I'm baaaack!

Oh man, does it feel good to be back or what? Let's jump right in and get caught up...

What the Heck has Mike Been Doing?

Getting Married
I'm sure you've seen the pictures on Facebook (Speaking of, I'm now at www.facebook.com/nagel.mike - the other itinerations of my custom url had been taken by Mike Nagel's with far fewer friends and way more time on their hands. And I'm mad about it.). Please do take the time to soak in the glory that is a tailored tuxedo worn with white Chuck Taylors, while you're at it. We do promise to post pics of our own as soon as we get the digitals back from our photographer.

As I was remarking to a co-worker the other day, the process of getting married is pretty much like having a second, full-time job. One that's a lot of fun, but also takes a lot of work, a lot of time, a lot of patience, and you have to pay half the salary of your other job to work there. Oh, and when the job's over, there's no exit interview. There's just half a cake left and a car ride to a court-mandated, two-week vacation where you're left to wonder, "Did that just happen?"

I do want to write more about the wedding in the near future, but for now I feel guilty about mentioning it at all since Sonja and I have yet to post a single thank-you in the seven weeks after the Big Day.

Honeymooning
If you have about six hours to spare (like, you know, when you're at work reading this), you can check out the pictures of our two-week trip to Italy: Rome, Florence, a quick stop in Pisa, a day trip via bike through Tuscany, and Venice. As you'll see, the trip was absolutely amazing... and I'll write all about it coming up. Suffice it to say, we have a whole lot of souvenirs hanging on the walls of our place.

Moving In
Speaking of, did you know when someone moves in with someone else it takes them twice as long to do it as it would if just one of them moved? Yeah, we're still finding places to put all of Sonja's stuff and others places where we can donate mine.

More importantly, when you get married, people give you a lot of stuff. And they give you a lot of money. We're enjoying refurbishing the kitchen and the non-existent linen closet.

Work
Yup, back at it. Moving on!

Reading
Okay, so I'm not reading that much, but I am reading a little. I'll even tell you what I'm reading - Team of Rivals - in the hope that the next time one of you asks what I'm reading I'll have finished and moved on to something else. If not, I'll lie and say I've been buried up to *here* in literary magazines and haven't touched any book-length work in ages, darling.

Music
So, here's what it's my iPod of late that you should totally check out... MuteMath's Spotlight EP - fantastic single from an album that drops on 8/18, Our Lady Peace Burn, Burn if only for nostalgic purposes, The Devil Wears Prada Dear Love: A Beautiful Dischord suggested by a dude from GYG, and Michael Jackson Off the Wall because it's great to remember when the King of Pop was still royalty.

And While I was Writing This Post...
I learned how to pop popcorn on the stove without a JiffyPop exploding foil bag.

Get On Your Boots

In case you haven't heard, but that big band from Dublin just released their new song. You can listen to "Get On Your Boots," the first single from No Line On the Horizon at U2.com. Check it out here.

I listened to it twice and liked it. It's not "Vertigo," but it's along the same vein. It's a catchy piece of pop rock that's hard enough to maintain credibility, but light and upbeat enough to garner some serious radio play. Of course, if the Edge wanted to play fart noises through a cardboard tube while Bono read off a Campbell's Soup label, they'd still sell 18 bazillion records.

It's good to be U2.

While I'm at it, here's the track listing:

1. No Line On The Horizon
2. Magnificent
3. Moment of Surrender
4. Unknown Caller
5. I'll Go Crazy If I Don't Go Crazy Tonight
6. Get On Your Boots
7. Stand Up Comedy
8. Fez - Being Born
9. White As Snow
10. Breathe
11. Cedars Of Lebanon

And I'll also share my requisite U2 story and say that I saw them, live and in-studio, on Saturday Night Live when they played Vertigo and I Will Follow and brought the house down. Yeah, you're jealous. Heck, I'm jealous of the 2004 version of me.

Heavy Metal Flow Chart

This was just too good to pass up. It's a heavy metal flow chart that breaks down hardcore band names into five basic categories: Deadly Things, Religion, Death, Animals and Badass Misspellings.

I'm giving it the big double devil horns right now. Check out the full-size chart over here.

Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends...

Come on now, let's not get our knickers into a twist and anoint Coldplay the World's Biggest Band and Chris Martin as a falsetto-singing, British world-savior. All the pop music magazines did that for X&Y, and we all know how well that turned out.

Thankfully, the press seems to have taken a vicodin or three and just chilled out, man. While the fourth full-length from our (current) favorite fab four finally hit shelves today, there has been much less buzz surrounding this one. I don't know if it's because we've realized that pumping something up too much only leads to abject disappointment (no, that was not a penis joke... entirely) or that anyone who names their kid "Apple" can't also be the second-coming of Ghandi. Instead of magazine spread after magazine spread of blah-blah-blah, we've had one single released online and another made into one of those wicked-cool iTunes ads. That's good enough for me.

Maybe the record label execs relaxed this time around, realizing that they're going to be swimming in royalties either way after yet another chart-topper. Or maybe the band just got fed up with answering the same questions at every interview. Who knows? But it just seems quieter this year. That's okay with me. Not every band has to pull a U2 when they drop another record.

Thanks to something I'll call "industry connections," I received a copy of the album (possibly illegally, so I won't say how to thus not incriminate any co-conspirators) last week. For anyone who likes Coldplay - either secretly or openly - you'll be happy to hear that this album is solid, track 1-13.

Throughout the wordily titled Viva la Vida or Death and All His Friends, Chris Martin's vocals take a backseat to the music. His voice, at times, falls to a whisper-level croon as the guitars rise and swell (this time, definitely not a penis joke) around him, making it hard to figure out exactly what he's saying. For me, the lyrics were always the best thing about Coldplay tracks, so it was surprising the band moved in that direction. I didn't like it at first, but after a couple listens, the effect grew on me.

It did so mostly because the music on this album is far catchier than on any of the band's others. The guys took a page from Radiohead's playbook and centered each track around a single riff, building and layering the guitars, drums, organs and piano throughout (with the occasional string section, steel guitar or middle-eastern lute thrown in for good measure). The result is a whole lot of theatrical buildup that gets you toe-tapping and head-bopping; the music keeps you listening for long enough to start to pick out Martin's words. And when you do, you find some gems:

Those who are dead, are not dead.
They're just living in my head.
And since I fell for that spell, I am living it, as well.
Time is so short and unsure, there must be something wrong...
You thought you might be a ghost
You didn't get to heaven, but you made it close.

