The Walker Evans Effect

Being a child of 1980, I started getting into music around 1994 when I was a young whippersnapper of 14. Thankfully this allowed me to bypass the terrible pop music of the late eighties and early nineties when people like MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice ruled the roost. Some of the bands that got me into music included Smashing Pumpkins, Stone Temple Pilots, Beck, Whale, Cracker, The Meatpuppets, Green Day, Nirvana, Tool, Soundgarden, and more. It’s sort of sad that out of that whole list the only bands still around are Green Day and Beck. And Green Day sucks.

Anyway, thanks to the magic of YouTube, I’m allowed to easily take a “lackadaisical ride on my back-in-the-daycycle” as one might say (if one were MC Paul Barman). So now I share a little collection of some of my favorite videos (and songs) of the mid-to-late nineties.

(Also, as an aside… I’m really not into pop/rock/alternative music anymore. Around the late nineties, thanks to the internet I got into whatever weird eurodance i could find (stuff like E-Rotic) and from there found my true love of deep house music, which has been my number one brand of music up until now.)

Beck - Loser : I have to admit… this was the first video that did it for me. Up until this point all I ever listened to as a kid was Oldies (due to my mom’s control of the radio in the car) and Weird Al (my choice to listen to at home). After I heard/saw Loser by Beck I was hooked and got all up into “Alternative” music as it was known in the mainstream of the 90s.

Smashing Pumpkins - Rocket : The first Pumpkins video I saw was Disarm, and at first I wasn’t impressed (give me a break… I was like 14) but then I saw Rocket and fell in love. Siamese Dream was purchased and quickly became my favorite album. I’ve not listened to it in forever, but I’m sure it aged well and probably considered cool again by today’s hipster 14-year-olds. Oh yeah… Today was pretty good too.

Stone Temple Pilots - Vaseline : I enjoyed their first album, Core, but the videos were all pretty gloomy and lackluster. When Vaseline dropped it became one of my favorite songs of all time. The video is weird and arty… but in a fun way. Enjoy!

Soundgarden - Black Hole Sun : Wow. This was a great new entry into the world of weird-ass videos. I loved it at first, but quickly grew tired of it playing on MTV every hour on the hour. You have to keep in mind that this was back when MTV still played videos and the shows were minimal. M2 didn’t even exist yet. Anyway, still a classic video. I’m sure some college students in some class somewhere are writing papers about it.

Meat Puppets - Backwater: The Meat Puppets never really got the recognition that they deserved. Perhaps they just didn’t rock quite as hard as the other major bands, or their videos weren’t quite crazy enough, but I always enjoyed them.

Whale - Hobo Humpin Slobo Babe : YES! This was one of those videos that only ever got played at 4AM, but thankfully I’d put a tape in the VCR and record videos from midnight to 6AM. A friend of mine claimed that this video gave him nightmares once. Quality stuff.

Green Day - Longview - Ahh… a nice young Green Day… back when they used to sing about beating off and not politics. This is back when they were a punk-pop band and not a pop-punk band like they are today. Anyway, a fun video and a fun song.

Toadies - Away : Easily one of the most overlooked bands of the nineties. Rubberneck was an awesome album. Every song a classic that nobody ever got around to listening to. Sadly. Anyway, I linked to the video of Away, because I couldn’t find one for Possum Kingdom, which is just a slightly better video. Both are great songs.

The Flaming Lips - She Don’t Use Jelly : What the hell happened to these guys? Wayne was so much cooler when his hair was orange and he wasn’t a beardo obsessed with furries. Clouds Taste Metallic was an awesome solid album, but then it was all downhill after that. RIGHT?

Marilyn Manson - Dope Hat : I wasn’t too big into the more industrial or gothic bands, but Manson will always hold a place in my heart with their first great album and the awesomeness that is the Dope Hat video.

Nine Inch Nails - Closer : Again… not my favorite style of music… but the video was great and the album was pretty solid for being more industrial than I was really ever into. I honestly don’t think this has aged that well. That, or I’ve just outgrown my teen angst.

