Kinetic

Mr. Schwimmer's attempts to discredit me only further emphasize his incompetence and overall cuntliness. Kinks albums worth owning are as follows: Face To Face; Something Else By The Kinks; Village Green Preservation Society; Arthur; Lola Vs. Powerman & The Moneygoround; and, to a lesser extent, Muswell Hillbillies, which contains the song "Alcohol," which must surely be of some interest to Mr. Schwimmer, a noted drunkard. I concede to not originally realizing that Mr. Schwimmer was such an enormous Who fan, nor did I initially suspect that he was such a dominant figure on Pete Townshend's hard drive. Lamentably, this I can't explain. Can't explain.

Pipe down, Schwimmer.

As far as actual quality is concerned, Lust For Life is about 100x better than anything The Stooges ever did.

Sssssuck.

As a few of you may have noticed, I recently made my return to the main page with an article entitled "Eli Manning's Rookie Diary." Go read it. It's quite good. But for the purpose of clearing the air, I'd like to give you all some idea of the winding road that led me back to TSM, particularly in light of my infamous 2003 thread, "I'll Never Write Another Goddamned Word For This Second-Rate Piece of Shit Website." It all began with my heavily coerced resignation from the site last March following the scandal caused by my explosive expose on child pornography rings in the Internet Wrestling Community, in which I implicated several founding members of this site. In retrospect, I probably jumped to a few conclusions on that one. But as any architecture student will tell you, for every door that closes a window opens. With that in mind, I set about attempting to parlay my legacy of journalistic excellence here into other, paying jobs. After months of futility and frustration, I was finally granted an opportunity with bucolic Eagle, Colorado's tiny Eagle Gazette. I was to be a sports writer, covering the Broncos and Rockies with an eye befitting the moniker of my new home. Sadly, I lasted only a few short months. I was really a bad fit from the get-go, but the straw that broke the camel's back was my Kobe Bryant story entitled "Laid Up Laker Takes Break From Lay Ups, Gets Laid." Fortunately, after a brief dalliance with the world of serious political commentary (more on which later), I got a second chance in the world of sports reporting when I was hired as a writer for the official website of football's Arizona Cardinals. This consisted mostly of puff pieces, such as short pieces on the signing of practice squad players and the like. And yet I still managed to rile enough people to prompt my firing, which I suspected was due in large part some angry letters the team got after my article "Pat Tillman: American Hero, Shitty Safety" was posted on the main page. Again, that headline may have an error in judgement on my part. I think part of the problem was the amount of creative freedom I enjoyed on my previous assignment as a staff writer for a conservative newsletter called "The Right Stuff." What a great gig that was. Imagine, then, how surprised I was when the editor asked for my resignation, citing the following infractions: recommending that Mount Rushmore be completely redesigned and re-named Mount Bushmore; claiming that Teresa Heinz Kerry had "ketchup streaming from her cooch" in my editorial on her husband's voting record in the senate; referring to the Democratic primaries as "a waste of time" and "fag tag" on 46 different occassions; creating a major flap by insisting that Howard Dean could fit an entire gopher in his mouth in my editorial on his opposition to the Iraq war; and then refusing to back down from the previous claim and subsequently accusing Michael Moore of winning a gopher eating contest. Whew! What a whirlwind three weeks that was! But, anyway, the powers that be here at TSM have graciously accepted me back into the fold and I look forward to keeping all of you entertained and informed with my inimitable brand of "journalism." See you on the main page!

Or.... you have a very primitive sense of humor? I'm not exactly sure what in that article could be deemed "very primitive" humor. Was it the four paragraph description of monkeys fucking? I kind of felt like that part was tacked on, too.

You people just don't understand humor.

I doubt that Eli's one of the complainers, considering that he didn't mention this incident in his absolutely uproarious rookie diary, currently available to one and all on the main page of this very site.

Barring any sort of undetected sarcasm, I'm a little confused by all this "fuck 'em" talk, considering that the current justification for this war is the liberation of the Iraqi people, who last I checked are Arabs.

I'd love to meet everyone! TSM party at my place, y'all. Bring your 40s and your vaseline. Anyone got a digital camera? I want a picture of me with my head in Squinc's lap to finally put those rumors to rest.

I've been racking my brain for days trying to figure this one out. You know in that one car commercial where there's that girl in the car on the lot? There's this song on there that goes something like "IT FEELS LIKE THE FIRST TIME!" and then "IT FEELS LIKE THE VERY FIRST TIME!" What's that song called?

Yeah, but your dick must be HUGE.

I grant you the Waffle House point, but this was exceptional. It included one toothless waitress chastising her daughter? cousin? whatever for mowing the hotel lawn next door and then walking into the Waffle House without shoes on. Then there was this outpouring of disbelief because my family had lived in Italy for a while, presumably because the waitress in question had never left Gainesville. North Florida is really as bad as the worst portions of Georgia, Tennessee, Alabama, or South Carolina in terms of rednecks. Edit: Changed to cover up my geographical faux pas.

I don't think anyone could actually withstand that much glam metal Pantera in one day. However, I think anyone could stare at those album covers for hours on end. That said, I can't deal with getting all those covers, so I'll just list the albums I've listened to today: Talking Heads- Fear of Music David Bowie- Aladdin Sane Prince- Dirty Mind & 1999 John Cale- Fragments From a Rainy Season That John Cale album isn't recommended, by the way.

I've heard that Jacksonville is crap, too. My memories all involve the Atlantic ocean and jellyfish, but I have a friend who used to live there and all he ever talks about is Lynryd Skynyrd and Limp Bizkit.

21 as of last Saturday and currently residing in scenic Asheville, North Carolina. And I've eaten at the Waffle House in Gainesville. My family and I still joke about the level of redneck to be found there.