If you're a fan of the band, definitely pick up the album. I won't say it's the year's best, but it's probably in my top-10 so far - and I don't see it dropping from there anytime soon. I give it a solid B+

Now if only I had scored tickets to one of the free shows in New York or London....

The scariest moment of my life...

The first emotion is absolute shock:

I'm sitting in my chair, just staring at the computer screen. My mouth moves, but no sound comes out... I must look like a beached fish, gasping for oxygen. That's pretty much what I feel like - it's hard to draw a breath and the air moves raggedly through my throat, rattling slightly.

Followed by furious, burning anger:

Just then, my brain seems to catch up with my body. My fists clench involuntarily, fingernails digging into palms, as my whole body stiffens. It's a reaction to the fire that was lit in my belly. A soft matchstrike at first that quickly - nearly instantly - builds into a raging inferno. The heat shoots up my chest and consumes my head as my face turns a brilliant shade of scarlet.

Gasp. I gulp in a lungful of air and a profanity explodes out with the exhalation. It doesn't give me any sort of release, so I try it again - louder and clearer, slamming both fists down into the arms of my chair. The exclamations and pounding come faster, in rhythm and the furniture in the room shakes. No one can hear me, it's nearly midnight, as I vent my frustrations to the air.

Which gives way to quiet, pleading denial:

I sink back into the chair and cease shouting. The sides of my hands are sore from slamming into the wooden arms, but I'm not thinking about that at all. Now, I'm once again looking at the computer screen. This time, shaking my head slightly and muttering, "No, no, NO," over and over again. I re-start everything, hoping that something's changed, like a desperate patient reviewing test results... but nothing has. The results are the same. The file is empty.

Last, a sickening realization:

I just deleted my entire music collection. Thousands of dollars and years of accumulation gone in an instant. 8,500 songs, 100 videos, 75 gigs of data... wiped out. I sold my CD collection last year and can't get the songs back. There is no backup. I am screwed.

*****

Friends, I hope and pray that this never, ever happens to you. Perhaps I am way to (psychotically) attached to my music collection, but I felt like a large piece of me died that night. This thing that had always been a part of me. Full of favorite albums, rare tracks, defunct local bands, Internet-only downloads and live cuts, I'd babied it over the years. Like a gardener, I pruned back albums that I no longer listened to, added new areas to appreciate, maintained it when it got old and upgraded to digital. More than mere enjoyment, my music collection was a hobby, no, a passion.

And then, in an instant, it was gone. I was alone. It was terrifying.

It all happened when I tried to re-partition my external hard drive so I could set up Time Machine to backup my data. If you're not tech-savvy, don't worry - I didn't understand half of what I just wrote.

Basically, I have an external hard drive to hold my music collection (it's too big to fit on my laptop). Time Machine is a Mac program that automatically backs up your computer. So, if you delete something by accident or if everything crashes, you can recover all of your files - not too shabby, eh? I wanted to use half of the external hard drive to house my music collection and half to back up my computer. To do so, I had to divide it (or "partition"), which is kind of like drawing a virtual line through the thing.

When I partitioned it, the program said that it would not touch any information stored in the current section of the drive, which is where I had all my music. It would just separate out a new chunk of space for me to use. Simple enough.

Except some glitch occurred - I don't know what - and my entire hard drive erased itself.

Poof. Everything was gone.

*****

Ultimately, acceptance:

It was gone. All gone. There was nothing more I could do.

My laptop's internal fan whirred to a stop, both silence and darkness filled the room as it turned itself off. Slowly, I picked myself up from my chair. Now past midnight, it was time for bed. 90 minutes of denial, frustration and vain attempts to turn back time had failed. I'd started trying to calculate the costs of rebuilding my music library... hours spent transferring files from friends' computers, re-buying albums that I couldn't live without... but it was overwhelming. I could never get it back.

I gave up and went to sleep, which came surprisingly fast. Perhaps I'd exhausted myself with worry.

"Tomorrow's another day," I thought, just before I drifted off.

A happy ending:

Brian, my brother and resident Apple-expert, sent me a link to Senuti. It's a progam that's intended to back up your iPod. You can use it to unlock any iPod and transfer the music files, playlists and videos back to your computer. It's free (donations encouraged) and works extremely fast...

A little ray of hope burst through my sickening cloud of despair. Maybe, just maybe, the program would work like advertised. I quickly downloaded it, opened it up and clicked the "transfer" button.

You could not imagine my joy when I saw names of songs flashing through the list, each one announcing a successful copy from the iPod back to my iTunes library! I shouted out of happiness, "Whoohoo!" Pumped my fists and ran around my room in circles.

Really.

I'm a child. And I turn 25 next week.

12 hours of depressing loss led to 3 hours of joyful exuberance as the program took 60 gigs of music and videos and restored them to all of their organized glory. In the end, I recovered all of my music and only lost about half of my videos (all from seasons of Lost and The Office).

I don't know what the lesson is here... I'm sure there's one somewhere. Frankly, I'm still too much in shock to figure it out. For a day, I ran the complete gamut of emotions - loss, depression, denial and anger to disbelieving happiness and celebration. I feel like it's the 2004 Sox-Yankees playoff series all over again.

I love life!

Coldplay - Violet Hill... LOTD

As promised, I have Coldplay's new single, "Violet Hill," up her for Pando-users to download. I don't know if it's illegal, but if you're Chris Martin and you somehow stumbled onto my crappy blog, then tell me to take it down and I will. I'm only putting it up here because you guys gave it away for free and I want everyone to go out there and buy the album and make you infinitely more wealthy.

How's that for a disclaimer?

Also, I'm putting it up because it took me three days to get the link sent to me via email and I'm assuming most of you are having the same problems.

It is still available on the band's site, so feel free to grab it there, too.

Happy listening! Let me know what you think in the comments...

Death Cab for Cutie downloads...

One of my favorite bands, Death Cab for Cutie, has another full-length dropping in a couple weeks. In advance of the album, Daytrotter has put up a six-song, live session for free download. Here's the track list:

1) A Movie Script Ending
2) Cath
3) Styrofoam Plates
4) Talking Bird
5) The New Year
6) Why You'd Want to Live Here

Tracks two and four are from the upcoming disc, Narrow Stairs. The others are favorites from The Photo Album and Transatlanticism, both of which you really should own. Heck, you should celebrate their entire catalog.

Want a taste? I've put up the tracks here for you to download, too, as long as you have Pando. If you don't, go get it or visit Daytrotter to get the files there. Heck, visit that last site anyway as a little web thank-you for the session.

