Johnny Sokko And His Flying Robot

One of the biggest surprise gifts I recieved this past Christmas was a 2 DVD-R set containing the complete run of Johnny Sokko And His Flying Robot: a 1967 Japanese T.V. series that was imported (and substantially re-tooled) for U.S. syndication two years later.

Similar to the previously-discussed Ultraman T.V. series (which was shown back to back with this show on WXON Channel 20 in Detroit during my youth), Johnny Sokko was all about hilariously fake-looking giant monsters attacking Tokyo on a daily basis and getting their rubbery asses kicked in short order by a 100-foot tall Egyptian-looking robot equipped with eye lasers, a flamethrower for a mouth, and rocket-launching fingers. Said robot can also fly at Mach 17 and is controlled by the series' namesake: a pudgy 12-year old kid with a radio-control wristwatch.

Adding an element of secret-agent cool to the proceedings is the "secret war" that represents the story arc of the entire series. You see, these unending monster attacks weren't just random beasts sludging ashore from the depths of the Pacific out of sheer boredom, but instead these were deliberate attacks by the evil Emperor Guillotine from the planet Gargoyle, whose planned takeover of the Earth by way of "Giant Robot" was short-circuited by Johnny Sokko being the first voice heard by the automaton following its accidental activation by an (apparently very low-yield) nuclear explosion at a Gargoyle-run construction facility.

Since Johnny is now the sole controller of the robot, he is quickly persuaded by his new best buddy (and suave secret agent) Jerry Mano to join U.N.I.C.O.R.N., a kind of worldwide police force charged with the security of the Earth against all foes, most notably Guillotine's hired muscle, The Gargoyle Gang (the footsoldiers of whom all resemble Japanese Nazis in Ray-Bans, particularly their initial boss, Spider).

I suppose being a kid and seeing these 26 episodes scattered over a month or so of afternoon T.V. viewing failed to telegraph just how incredibly stupid most of the plots for this series really were, but watching all 26 in a 3-4 day period really drove the point home. Your average Johnny Sokko episode (you can view synopses of all the shows here) pretty much goes like this:

1. A monster attacks something somewhere.

2. Johnny and Jerry are sent to investigate, alone.

3. In a matter of minutes, Johnny and Jerry are captured and summarily threatened a lot by the Gargoyles and their current leader (any one of a mixed bag of cool / extremely annoying characters). Of course, the two are never killed outright (which would be the most immediate way to take Giant Robot out of the equation once for all), but constantly placed in a room with a time bomb ticking away in the corner. The enemies, of course, all chuckle evilly and walk off to another room in order to await the big ka-boom.

4. Johnny and Jerry escape, of course, and the day's monster is unleashed upon Tokyo.

5. Johnny calls in Giant Robot and the final battle is waged (and generally won in very short order).

One key factor to this show being as, well, laughable as it is most of the time has to be due to the near identical nature of the plots from episode to episode, as described above. While I realize a certain amount of fallibility in both organizations is necessary for there to be any kind of tension in the battle between good and evil, the incredible, absolute incompetence of both organizations is just staggering to behold. Funnier still, in light of their apparent complete inabilty to keep a secret or guard any given location with any number of soliders, both sides also display a convenient omniscence in being able to infiltrate the deepest reaches of their enemies' organization at the drop of a hat. If, say, U.N.I.C.O.R.N. hatches a top secret plan to move a new, indestructible metal from Point A to Point B, you can guarantee at least one agent will reveal himself as a Gargoyle member and steal said formula. Bet the house on it. You'll never lose.

Despite these often hare-brained plots, a few of the later episodes in the series managed to reach some startling (and occasionally very creepy) creative heights for a kid-aimed T.V. show, which is rather disappointing since you must wade through so much dreck to get there. The same was true of the characters employed by Guillotine to command his foot soldiers. Spider was dealt with early in the series (in a rather bloodless, yet graphic fashion), leaving the command of the Gargoyle forces to a host of replacements. Yet, for every interesting leader such as the silver-skulled Doctor Botanus, the truly ghoulish Space Mummy or the Gargoyle-controlled robot Torozon (perhaps the only truly worthy opponent faced by Giant Robot during the whole damn series), you have such incredibly inane creations such as Fangor (imagine a cross between William Hung and The Phantom Of The Opera), the unbelievably irritating green gigglemuppet Dr. Engali, or the monster Double-Head (the most hilariously fake monster of them all: Giant Robot very nearly knocks the headpiece off of the costume a few times during their climactic battle).

All that said, it was a hoot to watch this series again through older eyes. I don't know if I could ever watch all of these again in sequence (some were that bad), but there are definitely a handful of standouts that should stand up well to repeat viewings. Here's hoping my friend Dave (who gave me this collection) can come up with the whole run of Ultraman on DVD for this Christmas ...

Christmas In March!

March 7, 2006 ... which is also the same day as Morph The Cat: the first new Donald Fagen solo album since 1993.

Wheee!!!!

Out Of The Past

Writing this particular entry was kind of like sucking out old, stale venom from a reopened wound, but this is something I needed to get out in order to clear my head of old ghosts and goblins from another life. In other words, I can't imagine that reading any of this will be anywhere near as therapeutic or enriching for y'all as it was for me to post it ... think of this as I Am A Bug Goes LiveJournal and you'll get an idea as to what to expect. Otherwise, I'd skip ahead ...

By the time I'd met Sarah in an old online hangout we both frequented in the spring of 1999, I hadn't dated anyone at all in nearly three years. The last actual relationship of any kind I'd been in before that last one-off date in the fall of 1996 was the third in a series of ill-advised 1-2 week flings I'd had the year before (1995 was apparently a great time to be working in a mall record store as far as pulling chicks was concerned). Before then, I had been in a couple of lengthier relationships, but there has always been only one Ex in my life.

This past Monday, I had the day off and decided to do some running around in Mentor (mostly dumping off some old cruft at Half Price Books). Since I was going to be in the area, I decided to use up my Christmas gift cards at Borders and Kohl's, and it was at the latter location that I unexpectedly found myself nearly face-to-face with The Ex for the first time in more than seven years.

There really isn't a lot to say about the moment beyond the above paragraph; no words were exchanged, no eye contact was made, and there were no dramatic gestures or even a grand swelling of strings in the background. I had been standing in line with an armful of clothes, fumbling around for my gift card in the inside breast pocket of my coat. I looked up briefly to see out which register was open, looked back down, and then did a shocked double-take, murmuring to myself "you've got to be fucking kidding me."

I wasn't fucking kidding me ... it was The Ex, working at one of the open registers.

The last I'd heard (and this was a few years ago now), The Ex had been working at a bank in downtown Cleveland. Based on that, I'd figured the chances of us ever running into each other again as nearly negligible (and that was correct ... I'd just forgotten about that pesky "nearly" part). As I told Sarah later on, I'm pretty sure The Ex knew I was there the whole time as I had wandered throughout the store over the previous twenty minutes, absently looking around at what all was on sale aside from clothes. While I was standing halfway between two registers, dumbfounded, The Ex's attention was thankfully centered on the customer she was dealing with. I was just starting to wonder exactly how I was going to say "hello" when the cashier at the other open register called me over. Greatly relieved, I purchased my new clothes, my mind kind of fogged up with the wonder of it all.

While it took me a few minutes to get past the complete surprise of seeing The Ex that night, it has not been nearly as easy to put her out of my thoughts a few days later. The reason for this is that I had a long chat with my old friend Ike earlier this evening: the first time we'd talked at length in years, actually. It was while we were reminiscing over acquaintances/members of the old "gang" when I let slip that I'd run into someone I hadn't seen in a long time while when I was at Kohl's. Ike immediately started to laugh in recognition: he knew exactly where I was headed. Small world.

As it turns out, Ike and The Ex (who have known each other since at least high school) still hang out on occasion with some other members of the old gang, and we wound up in a short conversation about her in the midst of our catching up. I started off asking questions about her in a rather catty fashion, but forced myself into more civil territory in deference to Ike's situation: being friends with two people who have fallen out is never a comfortable place to be.

While discussing hanging out and playing Texas Hold 'Em (can someone please explain to me when the hell poker became out new national pastime?) with The Ex and friends, Ike crossed over into mentioning her current boyfriend in unremittingly hostile terms. Listening to Ike describe a near-fight that broke out over a recent poker game, I felt my face harden a bit, my good humor replaced by a sudden, unexpected flash of old, rotten anger. Surprised at myself for this reaction, it took me a few hours of thinking things over to figure out what that was all about, and out of that reflection came this post.

Full disclosure: I knew The Ex was interested in me long before I ever got the nerve to move things beyond the neighborhood of "just friends." I hadn't really said much of anything to her beyond pleasantries until she appeared at a small party I had thrown at my parents house in the spring of 1991. I had seen her around at Newberry's for months beforehand (she apparently had been hired while I was living in Columbus or working in Willoughby for most of that year) and she also was in my English class at Lakeland the fall quarter I returned to school in an ill-fated effort to get myself off the shop floor and into the office at the factory job I had been working for three months. For the first six months I knew her, The Ex was a kind of mysterious and shy presence: I wasn't attracted to her, but I sensed she was interested in me ... a feeling that was confirmed a few months later when I learned of her feelings from a mutual friend of ours. Amusingly enough, I was completely disinterested at the time, as I was very interested in that mutual friend instead, but alas that interest was not reciprocated (and she was quite frankly way out of my league anyway). Funny how what goes around comes around, eh?

