Things That Don't Matter

A month or so ago I predicted that based on what I’d heard Jukebox the Ghost’s Everything Under the Sun was about to become my new favourite album of all time, dethroning Belle and Sebastian’s The Life Pursuit, not an easy challenge by any standard. So now that I have the album, and have listened to it many times over, the question is was I right? The answer, plain and simple, yes. Belle and Sebastian of course have the opportunity to take back the crown when their new album Belle and Sebastian Write About Love hits shelfs October 12th in the U.S., but for now Jukebox the Ghost has captured my heart. Their first album was fantastic, it was fresh, new, different, and inventive. I was almost a little worried that they wouldn’t be able to reach the same high standard with a sophomore album. They did, and in fact I think they went a step further, a giant leap further even. The album is very recognizably Jukebox the Ghost, not much if anything has changed, but in no way is that a bad thing. The band is far stronger in a number of areas, Ben and Tommy are clearly more experienced vocalists, and they’ve done an excellent job of meshing piano with guitar, two instruments with a tendency to vie for attention when used together creating a sense of disharmony. Jesse remains ever fantastic, listening to him play always depresses me a little because I think to myself, “Damn, I’m never going to be able to do that.” His drum parts are as much a part of the music as Ben’s piano and Tommy’s guitar. In some bands the drummer just keeps time, plain and simple, that is not Jukebox the Ghost. Jesse takes it to a whole different level, he play’s inventively, uses the whole set and then some, and at the same time plays with such speed and precision, it’s really just amazing. Okay that’s a lot about drums, but that’s the only instrument I really know much of anything about, and drummers don’t generally get the attention they deserve, and in this case attention is definitely deserved.

There is not one song on this album I don’t like, and I love most of them. Schizophrenia, The Popular Thing, and Nobody are all strong candidates for replacing Dress Up In You as my favourite song of all time, I’m not calling it just yet though because I have yet to see if they all stand the test of time and repeated listening. The great thing about this album though is that the songs not mentioned there are still great, they’re not just filler tracks as you so often find on LPs. Summer Sun although short is a gem of a track, The Sun and The Stars are both fun and energetic. Half Crazy and Carrying are infectiously catchy, but in a gimmicky sort of way that comes close to making me not like them, but they’re still fun to listen to. Empire and Mistletoe are also great, and if it wasn’t for that fact that I’d already heard them many times over prior to the release I would probably have been wowed by them as well. There is practically nothing wrong and everything right with this album, and it is absolutely necessary that everyone go listen to it.

Final score: 100/100

An update: For those of you who don’t know who Jukebox the Ghost are and are too lazy to go look them up I’ve embedded this video here of them playing Schizophrenia on Letterman.

This is one of the very rare occasions when I’ve actually seen something that’s been in theatres (spell check tells me that’s the wrong way to spell theatre but it’s TOTALLY NOT!) less than a week, but Scott Pilgrim was a movie that I knew I didn’t want to miss and it’s release having coincided with a week I was looking to fill with any and all kinds of distractions I grabbed a couple of my friends and saw it. It was wonderful. There was so much that I loved about this movie, I don’t even know where to begin. I guess I’ll start with that Kieran Culkin (Igby from Igby Goes Down) is a most fantastic actor and he is perfect in this movie. His character Wallace was undoubtedly my favourite (THAT IS ALSO THE CORRECT WAS TO SPELL FAVOURITE GO AWAY RED LINE), he was wonderfully sarcastic and witty and his interaction with Scott was the best thing about the movie and if I could change one thing it would be to add more of it. The other thing I loved about this movie was it’s tendency to surprise me with pop-culture references. Now, you may be thinking, “What do you mean surprise? Half the point of that movie was to make pop-culture references,” and yeah, that was half the reason I went to go see the movie, but I expected mostly references to 90’s video games, and yeah there were a lot of those, but quite a few others that I didn’t expect. I won’t reveal what they are because being surprised by them was a large part of their entertainment value, but they’re there, and you’ll know what I’m talking about if you’ve seen the movie, or will when you inevitably do (because everyone should). As a whole the movie is fast paced, witty, action packed, and at moments endearing. A few people may feel a little alienated by the mass amounts of culture they won’t understand, but even without understanding some of the references I think most of the humour (Are you kidding me!? THAT IS HOW IT’S SPELLED.) and the story itself are relatable to a much larger audience than most people perceive.