Also, Coldplay just released the first single of its upcoming album for free download, too. I haven't gotten it yet, but I heard it and it's not bad. I'll post it later.

LOTD... or This Week's Sign of the Apocalypse...

Normally, I wouldn't bother you with such trite material, but this was just too terrible to pass up. This is an actual song by an "artist" named Riskay who apparently has (incredibly) a SECOND album coming out. Yes, the world been subjected to not one, but two Riskay offerings.

Apparently, the tune "hit big in 2007" as an Internet session. Whatever. It's called "Smell Yo' 'Weewee'" and is the thrilling story of a girl who, suspecting her man is cheating, tells him to drop trou so she can... well, you get the point.

I'd say enjoy, but I don't think you will. Try not to bang your head onto your desk in horror and/or paroxysms of laughter.

(PS - NSFW)

Editor's note: I decided I couldn't, with good conscience, keep the video posted here. If you really want to see it, here's the link. But you're going to have to leave my site to see it.

Editor's update: There's also an acoustic version. Rock on.

Arena rock no more...

Sonja and I spent a most enjoyable evening together on Tuesday. We traveled down to Boston, as I'd bought us a pair of tickets to see Colin Meloy, frontman for The Decemberists, on his solo tour as a big thank-you for being so patient with me during the thesis-writing process. The past few months have been semi date-free and I was trying to make up for it.

Previously:
S - "Can we go on a date and spend quality time together in a time symbolic of our eternal and undying connection?"
M - "Aieeee! I have 20 more pages due and I haven't started yet! I need to lock myself in, duct tape myself to a chair, stop showering, shun all human contact and subsist on popcorn and beer until I get this done."
(repeat every weekend for four months)

May it be known that, not once, did Sonja complain about me ignoring her. She rocks. I suck.

Anyways, Meloy is out on tour and promoting a new solo album while the band takes a break in between its last tour and next release. The show in Boston was at the Somerville Theater, which is a terrific venue. It's small without being crowded, atmospheric without being contrived and old without being smelly. They also serve beer for $5, so they've got that going for them, too.

It was a terrific concert. I always go into solo shows wondering if the artist can pull it off without a band to interact with, but Meloy is a consummate performer. Any worries I had were laid to rest after the first song when he held the following banter with the audience:

"Freebird!" screamed some annoying high schooler who no doubt has never heard that song in her life.
"Sorry, not going to play Freebird," replied a wry Meloy. "You see, I'm a charter member of MACOF - Musicians Against the Calling Out of Freebird... Incidentally, there's also a committee in MACOF that promotes the writing of more songs about gypsies, which I chair."

The whole night was like that - Meloy playing songs, joking with the crowd and interrupting his own train of thought to tell stories or recall forgotten words/chords to songs. Hands down, it was a blast - particularly his performances of "Perfect Crime" and "Shankill Butchers." It was a low-key, intimate and fun concert.

The show highlighted a realization that I've been coming to for a while now. I don't know if it's out of snobbery or that I'm getting old (or a combination of the two), but I can't do arena shows anymore. I'm just not into getting sweaty with big crowds, being a mile away from the stage, waiting in line for hours to get in and paying hundreds of dollars for tickets the way I used to be. That's ceased to be fun.

In the past five years, I can only think of one, maybe two, bands that I would see again in an arena. The first is Tool, because it's a band that needs to be seen to be fully appreciated and they put an enormous amount effort into putting on a show and not just a concert. The other band would be U2, just for the experience - but the amount of annoying people there and the prohibitive cost of tickets probably would discount me from every seeing them again.

The other bands I've seen in arenas over that span include Death Cab for Cutie (one of my favorites, but I am never, ever going to see them in a place that holds more than 800), Franz Ferdinand (you can't dance in bleachers), Stone Temple Pilots (uh, don't ask), P.O.D. (again, don't ask), the Darkness, Dashboard Confessional (from days as a 15-year-old girl), Incubus (several times - it was a phase), Wilco (awesome group), Kings of Leon (opened for U2 and were terrific, but no one cared because it was a 40,000-seat arena), the Flaming Lips (great performance, but again, not an arena band) and Justin Timberlake (eeeeeeeeeeek! Justin! marry me!).

Live music is meant to be soaked in and appreciated. At its best, it's a deep emotional connection and a touching experience that feels as if it's potentially life-altering (Although, it's not, but for an evening, you think it might be). It's hard to sense that, however, if the periphery of your mind and senses are being bombarded by a huge crowd and an echoing venue. In thinking back to the 15 best live performances I've seen, only two were in arenas (the aforementioned U2 and Paul McCartney playing 95% Beatles songs for 3 hours).

So, unless something huge rolls around, I think I'm calling off all future arena shows. If the venue is bigger than 1,000 people, I'm not going - unless it's a festival, and then I may reconsider.

I want the intimacy. I want the lead guitarist to sweat on me. I want to have the bar and the stage no more than 15 feet from me at all times. Is that too much to ask? I don't think it is.

It's a Trifecta!

I forgot to throw this is... Here's another download for you to enjoy - "Dance and Holler" from The Everyday Visuals.

Check out the bands website here. Or you could visit its MySpace. It's a Boston-based group that's starting to garner some national attention on the indie circuit. They're pretty good - I'd call them dance rock with heavy songwriting chops. Well worth a listen. If you like the track, please buy the album or go to one of their shows (couple coming up if you're in Boston or New York).

Today, I'd like to have a beer with...

We're going to start a new, regularly re-visited topic for our website, here at Mike Nagel's blog.

(By "we," I mean the royal we. We like to refer to ourself like that from time to time. Apparently, since we've started living in our own apartment, we have developed multiple personalities out of boredom. You know, just like in solitary confinement.)

Anyways, the new bit we'll be shoving down your throats for Internet consumption (Yes, we know the previous statement sets off the NSFW filters on your workplace's firewall.), is telling you who'd we'd like to meet and share a beer with.

This is not, by the way the man-crush segment or the crush-crush segment. Those are coming and will give us ample opportunity to post pictures of Natalie Portman and Sawyer from Lost.
We'll leave it to you to decide which is which.

(I'm also stopping all multiple-personality typing and parantheticals...just... about...n...now.)

Okay, so down to the drinking business... I would very much like to have a beer with Kate Nash.

For those of your unfamiliar, Kate is the latest female singer-songwriter to start making waves here in the States after hitting the tops of the British charts. And, as the Brits say, she's brilliant.

