Raspberry Claws
July 07, 2008
July 04, 2008
Welcome back from vacation. Never do it again.
Why yes, it's the Fourth of July. Am I out being festive with my family, perhaps enjoying a leisurely BBQ lunch (as it's now 12:36pm)?
Why, no. Because I'm sitting at my desk. At work. Because, apparently, if I don't put in about 5-6 hours today the world as we know it will come to an end.
Good times.
June 29, 2008
Notes from the Forbidden Northlands, Part II
- If you're a woman in your 60s driving a large, American car with the license plate KDDK - and you happen to be a terrible, terrible driver - please know that the angry couple with three howling children in the SUV trapped behind you on the looooooong 2-lane road to Vacationland will refer to you as "Kook" as they curse you until the end of time.
- Nothing smells worse than kids' Tevas that have gotten soaked in salt water and then dried wrong. Putting them on the next day is like strapping rotting moose asses to your kids' feet.
- Old Maine joke but still my favorite Maine joke: "Bangor? Hardly know 'er!" (It only works if you say it with a thick Maine accent.)
- We took a horse-drawn carriage ride through the park, which actually turned out to be one of the high points of the trip -- a surprisingly scream-free experience in which I discovered the rationale behind the phrase "pissing like a racehorse." Wow. I'm pretty sure I've never been that impressed by gallons of urine before.
- On that ride, we were pulled by two huge horses named, homonymically, Dick and Vic. Which led to this conversation on our drive home afterwards: TheWife: "Did you guys have a good time?" Rabbit & Butterfly: "Yeah!" TheWife: "Did you like the horses?" All three kids: "Yeah!" TheWife: "Do you remember their names?" (brief pause w/o answers) TheWife: "They were named Dick and Vic." Butterfly: "Yeah! Mommy, do you like Dick?"
- At that point, I came thisclose to driving into a tree.
- Possibly my favorite part of the entire week: meeting my friend ScienceGuy, his wife and adorable just-turned-1 daughter at the same restaurant where TheWife and I had our wedding rehearsal dinner about a million years ago. Two-plus hours of sitting in open air in one of my favorite places in the world, good food, a couple-two-t'ree blueberry ales, my kids miraculously deciding to behave themselves the entire time, catching up with old friends... damn, that's what a vacation is all about.
June 25, 2008
Notes from the Forbidden Northlands, Part I
- Four days down, three to go. All children still intact. So far.
- Apparently, when you go on vacation with young kids, that means you're going to the beach. Every. Fucking. Day.
- Cranky old people will not be shy at all about shoving both you and your young children out of the way - and I mean shoving in the style of an old-school hockey check - if you stand between them and a restaurant restroom
- Blueberry ale = a pint of heaven. Honestly.
- Was I smart enough to rent a house with wireless internet access? Oh, yes. Is my wife happy about it? Not really.
- Bugs in the Maine woods are big. Like, Cloverland big.
- In about an hour, we're going on a horse-drawn carriage ride. Odds that it will end in tears: 80%.
June 20, 2008
2x3
This Sunday marks three years since these little mammals arrived, and signaled the end of the world as I know it. Please join me in celebrating the twinpocalypse...
June 19, 2008
It was all downhill from there
High point of my work day yesterday: a long and passionate discussion in which I made a very real attempt to persuade my colleagues on the strategic benefits of a photo shoot involving the stomping of baby ducks.
(Note: They chose to go in another direction.)
June 18, 2008
Let us speak of journeys in the non-Steve Perry sense
1. First things first: my Celtics. If you'd have told me a year ago that they'd be celebrating a championship - never mind an honest-to-god blowout of the artist formerly known as Kobe & co. - I'd have stepped back slowly (making no sudden moves) before asking gently if you'd forgotten your antipsychotics. Seriously... at this point last June, we were looking forward to Odom/Durant and another 3-4 years of rebuilding before the Celts could become a serious contender again.
Un. Fucking. Believable.
2. Btw: have you ever seen a team in a championship situation give up the way the Lakers did last night? Seriously -- it's like Phil Jackson's halftime speech consisted of nothing but repeated kicks to the groin... by four minutes into the third quarter, they'd stopped playing defense and had abandoned any semblance of an offensive strategy. They weren't even contesting open threes by Ray Allen... and Ray Allen... and Ray Allen...
