Procrast-Nation

Let’s start with a cliche; why not? These are the building blocks of popular music. In the balancing act each song represents, the scales are always tilted heavily in one direction-to allow for monolithic (both in the religious and ominous all-encompassing sense) acts of melody and arrangement, the lyrics must be repetitious and innocuous. Pop music is for the young; for those whose experience is little and for whom the phenomena of love and the adult world are still mysterious. Intel must be gotten! From any source! The simpler and more exotic the better…

So anyhow, onto my cliche: What’s in a name? In the case of “That’s Not Me: Best of the Beach Bastards”, there is quite a bit encoded in it. The first half is clearly a lift from the classic “Pet Sounds” track, but the second has a history somewhat more convoluted. The original impulse for this was, put without charity, that of a junkie. I had my early Beach Boys albums, my later ones (though even I stop after “Beach Boys Love You”, after all, who wants to shoot up the cotton at the top of the bottle?), my rarities, my solo albums, but I still needed that fresh high. That first cigarette again, that made me feel that same narcotic rush…

I went on a mad and time consuming quest to find and curate a collection of the best Beach Boys rip-off bands. Hours and hours gleefully spent loitering in the youtube related links bar revealed a plethora of imitations. Some revelatory, some competent, and some best left unspoken of. Yet as I researched each song, they were all either directly or indirectly connected to the Beach Boys. The web of names seemed inescapably interrelated, never to be transcended. Their organization would take on all competent imitators as collaborators the same way Mia Farrow would later adopt children.

The cases are several. Glen Campbell, before becoming a bastion of bland with “Wichita Lineman”, was a touring member of the Beach Boys and recorded the track here with Brian Wilson as the producer. The Sunrays, represented here with “Andrea”, were Murry Wilson’s attempt to prove he was a genius too.* Brian’s wife sung lead on the American Spring tracks and on The Honey’s classic surf cheese “He’s a Doll.” So these weren’t exactly rip-offs, not exactly side-projects. Some genuinely had no direct Beach Boy involvement (Tony River, The Tradewinds, The Westwoods). Left with their father’s features, but without his name. Beach Bastards. It was settled.

The delightful curiosities on this record are numerous. Leading off is “New York’s a Lonely Town”, by the Tradewinds, which allmusic.com called the best of the Beach Boys imitations. It was the Tradewinds only hit, a modest one, and the song has since drifted into obscurity. This makes the second song “I Miss My Surfer Boy Too” an anomaly-an answer song to a song now nearly as much forgotten, and one of the few answer songs I would hold as being an equal to the song that incited it. For those desiring a bit more trivia, the strong Spector-vibe attached is probably because the song was produced by Spector’s right hand man Jack Nietzsche. Speaking of Spector, some of you might recognize “This Should Be the Night” from the “Back to Mono” boxset. This is an odd case of reverse influence-while Brian Wilson was a noted Spector-obsessive, this is the only case I know of where Spector is attempting to delve into Wilson territory. Other connections are far more numerous than they are meaningful, and I leave them to you, pop obsessive, to tease out.

A couple songs are dumb out of negligence, and more are dumb as an homage to that negligence. While the Beach Boys were never particularly renowned for their way with words, the Beach Bastards are a stewing cauldron of half-rationalizations and contempt. “He’s a Doll” might be the most blatant example, showing what Brian Wilson (or whoever his co-writer was) thought women wanted. “He’s not very tall/but he’s not too short/he’s just the right height”. The Goldilocks approach to romance. “He’s got a broken-down car/but he keeps it clean”. Just take me now!

But all snark aside, just turn off your brain and enjoy it. It’s summer for goodness sake!

*The rest of the one deeply mediocre Sunrays album conclusively disproves this assertion, while Murry’s later foray into muzak, “The Many Moods of Murry Wilson”, makes me wonder if my previous use of “mediocre” was too charitable…

Grab it here, while supplies last!

Let’s be honest, there are too many fatties, and you very well may be one of them.  Despite the billions of dollars spent on weight loss programs, pills, surgery, and other methods, we are getting fatter as a society.  Obesity is linked to basically every fatal health condition you can imagine, including the two big ones, cancer and heart disease.  Never fear, however, for I have developed a two step foolproof strategy to losing as much weight as you want.   The key though is you have to actually do it.   So here you go, repeat this process every day until you lose the desired amount of weight.

Step 1- When you wake up, take a once-a-day multivitamin.

*Step 2- If you want to eat, eat almonds.  Nothing else.  The only food you are allowed to eat is almonds.  No honey-roasted either.  They may be lightly salted, but that’s it.  Breakfast, lunch and dinner.  You can drink water of course, but no caloric beverages what so ever.  Nothing with artificial sweeteners either, because that has been proven to actually make you crave sugar more.

*if you get really bored of almonds and water, you may be permitted to eat low calorie vegetables like lettuce, spinach, celery, and cucumbers.  Make sure you put nothing on them and eat them raw.  Also, if you get really bored of water, you may drink green tea with NO SWEETENERS or black coffee.

And that’s it.  If you stick to this I guarantee you will lose weight.  Your body will also be getting all the nutrients it needs.  Your only issue will be without carbs, your body may run low on glycogen giving you fatigue.  Don’t worry about it though, that means your body has had to resort to burning your fat and the diet is working.

