Annoyance Index No. 4

People saying it’s their “birthday week”
Northbound 4B bus always running late
Someone listing all their favorite podcasts as a pretense for conversation
MFA-Writing Grants-Writing Magazines-Industrial Complex
Me not coming up with a catchy name for above like Ike did with Military-Industrial Complex

Tuesday Tuneage
America - “Sandman”
1972

Call me a sap (and many likely have) but throughout my existence as a mostly hard-rock-or-GTFO guy, I’ve always dug America’s singles. A big part of my mid-seventies soundtrack what with “A Horse With No Name” being played on the radio among rockers Bachman-Turner Overdrive and Joe Walsh while my friends and I played Risk over and over and “Sister Golden Hair” coming onto an AM station on a ride home from church in that same era and feeling wistful while hearing it (if a fourth grader can feel wistful.) Something called “the Tropic of Sir Galahad” from “Tin Man” is deep when you’re that age and in later years “you can always change your name” from “Ventura Highway” always had me convinced the  narrator was talking to a draft dodger friend.

A few years back my hankering for that America sound got to the point where I went out of my way (simple rack surfing at local record stores wouldn’t suffice, suddenly needed this album pronto) to get History: America’s Greatest Hits on eBay. Yessir: All the seventies hits and other gems, plus “Muskrat Love” leads off side two so it’s easy to skip and get to a true leadoff hitter in “Tin Man.” Finding out that Phil Hartman (spelled Hartmann in the liner notes) designed its album cover is the second coolest “whoa HE designed album covers” discovery I’ve had in recent years since looking over my Steve Martin Let’s Get Small album and discovering Dean Torrance of Jan and Dean designed that cover. These types of finds are arguably more mind-blowing than the concept of a Tropic of Sir Galahad.

While in the depths of my America rabbit hole on the Internet. I came across some blurb where David Crosby showed disdain for America allegedly ripping off Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young’s sound. But I find America more sonically and lyrically interesting than the likes of CSNY’s “Our House” and “Teach Your Children.”* Meanwhile “A Horse with No Name” did as good at Neil Young as Neil himself. So yeah, I can get my first-half-of-the-seventies fill of rock jollies with Aerosmith, Deep Purple, Blue Oyster Cult, BTO, et. al. but “Sandman” is the America deep cut played on the AOR FM station in that alternate universe I’ll gladly set up shop in some Saturday afternoon with Ardbeg and Snyder’s of Hanover.

*“Adult bubblegum” was the spot-on phrase used by Billy Altman to describe CSN(and sometimes Y) in The Rolling Stone Record Guide. The Guide’s entry on America by John Swenson snidely notes that all of their album titles begin with the letter “H” and calls this “a Sesame Street-level conceit”. Having been a huge fan of Sesame Street seasons one and two as they aired, I should take offense.

Tuesday Tuneage
Deep Purple - "Highway Star"
1972

 

The Imaginary Further Adventures of Guys Who Had Written Their Names on Albums I Bought in Used Bins

Jim Clark, Deep Purple, Machine Head — Later as an adult when his nephew played The Replacements’ “Takin’ a Ride”, Jim realized they nicked its opening from Deep Purple’s “Highway Star” (And damn: both were opening tracks.) Then he went to a local store, bought Machine Head on compact disc for $15.99, and realized that the jokers at the record label had released it in quadraphonic sound and everything sounded bizarre. Around this same time, his nephew asked if he still had his vinyl albums and could he look through them for anything by Budgie, Bloodrock, or Funkadelic. I’m getting too old for this, Jim said to nobody in particular.

Steve Forman, The James Gang 16 Greatest Hits — On the album cover after “The James Gang” he wrote “with Steve Forman” because he was moved by the plea of the Gang’s “White Man, Black Man”, a pop culture racial unity moment on par with Jerry Seinfeld’s “look to the cookie” speech in 1994. He was also delighted to see that they had a “Funk #48”, which makes sense: Because if there were a “Funk #49”, it must be assumed that there were funks one through forty-eight beforehand.