Parsing out perfect pop with a signature heavy London accent, Nash's debut album Made of Bricks is the best thing I've heard this year. So far, anyway.

Everything she writes is catchy, but not in the annoying song-that-never-ends way. She coats her lyrics with enough sugar to sweeten but not sicken. A distinctly Casio-sounding piano provides the base while Nash's vocals (simple at first listen, but continually surprising) dance and flutter through the songs' melodies.

The first single, "Foundations," has already hit my top-15 Breakup Songs playlist. Or it would, assuming I had one. I would like to start making some playlists, so maybe I'll do that one and post it here. But you can bet "Foundations" would be on it... its a perfect song that sounds happy and reminiscent, but underneath lies the decay and emptiness that brings all once-good relationships to an end. It captures the feeling of knowing something is over but feeling trapped and unable to escape. "Oh God, I hope I'm not stuck with this one," Nash tags in at the end - c'mon, ladies, you've all been there. I should know; I've caught you sneaking out at 6 a.m. many, many times.

Seriously, though, Kate's written some great stuff. So, that alone would make me want to have a pint with her. The topper, though, is that thick accent. It's captivating (in a non-sexual sort of way). I could listen to her read the newspaper in a pub for 30 minutes and be fine with it. Plus, if anyone is to judge from her MySpace pictures (which, of course, is what MySpace is all about), she looks like a girl that knows how to have a good time.

So, Kate, cheers to you. Let's grab a Carling sometime...

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Since I'm so good to you, I'm giving you a free remix to one of Kate's tunes - "Caroline's a Victim." If you like it, visit her site and sign up for the mailing list, which is what I had to do to get it. Ha.

You'll need Pando to download it. Enjoy!

It's Super Tuesday, have you stuffed your local ballot box?

"Super Tuesday." Doesn't that just have a ring to it? It gets you going, right? I mean, how can you not just spring out of bed when the alarm goes off, full of joie de vivre and feeling super on Super Tuesday?

I move that we have more of these happy-adjective days... Like a three-day weekend could be called "Bonus Monday" (beats "Columbus Day, right?") or we could periodically have "Cuh-razy Thursday," where everyone gets to be their boss for a day. Tell me you would not get pumped up for that... I'm pumped now and this idea is still all in my head. But, my friends, WE can make it happen. Because WE are Americans and WE have the right to chose what we want to term our days of the week.

Okay, so I am a little hopped up on Patriotism right now, possibly from the fumes of the Sharpies in those tiny voting booths, but mostly from the fact that I voted in the primary today. In spite of everything that's wrong with our political system (for example: this, this or this), when you sit down and really think about it, it's pretty cool that we get to have a say in who makes the rules every couple years. We are the rule makers for those rule makers and, if we don't like it, we will layeth the smacketh down on them with our ballots.

Since I live in Massachusetts, I voted today, which was exciting. Actually, this race is making me wish I hadn't given up standard cable, since it's shaping up to be incredibly close (yet again) and I actually want to watch Wolf Blitzer's giant head and rugged beard in front of giant red-and-blue tote boards for hours tonight. Oh well, I'll read about it in the paper tomorrow.

I did find that, after I got back from the polls and exercising my right to choose, I couldn't stop. I had to keep declaring my choices. I put on a new pair of pants. I pulled two versions of lunch out of the fridge and then decided which one I wanted to eat. I chose to work on my thesis instead of writing an article.

But those decisions seemed small and inconsequential in light of voting for a new President, so I had to come up with something bigger to satisfying my urge to vote. I had a fever for more hanging chads, baby.

So, I started voting off musical acts from my iPod island. iGuapo, as I call him, is a big boy - 60 gigs of music and video playing magic - but he was pretty close to being full, so I needed to clean him up. You should have seen me in my voting frenzy, scrolling through iTunes, highlighting and deleting tracks with almost reckless abandon. With so many candidates gotten rid of as irrelevant, you would've thought it was the Green Party convention (bah-zing!).

So long Antony and the Johnsons! Goodbye CoCo Rosie! Peace out, Static-X. Stone Temple Pilots, don't let the door hit you on the way out...

Whew, that felt good. Now iGuapo isn't so bloated.

But while organizing my music collection was fun, I knew I had to take an even bigger stand and align myself, for all time, with one side of the biggest battle of our age.

Yes, I am talking about the historic Facebook vs. MySpace showdown.

I've written about this before, but the day had come to put my money where my mouth was. I had researched the parties, spent a lot of quality time with the candidates, read news stories, argued with friends and caucused until I was spent. It was time to take up the American mantle and stand up for my beliefs.

I want you all to know that I went into the polls of the world wide web and made my choice.... MySpace, you are dead to me. Facebook forever!

C'mon now... who's with me!

I've missed you...

As you, my faithful readers, have no doubt noticed, I haven't posted much this year.

Okay, I've only posted once and, to be honest, that was one I'd started writing before the ball dropped. I should beg your forgiveness - I know you've come to expect at least thrice-weekly Internet lovin' from me to make it through those tedious 8-hour days in your cubicles. I have a good excuse, though!

Here it goes...

So, I went home from work on January 4th, just like it were any other day. When, in fact, it most certainly was not.

That Friday marked the last day that I, Mike Nagel, could truthfully call myself an employed man. When I re-started my computer at the end of the day, it was out of habit - I always did that when leaving at the end of the week, just to give the poor, non-Mac machine a break. But it was a futile, worthless gesture... the thing could have spontaneously combusted and it wouldn't have affected me one iota (or, less, depending on how big your particular iota is, I wouldn't know).

I woke up the next day in a cold sweat. Which, when you think about it, isn't really possible - who's actually cold when they're sweating? Unless you're talking about Tom "Terrific" Brady's icy blue eyes, that is.

Suddenly, I was without purpose. At 3 a.m. on that Saturday morning, a most inconvenient time to be awoken, I realized that even the word "Saturday" had lost its meaning. I no longer had any "weekends," because I didn't even have a "week." My week could never end because it couldn't even begin.

I freaked out and began pacing my room, which is something I'd never done before, most likely because it only takes two-and-one-quarter strides to reach either side of the room and the 180-degree pivot to turn and step the other way causes extreme rug burn after a few minutes. But I was too panicked to care that my soles (and very soul!) were bleeding... I needed to find a meaning, a purpose in my existence.

At precisely 5:42 a.m. - which was sunrise on the 5th - it dawned on me (ba-dum ching!), I would take a trip! I would search for meaning in my travels! I would wear the same pair of pants for 10 days straight!

