Since my last post relative to this topic was so immensely popular with you, America (3 whole comments, 2 of which were about Gwen Stefani’s baby!), I have elected to give you what you want: my droll poo-pooing of God-awful lite rock songs. Here we go. Again.
“Gonna Make You Sweat (Everybody Dance Now)”: C + C Music Factory
First of all, I can’t believe this is now considered a “lite” rock song. Wow. What’s next, “War Pigs?” “G-Spot Tornado?” Back in the day if some 50ish woman using this so-called “facsimile” machine and considering getting a “something-or-other-ccino” at that new “Starblocks” place all the way across town heard anything remotely sounding like rap music wafting by her desk, she probably would have shit her pants. Even if it was rap like this:
Here is the dome, back with the bass
The jam is live in effect and I don't waste time
On the mike with a dope rhyme
Jump to the rhythm jump jump to the rhythm jump
And I'm here to combine
Beats and lyrics to make your shake your pants
Take a chance, come on and dance
Guys grab a girl, don't wait, make her twirl
It's your world and I'm just a squirrel
Trying to get a nut to move your butt
To the dance floor, so yo…what's up
Hands in the air, come on say yeah,
Everybody over here everybody over there
The crowd is live and I pursue this groove
Party people in the house
Move ... (Let your mind)
Move ... (Put me online)
Man, rap has come a long way, hasn’t it? I mean, I like a good pants-shaking as much as the next party person, but this doesn’t exactly make the hard-scrabble streets of Compton or Watts or Harlem come alive for me. (Similarly, could someone also make the contention that lite rock has come a long way?)
Secondly and further tangentially, when I was in high school I ran around with a very small group of friends. We were nerds. Sort of. We were all in “advanced” classes, but we were a little misanthropic about it all. We listened to Depeche Mode and thought we were disturbed. We went “dancing” at this all-ages club in Chicago, Medusa’s, and wore black jeans. We were bored a lot of the time. Think of Claire from “Six Feet Under” but roughly 85% less cool and 95% less attractive.
One of the guys who hung around with us sometimes, now that I am an adult and can reflect back on this all with a greater degree of perspective, was as gay as Charles Nelson Reilly. He made Jack from “Will & Grace” look like John Fucking Wayne. I’m talking, like, REALLY gay. GAY gay. But, of course, at the time, I had no clue. I just thought he was a little…odd.
If you had asked 17-year-old me what made a gay man a gay man, I would have responded, “A gay man likes men,” or something direct and—frankly—correct like that. However, my problem with respect to REALLY grasping what that statement meant, or more specifically in order for me to truly have presented it as a correct statement, lied within my misunderstanding of the verb “likes.” A gay man likes men, sure. I myself am not gay, and I also like men. Well, some men. However, now I know that a gay man, while liking men, also LIKES men. As in, likes to FUCK men, which for some reason really never occurred to me. The fucking, I mean. I mean, sure. I guess I knew that gay men have sex with other men, but I just never really thought that meant—well—actual sex. I don’t know. I sound retarded, which I pretty much was when I was 17.
Gay Guy in High School was a really good guy, though, albeit a little spoiled. I just hope he’s gay and happy somewhere. (Gay and gay somewhere?) Anyway, uh…he really liked this song.
Come on let's sweat, baby
Let the music take control
Let the rhythm move you
Sweat!
What?
SWEEEEEAAAAATTTTT!
Oh. OK!
“Drops of Jupiter”: Train
My wife and I saw these guys in concert accidentally when they were opening for Ben Folds in support of that “Meet Virginia” song. Now, I didn’t necessarily think that “Meet Virginia” was a terrible song or anything (still don’t, really), so when I discovered that they were the opening band, my interest was piqued.
They all walked out on stage and the lead singer sparked up some incense, as if they were about to lead us all on some spiritual journey. Oooooo…ok, Carlos Castenada. Whatever. Just tell me that Virginia wears high heels while she exercises and let Ben Folds get on up there. (That Virginia…she’s so sassy!)
I also noticed that the singer brought out a trumpet with a fancy stand and set it right next to him. I therefore assumed that Train’s tunes were liberally dosed with trumpet accompaniment: hence the trumpet, the stand, and their relative proximity to the singer. Hmm.
Well, the music pretty much sucked. They played that “Virginia” song, all right. Did you know that she wears high heels while she exercises? Well, she does. I think I was turned off by the incense-lighting at the beginning of the show. Their music could have been the perfect marriage of The Beatles and James Brown (which is pretty much—well—Prince, anyway) and I would have been like, “Meh. Pretentious fucks…”
And the trumpet? He played like 5 notes. On one song. So basically he played trumpet in the high school marching band and wanted to put his rudimentary knowledge of embouchure to use.
Then “Jupiter” came out and the band kind of blew up. And by blew up I mean “really, really sucked camel dong and not due this time to any ego-waving delusional meditation-trainer syndrome by the lead singer”:
Tell me, did you sail across the sun
Did you make it to the Milky Way to see the lights all faded
And that heaven is overrated
Huh?
Tell me, did you fall for a shooting star
One without a permanent scar
And did you miss me while you were looking for yourself out there
HUH?
