Welcome to BigFlax.com!

August 27, 2002

   Big IM update today, or last night.  Whichever.   Also, if you haven't been keeping track, my birthday is in two days.  Ric'll be out here tomorrow, so expect eventual pictures... I may have to put them on a separate page, though, as this one is already pretty unloadable.  I may move the Boston pics to a separate page as well, just because of space.
    Birthday shout-outs might as well be in order: WNUR's Rich Goldberg, today (19?  Makes sense); WNUR's Jordan Burgess, tomorrow (20, as far as I know); my old middle school pal Sandro, tomorrow (20).  Did I miss anyone?

August 23, 2002

   I was worried that Marc would give me a hard time about any even potential inaccuracies in my Boston update, but as it turned out I really didn't need to, although apparently he would have related stories had I not warned him to shut the fuck up about it.  On the other hand, I did have to worry about Drew, who informed me that Minneapolis' skyscrapers are those heights because the first one got a permit from the city allowing it to be the tallest building in the city until 2005.  This explains why the next two buildings were built to within two feet of it but not above.  Strange.

August 22, 2002

   This is already the largest page of any month out there, even without pictures (like, say, July 2000 or June 2001).   This is probably due to the golf scores (I think tables take up a lot of space) and August 4th's major rantage.   But now we do have pictures (my digital camera works on this computer, hooray), so it's only going to get larger.  (BTW, these pictures were fucking huge when I first brought them in, so I've slimmed them down a tad for easier presentation here.  If, for some reason unknown to me, you'd like to see the huge-ass image, click on the picture.)

This is a picture of Gabby's summer dorm.  I think her room is that set of third floor windows in the middle.

This is a chapel on the BU campus.  If you're wondering why I took a picture of this, as opposed to, say, anything else on the BU campus, it's because this was conveniently located only a couple blocks from Gabby's dorm and, at that, right across from the T stop.  I guess it's just more convenient to use these captions to also relate stories, so here's where I'll mention how I almost got hit by a T: Gabby had given me directions to a place on Commonwealth Avenue, but as it turned out I got there way earlier than she'd expected.  So she was giving me directions to her dorm over the phone, and she told me to turn left at the next light.  The next light, it would transpire, went into a one-way street - in the wrong direction, obviously - to the left, but I was already on the T tracks before I saw it, and a T was bearing down.   Fortunately there was no one behind me, so I quickly hit reverse and zipped out of there before the T even had time to honk at me - and given the condition of the T cars I might well have done it more damage than it to me - but it was still a bit unnerving.   But then, Boston's annoying habit of having about three streets in the entire city that run two ways wasn't very helpful at any point on the trip.

Owen samples the hands-free water fountain at the Museum of Science on our first of two trips there (necessitated by the fact that our first trip arrived ten minutes too late to see the Imax movie we wanted).  It's true that I hadn't seen him for a while, but he still appears to have not gotten a haircut since that point (whenever it was).  Maybe a large, furry animal just died on his head and he figured it would be easier to wear it as a hat than to take it off.  I don't really know.  We had gone to Buddha's Delight, a vegetarian restaurant in Chinatown, earlier in the evening, site of three amusing notes:
1) Owen not only ate his entree, but he finished what Gabby and I didn't of ours (least amusing).
2) There were two strip clubs, or whatever, down the street and visible from the window - Centerfolds and The Glass Slipper.  At one point a car pulled up on the corner and a blond woman got out and started walking up the street on the Centerfolds side, so I joked that she was going in to work.  Then when she got to the door, the bouncer opened it, and she did in fact go in to work.
3) At some point a large stuffed rabbit appeared in the garbage can across the street.  Once we noticed it, it became a running joke - would people walking past look at it?  Would anyone take it?  I wanted to take a picture of it but I didn't want to from the window because a) it was really grimy and b) we were inside, so the flash might have gone off.  We started joking that the rabbit contained drugs, and speculating on which shady-looking passerby was going to pick it up and walk away quickly with it under his arm.  I picked out one guy who was walking kind of shadily, but he passed without incident.  When I looked back at the can, the rabbit was gone - a kid riding by on a bike had grabbed it.  I'm disappointed I didn't get the picture, but it's still a funny story.  At least I think it is.

Parking in Boston is not the easiest enterprise.  The car spent most of Wednesday in a parking garage (which cost me $21 for ten hours but was basically necessary to stop us from being tied down to feeding a meter every couple hours), but at every other time it was on the street at a meter.  When I arrived around 4 pm Tuesday we only had to put two hours' worth of money into a meter to hold till six, but of course things started up again at 8 am Wednesday.  Gabby took it upon herself to go out and feed the meters, which she did at 8 and again at 10 something.  When I went out at 12:30, the orange thing you see was waiting for me.  Fortunately I was parked in Brookline (though Boston was across the street), so it was only a $15 ticket, but all the same.