Being that I was in vain, unspoken pursuit of that mutual friend, I found myself hanging out with The Ex's quite a bit over the summer. The lot of us would usually head into the warehouse district in The Flats to what was then called Metropolis on Sunday nights to dance, drink, smoke, and attempt to conduct conversations for hours on end, all the while being pounded mercilessly by relentless Belgian techno. At some point, somewhere during that summer, I had started to regard The Ex differently than I had before and it wasn't until we were on the way home from Metropolis at 3 A.M. on a Sunday that September that I got up the nerve to take her hand in mine while we both lounged tipsily in the backseat of Ike's car. A couple of nights later, nervous as hell, I started to clumsily make my moves. I was a complete novice at this kind of thing and flying by the seat of my pants, but my fears that I had waited too long and missed my opportunity were unfounded: in a few days, I found myself in my first full blown relationship.

When we started "going out," The Ex was living in an apartment complex a couple blocks from my house: she had gone through a huge row with her parents and for the time being was rooming with Lisa, a cousin of her best friend. One might think was a dream come true scenario for me, but in fact this arrangement was the complete opposite of that: Lisa had no concept of time, a rather over-ripe intellect, and a mouth that had no shut-off valve. Visiting The Ex at the apartment usually entailed waiting until nearly 4 A.M. to get some quality time alone with her as this was when Lisa finally started to wind down and head to bed after bombarding us with World War II trivia or whatever else came to her mind for five solid, soul-smashing hours.

I was initially overjoyed a few weeks later when The Ex announced she was moving back in with her parents as that finally meant I wouldn't have to endure Lisa The Human Encyclopedia for hours on end every night ... though in a cruel twist of irony, that also meant my time with The Ex would be severely curtailed, as her parents had her under lock and key as if she were a ninth grade delinquent rather than a college student. Once she moved back, The Ex had to be dropped off at home by 11 P.M. every night. No exceptions. No more going out dancing, no more breathless groping at 4 A.M., and any time we would have alone together was either at my house or on the rare occasions her parents were out of town. So much for lucky breaks ...

To get around the maddening new time restraints, we would quietly talk on the phone for hours at night, and it was that enforced distance between us that pushed us even closer together. Falling in love with The Ex was all too easy for me: she was energetic, passionate, extremely talented, and affectionate: almost everything I could have asked for in a significant other. However, she also had a stormy, almost bipolar personality and attendant mood swings that could come along at the drop of a hat. Ours was a stormy, almost soap-opera worthy relationship at times: it seemed like we spent half of the time we weren't imitating rabbits either fighting with each other or going through some kind of dramatic crisis that needed working out. For me, completely new to this kind of thing, this was a healthy relationship: it became perfectly normal for us to get completely fed up and exasperated with each other on one day and then spend the next two in bed. Looking back on this now, I'm a little ashamed of myself for putting up with so much grief so gladly in the interests of getting laid: guys really can be malleable, sex-centered apes when given the chance. We can also get lazy ... dangerously so: and if we're too content with the way things are to pay attention to little signs of things going wrong, very bad things can happen.

From September of 1991 until May of 1993, The Ex was The One I was destined to be with forever, the Love Of My Life, the cream in my coffee ... insert cliche here. In a few short weeks after that, she also became The One That Got Away.

It was right around Memorial Day 1993 when The Ex dropped the bomb and our relationship immediately went into an calamitous, five-month long tailspin (the epic length of this breakup was entirely thanks to my stubborn refusal to just let go already). While I never seriously considered, say, throwing myself off the top of Terminal Tower, I spent a most of the second half of 1993 believing that I had lost everything worth living for.

Worse, I had lost my everything to someone else who had simply waltzed into the picture when I wasn't looking and stolen her right out from under my nose. By the time I'd found out what was happening (it was kind of like a live "Dear John" letter in conversation form), it was already too late to do anything about the situation, though I didn't believe that while it was unfolding.

HARD-LEARNED LESSON TIME: Listen up, alright? Let's be really clear about something here: if there is already someone else in the picture, it doesn't matter if anything has happened physically or not when you find out, because your time is already over. Real life is not High Fidelity: there is no successful pleading, bargaining or changing your loved one's mind after someone else has already seized their imagination. If you ever find yourself in this situation, then do yourself a favor by suckin' it up and walking away with what is left of your dignity intact. If you don't, you're only going to wish you had months later, generally after you've made a complete and utter fool of yourself attempting to undo the irreversible.

If you think I sound bitter now, heh heh, you should have seen me thirteen years ago. I think it's fair to say that I was not a very fun person to be around during this time of my life. Reflecting on that year mainly brings up pangs of regret and embarrassment: my wheels had come off and I wasn't myself anymore. The intended "post-breakup-but-can-we-still-be-friends" relationship The Ex tried to institute with me didn't work at all thanks to the borderline-psychotic way I was handling the situation: not only was I floundering in despair, but I was also seething with rage at the way things had turned out. Conversations on the phone degenerated into ugly recriminations or humiliating pleas for one more chance please and I swear it will work again I love you so much how can you do this to me et cetera. In the end, it took a tense, but civil chat with The Ex's father on the phone one afternoon for me to finally get the message to just back off and move on.

The following summer, in a futile exercise, I blundered into a "bounce-back" relationship with someone far too young for me that was pretty much doomed to failure from Day One and should never have lasted six days, let alone six months. That plastic sham of a relationship flew to pieces in nearly identical fashion to my first, and after that disaster came the previously-mentioned wave of brief, purely-physical one-week-stands. These little flings were a nice boost for a sorely-woudned ego at the time, sure, but they were also completely meaningless: by then, everything was on my terms and I had no patience or desire anymore to take things beyond a few rolls in the hay.

After ducking each other for two years (we still worked in the same shopping mall, mind) a couple of tentative letters were sent back and forth between The Ex and I, and we eventually found ourselves on civil speaking terms again by the beginning of 1996 (we even saw a movie together at some point and headed out for an after-work drink at TGIFs). I wish I could say that I didn't try to ask her out again that year, but I felt I had nothing to lose by trying. You can guess the answer I got for yourself.

Time heals all wounds, perhaps, but in this case too much damage had been done for things between us to ever return to anything beyond pleasantries and small talk. While I'd made a couple of halfhearted overtures, we never moved beyond the point of cautious, casual friendliness again, and I lost contact with her completely after Record Den moved out of the mall at the end of 1997. I'd had little or no reason to ever head back in there since, and I believe it was just before Christmas of 1998 when we talked to each other for the last time.

More than anything else, talking with my close friends about The Ex over the years since the breakup finally began to fundamentally alter the way I viewed our relationship, displaying loud and clear just how fraught with problems and flaws it had always been. We all tend to remember the best times and the best attributes about people we've lost contact with unless someone else who was around reminds us of how things really were, and refocusing on everything that was wrong with our relationship is what finally started the healing process for me all those years ago.

It was hearing about her current boyfriend from Ike that finally gave form to a thought I'd been kicking around for some time: The Ex was not really The One That Got Away at all ... I had that line of thinking completely backwards. That surge of anger and/or resentment that I'd felt during that chat wasn't about losing The Ex to yet another meatheaded asshole, it was about losing me for the better part of six years and letting myself seriously think that I'd made the mistake of a lifetime at age 24 when all I'd done was refuse to fucking grow up a bit and carry on.

Ultimately, Ike had to take off and I had to return to my work. We exchanged good-byes and handshakes, with me passing along a message of "hello" to The Ex as an afterthought, but having written all of this down for posterity, a part of me now hopes that message doesn't get through after all. That "hello" was intended as a kind of "hi, I thought that was you, heh" though it could just as easily be taken as a "hey, gimme a call sometime" or "stop by and say hi wilya?" These interpretations can only set up another pointless dead-end, and I have no desire (or reason) to re-establish contact with The Ex, much less re-enter that part of my life any further than I already have while bopping all of this dreck into the ether.

That said, I don't have much to worry about as I'm fairly confident The Ex doesn't want to revisit any of this shit, either. I'm not exactly a difficult person to find (I've only been working at for the same store since the end of 1987, for crying out loud) and having not heard nor seen her since the last freakin' century says it all right there. Also, there is something that The Ex probably knew well before our break-up that took me ages to face up to: we aren't similar people, and I'm not sure that we ever were. While the physical part was great, the endless emotional sturm und drang that she fed on for the sake of her art and the constant fiery battles we waged with each other over friends, futures, careers, whether or not we were going to move to New York City and who knows what else ultimately made the whole thing untenable.

I certainly wish things hadn't gone as spectacularly badly as they did, but I have no regrets hanging over my head anymore. My life would be dramatically different than it is now had things somehow worked themselves out ... and "different" in a way that I most likely wouldn't have been happy with, one way or the other. Looking back now, I wasn't really happy from 1991-1993, either. I'd let myself believe that those years were the absolute pinnacle of happiness and contentment, and I couldn't have been farther from the truth. Despite all of the recent shenanigans with finances gone amok over the last year, I am happy now -- personally and professionally. In fact, life is better than it has ever been, and I'm in love with someone who isn't going to dump me for Marky Fucking Anarchy or slip into a funk if I go see a U2 concert without her or (heaven forbid) decide to go to my parents/friend's house for a visit while she wants to stay at home.

