Empty Bookshelf Reviews

Category: Reviews

  • Rubbie’s Southside Bar and Grill (Louisville, KY)

    [consider this line the token “and we’ll start to write more frequently…I promise”]

    According to whatever research I had done, Kentucky is famous for barbecue. Judging from the competitive grilling shows that I’ve seen (not a joke), my memory tells me that Kentucky barbecue is all about the sauce and St. Louis barbecue is all about the spice rub. I’m a sauce guy, having frequently talked people’s ears off and began awkward conversations about one’s favorite barbecue sauces until my sauce enthusiasm overtook the underwhelmed victim’s interest and desire to continue the conversation. And people wonder why I’m awkward around girls. (well, that and the fact that I have/run a website)

    ribs
    My class knows no bounds. Neither does my belt size.

    With a GPS unit with a “barbecue” category in the “food” menu. (You tell it what kind of food you want, it tells you how to get there. Kind of like a reverse drive-thru, I guess.) We randomly picked the fourth item, “Rubbie’s.” In two hours later hindsight, I’m not sure why I, as a sauce guy, would agree to a place called “Rubbie’s,” but I guess I thought it was “Ruby’s” but spelled incorrectly.

    My traveling companion gave the typical “if it looks awful, we’re going somewhere else.” I’m not familiar with Louisville at all (nor should I be, thank the FSM), so it was just a point on a map of uncertainty as far as I was concerned. Pulling up, indeed, it didn’t look too special. Rather divey, but in a quaint, people playing beanbags and poker outside of the place sort of way. I’m not picky, so it worked for me. I don’t get much out of the whole “rustic” charm thing (people who do should replace their toilets with outhouses, to make sure they’re getting the full effect of what they claim to love), but more than anything else, I didn’t want to pick yet another arbitrary place in the list of restaurants of unknown quality.

    I don’t review ambiance, but in short, there wasn’t much. A food critic would include an overly colorful sentence about how “in the evening, the characterless walls and booths achieve a sense of ghostly familiarity as the drinks and conversations ebb and flow.” The menu was small, with the barbecue section tucked in a corner of the menu. There were the typical barbecue offerings: pulled pork, brisket, wings, and ribs. I picked the full rack of ribs (a whopping $12.50, which is the absolute lowest I’ve ever seen for a full rack of ribs), and my traveling partner chose the small pulled pork sandwich ($4.50). Sides selected were steak fries and onion rings, though considering my future held large quantities of meat, I laid off the fried things.

    At my advanced age, I’m not prone to hyperbole, especially related to food, but (say it with me) it was truly nothing short of incredible. The meat wasn’t “fall off the bone tender,” but I have four pointy teeth for a reason. In full caveman mode, I pretty much destroyed both of the racks, using the two supplied sauces liberally. Well, actually I pretty much focused on the “normal” sauce; the “hot” was so intense that had I used of it, I would’ve had to go to a hospital and a church, and probably not in that order. The “normal” sauce was like none I’ve had before: much more molasses than I was used to, but not overwhelmingly tangy. It had bite, but no kick. They left the kicking for the bottle of “hot.”

    The pulled pork was equally good (though in all honesty, I’m not a big pulled-pork fan). Perfectly tender and not at all chewy. There was some sort of smoke-aging present in both meats, but I can’t tell Mesquite from whatever else would be used for it, so I’ll just leave it at “the smoky flavor added a lot to the natural taste of the pork.”

    Cheapskate or not, this is probably the most amazing part:
    The total for two people was $20.13. And that includes tax. There wasn’t any alcohol on the tab (which screws up any cost comparisons), but that’s border-line ridiculous for both the amount of and quality of food presented.

    And finally, the weakness of my Constitution is known all the way from here to Hong Kong, and it looks like I’ve finally found a barbecue place which doesn’t much any/much garlic in their sauce. This means that right now, my body isn’t trying to destroy itself to punish me for my foolhardiness, and that’s a first for getting barbecue at any restaurant.

    *****

    Rubbie’s Southside Bar and Grill gets five BIG stars. Great food, better prices, and bean bags if necessary.

    Their address:
    Rubbie’s Southside Bar and Grill
    6905 Southside Drive
    Louisville, KY 40214
    502-367-0007

    Also, I drove by what might be the worst house location I’ve ever seen: they’ve got amusement park screamers not far from their backyard, an airport across the street, and the “street” is an interstate. Too bad a railroad crossing isn’t in their backyard and the hog rendering plant a few blocks upwind closed last summer…

  • People Who Say “Cheers” Instead of “Goodbye”

    Special note on the title: I figured that there must be an opposite of the word “greeting,” and it turns out it’s “valediction.” Instead of using a houty-touty word such as that, I’ve grouped everything into the serves-all “goodbye.” You’re welcome.

