I was watching the Euro 2008 final between Spain and Germany today when I noticed something funny. At one point, a German player got pissed at a Spanish player, got in his face and started a shouting match. But what the hell are they saying to each other? Are they just exchanging “mierda” and “scheiße” and assuming the other dude knows more or less what they’re saying, or are they picking a language like English that they think maybe the other guy knows so they can express just how much they would like him to burn in hell?
Soccer doesn’t translate as well to television as a lot of sports for me. A lot of the skill and nuance is lost when watching it on TV, even if it’s on a big screen in high definition. When they show slow-motion close up replays, you see these guys doing ridiculously intricate things with their feet when they handle the ball, but from far away it ends up looking like a bunch of guys kicking a ball back and forth a bunch of times, occasionally pausing to fake an injury. It’s funny, because guys will get hit in the face and fall to the ground clutching their shin. Then when the ref doesn’t call a foul, they hop right up like nothing happened. I think, besides the fact that we’re generally worse players, one of the reasons the United States has never been particularly competitive in soccer is that we never seem to fake as many injuries as the other countries. Plus the fact that no one in this country cares about soccer. That might have something to do with it.
For my brother’s birthday, I bought him a ticket to Body Worlds, the museum exhibit where they take actual plasticized bodies, strip them of their skin, and display the wonders of the human body in all its icky glory. Two things in particular struck me while I was strolling down cadaver lane.
One was the fact that I really wasn’t particularly weirded out by the whole experience. Sure, I was looking at some guy’s intestines without so much as a sliver of glass between his bowels and my face, but there was really only one time that I actually made the connection in my head that these were real people. Most of it still looked fake, or my brain just insisted on interpreting it as such. The only things that were kinda creepy were the eyeballs which, ironically, were the only fake parts on the bodies.
But overall, there was only one part of the whole exhibit that was a little weird to me. I called it the “dead baby room.” They had specimens of babies in various stages of the pregnancy; early examples were in test tube-like thingies and sorta looked like tadpoles or a cloud of spores (yeah, I know there are no actual spores, but that’s what it looked like). At eight weeks it really looked like a tiny, translucent baby with eyeballs, fingers and everything, no bigger than my thumb.
But soon I came face to face with much more developed dead babies curled up peacefully in glass cases. They were totally intact, not dissected like the other people. And it was eerie. I was just looking at actual dead babies in glass boxes. I mean, what if that had been your child? These ain’t no Cabbage Patch Kids. In fact, there were two nuns near us who left to go get their tickets back as soon as they saw their first placenta in this display. And here’s how Body Worlds instilled confidence into more socially conservative visitors: a sign that said that all of the specimens died of natural causes “to the best of their knowledge.” Uh, great. Why not just go ahead and lie a bit and say you know for a fact it’s not a room full of abortions?
Anyway, the other thing that struck me was how much sick fun some of these people must have had posing the bodies. There’s a dude with his chest split open, holding all of his internal organs above him. There’s a woman whose spine is yanked out perpendicular to her body, tearing open a gaping hole in her back. I mean, look at this shit! It’s a dude holding his own skin! I can just see the scientists sitting around, going, “hey, let’s take this dude’s penis and split it down the middle, peeling the sides off like a banana so it’s just the head floating and attached via the urethra to the guy’s body. And let’s have him leaping over a hurdle at the same time!” You think that last one was a joke? Cause it wasn’t.
Anyway, I found the whole thing pretty fascinating, and if there’s an exhibit in your area and you’ve considered checking it out, I say go for it. It’s worth the $20 ticket. Oh, but it’s probably not the best first date idea. Just so you know.
Coldplay released what I suspect is their version of an “experimental” album with Viva la Vida. Upon first listen, it did sound a bit experimental (didn’t expect an instrumental first track featuring a hammered dulcimer, I must admit), but with repeated listens it turns out it’s not such a far cry from their older stuff; they just stripped away a few signature elements to make it seem experimental. There are some familiar chord progressions, song themes, and melodies here. Here’s what I did and didn’t like about it.
THE GOOD
1) It sounds like Chris Martin has decided to write lyrics again, which is nice. After the exercise in lyrical blandness that was X&Y, I feel like he realized it sounded like he was phoning it in on that entire album and figured he’d put a little more thought into these songs.
2) The vocals sound less lazy this time around, too. On the last album, it sounded like Martin was breaking into falsetto at every chance he got, even when it made no sense. Now he’s back to singing in a normal range and actually belting a higher note or two before cracking out that head voice.
3) When the experimentation works, it works well. It’s satisfying to hear a band sound a little different from what you’re used to and pull it off. A few times, they do pull it off. A new beat (!) here, a new song structure there.
4) They’re not trying to rock. That seemed to be an issue with album #3; Coldplay never rocked, nor did I want them to. I didn’t listen to Parachutes because it rocked. I listened to it because it was good. X&Y sometimes sounded like an apology for having not played louder and faster before (it’s funny what playing arenas will do to your music). But now they’re balancing that out with what they do best, namely not rocking.
Highlights: “Lost!,” “Yes”
THE BAD
1)Remember when I said they take away a few key elements to make it seem more different than it actually is? Unfortunately, some of those elements are the things that made me like the band when I heard them in the first place, like interesting guitar lines that become identifying hooks in the songs. It’s not that I want to hear mid-tempo eighth notes over the “Clocks” drum beat for 45 minutes, but I really could have used some more “classic ‘Play” guitar action on this one.