A random view of part of Boston, taken from the roof of the parking garage simply because I was astounded that there were basically two open spaces in the entire place, necessitating a trip to the roof to find parking.  Got redundancy?

We went to one of the many bridges over the Charles, from where I took several pictures, of which this is one.  That's the financial district, if I remember Gabby correctly, though if that's right it would be one of the few times when she was more than a half-assed tour guide - most of the time I was pointing at buildings like "What about that?" and she'd say "Um... that's a building."  This was the capper to the saga started by the driving directions she gave me, most of which read "look for signs to [next highway you're supposed to get onto]."  One part read as follows: "At the light, turn right, then bear to your left, then just stay to your right."  As badly as these directions read, they were actually pretty easy to follow in practice, though it would have been helpful to know certain exit numbers, at least in the case of getting from 287 onto 684 in New York, where the first sign for 684 came a mere half-mile from it.  Running along the right side of this picture, more or less, is Storrow Drive, which is like the LSD or FDR of Boston, or at least it seemed that way to me.  I took to calling it "Sourdough Drive," mocking the last bit of Gabby's Boston-related gaffes, as in the directions she referred to it as "Stourough Drive."

The one problem with the digital camera, or at least my digital camera, is a lack of zoom.  In the center of this picture are three fairly neat-looking bridges - the Salt and Pepper Bridge (so nicked because its pillars look like shakers; it's really the Longfellow), the Tobin Bridge (which never failed to make me think of Mike Tobin, and, just now because I was thinking of other Tobins it could have made me think of, Vince Tobin), and probably the only one you can really see, the white suspension bridge, which I'm told isn't in service yet.  Meh.

Another shot of Boston, this time with the Hancock Building in full view.   At 788 feet, the Hancock (fully the "John Hancock Tower," possibly to avoid confusion with that other, taller - 1,127 - Hancock Building, even though it isn't technically named that either) is the tallest building in Boston, just 38 feet taller than the Prudential Center, and completed in 1976.  If you think it's odd that Boston's tallest building is only 788 feet high, or that there are fully nine buildings in Chicago which are taller (several of which do not even have names other than their street addresses), I think it has something to do with the land Boston sits on, which is not entirely stable due to its location and thus not conducive to big skyscrapers sitting everywhere.  (Incidentally, Marc, I don't care whether that's the whole story or not, so don't post to the message board about how wrong this is.  In fact, now that I think about it, don't do that with anything here.)

Here's another picture in which it's kind of hard to see things.  That's Cambridge and MIT straight ahead - the two domes are apparently the MIT library and something else, as Gabby once again comes through with the info.  I think the library is the one to the right.  If you can't see the domes, it's because this picture is really small.  It might be easier in larger mode; try it.

The aforementioned Prudential building.  That it might fall over is I'm sure just suggested by the angle or some other visual trick in this shot, though it is nearly 40 years old at this point (ancient!).  Again, it's 750 feet tall, which ranks 2nd in Boston but way down there on the world charts, behind buildings in really impressive cities like Warsaw, Charlotte, Cleveland, Pittsburgh, and Penang, Malaysia, not to mention fully three in Minneapolis, which I only mention because Minneapolis' three tallest buildings are 775, 774, and 773 feet, and the tallest one was built first, in 1973.  Way to up the ante, architects!

And another, closer, shot of the Hancock.  Within the constraints of Boston it looks pretty impressive, at least, but like I said, put it in downtown Chicago and it gets lost among One First National Plaza and 900 North Michigan Ave. and 311 South Wacker Drive, and all those other street addresses.  Am I displaying a Chicago bias here at all?  Just to even it out, I will say that of all the major United States cities I've been to, Boston is probably the most attractive on the whole.   Think of a nice New York neighborhood, and then pretend that 2/3 of New York is covered in that - that's what Boston looked like to me.

Gabby poses with the giant Arthur Fiedler head, not far from the Arthur Fiedler Footbridge.  Think this guy was popular in Boston?  The head is weird because it's made of sections, layered on top of each other until they eventually make a head, but up close it basically looks like nothing, kind of like a pointillist painting or something.  I was reminded vaguely of the huge Georg Solti head in Lincoln Park, but that was both less huge and more ugly than this one.

