Best of

This is the year that I really started to feel a bit old when it comes to music.  Like it was an effort to keep on top of things.  Like the kids are listening to bands I've never heard of.  I don't really like that. 


Songs (that didn't have albums to match)

Wugazi - Sleep Rules Everything Around Me

When I first heard about the Wugazi album I just freaked right out.  I had higher expectations, as a whole.  Sleep Rules Everything Around Me shows the promise of this concept.

Yacht - Shangri-La
This is my favourite song of 2011.  It reminds me of the slow jams that I listened to throughout my childhood.  Radio NL, the greatest hits of all time.  It's a bit Afternoon Delightish.  Just an extremely catchy and beautiful song.


Albums (the obvious ones)

Panda Bear - Tomboy and Atlas Sound - Parallax

I listened to both of these a lot.  See?  Obvious.


Albums (the less obvious ones)

Louis CK - Hilarious
Did this even come out this year?  I really enjoyed this album as it made me think about a few things for a few hours afterwards.  I can't really remember what they were, but it really resonated at the time.

Fucked Up - David Comes to Life
I remember trying to explain to somebody a few years ago that a great album can be created in just a few moments.  The 5 seconds in the middle of a song that make you want to listen to the whole album.  Of course, you need an album to support those 5 seconds.  Without the album, you're just going to yell at BTO to get "workin' overtime".  To dig way into the past, I think the Unicorns were a band that really captured these moments.  The Fiery Furnaces as well.  This album, while not quite on that level, does a spectacular job of capturing moments and sprinkling them throughout.

Wu Lyf - Go Tell Fire to the Mountain
This is really the only thing this year that came out of nowhere (well...Pitchfork) and got me really excited.  I honestly didn't know what language they were speaking the first time I heard it.  I was worried that the live show was going to bring the whole thing crashing down but it actually made everything better (although I've only listened to the album once since then).

See what I was saying at the top?  That's a pretty sad list right there.

THE BEST!! of 2011

Okay Dave, for posterity's sake, a top five:

- Thee Oh Sees, Castlemania. I played the hell out of this record all summer. Their double EP in November was icing on the cake. San Francisco garage rock had a big year, and even though Ty Segall gets most of the accolades, these guys are probably what he puts on when he's microwaving burritos.

- Ty Segall, Goodbye Bread. But then again Ty deserves some accolades.

- Girls, Father Son Holy Ghost. So I should just to move to San Francisco? But this album—-unassailable. On every point.

- The Psychic Paramount, II. Oh hi there post rock. Where you been? It's like when Megatron sort of died but then came back as Galvatron, bigger and more unhinged. Sure he was still just a handgun, so a little one dimensional, but he was a pretty kickass handgun.

- Wugazi, 13 Chambers. Mashups are a tired gimmick? Yes. This album is still impossible to turn off? Also yes.

(I should mention that this isn't really a “best of” so much as a “I liked this and played it a lot.” There is a difference. I also liked new albums by old favourites (Wire, Deerhoof, Feelies) well enough, and got pretty enthusiastic about old favourites with new/newish names (Wild Flag, Obits), and a little less but still enthusiastic about new (to me) bands with new (to me) names (Iceage, Trash Talk); I heard a bunch of indie (or easy listening?) bands mostly stick to formula, which is fine when the formula's okay (Antlers, Radiohead, Lykke Li, Gang Gang Dance, Cults, Atlas Sound, Panda Bear, Wilco), but disappointing when the formula didn't used to be quite so easy listening (The Rapture, TV on the Radio); I listened to a bunch of hip hop I found either too predictable (Lil B, Jay-Z/Kanye) or else pretty interesting, but missing the mark for some reason or another (Tyler the Creator, Death Grips, Das Racist, Danny Brown); I tried to like some American (ie. “false”) black metal, but failed (Wolves in the Throne Room, Liturgy); I tried not to like some NPR-approved singer songwriters, but failed again (Tom Waits, Sam Phillips, Bill Callahan); I spun some overrated genre exercises (Washed Out, Destroyer), and an underrated one (Dirtbombs), and some that were highly rated and deserved it (Tune-Yards, James Blake); I smiled at some competent rehashing of 80s electropop (Handsome Furs, HTRK, Drive sountrack, Gotye, Ladytron, M83). And I found myself surprisingly unconflicted about cheering for Lady Gaga, even though I only listened to her album once, if that. But she took a brave and genuinely compelling stand against homophobia in the year it was supposed to get better but didn't. I'm disappointed that her Shania track “You and I” wasn't picked up by country radio. But she made a lot of people a shit ton of money this year, so maybe try try again, and eventually the bible belt will erupt into one giant John Waters freakathon.

