Drifting, Falling

Took in an Indians game on Sunday with Sarah, my brother, and my niece. On the plus side, it was a beautiful (if unseasonably mild) summer day with a very welcome cool breeze that kept us cool as we sat in direct sunlight for the entirety of the proceedings.

On the minus side, I forgot my camera (oops), and this was perhaps the most uninspiring game I've seen yet from this team, who managed to come back from an early deficit to tie the Seattle Mariners at 3-3, only to once again have the god damnable bullpen fritter the game away in late innings. The fact that we were starting to join in the heckling of Kerry Wood during the ninth inning should speak volumes as to just how dispiriting this season continues to be on even long-suffering masochists such as I.

Oh, and my updated win-loss attendance record: 16-11 (.593). Hmm, looks like I might want to restrict the number of games I attend this season if I wish to keep a winning percentage...

NP: Foals Antidote

(guardian.co.uk): My Moon-Landing Jam Session

With the 40th anniversary of the first manned moon landing approaching this Monday, there are going to be many interesting reminiscences and re-visitations of this historic occasion all over the airwaves. Perhaps fortunately for you, reader, I can offer no historical or sociological input of my own as I was just about to turn a month old as this event unfolded. I'm sure I was duly impressed. Really.



Anyway, in lieu of my own infantile observations and reflections on this momentous day ("waaaaaahhh bottle waaaah"), I offer you the recollections of a certain Mr. David Gilmour (click post header to access link), who spent the occasion in a BBC studio with the rest of Pink Floyd, providing an one-off improvised soundtrack to the proceedings, the performance of which can be viewed below (goat bless Youtube).

From Bad To Worse: 20 Questions Concerning The Cleveland Indians

A few weeks ago, Sarah and I took in our first ball game of the year, a victory over the St. Louis Cardinals. At the time, I wrote the following:

With this victory, Cleveland took the series and hopefully boosted themselves another step closer to possible contention in the American League Central.

Ha ha ha. Oh, I kill me sometimes.

Immediately following that night's win, the Cleveland Indians stopped screwing around with .500-level ball and went back to outright tanking the year: the team went a miserable 2-14 for the rest of June, returning to levels of horrifying all-around suck not last seen since, er, April. By the time Sarah and I made it to another game on July 4, the 2009 season was for all intents and purposes a lost cause. Sigh.

A bigger development this past weekend: the news came down that Indians General Manager Mark Shapiro had just guaranteed the employment of hugely unpopular head coach Eric Wedge and his staff through the end of the current season. I suppose it is currently feasible that another one of this club's patented second-half breakthroughs is only a matter of time away as this seems to be the way Wedge clubs operate. However, it is also conceivable when looking at past evidence that if the Indians perform well enough from now until the end of September, Wedge will wind up keeping his job into the 2010 season.

Quite frankly, it is exactly this possibility that upsets die-hard fans the most: we've already accepted the early end of this campaign, and we're willing to see the rest of this mess through in order to (once again) evaluate some major league-talent lurking about in AAA ball and try and rebuild for next year. That said, the mere idea of possibly having to go through all of this frustration once again next year with this same coaching staff is intolerable. Enough is enough, Shapiro: I have nothing personal against Eric Wedge, but it's time to move on. Hell, after this year, even he might agree.

Even with the speculation as to status of Wedge's job now laid to rest (for now), dozens of other questions surround this team as we head towards the All-Star Break and, eventually, the season trading deadline at the end of the month. I've listed 20 of the more pressing queries below:

With Shapiro and Wedge and the players all accepting the blame for the woes of this team, is the entire organization flawed from top to bottom?

If that is the case, should Shapiro be fired as well as Wedge at the end of this year?

If that is to be, then how long before this entire organization can be righted and set back on a winning course?

What in the hell is going on during Spring Training and why does it look like this team has drilled relentlessly on everything but actually playing baseball?

What is wrong with our much-vaunted scouting staff, particularly in regards to evaluating pitchers?

Why does this team only seem to "put it all together and hit the afterburners" during the stretch run in August when it's usually too little, too late?

With the season already in the toilet and showing very little hope of a turnaround, why is Grady Sizemore playing at all and not undergoing needed elbow surgery instead?

Will the dominating 2007 iteration of Fausto Carmona ever re-appear, or is the tentative, apparently fragile pitcher that we see on the mound in his stead all we have to look forward to until his contract is up?

While we're on the subject of Carmona, what exactly was/is being done to correct his mental and mechanical issues in Arizona and the minor leagues? Is this a Roy Halladay-style complete rebuild or a kind of double-secret rehab assignment without end?

Just how ungodly awesome is Shin-Soo Choo?

Is the return of Travis Hafner a recurrent mirage?

Who is the real Kerry Wood?

Just how bad is the news with Jake Westbrook's delayed return to regular pitching? Is this going to be one of those rare Tommy John Surgery stories where it doesn't work out in the end?

How long before Carl Pavano is dealt? Kelly Shoppach? Ryan Garko? Jamey Carroll? Ben Francisco?

How far up Eric Wedge's shit list is Jhonny Peralta and will this affect his standing (or employment) in the ballclub?

With the recent additions of Jose Veras, Winston Abreu, Mike Gosling and Chris Perez, I believe we are now on version 3.0 of the 2009 Indians bullpen. When Rafael Betancourt returns at last from the Disabled List, will he pitch again for Cleveland, or is a deal in the works?

Speaking of the bullpen and people named "Perez," is Rafael Perez in need of more time in Columbus before he can be trusted again in a tight game?

With over seventy different lineups used thus far, when will we finally see a stable, standard batting lineup from Wedge?

What will be the respective futures of superstar catcher Victor Martinez and staff ace Cliff Lee after 2010, when both become eligible for free agency (and with the likelihood of the Indians to afford what these two will be worth on the open market, will they even be on the team by the end of this year, for that matter)?