Okay, I’m really terrible at writing about things I like, so here’s the fun part, what I didn’t. To be clear, all of my issues with this movie are trivial, I include them only because I enjoy complaining. My biggest issue is that I didn’t see what was so attractive about either of the two main characters. I mean I liked Scott, I love Micheal Cera and I thought he did a terrific job, but what he did a terrific job of was playing a character who’s 22, lives across the street from the house he grew up in, has no job, and plays bass (yes, I did just italicize bass as a method of expressing disdain, deal with it) in a band that I wouldn’t expect to ever be popular anywhere beyond their hometown, if that. What then do Ramona and Knives see in him? That wasn’t the worst of it though, to an extent I can accept girls going for some guy for no reason apparent to me, mostly because I’m not a girl and never understand what they see in anyone (who’s not me anyway), but as a guy I didn’t get Scott’s infatuation with Ramona at all. I think I can probably for the most part blame it on her hair, which was first pink (ick), then blue (eh), then green (ghastly). With the right clothing (or lack thereof) you could see that she had a pretty nice figure, but not on its own deserving of what Scott went through in pursuit of her. Now that is of course extremely shallow but I don’t think she had a very interesting personality either. Her character is largely supine (I had to look that up to make sure it had the definition I thought it did, it does) and little is revealed about her not directly pertaining to the exes that control her. I can understand being enticed by the mystery but I didn’t get the sense that there was much of anything that interesting to be discovered. Again, it’s probably all because of the hair.

I think that what made me love this movie, instead of just really really liking it, is right there in it’s title, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World. This is probably something that holds true for most people who have seen or will see the movie, I was able to empathize with Scott’s battle against insurmountable odds, and it was satisfying for just this one time to see the world lose. Plus it’s hilarious.

Final Score: 95/100 (All 5 points off for the hair.)

So you may remember (but probably don’t) that at about this time last year I wrote an article about Rock Band 2. In said article I mentioned that the only instrument I ever used in the game was the drums, and that I got pretty decent at them. Since that time my interest in drumming has moved on to the real thing. After playing on the kits of a few friends I got my own a few months ago at Christmas. Several hundred dollars later I have what I consider to be a complete and pretty awesome set up, which looks like this:

And here is my collection of broken drumsticks, I’ve gone through a significant number in the few months I’ve been playing. I think it might be more the sticks than it is me, but they only cost $2.50/pair, ship for free, and come with candy in the box! (Sweetwater is the best store ever.)

And it sounds like this:

Bass, snare, and toms are all from a company called Drumfire, if the logo didn’t tip you off to that already.
Cymbals are (Camera’s perspective right to left):
Meinl HCS 14″ Hi-hats
Meinl HCS 16″ Crash
Zildjian ZBT 10″ Splash
Zildjian ZXT 16″ Rock Crash
Wuhan 18″ China
Meinl HCS 20″ Ride

I now plan on going through each of those items and what I like/don’t like about each. If you’re not interested, which chances are you aren’t, you can skip to the end.

I like the bass, and I like the snare, that’s about all I can say about them. The toms are about as close as I’ve ever come to actually liking toms, they sound kind of harsh without the headphones on, but with them they sound pretty good, and I guess also in the recording.

The hi-hats are kind of heavy sounding, if that makes any sense. Very low pitched, as are all of the HCS cymbals. They get very loud when you hold them slightly apart. Those really aren’t black and white pros and cons, more personal preference kind of thing. I like them.

The HCS Crash has almost exactly the sound I want from a crash, except it doesn’t have quite a long enough sustain, almost seems to choke itself, and it’s a little to0 quiet. When playing with the hi-hats open you have to hit it really hard to get it to stand out as separate.

As far as the splash goes it’s quite simple, I love it, end of story.