It just became abusive (although I'd be lying if I didn't say that I enjoyed it thoroughly). And as Mr. Big Dubya pointed out in an in-game e-mail to me, that hard foul KG put on Odom in the fourth quarter - when Odom tried to drive to the basket and KG responded by putting him unequivocally on his ass - was one of the greatest F-U sports moments of all time.
To get a little Bill Walton for a moment, they were terrible -- just terrible. An awful display from any organization competing for a title. And Kobe? Forget about "becoming the next Jordan." I don't think you've even got the right to the title of "best player in the game" anymore. Look at the way LeBron fought the Celts down to the wire in the 2nd round -- that's how you play the game, you colossal jackass.
3. But on to more important things: a vacation. To be more specific... a family vacation. To be even more specific... our first full-week-away-from-home-vacation in four years. And to be even more specificer than even that... our first-ever family vacation with our full starting five.
I don't know whether to be excited or apprehensive. All I know is that in Maine... no one can hear you scream.
4. Speaking of potentially life-changing journeys... TheWife is finally beginning her job hunt in earnest, after 10 years with the same company. Please join me in impassioned prayer for a job that will not only motivate and reward her, but one that will pay her enough money to enable me to leave my job, send my kids off to boarding school, and begin enjoying the life of sloth that I so richly deserve.
June 16, 2008
Words fail me
Why yes, that is my neighbor painting over the duct tape that he wrapped around his front porch. Why do you ask?
June 06, 2008
Slow roast
Have a nice weekend, everyone. We'll be roasting in 90+ degree brutal humidity —without benefit of our long-awaited central A/C system, which apparently will not be completed until next week.
(Fortunately, not everyone hates summer as much as I do.)
June 04, 2008
Love of the Masses
As my beloved Commonwealth prepares for its newest edition of sports-induced euphoria - and to be clear, we're talking about the entirely legal kind - I'd like to take a moment to express my gratitude for the following things:
* Danny Ainge, who last summer transcended years of fantastic drafting coupled with terrible trades and free agent signings (Brian Scalabrine? Sebastian Telfair for Brandon Roy? Raef LaFrentz? The list goes on... and it's just fucking horrifying.) to have a championship-caliber team fall into his lap. Good job!
* Kevin McHale, for apparently still being a Celtic at heart. (I'll add that I hope he's making the most of his annual early start to the summer.)
* David Stern, for scheduling every game in the 2008 NBA Finals to maximize west coast ad revenues — thereby ensuring that no game will end before midnight on the eastern seaboard. Oh, wait... that actually sucks. Never mind.
* The fact that even as I type - and look forward to Boston's first 90-degree day of the year, which should arrive on Saturday - the miracle of central air conditioning is being installed in my home. I can't even being to imagine how much this is going to transform my quality of life in the summertime... although I'm really looking forward to finding out.
* The fact that in three weeks, TheFamily and I will be taking our first official, week-long, family-style vacation in four years. Five of us will go up... only time and fate can determine how many of us will return.
Do You Hear What I Hear?
Sigur Rós: Med Sud I Eyrum Vid Spilum Endalaust
Bliss. Just... bliss. And no, I don't know how to pronounce the title. And no, it couldn't possibly matter less. This is a sunnier version of Sigur Ros than we've encountered before, but no less breathtakingly gorgeous. Run, don't walk (naked, if necessary) to make this a part of your life.Bob Mould: District Line
I picked this up when I saw him play live back in March, but it wasn't until earlier this week that it really caught and held my ear. Overall, this is a very solid album - with several songs that would sound perfectly in place with any of your favorite Sugar CDs - but two songs stand out head and shoulders above the rest. The first is "Again and Again," which I'd been mishearing (and enjoying) for months as a classic bitter Bob sendoff to an ex-lover, along the lines of "Explode and Make Up." Wrong: a closer examination (read: I started paying attention) shows that behind the gorgeous Richard Thompson-esque guitar solo and great ragged Bob voice lies nothing less than a heart-wrenching account of a life spiraling downward and out of control... in short, a suicide note. I can't remember suddenly hearing a song I've been half-listening to and GETTING it like this - and being so deeply moved - since the light turned on for me with Peter Gabriel's "Family Snapshot" back in high school. What's really impressive is that "Again and Again" bookends with "Old Highs New Lows," which is as lovely a song as he's ever recorded -- a love song, basically, to his life in music. The song blurs slightly into electronica (a relatively recent passion of Mr. Mould's, thoroughly explored on his never-to-be-heard-by-me album "Modulate"), but in the end it's just a gorgeous piece of work. Viva Bob!The Autumns: Fake Noise From a Box of Toys
