the sticking point

I Took My Earphones Out For This?!

I was on the elevator in my office building this morning, and bumped into a guy I sometimes work with. If you watch television sometimes, maybe you know him. He's the one who sort of looks like the bastard stepson of Ziggy Marley and a broom handle. He was nibbling at a breakfast burrito in that self-conscious way he does everything when he noticed me and said, “You look like you were on a bender last night.”

The handful of elevator passengers turned for a peek and Mr. Morning Bender.

Here's a little fact. Weblog aside, I am a private fellow. Some might say secretive, even. The thing is, I don't like strangers (including the Marley Handle) knowing my business. I'm the guy who's even irked when a colleague comments, “Wow, you're here early today.” So what, you know? Mind your business.

So, partly to fend off accusations of drunkenness and partly to make this guy feel like the turd that he is, I reluctantly shared a truth about my life with the entire elevator. “Actually, my son was feeling sick all night. He slept for three hours; I only got two.”

Marley half smiled, and as we stepped off the elevator replied, “Well, you know how I feel about kids, right?!”

It's not mere coincidence that his name rhymes with “The Douche.”

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Here's this week's Friday 10.

01. Girl You Want - Devo: A great, great song (that riff!) and rumored to be Devo's attempt at “My Sharona.” From Freedom of Choice.
02. Rubber Biscuit - The Chips: The original; from The Doo Wop Box, Vol. 2.
03. Vicious - Lou Reed: How about that vocal? The lyrics are malicious and violent, and the vocal is just matter-of-fact and cocky. From Transformer.
04. Whip-Smart - Liz Phair: “I'm gonna tell my son to grow up pretty as the grass is green / And whip-smart as the English Channel's wide / And I'm gonna tell my son to keep his money in his mattress / And his watch on any hand between his thighs / And I'm gonna lock my son up in a tower / Till I write my whole life story on the back of his big brown eyes // When they do the double dutch, that's them dancing / I'm gonna tell my son to join a circus so that death is cheap / And games are just another way of life / And I'm gonna tell my son to be a prophet of mistakes / Because for every truth there are half a million lies / And I'm gonna lock my son up in a tower / Till he learns to let his hair down far enough to climb outside // When they do the double dutch, that's them dancing.” -- Liz Phair. (Lyrics reprinted with love but without permission.)
05. My Back Pages - Bob Dylan. From Another Side of Bob Dylan.
06. A Pretty Girl is Like... - Magnetic Fields. From 69 Love Songs.
07. Nervous Breakdown - Ryan Adams: I don't have any Adams on the iPod except this Black Flag song from the WM3 disk. I'm not a fan.
08. You Should Never Have Opened That Door [demo] - Ramones. From the extended version of Leave Home.
09. Paid Vacation - Circle Jerks: From Group Sex.
10. Angry Chair - Alice in Chains: Several years ago, I was working on a project with Sticking Point pal SO'C, who would endure at least two or three of my rants a day. I'd get all worked up over some bit of nonsense or another and as I neared the end of a tirade SO'C would smirk and start singing the first line of this, “Sit-ting in his an-gry chairrrrrrr...” Always got me to laugh at myself. He's about the only person I'd let get away with something like that.

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Et tu? Put your mp3 player of choice on “shuffle all songs,” let us know the first ten you hear.

[posted with ecto] 

Meanwhile, Back at the Pussy Ranch...

Diablo Cody is on fire this week.

Stupid is as Stupid Says

"Shame on Cindy! Shame on Cindy!" -- Group of Texans protesting Cindy Sheehan.

"I think it's unbelievable that Cindy Sheehan would protest her own son's death." -- Random Texan.

"Shut up, Cindy!" -- Don. (Texan)

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Oh, man. Oh, man! Really? Is it so wrong that a woman wants an answer from the country's highest elected (sort of) official as to why her son needed to die? Is it "unbelievable," you stupid cocksuckers?

Some of these people need a personal tragedy, ASAP.

Serious Like Peak Freans

Here's this morning's Friday 10. I'm in a time crunch, so I wanted get these up now, and post notes about them later. Hopefully. In an hour, I'll be heading down to Time Warner Cable and throwing their shitty cable modem in their (figurative) faces. We've had about 20 hours of internet service this week.

01. Rock and Roll - Velvet Underground.

02. Bad Reputation - Thin Lizzy.

03. All is Quiet on the Eastern Front - Ramones.

04. The Call Up - The Clash.

05. Brothers Gonna Work It Out - Public Enemy

06. Illumination - Rollins Band.

07. Tiny Town - Dead Milkmen.

08. Here Comes a Regular (Live) - The Replacements.

09. The Longest Time - Me First and the Gimmie Gimmies.

10. I'm OK, You're OK - The Dickies.

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DIY: Put your mp3 player or mp3 jukebox on "shuffle all songs," and let us know the first ten songs out of the chute.

Reasons To Be Cheerful

Henry Rollins and Heidi May will be subbing for Dickey Barrett tomorrow morning (10AM - 1PM ET) on Indie 103.1. You can listen from here. Expect great music and the good-natured bickering of a couple sublimating their mutual attraction.

Mmmm... That's Good Scrobbler

Audioscrobbler finally has its new site up, and most of the tech kinks have been worked out.

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On iTunes right now: “Ever Fallen In Love?” from the album Singles Going Steady by Buzzcocks

[posted with ecto]

Sundry Monday

First, sorry. It's been real tough to find time to post lately. There was a lot happening in the Sticking Point world last week. It was unreal. And this weekend I finally found the time to get some stuff down here that I wanted to share with you all, but Time Warner Cable of Brooklyn failed to supply internet service for some reason.

