Why Am I So Happy Today?

Smile, world.  Smile big.

Countdown to Extinction

And now, let’s enjoy a bit of song:

1600 ’scans and whattaya get?/Another chain closing and closer to death/St. Branson won’t be calling to save your ship out/Cause Virgin’s closing shop: proceed to fucking flip out!

My horrid meter notwithstanding, this is actually some brutal news – as reported in the NY Post earlier this week, Virgin Megastores North America has been sold to a real estate con-glom. “Industry watchers” are forecasting the imminent closing of both NYC Virgin locations, in Squares Times and Union.

If you’re thinking “meh,” well, I can understand that. But here’s why this is terrible news not only for me, but possibly you as well.

Last year, when Tower Records and their 81 locations finally succumbed to bankruptcy, Virgin Megastore became heir to the Deep Catalog Chain-Store throne. A dubious honor, to be sure, but a pretty vitally important one in the world of independent music. Whatever faults you may have found with Tower/Virgin, you could at least expect them to have a) a somewhat knowledgable and musically-inclined staff and b) a pretty deep catalog to back it up. Sure, if you’re looking for obscure and out of print prog LPs (and who isn’t!), you’re going to have to go to a specialty store (or more likely online), but in terms of overall depth/consumer reach, these two outfits supplied a lot of independent music to a lot of independent music fans.

And as much as a lot of independent music purveyors and fans like to dance around the issue in favor of upholding some idealized world of Music For Music’s Sake, the real fact is that it costs significant amounts of money to produce, distribute, and promote the overwhelming majority of the music we consume.

Consider this: next time you’re in a Best Buy, go check out the endcap/wall/whatever of New Releases. Then consider that, for each title you see displayed in this section, someone spent roughly $20-$30,000 to put it there. Like, not in some abstract sum-of-parts/this-is-what-it-costs-to-get-your-record-noticed way. Literally, someone cut BB a check for 20 large in order for their CD to be placed on the New Release wall.

The general point to all this being: putting out a record costs bank, and as the marketplace for physical retail shrinks away from independents and deep-catalog megastores, what you’re left with is Walmart, Best Buy, etc., whose interests aren’t in providing you with a wide array of choice, but rather pushing the top echelon of saleable goods at cut-rate prices in the hopes that while you’re in there, you may decide to pick up a washer/dryer combo on the way out.

(SIDEBAR: This is also actually why, if you see a CD on sale ridiculously cheap at Best Buy, you can sort of feel morally ok about purchasing it; often, they price new releases below cost to bring in the customers with the hope of making up the margin elsewhere. So as long as you *don’t* get the w/d combo as well, you get your shit for cheap, Best Buy loses money, and everyone’s happy! More reading on this here (simple) and especially here (lengthy and in-depth discussion, but worth it if you have the time)

Uh, sorry, back to the point: it seems reasonable to conclude that there is a tipping point for independent labels, where their music is not mass-friendly enough to warrant sale in the big boxes, and there are not enough specialty/deepcat stores left to take in enough of their product to even really justify manufacturing and distributing the CDs in the first place. All of which, at the end of the day, leads to a shrinking of the overall choices available to consumers (and perhaps more importantly, a shrinking awareness that these choices even exist in the first place).

All of this opens far too many cans of worms to even think about starting to get into – the intersection of art and commerce, the morality of file-sharing, intellectual property and copyright law, and the cloudy future of the music industry, just to touch the tip of the iceberg – but to end this ramble on less gloomy note: regardless of how it all exactly plays out, it seems to me there are a few (hopefully) incontrovertable facts about all this. First, that (hopefully) a lot of people are going to continue to make the kind music that they want to make. Second, that (hopefully) a lot of people are going to want to hear this music. Thus meaning that third, someone is going to have to figure out the best way to get this music to them.

How this will happen in this crazy digital world we live in is anyone’s guess (at least anyone more informed than I am), but ultimately it seems as naive to think that the death of independent retail will kill good music as it is to think that all those albums you got for free on Bit Torrent aren’t actually hurting anyone. Sooner or later, some genius capitalist will figure out a new model for the whole system and get filthy rich, and in the end perhaps we’ll all be better off, as fans and artists alike.

Oh yeah…and god willing, that genius will be me.

Sometimes, Life Interferes with Blogging

I’m not gonna lie: I got nothing. There’s a lot going on these days in Traw West Land and since I refuse to treat this page like any more of a LiveJournal than it has to be, I haven’t sharing it with you. Suffice it to say that it’s not very interesting, but plenty frustrating and you wouldn’t have any fun reading about it. I might go see Superbad later, so maybe there will be a review of that on the horizon.

In the mean time, I share with you some fiction of mine, since I have nothing better to offer you. It’s not new… but if you happen to be a fan, there is new stuff on the horizon.  You can love it or leave it. Just be happy it’s not my poetry.

