Best Songs Of The First Half Of 2007

So this weekend marks the end of the first half of 2007. It has been quite a year so far. My Bears played in their first Super Bowl in 21 years, we have learned who is who in the future presidential primaries, Paris has gone to jail, Imus lost his job and Florida has won everything. Musically for me i find myself listening to less and less hard stuff and more and more indie stuff. Oh no... I'm an indie kid.

Any way, here are my favorite songs of 2007 in no order:

Peter Bjorn & John- Young Folks

"if I told you things i did before
told you how I used to be
would you go along with someone like me "

Young Folks is a electronic folk song that seems to get catchier each time you listen to it. The electronic drums, male & femal vocals, sing along chorus, but most of all the whistling hook. It brings to mind an updated version of Serge Gainsbourg & Bridget Bardot's Bonnie & Clyde.

Queens of the Stone Age- Turning on the Screw

"You got a question? Please don’t ask, it
Puts the lotion in the basket
You say bigger’s better but bigger's bigger
White boy dressed up like a figure
Drawn inside a toilet on the wall
The world is round my square won’t fit at all"

Sometimes a band comes out with a song that is such a good example of their own music that it amazes me. Kinda like Guns 'N Roses- Mr. Brownstone, The Smith's- How Soon Is Now?, Social Distortion- Cold Feelings and so on. When I first grabbed a copy of Era Vulgaris, I went straight to the song Make It Wit Chu since I wanted to hear the changes from Desert Sessions. Then i went back to teh beginning. When this song was at about 0:17 I said, "wow this sounds like QOTSA" to one of my co workers. The guitars seem to swirl around your head when you listen to it and the melody of Josh Homme's voice seems to hang above you and put you in a trance. The lyrics in this song are twisted and as dizzy as the instruments.

Kings of Leon- Knocked Up

"who'll call us renegade
Feel like we're living crazy
We like taking on the town
Some people getting lazy
I don't care what nobody says, no
I'm gonna be her lover
Always mad and usually drunk
But I love her like no other."

I'll admit it, I liked the other two albums better. However, the second the first song on the new Because of the Times, I knew that I was going to love this song. The lyrics are great, the music is great. Of all of the new songs, it for the first time was pretty obvious that they have been spending time on the road with Pearl Jam and U2. The guys proved they had grown up but I have to admit I do miss the more whiskey soaked sounds from Aha Shake, Hearbreak.

The Stooges- My Idea of Fun

"They break your skin, when you're a kid
They steal your soul, and keep it hid
And that is why, I hate mankind"

The thing I love about this song, is how much the Stooges stayed to their roots. I love the New York Dolls, but their new record sounds like a new record. Weirdness could have been a Stooges record 40 years ago! Sex, drugs, violence everything that you would expect from a song fronted by Iggy Pop. He hasn't lost a step at all. When I saw him live, I could not believe this man was 60!

Emily Haines & The Soft Skeleton- Crowd Surf Off a Cliff

"Cursed with a love that you can't express
It's not for a fuck or a kiss
Rather give the world away than wake up lonely
Everywhere in everyway, I see you with me."

The words are beautiful. The piano is beautiful. The singer is beautiful. This song grabs your right when it starts. The piano so simple forces emotion out of you and almost makes you scared. It's sexy. It's sad. I love this song. I don't know if its better in a low key lounge setting, or if you are home from the lounge back in your bed enjoying the fruits of a successful night on the prowl.

JJ Grey & Mofro- Circles

"So please forgive me for what some other man did too you
Before I came along
Cuz I don't want to go on fighting and fussing over something
I can't change at all
There's no way I can change the past or your pain
I don't want to fight walking in circles
I'm not the one who hurt you so deep down
Let's start a new now walking in circles"

This song actually wins the timing award. I learned about this band from a co worker right while I was really into a southern bluesy sound and these guys are like the Black Crowes. Some people call them a "front porch soul" band. Really they are a great blues band that gets funky whent hey need to. They have a great strings section and JJ kills it on the organ.

The Game Is Half Over

I am a pessimistic sports fan. Basically I see every game... no... every situation in every game as Murphy's Law. For example, I almost always think the next pitch to the other team is going to be a home run. I can't help it. My New York friends don't really mind because the only team we share is Syracuse. My Chicago friends get annoyed with me about it. They blame things on me because I am negative energy and they remind me I am a "half empty" guy when we win games.

Perfect example happened to night. The Cubs were winning the whole game and went into the top of the 9th where the Rockies scored 6 runs to take the lead. I predicted the 3 run home run that gave Colorado the lead. Then I text messaged my friend.