Eber (only surname was inscribed), Blue Oyster Cult, On Your Feet or on Your Knees — His roommate ate all his Cheetos and also made a serious dent in his Frosted Flakes stash so hell no is that joker going to abscond with his Foghat, Montrose, or BOC albums. Eber sat down with a black Bic pen — the same model he used to take the ink reservoir out of to configure a spitball shooter in eighth grade study hall — and plainly wrote his name on all of his LPs. Even the Flip Wilson album that ended up in his collection after his big brother left for college. Your move, roomie.

Sam Birkholm, Alice Cooper, Love It to Death — Once his mom found out they had a song titled “Dead Babies,” all of Sam’s Alice Cooper albums went in the Sell Immediately pile when the family emigrated from their 42-parishioners Laestadian Lutheran church to a breakaway 17-parishioners one. This new sect adopted a further hardline (no card playing, no playing music on the radio) and held its services on Sunday mornings in a vacant storefront in a half-empty strip mall on the south edge of town. Sam would later go on to form a metal band called Lutheran Schism before sidelining music and getting a manager’s job at the local Jiffy Lube.

Duhe (only surname inscribed), Bad Company — On this debut long player, the band’s pared-down logo, designed by album cover masters Hipgnosis, is simply stamped in bold white letters across a black field. Duhe couldn’t stand to mar this visual masterpiece, so on the sly he wrote his name on the inside jacket of the LP. In cursive as well, to offset the bold sans-serif font used by Bad Co. on the cover. He currently has a job where he uses the word “creative” as a noun and hosts weekly Mad Men parties, though the show has been off the air for years.

Donn B., John Entwistle, Whistle Rhymes — In 1976 a cash crunch necessitated the selling of all solo works by members of The Who. Donn felt none of them had been that outstanding and the one where a shirtless Roger Daltrey was portrayed as a centaur always gave him the creeps. This one had to go as well because Entwistle did not spell his name using “whistle”, while Pete Townshend had a silent “h” in his surname. A maddening bunch.

Tom Lenzen, Focus, Moving Waves — This album contains “Hocus Pocus, ” which is not only the greatest rock ‘n’ roll song with yodeling AND a top-five one featuring a flute (Lenzen briefly had a flute-rock section in his vinyl collection: Focus, Jethro Tull, Marshall Tucker Band), so damn straight he was going to ink his brand on the cover.

Ray Nickels, Yes, The Yes Album — Ray, bitter that this album had a song called “Starship Troopers” but it had nothing to do with Robert Heinlein or libertarianism, sold it with all his other Yes albums. Yes was always too happy and hippie-dippie for his taste anyway. He took the cash, walked to a nearby used bookstore, and bought a second copy of Heinlein’s (yes) Starship Troopers to keep at his cabin in the woods.

Annoyance Index No. 3

Cars stopping in middle of crosswalks
Mindfulness
Using “Nordic” and “Scandinavian” interchangeably
Lack of Thin Lizzy LPs in my collection
Skip preview > Skip listen to podcast about this episode > Skip recap > Skip intro

Tuesday Tuneage
Little Richard - "Rubber Duckie"
1994

Your friends at the table each order a beer. The server looks your way, you order a single malt scotch. To the table you say, “Toddler time has ended.”

Tuesday Tuneage
AC/DC - "For Those About to Rock (We Salute You)"
1981

As noted here before, the Young brothers’ attempts to mimic Pete Townshend’s *Who’s Next* synthesizer using guitars were downright admirable. That sound was first heard on this track and the use of cannons towards the end of the song was downright Spinal Tap-esque*. Wikipedia says AC/DC was inspired to employ artillery when hearing cannons being used at the wedding of Charles and Diana. Turns out those inbred German royals were good for something after all.

*AC/DC’s use of phallic metaphors is a whole other Tap-worthy thing. As Chuck Eddy has noted, the *For Those About To Rock** album alone has “Let’s Get It Up”, “Inject the Venom”, and “Night of the Long Knives.” You could make your own playlist of such songs by throwing in “Big Gun”, “Sink the Pink”, “Hard As a Rock”, “Fire Your Guns”, “Let Me Put My Love Into You,” and many, many more.

