The 30th edition of this particular exercise does have a theme, though I’m not entirely sure what it is. There’s a lot of “rock” going on here, spanning several decades, but centered on the early 90s, for no other reason besides the fact that that’s when I did the greatest volume of compact disc buying. In any case, it was a mostly enjoyable stretch of listening, with a few exceptions, though the biggest one was the disc I didn’t give it’s own entry, but it kind of got it’s own extended aside – consider this entry as covering four and a half discs; call the running total 126.5.

In any case, enjoy the rock, and occasional lack thereof:

♦- Boston –Walk On: This is another one of those record club infiltrators, I suspect, though it’s quite possible that I used it to fill out an order of free discs, because it’s something I probably would have gotten anyway – at the point in my musical life where I would have acquired this, I was coming out of the awkward country phase, and thanks to my 80 hour a week summer job, was listening to a *lot* of classic rock radio. Even so, this is Boston’s fourth record (without Brad Delp, the iconic lead singer), released in ’94; well past the late 70s classic rock heyday of “More Than A Feeling” and “Peace of Mind”. I’ve never been a huge Boston fan, but the idea that it’s the rock and roll equivalent of inventors tinkering in the basement appeals to my geek side. Although the band toured, Boston was always pretty much the baby of Tom Scholz, songwriter, guitarist, and MIT post-grad in electrical engineering. Scholz thinkered with pedals and effects boxes and amplifiers and stuff in his basement, and out came hit singles (and occasional guitar gear from Scholz’s electronics company, SR&D, like the Rockman headphone amplifier); with a variety of musicians floating in and out- many think of it as more a studio project than a “band”. As far as my reaction to this particular record, I like it. By the mid-90s, the polished classic rock sound was kind of a cliche or trope, but then, this band did a lot to invent that trope. It’s great to hear masterful perfectionists (they’d have to be, knocking out only five records in the band’s 30-odd years) work their craft. Every sound on this record is exactly where it’s intended to be, though at the same time, doesn’t have the kind of sterility you’d expect from that sort of exactness. The soaring vocals and intricate guitar lines on the “hit” “I Need Your Love” are technically perfect, though still manage to resonate on a level deeper than the technical; likewise, the organ on the “Walk On” medley are bombastic and majestic, and sound perfectly “Boston”. Also of note on this one is the “girl song”, “Magdeline” (which feels rather like a not-quite-as-good follow-up to Third Stage‘s “Amanda”) has a geographic connection to my youth – the tune was originally written and recorded by Danville PA based indie band Hybrid Ice in 1982; a few of whose former members I’ve run into in various venues and watering holes over the years.

♦- Bon Jovi –Cross Road: Cross Road is the first “best of” collection from Bon Jovi, covering the first five band records and Jon Bon Jovi’s solo record/movie soundtrack. The bulk of the record are the big hits from Slippery When Wet and New Jersey, filled out with token inclusions from the others, plus a couple of new tracks not really worth mentioning (except to say that they’re not very good, and presage the trend of the band’s latter-day change in musical direction). The good old stuff is, as always, the good old stuff. “Wanted Dead or Alive” and “Livin’ On A Prayer” still work as well as they used to; what surprised me about the stuff from SWW was the fact that Sambora’s guitar is more of a garnish than anything fundamental; it doesn’t play as big a part in the overall sound as does Bryan’s keys and, especially on “Prayer”, the iconic bassline (which is interesting, as the band hasn’t had an official, on-the-books bassist for like 15 years). All those heavily chorused harmonics and dive-bombs could be taken out of the mix, and Prayer would still work as a fully-constructed object. Take out the keys, and it wouldn’t be a song anymore. That’s not to say that the guitar wasn’t part of the sound – try doing “Lay Your Hands on Me” or “I’ll Be There For You” without it…

…which leads to a digression: I also listened to This Left Feels Right, in amongst this batch of discs; a 2003 disc of new versions of classic Bon Jovi tracks, which, frankly, is awful, and I didn’t feel like writing it up. As to why it’s awful, I can point to one signal – on the lead-off track, a re-recording of “Wanted”, full of synth drums and heavily compressed and digitally processed electric guitars, John Bon Jovi changes the lyric “I’ve Seen A Million Faces, and I’ve Rocked Them All” to “I’ve Seen a Million Faces…well, I’ve seen a lot of faces…”. Listener beware – despite the uptempo nature of track one, there is no rock at all for the rest of this record, in accordance with prophecy. There’s barely a guitar to be found. It’s all schmaltzy strings and low bpm. They tried “Lay Your Hands on Me” and “I’ll Be There For You” without the guitar, and it didn’t work. This was a disappointment when I bought it, and remains so today.

