Friday Random 11

It’s one more random than 10!

I got a text from my youngest brother, Snake Anthony, this week. “I’m about to platinum Skyrim. Fuck my life.”

Skyrim is the videogame/digital heroin that has gripped once upstanding men such as my brother. It has gripped me, too. In fact I haven’t played in two days and I’m feeling slightly twitchy, like I need my dungeon crawling fix.

The platinum part refers to the diabolical practice of granting achievements in videogames. When the Xbox 360 came out, it introduced the practice of giving the player points for accomplishing certain objectives in games. Some are easy, like score a touchdown in Madden. Some are hard, like score a 99-yard touchdown in Madden. Each game has a fixed number of achievements you can get. Each one also has a little name, often cutesy or punny. For instance, if you get 20 headshots in a first-person shooter, you get a 50-point “Dude, That Was My Skull!” award. (Note: not a real achievement, but should be.)

I thought this was the dumbest thing ever when I first heard about it. What do you get with achievements? Nothing, save bragging rights from other nerds. Not only can you not use achievements to do something useful, like get laid, the act of getting them will take the place of doing something useful, like making yourself more attractive by not holding a controller in your hand and screaming “Munch on those nuts, little squirrel!” to the 12-year-old you’re playing in Call of Duty.

But then I got a 360 and got my first achievement. When you get one, it makes a little noise and pops up. Sometimes achievements are secret, and you don’t even know that jumping on the princess’s head to make her sneeze out mushrooms that turn to gold coins was actually rewarded. I was looked like a bass in a fishing game (which nets you a five-point "You Da Gorton’s Man" achievement).

The Playstation 3 took this one step further by handing out little bronze, silver, gold, and platinum trophies. You get a platinum trophy for a game when you achieve all the others. Now when confronted with the gnawing accusation that you were wasting your life playing games, you could open a virtual trophy case and say, “Oh, really? Who’s laughing now, dad? Oh, and can I live here for another six months?”

As a fellow Skyrim player, I have seen the list of achievements. Getting the mystic platinum trophy is not something one acquires easily. Dare I say it would take less time to take a ring of power to Mordor and catch a ride home from a giant eagle, with time for a stop in Rivendell for a three-day bender with a pair of wood nymphs and a dwarf of undetermined gender. But how long exactly?

A couple days later, I had my answer. “Platinum. Done. Fack. 120 hours.”

That’s a lot of work to feel both secretly proud and very publicly ashamed. You could watch the entire series of The Wire twice in that time. They should at least give people like my brother a t-shirt that says, “I platinumined Skyrim” on the front and “Who wants to fucking touch me?” on the back. Either that or total consciousness on your deathbed. A little something, you know, for the effort.

Tunes…

1) “Long Distance Runaround,” Yes. I really hope that Newt Gingrich stays in the race. The GOP nomination process will become as boring and limp as a Mormon key party the minute Romney gets the nod (which is inevitable), and Ron Paul is like most SNL skits, a great premise that becomes repetitious and tiresome after the first 30 seconds. Santorum will only become interesting if he gets caught speading Santorum of the couch of some Nevada bathhouse. The race needs Newt, because while the prospect of a Gingrich administration is both ridiculous and appalling, watching him delude himself into thinking he’ll be president is fascinating. Of course, that would require him keeping a vow.

2) “Cult of Personality,” Living Color. Nice follow up, iTunes. You are becoming more genius by the day. This is easily in my top five of favorite guitar solos of all time. I think this was in Guitar Hero III and it the solo was such a blur of colors is was like going through the Star Gate in 2001. (Side note: freakiest goddamned "music" ever in a movie.) The Vernon Reid of plastic toy guitars I am not. Note: Live performance from Arsenio! God bless the Internet.

3) “Standing in the Shower…Thinking,” Jane’s Addiction. I wish I could work in the shower all day long, because there is no better place I think. It would require solving quite a few problems: hot water, environmental waste, electrocution, and modesty issues when videoconferencing, to name a few. But I could probably write my novel in a month if I could find a way to do it in the shower. And, from the TMI file, The Lovely Becky hates getting ready when I am in the shower because I take scalding showers, which steams up the bathroom and makes things like makeup application difficult (for her, I have no problems putting my makeup on). Take a water temperature needed to repel a group of Normans storming your castle walls and lower it by 3-5 degrees and that's what I like. If there is water in hell I may wind up feeling both refreshed and productive.