My personal favorite is "Lisa the Vegetarian." Just too many funny bits to mention. And the best sub-plot ever is the Homer-Flying Dutchman bit from "New Kid on the Block." "Do these sound like the actions of a man who's had all he can eat?"

Huh, you really think so? I haven't heard it, but a lot of people list it as only slightly less brilliant than their first album. Certainly not terrible, at least. No, it really isn't any good. One of the explanations for this that I've heard but don't really subscribe to is that the Marquee Moon material was fairly old and had been played out and perfected long before the actual recording, while the Adventure material was all stuff that Tom Verlaine had come up with in the last year. But regardless of why it's bad, the fact remains that it really isn't any good at all and represents one of the more significant "sophomore slumps" from which the band (and particularly the primary songwriter, Verlaine) never really recovered.

I want to get a lot of different opinions on a lot different things, but don't want to go to the trouble of starting a lot of different threads about stuff that maybe five people know anything about. So here goes: My current dual musical obsessions are with the Kinks and David Bowie. How can anyone familiar with the stuff the Kinks recorded in their prime not think The Who are a complete fucking joke? I mean, the Beatles and the Rolling Stones are unimpeachable and I accept that, although I secretly suspect that their continued dominance in "best-of-all-time" lists is part of a shadowy baby boomer conspiracy to feed that particular age group's sense of self-importance. And, shit, I love the Beatles and Stones, but how they've managed to completely overwhelm all other British Invasion bands (with the exception of the aforementioned Who, a complete fucking joke) in terms of long-term popularity has to be the result of some sort of media ploy. And the Kinks are essentially forgotten with the exception of "You Really Got Me" and "Lola," when anyone discerning enough to pick up their records from the period beginning with Face to Face and ending with, arguably, Lola vs. Powerman and the Moneygoround, although Muswell Hillbillies has a few good songs, would realize that Ray Davies was easily the equal of Lennon or McCartney during that time period, and that Dave Davies wipes the fucking floor with George Harrison. So get out your fucking Ipods, yuppie motherfuckers, and download goddamn "Waterloo Sunset" and "Shangri-La" and "Do You Remember Walter?" and anythings else Ray Davies wrote during the brief period in which he was the world's greatest popular musician. Speaking of overlooked genius, how come no one on this board has ever mentioned T. Rex? I defy anyone to pick up Electric Warrior and not totally fall in love with it, as well as proclaim it easily equal to any of Bowie or Roxy Music's glitter rock records from the early 70s. Everyone knows "Get it On (Bang a Gong)" but the real meat of that record exists elsewhere. Seek out "Mambo Sun," "Jeepster," and "Cosmic Dancer" at once. Oh, and Saturnmark was deadly accurate in his praising of Sparks. The two I would suggest specifically are Kimono My House and Propaganda. A good primer to the band's sound at that time would be "This Town Ain't Big Enough For Both Of Us." Discuss.

What periods of Bowie are you getting obsessed with? If it's lining up with the Kinks, I'm guessing you're thinking sorta Hunky Dory through Aladdin Sane type Bowie. I ask because I love Bowie, but I really have trouble sticking with him for very long. Ziggy Stardust is great. I really like Hunky Dory. And I like the Berlin albums, even if I think the instrumental halves play out more like a Brian Eno training ground than anything Bowie really has his hands on. But when I picked up the 2-disc best of, I felt like I had pretty much everything I could ever want. I think you can pick out 15 or 20 songs of Bowie's and put them up against anything else and still have them come off as being really fucking great, but I get tired listening to more than 30 or 40 minutes from the same period. I really only like a few songs from Hunky Dory, truth be told. I think it's a fine album, but 9 times out of 10 I'll just listen to "Changes," "Oh! You Pretty Things," "Life on Mars," and "Queen Bitch." A lot of it seems sort of wishy-washy to me; sort of the last vestige of early David Bowie before he found his voice on Ziggy Stardust. That said, my favorite of the three glitter rock records is probably Diamond Dogs. Ignoring the half-assed Orwell song cycle nonsense, it really has the best set of songs of those three records. I'm not all that keen on the sequel-to-the-theme-from-"Shaft" sound on "!984," but everything is else is pretty brilliant, especially the "Sweet Thing" suite and "Rebel Rebel." Aside from that, I'm partial to Station to Station and Scary Monsters moreso than any of the Berlin albums. In fact, Lodger is my favorite of those three simply because it's noticably devoid of any of Brian Eno's ambient bullshit. A better set of David Bowie projects from the Berlin period are the two Iggy Pop albums, especially Lust for Life. Discuss. Another topic of interest to me: Television's Marquee Moon is a rare masterpiece, but Adventure is a total piece of unlistenable shit. Why?

Yeah, I've been in Asheville for a little over a year now. If you're around this weekend, you should come to Vincent's Ear on Saturday night and see my personal favorite local band, Congratulations. I'll be the one in the suit.

Woah! Magic bus.

I don't see the big deal about Will Oldham's fucking boring, sub-Leonard Cohen bullshit music. Now, I can't say as though I've ever actually listened to his stuff in any sort of private setting, but the times I've heard it in public I was really offended by how bad it was. That said, it isn't half as synapse-grindingly awful as the Mountain Goats, who tend to get played in similar situations here. Is it wrong of me to equate the two?

Wearing earplugs really wouldn't be consistent with my decadent rock and roll image. And the sound at local shows is generally so shitty that it's really not a factor.

I've been listening to Bowie's Scary Monsters and Lou Reed's Berlin a lot recently. Honorable mention goes to the first five songs or so from John Cale's Fragments of a Rainy Season, although I wouldn't suggest paying any more than $6 for the album, especially if you're familiar with the studio versions of the Cale songs on there. "Dying on the Vine" is probably my favorite.