The Suburbs

I've listened to the new Arcade Fire album, The Suburbs, practically every day since it came out earlier this month. It's good but not especially hummable -- after it ends it kind of evaporates from my brain.  I wasn't quite connecting.

I've got one of the songs stuck in my head now, though, after stumbling across Arcade Fire's ridiculously cool website. With a little help from the interwebs and your own memories of your childhood, it generates an interactive music video for one of the songs. Nothing puts a tune in your head like a little nostalgia. Give it a try. You'll be humming all day.

Start the turntables!, Cont'd

I got an email from U2 today alerting me to a new remix album available... only on vinyl. I already own a couple of U2 records -- they're in frames on my wall, relics of an earlier, groovier time. I'm not about to run out and buy a turntable yet, but I do find myself craving this remix album. So big, so packed with tangible objects. Everything old is new again.

Start the turntables!

This month's Rolling Stone says that sale of records -- those big, grooved things made of vinyl -- has surged in the last couple years. While I didn't buy last month's claim that magazine subscriptions are up, I definitely believe record sales are. Last week when I paid a visit to Newbury Comics (to buy a CD) I was amazed how many records they sell now. There's always been a few on hand for the devotees, but suddenly the shelf-space devoted to records is starting to rival CDs.

Amazing, but maybe not surprising. The reason I went to an actual store to buy a CD is because lately it's dawned on me how much money I've sunk into albums that don't actually exist. Ninety-five percent of the albums I've bought over the last few years have been digital downloads, just magnetized dots on a harddrive. And that suddenly feels kind of shitty. It feels like I've only been getting half of what I used to get from buying CDs.

The whole premise of "digital" assumes that content (a story, a song) is the important experience and that the delivery system is irrelevant. It assumes that when you pay for music you're paying to hear a song rather than to own a CD (or a record). That when you pay for a novel you're paying to read a story rather than to own a book. And that may be true for fleeting things like magazines or news, things you consume and throw away. But it's not true for the types of media we define ourselves by and decorate our homes with. Digital has been a novelty because it's cheaper and easier, but I think we might be at the beginning of a backlash, as people realize that for all their collecting and all their money invested, they have nothing tangible to show for it.

Hence the records.

See you in Machu Picchu

Just so you know, the ancient city in Peru has reopened to tourists after being closed due to heavy rains.

Machu Picchu, rediscovered by the outside world after U.S. explorer Hiram Bingham's 1911 visit, is one of South America's top tourism attractions.

I like the wording of that, and the ease with which it shucks off the Euro-centric, nothing-was-here-till-we-found it perspective. (As a sidenote, I know USA Today, where this article is from, is considered the McDonald's of news, but sheesh, it really does have the best articles.)

I want to go re-re-discover Machu Picchu. South America is tops on my list of places to visit. It has such a vibrant mix of things I would really love to see, and things I'm captivated by the horror of. I just finished an excellent book called The Lost City of Z, a nonfiction account of a journalist attempting to discover (no "re-" necessary) what happened to a famous English explorer who was lost in the Amazonian jungle in the 1930s while searching for the fabled city of El Dorado. The Amazon, aka the "green hell," full of poisonous plants and 30-foot snakes and hostile Indians and maggots that burrow under your skin, makes me think, "Oh my goodness, I wouldn't last a minute there," and then, "I want to go."

A lot of Brazil, about which I've been reading for a book I'm writing, is like that too: the herky-jerk of the awesome and the terrifying. For example, in Rio you've got the incredible beaches and the eye-popping vista of the hilltop Christ -- and down the street the drug cabals are taking down police helicopters with anti-aircraft missiles.

I guess you just have to know where to go.

Ricky's Thesaurus

I am proud to say that I am a fortunate homosexual man. I am very blessed to be who I am.

Oh Ricky Martin. Not exactly a surprise, but good for you.

I don't get the adjectives that people have started including in these admissions, though. Ricky is a fortunate homosexual. Neil Patrick Harris (the best thing to spring out of the gay community since Pop Tarts) was a content gay man.