    I saw some of the MTV Movie Awards tonight, and Johnny Depp, accepting Best Performance for Pirates of the Caribbean 2 (Piratey-Boogaloo), did the normal awards-show spiel after receiving a lengthy standing ovation from the audience. Nothing out of the ordinary… except, instead of ending his speech with “thanks,” “bye,” or even the ‘look at me, I’m a World traveller’ and I want you to know it, “Ciao,” he dropped this gem: “Cheers.” What is this world coming to. And that’s not a question. Given the wide variety of ways to say “goodbye” (even some that serve to combine it with a “thanks” aspect), he has to give the trendy, pretentious “cheers.”

    euro
    Cheers, hippy

    Let Johnny Depp serve as an example for the problems with the phrase, but his usage was no more egregious than any others’. I take exception with this expression for three reasons:
    1) “Cheers” is a drinking-related saying. That’s fine, but this was an awards show, not a restaurant. It wasn’t even the Golden Globes which (obviously) serves alcohol. This is the biggest issue – it makes no sense.
    2) It reeks of Eurotrash and, even worse, Americans who wish they were Eurotrash. You know these people – they refer to manual transmissions as “standard” and call elevators “lifts” just so you can make a weird face at them to which they respond by saying these exact words (every time): “I was in London, and that’s what they call them in London.”
    3) I’d like to take credit for being part of the cusp of the expression “not so much.” In fact, my earliest documented utterance of the phrase was way back in July of 2004. I challenge anyone to beat that. I’m not claiming to be first, but I’d like to think I beat any of you seven reading this to the punch. How is this related to “cheers?” Well, tangentially at best. I guess I’m just a little bitter, and my lexicographic warning radar is going of like crazy about the soon-to-be “cheers” phenomenon. Consider this my warning to people who want to keep European lingo where it belongs.

    People Who Say “Cheers” Instead of “Goodbye” get ZERO stars. The English language has hundreds of thousands of words, and provides myriad tools for making up words (such as “spamera” – n. a digital camera used to take pictures which will later be e-mailed to everyone the camera owner knows, but no one will look at. Usage: “Yeah, my mom is unfortunately bringing her spamera to my nephew’s pre-school graduation next weekend, so I’m definitely going to spend time familiarizing myself with the delete button in my e-mail program.”) Hmm. That’s actually a pretty good made-up word. Anyway. Lots of words, easy to make-up new ones. Does the bowel of the English language that is the British dialect really need to be given a colonic every time someone decides that he’s too cool for “bye” or “thanks?”

  • Pitchfork Media’s Review of “Shine On” and “Get Born” by Jet

    My review of “Step One” by Steps. Wow, that was easy. I didn’t even have to sit through the CD!

    When you read a review, you expect certain things. You want to hear some insightful positives and negatives regarding the thing being reviewed. You don’t want to be talked down to. You hope to have an overall idea of whether said object is worth seeing/listening to/buying/reading/visiting/eating/doing/throwing things at. And after you’ve done any of those things, you want to come back and read that review again to determine whether you agree or think the reviewer is out of his mind. Basically, you expect reviews like this and this. Then you go to a website whose supposed specialty is reviews, and you see something like this. This “review” only manages to fit one of those criteria, that being the last one” that this reviewer is totally out of his mind.

    A long time ago, when the second Franklin movie was being planned, our discussion took a long detour, with us arguing over the definition of the phrase “cop out”. There were numerous e-mails sent back and forth trying to determine if an idea that I came up with was something that constituted this. You can read highlights here. This argument was never really solved, but I stand here today telling you once and for all, that this “review” is the definition of “cop out”.

    I can gather by the video clip shown here that the “reviewer” doesn’t like Shine On, but I was interested in hearing some actual insight into what makes it good or bad. Granted, the CD wasn’t that great (there were three songs on it that I thought were really good, but the rest was kinda mediocre), but it doesn’t deserve to have its review have nothing interesting or meaningful to say at all. I don’t know how a high-fallutin’ website like pitchforkmedia decided that that was representative of their organization, but recently, they even put up a similar video, claiming it was a JET music video. Obviously, the pretentious music-lovers have a thing against the Aussies rockers, but I really can’t figure out what it is.