Now that she's back from that soul vacation
Tracing her way through the constellation, hey, hey
She checks out Mozart while she does tae-bo
Reminds me that there's room to grow, hey, hey
Now that she's back in the atmosphere
I'm afraid that she might think of me as plain ol' Jane
Told a story about a man who is too afraid to fly so he never did land
Tell me did the wind sweep you off your feet
Did you finally get the chance to dance along the light of day
And head back to the Milky Way
And tell me, did Venus blow your mind
Was it everything you wanted to find
And did you miss me while you were looking for yourself out there
Can you imagine no love, pride, deep-fried chicken
Your best friend always sticking up for you even when I know you're wrong
Can you imagine no first dance, freeze dried romance five-hour phone conversation
The best soy latte that you ever had . . . and me
Tell me did the wind sweep you off your feet
Did you finally get the chance to dance along the light of da
And head back toward the Milky Way
Does anyone have any clue what the FUCK is going on here? Maybe if I ate a fistful of diazepam and chased ‘em down with a gallon of Murphy’s Oil Soap this would make some sense. Mozart? Tae-bo? Fried chicken? Soy latte?!? Oh, Jesus.
To me, it sounds like this guy just got done listening to “You Can Call Me Al,” thought, “Hey, this would sound even cooler…in SPACE!” and then wrote this piece of shit.
“I Hope You Dance”: Lee Ann Womack
“Because You Loved Me”: Celine Dion
“Hold On”: Wilson Phillips
“I Need You”: Lee Ann Rimes
“That’s The Way It Is”: Celine Dion
I really don’t have anything intelligent, insightful, or even remotely humorous concerning the reasons for the glorious suckitudinousness of these songs. They just SUCK.
I guess my major problem is that they are simply BORING. Dull. Lame. Comprised of cheap, unimaginative sentiment that been rehashed time and time again. People love this shit, though. Whatever. I guess I don’t know what I’m missing.
“Breathless”: Kenny G
Funny story…
The best job I ever had in my life was when I was 19, after I had dropped out of college (the first try didn’t take). I worked at a Border’s Books & Music. It was awesome. I was surrounded by cool, older people who liked me and for the first time in a long time I didn’t feel like a nerd or a loser or, more dramatically, human social cancer, which is pretty much what I felt like when I was at school. Women paid attention to me, even liked me. People thought I had interesting and insightful things to say about music and other stuff. They laughed at my jokes. I had fun.
One thing about the job sucked, though. You guessed it: the fucking customers.
Annoying fucking customer: “I’m looking for a song. I don’t know what it’s called. ‘Breezes’ or something? You know it. Do you have it?”
Me at 19: “Uh, I really don’t know. ‘Breezes’ you say?”
AFC: “Yeah, ‘Breezes.’ Something like that…”
**annoyed typing sounds** Me: “Uh, nothing coming up. I don’t think we have that.”
AFC: “Oh, sure you do. You know…’BREEZES!’ Guy plays a golden flute!”
**Me, thinking** Golden flute? What the fuck?!? “A golden flute? James Galway? Uh…hmm…”
**Me, continuing to think** What terrible shit music would this woman want that sounds like ‘Breezes’ and is played by some jackass with a golden fucking fl—
Me: “Oh! Do you mean ‘Breathless?’”
AFC: “Yeah, it could be…”
Me: “Kenny G. ‘Breathless.’ It’s in [**GULP**] JAZZ. I’ll show you. (as snarkily as my 19 year old self could muster) And it’s not a golden flute. It’s a soprano saxophone.”
What still impresses me almost 15 years later is that I figured it out. Kenny G. “Breathless.” I love how she kept insisting, “Oh…you know it.” Yeah, lady. A 19 year old kid with long Tom Petty-like hair who smells like a fucking ashtray is a huge Kenny G fan. I’m sure he celebrates the man’s entire catalog.
We found ways to amuse ourselves at the store. After all, spending 40 hours a week surrounded by people with no taste at all is enough to make a person want to pound Wild Turkey and beat up children at the end of the day. My favorite way to kill time was what we called “The Yanni Experiment.” Lemme ‘splain:
The employees were allowed to select the music for in-store playing. We received a lot of free promotional CDs, which we certainly played, but sometimes we just cracked open a particular disc from stock in order to break up the monotony, to check something out to sate our personal curiosity, to advertise something that people would probably dig and then buy, etc. The best was when we decided to put Yanni on the in-house stereo.
Within 30 seconds of hearing the music of that former Greek national swimming champion (seriously), people became zombies, wandering up to the cash register as if looking for brains to consume.
“What…is…this…beautiful…music?” they would intone.
“Yanni!” we always too-emphatically replied, relishing in the fact that they had no idea we were mirthfully mocking them.
“This…is…beautiful…music. May…I…possibly…purchase…this?”
“Sure!” And we’d walk Zombie Yanni Enthusiast over to the New Age section and show them the wide variety of Yanni CDs for sale, from which they would almost always select at least 2, perhaps 3, sometimes (I shit you not) one of every single available title. It never failed. Incredible. What’s in that guy’s music that made white people from the (then) ages of 36 – 54 go cuckoo?
Friday, March 28, 2008
Tuesday, March 18, 2008
The Secretary
For some reason, growing up our living room was this abandoned Museum of Social Decorum. Pristine couches and glass ashtrays and weirdo porcelain statuettes and fancy candy dishes which were never filled with anything much less candy and overgrown plants and it was very, very white and very, very clean and we were never, ever in there. Ever. The dining room and living room were conjoined and while we did use the dining room during big family get-togethers, the dining room was a room completely devoid of people. It kind of scared me.