Use of adjectives is a relatively new thing. Ellen's coming-out was short and sweet: "I'm gay." (Even if she did say it over a loudspeaker.) It makes me wonder what other famous homos would've said if they'd come out in this age of adjectives...

Ellen: I'm a talkshow-hosting, American-Idol-judging gay woman.
Elton John: I'm a polka-dot-loving, big-glasses-wearing gay rocket-man.
Rosie O'Donnell: Bwaahhh!
Sir Ian McKellan: I'm a wizard-playing homosexual gentleman. Tea?

Message Rock #5

Hair today, gone tomorrow

I saw this photo on the New Yorker website:


My goodness, why do some men do this to their heads? I'm referring, of course, to the aggressive shaving of the sideburns. There needs to be some sideburns, fellas, at least enough to hook around the front of the ear, like reverse glasses. Otherwise, what's to keep the hair from sliding off and tumbling down your back? The sideburns hold your hair in place!

Top Tensies

Everyone else is doing it. So here goes. These are my favorite things of the decade.

MOVIES

10. Nicholas Nickleby (2002). Pitch-perfect Dickens, a very rare thing.

9. A Knight's Tale (2001). No, the medieval jousting-match audience chanting Queen songs makes no sense, and that oddball creativity is why it's a favorite. Also, this was Heath Ledger at his dreamiest.

8. Spider-Man 2 (2004). Everything a superhero movie should be, even if it is... Marvel.

7. Road to Perdition (2002). The Hanks/Newman gangster flick, and the most beautifully shot movie ever. This was made by some master craftsmen. Every frame is art.

6. Star Trek (2009). I was staunchly against this movie until I saw the trailer, then I happily ate my hat each of the five times I saw it in the theater.

5. Twilight (2008). You may have heard of it.

4. Brokeback Mountain (2005). Not one of my favorite movies, but sometimes movies are bigger than themselves, and that's why this one's on my list.

3. Superman Returns (2006). A gigantic missed opportunity that resulted in a mediocre movie. But what can I say? I love it anyway. The production design is gorgeous, Brandon Routh is a worthy successor to Christopher Reeve, and the plane-rescue scene is thrilling.

2. Wonder Boys (2000). My favorite movie about writers and writing; after watching this the first time, I literally went in the other room and started writing my novel. Also, an early stepping stone on Robert Downey Jr.'s very-welcome road to professional redemption.

1. The Lord of the Rings (2001, 2002, 2003). Easy. It wasn't just a movie but a three-year event. Peter Jackson & Co. did everything right -- the casting, the music, the humor and the heartbreak were all just dead-on. This is everything I want from movies. This is probably the movie of my lifetime.

MUSIC

10. Original Pirate Material - The Streets (2002). Josh and I just about burned out this CD that year.

9. A Rush Of Blood To The Head - Coldplay (2002). C'mon, you know you like them too.

8. I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning - Bright Eyes (2005). Conor Oberst is one of my favorite lyricists and he was on a roll on this album. "The sun came up with no conclusions."

7. Life In Cartoon Motion - Mika (2007). Gay gay gay!

6. Hot Fuss - The Killers (2004).

5. Only By The Night - Kings of Leon (2008). My most-listened-to album of 2009.

4. The Rising - Springsteen (2002).

3. How To Dismantle An Atomic Bomb - U2 (2004).

2. No Line On The Horizon - U2 (2009).

1. All That You Can't Leave Behind - U2 (2000). My desert-island album.

BOOKS

Surprisingly, this category was the hardest because I'm not as up on recent books as I should be.

10. From A Buick 8 - Stephen King (2003). A slow-boiling thriller and a rebuke to anyone who, like me, suspected Stephen King's glory days ended with his coke habit.

9. War Boy - Kief Hillsbery (2002). Narrated by a deaf-mute, gay, anarchist teenager. Need I say more?

8. A Death In Brazil: A Book of Omissions - Peter Robb (2005). A memoir disguised as the entire history of a nation, from discovery to modern politics. And a page-turner, to boot!

