Shopping for Music at the Awesome Store

I got to go to the record store recently.  This is always very exciting for me.  There are literally PILES of goodness in there for a music geek like myself, and it’s all organized and alphabetized.  Along with the bookstore it is my safe haven.

I went in with no plan to buy anything in particular, but when I go I always end up having to make a decision of what to get when it is time to go.  I was there with my lovely girlfriend Veronica so my time was limited because she needed to get home to study.  When I go alone I rarely spend less than 1.5 hours browsing.  This trip was very condensed.  

Elvis Costello,Talking Heads, Pavement, Ween, the list is endless of artists that I check out even though I know I will not find anything new from them that I don’t already have.  But it’s my routine.  Just like taking out the puppy-dogs when I get home from work and showering on Wednesday nights.

I have recently adopted the Violent Femmes’ self-titled first album as a go-to.  They absolutely shred on a largely acoustic three-piece record.  I hear traces of everyone from Bob Dylan to Buddy Holly to David Byrne in that album and there is not a song on the whole deal that I ever feel like skipping over.  I defy any human being to listen to ‘Add it Up’ without boogying.  It only made sense to explore their pile at Vintage Vinyl to see if I could find their second album, ‘Hallowed Ground.’

When exploring an artist on a trip to the awesome store I always cruise the vinyl section first.  I had recently made a trip to Vintage Vinyl on Record Store Day and checked the Femmes’ section and found nothing.  So this time I was not expecting the moon so you can imagine my happiness in seeing ‘Hallowed Ground’ on vinyl in an original pressing!  What idiot would sell this gem back!?  Of course this only just started my dilemma.

I have been on a 90’s pop rock kick lately, i.e. Guided By Voices, The Lemonheads, later Dinosaur Jr., etc., so I checked these groups out as well and found The Lemonheads’ ‘It’s a Shame About Ray’ cd and carried it around with me like a kid with a G.I. Joe for the rest of the time I was there.  ‘Girls Can Tell’ by Spoon was also available on vinyl.  Times like these are when a pleasurable trip to the awesome store turn into nightmares for indecisive souls like me.

Veronica was ready.  She made her choices and taunted me cruelly that she had done so and I needed to do the same.  The heat was on.  

I always remember my mom telling me that when taking a test, the first impulse for a multiple choice question was usually the right one.  I never liked listening to her so I found this to be true though trial and error.  I decided to go with the Femmes based on the fact that I sought them out first.  I headed for the checkout counter with my new treasure.

“This is really a great album.  So much darker than their first,” said the cashier as he rang me up.  “I was really excited to find it on vinyl,” I told him as I signed for my debit card.  The debacle was over.  Thank golly…Then Veronica asked:

“Did you see this?,” as she held Neil Young’s new album, ‘Letters From Home’ in her hands.  SHIT!

Do I buy it or not?  I of course did and it was awesome.  It was recorded at Jack White’s studio in Nashville and I love it.  You should go buy it.  End of story.

(PS: I realize that Wikipedia is not the most reliable at times, but for those reading this that have no clue who some of the bands that I write of are, I thought it was appropriate for descriptions.  If you don't know who Bob Dylan, Buddy Holly, David Byrne, Neil Young or Jack White are then you should kill yourself.)

If Global Warming is Fake, I'm Whitey Herzog

“Thirty percent of carbon released into the atmosphere is sucked up by the ocean, leading to acidification that’s killing coral and shell life.  Coral protects young fish from predators, and tiny shellfish, at the bottom of the food chain, help feed entire ecosystems.”

This quote came from an AP story on the front page of the Post-Dispatch.  As a journalism student learning the art of getting a point across via the written word it stuck out to me greatly.  It is concise and informative and conveys a strong point of what is happening to our planet.  Global warming is not a political issue.  It is real.

