Rivers Cuomo, Alone

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…

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)

My new favorite wrestling gimmick:

il Cartographer!