Archive for July, 2008

Happy birthday to me; The Sting review

July 29, 2008 at 3:30 am · Filed under Movie Reviews ·Tagged , , , , , , , ,

No, it’s not my birthday today, or tomorrow; it is still the 28th of September, but the world of audiovisual media seems to have already known that, so get on the ball already, willya? Band-crush TV On The Radio drops their next album – Dear Science, – on the 23rd of the month (and yes, the comma is in the title; I like that creative choice) and The Fall, a little-seen movie that I believe is the best movie of the year so far (don’t look so indignant, WALL-E and IMDb number one Dark Knight, you guys were great too), comes out on DVD on September the 9th, plenty of time for me to show it to everybody! Don’t roll your eyes, dammit, it’s a great film!

Anyway, The Sting is one of the all-time classics, so I’m told, directed by George Roy Hill and starring Paul Newman and Robert Redford, AKA two of the all-time Hollywood pretty boys who could act to boot.  Their other great duo feature was Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, also directed by Hill.  The two movies have a little similarity in the way the two leads play off each other – in both, Paul Newman plays the wisecracking, confident senior partner, while Redford plays the roguish, dashing young gun with a chip on his shoulder.  Hill’s directing probably has a lot to do with it, since lots of the looks these guys give are the same – the looks, I feel, are more a director’s influence than the delivery of the lines, since it’s harder to control the way an actor says each word than whether or not he raises his eyebrows, and here it’s Newman’s smirk and his sideways glance, and the way Redford looks down, rolls his eyes and grits his teeth when he gets shut up or has to take an earful.

If you think that analysis was a little too subtle, then you probably think that The Sting‘s greatness is a little too subtle, because on the surface, it’s like an older, smaller-scale Ocean’s 11 – a movie about con men getting personal, getting dangerous and looking good doing it.  But where the latter movie is the slickest of slick entertainers, the former is gritty and more believable.  In Ocean’s 11, you never really feel any sort of danger for the characters; Terry Benedict seems intimidating, but he’s more comical than anything.  Robert Shaw (also known as Quint from Jaws) is downright scary as Doyle Lonnegan, and in other scenes, you really think there’s a chance Redford’s Johnny Hooker could die at the hands of Lonnegan’s men.

You also never lose the feel of the Great Depression era that the film is set in.  That’s why it won/got nominated for all the technical Oscars; it had an authentic feel, even if it was inaccurate (and I didn’t look it up, so I don’t know.  I’m not a Wikipedia fiend all the time, like some people).  The music was also great, and it won a terribly-worded Oscar for that as well, so I’m not sure what its qualifications were.

I actually don’t have much else to say about this movie, because it was so straightforward, which is I think what people dig about it so much – it didn’t try to make anything more artistic or more stylized than necessary to tell the story well, and the film is really carried by the actors.  Other than the three that I previously mentioned, who were all incredible, Charles Durning was great as the Joliet crooked cop who goes a little overboard and winds up in over his head.  If you recognize that name from something recent, it’s because he won this past year’s Lifetime Achievement Award from the Screen Actor’s Guild.  As a character actor whose IMDb page is too long to believe, he really did deserve it, and I can’t wait to see the movie that he’s most famous for, Dog Day Afternoon.

I’ll see if I can knock one more movie review off tomorrow before I get back to random combinations of music and movies.  Also, keep on the lookout for some more guest contributors making their debut, because I’m looking forward to them probably more than you guys all are.

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Under cover of Microsoft Excel; Patton review

July 28, 2008 at 4:13 am · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged , , , ,

I am beginning to write this review whilst my superiors think I am making up yet another list of people to call and to beg for money.  Don’t snitch on me.  But I do wish to reiterate my thanks to Maxwell for allowing me to maintain the dailiness of this blog while doing some freelance/mercenary work for another.  See how I laud you with praise if you contribute to this blog? You can be this guy too! Don’t be afraid.

Anyway, Patton, directed by Franklin Schaffner, was made in 1970 and is based on a couple of biographies of the famous World War II general.  One of the biographies, A Soldier’s Story, was written by General Omar Bradley, who is the second most prominent character in the movie, so unlike most “based on a true story” or even “inspired by a true story” movies, I found myself assuming and believing that most of the events of this movie actually happened.  That’s a lot of the appeal of the movie for me, to see a story like this that would more often than not be told by smiling bearded historians with voices so dry that firemen would attach the Sahara desert to a hose to douse them.