Sarah Daniels is the Worst

Sarah Daniels makes me so angry.  I realize that she's really a symptom of the problem and a physical object on which I can transfer my frustration...but she's just the worst.

If anybody doesn't know who Sarah Daniels is...well, she's a former Radio/TV traffic girl who went and got her real estate license and is now the Global BC real estate "Expert".  I don't know about you, but when I'm looking for expert advice on the real estate market I tend to turn to economists, accountants and the like.  But no, Global BC turns to a former traffic girl.  A former traffic girl who makes a living off the myth of an infallible Vancouver real estate.  Very impartial.

So, week after week I hear about how it's a "great time to buy".  Indeed, today her segment (Dunbar and White Rock - So hot!) followed a story about the potential collapse of the Euro zone.  Because the collapse of the (arguably) most powerful currency in the world couldn't have any impact on Vancouver Real Estate Prices*.  Because we have an ocean and a border and mountains!  Nowhere but up!

To make things even worse, her stupid, perky, ever-smiling face has a show on HGTV.  One of those terrible shows where they talk people who can't buy a television without financing into purchasing a condo somewhere.

I don't even know what to do about this.  I wish things like this didn't bother me.  I don't think an angry letter to Global BC will result in much.  I think I've already written one and they never seem to respond to my angry letters.  A Facebook anti-fan page?  Please.  Ideas.  This woman must be stopped.  Perhaps City TV will split the cost on an anti-Sarah Daniels billboard?  Oh...I really want to mock that up.

*Note - I thought about this for a while after I posted this.  I actually think that she might believe that a collapsing world economy will have a positive effect on Vancouver real estate. i.e. "There's no other good investments left in the world so everybody is going to come to Vancouver and buy a condo from me."

syllogism

1. All ruling politicians are frustrated by their critics and opponents.

2. All ruling politicians secretly wish for the kind of mindless devotion only pop stars get.

3. Most politicians are stuck working under democracy, a system that generates disagreement.
_______________________________________________________________

:. Any politician who sings in public is admitting that he—always he, somehow—wishes he were a dictator.

Exhibit A: Berlusconi just released an album.

Exhibit B: Robert Mugabe is a hit with the kids.

Exhibit C: Abdala Bucaram, Ecuador's most catastrophic president in recent memory, thinks he's Elvis.
And lest we forget,

Exhibit D: Majority government. Seriously.

Exhibit E: The fact that this man is possible is the reason I study American culture.

*** heard about all this on The Bugle. Thanks guys for sorting out my xmas shopping.

what's on repeat.

It's been a while since I've put up any music. Just single tracks this time, since I imagine we'll be talking at length about full albums when the best of 2011 arguments start. So here's a bit of a preview in five songs.



Johnny Guitar Watson, “Those Lonely Lonely Nights.” I don't get why people kept writing love songs after this.


My Head Explodes by nogoodnik
Ty Segall, “My Head Explodes.” So what if he stole the chords from Marcy Playground. Listen to what he does with them. Rockiest rock song of the year. Also listen to Segall's awesome explanation of it: "When you play music and you're a person on a stage, sometimes people can put you on a pedestal, and that can do a lot of things to your head. And... what if it actually exploded all over the walls during a show?"




Handsome Furs, “Memories of the Future.” Dave, I can feel your frown. But I don't care if Alexei is super annoying onstage. She's written terrific lyrics here. Nothing better than hearing Dan “Springsteen + Ocasek =” Boeckner, a guy who hates every song written after 1978 with equal and unrelenting intensity,* croon “Nostalgia never meant much to me.” Over 80s synth pop. That might sound dismissive, but I think the tension between lyrics and music here is actually really interesting. This band likes to write concept albums about the aftermath of totalitarianism; Sound Kapital is apparently inspired by a tour through Burma, and Face Control was about postcommunist Russia and Eastern Europe. So that terrible twentieth century tendency of regimes demolishing history and starting a nation and a culture over at year zero lays in the background here. But back to Dan singing Alexei's words: “I threw my hands to the sky, I let my memories go.” Nietzsche said forgetting isn't a mental lapse, but an active, deliberate thing societies must do to reinvent themselves. Freud said that willful forgetting is repression, where everything you tried to forget turns out to frame your existence in sneaky and unpredictable ways. I listen to this and remember a few of the many things I've forgotten--things that, like the anxious, glitchy backbone of this song, shape everything, and aren't too hard to spot or source.



