This American Life

If anybody wants to give $150 to WBEZ, you would be given the unique oppurtunity to give me this dvd/book.

Honestly, donating such a large sum being the only way to obtain the dvd pisses me off. Public radio, my ass.

Shatner!!!

"Sorry to disappoint you, but I'm real."

No prob, Bill.

William Shatner's new album is actually quality. Even Pitchfork agrees.

Has Been is the product of that weird friendship between Ben Folds and the Shat-man that you may recall hearing about a few years ago. The Shatner track off Ben Folds' pre-Ben-Folds-Singular "Ben Folds" album, Fear of Pop vol. 1, was certainly a highlight off that CD. While we all wanted to hear more of that type of thing, I don't think anyone expected that desire to ever manifest into something tangible. So, Has Been has hit secretly like a thief in the night. I know a guy who anticipates upcoming Star Trek novels based on their authors, and he was shocked yesterday when I suggested there was a new William Shatner album out. When I told him that it was good this time, his world was simply rocked from its axis.

The album works as novelty at its core... I mean, it's Shatner doing the Priceline thing for 40 minutes. But, Ben Folds' music makes it more than that, though, and a few of the songs just click as songs and not just spoken word bits. This should be encouraging for poets, who can be assured that they don't need to learn guitar or how to carry a tune to be in a rock band. (Not that anyone in a rock band ever felt the need for those skills.)

I don't know if that's good news for everybody. But as long as William Shatner is their captain, it can't be too bad.

Madden Madness : Some Words

Unfortunately for all of us, my work schedule has abruptly changed and made it very difficult for me to watch Monday Night Football much less pick a choice John Madden quote from it. This will only get worse with the store extending its hours for the holidays, having us work six days a week and, also, my one day off needing to be Sunday (Go Bears! Go Jesus!).

Madden Madness will likely become an irregular affair for the remainder of the year, although I will do my best to keep it going with some consistency. Suggestions from home are, as always, welcome and could help keep the feature running. From now, we'll count our days with Madden as momentous moments of celebration. We do get a week 12.5 thanks to Thanksgiving and are practically guaranteed some bizarre statement about six-legged turkeys.

And, that'll make everything alright.

An Unexpected Vacation of the Mind

You can imagine my shock and dismay that the Secretary of State had resigned and been replaced during my unannounced leave of absence from being wired. As far as I can tell, this all happened in a day. The news is difficult to track in hindsight, and I'm honestly not sure what I think of that.

What has happened these two weeks or so that you have only posted about the Guster live album, you might ask. Frankly, I have no answer for you. My time management was simply lost in dense, poisonous vegetation. For the record, I could easily blame my misspent hours on the soon-to-be-released World of Warcraft, but that would be unfair to those diversely brilliant landscapes fashioned from cunningly aligned binary. The truth is that I --albeit with assistance-- destroyed my attuning circadian rhythm and was unable to regain it like a crowd trying to clap to the beat for more than one reprise.

Well, until now.

At one point during my excursion into the early AM hours, I was convinced of launching a so-to-speak experimental weblog that would simply be a hapless spewing of words into posts; raw, emotional, chaotic and unproductive the project would be a sort of live non-fiction Ulysses (what's this I hear about aliens attacking in that book?). I composed some poetry which has been lost in the vast catacombs that are my memory because there is a tiny sliver of me that wants to be a Def Poet... The two projects deal with it in their unique ways, but are probably attempts to see the furious, chaotic anger I have been told lies buried inside of me.

I do have more pressing matters to attend to at the moment.

All of that said, expect a long and elaborate music-oriented post in the next couple days and also a return to regularity here at TMSO.

The Gusters On Ice

Maybe you weren't thrilled with Keep It Together, or you bought into my buzzing about it being a sort of farewell to Guster as that secret nougat inside the hollow chocolate shell of sugary pop rock. Maybe we were right. Maybe an unlikely, masterful DVD manifestation of the Gusters proves the band was never lost or gone forever.

(this is long, and there are pictures, click below!)

But I began to doubt my own estimations of that album around the time I was trying to decide which my favorite records were of 2003. Even if it was too sweet at times, there were moments of the melancholy darkness that made Guster distinct in their past several albums.

Then again. Maybe I'm at a point in my life where I'm too old to be a serious music fan who likes Guster. I've known Guster was a hit with teenage girls on the East coast since I first grew enthralled with the group. This was always something I could accept. But, now, I'm 24. My guilty pleasures shouldn't really be guilty anymore. My guilty pleasures should be kitschy things; I should love Justin Timberlake because he is an MTV poster boy trying to sound like Michael Jackson, I should love Destiny's Child because they sing about being too booty-licious for me, baby; I should howl along with "Sk8er Boi" for the simple fact that "skate" is spelled with an 8. I shouldn't --even discreetly-- love Guster because their music entwines itself to my mortal walk.

If I were a frat boy or a girl who'd shop at Urban Outfitters if she wasn't just so goddang smiley all the time, Guster would be acceptable.

Guster on Ice is a CD/DVD combo whose place in your favorite music retailer tends to suggest I was right back in the day when I said Guster was making the break for the mainstream and leaving behind all of us who wanted our guilty pleasure kept within a close knit circle of friends watching videos on a Saturday night. These types of people do not get cute little CD/DVD live albums from their bands, much less prominently placed ones.

Despite it all, Guster on Ice captures the blistering energy of a live Guster show and, yes, forces me to write this piece questioning everything I thought about the direction of this band and the direction of my relationship with their music.

