did it

As I was looking through all my GBV and Pollard stuff, I realized I don’t even own all of Guided By Voices’ albums. I still need to get “Earthquake Glue” and “Propeller” to complete the collection.

What is my problem? I don’t own Propeller? Today I finally picked up the 6-disc “Hardcore UFOs” boxset. Not including the 45’s, the DVDs and the “Bee Thousand Director’s Cut” this puts me at over an entire day’s worth of GBV. It would take you over 26 hours to listen to all of it back to back.

And I love every minute of it.

Eff Pitchfork!

Pitchfork is a pretty not bad music site. I can’t say I agree with a lot of their reviews – but who judges music based off of reviews? It is like reviewing poetry. What is the point? “This album is a 7.4” However, some of their writers are quite good, and I enjoy reading some of their stuff. And they have a great news section.

HOWEVER, this review of “Crickets: The Best of the Fading Captain Series” has pissed me off!

When I first read it at the end of August, I noticed they had a factual mistake. The writer credited “Island of Lost Lucys” to The Takeovers, when every Pollard fan (or anyone who can read the back of a CD) knows that is a song off of Keene Brothers’ “Blues and Boogie Shoes.”

So I penned a polite email to let them know of the factual error. It has been over a month, and the error remains. Also, in the review, they link to the unofficial Robert Pollard myspace page. You dumb shits! Everyone knows THIS is the official one.

Ok, I’m not really mad. But they should at least do a little more research in their reviews and link, and if a helpful reader points out a factual mistake, they should fix it, no?

Two Lane Blacktop Coming to Criterion

I’ve never seen this, but have always wanted to. Unfortunately I’ve never seen a place that had it on VHS, and the DVD releases have been out of print for a while.

Yay for Criterion! They are releasing a special edition of this soon, according to their page. Finally, I get to see Dennis Wilson and James Taylor drag race cars. A life long dream has come true.

I’ve always had a mini soft on for Criterion discs. They are a little pretentious, a little rad, and always good quality. The last time I was at the record store, I noticed they had a used copy of “Knife in the Water” and I’ve been thinking of going back and picking it up. It comes with a second disc of early Polanski shorts. Watching “Knife in the Water” and “Dead Calm” back to back would be a fun night.

Speaking of Criterion and shorts, you can download a Wes Anderson short on iTunes for free right now. Go here (or just go straight to iTunes) to download it. It is a prequel of sorts to “The Darjeeling Limited” which is sure to get a Criterion release when it comes to DVD.

And finally, it looks as though “Bottle Rocket” is getting the Criterion treatment. I can ditch my single disc version of this and get the extended cut when this happens. Yahoo!

Mods vs. Rockers

I walked into the house of miraculous recovery and stood before King Everything:

You may think I don’t have a lot of things to say lately. “Au Contraries” I have many things to say.

I love that I own two different vintage bikes. I ride them everyday! The best part? I get to choose which one I want to ride everyday. If I feel like going nuts, I can get on my CL350. If I feel like a more relaxed (yet zippy) ride, I get on my Primavera.

I love riding 2-wheelers. I like riding home tonight from a going away party, and riding up the beach, and smelling fire works in the middle of September. I like riding home in a t-shirt and feeling quite warm.

These are the things I like! I like good friends and great oldies. Tell me, reader, what makes you go buck wild?

Vegas: What Happened?

Ok.. the skinny.

I drank for about 40 hours straight, had a three hour nap. All day Saturday I was out of commission.

Yes, I had fun.

No, I didn’t win any money.

Yes, I enjoyed myself, but can’t really see myself ever going back.

I took about 400 pictures, so I need to cut those down before uploading them to my Flickr page.

Well, with Vegas off my list.. on with the show!

Wonders: Tractor Rape Chain

“Tractor Rape Chain” is the third track on the seminal Bee Thousand. It is my favorite Guided By Voices song of all time. Much has been written about this song by others, but I’ll write what it means to me. Because it’s my blog.

Even though I’ve been listening to Guided By Voices for about ten years now, I only picked up Bee Thousand about two years ago. It is now one of my favorite albums of all time – so much so that whenever I see it used at a record store I feel the impulse to pick it up.

The entire album is a one of the greatest rock records of all time, no doubt. But something about the third track really struck me, and made me listen to it on repeat over and over.

Lyrics and more after the jump.

My daily Craigslist search terms

Scrambler
Vespa
Elsinore
Vanagon

Less Frequent:

Lambretta
Moped
Puch
Bonneville
Norton
Manx
Meyers Manx

Student Tasered at Kerry Event at Univ. Of Florida

Is anyone else feeling sick at this story? Or at any of the other thousands of stories where people’s rights are being trampled on, tasered, then locked up?

The article is here. Basically, this student became a little over zealous in asking a question to John Kerry. Annoying? Yes. Worthy of tasering and arrest? FUCK NO. There are tons of videos of this appearing all over the internet, here is one from YouTube:

I guess six campus police (including one that looks to be pushing 300 lbs) isn’t enough to take down a non-violent question-asker! Better taser him. From the article linked above:

As two officers take Meyer by the arms, Kerry, D-Mass., can be heard saying, “That’s all right, let me answer his question.”

Apparently, it isn’t all right for the campus police. Kerry was ready to answer his question. If during that answer the student continued to be unruly and completely disturbing, then cut the mike and get an event organizer to ask him to leave. If that doesn’t happen, then escalate it to a single officer (WITHOUT LAYING A HAND ON HIM) escorting him out.

Ahh, college! Where youth-fueled passion and ideals are quickly beaten down by the big, fat, unconstitutional reality of rights-tramplin’ police.