If we are to trade Lee and Martinez now or in the offseason, in what state does that leave this team in for 2010 and beyond (especially if our farm system/scouting operations are as compromised as they appear to be by a systemic tendency to focus on players of a certain personality in lieu of a certain level of ability)?

The next 4 weeks may be very interesting indeed as far as answering the trading/dealing questions is concerned. Beyond that timeframe, there will be a lot of waiting and seeing going on both in the stands and behind the scenes. How this team handles the second half of this season, whether Wedge is able to create another late surge to semi-respectability, what kind of deals Shapiro can engineer in a league currently awash in tight divisional races, all of these factors will play into the decisions that may have to be made by Indians owner Larry Dolan in the offseason. For now, Dolan is staying mum and letting things play out. Who knows, when all of this is over (one way or the other), he might not be so willing to stand pat once again.


P.S. About the only good news to be had in all of this: my new adjusted attendance record is now 16-10 (.615). Ph33r!

Clash Of The Titans

On July 4, two of my favorite guitar players on the planet occupied the same stage at the Royal Albert Hall. Man what I would have given to see this up close and personal.

Ladies and gentlemen, David Gilmour and Jeff Beck playing a ghostly, drifting take on the 19th century hymn "Jerusalem":


Gilmour and Beck then ended the evening with a lighthearted take on the latter's 4-decade old single "Hi Ho Silver Lining":


The internet rules.

Public Enemies

Alright, I'm gonna come right out and say it: despite all of his proven acting qualities, Christian Bale is flat-out boring in a straight-up "hero" role: give me more of Alfred Borden, Patrick Bateman and Trevor Reznik and less of this dull, Kevin Costner-esque stoicism. Were it not for the high-powered charm and pure star presence of Johnny Depp as infamous serial bank robber John Dillinger, Public Enemies would be a complete snooze despite all the squealing tires and chattering Tommy guns.

Public Enemies traces the fall of Dillinger, and his pursuit by Special Agent Melvin Purvis of the FBI. A lot of this will be familiar enough territory to anyone who knows a little about the history and characters of the Great Depression: what little additional insight we are given here is an explanation of how the extremely popular Dillinger suddenly became a real problem for the all-powerful Chicago crime syndicate. There are also some interesting background scenes detailing the changing role of J. Edgar Hoover's FBI, along a few unpleasant interrogation scenes that serve to illustrate the completely ruthless techniques which Hoover's Bureau would become infamous for.
I might have been able to accept such a dull, stony leading man if I could have had some additional back story and interaction with the Texan special agents Purvis employs as the film winds on, but we are told hardly anything about these men and they are given precious little to say. Pity. I realize, as with most superhero movies, that most people are going to see this film for the bad guy, but do we always have to have "good guys" who are simply by-the-book "good guys" and not every bit as charismatic or interesting as the villains?

Speaking of charismatic, Public Enemies always gets right back to being interesting whenever Dillinger is onscreen. It would have been easy for Depp to go all Captain Jack Sparrow with his character since Dillinger is basically the lone wild card in a cast full of straight men, but Depp wisely lets his natural charm do most of the work for him. Portrayed as a kind of dashing, old-school romantic anti-hero (he'll robs banks, but not the customers, for example), Dillinger is mindful of what his adoring public thinks of his exploits, but also unafraid to get his hands bloody when the situation warrants. He also has displays an amazing proclivity for escaping from jail (which is the basis of two of the best scenes in the movie), which incenses the proud Hoover so much that he eventually instructs Purvis to "take the white gloves off" and capture his quarry by any and all means necessary.Since the 1933 setting prohibits lingering shots of garish neon lights gleaming on wet sidewalks, it comes as a bit of a surprise to see Michael Mann's name show up at the beginning of the end credits. Most of Mann's usual stylistic flourishes seem to be muted here, though filming in High Definition video makes for a few strange-looking scenes to eyes so accustomed to standard film. More irritating (though only occasionally employed) is that jittery documentary-styled "you are there" camerawork, the effects of which seem especially pronounced in HD.

For a day-off summer movie matinee, I was entertained enough by Public Enemies, and it certainly looks to be of significantly higher quality than its July 4 competition. That said, the recent benchmark for these period crime movies remains The Untouchables, a movie that so brilliantly sums up the genre as a whole that you can't help but compare and contrast while watching this one. Public Enemies is a movie that tries hard, but ultimately falls into the vast, unremarkable summer wasteland of "been there, done that."

Public Enemies rating: 3/5

Michael Jackson: 1958-2009

Video killed the radio star, hip-hop killed rock, mp3 killed the album, runaway consolidation and niche marketing killed pop music, and now the self-appointed King Of Pop is dead. I guess it all adds up in the end somehow, doesn't it?

For me, this news isn't quite like Kurt Cobain shooting himself with Nirvana still reigning (albeit in wobbly fashion) as the biggest rock act on the planet: the shock and loss just isn't there. The Michael Jackson that I choose to remember fondly tonight vanished over twenty years ago: a troubled ex-child star who'd started to come apart at the seams in the turbulent wake of one of the biggest pop culture achievements of the century. If you want to read a more thorough and in-depth life story or perhaps a litany of his greatest weirdest moments, you're going to have to look elsewhere as I'm here to celebrate Jackson's halcyon days before the looming specter of middle age and the yawning chasm of 24/7 celebrity culture programming turned his life into the world's weirdest reality show.

There will be a lot of talk about financial foolishness, lost childhood and Peter Pan obsessions, but if you really want to get some clearer idea of the real tragedy of Michael Jackson, simply watch "Don't Stop Til You Get Enough," "Rock With You" and "Billie Jean" for a clear look at the vibrant, raw talent he once was. Primitive by today's standards (oooh, lasers!) these clips still offer an instant primer to understanding Jackson's popularity at the time as his voice, stage presence and stunning physical grace were simply unmatched in pop music.