"Way to close the game out guys... good work."

The response I got was, "one game against the Rockies? Big deal you're just torturing yourself."

Moments later, Soriano hit the game winner. My friend then texted me again, before my viewing on MLB.tv on the internet showed me the game winner.

"Cubs win... you suck... letting one inning dictate your emotions."

Well, he has a point. I get caught up in my teams. I wouldn't say it ruins my day when they lose, but I will say I'm much happier when they win.

The Social Right & The Social Left

On Friday, I went to a club called La Boucarou in the East Village for a birthday party. I need this place explained to me. It was such a shit show. First of all, luckily we get there early enough that we didn't have to wait in line. Yes there were velvet ropes. Nothing sends me screaming in the other direction quite like velvet ropes.[1] Ok, so the décor was unoriginal, you weren’t even allowed to sit unless you bought a bottle, the music sucked. Not even like bad southern hip hop sucked, like Fergie sucked. To make matters even worse, a huge percentage of the tools there were for a white party. These kids were acting like big balers at the lame club, with bad music, wearing white pants, white blazers and white shoes.

So my question to the people who run this establishment, work the door and the kids in the white… why this place? Why should someone wait in line for shit decour, lame music, expensive drinks, douchy uncreative kids? And don’t say because of the girls that were there because frankly there weren’t that many girls there let alone good looking ones. This is why my friends don’t go to these types of places.

This weekend I went to my first MMA event. It was Cage Fury Fighting Championship. Which is about as cheesy as the term extreme sports or half the names for all of the professional wrestling leagues. Any way before I talk about the fight a few observations on the people at this thing and remember its Atlantic City, New Jersey:

The Males

• Flat rimmed baseball hats
• Cursing
• Ogling and discussing what they would do to certain females
• Drunk
• Tons of people claiming to be friends with one or more of the fighters
• Wearing t shirts from the fighters, their gyms or UFC guys
• Club hair
• Diamond earrings
• Thick accents, even if they have never been to New York

The Females

• Played the gender role of the hunted
• Short skirts
• Shorter cut shirts
• Comically large implants
• Stripper heels
• Drunk
  
• Hair coloring in various streaks and colors
• Hanging on a guy with all of the above

Now as you can probably guess this isn’t my type of people from either gender, but I have to admit I had a great time with them. I like to think I’m hip in my own way and a dork in my own way. The people at the event probably didn’t understand me either and I am totally cool with that.

The crowd was actually a larger age range than I expected. Everything from dad's with kids, to older men, teenagers, college kids, twenty something’s, thirty something’s and the biggest surprise (though in retrospect shouldn't have been) was the number of cougars.[2] There were also a lot of fights in the stands probably about five on the night. The first being the best as it happened before, during and after the security got there. What made it even funnier was that it was too 45+ year old white guys, with guts.

The fights themselves weren’t the best I had ever seen, especially the first 3 that went the distance. They also took way to long between the fights to actually get things going, thus causing more beer drinking. Which, of course, I had no problem with.

We were there to see Kimbo Slice, of street fighting/youtube fame.[3] He fought Ray Mercer and beat him less than 40 seconds in the first round by a choke. I was hoping for an all standing fight but Kimbo learned some ground technique and Mercer clearly didn’t. So there goes that idea.

Once the fight was over again we went to the casino where I went to win about a grand. I went on a fantastic blackjack run while singing “the devil came out to play” and dancing wit h my friend who was cheering me on and pressuring me into betting $100 bets. Yeah, we looked like drunk idiots, but the people at the table loved us.

The weirdest part was when we left the casinos in the morning to head back to the city, we saw a cloud of smoke raising above the city that was stretched for what looked like a mile. I had never seen anything like it before. Some guy on the radio reported it as a dumpster fire, but according to a local paper it was coming from the Casino Control Commission. Thankfully no injuries were reported. To the right is a picture my friend took on his phone while we were driving home.

You can pretty much say that if I am the center of a my personality spectrum. On Friday night I hung out with the right wing and on Saturday I hung out with the left wing. I’m not sure I have ever had both like that before. I was at a false trendy place and then a place full of mongrels. The only thing they have in common is that they all think they are ballers and they go out to these clubby type places. Well I guess we can agree to disagree. Either way, I love casinos.

In other great news, the North Siders swept the White Sox at US Cellular this week taking the series 5 to 1 this year. Now they just have to keep this momentum going.