Unfortunately it's all but impossible to read that storefront, so you'll have to take my word for it.  You may be able to recognize the 7-Eleven part, at least.   Anyway, this is in the Beacon Hill section on Charles Street, where apparently some mandate says "all storefronts must look like it's the 1940s" or something like that.  What amused me most were the words on either side of the 7-Eleven itself - "groceries" to the left and "sundries" to the right.  When was the last time you actually saw that word used?

The all-intents-and-purposes "Flax's Trip to Boston Slideshow" concludes with a shot of the Boston City Hall, which has to be the weirdest-looking government building anywhere.  It's even weirder than it looks in this picture, because I had to take this from a fair distance or risk not getting the whole thing in.   It's huge and imposing, but then it's in this like, late-1960s style of architecture that makes you wonder how it was ever approved in the first place, constructed out of boring-looking stone and then jutting out at odd angles all over the place.  I think it looks even weirder from the other side, but we were about to go to the Museum of Science to see the Imax movie we'd missed the night before.  Anyway, that's it, and I'm not going to go through some formal conclusion here, as I've already eaten up gargantuan amounts of space.  Trip fun; Flax done talking.

August 20, 2002

   Even though I should be getting ready to leave for Boston, I had to get a dream like this down.  Cause damn, it was pretty huge.  Ah, link to it yourself.

    Okay.  See you in a few days.

August 18, 2002

   You know where I was for the last seven hours?  Sitting downstairs waiting for the power to come back on.   That's right, the power to our neighborhood, as well as numerous other spots in the area, was out from 4:15 pm to 11:15 pm, pretty much right on the nose.  Monumentally annoying.  I wonder if the stuff in the freezer has all melted.  I am going to have to reset a bunch of clocks, which will suck too.

August 18, 2002

   Saturday's entry on my Page-A-Day sports calendar: "8/17/66: Willie Mays passes Jimmie Foxx for second place on the all-time homer list with his 535th round-tripper."  There's more, of course, but is it me or is that really weird-sounding nowadays?  Just the idea that there was a time not that distant (a mere 36 years... and two days, now) when Jimmie Foxx's 534 career home runs was good enough for second all-time.  Second!   Meanwhile, today he's eleventh, having been passed in the interval by Hank Aaron (755), Mays of course (660), Barry Bonds (600 and counting), Frank Robinson (586), Mark McGwire (583), Harmon Killebrew (573), Reggie Jackson (563), Mike Schmidt (548), and Mickey Mantle (536).  Damn.  No wonder 500 home runs used to be an automatic qualifier for the Hall of Fame.  Nowadays, though... who knows.  The very fact that Jose Canseco had a chance at 500 should tell you something about that.

August 17, 2002

   New shit.  Slight change on the quiz bowl page (to Loyola's description), plus new IM (I won't pluralize that because there's only one, just under the deadline), plus "new" (though it's a couple days old already) dream.

    A few family items to pass around.  My uncle and aunt had a baby girl, Paige McKenna Flaxman, on Friday.  (Unfathomably adorable yawning picture ahoy.)  She becomes my only cousin to have the last name of Flaxman.  Also, my parents celebrated their 25th wedding anniversary on Wednesday the 14th, and my grandfather turned 77 on Sunday the 11th.   Big month.  In more personal news, we are 12 days and counting from entering my third decade, a terrifying thought when I use that particular wording.  So let's say instead, we are 12 days and counting from my age starting with a 2 instead of a 1.

August 12, 2002

   So I went over to Underhill to run today, and my dad and I ran intervals - run a lap full on, walk a lap, repeat.   We did a mile of each (four laps), with the following running times (for me; my dad's were a bit slower but then he hasn't run in like 20 years): 1:45, 1:29, 1:30, 1:40.   Good enough for just over a six-minute mile, though of course they weren't right next to each other so it doesn't really count.  My dad says that that means I could do a seven-minute mile, a prospect I scoff at, given that that's nearly two minutes better than my previous best of 8:50.  Plus after the intervals I was fairly wiped - not as wiped as you might have thought, which is good news, but my legs resembled a gelatin-like substance for nearly an hour afterwards.  Fortunately, there is always room for Jello.

August 11, 2002

   Minor update - new section on the Quiz Bowl page, with listings of "Teams We Don't Hate."  Merely a small cross-promotion with Loyola so far, but maybe that'll expand.  Who knows.  Also, a couple new capsules in the summer books section.