And, just when you think the internet has done good by spreading the injustice via video, it also has the misfortune of being an open book of all the silly things you’ve done. Again, per the article linked above:

Meyer has his own Web site and it contains several “comedy” videos that he appears in. In one, he stands in a street with a sign that says “Harry Dies” after the latest Harry Potter book was released. In another, he acts like a drunk while trying to pick up a woman in a bar.

Wow, Associated Press! That is some relevant information there. He also once masturbated in a closet when he was 13 and he sometimes listens to ABBA in secret. What does any of the above have to do with what happened to this guy and the wrong end of a taser?

FUCK.

China has the right idea (for once, sorta kinda)

Yeah.. so China has had a few hiccups here and there making lead-coated Barbie dolls.

And the crash test videos for their cars are less than desirable for any car company post 1920:

And you all know how I feel about Chinese scooters!

However, this article from The Consumerist says that China is becoming more active their anti-smoking crusade. How are they doing it? By making cigarette packaging WAY COOLER LOOKING by adding a skull and crossbones to it. Stay away from the skulls, and stick with blackened lungs, or maybe current pictures of Britney Spears (easy target, I know).

Want to cut down on smoking? Ban it from all public places. Non-smokers shouldn’t have to deal with other people’s disgusting habits and breathe their nasty secondhand smoke. Adding a skull to a pack of cigarettes isn’t going to stop Mr. Yellow Fingers Halitosis Face from puffing away as he walks down the street. Images don’t break addictions, changes of habit do.

Las Vegas (I refuse to say ‘baby’)

Crud, I think I just did say “baby.”

This Thursday I’m heading to Las Vegas until Sunday. I’m planning on gambling a total of 15 minutes. However, I heard there are lots of other things to do in “sin city.” (Please stop me from making any more cliched Vegas remarks.)

I want to start a campaign to stop capitalizing the names of days! Thursday should be thursday.
In other news, my motorcycle rules! It is running like a champ, and I’m currently trying to find super low profile foldable bar end mirrors. Because its a little illegal right now with no mirrors. I also want to do a little gear tuning to get it quicker in first gear, but I’m focusing on tuning up my Vespa for the time being.

And finally, I met the Hulk yesterday.

my luck (its a funny thing)

Just a few days ago, I talked about “why I don’t need an iphone.”

I woke up this morning, turned on my cellphone, and it starts beeping, saying the battery is low, etc. I plug it in, make a phone call, and in the middle of the call, it dies. Then it says its fully charged, then it completely blanks out.

My cellphone is dead. It won’t turn on, won’t charge, won’t do anything. I really liked that cellphone.

The cheapest replacement phone is nearly 200 dollars.
The 4GB iPhone is 300 dollars.
The tmobile unlock is now free.

 Don’t hate me.

Why I Don’t need an iPhone (oops)

Update: Three days after I posted this, I have an iPhone. Ha ha! Fooled myself pretty well there!

Have you heard of the iPhone? It is the hot shit right now, especially from all the whiners who stood in line the day it was released and are now pissy at Steve Jobs for lowering the price.

ANYHOOS.. the price was dropped $200, and that means you can get the 4GB iPhone for $299. This didn’t really concern me until news dropped that you can finally unlock the iPhone to work with T-Mobile, for free.

I checked out Apple’s site, and yes, there are still 4GB iPhones for a measly $299! Should I drop the dough? Look how cool it is! It does Google Maps. I FREAKING LOVE (need) GOOGLE MAPS!

But then, rational Robert made an appearance. Do I need an iPhone? Will I really use the internet when I’m out on the town? Do I WANT to use the internet when I’m away from my computer? And I certainly wouldn’t use it as an iPod. Even 8GB of storage would hardly hold enough songs without me having to switch out albums all the time, and I HATE doing that.

Also, do I really want another big thing to stick in my pocket? Because even though the iPhone is small, it is also about 4 times bigger than my current phone. (Update: I just looked at someone’s iPhone, it is more like 3x as big, and about half as thick. And about 90 times cooler) And my current phone is so worn in, and small, and it works great, and if I drop it.. no biggie.

The iPhone is a great gadget, but I just don’t think it is $300 dollars worth of great gadget for me. Yeah, at first I would go nuts with it.. checking my email in the record store, using Google Maps to find that damn restaurant. But then, eventually, it would just go back to being a phone. And the one I have works great.

I just succeeded in convincing myself not to spend 300 dollars. Let’s celebrate!

I just bought this instead:

tell me what your here for, guy

What a weekend. I really don’t want this blog to be a “weekend update” recap, but hey – sometimes a lot of things happen over the weekend. I’ve added pictures to the post, so this post continues after the jump.

i drank too much last night

The Takeovers – I Can See My Dog
The Specials  – Do the Dog
Guided By Voices – Straw Dogs
The Damned – The Dog
Love and Rockets – The Dog-End of Day Gone By
Bob Log III – Wag Your Tail Like A Dog In Back of a Truck
Cat Stevens – Was Dog a Doughnut?
Robert Pollard – Other Dogs Remain
The Stooges – I Wanna Be Your Dog
David Bowie – Diamond Dogs
Led Zeppelin – Black Dog
Roky Erickson – 2 Headed Dog
Belle and Sebastian – Dog on Wheels
Deerhoof – Dog on the Sidewalk

pulled into economy island

It has been hot as tits here in L.A. this last week, even on the west side. So when I’m home, I haven’t felt like writing, and I’ve been crazy busy at work – so the blog suffered.

Anyway, I’m back! Let’s see:

– Bought my motorcycle, having a few tweaks done to it and it is getting all tuned up.

– Went and saw Halloween. Want my two hours back.

– Pushed the limit on Labor Day weekend.

– Was officially inducted into the Westside Scooter Club. Awesome!

– Put some songs in my pocket.

– Learned 3 “blues 5ths” last night.

That’s all I got right now. Lame, I know. Dems da breaks.