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[1] Of course like all shit show clubs that line is only meant for the males

[2] Cougar (as defined by urbandictionary.com)- An older woman who frequents clubs in order to score with a much younger man. The cougar can be anyone from an overly surgically altered wind tunnel victim, to an absolute sad and bloated old horn-meister, to a real hottie or milf. Cougars are gaining in popularity -- particularly the true hotties -- as young men find not only a sexual high, but many times a chick with her shit together.

[3] http://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=kimbo+slice&search=

The Old West Gangsters & The 600th Shot

Nothing really new but i noticed something pretty funny at dinner recently. A bunch of music industry schmoes were sitting around a table talking business, talking music, family, friends, girls... nothing too different from any other group of twenty and thirty something males do. We talked about Barry Bonds, we talked about the... um... t shirt on the female bartender.

It had occurred to me that we were all sitting there with out Blackberry's sitting on the table in front of us. When someone got up, he put it in his pocket. When he sat down he pulled it out of his pocket and put it on the table. It was like we were sitting around in shitty Jesse James movie, and we all sat down to play poker but put our guns on the table to keep everyone from cheating.

I had dismissed this as me doing something that seemed comfortable. It actually may have been the fact that we subconsciously were showing how important we were and what important things we had to take care of. The precise reason that those who don't have Blackberrys hate them. So here we are showing how cool and important we are... isn't that just like a group of guys in the 25-35 range? Please believe it.

Also, congrats to Sammy Sosa for the 600th home run. I am happy that he did it against the Cubs so that we had some fans to cheer for him too. Nice work Sammy.

It's All About Simplicity

So I was at Shea Stadium a couple weeks ago and my seat was broken. The old man who was working as usher decided the best solution was to have my friends sit in their seats and me sit in another section. Clearly this was not an option. I don’t know if you have ever been to Shea, but their ushers are notoriously rude and stupid. I have seen 10 year olds getting yelled at for moving up to the row in front their parents to get one foot closer to the action. Any way, this guy made such a production. He walked us half way around the stadium to his supervisor who just said sit somewhere else. He said, “sit in another section if the people come for those seats, please move.” That made sense! A simple solution. Is it that difficult to be nice?

In pictures, I’m bringing back bunny ears. I just feel like at in your mid twenties that can be randomly funny.

I’m not sexist. Let me say it again, I’m not sexist. However I do think that women are infinitely worse drivers than men. I had a woman cab driver the other day, who was also the nicest cab driver I have ever had. She had lead feet. We went from 0 to speeding in no time then she slammed on the breaks at the last second. She also had no idea where Ludlow and Stanton was. She wasn’t the best driver I have ever had but she was really nice. She took me to see the Methadones at Cake Shop.

Cake Shop might be the best place I have ever been. It’s a venue, a bar, a coffee bar and a vinyl store. So I got to watch the Methadones, then I brought a pint of Guinness upstairs with me and while enjoying it, looked at vinyl. Amazing! Disney World for music guy who enjoys the booze.

After I finished up with the night of Guinness and Cockney Rejects records, I decided to walk home. They haven’t had bands play at Continental in several months now. Why does Trigger sit outside still? What is his job there?

It was fleet week this past week. For those of you who don’t know what that is, its when the sailors all come to New York City dressed in their uniforms for a week of boozing, concertgoing and woman ravaging. They do all of these things well. These guys even the one’s that are flat out dick heads do so well with the ladies this week. Just that Sunday, I walked into a bar to watch the boys from MRNORTH do an acoustic set, when I saw a woman sitting at the bar wearing a sailor hat. Within minutes sure enough I guy in all white comes stumbling out of the bathroom. They eat each other’s faces a little and they went back to her place. So she dug him simply because his uniform. The guy was a dick but I guess what does that have to do with the price of tea in Long Island? God bless America.

This past week I was in LA. Why do people from LA show up every where that’s fun late and everything serious on time? Of course it would be more annoying if the opposite were true but seriously why does this happen? You know the 405 sucks. You know how long it takes to get places but they show up to dinner, concerts, sporting events, etc. late. You can see it. The next time you watch the Dodgers, Lakers or Clippers look at the crowd the first 10 minutes in the game, then look again 45 minutes into the game.

Memo to all bars. Put ice in the urinals. I am a huge supporter of it as it generally keeps the smell of stale beer piss down. Also I have never once to been to a place that has that when a guy comes out and complains. Every guy says, “there is ice in the urinals. I aimed in one spot and watched that shit melt.” Its all about simplicity.