M.O.L. Junior

Adios, Mofo

as i prepare to give the 1975 green bronco to it's rightful owner, after 3 weeks of a true love-hate relationship, i have decided to commemorate the ocassion with a top 10 list of things i will miss about it:

1. the way the ignition handle heats up to 200 degrees in the heat of the day

2. the way the windshield wipers inexplicably turn on when i turn on the headlights (and vice-versa)

3. a feeling of invincibility that led to no seat belt wearing

4. the pectoral muscle (yes, i'm shocked i have one too) that i pulled when i quickly reached for the seat belt the one time i passed a cop

5. the 150 miles that i get in return for $75 of gas

6. the freedom to never lock the door !

7. the built-in excuse of a broken spedometer should i get pulled over

8. the built-in, fool-proof response when panhandlers approach me: "look at what i'm driving, do you think a guy who drives this has any extra money to give away?"

9. the enormous amount of street cred i built up with all rednecks that i know (3)

10. the engine that inexplicably dies every morning 30 seconds after ignition - or whenever the a/c was on for more than 1 minute.  what is up august in texas !!!

mitchell, thank you for the bronco. it proved to be a treat and a challenge - kinda like you.  as i return the keys, please consider these 2 requests:

a) let me drive it every year on my birthday; and

b) bequeath that bitch to me in your will !!!!!  (you know i would care for it always, like no one else)

Like A Baby

i don't know how they do it.  i can give them kisses, tussle their hair, whisper in their ear, and they never so much as stir.  the other night i picked up the little one and did a full 180 in her crib to keep her away from the slats.  nothing.  i wish i could be picked up in the middle of my sleep and not even know it.  maybe it's because they don't know insecurity or doubt or pimples or boys.  i like to think it's because they have a clear conscience.  enjoy it while it lasts, babies.

  

Fizzy Fuzzy Big And Buzzy

the problem with driving a nice car is the same problem as living in a nice house or wearing a nice shirt.  and the genius of driving an old beat up car iws the same genius as living in an old house and wearing crappy clothes.  drive a 1975 green bronco for a week with no air and no radio and you'll spend a week sweating and listening to your own thoughts (off) and not worrying about spills or dings or potholes.  you'll spend less energy on things that don't matter and more energy on things that do matter. like your wife and your daughters and your friends and your fantasy baseball team.

The Twitter

so it appears that i am finally on the twitter.

i resisted for the longest time, just like facebook, but now i gave in and so now i am gay.  at first my reason was simple: to not miss any more porch openings that were announced only via twitter, because  i just couldn't think of anything less interesting than to mass-text 20 people "i am at a birthday party with my daughter". but just like with everything else i do, i have broken it down and have figured out a way to make it better.  if i am putting on socks, or driving, or eating, and feel compelled to tell the world - then you just may get a 1 word twitter from me. and you will love it.

i do feel compelled to admit that even though i am on the twitter, i am still somewhat against the twitter in principle.  for months now, at concerts, poker nights, and bars, my buddies would look down to their phones every 5 minutes or so and then look back up after 30 seconds of twittering. and that's the problem.  it connects you to who you are not with but it disconnects you from who you are with.  quantity over quality.  ed young jr over danielle shroyer.  watered down intimacy.  apparently everyone is susceptible.

It's Easier For You

this is the album that made me fall in love with the old 97's.

and it's kind of embarassing to admit, but it took a starbucks compilation album to do it.  a band from my hometown, who i had heard about a number of times, but i had never given a listen for some reason.  then i buy starbucks' hearmusic sampler volume 7, and on comes "salome", and i was hooked.  what's weird is that salome was a departure for the band, and in retrospect now that i have a greater feel for their entire body of work, it's not what i love them anymore.

don't get me wrong, it's a great song.  it's the song that transitioned them from drive by truckers terrirtory and plunked them in shins territory - in the sense that, hey, we can write a smart pop song, too.  we're not just a bunch of literate rednecks.

but it's the literate redneck vibe that makes this album, and the band, work.  and on no other album do they embrace their slobberbone-esque-ness - replacements with a banjo - than this one.  it doesn't feature the number of songwriting high points as their earlier albums (even though it does boast the top 5er "barrier reef", but this one's about style more than substance.  timidity was thrown to the wind.  so the serial lady killers brushed those west texas tear drops out of their eye and wrote songs about california girls and it worked. 

 

Waiting For The Other Shoe To Fall

with their 2nd official release, the old 97's dug deeper into their bakersfield roots - complete with rootsy shuffles and ooh-ahh harmonies that surely made buck owens smile.

