Get "Wilco (The Album)"

I could write a long post that would analyze each track, etc., but that would be boring. (I'm so done with music journalism, for many reasons that I won't enumerate now.) Instead, I'll compare it to someone else's recording history: Neil Young. Now, the two artists don't sound alike necessarily, but their creative trajectories are relatively similar.

So:
--"AM" was like a Buffalo Springfield album, in that Tweedy had not yet sloughed off the "Uncle Tupelo" brandings that were inevitable, and Young clearly wanted to focus on his solo career as well.
--"Being There" was like "Everybody Knows This Is Nowhere," and not only because both are double albums.
--"Summerteeth" was like "On the Beach." The latter is occasionally a crude recording, but also had polished pop songs like "Walk On." The former has both "Via Chicago" and "Pieholden Suite."
--"Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" was like "Trans," but not like you'd think. Both were avant-garde sonic experiments with good intentions but very different results. Wilco's album was and is a masterpiece that deals with miscommunication, or actually non-communication, in a relationship. Young was trying to find a way to get through to his disabled son (with cerebral palsy), but it was more personal than artistic, which is a distinction that can denote transcendence, or, in this case, aimlessness.
--"A Ghost Is Born" was like "Ragged Glory," because both had brave fuzzy bursts of feedback next to bouncy ballads.
--"Sky Blue Sky" was like "Harvest Moon." Both have soft, majestic songs, in Young's case motivated by tinnitus and, in Tweedy's case, a recovery from addiction to painkillers.

This brings us up to date, for the most part, and I think "Wilco (The Album)" is like "Greendale." Wilco want to offer themselves up as a remedy for nearly any kind of psychological anguish, and Young wanted to show the world that everything would be all right because it had been previously.

I'd ramble on longer, but one of the reasons I got away from music journalism was that most of it was boring as shit, and not at all enlightening. Hopefully this simple piece cuts to the chase.

Rick
ADDENDUM: This album is hysterically funny. Something very new and shocking lurks below, though, I think.

Adult vs. Embryonic Stem Cells

To me, the distinction between the two reveals the specious logic that typifies fundamentalist, and not so fundamentalist, Christianity. I can't remember the exact quote in an article in Medjugorje Magazine (to which my grandmother subscribes, much to my feckless chagrin), but I remember the gist of an awful point that the writer, a laughably lunatic Catholic priest, was trying to make. Alas, I thankfully do not have a subscription, but I promise you that I am not distorting the content of the article, or exaggerating the pure stupidity of its logic.

The author likened the proliferation of embryonic stem cell research to the Holocaust--I shit you not--as well as a number of other various sites of human-rights atrocities, from Tuskegee to Rwanda. This is one of the major problems of religion (Catholicism in this case). Acolytes sensationalize as if they were writing for a tabloid, and mindless non-thinkers with a proven ability to discriminate racially and socioeconomically cannot apply this discernment to bullshit propaganda.

Now, I hate to tell this to all of you religious, proselytizing morons, but a group of random cells is not life as we all know it. To compare embryonic stem cell research to genocide should infuriate any rational, halfway-intelligent individual. In many repositories across the world, frozen embryos wile away while actual human beings--adults--murder and rape and commit acts that approximate the aforementioned atrocities. If you're religious, which I adamantly am not, this should throw you into a fugue state. Instead, inexplicably, self-righteous religious vermin prattle on about the sanctity of life. If I have to explain the paramount hypocrisy here, I feel sorry for you.

My own personal impending stem cell procedure uses the adult variety--my own, in fact--so religious hypocrites (I think this is a redundancy, for the most part) can rest easy. However, I wish wish wish that it used the embryonic kind, just so I could shut up all of the idiotic religious monsters in my sphere.

If you want to impede embryonic stem cell research, I suspect that you are too dumb to understand how it could lead to revelations that could then lead to treatments or cures for some of the most debilitating disorders in the world. I have multiple sclerosis, which can be aggressively crippling, and I mean this in the most literal sense, for some. I can still walk of my own volition, but it is quite possible that eventually I won't be able to do so. This doesn't bother me, because I'm lazy as it is, but I imagine it can be a terrifying prospect for others (maybe even most of the afflicted and sick).

Christianity famously exudes hypocrisy. Think of the molestation by priests of today or even (if you want to think way back) of the Protestant Reformation that began in the 16th century with Martin Luther's indignation at the selling of indulgences by the Catholic Church. I know that this picks on the Catholics, but they can, or should be able to, handle it. (I went to Catholic parochial schools for most of my life, so I know how ridiculous some of the dogma is, and have been railing against it for years, without an authentic stab at rebuttal from anyone.) If not, bring it on--and don't condescendingly dismiss me with an empty "I'll pray for you."

