I was in Borders yesterday and it took me forever to find a copy of Alone: The Home Recordings of Rivers Cuomo.
It wasn’t under “C” for Cuomo, nor under “R” for Rivers. It wasn’t in the new releases section. But I finally located it in the “W” section (for Weezer). I paid for it, left the building, and sat in my car for a few minutes with the CD in the player as I read the liner notes, and I was content.
Continue reading “Rivers Cuomo, Alone”
Year: 2007
It's an Illusion, Michael
I was surprised to recently read that NBC is reviving Knight Rider as a made-for-tv movie, hopefully to be a stepping stone to a new TV series featuring a talking car.
For me, this is great news, as I was a huge fan of the show and one of my major complaints currently is that I can’t find any re-runs of the show on cable.
They’re making some changes to the show. KITT will be some type of Ford Mustang. The Hoff won’t be the star, but rather, the show will be based on the adventures of Michael Knight’s son. But the most surprising change is the voice of KITT, this man:
According to aintitcoolnews.com, Will Arnett will be the new voice of KITT. I’m a fan of Will Arnett. I think he’s been great in Arrested Development, Blades of Steel and his appearances on Late Night. But it’s just weird to think of him as KITT.
Then again, I’ve been wrong before about casting choices.
Clean-up on Aisle One
Tonight, the Civee and I walked to the nearby Giant Eagle to get some things for tonight’s dinner (turkey burgers).
We were mostly done getting what we needed when I wanted to stop and get a bottle of Orangina (the best soft drink ever). I reached for a bottle, but it slipped out of my fingers and broke on the floor, spilling and shattering glass all over aisle 1.
The Civee went to go tell the store staff of the spill (and broken glass) as I stood by, letting people know of the broken glass and liquid on the floor (and when people in a grocery store are on a cell phone, they really aren’t paying attention to anything else). She came back, saying that the manager said they’ll send someone. We agreed to stand there until someone showed up, figuring it was our responsibility to do so.
The thing is, it took ten minutes for someone to show to clean it up. By this point, I had gone to the front to tell someone (as we thought they forgot about us). It was an ethical quandry for us–yes, the broken glass and spilled liquid was our responsibility, but how long were we supposed to wait there to let our fellow shoppers know to be careful?
And by the way, I did apologize for my clumsiness. Instead of signing my name on the receipt, I wrote ‘sorry ’bout the Orangina.’
I've got a friend tonight
“Alone” comes out next week.
But Superfriend is here.
Worth the wait? For a weezer fan, yes. It may not make much sense outside of Songs from the Black Hole , but when you consider it’s all Rivers trying to sing two different parts and play the instruments to lay down a story and feel for his scrapped concept album, it’s pretty impressive.
It’s nice to have these pieces (the ones that we already have and the ones that we’ll get next week), but even with everything that Rivers has recorded, SFTBH was never really finished. Because of the band’s reception of his ideas, the release of Return of the Rentals and his own experiences at Harvard, Rivers took what he could from SFTBH and made one of the best albums ever, Pinkerton. Sadly, the rest, like Superfriend got dropped. Some of his dropped demos from all eras of Weezer are real good. Some aren’t. I’m just glad that Rivers (and the label) is now releasing Alone so that we finally get to hear what else there is.
Clips of the rest of Alone are right here.
Looks like someone got the tracklist right after all!
The city that never stops talking about baseball
I moved to Columbus from the NY-NJ area almost eight years ago. While I like Columbus, there are some things I miss about my native land, to wit:
- Good Chinese food
- Edible Pizza
- Restaurants open past 10 p.m.
- The Yankees
- Year-round baseball coverage in the media
That last one has hit home over the past few weeks. Here in Columbus, people are abuzz about the local college football team, but my level of interest in college football is nil.
While the baseball playing season has been over for more than a month, plenty has happened, epecially for the Yankees. They let Joe Torre walk and hired Joe Girardi. Alex Rodriguez left the Yankees then came back. The talk over the last week has been about which team the Twins would trade Johan Santana to. And this week, team executives met in Nashville for the winter meetings.
But it’s being ignored here.
Actually, Peter Abraham, a Yankees beat writer with an excellent blog, summed up the situation in NY last week:
Nobody talks football once the games are over. We know nothing much about 85 percent of the players and not even the best fan could name all of the GMs. But even a casual baseball fan can list four prospects his team could trade for Santana. Or has an opinion on A-Rod.
