An Impasse

It is 6:07 and I am currently on either my third or fourth listening of Maritime's We The Vehicles for the day. I sat down around 4:30 to write an entry about the album which has been in the works since Thrusday night. Early in the process of researching the record, I confirmed my fear that the song lyrics for the record are not available on the internet. Anywhere. Occasionally, I have run across obscure songs where I could only find one or two blog-type websites featuring the lyrics, but until today I had never been completely unable to locate the lyrics to a song on the internet. I had previously decided it would not be a big deal to write the blog entry without knowledge of the lyrics. However, I suddenly became convinced I would not be able to do the album justice without access to every last one of Davey von Bohlen's delicately crafted words. I then began the hopeless task of searching for a record store where I could buy an obscure album at 5:15 on a sunday which also happened to be the day before a national holiday. Shockingly, Cheapo Discs is open until midnight 365 days a year. Perhaps more shockingly though, Cheapo did not carry the album. By the time I thought of crossing the river to visit the Electric Fetus due to Matt Swearngin's praises, there were only seven minutes left until closing. I called and spoke with a friendly clerk who informed me that the store will not reopen until Tuesday. Discland in Bloomington is open until seven on sundays but had a recording apologizing that no one was able to answer the phone and urging me to leave a message. I declined. I have yet to decide whether I will spend my Memorial day running around town in search of We, The Vehicles, order a copy online and put the entry off for another week, or bite the bullet and write the entry tomorrow sans lyrics. Stay tuned.

In the meantime, consider this a second entry to hold you over until the glorious day when I finally wax poetic about the redemption of Davey von Bolen. I mentioned to my friend Tom yesterday that I plan to include as many lists as possible in this space. Believe me when I say I was just warming up with yesterday's entry. As proof, I offer you my fifty favorite albums of all time. This no doubt sounds like a massive, daunting undertaking. Fortunately I have set up guidelines to avoid spending my entire evening formulating the list. 1) The list is in no particular order. 2) I will not post any comments about any of the albums at this time. 3) I will make rash, split second decisions to choose the last few albums to make the cut. Here goes nothing:

Face to Face - Face to Face
Mineral - EndSerenading
Texas Is the Reason - Do You Know Who You Are?
Lifetime - Hello Bastards
Amusement Parks On Fire - Amusement Parks On Fire
Elliott Smith - Either/Or
Elliott Smith - XO
Sunny Day Real Estate - Diary













Coldplay - A Rush Of Blood To The Head
R.E.M. - Automatic For The People
Superdrag - Head Trip In Every Key
Superdrag - Regretfully Yours
The Casket Lottery - Choose Bronze
The Casket Lottery - Moving Mountains













Jawbreaker - Dear You
Fairweather - If They Move...Kill Them
...And You Will Know Us By The Trail Of Dead - Source Tags & Codes
Oasis - Definitely Maybe
Oasis - (What's The Story) Morning Glory?
Jimmy Eat World - Static Prevails
Jimmy Eat World - Clarity
Death Cab For Cutie - Something About Airplanes
Death Cab For Cutie - The Photo Album
Death Cab For Cutie - Transatlanticism
Cursive - Domestica
Cursive - The Ugly Organ
Built To Spill - Perfect From Now On
Radiohead - Kid A
Bad Religion - Stranger Than Fiction
Okkervil River - Black Sheep Boy













Alkaline Trio - Alkaline Trio
Time Spent Driving - Just Enough Bright
Moneen - Are We Really Happy With Who We Are Right Now?
Nada Surf - The Proximity Effect
Weezer - Pinkerton
The Get Up Kids - Four Minute Mile
The Wrens - The Meadowlands
Modest Mouse - The Moon & Antarctica
Mock Orange - The Record Play
The Good Life - Black Out
Green Day - American Idiot
Nirvana - Nevermind
The Beatles - Abbey Road
The Beatles - Magical Mystery Tour
The Beatles - Help
The Smashing Pumpkins - Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness
The Smashing Pumpkins - Siamese Dream
Knapsack - This Conversation Is Ending Starting Right Now
Knapsack - Silver Sweepstakes
Sufjan Stevens - Greetings From Michigan "The Great Lake State"

Notes: The last cut was Franz Ferdinand's "You Could Have It So Much Better"...I began with roughly 85 albums and whittled that list down to the final 50...I listened to We, The Vehicles twice more while writing this entry. It was part of the original list but did not last particularly long. There is definitely an intentional bias there against recently released albums that have not yet had the opportunity to withstand the test of time.

"Marge, Beer Me!"

