They Might Be Giants - Flood

Okay. Let's see if I can get through this one trying to use the word "wacky" as seldom as possible. Thesaurus, be my guide.

For sheer zaniness, They Might Be Giants reigns supreme among music groups. And to this minor fan, probably nothing in their catalog beats Flood. I mean, for starters, this is the album that produced the immortal, wacky "Particle Man," whose Tiny Toons video would be absolutely required viewing, were it not so inaccessible. (All the YouTube "Particle Man" videos have had the song amputated from the audio. Damn pesky copyright laws.) The single, "Birdhouse In Your Soul," is also insanely catchy and makes absolutely no sense whatsoever.

Yep. Anyone looking for deep meaning in their music - or any meaning at all - should steer clear of this one. Rolling Stone got their panties in a bunch back in 1990 upon Flood's release. For example, they kvetched that although "Your Racist Friend" had a great message, it was ruined by a bouncing tympani and brassy horn bridge. Meh. So the message is good. Who cares? You don't go to McDonald's for health food, and for sure you don't listen to TMBG for resounding polemic.

TMBG - or to be accurate, the Johns Linnell and Flansburgh - exist in a world that is unendingly, deeply wacky. Their sense of reality is bounded by the likes of polka accordions and brass sections gone haywire, with lyrics that stretch puns to their absolute limit and turn everyday situations inside-out. But they have one serious command of pop music. Lincoln, the predecessor, proved all this admirably, but Flood took it to a new, more accessible, and ultimately more outrageously fun level.

It's hard to know where to start - there are just so many high points to this album. So how about "Letterbox," with the lyrics squished together almost unintelligibly: "Illneverknowwhatyoufindwhenyou openupyourletterboxtomorroooooooooow," for starters. The song practically dares you to keep up, much in a similar vein of "It's The End Of The World As We Know It (And I Feel Fine)." Just as weird, but much shorter. Then there's the hilarious "Minimum Wage," wherein...well, that's the lyrics, screamed out at the very beginning, followed by a "Hyaah!" and a whip crack. Oh yeah, and the 1950s kitschy background music for the next 45 seconds. Even one of the album's weaker moments, the relatively dirgelike "Hearing Aid," contains the immortal couplet "More coffee for me, boss/'Cause I'm not as messed up as I'd like to be." (Relatively. For these two guys, dirgelike means "midtempo and lasting longer than three minutes.")

Oh yeah...there's actual tunes, too. (And careful, now...they may not have full-out messages, but some do have plots and stories!) But even they verge on the realm of the commercial jingle, so snappy are they. The computerized handclaps and buzzing organ of "Twisting" belie a jilted girlfriend's desire to see her ex hanged, and screw those tapes and records she loaned him. "Dead" is a mock-ballad, with the two Johns accompanied only by a saloon piano, singing about God knows what. It sounds serious, but what do you make of lyrics like "I came back as a bag of groceries accidentally taken off the shelf before the date stamped on myself"? So it could be about mortality, or it could be about groceries. Either way is just fine, and there's no use trying to analyze it.

Just like "Particle Man" will always be tied with that hilarious Tiny Toons video, Flood is unalterably a product of its time - heck, the opening fanfare announces "It's a brand new record for 1990!" It was a record the cool kids listened to and enjoyed as their little in-joke - at least, the ones who had at least one gear running off keester. You know...the kids into drama or art or choir or the yearbook or the school newspaper. But I digress. Flood is and will always be dated, but it will also always be one of the most excellent albums of the 1990s. At least to this grown-up kid.

Poor, poor Rachael Ray

I feel for Rachael Ray. Yeah, you heard me right. The bubbliest, perkiest, most annoying domestic cocktease since Denise Austin (who's so happy I'm convinced there's pathology there) gets my sympathy. Now, I know that the woman is set for life...if she never set food on another Food Network soundstage or wrote another cookbook, she'd be just fine.

