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BPF

Friday.  Watched the Arcade Fire’s live show from MSG on the big TV; the YouTube stream was surprisingly solid and high-definition.  Was great.  We should try and see them again when they come around for the new record…

I’ve written before about the plague the Lord placed on my face during my junior-high years.  Perhaps I was being punished for all the evil things I was doing.  With all my evil friends and all our evil urges and our evil homemade napalm and stolen cartons of smokes.  Whatever the reason for the curse, my previous entry recalls the way those pimples sunk my self confidence.  Sharaun, too, suffered from a particularly nasty attack of the pimples – although her time came much later in life.  Between the two of us then, we’re like an acne survivors support group.  We should be able to at least provide some empathy to our kids when their time comes.

I write all this because I was reminded of it by little baby Cohen’s “infant acne.”  Our poor little man has a pretty ugly case.  Keaton had baby acne too, but I don’t recall it being as pronounced as Cohen’s is.  Maybe that’s because his little-man body is simply bursting with awesome hormones (because his dad is so manly and strong).  I’ve taken to calling him “baby pizza face,” out of love, of course – and Keaton has even picked it up.  BPF, for short.  Oh nevermind you who say I’m mean… it’s a nickname and it helps me acknowledge to people who may see him and think, “Dear God, what’s wrong with that baby’s face,” that yes: my little kid has zits.

Don’t worry Cohen; don’t let the world get you down… that acne’s gonna clear up and you’ll have perfect newborn skin again until you’re twelve or thirteen.  Then, just when every flaw is under 100 social microscopes, it’ll come back to test your mettle.  And if it couldn’t best you when you were three weeks old, just think how much easier you’ll fare with twelve more years under your belt to thicken your skin.

That’s my boy; baby pizza face.

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musty smut

Sometime back in 2009 I started a draft entry about finding dirty magazines in the woods.  Wait; stick with me.

I had seen a funny thread that someone started online about the very subject, and was surprised at just how many folks chimed in to say that they, too, had seen some of their first pornography by virtue of “discovering” some mildewed magazine half-buried under a pile of rotting leaves.

Back in my day (wow, that makes me feel old), finding and then hiding your dirty magazines in the woods seemed to be a common thing (look on the internet here and here if you don’t believe me).  In fact I can remember we would go strolling through the woods with eyes on the ground for the express purpose of stumbling upon porn.  And we found it when we looked, too; if you were a pack of twelve year old boys in the 80s, you had some kind of Playboy sonar… and no camouflage could hide a Hustler from that.

As I wrote back then, the whole “chase” of porn is lost on today’s young men.  Porn is on your TV at night, no watching through snow required; porn comes to you on the computer; porn is on your cellphone.  There’s no looking anymore, there’s no “discovery,” there’s no state of un-knowing.  Back in my day, we relied on our found porn to reveal to us the magical secrets of sex.  Someone in that online discussion I read over a year ago, and that inspired this entry, put it best with the following:

We found an issue of Club in a garbage can, and in it there was a picture of a woman sticking her nipple into another woman’s vagina.

We acted all knowing with each other, like “Yeah, that’s something people do. You didn’t know about that?”

In this modern internet age kids have probably seen worse than that by 3rd grade computer lab.  Whither have the innocent days of thumbing through a tattered Jugs in a draining ditch with a couple friends gone?  Our poor young men today have no chance… Gone are the days of having to muddle through not understanding every other word in those Penthouse Forum articles,  having to guess from context and later being embarrassed whilst employing it incorrectly after getting up enough courage to dare use one as you’d self-defined it.  Oh man that was embarrassing to find out that “woody” doesn’t always mean a paneled surfer-mobile… kids can be rough.

I suppose I’m not really lamenting some great lost innocence of my day here, I mean there’s plenty more to be sad about aside from the mechanics through which our youth are introduced to smut.  In fact I’ve quite forgotten if I was driving to any point here or not.  I think maybe I just wanted to talk about finding porn, quote that hilarious nipple thing, and maybe opine about “kids these days.”  Mission accomplished?

Goodnight.

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cooing & head-petting

It’s only Tuesday.

