2002 Recap
This year shall herewith be referred to in my inner dialogue as The Year I Think I Came to Resemble a Grown-Up. I don't know why, but I just feel like my personality and sense of purpose has changed considerably this past year, due in no small part to my woman Glenda, whom I will be getting hitched to this summer, by the way.
I also feel like my mental acuity has reached an all-time high this year. This is no doubt due to a significant reduction in my alcohol consumption. I spent my twenties getting shit-ass drunk two to three times a week, although that tapered off quite a bit when I moved to Denver. Nowadays I hardly drink at all; it's just kind of a pain in the ass around here unless you're into driving drunk or shelling out for $20 cab rides. Not playing music is the other contributing factor. In contrast to years past, duty does not prevail upon me to hang out in bars anymore. That was always my very least favorite part of being in a band and a certain cause of my very unspectacular undergraduate college career. Now, this isn't to say that I'll never drink again, shit no. A good clear drunk is a healthy act when done sparingly; it's analogous to the Reset button on a computer, I figure. But the fact that I don't have a steady stream of alcohol passing through my blood has allowed my thinking and mental health (and physical health) to improve drastically. That fire-water'll keep you stupid if you let it.
I finally got my foot in the door of my chosen career path this year as well. I was jobless for ten agonizing months and even reduced to delivering flowers there for a while. And to my great relief, this career path is fulfilling and challenging. I'd been kinda worried, having spent so much time and money pursuing a career in GIS, that it would turn out to be something I hated doing. But luckily I dig the shit out of it so far.
I learned some good things about interpersonal relationships, namely those of the romantic live-in variety. For instance, I've realized that I can't just mysteriously start acting like an asshole and expect the other member of the relationship to keep guessing why. I've learned that a girlfriend need not necessarily regard the Minutemen as the greatest band ever in order to qualify as a human being.
I learned that if you eat at home more often, you don't get as fat and you have more money in your wallet leftover.
I became much more politically aware this year. These days I feel completely out of the loop unless I read the entirety of the newspaper every day, sometimes two newspapers. And I'm sure you've noticed my newfound obsession with the issue of urban planning and sprawl and so forth; that's become my white whale, my central issue, the one thing that gets me fuming mad nowadays.
Uh, what else happened? I retooled this site (with the immense help of Hank Donovan). I got a new car. Well, a used car, but I dig the shit out of it. I moved in with Glenda which has been a dream come true, although I miss living in The Shit. I came to like cats a lot after hating them for most of my life. I started exercising regularly, and although I still hate it, I do feel much better and sleep better too. I became a bona fide programmer at my job and it seems like my brain likes the challenges required for that type of thing.
And here are the awards to the best of 2002:
-Best Album: Apples in Stereo- The Velocity of Sound
-Best Movie: The Man Who Wasn't There and Amelie (tie) (and I think both came out in '01, but I saw them both this year)
-Best Book: A Working Stiff's Manifesto by Iain Levison (thanks to Matt Haze for foisting it on me)
-Best Rock Show: Guided by Voices, Boulder Theatre, Feb. 2002
-Best Restaurant: Namaste, Lakewood, CO (awesome Nepalese fare)
-Best Website: The Clusterfuck Nation
Some annoying developments from this year:
-The trend where magazine writers write editorials as though they were open letters (e.g. Dear Democratic Party, Where did you go wrong?)
-The continuing trend towards short-attention-span journalism
-Our president being an unrepentant half-wit (although I've begun to really enjoy his speeches; it's a lot like listening to a fourth-grader read a book report in front of the class) (but that doesn't make it any less unsettling)
-Our cities resemble parking lots more and more every day.
-the domestication of the dog continues unabated
What happened to you in the Ought-Two?
Wellsir, Yale I think that's real big of you. Your endorsement of adulthood is a clarion call, bro. To work, young people.
Best lists, I dig the hell out of best lists.
- Josh Vanek January 01, 2003 12:09Best Album: tie between Deerhoof's 'Reveille' and the Hot Snakes LP or maybe this great sleeper from Mike Fellows' 'Miighty Flashlight' deal...
Best Book: the Raymond Chandler Papers or Letters (or something...)
Best Live Rock Show Witnessed:The Joggers, Federation X
Best New Place Visited by JDV: Either Death Valley CA or the Environs around Asheville NC, two good places, people.
I gotta check out this Deerhoof action. I heard one of their tunes and it just about froze my brain. So with your endorsement, JDV, I will proceed to purchase forthwith.
What's the story with The Joggers?
