Took One for the Team

Well... It had to happen sooner or later...

Every real private dick has to take it... Hard.

And I did.

Some of you out there have probably been thinking that this private eye thing was some sorta gag or front. Well, I hope you’re feeling appropriately shitty now, as I drag my aching carcass from sofa to bathroom, then back again... and not much else place further. That’s about it.

I’ll have details for you later, but in the short term, lemme just say that I’m plucking lead--not much of it, sure, but real lead, outta my neck now--which has ruptured a coupla disks, which has made it impossible for me to lift my right arm past the level of my navel or so. Actually, I can as of just now, cuz I had surgery, which sorta sucked, but I’m recovering, but that’s why I haven’t been updating, but I will be soon...

But hey, see, at least this time, I have a real excuse: I got shot. Really. Like a real private eye. ‘Cuz I really am.

Lines Composed after Snorting Powdered Mescaline Mixed w/ a Half-Pint of Banana Daiquiri Mix

Dateline: Saturday, July 2, 2011, Albert Lea, MN.:

Over a slope encased in concrete comes a purple motorcycle. Sure enough, astraddle it is the Artist Once Sometimes Known As His Royal Badness--except for but that now he’s pretty much been emasculated down to Their (Witnesses’s) Royal (as in Kingdom Hall) Lousiness comin’ on as Goodness--i.e. Prince.

He’s in the ol’ purple waistcoat, ruffle shirt, pointy boot getup, n’ wearing the ol’ jeri curl, and it all still looks pretty good, despite his advancing years. Motorcycle cracks and snarls along, and as Prince approaches the camera in

LONG SHOT, a covered wagon appears, following him.

Piloting the wagon is the rotting specter of Michael Landon, who shrieks, whether at the horrors of death or at the miseries he’s found in resurrection, (e.g. the cluster of economy motels, fast food restaurants, and gas stations crouching like some fattened toad on the dirty concrete before him,) none can say. Next to him sits Karen Grassle, who played his wife on the beloved TV drama Little House on the Prairie, now just short of 70 years old. She is not hot, cuz she never was, and she still wears lotsa gingham, cuz she always did. She gags and weeps and looks generally unhappy about being stuck next to the screaming Thing Formerly Known As Landon.

Scampering around the wagon come 3 adult women who are trying to move with the playful enthusiasm of children, but they appear overheated in their own frontier-style dresses. These are Melissas Sue Anderson and Gilbert and that other bitch who keeps falling and rolling comically as she tries to keep up with the wagon. (Actually, wasn’t she twins? Gotta work around those kiddie labor laws. If so, how to handle this? Have both of ‘em stumble & fall, cutting heads around the wagon, getting up, sniveling, continuing to run? Take turns? Hmmmm.....) Oh yeah, and there was a rotted, dead dog around somewhere too a while back, but he was hit by a car long since. Albert Lea is surrounded by freeway interchanges.

Melissa SA, the one with the freakish blue eyes, which is probably why they had her become blind on the show, calls out, begging for a moment’s rest. With great difficulty, the message is somehow relayed to Prince, who screeches to a halt.

“Where R we goin?” she whines, outta breath.

“Lake Minnetonka.” He grins smugly.

“Wh-what for?”

He looks at them all, licks his chops. “An initiation rite.”

And they move on.

(Note 2 regular readers (all none of u): Casework in Albert Lea and points west r the reason 4 radio silence. Have been gone A WHILE. Back Now w/ even more adventures 2 tell u about crowding the blotter! I’ll try 2 do a better job. See u soon.)

Take Me Home to the Ballgame

Apologies for that last bit of pissery... so... It’s May and raining in Chicago, and too much alcohol & baseball will lead to those maudlin blog entries, which reminds me...

It’s now around about 1/4-1/3 of the way into the baseball season, depending on who you are, and c'mon, you know who you are if you're me. (Wait. Do we know I am if you’re me?) So that makes it pretty solidly 1/3 if you’re us, give or take, which makes it pretty fucking late to be providing any sorta useful public services for my fellow Cub fans out there, but hey, I've watched the games, or at least way, way more than I wish I had. And if you're a Cub fan, I'm sure you can say exactly the same, even if you've only watched only 1! 'Cuz if you're a Cub fan, you know as well as I do that if you picked a single game to watch, it had to be the one where hotshit rookie Starlin Castro committed 3 errors in one inning, thus blowing the lead and initiating a 5-3 loss, in which only one of the Colorado Rockies’ runs was earned, right? Right.

Well I’ve watched substantially more than 1 game, god help me, but you know what's great about Cubs baseball? It's on TV! And mostly, you don't need more than basic cable to watch it--this being an important concern, since if you're a Cubs fan, you may well be so depressive and/or alcoholic--there's this real chicken-n-egg-n-rooster cock question here as to what causes what when you begin mapping out the complex dynamics of booze/depression/Cubs baseball--that you long since ran outta cash for luxuries like the Playboy Channel, air conditioning or hot water. But hell, with the Cubs? If you're really strapped for cash, you can crawl back into your ancestors cave, lug an antenna onto its rocky surface and tune in around 60% of the games, listening to the rest on yr. radio. And for the games you can't tune in, (or even better, for the ones you can't stand to watch,) if you have an antenna, you can tune in all sortsa other shit that's just as compelling and uplifting to watch.

'Cuz but you know what's great about Cubs baseball being on TV? You can change the channel! Yeah, yeah, I know! I know! We're Cub fans... We're screwed. We can't, like, watch a good baseball team play or something like that, (unless they're in the process of humiliating us,) because that would be disloyal. But sometimes you need a break. So I've picked out some stuff you can usually find just down the dial for you. And in the interest of helping you maintain your Cubbie spirit while you take a break, I've picked a ballgame's worth of programming (assuming there are commercials) that reflects one of the key pieces of the team--one selection each for starting pitching, catching, infield, outfield and bullpen. I tried to stick with basic cable stuff, but Californication and the bullpen are just too eerily simpatico to not go hand-in...uh...vu-jay-jay w/ one another. Go out and buy a Roku or something and you can still watch it without cable though. So w/o further ado, here’s some you can watch when you’re thinking of you’re pals on the North Side, but either can’t look at ‘em or just can’t stand to. (Works on the off-season too!) Here goes...

STARTING PITCHING ROTATION: TWO EPISODES OF ER CHOSEN AT RANDOM OR YOUR DISCRETION

At first this seemed like a gimme: We’re based in Chicago. We have an undistinguished ensemble cast--its veterans growing ever duller, its shiny youngsters growing ever more interchangeable. and a neverending focus on injury and recovery--the season-opening loss of both our #4 & #5 starters being only the most recent example of this fine Cubs pitching tradition. Hey! As I’m writing this, our #3 starter just went on the 15-day DL with a bone contusion! No kiddin’! Get me 50cc’s of Old Style! Stat!