Here's the thing: I can see what they were trying to do, and I think they succeeded. But I just don't enjoy it. Over the past decade-plus, The Autumns have created some of the most strange, beautiful and drama-soaked music anywhere -- try listening to The Boy With Aluminum Stilts or Hush, Plain Girls and not be moved by the power of what you hear. That being said, it's clear they came at this new album with a different tactic... it's like they're trying to capture the dischordant sounds of a world coming apart at the seams. And they do it, with great skill. But. That strange beauty that characterized so much of their earlier music is gone... and with it, my ability to enjoy this album.Filter: Anthems for the Damned
A resounding return to form for Richard Patrick (following his quasi-supergroup misstep Army of Anyone), marrying his distinctively powerful and emotive voice to a set of thoughtfully-written and extremely well-executed songs. As the cover and title imply, the album is powered by Patrick's outrage over the loss of so many military lives. The result is moving, and memorable, and one of the best things I've heard in a long time.Matthew Ryan: Matthew Ryan Vs. Silver State
I'm mighty pleased with this. It's easily Ryan's most consistently strong album, with his uniformly strong writing and characteristic raspy, strangled vocals buoyed by the support of a strong and capable band. (And now I'll write a sentence that doesn't use the word "strong" three times.) The songs themselves are as diverse and memorable as any set he's produced -- from the Bill Morrissey-esque "Dolce Et Decorum Est" at the beginning to the growing ache of "Closing In," which offers a glimpse into the inspiration for the album's title -- a brother recently sentenced to life imprisonment in Nevada. Ryan is tough to pigeonhole - in his voice, writing and music, you hear a little Westerberg, a little Springsteen, a little Waits - but as acquired tastes go, you could do a lot worse.
Reading is Fundamental
Boston Teran: Never Count Out the Dead
Another ferocious crime novel from the mysterious and psuedonymous Boston Teran -- this one featuring what may be the single most damaged mother-daughter relationship in literary history. Not for the weak of heart.Suzanne Finnamore: Otherwise Engaged: A Novel
This was a Jonniker recommendation, and while I bought it for TheWife as a birthday gift I have to admit I was a little apprehensive about it -- most of the blurb reviews spotlighted this as chick lit in its most classic sense. Now, don't get me wrong: I enjoyed Bridget Jones' Diary (the movie, at least) as much as anyone else, and I definitely understand the appeal of the genre. But it's not something I usually stray into. Well, let me clarify: this isn't chick lit... this is fucking GOOD writing. The trappings of the plot - woman in her 30s gets engaged, has doubts, gets stressed, hurtles toward her wedding - scream chick lit, but the execution is waaaaaay beyond anything you'd associate with that diminutizing description. Finnamore has an eye for detail that is razor sharp in the sense that not only does she capture unexpected nuances in crystalline perfection, but in that the observations cut deep and true -- transforming her very funny scene-snippits into snapshots of a life gone numb with entitlement and pointless ambition and defensive sarcasm and, beneath it all, a deep and profound and nameless fear of the known and the unknown and everything in between. The fact that the novel manages to achieve all of this depth while simultaneously being funny and entertaining is just about the highest praise I can imagine. Screw genre categorization -- this is great writing.Barry Eisler: The Last Assassin
Is it a bad sign when you're 110 pages into a theoretically fast-paced thriller and all you can think is that you wish you'd picked up something else instead? Probably. (Update: uh... yeah, that was a bad sign. What a disappointment from a usually reliable author.)Kim Stanley Robinson: Antarctica
672 pages of ecopolitics. There's a lot to admire in this book - the in-depth portrayal of societies in microcosm, feng shui, geology/glaciology, the way global politics impact lives on a small scale, etc. - but in the end I think I admired it more than I enjoyed it. Although there was a span of about 200 pages or so where Robinson managed to weave in a pretty compelling adventure/survival story... if only more of the book had been that riveting.Lee Child: Bad Luck and Trouble (Jack Reacher)
Lee Child writes thrillers the way a thriller out to be written: fast, mean, smart, tough as hell, unafraid to surprise, and always leaving you hungry for more. This fine entry in the Jack Reacher series - I'm losing track, but I think it's the eighth (edit: I'm wrong. This is #11. Wow.) - is no exception.
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