The fact that there are factions within the government that are arguing over whether or not our planetary ecosystem is doomed should worry more people than it does.  As I said, I am a student of journalism, which means that I am constantly trying to see as many sides to any story as possible.  I’ll be honest here, it seems to me that humans are in the wrong on this one.

Various government studies are shown regularly to entice dissent among the public in favor of whichever party ordered the study.  It’s despicable, but it happens all the time.  I try to pay attention to these differing views when I consider a story.  When I look at the issue of climate change it seems to me that one side stands to benefit monetarily much more than the other by keeping our energy supply as it currently stands than the other does by changing it.

Yes, if we were to totally change our way of energy consumption by switching to wind, solar, and electricity for cars (which has already proven effective) those in charge of said resources would stand to make a lot of money.  But they KNOW that they will make a lot of money by keeping us dependent on fossil fuels.  They know this because it is the way things have been done for years and it is lucrative.  This allows them to pay lobbyists millions of dollars to do their utmost to keep things the way they are.  Global warming reports by scientists from around the globe are considered to be “alarmist” in their eyes.

I’m to the point where I really don’t know what to say to those that think global warming is a myth.  

“Marine scientists in the Pacific have traced the mass die-off of the sunflower star, a type of sea star, to warmer temperatures.  In a laboratory, 10 sunflower stars were placed in water with normal temperature and another 10 in water only 1 degree warmer.  Within two days, half the sunflower stars in the warmer water were dead.”

I don’t condone any study that takes a living creature’s life, but I digress.  The sunflower stars are one of the organisms at the bottom of the food chain that “help feed entire ecosystems.”  

Proponents of taking a different direction energy-wise do not stand to lose much if anything monetarily.  They certainly do not stand to lose a fraction as much as those in the fossil fuel business should we explore new energy sources.  This should be telling to us ordinary citizens that are abnormally addicted to money.  We will often do whatever we can to gain $$$ no matter what damage may be done.  At times, I myself have not been above this fact in my life.

There should come a point where partisan lines should be ignored in the name of humanity.  We are all humans last I checked…More to come from me on this.  I’m sure you’re all chomping at the bit. ;)

Opening Day At Busch Is Great, But It's Great Everywhere

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NCAA National Championship 2014: One Non-Gambling Moment

The Final Four is one of my favorite sporting events of the year.  That may have a lot to do with it coinciding closely with the opening of the baseball season and the Masters tagging in not far behind, but there is just something about amateur athletes playing for pride that puts me in a good mood.  Even if this situation with Northwestern gains more traction, a vast majority of NCAA players will still be amateurs that do not play for millions of dollars.  They may play for better benefits and access to the college career tracks that all students have, (this is their right, especially with the $$$ they bring in), but the malice of professional sports will most likely be kept out of the NCAA.  Let's hope so at least.

The late great Hunter S. Thompson is a hero of mine and it always seemed like he had more fun writing about sports when he had money on one of the teams or competitors in whatever contest was taking place.  I have no money invested this evening in either UConn or Kentucky, but it is still a fun game to watch and write about.  (This is my one non-gambling moment of the tournament this year.)

The great Dr. Thompson would probably come at me with a sharp object of some sort if I badmouthed UK in his presence since that was his home state, but I cannot help but bring up how much I really dislike Kentucky, especially with John Calipari in tow.

I just wrote a column for Saintlouissports.com earlier about how we as St. Louis Cardinals fans did not want to slip down the slope of becoming pain-in-the-ass fans of a team just because they are good on a regular basis.  This is exactly the reason why I don't like Kentucky and why I enjoy every down year they have.  It may be mean, but it's how I feel.  Plus John Calipari is as crooked as any politician that has every been outed for malfeasance of any kind.  He even has the look.  Why he has the support of the NCAA after the things he has pulled is beyond me, but I guess we are talking about the NCAA here and not Shriner's Hospital.  I digress.

