Archive for November, 2005
November 30, 2005
Christmas is coming, I’m starting to pack my bags to move home, and the Christmas mix CDs are shipping out this week, so what what better time to follow the herd and post my favorite albums of 2005?
In four parts, I’ll count down my top 20 albums of 2005 and give you info on where to purchase them. No mp3s until Friday, though!
20 Doves: Some Cities
Not many people think that this is Doves’ best work, but as far as solid rock albums go, I can’t expect much more. Brit-rock is never going to be as emotionally available and purposefully coarse as American rock music, so complaining about a certain tenseness throughout the album isn’t a criticism I can sympathize with. How many bands do you know that can amass bar room vocals, a string section and manicured riffs so pleasantly?
19 Supergrass: Road to Rouen
Supergrass have definitely slowed down their sound on this album, but never before have I been so impressed with Gaz Coombes as a vocalist and composer. Don’t buy the sadly punned Road to Rouen if you want instant gratification, but stick around if a 35 minute full-length with its own moods and roundabouts interests you. My favorite track is the George Harrison-ish “Low C”.
18 We Are Scientists: With Love and Squalor
They probably won’t be able to escape Hot Hot Heat and maybe even a Les Savy Fav reference here and there, but Scientists maintain a truly likeable union between indie rock and pop. “Textbook” sounds like Interpol married The Cure, while “Cash Cow” raises the stakes with a familiar and almost Bloc Party-ish rythym section, but the results are anything but “like” something else.
17 Stephen Malkmus: Face the Truth
It took three albums for Stephen Malkmus to present a body of music that can stand alongside Pavement and Silver Jews albums proudly, but it’s finally here. Give it a few listens to grow on you, and let its wrecklessness repeat itself as a representation of Malkmus’ own inner dialogue.
16 Caribou: The Milk of Human Kindness
Four Tet-ish and Soft Machine invoking tunes by Dan Snaith. How to explain the synthesized, warm and loopy album is beyond me, I’ll be honest. It’s definitely quirky, but not in an obnoxius way, and it’s cute but not sweet, and it’s charming without being slick. Enjoy it, there’s not a lot out there like it.
15 The Magic Numbers: The Magic Numbers
The Magic Numbers sound like what I imagine hip hair stylists of the 60’s would listen to in their basements, smoking pot and combing each other’s mop tops. Folk at its least folky and pop in its most well-rounded state, the music is best described as what Marc Hogan calls “Polyphonic Spree for Normals”.
Honorable Mention:
Gorillaz: Demon Days
Almost makes me want to really like hip hop.
November 29, 2005
Things are progressing nicely in terms of my move home to Texas. Yesterday morning, everything was falling into place, and I blindly assumed that they would continue to do so.
Think again, Paige. We’re talking about you, here.
In the afternoon, we took Sophie up to the vet to weigh her and her kennel and pick up her medical records so she can fly with us. Putting her on the plane with me and Dash costs about $100 - not a big deal. We scheduled a flight that goes through Dallas so we wouldn’t touch down anywhere too cold, and I was feeling great for being so organized.
When the lady behind the counter started talking, though, I immediately felt a sense of severe Uh Oh. I knew that she was about to give me bad news before I even truly focused on the words.
“Sophie is a week late for her Rabies booster, which means she’ll have to wait 30 days to fly.”
“But we’re leaving before that.”
“Well you can fly with her, but they’ll kennel her in the States until the 30 days is up.”
“Uh, so what do I do?”
“Get her shot right now and get her a ticket via Pet Air.”
Oh ok. This wasn’t too bad - Sophie won’t get to fly with me, but she’ll get a special pet fight and get to stay warm and cozy and everything will be ok. She got her shot, we left, and I explained the whole thing to Mike. After his initial “Oh shit I have to take care of the dog by myself” speech ended, we agreed that this is what we must do: we can’t risk having her kenneled back home because of how expensive it is, and we can’t leave her in Germany. Neither is an option. We agreed to call and see how much the Pet Air tickets cost today.
I just got off the phone with Pet Air. It’s about 500 U.S. dollars to ship her with them. That’s a 400% increase from what it would cost to ship her with me and Dash, but again, that’s not possible anymore because of the waiting period after a rabies shot.
