New Albums that I Like (Update)

Plastic Beach (Gorillaz) – A concept album from a concept band. What impresses me about this album is how fluid it manages to be for having guest artists on most every track (from Snoop Dogg to Mos Def to Lou Reed). It definitely has some catchy songs (e.g. ‘Melancholy Hill’) that you can’t help but like but it also has some less “user-friendly” tracks (‘Sweepstakes’ w/ Mos Def) which have a lot of depth to them upon subsequent listens. This helps make the album a lastingly good one. ‘Some Kind of Nature’ w/ Lou Reed doesn’t really fit any of those categories; it is just awesome.

8.5 (on a scale of -10 to 10)

Sisterworld (Liars) – A friend of mine wondered if the cd had possibly been retrieved after being “discarded somewhere on the floor of hell.” He continued, “I tried, but I just can't do it. I feel like an old man getting his first taste of rock 'n' roll.” This album is definitely not for the faint of heart and yes it may have some diabolical qualities to it, but damn if I don’t LOVE this album. It’s so good. Admittedly, you have to be in a slightly sinister mood (in other words, don’t listen to it on a sunny morning whilst on a power walk) to really get into it. Interestingly, some of the tracks (e.g. ‘Scissor’) are haunting and jagged, yet others (e.g. “Too Much, Too Much’) are angelically melodic. Also, they pull off one of the best album remixes I’ve ever heard. As a bonus disc they do alt versions of each track allowing other artists to inject their influence and remix the track to their style. Two of these remix creations are just annoying and offer no new perspectives or improvements, but at least two of them are homeruns and most of them are just really good.

9.0

Go (Jonsi) – Listen to this album on a sunny morning whilst on a power walk. It will make you happy. Jonsi (frontman of Sigur Ros) steps out on his own to deliver this solo project. It’s very colorful and upbeat and I like that it draws on that signature Icelandic sound that he has helped to create. No song really stands out as genius, and after a week or two you might even forget that you have this album in your collection, but it is good and you will be glad when you play it again after realizing that you haven’t listened to it in a while.

7.0

Forgiveness Rock Record (Broken Social Scene) – The Canadien indie superband is back at it with their fourth studio album. I think this is BSS’s most consistently good album to date. It doesn’t have any immediate hits like ’Anthems for a Seventeen Year Old Girl’ or ‘7/4 (Shoreline)’ but it has two or three or four songs that I really like and more importantly, no duds. This album is pretty recent so I haven’t given it a lot of listens yet but I’ve found that it’s their most complete album and for that reason probably their best.  I'm bored with this album by now.  It has little character and at least one annoying song ("Texaco B's").  It still has a few nice tracks but it's never enough to pull me back in.

7.5 4.0

The NBA: Where Vengeance Happens

Will the Suns have enough to rise above their former slayers?

You know how often in movies the plot centers around someone being killed and that someone's friend/lover/child swearing he will get revenge?  And then there's another character who tries to tell the avenger that revenge isn't the solution, it is eventually unsatisfying.  Or, as Batman put it to Robin, "You make the kill, but your pain doesn't die [there], it grows. So you run out into the night to find another face, and another, and another, until one terrible morning you wake up and realize that revenge has become your whole life."

Well in 2010 the Suns are the dead corpse and I am the friend/lover/child and even if Batman himself tells me not to seek revenge, I don't care.  We Suns fans have been dealt some deadly blows in the past, and this year I want vengeance.

With the Suns going on an impressive surge since the All-Star break and finishing out the season by beating both the Nuggets and the Jazz, they clinched the 3rd seed in the Western Conference.  Here's the playoff landscape they face:

Round 1:  Suns (3) vs. Blazers (6) - The Blazers have toppled some hurdles of their own to get here.  Some of their role player guys have been playing well above their level and Brandon Roy is always a force to be reckoned with, but I take comfort in the fact that the unflappable Suns come into the playoffs scorching hot and the Blazer bigs don't have the speed to defend Amar'e.

Vengeance Implication: In the days of KJ, Hornacek, and "Thunder Dan" Majerle, the Blazers beat us in 5 in 1989.  Then, in 1992, with the addition of Tom Chambers, and poised to go the distance, the dynamic duo of "Clyde the Glyde" and Terry Porter with help from the nefarious, head-banded Clifford Robinson, stopped us short by beating us in 5 in the Western Conference Finals.

Fear the headband.  Cliff Robinson literally invented the thing.

*Round 2: Suns (3)  vs. Mavs (2) / Spurs (7) - The Mavs have been playing good, playoff-caliber basketball for a good stretch now and they are not to be overlooked as serious title contenders.  The Spurs are not at 100%, or even 90%, health and vitality, and their core of Manu/Parker/Duncan is getting old and less title-hungry.  But they've had our number for a while and they are probably the most savvy team in the NBA.  I don't think this is their year to win it all, or even win the West, but they can certainly cause some serious disruptions.