1:55 into the second half and UConn is leading the Wildcats 37-35 after coughing up a 13 point lead in the first half.  Shabazz Napier is/was a force to be reckoned with in the first half.  Watching that first half I had already planned on writing about how he was running circles around the physically superior Wildcat team, but alas the fucking Wildcats have lived up to their modus operandi and come back with a flurry of capitalizations of Huskie mistakes.  It makes me sick to my stomach, but that could also be the smooth Busch beer I've been drinking since watching the Cards' home opener earlier.

{POST INTERRUPTED SO AUTHOR COULD  WATCH THE REST OF GAME}

A bit of an anticlimactic ending but a good one still.  I won't say that John Calipari is not a good coach.  I will just say that he is a cheater and a scoundrel.  I will also say that Kevin Olie is a hell of a coach and that Jim Calhoun probably feels pretty good right now.

UConn started out with a head of steam, characteristic of a team coached by a pragmatic guy like Olie.  (He seems so in his press conferences anyway.)  UK came out at first looking like they had prepared to be run on and were overcompensating for this fact with silly fouls and overzealous goaltending calls in the first half.

Then they made a game of it and made everyone that has seen them fall behind and come back in this tournament squirm.  Coach Cal is very skilled at bringing together the big egos of teenage phenoms from around the country to play together as a team.  This however does not make him any less of a crooked fucker, in my humble opinion anyway.  I may be judging a book by its cover, but any avid reader knows just as well as I that when you are window shopping for books you put an awful lot of stock in the cover.  And I am willing to bet if we read the back flap of John Calipari it still would not pass many morality tests.

I will be the first to tell you that I am biased because of my disliking of John Calipari and Kentucky basketball.  That does not make what UConn has accomplished any less impressive.  Hell, I picked them to lose in the second round.  Actually, I picked both teams to lose in the second round now that I think of it, and I still stand to win $50 on the lone bracket that I filled out this year.  Figure that one out.

I guess Hunter Thompson was right about it really being more fun to write about sports when you stand to win some cash.  Long live college hoops.

-Luke
4/7/14

On hoping that the St. Louis Rams continue to be so.

2/2/14

I sit here tonight on super sunday a broken spirited man...The big game sucks.  Seattle has just scored their 43rd point.  And on top of all of this, it is looking like a very real possibility that my beloved St. Louis will be without a football team within the next few years.

Many people are saying that this is just a negotiating ploy by silent Stan Kroenke to strengthen his hand at the poker table with the city of St. Louis.  This is a very real possibility, but I am not optimistic about it.  I’m sure Stan is a shrewd business man, but something in this whole mess just smells like a big pile of shit.  He has not made his thoughts on the matter known at all, and meanwhile a fanbase waits in baited breath while the powers that be on both sides play chess.

I’m inclined at times to say, “Fuck you, Stan.  And the NFL can kiss my dick too.”  It’s all a business and we the fans do not have all that much say in the matter.  

Let’s look at this situation:  Los Angeles is the 2nd largest media market in the country.  St. Louis is a great sports town, but we can’t bring the clout like LA.  Despite what Roger Goodell says, the NFL wants a team in LA and they do not want it to be an expansion team due to that meaning there would be another team to share television revenues with.  This means that the developers in LA that own land with the intent to bring football back will most likely need to do so with a team that already exists.  The Rams were there once before and Stan just bought 60 acres.  You don’t have to be a mathematician to do this math.

Much the way a politician’s sole purpose in life is to be reelected, it is Stan Kroenke’s sole drive to make money.  He will do whatever is more lucrative for him in this situation.  In my humble opinion, the only way the Rams stay in St. Louis is if the LA deal falls apart.  This is not beyond the realm of possibility, as there is a near infinite amount of red tape to surpass to develop a site with the intention of building something as large as a football stadium.  What scares me about this is the fact that Enos Stanley Kroenke knows this and is prepared.  Case in point: Bill McClellan wrote in his weekend column that “the land deal in Los Angeles went down on Jan. 13.  The buyer was a holding company in care of a lawyer from a firm that advised Silent Stan when he bought an English soccer team.  Nobody in the press made the connection.  This newspaper and the Los Angeles times both published stories Thursday night.  In other words, the story was 17 days old and the two papers broke the story within 10 minutes of each other.”

