New Issue

Exiled on Main Street #44 is now posted.

And I Mean Anybody

I have started season six of Homicide. All kinds of people (okay, actually the actors) in the first episode show up who went on to be in The Wire. Gus has always been in the show, but this season adds McNulty's judge buddy and McNulty's ex-wife (yessir) as regular cast members. And who's the big-time drug dealer that Lewis and Falzone go and question? Proposition Fucking Joe!!!

The best line so far was uttered early, by Bayliss:

"An Emmy. They give those things to anybody!"

Homicide? Never even nominated for Outstanding Drama Series. What series did get one instead during that same era? Star Trek: The Crappy Sequel Series Next Generation. Gimme a break.

Yawn.

Sat down to watch John McCain's speech and realized I needed coffee. Not coffee to stay awake (though it couldn't hurt, man does he come off as unenthused), no I need coffee to make for tomorrow morning's awakening.

Though his highly underwhelming speech isn't over yet. The crowd seems kinda into it. Just kinda.

I'll listen to the rest on NPR on the way to the store.

Preposterous

I just saw a new-shows-this-fall plug on The CW for 90210, the sequel series to Beverly Hills, 90210. Jennie Garth declared that the orginal series was "the first to deal with teens and the problems they face."

Hello! The White Shadow addressed teens and their problems over a decade earlier and like twenty times better. And who would you rather hang out with: The poor man's James Dean Dylan McKay or the irrepressible Morris Thorpe?

I Once Had A Small Cavity, He Said Novocaine Probably Wouldn't Be Needed. I Was Tempted To Say: "Grand Forks Is A Tough-Guy Town," But Am Glad I Didn't

I was getting a cavity filled on Monday afternoon. My dentist is a former Gopher hockey player. While he's working, he asked me:

"Have you ever seen that movie ..."

Omigod! I thought, he's read all those snarky cheap shots I've taken at the Foldin' Gophers over the years and it's payback time! He's gonna ask me if I've ever seen Marathon Man and then he's gonna go to town!

"Have you ever seen that movie Mr. Woodcock?"

Fast Forward To 2009

AFC: The Jets attain a wild card for the playoffs and then knock off the Colts, Chargers, and Patriots on the road - all with fourth-quarter come-from-behind drives led by #4 Brett Favre.

NFC: The Purple are blown out 38-10 by the Cowboys in Dallas in the NFC championship game. Vikings fans flood sports talk radio for the next two weeks complaining that if the refs had just thrown a couple, three flags the Purple would have won. (Though some claim the refs shouldn't have thrown a couple, three flags; while others claim that the NFL "wanted" the Cowboys in the Super Bowl; and yet others are still whining about issues from the game the week before the NFC championship game that the Purple won.)

Up next are some historic, dramatic Super Bowl moments:

- In the week before the game, Favre, poolside at his hotel, guarantees a victory for his 18-point underdog Jets.

- It rains at halftime. Favre joins Bruce Springsteen for a duet of "Who'll Stop The Rain?" And then the rain stops.

- The Jets win the big game - it was never really that close - and Favre runs to the tunnel, right index finger in the air. A classic image, NFL Films can't get enough of this one.

- In the post-game press conference, Favre tearfully announces his retirement ...

Homicide And Class Warfare

So season five of Homicide is turning out to be just as awesome as season four. And I really like the attitudes of the detectives when dealing with the rich folk. In one episode, Elijah Wood plays a smarmy prep-school kid. Bayliss calls him a "punk" to his face and later damn near slaps him up in the box.

In a later episode, Lewis and Pembleton get some richie in the box. He's one of those Eastern bluebloods, you know the type: Talks like he's a freakin' Brit and not an American, says "cannot" instead of "can't", "had forgotten" instead of "forgot", and pronounces "happen" like "hoppin'." His voice to me was like fingernails on a chalkboard, but then we had the ever-eloquent Frank Pembleton sounding like a real person when he said "drawin' blood, checkin' for scratches." And the soothing sounds of Meldrick Lewis's voice was amazing - dropping his g's and saying things like "She didn't tell ya?" and "See if dat diamond ring don't turn up, huh?"

And the ever-likeable Clark Johnson as Lewis is stealing scenes left and right this season with his one-liners. In this episode where he's teamed up with Pembleton, he says: "Cut me some poetic slack, won't ya Frank?"

49:00

Paul Westerberg dropped a new album on us recently, it is only available via a 49-cent download. After three listens, three thoughts about Paul Westerberg's new 49:00 album:

1) I had it in my car today and said: "Fuck it, I'm declaring this: The best breakdown/mess/WTF album ever! It tops both Smile by The Beach Boys and Sister Lovers by Big Star! And he delivered the goods when he intended to! Plus he doesn't appear to be actually going through a breakdown!" (I may have to beat this take into the ground.)