It's that damned letter "a." Her parents, like so many nowadays, couldn't leave well enough alone and name her simply Rachel. Nope. Let's throw in a rogue letter that makes no sense to ensure the misery of our dear daughter, and to ensure that, despite her best attempts, people will forevermore be misspelling her name (to the tune of 1.3 million "Rachel Ray" misspellings listed on Google, people).

Probably anyone outside of "John Smith" can relate. I certainly can. I got so sick of people misspelling my name that when I got to college, I finally created a smartass retort to those sorry twerps. "Just like the Biblical character, only with an 's' at the end." Especially at a religious school, I figured that'd work. Except for one thing...these stupes misspelled the Biblical character, too. Cue wailing and gnashing of teeth.

Okay. Gotta back up here. Back in my spelling heyday, if anyone tried to foist someone's random name on me and dare me to spell it correctly, I'd claim immunity. (Still do, in fact, except that hardly anyone asks me, 20 championship spellers down the road.) There are so many variations to so many names that any attempt is doomed to failure. Words that have been in the dictionary for years and years, that's one thing. Names that end up having variations dreamed up by sadistic parents, that's another.

Hollywood parents lately have jumped on the "let's give our kids the dorkiest names we can so we can prove how Very Creative we are" bandwagon, and I pray, PRAAY that the rest of America doesn't follow suit. I really don't feel the need to go out of my way and find a link to emphasize this for ya, so Google yerselves silly, kids. But just one name: Shiloh Pitt. For all the piles o' shit that poor girl is gonna have to slog through for the rest of her life (and if she lives through middle school and high school, I'm buying her tell-all), her dumbfuck mom and dad deserve to do years of hard labor. (And Brad? A double sentence for abandoning Jennifer Aniston for that condescending celebutante who makes Greta Garbo seem approachable. And hey, Jen? You can pose nude for GQ again any ol' time you want. Yes, this is a gay man saying this. My straight brothers will totally back me on this, though.)

So my heart goes out to Rachael, but just for that one thing. And I wish a balsam-wood door slamming on her parents' heads for giving her a craptacular name. Oh yeah, and the same for her thousands, maybe millions of fans who adore her, know her, and can't get her damned name right, even though it's visible everywhere.

Pump Up the Volume

"Do you ever get the feeling that everything in America is completely fucked up?"

And like that, I was hooked. In the very first line, a movie had caught my attention and would not let go for the next 100 minutes. All the angst of a teenager who somehow felt that life in this blessed country of ours was severely off track began here and rampaged all through Pump Up the Volume. It was like Paul Simon's "American Tune," only more graphic, more punk, and updated for the life of the alienated 1990s teenager, rather than the merely discontented 1970s young adult. Oh yeah, and it was a full film instead of a pretty four minute-long folk song. Never mind that it was a suburbanite's view of alienation, rebellion, and just generally acting out. I was a suburbanite. And a fairly alienated, rebellious, and disturbed one, as they come. So it hit me like a sucker punch to the gut, as if someone had read my mind and transferred its contents, goo and all, to celluloid.

It's hard to say exactly where my adoration should start. Mark Hunter/Hard Harry (a very cute Christian Slater) was my alter ego, a high school kid hiding his literary talents by day behind painful shyness and by night behind voice distortion over his freeform makeshift radio station. He'd utter random, meaningless thoughts on the air like "Eat your cereal with a fork, and do your homework in the dark," but I lapped it up like honey because it sounded so gleefully subversive, and man, what if you did exactly those things? What would people think? How fun would it be to screw with their minds? It wasn't a stretch for me to go from there to considering super-gluing all the pots and pans to the kitchen ceiling, just to see how the parental units would respond. (For the record: I never did, but man, some days I wish I had. Would have explained a lot more of my impulses nowadays.)

