Less volatile indeed! One has to wonder whether Sunday's Bears win could have been achieved with Kordell Stewart, but one needn't mill over it, because a win is a win is a win.

The new Shins CD, Chutes Too Narrow, is excellent by the way. Critics are claiming O Inverted World marked the beginning of concious thought for humanity, though, and that this is just a nice follow-up. I don't remember the universe getting knocked to the floor by the last album, but the "sophomore slump" is like juicy red meat in criticism. I don't think there's any REAL "sophomore slump", the same kind of approaches used following a successful first are the same as those used following a second, third, fourth, etc... One magazine I read said, essentially, "some bands clone their original sound, some bands rebel against their original sound, and others mature/evolve". Who are we trying to kid here? It is no great feat nor surprise that bands must have their second record sound like something. There is no mysterious trend in how bands make their decision, they just do it and the results are as numerous as second albums themselves. The whole idea of the slump needs to be abandoned as a viable introduction/structure for a piece of criticism.

It's an introduction much too steeped in the business of music. Though we've been trained to care about the marketability of music, I don't think the album itself cares too much.

Networks have noticed a mysterious disappearance of 18-34 year old males watching television this season. Maybe because we are downloading all their shows off the internet.

The question for the day is: Is a mall a good place to hole up in case of a zombie outbreak?

George Romero's Dawn of the Dead and Max Brooks' seminal The Zombie Survival Guide seem to give us contradictory answers. In Romero's film, a group of four survivors find great safety in a shopping mall after securing the structure. All of their needs (aside from social relations) are accounted for and the mall is a large, relatively controllable environment... once it is secure. That is the important thing to emphasize. In Dawn of the Dead only two mall residents survive the process of shutting down outsider access, a sign that the task is extremely dangerous. Of course, one can argue that if early situations had been handled more wisely, the deaths could have been avoided.

Romero's mall is strangely vacant aside from a spattering of zombies. Brooks' however sets a more realistic stage of the possible overcrowding of a mall. In the early stages of an outbreak (and continuing indefinitely), malls will be points of attraction for both zombies and people. THIS MEANS DANGER! Even if you can arrange the initial arrivals into an efficient military, constant influx of outsiders and zombies would present continual problems.

In order for Romero's mall to be as vacant as it was when the heroes arrived, how many regular people would have already died at the location? This certainly doesn't say much for your odds of survival.

Still... Are the potential benefits greater than the dangers? Large parking lots give you a good scope of approaching undead, there is a large quantity variety of inherent supplies and the attraction of people means an ability to establish new trade, society and culture.

If you've got the answer, weigh in at the forums.

No more Tuesday Morning Quarterback for awhile

beeFymojo: espn.com just ousted Gregg Easterbrook (one of their best non-sports-people-but-still-serious-about-sports columnists) presumably because of something he miswrote about Jews off-site
Moogle: Something he mis-wrote?
beeFymojo: [Edited for length: text is here in the 10.16.2003 entry.
beeFymojo: as he explains it, he didn't mean to bring in the jews-love-the-money stereotype
beeFymojo: meant more to go for, how can the victims of horrible violence also market it
Moogle: I got more of a "Jews are corrupting us" sort of thing.
Moogle: Yeah, I can see the glimmer of that argument lying in there.
beeFymojo:obviously, what he wrote was bad
Moogle: But, yeah, this is why you have people look over your work.
beeFymojo: but that is part of the problem with the quick-update philosophy of the web right now
beeFymojo: the blog mentality, so to speak
Moogle: Oh well, he'll get his foot surgically removed from his mouth, and get a job somewhere else.
beeFymojo: yeh
beeFymojo: i just hope the football column gets picked up quickly
Moogle:Uh huh
beeFymojo: i'd paste some quotes in here, but espn eradicated the whole archive
beeFymojo: it is a good thing that RF has taken a year to get its first issue out
Moogle: Yeah, otherwise you guys would totally have come across as the New Hitler Youth of the critical world, or something.
beeFymojo: and our publisher would fire us all
Moogle: Hey, speaking of insta-update and blog mentality, I've been reading Transmetropolitan...
beeFymojo: o?
beeFymojo: how is that?
Moogle: Oh, it's good.
Moogle: Especially if you have delusions of being a writer or journalist.
Moogle: But the "Feedsite" thing Ellis put in there is remarkably similar to blog-news
Moogle: Basically, people sign up to be "listeners," and run around equipped with backpacks that feed everything they see and hear into these massive website/tv station things.
Moogle: These are then filtered and turned into television.
beeFymojo: that is interesting
Moogle: A bit more centralized than modern blogs, but I could see centralized "Plastic" style hubs of "professional bloggers" who actually get good at writing or investigative journalism, or editorials, for that matter.
beeFymojo: that may be where things ultimately go
beeFymojo: it is kind of moving that way
Moogle: Especially as professional writers are starting to keep blogs of a sort...
beeFymojo: Gregg Easterbrook, incidently has one
beeFymojo: which brings us full circle to the problem of that kind of system
beeFymojo: pretty soon, we will just have rediscovered the old media publication environment
beeFymojo: i mean, if you think about it as a frontier
Moogle: Yeah, but for a few moments, right now, it can be remarkably simple to thrust yourself into literati.
beeFymojo: in the literal frontier you had people just going and living independently off the land...
beeFymojo: and here we are
beeFymojo: yeah. it's nice to have a moment
Moogle: Yup. Pay attention. This is history.