Drumroll please... My viewing suggestion is two episodes of E.R.!!! Except but for that, it isn’t. For one thing, I can’t think of 2 episodes of E.R. to suggest. I’m not gonna pretend I never watched it. Just, whenever I did, it was because I was bored, there was nothing better on to whack off to than George Clooney or Noah Wyle or that bald guy they got later who had/was cancer on the X-Files. I mean, E.R. was a slumming show, as it were, for when I was drunk, depressed, stuck at home with nothing better to do, and eating microwave or delivery food. In other words, I could’ve watched it almost every night, but it was only on once per week, thank god. But the thing was, it’s hard to tell you what episodes to watch anyway--not just because I was comatose from alcohol, saturated fats and emotional murk, (tho these factors and the mulchy writing of the show do kinda make the story-lines just glop together,) but because I didn’t even watch it every week. Like I said, it was just the sorta show I found myself watching like that--it fit that sorta passive need perfectly, except for one small, but absolute flaw--a dainty crack in a diamond, a burst blood vessel in an angel’s hymen: it was often boring enough to make me turn the channel even when I was in a state of apathy that was as terminal as the one I describe here. Which means, given the choice between it & a Cubs game--even a bad 1--I’d usually go with the Cubs game. Usually. On second thought, you probably should too.

CATCHERS: THE BRADY BUNCH, EPISODE 41, "WHERE THERE'S SMOKE," AND EPISODE 61 "THE NOT-SO-ROSE-COLORED-GLASSES," EPISODE 101, "GETTING GREG'S GOAT"

I'm sure that any Cubs fan who is also a Brady fan--and I suspect this is a quite healthy demographic BTW, as the misery of the one quite naturally might lead you to the insane escapism of the other in your most blasted (in terms of both substance abuse and of spiritual desolation) moments, which is to say at those blue-lit moments in the early-AM, when some lost extra-innings west coast matchup has barfed you out into rerun land and you have not the will to flip past but a few channels, so that first remotely interesting piece of tail, be it Marcia or Alice or Mike or Sam or Tiger or whatever fits the bill catches your eye before your ability to animate your thumb for the purposes of changing channels entirely fails you and you find yourself melting sickly but warmly into a Very Brady Semi-Catatonic State... wait... I never finished that sentence... Well, I think that proves my point.

Which is that being a Cubs fan, like watching television, is an experience that is often reminiscent of wandering through a vast wasteland. (Lest you think I'm using 1 of those dumb empty metaphors, lemme point out: I've done all 3 things--cf. Hawaii entries about wandering around all that lava--except for but that makes me realize the 3 things aren't really alike, because wandering in a wasteland is sorta cool. Shit. Man, I hate you sometimes. Asshole imaginary reader.) Let's pretend that parenthesis didn't happen.

But sitcoms are all meaning... shallow meaning, and The Brady Bunch is the most archetypal sitcom of all. C'mon, what else holds a candle? Cosby? But a multicultural afterthought. Van Dyke? A rudimentary proto-thought. Bundy? A post-modern de-construction. Brady, man. It's all Brady.

So if Brady is the Most Sitcom, it is, by the transitive property, the Most Meaningful. And the most shallow. But you knew that already, cuz you are quick as a whip crack, which gives me a hard-on in so many ways, except, unfortunately, in the literal one. And, obviously, that's exactly like the 2011 Chicago Cubs catching staff: shallow, but full of meaning.

What do I mean? Well, shallow in that the talent's very limited. In 2008, everyday catcher Geovany Soto was National League Rookie of the Year, and the Cubs sailed into the post-season. In 2009, he began making bizarre calls and miscues, put on around 50 pounds, and dropped around 50 points from his batting average. He also got caught puffing on ye olde Wackee Tabackee, aka cannabis aka hemp aka Mary Jane, etc. Now while I'm all for recreational drug use within reasonable parameters, some people started drawing all these a=b causal connections or whatever and throwing arbitrary suspicions around, which immediately, along with how cool and sexy both he and Greg Brady are, led me to think of the Brady Bunch episode “Where There’s Smoke” wherein cigarettes and suspicions lead to a real witch hunt that nearly crucify the eldest Brady sib. Well worth watching--prob. a lot more than most 2011 Cubs games, esp. now that Geo's on the disabled list with a groin pull. On the plus side, maybe he'll get some of the really good medicinal shit, eh? And what's more, I don't think he'll have to worry about manager Mike Quade giving call up Wellington Castillo any playing time while he's gone. He seems pretty committed to letting backup catcher Koyie Hill step in.

Speaking of Koyie, think of how thrilled Jan Brady would be if alla sudden the spot light were flickering offa her gilt braces! Remember how in “The Not-So-Rose-Colored-Glasses” ol' Jan managed to stop whimpering and accept her disability, thus allowing the whole Brady kid team to unite and score a big victory by restoring the framed family portrait she'd broken whilst riding around, blind as a bat, without those new, ugly-ass glasses? Well do ya?

How do ya think ol' Koyie Hill, backup catcher extrodinaire, (if such a thing exists) felt, when he hacked four of his fingers off with a table saw in a bizarre accident? I mean seriously? Not only does that reduce options for foreplay, assplay, etc., the dudes a catcher! I mean, what's he gonna dangle beneath his ass, like the testes of an aging basset hound, when he wants a backdoor slider? Huh? How's the pitcher gonna know what he wants?

Well, like Jan, Koyie learned to embrace adversity. She finally put her ugly-ass glasses back on, and he put his ugly-ass fingers back on--with some surgical thread. And now he's flashing signals at pitchers pretty much everyday! And never mind that he can't hit! Or commits all sortsa errors! So does everyone else on the team! Let's applaud his heroism! And Jan's!

Meanwhile, there's probably an episode of The Brady Bunch on out there right now, and you can laugh at it, if you're really that lame, but remember, if you're a Cubs fan, also out there right now, The Goat is laughing at you as well.

INFIELD: STAR TREK (THE ORIGINAL SERIES) - EPISODE 21, "THE RETURN OF THE ARCHONS" (STARDATE 3156.2) AND EPISODE 32, "THE CHANGELING" (STARDATE 3541.9):

Well in terms of character and physical presence, I think it's pretty obvious what we're looking at when we're looking at the Chicago Cubs infield. Three dominant forces. (Plus whoever's playing 2nd base.) James Tiberius Kirk.

Who's on first? I don't know, but he's got Jim's chiseled good looks--that round, meaty jaw--that speaks of leadership that is both firm and warm--and, well, of sensuality. What's the guy's name on second? (Well actually he’s playing short, blocking my view of the guy on second.) Beat's me, but he shows the cockiness and athleticism that'd lead him to hurl a flying kick and a two-fisted punch at an opponent twice his size--or, say, to hit two triples in a single game! And you'd have to possess those sorta cojones if your middle name was Tiberius, right? Now who's playing third base? Well, urm, uh… Ida know, but he's pretty sturdy, isn't he? He displays the steadfastness of a real veteran, whose presence should put you at ease. It really should, with a name like Kirk. In this case tho, his name is Aramis Ramirez. I'll leave you to draw your own conclusions about that one.