Even the most sugary tracks off Keep It Together have grown into furious, infinitely layered arrangements from where they were in the pre-album shows and on the album itself. I can listen to and be engaged by the college freshman anthem "Amsterdam", and I am stunned by this. What's possibly more important is that ye olde standard Guster songs have been immensely aided by the band's new instrumental explorations from Keep It Together. There is a drum kit, there is a bass guitar, and there is a lingering fourth Guster. I don't know if I could ever go back to that two acoustic plus bongo set up. This isn't something you could see happening with the album itself, and maybe that's why we have Guster on Ice.

Still, what's so successful about this CD/DVD/whatever is the way every part of the show comes together so effectively. The Gusters are on, their fourth Guster "Joe" brings them to a new level, the Portland crowd is simply ecstatic, the cameramen stay out of the way and still get shots that are constantly new and revealing, and the footage is brilliantly directed by Danny Clinch. I have to give Clinch and the footage crew an enormous amount of respect. Most concert DVD's I have seen become quickly tiring and never capture the live environment even when they document incredible musical moments... It is almost as if the standard video crew point their cameras at an oncoming train, giving you the feeling of the power of that vehicle rushing towards you. Still, there's a lot more to that train than its rumbling down the tracks, and that's what Clinch's crew manages to get to... They seem to be everywhere and nowhere at once. The photos I've scattered through here don't do the fluidity of the footage justice.

Now, what's important here is that, for maybe the first time, people who have never seen a live Guster show get to see a full Guster show. Those of us who have also get a splendid artifact of that (those) event.

I've actually seen a show at the State Theater in Portland, Maine, the setting for this particular concert. Guster on Ice takes me back to a weekend where Kristi and I drove from Boston to hang out for a few days and see Wilco and Califone. Hopefully, we all find moments in our lives of perfection, and I can't really tell you what those moments are "like" but you will simply know of what I speak if you have ever had one. My trip to Portland was one of those moments, and it still resonates (and, at the time, I could feel how it would resonate for years beyond) so much so that, in my mind, I have decided that if i ever find myself free of geographical restrictions or even with a fledgling oppurtunity there, I will undoubtedly make a home in Portland, ME. (I also feel that run-on sentences are the best indication that a person is f-ing serious.) From Portland, I will raise a bold middle finger to Boston quite often and to a truly obscene degree (but that is a different story altogether), and that will be a good enough thing to make me stay.

If Guster plays even one show like this one while I am there, I feel like my decision could never be proven wrong. And that's nothing to feel guilty about.

(When in Portland, ME, stay at the Percy Inn.)

Election Day Predictions

A few predictions as we approach 12 hours until one of the most exciting days of the year for a political science major like me...

Electoral College: Bush 286, Kerry 252

Popular Vote: Bush 50.1%, Kerry 48.3%

Swing States:
Bush wins Florida (27), Iowa (7), New Mexico (5), and Ohio (20)
Kerry wins Minnesota (10), New Hampshire (4), Pennsylvania (21) and Wisconsin (10)

I honestly believe Hawaii (4) may flip Bush too, but not enough to stake my reputation on it. Michigan should be firmly Kerry at this point. Once again, the key state is almost certainly Florida. The difference is, I don't believe Kerry can win without it, but Bush can lose FLA and still cobble together enough Electoral Votes to win the election.

Republicans pick up 3 seats in the House.

Republicans pick up 3 seats in Senate -- now 54-46.

Obama defeats Keyes by a margin of 63-34.

Just remember, I did predict both the Boston Red Sox to win the World Series and the UConn Huskies to win the NCAA Men's Basketball Tournament.

I invite Mike to add his 2 cents, and readers to reply with their predictions. Winner gets the most valuable possession of all, pride.

Reverse the Curse : Campaign Edition

Of course, what curse should be reversed is entirely up to you. I'm working to assemble as many mumbo-jumbo election prophesies as possible. Primarily, I'm doing this so that I can smash down the losers when we're through with November 2, but it's also kind of fun.

Green Bay beat Washington, heralding the triumph of John Kerry as a Redskins win before the election has also meant victory for the incumbent party's candidate since their inception.

Nickelodeon's "Kids' Vote", which has predicted the last four elections, also fell in favor of Kerry this year.

The Dow Jones fell by 0.52 percent in October; anything worse than .5 has signaled a win for the challenger. Advantage : Kerry.

Of course, Laura Bush quite soundly defeated Theresa Heinz Kerry's campaign-staff-selected cookie recipe in the Family Circle bake-off, a contest which has predicted the president since 1992. (Heinz Kerry claims conspiracy, vowing that she has never baked pumpkin spice cookies.)

There's also something called the Shrum curse. Bob Shrum is sort of the William Jennings Bryan of the contemporary age as every Democratic campaign he has worked on has lost. Shrum is back again in 2004; a good sign for Bush.

In the Weekly Reader's poll of children, perennially accurate since Dwight Eisenhower, Bush was determined the winner.

The jury was still out on Halloween masks at the time I checked (most sold = winner); I've seen reports giving either side the edge.

Of course, many predictors have been aided by Gore winning the popular vote in 2000.

One is the Thirteen Keys to the Presidency, which currently predicts a Bush reelection. 2000 was its first "losing" year since it began in 1984, but the originators argue the system can only predict the popular vote, not the electoral. As it's not a mystical prediction, the argument seems fair.

The Hogue Prophecy attests to predicting every winner since 1968; this year he predicts Bush but notes that "2004 will become one of the closest presidential races in history, with no less than three disputed states requiring a re-count" and there will be dark times ahead.

Indian astrologers (whose claim to fame was predicting the assassination of Indian premier Rajiv Gandhi in 1991) see the stars in alignment for Kerry. Previous record on US presidential elections for the Future Samachar crew is unclear.

If you know of others, I'd love to hear them.