Anyway, my parents kept this God-awful ugly secretary desk in the living room. It had a yellow painted finish with purple birds or flowers or some shit all over it. Perhaps for the late sixties or early seventies it was the height of fashion (probably not) but as time wore on it became and more hideous. After probably 40 years of ownership by my parents and then by my mother alone after the divorce, it ended up in my house after I was forced to admit my mother to the nursing home where she now resides and is cared for. My wife arranged to have it stripped and refinished by her father, who is after all a furniture refinisher. It now sits in our home, completely transformed by his hand. Quite beautifully, I might add.
When I was a kid, I do remember impressions of the secretary. Within it were contained the notions and detritus of adulthood: checkbooks, stamps, appointment calendars, greeting cards, ribbons, correspondence, labels, bills to be paid, telephone numbers. When something adult and fairly far removed from my world required completion, the secretary was consulted. It smelled weird, artificially sour like printed money yet bucolic and comforting like open land. It was mysterious and a little imposing. What, exactly, was all that stuff FOR?
Well, now I’m an adult with a wee one on the way. The contents of the secretary are all too familiar to me. Perhaps my child will look upon the same configuration of wood and nails and brass pulls and knobs that I did with a similar sense of bafflement. Having been reimagined, stripped of its odd paintjob and finished anew, awaiting a brand new life to be lived around it, I hope that the secretary in its new clothing blesses my home, my wife and my child. And me, too.
Anyway, my parents kept this God-awful ugly secretary desk in the living room. It had a yellow painted finish with purple birds or flowers or some shit all over it. Perhaps for the late sixties or early seventies it was the height of fashion (probably not) but as time wore on it became and more hideous. After probably 40 years of ownership by my parents and then by my mother alone after the divorce, it ended up in my house after I was forced to admit my mother to the nursing home where she now resides and is cared for. My wife arranged to have it stripped and refinished by her father, who is after all a furniture refinisher. It now sits in our home, completely transformed by his hand. Quite beautifully, I might add.
When I was a kid, I do remember impressions of the secretary. Within it were contained the notions and detritus of adulthood: checkbooks, stamps, appointment calendars, greeting cards, ribbons, correspondence, labels, bills to be paid, telephone numbers. When something adult and fairly far removed from my world required completion, the secretary was consulted. It smelled weird, artificially sour like printed money yet bucolic and comforting like open land. It was mysterious and a little imposing. What, exactly, was all that stuff FOR?
Well, now I’m an adult with a wee one on the way. The contents of the secretary are all too familiar to me. Perhaps my child will look upon the same configuration of wood and nails and brass pulls and knobs that I did with a similar sense of bafflement. Having been reimagined, stripped of its odd paintjob and finished anew, awaiting a brand new life to be lived around it, I hope that the secretary in its new clothing blesses my home, my wife and my child. And me, too.
Wednesday, March 12, 2008
Things I’ll Never Get Sick Of, Part 1
We live in a disposable society. As Americans (and perhaps as humans?), we are almost expected to live in diametric opposition to the rest of nature in that we do not strike any sort of balance with our environment. We exhaust resources with nary a worry and move on to the next thing. (Didn’t Agent Smith more eloquently expound on this topic in “The Matrix?” I believe he did. So go smoke a bowl and watch it, Neo.)
The Beatles
I know I said in an earlier post that I can understand why someone wouldn’t like The Beatles. Well, I was wrong. If you don’t like The Beatles, there is something seriously wrong with you. So just let it go and admit their music is completely fucking awesome. ‘Cause it is.
The word “Fuck”
I love cursing. Some would contend that people who curse are just too lazy, insensitive and/or dim to conjure the non-offensive words to make their point known. Again, fuck those people. Cursing is so integral to our nature as human beings. I heard this story on NPR one evening about this man who wrote a book on cursing. (Wouldn’t he be fun to have dinner with? “You’re a filthy cocksucker, or as they say in Arabic: chaim’laal! More wine?”) Based on his exhaustive research, he contends that most likely our first words as humans were in fact curse words. Mute stroke victims, dementia patients and others similarly afflicted show significant brain activity when they are exposed to curse words. Curse words are part of us, part of our history as a species.
And “fuck” is the granddaddy of them all. I’ve said “fuck” probably 10,000,000 times in my life and I’ll say it another 10,000,000 before the end. Well, probably 15,000,000. After all, I’m having a kid.
Fargo
I must have seen this movie 25 times. And I could watch it again right now. It’s pretty much the perfect movie. It’s got everything. The acting is brilliant across the board. William H. Macy AND Frances McDormand?!? Come on… The story is wild: the disclaimer at the beginning about how it was based on a true story? Yeah, that’s bullshit. That’s just the Coens fucking with your head. Even the music is awesome. Carter Burwell features the viola da gamba, an antiquated progenitor of the cello, which has this isolated, lonely sound. “Fargo” is funny, scary, violent, sad, intelligent, silly and deadly serious.
The Paris Codex
You can read about and even see the Paris Codex here (http://digital.library.northwestern.edu/codex/), but in a nutshell (“What am I doing in this bloody great big nutshell?”) the Paris Codex is a surviving paper book of the Postclassic (after 900 AD) Maya. Most of their paper books were burned during the Spanish Inquisition and as a result only four have survived: The Paris, The Dresden, The Groiler and The Madrid. They all contain information about gods, chronology, royalty, warfare, economics and astronomy, among other subjects.