    The review of their first album, Get Born, gives us a little more understanding, but I use the word “little” literally. It’s presented in the form of a discussion between the band and the owner of a venue where they’re supposed to be putting on a concert. Things go wrong at the concert and the fans turn on the band. Sure there are opinions presented about the band, but I’m sure they’re all completely over-the-top exaggerations from someone who’s never seen them live or met them. I can’t imagine a band (aside from the Flaming Lips or Ozzy Osbourne) actually demanding [thirty f%$&in’ angry alligators with top hats on, Iggy Pop shooting out of that cannon, and midway through sending in the kid from the iPod commercial.] It may work as a review of the band, but as a review of the album it fails miserably.

    It only mentions three songs from the CD (very briefly) and it only has two points that I gleaned from the whole thing. The first is that all their songs sound like other bands (citing AC/DC, Iggy Pop, Wallflowers, Oasis, Bon Jovi and the Rolling Stones). The second is that they have “insipid love songs that sound like wedding band covers” and “insipid lyrics, we say ‘Come On!’ and ‘Oh Yeah!’ every five seconds”. So basically the guy only knows one insulting adjective. You know, there’s a thesaurus feature in MS word, and I’d assume there’s also one on the trendy Mac you also probably use. Insipid: dull, bland, wishy-washy, characterless, colorless, trite, tame, unexciting, uninteresting, boring. Maybe none of those words sounded smart/insulting to readers enough, though I’m partial to the word “trite”

    Here’s the thing that the review is missing. The music is fun. It’s not meant to be high art. It’s not meant to be genre-pushing. It’s meant to be music with easy-to-learn lyrics and melodies that you can put in your car CD player, turn the volume way up on, roll down your windows and shout at the top of your lungs and have a good time. And it completely succeeds at that, something that this reviewer was competent enough to pick up on. There’s a good mix of fast and slow songs (so the whole CD doesn’t sound the same, a huge pet peeve of mine), and I like most of the slower songs. I understand that a lot of the faster songs sound similar, but they’re catchy enough that it doesn’t bother me (a problem that the second CD had), much like with critically lauded Franz Ferdinand. As far as the words go, I’m not expecting poetic lyrics, so why should I complain that they’re not there? Did people who went to see Pirates of the Caribbean complain that there wasn’t a deeper meaning in the dialogue, or that it wasn’t a British period piece about some queen from the 17th century? I would hope not. They should be expecting to have fun. That’s all I expect out of it. That’s not to say that I shouldn’t hold the band accountable for bad music, I just don’t think that criticizing lyrics for this kind of music is really the way to go. Do critics complain about the lyrics to “SHOUT” or “MONY MONY”? Some of the songs on that Fountains of Wayne CD, Welcome Interstate Managers had TERRIBLE lyrics, but critics dismissed them because of how fun the melodies were.

    Now some of you who are familiar with Aaron Copland’s book, “What to Listen for in Music“, would say that I’m only listening to this album on a “sensuous”, or maybe an “expressive” level, and that to fully understand why music is good or bad, I have to be listening to it on a “sheerly musical” level as well, combining the three. Well, in response to that I would claim that there isn’t too much to it on a musical level, but my musical knowledge is limited. I’m learning to increase what I hear when I listen, but I want to understand what makes this a musically good or bad album. That’s why I went to a site where I knew I would find a harsh but intelligent criticism of the CD. But there was none of that there. Instead, all I got was a poorly-written, profanity-laced diatribe against the band for mimicking other bands. Personally, since there really isn’t any truly popular band playing right now that sounds like them, I don’t have too much of a problem with it, but I’m reviewing the review, and not the band or CD, so that doesn’t really matter.


    Zero stars for the cop-out Shine On so-called review.

    ½
    ½ star for the creativity to write a review for Get Born as a dialogue. Minus four and a half for not having any substance to it at all, not talking about the songs, and basically complaining because Jet has songs that sound like bands that lots of people like.

  • Comic Book Movies Being True to Comic Book Books (aka Spiderman 3)

    First things first, I don’t normally care about the “cleanliness” of a comic book’s translation from paper to film. I think it’s good that Sentinels weren’t in the X-Men movies, that the Joker killed Bruce Wayne’s parents in the 1989 Batman movie, and that Peter Parker was magically able to shoot webbing from his wrists after getting bit by a spider (as opposed to him constructing webshooters with his nerdy science skills). Long story short, “the internet (comic book branch)” finds it egregious – in fact, here’s someone’s take on the fact that the comic book has incorporated the detail from the movie. Blasphemy! [the most fundamental aspect of why these “internet people” are wrong is as follows: the movies go out of their way towards unenjoyable awkwardness establishing Peter Parker as an awkward science nerd. Having him construct webshooters in the movies is wholly unnecessary. There are no doubts about just how nerdy he is in the movies.]

    sp3
    Lycra and rain, never a good mix.