But. So. Like. Let's quick fill in the blanks there: 1st - Carlos Pena. SS- Starlin Castro. (OK, I was being a prick about 2nd. Rookie Darwin Barney there, and he shows some promise. But we're talking Trek, not Flintstones.) And along with A-Ram, they are the Kirk triad ascendant.

But like I didn't just pick Trek re-runs for you to watch here cuz these guys are a sorta trinity of Kirk with all their power hittin' and masculine struttin'. I mean, what, like 33.3333% of screen icons embody that whole masculine splurt squirt stuff, am I right? Granted, Kirk's one of the best, one of my personal faves, and really does fit these guys, but nope, I picked Trek, 'cuz these two episodes have a really special connection to this very special Cubs infield. If you haven't seen these episodes in a while or -gasp!- ever… just wait till the end of each of 'em, when Kirk argues with the bad guy, omnipotent computer. In each case, his kung-fu logic is better than the computer's, and it starts squawking "error! error! error!" before short circuiting in a spectacular pyrotechnic display! (Wow my dick gets hard every time!) Then the whole analogy I’m drawing will make sense to you.

And well, I mean, sure, these episodes are derivative of each other, but so are all the Cubs games. So when you get tired of watching Pena trying to dig out another one of Castro's volleyball servings or Ramirez tripping over a ground ball rolling lightly past third as he wanders back from the hot dog stand, these episodes'll give you something fun to do for the rest of the game.

OUTFIELD: ANY TWO EPISODES OF SEASON THREE SOPRANOS IN SYNDICATION (YR. PICK, CUZ I LIKE YOU):

Actually, I don’t know if Season 3 is best. After Season 1, the show is just this kinda blur to me. Maybe that’s incipient alcohol abuse. Maybe that’s Meadow getting way less hot or AJ getting less hot or whatever or who cares? Eh? What am I? An asshole? Or something.

Anyway. The Cubs. Remember them? Me neither. Well, they have an outfield, apparently. And it’s composed of: Alfonso Soriano, LF, (where he shall stand long after the Great Old Ones wake, caper and go back to Sleep, thanks to the most ludicrous contract in all of major league baseball history,) Marlon Byrd, CF, (who can easily cover all that territory because he’s physically large enough to literally cover all that territory and yet frequently manages to miss the occasional routine fly ball,) and ?Kosuke Fukudome? ?Tyler Colvin? ?Reed Johnson? ?Lamont Cranston? ?Lon Chaney? or whatever chameleon our overinflated bench coach decides to prop up out there that day.

What I like best about our outfield is how many ways it works around the word Fuck. Think about it: Byrd. Flip the bird. Johnson. Fuk U Do Me. Hilarious. How’d they orchestrate this shit? Millions of dollars spent to line that brilliant gag up, and you’re mad because we haven’t gone to the World Series since 1945, nor won it since 1908? Where’s your sense of humor? Which is what brings me to The Sopranos. You know what’s fun about watching it in syndication? I mean aside form the fact that watching only 2 episodes will get you through an entire baseball game thanks to all the commercials? The many creative ways in which they dub out the word fuck. They always take the high road and never bleep it out. They somehow get Gandolfini n’ pals, who ask for a continent’s worth of cash per episode, to come in and badly post dub some fuck-like homonym. It’s a truly noble endeavor.

Reminds me of this time I watched some really shitty heist movie--pre-24--with Kieffer Sutherland playing a psychopath member of a bank-robbing gang--multi-ethnic, of course--and at one point they actually dubbed in “monster truckers” for “mother fuckers,” and, get this, “Latinos and African Americans” for “niggers and spics!” I shit you not. Some sound editor was obviously just having a big ol’ laugh at that one and it didn’t fit at all! Hilarious!

About as hilarious as watching the Cubs outfield stumble around dropping softly hit balls left and right, then complaining about wet grass or whatever. Don’t worry, they’ll get up and whiff at the next 9 or so straight pitches, stranding the middle infield, who do at least usually get on base, like they’re supposed to. And hey! you can’t get much more multi-ethnic than our outfield, unlike The Sopranos, who were always bitching about “Latinos and African Americans” and what monster truckers they were.

BULLPEN: CALIFORNICATION - 4 EPISODES OF YOUR CHOICE

Wow, I had a hard time with this one... I mean, the thing about the 2011 Cubs bullpen is that it’s really pretty boring, but not in an alienating way. It doesn’t really make you want to turn the channel in any active way. It’s watchable. Usually, it doesn’t even lose the game.

For a while there Jeff “Shark” Samardijiza was a profound exception. When that dude came in--mullet a-fluff behind him--you just knew the ball was gonna leave the strike zone. And the batter knew it too. Four times in a row. Then it was gonna do the same thing for several more batters. Then it was gonna leave the park. And well, you get the picture.

(Incidentally, wikipedia sez good ol’ Shark got his nom de choke cuzza his elongated nose. I always assumed it was his grotesque jagged grey teeth, which I’m pretty sure I’ve glimpsed multiple rows of. Anyway, as we all know, wikipedia’s made up of user-contributed content so I’m sticking with my answer and I encourage you to do so as well. I mean, c’mon--anybody who gets paid millions of bucks per year and can’t fix teeth that look like that has gotta be a fucking shark. Or something.)

Anyway, Shark’s hitting his points now, not giving up so many runs, and like pretty much everyone else in the bullpen is pretty efficient. Meaning this is the only part of the 2011 Cubs that really works--not spectacularly, but pretty well.

So you see my dilemma. What’s efficient, OK to watch, but nothing to write home about? A lotta stuff! But who cares? And who wants to think about it? Even if you try to, your mind goes blank. Mine does anyway. Here, watch:

OK. Where were we? Oh so but then I realized that, like a male prostitute, this was one of those opportunities I was missin’ because I was looking at it backwards. Instead of trying to come up with something that cleverly links up to the bullpen in some thematic way, why not just cynically throw some stupid shit out there and pretend it has some thematic link to the bullpen? Wouldn’t that be hilarious???

So I thought, OK what’s the best thing on television? Well that’s easy, right? Californication. It’s got everything. It’s really embarrassing, because you have to hear David Duchovny say “clit” or “vu-jay-jay” every 30 seconds. (Not embarrassed by either word/expression, ‘tho I find the latter irritating, but somehow, he manages to make them so, esp. since he can’t stop repeating them. Is it his deadpan delivery? His dead-blank eyes? Ida know.) Maybe it’s the fact that, whatever your sexuality, the show is 1 big ego-booster. Like, if you’re into chicks, it offers the re-assuring fantasy that no matter how old n’ dumpy you become--or how ugly you were to begin with in the case of the Artist Formerly Known As Spooky’s sidekick--gorgeous women with enormous breasts will always throw themselves at you. What’s more, they will straddle you and do all the work, so you can just sit there and fondle their breasts and be as outta shape as you like! Merry Xmass, Bedford Falls! It’s a Wonderful Life!