2) If that's not convincing enough, it's the best fifty-cents-or-less album I've bought this year, it even beats The Bangles All Over The Place LP which I scored at Roadrunner this spring for a half-dollar. Man, the CD truly IS dead.

3) How about this? "Westerberg has a new album out, but you haven't heard it yet. You're at the bar, drinking alone, and somebody plays 45 minutes worth of Westerberg songs that you've never heard on the jukebox. You know it's the new one. But between barflies distracting you with drunk talk, you scoping out twenty-something hotties who are dotted around the place, and the Twins vs. Pale Hose game on the TV, you don't pay complete attention to the music, which keeps grabbing at you. That's what listening to Westerberg's new one is like."

Norm Coleman Disses The Working Man But Expects His Vote

The latest Norm Coleman ad puts down the working class ... apparently proles aren't qualified to be Senators. And you'd think Coleman's campaign staff could find an actor who sounds like a working class Minnesotan. The bowler speaking in the ad sounds like Don Knotts in The Andy Griffith Show.

Hey Madison Avenue: There's a bunch of us - working class or not - who drop our g's when speaking, we're not interchangeable.

(Thanks to Chuck on this.)

You and Whose Army?

John McCain says: "I know how to win wars."

And just exactly how many wars has he won?

Clueless

Great op-ed by Frank Rich on how Bob Dole John McCain is clueless on the economy. (You might need to login, try BugMeNot if so.) But he's strong on foreign policy ... except for thinking that Czechoslovakia is still a country and that Iraq and Pakistan share a border. Oh, and that invading Iraq in 2003 was a good idea.

"That's A Shame"

I'm sure nobody wants to hear about how this year I'm only spending a dollar more a day on gas than I was a year ago, all without changing my driving habits.

Let's instead take some glee in the "plight" of the SUV owners. Said jerks are paying through the nose for gas and can't sell their vehicles because nobody wants 'em! Ha! Remember back when the ad campaigns for SUVs were for "tough" vehicles who could get you to mountaintops? All the Edmund Hillarys in the Strib article who have been burned by buying SUVs love 'em because they can haul their kids and a bunch of other non-mountain stuff in one load. Good thing ya got four-wheel drive! That soccer playground's parking lot is brutal!

Lord, is this hilarious. I mean truly. Burn (that gas) baby, burn.

Gotta Love Those Baltimore Murder Police

Finished up season four of Homicide tonight. Wow.

If in earlier seasons I liked to compare myself to Frank Pembleton, this season early on I identified with Tim Bayliss - he of the bad back. I think I tweaked my bad back tonight messing around with my bicycle. (It shouldn't be that difficult to carry it a half-dozen steps down to my building's basement and storage space.)

Season four also saw the fleshing out of Meldrick Lewis's character, who said some great words regarding marriage: "This is like a life sentence here. You're talkin' about PTA meetins and changin' diapers or mowin' lawns." Lewis is played by the funny and likeable Clark Johnson. (Never met him, but from the first scene he appeared in The Wire, I liked him.)

Speaking of The Wire, there was a Homicide episode today that was like a prequel to The Wire: Drug dealing in the towers? Check. Black Muslim? Check. Higher-up brass making life miserable for the lieutenant because of politics? Check. Leaks to the Baltimore Sun? Check. It even had the actor who portrayed McNulty's judge buddy!

Cool Internet Thingy

Via Magers and Quinn's blog, I found out about Worldle.net, which allows you to create word clouds. I plugged in my very own Best Band in the Land, and came up with this (cilck the image to see it full-sized):




Fun!

"Do You Want To Buy A Three-Year Extended Warranty For That LP?"

The news broke last week that Best Buy is going to experiment with selling vinyl albums. Thanks, but I can get my vinyl here in the glorious city, thank you.

I likely mocked the theory of viny's "warmth" for years, but two events changed my mind: 1) A few years back, I was working on a spreadsheet and had the original Jeff Beck Group spinning on the turntable. At the beginning of a song, Rod Stewart said: "Listen!" I damn near jumped out of my chair, I thought somebody was in the room. 2) This weekend, I was blasting side one of Raspberries' Best and no way does the guitar in "Go All The Way" sound that blistering in any digital format. We're talking BLISTERING.

On a related note, like I mentioned before, this year is the one where I effectively stop buying compact discs. I don't want to invest in any more storage shelving and can buy most songs online via iTunes. And if an album is worthy, it gets burned into iTunes anyway. Plus even if I find a cheap used CD via Amazon.com, you add on the shipping charges and it's comparable to the iTunes rate. And with iTunes I can get the music right now. So I may be purchasing the odd CD now and then - I'm thinking of last fall when I bought a nineties-era Pretty Things CD for just one song that I couldn't find via download - but this is the end of an era.

Mp3 downloads plus used (and new??) vinyl = The Future (for now.)