Antlers, "Corsicana." This is not exactly what I thought their new album would sound like. It's just so... pretty. And the lyrics are filled with spite and broken bodies. I'd call that a winning combination.


Wild Flag - Future Crimes by Music Meds
Wild Flag, “Future Crimes.” One day I'll get past my Carrie Brownstein fanboy crush. Just probably not anytime soon.


And since one of the five is obviously not from 2011, a bonus cut from my daughter's playlist, which is what I'm listening to most of the time anyway:

10 Heigh-Ho Whistle While You Work (from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs) by PantsDanced
Brian Wilson, “Heigh Ho/Whistle While You Work/Yo Ho.” I know right, did you hear the one about the lobotomized pop god who called his record company and said I want to make an album of Disney covers? But seriously listen to this. Brian Wilson's whole career was building up to these three and a half minutes. It's perfect. Somewhere between Walt Disney and Brian Wilson, California convinced the world to accept its hokey grotesquerie as mass culture. This song makes it all sound grotesque again. So thanks for that, Brian.


*I doubt Boeckner's ever said as much in an interview, but I have it on pretty good authority that he's said it.

ball so hard

As a footnote to my earlier post. Why, Jay? Why is it that you can be so crass, and all I can do is nod and say "nice play"?

Here's the story about Rocawear shilling occupation-ist t-shirts. Here's the follow up, in which he apparently pulled the shirts from Rocawear's site due to public outcry that he was keeping the profits instead of donating them to the occupation. Here's the correction: apparently the shirts just sold out. Of course they did.

Wu Lyf

Wu Lyf is here this week.  After watching this video...

I'm feeling like a Wu Lyf/Liars comparison is apt.  Perhaps not so much on their musical stylings...more in a weird, arty kind of way.  Hopefully they do a better job of translating things into a live act.  I'm really looking forward to it.

McDonald's

I'll start this post off by saying that I eat fairly well.  I make 90% of the food that I eat from ingredients bought in a grocery store.  I eat lots of vegetables and less meat than I used to.  I don't get super stressed out about reducing fat or avoiding carbs, but I think that largely avoiding pre-packaged food gives me that right.

That being said...man...I love me some fast food sometimes.  I watched Supersize Me.  I honestly think that I walked up to McDonald's and bought some french fries right afterwards.  It was like a 2-hour McDonald's commercial for me.

We watched a couple of episodes of the Jamie Oliver show where he attempts to explain to Americans that they're too fat.  At one point, he took a bunch of chicken fat, bone trimmings, gristle and bones and showed it to a bunch of school kids.  They were disgusted.  Then he ground it up in a food processor.  They were disgusted.  Then he formed it into a patty, cooked it and explained to them that was how McNuggets were made.  They wanted to eat them.  I kind of get that.

Anyhow, here's a story that McDonald's is nothing more than a commodities trader, bringing out the McRib when pork prices are unnaturally low.  I didn't eat my first McRib until about a year ago.  I didn't enjoy it.  It wasn't good.  I read about what goes into it.  It sounds terrible.  But the more I read about how gross it is, the more I want one.  I see that photo at the top of the article and I'm thinking about how badly I want some french fries.

What the hell?

This is Satire

It's a reverse Borat.  Please watch this Hamster Wheel interview of a crazed right winger.

I don't know, guys...

First watch this.



So we're in a weird spot now, Black Keys. It took me a little while, but I got over the fact that you're two white guys from Ohio channeling Muddy Waters. The history of pop music is the history of racial appropriation, and by the time you guys got to the blues it couldn't have been about the money. So fine. Fine, too, that your version of appropriation has none of the ironic distance of, say, Jon Spencer. You're a straight up tribute act. Fine. And you want to take on the blues, the musical form most overtly about racial dispossession, slavery, and suffering. Okay. I'll look past it. Because you're a pretty good straight up tribute act.

But this video: I'm sorry, flag on the play. First appropriation, now ventriloquy. First, you gave us the incongruity of white hipsters playing pretty good blues; now you give us white hipster blues being lip-synched by a black guy for a mostly white viewership. It's all a little... minstrel-like, isn't it?

I'm beginning to think you guys are the most insidious band in America. You are the liberal, post-racial utopia that NPR listeners think they live in.

"Well, this isn't very good."

