catholic? I'd be more worried if the media actually liked the guy. Honestly, the only thing he could have said that would have pleased the media and political establishment in general is if he said "Um, everyone just do whatever you want and don't worry about the consequences. Jesus was a reallly nice guy and he wouldn't want anyone to make some sort of moral assesment of any actions or ideas or their implications. Also, Islam is peace. While nothing is actually wrong per se, it's very not nice to imply that your religion might be closer to truth than anyone else's." Anyways, as you can see, I'm in no mental state to engage in any kind of intelligent thought right now, and I'm ranting. Come to think of it, I'm not sure what my mental state would have to be in order to make an intelligent post. I've yet to attain it, whatever it is. Sooner or later you have to realize that it's not really going to make a whole lot of difference whether you're hearing that sound from outside your head or if its just some ringing in your ear from too much shouting in the art galleries where Dr. Mournful's finest work is never on display, but where you can find his finer mediocrities without much trouble to the police or anyone else in this town know where I can find a telephone that takes American change? Times change. You can argue that Time is a human construct, but I don't think that it is. Clocks are a human construct, but I'm pretty sure that Time would exist without them, and without calendars on the wall telling you what to do all the time you might actually break down and do what you've wanted to do all along but never had the time because of the worrysome sound of water coming from the ceiling in the room that you'd just repainted-and suddenly we're back to paint and it's time (back to time as well, although we technically can't leave it behind anywhere either way) to wrap this up and wish you a fine evening before it becomes morning and you have to get up and do your chicken dance all day until you can't lay any more eggs and farmer John will come around with his axe a-swingin' and whiskey on his breath. Maybe tommorow won't be the day, though, so maybe we'll have time to have a pint and talk it all over on some evening when we're both free. We'll see.

An Overly Long Review of Bob Dylan's Modern Times

First off, I feel compelled to warn you that this is a Bob Dylan album. If you’ve already given Dylan an honest and open-minded listening and either still can’t get past his oft-maligned voice or simply aren’t fond of his somewhat weird folk rock injected with postmodern imagery, you’re probably not going to like this album. I can’t fault you for having different tastes than my own. That said, I can’t help but think (probably because of the degree to which I personally am fond of Mr. Dylan’s music) that there are some (perhaps many) who haven’t given the guy a chance, and this album is a pretty good opportunity to do that if you’re up to it. The only disclaimer I can offer is that there are at least six or seven (some might put that number closer to 30) versions of Bob Dylan floating around out there on record, and if you’re expecting to hear the guy who sings songs like “Lay Lady, Lay,” “Blowin’ In The Wind,” or “Like A Rolling Stone” the way they sounded in the ‘60s, you’re not going to get it. There, that’s off my chest.

For all the hats he’s worn over the last forty-five years (lately he’s been wearing a Stetson), Dylan’s still at his core a folk singer, and throughout Modern Times he constantly and unabashedly revisits and borrows from the folk and blues canon, seamlessly writing new songs around old lyrics and themes. Backed by the current five-man lineup of his ever-changing touring band, Dylan croaks out blues and croons ballads from behind his guitar and piano, throwing in a few bars of harmonica where needed.
The album starts out with “Thunder on the Mountain,” a nice upbeat blues tune with somewhat typical weird Dylan lyrics that don’t make much sense, but sound cool. With some slick guitar work and a superb rhythm section behind Dylan’s sneering vocals, you’ve got an all-around good album opener.
Next comes “Spirit on the Water,” a somewhat sour love song set to an easy-going jazz standard-sounding piano tune, carried by an upright bass and some airy guitar fills. I guess I’d have to call it a pop song despite its seven-plus-minute length, and also despite the fact that “pop” music like this stopped being mainstream at least forty-five years ago. Not the voice you’d expect to hear crooning out this song, but it works so well you wonder why you didn’t.
“Rollin’ and Tumblin” picks up speed and turns up the guitars again, sounding to me sort of like Dylan's mid-sixties hit “Maggie’s Farm,” if it had been written by John Lee Hooker.
What better way to follow up a heavy blues song than with “When the Deal Goes Down,” a slow waltz that again finds Dylan playing piano, accompanied by a steel guitar and violin.
You could call “Someday Baby” a re-imagining of the blues standard “Worried Life Blues” to some extent, with the rhythm section laying down a nice groove into which Dylan weaves his vocals. One of the highlights of the album to be sure, catch it on the latest iTunes + iPod commercial on telly if you watch that sort of thing.
“Workingman’s Blues #2” is, unless I’m mistaken, Dylan’s most political song in at least the last decade, or at least the first verse is, so I’m actually quite surprised at how much I like it. It might be because after lamenting the fact that “the buying power of the Proletariat’s going down” early on, the tune pretty much turns out to be more of a blue-collar love song. Also, if you’re an absolute geek like me, you might notice how much the instruments here sound like much earlier Dylan. To me it sounds like Dylan in his mid sixties has transported himself back to the mid sixties to sit in on a song recorded one take after “Just Like Tom Thumb’s Blues,” but I can tell that I’m losing you. Seems to me that everybody’s got something that they’re a geek about, this is mine. Sorry.
“Beyond The Horizon” is another jazzy love song, or so it seems to be. To me, it seems that perhaps he’s referring to a place/state of life that’s impossible to attain, and singing whistfully about happiness that’s never to be. Give it a listen, either way it sounds pretty nice.
Hmm… I’m not sure what to say about “Nettie Moore.” The lyrics to the verses make less and less sense as the song progresses, but the beautiful chorus and the sadness conveyed throughout make it one of my favorite songs on the album. Good stuff.
Things pick up again with Dylan’s cover/re-write of the old blues song “The Levee’s Gonna Break,” recorded and performed in various different versions over the years, the most famous that I can think of being by Led Zeppelin. Dylan and the band manage to be upbeat yet subdued here, giving the song a much more chilled vibe than its otherwise urgent lyrics suggest.
Ten songs into the album and you’ve reached the closer, “Ain’t Talkin’.” As is not uncommon with Dylan albums, the final track here is slow and acoustic, and it could be one of the eeriest sounding songs in Dylan’s extensive catalog. While most of Dylan’s songs don’t seem to be directly about himself, this tune somewhat suggests that sadly the singer/songwriter is no closer to finding the answers to life’s questions than he ever was. The tune’s final seconds are to me one of the more musically brilliant moments on the whole album, when, after dangling between a few minor chords for the whole song, the band slowly cycles into a major chord so perfectly that you almost forget how gloomy a song it actually was. It’s also got some pretty cool poetic biblical references in there, too.
Anyhoo, it’s a good CD and if you’re up for it I’d highly recommend it. Of course, as I said I’m a huge Dylan fan, so take anything I say about his music with a grain of salt. Also very much worth picking up are the sophomore releases (both from early summer) by Keane and The Zutons. Keane kicks up their weirdness in the production department a notch, and The Zutons Turn up the guitars and kick up the tempo bit, but both albums are carried by strong songwriting and production, and are further evidence that good pop music can only come from England. Sorry for an even-more-self-indulgent-than-usual post, I’ll try to have something more normal up here soon. Have a great week.