August 8, 2002

   Dinner tonight (Wednesday) was at Coyote Crossing, a pretty good little Mexican restaurant.  Its chips and salsa weren't quite enough to make me forget Toro Loco, or even Las Palmas, but they were pretty good, and the place makes a nice enchilada plate.
    Then we went and saw Goldmember.  It's, uh, not so good.   (Once again, Gabby, you have no idea what you're talking about.)  Review ahoy.

August 7, 2002

   Good news: My Western Suburbs shirt came today.
    Bad news: I'm out in Pennsylvania and so I can't see it for a couple days.
    Good news: I hit a great three-wood off the first tee.
    Bad news: It was the only three-wood I hit more than about 75 yards.
So whoever put the hex on my golf game so they wouldn't have to read the scores anymore, it worked.  Actually it was mostly due to the complete change in my swing, I think.   Tip: don't go out on the golf course two days after you've changed your swing something major.  I'll go out to the range tomorrow, but I don't even want to think about golf before then.

August 6, 2002

   Another place I've been going to online recently is Tbay, the auction site run by time travelers.  They've got some great stuff up there:
    * 1909 T-206 Honus Wagner MINT!!!
    * Lot of 20 1952 Topps Mickey Mantle ALL MINT!!!
    * WOW!! Original copy of Gettysburg Address w/ Lincoln auto!!!
    * SHROUD OF TURIN IN GREAT CONDITION!!!  THIS IS THE REAL THING!!!
    * Authentic Nails from Crucifix!! (Set of 3)

August 5, 2002

   After an IM-less week - perhaps you noticed - I decided not to take the chance and so dipped into the classic IM file to start this week.  So check out a conversation between Jan and myself talking about, among other things, amusing bonus intros, now up on the IMs page.

August 5, 2002

   Few things put a hop in my step quite like getting mail, but when the mail is stuff I've won on Ebay, it just gets better.  After waiting a few days, the first few of a good many things rolled in - a retail box of Upper Deck Series 2, a Sammy Sosa/Luis Gonzalez dual bat card, a Dez White jersey card, and three things from one guy including a graded 10 Barry Zito rookie and a graded 9 Mike Piazza rookie.  Nice.  I got a decent haul from the 14 packs in the UD box - it was retail, not hobby, so there weren't any guaranteed memorabilia cards, and so I didn't find any.  But I did get one card from each of the three 1:11 insert sets, plus a UD Plus card numbered to 1125 that turned out to be worth what I'd paid for the box itself.  Plus 14 rookie cards (one per pack) without a double.  Come to think of it, I think there were few if any doubles at all, which is always nice.
    Few things also put a hop in my step like positive feedback, and I'm up to 7, which is money.  If I don't get closer to one per, though, I'm going to be a little annoyed - I am a model Ebay citizen.  At least according to some of my feedback.

August 4, 2002

    Maybe the main page isn't the best place for this, because it may get long.  Too bad.

    Recently my friend Jan wrote in his LiveJournal, which now provides essentially the only updated content (and rather infrequently recently) on his website, a little bit on Dashboard Confessional, in which he complained about their whiny-emo sort of style, punctuated with the following note on their t-shirts which bore the slogan "Fight the Good Fight": "Do I have to throw out everything I've learned through difficult years of adolescence, regress to age thirteen, and once again believe that 'the Good Fight' consists of sort of standing there, watching it all go by, then crying that you can't get a piece of it?"  Of course, he said other things too, but I had a few things to say about this, which I posted in his comments section:

Though I recognize that not everyone likes Dashboard (in fact I seem to know many people who direct  venom at him that could be better tossed at, say, the entirety of mainstream pop music), I think I should just butt in and say that "Fight the Good Fight" on the shirts is almost unquestionably a reference to the Dashboard song "The Good Fight," which instead of merely whining about girls is a lament on a relationship gone to shit. Among its lyrics:

"I begged you not to go.
I begged you, I pleaded.
Claimed you as my only hope
and watched the floor as you retreated."

"Does it comfort you to know you fought the good fight?
Basking in your victory, hollow and alone,
to boast your bitter bragging rights to anyone who'll listen."

Kind of odd that he'd choose that song to put on the shirt, but I guess it suggests that he prefers to see people in relationships than as whiny singles, even if that's what most of his songs refer to.

