Happy 2008

 

It’s hard to believe this decade is almost over, even before anyone has come up with a convincing name for it (The Naughts? The Oh’s?).

In addition to family and friends, here are a few things that make me a happy camper and that I’m grateful for as we enter “El Ocho”:

1)  Public libraries

2)  Late capitalism

3)  Lots of great music again this year, with the new-ish Spoon and Georgie James discs keeping me plenty of company on my drives to and from work.

4)  The Nooksack River

5)  William Shakespeare and Philip K. Dick

6)  Joe Gibbs and Clinton Portis (Joe thrives on taking so-so quarterbacks and putting a game plan around them that makes them look like stars.  We should all be so lucky in our professional lives.)

7)  Productivity in all of its varied forms

8)  Baseball players who obviously never came near performance enhancing drugs including Len Sakata, Jim Walewander, and Rick Dempsey

9)  Peace

Happy Secularist Holidays

The AV Club interviews Hitch.  Interesting, as usual.

Koan

If a loser, standing all by himself, endorses someone in a dark wood, does anybody hear him?

Keep on Turnin’

By most accounts, Ike Turner was a terrible human being.  But his musical accomplishments, including the creation of arguably the first rock and roll song ever (“Rocket 88″) might just tip the heavenly balance in his direction.  At least, it should.

Wonderful People

In a more just world, DC’s Q and Not U would have gotten a little more attention than they did (although it was a great run, with each album better than the last one).  Drummer John Davis is doing a very cool AM pop duet thing with Georgie James, main singer Chris Richards is doing acoustic ambiance as Ris Paul Ric, and now guitarist Harris Klahr is out with his new project President.  It’s delightfully spacey, and probably the oddest approach to things from the guy who always struck me as the one who wanted to take the most chances.  Hence, it’s probably the strangest of the three projects, with an interesting electro-tropicalia vibe.

In any event, best of luck to all of them and their current and future musical efforts.  I got to see them play live three times as QaNU and am a much better person because of it.

Philip Levine’s “You Can Have It”

My brother comes home from work
and climbs the stairs to our room.
I can hear the bed groan and his shoes drop
one by one. You can have it, he says.

The moonlight streams in the window
and his unshaven face is whitened
like the face of the moon. He will sleep
long after noon and waken to find me gone.

Thirty years will pass before I remember
that moment when suddenly I knew each man
has one brother who dies when he sleeps
and sleeps when he rises to face this life,

and that together they are only one man
sharing a heart that always labours, hands
yellowed and cracked, a mouth that gasps
for breath and asks, Am I gonna make it?

Artist Bites Dog

Apparently Greyhound tried to get all viral recently with a “cool” ad campaign featuring some lesser-known Baltimore musicians.  Pitchfork has the goods on this very minor but somewhat interesting controversy.

I keep trying to picture the lone guy at Greyhound’s corporate offices with a goatee and a John Deere hat convincing his bosses that a spread in XLR8R is totally going to amp up their business just in time for Christmas.  We all know most hipsters wouldn’t be caught dead on a Greyhound bus anyways.  Their boyishly cute Asian girlfriends just wouldn’t be having it.