When I first hit the ZXT Rock Crash I was taken aback by it’s incredibly high pitch and long drawn out ringing sustain. I almost didn’t like it. After using it for a little I have come to really like it, it’s high pitch makes it stand out and I think the only reason I was at first shocked is because the HCS’s are all much lower pitched than is average.

The Wuhan China arrived today, and I haven’t formed an opinion on it yet. It sounds like I expected it to but I’m not sure I really like that as much as I thought I would. It works well as an accent to the snare, maybe occasionally as a contrast to the crashes, but other than that it’s a little too trashy for me and the music I normally play.

The HCS Ride is far better sounding in the recording than I think it is in real life, although that’s still pretty good. Ride cymbals are my favourite and I’m pretty picky about them, or would be if I could afford to. Unfortunately ride cymbals are incredibly expensive, you’re looking at $200 to get anything above very basic entry level stuff, and you could easily spend $500 for something top of the line, which I probably will, someday.

And that’s it, sorry if this wasn’t very interesting to most people, but it’s interesting to me, and that’s what this site is really about.

One day when I was 7 or 8 years old I was bored and looking for something to read (I don’t get cable at my house, and this was way before you could watch so much online). Perusing the bookshelf in my living room I stumbled across something called the “The Calvin and Hobbes 10th Anniversary Book”. I picked it up and flipped through, I was delighted to find that it was full of comics and instantly began reading. Thus began what could easily be called a love affair with Bill Watterson’s masterpiece. For the couple weeks it took me to read it I carried this book everywhere with me, and when I finished I’m pretty sure I went back and read it again. After that I collected more whenever possible, and at this point I believe I’ve read just about every strip that’s been published. This comic literally made me who I am today. Calvin was the expression of everything I felt as a kid, things like why do we have to do homework? why do we have to get up so early for school? why do grownups get to control us the way they do? I connected with him more than I think I’ve ever connected to anyone on the face of the earth. He taught me to say no, to question why, to live in the moment with total disregard for any and all consequences. I shudder to think what I would be like had I not learned these lessons from him, and my parents probably sigh regretfully. Those of you who have read Calvin and Hobbes (If you haven’t I consider you as culturally deprived as I consider myself to be) know that Calvin utilizes quite an extensive vocabulary, which I think I can credit as being responsible for my own comprehensive diction from an early age. That of course, is only half of it. Hobbes too defined me as a person. It is from him that I learned wit, his constant air of superiority and offhand comments most definitely rubbed off on me. To this day I pride myself on my skill with the quick quip. So if you’ve never read Calvin and Hobbes I strongly suggest that you do so, it’ll change your life. Oh and did I mention that it’s hilarious?

So you take two great things, The Beatles and Rock Band, and you put them together. You should get something great right? I mean where can you go wrong? Actually there’s probably a whole bunch of ways you could go wrong but thankfully we don’t have to contemplate them because this game doesn’t go wrong. The Beatles: Rock Band is the perfect union of two totally awesome things, it’s everything I expected and more. What I expected was Rock Band with Beatles songs, and this definitely has that, but there’s much more, it’s an experience. I sat down with this game on Saturday and played through the whole thing from start to finish, and even though it only took a couple hours (you only have to play each song once) the way that they arrange the songs in order with detailed recreation of their performances and recording sessions I felt like I too had been a part of their decade long career. They clearly worked very hard on the graphics for game and one thing they’ve done is made the note run a little transparent so even when you’re playing and focusing on your part you can still see what’s going on in the song’s cinematic which are either recreations of their live performances or imaginative “dreamscapes”. There is much more detail in the character animations so it really looks like they’re all playing their instruments. But these really are all just things that fill out around the edges, the essence of this game is the music, and the question on everybody’s minds is “Are The Beatles’ songs any good to play in Rock Band?” The answer: an emphatic yes. Now, as a (Rock Band) drummer, I have to admit that the drum parts for this game are not very challenging as far as not failing goes. The only song I failed the entire time was “Money Can’t Buy Me Love”. The rest generally have easy to keep beats but what I love are the fills. When I first heard that for this game they were going to be taking out the option to make up your own fills at certain points I was a little annoyed, but I since have found out why: because Ringo’s are so perfect anything you tried to play would just make a mess of things. I can’t really speak to any of the other instruments as I almost never touch them but a friend of mine told me he thought they’d much improved the way the game reads vocals (which probably means that it just doesn’t), and guitar seems to be pretty much the same as it’s always been. There aren’t many extremely hard to play finger blistering songs (except Helter Skelter of course) but I’ve never really enjoyed those as much as playing along to songs that I like regardless of the difficulty, and these are all songs that I like. I can’t really think of much they could have improved on except maybe some of the song choices (no Hey Jude!?) but that of course is being addressed by DLC.

