In Your Electric Chair

It's been awhile since I've actually checked my activity log, but it's always interesting to find out what people have been searching your site for. I've had quite a few people looking for "stand-up comics" and "Jerry Seinfeld" -- I know, that one kind of baffles me too, but there you are. Ray Tate has also apparently popped by and searched for himself -- I'd suggest some kind of philosophical soul-searching joke here, but unless it has something to do with Doctor Who, Buffy, or Scooby Doo... Maybe he just got lost? People have also been searching for "Alan David Doane" -- about six different queries for him in the last week -- and if you're looking for him, you can find him here.

Nightmares by the Sea

At CBR: "LYING IN THE GUTTERS will be published late afternoon Monday."

Not that I'm one to quibble over regularity in updating, but when you promise something, follow bloody through. It's now Tuesday here in North America, five thirty in the morning across the pond. You need your weekly fix of Rich's inane ramblings, sour grapes, and sometimes news.

Blank Stares & Nervous Glances

You know, when they say that there are only two things that are inevitable in life -- death and taxes -- they're wrong. At least, they've never met me, since I would be the third actuality; that it's inevitable that I will drop off the face of the planet for a month or two.

Um...how 'bout them Leafs?

Newer Thought to Question Why

A fully-realised thought does not just plop out of the sky. It's not like a latter day Python-esque sketch where a man walking down a street is just suddenly struck by an albatross. Not even the more feasible streetcar. No, a fully-realised thought percolates. It transmutes. Is mused over. It's forgotten. Picked back up and forged into a working thesis. Ideas, ideas grow on trees, but they have to be worked upon to become a thought. Not merely a question, or a ponderance. ...but a real thought.

This is why I constantly have problems with "keeping up". I place strictures on what I consider to be a fully-realised thought with supporting, logical argumentation. It takes more time than the cookie-cutter nature of the quickening of culture through blogonomics. It has to be something larger, something that accurately shows a step-progression of logic, instead of giant leaps and the higgeldy-piggeldy nature of much online writing.

I'll have to think on this further.

If You Hate Something, Don't You Do It Too

The thread following Mike San Giacomo's asinine column this week has degraded from "everyone vs. Mike" in defence of iconic artwork to the typical name-calling back and forth that normally graces Newsarama threads. I guess I should be glad I stopped when I did.

2003 in Muisc: Song of the Year

It's All Right, Sooner or Later

This year it seems as though we've been at a loss for "anthems" that carry us through the summer, that we see everyone singing, and gets played again and again and again such that after about a week, you're already sick of it. Maybe I should be thankful that the record companies took the year off from pimping the "big" single, or else I'm willfully choosing to supress something since it was so goddamn awful. How often have that new Britney Spears song or Pink's "I'm Trouble" been played? Neither seem to have diffused through to public many repeated playings.

...and so, I'm left coming up with a favourite that probably hasn't been played on the radio.

•"21st Century Living" -- Matthew Good

From his debut solo album, Avalanche, "21st Century Living" is like a Rick Mercer rant set to music -- funny, relevant, biting, and catchy. Ringing in at just over three minutes, Good tackles "super-sizing" and "ambition".

"I'd like a super-size of death with a Coke."

A Portrait of Ignorance, Simply Drawn

There's this thread currently stemming from Mike San Giacomo's latest treading into the realms of blissful ignorance in regards to "realistic" and "simple" artwork. As you'll note in thread, I myself have a few things to say, which is odd since I rarely actually take part -- or read -- most of Newsarama. What's more interesting is Alan David Doane's response, Journey into Ignorance.

The Only Thing You Need to Buy This Week

Drawn & Quarterly Volume 5.

It's the only thing you need this week and it's the giant red and green covered anthology sporting a beauty from Dupuy and Berberian. The book is just gorgeous, featuring a story from the aforementioned Dupuy and Berberian, a new Paul story from Michel Rabagliati (if you didn't pick up Paul Has a Summer Job earlier this year, you seriously missed out on some great autobio comics), R. Sikoryak's adaptation of Wuthering Heights to the style of EC horror comics, and a sizeable retrospective of Albert Chartier's art and career. Plus a couple other things.

If you have no clue who any of the people above are, please, stick your head back in the sand now.

The Greatest of All Time?

Take a look at this. Occasionally I'll joke about a book being heavy enough that you could kill someone with it, I think you actually could if this one was thrown with enough force. Certainly the book itself -- or perhaps once you see your bill -- would be enough to knock you out.

Mind you, the above is just the right hand punch from a southpaw. Here's the left.

2003 in Music: Disappointment of the Year

Is This How it Ends?