7. New Moon - Stephenie Meyer (2007). Truth be told, this probably should be higher up.

6. Chasm City - Alastair Reynolds (2002). Mystery wrapped in sci-fi wrapped in holy-shit! wrapped in awesome.

5. The Road - Cormac McCarthy (2006). Gut-wrenching. With punchy dialogue!

4. Dogwalker: Stories - Arthur Bradford (2002). Why is this the only book you've ever published, Arthur?

3. A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius - Dave Eggers (2001). Read this memoir to make your own life feel boring and unromantic in comparison.

2. The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao - Junot Diaz (2007). Expanded my notion of what a novel could be and do. Deserving of every ounce of his Pulitzer.

1. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay - Michael Chabon (2001). A sprawling epic loosely based on the creators of Superman, set in Depression-era New York. The book I most wish I could've written myself.

Message Rock #4

Like last time, a tribute to a lost loved one.

Obama Abroad

It's strange to me that foreign countries are pasting our president's picture on our flag, not to burn, but to wave around as though he were the Beatles. But of course that's exactly what I hoped for when I voted for him.


Six months into his presidency I give him mixed reviews. He's more cautious and less bold than I think the times call for, and I'm getting impatient on the gay stuff. But everything he's done and said abroad has been pretty much exactly what I wanted.

As a side note -- but maybe not too much to the side -- practically everyone I know is either currently abroad or is planning a trip abroad. At this moment I know someone visiting England, someone visiting Sweden, someone visiting France, and two unrelated people visiting Spain. Other upcoming trips include Scotland, Vietnam, and Canada. Even little old insular me is starting to get the itch for foreign travel.

For people my age, the entirety of our adult lives thus far was spent under the Bush Administration, during which, if we went anywhere, we said we were from Canada. Now I think we've got our dignity back, and it's making us want to explore.

Webster Makes Lame Words Official

The latest edition of the Merriam-Webster dictionary will include the following new words:

frenemy - one who acts like a friend but is really an enemy
locavore - one who eats only locally-grown food
vlogs - a blog that contain video material
webisode - a TV show you can watch online
staycation - staying in your home area while on vacation from work

There are others, such as flash mob and waterboarding, but what irks me about the ones I've mentioned above are that they are two words mashed together. In addition to how generally annoying that is, it makes me worry about the future of our language. Everything is getting shorter (from newspapers to blogs to Twitter; or letters to emails to texts, for example).

Will we soon (read - in a few hundred years) come full circle back to communicating in grunts?

Floodgates

I think it's safe to say: they've opened.

Things are starting to move faster than I ever imagined. Iowa and Vermont last month. Maine today. Washington DC (kind of) yesterday. New Hampshire is moments away.

What's most exciting is that this is now being done by the states voluntarily with no court involvement.

Prop 8, as much as it hurt, was a turning point. A final injustice that woke up a lot of people. If you had told me even a year ago that public support nationwide for marriage equality would now be approaching 50%, I would've laughed. But here we are.

I want to do some traveling! There are so many more places I feel like I can go now.

Tummy Tubs

They can call them Tummy Tubs. But we all know they're baby buckets.

15 Things on Google Earth

This fascinating slide show by a former colleague of mine shows 15 of the amazing things you can see via Google Earth.

The elephants and hippos are my favorite, of course, but that giant Italian wool bunny looks awfully cool too. Ahhh, people... they're so weird.

And who wants to see the island where Tom Hanks spent, what was it, 7 years?

Tropicana

I join the rest of the world in thinking the new Tropicana packaging is, let's say, unfortunate. Every time I pour a glass I have the sneaking suspicion that I'm about to drink a bathroom cleanser. To me it just looks anonymously, ambiguously soapy.

No Line On The Horizon

Hearing new songs from your favorite-favorite band is like meeting a half-sibling you didn't know you had: weird, exciting, and, for better or worse, forever a part of the rest of your life. Such it is with the eleven new songs on No Line On The Horizon, U2's twelfth album and the third released during my time as a fan (fandom achieved December 1998). U2 songs take a while to grow on me and they never really reach their potential until they're played live. (I would not have suspected "Love And Peace Or Else" to be one of the best songs on the previous album until I saw Bono pounding away its finale on Larry's drum, pieces of the sticks sailing into the audience.) Thus I'm not ready to comment on the songs.

