9 December

This is precisely why I should not have caffeine in the evening

Step 1: Consume caffeine too late in the day/evening.
Step 2: Stay up much later than normal because of the effects of the caffeine.
Step 3: Explore the dark recesses of my mind and the Internet; shudder at what I find.

Tonight is one of those nights. And through a bizarre chain of links that, among other things, taught me that the late jazz multi-instrumentalist (as in simultaneously) and all-around weirdo Rahsaan Roland Kirk played the lead flute part on the 1964 Quincy Jones track “Soul Bossa Nova” — probably best known as the theme song from Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery, I also discovered this little gem by the Swingle Singers.

I don’t know if you know much about the Swingle Singers. I know just enough to know I don’t want to know more. (And if you know what that sentence means, let me know.) But as of tonight I do know more, and it isn’t pretty.

Step 1: Take an already insufferably cheesy theme song from a ’70s cop show.
Step 2: Give it the full-on a cappella vocal group treatment (including “wacka-chicka” guitar parts).
Step 3: Add a human beatbox, because steps 1 and 2 just weren’t enough already.

Enjoy. Here’s the original, in case you’ve forgotten it:
[audio:http://blog.room34.com/wp-content/uploads/underdog/55-starsky-and-hutch.mp3]

And here’s an excerpt of the new version, courtesy of the record label’s website:
[audio:http://blog.room34.com/wp-content/uploads/underdog/sigcd104_10.mp3]

Oh yeah… I almost forgot. The album’s called Beauty and the Beatbox. Clever!

There’s nothing like looking down on someone else to make you feel better about yourself

Most of the time, at least, I try not to judge myself in comparison to others, but sometimes when I get down on myself for certain personality traits, such as passive-aggressiveness, it’s helpful to find evidence that there are others who are far worse than myself.

And to that end, I need look no further than to passiveaggressivenotes.com.

I will admit that, my own impolite behaviors notwithstanding, it requires a great deal of restraint to keep myself from printing and posting notes in certain situations (especially where unflushed office toilets are concerned), so it’s not that I couldn’t relate to the pent-up frustrations being vented on some of these notes. Indeed, bad spelling and inscrutable grammar aside, a lot of these notes seem almost exactly like something I might have produced myself.

But then there are the others. The frothing, raving blather of those teetering on the edge of insanity. Not that the circumstances they were placed in by disliked roommates, coworkers, or proximate strangers didn’t warrant it most of the time. In the end, however, I’d rather be the culprit than the chump whose incoherent rants get photographed and posted on a blog for the purpose of global mockery.

Whatever. I just spent the last hour and a half poring over it all. Enjoy.

On a related, but less spiteful note (but only slightly so), you may also enjoy these similar sites (lazily copied from the passiveaggressivenotes.com blogroll). I am beyond pleased to see that there are others out there who share my same pet peeves, namely: apostrophe abuse, lowercase L, and unnecessary quotation marks.

Boy, this kind of puts my Catalog of Annoying Grammatical and Spelling Errors to shame.

OK, follow my train of thought here…

The other day, for reasons I’d best not get into, I was listening to the Steven Wright tracks from the Reservoir Dogs soundtrack. If you’ve seen the movie, you know that the soundtrack is interspersed with segments of deadpan comic Steven Wright‘s voice as a DJ on “KBILLY’s Super Sounds of the ’70s Weekend.” Listening to those tracks in sequence with absolutely no music in between them is a surreal experience.

In addition to the long-buried ’70s gems that made it onto the soundtrack, a slew of other songs did not appear, but did however get a mention from Steven Wright, tantalizingly conjuring a world beyond the details of the film, where a radio station that actually plays all of this crazy stuff exists! (Granted, this film predates the Jack FM phenomenon by a solid decade, but Jack rarely plays stuff this obscure.)

One of the titles Steven Wright mentions caught my attention: “Love Grows (Where My Rosemary Goes)” by Edison Lighthouse. (Anyone who knows me personally will know why that got my attention.) So I listened to a bit of it on iTunes, and it jogged a vague memory of this one-hit wonder from 1970. Then I headed over to YouTube, where I was delighted to find the music video:

Now many people of my generation or younger — or older for that matter — may not realize that they made music videos back in 1970 (and even earlier). I still have no idea where these things actually got played in a pre-MTV world. Of course, I don’t know where today’s music videos get played either, given that they sure as hell aren’t on MTV anymore.

Groovy.

Top 5 Albums of 2004

Another year is almost over (and considering where we’ve come, I can only hope the next four go as quickly… but I digress; besides, I’m still on political vacation). Time to review the sounds that made their way into my ears (or at least onto my iPod) this year…

5. Benoît Charest: The Triplets of Belleville (Soundtrack)
This brilliant soundtrack lifts from such diverse influences as Django Reinhardt and Curtis Mayfield, and works as perfectly as the animated feature itself. Everyone owes it to themselves to experience both the film and its music.
4. Wilco: A Ghost Is Born
I’ve only just begun to delve into this album but it seems to hold great potential. (Plus, Jeff Tweedy lives in my sister-in-law’s neighborhood in Chicago.)
3. Beastie Boys: To the 5 Boroughs
Dripping with ’80s pop culture references, the only question that remains is best spoken in the words of George McFly: “Do you really think I ought to swear?” The occasional expletives don’t detract, however, from such delights as “Think twice before you start flossin’ / I’ve been in your bathroom often,” or “Ad-Rock, a.k.a. sharp cheddar / my rhymes are better / What the Helen of Troy is that? / Did I hear you say my rhymes is whack?” (More on that here…)
2. U2: How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb
I was groovin’ on “Vertigo” for a couple of months (yes, cranked up to 14), and when the full album “dropped” (pardon the pun) I wasn’t the only one grabbing it from the rack at Target 10 minutes after they opened. This would easily win my best album of the year, were it not for…
1. Brian Wilson: Smile
Wow. Friggin’ holy crap, WOW. Perhaps not only the best album of the year, but of the past 37, since that’s when the former Beach Boy started working on it. No one (least of all Wilson himself) ever expected to see (and hear!) it finished, but here it is. And worth the wait.

Addendum: February 26, 2005

When I wrote this, I hadn’t yet checked out Green Day’s American Idiot. Having pretty much loathed the band before, I didn’t expect much, but this album really is quite amazing! If I were to revise the list above, I would probably put it at #2.