Hastily, I gathered some belongings and shoved them, willy-nilly, into my backpack: my journal, a digital camera, a couple Clif bars, three sets of socks and underwear, a Hooters t-shirt, flip-flops, wool socks, a Sharpie, a picture of my mom, an Espanol word guide/dictionary, a flask, a paperback copy of Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban and my bottle of allergy medication. I flung the load onto my back, scribbled a hasty goodbye to my roomie (and an apology for using the last square of Charmin) and threw open to the door of my apartment and stepped out confidently, albeit hastily, because I slipped and fell down a flight of stairs, landing prone in front of a lawn ornament of Little Lord Fauntleroy (seriously, my landlady has lawn ornaments adorning her landing).

Recovering from my fall, I continued out the door to Logan airport...

There, I bought the second-cheapest Jet Blue ticket they had to offer - a one-way to San Juan, Puerto Rico. I could've saved 20 bucks and flown to Fort Lauderdale, instead, but one look at each destinations advertisement was all it took to convince me to spend the extra Cleveland (which is what I call 20-dollar-bills, refusing to acknowledge the switch that took place in 1928 to put the impeached Andrew Jackson on the front... read more here). The photo of Puerto Rico showed smiling couples with taut, bronze skin playing in crystal clear waters... bosoms and pectorals everywhere! Fort Lauderdale's showed the same thing, but in geriatric form - the guys all wore black socks with sandals and the gals showed off plenty of bosom-action, but it was all around their belly-buttons.

I was going to Puerto Rico! I had a plan! My mind was filled with exclamatory punctuation!

I landed without a place to stay, but I didn't care... I had decided on my flight down, in between happily enjoying the Dunkin' Donuts coffee that now comes on all Jet Blue flights and the little blue bag of pretzels, that I would sleep on the beach. I'd never done that before.

When night came, I dug myself a little bed on the beach, made a mound of sand for a pillow and curled up with my backpack to watch the sun go down. I fell asleep watching the sun painting the sky a brilliant palette of pinks, oranges and reds. The waves crashing into the shore, lulled me to sleep and a gentle breeze wafted over me.

I woke up to find the surf pounding around me, my bag nowhere to be found. The undertow had dragged it, along with one shoe, away, and was threatening to do the same to my pair of pants. I was completely soaked and a rather large piece of seaweed had wrapped itself around my head, partially blinding me.

I stumbled around the beach for a while, grasping at my pants and struggling to pull the wet jeans up to cover my bare rear, when I found about about two cups of sand had found its way into the crotch. Now THAT was comfortable.

Sputtering seaweed, I tried to figure out what to do. The entire beach was completely dark and that comfortable sea breeze I'd fallen asleep to was now freezing cold. My erect nipples were cutting twin holes in my Hooters t-shirt, which I would have found amusingly ironic, had they not been blue.

The closest apparent source of light (a neon sign) and civilization (it said, "Budweiser") was about a quarter mile down the beach, so I started walking towards that. My one bare foot leaving footprints in the sand next to my shoed foot that read "Puma" and had a cute little drawing of a cat on it. I reached the bar and tried to assess the situation. I looked like I had just washed up on shore (which I kind of had), but I still had my wallet, which albeit soggy, could be used to pay for some drinks, a spot at the bar and a chance to dry out and figure out what to do next. I took a deep breath, held my head high and walked through the door up to the bar, my bare foot leaving wet, sanding footprints on the floor, which, incidentally, was covered in peanut shells, causing me to squeal in pain every other step.

Crunch. Ouch! Crunch. Ouch! Crunch. Ouch! Crunch. Ouch!

It took eight steps to get to the bar.

I ordered a "cheapo cerveza," no doubt impressing the bartender with my fluent Spanglish, and looked around. It was about as close to a biker's bar as I'd ever been in. Everyone there was bigger than me, more leather-clad than me and harrier than me, including the chick behind the bar. I was, as the British say, scared poopless, but no one was paying any attention to me.

No one, that is, except this one scruffy dude in the corner. He was a small guy with, no joke, an eyepatch AND a wooden leg. Seriously. In 2008, someone was walking around in a bar with a wooden peg leg. It started at the floor and disappeared into his cut-off, khaki shorts. Someone had taken the time to ornately carve and paint a mermaid into the side of it. Her sea-foam tail started at the base of the leg and continued upwards to just below a pair of fantastic, wooden breasts (36 C's, I'd say). I couldn't see her face, since it disappeared into his pants (if I had a nickel for every time...), but it was quite the piece of work.

Anyway, Mr. Peg-Leg Eyepatch was staring at me. Not wanted to be rude, I didn't stare back, but tried to drink my beer in peace, which is hard to do when one eye and a wooden leg with boobs on it are fixated on you. I sipped. I pretended to read the Spanish label. I sipped again. I learned the Spanish names for the months by checking the born-on date. I sipped some more. I re-read the label, and so on.

I did this for three (tres) beers. I had no where else to go! And all the while, the weird, piratey looking dude just nursed his own beer and kept staring at me with his one good eye.

Eventually, while I was on my fourth beer and giggling without reason every time I read Junio on the bottle's label, the guy walked over. He was surprisingly smooth for a guy with a wooden leg. You couldn't even hear him striking the floor with it - just the same crunch, crunch sounds everyone else (but me) made when walking over the peanut shells.

"Ahoy, there!" he said. No, really.

"Ahoy!" I said back and saluted him with my bottle. No reason not to be friendly.

He looked at my bare foot. I looked at his mermaid's bare chest.

"You look like you could stand to have a drink bought for you. Ever had a Mind Eraser?"

Visions of roofie coladas danced in my head. But I didn't want to seem standoffish. Plus, I still had nowhere to go and I didn't want to spend all of my own money.

"Nope, what is it?"

Peg-Leg chortled heartily, if not somewhat ominously. I don't know what it was - perhaps the fact that his laugh was deep and dark and that his smile didn't reach his eyes - but I was nervous. Apparently, though, not as nervous as I should have been.

He hauled himself and his leg up onto the stool next to me.

"Betty," he said to the mustachioed bartender, "get this kid a Mind Eraser."

I tried to watch all the ingredients her tatooed hands poured into the blender, but it was impossible. Clearly, it was a popular drink and she'd made it plenty of times before, because she spun bottles, poured in syrups, crushed ice and blended it all together in a flash. She set the drink before me, condensation dripping from the outside and a deep, red, slushy mixture inside.