So that’s what we have here: a living history.  And just what, exactly, gives Patton such life? Well, let’s start with the obvious: George C. Scott as the title character is phenomenal in both subtle and obvious ways as the eponymous character; a role for which he won the 1971 Academy Award, though he rejected it on the grounds that he did not feel he was competing with other actors.  But enough has been said about his performance already, though I will just say that I loved how many different things his crazy-ass smile could mean throughout the movie.  Karl Malden as Omar Bradley was his usual incredible self; he’s just one of my favorite character actors from bygone days, and this is late-period stuff for him, but he’s still the same stand-up guy he was in On The Waterfront.

The music in this film, though, is the standout to me.  Anyone with a modicum of pop culture or film knowledge will recognize the trumpet figure that is prominent throughout, but the incorporation of bugle calls and military themes and their modernization was just incredible to me.

Patton’s character, though not the creation of the movie, fascinated me to a great degree, what with his interest in reincarnation and his granite moral center that was incredibly predictable, though it gave him an outward appearance of unpredictability.  He stands as one of those enigmatic, brilliant military leaders that seems to come around once an era, yet maybe not ever again.

The cinematography, sound, editing were all incredible, because it didn’t glorify the battles, even though they were shot from afar.  The shots had a touch of realism, that feel that the movie was a documentary played by actors that I really dug.

Still, for all of its technical beauty (and there was a lot of it), I couldn’t help but feel that the movie wasn’t seen through fully, for the single reason that so many of the one-line characters, the non-central supporting cast, seemed stiff and poorly directed/poorly cast.  The string of stiff, dull small characters irritated me.  But that was really my only gripe with the film – that it wasn’t perfect, and this was its imperfection.  It’s still one of the better movies I’ve seen, and I can imagine wanting to rewatch it with someone willing to give it some time with me.

So I started this review uncharacteristically early and finished it uncharacteristically late as a result.  Just goes to show me, once you have a routine that works, stick to it.  Stupid Matt, stupid stupid Matt.

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Maxwell’s House; Oreos to be broken out

July 27, 2008 at 3:09 am · Filed under Uncategorized ·Tagged , ,

So another, deeper thanks to Maxwell for posting another review (two in two days! how is that even possible?!) and thus allowing me to focus on my pending review of Siren Music Festival for Nicole’s famed BOTO, which will arrive probably tomorrow, since I need to ask how to post it.  I’m lost anywhere but here.  If I have some spare time at work, I will try to review Patton early and possibly squeeze a second review out later that night, but if you’re counting on one review from me tomorrow, count on Patton.  That’s all for now, folks.

UPDATE: The Siren review has been submitted for review on BOTO, and will be up shortly, so head on over using the link on this page or on the handy-dandy sidebar.

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They just Howl all night long; Empires review

July 26, 2008 at 11:24 pm · Filed under Music Reviews ·Tagged ,

Empires - HowlThe story of Empires is a pretty all right one, and if you want to read it, check out their myspace. The long story short is that five dudes formed a band called Empires, got to know each other for a year, recorded an album called Howl, and then put it up for easy download from their website.

In a blog post titled “But why?” they write, “A lot of individuals have been saying they would have paid for Howl. But you know what? We would rather have you spend that money on CDRs and burn copies for friends and family. Music is about sharing.”

I gotta respect that. I get that it’s a legitimate strategy for jump-starting a career, but it’s still a very modern and risky thing to do. They’re relying on the powers of word of mouth and self-promotion (from their myspace blurb, “The anticipation of hearing this act over a year in the making may be hard to withstand, however, it’s important to remember that Rome wasn’t built in a day, and neither were Empires.”).

So when I obligingly downloaded the zip file and noted the aesthetic of the cover (which curiously has the entire tracklisting on it) and the title I sort of expected some disposable, poorly recorded hardcore (not to knock that genre). Then, glancing at the pdf liner notes I saw that the one thing they ask in return is that you “PLAY LOUD. Thank you.” Uh oh.

So going in with that expectation, I was honestogod blown away by the first track, Spit the Dark. It’s a fantastic song that so caught me off guard and surprised me that I don’t even want to describe it. I want you to go download it if only for this song, and don’t be afraid to play it loud. I’ll wait right here.