Anyway, I’m a big Maya history buff and every once in a while I’ll go to the website above and just look at the pages. It’s just so COOL and exotic and weird. Of course I can’t read any of it or anything but I simply appreciate the esoteric nature of their writing system and wonder how it came to be. Kind of “discovering” my interest in Mayan culture this late in my life (my wife and I went to Belize and Guatemala in 2005) has made me feel like a kid again.
Dunkin’ Donuts Coffee
You can keep your Starbucks. Seriously. Keep it. It’s gross.
Gimme the good stuff. Yeah, that’s right. What’s that? You…you want me to…to drink you? Oh, you’re SO naughty, DD! If I must…
I think there’s real honest-to-God crack in there. There’s no other way to explain the fact that’s it so FUCKING good.
The above photo is the result of doing a Google image search for "I fucking love dunkin donuts coffee." God bless the Internet. --Ed.
Art Tatum
Art Tatum is the greatest musician you’ve never heard of. He’s unequivocally the greatest jazz pianist who ever lived. (No one, really, can make an argument otherwise. Well, I mean, you could…but you’d be a tremendous douchebag.) He also may be the greatest jazz PERFORMER who ever lived. Furthermore, he may even be the single greatest performer in any genre on any instrument in the history of recorded music. Seriously.
Art Tatum knew 10,000 songs, from Tin Pan Alley to Dvorak. Every time he played any one of them he would completely deconstruct it and put it back together in some other beautiful form. Imagine the Sistine Chapel made out of Legos. If “Someone to Watch Over Me” was that Lego Sistine Chapel, Art Tatum would take it apart and put it back together into a perfect replica of Notre Dame. Then he’d take Notre Dame and make Machu Picchu. Get it? He was incredible.
Art Tatum was rarely recorded during his all-too-brief life and when he was the conditions were always really shitty. But it almost doesn’t matter. It’s so brilliant. He died in the mid 50s due to kidney failure brought on by excessive beer drinking. Seriously.
RIP, Art Tatum.
“I’ll enjoy watching you die…Mr. Anderson.”
American media—music, books, film, etc.—is a function of this philosophy. “Everyone’s going to get sick and tired of everything in a couple months anyway, so why make anything good?” Well, fuck them. Stuff that’s really good I never get tired of. I might be a little sociopathic in the sense that I can listen to, read, or watch the same thing over and over and over again, but I don’t care. Good is good.
The BeatlesI know I said in an earlier post that I can understand why someone wouldn’t like The Beatles. Well, I was wrong. If you don’t like The Beatles, there is something seriously wrong with you. So just let it go and admit their music is completely fucking awesome. ‘Cause it is.
The Music of Johann Sebastian Bach
Some of you who know me reading this have probably heard this story a million times, but it is in NO way creatively embellished or apocryphal. I swear:
When I was 7 years old I was sitting there in music class behind Andrea Halpern who I thought was really pretty just minding my own when our music teacher, Mr. Jim Thompson (no relation to the former governor but who in fact did lop off 3 of his fingers with a band saw about halfway through the school year and we never saw him again), decided to expose us to a little bit of classical music. The first piece he played for us was “Little Fugue in G Minor,” by the illustrious Mr. Bach.
You can listen to a version on piano here:
Some of you who know me reading this have probably heard this story a million times, but it is in NO way creatively embellished or apocryphal. I swear:
When I was 7 years old I was sitting there in music class behind Andrea Halpern who I thought was really pretty just minding my own when our music teacher, Mr. Jim Thompson (no relation to the former governor but who in fact did lop off 3 of his fingers with a band saw about halfway through the school year and we never saw him again), decided to expose us to a little bit of classical music. The first piece he played for us was “Little Fugue in G Minor,” by the illustrious Mr. Bach.
You can listen to a version on piano here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pVadl4ocX0M&feature=related
(Note that it was originally written for organ, I believe, and that there are now myriad versions, including one played by a full orchestra.)
In a word, I was floored. I had never heard anything like that. I was changed that day. I’ll never forget it. I think it was the first time I was MOVED by something.
And so here I am, almost 30 years later, and I’m still listening to this man’s music. I own every major piece (sometimes several times over in different recordings) and have begun to collect and listen to the lesser-known ones.
I like Mozart and I like Beethoven but Bach started it all. The musical language which was and is used to create everything you have heard and will ever hear in your life started with Grandpappy Johann. He represents the pinnacle of Baroque style and in many ways, therefore, the pinnacle of all of Western music.
Individuals I know who like classical music have expressed a dislike for the seeming robotic nature of fugues and other contrapuntal writing and insist that Bach’s music is “unemotional.” I gotta go ahead and call bullshit on that one. If imitative works like fugues and canons aren’t your shit, so be it. Bach has many other more linear works that might grab you:
(Note that it was originally written for organ, I believe, and that there are now myriad versions, including one played by a full orchestra.)
In a word, I was floored. I had never heard anything like that. I was changed that day. I’ll never forget it. I think it was the first time I was MOVED by something.
And so here I am, almost 30 years later, and I’m still listening to this man’s music. I own every major piece (sometimes several times over in different recordings) and have begun to collect and listen to the lesser-known ones.