    As a disclaimer, it’s been a long while since my comic book “phase” – upwards of 10+ years. I was into Spider-Man when I was little, maybe 6 or so. This would’ve been too young to really process any of it beyond see that he was a guy who could walk on walls and stuff like that. (To really feel old, let me mention that I had Spider-Man read-along record and book set that I practically memorized.) My comic book interest followed the 1991 re-launch of X-Men, The Death of Superman, DC vs. Marvel, and ended with the Age of Apocalypse. As always, ladies, take a number. Anyway, I’m no expert on Spider-Man, and to the horror of true believers, most of my Spider-Man background comes from the cartoon show and the video game Maximum Carnage.

    Now, I don’t care about the whole “webshooters” thing – the argument that Mary-Jane in the movies is actually Gwen Stacey is even weaker. But, when there are little interesting details in the story (which would be in no small part inspired by the comics), why not include them? The Sentinel head in the third X-Men movie didn’t require any explanation: it wasn’t important to the plot and it was just a random thing for those who’ve never read the comics or seen the TV show, but it’s a neat little thing to put on the screen for five seconds.

    The Spiderman movies are probably the most appealing comic book movies for non-comic book people. That’s fine. The movies are a bit cheerier in style than the X-Men movies or Superman Returns, but they work to the tune of what will soon be more than one billion dollars. Anyway, enough of this disjointed mess. Here’s what’s right or wrong with the movie (from a “movie” point of view, regardless of the comics) and a tiny little thing that would’ve added a lot to it.

    I’m about to ruin the movie for you, if you’ve not seen it:

    1. If you really liked the first two, you’ll really like this one.

    2. After Sandman was “killed” the first time, there was no longer any plot. There was the lovey-dovey stuff, but that’s absolutely a side-show to the Spiderman story. If they wanted to make a romantic drama (it definitely wasn’t funny enough to be even a marginal romantic comedy — except the French waiter scene… HI-larious), they wouldn’t spend $250 million on an action movie.

    3. Venom, about whom “the internet” was crazy, was never mentioned by name and didn’t show up until 20 minutes before the end and only came into being by a stupid (stupid) coincidence. I don’t care how he came to be in the comics (Secret Wars, space, etc.), but the movie dumbed it down too much. Even someone who’s never heard the story would say that it’s stupid.

    4. Here’s my little detail (also Venom-related): the movie never called him by that name (that’s fine), but the whole symbiote thing (in the comics and TV show) made it so he always talked in the first person plural, leading to the following exchange. “Who are you?” – “We are Venom.” Now really, how tough would it have been to include that? Instead, they wanted to humanize their villains and frequently show Eddie Brock appear through the suit. Now really, does this movie need its villains to be any more humanized with Sandman (“I did it by accident, but even so, it was for my sick daughter”), (New) Green Goblin (“I got amnesia and love you guys. Wait, you killed my dad. Wait, no you didn’t because my butler finally told me the truth after I spent millions of dollars assembling a woefully impractical flying glider and pumpkin-shaped grenade launcher.”), and Eddie “slimy, but not evil until the last 20 minutes of the movie” Brock? Oh wait, Spider-Man himself is over-the-top “deep” as well. It’s not complexity, it’s painting in shades of grey because it keeps everyone smiling. Redemption for the win!

    **½

    Comic Book Movies Being True to Comic Book Books (aka Spiderman 3) gets two-and-a-half stars because there are some things that enhance a story, but for the most part, the correct decisions in terms of translating from “page to screen” are made. The Starjammers have no place in the serious, grounded in a sort-of reality (within reason) X-Men movies, so distilling the Dark Phoenix Saga into a silhouette in a lake and a crazy chick in X-Men 2 and 3 worked wonders for making money. But, that isn’t to say that there aren’t cool little details that shouldn’t be added. For example, Spider-Man’s black suit looks a whole lot snazzier with a big white spider on it than with grey details, but oh well…

  • The End of Scrubs

    Update 3 (1+ weeks later): The ad during tonight’s SNL 90’s retrospective billed this week’s episode as “only three episodes until the season finale. I guess that’s that.

    Update 2 (four days later): So, it looks like NBC is advertising this week’s Scrubs as being the first of “the last 3.” Hmm. They even emphasized the “last 3” section. Heck, they made mention of characters making the “biggest mistake of their lives”, then showing Elliot and Keith’s wedding scene then JD looking emotive (as usual).