Maybe I'm overcompensating for that highbrow crack, but I just wanted to point out that these guys came back, and I couldn't be happier.

NHL Hockey Teams as Bands

Wow.  This is pretty amazing.  The Canucks one hurts a bit though.

The Art of Racing in the Rain

I'm glad to see that Evan is back on board with his posts.  Although, he's gone a bit high brow....showing off all his fancy schooling.  So I'll take a step back.

This book (The Art of Racing in the Rain by Garth Stein) is not literature.  It's probably sneered at by English major types.  There's not a hidden meaning (that I can get).  There's some metaphor, for sure, but no "the dog represents the pain of giving birth" type stuff.  I think.  It's just there.  A simple story that makes you think about things a little bit differently.  I challenge you to read this book and not cry a little bit.

Even more so, I challenge you to read this book and not feel a little bit inspired.  I finished it a week ago.  The feeling that I lack a true goal in my life has subsided.  A bit.  But, in a way, I feel one step closer to finding it.  Hopefully.

How did the Renaissance men do it?  Would DaVinci be writing computer code during the daytime and banging out street art at night if he were around today?  Are there any truly successful modern people that aren't completely and totally focused on one narrow path?  Besides Justin Timberlake.  And maybe Shawn White.

"Original Don"

I love everything about this image.

It's more than just a visual pun. Here's the thing about Don Draper that makes the image work: Draper is so clearly intended to stand for midcentury America. He's in charge, and likes being there; he came by it dishonestly; he has no past; things come easily to him; so easily he's a little paranoid about them; his wartime heroism is false, but having people believe in it is crucial; he manufactures commodity desire, but doesn't believe in happiness; he's fascinated by a counterculture that he'll never belong to, so he hires it--contract, not salary--and takes credit for its ideas.

So what does this image get about Don that we don't already know? It reveals the secret history of American prosperity, or the thing that made hyper-commodification and Madison Avenue possible in the first place. The American Century was structurally dependent on exporting capital to third world military dictatorships. This is a lot easier to see today, after Afghanistan and Iraq, but keeping the world safe for democracy always required gunpoint. And coups. Juntas. The Truman doctrine. Client states. The Domino Theory. United Fruit. Import substitution. Armas. Park Chung-Hee. Suharto. Pinochet.

I want to say the song gets this, since it slips into an almost military march about halfway through, as if the veil is being pulled back. But this might be giving Diplo and Switch too much credit; I'm not sure they ever stick with one idea for that long.

But when I look at this image, I feel like I've put on x-ray specs. Or Noam Chomsky's glasses. Same difference.

down with the king

This is too damn much. Russell Simmons: “Kanye has been a big supporter spiritually for this movement, and he just, he has to stand with the people. He's not—the politics of it, he doesn't want to make a statement, didn't want to do any media.”

Of course it's a lie. Except maybe that Kanye doesn't give a shit about the politics of OWS, or else he'd understand that just showing up is making a political statement. Of course he knew he'd “do media” if he went down there. Looks like Simmons called in a marker, if Kanye's sourpuss face is telling me anything. So Kanye goes down there with all the noblesse oblige he can summon. Later Simmons tweets, “I love how sweet and tolerant he was to the crowd." Thanks, Kanye, for tolerating poverty. I know it's hard.

Truth is, I don't think this appearance does much of anything: the occupation doesn't need spokesmodels or theme songs, and they wouldn't be hitting up Kanye if they did. The bracing wtf of a mega-rich hip hop producer showing up to a 99% rally is only the very tip of a Petermann Glacier-sized iceberg of contradictions.

Nobody expects ideological consistency from Kanye. The man has made a lucrative business out of pointing out his own hypocrisies. They are the core of Watch the Throne, which struck me from the beginning as a weird statement in 2011: an orgy of private jets, couture, other other Benzes, and, once again, somehow, diamonds, released on the cusp of new and improved austerity policies, the beginning of the double dip, increased unemployment, food riots, sovereign debt crises, and so on and so on and so on. Maybe Kanye's at the occupation to atone for that album. Where on last year's My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy, once in a while the socially-conscious Kanye would break through the usual narcissistic hurricane (“I treat the cash the way the government treats AIDS / I won't be satisfied until all my n****s get it, get it?”), the new one is only ever about how fucking great it is to be as rich as Kanye and Jay. Greater than you can ever imagine. Greater than they could ever tell. So, so great.