I took a sip.

Boy, that felt good! I started to warm up inside... and all the way down to my bare foot...

I took another sip.

"So, tell me your story," said the pirate.

I did, right from the beginning of my revelation that morning to waking up on the beach that night, sparing no detail (including my airport purchase of a grande-triple-shot-soy-extra-hot-extra-foam-no whip-latte). During which, he bought himself another beer and me another pair of Mind Erasers, laughing another dramatic har-har guaff when I drunkenly started on both at the same time (Man, if I had a nickel for that!).

Did you know they still Shanghai'd people in 2008? Yeah, um, me neither...

When I woke up the next morning, with the absolute worst headache I've ever head in my life, I was on the deck of a fishing vessel bound for Caracas in the company of Peg-Leg and a bunch of other guys I recognized from the bar. Apparently, they needed another drug mule for operations coming out of Bogotá. Their last one had burped too hard and three condoms full of coke burst in his stomach.

At the risk of self-incrimination and a life-sentence from the D.E.A., I won't tell you about the next week, except to say that if you've never pooped a balloon before, thank your parents. And, if you have, tell me where to buy the most comfortable, inflatable donut, okay?

I finally managed to escape while I was expelling the balloons into a public toilet in Havana. I pulled a Shawshank and crawled through a hundred foot pipe filled with foul, stinking, ballon-infested fecal matter and then found my way, via sewer main, to the black market, where I managed to find passage on the next ship bound for (no joke), Fort Lauderdale. It cost me quite a bundle to get on that homemade raft and I'm not proud of what I did (suffice it to say, that word "kidney" in Spanish is "riñón"), but I finally made it back.

Didn't you miss me?

-------------------------

Okay, okay, okay... so maybe I made some of that up. Or all of it. But at least it's better than telling you, "I had writer's block and not much time in front of a computer," right?


Any idiot can play greek for a day
and join a sorority or write a tragedy.
Articulate all that pain,
and maybe you'll get paid.
But it's a sin when success complains,
and your writer's block - it don't mean sh*t.
Just throw it against the wall and see what sticks.
Gonna write a hit - I think this it.

It's a hit.

-- Rilo Kiley, "It's a Hit" from More Adventurous

(Was listening to this album, which is ridiculously good and I just sorta re-discovered, while I wrote this post. You should check it out.)

What is Mike up to these days?

Okay, so here's part number 2 in a 500-part series... "What is Mike Up To?" If you somehow missed the chance to have your life, your beliefs, your very soul changed by reading my first submission, here's the link to catch up.

You're welcome.

Pure and simple, I'm going to give you a list of some of the things that have caught my attention/obsession over the last month or so, just in case any of you out there in web-land care to know. And, in case you don't care, you can click here or here to go to much more fun ways to kill time.

(If you followed those links, I've already suckered you into doing what I suggest! Muah-ha-ha-ha...*cough* *hack*... that was my best attempt at an evil laugh. I think I hurt a lung. Let's move on...)

The Best of 2007

It's been suggested by a wonderful, faithful reader that I write more about music, which actually surprised me, because normally when I start talking about music in a bar, everyone around me either decides to go to the bathroom or their eyes glaze over and they start staring at the shapes the foam makes on their glasses. But maybe things are different when I talk about them on the 'net... so here goes nothing...

(Wait, what's that sound? Hundreds of mice clicking away from my site?)

Anyways, I used to compile top-10 lists of the year's best music, but I'm not going to do that this year. It's actually a ton of work because, heaven help you if the list doesn't stand up to the test of time or you leave something out. So, instead of giving you my top 10, 25 or 50... I'll give you links to some experts with much better ideas on what you should be buying:

Woxy's top 97 of 2007
eMusic.com Listeners' and Editors' choices
AllMusic.com's alphabetized list and their Editors' Picks
Pitchfork's staffers' favorites
Spin's random selection of 50 albums that contain no surprises and a sucky, cop-out #1 pick


And, while I'm not going to do my own list, I will give you a list of albums that would probably make it and you should go buy. In no particular order:

Bloc Party - A Weekend in the City
I found it extremely surprising that this record didn't show up on anyone's top-2007 list and I have to chalk that up to the band being a victim of its own success. Their debut, Silent Alarm, was THE ALBUM of 2005 - the one everyone bought, everyone loved, everyone talked about. So, when 2007 rolled around, everyone was Bloc Partied out.

That's too bad, because A Weekend in the City is a great album. It still rocks with the band's signature, frenetic, alt-punk energy, but has some lovely ephemeral touches painted on its canvas. It's as if the politically minded band is now less concerned with blowing up the world and more interested in bandaging the wounds it perceives. Solid.

Spoon - Ga Ga Ga Ga Ga
I arrived to Spoon late, having bought Kill the Moonlight last year and then forgetting to listen to it (a really bad habit of mine). I finally did crack the spine on the CD case when their latest record dropped and all the indie sites started buzzing with glowing reviews.

Let's just say that Spoon is now one of my favorite bands.

The Texan trio isn't supremely talented in any one aspect... vocals aren't outstanding, music is simply arranged and hardly uses more than four or five chords a song, lyrics are fun but not special... but they do know how to be a band. The guys work function well together and don't try to push the envelope further than they can deliver (yes, I just mixed two cliched postal metaphors).

If you want a free sample of their music, I can burn you a copy or you could just rent Stranger Than Fiction (solid flick and the soundtrack is mostly Spoon songs). If you're not singing Spoon's songs in your head the next day, then I'll give you your money for this post back.

Kings of Leon - Because of the Times
This disc should come with a warning label - "Listen at your own risk. Kings of Leon is not responsible for any injuries sustained by bourbon-drinking, beard-growing, tight-jeans-wearing boogieing down while listening to this album."

Because that's exactly what happens. I find myself having to shave every time I listen to this Southern rock masterpiec and that has really worn down the blades on my Mach 3.





Radiohead - In Rainbows

It's Radiohead. Tons of people have written about it. Go out and buy it, you'll like it.

(By the way, I wrote about this album in a previous post, so feel free to check that out, too.)









Andrew Bird - Armchair Apocrypha
I have a thing for acoustic, singer-songwriters. Maybe it's because I've always wanted to learn how to play the guitar, so I can be the center of attention at every coffeehouse, fireplace and drum circle I visit.

Bird probably put out the best solo project of the year. His light, airy guitarwork accompanies twisting, complicated lyrics perfectly... he doesn't try to overdo anything. It's the perfect cloudy-day album (and Lord knows we'll have enough of those in the next few months).