But I will wax nostalgic about the hype that used to surround an album release, back in the olden days, pre-Internet. It used to be, the only taste you had of an album was its first single -- the other songs remained a mystery. There was a desperation to hear them as the release date crept closer. This is why Josh and I would stand in the rain outside Newbury Comics in October 2000, waiting for midnight and the release of All That You Can't Leave Behind. I remember hiding under the covers that night, listening on my headphones.

I don't actually even own No Line On The Horizon yet but I've heard all the songs. First like a year ago there were clips some fan had recorded on his cell phone outside U2's studio -- muffled sounds of rehearsals within; it was pretty clear from that what the new album would sound like. Then last month Walmart.com briefly posted 30-second clips of all the songs, way before they were supposed to. And since yesterday U2.com has been streaming the entire album for your listening pleasure. It's a little sad that the magical moment of pressing play for the first time has been diluted by all these teases. But, like I said above, none of these songs really come alive until they're played live. And when they do I'm sure they won't disappoint.

(Photo: Adam Clayton calls me to ask how I like the new album.)

Ticketmaster, will you be my Valentine?

Ben: I was unable to get concert tickets for Kings of Leon. They went on sale this morning at 10:00 -- I was waiting, refreshing the Ticketmaster page until it went live. At 10:01 I was offered tickets that I thought were too far away from the stage so I rejected them. When I searched again at 10:02 there were no tickets found. Ditto for several minutes after that. So it appears they sold out in 2 minutes. Those other umpteen thousand people who want to see them can suck it!

Maggie: Don't even get me started on Ticketmaster. I hate them too. The same thing happened to us three times before. The third time, we went to the library so we could all (Jon, Mike and I) be on a computer, ready and waiting, and we still didn't get tickets.

Ben: At first I thought I was relieved that they were sold out because between the ticket price and Ticketmaster's stupid convenience charges it would've cost me a hundred bucks. But I wasn't really relieved so I checked again for tickets just for the heck of it. By then they'd added a second concert on another night and for that one I was offered pretty great floor tickets. I got to the check-out stage and saw the $110 price and balked and canceled the order. Stupid Ticketmaster fees. Do they really need to charge $23 for processing a web order? At least when Jesse James robbed you he had the decency to wave a gun in your face.

Maggie: I wish Ticketmaster wasn't such a monopoly. I wiggle over shows whose tickets are sold on alternate online services.

Ben: Ticketmaster makes us their Ticketslaves.

Flyers' "Sign Man"

I loved this article about a long-time Philadelphia Flyers fan, nicknamed the "Sign Man." I love stories about people who become famous for something as simple as holding a sign as a hockey game, about people who become part of the lore of whatever it is they've dedicated themselves to.

An article would not have been written about Sign Man if his message was as commonplace as "Go Team!" or "We love you Big Fat Goalie!"

The article lists the top Sign Man signs of the past almost-four decades. My two favorites are:
1. Ref Chart (copy of an eye chart that reads, as the letters get smaller with each line – “bad call, you’re hopeless”).
2. Start the Bus (as the Flyers are close to clinching a victory).

Unveilings

U2 released the cover image to their upcoming album, No Line On The Horizon. I love the simplicity of it, however it looks strikingly like the logo of the pompous and ineffective Human Rights Campaign, doesn't it?

In other news, the official White House photo of the next president has been unveiled. Get yours for your mantle while supplies last.

Worst Men's Hair of 2008

In a piece of very hard-hitting journalism, the Boston Globe offers a group of nominees for worst male haircut of the year. Some we can't dispute -- Blagojevich's cut does make him look like a lifesize Lego man). But other nominees are downright puzzling, including everyone's favorite vampire, Robert Pattinson.

I know Maggie didn't particularly go for his 'do, but I think it's hardly one of the worst of the year.

Also, dreads are an easy target, and I'm not a fan of them myself, but Jason Castro's are among the least offensive you'll find. He doesn't belong on the list either.

Gov. Bill Richardson deserves his nomination, for shaving off his beard. He was the last, best chance for facial hair in the Obama administration...