Rancid - Salvation : Just like industrial music… i dabbled in punk music a little too. Rancid’s early work was fun and entertaining, but I never really explored many other punk bands. Seeing a black and white video was refreshing at the time. I can’t think of too many other bands who had them then.

The Breeders - Cannonball : I know everyone loves The Pixies, but I never took the time to get into them. I heard Cannonball used in a sketch on “The State” on MTV (featuring a pantless Michael Ian Black) and loved the song. I discovered the video soon after, which is pretty decent. Still hear this one on the radio every once in awhile…

The Rentals - Friends of P : Weezer was ok… but The Rentals were AWESOME! I totally discredited my statement above about the black and white videos, because I forgot about this one, but I’m too lazy to write anything else about Rancid. Anyway, The Rental’s album was solid. Tons of great songs that could easily fit into a party mix with today’s best electro-rock music.

White Zombie - More Human Than Human : YEEEEAH! White Zombie was back when Rob Zombie had a great band. Astro Creep 2000 was another solid album you could pop in while playing video games and get yourself worked up into a nice little adrenaline-crazed mountain-dew-drinking teenage one-man-mosh-pit. Oh… nice video to boot.

Radiohead - Fake Plastic Trees : I wasn’t a huge fan of Radiohead, but this song was great. And the video was great too. YES!

Primus - Wynona’s Big Brown Beaver - Not the best Primus song, but hands down the best Primus video. Such a weird, yet talented band. Most kids today know Les Claypool as the man who’s delivered hits such as The Theme to South Park… and… The Theme To Robot Chicken. Primus was awesome.

Butthole Surfers - Pepper : This was my first exposure to the BHS, and I bought a lot of their older albums after this poppy hit notified me of their existence. Great video. A lot of it is black and white (doh!) but does have some color as well.

Our Lady Peace - Superman’s Dead : I had a friend who was REALLY into these guys, and got me hooked. Great songwriters. Another one of those bands that could have been bigger hits but some unknown force was holding them down. Watching this again now (probably first time in 8 years) looks like it’s aged really well compared to some of the new stuff out there right now.

Ween - Freedom of 76 : It’s hard to say, but I think this was the first Ween video I ever saw. Unless you count watching Beavis & Butthead and seeing snippets of “Push the Little Daisies” on that. Anyway, Chocolate and Cheese was one of the weirdest albums albums I ever owned. That is until I bought some of Ween’s earlier albums.

Presidents of the United States of America - Lump : Yeah. I remember digging this video the first night I saw it and got some big ridicule from my friends for it. Perhaps a little too childish for some, but I loved it. Good wacky stuff, those Presidents.

That’s about all I can think of right now. I know I’m forgetting some bands and songs and videos. Perhaps more will come to me in time and I’ll update this entry. But for now it should suffice.

I played me some Gamma Bros yesterday and almost managed to beat the game on my first try. Not to say that it wasn’t fun. Sort of a combination between Asteroids, Robotron, and Gradius. Very fun. I’d pay $20-25 for a Nintendo DS version. So why can’t we get good homebrew/indie games like this for consoles, eh? EH????

Anyway, enjoy it online for free.

So yeah, over the past few weeks, Anne & I have been doing some hardcore maintenance to our place. The sidewalk outside is a wreck. It’s some lovely brick laid out there, but our landlord has let it get completely overrun with grass for what looks like the last 5-10 years unchecked. So we went out and bought a scraper tool and some weed killer and got to work.

Anne did a TON of it one afternoon, and I helped her wrap it up. I went out the other day and did some more and we’ve filled plenty of yard-waste bags with grass and drit. It’s sort of annoying because there’s so much drit covering the bricks. Takes forever to sweep up all that drit.

