The World is Made For Me

Mike Watt has a podcast called The Watt from Pedro Show. For the latest hefty installment, Mike Watt and Jim O'Rourke discuss Japanese grammar, play some songs, talk about film, and share embarrassing childhood music stories. 96k mp3.

What can I say, Jim O'Rourke is ridiculously interesting. I have always been a huge fan, ever since I heard Gastr Del Sol, then Bad Timing, then Eureka, then a thousand of his improv records, then the million records he produced for Stereolab, Smog, US Maple, and many other cool bands (although it was interesting to find out that the reason he worked on so many of those early Drag City-related Chicago releases was because he worked FOR FREE). Listening to him talk, it is really wonderful because he is just so unabashedly uncool. He "shoots the moon" with uncoolness so much that he is actually really cool. Despite what I consider to be astounding life accomplishments, he just sounds so humble and unconcerned with being cool. Although it seems like a huge loss that HE ISN'T EVEN DOING MUSIC ANYMORE, I think it is really commendable that he is dropping everything because he always wanted to learn Japanese and because he wants to start doing film.

The timing of this coming out is really interesting to me because when we were in Texas, Andrew pulled out the Bad Timing LP from my brother's record collection and asked us "what is this?" so we put it on and Andrew ended up really liking it and I too remembered how much I liked that album and how I listened to it and nothing else over and over again on a trip to Lawrence Kansas once. Andrew asked what Jim O'Rourke was doing right now, and I said that I had heard he was living in Japan and concetrating on doing film, but I didn't really know for sure. Then this wonderful gift of a podcast falls into my path.

Here's what I think is happening: Having listened to The Secret audio book on the way home from Texas, the "Law of Attraction" has really been kicking in. I have been wanting delicious talk radio type stuff to listen to, in addition to thinking about Jim O'Rourke. And then it happens! Ask and ye shall receive! Coincidence? Yeah, probably. But hey. We listened to The Secret for probably four hours, and it ended up being a little too much for our puny minds to take. Apparently Oprah plugged this book/movie/whatever, but I would be interested in knowing why. It was mostly interesting, and occasionally new age to the point of being hilarious.

But back to this podcast. It is great. It gives you plenty of content, this one clocking in at around three hours. I felt like this one was made just for me, because it is all so tasty and interesting. Great job. I am done being a fanboy for one day.

What Next?

Just saw a video for a cover of the Smiths song Stop Me If You've Heard This One Before on Mexican MTV. By some clown named Mark Ronson. Probably one of the most horrible things I have ever heard/seen. I'm not sure which is more disturbing, this video or that scene in City of God when the little kid gets shot in the foot. Soooooo bad.

See for yourself. I can't stand to embed this.

Parabéns pra Você

First off, excuse my weird punctuation and typing. I am on a computer in Mexico City and some of the keys are not where they should be. For example, to make the @ sign, I have to hit Alt + 6 + 4. It is wild. This should also explains the lack of contractions.

Today is my wonderful sister Liz's birthday. My sister thinks that I don't ever mention her to my friends.. The reason behind this is because once Liz met my roommate Hector and when Hector said he was from Bloomington, they made the connection that he was my roommate and she was my sister. Then Hector said something like, "Gee, that's weird, I don't think Mike ever mentioned that he had a sister. I mean, I knew he had a brother, but I had no idea that he had a sister." That's classic Hector tact for you. Thanks man. In my defense, I will say that the only reason Hector knew I had a brother was because he came with his wife to visit Bloomington and they stayed at the house. But, anyway, Liz thinks that I keep her a secret or something, but I am out to prove that theory false. Besides, if Liz were as vocal about her opinions of Frank Zappa as my brother Greg is, her notoriety might be a little bit better established among the people I know. That is a joke. About three people will get it.

Liz has a MySpace account, but her name is Super Trading Post. I am told by Megan D. that Super Trading post is some kind of radio thing that they do on a radio station up in the Lafayette area where you say for example that you have a bunch of bails of hay that you need to get rid of, and that you are open to trades for said bail of hay and then you leave your contact info. Sort of like a radio-based Craigslist for people in the Tippecanoe County area. The reason Liz uses a fake name on her MySpace account is because she is a high school teacher, and she said that she doesn't want any of her students finding out anything personal about her on the internet. Fair enough. If I were in high school these days, I can say with a fair degree of certainy that I would be clowning my English teacher's profile if I knew one existed.