Then along came The Big One: despite essentially being a PG-rated re-shoot of An American Werewolf In London (by way of a George Romero zombie film), the John Landis-directed "Thriller" video continues to hold up under scrutiny 26 years after its debut. Universally hailed at the time as the greatest video ever created, there are definitely arguments that can be made that "Thriller" still holds claim to the title. Even if you disagree on that point, there is no argument that "Thriller" remains a conceptual, cultural and budgetary milestone, and perhaps the most fully-formed realization of the possibilities of the music video format. That said, this short film (and, more to the point, its parent album) also created an impossible standard that Jackson sought continuously to beat for the rest of his life.

The follow-up to a blockbuster solo debut, Thriller was not only the kind of a mega hit you only saw once per decade, it pretty much dominated the entire year of 1983 (with only The Police's Synchronicity putting up any kind of spirited fight for the throne). As a fourteen year old with an insatiable fascination for the music business, Thriller made for a hell of a story to follow as single after single made the Top 10 and the album sold in the kinds of quantities that record companies never dared to dream of. Beyond that angle, I don't think Thriller had a major effect on my tastes as I was pretty well over the moon on New Wave and electropop, with my taste in R&B more along the lines of "Rockit" and "Little Red Corvette" than, say, "P.Y.T." Listening to the album now remains a largely entertaining 45 minutes, with the lyrical subtexts a lot more noticeable thanks to the passage of time: Thriller is the state of Jackson's psyche at the end of 1982: a bit naive ("Human Nature"), intermittently dark and intense ("Wanna Be Startin' Somethin'," "Beat It"), yet possessed of a certain charming innocence that, in its resolute failure to change, started to became increasingly creepy and disconcerting over the albums that followed.

A barely-memorable reunion album and tour with The Jacksons in 1984 was the only peep the world heard from Michael Jackson for nearly three years while the hub-bub from Thriller-mania gradually died down. It was during this crucial down time that throwaway sight gags in comedies like Beverly Hills Cop began to send-up Jackson's style and image, while the first real whispers of "that boy ain't right" began to circulate in the gossip columns. Over time, the aura of invincibility around The Gloved One began to ever-so-slowly dim.

Then came 1987's ravenously-awaited Bad, which managed to become a decent-sized follow up for Jackson as far as sales and popularity were concerned (and I don't think anyone aside from Jackson really expected anything approaching halfway to Thriller's ridiculous level of success), but was also a record that I personally found to be a troubling letdown. Despite some of returning producer Quincy Jones' best work and top-flight musicianship deployed throughout, Bad was the beginning of Jackson ratcheting up his own self-importance to nearly unbearable levels while perfecting the art of writing songs and creating videos that screamed "HEY EVERYBODY! LOOK AT ME! LOOK AT ME! DAMN IT, GO AWAY AND STOP LOOKING AT ME!"

Four years after Thriller, high-budget music videos with dialogue and Hollywood actors were commonplace, and Jackson had his work cut out for him attempting to reset the playing field. In trying to continually up the ante on himself, Jackson's newer clips became self-parodic mini-epics where he tried to have it both ways: you know, the kiddie-friendly entertainer who happens to be a hard-assed, hair-trigger street-fighting man not to be trifled with by anyone (eventually up to and including Marlon Brando for crissakes). It is here that I signed off and moved on, letting what eventually became Wacko Jacko The Morphing Human Freakshow become the preferred pet of the tabloid crowd. Besides, by 1988, I was neck deep in the far more interesting weirdness being released by Prince, Jackson's only true competition that whole decade, if not exactly his successor.

In the end, I'll simply forget that the last 20 years ever happened as far as Jackson's career goes and remember him for that first electric decade of solo work and the timeless 70s soul he cut as a child with The Jackson 5. After that, let's just say that he wasn't my King Of Pop. Dangerous? Hardly. Invincible? No. HIStory? Sadly, yes.

XL

Guh.

What else is there to say, really.

Road Trippin'

During the typically endless Northeast Ohio winter, thinking of a clear, sunny, warm summer afternoon while the frigid wind batters at the screen door is a kind of masochistic exercise, largely because such weather feels so impossibly far away. Even when we are treated to that rare summer-like May, and our hopes rise that maybe we're getting an extra early start to the best part of the year, we usually have to endure a cool, clammy, damp early June in a kind of final cruel tease before we are (temporarily) back in paradise once again.

Yesterday, Summer 2009 finally arrived, a perfectly-timed warm and dry end to a week's worth of humid, inclement unpleasantness. For the first time in far too many years, I could think of no better way to celebrate than to head out on a little exploratory road trip in the new MeMobile. While my plan had initially been for a for a full-on all-afternoon excursion, a cluttered schedule coupled with many of the main roads of Lake County being presently ripped to shreds forced me to instead wait out the evening rush before heading east down Route 2, past Painesville and into the rolling countryside.

The idea of going on these aimless trips again has been in the back of my head ever since I started going to get my E-checks done in Painesville Township, rather than off Lost Nation road in Willoughby. After one visit a couple of years ago, the leisurely drive back home (detailed here) took me back to better times when driving wasn't so much a dry, functional part of the day as one of the highlights of the day itself. A time when you didn't have to be anywhere at any particular time, and you could just pick a direction and, well, go.

Even from when I was a kid, traveling by car to my relatives or on camping excursions to Upper Michigan was something that was almost as much of an adventure as the destination itself (save for that soul-sucking 300 mile stretch of Interstate 80 across northern Pennsylvania, anyway). One of my many obsessions as a youngster was maps and roads, and I was always flipping through Dad's old hardbound atlas he kept from his college years, occasionally furling my brow at places that had changed names (or phonetical spellings) over the previous fifteen years. Dad would also bring home newer maps from business trips domestic and foreign. and I would literally spend hours poring over them, memorizing names, locations, routes, mileages, trying to imagine what these places looked like and generally marveling at the sheer scale of the American transportation system and, ultimately, the world itself. I suppose all of this made my later love affair with astronomy that much more of an obvious next leap forward, but I digress ...