Now while it’s not immediately obvious, Californication also offers something to the part of its audience that’s into dudes, and that’s the notion that men are utter idiots. It’s good to know, so that if you want to seduce and destroy them, you can feel confident about doing so. You’re only limited by yr. imagination, once you get ‘em thinkin’ w/ their wee-wees. Well, actually, you’re also limited by your conscience, and that’s what always comes back to bite all the women in Californication in their hot asses. Duchovny or that Pop n’ Fresh guy blink n’ look cute, and they go aw shucks, and don’t castrate ‘em or whatever, but hey! That’s TV, right? In real life, our conscience is way-hey-hey less of an impediment! So let’s get at those guys! Who’s with me?

Anyway, as there’s probably some rationale by which this all applies to the 2011 Cubs bullpen, but I’ll be damned if I can figure out what it is. If you can, feel free to write and tell me about it. I’d love to know!

In passing... a final word... I wrote a lotta this a while ago--back when the season was still pretty young. There have already been some changes, largely for the worse. (Good ol' Marlon Byrd just took a fast ball to the eye socket this weekend, for example, & is really pretty fucked up.) I'd've liked to've gotten it up... (countless times...mmff...snicker...) uh... earlier, but y'know, I gotta lotta balls in the air. If you could only see how many balls I got in the air right now... actually probably best you can’t. FCC’d be shutting this blog down pretty quick, prob.

But. So. For the moment They/it/whatever haven't/hasn't. Whatta rebel I am. So I'll be back atcha Hawaii/NYC. Don't go nowhere. Or if you do? Take me with you. Please?

Laryngitis

He said, "See, what's happened is perfectly normal: you're worried that you've lost yr. literary voice."

I was confused. 'Literary voice?' Was that like yr. 'indoor voice?' What did he mean?

“Well, don't worry. I don't think you've lost yr. literary voice. I think it's just a little hoarse.”

Now I was really confused. Like Athena goin' backwards, an insane picture burst, fully formed, into my head. I could see me, Horatio, in my mind's eye, gagging, as one of those tiny prehistoric horses read a book that had been tied to my vocal cords.

“Uh, you mean my voice is a Hyracotherium?”

He said, “Come again?”

Now that really threw me. But I figured we were well through the looking glass here, so i just shrugged and unzipped my fly. I was just about to grasp my member when he screamed, “Ahg no! stop!”

Not having received mixed signals like this since I took a closeted lesbian to my junior high school prom, I just blinked.

“See?” he said. “That's what I mean! You're taking everything literally. The linguistic paths to yr. imagination have been badly damaged.”

“Oooooohhhh...!” I said, trying to placate him so he'd shut the fuck up. “That's it!”

“Look at what little writing you do do. (Huh huh...) Life's just become this really old, bad forced joke to you."

"Become?"

Tricks with Sticks

OK, so back to this Hawaii thing...

When last we left our hero, he was being sodomized by an alligator w/ a bad case of shingles. (How do you know if an alligator has shingles? Well, just climb up on his roof and look!)

Oh wait... That was where we last left the ghost of Oscar Wilde, who'd just lifted the vial of plutonium from AmWay's Worldwide Secret HQ. It was in a wall safe behind a painting that look just like Melissa Sue Anderson w/ a dick. She was runnin' down that fuckin' hill w/ Half-Pint and that fuckin' dog and alla that, but whereas usually, when her dresses flips up a little, you see bloomers-- here you get an eyeful of a a big, hairy shlong. (Fortunately, in this painting, she's herself as an adult, or this image would be pedophiliac, and that is not just morally wrong, but psychologically disturbing!) The painting was in a gilt frame, wrought in such a way as to look like scrolling with lil' tiny letters embossed in it that spell out: IF YOU CAN READ THIS YOU ARE TOO CLOSE. AND STUPID.

Yep. That's where we left Oscar Wilde. Except for that I never wrote that about Oscar Wilde. Hmm...

Oh well, see ya next time--whenever I update this thing again!

Oh but wait... We were talking about Hawaii! That's right... Hmmm... OK then... well... Let's see...

When last we left... our…well… uh… me… (can't call myself a hero w/ a straight face...) I was--and, OK, while this image is not nearly as overtly sexual as an alligator fuckin' Oscar Wilde, it is pretty surreal--looking through some strangers camera lens at a pool of molten liquid... Yeah. That's where I was when I last wrote about this…on December 9. 2008.

Hmm… well if you want me to do a "previously on," I just did. Or at least, that's the best you're gonna get. Because if I did a "previously on," I'd never finish an entry, and the next time I'd finish an entry would be around the next time Kilauea erupts, which it just did, by the way, in case you didn't notice. (Right after Libya, but right before the tsunami. What a world, what a world.) (Actually Kilauea is always erupting, but not usually boom pow! erupting. They had to close Volcano National Park. Thankfully, Hilo's OK though.)

But so, quickly: While on a missing persons job in Hawaii, I, Steve Forceman, PI, had been sidetracked into running a fellow lodger's 16 year old son, Niko, up to the heart of the Kilauea lava flow at Volcano National Park. I'd wanted to see the flow myself and had figured a brief stop off would do no real harm, but hadn't fore seen how the drive through the surreal volcanic scenery would lead not just to a short hike, but to a longer more rigorous trek over uneven volcanic rock. Along the way, Niko and I hooked up with his dad, Stefan. Niko and Stefan were Germans and experienced hikers, but you shouldn't hold that against them. We ran into a young shy couple, Natalie and her unnamed male companion who followed us but seemed not to want to engage with us much. They were lousy hikers. Just after dark, we ran across large, spectacular pools of molten lava. Around the same time, we met another lava seeker, a bearded, long-haired hiker named Mark, who loaned me his high-end video camera so I could gawk at the details of the flowing lava in the dark.

Huff puff… OK caught my breath… and… action!

I handed Mark back his camera, and, to the extent that I could, directed my attention away from the phenomena in front of me to get a better look at him. I'd said before that he struck me as a hippie sort. His long hair and scruffy beard suggested Dead before Zep and Zep before Sabbath and Sabbath before Slayer and so down the line. I think this was partly the earth tones and lighter colors he wore, but also how laid back he seemed. I mean, he was clearly awed by the lava, just like the rest of us--the same idiot grin stretched his face--but he seemed more sedate. Then there was the fact that he immediately projected this air of someone who enjoyed nature. I couldn't figure it out at first. To be fair, I was caught up in the blast furnace air and the intensely distracting presence of the lava. It was hard to make sense of why anything was the way it was. But then it hit me: a big part of his sylvan vibe came from the big, gnarled wooden staff he bore. I looked him in the eye. I pointed at it.

"Gandalf?" I asked.

He laughed and shook his head.

"You're not that other dude who everyone mistakes for Gandalf and who's really a prick?"

"Saruman?"

Thousands of people in Hawaii and I had to keep running into the Tolkien enthusiasts.