So I thought celebrate Liz's birthday with an embarrassing story about her, but nothing really comes to mind at the moment. I will say this, while it's on my mind: When Liz was a member of that Columbia House 12 tapes for one penny deal, she got some really influential tapes that I ended up being really into and sometimes kind of  appropriating. For example, the Pump up the Volume soundtrack. This tape is like the monolith that brought me out of being a heavy metal guitar shredder and into being a fan of alternative indie rock music, whatever you want to call it. Another crucial musical Rosetta Stone for me, it introduced me to Sonic Youth, Soundgarden (back when they were like REALLY GOOD, seriously, don't even think about "Black Hole Sun," as far as I am concerned, a completely different band made that song), a Bad Brains + Henry Rollins collaboration covering "Kick Out the Jams" by the MC5 (how historically loaded is that?), The Pixies, Cowboy Junkies, Leonard Cohen, and that weird song by Peter Murphy. This tape was pretty mega for a young 14-year-old metalhead like me. In some ways, I am pretty sure that I can directly attribute this tape to getting my first girlfriend. I will explain that on another day. Today it's about Lizardo.

I mentioned that Liz is a high school teacher, but what I didn't mention is that she teaches at the high school that all of the Dixon kids went to. She hangs out with teachers we once had. She is on a first name basis with some of the most intimidating and ridiculous teachers of our high school careers. I think that is so cool.

Liz has done well for herself. She has a master's degree and a very good job and owns a nice house on a very crucial corner in Lafayette, Indiana. She oversees the very sweet school newspaper, helps musical bad boy Jeffrey Sterns put on the high school musical (well before it was cool, you know after Disney legitimized the genre of high school musicals with their smash hit High School Musical, perhaps you have seen it) and is involved in a million other things that she probably doesn't even tell me about because being busy doing good is just normal everyday life for her. She plays a mean cello (teaches lessons too) and can play pretty much any song from the LDS Hymnal on piano.

Oh yeah, and I have heard that she started a blog, although I haven't seen any entries there yet. Once she gets started, I am sure that it will be impecably literate and funny.

OK, here's a cool story about Liz. One summer we were living in the basement at Grandma and Grandpa Hart's house and Cousin Sarah and Liz went to see Bill and Ted's Excellent Adventure at the dollar theater around the time when that movie first came out. Something about this movie really jived with them, because they ended really getting into a groove, and they went to see Bill and Ted like five more times in the period of about a week, if I remember correctly. Liz and Sarah could quote that movie like no others. They probably still can. Liz and Sarah remain like BFF to this very day, and I am pretty sure that their mutual affinity for Bill S. Preston and Ted Theodore Logan Esq. has a lot to do with that.

Back when Liz and I were in orchestra together in high school, we had this kind of nemesis family that was also in the orchestra, and each of their children were of the same age and same sex, corresponding all the way down to Greg. They were the notorious Rao family. Liz's counterpart was Malini, mine was Karthik, and Greg's was Sid. It was quite the feud, if you could call it that. They were all very talented violinists, so they held their own, but I always thought it was so funny that their kids and ours lined up so perfectly in terms of gender and age, but yet clashed so seriously when it came to ideology (if you could even call what high school kids have ideology). Sometimes having a feud can be a lot of fun. I can finally say "peace" to the Rao family. I'm sure they are all rich doctors or something now. I'll google that and get back to you. They have incredibly Googlable names, that is for sure.

Wow, that paragraph really had no point. I just got a kick out of mentioning the Rao family.

Anyway, it's been good having Liz as a sister, because it seems like the older we get, the more that we actually seem to "get" each other, and that is great. We share a lot of the same friends and get kicks out of a lot of the same things. I'm blessed that she is my sister and I hope you have a great and special day, hermana! 

One Thirsty Cat

I Kind of Feel Sorry for Nickels - Monetary Heavy Metal

I kind of feel sorry for nickels. They are kind of husky and not worth very much for being so thick. The dime, on the other hand, is a sleek and efficient coin that packs a monetary punch despite its deceptively diminutive size. I forget which European country it is, but in one of them I recall that they didn't mess around with the Euro cents, and instead rounded everything up to the nearest 5th cent. I can see the value in this, although I realize that advocating a similar stance in the United States would make the nickel the new penny, and I'm not sure how I feel about that.

The American coin system is kind of weird in other ways as well. In addition to the disregard of the correspondence between coin size and value, we have weird names for them. The name "quarter" makes sense because it is a quarter of a dollar, but the dime, nickel, and penny are really just arbitrary nicknames for coins that don't exist in other nations or languages. Although a U.S. coin for 50 cents is most commonly called a 50 cent piece, it would sound totally weird if someone asked you if they could borrow a "ten cent piece" or a "one cent piece." Them's called dimes and pennies, weirdo. I recognized the peculiarity of this phenomenon once while teaching an English lesson in Japan. In Japan, for example, they're just called "ten yen coin" etc. and coins are widely used from values of less than a cent all the way up to 500 yen, or roughly five dollars. So anything from a penny to five dollars is coin territory. There are no bills for anything below the equivalent of ten dollars. A pocket full of change can easily be the equivalent of like fifteen dollars. This coin-centered monetary system could be part of the reason that Japan is notorious for its vending machines that sell everything from noodles to used panties. They don't have to mess around with picky bill acceptor things. I mean, let's face it, those things are a pain in the butt. You have to feed it a crispy bill or else stand there and fiddle with the corners of your bill until it meets the standards of the bill changer.