4) “Ain’t Talkin’ ‘Bout Love,” Van Halen. It is appalling that they have gotten back together. It’s bad enough to Mick Jagger shaking his moneymaker, but the idea of old David Lee Roth talking about reaching down between his legs and easing the seat back is unappealing when his car seat probably has one of those beaded back rests to help his sciatica. And God help the first five rows if he breaks out the chaps.

5) “Pandy Fackler,” Ween. I don’t get them and honestly I don’t want to. I was sort of fascinated by Ween for a bit because they were so goddamned weird that I made the mistake of thinking they must be good. But sometimes weird is just weird, and they give off too much of a creepy uncle vibe. Yeah, he can play the shit out of his guitar and he’s really smart, but you don’t want to get stuck with him waiting for the isolated upstairs bathroom at your aunt’s house. I do, however, love that some hipster ad agency guy thought it would be a swell idea to hire them to write a jungle for Pizza Hut (their best song because it’s their shortest).

6) “I’m Eighteen,” Alice Cooper. I was too stupid and horny to be confused at 18. I knew I was going to college and that I wanted to have sex. Even when my medical study plans evaporated after my first chemistry midterm, I still knew I was going to get a degree and that I still wanted to have sex (with drinking standing by as a helper monkey/platonic friend if the latter didn’t work out). There was always another class/test/paper/party/bar/visit from TLB to keep me focused and/or content. Even in my 20s, I was just happy to be working and living in New York and then Chicago. No, my version would be called, “I’m Thirsty-Six,” and go I’m looking at these reports while sittin’ in my cube/the boss is calling me and IT’s blocked YouTube/I’m getting’ pounded and I’m all out of lube/I’m thirty-six and I don’t like it! Of course, now I get to work at home wearing whatever combination of sweats/jeans/hot pants I desire and can crank Alice Cooper when it shows up, so I’m good.

7) “Blister in the Sun,” Violent Femmes. Now here’s some Friday music. Funny college anecdote: My dorm roommate and I used to play this album a lot. We were going down to the mailboxes and he was humming this song. There was one other guy getting his mail, and as the three of us retrieved our letters and were leaving, we heard this guy starting to him “Blister in the Sun.” That’s some old school earworming, before you could just slap a YouTube thingy on The Facebook. I always think of that whenever I hear this song now. Unrelated: EPIC MULLET IN THE VIDEO. There is so much party in the back of the bassists hair I feel like I need a rehab stint at Supercuts just from looking at it.

8) “Destination Ursa Major,” Superdrag. A lost gem from the 1990s. Major labels have killed many a good band, but I have tended to enjoy indie power pop bands that got to take their songwriting talents to big studios. As much as I love this crackle and hiss of early Guided by Voices, I am a big fan of the stomp that they achieved on their two major releases.

9) “Go With the Flow,” Queens of the Stone Age. I got a whole new appreciation for drummers when I tried to play this on Rock Band. The first time I played this, I was winded, and this was even before I was in my current post-parent creampuff state, back in my Branimal salad days. It’s three minutes, and I thought I can do anything for three minutes (insert TLB joke here). But I couldn’t keep up and had to stop. How does Neil Peart do this shit for three hours? Alas, I can’t play it now because I done broke my Rock Band drum pedal, and there appears to a shortage of replacements—spare pedals are selling for $90 online by guys who are all about the money instead of the music, man! The invisible hand of the free market once again punching me in the nuts.

10) “You Know I’m No Good,” Amy Winehouse. I love the Tanqueray couplet she pulls off. It’s too bad she died, because regardless of how fucked up she was, she was talented and I think she could have made some great music about getting back from the edge of the abyss. At the same time, because my brain knows it’s no good, when someone like Amy Winehouse dies, I imagine Abe Vigoda sitting back in his easy chair and marking another vertical line in a notebook that tallies how many people he’s outlived. You want the secret to immortality? Find out what he eats and make a pill out of it.

11) “Portions for Foxes,” Rilo Kiley. It’s interesting to get a woman’s perspective on things. Jenny Lewis sings that “the talking leads to touching, and the touching leads to sex, and then there is no mystery left.” Whereas if a guy was singing this, he’d sing “the talkin’ leads to touchin’, and the touchin’ leads to sex, and…what do you mean and, that’s it, that’s the trick.” We apparently have differing opinions on what constitutes the prestige.

Seriously, though, how are men in charge? I think women could walk around with a little pen like they use in Men in Black, only instead of flashing some kind of amnesia light, it flashes boobs. Some guy is blathering on about his fantasy team or how he’s going to squeeze an extra five horsepower out of the Mustang or how feminism has been the undoing of America and, boom-boom. When he comes back to reality and asks what happened, you tell him he was just about to take the garbage out or cook dinner for the kids or withdraw from the race. Problem solved. You're welcome, women of America.