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Under Daddy’s Palm

Things weren’t getting better around the house so much so that I couldn’t stand to be inside anymore when it wasn’t raining – and sometimes when I was raining I’d just hop in my truck and drive around for awhile. I just never wanted to be around when she got home from her job because she just lit right into me all the time about this and that. Like why I hadn’t started dinner or that those leaves weren’t going to rake themselves. She wanted me to strip and paint the house. She wanted me to dig a ditch from the soft spot in the lawn down to the property line so the water would drain. She always yelled about what she wanted – she never asked. Hardly never said nothing with a smile.

Now, I know that sounds like every marriage but her mouth was real bad — the way she cursed at me so. That’s why I usually sat out on the back porch with my shirt off and smoked cigarettes when she was home. I did — often had already done — these things she yelled about me about, but I never did them when she was there because I didn’t want her to see me doing them. So she’d holler at the back door while I sat out there, sometimes throw a pot while she was cooking because I still always made her do that. Didn’t make her so much as wouldn’t do it on my own. I’m no fucking chef… she knew that. But sometimes she’d just cook for herself a little pasta or something and leave me to my own devices. Other times, she’d take my money and go get a sandwich for herself and not offer to get one for me. Stuff like that.

She worked in real estate at the local brokers and I drove a truck, but was only on the road half the time. It wasn’t a bad deal, especially since I couldn’t hardly stand to be around her anyway and the pay was better than she made and she made a pretty good salary. Her commissions might have trumped me, though. But being on the road every two weeks was good because I didn’t have to be called names like “piece of shit” and “fuckhead” and no one threw bottles or pans at me unless I happened into a bar fight on a pit stop, which has happened a time or two. She always said it was her job that made her stressed her out so much, having to find new places to live for people who couldn’t make up their damn minds about what color sweater to wear. She’d only say things like that in the moments of apology and love we shared. There were always some moments like this, increasing and decreasing in frequency for our whole lives together. It was sort of like the Cold War – like I remember growing up and things were really bad sometimes and everyone thought the Soviets were going to start launching nukes from Cuba and we all practiced hiding under our desks at school… but then down the line to Kissinger made friends with the Chinese Reds and everything warmed up. That war never happened, just like her and I ain’t killed each other yet.

Honestly we were pretty tender every night after she went to bed alone and I’d finally come in from the mosquitoes out back and join her. It was just those hours we weren’t laying together when she hated so hard and swore at me incessantly. But when it turned night I’d come into the bedroom where she’d be watching TV in big tee-shirt with an eagle on it or sleeping on her side. I liked to lay down next to her, whether she was asleep or awake, with my head right on the bed and put my hand under her shirt and right over her belly button so I could feel how warm her skin was. I liked to draw shapes on her skin, feel her tremble a little if I was tickling her or something. I loved the feel of her body underneath my hands which I’d slowly move everywhere. Then one of three things would happen: I’d kiss her and we’d make love, she’d roll over on me and we’d fuck or we’d just fall asleep and maybe do it in the morning before she started yelling at me again. I liked it when she’d just roll over on me and I’d feel her heat spreading through my body and legs like hot water. Made me feel like she wanted me for something that I was happy to provide.

We never talked about having kids because she hasn’t brought it up and I don’t want a woman of that disposition being a mother to my children. Can you imagine her winging building blocks at them if they were bad or calling them “dirtball loser scumbags” when they gave her finger paintings? I can see her doing that and I couldn’t suffer loving my kids and telling them I love them and that everything will be all right but we have to stay with mommy because of the way she feels under daddy’s palm.

Well, It’s Friday…

I’m not sure what it is about Friday that makes me celebrate it so heartily. It’s not like a I have a job and this is the day that will conclude an otherwise hellish week — gazing dreamily at the two listless days I’ll call my weekend.

Anyway, it’s Friday and that always puts me in a good mood. So I’d like to commemorate that with something wonderful:

Animated Petty is amazing and that guitar solo makes my spirit soar like an osprey over Central Florida. Mike Campbell wails; don’t you ever forget it.

Enjoy yourselves…

Using the Power of Microwave Photons, My Future Self is Writing This Post

When it comes to things I don’t understand, anything preceded by the word “quantum” tops the list. Unless it’s some new age crap. Then it’s just a marketing ploy. Quantum living, anyone? I’ll teach you how if you give me $2000.

With that disclaimer in place, behold as I address the theory known as “quantum tunneling” — a phenomenon which allows sub-atomic particles to apparently break the unbreakablest laws of the universe. And by that, I mean travel faster than the speed of light.

Guh? Wha? Howza? Einstein is rolling over in his immortal place in history!

A couple of German scientists managed to apparently accomplish this feat by somehow propelling microwave photons instantaneously between prisms three feet apart. I’m not sure how this is traveling faster than the speed of light, but you can try and figure out the details from this sparse (at best) article from the Telegraph.co.uk.

Here’s the bottom line: do we really want the Germans figuring out this sort of science before anyone else? They’ve never been good with sharing technology, unless your country/people feel the murderous end of it. If we hadn’t jacked Einstein, wouldn’t they have gotten the bomb first? That probably wouldn’t have worked out well for anyone. And didn’t they invent a different bomb that you didn’t hear coming until it had already blown the hell out of your London neighborhood? (The V2, faster than the speed of sound.) Now we’re in for a bomb that will impact and explode before it’s even launched. Of course, that would take an infinite amount of energy. Which, apparently, can be provided by microwave photons and prisms or something.