But then Hard Harry would swing from the gleeful to the deathly serious (at least for young kids like me): "Sometimes being young is less fun than being dead." Yeah. Tell that to the kid who's dealing with potential rejection far beyond what his 15 years on this planet has prepared him for. Say that to a kid who often becomes morbidly depressed for reasons he really can't fathom. He'll be listening. And he'll still be listening when Hard Harry says, "We're all worried, we're all in pain...Being a teenager sucks, but surviving it is the whole point. Quitting is not going to make you stronger, living will. So just hang on and hang in there." It was lines like these that kept me going when really, nothing else would.

But it was the realm between the absurd and the serious where Pump Up the Volume really came together. Hard Harry was able to take the deepest depths of teenage angst and give it meaning, give it momentum, and give it a target. Soon after Hard Harry began his radio show, a fan of his wrote in threatening suicide, and after a disturbingly blunt phone conversation, he tragically followed up on his threat. Hard Harry showed appropriate remorse afterward, but then began to rally himself – and purely by proxy, his other fans – against the forces that brought one of them down. He rightly took aim at his suburban chockablock surroundings - physical and otherwise - that created artificial walls and separated people from the compassion that everyone needs. "We're all disturbed. And if we're not, why not? Doesn't this blend of blindness and blandness want to make you do something crazy? Then why not do something crazy?" After hearing this call to arms, I wanted to yell out, "Hallelujah!" Except he had already beaten me to it, about 30 minutes before that. That's how onto my game Hard Harry was.

Oh, and since we’re talking about teenage drama, we can’t ignore hormones. How uncomfortable did Hard Harry make moviegoers when he faked a sexual act – jacking off – on the air that billions of men engage in every day? It was that unabashedness – again, behind a smokescreen of voice distortion – that was so compelling to all teenagers. To the guys? Wow…that guy has balls to be able to just admit to doing something like that…but actually jack off? And on the air? Damn. I can only imagine what women thought. Honestly, I had (and still have) no idea. But perhaps more compelling was Hard Harry’s insecurity about opening himself up to sexual attraction with someone else, expressed so dramatically during his scenes with an utterly compelling Samantha Mathis. (I had a bit of a girlcrush on her for a bit, quite similar to the one I had on Winona Ryder in Beetlejuice.) Gay, straight, at that point, it didn’t matter…being supremely awkward and uncomfortable, yet aching to connect with someone on a profoundly profound level was universal.

Pump Up the Volume, to be honest, doesn’t have much of a plot, much like its brilliant kindred spirit Dazed and Confused. Okay, so Hard Harry starts his own renegade radio show, eventually gets in trouble with the feds, and is arrested. Saw that one coming from miles away. But just like good Greek drama (my God, am I actually comparing this to Greek drama?), the story is not in what happens, but how it happens. Everyone knew Oedipus was going to kill his father and marry his mother and gouge his eyes out; how would it transpire on stage, though? Similarly, we all know Hard Harry’s going to jail for his (supposed) crimes, but how much can he get away with before the plug is pulled? Obviously, if he’s raising the hackles of the FCC, he goes much further than giving a (very powerful) voice to teen disillusionment. Heck, even what he accomplishes (bringing the corrupt administration of his high school down) pales in comparison to the voice he gives to his alienated peers.

Incidentally, I never did get this soundtrack, which is a bummer. But I’ve heard the original versions of at least half the songs, including Sonic Youth’s searing “Titanium Exposé” and a supremely awesome surf guitar version the Pixies did of their own “Wave of Mutilation.” Definitely worth a listen. And even though Concrete Blonde will never cease being cool in this guy’s eyes, Leonard Cohen’s original version of “Everybody Knows” is simply unbeatable. Download it posthaste.

Daria on YouTube...and DVD?

Two things Daria-related have recently made my universe much brighter. First off, there is a YouTube channel that has recently been updated (actually, inundated) with many episodes of Daria, after a few-month hiatus. Including my personal fave episode. Enjoy, kiddos. (If you're wondering what the big deal is about Daria, check this out.)

But perhaps the bigger news (and hopefully this isn't just another rumor), is that Daria may well be officially released on DVD next year!

No snarky, witty, or otherwise Daria-worthy comments right now...our hero is too involved with the physical labors of moving to a new home to engage his brain in a coherent manner. But I will keep you, my one or two regular readers, updated.