Have a great weekend.

Friday Random 11

It’s one more random than 10!

This month marks five years of the Random 11, a feature I started after I got an iPod for Christmas in 2006. I’ve written 168,000 words since then, with a few of those not even connected to dick jokes.

Yesterday was also the first day of the season that I needed my winter boots. I’m honestly starting to become very Republican on this global warming thing. Just round up all those swimming polar bears, open a few new zoos, and turn on the ice maker. Extinction solved and I can still wear shorts on New Year’s.

1) “Let’s Spend the Night Together,” The Rolling Stones. This would perfect for a Cialis commercial. Boomer couple goes to a Stones concert and is right in the front row. The voice-over guy talks about how you want to be ready when the mood strikes while Mick sings the song. Then after 45 seconds of medical disclaimers, the song climaxes, and before the husband can hustle his wife to the back seat of the Lexus, Mick reaches out, pulls the wife onstage Courtney Cox-style, and takes her backstage, throwing one last wink as the voice-over guy says, “Keep the rock rolling with Cialis.”

2) “Punk Rock Girls,” The Queers. The Lovely Becky and I have talked about Libby as a teenager and how we would react to Libs dyeing her hair. TLB came up with a great solution: Libby can dye her hair any color she wants, but she’ll get a surprise when her mom shows up with her hair the same color. However, piercings will be right out because I’m not becoming a pin cushion to make a point.

3) “My Delirium,” Ladyhawke. I have been tired all week because I am a dumb ass. Why am I a dumb ass? Because my fatigue stems from playing videogames late at night instead of sleeping like a responsible adult. Because I try to be a responsible adult and not play videogames around my toddler-age daughter, I wait until she’s asleep. Unfortunately, I have been playing The Elder Scrolls: Skyrim, which is a crack rock shaped in the form of a 20-sided die. Oh, I’ll just play for an hour or two, I say to myself, with the delusion of an alcoholic hitting happy hour for the appetizers. Four hours later I’m woozy, incoherent, and not wearing pants. This is why I never played World of Warcraft, because I’d be like one of those Korean gamers who dies after forgetting to eat. (I made the mistake of starting Skyrim while Libby was awake, just to check it out. How bad could it be at the beginning, I thought. Of course, the game opens with a beheading and a dragon killing everything in sight. What’s got two thumbs and is father-of-the-year material? This guy.)

Bonus fun material: An absolutely killer bit about videogames from comic Dara O’Briain. He destroyed me with laughter when he started talking about Metal Gear Solid.

4) “Gideon (Live),” My Morning Jacket. Probably makes my All-Crescendo List.

5) “Nothing,” Stabbing Westward. I don’t know if Trent Reznor ever got royalties from these guys, but he should have. Also, the title of the album is Ungod, which is Latin for We are trying too hard to be edgy.

6) “Time for Me to Fly,” REO Speedwagon. My company used to have a yearly conference in Vail, Colorado. I got to attend the last year we held it, and while I certainly worked, the experience was bookended by two of the drunkest nights out with coworkers I have ever had. The first night there (the day before the event started), and after being warned that drinking in high altitudes can exacerbate the effects of alcohol if you’re not used to it, I had an evening where I started drinking 7-and7s, switched to Maker’s on the rocks because I wasn’t getting drunk fast enough, then switchied back to the 7-and-7s because the Maker’s was making me blind (along with the nicotine blitz I was getting from the smart decision to smoke). Thank God I didn’t need to start the next day until 11.

When the event ended, we went to a bar where this one guy was a musician in residence. He had a big fat book of covers you could request, and in my drunken happy state (it had been a great week and we were celebrating a successful event) I requested this song and sang along with it. I would have popped a lighter in the air if I had one at the time. I feel a bit of shame because this is a sappy, sappy, sappy song, even if in deep dark places I don’t talk about at cocktail parties, I really do love it.

7) “Snowblind,” Black Sabbath. I don’t think Ozzy’s talking about winter drifts in January. For all the perils of today’s society, I am glad cocaine was no longer chic by the time I reached an age where I might have been tempted to try it. Because there’s no way if I was 20 in 1977 that I wasn’t doing a couple of lines before heading to a Foghat concert. That’s why I stick to booze—I tend to get too sleepy by the time I would do any real damage. The last thing I need is to get hooked on something that would have me playing Skyrim for 56 straight hours.

