A Giant among men?

Remember San Francisco Giants (and New York Mets) centerfielder Tsuyoshi Shinjo? The onetime fan favorite who couldn't hit much, but sure could patrol the pasture?

He's got a new career now. Oh man.

No comment on the fact that the underwear company is called Gunze.

Back next week....

Metacritic

About that Calexico non-review below: I imagine you think that's pretty sneaky of me, reviewing a record by declining to write a review.

Borges claimed that he frequently composed reviews of non-existent books rather than write them himself, because he just didn't have the time. (I am not trying to compare myself to Borges here. I'm just saying.)

But he could do even better than that, too. Here's one of the most wildly creative stories ever, reprinted without permission.

The record company, Rosie...

I was going to compose something here about the new Calexico record. How they needed to stop doing what they were doing, and how they took a step that wasn't necessarily forward, and how time will vindicate them for this move anyway. (There was also a planned digression about how we don't normally think of pop records as "composed music".) But then I remembered Chuck Klosterman's article about the Advanced theory of pop music, and I couldn't think of anything I could say about Garden Ruin that would be better than simply calling it Advanced. Maybe after I road-test it in the desert I'll be able to articulate my thoughts better. (You know I'm good for it.)

The co-creator of the Advanced theory runs a blog too (found via Jimmy Page's Sweater Vest). There's a lot of interesting stuff there, but if you only have time for one video, I suggest the R.E.M. performance on Nickelodeon in 1983. (Yeah, 23 years ago.)

At least one of you will want to see that Mats vid too, if you haven't already. Tommy: seven years into the band, and still just 19.


FMFM: Garden Ruin

Yo momma!

Former U.S. poet laureate Robert Pinsky on the poetic insult. Includes the one about Hitler's testicle.

Who knew "turd" was a word in 1608?

This Humanist, whom no belief constrained,
Grew so broad-minded he was scatter-brained.


FMFM: Gram Parsons' "lost vocals" from the Sweetheart of the Rodeo album. In a few days I'll be in Gram's beloved Joshua Tree, retreating from my RSS feeds and two-machine desk in favor of climbing on rocks, cooking outside, drinking red wine, and scanning for the UFOs Gram and Keef swore they saw. Will try to post a photo of the immolation site if I make it there. (The slab, by the way, is gone. It's safe at home, back at the Inn.)

It appears we will be approaching from the north via Hwy 395. The road is still too snowy to go to Bodie, but I imagine I will get in some quality time down by Mono Lake and up around Bishop Creek. Anyone have more ideas?

Lordi, lordi, lordi

Oh my. This is the best Scandinavian metal story since the glory days of Mayhem.

"In Finland, we have no Eiffel Tower, few real famous artists, it is freezing cold and we suffer from low self-esteem," said Mr. Putaansuu, who, as Lordi, has horns protruding from his forehead and sports long black fingernails.

...Dragging on a cigarette, Mr. Putaansuu added, "Finns nearly choked on their cereal when they realized we were the face Finland would be showing to the world."


FMFM: Something just a little gentler.

When I hear the word MySpace....

A "minimally scientific" study reveals exactly what you'd expect.

Search: "I hate my mom" OR "I hate my mother" OR "I hate my parents" OR "I hate my dad" OR "I hate my father"
∙On the web: 275,000. | On Myspace.com: 46,100.
∙Myspace’s parent angst level (PAL) represents 16.7% of the Global Whole.

Language foul

You know a piece of tech lingo has really gone mainstream when Janet Reilly, Democratic candidate for California state assembly, sends you a piece of mail touting "California 2.0: [A Plan] for Upgrading California Public Policy in the 21st Century."


FMFM: Old Genesis, specifically Foxtrot at the moment. Yeah. A holdover from my prog-rock days of the mid-1980s. (Go ahead, make fun of me.) Back when Phil Collins was just a hairy drummer who could stay loose in 11/8 time, when Peter Gabriel would take the stage dressed as a sunflower (or something much weirder!), when Mike Rutherford was the slickest 8-string bassist around, they made some of the best RenFaire Rock around. (Steve Hackett sure could get heavy too.) To be clear: I don't need stories about medieval knights or battles in English forests. I just have fond memories of, you know, trying to figure out what the hell they were talking about.

As I recall, King Crimson once sold its mellotron to Genesis. I understand it's obvious on the records, when King Crimson no longer uses mellotron and Genesis starts using one. Funny.

It's kind of like the tale about the guitar shop in Asbury Park that advertised the Gibson Les Paul as "the guitar Bruce Springsteen uses!" back in the early 1970s. The story goes that some kid traded his Esquire/Tele frankenguitar for a Les Paul so he could be like Bruce; then, the Boss himself swapped his Les Paul for the Esquire, which he still uses today. (Yeah, that one.)