Because, unfortunately, the album opens really strong but suffers from weird song order and trying to do too many things on one album. If the first song on an album makes a promise for what the album will be, then Howl doesn’t keep it. The first three songs are all radically different genres, though still distinctly the same band. It’s weird. I give them credit for experimenting with several sounds, but it seems to me that the band recorded a dance-rock EP, an experimental rock EP, and some filler songs, then put the best song first, shuffled the rest, and called it Howl.

I think most everyone will find a couple songs they love on Howl, but I doubt many will find an ALBUM they love. Personally, I’m not so much into the dance-rock vibe going on in some of songs. They’re good enough on their own, but they don’t feel like they belong on Howl. I dig the epic rock songs and the goofy acoustic songs. And so, because my main issue is the sequencing and genre misgivings, I decided to take a stab at how it should have been. My version is an 8 song, 28 minute album (compared to the original’s overlong 15 songs and 53 minutes).

1. Spit the Dark
2. Midnight Land
3. Believe!
4. Under the Bright Lights
5. All Night Long
6. Don’t Let It Fool You
7. Anywhere
8. Hayley

So if you get all jarred up, try making a playlist like this and give it a second shot (if you don’t, by all means enjoy the dancier songs). I’ve never done that before for an album, was that rude? To the band, I mean. Now I’m going to say some nice things about these songs so I don’t feel bad. Self-produced by Empires guitarist Max Steger, the band sounds really great. It’s so professionally done that it really is a marvel that it was made completely independent from labels and outside producers. You can really hear each instrument contributing– the sounds never cease to be the product of an instrument. And yet, they come together to really make something special. Do you know what I mean? I mean that there’s no suspension of disbelief about what it is I’m hearing. It’s a bunch of guys playing instruments, it’s not the musical manifestation of society succumbing to industrialization or something bullshit like that, and it’s better for it. Does that make sense?

Spit the Dark, Midnight Land, Under the Bright Lights, and Anywhere are the aforementioned “epic rock songs” and that’s really what I dig them for. Their epic-ness. Some of them have really great sing-along choruses, but all of them are successfully fist-pumping anthems. They’re nicely balanced out by the other four, acoustic-guitar based songs which range from the goofy acoustic Broadway-esque song that is “Believe!” to the relaxing interlude “All Night Long”, the possibly Radiohead-influenced “Don’t Let It Fool You” and soothing closer “Hayley.”

So it’s cool they put it out for free. I see good things in this band’s future. They’re super versatile, and singer Sean Van Fleet has a powerful voice and isn’t afraid to use it. So enjoy.

-Max Jacobson

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Third of the Siren reviews: Parts & Labor

July 25, 2008 at 2:54 am · Filed under Music Reviews ·Tagged , , , , ,

So as you may have noticed, our treasured contributor Maxwell Jacobson posted a review this afternoon of an EP by The Gaslight Album that I will try to check out, though I won’t try to show Max up with a review of my own.  That would be poor form.

I caught about half of Parts & Labor’s set at Siren by my estimation, and what I saw was pretty good, but it kind of annoyed me that singer B.J. Warshaw (who had a cool, Matisyahu-esque beard) sounded as close to Billy Joe of Green Day as Ben and Nicole said that Victoria Legrand of Beach House sounded like Feist, though Nicole tells me that he sounds just as much like the lead singer of Brazil (though I’ve never listened to them) than Green Day, so I guess I don’t know shit.

Anyways, they weren’t as boring as Islands, but were by no means memorable, so I almost forgot that I could review them as my third, and probably final, Siren-related review.  I was trying to decide between the Dodos, to whom I’ve already listened a million times, or The Helio Sequence, whom I never saw at Siren.  But that dilemma was solved.

When I looked up Parts & Labor in various corners of the internets, I was told that they were noise rock.  Based on their latest album, last year’s Mapmaker, I don’t really believe that.  I think they’re a little out there, but not as far as say, Dragons of Zynth.  They sound pretty close to early Green Day as a band, just with some craziness added on top, so in that vein, they can be considered like punk, I guess.  I’m never quick to label something punk; I have very little experience in the genre, and my first instincts are normally wrong in regards to anything beyond, say, the Ramones.

It seems a bit shallow to say that the reason they’re considered noise rock is because they have noise, but that’s pretty much it.  They have standard, real songs, they just add a little weird noise either at the beginning, somewhere in the mix in the middle, or more likely, at the end.  That’s really all there is to it.