Annoyance Index No. 2

The Academy Awards
Stating that the Miracle on Ice game was a semifinal
Unshoveled sidewalks (hello Minneapolis 311)
Person next to you on the treadmill who obviously smoked a half pack before coming to gym
Person next to you on the stationary bike who reeks of patchouli (or is that perfume okay boomer)

Tuesday Tuneage
Alice Cooper - "School's Out"
1972

On a recent Saturday morning I was supposed to take an accounting course to further my knowledge and appreciation of the profession learn something new to help make some extra money so I can maybe bump up my retirement savings and hopefully get out of the game before chronic pain takes over my life. So I had a doughnut and coffee ready in my UND mug and was set to start. I logged in and found out a specific software was needed to take this course and I would have to take it elsewhere. What to do with an unexpected hour off?

Reminds me of junior year in college when I was taking a course called The Economics of Labor and the professor was a real stiff. Grumpy and anti-union. Great, a professor hostile to labor teaching a course centered around labor … it was fun to wear my P-9 Proud button to class one day. And now I’m hesitant to get out my transcript to see if I: 1) gutted out an A or B in this course, or 2) took a C in some sort of mail-it-in misguided protest. Anyway, one day he simply didn’t show up. We all sat in the classroom for about ten minutes and then reached some sort of consensus: F*ck this, let’s leave. Huh, an unexpected hour off during college? What to do? Unfortunately I didn’t have a non-school book with me to pass the time with (the best thing about going to the laundromat back then, shun the video games and sit on one of those crummy uncomfortable plastic seats and read a book that wasn’t required for as long as the machines were running) so I headed to the library, found a quiet cubicle, and took a nap. Professor Grumpus was back the next day. (And that Saturday morning I took my coffee and doughnut to the recliner and watched Succession.)

The list essay is a great way to get into the personal essay. Of course, sometimes the essay just doesn’t materialize. So you take what the muse will give you and just stick with the list. 

Annoyance Index No. 1

Emotional intelligence
Quickbooks Online
Kevin Hart
“Is this the Vikings Super Bowl blueprint?”
Rock and Roll Hall of Fame

Tuesday Tuneage
Nirvana - "Stay Away"
1991

Curbside 2021

Yes I’m that guy standing on the curb hoping somebody inside will see me. No, I don’t have a make or color of car, just wearing jeans, tee shirt, ballcap. I’d like my hoagie and chips, I already paid and tipped online. And I’m dropping off my cat who needs emergency care.

No, I don’t have a number for a parking stall that I’m in. Yes, I assure you I won’t walk through the door and be a bad guy, a villain, even though I am wearing a mask. I’d just like to pick up my chicken dinner and side salad. And pay the veterinary bill with a couple of credit cards so I can take my cat home.

I haven’t had a car in ten years, that’s why I’m standing here. Yeah, it’s been walking and buses and cabs. I don’t mind it here on the curb except when it’s cold out, then I’ll have the food delivered. Do you deliver veterinary care?

Standing curbside digging the phone out of my pocket, the folks in their cars look happy, smiles all around when the door to the building opens and staff emerges with bags of food and carriers and furry friends on leashes.

Hoping somebody will answer the phone and not put me on hold so I can get my stir fry and egg rolls. And prescription for my cat who had the urinary blockage. Help me out and then send me on my way, I’d like to get home to eat this delicious meal. And monitor litter box usage to ensure my cat doesn’t have to come back.

Please please please someone release me from this curb.

Tuesday Tuneage
The Chi-Lites - "(For God's Sake) Give More Power to the People"
1971

After Quickbooks Online Accountant, Quickbooks Ledger, Quickbooks Solopreneur (formerly Quickbooks Self-Employed), and Quickbooks Money … it’s not surprising to see Quickbooks Capital has been added to the QB roster of products. One can imagine the weekly emailed newsletters — you’ll get them whether you subscribe to them or not — and their features:

City and State Code Loopholes: The Key to Starting a Profitable Sweatshop
Hell Yeah the NLRB Is Unconstitutional: Go Trader Joe!
Pinkertons: A Timeless Classic
The United States Chamber of Commerce: Your Uncle, Your Friend

Of course with Quickbooks Capital being an Intuit product, bugs will be features. These include such things as the concentration of wealth, wage inequalities, and recessions. If you like Quickbooks Capital, you can upgrade to Quickbooks Imperial for a monthly fee. There is no Quickbooks Labor available and in a release Intuit says it has no plans to develop it, though Reddit boards indicate a shareware version is available with a Seize the Means of Production mode. 