Sitting here at 9pm reveling in the fact that the 9:30pm meeting I’ve been dreading since my 6pm arrival home from work is on its off-week of its every-other-week cadence.  Seriously, three hours of between time isn’t even enough for my work-brain to fully shut down and my home-brain to take over.  When a bad work day happens to align with one of those few and far between days where I have late-night meetings I clock-watch from the moment I get home until the moment the cellphone rings.  Stupid work, encroaching on my time.

We leave for a week in Florida around the middle of the month.  And even though I just had some time off work when Cohen was born, I’m ready for some more.  While there I plan to hang out with friends, maybe take walks by the river, spend some time in the pool and sit around reading.  None of the family back South has met Cohen yet so we’re all excited to give him his east coast debut.  Keaton might be most proud, she’s so in love with the idea of being a big sister and takes real joy in sharing him with other people.  She wants everyone to know how well she can perform her sisterly duties… and it turns out that, luckily, Cohen actually seems to be calmed by her cooing and head-petting.  Her very real ability to soothe him is a really cool thing for her (and us) and she wants everyone to know.

Let’s hope their relationship stays as sweet right through highschool.  Goodnight.

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best of 2010 – halfway

Hard to believe it’s already more than halfway through 2010, right?

I’ve had my usual “halfway best of” list near-ready to post since way back in early June, but I was really unhappy with the substance of the content I’d written on each record.  What I needed to do was sit down and listen to each one as I wrote about it… but even until now I’ve only had times to do that in fits and starts.  With Cohen’s arrival and work and the other trappings of the daily grind the best I could muster was a few re-writes aimed at saying something more than “this album is good, you should try it.”  I’m still not entirely satisfied, but I’ve been working on this thing so long it’s just time for us to part ways.

So I sat around Sunday night with headphones on and banged this out.  I tried to flourish where I could.  Hopefully it might turn you onto something, or at least give you cause to call me a front-running wanna-be hipster, one of those two (perhaps both).  See if there’s anything you can dig on:

10. Sleigh Bells – Treats [listen]

People who know my taste might find it odd I like this record so much, but so help me I do.  You know what this record is?  It’s a cheerleading record.  No I swear I’m not kidding.  It’s an album that tweaker cheerleaders do routines to.  At times the guitars and beats and vocals and everything else are so distorted and clipped that songs risk becoming a static wall of sound, but in the end the beats and teenage-chant vocals prevail and land smack after smack of meth’d-out Toni Basil.  All of it hits hard, but “Kids” and “Riot Rhythm” are likely my favorite of the stompers here.  A lot of times I’ll try and give my opinion on what setting a particular “best of” album works best in – but for this one you should just turn it up and dance.  Go; dance.  Badly around your living room with your sons and daughters like I do.  Dance and have fun doing it.  This music is stupid and disposable and that’s what makes it so very enjoyable.

9. Ariel Pink’s Haunted Graffiti – Before Today [listen]

One of the later entrants on the midyear list, Before Today didn’t grace my ears until sometime midway through May.  I can still remember my first impressions: “What is this?  Some retro Bowie/Eno/Hall & Oates mashup thing?  Oh no wait here comes some Velvet Undergroundy guitar stuff.  Man this is oddball.  Drug music.  Music for drugs. Slick; intravenous.”  I guess this is what they call “art rock;” what a dumb taxonomy, music nerds are so full of themselves.  But man, this swings.  Pink’s music divides critics; some hate it some love it.  With ties to indie wunderkind Animal Collective and a ton of underground press I think people are actually afraid to like this album for fear of being judged to be among the sheep.  So do I like it or did the internet tell me I should like it enough that I’m brainwashed?  Does it matter?  I like it, of my own doing or the hivemind’s… I like it.  Shut up.