They all seem to be really good musicians, which is refreshing.  Drummer Chris Weingarten is unbelievable on this album, plowing through lots of parts with incredible speed on multiple drums that I’m really pissed I didn’t take notice of while I saw them live.  Another key difference that makes their CD experience better than their live experience is that keyboardist Dan Frier takes more of the singing duties than in the live set, which makes me think less of Green Day, which is good, because I like to have a band have their own identity in my mind beyond something “that sounds like this other band”.

Unsurprisingly, Mapmaker‘s best song is its opener, “Fractured Skies”, which comes in on an awesome drum beat by Weingarten, which gets layered on top of it a guitar effects loop, followed by heavily reverbed vocals that make it hard to make out the lyrics at all (this goes for the whole album, but strangely, I don’t see it as a problem this time; there’s enough stuff going on for the lyrics not to be necessary), which builds into a great crescendo and release.  Then the release gets even better when they add a brass section later – gotta love the huge sound.

Although from there on out, the pacing of the album varies, with slower songs like “Long Way Down” and “Ghosts Will Burn” smack dab in the middle, the ridiculously fast drumming of Weingarten keeps the energy up the whole way – and I do like the idea of putting some balls-to-the-wall drums in a ballad to fuck shit up.  Seems pretty badass to me.

Then again, this album isn’t perfect.  I think some of the noise flourishes go overboard, and I think that it’s easy enough to make the lyrics of a song intelligible – if you take the time to write them, why not allow them to be understood? But as I said before, the second one doesn’t really negatively impact the effect of the album, I just think it’s a bit n00bish.

P.S. – I realize this review was horribly written, but I’m tired of writing music reviews right now.  After my Siren review for BOTO, I may be refreshed, but I’ll try to get a couple of movies in the next few days, after my off day tomorrow.

P.P.S. – Look out for Nicole’s inaugural review on IAMDC; I believe it is a review of the show Sex In The City.  We’re all waiting with bated breath, Nicole.

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Less than 12 minutes long, but: Señor and the Queen review

July 24, 2008 at 1:41 pm · Filed under Music Reviews ·Tagged , ,

The Gaslight Anthem - Señor and the QueenSo I thought I’d write another review, seeing how I’m on the contributor page and I haven’t hardly contributed since last I rambled about an outdated horror flick, what, a month ago?

(Note: I just edited out about 200 words with more half-baked review philosophy. You’re welcome. In short: I’m probably only ever going to write about things I like.)

Starting with this EP that came out earlier this year via iTunes. It’s called Señor and the Queen by New Jersey band The Gaslight Anthem. It’s the follow-up to their debut album “Sink or Swim” which I can’t seem to find anywhere (including stores!). This is the first in a series of reviews called “Great Music Never Featured on Pitchfork Media.” Really though, it could just as easily be called “Cause for concern that my pop-punk phase isn’t a phase.”

Not that The Gaslight Anthem plays pop-punk, really. Brian Fallon’s gruff, charismatic singing and the bombastic guitar and drum backing could be punk, but the production gives it a fresh sound. It’s never abrasive, and oddly homey. As for pop’s half of the hyphenate, it’s not. This is punk rock if anything, with a dose of soul.

At just 11 and a half minutes and 4 songs, I can spare a few words about each:

The EP opens with the title track, Señor and the Queen. With five beats of the drum and a drawn out chord strummed, the song begins proper. These are the kind of songs that are wordy in a good way, that demand to be sung-along-to and that race you to the finish. The song starts fast but the tempo shifts about, and Fallon’s voice gamely navigates the tricks and turns.

On the next track, “Wherefore Art Thou, Elvis?” there are some of my favorite lyrics on the album. Check it out:

Now I got scars like the number of the stars, my head’s full of vipers. I got the dust of the desert in my bones, and they’re coming through the amplifiers.

But you gotta hear it. Here’s another tasty sample:

Walking in my old man shoes and my scientist heart. I got a fever and a beaker and a shot in the dark. I need a cadillac ride, I need a soft summer night. Say a prayer for my soul, señorita.

