Sonic Youth Plays Daydream Nation @ McCarren Park Pool, Brooklyn, NY, 07/28/07

Plot Synopsis: Three old guys and my wife go to see a band of even older people play an old album that everyone liked when they were younger. T-shirts, beer and tote bags are purchased. Chloe Sevigny stands right behind us. The moon is full, the night is beautiful, and Sonic Youth is in the house. It doesn't get much better than that.

My Two Cents: What is up with "Chocolate Rain"? At first I couldn't tell if the guy was for real, but, after further research (Yes. I did further research), I found out he was, well, serious. His song has been re-mixed hundreds of times. There is a McDonald's parody, a Darth Vader parody, and an Eastern European woman sings it with her acoustic guitar. There are a gazillion club remixes. He was recently on "Opie and Anthony", whoever they are. His video- five minutes of a keyboard arpeggio over a casio beat, and his unsettling baritone- has been hit almost TWO MILLION TIMES. That's quadruple PLATINUM. For "Chocolate Rain"! Unbelievable.

Which brings me to Coney Island.

We went to Coney Island on Sunday. If you haven't been there, I had a friend once describe it, in her infinite, innocent wisdom, as being like "Virginia Beach for poor people." It was raining, so we dipped inside Ruby's for a couple of beers. They were playing Frank Sinatra and Tony Bennett on the jukebox. I went to the jukebox, not really intent on playing anything, and this Hispanic man came up to me, grabbed my wrist, put two dollars in my hand, and pointed at the juke box.

"You play," he said. My first thought was this: He must be gay.

"Play what?" I said. He shrugged his shoulders.

"I no care. Sinatra. That stuff." My second thought was this: He's gay and he needs to be in an adult ESL class. "It confuses me."

I put the two dollars in the machine and started scrolling through the artists. Before he went to sit back down, he told me NOT to play any SPANISH SHIT, NONE OF THAT PUERTO RICAN, SANTO DOMINGO SHIT, I HATE THAT SHIT. And so on.

It turns out that he wasn't gay and he could speak English pretty well. He was from Jersey, via El Salvador, and used to be a jeweler in Midtown. And he hated that Spanish shit. Hated it.



My Grade:

"The Great White Surprise" November/December 1999

Plot Synopsis: This is the third issue of GWS. I don't have the second issue; in fact, the only thing I remember about the second issue is one of the volunteers supplied me with some surprisingly funny "Dear Dr. Sammy" Q&As.

My Two Cents: I gave this issue to a volunteer over the Christmas break in 1999. We were in Egypt at the time, in a hostel. Giving someone the GWS for the first time always made me a little nervous, because I was anxious to see what they thought. She was lying in bed reading it, as I sat in the other bed across the room. When she finished she handed it back to me and said, "It's not very funny".

Then my friend Joe came in and put Vaseline in his hair.

In my opinion, I think there is some very funny shit in here, hair gel or not. The West African Christmas is a truly inspired twist on the traditional Santa Claus story. I love the poem by Mr. Njeke Jama, as well as the illustration of the Twin Manenguba Lakes. And I completely forgot that a student of mine at GTTC Mamfe, a teacher's training college, asked me if genetics was the reason some women gave birth to yams.

My Grade: A+

"The Great White Surprise" September 1999

Plot Synopsis: 30-year old man joins the Peace Corps in 1999 and goes to Cameroon. He self-publishes four issues of "The Great White Surprise", a DIY zine about, er, the life of the, uh, typical volunteer.

My Two Cents: In retrospect, "The Great White Surprise" is actually pretty nasty and mean-spirited. I'm not sure if it was a cathartic move on my part, having to spend so much of my time inexplicably smiling and shaking hands in Cameroon, but the humor is fairly cynical, and, purposefully so, based on inside jokes. But it is an honest representation of my admiration for the people I served with for two years. I think about Cameroon every day. And none of it is nasty, mean-spirited, or cynical.

You can enlarge the photos by clicking on them.

My Grade: A+ (I'm grading myself, after all.)

Movie: "Joshua" (2007)

Things to be thankful for:

1.) I am thankful my wife is not a whithering mess of hormones and melodrama, prone to bouts of temporary insanity and red-faced sessions of uncontrollable weeping.
2.) I am thankful my wife comes up with her own dialogue, rather than having to rehearse lines written by someone who graduated from NYU film school.
3.) I am thankful I don't have a gay uncle.
4.) I am thankful I don't wear tighty-whities.
5.) I am thankful I never knew that death lurked around every hidden corner of Grand Army Plaza and the Brooklyn Museum of Art.
6.) I am thankful that this movie only stole an hour and forty-five minutes of my life. I would have probably spent it doing something shameful, anyway.