- Yapple Kaul January 02, 2003 08:35The Joggers are a two guitar, bass and drums outfit from Portland, Oregon. Friends of the Dutch Flat. Very talented songwriters, sort of in a Steve Malkmus/Duane Allman kind of way. They've got a website that I think is:
- Wahnek January 02, 2003 08:48Linked Text
Very worth ordering a copy of their self released CD. I gurantee you too, friend, will be putting fist to air within two listens.
I, too, became an adult this year. After spending a good portion of my 20s (OK, all of my 20s) mired in booze, cigs and the relentless pursuit of a good time, I decided to try and grow up a lil. Result: Sometimes going A WHOLE WEEK between drinks, early morning workouts at the Y and (extended drum roll) I finally quit smoking after 15 years spent as a slave to nicotine!! Cold turkey!! Turning 30 in November felt great. Saturdays without hangovers have truly been a revelation. I also fell in love this year, for the first time since the mid 1990s, and I'm pretty sure my newfound maturity played a significant role in that development. Aw, I'm getting all choked up. (Yale, just in case you're getting the wrong idea, I will still drink your ass under the table any dang night of the week. As long as it doesn't involve whiskey. Heh.)
Best album: Common, "Electric Circus"
- Sayrah January 02, 2003 09:44Best book: tie, "Perma Red" by Debra Earling and "Caramelo" by Sandra Cisneros.
Best show: "Ladies and gentlemen, Bobby Rush!" Saw this cat at a local blues joint. He's a straight-up Southern pimp, with a curl, tight-ass pants, snakeskin shoes and everything! He came to town with a busload of folks from his home base in Mobile, Alabama. Part of his stage gimmick included three barely-legal girls, who were there to do nothing besides grind their asses in a suggestive manner. One girl had a booty you could literally serve tea on. I've never seen anything like it! (We hung out with the entourage after the show, and the ass-shakers were the nicest, most demure young ladies you could imagine--total contrast to the face down/ass up vibe of the stage show.) Bobby himself, who is almost 70, had outfit changes, props, insane dance moves... He capped off the evening by autographing an 8x10 for my sister that included his "personal" cell phone number on the back. Classic.
Like Yale my wife and I also determined that we were better off without alcohol, but not before poor Laura blew through a stop sign and killed one of her best friends. Good thing my family is so rich and powerful, she didnt even have to appear in court. But that was back in the sixties. My how time flies, seems like it was just yesterday that I walked away from the Texas Air National Guard and never went back. Good thing my family is so rich and powerful otherwise they would have said I was AWOL.
- George Dub Yeah Bush January 02, 2003 12:48Now Im the President and the most powerful man in the world, and I can do anything I want. I can decide who is evil, and then I can kill them and all their children just by telling Tommy Franks: "Let's Roll" I love that saying.
In 2002 the one thing I learned is that I have to get rid of Colin Powell somehow. He keeps telling me and Rummy we cant use all of our expensive toys to kill all the Iraqi children with. I hate that Colin Powell. We would have been better off just like what Trent Lott says, oops did I say that out loud.
Well its nap time, and then I get to fly in the big plane back to crawford for a month of vacation. I can hardly believe we are at war, good thing noone knows where or with whom, oops did I say that out loud.......
Wow, some poignant shit going down here, for a change. Just think, last week the talk centered around the 'Male Adjustment Issue." My guess to the why of that is: it's "a cultural thing."
All these onetime droppers singing the praises of the teatotalling lifestyle, replete with excessive TV and regular excercise has got my head spinning. What the shit, when did everybody move to Utah and start driving mini-vans? Who's wearing flannel house pants right now?! You make me...
Well, except for the excercise part it sounds faintly Utahn. It's as exciting as it is weird.
I endorse maturity to an extent, there's no need to get fall down drunk more than a couple times a year, for example.. The removal of the endless quest for a good time/oblivian as Sara said it, I think. But at the same time, you need to keep on top of shit so you're still up in the proverbial mix. Not sure if that makes sense, but too much talk of forsaking the demon tobacco I think makes a brother self conscious about still being a puffer.
