It's been a weird week at work (power outages, firings, lots and lots of call-offs, ten days in a row with no time off, massive overtime, etc.), and as a result, I'm sort of stressed out, tired, and in a weird mood. Also, I am, at this point, running solely on caffeine and nerves, so this blog may or may not be comprehensible to anyone else.

Anyway, here's a quick list of what I've been listening to lately, for anyone who cares.

1. Golden Age, TV On The Radio
2. Kids With Guns, Gorillaz
3. He Hit Me, Grizzly Bear
4. The Mission, Puscifer
5. Policy of Truth, Depeche Mode
6. Many Things In This For You (Meet Your Master Remix), NIN
7. Sex Bomb, Spinnerette
8. City Noise, Scarling
9. Electioneering, Radiohead
10. Destroy Everything You Touch, Ladytron
11. Crying, TV On The Radio
12. The Government, Saul Williams
13. Nine Million Rainy Days, The Jesus and Mary Chain

Yes, I've started listening to The Jesus and Mary Chain, god help me. Throw in some Bauhaus and clove cigarettes, and I'll be too Goth to function. (Yep, that's a Mean Girls reference. Sue me.) And yes, I've obviously spent MORE MONEY at Amazon, my latest purchase being TV On The Radio's Dear Science, which is excellent.

And yeah, I totally shouldn't have had that extra shot of espresso added to my Venti Macchiato at Starbucks this morning-- or that last Diet Pepsi, either. Hmm.

I spend too much money on music. The end.

Seriously. I should be getting frequent flier miles or something from Amazon, given the amount of music I download. I've got about six and a half gigabytes on my hard drive currently, and that's not counting about half the CDs on my rack. Given, a lot of those are music that I don't really listen to anymore (Hey, by the way, if anyone out there's looking to purchase Matchbox 20's or the Red Hot Chili Peppers' discographies, let me know. Everything except By The Way is up for grabs, since Stadium Arcadium aka RHCP's Great Big Cash-In Pretentious Double Album pissed me off so badly.)

And, as I've already implied, the library is growing rapidly. In fact, as I am typing this, I am also downloading Spinnerette's newest single, "Sex Bomb". I have already downloaded all of Bon Iver's For Emma, Forever Ago (depressing but excellent), and a song by Grizzly Bear, whom I had studiously avoided listening to until today (also excellent). Last Friday, I actually went out and bought Annie Lennox's new greatest hits comp, which is great, and in the past week, I've added Belong's October Language and Modest Mouse's The Lonesome Crowded West to my collection as well. And let's not forget about Depeche Mode's Playing the Angel.

It's seriously not my fault this time, though. Damn blip.fm and me for getting a blip.fm account, and damn everybody on that site for putting up interesting music. Also, damn Treznor for getting a blip.fm account and putting up a bunch of neat music.

Also, for those of you who might be interested, I've added a last.fm widget to my blog that shows my most recent listens. It's a bit Big Brother-y, but interesting technology nonetheless.

Anyway, that's about all for right now. My poor neglected blog-baby.

VACATION. That is all.

So this is my fourth day of vacation, and up til now, I've accomplished pretty much nothing of consequence-- I mean, unless you consider Twitter and listening to Depeche Mode leaks "consequential". (Yeah, by the way, if "Corrupt" is any indication, Sounds of the Universe is going to kiss some serious ass, so I will definitely be downloading that when it comes out. Also, I'm beginning to think I have a bit of an older-man complex, since I've been thinking dirty, dirty thoughts about Dave Gahan. Seriously, though, listen to this . . .



. . . and then tell me you're not having improper thoughts. That's what I thought.)

Wow, that's gotta be a new record for me: Longest Parenthetical Statement Ever. Plus there was a video embedded in the middle of all that!

In other news-- Kristin's car has broken down (AGAIN) so I am (ONCE MORE) serving as her primary transit system. Today, however, she at least found a friend to take her to and from band class, which is in Dowagiac (a 20-25 minute drive), and in all hopes, Dad will be over to take a look at Warchild sometime today. It certainly needs to be up and running by Thursday or Friday, or else that kills either my plans to go see Mom or Kristin's chances of getting to work all weekend.

Survey says that Kristin getting to work to collect a paycheck is more important than any trips to up see ma mere, though Mom would probably disagree about that at this point.

The good news is, I am still more relaxed than I ever thought possible, even considering an impending "dinner out with the ol' coworkers" tonight. I'm hoping for an early evening, in all truth-- and NO WORK CHATTER. (Like that's gonna happen.)

Well, that's all I have to report for now. Later!

The Home Stretch

It's been about a week since I last posted anything; this is mostly because I'm now in the home stretch of an 8-day-straight run at work. My vacation next week is going to be rad-- at least, it will be if getting there doesn't kill me. Grocery retail is a harsh mistress-- inevitably, any vacation is prefaced by being scheduled at least seven days in a row with no time off. Throw in my 2-10, 9-5, 5-1:30, 2-10, 9-5 schedule (those back-to-back close-open shifts are what we in the supermarket business like to call "the silent killer") and I guarantee, you'll be half-dead by the time you actually get your time off. I usually spend the first day in bed.