…anyway, unlike that last bit (which I guess I wrote up anyway, despite not wanting to), the listening experience, is pleasant, if uneven (given the newer stuff – feel free to skip “Always” and “Someday I’ll Be Saturday Night”) – listening to it was a nice jaunt down memory lane into the world of my early teens (which itself was uneven – a nice place to visit, but there’s no way you drag me back there full time), even if the tracks don’t resonate with me as much any more the way they did when I was a kid. I would have been happier if one or two of the new tracks hadn’t been bumped to make room for more “essentials” like “Born to Be My Baby” or “I’d Die For You”.

♦- The Badlees –See Me As A Picture: the best so far, 1990-2012: This disc was just released in the last couple of weeks, and more or less picks up my music super-fandom right where the previous disc left off. It’s a full-on career retrospective, with a really great package (yay for physical media) featuring a big booklet full of reminisces and remembrances from the band and others in the orbit. The selection of tracks is weighed, not surprisingly, a bit more heavily toward the era of River Songs forward, though catches a few highlights from the early discs, including one of my favorites, “Like A Rembrandt” from Diamonds in the Coal. It’s a good listen all around, and puts a few of the more recent tunes into a new context, allowing for greater appreciation; For example, “Drive Back Home” from Love is Rain kind of disappeared into the mix on that disc (for me, it’s all about “Radio at Night”), though here, in this package, it stands out as a really great piece of songwriting and studio engineering. There were only three songs on this package that I didn’t already own in one format or another, two new tracks (which are good, but not great), and a fun studio cover of Rod Stewart’s “Maggie May” circa 2004 from a soundtrack to a short story collection put out by MTV, which is an interesting artifact, and plays to all the band’s strengths. However, despite having almost all of it (and then some) already, there was no way I wasn’t snagging this one the moment it was available.

♦- Skid Row: Rounding out this edition of cutout is a disc that I picked up on a lark on Monday. I bought this, Skid Row’s first record, the first time when it came out on cassette. This CD I grabbed off the top of the Walmart $5 bin as I was picking up some groceries for the week on the way to the DC office. I’m not entirely sure why, but I’ve been in a bit of a hair-metal headspace lately; this five bucks was my way of scratching that itch. The disc itself is nicely bright and slinky, with lots of syncopated guitar riffs and a 20-something Sebastian Bach’s soaring, operatic vocals. Lyrically, it’s almost pure 80s Sunset Strip trash, but it’s fun trash – “Youth Gone Wild” was a great single, and deeper cuts like “Sweet Little Sister” and “Here I Am” betray a certain pop sensibility under all the slease. However, the track that sticks with me 20-odd years later is the cheesy power ballad “I Remember You”, love letters in the sand and all. Why? Because it’s got one of the greatest guitar solos of the 80s wedged in there amongst all the G9-C9-Dsus acoustic chords – those last three wailing notes are something to behold.

Cribbed from a gaming with kids discussion on ENWorld, via commenter Kzach:

Stereotypes exist for a reason. They create stability. Breaking stereotypes is NEVER a good idea. It leads to individuality, imagination, self-confidence and improved self-worth. We can’t have that!

I really home you all smell the sarcasm.

One’s perception makes a world of difference:

I’m rather loving this whole “Coulson is badass” meme…

In a televised interview on Wednesday, President Obama announced that he personally supports the concept of same-sex marriage.

This, of course, happened during a big information blackout for me (network problems at the office, followed by a lengthy subway jaunt and a stopover in Faerûn), so I haven’t really had the chance to react right away.