The feelings of irreplaceable loss are long gone: The Ex was a "learning experience," as we guys say when we can think of no other good reason why so much effort was expended on so fruitless an endeavor.

BEST WINTER EVER!!!

Going into this winter, I figured it would be statistically improbable to follow up the Snowiest Winter In NorthEast Ohio History™ with a season just as bad or even worse, but I had no idea the weather was going to swing completely the other way as it has so far.

It seemed initially that we were in for one very long winter as it was already colder than hell and blowing snow all over the place on Thanksgiving Day, and we found ourselves pretty well blitzed by heavy snow storms over the early weeks of December as well. And then, something utterly unexpected happened as we hit the calendar start of winter: the season just stopped, and seemingly on a dime at that.

Now, I am not exactly complaining about all of this, mind you. Outside of a two-week period around Christmas and New Year's Day (as I've said elsewhere, green Christmases are a real spiritual drag), we could stay completely snow-free all winter long and I'd be totally O.K. with that. I like watching snow falling and seeing a fresh blanket of white in the morning as much as the next guy: it's driving though said conditions (especially with other people on the roads) that makes me dread this time of year.

So, perhaps as a karmic treat for enduring the unending hell of 2005, I have been given a Dream Winter (or at least a Dream January ... we won't be in the clear for "no snow" until May) this year. For the last three weeks (save for a two-day false alarm last weekend), there has been no snow, no blasts of steel arctic suffering, and a temperature reading that is seemingly incapable of dropping below thirty degrees. Hell, Sarah (snowbunny incarnate) tells me we're due to hit fifty degrees on Thursday. Muahahahaha.

Tennis, anyone?


NP Robert Plant & The Strange Sensation The Mighty Rearranger

Record Den Top 100 Sellers Of 2005

1. GREEN DAY American Idiot


2. SYSTEM OF A DOWN Mezmerize


3. NINE INCH NAILS With Teeth


4. THE KILLERS Hot Fuss


5. COLDPLAY X & Y


6. 50 CENT Massacre


7. THE WHITE STRIPES Get Behind Me, Satan


8. THE ROLLING STONES A Bigger Bang


9. MUDVAYNE Lost And Found


10. WEEZER Make Believe


11. FOO FIGHTERS In Your Honor


12. AUDIOSLAVE Out Of Exile


13. THE GAME The Documentary


14. GORILLAZ Demon Days


15. INSANE CLOWN POSSE The Calm


16. DISTURBED Ten Thousand Fists


17. KANYE WEST Late Registration


18. PAUL McCARTNEY Chaos And Creation In The Backyard


19. DAVE MATTHEWS BAND Stand Up


20. TWIZTID Man's Myth

21. THE MARS VOLTA Frances The Mute
22. SYSTEM OF A DOWN Hypnotize
23. MADONNA Confessions On A Dance Floor
24. OASIS Don't Believe The Truth
25. MIKE JONES Who Is Mike Jones?
26. JUDAS PRIEST Angel Of Retribution
27. NEIL YOUNG Prairie Wind
28. THE STOOGES The Stooges
29. BECK Guero
30. THE STOOGES Funhouse
31. EMINEM Encore
32. FRANK MARINO/MAHOGANY RUSH Real Live
33. FRANZ FERDINAND You Could Have It So Much Better
34. MICHAEL STANLEY American Road
35. BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN Devils & Dust
36. GWEN STEFANI Love, Angel, Music, Baby
37. BOB MARLEY & THE WAILERS Legend
38. INSANE CLOWN POSSE Forgotten Freshness Vol. 4
39. NICKELBACK All The Right Reasons
40. KORN See You On The Other Side
41. 311 Don't Tread On Me
42. NEIL YOUNG Greatest Hits
43. MICHAEL STANLEY BAND Stagepass
44. SOOPA VILLAINZ Furious
45. MARIAH CAREY The Emancipation Of Mimi
46. QUEENS OF THE STONE AGE Lullabies To Paralyze
47. EMINEM Curtain Call: The Hits
48. BRUCE SPRINGSTEEN Born To Run: 30th Anniversary Edition
49. TWIZTID Mutant
50. DREAM THEATER Octavarium
51. JACK JOHNSON In Between Dreams
52. BRIGHT EYES I'm Wide Awake, It's Morning
53. MY CHEMICAL ROMANCE Three Cheers For Sweet Revenge
54. LED ZEPELIN Early Days & Latter Days
55. PINK FLOYD The Dark Side Of The Moon
56. YOUNG JEEZY Let's Get It: Thug Motivation 101
57. THE RASPBERRIES Greatest
58. AEROSMITH Rockin' The Joint
59. DEATH CAB FOR CUTIE Plans
60. CREAM Royal Albert Hall
61. PAUL WALL The People's Champ
62. STAIND Chapter V
63. GARBAGE Bleed Like Me
64. BRIGHT EYES Digital Ash In A Digital Urn
65. STEVIE WONDER The Definitive Collection
66. BON JOVI Have A Nice Day
67. ROBERT PLANT & THE STRANGE SENSATION Mighty Rearranger
68. GENESIS ...And Then There Were Three
69. CHAMILLIONAIRE The Sound Of Revenge
70. OUR LADY PEACE Healthy In Paranoid Times
71. OFFSPRING Greatest Hits
72. THE DARKNESS One Way Ticket To Hell .. And Back
73. KENNY CHESNEY The Road And The Radio
74. THREE 6 MAFIA Most Known Unknown
75. CROSBY, STILLS & NASH Greatest Hits
76. ZAKK WYLDE: BLACK LABEL SOCIETY Mafia
77. 3 DOORS DOWN Seventeen Days
78. POSTAL SERVICE Give Up
79. GENESIS The Platinum Collection
80. MOTLEY CRUE Red, White & Crue
81. THE CHOIR Choir Practice
82. TOM PETTY & THE HEARTBREAKERS Greatest Hits
83. METALLICA Metallica
84. BLACK EYED PEAS Monkey Business
85. BEN FOLDS Songs For Silverman
86. KELLY CLARKSON Breakaway
87. MARILYN MANSON Lest We Forget: The Best Of Marilyn Manson
88. VELVET REVOLVER Contraband
89. PINK FLOYD Animals
90. MICHAEL STANLEY BAND Heartland
91. GREEN DAY Bullet In A Bible
92. ALICE COOPER Dirty Diamonds
93. KOTTONMOUTH KINGS Kottonmouth Kings
94. FALL OUT BOY From Under The Cork Tree
95. PORCUPINE TREE Deadwing
96. THE BRAVERY The Bravery
97. MOBY Hotel
98. TORI AMOS The Beekeeper
99. RASCAL FLATTS Feels Like Today
100. ARCADE FIRE Funeral

Why Things Are (or: "Where'd Ya Hide The Singles?")

Anyone paying even cursory attention to the news over the last couple of years is probably well familiar with the totally fucked state the modern music industry has found itself in over the last four years. Yeah, downloading and piracy are pretty major bugaboos these days, but the damage is being done on nearly all levels: not just with the weak sales of recent albums. The many iterations of the industry's current woes have been covered exhaustively: music itself sucks, radio stations care more about enedlessly spinning the overexposed hits of 1964-1999 than actually trying anything new (which has turned car commercials and The O.C. into the current way to break new acts), kids care more about video games than music, concert attendance is dive-bombing while ticket prices are skyrocketing, the major labels are collapsing in on themselves while eating each other up, record stores themselves are an anachronism, et cetera.

What I find rather darkly amusing about the above is that you hardly ever see discussed what in my mind are the three root causes for most of this malaise

1. The advent of the Nielsen Soundscan era, which was the beginning of the industry's current idiotic obsession with first-week numbers ... all other priorities rescinded.

2. The major label-funded creation of the three headed monster that is Best Buy, Wal-Mart and Target. After a decade of setting the table, with thousands of independent record stores and dozens of national record store chains long since closed, these three mass-merchants (all of whom would just as soon sell singing fish plaques as Mariah Carey CDs) have become, by some distance, the three biggest retail accounts in music. Even better, none of these chains cater to anything outside of the current Top 40. Worst of all, and the biggest reason for the annihilation of the music retail base, the dominance of the mass merchants was almost entirely due to an incredibly short-sighted effort by the major labels to generate bigger SoundScan numbers by using the loss-leader pricing ability of these chains to crank up first-week numbers as big as possible. Funnily enough, the dependence of the major labels on the mass merchants has become such that they can ill afford to let these accounts stop carrying their product and, in effect, pay these stores for shelf space.

3. The forced killing of the singles market. This catastrophic strategic miscalculation, more than any other factor, is directly responsible for the explosion of P2P downloading at the tail end of the decade, which eventually sent the entire industry into a tailspin.

It's not often that I get to pat myself on the back for clairvoyance, but I recently came across a feature article I'd written in the fall of 1997 (during my tenure as senior writer at Scene) that, nearly a decade later, literally screams a frustrated "I told you so!!" to the very industry I've been working in for half of my life. Some of the names in this article may have changed, but the general thrust of the piece holds up pretty well ...