I like Mozart and I like Beethoven but Bach started it all. The musical language which was and is used to create everything you have heard and will ever hear in your life started with Grandpappy Johann. He represents the pinnacle of Baroque style and in many ways, therefore, the pinnacle of all of Western music.
Individuals I know who like classical music have expressed a dislike for the seeming robotic nature of fugues and other contrapuntal writing and insist that Bach’s music is “unemotional.” I gotta go ahead and call bullshit on that one. If imitative works like fugues and canons aren’t your shit, so be it. Bach has many other more linear works that might grab you:
- Any of the harpsichord concertos, namely the A Major (BWV 1055) and the F Minor (BMV 1056)
- The Italian Concerto and French Overture (written for harpsichord but easily found on piano)
- The Cello Suites are deservedly famous, although solo cello becomes a bit tiresome to listen to after a while, I find
- The Concerto for 2 Violins is pretty amazing
- The Brandenburg Concertos are probably his famous works and are very easy to listen to
- The Five Orchestral Suites are wonderful and you’ve heard his “Air on a G String” from these at every wedding you have ever been to, including mine
Happy listening. 27 years and counting for me and I listen to Bach almost every single day of my life.
The word “Fuck”
I love cursing. Some would contend that people who curse are just too lazy, insensitive and/or dim to conjure the non-offensive words to make their point known. Again, fuck those people. Cursing is so integral to our nature as human beings. I heard this story on NPR one evening about this man who wrote a book on cursing. (Wouldn’t he be fun to have dinner with? “You’re a filthy cocksucker, or as they say in Arabic: chaim’laal! More wine?”) Based on his exhaustive research, he contends that most likely our first words as humans were in fact curse words. Mute stroke victims, dementia patients and others similarly afflicted show significant brain activity when they are exposed to curse words. Curse words are part of us, part of our history as a species.
And “fuck” is the granddaddy of them all. I’ve said “fuck” probably 10,000,000 times in my life and I’ll say it another 10,000,000 before the end. Well, probably 15,000,000. After all, I’m having a kid.
“I’m the executive sales manager!”
Fargo
I must have seen this movie 25 times. And I could watch it again right now. It’s pretty much the perfect movie. It’s got everything. The acting is brilliant across the board. William H. Macy AND Frances McDormand?!? Come on… The story is wild: the disclaimer at the beginning about how it was based on a true story? Yeah, that’s bullshit. That’s just the Coens fucking with your head. Even the music is awesome. Carter Burwell features the viola da gamba, an antiquated progenitor of the cello, which has this isolated, lonely sound. “Fargo” is funny, scary, violent, sad, intelligent, silly and deadly serious.
The Paris Codex
You can read about and even see the Paris Codex here (http://digital.library.northwestern.edu/codex/), but in a nutshell (“What am I doing in this bloody great big nutshell?”) the Paris Codex is a surviving paper book of the Postclassic (after 900 AD) Maya. Most of their paper books were burned during the Spanish Inquisition and as a result only four have survived: The Paris, The Dresden, The Groiler and The Madrid. They all contain information about gods, chronology, royalty, warfare, economics and astronomy, among other subjects.
Anyway, I’m a big Maya history buff and every once in a while I’ll go to the website above and just look at the pages. It’s just so COOL and exotic and weird. Of course I can’t read any of it or anything but I simply appreciate the esoteric nature of their writing system and wonder how it came to be. Kind of “discovering” my interest in Mayan culture this late in my life (my wife and I went to Belize and Guatemala in 2005) has made me feel like a kid again.
Dunkin’ Donuts Coffee
You can keep your Starbucks. Seriously. Keep it. It’s gross.
Gimme the good stuff. Yeah, that’s right. What’s that? You…you want me to…to drink you? Oh, you’re SO naughty, DD! If I must…
I think there’s real honest-to-God crack in there. There’s no other way to explain the fact that’s it so FUCKING good.
The above photo is the result of doing a Google image search for "I fucking love dunkin donuts coffee." God bless the Internet. --Ed.
Art Tatum
Art Tatum is the greatest musician you’ve never heard of. He’s unequivocally the greatest jazz pianist who ever lived. (No one, really, can make an argument otherwise. Well, I mean, you could…but you’d be a tremendous douchebag.) He also may be the greatest jazz PERFORMER who ever lived. Furthermore, he may even be the single greatest performer in any genre on any instrument in the history of recorded music. Seriously.
Art Tatum knew 10,000 songs, from Tin Pan Alley to Dvorak. Every time he played any one of them he would completely deconstruct it and put it back together in some other beautiful form. Imagine the Sistine Chapel made out of Legos. If “Someone to Watch Over Me” was that Lego Sistine Chapel, Art Tatum would take it apart and put it back together into a perfect replica of Notre Dame. Then he’d take Notre Dame and make Machu Picchu. Get it? He was incredible.
Art Tatum was rarely recorded during his all-too-brief life and when he was the conditions were always really shitty. But it almost doesn’t matter. It’s so brilliant. He died in the mid 50s due to kidney failure brought on by excessive beer drinking. Seriously.
RIP, Art Tatum.
Friday, March 7, 2008
I'm a real estate executive!
