Free Music Friday – The Eternal Sonic Youth July 31, 2009
Posted by Matt in free music friday.Tags: music video, Sacred Trickster, Sonic Youth
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I’ve been a fan of Sonic Youth’s brand of experimental rock for some time and was pleasantly surprised that their latest release, The Eternal, was an excellent return to form for the band. After more than 25 years they’re still going strong.
Beer and Peace July 30, 2009
Posted by Matt in Obama, politics.Tags: Barack Obama, beer diplomacy, Henry Louis Gates, James Crowley, race, Richard Neal, Sam Adams
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Today marks the much-talked about time of beer diplomacy set up by President Obama to talk through the racial tension brought about by white police sergeant James Crowley’s arrest of renowned black Harvard professor Henry Louis Gates, the two other participants in today’s event. Personally, I think Obama should be applauded for bringing both sides to the table for civil discourse and hope that it can be a model for the rest of us.
Now there has been a bit of controversy regarding the beer choices for this gathering, though. Obama chose Budweiser, Crowley picked Blue Moon, and Gates was trying to choose between Beck’s and Red Stripe, but Rep. Richard Neal of Massachusetts has balked at their choices, saying that the men should not pick brands owned by foreign entities (Budweiser is owned by a Belgian company). Instead, Neal suggests that they all settle in for a brews from Sam Adams, the largest American-owned and brewed beer. In case anybody’s wondering, I would side with Neal on this – not for any patriotic reasons, but because Sam Adams is my favorite.
Let us all hope that some good comes from this meeting over drinks. As the great philosopher Homer Simpson once said, “Alcohol: the cause of and solution to all of life’s problems.” Let’s hope today’s event is more of the latter and that this act of beer diplomacy is a resounding success.
A Mighty Wind July 29, 2009
Posted by Matt in fiction.Tags: fiction, short story
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As most of you can probably tell, I love to write, but it is not very often that I delve into the fictional side of things. My latest work is entitled A Mighty Wind and I think it will probably be my entry in the Memphis magazine short story contest this year. The deadline for entering the contest is Saturday, so please feel free to critique my story as you see fit and give me any pointers that you may have. I am an untrained writer so I value anybody’s criticism or suggestions. Thanks.
Palin as Poetry July 29, 2009
Posted by Matt in politics.Tags: video, Sarah Palin, William Shatner, Tonight Show, Conan O'Brian
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I know I’m a little late in posting this, but man it is some funny stuff. In case you missed it, Conan had William Shatner on his show the other night to read Sarah Palin’s disjointed farewell speech as beat poetry. Seriously. Check it out.
Ten For Tuesday: Music to Play LOUD! July 28, 2009
Posted by Matt in top ten.Tags: albums, Beastie Boys, Black Keys, Green Day, guns n roses, Jane's Addiction, loud music, Pantera, Radiohead, Rage Against the Machine, Sonic Youth, The Hold Steady, volume
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What is it that makes us want to turn some types of music up loud, raise a fist in the air and rock out? There is just something about it that makes us want to blast the decibels to an extreme, eardrum-bursting level and lose ourselves in a cloud of crowd-pleasing power chords. Some albums are just that way and, despite the fact that they will no doubt contribute to me needing a hearing aid by the age of 40, I’m glad to have them. Below are ten albums, in no particular order, that I love to blast out loud. Enjoy.
10. Beastie Boys – License to Ill
I thought about including my favorite Beastie’s album, Paul’s Boutique, but their testosterone-fueled party anthem-filled debut seemed more applicable in this instance. Just try to keep the volume low on classic songs like “Rhymin’ and Stealin’,” “No Sleep Till Brooklyn,” “Brass Monkey,” or “Fight for Your Right,” it can’t be done.
9. The Black Keys – Rubber Factory
You can’t go wrong with this loud and crunchy blues-rock duo, whose Jimmy Page-like blues riffs can knock anybody flat on their back. From the opening track, “When the Lights Go Out” (If you’ve seen “Black Snake Moan,” you’ve heard it) through the rest of this great collection, they hit as hard as anyone in the business today.