To quote Christopher Hitchens (which I do occasionally, begrudgingly), "religion poisons everything." In this case, though, it could cost lives. Real ones. The ones that some particularly vehement and despicable pro-lifers hypocritically snuff out with righteous indignation, which nearly always hides profound stupidity.

Rick

Fucking Heat

So the fucking heat has begun to aggravate my already-onerous, annoying symptoms noticeably and cloyingly. Sometimes I feel like Jean-Dominique Bauby, except not as communicative. Occasionally--especially in the afternoons--I wish that I could carry on conversations by blinking, or not at all. Ugh. I know now the full implications of the phrase "oppressive heat."

I am eagerly counting down the days of July--irrationally, as it turns out. It's still June. Who knew? Unfortunately, that speaking/typing program would not work, not the least of all because I cannot say what I want to write before I write it. This just does not happen; I don't function like that.

I'm getting cabin fever, though. I suppose I could venture out with one of those hat-fans, but a) I don't wear hats and b) if I did, I'd probably get one with a fake ponytail for my own amusement. And oh yeah--c) that would look ridiculous, like one of those Americans in Europe with a bright smile and a brighter fannypack.

Speaking of Bauby, this is my own brand of "locked-in syndrome."

R

Michael Jackson Sucked, Everybody

Why am I the only one who will say it? "Billie Jean" was good. Most everything else was awful. I can think of several people who have died in 2009 who were more deserving of my sorrow and who received nary a mention in the press.

To name just a few:
David Carradine, who was smeared by the press and the Thai police.
Koko Taylor, perhaps the one tolerable contemporary Chicago blues singer/musician.
Jay Bennett, former Wilco collaborator.
Karl Vogler, the German actor who played Rommel in "Patton."
Harold Norse, Beat poet (almost an oxymoron) but a close friend of Auden.
Jack Nimitz, the jazz saxophonist.

So kill me (pardon the pun), but Michael Jackson's death, though shocking, barely makes me shrug. It's sad, but not that sad. Get over your grief and plug up your crocodile tears.

Plus, lest we forget, he was an unrepentant PEDOPHILE.

Rick

Age Before Beauty? (A dubious distinction)

Last night, I watched "Bonnie & Clyde" (and subsequently heard about Farrah Fawcett's death the next day) and started to think about human attractiveness. One of the cliches about human aesthetics insists that youth translates reliably into beauty. This is very specious reasoning, and I can cite two examples that are not simply anomalous.

1. Faye Dunaway--she was attractive in "Chinatown" (don't get me wrong), but she was exquisitely beautiful in "Bonnie & Clyde," filmed seven years earlier.
2. Tom Cruise--he was a stud (I'm not gay, although I've said countless times that I wish I were, because things would be so much easier) in "Risky Business," but didn't really attain the hot-ness that we all accept until, arguably, eleven years later, with "Interview With A Vampire."

I know that many people would take umbrage with both of these, but they're just being wimps trying to act PC. First of all, Dunaway came to resemble Predator a little bit. I half expect her to widen her jaws and taunt me to battle her. On the other hand, the early Cruise had a very prominent probiscus that I, and I suspect other people as well, could not look past (pardon the pun).

These are only two examples. I could mention Jennifer Connelly ("Career Opportunities" vs. "Little Children"--come on) or Vincent Price (look up his filmography, kiddies, but he was much more handsome in "Tower of London" than in "Edward Scissorhands").

Clearly, there are those who got worse with age. I think everybody can think of classmates in high school who now make them cringe. There is a sexist component to this that I'm trying to stay away from, but it's the proverbial elephant in the room. Nevertheless, both sexes have strong examples of this phenomenon of age superceding youth when it comes to beauty.

Baldness, however, is one of nature's great equalizers, and tends to afflict a disproportionate number of men, obviously. This brings me to my impending chemotherapy. In a month, I could very well look like Nosferatu. However, my hair should grow back, barring a "Seinfeld"-esque miscalculation. If it doesn't, I can always wear it short like Bruce Willis.

Nevertheless, nature generally has an unfair predilection toward male aesthetics when it comes to age. It's patently unfair, but generally true. Even obesity favors men unjustly: think of Kirstie Alley vs. Biggie. (I know that that has more to do with success, but those are the only examples I can think of right now.)

Am I wrong?