So anyway, we fill the waste bags and put them near our door to keep them out of the rain until pickup day (Tuesday). Last night we figured it was time to move the bags out to the curb to be picked up and the drit, which was a little damp, had weakened the bags. When we lifted… they broke. So we had to re-load all of the grass and drit into new yard waste bags and finally got them out to the curb.

So today for lunch we walked home to find only one of our bags taken away and a note attached to one of the others informing us why they could not be taken.

God damn it. What are we going to do with all of this drit?

Saturday, Anne & I went to Cedar Point with Dave & Betsy. It was the first time I’ve been in 8 years, so pretty much all of the “old” coasters were still new to me. Surprisingly, it wasn’t too busy of a day there so we got to ride almost all of the coasters with waiting lines averaging about 30-45 minutes. It could have had something to do with the fact that it was like 92 degrees all day, keeping some people from venturing out to an amusement park.

Anyway, here’s my thoughts on the coasters we hit:

Blue Streak - This is an older wooden coaster. Sort of lame compared to everything else. The hills were fun, but it seems like most wooden coasters don’t have much of a grade-adustment when it comes to corners, so it’s pretty jerky whipping you around. This ride isn’t very tall, so it might be a good one to start on or else it will feel dissapointing to ride after some of the newer ones. At least the line was only 6-7 minutes long.

Gemini - A wood-framed double-coaster that runs on steel rails. Much smoother than the other wooden coasters. It’s a step up from the Blue Streak, and the added “racing” element is fun. Still, it does feel a little dated.

Magnum XL-200 - Awesome. The Magnum and Millenium are probably my two favorites at Cedar Point. Probably my two favorite coasters anywhere for that matter (not that I’ve ridden a ton though). Huge drop (around 200 feet) and it travels over 70 miles an hour. Definiately a thrill.

Mantis - Ugh. Fun concept but terrible execution. The Mantis is a standing coaster on steel tracks that gives you a different experience, but after the first few loops upside-down, you start jerking around corners so fast that your head bangs back and forth into the side “cushions” surrounding your head. And I use the word “cushion” loosely, because it’s really just hard plastic. About halfway through the ride you start wishing it was over. Anne decided not to wear earring to the park because last time she was there the Mantis made her head bleed because her earrings were bashing into her skin so hard. DO NOT RIDE THE MANTIS. IT HURTS.

Mean Streak - The biggest wooden coaster in the park. This thing is fast, whips around corners, plunges down drops, and the wooden track will nearly vibrate you to death in the process. It’s a little painful, but nothing compared to the Mantis. Well worth the typically shorter waiting line.

Millennium Force - This is pretty much the mother of all coasters. Over 300 feet tall at the highest point and over 90 mph at the fastest. Your stomach will hate you for this one, but you’ll hate yourself if you don’t try it.

Raptor - The Raptor was a lot of fun despite that it wasn’t as tall or fast as some of the newer coasters. It seats you underneath the track, and if you wear flip-flops (we did) to the park, you have to take them off so they won’t go flying. Very weird feeling to ride through the air with no shoes on, but loads of fun. Plenty of loops and corkscrews in this one.

Top Thrill Dragster - The newest coaster built to break records. 420 feet tall and it uses electromagnetic force to shove you from zero to 120mph in 4 seconds. The ride only lasts about 30 seconds, but it’s definately worth about an hour in line. You know that feeling you get when you drive over a hump in a road and your stomach sort of flutters. Multiply that by 100 and that’s the Top Thrill Dragster taking off.

Wicked Twister - This one was actually a lot more fun than it looks. It propels you up double-spirals and back down in a rocking motion. Make sure you sit in the front or the back for the best seats on this one. The shorter line was an added bonus as it only took us about 30 minutes to hop on.

That’s all. Cedar Point has about 15 coasters total, but some are either too old or too lame for us to pencil them in. The only one I would have liked to gone on was the indoor one, but everyone else in my party had already ridden it and didn’t want to wait an hour in line for it. I guess it’ll give me a reason to go back sometime.