In even more other words, This was an old story with things that took place behind the scenes and it was leaked to the media by someone.  Plus, Stan is using the same network of individuals that helped him buy a Barclays Premier League soccer team.  Like Mr. McClellan, it is interesting to me that Kroenke went through these channels.  If he wanted to force St. Louis’ hand by leaking this story, why use a holding company?  And why wait 17 days?     I don’t like this.

I haven’t liked this or Stan since the press conference he gave when the Rams hired Jeff Fisher.  The old man wore a smirk under his stupid mustache when asked about the future of the franchise that said, “I’m in charge and there’s nothing that anyone can do about it.  Heheh.  Kneel before Stan!!!”  This is a guy that was named after two St. Louis Cardinals baseball legends.  And if all of this goes down the way that I am afraid that it will, then you can rest assured that Stan will flee his home state of Missouri for fear that he will be put to death for the crime of treason.  You cannot be brought up in this part of the country with two Cardinal namesakes only to gain billions and turn your back on us.  To do so would be the admittance that he hath no soul.

I can be honest and say that I have always hated the fact that teams can move from city to city and keep the same nickname.  The first St. Louis football team I was familiar with was the football Cardinals at the age of three.  One of my cups that I played with in the bathtub was a St. Louis football Cardinals cup and I remember being confused as a toddler when my dad told me they were moving to Phoenix.  I had no clue where this Phoenix was, but I knew there was something wrong with the Cardinals now becoming the “Phoenix Cardinals.”  I must admit that I had trouble thinking of the Rams as St. Louis’ team because I had the ripe thoughts of them being the LA Rams.  Other kids who grew up with them here will no doubt be confused if they leave though.  I personally think the nicknames should stay with the cities, but I guess I’m off on a tangent now.

The bottom line is that money rules all, and the fans be damned.  Sad but true.  And if you should help take the NFL from us again, Enos Kroenke, then I hope karma rips your face off.  

I have been in the middle of a serious NBA team identity crisis for years now.  (Just ask my girlfriend, brother, or cousin, Tyson.)  If the Rams leave then I suppose I should be thinking about who I will throw my support towards in the future.  Perhaps the Titans, Chiefs, or Bears.  My mom and stepdad live near the Titans, I live closest to the Chiefs, and I used to live near the Bears.  My mental health already isn't great, and if I have to pick a new NFL team then it will surely take another turn for the worst.  I have mild OCD when it comes to having to have favorite teams in each league...But that is a blog for another day.

How can Stan Kroenke live with himself knowing he is toying with folks' mental health?  He is quite possibly very evil.  That's how.

Regarding the Article I Posted on Animal Cruelty / Things to Think About / Hello

12/16/13, 10:28 pm

http://www.rollingstone.com/feature/belly-beast-meat-factory-farms-animal-activists

“Your anger will cool into hardened passionate insight if you wait a day.  Most of the things that make me angry, I try to let them sit.  The heat that remains will be sufficient.  The stuff that evaporates is the stuff that would have simply offended or made it histrionic.” -Keith Olberman

    I am an avid reader of just about anything.  Newspapers, magazines, books, websites, nutrition facts, etc...Being a reader opens one’s eyes to things that non-readers may not be privy to, and every once in a while you may come across something that moves you to changing a viewpoint in your life...or creating a new one that may have not been there before.

    Recently I read an article that moved me to the point of a change.  After I read it I went apeshit, my head spinning circles, spewing fire from my eye sockets, the hate inside me born of a spawn from lucifer himself.  I ran around and punched things and screamed and kicked and cursed.  I was reading about cruelty to farm animals, and it caused me to have a cow, and this cow is now living humanely in my living room and will continue to do so for the rest of his natural life.