    Update (ten minutes after posting): I guess I should check Wikipedia (of all places) before I start posting things I think are facts. Looks like NBC has yet to officially renew the show, but according to Zach Braff himself, ABC is willing to air the last season if NBC does not renew it. Media watchers, don’t worry, I’ve added the “journalistic integrity” category to this entry. Regardless, I stand by my comments about this season.

    I haven’t seen this reported anywhere else online (yet), but during a teaser for tonight’s episode of Scrubs during The Office, the voice over announcer said something like, “the first of the last four Scrubs episodes.” It was said that the show’s status was up in the air, then there were stories about NBC throwing huge sums of money at Zach Braff to get him to come back for one more year. Well, I guess that didn’t turn out so hot. And that’s a good thing.

    You might remember my epic review of Scrubs last year as being one of three notable parts of “the current TV landscape,” so me thinking that the show might be capital “O” Over might not make any sense. Simply, if you’ve watched the show at all this season, you understand. Not just “not quite the same as older episodes,” the first 10 or so episodes were awful. Dreadful, painful-to-watch TV. Mind you, this isn’t like the-Simpson’s-were-better-back-when thinking, where old episodes are more thought of as a collective period of time rather than individual examples of the series strengths. Just last season could be considered “classic Scrubs.” Who knows why, but this season didn’t get watchable until about episode 13, with one of the first twelve episodes being a brutal clip show and the other being a show about the newer Iraq war which served only to get politically simple people to say, “Wow, they really brought a new voice to the argument.” Oh yeah, one of the pre-13 episodes was a highly hyped musical episode. It was tedious, so say the best.

    Last year, I wrote that with Turk and Carla’s baby and JD’s impending fatherhood, the characters and show were growing up, and the show wasn’t about grown-ups who acted grown-up. This should’ve been an occasion to use this season to wrap things up, but instead, Carla got an after school special version of postpartum depression, recovered from it, then the baby all-but disappeared from the show (a fair move – the show’s not about babies). Also, JD’s impending fatherhood/implied-eventual marriage was thrown out the window with the good, old-fashioned “tell the long distance dad-to-be that mommy had a miscarriage, but actually lie about it” move. It’s like putting drama in a piggy bank.

    All that said, the recent episodes have been solid, but the show’s been on since 2001 (yikes, that’s a long time for a show most people have never watched), doesn’t have many viewers, became self-aware about how limited the main character was last year, and gave a potential setup for a season-long arc about JD “growing up” at the end of last season, then blew it. Of course, Scrubs is practically the template for wrapping things up efficiently and poetically (with indie music playing in the background, of course), and the series finale would pack a doozy, I’m sure [not sarcasm]. Considering that the writers did one of the tidiest jobs ever of removing a “Ross/Rachel” relationship from a show in a gutsy, (female) viewer alienating move at the end of season three, the slight (maybe unintentional) tension between JD and Elliot was a bit out of place on tonight’s episode, who knows if they’ll go that route, though Elliot’s boyfriend proposed to her to end of the episode.

    ****

    The End of Scrubs gets four stars because it’s about darn time, but loses a star because it could’ve been setup better considering how last season ended.

    I’m thinking about it some more, and maybe the voice-over lady during the promo meant they were the last four episodes of the season, but one can hope. Still, the show is responsible for one of the best ever TV moments, so I guess they’re entitled one more season…

  • NES Games: BigNose The Caveman


    Ah yes, taking advantage of all 8 bits of excitement. You wonder how the people from “Prehistoric Park” feel about the discovery of the mini-stegosaur.

    The best way to make a video game accessible to lots of people is this: make the first few levels pretty simple, and then have them get exponentially harder. Sure, you say, most video games follow this pattern. Mario, Tetris. Sonic the Hedgehog” Ducktales is pretty easy throughout, but that’s mostly because the levels are built more as challenging mazes, and you can choose the order in which you want to play them. Don’t get me started on Legacy of the Wizard… I’ve already written 2000 words about that.