    Upon further listen, it actually occurred to me that Jan was missing the point even more than I initially thought.  While many whiny-emo songs are about not being able to get girls, Dashboard's songs are more about trying to maintain struggling relationships, which is what "The Good Fight," as with the song, refers to.  "Screaming Infidelities," which I believe is the first single, is about, I'd have to say, a guy upset at the breakup of his relationship because his girlfriend cheated on him.  Other songs I happen to enjoy are "A Plain Morning," which is about, more or less, a long-distance relationship and how the guy can't wait to get back to the girl, and "Again I Go Unnoticed," the Dashboard song Jan likes, which is another "our relationship is struggling and it bothers me" song.  Why Jan didn't manage to notice that the great majority of Dashboard songs in fact follow this tack instead of the "oh, look, there's a girl over there who I like but am never going to talk to" format (or similar), I don't know, but it indicates to me that he heard the whiny tone and just assumed.  He probably hasn't heard that many DC songs in the first place, outside of that concert.
    Chastened by my reply, particularly my reference to mainstream pop, Jan made a further update where he discussed lyrical dysfunction in current music.  His big problem seemed to be the lack of images, replaced by plaintively hollow "I feel such-and-such a way" words that seemed to him little more than vapid blocks of text.   He compared this to bands who at least tried to use concrete images, and at one point compared Boxcar Racer, a band I'd never heard of, with Blink 182, one I'm rather more familiar with.

Blink 182 vs. Boxcar Racer

"I feel so mad
I feel so angry
I feel so callous
So lost, confused, just mad
I feel so cheap
So used, unfaithful
Let's start over
Let's start over"
-Boxcar Racer, I Feel So

Repeat this verse five or six times and you pretty much have the entire song, devoid of any images, and it's just pure and poorly developed angst. Compare to another song that's getting heavy rotation on the radio:

"In the car I just can't wait,
to pick you up on our very first date
Is it cool if I hold your hand?
Is it wrong if I think it's lame to dance?
Do you like my stupid hair?
Would you guess that I didn't know what to wear?
I'm too scared of what you think
You make me nervous so I really can't eat"
-Blink 182, First Date

Oh my God, it's concrete images and real emotions. In declining to be so earth-shakingly self-indulgent, the same people have produced lyrics that are somewhat more intelligent and go a little bit toward bucking the trends that have been crippling most of the other stuff in the mainstream (though not everyone can be a lyrical genius).

I guess it should be considered odd that I'd never heard of Boxcar Racer, as it's Blink without Mark (and plus a couple of whoevers), but it's not like I follow the current music scene with much vigor - I sort of sit around until I stumble upon or have someone point out to me something I end up liking to listen to.  Having listened to "I Feel So," it is pretty iffy, but it should be noted that I'd always thought the same thing about "First Date" - I like the opening riff, but the words had never exactly blown me away.  It may be "concrete images," but that doesn't make it especially clever in my opinion - and remember we're talking about my favorite modern band here (though Ben Folds/Ben Folds Five are making a hard charge).
    (Maybe the problem is the lack of Mark.  After all, we don't really know how many songs or parts of songs he's responsible for, since Blink chose to go the way of the Beatles and credit everything to Hoppus/DeLonge, giving us no idea of how collaborative the whole thing is.)
    Compared to Dashboard, though, Blink's lyrics can be equally whiny, if in different ways.  There's "Wasting Time," an early offering off Cheshire Cat, in which Mark sings, "Sometimes I sit at home and wonder if she's sitting at home thinking of me and wondering if I'm sitting at home thinking about her... or am I just wasting my time?"  In theory, of course, these are "concrete images," and I love this song, but what makes this any more "concrete" than "Your hair is everywhere" or "This damp air is fighting my defroster" or "The television steals the conversation," all Dashboard lyrics?
    I do agree that plenty of mainstream songs suck, but I don't hate them because of the lyrics per se - it's because I have no interest in the music.  The lyrics may suck too, but I can deal with sucky lyrics in a song I can listen to.   "I Feel So," for example, does not have a very catchy line in the chorus, which put me off it as much or more than the tame lyrics.  By contrast, look at Nickelback's "How You Remind Me," another recent hit on Top 40 radio.  The lyrics aren't exactly stunning:

This is how you remind me
Of what I really am
This is how you remind me
Of what I really am
It's not like you to say sorry
I was waiting on a different story
This time I'm mistaken
For handing you a heart worth breaking
I've been wrong
I've been down
Into the bottom of every bottle
These five words in my head
Scream, "Are we having fun yet?"

Yet at the same time, Nickelback provides a catchy enough tune for me to forgive what otherwise I might consider a pretty bland, uninventive, and probably "crappy" song, like I would most things on Top 40 radio.  Take as the opposite example Lifehouse's "Hanging by a Moment."  For as much as it concerns me, these are probably the same song with stupid Gen-X rock lyrics, but I could never get into the sound of Lifehouse's, and so I've never even listened to the whole thing.  As a result, I can't quote you any of the lyrics (aside from "hanging by a moment here with you"), but I can tell you that "Hanging by a Moment" was the best-selling single of the year 2001, even though it never hit #1.  Strange.
    Jan goes on to discuss the Beatles, a group I'm, uh, pretty familiar with.