Frank's Wild Years - Tom Waits

Tom Waits is a genius sui generis. (Go look that one up, kids.) He spent the first phase of his career (in the 1970s) doing the semi-sensitive songwriter gig, with some twists that made you realize he had maybe a few screws loose. But his heart was always in the right place. And for the most part, he held onto his sanity fairly well.

Until Swordfishtrombones. I mean, the title alone should tell you something. Tom suddenly begins grunting, slithering, squawking, and belching out his songs, exorcising some mighty hepcat demons and channeling his Beat Generation forebears. Not that he was all crazy...he still painted some gorgeous, almost impressionistic ballads, like the sentimental "Johnsburg, Illinois." But some of those songs were juxtaposed with music so nearly hallucinatory and random that the serious, unironic stuff was like hitting a brick wall after careening down an alley in a car without brakes. Swordfishtrombones is brilliant in large part for its fearless leap into primitive, absurd territory, the likes of which had probably not been imagined for at least 10 years. It's doubly triumphant for having been released in 1983, a year rife with synthesizers and hair mousse. Saying that this album ignored the trends of its time implies far too much of a relationship. Swordfishtrombones simply existed in its own universe.

"Frank's Wild Years," a hilarious short monologue performed like a poetry reading complete with groovy organ in the background, just has to be heard. I mean, any piece that starts this way is an instant classic, no matter what follows: "Frank settled down out in the Valley, and he hung his wild years on a nail that he drove through his wife's forehead." And the humor continues. Frank lives a suburban life with a wife who's derided as a "spent piece of used jet-trash." (Thankfully, she "kept her mouth shut most of the time.") Their little chihuahua Carlos "had some kind of skin disease and was totally blind" - an automatic shoo-in for the World's Ugliest Dog Championships. Tom Waits deadpans his way through the monologue as deftly as Steven Wright, with an abrupt ending it would be unfair to reveal. (Apparently, "Frank's Wild Years" struck Waits so much, he decided to expand on the song, creating an album by the same name four years later.)

Can't say much else except to repeat: Tom Waits is hidden treasure, a quixotic angelheaded hipster that deserves a wide audience. Swordfishtrombones may be a bit too eccentric an album to start out with for most people, but if you wanna dive in, "Frank's Wild Years" is among the best and most accessible of the songs here.

(Also recommended: "Johnsburg, Illinois," "16 Shells From a Thirty-Ought Six," "Down, Down, Down," "Soldier's Things")

The Jucy Lucy

First off: No, that is not misspelled. Well, yes it is, but it's intentional. Sic. To spell it correctly is to get the Jucy Lucy all wrong.

Second, the picture just doesn't do this hummer justice. People, listen up. There's cheeseburgers. And then there's cheeseburgers. But this? Hot DAMN, the Jucy Lucy reigns supreme o'er all. A cheeseburger with the cheese (American or Velveeta, of course!) placed in the center of the burger. Then cooked until the cheese is liquefied and the temperature of the earth's core.

Somehow, during my six years of tenure in Minnesota from 1993-1999, I evaded the gravitational pull of the Jucy Lucy. Seems like hotdish, wild rice soup, and the belly-busting fare at the Minnesota State Fair (a demimonde all unto itself), may have kept me in check. My loss. Years later (like 2004, I think), I finally found my way to Matt's Bar at 3500 Cedar Ave S in south Minneapolis, home of the original Jucy Lucy. And began doing penance for my decade-long sin of omission.

When you go to Matt's, there will be a wait. At least 15 minutes, more like a half hour. The whole restaurant is the size of an old 1950s style icebox. Sardines is the word you're looking for. As for the decor, it's all vinyl seats, wood paneling, and laminate table tops. Lowbrow kitsch seldom gets better than this. Once you jimmy yourself into your seat, order a pop. Only don't expect a glass. If a can's good enough for Matt's, it's good enough for you.