How great? Look at the central metaphor. They're kings. Hip hop royalty, in the short line of self-anointed kings that runs from Run DMC forward, through Biggie to Jay. Though they seem to question the category in the first song (“What's a man to a king? / What's a king to a God? / What's a God to a non-believer?”), the rest of the album is the longest bit of wanking on sovereignty since Carl Schmitt. The requisite social commentary song—Kanye's gotta have one, Jay not so much—is basically an edict that royal subjects please stop murdering each other, since black-on-black violence is like the holocaust. Yeah, somebody thought that thought. Out loud, on tape.

But this is the trick of hip hop sovereignty, isn't it? It's a postmodern version of the medieval problem of the king's two bodies. One body divine and everlasting, and one of this world. These sovereigns are so far above the fray that they think, in a lyric so incredibly half assed only Kanye could have written it, that they're “gonna take it to the moon, take it to the stars / [...] we gonna take this whole thing to Mars.” But they also have a deep and pressing need to let you know that they're still a part of the everyday struggles that formed them. Run DMC knew enough about staying close to the ground to dress down and surround themselves with a crew. Kanye's version of this, or the part that he thinks makes him relatable, is to write issue songs about NPR headlines. And you get the sense that listening to NPR really actually bums him out. Authenticity rules in hip hop, now as ever, even if it's Kanye's authentic superficiality.

Jay's a little more thoughtful on the sovereignty question. As always, autobiography is his only mode, and he seems to model his own story on that other, quintessentially American Jay: Gatsby. And it's a story Hova rolls out to any audience he can find.


So what if he made $400 million dollars last year—he's in every important respect just like us. He needs to be, since this is how hip hop sovereignty works. Anyone can rise if they're talented and shrewd like Jay. I can't actually begrudge the man his giant pile of money. Way back on “Izzo” he told me why he's doing it: “Industry is shady, it needs to be taken over / [...] Pay us like you owe us for all those years that you hoed us.” (Kanye takes this a step further when he “collaborates” with the whitest guy in the music industry, then piles so much synthesizer on top of him that I could have sung his part and no one would have been the wiser. No difference, Pitchfork still gave the record a 10.) I've got no problem with reparations as a recording policy. On Throne, Jay tells me, in a line that will last longer than most of the record, “Not bad, huh, for some immigrants? / Build your fences, we digging tunnels / Can't you see we gettin money up under you?” This is the Jay I know and love. Jay as the charming hustler, the Clyde Barrow, Jay as the guy who despite everything you've seen makes you believe he can shake up the record industry. He coexists uneasily with that other Jay, the one who writes fake populist garbage like “Empire State of Mind,” an ode to a city he presumably once lived in but now only sees from the window of his private jet; a song filled with all the penetrating insight into local folkways of a Bloomberg-approved tourist brochure.

That's the thing about the two bodies of the sovereign. Its current-day version is on Fox News every hour of the day: it's fake populism plus financial power. It's the very thing that OWS is trying to slowly, painstakingly, and through sheer necessity, make impossible. And so what happens when, his two bodies pulled apart, the king has to choose one?

"Electronic" Music Explained

This site is crazy. I think it will probably leave more questions than answers. But if you've ever wondered what the hell half of this stuff is, worth a look. You really need to listen to some of the German variations. Funny stuff.

Louie

I'm a bit behind on this one. But the show Louie is amazing. There's a bit where he talks about teenage boys masturbating. I could remember back to that joke for days and still laugh.

Yacht

The song Shangri-La on the album Shangri-La, to be specific. What a beautiful song. I just listened to it twice in quick succession. It's like a modernized 70's easy listening song. I really like it.

Making You Care

I don't really care about Amy Winehouse. But this Russell Brand blog post makes me care. A bit.

More importantly, that blog post goes part of the way towards explaining why I'm starting to hate Russell Brand. God. Look at this guy. Look at his standup. Look at his blog postings. Look at his interviews.

He can write better than I can.
He can speak better than I can.
He is funnier than I am.

It's just all very depressing. I'm depressed by people that can sound intelligent while being funny. It makes me feel a bit dumb.

Fucked Up. The band.

I know that both of you guy are not fans of the band called Fucked Up. I'm a pretty big fan of (portions of) the new album. Especially The Other Shoe. I'm not really sure why. There's a really beautiful rock'n roll song hidden beneath the Pink Eye on top. Check it out.

Why musicians are not role models

There seems to be a resurrection of aged late-90's pop punk icons. Not a good thing.

First, go and read this article about Fat Mike's Cokie the Clown act(last year but still interesting). Oh my god. Is that ever messed up.