"I don't get no respect."

So I was watching the big Notre Dame/U. of M. game on Saturday, which was enjoyable. I'm not the world's biggest sports fan (I don't have time, what with working out the logistics of 50WD and all), but I do like football, and it was more than a little gratifying to see #11 Michigan win their road opener by wiping the floor with an old rival, who happen to also be the no. 2-ranked team in the country. Ah, Autumn. Anyways, watching the game I was struck once again by the striking resemblance that Fighting Irish head coach Charlie Weis bears to the late comic Rodney Dangerfield. Sure, Weis is a little fatter and a little less dead, but I have to think that I'm not the only one who noticed this. I didn't watch the post-game press conference, but I like to imagine that Weis' comments went something like this:

“So I went down to the stadium today, stop me if you’ve heard this one. I was havin’ the time of my life until I realized I was supposed to be coaching a football game, instead of watchin’ the cheahleadahs. This football team I got, they don’t give me no respect. I tell ‘em to run the football, they run 11 yahds in the whole game! I tell ‘em to pass the football, they pass it right to the other team! I shoulda been coaching the cheahleadahs, they were doin’ what I wanted ‘em to do!”

"When you're in your little room..."

Greetings, friend(s). It's been a decent-ish few weeks behind the scenes at the Republic of D.Cous., various things going on.
I spent Labor Day weekend road tripping to and from a wedding in Iowa, which was actually quite fun. I was expecting the trip to be a drag and the wedding to be fun, but they both turned out to be a great time. I rode out with people who I mostly didn't know very well, and we had a great time getting better acquainted and playing mad libs and making more inside jokes about other parts of the trip than any group of people probably should.
Bob Dylan's new album Modern Times came out on August 29. If you're reading this you probably have some idea of how big a Bob Dylan fan I am (much to your chagrin, perhaps), so watch for my review of the disk in a day or two. I won't blame you if you decide to skip it, but I thought I'd try my hand at writing a review, and it's just not finished yet.
Yesterday was my 22nd birthday, which I'm pretty sure makes me officially old. I had a nice dinner celebration with a few friends, and I'm having dinner tomorrow with my family, so I guess I get bonus points for spreading my birthday out accross three days. It's been a good life so far, many thanks to all of you who have helped to make it so (some of you have probably done so completely by accident).
I went to Cedar Point for the first time in at least a decade over the past weekend, thanks to an invitation from friends. There are a fair amount of new rides since I was last there, and at the time I was too scared to enjoy the few rides I did try (I was something of a nervous kid, as I'm sure you can imagine). This time around was much more fun than my few remaining shards of memory from the first trip, but I have to admit that I don't think I'll be going back any time soon. I'm not sorry I went, don't get me wrong. I enjoyed myself, though it's not the sort of thing I would've done of my own volition. The problem really was that I got pretty sick from the roller coasters and didn't end up going on all that many. More evidence that I'm miserably old, I guess.