"Where'd Ya Hide The Singles?"
How New Sales Strategies Are Rendering Hit Singles Obsolete

Following a silent, subtle decline over the past seven years, the commercially released single -- once a dependable market-testing workhorse and the ideal way to break a new artist into public awareness -- appears to be an endangered species. This ominous trend has been most noticeable in the alternative rock genre, but there have also been hundreds of popular songs in the categories of rap, country, adult contemporary and dance music deliberately kept off store shelves as well. Anyone searching for the current hits by the Rolling Stones, Matchbox 20, Oasis, Smash Mouth, or the Wallflowers on cassette or CD single? Save yourself some grief -- they don't exist.

Throughout the rock era, singles were considered to be the "gateway" format for the industry to establish regular music buying patterns for the under-18 demographic, who can rarely afford buy full length releases due to limited average income. Once teenagers had acquired a habit of buying singles, the old thinking went, it was logical that they would "graduate" to buying full-length albums after they had acquired a steady source of income. With that process now short-circuited by the shrinking amount of radio hits available at a cheap price, kids (as well as adults) have become far more wary of splurging fifteen bucks on an unknown album when all they wanted was "that one song" in the first place.

While the single racks at record stores may appear to be full of smash hits, a little detective work reveals that this isn't necessarily so. Incredibly, less than 40% of the current Top 75 tracks being played on the radio have any kind of single available in stores. "Don't Speak," "Men In Black," "How Bizarre" and "Lovefool" (three of the biggest mass appeal radio smashes of the last year) have never even been released. The above percentage plummets to less than 15% when you examine the current Modern Rock Top 40 -- thus, if you're intending to pick up recent hits by Sublime, Foo Fighters, Sugar Ray or the Dave Matthews Band, you'll want to keep a twenty-spot handy for each.

Not surprisingly, record companies have vigorously defended this policy of abstinence, though their reasoning involves the kind of fallacious arguments and fudged-with facts one would expect from a political candidate on the campaign trail. The myriad reasons behind the lack of support for singles vary from bottom-line financial concerns to the preservation of "street-credibility" to the rise of new and upgraded technologies (i.e. video games and computer software) that are supposedly draining away the music buyers market here in the U.S.

The Legacy Of Vanilla Ice & MC Hammer

Perhaps the most oft-cited excuse for the dearth of hit radio songs appearing as singles is that a commercially available cassette or CD single cannibalizes its parent album's sales potential. In fairness to the labels, this argument is admittedly not without merit. The two ground-breaking (and most spectacular) examples of this strategy date back to the two biggest selling albums of 1990 -- MC Hammer's Please Hammer Don't Hurt 'Em and Vanilla Ice's To The Extreme (obviously, 1990 was a year we would all love to forget). Shifting a combined 17 million copies, the chief sales catalysts from these records were either never made available ("U Can't Touch This") or deleted just as popular demand began to spike ("Ice Ice Baby"). This grand experiment paid out huge dividends to the companies who went with the risky strategy -- and with the advent of SoundScan just around the corner in 1991, it was only a matter of time before both of these practices would become commonplace.

Seven years later, the major labels know how to make the once-reviled SoundScan (the independent firm that tabulates the sales figures used in the Billboard charts) system work in their favor. The refurbished-model Billboard album chart moves at a far more rapid pace these days, and perfect timing is of the essence if a label wants to grab that lofty debut at the Number One slot. Of course, it's doubly helpful to withhold the release of a hot advance single and instead force consumers to cough up for the full-length album as quickly as possible. Barbra Streisand's Higher Ground debuted at the top of the Billboard chart last week, moving over 200,000 units in the process. Granted, Streisand's fan base is considerable, yet how many copies were sold thanks to the non-availability of "Tell Him," her duet with Celine Dion (whose own new album featuring the same hit, Let's Talk About Love, debuts on this week's chart)?

This strategy can also work wonders when a single is flash-released for a week or so and then deleted as soon as the album hits the shelves a la "Ice Ice Baby." Hold your noses and check out the sales of Aqua's debut album Aquarium-- the single "Barbie Girl" was available for one week prior to the album's release and then deleted immediately. As a result, Aquarium moved nearly 750,000 units in its first two months of release. The two-week availability of Chumbawumba's "Tubthumping" (the "Rock And Roll Part 2" of the 1990's) has already surpassed Aqua's sales feat in its first two months on the shelves, and will likely be one of this Christmas season's surprise mega-sellers.

Never releasing a single in the first place can also work a potent magic on sales. Matchbox 20's Yourself Or Someone Like You has sold over 1.5 million copies on the strength of "Push," and Fleetwood Mac's blockbuster The Dance was driven in part by the massive radio and video blitz on "Silver Springs," which was serviced to the public only as a vinyl 45 record -- thus making it eligible to chart despite the fact that virtually no one outside of DJ's or hard-core collectors even buys vinyl anymore. With success stories like these, it does become easy to see the industry's point.

Despite these winning examples, there remains a substantial fault in this corporate boardroom logic -- how does one explain such monster albums as Hysteria, Rumours, Thriller, Metallica, Cracked Rear View, Pieces Of You, and Mellon Collie And The Infinite Sadness? All of these albums have had multiple singles released and yet still sold far into the multi-millions. The Hootie, Jewel and Smashing Pumpkins albums in particular are notable in that they were released well into this anti-single decade and all have flagrantly defied the notion that singles aren't a viable option in the late 1990's. More recently, LeAnn Rimes' You Light Up My Life blitzed through over one million copies in a month with not one, but two singles currently available and selling. Stick that in your pipe and smoke it.

In an interesting development, a small company called Under The Cover Records has indulged in pure capitalism and released its own cassette singles of "Fly" and "Walkin' On The Sun" by a couple of "studio acts" respectively dubbed Sweet Rain and Smack. These note-for-note renditions of the radio hits by Sugar Ray and Smash Mouth could be the beginning of something unheard of in the U.S. industry for decades -- the mass-marketing of big hits by faceless musicians for the purposes of commercial exploitation. Even better -- Sweet Rain and Smack would fit almost exactly where Sugar Ray and Smash Mouth would be located in singles displays. Cute. One can infer that "Barbie Girl" by Arrgh! is only weeks away at this point.

Our Prices Are In-sane!!

The other major factor working against singles comes from an entirely different (and ancient) industry strategy gone haywire. While it is possible to debate the wisdom and merits of the "lost album sales" theory, this other problem is a little more difficult to decry, even though it was brought on by the record companies themselves and its widespread use defied (and still defies) financial logic.

Incredibly, hit singles can now actually hurt a company's bottom line. This is thanks in part to the ludicrously high cost of record promotion (a lengthy, separate story in itself) and more directly due to the rampant deep-discounting and the free giveaways of thousands of singles to larger retail chains. It is this practice alone that has done far more damage to the format than any other in that it destroys not only whatever profits the single may have incurred at full price, but also lowers the perceived value of singles in the eyes of paying consumers. As with earlier, it's all a matter of chart manipulation -- this time aimed at the increasingly snail-paced singles chart.

As with albums, explosive first week sales are highly desired for superstar singles. -- partially to maintain a label's chart dominance in the marketplace and often to placate a the same label's expensive superstar acts, some of who have been wondering why they haven't been able to crack the Top 10 anymore in this brave new even-keeled SoundScan world.

In the old days, Billboard's sales charts were tabulated by phone and based on extremely fallible ranked reports from record stores, one-stops (the middlemen who supply the stores in most cases) and rack jobbers (the guys who supply some chains and big department stores). It was frighteningly easy in those days to deliberately enhance a record's standing with good old fashioned bribes and perks, or even threats. When the first SoundScan-determined Billboard chart hit the streets in late May of 1991, most of the old tricks of the trade vanished forever (despite a few devilishly clever attempts to subvert the data in the years since).
Now that fiddling around with sales data is virtually impossible, one must connive other methods with which to enhance an artist / label's standing in the marketplace. The deep-discounting frenzy that gripped the industry over the last three years was pretty much born of this thinking. The logic, again, is simple -- release the new single by, say, Mariah Carey at a price of 99 or even 49 cents, and a debut at (or near) the top of the charts is virtually guaranteed.

While some labels will offer singles to stores at greatly discounted prices to enhance profits, a few others will literally give away thousands of singles (complete with variable pricing stickers) to larger chains as a "goodwill" gesture. Since these singles are sent gratis, the store is guaranteed 100% pure profit on the title whenever it sells. Once, this strategy was used exclusively to break new artists into the mainstream by stimulating impulse sales. This is no longer the case, as many new superstar singles have been slashed to garage sale prices as well. With so many singles priced low, consumers rightly wonder why so many singles by big artists are cheaper than a buck while so many other singles remain at a list price of $3.49 or higher and in a nutshell you have devaluing of the format.

This practice hasn't always worked, however. A bomb is still a bomb, no matter how cheap the price. "To Make You Feel My Love," the premiere single from Billy Joel's Greatest Hits Volume 3 album (and his first single of any kind since early 1994) was recently issued at a pittance to virtually zero retail reaction. That's no sweat off of retailers' backs, though -- the unsold thousands of singles could then be returned for full credit to the record companies. Thus, the cost of a "free" hit single is actually quite high indeed -- the company takes a loss for the sake of chart appearances, and the problem is compounded.

While this sales practice is supposedly falling into decline (PolyGram has reportedly backed away from this practice, and the other majors are expected to fall in line -- at least as superstars are concerned), there are still an awful lot of shockingly good deals standing out on the shelves in a seeming mockery of the full-priced titles around them.