8. Pantera – Cowboys from Hell
This one will take you back. Pantera burst on the scene with this blast of aggressive metal in 1990 and it still resonates today. Dimebag Darrell was one of the most distinctive guitarists of an era and Phil Anselmo’s vocals are rife with unbridled fury. I put this album, with great songs like “Psycho Holiday” and “Cemetary Gates,” on when I’m tired at work. It perks me right up.
7. The Hold Steady – A Positive Rage
The Hold Steady have been called the greatest bar band in America and this live collection displays them in all of their ragged glory. Songs like “Stuck Between Stations” and “Massive Nights,” are meant for playing in noisy bars with amps turned up loud.
6. Jane’s Addiction – Nothing’s Shocking
There are few songs from the past 20 years that are more mind blowing than “Mount Song” turned up as loud as it will go. Just try it out and thank me later.
5. Radiohead – The Bends
The first of Radiohead’s incredible trilogy of albums from 1995-2000, this strongly rivals OK Computer as the best work by the greatest band in the world. The intricacies of this album cannot be heard at low levels, just pump it up loud and lose yourself in the sonic goodness of “High and Dry” and “Fake Plastic Trees.” It is an experience not to be missed.
4. Sonic Youth – Daydream Nation
I admit that I didn’t always appreciate the artsy noise-rock of Sonic Youth. Today I don’t know what I would do without them. This breakthrough album from 1988 is a blast from the beginning with “Teenage Riot” to the 14 minute “Trilogy” at the end.
3. Rage Against the Machine – Rage Against the Machine
This debut from everyone’s favorite rap-rock Marxists is violent, rage-filled shotgun blast that took the country by storm in the early-90’s. “Killing in the Name Of” is, without a doubt, one of the greatest, loudest anti-authority anthems ever put down.
2. Guns N’ Roses – Appetite for Destruction
What do you get when you mix 70’s stadium rock, punk sensibilities, and a good dose of sleaze, drugs, and debauchery from the streets of L.A.? Guns N’ Roses. And this is definitely their best work. “Paradise City” is one of the greatest rock anthem ever recorded and it cannot be played at low levels.
1. Green Day – 21st Century Breakdown
Not the best collection on the list, but it is my favorite from the current year and I happen to be listening to it right now, so this incredible concept album definitely needs a spot. Like many others on the list, this album is meant to be experienced as a whole, so I would encourage you to eschew the Itunes-fueled idea of downloading individual songs and get the entire thing. You won’t be disappointed.
What about you? What do you like to turn up to 11?
One for the Green Team July 28, 2009
Posted by Matt in Southaven.Tags: Commercial Appeal, plastic, recycling, Southaven
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For those of you who are not aware, I have been waging an email war of sorts over the past several months with the mayor of Southaven over its lackluster recycling program. So far, my numerous requests have gone completely unanswered, so it was with a great sense of satisfaction that I saw this recent article in our local newpaper.
Sure, it may not be curbside recycling, but the fact that they will begin taking plastic in addition to metal and paper is a definite win.
Community Garden Update July 27, 2009
Posted by Matt in church, garden.Tags: community garden, free vegetables, friends, Holmes Road Church of Christ, neighborhood, service
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Things are going well at the ol’ garden this summer.
For those of you who don’t know what I’m talking about, we have a community garden at our church in Memphis that we use to benefit the residents of that area. Throughout the week, a few of us engage in any needed general maintenance and pick any vegetables that happen to be ripe at the time. On Saturday we do one final picking for the week and then give away our harvest to people in the neighborhood. We generally set up a table by the bus stop at the corner of Holmes and Elvis Presley and give the fruits of our labor to any that come by. So far we have given away nearly everything picked in a very short time on Saturday mornings.
