On the bright side, somebody came to my office hours.
Just ran outside to feed the meter. When I got back, someone - apparently a Mormon - left a card with a picture of Jesus stuck to my nameplate and a number I can call to get a free video from the good folks at LDS. And there's a handwritten note that says "I thought you needed this."
Oooooooookay.
Perros y dinero
Dateline: Tijuana.
Just wanted to take a quick sec to offer public thanks to Token Potts, Primetime Steve, Bella Express, and Dutch Oscar. Fine specimens of dog all, and drinks are on them tonight.
And condolences to Kiowa Beatgoeson, who lost by a nose.
And condolences to me, who would have won a tidy sum had he not.
The Happiest Place on Earth
Tomorrow we set sail..er...bus for that jewel amongst border towns, Tijuana.
Why? Because we haven't had a trip in forever that a) both of us went on and b) was not going home for the holidays.
Why else? The dog track, obviously. I'm gonna bet on the puppies and win some scratch.
I'm a little worried about not being able to speak a lick of Spanish, though I hear TJ (at least the touristy parts) is pretty much a suburb of San Diego these days and English is spoken pretty much everywhere. (Just wait till we go to Munich; I'll be all over the
Deutsche Sprache like sauerkraut on a schnitzel.)
Happily, my better half has taught me some useful Spanish phrases. She said if we get separated for some reason and I get lost and need directions, I should just find a policeman and ask "Donde esta la presentacion con burro y senorita?". (My spelling's not the best, so I may have messed up the suffixes, but that was about it.)
She takes such good care of me.
Two wholly unrelated things:
A) There was apparently a nifty little hostage situation going down at Wilshire and Highland today. Big city living = fun, fun, fun.
B) For some reason I do this thing where I switch the names of similar sounding sociologists or philosophers or other smartypants writer types. I don't get their work confused, I just say one when I mean the other. Past tics of this nature include Garfinkel/Goffman, Simmel/Schutz, Hegel/Husserl. My new one is Lamont/Lareau.
One of those last two is a family sociologist, whose work we assign in the Sociology of the Family class I'm a TA for. One is most certainly not.
Guess which name I used in the long email I wrote to the prof this morning?
Sigh.
Music Mondays, Pt. 2 - Braaaaaiiiiiinzzz
This week we'll be hopping into the wayback machine and digging on a fine record by a band who VH-1 addled listeners may consider a one (or two) hit wonder. . .
The Zombies - Odyssey & Oracle
First, let me get this out of the way: I have no excuse, except perhaps grad student poverty, for not having picked this up earlier.
That said, let me say this too: Good lord I am sick of baby boomers insisting that music never got any better than the 1960s. It did,
Sgt. Peppers is woefully overrated, getting old is certainly a bugger and I miss my early twenties too, but for the love of all that is holy and good, get over it.
All of
that having been said,
Odyssey & Oracle is one stellar set of tunes and evidence that, despite the undeserved stranglehold that
Pet Sounds seems to have on the top of almost every dang critic's "Greatest Albums of All Tiiiiiime" list, demonstrates that the 1960s were kind of overstuffed with great rock and roll records. If the Kinks are the most overlooked kid on the British Invasion block, that makes the Zombies Boo Radley.
(Also, they misspelled "Odyssey" on the album cover. That's kind of awesome.)
Do you like The Shins? I do. Do you like the Zombies? I do, and The Shins do too.*
That's not a criticism; I'm just sayin', is all. Let's face it, at this point rock and roll is a folk art form and there's something to be said for tweaking (by-now) well-worn idioms.
But I digress. About the record.
Odyssey & Oracle is a masterpiece of baroque Mod pop: stellar melodies and a sneakily supple rhythm section welded together in consistently interesting arrangements. Unlike any number of twee popsters (I'm looking at you, Belle & Sebastian) the Zombies knew that pretty melodies work best when you've got a bass player who knows how to hit the pocket and propel the tune, lest it become a cold-fish handshake between chamber music and foppish poetry. So even when they break out the flute in the midst of all the mellow vocals, harpsichord-sounding organ, and tremolo, it rarely gets unbearably frilly-cuffed.
Standout tracks include "Time of the Season," "Beechwood Park," and "Care of Cell 44," which has to be the best love song ever written to a girl in jail.
(It also gets profoundly weird at times; see "Butcher's Tale (Western Front 1914)", a lovely little accordion-based ditty about WWI with lines like "If the preacher he could see those flies/Wouldn't preach for the sound of guns.")
All in all it's an albums that is by turns bouncy, morose, full of swagger, and full of melancholy. You can check out some sound samples
here.
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*The same goes for Elliott Smith, the Brian Jonestown Massacre, and a whole bunch of classic pop/psychedelia types, who do not fess up as often as they should.
That said, let me say this too: Good lord I am sick of baby boomers insisting that music never got any better than the 1960s. It did, Sgt. Peppers is woefully overrated, getting old is certainly a bugger and I miss my early twenties too, but for the love of all that is holy and good, get over it.