Tuesday Tuneage
Sammy Hagar - "Three Lock Box"
1982

A short time before Sammy Hagar went for the Reagan/Sgt. Slaughter votes in ‘84 followed by the solo Diamond Dave vs. Van Hagar ‘86 debate (Dave won in our booth in Whitey’s, natch) we had to deal with Hagar’s somehow emerging from his AOR Okay Rock of the likes of “There’s Only One Way to Rock”* with a tune of relentless riffing, nifty playing, and not-dumb lyrics that weren’t bad for Hagar:

The Father, Son, and Holy Ghost
To the Trinity, I raise a toast

“Three Lock Box” clocks in at just under three-thirty and dare I say … these lyrics are a revelation (sorry.) Because with Van Hagar, Sammy gave us such gems as: “Only time will tell if we stand the test of time” and “I feel like a running politician, just trying to please you all the time.” Though things could of been worse (arguably): because after singing about the Trinity, Hagar could have turned to Christian Rock.

*Though Hagar himself seems to have discovered a second way to rock.

Tuesday Tuneage
The Undisputed Truth - “Smiling Faces Sometimes”
1971

Spent my twenties at a salaried accounting job in the role as dupe roped into additional tasks and projects. Eventually a General Ledger — the accounting lifeblood of a company, in this case a new joint venture — was offered to me. Management painted it as by taking this quest I could be King Arthur, Wyatt Earp, or Lee Iacocca in a choose-my-own-adventure. No doubt involving triplicate forms and data entry. While this would likely be a handy card to have up my sleeve in future dealings with the powers that be, it certainly wasn’t desired like a Shelby Cobra Mustang or a Fender Telecaster or even a case of Heineken. More money in my paycheck? No dice.

So there was my young self, sitting in a suburban office, management acting benevolent but with smiles that were a little too pleasant. I knew this general ledger wasn’t a grand undertaking, it was just more work. I didn’t want to be in the office nights and weekends and besides my mind was still at the previous night’s Soul Asylum show. Somehow I said what I wanted to say without truly saying it, I made a crack about Tom Sawyer painting that fence. Glances were exchanged, eyes dimmed, and smiles along with any future opportunities faded.

Tuesday Tuneage
Neil Young & Crazy Horse - "F*ckin' Up"
1990

Intuit has been pushing hard to get accountants off of Quickbooks Desktop and into Quickbooks Online, switching Desktop to a spendy subscription model over the summer and then ending subscription sales on September 30th. But what are you getting with Quickbooks Online?
 
First of all the pros. With Quickbooks Online (QBO), you can share a Quickbooks data file with your client. But with all Intuit products any improvement over what preceded it comes with downsides*. Your client will have access to the data file in the cloud and we all know what clients love to do when left to their own devices: Download bank transactions and import them into Quickbooks. In my twenty-five years of bookkeeping I’ve never seen the importing of transactions from a bank work smoothly. Usually it imports the vendor name IN ALL CAPS followed by bunch of random transaction/confirmation numbers. Worse, clients tend to click some wrong button (or just as likely, Intuit fucks this up) and the transactions get imported twice. So you spend time deleting all the duplicate transactions, which takes more time on QBO than it does on Quickbooks Desktop (more on this later.) And your client may think they can take a stab at reconciling their own statements (after all the commercials used to say that “if you can balance a checkbook, you can use Quickbooks”) and that invariably won’t go well. Because, well, your clients probably didn’t spend much time balancing a checkbook — that’s why they hired you, right?

So that’s the caveat-laden pro, what are the cons? The data entry feature will have you bogged down in no time. In desktop, you type in the transaction details, then hit “enter” on the keyboard with your thumb, and you’re automatically in the next transaction. You get in a rhythm and you start flying through data entry. In QBO, you have to move your mouse and click on the enter button at the bottom of the screen to record the transaction. So instead of doing everything pronto with the keyboard, you have to involve your eyes and the mouse as well. Deleting transactions is a three-step procedure involving a hidden drop-down menu, rather than a quick shortcut keystroke like in Desktop. Then there’s the general view of the software interface. In Desktop, you have your customer, vendor, and banking sections laid out clearly and you can add icon shortcuts for your frequently-used tasks. In QBO, the transactions menus are assembled haphazardly in some stew of nonsense. Entering checks and credit card expenses are in one section, bank deposits are in another. For some reason, reconciliation and chart of accounts are lumped in another section altogether. The reports section is overly complicated and good luck trying to figure out how to assemble a simple transaction detail. Thankfully, the Find function works quite well (hey another pro!) and has many numerous, easy-to-use filters to help you narrow your search. This will come in handy as working in QBO will probably result in errors, especially if your client starts poking around in it.