Now, when I said I did penance, here's how it happened: I received my Jucy Lucy, grabbed it, and immediately took my first bite. And squirted molten lava all over my hands and into my mouth, cauterizing most of my taste buds in the process. Lesson learned: No matter how hungry you are, you do NOT eat a Jucy Lucy when it first arrives. You'll look like a rube. Stuff down the fries that arrived in the basket. (Oh yeah, no plates here, either...they don't need no stinkin' plates.) Look around and enjoy the people-watching. Take your time. The cooks sure did, didn't they? But it just takes that long to make the perfect Jucy Lucy. And if you can evade the tongue-searing effects of the liquid cheese, then you'll taste a Midwestern carnivore's idea of heaven.

P.Y.T. (Pretty Young Thing) - Michael Jackson

So here's my token Michael Jackson smash note. Because if I didn't do one, I'd be un-American and stuff. Also, for me not to acknowledge the awesome forces that were "Wanna Be Startin' Somethin',"Beat It,"and especially, especially, my GOD especially "Billie Jean" would be treason.

Thriller, yes, did a huge ol' number on me. I remember spending one whole recess in 3rd grade practicing my moon walk. Never did perfect it, really. I wrote all my favorite Michael Jackson songs in calligraphy (yes, calligraphy - with a calligraphy pen with refillable ink cartridges, no less) on my Trapper Keeper. Did I mention I was a nerd? Oh, and then there was that whole Victory tour thing. Nosebleed seats be damned - the day after that concert, I was well-nigh OBSESSED with all things Jackson.

But I have to give my props to what I ultimately thought was the essential fourth wheel to accompany the aforementioned triune: "P.Y.T." The first verse alone killed me. Only Michael Jackson could serenade his "Tenderoni" and not make her sound like a pizza condiment - he made it just about the damned coolest name ever. And his pleas to her to "spark my nature, sugar fly with me" were totally irresistible. But to this landlocked kid with no exposure to anything remotely Valley Girl-ish (other than my sister's copy of Fer Shur! How to Be a Valley Girl-Totally! - now out of print, malheureusement), hearing him yell, "Let me take you to the max!" just sent me overboard. Some guys just had all the moves and said all the right things and were too cool for words. And Michael Jackson was WAAAY at the head of the pack in that regard. Incidentally, the rest of the song was great, with the call-and-response bridge (thanks to Janet and LaToya) and whatever that damned chipmunk was singing at the end of the song - we may never know.

So, yeah, there's my Michael Jackson tribute. Poor guy was America's answer to Icarus - flew so high, and plummeted to such depths. I hear someone recently say, "Too soon! Too soon!" Too soon? Really? Sorry...but to this cynic's eye, MJ ceased being relevant just about the time "The Way You Make Me Feel" hit the airwaves (with "Man in the Mirror" and "Black and White" being the few exceptions). Worst of all, though, he just plain turned too weird, too white, too oxygenated. Going into a store and purchasing Dangerous or even browsing around the Michael Jackson catalog was tantamount to announcing to everyone in your class that you were a gaywad. Regardless of how great the music may have been inside. But in 1982, not liking Michael Jackson was just plain not an option. You might as well say you didn't like breathing.

Mai Tai

I've mentioned this one before. During my tiki summer of 2004, I discovered a recipe for a mai tai that I thought would fit the bill...something tropical, sweet, fruity, and strong. Yes, yes, yes, and HELL YEAH! Depth charge to the liver and the pancreas in one fell swoop. When I made one of these hummers, that did me just fine for the night. Once, I decided to have two. I think I lost my way to the bedroom that night and just passed out in the hall. (This is even less impressive knowing that at the time, the living room recliner and the bedroom were separated by, oh, maybe 20 feet. And the hall was straight.)

Anyhow, ever since that time, I have referred to this particular mai tai recipe as the drink of death. You don't drink this one lightly. You drink it to get wasted. For the uninitiated, it tastes like slightly flavored ethanol with red food coloring. (Incidentally, it looks MUCH redder than this picture portrays, thanks to grenadine.) The recipe comes from the New York Bartender's Guide. (So it ain't Trader Vic's. Whatever.)