Speaking of work, I had my six-year anniversary last Friday. "Are you celebrating with champagne?" asked one of my coworkers, only half-joking-- this particular chain of grocery stores is know for, among other things, a measure of employee loyalty that borders on cultish behavior-- to which I snorted and replied, "I'm actually thinking about buying a fifth of cheap vodka and drinking myself into an early grave." Okay, my job isn't that bad, but looking around and realizing that you've spent the last six years of your life basically stuck in Nine Inch Nails' "Every Day Is Exactly The Same" is certainly a downer.

In other news, Twilight mania has hit again, this time due to the DVD release of the movie. One of my friends went to Walmart at midnight last Saturday when it came out, just for LOLs, and said she couldn't believe how many people were there. I've been playing around with the idea of writing my own vampire novel for a while, ever since I realized how much money $tephenie Meyer is making off her own "Ann Rice LITE" series, and now I've gone as far as actually starting my own. Granted, I'm still sort of just playing with ideas-- I've only got 5 pages so far-- but if it amounts to anything, I'm considering putting it up on the ol' blog in installations. Of course, I'm planning on having actual sex, violence, and gore in mine, and my vampires will not sparkle.

Oh, and there will not be any creepy half-human, half-vampire children running around. *Cough* I mean, not unless they are demonic and bent on total destruction.

All right, well, I've run out of shit to talk about, so I'd better tag this mofo and get on with my day. Big day 7 of 8 today-- I'm leaning heavily on Josh Freese's "I Don't Think That's OK" and Weep's cover of "Shut Up and Drive" in order to get through the day without murdering and pillaging.

"Wait, I wasted 3 hours of my life on THIS?!"

K and I went to see Watchmen, Zack Snyder's adaptation of the popular comic books, on Tuesday night, because she was excited about it and I was willing to go despite the hashing that the film's been getting from all the critics. After all, we have this great moviehouse (I'm calling it a "moviehouse" because it feels very quirky and '30s of me to do so) downtown where you can see first-run films for only $3.50 ($2.50 for matinees), and also, I figured that since Snyder is also responsible for 300, it would at least be a great-looking movie: Worst case scenario, I could sit and zone out to bright colors and stunning cinematography for three hours.

Dude, I was so wrong. Watchmen is a huge, lumbering mess of a movie, a leviathant whose flashy, big-budget special effects can't reconcile themselves to the BIG, DEEP, MEANINGFUL THEMES portrayed in the comic; in fact, the two often seem at blatant odds with each other. Plus, there's simply too much of everything in this film for any of it to have an impact.

Watchmen takes place in the year 1985, only it's an alternate 1985 in which Richard Nixon has just been elected to his third term and the US and USSR are perilously close to all-out nuclear war. The whole shebang is narrated by Rorshach, who's a superhero of your "I'm crazy, and that's what makes me super!" variety, a raspy-voiced, sweat-sock masked, conservative-minded vigilante whose "journal" is filled with dead dogs in gutters, lamentations on humanity's filthy and unworthiness, et al. He's also bitter as hell that he's the only one still keeping up with the superhero thing; it turns out that Rorshach was part of a group called Watchmen, a coalition of heroes dedicated to keeping the world from going entirely batshit. Now, somebody's launched a plot to take out the remaining members of this coalition.

And that's really about all I got out of the plot, per se: This movie is so jam-packed with plots and subplots and backstories and commentary on current politics, that it's hard to see the main plot, let alone figure out who the characters really are or care about them, for that matter. It's epic but not meaningful, splashy but without real impact, and comes across as being jumbled and disjointed. Case in point? The film's score utilizes songs from Bob Dylan, Jimi Hendrix, and Simon & Garfunkel, which I'm sure is supposed to "mean" something but mostly just makes you wonder: Do Hendrix and Dylan actually exist in this parallel world, or are we breaking the fourth wall, here?

Also-- if you're offended by repeated full-frontal shots of nuclear, possibly cancer-causing blue dick, definitely don't bother seeing this movie.

L-Scale Grade (out of a possble 5 Ls): L 1/2

The New Regime, "Coup"

Confession time: I didn't actually have high-speed internet until last June, so I was a bit late in getting into the whole downloading music thing. Once I got into, though, I never got out: Probably half my iTunes library consists of songs that I've downloaded from the internet, and the last time I actually bought a physical CD was when NIN's The Slip came out in May of last year.

I was reminded last night, during a trip to the mall, why it is that I download instead of buying physical CDs: A, there's a nearly-infinite selection of music available for download via retailers like Amazon, and B, downloading an album is usually about $3-$5 cheaper than buying the same album from a brick-and-mortar store. FYE, the store in which I was browsing, had a very limited selection, and the average price of a CD was $15.99. Ouch! It's no wonder that the big labels are hurting!