Vengeance Implication (Mavs): With Amar'e out for the playoffs with a knee injury, the Suns miraculously made it to the Western Conference finals in 2006 on the strength of career years from the likes of Boris Diaw, Shawn Marion, and Barbosa, and of course Steve Nash leading the way with his MVP season.  We put up a good fight against the Mavs but the Mavs were too deep and they went on to beat us in 6.  The frustrating thing is that they had a relatively easy path to the trophy with a finals matchup against the Miami Heat but after going up 2-0 they crapped the bed and lost 4 straight.

Vengeance Implication (Spurs): Oh how I loathe the Spurs. The anti "joga bonito".  I hope we do get the chance to match up against the Spurs so we can comprehensively exorcise the vengeance demons.  In 2005 the Suns had one of their best ever regular seasons and were poised to win it all.  En route to face the Spurs we challenged and conquered the Mavs but not without Jerry Stackhouse pile-driving our offensive star, Joe Johnson, onto the floor and literally breaking his eye bone (tack this offense onto the paragraph above).  So we hobbled into our series with the Spurs and were dismantled 4 games to 1.  Momentum, excitement, thrill: gone.  In 2007 the Suns worked hard all season to build up steam and assemble a Spurs-proof team.  We succeeded at building such a team but in game 4 of the semifinals in San Antonio we were staging a symbolic, come-from-behind, crunch time win but in the closing seconds all that was marred by the Robert Horry hip check on Steve Nash that sent him flying into the scorers' table and resulted in a 2-game suspension for stars Amar'e Stoudemire and Boris Diaw on a ruling technicality.  In 2008 I wrote the following post and my feelings haven't changed since: "In 2008 things were almost looking good. We had beaten the Spurs 3-1 in the regular season series and we had started game 1 in complete control, leading by double digits for most of the game. Then the entire season ended with one ill-fated shot. Tim Duncan's OT buzzer-beater 3-pointer. His first 3-pointer in the last 2 seasons. I think that shot ended the game, the series, the season, possibly the era of the Phoenix Suns. I strongly dislike the Spurs. I have nothing more to say."  
 

Classless.

*Round 3: Suns (3)  vs. Lakers (1) / Thunder (8) or Nuggets (4) / Jazz (5) - The Lakers are the defending champs but they are backpedaling into the playoffs, Kobe is playing through pain, and they are not as deep as they were last year.  The Thunder are young and exciting.  Kevin Durant is a pure baller and I look forward to watching him play for years to come.  The Nuggets historically crumble in the playoffs but they might go far this year if they get inspired play from "Mr. Big-Shot" Billups and a revitalized Carmelo Anthony.  Their excess of tattoos means that I will never root for them.  The Jazz are hopeful that Carlos Boozer's injury is not serious.  They are always a threat to win at home but losing the advantage by slipping to the 5 seed might have a devastating affect on their 2010 run.

Vengeance Implication (Lakers): Some Suns fans hate the Lakers but I don't really hold anything against them.  In my era we've had the upper hand in our matchups so I've got no reason to hate.

Vengeance Implication (Thunder): None.  Not a likely matchup.

Vengeance Implication (Nuggets): None.  They've never knocked us out of the playoffs and we typically beat them in the regular season.  

Vengeance Implication (Jazz): With the Jazz it's more about rivalry than revenge.  Technically they beat us in the first round of the 1991 playoffs but I've pretty much forgotten about that by now. The Jazz are just one of those teams that get my blood boiling.  I can't stand their foul-crying, home-court fans and I don't care for their style of play--they're like a hybrid of a poor man's Spurs and a throwback to the early 90's Stockton-Malone combo.  

 Carlos Boozer, I award you 0 points for style.

The 2009/2010 Suns are clearly not the best team we've assembled in the Steve Nash era but they might actually represent our best chance to make it to the finals.  If not the finals, some sweet vengeance will suffice.

Avatar

What if I told you that Star Wars Episode III (the last of the new ones) was the best of the entire Star Wars series?  OK, try this one on for size: what if I told you that Avatar is better than any of the original Star Wars?  So maybe I've now blacklisted myself as a heretic, but I must say that I found myself pulling for Jake Sully in a way that I never did for Luke Skywalker.  And I was attracted to the hot Na'vi chick, Neytiri, way more than I ever was to Princess Leah.  Maybe I'm overreacting because I just recently saw this film whereas I've rehashed Star Wars a dozen times by now, but this is a truly quality film and there's more to it than just a cool protagonist and a smokin' C.G. babe.