Magic Hat Odd Notion Series: Winter ‘10
3/4th Pint of Ale Brewed With Hibiscus

Whenever I shower, being a hairy man, there is a modicum of soap scum left behind. It takes some time for the water to drain completely. Sometimes I have to swirl my finger in circles around the drain in order to get the water to have enough force to power through the wall of Irish Spring, Head and Shoulders, and body hair.

At some point in my youth, before I had all this hair, before I knew you weren’t supposed to do such things, I probably tasted some of this soap water concoction.

Anyway, Magic Hat continues their Odd Notion series with this otherwise untitled Winter 2010 offering. The gimmick this time around is that it was brewed with a hint of hibiscus. The hibiscus at first distinguishes itself nicely, though it isn’t the flavor most conducive to quality beer-it tastes like walking through a greenhouse in the spring. There’s the pleasant quality of floral arrangements, but also the hints of dirt of and bugs.

This subsides after the third or fourth sip, and a hint of artificiality interrupts the remembrance of walking through my mother’s flower shop with a more hazy remembrance of walking through a candle shop in a mall in Albany once. Back then my mother used to light candles a lot, but they’d bring on the most subtle hints of nausea in me.

After taking me through a tour of some of the less noteworthy moments of my childhood, the final sips are a journey of rapid disintegration. The flavor, never that distinct in its light sweetness, is violently overtaken by whatever backwash inadvertantly accumulated in the bottle. This is what I always imagined, in the less engaged moments of showering, the soap scum would taste like.

Stick with #9.

3.8

Fatman Calculation XX

Thought I may have been done with these, but a recent spike in content has allowed me to do another.

(((Procrast-nation Page Views/10) + Comments + images uploaded + database size/1000000 + Total Blog Wordcount/250 + total site posts + HOID word count/500 + HOID page views/1000 + HOID Room Count/5 + Ludd Score)^2(1 + (((Total Site Posts)(Total Blog Wordcount)(HOID Room Count)(images uploaded)/1000000000000)) = Calories Consumed

(19306/10 + 978 + 1169 + 630000000/1000000 + 407819/250 + 575 + 362261/500 + 988 + 798 + 2000)^ 2 (1 + (575 X 407819 X 3992 x 1169)/1000000000000)) = 142,943,361,060 calories consumed

Fatman Official Weight: 40,840,960 pounds

Weight Gain since last calculation: 22,439,017 pounds

Calorie Equivalent: Approximately the energy that would be released by dropping 3 Fat Man’s.

Mass Equivalent: A little smaller than a Kirov Class Battlecruiser.

Notes: Growth has been aided by a couple of very large posts as well as the Ludd Score.

Formula Improvement: Because it is a pain in the ass to get a hold of the actual numbers, I’m slashing the database size part of the formula. Right now it ads about 630 (estimate) to the base, so to make up for that I am doubling the value per post. Furthermore, I will also double the value per word, so 1 will be added to the base for every 125 words rather than 250. The modifier shall remain unchanged.

NEW FORMULA: (((Procrast-nation Page Views/10) + Comments + images uploaded + Total Blog Wordcount/125 + 2(total site posts) + HOID word count/500 + HOID page views/1000 + HOID Room Count/5 + Ludd Score)^2(1 + (((Total Site Posts)(Total Blog Wordcount)(HOID Room Count)(images uploaded)/1000000000000)) = Calories Consumed

My epic and sprawling independent study project, after the jump.

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Bob Fosse’s Cabaret and a couple Marilyn Monroe things after the jump.

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A while back I posted an essay using lessons garnered from solving difficult mathematical problems to develop a strategy a mixed martial artist should employ while fighting Fedor. I’ve taken this idea and applied it to terrorism, specifically to Al Qaeda and how the United States Government should have crafted their response to 9/11 based on lessons learned from math. I don’t come up with any clear cut solutions, and I don’t think any such solutions exist, but going through all of the lessons used in the previous paper and some new ones I develop some pretty interesting insights. Enjoy.




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Magic Hat Winter Seasonal Pack: Encore

The packaging for this, the best of the winter Magic Hat seasonal pack, casts aspersions on itself immediately, almost daring you to try it. The package illustration lies somewhere between between a Rock Band tie-in and an admiring portrait of L.A. rock/rap/lead paint chip fusion combo Imperial Stars. The title comes out of a bic lighter.

However, Encore thankfully doesn’t taste like the moment when you realize its time to abandon your fraternity brothers. It in fact has a tangy taste-bitter yet fruity. When poured, the foam is fairly light, but pleasing to the tongue. This is a beer that could outstay its welcome after three or four have gone down the hatch, but until then, it presents the best of both sides of the hops-the bite and evocation of tropical fruit. Each is developed to the fullest, without either compromising the other. It is a flavor experience unlike anything else I’ve encountered in the Magic Hat canon, and I hope they come back to it eventually.

It has a light texture, which is excusable given the intensity of the flavor presented. A more creamy and bodied production might sit too heavy, and punish the boozer. As it is, the beer presents itself brashly-pushing back, distinguishing itself, but never being difficult purely as an indulgence.

8.9

I perceive Inception and check up on The Social Network.

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