    The above quote from Keith Olberman is fitting for my situation because after I read about the things that are done to cows, pigs, and chickens so we can get cheap meat (and very possibly pay for it with our health) made me so angry that all I wanted to do was write a 12,000 word manifesto that damned every person on earth who eats mass produced meat straight to hell...In hindsight this may have been an exaggeration.

    I did start the thing though, and plastered it with quotes from said article along with my own personal beliefs and as I was doing it I realized that I was so angry that what I was trying to say wasn’t coming across very well (It didn’t come across well after several beers at a friend’s engagement party Saturday night either).  You’ve got to press on though when you feel strongly about something.

    And please do not get me wrong.  There are terrible things happening to our fellow humans in other parts of the world as well as right here at home at this very moment.  My point is that these things will continue to happen to both man and animal for as long as all of us decide that we’d rather not hear about it because it might upset us.  I am guilty of this too.  I was discussing this topic with a coworker today and it went something like this:

Me: “Pigs are just as smart and affectionate as dogs and cats and what happens to them blows my fucking mind!”

Coworker: (Concerned sounding) “Really?”

Me: “Yeah.  The mother is immediately shocked and kicked and prodded away from her babies, which she is trying desperately to get back to, and meanwhile the baby piglets have their tails cut off without any kind of anesthetic and they’re screaming bloody murder and a lot of the workers take pleasure in this.”

Coworker: “I don’t want to hear anymore.”

I can’t say that I blame him.  I had a professor show my philosophy class a video that documented a lot of this senseless slaughter once, and for whatever reason it didn’t take for me at the time.  I was much more worried about catching my next buzz.  Maybe it was divine intervention or some other serendipitous phenomenon that brought it back to me now, when I’ve been desperately trying to get pumped up about something.  Some folks become born-again Christians...I write blogs about animal cruelty.

I’ve ranted on this long and haven’t even mentioned where I read said article.  I found it on Rollingstone.com, and it is titled: In the Belly of the Beast, by: Paul Solotoroff.  You may be thinking that I am just reading liberal propaganda and adding in my own imaginary catastrophic crimes against nature, but I am speaking from watching the videos that are presented along with this finely written article.  Mr. Solotoroff interviewed a group of undercover workers sent into these slaughterhouses by the Humane Society of the United States.  They caught workers taking pleasure in seriously injuring animals, animals living in multiple inches of their own shit (mmmm boy, who wants a steak?), and multiple other chilling scenes that if you are able to watch without it moving you in some way that you may possibly not be alive or have had the part of your brain that projects compassion removed and replaced with evil…

And what really gets my goat (see what I did there?) is that the large meat manufacturers that carry out this sickness along with their lobbyists have our politicians in their pocket.  Laws are in place to protect our household pets, but not livestock, no matter how heinous the offense (Read the piece.)  Lawmakers in several states are also attempting to make it illegal to video and document the cruelty in these places.  I believe in privacy and not having to worry about watching your back all the time, but not when you are torturing a creature that is scared, defenseless, and more times than not is struggling to find a way out of its surroundings, which it never will.  Cows, pigs, and chickens are kept in much smaller quarters than are livable.  This leads to cannibalism, tramplings, and contaminated food supply when the corpses are left to sit there with the ones that are still to be slaughtered.  This all goes down in the name of efficiency.  Because we can.  Why churn out less food to the public than we can?  If we can up our output to the absolute tipping point, why not do just that?  Because what is happening is fucking barbaric.  That is why.