So this guy was named Mark, and he had coppery colored hair which seemed appropriate enough for a traveling companion under the circumstances. And the large stick he was carrying was not a trick of the light, had in fact been carved and polished and then purchased cheaply by Mark from one of the innumerable roadside salesman in Kona earlier that day.

"It was kind of a last minute thing. I have a regular metal type walking stick, but I forgot to bring it when I flew to Hawaii. Seemed like a good idea to bring something with me if I was gonna be moving over this kinda shit."

Looking around me at everyone else and their walking sticks, I nodded.

After that, we all moved around the lava for a while, just watching it. Tendrils extended from pools and became smooth formations of rock. Then after a while, the pools themselves disappeared beneath a solid sheet of stone. Then cracks of golden-red light would show somewhere in the rock, a tendril would crawl out, and a new pool would reveal itself. It all happened continuously, more quickly than you'd expect, but in such a mesmerizing way that it seemed slower than it really was.

The state of mesmerization was soon shattered though when Mark took the same exuberance with which he'd shared his camera and applied it to sharing his stick. Man was his stick hard and long. And wooden. His walking stick.

"Check this out!"

Mark was crouching several feet from the edge of a pool of flowing lava, leaning down so he could poke it with his walking stick. A small flame twisted around on the edge of the stick, translucent and pale. Mark poked the lava again and sparks showered in reverse, upward.

"Holy shit!" I probably said. Who knows what I said? I ran over toward him. "Lemme! Lemme! Lemme!"

It was probably the act of an idiot. It certainly seemed all the while like you were inviting disaster. But that wasn't what was fun about it. It wasn't a rock n' roll thing--stealing a car, say. It wasn't evan an adolescent thing--stealing some lipstick, say. What was thrilling about it had nothing to do with transgression. Though the sense of potential transgression was there, it was mostly incidental, like a the atmospherics of a Grimm Brothers story. The attraction was one of childlike mystery: get up close and personal with the Fire. The Big Fire.

Mark relinquished the stick, and a-pokin' I did go. Down there, close to the lava, the heat was terrible. I could see more details, but there was a shimmer of heat distortion. There was no resistance when I prodded the liquid stuff, so it was hard to tell if I was making contact, but then there were loud hisses, timed to my stabs, and the sparks danced past me. I poked at the lava some more, and could see bubbles of the stuff chasing after the stick when I retracted it.

I looked at the others and they were smiling and laughing. Niko was eager to take his turn, so I passed him the stick. In turn, Stefan, Natalie and her friend each tried it as well, though they each gave it a pretty rudimentary effort. By that time, the thing had lost a foot or more. I was surprised it wasn't even shorter.

Though it was all so beautiful and strange, I became aware of how late it was and of how long the trip back to Akiko's was. At this point, I was no longer sure of what I'd been drafted for, but I believed it still involved carting Niko back to the Bed & Breakfast that night.

I looked around me, and although I ain't Gandalf either--I thought I could sense a general flagging of energy among my companions. We'd been less mobile for some time, and I suspect that everyone's sense of wonder was starting to be sapped by the aching of his/her aching joints, tendons and whatnot. Not to mention that dry heat. It had cooled off a lot, but the wind still seemed hot, and the glow rising from the ground was still palpable. A gulp of water seemed to wet your tongue for only a moment.

I think it was Mark who suggested that maybe it was time to turn back. I took one look back up the slope of the mountain past us. We'd never really climbed up there. No need. I'm not sure I would've felt safe doing so, though I'd gone so far past the point of what I'd originally considered "safe," who can say? The jagged orange lines stretched back and forth up into the dark. It was with only a little regret though that I turned around. I'd seen more than I'd imagined I would, and besides, I was really fucking tired.

At this point, Natalie and her beau hovered on one side whispering conspiratorially, but Stefan cut in without hesitation.

"We are heading back! Will you be joining us?"

He waited, wearing a big shit eating grin, while they stared at him for a while. They appeared nervous.

"Um, sure," Natalie said.

"Nat!" said her companion, in a voice that was way too high for Prince Valiant, despite the groovy haircut he wore, "I think we should wait."

He surveyed all of us with an unfriendly eye.

Stefan grinned, waited. No one else said anything.

Finally MArk said, "OK. Let's go."

We began moving. Natalie and her friend did not follow.

Stefan said, "Should we leave them like that? They don't appear to be very experienced hikers and it can be somewhat dangerous out here."

Mark said, "If they don't want to come with us, we can't make them."

They looked at me.

"What do I know? Ask the kid."

They looked at me some more.

My Private Eye training kicked in and did the talking for me: "OK. Mark's right. Mostly. We can't make them go. I mean, what are we gonna do? Threaten them? I think the guy is just insecure about his woman and wants his privacy. But they're as tired as we are. They won't wanna wait too long, and I think even if they're sorta dumb they'd have to know it's safer to keep us in sight. I'm guessing they'll follow us, just at a distance."

Mark smiled approvingly, "I bet you're right." He looked at Stefan. "They'll be OK."

I had some misgivings about my own argument, and I think Stefan did too, but for the moment everyone accepted it. I figured if we really lost sight of 'em, we could mention it to the rangers or figure something else more noble out later. So the three of us stumbled after Niko. The kid already had a pretty good lead on us. No one was worried about him hopping around out there in the dark, but then, probably no one needed to be.

Remember all that stuff I told you about the trip out? How I'd stumbled over piles of irregular rocks, often finding it necessary to leapfrog back and forth between large angled slabs of stone for minutes at a time because there was no flat ground to be seen? Well, it was worse on the way back. The impact wore me down more each time, particularly my lower spine, and in the darkness, my landings grew increasingly sloppy. And every time I caught myself, my hands would get more scraped. I was cursing those assholes with their fucking sticks as they trundled down the slopes around me.

"Now now," said Stefan at one point. "Sticks and stones…" He giggled merrily.

I tested a rock about the size of a grapefruit for heft, considered the angle of his skull, but then remembered the asshole's kid was there, and besides, he was German. They can't help it. They've got that Schadenfreude thing.

And really, it's a good thing I didn't brain him, because at that moment, I realized two things:

1) Natalie and her beau were following, as I'd expected. Although they were stumbling difficultly around, they would've had a perfect sightline on my murder of Stefan. Almost certainly, I would've gotten Murder 1 as a result.

2) The enormous full moon was breaking free from the clouds--the brightest it had been all night--dousing all the dead brown lava with blue and hiding all the orange light. Suddenly, you could see everything a lot more clearly.

2010 in Review: The Monkey I Have Been Told of - Part 2

2010 in Review: The Monkey I Have Been Told of

Part 2

OK… So where were we? Oh yeah I know…

12. Ruler - Marnie Stern - This Is It and I Am It and You Are It and... :

I've been making these playlists for 11 years now. One thing I've noticed in doing so, is that each list seems to form a personality around midway through the process. After I finish the list, I may hear it differently as time passes, but years later, that same essential character that I became aware of early on will still be palpable to me.

