Author: Wil

And now, some music I’ve been listening to, which I think WWdN:iX readers may like as well. Ratings are out of five.

Consonant – Love and Affliction (aka Consonant, apparently)
(4) Good indie rock that you won’t hear on the radio. John Coltrane’s My Favorite Things is awesome.

Yo La Tengo – And Then Nothing Turned Itself Inside-Out
(5) I skipped this and wrote thoughts on every other band on the rest of this list, then came back here and stared at a blinking cursor for close to five minutes. I can’t tell you why I like this album so much, or why I like it more than many of YLT’s other releases, but I just do. I guess that pretty much explains Yo La Tengo, and that’s as good as it’s going to get.

Mike Doughty – Haughty Melodic
(4.5) Mike Doughty’s introduction to the mainstream as a solo artist is long overdue, and this album is a great way to do it. Mike clearly loves his music, and is an incredibly talented writer. I don’t like this as much as Skittish and Rockity Roll, but that’s sort of like saying the second Grey Goose martini wasn’t as good as the first.

Air – Moon Safari
(3.9) Kelly Watch the Stars. ‘Nuff said.

Nada Surf – The Weight is the Gift
(3.75, but growing) The first time I hear an album, I have one of three reactions:

1. Yes!
2. Meh.
3. Hate it. Hate it. HATE IT!

Though you wouldn’t expect it, the albums that I end up liking the most, and listening to most often, are the ones that elicit a solid Meh. For example, I flipped over Kid A, but OK Computer got a solid Meh. Guess which one grew on me, challenged me, and is still in heavy rotation? Nada Surf’s Let Go is one of my favorite albums of all time (and will forever remind me of working on CSI) so I couldn’t wait to buy The Weight is the Gift when it was released. So far, it’s getting a solid Meh, but I like it a little bit more each time I listen to it. Look in the Mirror is my favorite song on the album, so far. I wouldn’t recommend this as an introduction to this band, but it’s worth listening to if you’re already a fan. I’m very interested to hear what others think about this album.

The Anniversary – Your Majesty
(5) Proof that good things can come out of Kansas, this is an amazing indie rock album, with surprising depth. Of course, I had to discover this band right after they broke up, so I guess I won’t be seeing them in concert any time soon. Sweet Marie, there’s a hole where your band should be.

The Rosebuds – Makeout
(3) Music that alternately makes me want to bop around and smash things. I can live with out the "woah-woah-woah-yo-yo-yo-yeah" on Drunkard’s Worst Nightmare, but the rest of the album is quite enjoyable. I especially like Back to Boston, Big Heartbreak, and Signature Drinks. It’s not a surprise that they’re on the same label as Arcade Fire and Teenage Fanclub. As a bonus, they’re playing tonight at the Troubadour in Hollywood, so I may just drag my lazy ass out of suburbia to see the show.

Johnny Cash – The Legend of Johnny Cash
(infinity) As I prepare to see Walk The Line, I’ve put The Man in Black back into heavy, heavy iPod, iTunes, and CD rotation. While it feels trendy and lame to have what is essentially a "best of" album, especialy now, this is pretty much the CD I’d make if I were making a Johnny Fuckin’ Cash mix tape.

If you have a rating of your own, or can put these bands together, figure out what I like, and have something to suggest based upon that information, or you just think I’m out of my fucking mind, let me know in the comments.

WWdN:iX readerJB wrote:

[I]f you don't read AssignBlame.com, you really should. You're the Goat of
the Week, evidently. Check it out.

Because I’m a fan of both goats and assigning blame, and because I am a huge fan of the word evidently, I headed over and took a look:

Honestly, I’d say Wheaton has been a big influence on other celebrities
starting up their own blogs. Whether they’re ghost written or
actually penned by the celebrities themselves, there is now a glut of
Hollywood claptrap flooding the internet. Pamela Anderson, Rosie
O’Donnell, Melanie Griffith, Barbara Streisand, William Fu***ng Shatner,
Tom Green, Al Roker, Hillary Duff, and freakin MOBY for chrissakes —
all of them have blogs out there on the internet. All of them are
spewing their “I’m so fantastic” bile onto what was once a pristine
electronic frontier.