So what's up with America's reluctance to embrace the dollar coin or even the 50 cent piece? When I paid a toll with a five dollar bill the other day, I got both a Susan B. Anthony dollar coin as well as a Sacajawea dollar coin, and I must say I was rather amped. Despite the post office's best attempts to get these dollar coins out there in circulation, they don't really seem to be catching on with people. Will the whole coin thing be rendered irrelevant when debit cards take over the land? Things seem to be headed that way. People already use debit cards to pay for a pack of gum at the convenience store, and it seems like you can use cards to pay for more things all the time. I guess I'm not yet completely comfortable with money becoming just a number that the bank keeps track of somehow, and maybe that's why I like coins. Their tangibility, their stackability, and their visual appeal (caveman like shiny metal), it speaks to the pirate in me.



P.S. The 1986-1988 albums of Xuxa (like Raffi, but Brazilian, spaced-themed, and sluttier) are back in my life in a big way, thanks to brother Greg's wicked CD collection. I'm a Baixinho til death.

Caveman Movie Review: Dr. Bronner's Magic Soapbox

Hell yes!
This is a good one.
D o c u m e ntary about crazy soap genius,
Self-proclaimed rabbi, also Einstein's nephew.
Escaped a mental institution, invented magic soap.
Writes crazy philosophy stuff on soap bottle label,
For example,"Spaceship earth."
His son was in orphanages, foster homes,
But is somehow a huge fan.
Now he travels around giving away magic soap.
His son, he meets this hippie dude.
At first we laughed real hard at him.
Because he was such a tool.
But then hippie plays piano,
And we were like "whoa."
Seriously, whoa.
Is it perfect that we saw this movie on Haight?
A few blocks from Ashbury.
And afterwards went straight to the hippie convenience store,
And bought bottles of Dr. Bronner's Magic Soap?
In my zeal, I tried to brush my teeth with it.
Bad idea.
It does not taste as good as it smells.
But seriously.
Best d o c u m e n tary I've seen this year.


http://www.magicsoapbox.com

PS, why is myspace filtering out the word "dockumentary" (only spelled correctly)?
Every time I tried to type it, it comes up as this "..ary."
Bogus. Bogus. Bogus.
Time to switch.

Caveman Movie Review: Loose Change

Narrator sounds like the "Boom Goes the Dynamite" guy
The Pentagon is actually made of sugar cubes
9-11 was a hoax
Facts dutifully checked via Wikipedia
Lots of internet screenshots
Lots of Google Maps zoom-ins
Some pretty cool computer models of airplanes
Confirmed my suspicions that Osama is actually just a pretty chill dude
Just look at a picture of him
He seems very relaxed
Conspiracies are funner to believe
One hour and twenty minutes of explosions

Dear Kobayashi-San

Dear Kobayashi-San
You were defeated by an American
On our equivalent of Cinco de Mayo
And vommed into your hands
And then tried to eat it
But whatever man
Your name is still synonymous with competitive eating
And although Kobayashi is the third most common last name in Japan
(It means "Little Forest")
Any person with the last name Kobayashi who visits America
Will have to explain that they aren't related to you, Takeru
And that they do in fact have a gag reflex
And that Joey Chestnut did not steal their family's honor
That alone is a HUGE accomplishment
Besides, you had arthritis of the jaw

Funnyman Cheek Strikes Again!

In response to my Flickr request for mega-LOL captions for this picture, the wonderful Jared Cheek has really struck gold:





Brilliant!

Caveman Movie Review: Factory Girl

Rich girl moves to big city, wants to meet Andy Warhol.
She meets Andy Warhol, he things she's stunning.
They hang out, she gets famous.
They do fabulous stuff like all the time.
She meets Bob Dylan, they make out, he drives motorcycle into lake.
Things start to be not-so-fabulous with Andy – gay, but jealous.
Bob Dylan marries other girl, Andy rubs it in her face.
Bob Dylan looks like Dylan from 90210 - Coincidence?
Nico is cooler now.
Girl loses all her money, is addicted to drugs, isn't so pretty anymore.
She ODs, Andy is like "whatever."
I kinda wanted to punch him.
But his mom seemed really cool.
Jimmy Fallon is in this.