Anarchy In The U.K.

While singles are languishing in the U.S. market, they are flourishing overseas. However, this has created problems as well, especially in England, where an opposite problem exists with the format. The Brits run their railroad quite a bit differently from ours -- while the American heartland is bare of hits, the English moors are running wild with them.

As in America, the British have been resorting to the massive discounting of singles in the interest of enhanced chart stature (the U.K. charts are solely sales driven, which serves to raise the stakes even higher). The availability problem in England is the exact opposite of the American dilemma -- just about everything is made available as a single, and to stimulate sales even further, these singles are usually packaged as two-part EP's brimming over with b-sides and other unreleased treats.

The immediate result of this cornucopia of new product every single week in such a small market is that the U.K. Top 75 singles chart is now so jammed full of new songs that next to nothing sells for more than a few weeks at a time (or less) before being replaced by the next hit. On a recent list, only four tracks out of the Top 75 had made it into a third month of popularity -- it's like the Billboard Top 40 moving at Warp 9. But at least the selection is there, however ungodly bountiful by our industry's standards. The kind of choices the average British singles consumer is faced with have not been seen on these shores in years. With the industry in the U.K. up in arms and looking enviously at the heroically-long runs now common to the American charts, a change may be on the way, and probably not for the better as far as consumers are concerned.

To Be Continued...?

No matter what the reasoning, the partial elimination of the single is a potentially catastrophic solution to problems that admittedly shouldn't exist in the first place. Despite the continuing pressure on the format and the industry to carry on into the next century and introduce new generations to music and music buying, the single cannot succeed when such well-intentioned sabotage continues to run roughshod over its future potential. Consumers and retailers alike are demanding more singles choices, especially with the average price for a new superstar CD now at $17.98.

Inevitably, the single must continue to exist -- without it, the music business may very well continue its current low-growth rate and may even plunge into a new recession that not even a new Michael Jackson album could save ... unless it had a hit single, of course.

Bye Bye, 2005

Welcome to another New Year's Eve: in this case, the rainy, cold, windy ass end of a rather...shall we say, dramatic 2005, and hopefully the start of a far more agreeable 2006.

Granted, a more sedate and calm new year free of financial surprises might portend a less vitriolic and/or miserable blog, I think I'll take that trade, thank you very much.

Aside from yesterday and today's relative business, the last week has been surprisingly calm at work. The day after Christmas turned into our best day-after we've had in the new location, with a sales figure more in line with the run-up to Christmas than the wind-down afterwards. From there, it was almost immediately back to normal business: a rather curious departure from last year's holiday season, where it was the week after Christmas that saved our winter storm-stalled momentum. We also managed to nail that half-million mark for the first time since we left Great Lakes Mall in 1997: a milestone that, if nothing else, tells us that we are doing something right in this Best Buy/Wal-Mart world.

Alright, without further ado, I Am A Bug presents a nice one-stop recap of the highlights and low tides of 2005 ...


January

Our first run-in with the infamous Inspector Scene in November 2004 is finally resolved with some slapdash hammering of wooden slats into the downstairs bathroom wall, immobilizing it and allowing the door to said area to close correctly at last (this repair lasts maybe three months).

Counterbalancing this, our ex-landlord kindly sues us for leaving our previous lease six months before it expired, despite our best efforts to resolve this matter with in advance of the move. Looking back on this from a year later, this kind of started the ball rolling right then and there.


February

January is the month that nothing happens in my business, but February is when all of the big tour/album news starts to fly fast and furious. As a result, there was much news of varying activities from many of my favorite artists this month. U2 announce a Cleveland show waaay early on, but my attendance this time was just not in the cards. The same is true with Nine Inch Nails, who announced a new album and tour as well. Bruce Springsteen came back from Limbo to announce Devils & Dust, which becomes one of my faves of the year. I then just about leap for joy when I read that The Cocteau Twins have reformed to play the Coachella Music Festival. However, a few days later it becomes apparent that no one had asked singer Elizabeth Fraser what she thought of this idea, and the whole thing fell apart before the good news had even started to sink in. Dead Can Dance also reformed for a tour, but there was to be no Cleveland date. Bugger.

On another musical note, I start writing what became a weekly column for 45RPM, a weblog run by my friend and ex-Record Den co-worker Mike Beaumont.


March

Without exaggeration, the snowiest freakin' winter in Northeast Ohio history continues unabated.

Thanks to the kindness of a regular customer at the store, Sarah and I head downtown to see Duran Duran and VHS Or Beta (the only concert we will see this year ... we just didn't know it then).

In an ominous sign of Things To Come, my car develops a rather expensive problem with the cooling system that requires immediate attention.


April

I get pretty damn sick at the beginning of the month: sick like I haven't been in years, really. Hell, I can't even think of the last time I called in sick to work, it was that nasty.

Spring joyously arrives a couple of weeks later and finally ends a terrible, endless winter.

A second car repair job in a month (as well as a couple of rather unpleasantly big heating bills) leaves me temporarily poleaxed financially.


May

I get an unannounced raise at work, which helps a bit to catch up with my car repair woes.

I also get to revisit my childhood one last time as Revenge Of The Sith finally comes out, which at once ends 28 years of being a drooling Star Wars nerd and reveals Darth Vader to be a complete rube with a hardon. Sad.


June

Life is ever-so-briefly Good as the weather is wonderful and I have no worries with money.

I am very pleasantly surprised that not only do I greatly enjoy War Of The Worlds, but that having Tom Cruise (in the midst of his public Cool Meltdown) as the lead character doesn't detract from the experience one iota.

Then, in the shocker of all shockers for the year, Pink Floyd announce that they will re-unite to play the Live 8 concert in London. With Roger Waters. Holyshit.


July

Following nineteen years of very public acrimony, David Gilmour and Roger Waters not only deign to be on the same stage as each other, but they smile and wrap arms around each other's shoulders during the group bow at the end of Pink Floyd's fucking amazing 23-minute reunion set. I am geeked up to an extent unseen since at least the summer of 1995, if not 1994. It's not a pretty sight.

From this high, it's only a few weeks until things head rapidly for rock-bottom. The tailspin that characterizes the second half of 2005 gets going at the end of the month: while trying to get my car to pass an emissions test, it seems like just about everything that can go wrong does goes wrong, and I get a whopping $1400 repair bill accrued in a matter of days, which pretty much atomizes my recently-rebuilt finances and sets me behind on bills and everything else for the next five months. Wheee.


August

Following a run of freakishly bad luck, running around, and very nearly losing my cool with people at all stops along the route, my car passes emissions and is back in my possession ... but oh, the cost ...

My friend Dave Lynch came to town for a Sunday and we headed down to the Rock And Roll Hall Of Fame, watched the remake of Dawn Of The Dead, and he spent the night on our new hide-a-bed with Moe as a new best pal and bedmate.

Sarah also switched jobs at Case: in effect, going from working with people to hanging out and playing matchmaker with a gazillion immune-compromised mice. After eighteen years of dealing with other people on my job, I can't say I blame her.


September

I watch, appalled, as the United States Government goes to Hell in a handbasket in front of the whole world following the near-loss of New Orleans and a wide swath of southern Mississippi following the arrival of Hurricane Katrina (one of, like, five or so to hit the U.S. mainland this year). This is quite possibly the most embarrassing and infuriating moment in a very embarrassing and infuriating last five years. The prospect of three more years left to go under with these jokers in office just fills the heart with dread, doesn't it?

While all that is going on, my lower-left wisdom tooth (the last of these still in my head) begins to ache on a regular basis. Marvy.


October

Fall shows up and promptly screws up all the wonderful weather we've been having since the end of May, but also brings along the drama and edge-of-your-seat action of the League Championship Series followed by another anticlimactic World Series. While the Cleveland Indians went to hell at exactly the wrong time of the season, at least the Everfucking New York Yankees didn't win the title. In fact, they didn't make it past the second round. Bwaahaha.

Just after mid-month, 45RPM (or, to be more direct, Mike's ISP) gets threatened by the RIAA over the posting of a Strokes track and we pull the plug for the time being.

I also develop a nastier seasonal bout of what feels like bronchitis than I've ever had before, and it turns out later to be a mild form of asthma triggered by allergens (i.e., two cats) and crappy weather. Laid low by this attack, I make a partially successful attempt to quit smoking that lasts a whole month and change. Wheee.

Lastly, our Halloween is spiced up considerably by news of Sarah's bank account/debit card being hacked into and overdrawn by nearly $2000. That's a hell of a lot of online poker. Grrrr.


November

Winter arrives very early this year, as snow is on the ground a week before Thanksgiving for crissakes. Oh noooo.

I attend a funeral for my friend (and ex-Record Den co-worker) Jim's mother at midmonth.

My toothache recurs in a big way around the same time, and a big day-long spat of cleaning reactivates my asthmatic tendencies in a big way. Fed up with the wheeze and cough that this entails, I make arrangements to visit a doctor at the Lake County Free Clinic and get some free Albuterol for my troubles. I also set up an appointment with my dentist to have my wisdom tooth repaired, and to my surprise, I am directed to an oral surgeon for the procedure instead.

At the end of the month, said tooth was removed at a cost far greater than I'd expected to spend at the dentists' office. Life (or at least the holiday season) looks rather bleak at this point in time.