As a teenager, I was delighted to find that my love of driving simply for the sake of driving was shared by the friends I'd fallen in with in high school, and we spent many Friday nights piling into Brian's car and embarking on so-called "Psychedelic Mystery Drives," which was basically 4 of us tooling around the sticks in the dead of night listening to music that had absolutely nothing whatsoever in common with real, actual "psychedelia," but nevertheless sustained a kind of eerie, dreamlike atmosphere that made these trips something I looked forward to every weekend.

Though college inevitably scuttled the regularity of these group night drives, I never lost my zest for just taking off and tooling around whenever the mood struck. To be quite honest, that mood struck pretty frequently in the years just after graduation, as home was not a fun place to be on pretty much any given night. In time, these drives became a convenient way of escaping a bad situation for a few precious hours until things died down (i.e., everyone was asleep). It also helped that gas was cheap, time was a luxury and the conversation was good. Whether it was Brian or Rob or Mike being in town for a weekend or summer or Kris being as bored and restless (and perhaps as anxious to get away from home) as I was, I was rarely at a loss for company when the urge struck to hit the road.

On the rare nights when I was alone, I made the discovery that many who are passionate about music already knew: there is something special about listening to an album end-to-end in a car with nothing else around to divert your attention away from the experience. With the volume up, the landscape unfolding before you, and your own solitude to free your inhibitions, you can sing along, pound the steering wheel in time to the beat, and savor each moment in a fashion that can only be approximated at home with a good pair of studio headphones and the lights down low. I'd say that maybe half of my favorite albums of all time became my favorite albums in exactly this way.

A funny thing: the last time I drove a car with a working cassette tape drive was 1993 (and I don't think that particular unit had worked properly since 1991). When I took over the payments on the Fiero from my brother in 1994, I also stepped into the world of CD car audio, and right around that same time, the night drives stopped.

As fashionable as it might be these days, I'm not going to blame the end of this era on the compact disc (though having a CD player in my car instantly wiped out the need to constantly make new driving mix-tapes to listen to): there were a lot of external factors at work by now that gradually wound this part of my life to a close. First and foremost, my close circle of friends had begun to gradually widen as Rob, Kris and Mike either got married or simply drifted away from the area. Also, I was in a pretty delicate state, still getting over the total meltdown of my first serious relationship the previous fall, and was thus far more motivated to get drunk and numb than zip around the outskirts of Chardon at 2 AM.

My home life had also settled down considerably over the previous two years, thus the constant impetus to get the hell away before another fight broke out had been pretty much erased. I had also met a girl and while this would ultimately prove a rather stupid mistake (and what is referred to as a "bounce-back" fling), things were going pretty well and being with her took up most of the free-time I once had set aside for myself. By the summer of 1994, the only long drive I made with any regularity was down to Brian's apartment in Cuyahoga Falls: an hour-long jaunt that I'd made so many times that it felt more like driving to downtown Cleveland instead of nearly all the way to Akron.

A few years later, the Fiero and I parted ways, and for over a decade afterward, I got by with nothing but a radio in whatever car I was driving. Actually, I didn't really listen to anything at all: I'd basically abandoned FM radio in disgust at the end of 1998, and save for a few weeks after September 11 when I had news radio going 24/7 or listening to late innings of Indians games during my drive home the last couple of years, driving back and forth to work became my "quiet time": the one point in the day where I don't have music going around me. For many years, I didn't mind the near-silence at all, but after I got the Saturn, I started to realize I was missing it.

One of the last things I worried about when deciding whether or not to buy The Saturn was the sound system. All that mattered to me at the time was that it had a working AM radio for baseball games: no consideration was given to music at all. The fact that the Saturn came with a cassette deck as well as a radio was more amusing to me than anything else, since I'd been selling used cassettes for years to customers who had purchased used cars only to discover that they had cassette decks in the dash rather than CD players. After years of smiling in commiseration at their tales, I was now one of them.

With the Saturn now legal and with a shiny new muffler installed to quiet it down, I got the itch to try out the sound system, and thus had a fun few days reacquainting myself with the second shittiest audio platform of the modern era: the prerecorded cassette. God, I didn't really miss these things: portability and convenience aside, they were on the whole a terrible waste of money to anyone who actually enjoyed listening to records multiple times in decent fidelity. I grabbed a half dozen oldie moldie faves from the used bins at work, and discovered over the following week that only two of them actually sound well-balanced, spacious and clear, while the others range between noticeably tinny or have those spots where you hear that awful, warbly, half-eaten submerged gurgle that indicates damage (or repetitive wear) to the tape surface.

While the cassette drive still worked beautifully and the heads sounded like they were in good shape, most of the Saturn's speakers sounded like someone partially fried them playing something loud and bassy. That problem was dealt with by simply flattening the low end of the EQ, but that action resulted in the prerecorded tapes, mixed and mastered in the treble-and-reverb crazed late 1980s, sounding even more unpleasantly shrill than before.
After weeding out the sonic weaklings (sorry, The Church, A-Ha and Julee Cruise, but back to the Record Den shelves you go), I spent some time rummaging around the office closet this afternoon and found a box full of old TDK SA-90s, mostly new wave-themed compilation tapes I'd made over a dozen years ago. I selected a few, filled up a box of old time traveling music, and took my drive, stopping on the way to take some pictures of an old railroad bridge near State Route 84, just east of Painesville.

Today, in effect, was all about getting in touch with an old habit that didn't so much "die hard" as "go dormant for fifteen or so years." It's great to be able to do this again: even after so much time passed and so much has changed, it's still a lot of fun and a great way to unwind and relax in a world that sometimes seems increasingly hostile to both.