It’s got this great sense of world-weariness and americana (with a good dose of mexicana thrown in, with the constant use of señor and señorita, and the lyric from gorgeous closer “We like our choruses sung together / We like our arms in our brothers’ arms / Call every girl we ever met Maria / But I only love Virginia’s heart.”) But I’m getting ahead of myself…

On track three, “Say I Won’t (Recognize)” he sings an ode to the great american party, but hidden within is a ballad to this girl (named Maria, naturally) who he’s trying to get to come with him. In an interview, Fallon said the EP is “just about summertime in New Jersey and it’s about kids experiencing summertime. You know that weird thing that happens as soon as the weather gets hot and everyone goes crazy and starts going outside and there’s those parties that happen and carnivals everything like that-it’s just about that. It’s almost this romantic view of how life should be when you’re young.” And it is on this song that this is most evident. He sings “Come on out Maria and lose the tragic / Come on out Maria and we’ll show you some magic / Meet on the warm sand and waltz out twilight / and watch the carnival lights explode.” At first it’s a rollicking party song (which, ironically, probably wouldn’t play so well at parties…) with Fallon singing straightforwardly “We’re having a party, everybody swinging” at the beginning, but only with The Gaslight Anthem would that same song end with the lyric “Don’t make me dance all night alone.”

So to recap, the first three tracks are badass sing-along anthems with their “heart on their jeans,” and that brings us to the final song, “Blue Jeans & White T-Shirts.” This song is just magic. It’s not quite the requisite softy ballad, though I can imagine it being unfairly pegged as such. They really are all softy ballads, this one’s just the prettiest. He sings the chorus like it’s a future classic lyric, and the truth is that I kind of believe him. (“Still we sing with our heroes, 33 rounds per minute / We’re never going home until the sun says we’re finished / I’ll love you forever if I ever love at all / With wild hearts, blue jeans, & white t-shirts”)

So there you go. It’s a fair 4 bucks for a solid EP you can listen to over and over, and if you come to love it like me, go ahead and anticipate their new full-length album “The ’59 Sound” which comes out in a few weeks. Thanks for reading.

-Max Jacobson

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Second of the Siren reviews: Dragons of Zynth

July 24, 2008 at 4:08 am · Filed under Music Reviews ·Tagged , , , ,

Let me start this review off by saying that Ethan pleaded (pled?) with me to shut the Dragons of Zynth off while I was re-listening to them to write this review.  “It’s not music, it’s just a guy screaming over a weird guitar part and a weird drum part.”  He had only listened to the first three songs, but that’s a crudely accurate description of the first part of this album.  The DOZ want nothing more than to fuck your shit up, they said as much in an interview with the Village Voice to promote Siren.  I like to think that they’re TV On The Radio without the white guy to keep them in line – and with a little less talent.

I love DOZ, but I don’t love their music.  I like it, I think it’s pretty good.  They call their music “Afrotek”, and it’s just a bit (really, not a lot) less pretentious than it sounds for them to have come up with their own genre.  It really is a whole different animal, though; this music is fucking hard to describe.  Really, my TV On The Radio comparison isn’t fair.  Only on atmospheric “Anna Mae” are the similarities definitely there, and less obviously on closer…ahem, “Closer”, and beyond that, they are loud, they are unconventional, and they are black.

Don’t think that calling them black was for some stunted shock value or just to be funny; they wear their identity out on their sleeve here, like with the beginning of “Who Rize Above,” which combines a Jimi Hendrix-ish guitar dabble with hip hop self-introduction before launching into a raucous “beat explosion” coupled with the shouts and yelps of Aku O.T., the lead singer who can do anything he wants with his voice.  They then just jam at this ridiculous pace in their Esau to jazz’s Jacob, abrasively, but then again, they aren’t making this music so you’ll like it.  They want to “show their intent,” as they say in the above article.

The next track, “Take It to Ride”, sounds like a kind of parody of “Ticket to Ride”, but it’s really an apocalyptic version of Caribbean rap, as I understand it.  You get the little glockenshpiel (I think) figure, sounds pretty straightforward, and then you get unrelenting, half-screamed raps over equally unrelenting mashed guitars that mirror the original glockenshpiel beat.

But I haven’t even mentioned the best song on the album yet.  That’s second track “Breaker”, which, after a little pause from the opener, just breaks your skull with a badass guitar riff straight out of Guitar Hero that I did NOT see coming the first time I heard it.  It was one of my favorite moments in music that came out in 2007, looking back.  Another one comes a few seconds later, when the guitar goes almost to your breaking point in pitch, and hangs while Aku sings/yells “Send sweet, unholy breaker…” As he hangs on the “y” in unholy, the song just explodes in a fit of percussion and hard guitars which look a lot like this:

Aku O.T. being badass with a guitar

Aku O.T. being badass with a guitar

And the song goes on from there, in much the same vein of badassery.