"Love, love me do.
You know I love you,
I'll always be true,
So please, love me do.
Whoa, love me do."
-The Beatles, Love Me Do

This is an example of the simple ballads that were going on at the time, though we have to admit that the lyricism wasn't so imaginative in this song. Again, the Beatles were just taking what they knew from the pop environment, which was probably also full of a lot of overly sentimental, simple love songs.

"I once had a girl, or should I say, she once had me...
She showed me her room, isn't it good, norwegian wood?
She asked me to stay and she told me to sit anywhere,
So I looked around and I noticed there wasn't a chair.
I sat on a rug, biding my time, drinking her wine.
We talked until two and then she said, 'It's time for bed'"
-The Beatles, Norwegian Wood

A few more years, and the lyrics are still simple, but they had evolved to tell interesting human stories that were also more sophisticated. They could have stayed their old ground, without progressing, but they took it upon themselves to create better lyrics.

True though this may be, it's a little unfair to everyone else - after all, the Beatles are and always will be the best band in the history of the world, so to say "Hey other bands, you should do what the Beatles did" is a little unfair, as it's pretty tough to go through five styles in six years.  What's more, the style changes slower these days - whereas the Beatles came along at a time when "rock and roll" was Buddy Holly and Chuck Berry, they departed with "rock and roll" being Led Zeppelin and Jimi Hendrix and so forth, but more importantly already existing in several styles, whereas in 1960 there had been maybe two.  By comparison, let's look at, say, Aerosmith, arguably the biggest act in rock of the past 30 years.  They've basically been doing the same thing since 1973 - slight variations maybe, but there isn't the same kind of difference between "Dream On" and "Just Push Play" that there is between, say, "She Loves You" and "I Am The Walrus" (and those songs were recorded no more than four years apart, maybe only three).
    To find a band today that has actually adapted its style to suit changing musical tastes, we should look at - and it pains me to say it - 'NSync.   When they first started up, they sounded basically exactly like the Backstreet Boys.  But while Backstreet has fallen off the face of the earth, 'NSync is still going strong, precisely because they knew to adapt.  They made more rockin' songs, they made R&B style stuff; Backstreet tried to make three albums' worth of the same stuff they did on their first album, and it blew up in their faces.  Britney Spears is beginning to have the same problem, though her behavior has as much to do with it as her consistently disposable music.
    Jan also compares the Beatles to Radiohead - something I've never gotten.  Many people regard Radiohead as the best band of the last ten years as well as currently, but I've never been able to get into them - for no reason so much as musically.  And this is where we come full circle.  Radiohead may write great lyrics, but I wouldn't know because I can't get into their sound - and that is, in fact, the real problem I have with modern music - so little of it sounds good.  My problem with Staind, say, another band Jan mentions, is not "oh, their lyrics are so trite," but simply, "I can't stand to listen to this music."  Lyrics are important, yes, but let's go back to the Beatles for a second, and a song I mentioned above, "I Am The Walrus."  I could quote the entire lyrics if I wanted to, but instead here's just a brief snippet:

Semolina Pilchard
Climbing up the Eiffel Tower
Elementary penguins
Singing Hare Krishna
Man, you should have seen them kicking Edgar Allan Poe
I am the eggman
They are the eggmen
I am the walrus
Goo goo goo joob

While not "trite whining about girls," it has to be admitted that these lyrics make no sense whatsoever, nor do any of the song's other verses.  Still, that isn't really the point, right?  In the Beatles' case, or at least in the case of songs like this, it was about the musical experimentation.  They did things with music that no one had done before that, and few have done since.  Overlooked in the whole thing is that none of the Beatles were exactly stunning musicians.  George and John were decent lead and rhythm guitar players respectively; Paul could play several things well but couldn't read music; and Ringo was, well, Ringo.  It didn't matter, though - they parlayed this into genius by inventing chords where they didn't know them, writing simple but catchy hooks, and eminently singable lyrics.  Plenty of Beatles songs repeat the same words over and over - and I'm not just thinking of "I Want You (She's So Heavy)" or "Why Don't We Do It in the Road?" here, but songs like "Oh! Darling," whose lyrics run as follows:

Oh! Darling, please believe me
I'll never do you no harm
Believe me when I tell you
I'll never do you no harm