  

the highlights here include the legendary "the other shoe", the jerry jeff texas influence of "W-I-F-E", and the superbly-written "big brown eyes".  lowlights include the remake of 1st album favorite "doreen" (give us another new song instead, rhett!) and, if you're getting picky, it all starts to run together by the time you get to "old familiar steam".  but by that point, you've gotten more than your money's worth anyway. 

this is an album where they really start to embrace their niche instead of distancing (see: whiskeytown, pneumonia).  this is an album that makes their mark on the american music scene and boldly claims they're not going anywhere for awhile.  this is an album with a true consistent theme from beginning to end - every song would fit perfectly on the jukebox in a vince vaughn cowboy serial killer movie. 

 

It's A Long Way Back To El Paso

from the very chord of "st ignatius", the first song on the first album by the old 97's, you can tell your in for a honky tonkin' treat.  with just the right amount of twang, this is what alt.country was meant to sound like.  then, 60 seconds in, the accordion comes in, and you feel like you've died and gone to americana heaven.  when rhett sings "i just can't find the words to make it right", you get the feeling he knows he's lying. 

but here's the shocking thing: it only gets better from there.  from the rockabiliy of "504" to the bluegrass of "DOREEN", written in honor of a woman (named doreen) who lives just around the corner from me and drives around with an old 97's sticker placed where all can see on her back windshield, to the irony-free haggard cover of "mama tried", you could tell that great things were to come from this punk country band. 

"dancing with tears" foreshadows 2008's "dance with me" in more ways than one, and the generically titled "old 97's theme" could've been the king of the hill theme song, if you added in a few shots of epresso (not the only clyne parallel - check out "desperate times").  but the real highlights are 2 songs that remain in the old 97's top 5 to this very day: "wish the worst" and the very fauss-influenced "if my heart was a car".  if you've got 2 bucks to spare, go pick those up off of the itunes.  they are good enough to give this album a ...

 

Copyright Infringement

someone please pass this along to the 35,383th best selling dvd on amazon.com: prepare to be sued.

The Easy Way (Gets Harder All The Time)

there are 2 albums that i failed to properly review in my album review post a couple weeks ago.  both are albums by local artists, and both are albums that i watched being made from the inside-out.  for some reason this made me think i shouldn't review them.  but i don't think that anymore.  one album was by blackbird harmony, and will receive it's own post shortly.  the other album is this.

blame it on gravity, the 97's seventh studio album (by my ipod's count) is an album that flirts with me.  it winks at me and then it blows me off.  it kisses my cheek and then it punches me in the gut.  but as is usually the case in these matters, the ups are worth the downs.

as evidenced by the retro honky tonk of "the easy way" or "early morning", or the tried and true power pop of "no baby i" and "my 2 feet", or the sneaky lyrical turns of "halcyon" and "sunset", or the piss and vinegar of "ride", there ups are a plenty here.  (with 13 tracks, there's room for both). 

i do wish they would embrace the pedal steel and accordion that so appropriately highlighted their earlier work, and i wish they could build on the great verse of "dance with me" with a worthy chorus (Questionable single choice) but it's forgiveable.  any band that can tell their record company "i feel obliged to warn you / we're gonna rob you blind", has obviously come to terms with who they are.  and what they are is a tightnit group that can finish each other's musical sentences.  which almost always leads to good things.  which means...

 

All Of Us Under It's Spell

we have started a tradition in my family called "family night friday night fun night", that is, essentially, a night where we get together and have fun as a family - usually on friday.  sometimes we play board games, sometimes we watch a movie, sometimes we....well actually those are the only 2 activities that we've tried so far.  this week, we had a special tuesday night edition of friday night family night fun night. 

a few weeks ago while she and i were messing around on the youtube together (she is a big fan of the super bumbo baby, and asks for it often) i got the idea to show her a clip of kermit the frog plucking on his banjo and singing rainbow connection. 

i figured this would be a hit, since she is a fan of: 1) animal humor, 2) banjos, and 3) that song.  i've learned it on guitar and it is a bedtime regular for us.  but i had no idea how her eyes would light up at the sight of kermie sitting on a log in a swamp, plucking away, and singing.  it was then that i knew that i had to get the muppet movie for our next friday night family night fun night.

for some reason i find comforting in sharing things with phoebe that were my favorites when i was a kid, like the muppets.  it went over great with her, and i think on our next friday night family night fun night we might have to break out a little muppets take manhattan (better than the muppets movie, by the way).  and now i've heard that the genius of jason segel has been tabbed to revive the franchise after the most unfortunate mis-steps of muppets in space and that wheels off pirate movie they did.  so this is needed...because honestly a world without rolph and beaker and animal and gonzo and the chef and dr teeth is just a world that i don't want to live in.  and now phoebe doesn't want to, either.