Over The Hump

You know those times when you’ve been behind the 8-ball for what feels like forever, perhaps beginning to despair that you might not ever catch up with your suddenly-ballooning finances? Somehow, after a major expenditure, it seems like everything comes due at the same time and what seemed like a pretty great idea a month ago has had you privately second guessing yourself ever since.

Then, along comes that unmistakable day where things finally start to feel right again: the highest hurdle has been cleared, and looking down the path ahead, you begin to realize that everything is actually going to get better from here on out. For me, that day was today.

I'm not going to be out of the woods for a while yet, maybe the end of July, but the Saturn passing E-check today (despite the presence of a hole in the exhaust system that only made itself known over the last five or so days) was a tremendous relief nonetheless. Now that the car is finally legal, I can start lining up and systematically dispatching waiting bills and ratcheting down the stress to a far more manageable level. Life can be pretty dramatic, and I should be familiar with this feeling, but it feels wonderfully new everytime it happens.

Of course, not everything came up completely rosy today: I have now lost my second Western Digital "My Book" external hard drive in the last six months and I am absolutely furious with that once-trusted company. As with everything else in this increasingly disposable world of electronics, the new model crap withers and dies while the older models soldier ever onwards: my oldest WD drive (a pre-My Book era dinosaur) is not only is it still working wonderfully in its current capacity as electronic jukebox for the Record Den, but also taking a fair amount of abuse doing so. How surprising.

Luckily, my friend Dave has most of the data on this drive already saved from the last time I had a drive fail, and that dead HD had ironically been migrated to this one. Assuming Dave can save what needs to be saved from what was so recently known as Drive K, I face a bit of a data-archiving quandary in that I have 3 other "My Book" drives still active and all of them nearly full-to-bursting with data. Obviously, I can no longer trust any of these drives not to fail in the near future and I will need to figure out a non-WD solution as to how I'm going to backup these drives before taking great pleasure in destroying them. For now, they are going to be used as little as possible until I can back everything up safely to DVD-R for a least a short-term solution (a project that has started in earnest as I write this post).

Lessons learned today:

1. Life does not always suck nose. There are indeed times when all is well ... or at least trending that way.

2. Never slack off on backing up your data, people: especially the important stuff you can't live without.

3. Fuck you, Western Digital. Seriously. Go take a long walk off a short pier.

(Flickr): Tribe On The Warpath

What a fantastic match-up last night! Indians maestro Cliff Lee pitched a 3-hit complete game shutout (after carrying a no-hitter clear into the 8th inning) as the Tribe defeated the Cards 3-0 behind home runs from Mark DeRosa and Kelly Shoppach. With this victory, Cleveland took the series and hopefully boosted themselves another step closer to possible contention in the American League Central.

My adjusted attendance record: 15-10 (.600). Maybe I should apply for mascot.

Taking Me Out To The Ballgame

An early birthday gift for me as we're headed downtown to see my first Cleveland Indians game of the 2009 season later tonight. Even though it's technically a stupid dumb interleague game, this contest should provide a very interesting pitching match-up as Indians staff ace Cliff Lee takes on St. Louis Cardinals ace Chris Carpenter before a national audience via ESPN.

I'll have more to say on this frustrating, but not entirely hopeless season in a couple of weeks. Until then, in a fit of boredom and sleeplessness (not taking any pills on the weekends is the plan for now in an attempt to draw out their effectiveness a bit), I computed my attendance win/loss record (minus one late summer game I attended in 1990 and have absolutely zero memory of) and the final results are presented below:

1995: 1 - 0
1997: 0 - 1
2006: 1 - 0
2007: 5 - 2
2008: 7 - 7

This gives me an overall record of 14-10 and a winning percentage of .583. Granted, that's not exactly a dominating number right there, but it ain't too shabby in baseball terms (especially in this year's AL Central).

I therefore conclude that tonight's game is in good hands. :)

SEMI CONSISTENT SLEEP ACHIEVED!

ALL HAIL TRAZODONE!!!!

Dreamstate Achieved

A heartening sign amidst all of the gloom: I dreamt for a short time this morning. I won't even attempt to get into the substance or symbolism of that dream state, but it was certainly a state of deep, restful sleep that lasted for at least a few precious minutes. Unfortunately, I spend the rest of the morning in my now-usual state of hypersensitive Stage 1. There was no sleep possible when Sarah was awake and getting ready for work while passing cars and the clanging of the garbage trucks doing their automated thing in the parking lot jarred me awake continuously. Still, I was asleep for a bit, and that was a start.

While I'm nearly certain that stress is playing a large part in this, it also feels like my body clock is completely out of whack: once the sun comes up, say 5 AM or so, sleep becomes at least possible, if very fragmented and frustratingly inconsistent. Until that point, I will occasionally feel very drowsy and lethargic, but unable to make the transition to a true state of slumber.

The worst part of the day is driving to (and arriving at) work and trying to get going without my usual shot of carbonated caffeine. I'll have a few "muuuhhh" spots along the way, but once I get home, my head somehow magically clears itself of cobwebs, which has rendered efforts to "nap" for a few hours from when I get home (trying to "cheat" myself a few hours of rest, in effect) completely unsuccessful.

I haven't completely run dry of ideas for how to combat this problem sans pills, but I am definitely within sight of the end of inspiration. I still have to try that Trazodone out, though I have very little real hope of those pills making any difference when nothing else works. I also want to try a return to our old comforter: shortly before all of this started, Sarah switched out our old heavy comforter for a newer, lighter blanket, and while I doubt that returning to the older model will provide a miracle cure, I feel it's at least worth a shot.

OK, back to work ...

Vent

Sorry, reader: this post is going to come off as unnecessarily defeatist and angry. I hope you'll understand and bear with me (or better yet, skip on down to the next entry). Normally, I try to ride these lows out without a word in here, but it's now a little past four in the morning and I don't do "peppy and upbeat" when I haven't had any goddamned sleep in 4 days.