Yeah, I love to cook. There are certain things that I especially love to make… here’s a picture of what I made for our 4th of July party last weekend…. Hummus, Salsa, and Guacamole. I made more than what’s pictured, but our cool serving plate is a little small to hold it all. Anyway, at least it looks nice as far as presentation goes…

We’re also having a party this weekend, and I made 3 kinds of salsa last night… one mild… one hot… and one PEACH (for Annie).

Anne & I walked over to Schiller Park this evening to watch a free performance of “The Complete Works of Shakespeare (Abridged)” as performed in part of the “Shakespeare in the Park” summer series, and I have to say it was a lot of fun. The actors did a nice job and some bits were pretty funny. A few of the jokes were dated, while others were updated, but beside that small inconsistency it was pretty well performed. Who can really complain when it’s free?

So i get a junk email today from the campaign for Michael Brown for Mayor. Normally this wouldn’t be anything to roll my eyes too hard about, but what gets me is that this dude is running for mayor in Washington DC. What the hell should I care about the mayor of DC when I live in COLUMBUS? Why is this guy buying email address lists from spam companies just to throw his campaign spam all over the country (or world)? How many of the email address he’s sending to are to registered voters in DC who actually care about who their mayor is? I’m guessing I’m not the only one in another town who really doesn’t care about how he’d govern some other city….

What a waste of time and money, MICHAEL BROWN.

My current video game addictions include Tetris DS, The Legend of Zelda: The Minish Cap, and Metal Gear Solid (the original one for the PS1).

I just got into the “touch mode” version of Tetris, so I’ve been at that for a few days in addition to playing some multiplayer here and there. I’m pretty decent at two-player online, but I suck at four-player, so every time I play that I end up losing and lowering my overall score. I think it’s currently around 5900 right now, but I’ve had it as high as 6300 when I’m not on a total losing streak.

I’ve been borrowing Minish Cap (GBA) from Nathan for awhile and playing it every so often. I’ve finally made it to what I think is the end, so all I need to do is beat the final boss and roll the credits. This game is a great throwback for anyone who enjoyed the SNES Zelda (Link to the Past), but god DAMN is this game hard in spots. Well… not really hard, but just impossible to figure out what to do next. Perhaps I’ve just grown too accustomed to games these days spelling everything out for you in terms of story progression and leaving the puzzles in between, but the game gives you some things to figure out in order to progress and that just drives me crazy. I’ll spend upwards of about 90 minutes of trying to figure things out on my own while running around looking for secrets along the way, but after that I always give in and look up what the hell I’m supposed to be doing on gamefaqs. I’ve had to resort to that at least 6 or 7 times in this game. It’s fun… but that’s just insane. Maybe I’m just overthinking it in places, but whatevs…

Yeah, and the other game I’ve been playing is Metal Gear Solid. I picked it up at EBGames for $7 a few weeks ago. I never really got into the series for some reason, but I’ve always been interested and read plenty about it. The trailer for MGS4 looks pretty sweet, so I figure I should probably start from the beginning. So far it’s a pretty fun game. The graphics are a little blocky and dated, but I’m willing to look past that. Some parts have been a little frustrating, and whenever I get caught sneaking I pretty much just stand still until I’m shot to death so I can restart. Partly because I prefer the sneaking element, but also because the combat is a little wonky. The guns are hard to aim and it seems like none of them have much of a difference in firepower. I’m still on the first disc on this one. I play it much slower than the portable games, mostly because I prefer to be able to play on-the-go or on my break at work or whatevs.

So yeah, there’s the video gaming update. HUZZAH.

Yesterday Anne & I went to Schmidt’s Sasuage Haus in German Village with her parents. They had only had their creme puffs and brats at the Ohio State Fair, so since we only live a few blocks away we were able to have them try out the whole grand buffet there. Good stuff.

So, just for the record… on the fourth of july, 2006, I ate a cold hot dog for breakfast, german sausage for lunch, and more hot dogs (hot this time) for dinner. HAPPY BIRTHDAY AMERICA!