And, in case this isn't enough to keep you entertained and Santa's given you more dough than you know what to do with, go buy: The Arcade Fire - Neon Bible, Raine Maida - The Hunter's Lullaby, The National - Boxer, Stars - In Our Bedroom After the War and, yes, even Paul McCartney's "my career isn't dead yet" release - Memory Almost Full.

Once You Pop, You Can't Stop

Even though it looks like microwaved popcorn may cause deadly lung diseases (see this story, about a guy who eats two bags a day and will now die because of it, but not before winning a giant lawsuit), I'm still eating more of it than ever.

Why, you ask? Well, it's because of this - Mr. Orville Redenbacher's delicious Natural Buttery Salt and Cracked Pepper. Oh. My. Goodness. It is the most amazing snack I have ever microwaved. If you could make something taste like stardust, rainbows and cute puppies, this would be it (except for the dog parts).

AND it's good for you! It comes in individual-serving bags that are under 200 calories. The popped kernels aren't covered in that fake orange butter-like substance, rather they are "all-natural popping corn" and are lightly salted with a hit of butter taste and sprinkled with pepper for some yummy kick. The flavors are natural, too, so this stuff is actually good for you. At least it's marketed that way.

So, yes, of course I eat two of them at a a time while drinking beer and sitting on my couch, but I could be injecting black tar heroin, so it's not the worst thing ever.

Christmas Cards

No, I don't send them out. But I have gotten quite a lot, which means that... A) I might be popular and B) my friends are apparently getting older and doing more "adult" things. I feel as if I should be doing the same, but I'll probably wait it out... My thinking is I should be married and have a shot taken of myself, my spouse and my Labrador retriever all wearing matching sweaters and sipping cocoa first.

Because, right now, my picture would probably be me alone, wearing sweatpants and a flap hat and shoveling my parents' driveway.

Once I get a shot of that, I'll put it up here for you all to appreciate.

Seriously, though, thank you to everyone kind enough to send me a card... I've put them up on my bedroom dorm, a la dorm style 2000. They make me cheery and holiday spirity in the morning, when I'm stumbling out of bed and groping for the shower and coffee.

Jesus is the Reason for the Season

And while we're on the subject of J.C.'s birthday, I just finished reading Lee Strobel's best-seller, A Case for Christ.

Without getting all religious on you, I do highly recommend this one. Heck, if you want to borrow my copy, you're more than welcome to. Just shoot me an email (or, better yet, leave me a comment! I love comments! And exclamation points!) and I'll send it over to you.

Here's the thing... too often, people get all in a tizzy about different faiths and religions without really researching their background from a open and, for lack of a better term, academic mind. This book takes care of that, when it comes to Christianity... it visits the questions of Did Jesus Exist? Are the Gospels historically accurate? Did early Christianity draw on other, more ancient, religious traditions? Are there other, non-Biblical, sources that can confirm the historicity of things like Christ's birth, death and resurrection?

It's a fast read in itself and simply touches on the surface of many of these questions, but does give resources for additional research. I'll leave it at that, but I do think that this book is more than worthwhile for anyone who's questioning some of religion's big questions or just looking to know more about Christianity.

What is Mike up to these days?

As you can tell, I am one classy dude. I don't know what gives it away more: the plastic cup of booze, the stolen scarf that doesn't match the jacket or the plastic beads that I had to drop trou for...

But, from time to time, I plan to let you guys know what I'm in to lately, what life choices I have ahead of me. This way, you will be able to correspondingly rearrange your cultural, fashion and social lives to better mirror the example I have set.

Or, more than likely, you'll just ignore me and my ranting. Which is perfectly acceptable and probably better for your overall health and state of mind.

---What Mike is Listening to---
My boy, Maynard James Keenan (the voice of both Tool and A Perfect Circle) has yet another musical project of mayhem that he's unleashed on the world. Puscifer is a step in a completely new direction for Maynard. While APC can sometimes be called - I mean this with no disrespect - Tool-lite, Puscifer is an entirely different type of project all together.

The musical inspiration draws heavily from Western African drum beats and, oddly enough, Moby's softer side. But only if Moby decided to start worshiping Satan, dropping acid and manipulating his mixer with his tongue. Gone are the bellowing, in-your-face vocals with detailed, cryptic interpretation. Instead, they're replaced with layered, spoken-word tracks that talk about sex, booties, genitalia, drugs, sexual slang and ol' fashioned gettin' it on. It's a weird mix, but then, MJK never was the kind of guy you'd want to bring home to your mom. Assuming you wanted to bring a 5-1/2 foot bald guy home for the the holidays.

Even weirder? It works... while Tool fans won't have to spend hours on message boards deciphering song meanings (hint: Maynard likes sex. With women. A LOT.), there are some pretty catchy hooks going on. I'm not expecting a tour or huge album sales - frankly, I could do without either - but this is a cool, niche record to own.

---What Mike is Thinking---
MySpace vs. Facebook - the final showdown.

Okay, so there won't be any showdown. But for those of y'all on MySpace, you'll have noticed that I don't visit the site any more and haven't updated my profile in months. Part of that has to do with the fact that my employer has chosen to block MySpace, so I can't log-on when I'm at work and I have very little desire to do so when I'm not working. Incidentally, porn sites are not blocked...

I probably should just delete my MySpace profile, now that I've become a more regular Facebook user (the latter is not blocked at work, easier to use and about 200x's more spam-free). But I haven't been able to bring myself to do so. In my head, I equate this to killing a friend. Or a mild acquaintance. Or someone I made out with once and then forgot their name.

There was a time, when I was new to web 2.0 in a band, and the social networking world was my oyster to shuck. And I shucked it good... I got lots and lots of friends, many of whom were also in self-recorded bands or sold jeans and penile enhancers; reconnected with peoples whose names and faces I barely recognized; solidified my emotional well-being by being in many, many top-8 when top-8's meant something; I commented; I learned html; I rocked MySpace's world.

But now, MySpace has lost my interest. It was a fad. I've moved on to this blog here and Facebook. They fulfill my social needs (Yes, editing my "status" via my iPhone and writing a public diary fulfill all the cultural interaction desires that 40,000 years of civilization built up). MySpace is excess. It's fat and it needs trimming.

I just haven't gotten around to it. Yet...

The guillotine has been raised. We're all just waiting for the blade to drop.

---What Mike is Wearing---

Well, I'm not wearing one yet. But I am debating about buying a hat. I have a mostly-shaved head right now. And it's starting to get cold here in Boston.