That's right: my insomnia has not only persisted over the last month, but has also worsened to the point that right now, nothing can make me fall asleep. Zilch. Nada. Niechievo. Benadryl? Stopped working last weekend. Unisom? Hasn't worked in weeks. Even fucking Ambien, my only guarantee of a good night's rest, has no effect on me (and discovering that last night was a pretty nasty and spirit-breaking surprise). My caffeine intake is now near-zero (I'm not sure how much caffeine is in a Snickers bar, but that's all I've ingested since Tuesday afternoon), I've walked a mile or so every night in a vain attempt to make myself sleepy, listened to ambient music for an hour before bedtime the last three nights, and all of this has had absolutely zero effect on my condition. Tonight, in a final insult to normalcy, I took a Clairitin-D an hour before retiring, and the near-knockout effect it usually has on me every single time I take one utterly failed to materialize. Of course. Sarah has a bottle of Trazodone on her desk that I can try tomorrow night for the sake of trying it, but I have about as much hope in that working as I do in popping some Dexedrine and washing 'em down with a can of Jolt.

So, now what? Obviously, I'm going to have to see a doctor about this, and here is where we come to the oh-so-diabolical timing of this condition worsening: even if I wanted to see a professional and throw a lot of money I do not have at this problem, I simply can't do it right now. As I mentioned previously, buying a new car two months earlier than I'd planned to has utterly nuked my finances to the point where I have already-delayed bills and obligations lined up for the next 3-4 weeks, and they must be taken care of before I can go getting myself into another medical adventure.

Speaking of the Saturn, by the way: to the kid(s) who ripped the temporary tags off the back of my car for a lark (or whatever the hell reason it is you assholes decide to fuck around with anonymous cars): thanks a ton, jackass. That was really hilarious. Seriously. I just love spending even more money and time running around to the police department and the DMV on unnecessary, redundant bureaucratic bullshit. By all means, keep up the good fight and display your little prize proudly. You really stuck it to the man this time! Rock on!

In happier Saturn news, my long-awaited title to the car arrived today, which means I will soon be able to put plates on the thing (the sole task that is holding everything else up that I have to take care of behind it). However, I was also informed while getting my new temp tags that I will need to E-check the Saturn before I can put plates on it, which means that the balding driver's side front tire will have to be replaced this weekend in order for the car to get tested ASAP. The front tire was a known repair issue when I bought the car, so that is no big deal in and of itself. As for the E-check ... while it appears that I have nothing to worry about in that department, I hope y'all can understand that it's very difficult for me not to imagine another shoe waiting to drop here.

Oh yeah, at some point yesterday, the shelving units mounted on our kitchen wall came crashing down to the floor, splattering their contents all over the place. I strongly suspect the hand (or paw) of Moe in this, but who the hell knows for sure. I'm also very glad Sarah discovered this mess first, as I might have simply exploded on the spot. If there was a "good news" angle to this story: it's that a.) the cats weren't hurt by the collapse b.) the unit came off the wall cleanly and didn't pull out any chunks of plaster with it. Huzzah.

So, that's it. Venting operation completed. I cannot afford to take care of this insomnia until sometime in early-to-mid July, so I'm just going to deal with it by waiting it out, at last until I am out from behind the 8-ball. At some point, eventually, my body's demand for sleep will win out this battle and that will be that (or I will simply get used to the series of five-minute catnaps or whatever the hell goes on with me once the sun comes up). Until that time comes, I guess I get to sit around and read a bunch, maybe watch some movies, organize my sock drawer, meditate or however else I choose to kill off the hours between 12-6 AM. Whatever I choose to do, it will certainly beat lying in bed, wanting to scream and/or cry, and listening to the fans running for hours. Whatever the hell is wrong with me, one way or the other, it is not going to last forever ... it just feels like it right now.

The New Vicmobile

Following the failure of the Beretta to pass E-check, my initial plan was to coast into July and allow myself plenty of time to save up the necessary funds and search out a replacement vehicle at my leisure.

Life, as always, had other plans.

On May 21, I was returning home from visiting Dad at LakeWest (sadly, his home away from home anymore) and idling in line at the Chick Fil-A drive-thru when something gave under the hood of the Beretta. There wasn't a bang! or crack! or anything dramatic like that, just a sudden, tangible change in the character of the engine noise, coupled with a sinister new vibrating thrum that immediately began clattering the exhaust pipes noisily against the frame of the car. The Beretta immediately sounded rougher, louder, and wheezier than it ever had before, lending me to suspect that I had somehow just managed to wreck my brand new (and apparently useless) exhaust system. But no, this noise was different ... it was coming from the engine itself, not from the rear or bottom of the car. There was also a whiff of something burning: not gasoline, not rubber, not coolant ... engine oil?

I got the car back home and worriedly popped the hood, sniffing around and smelling that weird, wispy tang of something wrong while not knowing what it was. On Sarah's advice, I checked the oil and was relieved to see that I was still filled up and looking good. That led me to wonder about the fuel lines being clogged, or maybe the transmission being compromised. Sarah wondered if the gas tank had taken on water.

The next morning, to my consternation, the car's new running characteristics remained unchanged. I tried gunning the engine a few times on the way to work (in an attempt to "blow out" whatever seemed to be making my engine sound asthmatic) to no effect, and adding some fresh gas to the tank didn't seem to help either. In fact, it wasn't until I was cruising down Mentor Avenue in the homestretch towards work that I realized that the Beretta was actually running semi-normally once I had it cruising along in third or fourth gear: it was getting to that point where I was having problems. That led me again to wonder if the transmission was at fault here, and I found that to be the case later that evening as I noticed a large puddle forming behind the left front tire. I backed the car away from the pool and dabbed at it with a paper towel, immediately spying a thick blot of pink fluid spreading across the surface of the paper. En route home, I smelled that burning scent again, and noticed wisps of steam/smoke crawling up the side of the Beretta from the vicinity of the left front wheel well. Ah, hell, that would explain a lot of things, wouldn't it.