Though this is our second year to do it, I feel as though this time around has been far better than last summer and most of that improvement has come through the amount of help I have received from others. Our inaugural year for the garden, in 2008, was an especially tough summer on me, for I felt as though I was doing almost all of the labor alone. So, because of the perceived apathy around me, I grew very bitter and resentful toward many of my fellow members and, truth be told, I’m still not quite over all of that now, a full year later, but I will say that things have greatly improved. There are two special people in particular, Lynn and Vickie, who have become the greatest helpers one could ask for. Lynn is about my age and has a demanding occupation which takes up much of his time, but he still makes time to come out and help as much as he can. Vickie, who is also my age, is a single mother of lower means and a rough background and is one of the most inspiring people that I know. She has an unmistakably upbeat glow about her, despite her current station in life. I’ve really enjoyed getting to know both of these new friends over the past several weeks. There are others who have helped a great deal as well (Jenny and Becky come to mind) and still more who have come out intermittently as they can, and I am grateful to all of them.
So, as July 2009 comes to a close, I think it is safe to call our Community Garden project as success for the second year in a row. Hopefully, we can spread the word and continue to increase participation and maybe even expand the size in 2010.
What Your Kids May Never Know July 23, 2009
Posted by Matt in random.Tags: children, things they will never know
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Kids today live in a different world that those my age did. We grew up in a time when there was no internet, we watched movies on videotape (we even had a Beta machine), we listened to music on cassettes, used pay phones, and the list could go on and on with outdated activities. On the GeekDad blog from Wired.com they have listed 100 things that your kids may never know about. Check it out and see what else should be added.
Audio-Visual Entertainment
1. Inserting a VHS tape into a VCR to watch a movie or to record something.
2. Super-8 movies and cine film of all kinds.
3. Playing music on an audio tape using a personal stereo. See what happens when you give a Walkman to todays teenager.
4. The number of TV channels being a single digit.
5. Standard-definition, CRT TVs filling up half your living room.
6. Rotary dial televisions with no remote control. You know, the ones where the kids were the remote control.
7. High-speed dubbing.
8. 8-track cartridges.
9. Vinyl records. Even today’s DJs are going laptop or CD.
10. Betamax tapes.
11. MiniDisc.
12. Laserdisc: the LP of DVD.
13. Scanning the radio dial and hearing static between stations. (Digital tuners + HD radio bork this concept.)
14. Shortwave radio.
15. 3-D movies meaning red-and-green glasses.
16. Watching TV when the networks say you should. Tivo and Sky+ are slowing killing this one.
17. That there was a time before ‘reality TV.
Computers and Videogaming
18. Wires. OK, so they’re not gone yet, but it won’t be long
19. The scream of a modem connecting.
20. The buzz of a dot-matrix printer
21. 5- and 3-inch floppies, Zip Discs and countless other forms of data storage.
22. Using jumpers to set IRQs.
23. DOS.
24. Terminals accessing the mainframe.
25. Screens being just green (or orange) on black.
26. Tweaking the volume setting on your tape deck to get a computer game to load, and waiting ages for it to actually do it.