Not long ago, we hired this new sales guy, M. He’s been in the industry for probably 20 years or so, having worked for at least 3 other sign companies (that I know of.) He apparently promised my boss the moon: all sorts of contacts and relationships forged from his dealings, chomping at the bit, salivating at the prospect of being able to order their stuff from our company.
Well, this guy doesn’t do SHIT.
I’ve never—EVER—seen him at the office past 1:30 in the afternoon. I understand that sales people don’t necessarily work 9 to 5, but come on. He’s always at “meetings.” If by meetings he actually means “a strip club,” well, then fine. He’s also really chatty. I know all about him and his two daughters, one of whom attends Villanova and is on the water polo team, the other whom is still at some private Catholic high school and plays forward for the varsity basketball team. He’s been coaching girls’ basketball forever and he doesn’t care if Girl X hasn’t played but 2 minutes the whole season. Sometimes, you just gotta win. He goes to church every Sunday like a good Irish Catholic. He loves the NCAA tournament and is really “psyched.”
He struts around like a peacock because he’s sold like 6 cheapo signs and some installation time to Donald Trump for his new eponymous monstrosity downtown. He had a meeting with Ivanka and The Donald one day for like 12 minutes about it and thinks he’s spinning yarns by telling me that Ivanka’s “hot” and that Donald has “weird hair.” As if I should be curled up at his feet, enraptured, as he sits in a stuffed leather chair in front of a crackling hearth with a snifter of brandy. Uh, yeah, dude. I know. I’ve seen pictures. Ivanka’s pretty good-looking and Donald’s hair defies reason.
What he would never admit, however, was that he got the Trump account by accident, since the other sales guy was out—you know—WORKING, and so it fell in M’s lap.
His other big account is Sam’s Liquors but, again, not originally his account. My boss had a relationship with their Director of Marketing, who left a company we still continue to do a lot of business with in order to go work for Sam’s.
He’s all about doing mailings which in my opinion don’t work. I don’t know about you, but if I see a piece of mail that I don’t recognize or want, I throw it away. But mailings allow him to sit on his ass, spend money on materials, make everyone else do work for him, and give the impression that he’s motivated and doing something. So I have had to personally send out no less than 2000 envelopes of crap for this guy within the last couple months, which always makes me wonder why exactly I went to college. He wrote a letter to accompany this new flyer and business card which we (I) sent out to about 1000 real estate owners. I swear, it’s so antiquated, so out of touch with the digital age of business and with the tenor of most Americans, if you had told me that this had been uninterred from a time capsule buried in 1952, I wouldn’t have been surprised. It makes me laugh. Then, it makes my cry because this guy probably makes a shit ton more money than I do.
Dear Real Estate Executive…
Hey, I’m a Real Estate Executive! I spend roughly 23 hours on my cell phone a day! I drive a Nissan Altima or better! I never eat! Eating is for the weak! I get up at 4:30 in the morning and go to bed at midnight! Spiders are cool, you know?!? They’re all bad asses, catching prey! If spiders were people, they’d totally be real estate executives! Hey, wait! That’s my phone! Hang on! **mumbling and fake laughter** Oh, snap! I just sold these poor idiots a condo in the South Loop! Little do they know the place looks great but they’ll have to shit in a hole in the parking garage! I never shit! Shitting is for the weak! I’m a Real Estate Executive!
Please take a minute to look at the enclosed promotional brochure…
Oooh, more of that “dot…dot…dot” way to end a sentence! I’m so intrigued! It’s like a movie! Did you see that movie, The Departed?!? That was fuckin’ AWESOME! (It really was. –Ed.)
[Company name] has provided the finest in sign related products and services for four generations!
Oh. Well, that was a little disappointing. What’s a sign related product? What’s a sign related service? Whatever. Four generations?!? Wow, that’s like…a…LONG time. Isn’t it?!? Wow.
Our expertise, attention to details and customer service are second to none.
Second to none? I don’t get it. Is that good or bad?!? Hang on! Phone. **further mumbling, fake laughter, rolling of eyes and gesturing of hands like “wrap it up, already”** Cha-CHING! Another sale! I’m AWESOME!
We try to make the sign ordering process a pleasant experience and try to eliminate many of the hassles that have become commonplace when working with other sign companies.
A pleasant experience? Like 2 chicks at one time?!? ‘Cause let me tell you…THAT is fuckin’ pleasant, even if you have to pay for it.
I don’t like hassles. Hassles are bad. My kids hassle me all the time. The wife’s got the van with the DVD player in the back so they can watch “Cars” for the 3,000th time and they STILL won’t shut up! Fuckin’ kids!
Here is a list of the products and services we provide…
Wow, that’s a LONG list there. You do lots of stuff! I only do one thing: Close. The. Fucking. Deal. ‘Cause that’s all you need. I’m AWESOME!
Check out our new website at www.[blahblahblah].com for more information.
Nah.
Please feel free to contact us to discuss any of your sign related needs. Thank you for your time and consideration. We look forward to working with you.
I’m sure you do! You know why?!? I’m fucking AW—oh! Hang on! Phone! **screeching** No, NO!! NO!!! That is WRONG! FUCK! What are we going to DO?!? Figure it the FUCK out and call me BACK!! **hangs up** Fuck! That fucking BITCH! I clearly ordered ORGANIC coconut tandoori chicken strips but that stupid BITCH of a receptionist I hired ordered me the NON-organic kind! Fuck! She gives great head, though.