I had already resolved that there would be no additional repairs to the Beretta, no matter what. So, it was going to be showtime ... two months early. Beautiful. With nothing else to be done for it, I parked the Beretta in the rear parking lot at the condos, where it sits as of this writing: cleaned-out and awaiting to be towed and ultimately junked.

I did some car shopping online looking for something cheap and (hopefully) semi-dependable, while consulting a bit with my brother (who is far better versed in cars and car repair than I am). After some poking around, I'd found a possible candidate to look at, but ran into a timing snafu: Sunday and Monday are my weekends, and the used car dealership where I found my pick was closed for business on Sundays and would be closed the following Monday since it was Memorial Day. Of course.

At least with Brett being currently out of work, we had some scheduling flexibility that normally wouldn't exist between us, so we arranged to meet early Tuesday morning to do some looking around. Brett was pretty skeptical of my initial pick, a 2001 Sebring sedan, and it turned out he had good reason to be: after some close inspection of the dessicated inside of the drivers compartment, the damaged front clip, and a small coolant leak under the hood, the Sebring looked like a bad investment waiting to happen. Next!

With an hour and change to burn before I had to be at work, we headed up to Vine Street and started driving eastward, eventually coming across Transportation Outlet Inc. An initial pass through their lot didn't look very promising: I was not in the market for an SUV or pickup truck, and I also wasn't looking right now to take on a few years of car payments just yet. On the second pass, however, we finally came across what turned out 45 minutes later to be the new Vicmobile:


And there she is, folks: a 1998 Saturn SL2. Considering what I am moving up from, this rather tame acquisition feels like a freaking luxury sedan, despite the lack of CD player (the only demand I had for car audio was a working AM radio so that I could listen to Indians games on the road, so this was a forgivable omission). It's also about as far from the old hot rods of my early twenties as I could have imagined myself buying. Priorities definitely change as you age, and while my priority in 1994 was "how cool does it look and how good is the stereo?," the biggest priority I have in 2009 is "will this car be dependable enough to get me through, say, the end of 2012?" Brett thought so, and his approval of the car itself and the asking price was instrumental in me sealing the deal.

I feel a strange mix of emotions writing this: that exotic blend of giddiness and terrified accomplishment that only comes from spending most of your hard-earned money on something you really hope was worth the splurge. I think most of my friends felt this way when they walked out of the realtors office with the keys to their first house. For me, it was driving off the lot in this car. While the price was good, it was also at the very top end of my reach financially, which will almost certainly make June and July a bit of a monetary high-wire act (at least until this thing has plates on it), but so far it appears to have been worth the risk.

Happy updates are hopefully forthcoming.

Up

The opening 5 minutes of Up is a brilliant, heartbreaking montage detailing the life story of Carl Fredricksen from an awestruck child watching newsreels on the exploits of his hero, explorer Charles Muntz, to a lonely, elderly man coping with the sudden passing of the love of his life. To watch this perfectly-accomplished sequence without a lump in the throat is impossible: this is easily the most moving and poetic piece of animation I have ever seen and alone would guarantee this film a 4 star rating, but it is only the beginning of this wonderful, thoughtful, and very funny movie.

Carl's modern life is an unhappy, stoic grind: a retired balloon salesman, he seems to take pleasure only in playing the pebble in the shoe of urban developers busily converting his old neighborhood into a faceless, concrete-and-glass downtown plaza. To the people working around his house, Carl is a broken-down crank, antisocial and unlikeable and clinging to a quaint old world that no longer exists. Then, an unfortunate incident with a well-meaning construction worker finally puts the ball in the developer's court and Carl is given barely 12 hours to prepare for life in a retirement home.

Rather than give in to inevitability, however, Carl leafs through his wife's old adventure journal and, in a wonderful sequence, uses thousands of unsold helium balloons to lift his house from its foundation and send himself on his way to South America, where an adventure that once defined his half-forgotten childhood awaits. Of course, it is just when Carl is settling into his favorite chair, feeling self-satisfied and at peace at last that a wrinkle in his plans arrives in the form of an inadvertent stowaway on his house-turned-aircraft. Russell, a bubbly, overweight cub scout in search of his last merit badge (for helping the elderly, natch) is trapped on his front porch and childless Carl is forced to cope with his unexpected guest explorer.

I won't divulge what happens with the plot once the explorers quickly reach Paradise Falls, South America, though I'm sure many of you will be able to figure out what is ultimately behind a squad of malevolent talking dogs (whose audible thought processes draw some of the biggest laughs of the movie) and what all of this ultimately has to do with a gawky, seemingly affect-less flightless bird that Russell befriends and names "Kevin." There is also a surprisingly action-packed (and occasionally intense) final third that often feels more like The Incredibles than what you might have been expecting, yet still feels completely right nonetheless.

It's striking to consider that other animation studios have yet to figure out that you can create modern animated movies of peerless quality without having to rely on identifiable celebrity voices and constant, smart-assed pop culture references. As always with Pixar, clever character development and an accessible, enthralling story makes these movies as special and as universally appealing as they are. I can't sing the praises of these guys enough: this is a seemingly fearless studio whose standard of excellence continues to know no bounds, and with Up they have once again delivered what is very likely to be the best film I will see this year.

Up rating: 5/5

In Defence Of Compact Discs

The bed-headed 15-year-old slaps down a battle-scarred copy of Pink Floyd's Dark Side of the Moon rescued from the 99-cent bin. I prepare to engage in the oft-repeated litany about the “warmth” of vinyl and how it's closer to how the ear hears than anything digital, etc. etc. etc.

But then he follows up with, “I really like all the ticks and pops.”

A blog post (linked in the post title) I can certainly identify with from a fellow record store lifer in the midst of the early twenty-first century vinyl resurgence who is perfectly happy with his CD collection, thankyouverymuch.