Then, go read about Ben Weasel punching two girls.

Both at SXSW.

Just crazy bad stuff.

I'm really second guessing any lingering feelings that I have for NOFX. Ben Weasel should have gone away long ago.

Put a nail in it

This might go in circles for a while... I'm finding lately that I'm a bit nervous going to shows because I'm nervous that something is going to be ruined for me. The chance that I'm going to experience something great and memorable is far less than the chance it's going to suck and I'll be disappointed. Case in point, the Dodos. The first time I saw the Dodos, they opened for Les Savy Fav at Richards. Holy shit. Just knocked me right back. There were two dudes on stage, one had an acoustic guitar and the other had a drum kit and they were just so powerful. Les Savy Fav became just a silly little sideshow that came on after the Dodos played. It was incredible. I've seen them a few times since then and it has been less memorable. But the show last week was the definition of mediocre. They've added a member. They play electric guitars. Yet all the power is gone. It's generic rock music now. And I don't want to see them again. Worse, the image of the Dodos in my mind is forever ruined. Now, in other news, LCD Soundsystem helf their "last show ever" over the weekend, whatever that means. I think the LCD Soundsystem show that I saw at the Commodore was the greatest show I've ever been to. One of them, anyhow. I've never felt so immersed in music before in all my life. I went to New York a few weeks later and saw them again and it was amazing, but the inherent repetitiveness of seeing a band twice in one month lessened the experience. The last time I saw LCD Soundsystem was at the Malkin Bowl and the only thing I remember about that show was this crazy old dude doing the weirdest dance I've ever seen in my life. I can't even imagine wanting to go see LCD Soundsystem performing for 3 hours at Madison Square Gardens. Is this what getting old is about? The build-up of knowledge until all your comparables outweigh potential new experiences? (I'm talking about music, by the way) Hopefully you guys actually read this one because I'm curious to hear what you have to say. It's honestly at a point for me that I only want to see bands that I've never seen before because the bands that always killed it live for me end up being a disappointment and if they sucked the first time they almost certainly haven't gotten any better.

Battier

I'm sure Evan will have something to say about this.

A far from new story about Shane Battier, Moneyball in basketball and defending. I thought it was pretty interesting.

More Real Estate

A while back, I was reading some article on how Canada had the highest real estate prices ever and how it was all guaranteed to never stop increasing and how Jesus Christ himself was going to buy a condo in Yaletown. And there was a comment that made me laugh. To paraphrase:

"Stupid Canada. 2nd biggest country in the world and you're jamming yourselves into condos in Vancouver."

Something like that.

So, here we are. A country with 1/100th of the world recognition of the United States and we tell ourselves that real estate keeps going up because everybody wants to live here. Nobody knows who we are.

For hundreds of years, real estate prices have come back to a norm (adjusted for inflation of course). Here's this boingboing post showing where the US is at. We're not different. This makes no sense. Paying $4000 a month for something you can rent for $2000 is not an investment.

I just lied to Dave Letterman

Well...to his assistant.

We're heading off for a week in New York next week (note to robbers, we've hired the H.A. Dogsitters to look after our place. They'll use lethal force if necessary. The dog bites as well). Last week I started looking around for what sort of tickets I could get my hands on. I decided to put my name in for a few TV shows and see what happens.

An assitant from the Late Show phoned me yesterday and asked if we'd be interested in coming. I wasn't sure what the timing was so I said I would phone her back. Anyhow, we sorted it out for the Monday taping (which actually might be for the Friday show) and I phoned her back.

They still had the tickets, so it was on to the lieing.

"Are you a fan of the show?"
"Oh ya. Of course." - Lie #1
"How often do you watch?"
"Oh...you know...once or twice a week." - Lie #2
"Okay. Great. Are you ready for the trivia question? You have to answer it yourself. No help."
"Oh....ya....fire away." - Lie #3
"What item of clothing is Paul Shaffer known for wearing?"
Frantic googling
"Well....he kind of wears wacky shirts?"
"Close, but not quite. There's actually two possible answers..."
I actually gave up at this point, but she seemed to really want to give me these tickets. So after about 30 seconds of umming and ahhhing...
"He...wears....glasses?"
"Close enough. I'll have your tickets ready for you at the box office."

Anyhow. I mean, who the hell has time to watch Letterman? How many shows does it compete with? Anyhow, next Monday (or Friday) we'll be in the audience. I'll try to do something touristy.

Food Perspective

This is just an awesome point of view on restaurant and food culture.