Be sure to check out the enclosed price promotion card and mention it when you call to order a banner or an MDO plywood marketing sign!
Wow! That’s in red! And italics! And bold! And it’s larger than everything else! It must be super important! I should probably read it ag—FUCK! PHONE! **calmly** Yes, Gretchen? Uh-huh. I see. OK, nice job. Thank you. **hangs up** Whew! Organic’s on the way!
I’m sorry…what we’re you saying?!?
Well, this guy doesn’t do SHIT.
I’ve never—EVER—seen him at the office past 1:30 in the afternoon. I understand that sales people don’t necessarily work 9 to 5, but come on. He’s always at “meetings.” If by meetings he actually means “a strip club,” well, then fine. He’s also really chatty. I know all about him and his two daughters, one of whom attends Villanova and is on the water polo team, the other whom is still at some private Catholic high school and plays forward for the varsity basketball team. He’s been coaching girls’ basketball forever and he doesn’t care if Girl X hasn’t played but 2 minutes the whole season. Sometimes, you just gotta win. He goes to church every Sunday like a good Irish Catholic. He loves the NCAA tournament and is really “psyched.”
He struts around like a peacock because he’s sold like 6 cheapo signs and some installation time to Donald Trump for his new eponymous monstrosity downtown. He had a meeting with Ivanka and The Donald one day for like 12 minutes about it and thinks he’s spinning yarns by telling me that Ivanka’s “hot” and that Donald has “weird hair.” As if I should be curled up at his feet, enraptured, as he sits in a stuffed leather chair in front of a crackling hearth with a snifter of brandy. Uh, yeah, dude. I know. I’ve seen pictures. Ivanka’s pretty good-looking and Donald’s hair defies reason.
What he would never admit, however, was that he got the Trump account by accident, since the other sales guy was out—you know—WORKING, and so it fell in M’s lap.
His other big account is Sam’s Liquors but, again, not originally his account. My boss had a relationship with their Director of Marketing, who left a company we still continue to do a lot of business with in order to go work for Sam’s.
He’s all about doing mailings which in my opinion don’t work. I don’t know about you, but if I see a piece of mail that I don’t recognize or want, I throw it away. But mailings allow him to sit on his ass, spend money on materials, make everyone else do work for him, and give the impression that he’s motivated and doing something. So I have had to personally send out no less than 2000 envelopes of crap for this guy within the last couple months, which always makes me wonder why exactly I went to college. He wrote a letter to accompany this new flyer and business card which we (I) sent out to about 1000 real estate owners. I swear, it’s so antiquated, so out of touch with the digital age of business and with the tenor of most Americans, if you had told me that this had been uninterred from a time capsule buried in 1952, I wouldn’t have been surprised. It makes me laugh. Then, it makes my cry because this guy probably makes a shit ton more money than I do.
Dear Real Estate Executive…
Hey, I’m a Real Estate Executive! I spend roughly 23 hours on my cell phone a day! I drive a Nissan Altima or better! I never eat! Eating is for the weak! I get up at 4:30 in the morning and go to bed at midnight! Spiders are cool, you know?!? They’re all bad asses, catching prey! If spiders were people, they’d totally be real estate executives! Hey, wait! That’s my phone! Hang on! **mumbling and fake laughter** Oh, snap! I just sold these poor idiots a condo in the South Loop! Little do they know the place looks great but they’ll have to shit in a hole in the parking garage! I never shit! Shitting is for the weak! I’m a Real Estate Executive!
Please take a minute to look at the enclosed promotional brochure…
Oooh, more of that “dot…dot…dot” way to end a sentence! I’m so intrigued! It’s like a movie! Did you see that movie, The Departed?!? That was fuckin’ AWESOME! (It really was. –Ed.)
[Company name] has provided the finest in sign related products and services for four generations!
Oh. Well, that was a little disappointing. What’s a sign related product? What’s a sign related service? Whatever. Four generations?!? Wow, that’s like…a…LONG time. Isn’t it?!? Wow.
Our expertise, attention to details and customer service are second to none.
Second to none? I don’t get it. Is that good or bad?!? Hang on! Phone. **further mumbling, fake laughter, rolling of eyes and gesturing of hands like “wrap it up, already”** Cha-CHING! Another sale! I’m AWESOME!
We try to make the sign ordering process a pleasant experience and try to eliminate many of the hassles that have become commonplace when working with other sign companies.
A pleasant experience? Like 2 chicks at one time?!? ‘Cause let me tell you…THAT is fuckin’ pleasant, even if you have to pay for it.
I don’t like hassles. Hassles are bad. My kids hassle me all the time. The wife’s got the van with the DVD player in the back so they can watch “Cars” for the 3,000th time and they STILL won’t shut up! Fuckin’ kids!
Here is a list of the products and services we provide…
Wow, that’s a LONG list there. You do lots of stuff! I only do one thing: Close. The. Fucking. Deal. ‘Cause that’s all you need. I’m AWESOME!
Check out our new website at www.[blahblahblah].com for more information.
Nah.
Please feel free to contact us to discuss any of your sign related needs. Thank you for your time and consideration. We look forward to working with you.