Rick
ADDENDUM: I'm actually in the minority of people that doesn't subscribe to this. Case in point: my appreciation, and attraction to, Helen Mirren and Carrie-Anne Moss. Not to say that the latter is old, but she's getting a little long in the tooth.

"I tell it like it is."

Translation: "I'm an asshole."

It's one thing to be honest, but it's quite another to be rude. I think many people think I have the latter attitude. Au contraire. My manners align more closely with that of a 19th-century Southern gentleman. But, you know, without the racism.

Here's the thing: I will speak, boldly at times, but I will not set out to humiliate or denigrate somebody else. Unless, of course, my hand (or tongue) is forced...

Then it's duel-time. And watch out--I have quite the verbal arsenal when it comes to this.

Now, with the MS, my patience has dwindled, and it was admittedly pretty low already. Still, I don't overtly "tell it like it is." Well, maybe I do, but I don't intend to slay anyone. (Not like that, anyway.) If I do "let it blurt," as Lester Bangs would say, it's probably because I can't get too riled up since stress exacerbates some of my symptoms, mainly fatigue and indifference.

Okay, the latter isn't really a symptom, but a lot of people don't know that, so I might just add/make up symptoms to fit my own idiosyncrasies.

R
--I'm still doing the initial signature, and I may keep it up. (I can always use the MS, too, as an excuse for not hitting more keys to spell out the whole name.)

White Linen Dress

I'm trying to decide whether or not to start wearing one now, because I'm inevitably going to turn into Emily Dickinson--without a preternatural fondness for dashes. Wait...--

(This has come up before, from me of course, but I think it'd look more like a muumuu, no? I need to figure out where PJ Harvey shops, because she looked like she'd know, judging from her attire on her last tour.)

Humidity: Nature's Game-Theory Gambit

Talk about lose-lose: I could go outside, which would be pleasant briefly, or stay inside and not be depleted--ravaged, really--entirely.

Lethargy, in this situation, is really a coin toss when it comes to its short-term pleasure or long-term boiling, as with a frog.

Father's' Day

I don't much care for greeting-card feel-good holidays, but I'm especially inimical toward Father's' Day. (Where the hell does the apostrophe go, anyway?) Obviously this comes from my own ambivalence slash murderous rage that I feel toward my own father. However, because I know my Oprah/Jerry Springer/Montel/Maury/etc., I know that empirically celebrating fathers is total bullshit. Some are good--quite good, actually. Some are terrible--my own falls in this category.

I guess my problem is with the unavoidable empathy I'm supposed to feel. Unrepentantly, irrevocably, and indefatigably, I scoff at this nonsense. As many of you already know, my own father is a selfish prick whose chance at redemption waved goodbye a long time ago. As a result, I've calloused over emotionally somewhat, but this can be a good thing. I'm impervious to further emotional trauma. Really. And as an atheist (agnostics are craven wimps who still want to hang onto a shred of possible belief "just-in-case"), I have no qualms with cutting ties and leaving them severed.

Personal growth can be supplemented by nurturing, but in the end it's all about you. This is not as cynical as it may seem. Personal growth comes with personal accountability, so you can't go crazy by murdering others and such, no matter how much you would like it. That's what ethics is: not an ethos born of religion. Actually, religion motivates a good chunk of the violence and antipathy that exists today, and that has existed for thousands of years. But I digress...

So actual fathers (not dads, as Kurt Cobain would say) can enjoy the day and rejoice in the fact, if it is a fact, that their children are not in prison or, in the case of daughters, on a pole somewhere.

The rest can, as the British say, bugger off.

Thank you.

R
(I always wanted to sign my name with one initial. That might be pretentious, but I'm doing it here.)

Nausea Redux

I just took my Klonopin and am waiting for it to kick in. The doctors at NW/Rush told me that I was finally accepted into the stem-cell study for MS. Hurray! Blue Cross/Blue Shield denied me several times, so I had to go on Medicare to get approval. That isn't so bad, but there's a period where I have to go on Medicaid, which is humiliating. I've said it before, but I don't even like using coupons because they make me feel poor. And wretched, in 19th century French parlance. Anywho...

Quick rundown:
I have multiple sclerosis (relapsing-remitting, with an emphasis on the relapsing), was diagnosed in January 2008 but began exhibiting symptoms in July 2007, which include the following litany: balance and gait problems, optic neuritis with nystagmus, numb fingers, vertigo, fatigue that dissipates at night (my nocturnality is pathological, and not simply an extension of depression), and sporadic nausea. I'm sure there's more, but that's enough for now.

I think it's nap time.