    I can’t think of a better example of this than the little-known game, BigNose the caveman, which came as a gold-colored cartridge. The main focus of the game was to walk from left to right on the screen and beat up dinosaurs. I really can’t remember if there was a story or not, mostly because I never got very far. I mean, the first two levels are exceptionally easy, to lure you in. They were actually pretty similar to the Mario model, with bad guys coming at you that you had to hit as you walked on the horizon line and jumped over random cliffs. That was something I always wondered about in the Mario world. How can there be so many cliffs on a piece of developed land that don’t have bridges built over them? The Princess’ father must not have been doing a good job in the public works sector. As far as BigNose, well, they barely had the technology to build a wheel, so I’m going to assume that bridges are way out of their league. ( And for all you cavemen out there, I’m not trying to insult you” the last thing I need are commercials disparaging our fine little rarely-updated enterprise)

    Strangely enough, though, most of the dinosaurs BigNose encounters are pygmy dinos, with stegosauruseses and triceratopseses no bigger than the eponymous caveman himself. Sure there are giant dinos that appear at the end of major levels, as bosses, but most of them, from as far as I got, were usually seen as just two legs or something. They were way too big. Someone obviously didn’t consult the AMNH before designing this stuff.
    If you think about it even more, you realize that there’s no reason for a stegosaur to attack a caveman anyway, unless he was intruding on its nest. Maybe it’s different with mini-stegosaurs though.

    The simple attack was using your club to hit the bad guy, and if you picked up some stones you could use them like the fireflower power in Mario, only lamer, cause the stones don’t bounce, and if you miss, they kinda just magically fell through the ground. The hard part is getting the timing right. If you swing too soon, you miss, and too late, you’re hit by the dinosaur, which is why stones are the best option, especially since there are some dinos that need to be hit twice. Jumping over them is always an option, but you can’t jump very high, so sometimes you’ll miss. There are also potions you can buy at some stores that you can use to regain life or kill everything in the frame, making it easy to beat a boss.

    Really though, the biggest challenge to this game was actually getting it to work. Maybe it was my system, or just the cheapness of the people who made the cartridge, but it never worked right. I had to do the blowing on the game, then blowing in the Nintendo thing that every kid my age was quite accomplished at. You’d think we’d all be harmonica players. At some point, even that began to not work, and the game would only work if I used the game genie as a buffer.

    The music was actually really catchy, even though I can’t remember any of it now.

    Overall, the first few levels are moderately enjoyable. The next few are too frustrating. And there’s no continue or save option, so once you lose, you start all over again. I’d say the same thing about Mario, except there’s plenty of opportunity for extra lives and level-skipping in that game. That, and you had some sort of goal to achieve in Mario. If you really want to play a game about cavemen, I’d settle for a Turbo Graphx-16, or an emulator for its games, and Bonk’s Adventure.

    *½

    One and a half stars for making me feel like I was good at video games, and then tearing that dream away from me. Relatively good music, but a premise that was pretty much just a terrible rip-off of Bonk’s Adventure.

  • Best Song Ever?: Magic (Ben Folds Five)

    Another in the “Best Song Ever?” series. Simply, I give the background, a point, a counterpoint, then star rating for songs that I have on my list of “good songs” with the goal of deciding what’s the best song ever. Note for those using feedreaders: the song is embedded on this review’s entry so there’s a point-of-reference in the review; you might want to view this entry from the webpage instead of the feed.

    Background
    I was really never a fan of Ben Folds Five. I thought “Brick” was catchy in its own way, way back when (1995?). I never followed Ben Folds Five, but I knew the band ceased to exist sometime between 1995 and 2000, with Ben Folds going out on his own, making CD’s that sounded just like when he was in “Ben Folds Five.” (I had no problem with it, I just wasn’t into it.) I randomly (very randomly) heard the song, “Magic” sometime in the fall of 2005 on WMUH. I didn’t know what it was when I heard it (I had missed the DJ’s intro), so I scribbled down some of the lyrics to look up later on the internet. Turns out that this was the mystery song. +1 for college radio.

    For

    • Shows that playing “around” chords and a pleasant melody can get you pretty far as a singer-songwriter. (yes, I’m aware that being that he had a backing band, this isn’t really a “singer-songwriter” type song). For what it’s worth, the song was actually written by the drummer, Darren Jessee, so it’s not necessarily a “Ben Folds” song.
    • The viola playing the bottom of the chords in a nice touch during the first verse.
    • It’s in 6/8. None of the pedestrian 4/4 stuff here, thank you very much.
    • The soft-loud-soft dynamic is used to good effect here. (see “against”)
    • 2:12 – At the risk of venturing into girliness, the line “You’re the magic that holds the sky up” really gets the point of that whole “love” thing. It’s not a metaphor, there’s nothing really figurative to it, I’m not sure it’s even symbolic, but it’s just a gentle exaggeration which gets the point across rather well.