Final Score: 99.5/100, with the .5 being taken off for the songs that weren’t in the game but should have been.

A few days ago I made a very very bad mistake. I watched the pilot episode of Lost. The first four seasons of Lost were added to Hulu a couple weeks ago and I originally stayed away from them because I am not normally a fan of TV shows that aren’t comedy. However it consistently hovered in about the #4 spot on the Popular Shows list and one day finding myself with nothing else that interested me in the slightest I watched the pilot episode part one. This was a very bad mistake. It was a mistake because then I had to watch part two, then the third episode, then the fourth, then the fifth, and so on. Now, not five days from when I started, I’m about 2/3 of the way through season 2, close to 30 hours of TV, and I can’t stop. I think one of the things that makes Lost great is its large cast. An episode generally focuses on a subset of the main characters, so you don’t get bored with them because they’re not featured in every episode. The other thing that they do very well is the mythology/supernatural element. It works solely because of their isolation. Many shows, for instance, Buffy the Vampire Slayer, try to mix a supernatural element with everyday society. Buffy does it better than most but even then I still often find myself jarred from a plot line by the thought that people would probably notice what’s going on. With the cast of Lost stranded on an undiscovered island there are no people around to notice. The other reason the supernatural element works is because it’s surrounded with mystery. If any explanations were to be provided it might become a little bit harder to believe but because neither you nor any of the islanders knows what’s going on there’s the possibility of a logical explanation to all of it. It’s something they’ll have to be careful with when wrapping up the show at the end of season six. The thing that keeps me coming back is the way they very slowly reveal little bits of the mystery. It does an excellent job of making me want, or rather need, to know what’s going on, and dangling it out in front of me like a carrot in front of a donkey. There are however a couple things that annoy me about Lost. In every episode they choose a character to do flashbacks to their previous life which of course some how relate to what’s happening on the island and are placed as if they’re memories triggered by an event. I’ve gotten pretty good at predicting them, the most common lead in is a character being asked something after which they stand there with a stupid expression on their face for a few seconds before it cuts away to the memory. The character background stories are normally pretty predictable, and I’m never anywhere near as interested in what happened to them before as what’s happening to them now so when they place one of these flashbacks in the middle of a pivotal moment I get a little annoyed. Sometimes it feels like Lost could function perfectly well as a 22 minute show of just them on the island instead of a 44 minute show with flashbacks and constant “previously on Lost” reminders which can sneak up on you in the middle of an episode and feel placed there just to take up time. The other thing that gets to me a little is that there’s supposed to be 40 other people on the island with them but you almost never see any of them, not even in the background. It’s obvious that in a situation like this people would get together every now and then as one group to make decisions, but I’ve never seen more than 20 people in a shot. The main main character Jack tends to make all the big decisions and then it seems like the verdicts are just supposed to be spread around by word of mouth. The creators of Lost seem to realize this too and occasionally poke fun at it by having all the main characters never be able to remember any of the extras’ names, specifically one guy named Steve who everyone calls Scott who was an extra that died way at the beginning. The only other thing that annoys me is that the picture Hulu put on the Lost main page features all of the main characters standing together. It does not however feature ALL of the main characters, only the ones still alive, presumably at the end of season five, a point I have not yet reached. So I recommend not looking too closely at that if you go to Hulu to watch and don’t want to know of such things. At this point it would appear that I’ve written more bad than good about Lost but I don’t feel that the bad in any way outweighs the good, I just have more fun and find it easier to complain about things than to praise them. On the whole Lost is pretty awesome, if it wasn’t I wouldn’t be unable to stop watching.