In a nice break from the unremitting gloom, Inspector Scene does his thing and finds absolutely nothing at all to bitch about for this year. Wooo!


December

I spend the first week of the month in misery from my tooth removal, which had far more lasting effects of discomfort than any I'd had done previously.

By the time all is finally copacetic once again, I have lapsed back into smoking, largely as a result of additional stress from another unplanned car repair. Luckily, this one goes far more smoothly than the rest, and at considerably less cost, but I am edgy as hell, regardless.

By midmonth, however, following months of worrying, my being able to participate in Christmas finally becomes a reality. Ho ho ho.

Incidentally, you gotta love Northeast Ohio weather sometimes: it snows like a son of a bitch for the entire first half of this month, and then the latter two weeks are full of the kind of weather that wouldn't seem out of place in, oh, April ...


Alright, back to a relaxing evening hanging out with the kitties and possibly tuning into America's Rockin' Eve (or whatever they call it these days) in morbid curiosity later on this evening. In case you haven't heard, they are planning on wheeling out dear old Dick Clark at some point during tonight's festivities. My money is on Dick's return to the public eye being previously-taped in case he should ask Ryan Seacrest for a handful of tapioca pudding and a blankee. At best, it'll be nice to see Clark still up and about again, if usurped as MC by Seacrest, the ultimate gigglemuppet. At worst, this could be one of those all-time cool bits of trainwreck T.V. that happen only once every few years.

Happy new year to all!


NP Eurythmics Ultimate Collection

Yule Wrap-Up

Please pardon the unintentional pun in the title: once again the hour groweth late and sleep beckons ...

All things considered, this was a nice enough Christmas this year, though the dull gray sky, rainy conditions and residual exhaustion from the last eight days (and these stupid extra keys on my brother's keyboard which keep tripping my hands up) made for a small damper on the day spiritually.

It was pretty hard dragging myself out of bed and into the shower this morning, holiday or not. We got to my parents' house just before 11 A.M. since my mom had to work in the afternoon, and thus we had our gift exchange at a relatively early hour for us (mine is the family that tends to do these things hours after most people seem to, on average).

Some highlights of the day's haul: Sarah gave me some gift cards to Borders and Kohls for books and clothes (yay!) which I will be utilizing in short order. I also scored some cool geek stuff from my boss in the form of Japanese editions of a few Pink Floyd CDs that I've been coveting for months. A real nice surprise from my friend Dave was a 2-DVD-R set of the entire run of Johnny Sokko And His Flying Robot. I also recieved some books that have been on my amazon wishlist for a while including The New York Times Guide To Essential Knowledge: A Desk Reference For The Curious Mind (hey, sounds like me!), Ben Fong-Torres' The Hits Just Keep On Coming: The History Of Top 40 Radio, and Wide Angle (a book of National Geographic photography).

Most of my wishlist this year was composed of DVD's, and I turned up a nice handful in the form of Field Of Dreams, The Looney Tunes Golden Collection Vol. 3, the seventh season of The Simpsons, and the two-DVD edition of Monty Python And The Holy Grail.

Lastly, I got another bundle of white socks. Rawk. It's kind of funny now to think that when I was a kid, opening boxes containing socks and clothes on Christmas morning was usually a drag, yet as an adult, these very things make me as happy as getting new Star Wars action figures did twenty-five years ago.

The big Christmas lesson to be learned for next year: I must go to greater lengths to avoid doubling up on things, perhaps even creating separate wishlists for different people. It wasn't a disaster: I was only given a couple of doubled-up DVDs from different people that I'll have to figure out a way to trade in without reciepts (I think I might re-gift one to a couple of friends, come to think of it), and I wound up doubling up on a gift for my mom with my sister since she bought the same item from my mother's amazon wishlist that I did from work. Ooops.

One double gift that did work out, however, falls into the super geek realm as I received the same making of The Dark Side Of The Moon book from my brother as my next-doo neighbor Steve, though in differing editions (one hardcover and one advance review copy of some kind in softcover), which is just ducky with me since I collect this kind of stuff (I do, after all, have all three editions of the Storm Thorgerson Floyd artwork collection Mind Over Matter).

Alright, my next goal is to head to bed and sleep for about, oh, ten hours or so, which is something I haven't been able to do in a couple of weeks now. Happy boxing day.


NP Various Artists The Narada Nutcracker

Merry Christmas!

At last, the day that makes the last few weeks (if not months) worth the slog.

I am so tired right now that when scanning the news headlines a few moments ago, I seriously thought for a surreal moment that the new Pope had just asked the world to be "Pacemakers" instead of "Peacemakers." If nothing else, that made for a seriously cool "HUH??" moment.

Anyway, just taking a moment to wish all who look in here a wonderful Christmas. Despite the utter lack of snow on thr ground, I'm off to a pretty good start, and I get two days off in a row (including the dreaded Day After! yaaaaay!) thanks to an intense -- if rather blurry and indistinct -- week at work. We kicked some serious ass this week on the sales front ever since last weekend, and Friday was the biggest sales day we've had in our current location to date. I've also worked 81.5 hours since last Thursday and am currently feeling like seriously burnt toast, so I'll leave this post at that and get some sleep since we need to be at the 'rents in about 9 hours for the family gift exchange followed by a loooong day of lounging around. I'd have it no other way.

More on this day later on. I crash now.


NP A.D. & The M.T.'s - "The 8 Days Of Hanukah" (an irreverent little gem from a locally-released holiday compilation that is pretty much utter crap otherwise)

This Post Has Nothing Whatsoever To Do With Canada

It feels weird noting that today is the first day of winter when we've had one of the snowiest Decembers in recent memory thus far. Then again, it's either feast or famine that way in this part of the U.S., it seems.

A few topics to cover before I head downstairs to watch a DVD with a bowl of chicken soup and some saltines ...

OK, I think it's official: David Gilmour hates me ... or maybe he thinks I smell.

See, it's not enough that my hero's first freakin' solo tour in 22 years does a nice looooong wide arc around my environs (and plays in venues so small in size that even if I were insane enough to truck off to Chicago to see him play, I would get cornholed on the tickets themselves), it also appears that he is terrified of somehow competing with himself, which is about the only reason that comes to mind for the news I heard at work today.

Hopeless fanboys like me nearly wet ourselves with joy a couple of months ago when Pink Floyd's eternally-delayed DVD release of Pulse was finally slated for release on December 20. Well, that news was too good to be true, we learned a few weeks ago, when the street date was pushed back to January 17, 2006.

Well, I found out earlier today that the January 17 date was also too good to be true, since the fucking thing has now been shoved into distribution Limbo once again: one source tells me that the title has been outright "cancelled," while amazon.com now lists a release date on January 1, 2010 (I'm not sure which is worse). AARRRGH!!

--

I'm nearly finished Christmas shopping ... just need to take care of some work friends and my siblings before I'm finally done. While scoping out some ideas, I bought a set of multi-colored "icicle lights" for the office, though I need to stop at the store sometime to pick up some nails and an extension cord so I can put them up as thumbtacks and reinforced packing tape didn't hold them up very long.

--

The Christmas tree went up on Sunday (along with a few lights in the window), and I'm now wondering if I'm going to bother with this again next year as Moe has been a complete butthead ever since. Almost immediately, he was attempting to climb/eat the tree while hidden underneath it, necessitating the placement of two Scat Mats on top of the tree skirt.

Moe quickly figured out a way to move these mats aside without shocking himself, of course, so I am at a loss as to how to proceed from there. Worse, it looks like he's also attempting to scale the tree from the outside, judging by the flattened bottom branches and a couple of bowed-downwards metal tree limbs. Grrrr.

--

The dry and cold conditions Weather Underground had been calling for last weekend never materialized, as we've been snowed on quite a bit instead. Here's hoping that they also called this weekend's forecast wrong as well: temperatures in the low 40s and rain! On Christmas! UGGGH!

--

Finally, some far happier news: after a slow start, we've been kicking some ass lately at the store. We finally reached the pace of sales we've been worried about all month long on Monday, and started padding our lead with a very good day today. Our increased pace should start getting noticeably more intense tomorrow night, followed by all-out mayhem on Thursday, Friday and Saturday morning.

Alright, time to relax a bit before facing the hordes again tomorrow. 'Night!

Buzzkill

Last week, my inner fanboy was sent into a tizzy with the announcement of a forthcoming new album and a possible U.S. tour from none other than David Gilmour. Squeeeeeeeeeee!!!

A quick break: If you have to ask who David Gilmour is, then get off my blog. Now.

Anyway, the above news was tempered with disappointment: as of today, it looks like I don't need to worry about how I'm going to afford concert tickets after all ...

Pink Floyd's Gilmour plans rare US/Canada tour

By Dean Goodman

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - Pink Floyd fans waiting in vain for the band to reunite for a tour will have to make do with the next best thing: the first solo trek in more than 20 years by singer/guitarist David Gilmour.

A week after he announced plans to tour Europe in March, Gilmour on Monday said he would play 10 shows in five North American cities, beginning on April 4 with a two-night stand at Radio City Music Hall in New York.

The trek will also take him to Toronto (April 9-10, Massey Hall), Chicago (April 12-13, Rosemont Theater), Oakland, Calif. (April 16-17, Paramount Theater), and Los Angeles (April 19, Kodak Theater; April 20, Gibson Amphitheater).