8) “Ray,” Aimee Mann. Amazingly not on the YoutTube. Year ago TLB—a giant Aimee Mann fan—was discussing with me why she liked Aimee Mann so much, and she launched into this discussion of Mann’s rhyming couplets and how she is so creative in how she structures her rhymes and will often string together a several quick lines of rhymes. I said, “She sings real pretty.” Guess which one of us is the professor. This song is real pretty, too.

9) “Rock N Roll,” Led Zeppelin. The other day, my mind wandered into this weird daydream where Alex Lifeson of Rush personally thanked me for sending him a copy of my award-winning novel (as well as commenting how funny I was on The Colbert Report), and then asked me, being a giant Rush fan, what kind of setlist they should play on their next tour (I wish to Cookie Jesus I was making this up). In mid-daydream, I actually stopped to give this some thought before replying to imaginary Lifeson that they would absolutely slay everyone in attendance if they opened with a cover of this. Which, all psychiatric concerns from how I reached this conclusion aside, would indeed melt the faces of every Rush fan in attendance. Or at least the ones who were not seated in the imaginary front row like I was. And no, Geddy did not pull me onto the stage Courtney-Cox style.

10) “Late Night Conversation,” Josh Rouse (decent cover version). One of the downsides of having a large collection of music on my computer (far too much for my 80 gig iPod to hold anymore) is that I don’t always get to listen to a lot of it. Which is a big reason why I love doing this post each week—sometimes something comes up and I go, “Oh, that’s good, I should get it,” before remembering that I have it. Incidentally, after Skyrim, late-night conversations with TLB are the next largest source of sleep deprivation. It’s literally like the lights go off and we start shooting the breeze (and no, that’s not a euphemism). So my two biggest sources of not getting enough sleep are running around an imaginary fantasy world and talking to my wife while in bed. It’s a damn good thing I’m married because I would have no fucking clue how to woo a woman these days.

11) “Wonderwall,” Oasis. I know Von hates this, as does TLB, but I love it. It has that universality that I think great singles have, where it can appeal to a lot of people who normally wouldn’t agree on anything. For instance, let’s say that I was talking with Beyonce, who also was complimenting me on my appearance on The Colbert Report. It wouldn’t surprise me if, when this song started playing, we both said, “I love this song.” And then we’d laugh and say, “Jinx, by me a Coke,” and then Jay-Z would have his guy Pain-Luv dangle me from the penthouse balcony. That’s good songwriting.

Bonus: “The Unsinkable Fats Domino,” Guided By Voices. A new classic sounding GbV song from the classic GbV lineup. Worth watching this performance from Letterman to see, as one YouTube commenter put it, “the sinkable Greg Demos.”

Have a great weekend.

Friday Random 11

It’s one more random than 10!

To quote the immortal philosopher Jim Anchower, I know it’s been a while since I rapped at ya. I was busy working on a secret project that I was unable to discuss: the largest dick joke in the history of the world! Unfortunately, it fell into the Pacific before it reached its punchline. Oh well, at least I got paid up front and will have some free time again.

1) “Let It Be,” The Beatles. Tomorrow is the birthday of the loveliest Beatle-hater in the world, The Lovely Becky. Here’s an amazing thing about TLB: she has absolutely no hang-ups about getting older. I cling to youth like Sylvester Stallone’s friend's wife in the Alps, feeling that glove slipping off with every new set of candles I blow out, and she just whistles while she makes that annual wish. It’s infuriating the same way it’s infuriating when the cats lie in a beam of sunshine looking more content than Buddha with a bellyful of good karma. Meanwhile I worry about when I’ll have a heart attack because of my love of bacon or whether that ache in my shoulder is shoulder cancer. However, TLB always says it’s my fear of dying that will lead to me living a long time, so that I will have that much longer to think about.

2) “Lose Control,” Ash. This opens with a Tie Fighter sound, and we just let Libby watch some of the original Star Wars movies. You would think she would gravitate toward the goddamned Ewoks (choke on a cute hairball, Lucas), but instead she was fascinated by Han Solo getting frozen in carbonite and then melted. That’s daddy’s little girl.

3) “Been There All the Time,” Dinosaur Jr. One of those go-to songs when I’m at the gym and need to get my admitted wimpy ass to stay on the elliptical at least as long as the 80-year-old retiree next to me. So few people just play the shit out of their guitars in indie rock these days. J Mascis looks like he could stop a Balrog in Moria with a shredding guitar solo.