Well, the Bears with Chris Chandler look a lot less volatile than with Kordell Stewart. I've been trying to figure this Kordell guy out and my basic assumption is that he's essentially a rookie who has been in the league a long time. With some good and possibly difficult coaching, he could turn his career back around and at least be considered a decent quarterback. He just makes too many rookie mistakes on a Bears team whose veterans have the injury bug. Chandler has plenty of experience and can use his limited abilities more effectively than Stewart can use his versatility. I don't like to see Chandler start, but I feel fairly calm when he does.

Maybe Kordell Stewart needs to stop trying to prove he is capable of getting out of his slump and just focus on the situation at hand. He's given the opponent the ball at the end of each first half this year, all in situations where the game was close and we could have made it, at least, closer. These aren't life-or-death moments, so don't treat them that way.

Honestly, I have no ideal. But my initial statement is probably the most true thing... The Bears with Kordell, for some reason -- whatever reason you decide, are an unstable concoction.

Super Bowl!

Kill Bill was tonight's attraction... Bought some comp tickets off a guy for $5 a pop for a sold out show. The story is funny considering a dream I had about a week ago...

My old friend Chris and I decided to go to the big Chicago premiere of Kill Bill, only we didn't have tickets. Somehow we ran into a guy from my high school who had stacks of comp tickets he was giving away. Chris, being the astute kinda guy he is, figured out the tickets were counterfit though. My response, "If they find out, the find out... but it's worth taking our chances." Soon after, I learned ticket holders would get to meet Quentin Tarantino before the film. Now, I don't know any HUGE Tarantino fans, but my imagination created every type from handwritten t-shirt-clad teeny-boppers to film geeks with scraggly hair and tiny specs. And not only was Quentin meeting his fans, but he was staging a seance' gone awry for groups of a dozen or so. I finally got into the room where the seances were being staged and while waiting for the scene to reset itself, Quentin looks at my jacket and says, "That's a good coat. It's got that classic, vintage look... That's a great coat." I humbly say thank you and in the process notice he is wearing a pair of sneakers like the ones I own. I point and say, "Same shoes too." He laughs and points out we're like evil twins and all of a sudden he's schocked. "Your shirt," he says and goes to his bag and pulls out a book and holds it up to my chest to confirm this strange occurence. I am wearing a Forlorn Funnies t-shirt, he has an issue of Forlorn Funnies. "WHOA!" is what we both say, and I am about to suggest he make a movie of Forlorn Funnies when I realize I can use such a point to get a creative "in" with Mr. Tarantino once we get a chance to talk more.

Well, in the back of the room is a fanboy type guy I went to college with, who is upset by the parrallels between me and the director. He starts teasing me about how I'm taking the attention away from everyone else for no reason; he steps back and begins falling.

Quentin Tarantino, invoking Gene Wilders when a child falls into his river of chocolate, says matter-of-factly, "Watch out. This may be a fake seance, but that's a real bottomless pit with acid at the bottom."

