An old friend of mine who we’ll call Jilly posted …

An old friend of mine who we’ll call Jilly posted this great link on her website. It’s all about indie rock hair, and it’s short, but it’s funny.

I had a dream last night that I was leaving college and loading up the trunk of my car and after I jammed just about everything I could fit into the trunk, I proceeded to fill the trunk with water to the very top, completely submerging all of my stuff. What does that mean? Any dream-translators out there to help me out?

Oh yeah, baby! You bet I already ordered the new Led Zeppelin DVD. I wouldn’t miss it for the world. I caught a preview on Launch.com and it looks just awesome! The Zep were, more or less, my first “favorite band” and while they do not have the distinction anymore, there’s still a spot in my heart for that band. They were so much better than the 4 songs you hear on the radio by them over and over and over and over……..

Underrated album of the week: Viva Last Blues by Palace. Very sparse, quiet indie-rock, but damn, after like 5 years these songs still resonate in my head from time to time. This morning at the gym, out of nowhere, “Work Hard/Play Hard” bubbled up into my brain and I couldn’t get it out of my head, despite the fact that I was listening to the Dramarama “Best Of” collection. The grass is always greener on the other side of my CD collection.

Song now playing: Wilco – “Dreamer In My Dreams”

A sad day for the video game business, at least fo…

A sad day for the video game business, at least for me. 3DO has declared bankruptcy. They weren’t making much noise in the video game business, but they did make the incredible High Heat series of baseball games that are just astounding in its realism. I talked about this game a lot last season, and I was first in line this season to buy the new one, and it doesn’t disappoint. I’m playing as the Cincinnati Reds, I’m 48-41, good for 3rd place in the NL Central behind Houston and St. Louis, and just 3 games back in the Wild Card standings. Anyway, nobody is really sure what will happen to this game now. Will this be the last High Heat game we see? Or will another company with deeper pockets purchase the team & assets behind this game? Yet to be seen. High Heat is 3DO’s best-seller, so my guess is that some company will acquire that part of 3DO. I hope so.

In other video game news, I can now say with some degree of support behind me, that playing video games is not a brain drain. I have noticed over the past few years that I have been able to monitor complex visual information more easily than non-game players. Yes. Of course.

Finally, I must ask one question: How often will this guy have to stop for gas?!

Song now playing: Neil Diamond – “Brother Love’s Traveling Salvation Show” (live)

Do you ever experience or do the following two thi…

Do you ever experience or do the following two things……

1. When I take a shower, I always have to keep a part of my body under the water because it’s nice and warm. Right? The second you step out of the stream of water, whether it be to grab a shampoo bottle, the soap or whatever, you know that feeling when that first blast of cooler air hits you. It simply sucks. So I always make it a point to keep as much of my body in the warmth as possible.

2. Springtime is when you’re finally able to stop putting layer after layer of clothing on. In the winter, I normally put some kind of t-shirt on under my regular shirt and tuck it in, then put a belt on. But now that’s it’s spring/summer (arguably!), I forego the t-shirt, theefore having no t-shirt to tuck in, but still the belt. The key point: the belt buckle is traditionally very cold, so the first time you bend over to tie your shoes or pick something up, that cold blast against my stomach is totally crappy.

Do these things happen to you, ever? Or am I just insane? Or both?

Underappreciated artist of the week: Tommy Womack. This guy writes some of the best songs I’ve heard in a long, long time. I have very specific memories of Tommy Womack because the record label I used to run came this close (picture me with my thumb and forefinger just centimeters apart) to signing him. I’ll never forget how disappointed and sad I was when we couldn’t release his terrific album in 1997 because we just didn’t have the money. Of all things……ugh. Anyway, Womack is not only a terrific songwriter, but he’s also an author who penned what might be the finest account of a rock band on the road that I’ve ever read, The Cheese Chronicles. If you even remotely like music, I guarantee that you will absolutely love this book and I strongly encourage you to get it. I might even give you your money back if you didn’t like it.

Finally, it was a pleasure to open this morning’s Boston Globe and see a nice piece on the great Joe Pernice, one of music’s greatest undiscovered treasures. Yes, I still get the daily newspaper delivered to my house and I read it every morning during my breakfast. Call me a creature of pre-internet habit.

Song now playing: Johnny Cash: “Tennessee Flat-Top Box”

I’ve hit a new low of sorts. Many people who know …

I’ve hit a new low of sorts. Many people who know me are aware of my reaction to hot and spicy food. For those of you who are not aware, let me clue you in: I sweat. I mean, I SWEAT. The slightest hint of spicy food causes my body to launch itself into a complete code blue, and I instantly begin sweating as if I’d run a marathon in stifling humidity or something. It’s downright odd. Sure, I could understand sweating profusely after eating a meal’s worth of hot food, but my affliction hits the second spicy food hits my tongue. The problem here is that I like the taste of spicy food, but eating it makes me so uncomfortable that I usually have to forego such pleasures. It’s either eat, quench my craving and lose 40 pounds sweating, or I don’t eat it and I’m miserable because I missed the opportunity. Which is better? I don’t know. All I can say is that I usually opt for the latter and skip eating the spicy food.

Then there’s those times when I am in a restaurant and I am completely at the whim of the waitstaff. This can have horrendous consequences. I will always ask the waiter if a certain dish is spicy and make it clear that I have low tolerance. Almost all the time, they say, “no, it’s not spicy at all,” and then it arrives and as soon as the fork hits my mouth, it’s all over. Whip out the bucket ’cause I’m drowning! So now I have to be very melodramatic in the restaurants because waitstaff don’t seem to believe that this really happens to me. It does.

So, to close out the circle of today’s post – back to my first sentence – I’ve hit a new low of sorts. Today I placed 2 gum drops into my mouth, the color was yellow, and suddenly – WHAM – sweating! I had to immeadiately take off my fleece and strip down to a t-shirt to avoid major problems – possibly death. Imagine my god damn surprise, now, that one of my favorite treats can possibly send me to the stratosphere of sweat?! This is a crushing blow. Nothing will stop me from eating gum drops, but this hurts. Oh, it hurts. One more thing: I can’t eat Bar-B-Que Potato Chips either – same reaction. Sometimes the mild taco mixes that you throw into ground beef or chicken makes me freak, too. Fun times…..

Song now playing: Teenage Fanclub – “Ain’t That Enough”

Random thoughts:- The Cars are probably the best b…

Random thoughts:

– The Cars are probably the best band to ever come out of Boston.

– The Latin music craze is over.

– The war accomplished very little.

– As long as you can get free downloads, pay-for-music-online services will never work.

– American Idol jumped the shark when Frenchie got tossed.

– Ronnie James Dio’s tenure in Black Sabbath wasn’t horrible.

– The older I get, the better Simon & Garfunkel sound.

– A freshman in high school this upcoming fall was born in 1990. Shit.

– Gum drops and Fig Newtons are quite possible the best snack foods ever invented.

– I wouldn’t mind living in a city like Cleveland.

– There’s a new Sloan album coming out soon. Clear the way for the best rock band of the last few years.

– The Mamas and the Papas were very underrated.

– AOL is in big, big trouble.

– Whatever happened to all the fuss about acid rain a few years ago?

Song now playing: Golden Smog – “Walk Where He Walked”