I am not proposing that everyone become a vegan tomorrow.  What you feed yourself is entirely up to you.  I am proposing that everyone think about what goes on behind the scenes.  I am proposing that we educate ourselves more about things.  Things like this, as well as other things we may not want to hear about for fear of hurting our fragile little feelings or giving us a tummy ache.  Animal cruelty is just my wake-up call.  Yours may be something else.  I strongly recommend you go to Rolling Stone and read this article though, because even if you care nothing for animals, you should care about the backroom bullshit that causes these things to happen, and you should also care about the health issues that the constant stew of chemicals being pumped into our meat and dairy supply could raise or already have.

I was raised to be an animal lover and I am sure that is why this issue has touched me in such a way.  It just isn’t right though.  This is an instance where greed has become so rampant that we are willing to completely disregard other living things’ well-being.  There’s no reason to treat them the way that we do.

So much for the quote from Olberman I guess...If this rant or some other thing that you have seen or heard has moved you the way this has me, please don’t just let it fall by the wayside.  We let things fall there much too often, and this is what breeds injustice.

PUPPYFIGHT!

12/10/13, 10:29 pm

    I just broke up a pretty serious fight between my two poodles.  I was sitting at the kitchen table while Veronica was hogging the computer desk for her “really important final exam,” when Charlie and Red both expressed an interest that it was time to play.  I could have picked up any of the number of toys that are lying around and thrown it for the perfect amount of playtime, but I decided to get up and chase Charlie into the bedroom with Red not far behind.

    Usually when we play “run to the bedroom,” it involves all of us running into the bedroom (yes), and jumping on to the bed and roughhousing.  Sometimes we play “hide under the blanket,” and other times we play “tug of war.”  This particular time before I could initiate any of the above mentioned games, a violent free-for-all broke out...It’s only by the grace of God that I, or either puppydog was able to escape with our lives.

    I was the first to the jump on the bed with Charlie close behind and finally Red thereafter.  Normally Red would be the first dog to make it, but he was preoccupied with his mommy (Veronica) when Charlie and I make our break.  It’s only about a 15-20 ft. sprint from the family room to the bedroom, so Red closed on us fast with his freakishly long legs.  It all becomes blurry after we all landed.

    I vaguely remember calling out for help while the two titan poodles were in the midst of their duel, but to no avail.  They had postured each other in their battle stances and it was then left over to whomever would draw first blood.  It was not unlike a Darthraki wedding.  Little did they know that first blood would be drawn from their master.

    At first I remember thinking that it may all just blow over and break up on it’s own like most fights between puppy-brothers do, but it just kept escalating.  A moment came when I knew that I had to involve myself or surely commit one of them to a soldier-puppy’s burial upon the winter’s morn…”STAND DOWN, PUPPIES!,” I screamed in fear for their safety and my own.  But it was no longer feasible to expect any peaceful resolution...So I pounced.

    I am currently employed in Crisis Management for Behaviorally Disordered teens, and am highly trained in Safe Crisis Management.  I was sure when I jumped in that my instinct and training would kick in and all would be well.  I imagined it would be somewhere along the lines of when Batman would disable a group of henchmen without issue...What I forgot was that Batman often gets injured while fighting crime.

    I swept Charlie up using the side-carry-transport hold and made my way for the door to separate the two brutes.  It would have been a clean break had I not failed to take into consideration Red’s freakishly long legs.  I remembered this fact right as his front incisors sank into my left love-handle.

    “AHHHHH!,” I yelled as I quickly dropped Charlie and ran screaming from the room.  “Stupid damn dogs!!!! Go ahead and rip each other’s heads off!!!”  I ran back to the family room to see Veronica still sitting at the computer table (which she continues to hog all the time for her graduate classes) laughing hysterically.  “That sounded so terrible that I didn’t even want to come in there,” she said, still laughing.

“I’m bleeding out!!!  Get a gauze pad!!!”  

“Hahahahaha.  They hurt you?,” she asked, not really caring.

“Red got me near the kidney.  You better go check on them.”

Both dogs survived.  As of presstime, I am also in stable condition, and both dogs have been locked in the closet.  The master will always win.