Oh! Darling, if you leave me
I'll never make it alone
Believe me when I beg you
Don't ever leave me alone

When you told me you didn't need me anymore
Well, you know, I nearly broke down and cried
When you told me you didn't need me anymore
Well, you know, I nearly fell down and died

Oh! Darling, if you leave me
I'll never make it alone
Believe me when I tell you
I'll never do you no harm

When you told me you didn't need me anymore
Well, you know, I nearly broke down and cried
When you told me you didn't need me anymore
Well, you know, I nearly fell down and died

Oh! Darling, please believe me
I'll never let you down
Believe me when I tell you
I'll never do you no harm

Possibly not the world's most complex lyrics.  Yet this song runs 3:26 - compared to maybe even more repetitive songs like "She Loves You" or "Love Me Do," which run something like a minute less - and bear in mind this comes off Abbey Road, not, say, Beatles For Sale.  The difference is certainly in the music, if not especially in the lyrics themselves.
    Jumping back to Jan's earlier point about the Beatles' early songs having less-than-clever lyrics because that was the music scene at the time, it should probably be pointed out to him that many of today's Top 40 songs are made by bands that have been products of recent or early 90s music, not all of which is really all that clever either.  We give the Beatles such leeway in retrospect, but who's to say none of these bands will evolve into better lyrics?  (Well, I will, that's how music is these days and certainly there aren't any Lennons or McCartneys out there - besides, it's not clear there are many acts who could get away with complete genre shifts and still maintain beloved status like the Beatles did.)
    To try and wind this up, because it's gone on way too long and has rambled at times, I'd just like to point out that yes, the current music scene sucks, but it's because most of the current generation eats up crappy music with slight, insipid lyrics.  They don't care how articulately it illustrates their problems, just that it does.  As long as that continues to be the case, music isn't likely to make a radical shift in the mainstream, except maybe in terms of who's producing it.  The recent trend into crap hard rock is a bit worrying, though the demise of Limp Bizkit is a gratifying occurrence.
    And as a final shameless plug, since Jan mentioned "Norwegian Wood" as a song with a story, check out Ben Folds and/or Ben Folds Five if you like that sort of thing.  He writes songs about people which can be beautiful, hilarious, or both.  And if you really hate the crap hard rock, check out "Rockin' the Suburbs," which makes a point not completely unlike Jan's, and in a much cooler way.

August 3, 2002

   The whole third floor smells like paint because my sister decided, for whatever reason, that her room needed to be a different color.  Why, I don't know, but she did, and it's half painted now, but she's not even done.  I can just feel brain cells dying.

    Movie review.

August 3, 2002

   Another day, another dollar.   Wait, did I say "dollar?"  I meant "golf round."   Same 114 as yesterday, but fewer putts and more good shots.  (Well, one more.)   Score, putts, good shots, just like yesterday.  I've stuck par back in at the top but bolded it so it stands out.  Also, ha ha, Marc, more golf scores.  Eat it.

    Time to explain the exclamation marks, since I know you're wondering.  They are not merely for emphasis, nor do they represent factorial (anyway, 1 factorial is 1 and 2 factorial is 2, so there wouldn't be much point), nor do they represent cards whose values are very contingent on their conditions like in Beckett.   (Shut up.)  Rather, they represent: 1) a very good putt was involved (if under putts), or 2) a good shot that didn't necessarily do me any good (if under good shots).   I will now explain the exclamation marks, followed by a quick explanation of that 11, which sort of jumps out at you.  Then I won't do any more explaining and let the round speak for itself, so you can more easily ignore it.
    * The 2! on #15.  I was on the green in four after a mediocre but playable drive, good seven-iron, pretty good five-iron, and middling chip.  This put me, needless to say, at the complete opposite end of the green from the hole - I couldn't have been any closer than 30 or 35 feet, and the greens at Blue Bell are fairly undulating.  I knocked one at the hole and was hoping it would slow down when - bang! - it hits the hole and bounces up, landing a foot or two away.  I knocked that one in for six.
    * The 1! on #3.  I absolutely pounded a five-wood, but unexpectedly drew it right (note that this was probably the first shot ever on which I hit a draw) and well right of the green.  I was able to chip it on (from where I three-putted), but if I'd hit it straight I probably would have made par.
    * The 1! on #6.  Again, I knocked a club stiff (this was a three-iron, I believe), but it went too far right and I had to pitch up onto the green.   So, better than I hit most clubs most of the day, but not straight enough to really be helpful.
    * The 11 on #13.  It took me five shots to get out of the sand.   Shut up.