And wow, that introduction turned out to be a lot longer than I had originally intended. You're probably looking at the title of this right now and going, WTF? Is this a review or another long-winded rant about the decline of the music industry, which has already been done to death by smarter people than you? No, really, this is supposed to be a review. That long-ass intro was supposed to be a short paragraph saying how my preference for downloading music rather than buying it has led me to discover artists who offer digital releases of their albums but not neccessarily physical copies of them, such as New Regime (I hate Myspace, but this is the only website for the group), Ilan Rubin's project, who just released his debut album, Coup, via iTunes and Amazon.

Rubin, a 20-year-old drummer from LA who has worked with Lostprophets and is currently the touring drummer for Nine Inch Nails (you just knew this would circle back there somehow, didn't you?), wrote all the songs and recorded all the vocals and instrumentation for Coup himself, during Lostprophets' hiatus-- no small feat, considering that the album features a dizzying array of different styles and influences.

Clearly informed by artists like Queen and the Beatles, Coup is a diverse, ambitious effort. Opening track "The Collapse" begins with a piano-and-drum stomp that quickly leads into a "Bohemian Rhapsody"-style lamentation on "what you've become", while a few tracks later, "Haunt My Mind" employs some nifty electronics and a spare piano line in its intro. "The Credit 'We' Deserve" is an airy, acoustic-guitar-driven jaunt that features Rubin harmonizing with himself (yeah!) and a well-crafted, Beatles-esque melody.

Sometimes Rubin gets a little too ambitious-- too many tracks follow the same formula of "quiet intro, then explode into rock god bombast, fuck yeah!"-- and his singing is a little dodgy, especially when he's trying to channel Muse frontman Matt Bellamy (who, if you ask me, usually vacillates between channeling Freddie Mercury and Thom Yorke, so I don't know what that means), but these problems are easy to overlook. A more noticeable flaw in Coup is its overwrought lyrics, but after all, Rubin is only 20 FREAKIN' YEARS OLD, so "melodramatic" is the name of his game.

Overall, however, Coup is a solid effort from a talented up-and-comer which anyone who enjoys Queen and/or Muse should check out.

Essential tracks: "All These Changes", "The Credit 'We' Deserve", "Haunt My Mind"

Rating: LLLL (out of a possible five Ls)

Bromance ahoy!

Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor sure knows how to keep the fans connected: Not only did Reznor launch a redesigned nin.com back in August 2008-- complete with discussion forums, chatrooms, member profiles, and a remix section-- but he also signed up with social-networking site Twitter and has been putting out videos from the band's recent Australian tour. The videos, shot by the group's art director, Rob Sheridan, from onstage with the band, are a brilliant way to capture the intensity and energy of a NIN show, especially the last of the series: a performance of the classic "Wish", with guests Dillinger Escape Plan.

DEP covered the song for their 2006 EP Plagiarism (along with Justin Timberlake's "Like I Love You"-- fun trivia fact), and the two bands met up in Sydney, prompting an, uh, enamored Reznor to post in his Twitter account: "Inter-band NIN/Dillinger Escape Plan Sydney Harbour Bridge climb bromance last night. Actually quite fun!" Oh, that TR, ever the romantic. (Uh, BROmantic?)

By the way, I am going to use the term "bromance" as many times as possible in this blog, because hey, it's just fun to say.

Anway, bromance or not, it's a great performance. Not only can you practically see the testosterone emanating in great big waves from the stage, but in the last 45 or 30 seconds of the video, you can witness Reznor (who, by the way, is fast approaching the age of 44) take a really impressive dive into a drum kit. You have to give the guy props for that: I'm only 24, and I'm not sure I could get back up that quickly after tangling with a bass drum. Watch:



Other things I love about this video?

1. The reaction from Ilan Rubin, NIN's 20-year-old drummer, who seems to be unsure as to whether he should be more concerned about his boss or his bass drum;
2. The fact that Sheridan hasn't taken an elbow, guitar, or fist to the face yet, given that there are so many angry, muscular, black-clad rock guys onstage;
   
3. That DEP frontman Greg Puciato and TR could be twins (awww, matching black t-shirts!);
   
4. TR's introduction of DEP as a "poor man's Coldplay".
   

I also think that perhaps Treznor should start looking for endorsement deals with pain reliever manufacturers. Think about it: "Hi, I'm Trent Reznor, and I have to tell ya, sometimes after a long day of beating up my guitarist and diving into drumkits, my back hurts like a mofo. Aside from a fifth of Jose Cuervo, nothing works on my gig-related pain like Tylenol Rapid-Release Geltabs!" Gold, baby. Gold.

Anyway, you can view the rest of Sheridan's video from Down Under, or have a look at this one in true HD, at NIN's official website.

Nine Inch Nails will be touring North America this spring and early summer with co-headliners Jane's Addiction; tourdates and ticket sales info can also be found at www.nin.com. Catch them if you can, because it's sure to be an explosive show-- plus, Reznor has said that after this tour, he's "making NIN go away for a while".

And just because I can and because I think it's funny. . . .