4) “King of the Rodeo,” Kings of Leon. The hard rock Coldplay.

5) “These Days,” Foo Fighters. iTunes is in a particularly power chord mood today. I bought this on CD because I still like having physical albums whenever possible, even though the only time I ever actually play CDs is in my car. They literally get popped in the computer, ripped, and put back in the case, which means it's idiotic that I spend more money to buy stuff that I don't use yet takes up space in my house, but my nostalgia is stronger than my common sense. Anyway, the Foo Fighters recorded this album on analog tape, and the CD came with a little piece of the tape in the case. I see myself being sixty and walking into the Pawn Stars store to pawn my “limited edition” copy of Wasting Light with a piece of the recording tape, only to have old Chumlee tell me he’s got 500 of these in the back and they aren’t worth anything. 

6) “Junco Partner,” The Clash. I was sick a couple weeks ago and took a rare sick day. Normally, that means a day in front of whatever video console I own, trying to save the princess or take the pretend Bears to the Super Bowl. But I was actually so sick that I didn’t feel like playing video games—the thought of putting a controller in my hand and having to figure out how to make a Potion of Kickassedness in Skyrim felt too goddamned strenuous. So instead I parked on the couch and went on a DVR expedition, scrolling down past 30 Rock and Cougar Town and the 8,000 kid shows we have recorded to get to things like documentaries that I add to the queue because it makes me feel smart, but which I never get around to watching because I play too many video games and Libby doesn’t give a fuck about George Harrison’s life, even as portrayed by Oscar-winning director Martin Scorsese (look, Libs, here’s where Clapton steals his wife!). Anyway, too weak for joystick gymnastics, I put on the Joe Strummer biography, The Future Is Unwritten. Things I learned: 1) While the film convinced me more than ever that Joe Strummer was the real deal, it apparently took him several test personas before he settled on being the real deal. 2) Joe Strummer hated brushing his teeth more than my daughter. 3) If you want to make your audience feel culturally idiotic while watching your documentary, don’t bother to identify the people talking about the subject of your film. Sure, even a cretin such as myself recognizes Bono or Johnny Depp (strangely talking like Captain Jack Sparrow despite being in street clothes), but I have no idea who the other gray-haired, phlegm-ridden talking heads are because I spent too many sick days in front of a PlayStation. Despite that, it was an awesome documentary. Now I just need a 48-hour bug so I can watch the Harrison doc.

7) “While My Guitar Gently Weeps,” The Beatles. That is downright creepy. Stop freaking me out, iTunes. Also, linked to the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame jam of this where Prince completely rips the solo. He definitely had to cool off in the waters of Lake Minnetonka after that.

8) “Honolulu Blues,” Craig Finn. His solo debut is more Holy Ghost than Hold Steady. There is a lot of Jesus on this album, to the point where my first thought was, “Jesus Christ, that’s a lot of Jesus.” The good news (not to be confused with The Good News) is that it’s good Jesus—your buddy Jesus who enjoys healing the sick and who uses two McNuggets and a can of Mountain Dew to feed everyone at Coachella. Not the GOP Jesus who watches more porn than Ed Meese taking a sick day so he can tell you how very, very, very (oh, God, so very) depraved it is.

9) “See a Little Light,” Bob Mould. I have my go-to good mood songs—the ones I pick out because I feel like air drumming or it’s Saturday and looking like a high probability of romantic wiggling (cue Loverboy or Whitesnake). This is one of those random good-time songs, one I rarely seek but am always so happy to hear. I feel so positive that I may just revise that five-year plan to “still alive and okay with that.”

10) “Teenage Girls,” Bad Sports. TLB and I talk fairly frequently about who we will marry when the other one dies. I profess that I will be unable to remarry because I will be stricken romantically impotent with grief. She is convinced that I will in fact run to the nearest age-inappropriate attractive female who has daddy issues. Not a bad call, mind you, but not in fitting with my character, because all a younger woman is going to do is remind me how much older I am than she is. If anything, I’m going the opposite direction and going older, both because I’ll feel better and she might be a widower with money, which means no more work and lots more times for documentary watching. Incidentally, Bad Sports Kings of the Weekend is a great bit of Ramones garage punk. Worth seeking out.

11) “Message of Love,” Pretenders. Of course, my lovely wife has put up with this mental nonsense for quite a few birthdays now, and she seems no closer to ditching me for an young creative writing student with a cougar complex. That’s just one of many reasons I know I chose well.

Have a good weekend!