Consequently, the elimination of such signature aspects makes a lot of the album feel more like a Chris Martin solo project. Take the title track, which grew on me a little since I first panned it out loud after seeing the iTunes commercial… The songl goes nowhere. It’s begging for the whole band to come in and take it home, but it just ends up leaving you hanging.
2) Some of the album smacks of the band trying to be something they’re not. They really bit off more than they could chew with songs like “42.” It starts out promisingly enough, with a lovely first minute and a half (even if the lyrics are a bit questionable). But then it busts out into a completely inappropriate section with odd, overly-loud attempts at “edgy” lines that make the band sound completely out of their element, not to mention uncomfortable with being out of said element. (Part of my problem with this song is a major-key guitar line that sounds too dissonant over a song that has clearly established a minor key.)
Another moment like this is the final track, which starts out well but goes into an “arena singalong” type climax for the end of the album. That would be all well and good, but they wrote it in a jerky 7/8 pattern, making for an extremely awkward singalong that will be a bit over a lot of their fans’ heads.
3) While many individual instruments sound well-recorded (the piano parts in general sound superb), with Brian Eno’s added ambiance to the production a lot of the mixes on Viva la Vida are muddy and undefined. The crisper mixes of the earlier recordings left little to the imagination (in a good way), with the listener avoiding the need to concentrate to pull out the important parts of the songs. Much seems to get lost in these mixes.
4) I know it’s their artistic choice to bunch two songs on the same track, but it’s kind of irritating as a listener. For example, I like “Reign of Love” more than “Lovers in Japan,” but I can’t skip directly to it because they’re the same track. That wouldn’t be so bad if they didn’t do it more than once. But they do.
Lowlights: “42,” “Strawberry Swing”
Overall, I think I like this one more than X&Y, but my constant hopes that they’ll release anything resembling Parachutes ever again seem to be fading more and more each day.
I just heard a second ago that my favorite stand-up comedian, George Carlin, has died. Instead of paying tribute by writing about why I was a huge fan, I decided instead to let his work speak for itself. I’ve embedded what his HBO special, appropriately titled “Life is Worth Losing.”
The world has another void to fill. Godspeed, Carlin. In his immortal words: fuck Tucker, Tucker sucks.
As if shelling out waaaay too much money for brake service wasn’t bad enough, I had to end my visit to the local auto shop on an extremely awkward note today.
Keep in mind as you read this that the extent of my bonding experience with the guy who worked on my car was this:
Him: “What do you need?”
Me: “My brakes are screeching.”
Him: “OK. That will be lots of dollars, please.”
Nah, I’m kidding. He didn’t say please. Anyway, I’m waiting at the counter as he runs my credit card, and the TV is playing a rerun of “I Love Lucy.” I’m watching a bit of it when this guy lays his grease monkey philosophy on me about Lucille Ball. Here’s how it goes:
Him: “You know what’s weird about her?”
Me (taken aback by the sudden, random attempt at small talk after he’s already secured my money): “What?”
Him: “You know how when you’re like walking down the street and looking at girls, you’re always thinking about what position you’d have sex with them in? Like, oh man I’d do her doggy style or whatever?”
Me: “…Uh, yeah, sure…”
Him: “When I see her, I don’t think about that at all. It’s not that she’s not attractive or anything, I just don’t see her like that.”
Me: “Um, yeah. She’s wholesome.”
Awkward pause.
Me: “But I’m sure someone thinks about that when they look at Lucy.”
Him: “You think so?”
Me: “Definitely. I mean, with all the weird fetishes people have these days, that’s not that crazy. I’m sure someone’s into her. She’s a good looking girl.”
Him: “Yeah, you know, you’re right. OK here’s your receipt.”
Me (to myself): “Thank you God.”
Hey, it softened the blow of the bill when I at least got a blog post out of it.
Not too long ago I noticed a moronic new feature of CNN.com. Next to several headlines on the front page is a little icon that you can click on that takes you to an online store from which you can buy a T-shirt with that particular headline printed on it.
Wait, what?
Yeah, that’s right. You can buy a plain black T-shirt with a CNN headline written on it in plain white text. Oh, excuse me, you can also purchase attractive varieties in white and gray, too.
First of all, nice one, CNN. It’s an obvious low-cost ploy to make a few extra bucks. I’d applaud you if it didn’t come off as desperate and without forethought. But most of the headlines they choose are either incredibly inappropriate to have on a T-shirt, or completely useless to have on a T-shirt. Let’s take a look at my options right now. I can buy a shirt that says:
“Gas prices cost soccer moms games”
“Barking mom alerts crew to stuck pup”
“Toilet with cedar chips vaporizes waste”
Oooh, the toilet one sounds good! C’mon… CNN is completely missing the mark with this. These are not cute little esoteric phrases that unite cult followers with one another like a shirt that says “These go to 11″ or “Nobody fucks with the Jesus.” These are just meaningless headlines culled from yet another day of mundane news stories that will disappear every six hours.
Oh, but if you want the one about soccer moms and gas prices, they’re only $19.99!!!
There are plenty of things I could write about today. Obama winning the nomination? Nah. The Phillies in first place? Why jinx a good thing. The effects of saccharine on a lab rats? I think we all know how that one ends up.
But I’m the first to admit my recent posts have been rather wordy, so how about a music video today? It’s the lazy man’s blog post. And right now I’m too tired to be clever and too lazy to be thoughtful. So here we go.
Jellyfish - “The King is Half Undressed”
Jellyfish was a band from the early ’90s that I didn’t discover them until recently, but they have some great songs. If you like this one, check out “New Mistake,” “Ghost at Number One,” and “Joining a Fan Club.” PS - This video is awesomely awful.