Gilmour, 59, will be touring in support of his upcoming album, On An Island, a follow-up to his second solo release About Face, which came out in 1984, the last time he toured without Pink Floyd.

The new set is due in U.S. stores on March 7 via Columbia Records. The title track boasts guest vocals from David Crosby and Graham Nash. Pink Floyd keyboardist Rick Wright, Roxy Music lead guitarist Phil Manzanera, Robert Wyatt and Jools Holland also appear on the album.

Pink Floyd's reunion with estranged founder Roger Waters to play the Live 8 charity concert in London last July raised hopes that the band would hit the road for the first time since 1994. But Gilmour said in a statement, "I'm rather hoping that with this tour announcement people will believe me when I say, honestly, this is the only band I plan to tour with!"

The European trek, meanwhile, begins on March 10 in the German city of Dortmund -- four days after he turns 60 -- and proceeds through Hamburg, Paris, Frankfurt, Amsterdam, Milan and Rome, before ending on May 29-30 with a sold-out two-night stand at London's Royal Albert Hall.

Reuters/VNU

Bugger. Ah well, thank goodness for the internet: at least I can download the shows a few hours later. Muahahahaha.

The Tide Is Turning

It was a pretty busy day today at the store: the kind of busy that creeps up on you when your attention is elsewhere.

Even though we haven't worked a Christmas season in a mall setting since doing that hellish daily commute to Great Northern Mall at the end of 1997, the kind of unending, staggering volume of people and sales you get in a mall environment is very hard to forget (especially when you've done ten years of these). In our strip mall location, however, we are never continuously beseiged by a store full of shoppers like we were back then, so for us it never feels at this time of year like we are doing the kind of figures we should be doing. That said, when I think back on today and remember all the times I was updating sales and orders or hunting down stock in the back room and constantly being interrupted by the phone, or breaking off to ring up a sale, or answer a question from a customer, I realize that we were, in fact, kicking some butt ... just in a far less overwhelming manner than I am still accustomed to after all these years away from the mall-shopping throngs.

In short, with nearly every customer leaving the store after buying something (often a handful of somethings), there is now a glimmer of hope that we might make the month of December after all. Until today, we were running far enough behind the pace of December 2004 that it was beginning to look like we might not be able to catch up. Twenty-four hours later, having solidly beaten the comparable Saturday last year, we're still not completely back on pace, but our lag has been cut down considerably.

Brightening spirits a little more is that due to the way the calendar falls this year, we are going to get a longer run-up to the holiday than last year, and I'd bet we are going to get absolutely slammed the last three full days of sales (starting on the 21st). Also, we lost a few of the biggest potential sales days last season to crippling snow storms (what ended up saving our month last year was the week after Christmas), and meeting the figures of those rotten days should be a walk in the park as long as the weather (currently cold and very dry) holds up.

On that note, according to the fine folks at Weather Underground, we're starting to look rather iffy for a white Christmas ...

Whoop-Dee-Doo And Dickory Dock

It's been raining more than snowing the last 24 hours, and the combination of all the re-frozen, half-melted snow and the roiling gray sky reminds me more of yucky mid-January than mid-December. Despite the blah conditions, though, it is with some trepidation that I have observed this evening that things are looking the tiniest bit up lately.

If there has been one overriding theme in my personal posts to this blog over the last six months, it seems to be that "planning is pointless": it seems that every time I have announced plans or forecasts for work/money/the car/et cetera, things have spiralled out of control quickly afterwards. Thus, I feel slightly foolish and maybe even a bit ballsy tonight since I am writing about feeling well and being in a pretty good mood, all things considered.

Now, don't get me wrong: life is far from a bowl of cherries here, but it really does feel somehow like the worst of 2005 is finally past as even the bad news seems tempered with a ray or two of sunshine. Firstly, Sarah's bank account woes remain unresolved as I type this, though she has managed to get another account going and is in the process of getting all of this crap behind her. I'm still winding my way through finally catching up with my debts, and am really fucking tired of running in place financially as a result, yet the light is now truly visible at the end of the tunnel in that department at last. Lastly, we seem to be in for a rather damp squib of a December at work as we have fallen nearly 20% off-pace from last December's figures as of today, though starting tomorrow anything goes as our sales should finally start to break out.

About the only thing that has me a bit pissy right now is 100% my own fault: I've relapsed into smoking over the last week or two. I'll of course blame this on a combination of my latest car troubles, my ongoing 2005 fiscal crisis, and the lingering discomfort of my wisdom tooth extraction, but it really boils down to me being a weak little dweeb when things were bleak. A week later, I have a car that works fine, an extraction site nearly fully healed over, I can eat whatever I want in a normal fashion, I am getting close to not being behind on my finances ... and I have to quit cigarattes all over again. Fuckin' duhhh ...

All that aside, my own mood has also been lifted immeasurably the past few days by the realization that I will be able to do Christmas shopping this year after all. I've been pretty upset about this over the last few weeks, particularly as things seemed to be accelerating downhill towards the end of November. But I found to my surprise last weekend that I would actually be able to pull off a limited Christmas shopping spree, and I was knocked off about half of my shopping list in one-fell swoop late last night (all hail amazon.com). The next step in me getting as absurdly Christmassy as I always get will be stringing up some lights and dragging out the tree this weekend (followed by keeping Moe out of the damn thing for the two weeks or so it takes before I get fed up with his mischief and take it down for another year, heh heh).


NP Various Artists Merry Mixmas: Christmas Classics Remixed

December 8, 1980

I was 11 years old on December 8, 1980. I don't really have much of any memory of John Lennon's death as it happened. I heard about it at school, certainly, but I simply wasn't really into music at the time beyond what happened to be on the radio at home or in the car.

I do remember that one of my best friends at the time was a huge Beatles fan, and he played his 45s of "Starting Over" and "Woman" a hell of a lot in the months after that day (then again, we also wore out a copy of the Stars On 45 single a year later, so make of that what you will). I also clearly remember reading a Time magazine cover story about it at my Grandmother's house a few weeks later while we were visiting for Christmas. I probably felt like it was a real shame that one of the Beatles was dead, but didn't give it much thought beyond that.

Needless to say, it took years for the enormity of that day to sink in. It probably wasn't until a bunch of us from work went to go see Imagine: John Lennon when it came out in November of 1988 that the real impact of that day was made clear. The movie, like its subject, was alternately joyous, frustrating, funny, flawed and amazingly touching: a beautiful tribute to John's life within and outside of the Fab Four.

This tribute comes at a price, however: the scenes at the end of Imagine that deal with the events of December 8 and the emotional aftermath in New York City remain almost impossible to watch without feeling overwhelmed with sadness or rage.


What an incredibly sad and senseless loss.

RIP.

The Attempted Rimjob (or: More Fun At Conrad's Good Year)

Hey, kids! Ready for some more "SUDDEN CAR REPAIR!!! OH NOES!!!" stories?

Well, tough shit. Neither was I.

Early yesterday afternoon, I walked briskly to my car, jumped into the driver's seat, started the engine and drove about fifty feet or so before I realized something has gone rather terribly wrong with my passenger-side front tire. Upon investigation in the parking lot, I saw to my surprise that I had spent the last half-minute of driving on my tire rim: the rubber itself was collapsed around said rim and flopping about uselessly. I quickly reversed back into my parking slot and then headed inside to call for a tow.

To answer the questions before they leave your lips (as they have with everyone else's), there was no option of trying to put on the spare at this time. First off, our parking lot was largely encased in a sheet of ice and I felt no great desire to see how the manufacturer-supplied jack mechanism would hold up on that surface. Even if I had felt daring enough to attempt this stunt, the spare tire, jack and tire iron are out of my reach for the time being as the trunk lock on this car has been busted since about 2002, and perhaps earlier.

Secondly, I currently have no AAA coverage. Sometime later that night, I thought of that option and pulled out an outdated membership card from my wallet. I then asked Sarah if we had let our membership slip. She replied that she had renewed her membership, but I had opted to let mine lapse, and saying at the time "Bah, I really can't see a need for it at this time."

Yes indeed, good call, Brainiac ...

Anyway, calling around to towing companies yesterday was a fruitless endeavor: either the tow trucks couldn't get to me on time, or they couldn't reach me when they did arrive in my area (the phone lines here have been annoyingly prone to not working very well when calls that we actually need come through) and subsequently buzzed off to another call somewhere else. Being that Tuesday is a bit of a pressure-cooker day for getting orders done and product tagged and shelved, I was in a time crunch and couldn't wait around until dark for a tow truck, so I had give up the chase quickly and finagle a ride to work a couple hours late from my neighbor (and occasional co-worker) Steve.

With a veritable snowstorm dumping down on the area (thanks for the assist, Mother Nature!) I was up early this next morning to start calling around towing companies again as it is impossible to schedule these things ahead of time. At 11:30, the wrecker arrived and it was a rather suspenseful ride to Conrad's on unplowed roads in a flatbed wrecker with a car chained to the top. I'll take this time to say hats off to the guys who drive those trucks in these kind of shitty conditions: the driver was smoking and chatting relaxedly while I was tensely strapped in my seat, watching the road ahead and hoping this guy wouldn't roll us over or send us skidding into a ditch.

