Done

Finished season 4 of Lost yesterday. Now it's time to take a break. That season was short enough and just in time too, because I was getting a wee bit burnt out on the show. Not to say that it ever lost my interest or it ever got less than intriguing. It didn't. But, the same thing happens when I do anything for two hours everyday for a month and a half. I get tired of it. So I'm going to break at the very least until I get back from the beach, maybe even until August. Time to get back into my kung fu movies, watch some episodes of The Monkees, start watching Renegade, and plug away at these stacks of VHS I've still been building up. After that I'll probably either find season 5 through a torrent or stream them, whichever turns out to work better. Doubt I'll wait until December for the DVDs.

Looks like One Tree Hill is moving to Mondays at 8. Which is House's time. After last season, guess which one wins.

Insane about Michael Jackson. In. Sane. Out of nowhere. What a shame.

Last Friday I went to see a Zeppelin tribute band called Zoso. I skipped the Rush tribute band that opened for them. Zoso was alright. Pretty much note-for-note recreations, either of the album version or if it was played in The Song Remains The Same, that version. They tried to pull off the look too. Eh. That velvet dragon costume just doesn't quite work when it doesn't billow away from you because you're all bone. Robert Plant looked a lot more like David Coverdale. John Bonham had a headband, but he couldn't quite hide his redneckness. John Paul Jones was pretty much phoning his look in. He had the pants and he had a puffy shirt, but otherwise he looked more like Jerry Cantrell than John Paul Jones. But like I say, musically it was okay. I only really got swept up in it once. They were really pretty powerful on "The Song Remains The Same," I was actually getting into it then. Unlike the rest of the crowd. Some people were all in on this band, in a way that I can't really criticize because when I was Zep-crazy in high school, I might have acted the same way. But I heard a lot of, "Man, I saw Zeppelin in '77, and this blows them away." And even heard one person say after "Ramble On" that, "I can die happy now," I assume implying that this was a suitable substitute for his one true wish in life which was to see the original Zeppelin play "Ramble On" in concert. The audience could not have been more depressing to be a part of. First of all, as always seems to happen when I go to one of these outdoor low-rent shows, I got stuck standing behind someone who was grinding around too uncomfortably close to me and paying very little attention to where she was swinging her stuff. This time it was what looked like someone's leather-skinned whorish grandmother, swilling beer and slurring speech and trying to look young like she hadn't been out of the house since she last saw Zeppelin at Live-Aid. She sure as hell wouldn't pay any attention to staying in her personal space, but was constantly looking around for approval from other attendees. And the worst part was, she was getting it! And it just got worse. By the end of the night, some dude near me was just absolutely molesting every pre-teen to woman in the vicinity, most of them going along with it, and a lot of the time doing it right in front of the guys these women were there with. But I couldn't feel bad for them, because one way or another those guys had proved themselves douches over the course of the night.

A couple things became more and more apparent to me that night. First, it's amazing, considering how much I used to smoke, what a hard time I have being around cigarettes now. It gives me a sick feeling to my stomach just to smell them around me, and oddly way more than it ever did before I started smoking. Of course, outdoor concert, it was one after another after two after eight being lit up around me at this thing, I just had to hold my breath. Weird. Second thing, I think I have absolutely zero enthusiasm for live music anymore. I've been meaning to blog about this for a while, but I'm just sapped of interest when it comes to live shows. I don't know that I ever really had it in the first place. When I would go to see someone like Dylan or B.B. King before, it was more about being in the same room with people and realizing what kind of history was on that stage. When I would go see more current/up-and-coming bands it was more like I felt like I ought to be there to say I saw it. Definitely a whole lot of feeling like I ought to go, and then once I was there hoping it would be over soon enough. But I've never really gone to shows with a worked up expectation of having my face rocked off like so many people seem to enjoy. And I certainly haven't gone for any sense of community with the crowd, like we're sharing something in liking this band. Hard to do that when you just wish that person 2 or 3 away from you would just shut the hell up and listen. That seems to be the part of the whole music fandom experience that has totally gone over my head. Anyway, what brought that on, I was sitting there last Friday night and just couldn't decide if a musical show was something I really wanted to bother with. Ultimately I decided to go because I was supposed to meet a guy from work there. He didn't show (family time? Come on!) and I doubt I would have gone by myself. Probably wouldn't again. Records, albums, CDs, those do it for me plenty.

Damn those Flaming Lips!