2010's list stands out positively in my mind--not because it was a great year… Actually, it sucked! And that makes this list yet another argument for the way a mix tape can uplift your life, but what's strange is that I didn't even find that much good new music this year. Time and money were more scant--apparently, so were the imaginative faculties of the people recording and/or distributing music out there. So. I did not find a lot of good new music. But what good new music I did find was really good--and in a really good way. Like this Marnie Stern record.

OK, maybe Marnie Stern isn't new to you. If so, the new album may not seem so revelatory, though the critical consensus seems to be that it's very good as Marnie Stern records go. All I can say is it blew me away. Aside from the drums here, most of what you're listening to is a one woman show. So yeah, there's a lotta multi-tracking, and she uses that and some incredible guitar virtuosity and extremely manic vocals to get out there somewhere really strange--somewhere that's both sunny and clear, but not remotely soft. Like a less cerebral Neu! And... she has a sense of humor and personality that rises up all over the record. This, to me, is a really unique sound, which is more rare in today's rock music than a Chicago Cubs postseason appearance. I'm really eager to see where she takes it. Her self-titled follow-up suggests a slower, more cathartic approach to the same ideas. I haven't fully digested it yet, but I can tell I like it.

13. A Horse Called Golgotha - Baroness - Blue Album:

Recently, you may've noticed a sorta ominous, muffled thudding coming from down yonder--no I'm not talking about that Down Yonder. Though it has been rumored to emit everything from roars to rumbles from hellhound howls to banshee shrieks. People've even tried to blame it for Led Zeppelin, which, no matter how truly awful Zeppelin may be is getting downright silly, I'm sure we can all agree. I mean, if Hell is really as tedious as your local classic rock station's weekly or... gulp... even nightly... Zep hour... then I think I really may have to repent and be born again. But that's probably grist for some other quixotic mill up the road.

But nope, I wasn't talking about Hell anyway. I was talking about down yonder past the Mason-Dixon line... down in the Sludgy South... and in particular, down in Georgia. (Where, to be fair, the Devil has been known to go--at least, according to the famous words of one fat lil' reactionary fireplug.) Must be something in the water, or more likely the mud, given the thudding sound of this stuff. You may or may not be aware of the fact that Georgia is the epicenter of the Dawn of New Metal Age, and I ain't talkin' 'bout nu-metal. This stuff is waaaaayyyy too big for that, both in terms of volume and ambition. The people have amps and ideas that are the size of glaciers, and they wield them with sheer tectonic force.

Mastodon, whom I championed in the past, is one of 'em, and size-wise, they obviously believe in truth-in-advertising. Baroness are their peers, and they're so confident in their badassery that they've named themselves not just after a chick, but a chick who probably sits on cushions being fed pastries all day. They don't care what you think, because when you hear them play this shit, you're gonna duck and cover. You will be amazed while you're being pummeled. I don't think you have to love metal to get this stuff, 'tho these guys show mastery of everything from Sabbath-crawl to Slayer-gallop and everything in between throughout their album. They also show such deep inventiveness as songwriters and such great cohesion as a rock band that their music is very difficult not to get caught up in.

14. All out of Love - Air Supply - The Best of Air Supply: One That You Love:

Including a song like this in a playlist is both provocative and cliche. Provocative because we, as a culture, have pretty much agreed to view this thing as an embodiment of treacle, to be recoiled from--with a smirk at best, with disgust at worst. Well... OK... you got me... The worst is boredom.

The opposite of love, sayeth the cliche is not hate, but indifference, and just a moment ago, we were speaking of cliches. Air Supply, and this song in particular, have been invoked so often, generally, these days, for the same ironic purposes that they have almost no meaning. But maybe it's worth remembering that irony only works when it has a base meaning to react against.

I can see you cringing as you read this. Is he about to make an argument for Air Supply as serious musical artists? Um, well, no. But I'm gonna say something about how silliness may arise from earnestness. Sometimes something is silly because it's heartfelt. Is this song heartfelt? Wow, I sure doubt it. At least, I don't think it's heartfelt in its entirety. How could anyone even know if there's a heart down there under those layers and layers of keyboards and canned background vocalists, who are, yes, thoroughly hilarious, to the extent that they aren't annoying?

Maybe some hack felt something when he wrote this, but he's at least 50 or 60 generations removed from what you're listening to here. What difference does it make?

The difference that it makes is that my first girlfriend loved this shit to the the point of tearing up whenever Casy Kasem spun it. She bought all the Air Supply tapes she could afford with the meager funds she scraped together from babysitting, modest pot-dealing and her sporadic white trash allowance--all that weren't already spoken for by cigarettes, makeup, birth control and whatever sundry hackshit a 16 year old girl shells out for.

I hated this music back then, but somehow, whenever she sang it, I was touched by the obvious depth of her feeling for it. Never mind the fact that she was the only person in the world who seemed to see anything positive in me. Objectively, her own experience just seemed very real.

And plus, this song is just so dorky, how can it not give a much needed boost as we move into the next, less pleasant moment of reminiscence?

15. Hast Thou Considered the Tetrapod - The Mountain Goats - The Sunset Tree:

When memories of adolescence aren't embarrassing, they're often just painful. Rock writer Lester Bangs once questioned popular music's glamorization of adolescence, calling it "one of the worst parts of life, it's the cloud of unknowing and a state of total awkwardness when the fun you have always seems to be tempered by some kind of stupid bullshit like parents or zits or what-have-you." This song, and most of the really powerful record it's drawn from, doesn't apply a waxy sheen to its reminiscence. It's about a lower life form's struggle for survival--a loathsome mass of flesh that dreams of "wriggling up on dry land" in the song's closing line. How poignant it is that this Darwinian crawl is being performed by a socially bottom feeding teenage boy may depend on whether or not you've been there, fielding confused hormonal urges toward violence and procreation, small enough that pretty much every other guy could (and many did) randomly work out his own confused aggressions on you, awkward enough that pretty much every teenage girl wanted nothing to do with you, and enough of a fuck up that pretty much every adult wished you'd just go away somewhere (maybe until you grew large and coordinated enough to make varsity sports or graduated and miraculously got into a decent college). Anyway, the simple declarative vocal and 3-chord punch, leading to a dreamy, but horrific image may still get to you. And I know for myself, that 1 little personal glimmer of escape does as well: the stereo--the one thing singer couldn't live without--that carries him away into a dream chamber, even in the midst of some really dark days he hopes to live through.

16. Masochism World - Husker Du - Zen Arcade:

This song sorta keeps the adolescent ball rolling onward for me. See, at 15 years old, I'd transferred to this new high school, whereat they had this exotic creature that wore grotesque amounts of eyeliner, styled her hair like that dork from Flock of Seagulls--'tho she could only achieve a sorta orange tone when she dyed it--and cultivated an openly bitchy contempt for the manifest stupidity of everyone around her. It was love at first sight. Well, not really, but eventually.

Anyway, she liked music, and she could coherently express why she liked the music that she liked in such a way that you could understand that her affections weren't cheap. She was a punk, she said, which was mostly a new concept to me And being a punk and all, many of her musical touchstones were unfamiliar to me.