So by this point you’ve probably gathered that as far as modern music goes I’m into the alternative/indie genre, except I really hate having to tack on that “indie” because the bands I like pretty much all have deals with major record labels. Of course, an exemplary example of this genre is Death Cab for Cutie. DCFC is about as well known a band as you can afford to be while remaining a part of the indie/underground scene and while their music isn’t always as interesting or wonderfully pretentious as The Decemberists’ they have a good sound and there is always room for them on my iPod (which to most people doesn’t mean much but keep in mind I have a 1GB shuffle). About a week ago I purchased their relatively new EP The Open Door and have since decided I really like it. EPs are my favorite form factor for music releases because singles always leave you wanting more and albums always end up filled with the not so great tracks that you find yourself skipping over when they come up. The EPs that I’ve come across so far generally have about 5 songs, all of them good, and in this case available for $4 in the Amazon mp3 store. I’m actually really bad at writing about music other than saying I like it and don’t see how anybody else can not like it so I guess the best thing to do is just to put this video here of the first song on the EP, “Little Bribes”. The only thing I really have to complain about is that the video is pretty unimaginative but I didn’t pay for that so I don’t really care.

For more awesome music you should also check out The Crickets

Wow, it’s been almost a month. I’ve been getting steadily worse about this and I’ll try to correct that in the future. The end of this school year has been a little hectic and every time I think about updating I think of something else I should be doing instead, then when I finish that I’m tired (as in, more tired than I normally am anyways), and I go to bed. The added complications of being sick, having my grandmother stay at the house for two weeks, and totaling the family minivan did not help much.

So anyway, I had a few thoughts I wanted to share quickly. Today is June 6th, the 65th anniversary of D-Day. Know how Google puts up the specially designed logos for special days like holidays and such, guess what Google’s celebrating today?

25 years too many!

That’s right, 25 years ago today Tetris was released, and I guess in Google’s opinion that trumps what is just about the most famous battle in the history of the world. In their defense, dead bodies on a beach twisted to spell out Google would probably not have gone down too well. Probably the best thing to do would be to have left it alone completely, because instead of just saying we really don’t care that today’s the 65th anniversary of D-Day this says we think this stupid annoying game with colored blocks is more important. I guess you could say that it’s the single largest and ongoing genocide against digital colored blocks the world has ever seen. But the fact of the matter is, Tetris is stupid, I wouldn’t play it if it were the only video game left on earth. It has no point and maneuvering those stupid little blocks around is annoying as hell.

On another note, a while ago I got Rockband and I wrote an entry about it. One of the things that I discussed in the entry was whether or not it actually teaches you how to play the drums. I have since then spent a considerable amount of time playing the drums in Rockband and yesterday got a chance to try my hand at a friend’s drum kit. The result: I did okay. I’m not going to say I was really good or knew anything about what I was doing but I could play some beats that sounded pretty okay as well as invent some while  playing along with music. I definitely could not have done it at all without having played Rockband. So, definitive conclusion: yes, Rockband will help you to play the drums. It won’t make you an expert, but you should be able to sit down and play simple stuff  pretty decently.

