The Giant

New favorite song off the new Anthrax record. It's called The Giant and while there's nothing special about the verse, the chorus soars. The first go round is pretty straight forward, but the second round has some additional vocals. Sounds great. Take a listen.

The lyrics:

Caught between the line between right and wrong
Caught between the things I don't know
Up and down the mountain climbing, climbing
Drowning in the ocean to find my soul

PS. After giving the record a few listens, I wondered if it was clipped...and it is. But I think I've decided that not all clipping is bad. Don't clip my Led Zeppelin records, but if Anthrax -a heavy metal band reliant on distortion- wants to write a record which they later intend to clip in the final mix? Sounds good to me.

Reading Material

After finishing The Poet, I've been going on a bit of an Elmore Leonard and James Lee Burke kick. Went through Tishomingo Blues and a little bit of Pronto, and I'm almost done with Burke's non-Robicheaux book Cimmaron Rose. Like Connelly, I've read enough from these guys to know a little about their style.

Connelly: police procedurals, modern technology, Bosch fighting with his supervisor, nicknames for everyone, that "ripped from the headlines" feel. Lots of "he knew" and "meant that" stuff. ("He knew that Eleanor would never eat bacon for breakfast. The presence bacon in the frying pan meant that someone else was in the house!)

Leonard: Lots of dialogue from lots of characters of diverse racial backgrounds, a scheme that unravels, usually involving a betrayal of some sorts, some romance, some comedy, very spare but at the same time very dense.

Burke: Weather reports, descriptions of flora and fauna, poetic detail and colorful metaphor. Vibrant verbs, spot-on adjectives. Everybody talks tough, death is omnipresent, the treatment of minorities and women always a major theme.

I'm onto all of them, and yet, I still like them.

Even as I'm reading one of Burke's weather reports, it's awesome. Here's a direct quote from Burning Angel: "I gazed out the window at the fine morning and the fronds on the palm trees lifting against the windswept sky." How can you not love that?

Dead Trees

I'm a mean old bastard. When the first big snow (I guess it snowed when I was up in Glenwood but I missed it) hit, I hoped it would break some of the branches on the junk trees growing in the fence of my neighbor's house.

Mission accomplished.

As long as that house is abandoned, I'm resolved of ridding the world of these trees. It's a favor really. They're growing through their fence.

I would just like to walk beside my house without having to endure bushwhack city.

Fantasy Football

It's been a pretty good year so far...

In one league, the Shivakamini Somakandarkam Bowl*, I'm in first place.

(* Yep, the theme this year is from The League. My team is called the Herdsmen. Hyah!)

In the other, the Denver Football Stars, my team is currently in second place. It's not a comfortable spot, though, as a loss next week could bump me down three or even four places.

One guy, who probably watched the Sunday night game like I did, wanted to trade me Percy Harvin, Dustin Keller, and Stevie Johnson for Jimmy Graham, but I said no. Harvin's hurt, and while I'd take Keller and consider Johnson, I need a quarterback this week, not some limpy receiver who's a week to week liability.

So instead of taking that trade, I'm dropping Devery Henderson (ain't doing shit) and picking up Matt Hasselbeck. Hasselbeck's going back to the bench next week, but this week he's facing the Colts. Last week Henderson was good for a single fucking point when the Saints blew out the Colts 62-7 last week. Hasselbeck's going to be facing those same sorry Colts. I'm betting he's going to score more than 1 point.

Anonymous

Years ago I had an idea for a writing project. The idea I still like, but the project I swiftly abandoned because a big Oscar-winning movie came out about a similar subject. The idea: What if Shakespeare didn't write his plays? What if Christopher Marlowe faked his own death and used this guy named Will as a frontman?

It wasn't an original idea, I know, but I thought I could do it justice. I wasn't going to be faithful to history at all and I was going to make it funny: a comedy about a con-job that was never discovered. But then Shakespeare in Love came out and after that, Shakespeare as a main character was out.

So when I saw the trailer for Anonymous, my first thought was "Yeah, I've seen that movie already...in my head." My second thought was, well, at least somebody made the "Shakespeare is a fraud" movie.

But too bad Roland Emmerich is the guy who made it, not because he makes bad movies (alright, not sure he's ever made a "good" one), but because his sensibility is all wrong for the material. He takes some weird ideas way too seriously and you almost get the sense that he half-believes some of it. I bet if you got him drunk and talking, he'd admit to believing Area 51 is where they keep the aliens (Independence Day), that the aliens created civilization (Stargate, 10,000 BC), that a global ecological disaster will suddenly hit us (The Day After Tomorrow, 2012).

And he'd probably confess to believing his Shakespeare theory, too, which sucks because if he's too evangelical about it, the movie's probably not going to be very good.

Naive Knaves

From a commenter named James K over at the League of Ordinary Gentleman regarding this post:

If a solution [to global warming] is to come, it will be technological, not political. If zero-carbon energies get cheap enough, it will become politically feasible to move away from coal and oil. Until then, I predict politicians will continue to either deny the problem, or sound concerned but do nothing substantial.

More technology? I don't know, man. I'm getting a little dubious that the answer to our ecological problems is going to come from a factory stamped Made in China.

But hey, if you don't like Al Gore, I can see why you don't favor a "political" solution. But whatever "solution" we come up with, it's going to have a political aspect because, well...that's just how this are in the modern, industrial world.

Which leads me to this comment:

I pretty much agree. We should have been investing heavily in research on alt energy for the past few decades and we should doing the same now clean energy. We are pretty good at developing all sorts of high tech stuff.

Um...every time "we" (I mean, the people) tried to invest "heavily in research on alt energy" we were called hoaxers and were advised to drill, baby, drill.

But I do like the sheer dumbassness of this guy's last statement: "We are pretty good at developing all sorts of high tech stuff." I know, huh? We have computers, plasma TVs, hair dryers, washing machines, dishwashers, air conditioners, and game consoles. All kinds of awesome "high tech stuff" that needs lots of energy, energy we get from burning fossil fuels, the burning of which is contributing to the problem in the first place.

Scoreless

It's the 4th quarter and the Broncos are scoreless against the mighty (ha!) Dolphins. My orange and blue blood doesn't blind me from the fact that the team that I love stinks.

The Josh McDaniels era may be over, but the damage continues!

Updated:
Oh, finally! They score. And this was just a few minutes after the first 3rd down conversion of the game. 55 minutes of football was played before a 3rd down conversion.

My goggle....

Updated again:

And now the game is tied and we're going to OT???

Updated again:

And the Broncos win! In traditional 4th quarter comeback style. Elway should be proud.