      • Against

    • For the love of God, who thought it would be a good idea to have the timpani levels so loud. If you’ve turned up your head phones to hear the first verse, the timpani is seriously “damage your ears and headphones” loud. Why, why, why? Studio engineers:The enhanced dynamic range offered by CD’s is a privilege, not a right. Don’t abuse it.
    • Again, the timpani. If anyone has his or her bass turned up (most people usually do), the two timpani entrances (combined with the relative quiet of the first verse) will cause noticeable clipping because of their volume. Again, why?
    • The string section is a bit gratuitous. A single viola, violin, or cello would be ok, but with all of them, it gets a little heavy sounding.

      ****

      I’ve got a fever and the only prescription is louder timpani. No one would ever say that, even jokingly making reference to a Saturday Night Live sketch. The slightly over-the-top string section can be forgiven, but when the mixing of a song calls attention to itself, someone should be fired. Jarring dynamic changes are one thing; being unpleasant to listen to is another. It gets 4 out of 5, because of the quality of the song, but the mixing should really give it an “NA” for its rating.

  • Inadvertently Recreating a Scene from Garden State

    Though each time I go to China, I make a pledge to write many reviews (usually a stretch where I’ve written very few) and not follow through, I’ll quietly imply that same pledge now, and begin and start here.

    With the fact that flying to China from the U.S. is an awful experience, many of my co-workers get small prescriptions (2 or 3 pills total) for sleeping medicine. I’m not a big fan of taking even over-the-counter taking medicine as it is (my family has a history of awesomeness), but the flight is just plain awful for 15+ hours at a time. With that in mind, I stopped at CVS the night before my trip and purchased a bottle of Advil PM, not exactly prescription sleeping pills per se, but maybe they’d help a little bit.

    scrubs
    Potential captions for this picture
    1) No, not this scene.
    2) I’m dark and brooding, too!
    3) Because if the girl on the far left weren’t touching his hand, he’d return to the land of lollipops and gumdrops.

    Skipping ahead to being on the plane between Chicago and Hong Kong (China), the first (of like 7 drink services – the flight is that long) came through, and international flights serve alcoholic drinks free. For whatever reason (maybe because it seems poetic), sleeping pills are “supposed” to be taken with red wine. Sure, the package explicitly says “do not mix with alcohol,” but I want to be dramatic, darn it. I get a 175mL mini-bottle (about half of a soda can) of red wine from a whichever vintner in California was willing to offer United Airlines wine at 3rd world prices. I take two Advil PM pills, then finish the bottle of wine.

    Now, I had to be at the Allentown airport at 5:15am, so as one could imagine, I was pretty tired to begin with but rather uncomfortable because of the whole “being on an airplane” thing. I started noticing the fact that I had drunk wine, then shortly thereafter, went from lazy-feeling because of the wine to full-out, “boy, I’m starting to feel more sleepy than I was before.” This turned into, “wow, I really don’t feel like moving, but I’m not sleepy. Ooh, look how interesting the wall in front of me is.”

    So, for about an hour (I think – it was about half of the movie “Marie Antoinette”) I sat there, dazed staring at the wall in front of me on the airplane as other passengers did their business, getting things from their stowed luggage, heading to the facilities, taking little strolls down the aisle. It’s like the chemicals had slowed me down to the point of not being able to process the outside world my choices had made it so life was passing me by. Oh no, I was inadvertently recreating a scene from Garden State!

    Extra bonus points for providing which Scrubs episode ending on a similar note to my ending.

    **½

    Inadvertently Recreating a Scene from Garden State receives two-and-a-half stars for, well, I’m not sure. I won’t be repeating the experience on the way back (maybe with significantly more Advil PM’s, though I doubt it), so I guess that counts for everything.

    A refresher for those who haven’t seen the movie or for whom it’s been awhile…

  • The Concept of Speed Stacks


    I can’t wait ’til ESPN starts covering this when they’re up against the Final Four.

    Now I’ve seen everything. In this day and age, it’s hard to find a hobby that doesn’t have a world championship. There’s world championship yo-yo, rubix cube, truck pulling, beatboxing, air guitar, and even bartending. I wouldn’t even bet against entering a golden age of world t-shirt-wearing competitions after this guy made it totally famous. So was I surprised a few weeks ago when I saw the above clip of the little girl breaking the world-cup-stacking record? A little bit. Only that there was such a thing as cup-stacking to begin with. I do however think it’s hi-larious how serious the comments that go along with it, from the cup-stacking peanut gallery, are.

    As surprised as I was that there was such a thing as world cup-stacking competitions, I was completely baffled today when I passed by what I assume was Nickelodeon, and caught the last fifteen seconds of a commercial for SPEED STACKS!, the fast-paced game of placing cups into pyramids and then collapsing them!!! Excitement for the whole family!!