When it comes to disappointments, like many years, 2003 was full of them. Jewel going further into a "pop" persona, taking on more and more aspects of her current female "counterparts" like Britney Spears or Christina Aguilera is disappointing, but I can't say I care too much about it. Resident-Select Bush continually lets down his country every minute he sits in office -- or sits on his ass anywhere else since he doesn't seem to be in office that much. Comic books can be downright depressing many weeks.

Given my bias when it comes to music, you might expect that I'd list one of the teenybopper crowd or the latest rap "sensation", but you have to have certain expectations if you're going to be disappointed. I expect a Justin Timberlake album to be mindless, bubblegum pop that I'm not going to like. Kind of hard for me to be disappointed by it. Likewise, when it comes to pure shit released in shiny plastic form that's not even fit to be used as a coaster, this year saw a doozy in Metallica's St. Anger album. Yet, there too, I expected it to be crap and it dutifully lived up to those expectations. Had it instead been something comparable to ...and justice for all, it would have been a pleasant surprise.

No, what disappoints me is when an artist/musician that I generally enjoy, produces something that is not necessarily downright awful, but something that fails to challenge me. Something that fails to grab my attention. Something that I perceive to be beneath the artist's ability. Something that I expected to be good, but is merely...okay.

In those terms, the greatest contributor to a disappointment is:

The Strokes -- Room on Fire

Don't get me wrong. I did enjoy the album, but after Is this It?, Room on Fire sets nothing of the sort and is certainly not IT. Basically, they took the safe route that too many pre-packaged (and I'm not calling The Strokes "pre-packaged", just comparing them to such "artists") bands do and essentially produced Is this It? 2. It's treading water and not breaking any new ground. Sure it sounds good, but we've already heard it a couple of years ago. A band can surely survive for years doing this, just look at The Ramones or Bruce Springsteen, creating the same album over and again. It justs gets stale after awhile.

There are many things to like about the album, many of the songs are nice, concise radio-friendly lo-fi gems, but they're all essentially patterned the same as Is this It? Particularly something like "I Can't Win" which seems to bear almost identical structure and phrasings as "Last Nite". It's still a good song, but you've pretty much heard it before.

There is some promise in the slightly different sounds of "12:51" and "Under Control" that hint at something new to come, but again, I say that Room on Fire is The Strokes treading water. I expect broader and greater things from them.

There are of course other albums that I was disappointed by and liked considerably less than Room on Fire, but it's the one I expected more from. Two other albums that stick out as disappointments that ultimately I decided I could write off without paying much more attention are as below:

Finger Eleven -- self-titled

This fourth release from the band (stop screaming already, I know that this is the third "Finger Eleven" album, but they did release an album previously when they were known as the "Rainbow Butt Monkeys") furthered them into a "kinder, gentler" nu-metal trappings and further away from their initial influences of Our Lady Peace and Tool. Maybe it's just the constant playings of "One Thing" these days, but it seems to me that they abandoned giving the music their own sound and just decided to blatantly follow Staind into nu-metal balladeering oblivion.

Linkin Park -- Meteora

Like The Strokes' sophomore album, Linkin Park too essentially repeats themselves from Hybrid Theory to make Meteora. The only difference is that I can't say that I've listened to this album again after the first week or so, and don't even remotely miss listening to it. That, and I still consider most of their lyrics trite and distant. Maybe angry, angsty music just doesn't have its edge with me that it used to. I also think that they ruined the kickass intro from "Somewhere I Belong" by attaching a song to it.

2003 in Music: Preamble

These Precious Things

Instead of waiting until January, I've decided to start posting entries about this year's volley of albums now, and dole them out over the coming days and weeks at no regular interval. As you should know by now, if you've been reading my ramblings with any regularity, I generally gravitate toward alternative, rock, metal. Those sorts of things in nice broad strokes, so if you're expecting some sort of retrospective on what's come out this year in good jazz, or country, or hip hop, you'll have to look somewhere else. Everything I'll be sticking up here will be things that I usually bought myself since I happen to like the artist in question -- or unlike many people these days, bought it for "that song" regardless of whether or not I liked the band.

My only criterion -- which is purely subjective -- is that I had some sort of experience, emotional or otherwise, with it, and do not purport in any way, shape, or form that any lists contained herein are the complete and objective truth, and that if you don't agree with me, you're an absolutely brainless, mouth-breathing heathen. Well, maybe you are anyway, but it's not necessarily because you disagree with me.

Okay, yes, it is because you don't agree with me. You mouth-breathing heathen. No, it isn't. Er...maybe.