Feed the Dog, Lock up the Kids, and send Granny to Bed...It's Time to Rock Out! July 2006

A few weeks ago I was browsing ebay, looking for nothing in particular, when a certain auction grabbed my attention. The title was something to the effect of "The Complete Works of the Beatles Songbook." The opening bid - $0.99. So of course I did what any reasonable person would in such a situation, and threw down a bid. I assumed there was some sort of catch/hoax, but for 99 cents, I was willing to take a chance.

When the auction ended a few hours later, I got an email saying I had won, and instructing me to paypal the money. In return, I would receive an email with special link to download my item.

Download? Yeah, it was not a physical book I had just purchased, but instead one enormous .pdf file containing guitar tabs for basically every song the Beatles ever recorded. But for 99 cents I really wasn't too disappointed considering it would take me hours of time online to find and put together such a collection for myself.

My point (and, yes, there is one): I've been working my way through that huge file, and listening to a LOT of Beatles lately. However, I didn't think I'd be meeting everyone's expectations if I just tossed up a "here's what I've been listening to lately" post and just listed a bunch of Beatles song. One of my aims here is to maybe turn someone onto music they would otherwise miss out on, and if you've missed out on the Beatles, then you need more help than I can offer.

So here we go, some songs you might not have heard before (or maybe you have...whatever) that you may enjoy:

1. Tokyo Police Club - Nature of the Experiment
2. Venice is Sinking - Undecided
3. Sufjan Stevens - Chicago (acoustic version)
4. Silver Scooter - Regret Sets In
5. I Love You But I've Chosen Darkness - According to Plan
6. Kate York - All Dressed in You
7. Danielson - Did I Step on Your Trumpet
8. Clogs - 5/4
9. Red Hot Chili Peppers - Wet Sand
10. Anathallo - Hanasakajiijii (One: The Angry Neighbor)
11. Final Fantasy - He Poos Clouds
12. Levy - Matthew
13. Hem - The Present
14. Half-Handed Clouds - You've Been Faithful to Us Clouds
15. Zero 7 - Futures
16. Tapes 'N Tapes - Omaha
17. Thom Yorke - Harrowdown Hill
18. The Blackheart Procession - Not Just Words
19. Camera Obscura - Let's Get Out of This Country
20. The Flaming Lips - The Yeah Yeah Yeah Song
    

And another....

Public Service Announcement from a Galaxy Far, Far Away...

Wilmington Sports News

Wilmington Hammerheads
The Hammerheads is our USL soccer team, and lately they have been tearing through the US Open Cup. For those of you that don't know - and admittedly, I did not until recently - the US Open Cup brings soccer teams from all levels from all over the country together for huge nation-wide tournement to crown a national champ. Wilmington has made it to Round 4, and next up is the New York Red Bulls from the MLS on Aug 2. On top of that, for some reason the game is here instead of NYC, and I will most definitely be in attendance.



Wilmington Sea Dawgs
It was also announced this week that Wilmington is getting new ABA basketball team, dubbed the Sea Dawgs. I for one didn't even know the ABA was still a viable organization, but it gives me something else to do around here, so I'll be checking that out when it tips off this fall.


UNCW
...does not have a football team. This isn't exactly "news," but I thought this would be an appropriate time and place for a mini-rant. This absolutely blows my mind. UNCW is a decent-sized university, and the 'hawks field fairly competitive D-I baseball and basketball teams each year. And yet they are utterly defficient in the gridiron department. Why would a school do this? And more importantly, why would anyone go to a school without a football team? Don't these kids know what they're missing? Apparently not. Yeah you're near the beach, but unlike, say Miami, around here beach-going whether is gone by mid-October at the latest. And what do normal people do on the weekends in October? Go to football games, stupid. Sure you'd probably be playing some fantastically-crappy teams, but, hell I'd show up. Come on, UNCW, get with it.

Girl reading on the beach, because there are no football games to attend in the fall

Bar-BQ

Best of luck to everyone taking the bar exam this week....you poor, poor bastards.

This Actually Came up in BarBri....

North Carolina, like many states, has its share of antiquated laws that probably seemed appropriate at the time, but now just come off as silly. "No elephants on Main St.," "No gray socks on Sundays," etc. There are books out there full of them.

Well, good ol' NC had a real gem in the books: No living with a member of the opposite sex unless you are married to that person. I stress "had" because thanks to a judge from New Bern (who also happens to be a good friend of mine's father), that law has been declared unconstitutional. Not that it was ever really enforeced anyway, but still, it did make it onto cnn.com.

Credit to Pete for bringing this to my attention.

Almost Like A Real City...

Wilmington has a Craigslist page now! We're moving up in the world.

The Ipod Shuffle (?)

It's been about a week since I've posted anything up here (I've been working on a doomsday scenario piece concerning the recent escalating violence in the Middle East, but that one isn't ready to go yet), so for now I'm going with the old cliche of what my iPod plays when I set it on random. Only instead of doing the "here are the first five or ten songs that came on" I've decided to track the statistical trends that developed over the course of an entire day. Or something like that. My last exposure to stat was sophomore year in college.

Anyway, as I've noted on here before, my work requires quite a bit of driving. Yesterday alone I had small amounts of business to take care of in five different cities, illustrated below on this cool old-timey map I found online:

During all of the day's driving, I had the iPod on shuffle, and observed some rather peculiar trends that seemingly defy all principles of probability*. Perhaps this is the essence of "randomness?" Some of the more interesting points:

Led Zeppelin - I own only one Zeppelin album in its entirety, Led Zeppelin IV. Of it's 9 tracks, 4 made it to the lineup

Of Montreal - Another one-album band for me, 3 tracks from The Sunlandic Twins appeared.