    Now if all of you cup-stacking enthusiasts are reading this, I’m not trying to disparage your hobby of choice; after all, I spent a good five hours of my life writing a review of a show about a Dinosaur Island Wildlife Preserve. Here’s my complaint… how is anyone supposed to take this seriously? First the company makes the cups bright neon colors, then they make a commercial only slightly less outrageous than the old “Crossfire” ad. I can’t say that I haven’t seen lamer products being sold on Nick though; after all, they were the sole reason why shoes with lights in the heels were so popular….. and there’s also Gak.

    But do adults do this cup-stacking thing? Because it really seems like everywhere I’ve seen it, it’s entirely for kids, which doesn’t bode well for thoughts of taking it seriously whatsoever…. well that and the fact that they’re spending their hours putting cups in a pyramid and collapsing them to beat the clock.

    The kit you can buy online comes with everything you could need: cups, a mat with just the right grip, a how-to DVD, and a mesh carrying case for whenever you want to lug your neon cups around town and show them off. Again, are we in 1991?

    I do have to say this though: in an age where hyperkinetic video games and cartoons give children the need to have instant gratification and hyperactive behavior, does cup stacking “stack up” against the alternatives? Maybe if they spelled it “Speed Stax” with an X. I really don’t know why they didn’t, with a commercial as crazy as that one.

    **

    The concept of Speed Stacks gets a generous two stars for doing its part to bring kids into the “exciting” world of cup stacking, and for taking a risk at banking on a trend that really has yet to gain any sort of steam. Minus three stars for the lame neon colors; the fact that cup stacking probably gets really boring after you realize you’re just doing the same thing over and over again, and that you’re not good at it; and for the fact that something advertised as being extreme isn’t spelled with an “X” when it obviously should be.

  • The Concept of Eleni’s Oscar Cookies


    You can’t even tell which direction Cookie Forest Whittaker is looking in, but man is he still compelling as a pastry.

    A few weeks ago, I happened upon this article on EW, briefly discussing the merits of cookies designed with illustrations of the best actor and best actress nominees for this year’s Academy Awards. I found it a little peculiar, but didn’t really think too much about it, until the next day when I walked past the cupcake and cookies store on the main floor of the building I work at. In the window I happened to see the images of the actors, and remembered seeing them on the EW website. I went in to check out the cookies (they’ve done the same sugar screening thing on the top of the cupcake icing too, which i think is creepier), and found that you could buy them in a sixteen pack box set for a mere 56 dollars. For those of you who aren’t hip to the mathematics, that’s 3.50 a cookie. You can check out images of the packs here
    Now I don’t know about you all, but unless it’s giant, or some combination of lobster, truffles, filet mignon, and gold, i’m not paying $3.50 for a single cookie. Especially one that’s about the same size and type as the Girlscout shortbread cookies (“trefoils” for those of you pagans out there). But then again, I’ve never eaten cookies that taste like Will Smith.

    I get that there are people out there who make a lot more money than I do (especially in NYC), and can afford to purchase extravagant items like this for their Oscar party. I would even argue collectibility, except for the fact that the cookies would totally deteriorate in a not-so-long amount of time. Here’s what I don’t get: At what point does somebody have so much money that his/her sense of worth gets skewed so that they don’t have an issue with buying 16 small cookies for 56 dollars? What makes this whole thing all the more preposterous is that on the Saturday before the awards, they were being sold at half price. Of course, the people there were talking up the “You can buy both sets” deal, but that just goes to show how much the price was jacked up to begin with. And are people really THAT into the Academy Awards? Do people have parties for a five-hour-long, and not particularly entertaining show that lasts until 1 in the a.m? On a Sunday? Is there some prestige earned by purchasing these cookies for your elaborate party? Maybe, but I think that if you went and bought some cheap but vastly more delicious cookies and gift wrapped them yourself, that you’d probably have more. “Ah”, you say. “But they wouldn’t have Peter O’Toole’s mouthwatering face on them”. And to this I say, “I think I’ve just proven my point”.

    *

    I’ll give them one star for the work that went into creating images of people to put on their cookies, and the fact that anything cookie-related can’t be all bad. Hey, if they were free, I’d totally eat them. But they wouldn’t last long… especially 56 dollars worth of time. That and I don’t find it particularly appetizing to eat a cookie with Helen Mirren on it. Now if they were Razzie awards cookies, filled with raspberry jam…. that might be different.