I wake up before flesh begins to be eaten away.

By the way, Kill Bill is loads of fun. I'll keep anymore comments about it for the review and move on here in the blog.

Went to go see Neal Pollack read at Quimby's last night. We were a dumb-founded (maybe just dumb) crowd who couldn't think up any questions in the question and answer part. We tried. Oh yes, we tried. But trying to think equals silence, and silence is not conductive in a question-answer session.

In a public venue, I find it difficult to ask questions of a underground/alternative artist. For this reason: No one knows much of the background details of the artist. When you're in these book reading crowds, you have the tendency, though, to assume everyone else knows many more details than you do. You don't want to ask a question that will get you old women staring at you over the tops of their glasses while shaking their heads at your baffling ignorance; this makes you feel like the illiterate scum of the known universe; this is bad.

At Quimby's last night, the only information the group universally knew was that Pollack is from Chicago, is now living somewhere else, and writes as/about hilariously ultra-important alter-ego characters. We got through the first two facts with a certain amount of cautious prodding... "How is your return to Chicago?" "So, are you living in Philly or Austin right now?" "Do/did you like it?"... Neal spared us the grief of stumbling around the third and read an Anthology piece on Columbia.

If you haven't read/heard Neal Pollack yet, you should write it down in your planner for next Tuesday at 10am. Stop into a Borders or your local underground zine shop, and find the Neal Pollack Anthology of American Literature and read the introduction. That's all you'll need to understand how important a piece of work it is.

Look for an interview with Mr. Pollack in the second full RF issue.

Football is a game of gods. Baseball is a game of curses

For the 7 out of 8 American households not tuned into the Cubs ill-fortuned drops of games 5, 6 and 7 of the National League Championship Series... Shame on you.

Most people don't believe in magic anymore because they don't bother looking. A good portion of the world, though, got to witness some lingering force from a more mystical time incinerate the bolstering hope (and egos) of Wrigley parishoners. Sure, you can look at each moment in the Cubs' demise and explain it all logically, but when you take the tragedy in whole... There is something far more powerful than you, I, Alex Gonzalez or Steve Bartman at work here. And all of baseball are its puppets.

Red Sox lost as well, by the way.

It is very satisfying for all whose allegiances lie in the south side of Chicago, that Cubs fans were partly responsible for game 6. They, moreso than the Cubs, are the bane of our baseball existence. But, more on this in an upcoming RF essay. Time to work.

The Kill Bill soundtrack has a 10 minute Latin-ish cover of the Animals' "Don't Let Me Be Misunderstood" by Santa Esmerelda.

It's my feeling that covers should never be recorded straight (concerts are a different beast altogether). It's disrespectful and shameless to peddle another musician's wares as one's own - even if you claim it's in "tribute". Can you imagine if Picasso had painted a copy of Van Gogh's Starry Night? Well, the inbred patrons of art would probably have clapped very loudly and pulled some bars of gold out of their cavernous belly buttons to pay Picasso with. But Picasso... Picasso would have laughed all day in those shorts he wore in some of the David Douglas Duncan photos. On the other hand, if Picasso had fractured Starry Night, we'd have an actually interesting piece of work. It's how Dada and Pop Art fed their extended families.

So, my advice to all the ambitious bands out there that would like to do a cover or two... Listen to the original and add something to it. Change its focus, change its flavor, find something inside of the song that the current emphases hide. People will love you more for it.

So, remember. Faithful covers are for chumps and concerts.

Required listening: Cat Power The Covers Record, Red House Painters "Silly Love Songs", Yo La Tengo "Little Honda", the "Roxanne" song in Moulin Rouge, and the above-mentioned track from Kill Bill.

As you might have already noticed, RF proper is functional. The last touch I'd really like to get working before we start pulling people in is to get The Coco Cabana Club's beautiful eulogy of Captain Ahab "Moby Dick". The band is struggling to give me the track without giving me a new incarnation of the blaster worm, but hopefully we can get things figured out in a short amount of time.

Regardless, we'll probably start publicizing the magazine and hope word-of-mouth extends our coverage. And I'll be writing about a bunch of different pieces here so keep coming back.