August 2, 2002

   Another day, another golf round.   And a much better golf round, it should be noted, though still not as good as the first one.  The weird thing is the front and back nines produced identical lines in every respect you'd care to name.  Observe.  The first line is my score, the second line is putts, the third line is "good shots."  I'll leave the par out at this point because if you actually care what it is, you can look at yesterday.

    Before you say it, yes, they do not duplicate by hole - that would be a little ridiculous.  But 57 strokes, 23 putts, and 14 good shots on each nine is pretty weird - it amused me when I was adding it up, anyway.  At any rate, 114 is a lot better than 131.  To be fair I've probably played both back nines better than the first time I played the back nine, but that's just because I was out of practice that first time and ran out of steam after 11.  I have yet to play the front nine as well as I did that first time, and still have yet to play the back nine as well as that front nine.  But hey, I'm not complaining that much.  It's getting there, and ooh ooh, I get to play again tomorrow.  My biggest complaint is the heat, which is only getting worse.  Today the heat index was around 100, which sucks.  My dad loves the heat for some reason, but I could do with it being a little cooler.
    To quickly sum up the two holes on which I had three good shots, because I know you care.  #7: I actually managed a 7, which is pretty good since it was a par five.  After a pretty good three-wood, I hit a pretty crummy four-iron, then a pretty good 7-iron and then knocked an 8-iron stiff onto the green.  Or at least it was something like that.  I've already forgotten exactly what happened in the middle, but for me, making the green in four on a par-five is huge.
    Then there was #14, another par-five.  I only got a nine, but I did hit some good shots.  The first shot was a pretty iffy three-wood, then I got a sand wedge to, rather amazingly, do what I wanted it to do, stopping short of the hazard so I could hit it over.  I picked up a five, but I wasn't hitting it well all day, so I ended up knocking it way short into the rough grass just short of the hazard.  From there I was able to hit a nice nine-iron - which I hit well all day - over the hazard, quite possibly only the second time (along with the first time back out) that I didn't lose a ball in it.  I'm not sure what I thought the third good shot was - after a crappy eight-iron I had to hit the sand wedge twice, as I recall, to get on the green, so I guess it was the second sand wedge.  Whatever.
    The best hole really was the twelfth, where I rather amazingly made par despite an iffy five-iron well left off the tee.  But I hit a - stunningly enough - good sand wedge to pretty close, and then sank the putt.  I actually read the greens pretty well most of the day.
    Anyway.  I know you're really excited.  More tomorrow, just because I hate you.

August 1, 2002

   Mm, updates.  Hope you like reading about my golf game, because that's what you're doing today, and tomorrow for that matter.
   This round was basically the opposite of last round, in that I played a pretty crappy front nine and a significantly better back nine, although on the whole I wasn't even close in terms of scoring.  This is because I played not as well as last time, where by "not as well as" I mean "markedly shittier than."   Why I had such a hard time hitting good shots this time out, who knows, but just to ram the point home I added a "good shot" counter, where I wrote the number of shots I actually hit well on each hole down.

    Plus-60.  Delicious.  I think I'm ready for the tour, don't you?  I probably counted a handful more shots this time than last time, but the 20 shots more on the front nine do not owe to that nearly so much as the fact that I was hitting crappy shots.  Witness the following table, which tracks my score against the number of good shots I hit:

    So, yeah.  The fact that I only hit 27 good shots in a total of 18 holes and 131 shots total should indicate that I wasn't exactly setting the world on fire.  This isn't a great indicator of which holes were my best, though, because the number of good shots has nothing to do with the total number.  #13, on which I had the most good shots all day, was one of my best holes, but #11 wasn't stunning despite the three good shots, and #8 was about average.  Meanwhile, you'd then think the holes where I had two good shots were also pretty good, but #1 was probably the only one for which that was really true, despite the scores.  Even though I made 6 at #4 and again at #17 (where it was only a bogey), neither of those holes were really great - my two good shots on #17 were a nine-iron and a good first putt from the fringe that just came up short of par.  This after popping up my drive and hitting two spectacularly bad four-irons that managed distance enough to get me within 75 yards of the green.   Go figure.  My putting was also pretty weak for most of the day - one putt only once, and I actually four-putted twice, which is something I may have done once before ever.  Ugly.

    Anyway, yes, I'm out in Pennsylvania, so don't expect to see me online much.  Do expect to read about tomorrow's round after it's happened.   Ha ha!

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This page last updated: Tuesday, August 27, 2002 09:08:10 PM