Let there be light

This creative fellow found a use for all his old CDs. (Hope it illuminates his Star Wars poster adequately!)

Found via TechEBlog's Top 10 Strangest Home Gadgets. I like the Pong clock too.

Logjammin'

Let me get this straight:

∙You're a theater located on Haight Street.
∙You're showing The Big Lebowski.
∙It's going to be screened at 4:20 on 4/20.
∙There's a "munchies" reference in your blurb.

What is that, an Eastern thing? (Far from it.)

The Dude abides. But I won't be there.

Wheeling and dealing

You know it's baseball season when the Onion has a trifecta like this:

∙The Cubs' season hopes, um, "hinging" on Mark Prior's right arm
∙Pedro Martinez talking to whales
∙Barry Zito seeking a spiritual upgrade

There's this too.


FMFM: Mingus's audacious Oh Yeah, a freewheeling session where it seems he could do whatever he wanted. This one's a grand slam -- clamorous and on the verge of clutter, as always, but probably the most fun he ever had in the studio.

Terminated

I can't help thinking Jeffrey Mount is overstating the case a little bit when he compares Sacramento's flood potential to that of New Orleans. But I certainly do believe him when he says the city and surrounding region are protected by vulnerable levees, and it's not surprising he was Terminated when he made a stink about it.

Related: Here we are, a century and a day after my city was destroyed by an earthquake, and most people still don't have canned food, batteries and bottled water lying around. They could put it on the front page of the newspaper every single day and people still wouldn't believe it could happen again. WTF?

Disciples of the 3-way

Back to back to back, on three consecutive pitches. You can add Saturday's game to my list.


FMFM: Ready for Freddie, which I'm starting to think I enjoy more than anything else in Hubbard's career.

Chin music

Another one for those of you who love rock'n'roll as much as you love baseball.

The closer songs of the early '90s tended to mix a cranky bravado with the threat of mental instability—don't mess with me, I'm so mean and crazy. The more recent crop ditches the crankiness in favor of all-out psychopathy. Today's closer isn't just baaaad, he's a cold-blooded murderer.


FMFM: More TV. The star of the San Francisco Old Waldorf 6-29-78 show is bassist Fred Smith, with a sound that's slippery yet authoritative. He's very loud in the mix and still sounds good, which any bass player will tell you isn't easy to do.

And Richie -- Richie said, "Hey, man, let's dress up like cops. Think of what we could get away with!"

But something, something said, "Hey, you better not." And I fell.

Ruination day

September 11 gets all the press, but April 14 may be the worst day in American history. Gillian Welch knows all about it.

∙Lincoln was shot
∙Titanic struck the iceberg
∙Dust Bowl awfulness peaked
∙2000 stock market crash signals end of dot-com boom

Maybe that last one wasn't so bad.


FMFM: Mingus Moves

Word gets around

So my shout-outs to the Kinks and "skank-pop" in the same blog post have generated a record 12 comments (and counting! -- although I admit some of them are my own). I'll have to see what happens when I say something really controversial. Maybe it's time for that rant about indie-rock and trust-fund kids, and where the idea of "not selling out" really comes from.... naw, another time, perhaps.

A little free reading I'd like to pass along, then:

∙This morning I digested Sy Hersh's piece about the coming nightmare in Iran. File under "you've got to be kidding, but no, I can see that you aren't." Because the last war went so well.

∙I have to laugh when I follow a link that says "New Jersey Bans Smoking". Um, New Jersey is smoking.

∙Ten years later, here is Jeffrey Maier: batting .400 in college. Still identified as "boy who helped Yankees."

∙Via ALJones and Boingx2: They're racing Big Wheels down Lombard Street's "crookedest" segment on Sunday. Seems like a street luge for the Dead Hensons set. Fun.

Have a Good Friday....


FMFM: Four Television bootlegs from my late friend's collection. "The Grateful Dead of punk," they said, probably thinking of all the guitar-tuning breaks. The band could work up quite a lather, even on the 1992 reunion tour. Oh, and the 1975 version of "Marquee Moon" reveals a different, longer guitar riff (the "twittering" one rather than the "stuttering" one). Cool!

Tequila champ

You can't always blame the music industry for shoving lame music down our throats. Witness: "skank-pop" is ruling the day on the entirely voluntary MySpace.com too, in the form of Tila Tequila and others. Thirty-one million visits, nearly four million plays of her top song, and thirty thousand streams so far today. Wow. She's terrible.

I'll say it again: When I hear the word MySpace, I reach for my volume control.


FMFM: A series of late-60s-early-70s Kinks records, lately. Sometimes I wonder how it's taken me so long to get to Ray Davies' best material. Probably I've just been distracted by their (excellent) earlier hits; the radio doesn't really play much from the 1966-1971 era anyway, except for "Lola" and "Victoria" and maybe one or two more. I know that the Kinks have become icons to a certain strain of indie-rockers, and while I haven't found the ambitious concept albums to be pure gold, I must say that certain trophy-winning pieces such as "This Time Tomorrow" and "Shangri-La" and "Arthur" do seem to be grossly neglected by the larger pop audience.