I was in the middle of waking up this morning when I decided I wanted to listen to In A Priest Driven Ambulance on the way to work today. Out of nowhere, I haven’t listened to that album in a really long time. Dammit, it’s so good! What happened to THOSE guys? Then I was thinking, it is really pretty inevitable that they’ve gotten so bad. Wayne has always aped a lot off of classic rock bands, whether it’s Yes or Zeppelin or Floyd. And just because I got into them seven years ago doesn’t make them any less twenty-five years old as a band. So I guess it’s really appropriate that take that downward shift like any other band would that they model themselves after. (To be fair, I guess Zeppelin never went downhill, but Page and Plant sure had their moments post-Zeppelin.) It’s still frustrating though, for some reason I thought they could go on forever like it was 88-98. Spoiled being a fan of Sonic Youth or Bob Dylan I guess, who seem to keep their shit together endlessly. Oh well, anyway, Priest, very good album. Can’t wait to get back in the car with it.

What's dangerous about watching this much Lost in a short period of time

I've been meaning to post this for a couple of weeks now, so it's not totally relevant, but I finally have a chance. Over Memorial Day weekend, my brother and I were housesitting for my dad in Staunton while he was in Nashville. That Saturday night we ordered UFC 98 (pretty much lackluster aside from the last match, go go Lyoto). So at 1am I was pretty much jacked up, not considering going to sleep, and instead watched a few episodes of Lost. I think that's when I finished up the first season. So I was in a house that was not my own, watching Lost on a TV that was not my own, in a town that was not my own. That weekend me and my brother pretty much sat in my dad's house, watching TV, eating a lot of home-made Chex Mix, and since we were not in Fredericksburg, we didn't really know where to go if we wanted to go out. That's right, feeling stranded. So combine that feeling with having had several dreams of being on The Island and I was feeling way wrapped up in that show. And a by-product of that being I was feeling way withdrawn from society, almost to the point I would go outside and expect nobody to be there. That was a long weekend, which added to it, and when I went back to work that Tuesday, I could not reconnect with normal life at all. I felt completely alien, almost wanted to look over my shoulders with shortness of breath going "Who are these people?!?" Anyway, by now I've gotten over it, even though I haven't backed off the viewing at all. If anything I think I've amped it up. I think there was a week or two between season finale week and when Conan started hosting the Tonight Show that I didn't watch anything aired on television. It was all Lost. Except for also watching the first two of the original series of Star Trek movies. Surprised by how much I liked those too. Hopefully some time soon I can find time to watch the next two.

I've been watching Conan as he's starting up. It's weird. It seems like the same show as Late Night, except the guests are more famous and more irritating, and the audience is often barely responding to anything that's going on. Do they just have one collective Tonight Show audience that they bus in every day and decided they'd use the same audience for Conan that they used for Leno? Just seems like things are falling flat with the studio audience that would have killed on Late Night. And maybe they can say he's adjusting to 11:30, but both shows tape in the afternoon don't they? Shouldn't make much of a difference with the studio audience. I'm not sure how long I'm going to try to keep up with it, Norm MacDonald and Neko Case are on this week so I have something to watch, but it seems to be going a little rough in the first few weeks. Hopefully he doesn't start to temper himself trying to get laughs from his zilch audience. Zilches.

Today I finally listened to The Hives last two albums, after basically taking a six year break from them. Not too shabby. That coming at the tail-end of a Santana phase I just went through. I think that guy basically deserves all the shit he's given for becoming a noodler between lame vocals, but those first few records are incredible, when Santana was more a band than a guitar player. I wonder if they had named the band something else and thus maybe made it a little less about him, maybe they would have been better a little longer. I've tried to listen to some of the albums after the third and I just haven't taken to them, except for the live album Lotus, which definitely burns at a lot of points. But I still haven't listened to Caravanserai, Love Devotion Surrender, or Welcome yet, so we'll see. Also have a little thing going on for the Monkees right now, which came from two fields. One: I was listening to a lot of albums from my younger days, which took me from Forever Your Girl to Gonna Make You Sweat to Ninja Turtles soundtrack to Batman soundtrack (which, ribbing about Batdance aside, that's just a really good album) to Beach Boys to Monkees. And two: since Lost has curtailed my time I was devoting to kung fu movies, I started getting the first season of the Monkees from netflix. Nice short episodes that go by really quick when I need a twenty minute break.