It must drive the NFL, NBA and NHL people nuts to flip on the radio at 4 p.m. on a late November day and hear nothing but talk about whether Minnesota will trade the lefty. But that is what makes our sport the best. It never goes out of season. They just stop the games for a few months.
Well, at least I have the Internet.
The best thing ever (of last week)
Make some other type of small talk, please
At work, I’m responsible for dealing with a large piece of office equipment manufactured by a company that I won’t name, but their company name begins and ends with the same letter. Anyway, when there’s a problem with the machine, I call the company’s (let’s just call them Company X) support line.
A little more than a year ago, Company X outsourced their support staff to somewhere in the Caribbean. I don’t remember exactly where, although I was told once and I do remember that it’s one of the places mentioned in the worst song ever.
Anyway, it’s pretty obvious that Company X’s customer service reps are still working on conversational English. During lulls in the call (when they have to wait for their computers to pull up records or whatever) they will often engage in a line of small talk:
-How are you?
-How is the weather?
Every time I call, they ask these questions. And not wanting to be rude, I engage them in conversation, and will often ask these very same questions back to them. Except the answer to question number two is always “Oh, sunny and in the 80s.” Usually, I don’t mind. But I had to call this week, and when my answer to that question is “cloudy and damn cold,” the very last thing I want to hear back is “Oh, here, it’s sunny and in the 80s.”
Someone should tell Company X to change the script.
Knee Deep In The Hoopla
The other night, I was watching one of my favorite shows on the television, VH1 Classic’s We are the 80s. The video for Starship’s We Built This City came on, and while watching it, I noticed something disturbing.
And I don’t mean the fact that I was watching the video for We Built This City.
Anyway, during the video, the band is playing the song for a group of diverse young people. As they play, lights flash and the band and audience are transported to various places in America, including, the Lincoln Memorial:
And we go to a close-up of Honest Abe’s memorial:
And then, all of a sudden lights flash, Abe springs to life and starts to dance:
BUT WAIT!
Is it me, or does that look nothing like Lincoln?
Here’s another look of the memorial come to life:
I don’t know if it’s just me, but that looks more like Robert E. Lee:
I’ve either uncovered a vast historical conspiracy, or aside from being reformed hippies, the members of Starship were Confederate sympathizers.
Turning turkey day into cow day
Tomorrow, the Civee and I are planning on being in Columbus for Thanksgiving evening. Neither of us are fans of turkey, and I think we may be doing something different: steak for Thanksgiving.
It’s something I’ve always dreamed of doing.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone.
Lost in translation
Despite the declaration on weezer.com that the tracklist of Alone: The Home Recordings Of Rivers Cuomo won’t be published until the album hits the stores, a Japanese media site has made the list public.
From http://www.ro69.jp/news/archive.html?1265, translation available here:
1.Ooh／オー
2.The World We Love So Much ／ザ・ワールド・ウィー・ラヴ・ソー・マッチ※The New Radicalsのソングライター＜Gregg Alexander＞の曲
3.Lemonade／レモネード
4.The Bomb／ザ・ボム ※Ice Cubeのカヴァー
5.Buddy Holly ／バディ・ホリー ※未発表別テイク
6.Chess／チェス
7.Longtime Sunshine ★／ロングタイム・サンシャイン
8.Blast Off! ★／ブラスト・オフ！
9.Who You Callin’Bitch? ★／フー・ユー・コーリン・ビッチ？
10.Wanda(You’re My Only Love)／ワンダ（ユー・アー・マイ・オンリー・ラヴ）
11.Dude We’re Finally Landing ★／デュード・ウィー・アー・ファイナリー・ランディング
12.Superfriend ★／スーパーフレンド
13.Lover In The Snow／ラヴァー・イン・ザ・ショー
14.Crazy One／クレイジー・ワン
15.This Is The Way／ディス・イズ・ザ・ウェイ
16.Little Diane／リトル・ディアン ※Dionのカヴァー
17.I Wish You Had An Axe Guitar／アイ・ウィッシュ・ユー・ハド・アン・アックス・ギター
18.I Was Made For You／アイ・ワズ・メイド・フォー・ユー
Of course, that all depends on if the google translation is accurate. It could be the list of theme ingredients on the next season of Iron Chef.
It’s a decent list. A few songs that the weezer community already has, but enough new stuff to make the disc interesting.
Aah, who am I kidding? I’ll buy it the day it comes out.