I've realized that having 1/8 of an inch of hair is much different than having 1-1/2 inches. In that, it's really freakin' colder on the old pate these days. A hat would be nice to keep my noggin warm.

But I haven't decided yet if they're too nerdy. I don't mind nerdy, but I do mind too-nerdy when it comes to fashion. Nerdy can be chic, too-nerdy means you're a loser. Mike is a winner. Or he thinks he is. So, if you have any hat suggestions, please let him know.

---What Mike's Plans Are---
Correspondingly, I'm thinking about a new coif to go with the (soon to come) new year. Sonja, my wonderful girlfriend, really likes my hair now. I believe the words she's used to describe it are: "sexy," "handsome" and "rowr."

Whereas, for a previous, more emo haircut with bangs and spikes, the description went something like this: "You're going to cut that, right?"

Anyways, I want to try something new, but because I start to look like a giant puffball when I grow out my hair, I want to wait to have a purpose before I do so.

Hence, I'm taking suggestions - should I go with a professional-looking, business man cut with a part? Should I spike it, as I have in the past? Should I keep it the same? Should I do the Slater gerrie-curl perm? I'm open to suggestions...

Chris Carrabba is killing my street cred...

I fancy myself to be a sort of music snob. I'm kind of proud of it, in fact. One of my (sad?) life's little pleasures is to hand someone my iPod and have them tell me one of the following:

A) "Wow! You have a ton of music!" (To which I nonchalantly toss off a "Oh, that, well, you should have seen it before I reorganized.)

B) "I've never heard of any of these bands." (To which, I always respond, "You must have completely crappy taste in music," but never out loud.)

C) "Wow! Your record collection is amazing!" (To which, I nod and ask what their latest purchase was and then we can bond over our shared delight in that disc and collective hatred of all things Snow Patrol.)

There are problems with my snobbishness, though. And not because it leaves people thinking I have a giant stick up my cornhole. That, I can live with.

No, the real problem is liking a band that you know is crappy, the trendily-tattooed, ironically-coiffed clerk at Newbury Comics knows is crappy, heck, even my mom knows is crappy. How are you supposed to maintain any sort of indie credibility with such obvious bad taste in your CD stacks?

I'm not talking about artists like, say, Justin Timberlake who are so-uncool-they're-cool-to-like. For those guys (I'd also include: Michael Jackson, Styx, Northern State and maybe Kelly Clarkson in this category), you're not cool if you think they're not cool but in a totally uncool sense, get it? And, let's face it, J-Tims is downright catchy and did put on one heck of a show back in August at the Garden. (Check out this clip... during the bridge, he starts to cover Ryan Adams. Yes, Ryan F-ing Adams.)

Back to the point, though. I'm talking about the artists that make "those of us with taste" recoil a bit... Britney, the Killers, Matchbox20, the Fray, John Mayer et al. Like a band in that category and you instantly drop down a couple notches with the people who know what's up.

This causes some problems. Like this week, for instance. Dashboard Confessional released its 4th full-length. And I wanted to buy it.

For those of you not familiar with Dashboard, it's basically the project of singer/songwriter Chris Carrabba. Carrabba's strained vocals, furiously strummed acoustic guitars and lyrics about lost love appeal mainly to 14-year-old girls. Oh, and dudes who like having sex with other dudes, as the joke goes.

So how am I, a self-respecting music aficionado, who listens to Woxy.com faithfully, reads Mojo, avoids pop radio and had hundreds of CDs organized alphabetically AND chronologically, supposed to walk into a record store and buy that album (on the day it comes out no less)?

Every time Dashboard comes out with a new record, I'm faced with that conundrum. The last time, I wound up buying three other discs (all of which were artsy, underground bands worth of hype and respect) and stuck the other in the middle. It made me feel better; the clerk couldn't judge me! Look what great taste I had! That Dashboard one was probably for my girlfriend or sister or maybe I was out of coasters for my DIY furniture?

But this time around, I couldn't do that again. A) because I'm broke B) because I sold my CD collection and don't really want to buy more discs and C) nothing else came out this week that I really wanted.

So, all Monday, I steeled my reserve as I prepared to walk into the store to *gasp* buy the album.

First, I thought about stealing it... but I don't steal and how embarrassing would that be to get caught with that record? It'd be like stealing a Sam's Choice bottle of soda from Wal-Mart.

I considered about giving cash to one of the homeless guys outside the store to get it for me, but Newbury Comics is right above a liquor store and I don't trust a crackhead to determine the finite differences between "MadDog 2020" and "Dashboard Confessional" or "Drinking it all down" and "Giving it to the person who gave me the money."

Also, I thought about maybe distracting the clerk by asking if they were going to the Minus the Bear show that week at the Middle East, or when Tokyo Police Club's full-length was due, but then I figured that minimizing my time and, hence, potential embarrassment would be a better idea.

Seriously, I thought about this all day. What else was I supposed to do? I was at work and all the internet and phones were down... (How the heck did people do anything before the Internet?)

But I was unable to think up a non-humiliating way to go about buying the CD myself. I just had to do it. I would have to walk in there, go to the rack as fast as possible and hand the disc and a credit card to the cashier and hope they didn't burst into a fit of giggling while I shamefully studied the gum stains on the carpet.

Listlessly, I surfed the web in front of SportsCenter that night. Even my resolve to live had tucked its tail between its legs, it was so ashamed of me. I was going to have to pay good money to get a CD that I'd probably like. Even knowing that I'd like it brought waves of nausea to my stomach and redness to my cheeks. Oh, the shame!

But then, I remembered that my month's subscription to eMusic.com had rolled over the week before. I had 40 downloads once again... and maybe, just maybe I'd be able to download the record. It was a long shot and I didn't have much hope - the major labels have been pretty slow to sign on with the website, which is okay because it gives their editors more space to tell me about the next all-girl, new wave band from Zimbabwe who combine a love of the Cure with references to pre-Pink Album Boris or some crap like that.

But then...

Right there on the front page...

Joy of joys! It was there! And I could download it without having to have any clerk stare me down, bringing my self-esteem crashing to the floor!

Thank God for the Internet...

Okay, so maybe it's all right to just enjoy something because you enjoy it. Music doesn't have to be about snobbery, even if it is kind of a sick pleasure to delight in that aspect. it should be about expressing personal choice and taste. I guess what's really important to remember that if you like it, then buy it.

Oh, and that my collection is so much better than yours.