How about some top Album Lists ?(albums may also have been discovered in 02, not just released then)
Stars of the Dogon S/T
- Van Van January 02, 2003 17:22Last of the Juanitas 'Time's Up' LP
Volumen 'Cries from Space' LP
The Fucking Champs "V" LP
Fela Kuti 'Expensive Shit' CD
Miighty Flashlight s/t CD
Hot Snakes 'Suicide Invoice' CD
The Joggers 'S/T' CD
Strapping Fieldhands 'In The Pineys" 10"
albums may also have been discovered in 02, not just released then
Good thing, cuz I seldom IF EVER am hip to the hip shit while it's going down. But here's some more happening shit I happened to happen into in 0-deuce, if you'll allow me to flesh out my earlier declarations:
-J Mascis- Free So Free
-Camper van Beethoven box set
-Walt Mink back catalog
-That fucking Oblios record never ceases to astound
-Yes, Fucking Champs V kicks the ass
-as does that Last of the Gorditas CD
-got wise to the Meters big-time this year
-along with Satan's Pilgrims
-had the distinct pleasure of copying the entire discography of the 90s Tacoma band My Name for some Danish fellow
-latest House of Large sizes record has no business sucking as much as it does
-likewise the latest Figgs offering
-new Greenhornes: come on, god damn it
-new GBV doesn't suck, but doesn't really not suck either
-I learnt that there's just no getting around my disdain for Tom Waits
Here's what stroked me book-wise:
-got real into David Foster Wallace and his overwrought hyper-academese blathering
-dug A Heartbreaking Work of Staggering Genius along with the rest of America (or the part of it that still reads books)
-Had my mind blown by Faster by James Gleick, albeit in Book-On-Tape format
-Read biographies of Howard Hughes, Gram Parsons, Mike Royko, Charles Bukowski and Al Capone
-Hoping to go on a Vonnegut jag here pretty quick, since I'm all but oblivious to his work and I get the feeling I'd dig it.
- Strapping Ex-Con Yale Kaul January 02, 2003 19:09Also, I tip my tam o' shanter to all whom prevailed over the Evil Tobacco. And though I've quit, I plan to still enjoy the occasional lung-dart now and again.
- Yax J January 02, 2003 19:16Holy smokes it was a funky year. The first money I earned in 2002 was on a job I lied for. This friend of mine in LA is in the "events planning" community, and knew I was desperate to make rent, so she gave me the number of an "events planner" who was equally desperate for good hands. She asked me if I knew Access very well, which at the time I had zero experience with, and told her, "Fuck yeah, I know Access." She hired me over the phone about 3 weeks before the gig was to take place. In the meantime, I got a little temp spot at a desk with a computer fully equipped with the MS Office Suite and nothing to do but look at motorcycles on eBay and teach myself Access. The Access part took about 23 minutes.
Then they sent me a plane ticket to NYC and set me up in a room at the Waldorf Astoria for 6 days. There I was in a suit, walking the halls of the Waldorf with a walkie talkie about three and a half months after I had quit a job that was literally kiddy-corner from that hotel in order to move to LA, where I could not find a job. I mean, wtf?
Somebody poached the number from the Nextel I was issued, and I got a call about 2 months later about the $1200 in calls made on the my little work phone. That gal never has hired me again.
Then I started playing my gal's guitar, on which I shortly became a 3-chord wonder. And am still. That launched me into a kick of ca. 1970 music. For me, 2002 has been all about Mick Taylor-era Stones and GP. (I'd love to hear the title of that biography, Yalio) Steve Earle's two releases, Sidetracks and Jerusalem in 2002 also got lots of spin time in the ol' discman. The SE connection also got me into the Supersuckers a bit. Love that shit, man.
Of course the most exciting, stressful, cool thing all year was the hitching I got with Andrea. I'm telling you, folks, people go over the deep end when there's a wedding being planned, but it ended up a great time, even if it was in Billings. Afterwards, we took our leisure driving back to LA on a seat-of-the-pants tour of the National Park System. We scored the last room at the Old Faithful Inn one night, and later got the last room at the Bright Angel Lodge at the Grand Canyon. Somewhere in between we got an eyeful of Bryce and took a hike in Zion. Good stuff.
Finally got a steady job I could stand, and I walk to work. The last album I bought in 2002 was Nashville Skyline by that old fucker Dylan.
- emeffinhaze January 03, 2003 11:41Our little Yale has grown up has he? No more of the stumble and grope....
I too, feel a little more wise and less impetuous in regards to the world and my own inner workings. I still like to think of myself as precocious though. I have begun to understand what the word "career" means and the fact that I would like to have one. I now think of my life in terms of five year cultural revolutions instead of the one-year-capilitistic-running-dog-live-by-the-skin-of-my-teeth-isms, I was living by. Big props to your new found happiness Yale in adulthood. You scored well in all departments, Work, Romance, and Wit.
Best show o2- Guided by Voices at the hallway known as the Chukker.
Also FederationX in a living room in Auburn AL, just for the thug-rock rejuvenating battery aspect of it. The Melvins in B'ham also ranks up there.
Best REcord Purchase 02- Hot Snakes, new Spoon, and Wu-Tang (36 chambers thereof)
Best Book 02- The Cometbus Omnibus was good reading. Also some Chris Offut was worthwhile to discover in the library.