Let’s see what rockstar astrophysicist Stephen Hawking as to say about all this:

Well, that explains it.

How Much do you LOVE Soccer?

In the immortal words of Futurama’s Professor Farnsworth…

Good news everyone!

David Beckham scored his first goal as a member of Major League Soccer’s LA Galax–

Oh look, anything that’s not soccer!

Mmmmmmwah! My favorite part is when the big fat one tackles the little pugilist one.

Anyway, call me when the World Cup is on…

Michael Vick is in Way Deeper Than Anyone Thought… Like, Al Qaida Deep

Finally, something amazingly awesomely incredible has come out of the Michael Vick dogfighting shit storm. Some dude rotting away in a South Carolina prison decided to file suit against Vick for $63 billion — “backed by gold and silver.” Rather than summarize this stroke of brilliance, I simply implore you to click the links below and prepare for the best thrill ride of the summer. If you need more motivation than that, here is a teaser:

Michael Vick is a man of many guises: animal entrepreneur, supplier of steroids, armaments investor, Al Qaida operative. He is seemingly a man with no conscience. This summer, find out what happens when one humble inmate in a lonely South Carolina prison decides to stand up against Vick… and fight back… for freedom… and gold!

Click here to read the news report, care of FOXNews.com (I know, I know)

Click here to read the HANDWRITTEN suit by Mr. Jonathan Lee Riches

Newly revealed facts about Michael Vick, as stated in Jonathan Riches suit:

• He’s an avid eBay seller
• He has used drugs in a school zone (they put those signs out front for a reason!)
• A mad scientist in his spare time, he subjects his victims to microwave radiation
• He might not know the Pledge of Allegiance, but he has pledged allegiance to AL QAIDA
• And he owns missiles purchased from the Iranian government!

You know what, if this was anyone else buy Michael Vick, I wouldn’t buy a word of it. But since it’s Michael Vick… I dunno…

Do yourself a favor and read the suit. Then join me in prayer that it’s heard before a real court!

Hell’s Angels Ain’t Got Jack on the Japanese

In “you’ve got to be kidding” news of the day, a motorcyclist in Japan cruised on for 2km (that’s over a mile) after the unrealized loss of his right leg.

If you’re keeping score at home, it looks like this:

1 Japanese motorcyclist, aged 54 years, collides with the 1 center divider of a highway, LOSES 1 right leg below the knee and keeps on rolling.

More details, sparse though they may be, here courtesy Breibart.com.

Let’s reflect on this for a moment…

Reportedly, Kazuo Osada was too busy focusing on the overwhelming pain resulting from the collision to notice that part of his body had been lopped off. At the time he was riding with about 10 buddies. They’ve always told me that eastern mentality dictates the needs of the individual are secondary to those of the community. So think about that. This guy was so furiously trying to keep up with his comrades that a freshly hewed limb couldn’t hold him back from accomplishing the gang’s goal — which of course was “to journey like the ancestral ghost wind over a thousand snowcapped mountains, singing prayers of success and accomplishment and sharing the blessings of the bi-rubber-wheeled deities.” (Approximate translation to English = “to ride.”)

Now me… I can’t get a paper cut without bringing my sector of the world to a crashing halt so as I may attend to my wound. And I don’t have a Takashi Miike-style fountain of blood spurting from my digit. This dude brings new meaning to “taking one for the team.” Although I guess he sort of left one for the team.

Get well soon, Osada-san. Your unbelievable sacrifice for the greater good of journeying like the ancestral ghost wind over a thousand snowcapped mountains, singing prayers of success and accomplishment and sharing the blessings of the bi-rubber-wheeled deities WILL NOT go unnoticed.

Child Abuse Has Never Been So Funny

It’s things like this that make me want to be a stay-at-home dad. That’s cool, right Keira?

Keira Knightley is a Smoke Show

Without venturing too far down the road of celebrity gossip blogging, I would like to point out that Keira Knightley is the probably the most gorgeous woman… ever.

And just to remind us of such things, behold her new Chanel ad:

Ab.so.lute.ly. STUNNING. She’s my favorite!

I have a feeling Charlie Chaplin saw many moments such as this.

Random Hottie. Charlie, come back to bed…

Charlie Chaplin. Not until you return my trademark hat! Now, where did you hide my mustache?

Random Hottie. Oh, I think you know the answer to that.

Except in Charlie’s day, she has much worse teeth.

Anyway, I can only hope that someone who knows Miss Knightley (or perhaps Keira herself) is out there Google-ing her name when I publish this. Then, he or she ends up at this website, thinks it’s awesome (because let’s face it… it is) and forwards the link to Keira. Then Keira emails me, revealing that she’s fallen for my wit and charm and wants to buy me a house in Bel Air where we’ll live together in really, really unbelievably good looking bliss!

Did I just type that out? Ah fuck it. I stand by it.

Of course, knowing my luck, she’ll fall for Mattraw anyway.