8. Yeasayer – Odd Blood [listen]

If most of what I dug in earl 2010 can be pigeonholed as dreamy harmony-based pop, then Yeasayer’s record is the outlier.  Opening with a relatively unapproachable (at first) beat-based Radiohead-sounding experimental piece, the album changes quick and offers up several pieces of highly danceable quirk-rock.  In fact, I daresay that tracks like “Ambling Alp” and “ONE” would get most people shaking something.  While other numbers aren’t as easy to categorize, the album as a whole leaves you with a happy feeling – each song upbeat in its own way, no harshing of one’s buzz here.  It’s a hard sound to describe, and maybe a hard one to fall in love with, but I’m convinced that spending some time with this one will turn you, too.

7. The National – High Violet [listen]

The National’s records have always been “growers” for me.  I don’t know how they manage to do it, but the urgency and energy of their music is often masked to me upon the first few listens. Yet as I listen more and listen carefully the real push and charge of each track is revealed.  Sharaun has commented more than once that this album sounds “slow” and “boring,” but she’s still got the scales on her eyes and I’m just a little closer to Damascus.  When those scales drop, my friends, you’ll hear such a passion in each deceptively muted rythym and baritone lyric you’ll know right away there’s substance to this one.  The National do more with less (the pause between the words “blood” and “buzz” on “Bloodbuzz Ohio” drips with anticipation and is likely to make the weak swoon).

6. Surfer Blood – Astro Coast [listen]

Surfer Blood make trashy surf rock that, upon listening, recalls hearing Weezer’s debut album for the first time.  You like guitars and fuzz?  You like triple-tracked vocals with stadium echo? You like shimmery cymbals on a majority of downbeats?  You like a 2010 take on 1960s beach-styled phrasing?  Well by God man you owe it to yourself to get this album!  I want to listen to these tracks hanging onto a rope stretched off the backside of a ski boat, a wakeboard strapped to my heels and a bellyful of beer while my bald head simmers in the summer sun – it’s that record you were listening to that one time you lost your sunglasses.  The Ventures and Beach Boys meet Weezer (when they were good) and JaMC.  You’ll want this to accompany your waterside summer, get it and find a palm tree to lounge under, bring a chick and a blanket.

5. Zeus – Say Us [listen]

I’m not even certain how I heard about Zeus, but this album is what Dr. Dog should have made in 2010 (let’s not talk about what they did make).  Every month of every year since the days of The Beatles some band released an album that sounds like the Beatles.  That’s a lot of Beatles-esque records since 1969.  Zeus shouldn’t be shy about their Beatles-tinged effort, however, they’ve done a great job and crafted some great pop-rock gems in the process.  If you are looking for the most universally-approachable entrant on this year’s list look no further than “Say Us” –  hardly anyone would ask you to turn this off at the barbecue, I promise.

4. Wavves – King of the Beach [listen]

The whole Wavves frenzy of a couple years back completely missed me.  I didn’t even download that acclaimed record.  The reviews alone turned me off, rambling on and making the music sound all a bunch of overblown half-baked garage crap, listeners suffering from the same strange mass hysteria that allows bullshit like Trout Mask Replica to rank as a “great” album.  So I didn’t touch it.  Then I heard the title of the new Wavves record and I was intrigued.  For in 2010 the beach/surf/coastal theme is in vogue (sorry The Thrills in 2003, you tried), and calling your album King of the Beach is like catnip to front-running indie hipsters.  Next, I saw the dang album cover.  All Sgt. Pepper badge-esque in terms of color and featuring some kind of Freemason weasel or fox smoking a joint.  I mean come on – I had to download it.  And you know what, it is simple, it is garage, but it’s anything but overrated.  In fact it’s right up my alley.

3. The Local Natives – Gorilla Manor [listen]

This record, the Morning Benders Record, and the Beach House record pretty much sum up the “sound” I’m digging so far in 2010.  These LA-area folks seemingly came out of nowhere.  I read about them in the UK press sometime early in the year and decided to give the album a try.  Wow.  With harmonies that would do any modern folk outfit proud, rim-and-stick happy percussion, and enough chops to get loud when they should – the Local Natives have made one of the best records of the year.  And so yes, people may say that the album droops and sags at points (namely points that aren’t shored up by the stellar “Airplanes” and “Camera Talk), but the whole effort is sound to me.  I mean, honestly, you could put eight tracks of random noise around the awesomeness that is “Airplanes” and I’d still buy the record.