I bet you got tired of seeing that Liz Phair entry every day, huh? Hopefully, this will make up for my recent Inter-negligence. Why don't I pick some topics out of the handy Moleskine notebook and see what sticks to the webpage?

Earphones Hey. You. Yeah, you. When you are out and about, and you're suddenly stopped by a reporter from NY1 or WABC to give your opinion on something for the television camera, take your friggin' earphones out of your ears. You look like an idiot mutant.

"Mr. Mom" This is the name of a movie that came out about 30 years ago. It's time for lazy newspaper/magazine editors, TV reporters, and idiots-at-large to stop using this term to describe simply any man who spends time with and/or cares for his child. He's called "Dad."

Aqueduct Right on for David Terry (Aqueduct). He makes great, interesting music with hooks that end up in your head for weeks. (Like "Dinner Mints.") And now, he's got one of his songs ("Hardcore Days & Softcore Nights") on a Jaguar commercial that seems to be on TV every sixteen seconds. Check out Aqueduct's Pistols at Dawn EP on Barsuk.

Babysitter With Mrs. Sticking Point hired to work on a three-month project, we had to scramble to find the right babysitter / nanny person to care for H all day. And then, we had to adjust to the fact that his safety and happiness were in the hands of a total stranger. Yow. The very moment that "Mission: Babysitter" transformed from concept into reality, I felt like I'd been hit in the solar plexus by a bus. Man, it was hard, last Monday, to walk away from my son and toward the train station, as Madam Vee stolled him in the direction of the playground. One good thing came out of that day: I was able to think up 163 more items for my list of Ways a 14-Month Old Can Be Gravely Injured Before 7PM.

Now, a week later, I can report that Madam Vee is even warmer and more intuitive than she seemed when my wife interviewed her, and little H is doing well in her care. But I'm still a wreck.

Supermarket Smell Went for groceries yesterday, and had a great sense memory. In the local Key Food, I caught a whiff of a smell that I remembered from when I was a 16-year old working in my neighborhood Shopwell store. On Saturday mornings we had to show up extra early, at about 5:30 AM, to unload the contents of two enormous delivery trucks. The entire store would be filled with the scent of fresh-out-of-the-oven breads and rolls wafting out of the Baked Goods department. I caught a slight hint of this aroma the other day, and it brought me back. It was comforting. As, I guess, the smell of warm bread would be.

Bonus fact: Because labor laws required it, after unloading the trucks, we teenagers and early 20-somethings were allowed an extended lunch break. (About two or two-and-a-half-hours.) The whole gang of us would grab a bunch of food and head down to the Stadium for a few innings of the Yankees' game. (This being the victory-challenged early 80s, there were about 40,000 good seats still available after game time.) We'd stay for about 90 minutes, then head back to the store to pack out our aisles. (Mine was aisle 3: cereal.)

Aaron Small So, the Yankees have spent most of the season struggling to find consistent (-ly effective) starting pitching. Aaron Small bounces around from organization to organization before becoming the Yankees "mystery meat" #5 starter, and providing some magical consistency to the tune of 3-0, 2.67 e.r.a. in four starts. He pitched effectively against powerful Angels, White Sox, and Rangers lineups. Jaret Wright re-enters the Yanks' non-rotating rotation tonight and Small rides the bullpen pine. And that's wrong. Of course, the argument can be made that prior to this season, Small hadn't started a game since 1996. But the fact is, he's provided the team with quality starts every time, while Jaret Wright sucked before he went on the DL. Plus, I feel like Wright's stuff could be great in relief -- he could fill that flexible role that Ramiro Mendoza held down in the primo years. Joe Torre pisses me off. Jaret Wright starts tonight vs. the D-Rays. Let's see if he's got the stuff to make it through that lineup. Although it's not the most fearsome bunch of hitters in the majors, they come into the game with a team batting average of .276... the same as the Yanks.

One other thing; Aaron's middle name is James. Why this guy is not going with "A.J. Small" is beyond me. THAT's a baseball name, for god's sake.

Yankees 1Bmen Has anyone else noticed that the last three Yankees first-basemen have worn uniform numbers 23, 24, and 25?

Hard Rock Cafe I think the fact that the gift shop of the new Times Square HRC was opened a couple months before the restaurant itself speaks volumes about the franchise. Plus, who the hell are these a-holes, walking out of there with $25 t-shirts from a restaurant that has yet to crack the seal on a single bottle of ketchup? What, exactly, is that a souvenir of?

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Listening: "Come Back Baby" from Jefferson Airplane Loves You by Jefferson Airplane

Phair Lady

Saw Liz Phair at Joe's Pub last night. It was an early show so, unfortunately, just as she was catching a groove she found out it was nearly time to go. You see, the immortal Leslie Gore was playing the 9:30 gig. Liz sounded great (and looked drop-dead fetching), and the new songs -- from the forthcoming Somebody's Miracle -- are solid.

So why was I laughing and rolling my eyes during the show?

Because dear old Liz was accompanied on guitar and background vocal by her boyfriend, Dino Meneghin. The guy's just a mediocre guitar player, and he all but ruined the tunes with his adenoidal background vocal. He sounded like Jackson Browne on helium. Or Tiny Tim. Except not as manly.*
Here's my advice, Dino: Let your girlfriend float around in the upper register. Be a man and anchor those choruses with the voice your balls gave ya.

Also in attendance: the affable star of Scrubs, in a t-shirt and low-rise jeans. He sat, leaning forward in the banquette in front of us, allowing my wife a crystal clear view of Crack Braff for most of the opening act.

* i.e.: Jane Wiedlin.

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On iTunes right now: “Vegas” from the album Knock Loud by Paybacks

[posted with ecto]