So Quickbooks Online: all in all, two stars as a bookkeeping software — and that may be too kind as a client once called it a scam — and one star compared to Desktop, which is solid until it isn’t. You long-timers out there know what I mean.

*In the first draft of this piece, I typed “downfalls.”

Tuesday Tuneage
Motörhead - "Eat the Rich"
1987

As research for my new zine/blog Troller or Controller? I dug into the April/May 2024 issue of Forbes, which has a specific focus on billionaires. My goodness. I wrote down four words: Late Stage Capitalism Porn.

Lessee, it starts out with some Steve Forbes opinion pieces. He fully supports Israel’s invasion of Gaza and claims that they have made extraordinary efforts to minimize civilian casualties. He writes that the US should fully support Israel, which reminds me of a news story I read last winter that read like an Onion piece and said something like “US advises Israel to use smaller bombs to minimize civilian casualties.” His other editorial said the US should stop investing in renewable energies and instead invest in new businesses that create jobs. Uh Steve-O: renewable businesses are new businesses, maybe go back to that flat tax long con.

What else is in there early on? A list of upscale eateries that are all in New York City. (I’ll stick with Monk’s Diner.) We soon learn that billionaires are nicknamed “three commas,” then things lead into the main act as the prose coughs this up: “What a year it’s been for the planet’s billionaires, whose fortunes continue to swell as global stock markets shrug off war, political unrest, and lingering inflation. There are now more billionaires than ever.”

There is the list of the fourteen men (yes, they’re all men) who are worth $100 billion. We learn that “The combined net worth of the planet’s billlionaires has skyrocketed by 545% over the past two decades, to $14.2 trillion — quadruple the 111% rise in world GDP.” (The graph that accompanies this is outstanding. I mean, seriously nice work whether you think that unreal accumulation of wealth is good or bad.) I found out that Warren Buffett (number six) got into a beef last year with Cleveland Browns owner Jimmy Haslam over the price of Pilot truck stops. WTF? And oh hey: the blurb on Bill Gates (number seven) references Cheap Trick with a mention of “stiff competition.”

But enough about the established big shots. Billionaire newcomers include Magic Johnson ($1.2 billion), who was Sid Hartman’s guy before he was your guy, and TV’s Dick Wolf, who for some reason hasn’t plugged his $1.2 billion into a 24/7 streaming Law & Order channel (he blew his chance to put Homicide: Life on the Street episodes on the air with Peacock beating him to it.) Then there’s Taylor Swift ($1.1 billion), who “became the first billionaire musician based soley on songs and performances.” In your face, McCartney!*

There’s a page titled “Warbucks” that leads off with “Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine has wrought death and destruction upon untold millions of people. Yet it’s been a boon, at least financially, for several members of the World’s Billionaires list.” War, amirite? Here we have eight men, three of who are war-profiteering from shipping Russian oil and sending Russia guns. There’s one Turkish gent who sent Ukraine a model of military drone so popular, troops wrote a folk song about it. If there’s one Ukranian folk song I would actually listen to, that one is likely it.

At the end there’s a quite good article skeptical of crypto currencies and their ilk that has a compelling page-long graphic and ends with the warning: “Buyer beware. The lunatics are running the crypto asylum.” Huh, actual investigative reporting and a takedown of the dudebros behind the various scams that are crypto. Bravo, even if it is buried in the back of the issue.

Finally, here’s why I love printed magazines. There’s an Aristotle quote on the spine. It reads: “Inferiors agitate that they may be equal, and equals that they may be superior.” I may not make much money, but Forbes gets me.

*A separate small feature shows that Gibson is releasing a version of non-billionaire Jimmy Page’s 1969 double-necked guitar with a mere $50,000 price tag.