Jake Sully and his avatar

I enjoyed the avatar concept of having an alternate identity, made even more poignant by the fact that the hero is liberated with full use of his regularly crippled legs when he is in avatar mode.  There is this clearly defined conflict between the greedy corporation and the natives, but there is also the more ambiguous conflicts involving Jake's loyalties and Neytiri's affections.  As Jake transports from one reality to another, he becomes converted to the Na'vi way of life and begins to appreciate the elements and the various life forms and his own interdependency with the biological network in which he resides.  But he knows he's a human in the end, and so, he struggles with his loyalties to humankind as well as his commitment to his hired task.  This dilemma is similar to that of John Dunbar in Dances With Wolves as evidenced in the scene where the union soldier taunts, "turned 'Injun', di'nt ya."  An equally difficult dilemma faces Neytiri who falls in love with the outsider Avatar.  She faces persecution from her own tribe, and eventually has to confront the fact that Jake is truly a human.  This all results in what I consider to be a deeply moving, not too sappy love story.

The graphics and images in this film were breathtaking.  The time and meticulous effort put into creating the creatures and the alternate universe are made apparent by the level of detail and the colors in the mountains and trees, in the creatures, and most impressively in the seamless overlay between the two universes.  Here James Cameron risked plummeting into the Uncanny Valley but fortunately he came out unscathed and on top.  I consider this film to be a culmination of the progress Hollywood has made with computer graphics merged with good acting and good storytelling--something George Lucas couldn't achieve in Star Wars round II.  This is one of the few movies where I will watch (and enjoy) the bonus features once it comes out on Bluray.

Incredible graphics and color.  Neytiri is a total babe.

Finally, this movie had a pretty awesome bad guy, the Colonel.  He was hardcore to the very end, and he introduced me to some cool tough guy sayings that I will be sure to incorporate into my daily speak.  Oh, and Sully had some pretty bad-A manuevers himself.

Have I Lost Touch?

The seemingly innocent Honda Fit is causing quite a debate between my brothers and me.

It's a long story but the Twainfecta family recently lost the '04 Audi due to a driving fault of hers and an insurance fault of mine.  Whoops.  We need to get a new car and without that trade-in value from the old car, we'll need to be economical about it.

I didn't even realize it but apparently I've had a secret crush on the compact, metro-friendly Honda Fit.  It costs about $17-$18k new and has only been in the U.S. for a few years so the used market is pretty limited.  With some trepidation, I sent a picture of the car to my younger brother.  It didn't take long before I got a phone call from my older brother that went something like this, "um... I'm not sure how to say this... I gotta say: not a fan of where your car search is headed."  I let my emotions get the best of me and I told him that the two of them are just a bunch of conservative, southwestern rednecks who can't appreciate a good urban vehicle.

This exchange left me wondering, have I been living in D.C. too long?  Does my interest in the Fit symbolize my spiral away from the core values that got me where I am today?  Do I now find appeal in what I would have once scoffed at and written off as, in my younger brother's words, "a fusion of a minivan and a PT Cruiser."  Or are my brothers really just not progressive thinking enough to see that this car embodies efficiency, practicality, value, and just the right amount of garish, euro trash style?  I just don't know.

Anyways, yesterday we rode our bikes to the closest dealer to give it a test drive.  It was about what I expected.  Rides like a Honda.  Safe.  Not too exciting, but not very boring either.  But I could envision some fun road trips, and some good times folding the seats in various contortions as we fit things here and there (the car's specialty).  Who knows, maybe one day Twain Jr. could even inherit it. The dealer didn't quite have the model we were looking for so we didn't make any hasty decisions, but now I am in the thick of a bidding war between all the area Honda dealers to see who can give us the best price.  

http://www.insideline.com/honda/fit/2009/2009-honda-fit-sport-long-term-test.html

Book Review: Cloud Atlas

Just finished reading 'Cloud Atlas', the 3rd novel by Brit author, David Mitchell.  A lot of the reviews and summaries call it a series of nested Matryoshka dolls; I consider it more of a chiasm.  It tells 6 stories in A-B-C-B-A fashion, telling half of the story at first and then providing closure and resolution to each story in the 2nd half of the book.  The plots cover protagonists that are doing such things as writing a journal in the South Pacific in the early 1800's, working on a classical-music opus magnum in Belgium in the 30's, cracking a giant conspiracy in California in the 70's, trying to convince the workers in a convalescent home in England that you don't belong there, providing a final interview to an archivist explaining how you achieved enlightenment, all prior to being executed for being a heretic clone, and telling a campfire story in  post-apocalyptic Hawaii about how you saved your tribe with the help of a tech-savvy outsider.

Obviously the different stories provide varied themes and perspectives, but I especially enjoyed how the author was able to weave it all together, which, from my observation, ties to the central theme of the text: that we all, as souls, pass through time like clouds shifting and floating across the sky.  Each protagonist has an undefined origin and travels through time changing and advancing.  He is linked to his predecessors and progenitors and finds himself on different parts of the globe.

Call it gimmicky, but I loved the way Mitchell was able to write each story as though he were an entirely different author.  From each transition, I felt like I was picking up an entirely new book--which is why I'm counting this as reading 6 books.