So the question that’s on everybody’s minds, “How the hell does this genius come up with all this fantastic stuff? Where does he pull it all from? Has he done the things he writes about, does he sit secluded for hours on end and dream it up, does it come to him in his sleep? I sure wish I knew so that maybe I could be like him.” Don’t tell me you weren’t thinking it. It’s a rather complex question, and deserves a rather complex answer. It’s funny because I actually consider myself rather uninspired. The stories I write are about average people doing average things. Well, except for that one I wrote about the war veteran who shot the kids playing in the street in front of his house. I honestly don’t know where I got that one from. But other than that, it doesn’t seem like they would be very interesting to read, seeing as you could just step away from your computer and go do the stuff that’s in them yourself, and still people like it (or so I’ve been told). So, how do I come up with it? It doesn’t seem like it would really be that hard to do does it? It’s not like I’m dreaming up fantasy worlds, I’m taking people in this world in ordinary situations and giving them rather dull lines to say to each other. Well if you think that you’re wrong. What I’m doing is exploring the human circumstance and it is very very difficult. Or it would be if I wasn’t a genius. Here’s how I do it. Seeing as all my writing is based on real life situations, real life is where my inspiration comes from. Actually, not my real life so much as other peoples. None of what I’ve written about has ever happened to me, although some aspects are taken directly from real life. There’s always at least one character who is meant to represent me, or at least contains some aspect of my personality, it helps me connect and write about them better. In most of the stories it’s pretty obvious who I am because there’s only two characters and one of them is a girl, but in a few, such as The Basement, it might be a little trickier. I think I might write a story with a lot of characters and see if you can spot me, a literary Where’s Waldo. Generally I get ideas when I’m not doing anything, or doing something that doesn’t require much thought, such as walking the dog, or lying in bed before I go to sleep. I don’t write them down or anything, they just sort of sit there and I’ll mull them over and gradually they’ll gather substance. This is an ongoing process so generally I’ll have about 3 to 4 going around at different stages of development. Then one will reach a point where I’m really excited about it or it seems to have enough substance to write about and I’ll sit down and write it. Generally it’ll go down on the page all at once, and after a few minor adjustments it’s ready for prime time. And that is how the magic happens.

In case you hadn’t noticed I’m totally out of ideas right now and it’s been over a week since my last update so I needed something and I figured this would do.

No, this isn’t one of my stories or some opinion article on relationships. The Hazards of Love is the latest album from The Decemberists. Now, I know you’re probably thinking, “Dear god when is he going to shut up about The Decemberists what is this the third time he’s written about them? They can’t be all that interesting I mean seriously write another short story or something you uninspired bore.” The answer is I am never going to shut up about The Decemberists, as long as they continue to make music I will continue to write about it, this is largely because The Decemberists are one of the very few modern bands that I like, and therefore I enjoy being able to keep track of their new releases and such. Now, about the album, the one obvious things to talk about is the way they’ve put it together. Each song flows into the next and it’s often very hard to distinguish one song from another. It’s almost like it’s one big hour long song, and I’m as yet undecided on whether or not I like this. It’s interesting and it allows the narrative to flow uninhibited by track changes, but on the other hand it’s hard to pick out one or two songs that you really like from the album like you would normally, you really have to have an hour to devote to listening from one end to the other. I thought that the beginning of the album felt a little too much like background music, for me it really picked up when they hit “The Wanting Comes in Waves/Repaid”. I thought that at some times it was a little too soft and slow, although The Decemberists can pull that off better than most, and at other times it was a little too heavy, but for the most part I really enjoyed listening to it. A big aspect of the album is the narrative, which is interesting, but has some inherent flaws. The words to a song can often be very hard to decipher, and trying to understand all the words as they’re being sung can really distract from the music. Also, it means that you have to sit for an hour and pay close attention, you can’t really go around doing other stuff while it plays if you want to understand what’s going on. I have a hard time trying to come up with an occasion to which this album is best suited. It doesn’t really work for social occasions because it requires attention, and because it’s hard to pick out single songs you like it’s hard to fit into a mix or shuffle through on an iPod. To me it feels like the kind of thing for a rainy depressing Sunday afternoon with nothing going on and you can lie down and lose yourself in the music and the narrative for an hour. Overall I think it’s a pretty great album although I have to admit I was a little underwhelmed by it probably due to “The Rake’s Song” setting the bar extremely high. I think I like some of their previous work better, especially The Crane Wife which contained the first songs I’d ever heard from them. Listening live to the webcast was a lot of fun although they didn’t take the stage until 1 am and then after an encore all was said and done at around 2:30. I think lead singer Colin Meloy said it best right before they played their last song, “It’s late man, it’s late. It’s time for you to be in bed.” I look forward to more from The Decemberists in the hopefully near future. In other words, yeah, you made a pretty great album, now get back to work and make another one!

Update: Today I got the CD and I don’t really know why but the studio version sounds a lot better than the live version they did. The whole beginning seems much more… I don’t really know how to describe it… there, than it did before. It’s pretty much the same really but I think the tweaks and tuning make it feel a lot more together than it did live. I’m considering placing it above The Crane Wife. Actually, I’m not just considering, I am.

Final score: 92/100