Mike audibly groaned when I called to tell him about the cost. He loves Sophie, and it’s not that he doesn’t want to ship her, but his suggestion was that I wait until the 30 days are up to fly home. Two problems with that: 1, I don’t want to fly in between Christmas and New Year’s, and 2) it will be cold enough then that she might not be able to get on a flight anyway. The only reliable way to get her home is Pet Air, and that is what we’ll do.
As we were finishing up the conversation about it, Mike said he hoped I didn’t have any real high hopes for my Christmas present. I know it’s cheesy but if I can go pick Sophie up at the airport and not have to worry about her, Christmas will be fine.
I’m really sick of this place and ready to go home, but my dog is not disposable. We’ll just pay whatever it takes to get her home. The End.
November 28, 2005
You know, as often as Dash gets dressed by himself now — which I encourage because up until a couple weeks ago he insisted on help every time — you’d think he would get them on frontwards at least once.
Helping him potty just now, I discovered that not only were the jeans on backwards (buttoned and zipped, mind you), the underwear was on backwards as well.
I’m not complaining though, Lord knows I’ve been waiting for this for what seems like forever. “Put your clothes on!”
“Ok!”
Yes. Progress is awesome, backwards or frontwards.
November 25, 2005
Hallo.
For Thanksgiving, I’m featuring a band that I’m thankful for: Home. They don’t have a website, they don’t have a MySpace, and Googling them results in a lot of weird websites that have reviewed some of their albums in the past, but not much more. No one talks about Home anymore, and that makes me sad. They’ve disbanded, with several of their members now more focused on their new endeavor, Leels, but I still remember when I came across 1996’s Elf Gulf Bore Waltz in a record store and purchased it based on the cover art alone. I was not disappointed. From Trouser Press:
With a sensibility that falls somewhere between the Residents and Can, this determinedly loopy Florida quartet likes nothing better than a good beer-bong-fueled jam session — the results of which they capture in real time, letting the audience handle the editing process later on its own.
They get compared to Pavement and Guided By Voices quite a bit as well. These days, it’s hard to find their stuff in a record store, but you can (oddly enough, considering there’s very little available regarding them on the web) get all of their CDs via Amazon. I highly recommend Elf Gulf Bore Waltz, even though lots of people think it’s one of the most disorganized of their recordings, because it perfectly captures their quirky, lo-fi sound that reminded me of Pavement without being one of those annoying bands that wanted to sound like Pavement in the 90’s.
I also stumbled across a Rogue Wave version of Nirvana’s “On a Plain” this week. I honestly don’t remember where I found it, but it’s interesting, and I like it.
This Thanksgiving, I am also thankful for weird indie videos. Check ‘em out, they’re all great no matter how I make fun of them:
Smoke pot much?
Like Wes Anderson much?
Art school much?
OMG CUTE MUCH?
November 25, 2005
We had Thanksgiving with my friend Amy, and I ate my weight. I prepared the sides since she was frying the turkey (fried turkey is amazing, by the way), and began thinking I’d go easy since there weren’t many people, but I ended up exploding and making mashed potatoes, fried okra, pasta, stuffed mushrooms, bacon wrapped water chestnuts and a green bean casserole. Good stuff. Here are a few of the things we made, then follow the collapsible more link for the recipes, if you’d like.
This became the green bean casserole, which I did not photograph. It tasted great, but I hate the fact that the beans lose all their color when you cook them, so I didn’t bother. This isn’t even a recipe so much as a hodge-podge of readily available ingredients. Throw your beans in a big mixing bowl with one chopped onion softened in a fry pan with butter, and 8 oz. of sour cream. Season with lemon zest and salt, and a pinch of four and mix. Transfer to casserole dish, cover with cheese and bread crumbs. Cook for 30 minutes at 350. Voila. Decent green bean casserole that isn’t covered in canned soup.
These are so amazing it’s not even funny. Wrap your water chestnuts in bacon, soak in soy sauce for 30 minutes or so. Cook them at 450 for about 30 minutes, or until your bacon is sufficiently crispy. Yum.
I decided to make this pasta dish for the kids since Dash isn’t too fond of meat. I’m sneaky though, and can always manage to sneak it in with some pasta sauce. Apparently it doesn’t work when the sauce is white and he can easily see big chunks of ham. He ate a bit of the Farfalle, though! (recipe after the jump.)
This recipe is after the jump as well, but in case you’re wondering, that is indeed an entire 8 oz. container of cream cheese, and an entire stick of butter there. This one is always a big hit, especially when I cover it with bacon.
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