So, the Mai Tai of 2004, the Drink of Death:

2 shots light rum

2 shots dark rum

1 shot orange curacao

1 shot lime juice

1 tbsp grenadine

1 tbsp orgeat (almond syrup)

Mix together in a shaker pre-filled with ice. Serve on the rocks in a big glass. With a serious drink like this, ya don't need no stinkin' paper umbrellas or cherries or pineapple garnishes. But they might help it go down smoother.

Cry Baby - Stray Cats

No, I'm not an expert on rockabilly. I just know that it's music that's just dripping with pomaded teenage rebellion, 1950s style, and was a great offshoot of more straight-ahead rock 'n' roll. I consider it the landlocked, scuffier, wilder, and slightly more countrified version of surf guitar music. Oh yeah, and there's singing, too...almost exclusively by guys, almost exclusively about girls, cars, backstreet brawls and beefs with The Man.

Don't know much about the Stray Cats, either. Of all their songs before 1990, I only know their three biggest ones: "Stray Cat Strut," "(She's) Sexy & 17," and "Rock This Town." Brian Setzer and Co. were born about 30 years too late, it seems. But they deserve mad props for bringing rockabilly back with a vengeance in the 1980s, even if it was an uphill struggle. They were about the only ones in the convertible cherry red Cadillac spearheading the effort. Worse, people were too infatuated with new wave synthesizers and short, sunny pop tunes to pay attention to much music before 1975.

By the early 1990s, the Stray Cats had long grown old. So it was no surprise that in 1992, Choo Choo Hot Fish dropped with the impact of a pebble into Niagara Falls. A shame, too, since the album wasn't half bad. But "Cry Baby" - the one song that my local "alternative" station played from it - was faster, more rambunctious, and more infectious than anything the Stray Cats had ever dropped before. Including "Rock This Town." If there were any justice, radio as a whole would have picked up on this hummer and brought these guys back to relevance. No such luck.

There's no real variation on any rockabilly themes here. Guys in these songs are always itchy and impatient and finding fault with the world around them. Here, the subject of discontent is a crybaby who always runs late for her dates. Lyrics like "The game you're playing is just not my bag/Why must you be such a drag?" certainly didn't win any awards for poetic excellence, but score major points for punk-like conciseness and attitude. Here, attitude is everything. Brian Setzer's sultry snarl is reverbed to the max, as is the stuttering guitar that zooms up and down like a rollercoaster flying out of control. And damn, these guys sound like they're having a blast. You'd think Setzer was thrilled to be kicking his girl to the curb, free to be on the prowl again.

Yeah, the Stray Cats are a footnote in music history, long gone (aside from the cliched reunion concerts and tours). And rockabilly remains the bastard cousin of rock 'n' roll, often easily overlooked in search of other genres with more variation. But who cares? Those facts are irrelevant when you discover songs as fun as "Cry Baby."

Coronary heart disease

Paging all health care professionals with half a brain. (And that should mean the vast, vast majority of you health care professionals.) Especially all cardiologists. Especially especially my cardiology instructor from back in the day, Dr. Milner.

If I read or hear another mention of "coronary heart disease," I'm goin' medieval on the fool. Look here:

coronary (adj) 1. of or pertaining to the heart.

"Coronary heart disease" is an obnoxious, stupid redundancy. It's like saying "heart heart disease." Some might argue this point:

coronary (adj) 2. pertaining to the arteries that supply the heart tissues and originate in the root of the aorta.

And they say, "See? It's heart disease that's specific to the coronary arteries!" I guess that's to differentiate from conditions like cardiomegaly or endocarditis. So, okay. That makes sense. Kind of.

BUT.

If it's disease that has struck the coronary arteries, then just say so. Coronary artery disease. Not so hard, is it? Saying "coronary heart disease" just makes you look dumb. At least to this health care professional.