Now, I can completely understand someone not liking this album, or not even wanting to hear it based on my review.  It’s some of the most out-there shit I listen to, and I didn’t realize it until I heard these guys at Siren right along with yawn-inducing Islands and when they gave Ethan a headache with measly laptop speakers.  I’m not going to push these guys on anybody.  I’m just happy and content in my knowledge that these guys are completely out of their minds and glorying in it.

Again, a bit of a short review, but two in one night will do that to a person.  You’re cool with 645 words, right? Right.

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First of the Siren reviews: Islands

July 24, 2008 at 12:02 am · Filed under Music Reviews ·Tagged , ,

I hope to get at least a couple reviews in today to catch up on my laziness, then hopefully be back to normal.  I realized that in the past couple of days, I had gotten used to not reviewing because of the thumb, and had thus not left enough time to watch/listen to anything new.  Also, having now seen the Dark Knight myself twice, I’m pondering having a go at my own review of that, but it would probably abbreviated and have the function of filling in some things I haven’t read about in other reviews but I thought stood out a little.

I only got to see Islands for about 45 minutes of what seemed like an hour and a quarter-long set at Siren Music Festival, and I was less enthusiastic about them than my companions, and we agreed that it was probably because I’d already heard them on their album, so it didn’t strike me as novel, and I had already pretty much made up my mind about the band.  But I’ll talk more about that in my upcoming (read: as soon as BOTO lets me) review of the festival on another, more widely read medium.

Arm’s Way, Islands’ second album, was almost as hard to make up my mind over than Coldplay, because it doesn’t just have both good and bad, it has great and horrible, often at the same time, and I think I know why.  The music is very compelling, lots of good, tight harmonizing here, with good energy throughout, but the lyrics are so intellectually bankrupt that I just can’t get behind them.  It just seems like lead singer/songwriter Nick Thorburn just looked for words that kind of made sense in a rhyming dictionary.  There’s no heart, no sincerity to them.  In “Creeper”, he sings: “Right from the start, I was stabbed in the heart/didn’t/know i wasnt breathing/didn’t know i had been bleeding”.  Groan.  From opener “The Arm,” he opens with “You faded into/a different shade/a completely different hue/of a kind of blue”.  And no, blue has nothing to do with the rest of the song.

Really, this album seems like a poor man’s version of Muse, the band that is huge everywhere but America, and probably the most mainstream of all of my favorite bands.  Muse’s songwriting chops aren’t really up to snuff in regards to the other bands I listen to, but the music is put together really well, and the music has a lot of charisma and a lot of “sing-a-long-ability”, in addition to an edginess that makes even the major-key songs seem a little aggressive.  Basically the same is true of Arm’s Way, only the songwriting is even worse, and the music is not quite as good, though it’s close.

Final gripe with this album: it’s long, and too one-note to get away with it.  Though it only has 12 tracks, it runs 68 minutes long, and that’s because the second half of the album is exclusively songs that are 5 minutes and up, with the closer, “Vertigo (If It’s A Crime)” being an inexplicable 11 minutes long.  But I’ll cut the review off here, to prevent similarities.

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The Dark Knight was too good for me to review

July 21, 2008 at 12:39 am · Filed under Movie Reviews ·Tagged ,

So I’m just going to give you a laundry list of reviews that you can peruse if you wish.

AintitCoolNews.com: Alexandra DuPont, Capone, Quint, Moriarty (companion piece with Hellboy II)

New York Times: Manohla Dargis

LA Times: Kenneth Turan

New Yorker: David Denby (WALL-E review on page 2)

New York magazine: David Edelstein (Mamma Mia! review on page 2)

New York Observer: Andrew Sarris

The two Davids are negative reviews; figured I’d add some ideological (EDITED) fluidity, but I don’t agree with them.

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Rothstein DL’d with hand laceration, Fernando Martinez call-up imminent

July 18, 2008 at 2:08 am · Filed under Uncategorized

For those who aren’t Ben in the readership and don’t get the title’s joke, don’t worry about it.  It’s not on you.  I sliced my thumb cutting apart frozen hamburgers at a barbecue for my job, and as a result can only type one-handed (read: not well enough for a full review).  Sorry about that; Siren Music Festival album reviews will come next week, at least one, and look for my review of the festival itself to show up sometime soon on BOTO.

The thumb

The thumb

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