2. Beach House – Teen Dream [listen]

Picked and plucked scales, dreamy harmonies, and plush backdrops.  I got this album as winter was turning to spring and it fit so well.  I just love the tunes here, the melodies are incredible – almost understated to the point of near breakdown, but done to perfection.  As far as songs go, I often find myself falling for tracks with vocal melodies that are well-defined enough to be standalone songs in their own right.  When a band or artist is able to craft a killer song musically, and then layer a completely different, yet just as amazing, vocal accompaniment on top of it I get goosebumps.  Teen Dream is like that, and although you might think it’s too slow or limp at first I’d urge you stick with it.  I mean just listen to the harmonies on “Love of Mine” and you’ll see what I mean.

1. Morning Benders – Big Echo [listen]

There’s that very last scene in the very last episode of the Wonder Years.  It’s a slow-motion soft-focus Fourth of July parade and we learn the fate of the entire cast; it was a perfect ending.  Even today my heart swells when I watch that scene, my eyes sting with tears held back.  Not sad tears but the tears you experience when years of nostalgia crescendo and eclipse everything else in your head.  When those moments come, those points of piled-on memory when all else in the mind slips away, you get a moment of pure feeling.  That’s what happens in my head when I hear this record.  The songs are somehow so familiar to me that I instantly loved them, “remembered” them even.  In part I think it’s the lead singer’s voice, in part it’s the subject matter.  I mean, the, “I can’t help thinking we grew up too fast,” bit in “Promises”… the tinkling piano and hints of feedback at the ends of the chords… fantastic.  This is the kind of record that doesn’t come often, one of those love-at-first-sight things, and nothing in 2010 has topped it for me yet.

Honorable mention this year goes to The Radio Dept.’s Clinging To A Scheme [listen] and The New Pornographers’ Together [listen].  Both excellent records but each, whether due to pure whim or a lack of diligence or true deservedness, not bowing in my top 10.  This should not, however, prevent you from checking them out – and it does not preclude my listening habits from elevating them come end-of-year.

So that’s what I dig so far.  And yeah I know the Arcade Fire’s new one leaked already, but I’ve only been listening to it for a week or so and it can debut at end-year if it deserves it (I’ll let you guess).

Goodnight.

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trading down

O how the coming of our new son Cohen has brought about much:  The name of my father and his father will now survive another generation (presumably); our house has completed its metamorphosis from post-college pad to full family domicile; we get another break on taxes; things of this nature.  One Cohen-induced change that makes a good writing topic: the great vehicle exchange.  Mmm-hmmm, I’ve been handed-down Sharaun’s Saturn while she’s upgraded to the new Acadia.

I knew this was coming; I mean it’s the reason we bought a vehicle as big as the Acadia to begin with (all good American consumers know the rule of doubling, which dictates that a family of four needs a car which can comfortably seat eight and that if you want three pancakes you should order six, among other things).  I’ve written bits here and bits there about my sadness at being bumped from the Acadia, with all its modern conveniences, and the tiny things about the Saturn that turned me off.  But I’m here to say that I’ve embraced my new primary vehicle, and am, in fact, quite happy with our new arrangements (remember that post where I picked on just what it means to have something “grow on you?,” it was in the context of music & beer… but still).  OK so I did a little work to the car to get it more firmly into my good graces…

  • I had the cracked windshield replaced.
  • I ordered and installed a new stereo.  One with built-in Bluetooth for both wireless stereo music and phone, and USB and AUX-in on the front, and all sorts of other bells and whistles.
  • I fixed the busted running light and left blinker.
  • I replaced the missing interior panel down by the gas pedal; it’d been in the trunk for years.
  • I cleaned the thing of all Sharaun’s detritus and took the car in for a white-glove interior detailing.
  • I dropped her off for an overall 90k service and tuneup, just to be sure.