I am currently planning an entry about the best new album I have heard this year, Maritime's We, The Vehicles, which will hopefully be completed sometime this weekend. To hold you over while I continue to listen to that album five or six times a day and allow the songs to swirl around my head, I give you a list of my five favorite beers in honor of the copious amount of beer I plan to drink to honor our veterans on Monday (in no particular order):



Summit India Pale Ale

Moose Drool

Anchor Steam

Sierra Nevada Stout

Grain Belt Premium

"At Every Occasion I'll Be Ready For A Funeral"

The above lyric borrowed from Band of Horses' breath taking "The Funeral", epitomizes the experience of being a viewers of Fox's The OC. The show has now killed three characters in a span of just 27 episdoes culminating with the car crash which took the life of Marissa Cooper in season three's finale last Thursday. I have no means of doing the research but am willing to bet that outside of crime dramas, no program has allowed its characters to die at such great frequency. At this point, it is only reasonable for fans of the show to brace themselves for the death of another charater somewhere around episode nine of the fourth season. My money is on Seth meeting his fate in a tragic sailing accident, but a twelve episode arc where Kirsten succumbs to breast cancer is probably a stronger possibility.


The problem with allowing so many characters to meet their untimely demise is that it becomes incredibly difficult for viewers to continue to care what happens to the characters. Such extreme tragedy both shatters suspension of disbelief and discourages fans from feeling compassion towards characters whose lives will only be marked by misfortune. The recent obsession with death is syptomatic of the show's attempt to create more powerful television by employing heightened melodrama. The program's plotlines have rapidly shifted from drama surrounding fist fights, relationships, and sex to drama surrounding death, infidelity, and alcoholism.

Perhaps most frustrating of all is the show's inclination to repeat previous plotlines with a far lower degree of success. Watching Ryan's Mom battle alcoholism while Luke's Dad and Julie Cooper cheated on their spouses was entertaining because the plotlines involved secondary characters. Watching Kirsten implode due to alcoholism and Sandy ponder infidelity was excruciatingly painful because the themes had already been explored and the characters are at the core of The OC. Not only did Thursday's episode feature the last moments of one of the program's most prominent characters, it repeated previous instances in the show where 1. a character died (Caleb and Johnny) 2. the music of Imogen Heap was featured prominently in the wake of a characters death ("Hide and Seek" plays during Caleb's funeral procession) 3. a character was involved in a roll over (Kirsten's drunk driving in season two) 4. Ryan was forced to carry Marrissa while she is near death (the Tiajuana OD first season) 5. a season cliffhanger ended in violence and potential death (Marrissa's shooting of Trey in the season two finale).


After viewing the commercials stating a main character may die during the finale, I was utterly convinced everyone would survive the episode based on the number of recent deaths on the show and the suggestion it would be a major character who would bite the dust. My mantra when discussing the show with my friends was "Look. Imagine if one of us or one of our parents were to die right now. Imagine the trama that would inflict on your life." Thankfully, I have never had to experience such tragedy. However, I am relatively certain that such events would leave a person utterly devastated for months or years and would never completely fade. The OC's unbelievably difficult challenge at this point is to adequatlely convey the misery experienced by Julie after losing her daughter, Ryan after losing the love of his life, and Summer after losing her best friend while simultaneously steering the show as far away as possible from melodrama. While agonizing over this decision for several days, I have come to the conclusion that I will be tuning in during the beginning of the fourth season to see if Josh Schwartz and company can in fact pull it off. I found myself incredibly relieved to read that Schwartz "intends to jettison the [show's recent] moodiness for more wit and winsomeness." While I am not holding my breath, my fingers are most definitely crossed.

The Beginning

So, I have started a blog. The title of this blog will be "Home Is...". I stole this title from the final track on the debut album of one of my favorite bands of all time, The Casket Lottery's Choose Bronze. This is largely due to the fact that I expect music will be the most frequently dicussed topic in this space. It had not occured to me until I began to create this blog that I would need to create a worthwhile title and this represented the best title I could come up with of in a span of ten minutes. In addition to referencing one of my favorite indie rock acts, it seemed appropriate because (barring the unlikely and now even more ironic event that I am admitted from the University of Minnesota's deffered list) I will be returning home to Chicago in August to attend Kent Law School. I had intended to create the URL www.homeis.blogspot.com but while that address does not pull up a valid site, the blogger website informs me this address already exists and hence I am unable to reserve the URL. Hopefully the riduculousness of the URL will help folks to remember how to access the site.

My previous blog, www.chisoxanalysis.blogspot.com focused on sabermetric (also known as "stathead") analysis of my favorite sports team, The Chicago White Sox. That blog has failed because I have found myself incapable of posting consistent entries. I have two theories for this phenomenon: 1) the blog's subject matter appealed to a very small audience and therefore failed to inspire me 2) I simply do not have the time to regularly update a blog and this point in my life. My (at this point) non-existant readers and I are banking on the idea that on the former explantion is the more accurate of the two. Ideally, opening myself up to writing about music, movies, television, sports, and occasionally events in my personal life will stimulate me to update this space far more frequently.

I will not lie: while the idea of a blog along these lines occured to me weeks ago, I was not inspired to actually create this space until I viewed tonight's episode of one of my favorite television shows, Fox's The OC. I intended to discuss my recent disenchantment with the show and the series finale in particular in my first entry. However, due to the late hour this will have to wait until my second entry. Until then take care and thank you for reading.

Jeremy