Counting Crows - 4 songs from across 4 different albums. That's about what I would expect.

Pearl Jam - Only one song played (the version of "Alive" from the Live in NYC bonus disc that came when you preordered Pearl Jam), out of a pool of 233 drawn from 17 different albums.

U2 - Again, just a single track - a b-side from Joshua Tree - from the seven albums worth of material I possess

The Beatles - 6 albums produced just one song, "Polythene Pam." This is a wonderful song that works perfectly in the greater context of Abbey Road, but comes to a jarring hault as a single when not immediately followed up by "She Came in through the Bathroom Window."

Toad the Wet Sprocket - 3 songs from 4 albums. Seems about right.

Mac McCaughan - not a single song from my combined 14 Superchunk and Portastic CDs

R.E.M. - another 0-for. 75 tracks to pick from, and iPod said "Nay"

iTunes Free Singles- of-the-Week - Unfortunately I did not keep an accurate count of these, but by the end of the day I became convinced that they were grossly over-represented. I do download them each week, becasue occassionally they throw a really good song in there. A lot really suck though. I don't know why I even keep them. They only exist to haunt me on long road trips.



* I do vaguely remember from my school days that there are, in fact, certain governing principles in the field of probability. However, I'm currently in no position to deabte the merits or application of said principles. Actually, I was just looking for an excuse to display that map. I've always liked old maps.

Nice Headbutt!

Even if you didn't watch the game yesterday, you need to see this.

It's a Small World (Cup), After All

Today's World Cup final promises to be a good one, but it raises an interesting question for me: Who should I pull for? With our countrymen making a less-than-stellar appearance and my sentimental favorite England eliminated, I'm sort of at a loss as to who to throw my support behind. Basically the way my international allegiances work are simple. After the US, I cheer for countries:

1. I've been to (many European nations)
2. I've met cool people from (Australia, New Zealand, and a few others)
3. With awesome flags (Bhutan, Kiribati)
   
4. I've heard of (Myanmar, Trinidad and Tobago, Latvia, etc)
   

The problem with this game, however, is that I've visited (and had hella-good times in) both Italy and France, so my usual system doesn't apply here (Italy vs. Togo would've been a no-brainer).

As I was pondering this predicament, I started looking back at some of my old photos from my trips to these two countries, hoping to jar some memory that might give an edge to one or the other. Here are a few of my favorites:

ITALY

FRANCE

In the end though, there was no clear winner between the two. In fact the only thing it made me realize is how bad I'd like to get back to Europe. So ultimately it looks like I'll be forced to take the oh-so-lame position of "I'm just hoping for a good game."

And I don't think there's any danger of that not working out.

Anyone Else?

Have you ever just been sitting there when all of the sudden you get the overwhelming urge to hop on a camel and trek through the Moroccan desert?

If so, 1) we really need to hang out, and 2) you need to check out these links:
http://ricksteves.com/plan/destinations/beyond/morocco.htm
http://www.busabout.com/default.asp?action=article&ID=447

Yes, I have been putting in some pretty long hours at work lately. Why do you ask?

Are You Ready for Some Futbol?

It's really a shame that more Americans don't follow soccer. I say that for several reasons, but most importantly because anyone who didn't watch today's two World Cup matches really missed out on world-class competition at its finest. Game one: England and Portugal going head to head for 90 minutes, then an extra 30, and finally a tension-filled shootout that rivaled almost any other sporting event I can remember. Game two: France uses home-continent advantage to its full advantage and takes it right to powerhouse Brazil, who many expected to take home the cup. Both games were exceptional.

But that got me thinking about how good American sports fans have it. The world's most popular sport aside, let's look at a calendar year for the sports fan in the good ol' USA: The year kicks off with a full slate of college bowl games, which is followed a few weeks later by the Super Bowl. All the while college hoops is in full swing, culminating in March Madness. By this time the NBA and NHL are heating up, and baseball opening day is around the corner. Then it's Stanley Cup and NBA Finals time, the College World Series, and the heart of the baseball season. Before you know it, the NFL is starting up again, as is college ball. Next we get the World Series, NBA and college b-ball tip off, and the puck drops for the first time in the NHL. Finally the year the ends, just as it begins, with a full slate of college bowl games. And what did I leave out? Let's see, the Daytona 500, the Masters, the US Open, Indy 500, etc, etc, etc.

Yep, we've got it good.

Everywhere else on the earth, though, is a different story. There you've got soccer, and well, soccer. Sure, there's cricket, NFL Europe, rugby, and all those basketball leagues where the not-ready-for-primetime Americans go to play basketball, but each of these generally pales in comparison to soccer. It's almost like all of the emotion we Americans spread amongst 5 or 6 different sports, the rest of the plant focuses directly on one. It's like a drug, or a religion, or some crazy hybrid of both.

And that's one reason I enjoy the World Cup so much. Sure, when the US gets bounced people will talk a few days about whether we need a new coach or whether Landon Donovon held too much back, but then the buzz dies down and life goes on. But watching the rest of the World Cup (even after we're out) provides great entertainment from both a purely competitive athletics-based perspective, and also an emotional one, as you can see on the faces of the players on the field and the fans in the stands exactly how much these games mean.

So we have a final four of Germany/Italy and France/Portugal, which should produce some outstanding semifinal games. It's really unfortunate, in my opinion, though, that England couldn't come through this afternoon. Not only do a feel like I developed a sort of spiritual connection to the English team when I was studying abroad in London, but also would love to have seen the World War II parallels play out if Beckham and co. had scored the win.

It would've been perfect. France and England on once side. Germany and Italy on the other. Battling for world (sports) supremacy in Germany. Damn you, Portugal! You don't fit anywhere in that equation!