Following this white-knuckle trek through the thickest snowstorm we've had so far this winter, the car and I were left safe and sound at Conrad's Good Year. If you've been keeping up with events in this blog, then you'll recall that Conrad's is the same place that I dropped a fucking shit ton of money on car repairs back at the end of July: the end result of this sent my finances (and the rest of this year) into a tailspin that I am only now starting to see the end of at last.

I should make it clear that going to Conrad's was not a choice I was happy to make for a repair destination: I haven't been entirely sure how much I trusted these guys after seemingly everything that could have went wrong went wrong the last time I was here. However, I couldn't afford a tow to Cal's Marathon in Mentor (my longtime trusted car repair business) and even if that weren't an issue, Cal is nearly impossible to schedule repairs with on short notice.

So, the ideal plan for today was to get the car to Conrad's as early as possible, get a new tire popped on and get the hell out in time for work at 2. That plan went out the window pretty quickly as the manager informed me that it would be a couple of hours before my car could even be looked at, let alone repaired. This wasn't a horrible setback: I'd been formulating a backup plan in case of this happening. Everything I needed to get the important work for today (a couple of orders I needed to place with suppliers in New York and California) was at home in the office, so all I needed to do was get a taxi back to the condo and get to work. I called the taxi dispatcher and was told a ride would be on the scene in about twenty minutes. Rawkin'.

While waiting for the taxi to arrive, of course, my car must have shot to the front of the repair queue. The manager mentioned to me that the car was being looked at as we spoke, and I hurriedly called back the dispatcher to cancel the ride as it looked like I wouldn't be hanging around that long after all. Well, that changed pretty quickly too, as it turned out: I was then told a few minutes later that my car had been inspected, but couldn't be worked on for another couple of hours.

While that alone was enough to get me a wee bit exasperated as I realized I'd have to call the taxi dispatcher again and then re-arrange a ride home, I started to get angry with the manager as we discussed exactly what these guys had in mind for my car. I was not at all surprised at all to be told that the rims on the blown tire were pretty bent up from being briefly driven on (not to mention dragged onto the back of the wrecker), and I told the manager that it didn't matter anyway as I had no intention of replacing the rims if that were the case: a plain ol' new tire would be just fine.

Apparently, this didn't compute with the manager and he told me with palpable incredulity that I needed a new rim since my tire wouldn't match the other tires (he apparently hadn't noticed that one of my other tires already had no fancy rim) and there had to be a new rim on the tire to test the seal of the rubber and blah blah blah: in effect, he was forcing a brand new rim down my throat and asking $230 for the damn thing before even getting to mounting and balancing the damn thing. Oh Jesus, here we go again ...

I was going to be paying $230 for a goddamned new tire with a snazzy official Beretta rim when all I needed and wanted was a plain old black steel donut instead. Luckily, a mechanic nearby was one of the guys who had worked on my steering system over the summer and remembered all the hair-pulling and wild tossing about of money from back then and I'll be damned if he didn't steer the manager quickly away from his $230 hustle and down to a simple $75 replacement wheel instead, which is pretty much what I'd had in mind in the first place. It would probably be a few hours or maybe a day before a replacement tire was in the shop, but I was too relieved to care at that point.

Feeling a lot better since it appeared that this business was going to be a minor cash inconvenience and not the dreaded financial coup de grace that would cap off my 2005 with a bang, I called the taxi dispatcher again to re-schedule a ride and was told that all the drivers were backed up thanks to the continuing storm and I'd probably be waiting for an hour and change. I said that was fine and then sat down with an irritated sigh in front of the store's T.V. set, which was being manned by the three older women who were also waiting on their car repairs.

The communal choice as I sat down was the FOX network, which was at the time showing a typically hyper-caffeinated episode of Malcolm In The Middle. I wasn't very pleased with this choice, but let me tell you, Malcolm was fuckin' Masterpiece Theater compared to the inhospitably vicious, soul-sucking moral vacuum that was The Maury Povich Show, which came on immediately afterwards. I had no idea ol' Maury was still peddling this shit on the airwaves, and the unrelenting screaming and bleeped-bickering between the, uh, guests on stage was actually starting to make me miss The Jerry Springer Show. Thankfully, the taxi finally pulled up to the front of the store and I finally got the hell out of there.

A couple of hours later, with the necessary stock orders and sales work finished in the comfort of my home office, Sarah arrived home from work and was preparing to give me a lift to Record Den so that I could at least cover the evening shift when, to my surprise, Conrad's called to inform me that the car was done and I could come pick it up at my convenience. Huzzah! Upon arrival at the store, I was told that the tire was fixable after all, and that they had resealed the rubber to the refinished rim and all was good. I paid the amount, grateful to be mobile again, yet also swearing off Conrad's in the back of my mind (and making a note here for anyone who might be considering using them in the future) for any future non-emergency repair jobs. I was a bit wary of being screwed over after dropping so much cash there over the summertime, but being given the hard sell on a fucking expensive new rim and tire when the old one was still fixable (wow, imagine that!) the whole time pushed me far enough to stick these guys on my shit list. Jerks.

Cal's Marathon, I'm coming home.


NP American Top 40: The Top 100 Songs Of 1977

Nothing But The Tooth

I had my last wisdom tooth pulled yesterday morning, right on schedule. For whatever reason, this was the first time I had this done under General Anesthesia (which, in itself, is something I haven't been through since childhood), which was administered via I.V. even before I had a shot of novocaine. Looking back from now, if I'd had any idea how very different this experience would be compared to previous extractions, I might have reconsidered on the GA part. In fact, I likely would have: yesterday was pretty fuckin' rough.

Going into this, I felt pretty cocky: yesterday was going to be more of a "last free day off before Christmas" than a sick day. If you've never had a wisdom tooth pulled on novocaine, it's really no big deal at all. In fact, it's really no worse than having a couple of cavities filled. Yes, you'll be sore at times when the pain meds wear off, but you can drive yourself home afterwards and only have to worry about what not to eat for the first day or so and keeping the extraction site clean. Thus, I lined up some bottled water, chicken noodle soup, and a box of saltines to get me through the worst of this, and I had a prescription of hydrocodone that I'd picked up from Walgreen's on Tuesday morning. All systems go and ready to rock, you might say.

Along comes Wednesday morning. It was required that I have someone to drive me home afterwards, so Sarah opted to take the day off and be my medical chauffeur. We got to the offices of Great Lakes Jaw & Implant Surgery just before 8 A.M. and I was brought into an examination room a few minutes later. After a short wait (this guy seems to always be running behind), the place was buzzing with activity as the oral surgeon and two female attendants moved busily around the small room while raising my chair into a weirdly not-quite-uncomfortable position so that my head was tilted dramatically back away from my chest. They couldn't seem to get a vein going inside of my elbow, so I felt a pinprick on the back of my hand and within 30 seconds I was out like a light.

Actually, "out like a light" is kind of a misnomer as I have no memory of even falling asleep, per se. The next thing I recall was waking up suddenly with a very numb left jaw and some distant traumatic half-memory/dream (?) of being under a dentist's drill and signalling "OW THAT HURTS" (I chickened out when given the chance to ask if a drill was used on me during the procedure ... in retrospect, I really don't want to know). Whether that memory was a drug-induced nightmare or not, I was pretty damn out of it and I have hardly any memory at all of writing a check to cover the operation, the trip home, getting in the front door, you name it. I think I was largely doing okay with walking, for what it's worth, though I also remember Sarah giving me a supportive hand at odd times.

The real nightmare, however, began not long after we got back home and I was dazedly surfing the web, checking my e-mail, and replacing the bloody gauze pad in my mouth every 5-15 minutes, waiting for the worst of the bleeding to stop. I popped the first of my prescribed pills and within twenty minutes was starting to feel pretty dangerously queasy. I went to bed quickly and managed to slip into an uncomfortable snooze that lasted until sometime after 3 P.M., when I woke up in a hell of a lot of pain.

Popping another tablet, I attempted to get some soup down and failed. The sensation of the broth was too much to handle at that point, and trying to get down some water didn't feel much better: the left side of my face was a live wire. Not much later, the nausea returned full bore, and it was then that I realized that the pain pills were doing as more harm than good since taking them on an empty stomach was only making me sick. I returned to bed again and fought down the urge to ralph all over the damn place as I slipped back into dreamworld.

A part of my mind knows good and well that, when nauseated, the best thing to do is just head for the nearest commode and yak and get the agony over with. Problem is, I also hate throwing up so much that I will frequently battle this urge with all the willpower I have to keep that from happening. Thus, I spent most of yesterday afternoon and evening lying semi-comatose in bed, moaning in misery, popping the odd pills, trying to get something into my stomach to keep it from freaking out over the pills, and generally trying very hard not to retch (a battle I finally lost around 10 P.M. and the results of which will probably kill my appetite for chicken noodle soup for a long time).

Somewhere around 2 or 3 A.M., I had finally had enough of being awake for a half hour before getting sick to my stomach again and decided to call it a night.

This morning went far better: I woke up around 8:30 and did some tentative puttering around, swished around my mouth with some Aquafina, ate a bowl of Apples & Cinnamon oatmeal and returned to bed around 11. A couple of hours later, I was up out of bed and getting ready for work, the only remnants of yesterday's agony being a dull soreness behind my bottom left molar. The worst is over. This year soon will be as well. Hallelujah.