It never rains in Southern California

...but it does up here. The truth about local rainfall, day by day for forty-six years.

I've heard a lot of talk about how people can't remember a winter as wet as this one, but it looks like last year's winter was very comparable to this year's.

Guess they weren't here in 1997-1998....


FMFM: Stevie Wonder's Where I'm Coming From. Who knew he was ever this psychedelic?

The boys from North Dakota drink whiskey for their fun

A couple of years after it published the memorable Vanishing Point series on the depopulation of the rural Great Plains, the Times comes through with a Sunday magazine piece about northwestern North Dakota.

This time, the tale takes an unusual twist: In a place so depopulated that banks would rather give away land than repossess it, homesteading has returned to the local economy. (Yes, this is occurring in the same country as the unprecedented real estate boom.) If you're willing to live on a piece of land in northwest North Dakota for five years, it's yours.

I'd like to know whether the same conditions exist just over the border in Canada, or whether the economy thrives a little more there because, well, going south means leaving the country. I'd like to know how much corporate vs. family farming has to do with this depopulation, too.

Regardless, they've got to try something to attract people there. The average age of a Crosby, N.D., resident is over 50; check out these demographics too. Even rural Nevada is doing better than that.

I mentioned going rural in this space a couple of weeks ago. No way could I go this rural.

[Separately: The Chron begins its quake anniversary special. The Simon Winchester book is worthwhile further reading, though the author is sometimes prone bizarre overstatement and draws a few highly suspect conclusions.]


FMFM: Wayne Shorter's Adam's Apple, featuring the classic "Footprints" and several other pieces that aren't far behind.

Amtrak Crescent

A few words about the team whose uniform I wear every Sunday in the summertime.

And the chumps wear the crown

It should be a national holiday.

[And by the way: April Fool.]

The book and the canal

Two things I took in today:

∙NoisePop screened a pretty good film about twenty-plus years of music from Tucson, Ariz., in the somewhat cramped and uncomfortable space at Artists' Television Access on Valencia Street this afternoon. With the filmmaker present (and Jonathan Richman in the house!), the High and Dry screening drew a crowd of about 35 attendees, many of whom seemed to know most of the people in the film.

High and Dry may have been made by someone too close to its subject. To my eyes, it buried the lede by failing to acknowledge soon enough, or strongly enough, the obvious truth about Tucson: it's a cheap town to live in, where people can do whatever they please as if no one's looking; therefore the insular arts scene thrives in unique ways that are impossible elsewhere. This should've been stated in the first minute of the movie. Instead, the film begins with a lot of talk about a bygone punk-rock scene of the late 70s and early 80s, disclosing very little that an outsider would care about. In fact, several of the bands aren't really that worth talking about much -- does anyone really care why Machines of Loving Grace disintegrated, especially when it's the same old story anyway? -- and some others aren't quite framed as especially unique, or especially emblematic of Tucson's circumstance.

Nonetheless, there is a lot of good footage, and Rainer Ptacek emerges as a central character worth memorializing. The editing is taut, and the pacing is pleasantly quick, although the finished product is a little long. High and Dry is a love letter to the bands in the filmmaker's hometown, and probably looks awfully different to Tucsonans than it does to the rest of us.

∙I read "My Crowd", a piece by the inventor of the flash mob found in the March 2006 Harper's, at Simple Pleasures Café way out on Balboa Street in the 121. I recommend spending a little time reading the whole thing -- it's a hoot -- but if you only have a few moments I suggest the second half of Part 3, entitled "Subject Population." (In case you're new to this whole idea, flash mobs are events in which large groups of people, recruited by stealthy missives and word-of-mouth, briefly convene in public and do something farcical, then disperse within about ten minutes.) I'm going to throw out the word "post-Gladwellian" with something resembling a straight face here.

∙Something I didn't do today: Join Google Romance, "a psychographic matchmaking service." Oh man. The end is nigh.


FMFM: Reincarnation of a Lovebird, on which Charles Mingus re-records some of his most notable works with worthwhile results. Usually that strategy only results in a waste of time, but Mingus re-thinks some of his best pieces here. That "Pithecanthropus Erectus" is really something.

Headline of the day

Monkey Flings Poo by Thinking. Found in a Slashdot feed this morning, but possibly originally published in 2003.


FMFM: Steely Dan, thanks to my discovery of this 1992 article from Modern Drummer. A trash can lid? "Aja" on the second take? Great stories.

"Then they counted off this tune...the first thing I heard was the lyrics 'agents of the law/luckless pedestrian,' and I almost stopped playing."

Got enough truck?

Funny.