My reaction to this is basically – “Good on ya, Mr. President!”

All kinds of people are reading into all of the political calculus that went into the announcement, and what it means in terms of the election and how it hurts or helps either or the candidates come November, how the timing might or might not be related to North Carolina ballot initiatives or Joe Biden’s big mouth, and what it actually means in terms of message and et cetera et cetera et cetera.

All that will provide lots of grist for the ideological mills of the commentariat in days to come. However, for me, it signals that the position of supporting marriage equity is finally becoming the mainstream position in this country (because Obama, or any politician concerned with job security, wouldn’t make such a clear-cut public declaration on any “controversial” issue without first considering the potential benefits and drawbacks of doing so). If the President, in an election year, feels that taking a public position on an issue won’t hurt his re-election chances, it pretty much indicates that the issue isn’t particularly controversial.

That in itself is encouraging. It just feels wrong to live in a world where the idea of equality under the law for all people, regardless of their differences, remains a controversial idea. We could use a bit more “evolution” in that direction, and I expect we’ll be seeing more of it.

In any case, it was nice to hear the President agree publicly with my belief that the law ought to apply equally to everyone, and that so many wonderful people I know (and so many more people that I don’t) deserve to have the same shot at happiness and legal partnership that I do. It may only be symbolic at this point, but symbols have power, and this time, that power’s flowing in the right direction.

Starting right now, I resolve to live my life more in the manner of the stick figure narrator in today’s xkcd comic, because I suspect that it’s more fun that way:

Introducing people to new stuff is fun. Watching someone discover something you love for the first time is sometimes just as good, if not better, than when you discover something yourself. So, go forth and find these moments; they’re worth it.

I must be doing something right if, inside a week, I can do more than fifty trail miles on a mountain bike, and top off the week by actually climbing a mountain:

Also, along the way up that mountain? “Bear Resistant Food Storage Poles”.

Yeah, I’m not nearly as sore and winded and beaten as I was when I made almost this same trek five months ago (when I didn’t have a bunch of biking behind me). All this effort of mine might be working a bit.

Anyway, thanks to Jason and Rebecca for hosting us for this adventure, and the beer and burgers afterwards!

Around 3:30pm yesterday, I started putting together some disparate facts. I didn’t have to work on Friday. After a bit of checking around, I found that there were plenty of seats available for the midnight screenings of The Avengers in town. I wrestled with the implications of these facts on my afternoon bike ride (fifteen miles through the woods, 50 miles for the week. I kind of rock). The plan seemed just crazy enough to work, and the spouse agreed with it.

So, it came that we found ourselves sitting in a rowdy movie theater last night at midnight, watching the movie I’d been looking forward to since before I knew it was even a possibility (for those of you keeping score on this here blog, and have seen me talk about stuff as “not my thing” – as a Marvel Zombie for more than three decades, this was my Twilight), at the earliest possible moment it was kosher to project it in the United States(as I was in the wrong city for the preview screenings this week).

So…about The Avengers: It was totally worth staying up 22 hours straight and going to bed at 3am. Oh yeah.

I can safely say that most of the reviews out there (save, perhaps, the NYT, though they’ve got issues with geek/genre stuff in general – Preach it, Brother Tee!) are pretty much on target: It’s not a perfect film – there are a couple of plot holes and a few slow spots toward the beginning, but you’ll likely forgive them because you’ll have a huge smile on your face from all the great character beats, action spectacle, and pure fun. It’s a summer blockbuster, but if you’re going to point to one of the best examples of that particular category, this is pretty much it. There is a reason that phrases like “game changer” and “new paradigm” and “template going forward” are being tossed around. That reason is that they really do apply here.

I’ll describe what I liked about it in broad strokes, so as not to spoil the experience (not that there are any huge, unexpected twists – the plot is about what you’d expect it to be). There’s a lot to like – the performances are uniformly good, and all the heroes get their chance to shine, which didn’t surprise, given director Joss Whedon’s experience working with ensemble casts.