I’m sure you do! You know why?!? I’m fucking AW—oh! Hang on! Phone! **screeching** No, NO!! NO!!! That is WRONG! FUCK! What are we going to DO?!? Figure it the FUCK out and call me BACK!! **hangs up** Fuck! That fucking BITCH! I clearly ordered ORGANIC coconut tandoori chicken strips but that stupid BITCH of a receptionist I hired ordered me the NON-organic kind! Fuck! She gives great head, though.
Be sure to check out the enclosed price promotion card and mention it when you call to order a banner or an MDO plywood marketing sign!
Wow! That’s in red! And italics! And bold! And it’s larger than everything else! It must be super important! I should probably read it ag—FUCK! PHONE! **calmly** Yes, Gretchen? Uh-huh. I see. OK, nice job. Thank you. **hangs up** Whew! Organic’s on the way!
I’m sorry…what we’re you saying?!?
Wednesday, March 5, 2008
I wear green sweatpants
I wear green sweatpants. In public even. With dress shoes and white socks sometimes, if I’m just walking from the dojo to the car after aikido. And I have this nice leather coat that my wife bought me but it’s a couple years old now and it’s been my only winter coat. So it’s a little beat up. And I lost my goddamned black gloves back before Christmas, so I’ve been wearing an old pair of my wife’s. Which are small on me. Not to mention brown. And I also have a nice hat my mother in law knitted me. But it’s a little feminine*. And gray.
So what’s my point? Well, my point is this: I guess I kind of look like a homeless person walking around sometimes.
Just goes to show you how your priorities change as you get older and once you find out you’re going to be a parent.
Probably a month ago I was in the grocery store shopping on Saturday morning, as is my routine. The CUTEST little girl was there, accompanying her brother and father; she was probably 5 years old. She was so damned cute; I just couldn’t take my eyes off her. Made me think about having a cute little girl of my own and how wonderful it would (will?) be to take her with me on mundane errands on the weekends, even if just for company’s sake. But, of course, I didn’t want to stare at her or anything. So I tried to be coy and catch brief looks.
Problem was…she CAUGHT me. She caught me looking at her and I think she got a little freaked out. Of course, I couldn’t say, “Oh, honey…I’m sorry! It’s just that I might be having a little girl of my own and you’re just so damned cute I want to pick you up and swing you around in my arms and think about what it could be like with her!” So I just moved on in the store and got my shopping done and left.
Driving home, it occurred to me: I’ve come pretty far from the person I was in college. Hell, I used to stare at some chick’s rack and try not to get caught. Now it’s little girls. (That sounded bad. You know what I mean.)
*Funny story about this hat. At D’s bachelor party, one of the strippers saw it in the bedroom with the coats and put it on.
“Is this yours?” she asked me.
“Uh, yeah, it is,” I said.
“Wow. I REALLY like it.”
I believe that Man Rule #17B-01.2 reads as such, verbatim: When a stripper expresses any modicum of attachment or attraction to any article of clothing, bauble, trinket or other tchotchke with a retail value of $19.99 or less it is your responsibility as a man to GIVE IT TO HER IMMEDIATELY and THANK THE LORD THAT SHE’S TALKING TO YOU ABOUT SOMETHING OTHER THAN GETTING PAID FOR HER LAPDANCE. But…
“Oh. Well, I’d let you have it but my mother-in-law made it for me.”
She takes it off immediately. “That’s cool. I wouldn’t want you to get in trouble.”
The stripper liked my hat. That’s funny.
So what’s my point? Well, my point is this: I guess I kind of look like a homeless person walking around sometimes.
Just goes to show you how your priorities change as you get older and once you find out you’re going to be a parent.
Probably a month ago I was in the grocery store shopping on Saturday morning, as is my routine. The CUTEST little girl was there, accompanying her brother and father; she was probably 5 years old. She was so damned cute; I just couldn’t take my eyes off her. Made me think about having a cute little girl of my own and how wonderful it would (will?) be to take her with me on mundane errands on the weekends, even if just for company’s sake. But, of course, I didn’t want to stare at her or anything. So I tried to be coy and catch brief looks.
Problem was…she CAUGHT me. She caught me looking at her and I think she got a little freaked out. Of course, I couldn’t say, “Oh, honey…I’m sorry! It’s just that I might be having a little girl of my own and you’re just so damned cute I want to pick you up and swing you around in my arms and think about what it could be like with her!” So I just moved on in the store and got my shopping done and left.
Driving home, it occurred to me: I’ve come pretty far from the person I was in college. Hell, I used to stare at some chick’s rack and try not to get caught. Now it’s little girls. (That sounded bad. You know what I mean.)
*Funny story about this hat. At D’s bachelor party, one of the strippers saw it in the bedroom with the coats and put it on.
“Is this yours?” she asked me.
“Uh, yeah, it is,” I said.
“Wow. I REALLY like it.”
I believe that Man Rule #17B-01.2 reads as such, verbatim: When a stripper expresses any modicum of attachment or attraction to any article of clothing, bauble, trinket or other tchotchke with a retail value of $19.99 or less it is your responsibility as a man to GIVE IT TO HER IMMEDIATELY and THANK THE LORD THAT SHE’S TALKING TO YOU ABOUT SOMETHING OTHER THAN GETTING PAID FOR HER LAPDANCE. But…
“Oh. Well, I’d let you have it but my mother-in-law made it for me.”
She takes it off immediately. “That’s cool. I wouldn’t want you to get in trouble.”
The stripper liked my hat. That’s funny.
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