27. Daisy chaining your SCSI devices and making sure they’ve all got a different ID.
28. Counting in kilobytes.
29. Wondering if you can afford to buy a RAM upgrade.
30. Blowing the dust out of a NES cartridge in the hopes that it’ll load this time.
31. Turning a PlayStation on its end to try and get a game to load.
32. Joysticks.
33. Having to delete something to make room on your hard drive.
34. Booting your computer off of a floppy disk.
35. Recording a song in a studio.
The Internet
36. NCSA Mosaic.
37. Finding out information from an encyclopedia.
38. Using a road atlas to get from A to B.
39. Doing bank business only when the bank is open.
40. Shopping only during the day, Monday to Saturday.
41. Phone books and Yellow Pages.
42. Newspapers and magazines made from dead trees.
43. Actually being able to get a domain name consisting of real words.
44. Filling out an order form by hand, putting it in an envelope and posting it.
45. Not knowing exactly what all of your friends are doing and thinking at every moment.
46. Carrying on a correspondence with real letters, especially the handwritten kind.
47. Archie searches.
48. Gopher searches.
49. Concatenating and UUDecoding binaries from Usenet.
50. Privacy.
51. The fact that words generally don’t have num8er5 in them.
52. Correct spelling of phrases, rather than TLAs.
53. Waiting several minutes (or even hours!) to download something.
54. The time before botnets/security vulnerabilities due to always-on and always-connected PCs
55. The time before PC networks.
56. When Spam was just a meat product — or even a Monty Python sketch.
Gadgets
57. Typewriters.
58. Putting film in your camera: 35mm may have some life still, but what about APS or disk?
59. Sending that film away to be processed.
60. Having physical prints of photographs come back to you.
61. CB radios.
62. Getting lost. With GPS coming to more and more phones, your location is only a click away.
63. Rotary-dial telephones.
64. Answering machines.
65. Using a stick to point at information on a wallchart
66. Pay phones.
67. Phones with actual bells in them.
68. Fax machines.
69. Vacuum cleaners with bags in them.
Everything Else
70. Taking turns picking a radio station, or selecting a tape, for everyone to listen to during a long drive.
71. Remembering someone’s phone number.
72. Not knowing who was calling you on the phone.
73. Actually going down to a Blockbuster store to rent a movie.
74. Toys actually being suitable for the under-3s.
75. LEGO just being square blocks of various sizes, with the odd wheel, window or door.
76. Waiting for the television-network premiere to watch a movie after its run at the theater.
77. Relying on the 5-minute sport segment on the nightly news for baseball highlights.
78. Neat handwriting.
79. The days before the nanny state.
80. Starbuck being a man.
81. Han shoots first.
82. “Obi-Wan never told you what happened to your father.” But they’ve already seen episode III, so it’s no big surprise.
83. Kentucky Fried Chicken, as opposed to KFC.
84. Trig tables and log tables.
85. “Don’t know what a slide rule is for …”
86. Finding books in a card catalog at the library.
87. Swimming pools with diving boards.
88. Hershey bars in silver wrappers.
89. Sliding the paper outer wrapper off a Kit-Kat, placing it on the palm of your hand and clapping to make it bang loudly. Then sliding your finger down the silver foil of break off the first finger
90. A Marathon bar (what a Snickers used to be called in Britain).
91. Having to manually unlock a car door.
92. Writing a check.
93. Looking out the window during a long drive.
94. Roller skates, as opposed to blades.
95. Cash.
96. Libraries as a place to get books rather than a place to use the internet.
97. Spending your entire allowance at the arcade in the mall.
98. Omni Magazine
99. A physical dictionary — either for spelling or definitions.
100. When a ‘geek’ and a ‘nerd’ were one and the same.
KISS and Tell July 23, 2009
Posted by Matt in Memphis.Tags: Kiss, Paul Stanley, politics, sex scandal, Tennessee House
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One of the more dominant headlines in the Memphis area as of late has been regarding Republican state Senator Paul Stanley of Germantown, TN, who is married with children and who was recently exposed for having an affair with a 22 year old intern.
So far there has been no comment from Gene Simmons.
Happiness is not a Warm Gun July 22, 2009
Posted by Matt in politics.Tags: anxiety, bars, church, fear, Gun Control, parks
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Gun control is one of many debates that have come to the forefront in recent days, and whether it be on talk radio, cable news or among your average person on the street, everyone seems to have an opinion. Due to mistaken beliefs about the current president and poorly concealed political posturing by gun proponents, recent legislation has been enacted in parts of the country to allow guns in businesses that serve alcohol, in public parks, and even in churches. Gun sales are skyrocketing as people build up their personal arsenals in response to blatant fear-mongering and false accusations by many in power. To many of us this lemming-like rush to fulfill the Machiavellian declarations from the most conservative among our leaders would seem laughable if it weren’t dealing with a tool of death.
Now, I’ve never owned a gun in my life, nor do I ever plan on owning one. I can probably count the number of times that I have actually shot a firearm on one hand and I’m okay with that.
I think the one major factor that separates those like me from those who feel the need to carry weapons into churches, bars, and parks, is fear. I refuse to live my life in constant fear of what might happen next. Sure, bad things happen and “What ifs” abound, but I will not sit in nervous expectation of events that will most likely never actually occur.
Listening to those who support measures such as these just makes me sad, for it causes me to realize just how miserable it must be to live in such a fearful state. It makes me wonder how you can ever truly love your neighbor if you always keep a finger on the trigger.