Best Place I dug the shite out of in 02- Ashville NC gave a right decent impression. I am also partial to my folks new place in Florence, Oregon. Good food. Nice view. Wet Ocean. Sandy Dunes. Waterloo Alabama was of note to for the rivery, greenery and dangerous backwoodsy of it all.
Best Website: Yalestar.com of course! The HeadwatersNews website was good reading.
Best Restaurant: No good eating Tuscaloosa. Therefore WaffleHouse is the end-all. The new Pho place is okay on first impression of the fare but the clicking strobe light signage and uppity waitress trying to talk us out of our order hurts its overall ranking.
- Rixxx January 03, 2003 14:21Dang, I've been digging the hell out of these personal narratives. Sarah Schmid, MHaze, Rx Stdrt, JDV, even ol' George Bush up there. We need a few more such holidays that impel people to contemplate their lifes. Just think of the market penetration we could acheive with New Years II held in July!
Yes yes: the GP biography is called (of course) "Hickory Wind" and was writ by Ben Fong-Torres. I think there is another GP bio extant, but it wasn't on the shelf at my local Borders. Very intriguing cat was he.
- yal January 03, 2003 15:33Well, all this talk about GP reminded me of a grievous omission in the rocollection of my musical 2002: Whiskeytown. Someone turned me on to Strangers Almanac, and I was flat hooked. I'm now an unapologetic fan of Ryan Adams.
Hickory Wind and God's Own Singer are sitting in my amazon shopping cart while I balance my checkbook.
- mhaze January 03, 2003 16:15I'm still struggling with the "fucking rudiments" of this hyper text meta language. I don't "get it," but this hopefully will work.
Please take a good hard look at the best Non American Rock and/or Roll Band of 2002. These dudes are like a combination of the colonial Williamsburg living replica stuff and Napalm Death. They dress up in occasionally in WW2 Latvian Army getup and play live. Solid. Ahem.
Oh, restaurants:
Any place by a freshwater body of water known as "the Pirates Cove," "Salty Anchor," "Rusty Barnacle" or otherwise. Thank you, Dave Knadler.
If perhaps you could entreat on Mr. John Fleming Esq. to the site he's been knee deep in some GP biography or other.
- Vaniquez January 03, 2003 16:57Y2003K,
I find your book biography choices intriguing. I too have read (in the past) bios of GP and Howard Hughes. I went through a GP phaze at one point.
Another good biography is of L.Ron Hubbard. I can't remember the title and it is not propaganda or anything for those wacky Scientologists (wait until they get clone technology). Crazy shit weird dude.
I remember being in a fiction workshop and they asked what was last book you read in the first class. And I said, "An L. Ron Hubbard biography". I wasn't trying to be cute and it sure didn't garner me anyone's trust.
Does anyone remember being approached by Scientologists in college? I remember at Fullerton JC they use to comb the campus with personality scantron tests for people to fill out. You give them your address and they would get back to with results and brainwashing. I took one and gave my friends address.
Also David Foster Wallace can suck my nut sack I read Infinite Jest by the joker. Some 1000 pages and no fricking ending. Infinite Jest on me I guess. I threw that book across the room when I was "done". He can be funny but that bastard owes me something. The short story, "The Girl with the Curious Hair", is good in whatever collection he has out there. I think something called a "Broom to the System" is okay. But just skim "Infinite Jest" for the Tennis Academy parts.
- Rxxx January 04, 2003 14:54Dang, that Skyforger is some far out shit! Presentation of "Latvian Rifleman". The song I downloaded (Pçrkoòkalve ) was equally beguiling with the flute passage and all.
I concur w/ Rx's assessment of Infinite Jest. I read about five pages and said fuck this shit. I ain't much of a fiction reader anyhoo. The DFW essays and so forth have been what I've been digging.
- Yog Sothoth January 05, 2003 09:11By the way Rx (and whomever else): have you dug on this site yet?
Less Talk, More Rock
This fellow is an avid music fan and showgoer who lives in Tuscaloosa and moved there from Denver, credentials that align closely with your own. Great site with lots of drunken Chukker photos.
- Koughie Kaul January 05, 2003 09:38Oh, yeah. Yale, a hearty congrats on your impending nuptials! Hope nobody's standing there with a shotgun, heh heh.
By the way, have you seen "About Schmidt"? Wow, did it ever make me want to flee the sprawltastic Midwest faster than I already do. I felt like I needed a shower when it was done. A fine movie, other than the sappy ending.
- Fukkstykk January 06, 2003 09:40