Oh boy guys… not only did all this get the vehicle in tip-top shape and make it a lot more appealing to me (OK so all I really cared about was getting my music on the speakers over Bluetooth), it also saw Sharaun (not entirely surprisingly) asking “why?”  Why did I soup up the car and get all the broken stuff fixed only when it became my car?  Yeah… good question.  Sure she’s been asking me to replace that burned-out blinker for about three years now (I’m not exaggerating) and sure that interior panel took all of ten seconds to re-attach… I won’t deny those things…

Uh-oh blog, I don’t really see a way out of this one…

At least I’m still the bigger man for diving into my newly downsized wheels with relish?  No?  Still the heel who only fixed his wife’s car when it became his car?  OK then.

Goodnight.

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daddy-daughter hiking

Tuesday and the week plods along.

If you’re caught up to yesterday’s entry you know that I don’t feel like I spent near enough time away from work to “bond” with my newly larger family.  I did, however, use what time I had wisely.  I tried to spend purposeful time with both Keaton and Cohen.  However, since time with Cohen chiefly amounts to napping together on a couch, I’ll share here about some daddy-daughter time that Keaton and I had last week.

We joined a friend and his son (also a good friend of Keaton’s) on a hike to a local waterfall.  We left early and grabbed breakfast along the way and had a gorgeous day for some fun in the water, sight-seeing, hiking and even some basic four-year-old-compatible rock scrambling.  Keaton was a champ, and followed my instructions well, practicing safe climbing during the hairiest parts of the short ~200ft ascent.  She did slip on some decomposed granite a couple times, once falling enough to scrape her calve before I could pull her up (we had a strict “always hold daddy’s hand while climbing” policy for just this reason).  Here are some pictures of the expedition (please excuse the sasquatch escorting her):

[nggallery id=43]

We spent more than a few hours wandering around, wading, and enjoying creation.  And in the end Keaton was immensely proud of herself for making the haul to the top (we were proud of both the kids, as they both did really well on the little outing).  In fact we talked about getting them each a “climbing” or “hiking” badge ala Scouts or something to tout their new experience (maybe I’m not  properly conveying the amount of pride they each felt in their efforts… but it was a big deal for them both).

I’ve been making regular trips back to that waterfall in my head at my desk this week…

Later.

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all this for eight hours of that

Mmmmgrrph… stupid back to everything normal.  Here goes.

It’s Sunday afternoon and there’s a tight spot in my chest and an thinness to my attentions; it’s a mild sense of dread.  Not an excited dread either, like being poised at the apex of a roller coaster or dropping in on a big wave.  No it’s a dread-dread, in the Websters sense, and it’s because I return to work tomorrow.  This time with family has been perfect and I don’t want it to end.  The feeling is compounded with the fact that there are at least two, if not more, difficult issues waiting for me to be dealt with once I’m back.  Being away from work with those things looming made the time even more sweet, but now coming back looms doubly with the weight of them.  O but Lord I don’t want to go back!

But let’s stay away from the drudgery and keep things positive.  All things in the world of our new four-person archetypal American family unit are going well.  Cohen seems to have picked up the “great baby” torch passed along be his big sister Keaton, and is super low-maintenance – only waking us twice at night for feeding (one late feeding before bedtime for mom and dad, one in the dead of the still of the night, and one right around sunrise).  He doesn’t fuss (yet), doesn’t spit-up (yet), eats well and sleeps well.  His beef-jerky belly button fell of without fanfare last week and he’s already recovered much of the birthweight he lost in those first few days.

Just as Keaton before him, he was an instant source of joy for me; the kid shines with some magical sheen I can get lost in – some aura that I can stare into for hours.  They are so precious, new babies.  I wondered, before he was born, how he’d “impact” the strong feelings and ties I have to Keaton – our firstborn.  Wondered if my attentions or passions would be split or multiplexed or somehow diminished.  Seems so silly now, it just adds together in heaps… you fill this huge space you didn’t even know you had.  My heart swelled the moment the slimy ruddy little man broke free and screamed from his toothless little mouth, and it’s roomier for each yawn and gurgle and startle.  The love I have for Keaton is the love I have for my big, four-and-a-half year old girl.  For Cohen my newborn boy.  Apples and oranges yet both innate and instinctive.

So anyway I’m depressed about having to go back and trade all this for eight hours of that.

Goodnight.