Honestly, at the end of this film, the denouement, if you will, is delivered as the nine-year old devil spawn breaks into song. And- I'm not shitting you-it sounds just like fucking Cat Power.

Bob Mould, Cat Power and Built to Spill @ MCCarren Park Pool, Brooklyn, NY, 07/07/07

Plot Synopsis: Three acts take the stage at a renovated public pool in the Williamsburg neighborhood of Brooklyn. While chaos does not ensue, the lines to get beer were absolutely ridiculous.

My Two Cents: I bought a "Metal Circus" t-shirt when I was a senior in high school. I wore it to school one day and when I walked into English class, Lulan Yu- and, yes, I am using her real name, although I have yet to google it- pointed directly at me and said, in that sing-songy circa mid-80s voice, "Ohmygod, you like Husker Du?". At that point, I suppose, I should have dropped to my knees and began singing the bridge from "Celebrated Summer", but instead I smiled through my braces and crooked glasses and walked into a desk, wracking my balls and ending the conversation.

On that note, I didn't actually see Bob Mould. I could hear him as my wife and I walked past the venue to the bar. My wife joked that someone was playing that sounded like him. Hey. It was only six-thirty. I thought the show started at 7:30.

As for Cat Power, let's just say that her popularity is inexplicable. It's not that I think she's without talent. I like some of her stuff. It's just that she sucks, in a kind of bland, soul-sucking way. She's just not impressive.

Which brings me to Built to Spill.

Like the t-shirt I bought in 1985 from Mothers Records and Tapes on the second floor of Lynnhaven Mall, near the food court, I once stumbled into Skinnies in Norfolk and pulled Built to Spill's first album "Ultimate Alternative Wavers" from a stack of CDs next to the register. The proprietor of the store, a long-haired thirty-something font of alternative knowledge and an owner of one of those creepy, synthesized drum kits, looked at me, much like Lulan Yu did nine years earlier, and asked me "Why are you buying this?". He held it between his fingers as if it was a dingleberry. He wasn't implying that the band was bad; he was implying that I was buying it before he had time to even hear them.

While the first album didn't quite hook me- it is flawed in a wonderful, experimental way and it was great hearing "Nowhere Nothing Fuck Up" outside on a beautiful July night- the next album got me right through the proverbial gums. "There's Nothing Wrong With Love" is an iconic album, perhaps the best rock album of the nineties- and this includes "Nevermind" and "Grace" and all the other albums that are typically thrown around in these conversations. A year later I would see them at the Neurolux in Boise, a sparse, beautiful show. On the way back to my brother's house, a cop on a bicycle stopped us on the campus of Boise State because my brother was weaving. The reason this is funny is because we were walking.

It's unfair for me to review a Built to Spill show. The band means too much to me in a way that's probably unquantifiable. They represent my brother's gutsy move to Idaho, his friendship with Andy and his acceptance into a new town. They represent weekends at my family's beach house in North Carolina, where my brother told me, in a long, drunken evening, to go, man, get out of Norfolk. They represent the Peace Corps and my move to New York City, where I've seen them every year they've toured. Above all, and most simply, they represent joy. They make me just plain giddy. And that's coming from a class A asshole.

As for the show on Saturday night, they didn't disappoint. I missed about four songs because I was in line for beer, which is what good husbands do. When I got back wielding two Brooklyn Lagers, my wife was five feet from the stage dancing rapturously to a cover of "Third Uncle", which is a Brian Eno song, but I know it from the Bauhaus version. It was a great pick for a cover. Doug played a stripped down, haunting version of "Car", which kind of made me try to picture my brother and Andy, the drummer on that album and Jon's impetus for moving to Boise, in the kitchen of the Trellis, Andy trying to convince Jon that he hasn't seen anything until he's walked the Green Belt to the Anne Frank memorial. They closed with "Carry the Zero", one of my favorite BTS songs, with one of my favorite lines:
You have become/A fraction of the sun/The middle and the front/And now it's coming back/Hasn't it come to far?

I think, ultimately, that's why Built to Spill means so much to me: they have a way of channeling that fraction of the sun. There's a lot of hope in their music, a lot of happiness, and for someone who tends to view the world through a cynical lens, it's nice to have something that makes you feel like dancing.

Thanks, Built to Spill.

My Grade: A

A special thanks to Ian! May the wind always be at your back!