In the blue collar big town/small city of Flint, Michigan, ca. 1985, a 16 year old's punk esthetic was quite forgiving--or at least my girlfriend's was. Soft Cell, New Order, The Thompson Twins, Depeche Mode and other fluffy-haired faces all made her hit parade. This being the sticks, I didn't know much better, and was left with the impression that punk was the music warbled by white kids who got beat up a lot and were OK with it. I was a white kid who got beat up a lot, but wasn't OK with it, but that didn't really make a hell of a lotta difference, I suppose. And to a large extent, I've seen that light, so that a lotta bands like that--e.g., the Cure--I like OK.

Later in high school, I would come to find that my relationship with my punk rock girlfriend really hadn't given me the background in the genre that I would need to be conversant in the genre. Yes she had mentioned something in passing about the Sex Pistols, maybe even the Dead Kennedys, but largely just in a name-dropping type capacity. Just like your friend's older brother, who was supposed to be a real stoner, had Hawkwind records, but thankfully never played the fucking things. It wasn't until my senior year in high school that I was even fully aware that the old Capitol Theater in Flint had live punk--mostly hardcore--shows several Friday nights each month, or that the city was even home to its own touring hardcore act the Guilty Bystanders, whose big hit was called "Broccoli Rules."

Strangely enough, one of the few kinda sorta legitimate punk bands of the day that sparked my girlfriends interest enough that I was exposed to it at that time was... Husker Du!

I'm not sure how significant it is that out all the stuff that was proselytized at me, that Husker Du, one of only artists I really connected with, was also one of the only artists that were arguably, really, "punk." (It seems somehow especially noteworthy when you consider that the officiating punkette sold them somewhat tentatively and listened to them infrequently if I remember right--and given the fact that up until this point and somewhat beyond, I still wasn't sure I really liked all this punk shit, which I pretty much saw as a buncha fey, elitist posturing. But this punk--the stuff with guys with guitars who were yelling--who were sloppy and loud--not like the stultifying fare my parents listened to like the Stones and Who... (I was also pretty ignorant of most of any Stones or Who that didn't get played on the radio at this point, which on Flint radio, meant mostly anything pre-1975 or so, when both bands lost any resemblance to a noisy sloppy rock band)... well this stuff I kinda liked.

And I still do. And Zen Arcade is the best of many worlds, because you can love it at 14 or 41. Well 15 and 41. And without any real nostalgia. I never really think about my second girlfriend much when I listen to it, 'tho most of my memories of her are good ones. It's one of those rare records that I really do just listen to pretty much every year just because I want to, and I always find something new in it. It's full of ideas and energy.

Sometime in the early fall, I was out for a walk, and I just heard this song in my head. Hadn't heard it in maybe a month or 2, and it wouldn't have been a song from the record I'd expect to have come to me like that. It's a great bit of noise--and definitely melodic in its way, but catchy? Guess so. As soon as I got home I put it on. Must be one of the consequences of living with a record that good for that long.

17. Master-Dik - Sonic Youth - Sister:

To continue the chronological thread: I was kinda "off" rock n roll for most of my teen years. White middle class kid that I was, I think this attitude was partly a reaction against the entrenched domestic culture around me, wherein Stones/Zep/Petty/et. al. were more or less the Perry Comos of the day. Mullets were crew cuts. Archie and Meathead were Kramden and Norton. (Actually All in the Family was a little on the early side for me, but it seemed a good correspondence here and close enough timeline wise.)

Not listening to a lotta rock radio not only liberated me from music that was presented in these overly reverent tones--as tho its holiness was manifest, despite the fact the songs often weren't so great to begin with--it also let me map out my own plan for youthful uprising.

"What are ya rebelling against?"

"I don't know, what did you use to rebel against whatever you rebelled against?"

"Uh… rock n roll. I guess."

"That then."

OK. You're right. Marlon Brando would totally have tripped himself up in alla those words.

Still, not liking rock n roll sorta was my rock n roll, if you get me. It was a way of rejecting an established norm of the bland-out culture around me. I mean, what healthy teen wants to listen to his parents music? Do you want to hang out with that kid?

It's one thing for girlfriends to listen to New Order or, gulp, even Air Supply. They have something you want! Eyeliner! You can freak adults out with that shit! But Tom Petty? Really? I still hate Tom Petty.

In my own way, I was a punk then--way more than my 2nd girlfriend--even if I had to use Prince or Run-DMC to induce fury and disgust in parents, teachers, jocks, preppies, stoners, etc. around me. Whatta rebel!

Only years later, at college, did I calm down enough to realize that I was missing out on a lot. I resolved to become more programmatic. I noticed that some hippie chicks were hot. I grew my hair long. I even cultivated a beard for a while. I started listening to Neil Young a lot--the really loud stuff mostly. At least that was angry enough that I could relate to it. Then I reconnected with the Beatles, whom I'd loved since infancy, and all a that was fine, but clearly, if I was really gonna make my peace with rock n roll, I was gonna have to find some new artists that were making stuff that was good.

And here was a problem. Much as I could grudgingly admit that I liked a lot of the canonical stuff--again, Neil Young, Beatles, also Velvets, (tho I never cared much for anything after White Light, White Heat,) Stones, (tho I never really cared for anything after Exile on Main Street,) Hendrix, et. al.--and some of the more underground stuff from way back, it seemed that everyone making new records was just trying to sound like some amalgamation of some of that old shit. That's fine, you know--building on established forms, putting your own stamp on it, etc. Jazz, blues, country, various folk forms have all flowed along like that, right?

Sure. But rock is more self-conscious, and in the age of heavily recorded and distributed music, there are fewer excuses for a lack of imagination. And besides, remember? This is all about me?!? My needs! Not history! Fuck history! I needed a new rock esthetic, or a newer 1, anyway, or rock was just gonna fizzle it's way back into a lil' blip on my CD rack. (That's what I had then--a big 1 that my then girlfriend made me. Always had lots a music.) And that'd be a tragedy, 'cuz, well, there's lotsa good rock, right?

Ignorant 'twas I. A bumpkin from Flint, MI. No internet. MTV showing videos still, but by none too many bands. I didn't even know about all the bands that were out there. Tons of 'em! You did! You were out there, dyeing yr. hair, piercing yr. labia &/or foreskin, singing along to Diamanda Galas arias while you shoved a dildo in yr. neighbor's plughole. (Tho she's only sometimes sorta rock and only sometimes sorta good and only sometimes do these things sorta line up.) And you're laughing at me! Because you hate Sonic Youth! And they're my rock esthetic!