Observance

It's not very often that a picture gets to me the way this one did.

A brief, shattering reminder of what this holiday, mostly seen as merely "the kickoff of summer," is really about.

Terminator Salvation

Remember that line in Jurassic Park uttered by Jeff Goldblum about scientists being "so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn't stop to think if they should."? I always find it blackly amusing that the writers of such cautionary dialogue work for an industry which functions in exactly the opposite fashion. Remember back around 1996 or so when Lucasfilm thought aloud: wow, special effects have come so far so fast in only a dozen years that we can finally make all new Star Wars movies the way we wanted to the first time!?

Yeah, I think we all know full well how that little plan turned out.

It seems like this same kind of thinking also applies to Terminator movies, which is kind of ironic in that Terminator 2: Judgment Day (still far and away the best of the series) was the incredible technical achievement that nearly singlehandedly kicked off the modern age of digital special effects. While this leap forward in technology has admittedly resulted in some truly amazing spectacles (like, say, the dinosaurs in Jurassic Park), it has also presaged a whole new generation's worth of action sequences so inhumanly surgical and antiseptic in nature that they carry all the dramatic weight of a Mortal Kombat match.

In the wake of The Rise Of The Machines (the awful third film in the Terminator franchise), I felt insulted that the first two films somehow weren't enough for Hollywood and that trying to go beyond that seamless basic story was not only pointless and a blatant exercise in derivative greed, but would only lessen the impact of the originals (see also: the entire Star Wars prequel trilogy, Alien3, et al.). Unfortunately, Terminator Salvation, while certainly far superior to The Rise Of The Machines (I believe this is what is referred to as "damning with faint praise"), fails in the end to alter my opinion one bit.

Perhaps the most clinically interesting aspect of Terminator Salvation is that this movie is, in essence, a high speed mash-up of a dozen different science fiction movies. You can almost make a parlor game of calling out the influences for each scene and plot development as they come along. Director McG isn't so much a "director" in this project as a DJ, and this movie is a peak hour set of old classics reconstituted, remixed, re-arranged and played back at high volume. Bits of exposition, revelation and visual reference lifted from old science-fiction chestnuts are everywhere: Return Of The Jedi, The Road Warrior, The Matrix, Aliens, A.I., The Phantom Menace (uh oh), Blade Runner, War Of The Worlds, and, uh, Body Parts.

There isn't a whole lot I can tell you of the plot, but then again the foreshadowing is so heavy-handed in the exposition that even a third-grader can figure out the "central plot twist" to this movie. Let's just say that after a big (and costly) break in intelligence-gathering operations, John Connor (a quite frankly wasted performance by Christian Bale) and the human resistance are preparing to deal a devastating blow to the central hub of Skynet, though it also appears that the machines are also ready to hit first by targeting Connor and his unwitting father, Kyle Reese (and if you don't know how Reese can be Connor's unwitting parent, then you really must be terribly bored right now to be reading all of this).

Much like other recent franchise reboots, Terminator Salvation attempts to blaze a path to fanboy redemption by repeatedly paying homage to the original films: numerous shots, sequences, lines of dialogue and visual references pepper this new film, constantly attempting to create threads and associations to the Cameron films. Many of these nods elicit a knowing chuckle or a nod of approval, others become heavy handed to the point of distraction. Also like any good reboot, this new movie wisely forgets the previous chapter ever happened: the sole connection here to The Rise Of The Machines lies in the character of Kate Connor (whom we last met as a veterinarian played by Claire Danes).

As always, I try to not let plot holes and unexplained happenings bother me too much in films like these, though there are always a few bits that manage to penetrate my suspension of disbelief. Without going into spoilers, I'll list a few below:

1. Considering the fact that it possesses the sum total of all military and artificial intelligence prior to the point of its creation, are you telling me that Skynet never heard of or manufactured a Magnetic Anomaly Detector?

2. Do waterbots (or whatever the hell those things I saw in The Matrix a decade ago are now called) not work in the open ocean?

3. As with many similar-scaled baddies in movies like these, eighty foot tall headless robots have the disconcerting ability to noiselessly tip-toe up on one-story buildings while undetected by anyone inside.

4. Bad news for future dentists and dermatologists: everyone in the post-apocalyptic future has absolutely perfect skin and blindingly white (and straight) teeth. This actually becomes pretty distracting at times when things are supposed to be pretty intense and dramatic.

5. I sure hope anti-rejection medication is still plentiful in the post-apocalyptic wasteland.

6. At a few different points in this movie, I started to think about the beliefs and performances of the principals in the first two Terminator movies. After watching this film (and assuming it is to be accepted as canon), some questions can now be raised about why certain characters behaved the way they do in the first two movies considering what happens in this one.

7. I have had just about enough of this modern school of digitally-edited action film in which everything happens at the very last microsecond before disaster can strike. Sure, it was really cool about 15 or 20 years ago when people in movies first ducked just out of the way of airborne cars, or hit the dirt just as something huge explodes behind them, but enough already. It's time to find a new paradigm here, action directors ... I have definitely "been there and done that" as far as these sequences are concerned.

8. There is a rather glaring continuity error set up by this movie dealing with a brand new series of Terminator met by a handful of the main characters during the Skynet Central sequence (this error only becomes apparent if you remember Reese's dialogue from the first Terminator movie). I stumbled across this error hours afterward while editing this review, and I'll let y'all figure this one out for yourselves if you can.

Look, I'll be honest here and admit that I was diverted and amused for the movie's two hour running time. But let's call a spade a spade: Terminator Salvation is really just another in an endless stream of those factory-made summer blockbuster roller coaster rides: a lot of fun and thrills while it's going on, but ultimately pretty silly once you get your wits about you as the final credits roll. As long as you're cool with that, you'll have a fine old time.

Terminator Salvation rating: 3/5