It was funny. Really funny. It had lots of well-crafted action. I liked seeing the thought that went into having these strange, disparate characters work together in clever ways. Iron Man arcing a repulsor blast off of Cap’s shield to hit an enemy he couldn’t reach otherwise; The Hulk stabbing a huge beast with a bit of scavenged shrapnel, and Thor hammering it home with his, well…hammer. They were nice touches that I appreciated, that didn’t need to be there for the film to work, but showed that the people making this thing really thought about how to make use of all the tools in their toolbox; it’s either a devotion to craft or a love of the material, or both – it doesn’t really matter what it is; what matters is that it adds that extra little something to push this film a bit higher over the bar than the rest of it’s action bretheren.

I really liked the fact that this film totally embraced the comic book universe reality it created for itself – it doesn’t run away from the fact that it’s populated with Gods, Aliens, Monsters, philanthropists in macguffin-powered armor and guys who survived being frozen in the Arctic for almost a century – it revels in it, with all it’s larger than life four-color glory. It’s a comic book movie that truly celebrates that it’s a comic book movie, and it’s all the better for it.

Also, between Joss Whedon’s script and direction and Mark Ruffalo’s performance, they finally got the Hulk right; I want to see more of this version of him. I’m not sure that The Hulk is a marquee lead character for another film – he works best with a foil, and the comics have known this for years – Rick Jones, Amadeus Cho, Doctor Strange – the brutish Hulk needs an intelligent cohort to play off of. Ruffalo’s got a six picture deal with Marvel now – have him show up in Avengers 2, Iron Man 3, etc…but what I really want is a series of Marvel Team-Up: Featuring the Hulk and… films introducing other minor-leaguers who would fit into the universe, but might not carry their own film. That’s the way to give the Hulk a character to play off of, and a really effective gateway to get c-listers like Cloak and Dagger, Starfox, Heroes for Hire, or Moon Knight up on screen, making them available to stick into future Avengers films without having to start from scratch.

Marvel – call me.

In any case, when you see it, be prepared to smile at the little character moments, the snappy dialogue, the heroic action, and be sure to stay to the end, because there are two tacked on sequences, one which sets up a big sequel in a couple of years, and one that simply pays off big time on a little throwaway line earlier in the film. Both are worth sticking around for.

So yeah, go see it. Early and often. You’ll enjoy it. It’s a great example of the summer blockbuster species, and it honestly deserves to earn the billion or so dollars it’s going to make in it’s run.

Things have been really loud today, so I’ve been hiding inside the friendly bubble of insulating sound that my headphones provide. Why not track some of the stuff coming out of them?

1. “Ribbon of Honor” – Innocent Nixon
2. “Cool Rider” – Michelle Pfeiffer
3. “Shut the Club Down” – Girl Talk
4. “Stupid Thing” – Aimee Mann
5. “I Would Die 4 U” – Prince & The Revolution
6. “Last Day of the Miner’s Strike” – Pulp
7. “Wasted Hours” – Arcade Fire
8. “Way Back Home” – The Badlees
9. “Firewalker” – Liz Phair
10. “All The Way Down” – The Swell Season

I really don’t even have to point out the date anymore, do I? You people know what to do:

Consider this your annual public service announcement.

So, last night I tagged along with the cub scouts on an outing to go see the local AA minor league baseball team, the Richmond Flying Squirrels, totally pound the Bowie Baysox into a pulp. It was a reasonably nice, if overcast evening out.

If you’re familiar at all with minor league baseball, you know that they’re shameless about promotions to get people into the park. It seems that one of Richmond’s ongoing themes this year is “Legends of Wrestling”.

So, who threw out the first pitch? Jimmy “Superfly” Snuka, the man that inspired millions of little boys in the 80s to leap fearlessly off of many a convenient couch, bookshelf, or porch railing.

I haven’t thought of professional wrestling in decades – it’s one of those things most people (except this guy, I guess) outgrow by the time they hit their teens. However, this guy’s presence made many a Saturday morning more interesting by his antics on television in my youth.

So, Did I manage to meet this legend of the squared circle? You bet I did, Mene Gene:

And you know what? It was pretty cool.