Friday! Friday! Friday! I feel like I deserve a beer tonight. For a week well-done or something. Yeah, or something, I need a beer for “or something.”
Slow week in the writing department, breakneck week in the working department to blame. Pulling late nights every night so far, becoming all too accustomed to coming home from work, relaxing, computerless, for an hour or so while I eat dinner, and then hopping right back online to do this and that. I’ll tell you what, as brutal and unceasing as it’s been – I really do feed off it. Somewhere deep down, I find a perverse enjoyment in feeling important – the age-old sin of pride festering right in my puffed-up chest. My mouth complains about working long hours half because I don’t like it and half because I want others to hear it. I’m just a braggart at heart… someone who’s trying to avoid letting the fact that he’s got a big head show outwardly. Always feigning humility, I hope it works. But really y’all, isn’t “feigning” just a precondition for humility? It’s a conscious thing, not an inborn one. So, while I do hate it, I do love it. Figure that one out.
I’m still somewhat surprised that the crew over at PF haven’t written up the Most Serene Republic album. I’ve about worn the grooves off the thing (I know, grooves are old-school, but it’s a good expression), and I’m wondering if they’ll dig it as much as I do. It’s one of those fantastic, but relatively unaccessible LPs. Things like the Arcade Fire and Bloc Party are not only super, but arguable fit for commercial consumption. Things like the Most Serene Republic, however, really aren’t. The style isn’t consistent enough, and those used to happening-packed 3min pop nuggets may get confused with the meandering and often seemingly aimless song structure. But… none of that matters to me. That album is the toppermost of the poppermost, as John would say. If you’re interested, you can get a good idea of what to expect from this sample clip. I’m not afraid to make the halfway call and say that the race for 2005 is so far neck-and-neck between this and the Architecture in Helsinki album. Oh, and in case you’re really interested, I figured out how to direct-link to 1min clips of every track on the album. Yeah, that’s right – no one is safe from my “View Source” javascript reverse engineering mojo.
If you keep up with my travels… you may recall that I was supposed to be boarding a plane for Shanghai today, but I’m not. I canceled the trip. Sharaun’s first real appointment at the baby-doctor is this coming Thursday, and they told us they’d be doing an ultrasound and listening to Lil’ Chino’s heartbeat. For a while, I was actually considering missing that. Can you believe that? Thinking about it now, I don’t want to miss that for the world. I’m going to try and get a cellphone recording of the heartbeat while we’re there – and knowing me it’ll be online the next day. I remember when I was in middle school, I paid entirely too much for a still-sealed copy of John & Yoko’s rare “Unfinished Music No. 2 : Life With the Lions” LP on the avant-garde Apple offshoot, Zapple. Since the music hadn’t ever been issued on CD at the time, I simply couldn’t resist the urge to completely ruin my investment by slicing through the 25 years old cellophane and putting the virgin plastic on the turntable for it’s only spin while I recorded it to tape. The LP sucked; sucked bad. All John’s whacked out Zapple stuff did. But there was one “song” that stuck with me. Called, appropriately, “Baby’s Heartbeat,” it was a recording of their (sadly later miscarried) baby’s tiny heart swisha-woosha-swisha-wooshing blood through his tiny developing body. I thought it was fascinating. I wonder what I’ll feel when I hear Lil’ Chino’s… part of me thinks I’ll be stricken dumb with awe, while part of me thinks I’ll take it in stride. Whichever it ends up being, I’m ultimate-glad that I chose to stay home for it.
It’s 11pm now and I came back here to try and write another couple paragraphs, this sentence is as far as I got.
Goodnight.
Also written on this day...
- surgery - 2009
- I just waked up! - 2008
- double-header - 2004