Well, they're part of it, 'tho not in an immediate way. Truth be told, the last Sonic Youth record I bought was NYC Ghosts & Flowers back in 2000. And before that, I hadn't bought one since Dirty in 1992. Before 1992, I can think of few popular rock band's with a sound I found more exciting than Sonic Youth's. It's a big, wicked field of noise that leaves room for all these haunting little jagged details. The guitar lines and interplay of Lee Renaldo and Thurston Moore were so vivid and unique that I could identify them almost immediately. (Famously when the band's instruments were stolen, they were no longer able to play a lot of their old songs, because they couldn't recreate the weird tunings in which they'd left the guitars.) And from 1983's Confusion Is Sex until Dirty, everyone in the band contributed odd ideas about arranging and writing songs that gave Sonic Youth records a feeling of experimentation and newness that never stripped them of sheer rock n roll immediacy. After that, something happened, it seems to me. I don't know what. (I'm not too rigorous of a fan of anything these days, and I swear it's by choice. I just can't take the disappointment of knowing too much.)

Anyway, another great thing about Sonic Youth is that along with inventiveness and rock power, they've also always had a sense of humor. (Sometimes to an excessive cornball degree, but, hey, ya gotta try...) This song finds then in their Ciccone Youth persona, a hip-hop group named after Madonna (Ciccone), thus tying together 2 of their many pop culture obsessions--the style and the musician. The song just popped in my head 1 day, and I had to put it on. The bit where it keeps going "I know... I know... I know..." made me laugh, and it's been in my regular rotation since. Really dumb song, but one that I like.

18. See the Leaves - The Flaming Lips - Embryonic:

I was a late convert to The Flaming Lips. I hated that "Tangerine" song like it was stomach flu. Still do really. I always felt it epitomized a tendency that I still think the band has to drift into arch cutesiness. 'Course, everyone who knows who the Flaming Lips are and gives them enough thought probably hates something about them. That's because the Flaming Lips are chameleons--though not in a traditional sense--they alter colors very after long changeless intervals, and when they do, the shift can be disorienting. The twist from mischievous alterna-mugsters to sophisticated psych-prog rockers was so convincing that I stopped being distantly annoyed by them and gradually sat down and listened to records like The Soft Bulletin long enough to absorb their imaginative scope and emotional sweep. Heart and energy, despite the tepid quasi-ironies of that "Tangerine" claptrap. Sure, there were full-paunched specters of MOR complacency lurking in the mixes somewhere, but you can't damn the work for the marketing, even if, at times, things seem a little calculated.

If the band's new album is this self-conscious, I didn't notice it. It has the feel, anyway, of some guys walking into a studio and plugging their instruments into really crappy amps, just ready to play some straight-ahead music. The guys are probably in a bad mood, maybe even suffering from profound personal problems. Themes of exorcism and black magic creep up in the song titles, but the lyrics are muddled and buried in the mix, and are delivered somewhere between a mumble and squeal anyway. The sounds are mostly muddy, overly bassy with the occasional spooky tone in a higher register. The chick from the Yeah Yeah Yeahs guests on one song where she and lead Lip Wayne Coyne role play over the phone, making animal noises. It's one of the few tracks where his voice is immediately recognizable--'tho you can catch it pretty quickly elsewhere. The song is also too cute by half in an old school Flaming Lips way. It's the only song really that drifts that way, and even it has this kinda spooky feel due to some brittle keys and textural effects.

The rule of the album is better exemplified what you hear in this song: thudding doom. Big thunder. Mumbling pronouncements, more panicky than Dylan's, of something you half understand. To my ear the coupling of melody and groove is probably lifted from "Ball of Confusion," an appropriate touchstone for the kinda heat this one's generating, both musically and in its dark, hefty sorta mood.

19. A Fond Farewell - Elliott Smith - From a Basement on a Hill:

I've already written about Elliott Smith elsewhere on this list, so I won't add much here. As with Ween, I've included 2 of his songs on this list to show what a big part his music played in my life this year. Every year, I seem to develop a greater appreciation for a few songs by playing them on the guitar. "A Fond Farewell" falls into that category. I spent some time figuring out that main riff, which is really only tricky, as it involves some very focused string-bending. I also felt a connection with the mood of the song though.

Some people think the lyrics forecast Elliott Smith's suicide. It's true that he was working on this album when he took his life. But his death was so violent and seemingly impulsive--I find it hard to imagine someone planning to stab himself multiple times with a kitchen knife, but maybe that's just me. I also find it hard to link it to the calm, almost meditative tone of the vocals. The lyrics are sad, the farewell does feel final, and I do believe that the "friend" Elliott Smith is offering it to may be a part of himself. But the suicidal intent remains obscured, and if present, maybe conflicted, which is, I think how suicidal people maybe live most of the time, while they do live. So it's paradoxical. Hope in despair and that sorta thing. I almost never hear hopelessness in Elliott Smith's music. A lotta times, actually, he sounds like he's just trying to work things out.

And the string-bending part is really pretty fun.

20. Big Jilm - Ween - Pure Guava:

At first, when I was messing around with a track sequence, "Big Jilm" seemed like a strange place to end things. Somehow, though the abruptness of it, leaves the list feeling more immediate than unfinished to me. It feels like the year is still in progress in a way, which seems appropriate somehow. It's not a bad feeling, tho 2010 was not a good year. Decades always seem to have rocky beginnings for me.

One of the entertainment highlights of 2010 for me was going to see Ween play the Aragon Ballroom. I hadn't been to a live show in a while. Maybe I'm showing my age, which is roughly the same as that of Dean and Gene Ween. Anyway, they looked pretty good on stage, and tho half the show was ruined by Gene periodically wandering off in a (one assumes pharmaceutically induced) daze, the other half was really powerful stuff. "Big Jilm" had to by the biggest lighter-raising moment. Tho some of the other songs were performed just as well, it was when this song came on that the crowd went really, really berserk.

If Elliott Smith's "New Monkey" was my theme song this year, Ween's Pure Guava was probably the album I listened to the most, when I settled in to listen to a whole album. ("Settling in" being figurative here, as this was often while walking around.) As much as humor is essential to Ween's music, Pure Guava strikes me as sorta a dark album--murky, claustrophobic, paranoid, twisted, melancholy and angry. Still frequently silly, of course, but kinda heavy. It's a monster of a headphone record, if you've never listened to it that way, but I think that derives from the fact that it was really concocted by a couple of guys in a studio to be privately shared... maybe with you.

I wouldn't say that Ween and Elliott Smith were the poles of my musical existence this year. Lots of less popular music type stuff--e.g. most of my jazz--never even makes it onto these lists 'cuz the songs are so damn long. But both Ween and Elliott Smith were important to me, so I'm beginning and ending this way. I'm not sure what that says about where I was at or am at. I guess I'm not blazing any new trails, and I'm also not exemplifying a positive, mature attitude--musically. (I promise next list'll be nothing but dubstep and Billy Bragg/Fugazi re-issues, seriously.) (Not that dubstep will be hip at that point.) (Not that it's probably hip now.) But I think it's also worth noting that I stumbled on some new sounds. Not a lot of 'em, and I hope I didn't the relatively small number of new tracks doesn't seem too dreary. The ones that are here make up for it in how good they are, I think. Seems like there's more happening out there that's actually interesting than there has been in some time. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens in 2011--musically anyway.