In
the hands of these “You like me, you
really really like me” publicity whores, the internet is going to
slowly become yet another cog in the Hollywood Spin Machine. Celebrity
Drunk Driving? Repentant blog post. Paparazzi
caught you topless on the beach? Outraged blog post. Didn’t
get the part you wanted in the newest M. Night Shyamalan film?
Sympathetic, downtrodden blog post. With enthusiastic publicists and
greedy agents, we already can’t tell the honest, well-meaning actors
from those who are just using it as yet another publicity mouth-piece.

And it’s all your fault, Wheaton.

You
had to go and create something good. You had to start something
that was enjoyable for people to read. You had to make something
that we could rely on to provide us with a laugh, or a sniffle, or a
cry of outrage on a regular basis. You had to go and TOUCH us, Wil.

And now all these posers think they can do it too.

When I saw the title of the entry was alt.wilwheaton.die.die.die, I wasn’t exactly hopeful . . . but this is actually pretty goddamn cool. I would like to say thank you, and I’m sorry. 🙂

Tonight, WWdN West Coast Warmup #2 is happening at PokerStars.
Yesterday, I got heads-up in a $22 SNG, and had my kings cracked by 84d
(!) when the flop came 6s-5s-9h, and he turned the 7h for a gutshot. On
the very next hand, I had AKo. He raised, I called. When the flop came
Ah Jh 9d, he checked. I made a small bet, he raised and I pushed,
confident I was ahead, and hoping he’d put me on a tilt-push and call.
He called, and showed Ac 8d, and I was about a 4:1 favorite. The turn
was the 5d, improving me to about 9:1, and the river was the 8h,
reducing me to 0:1.

So what I’m saying is, I used up all my bad luck yesterday, and I’m dangerous tonight. If you’re going to come play, I suggest reading two posts I did for CardSquad this week, Blissful Buckets parts one and two. They are about enjoying the game, and having fun at lower limits:

Is it a coincidence that I just wanted to have fun, and I finished the night way way way ahead?

Maybe.
But I know this: I had as much fun when I was losing as I did when
I was winning. I enjoyed the company of my fellow players, and I did
not take a single moment for granted while I played with people I like.

So
I am left with a few points, which will guarantee low-limit and
small-stakes SNG success, as I’ve defined it. This assumes that you
have a basic skill set, and understand things like the Gap Concept, the
Dominated Hand, and the importance of position in no limit hold’em:

 

1. Always play within your gulp limit.
2. Don’t play with the rent money.
3. Do whatever it takes to enjoy the company of your tablemates.
4. Don’t be afraid of Monsters Under The Bed.
5. Read Zen and the Art of Poker.

Hope to see you all there tonight! The game is at 7:30 Pacific, and
is in the lobby under Tourneys -> Private. Password, as always, is monkey.

So I got the new Wilco CD, Kicking Television: Live in Chicago. It sounds great, and has one of the most incredible version of Spiders (Kidsmoke) I’ve ever heard, but it’s not much different from any other soundboard recording from the same tour earlier this year. I’m not ashamed to admit that I have a pile of recordings from that tour, because I am that big of a Wilco geek. I even picked up the actual CD, rather than buying it from the iTunes Music Store, hoping for a booklet or something inside, but there wasn’t anything that made me glad I’d driven all the way to the store for it. Still, it’s a great recording that Wilco geeks will probably enjoy, and the best reason to buy this CD is because you love the band and want to support them.

I finally watched 28 Days Later last night. I enjoyed it, but I think it had been built up way too much by my friends, because it didn’t blow me away like I was expecting it to. I wouldn’t consider it a zombie movie, at all. First of all, I don’t consider it a true zombie movie. That’s not to suggest that it’s a bad movie, it’s just the zombie elitist in me snorting from behind a too-tight sweaty T-shirt: When the infected die, they’re dead. The end. If they were traditional zombies, they’d be coming to get you, Barbara. They also don’t eat the living, they’re just out there trying to kill everything that moves and spread the infection. I really liked that, and I think the zombie comparisons aren’t necessary. (Yes, I know that Danny Boyle called it a "reimagining" of the zombie films, so I’ll defer to him on this point, but like a good nerd, I’m needed to snort and argue about it a whole lot, first, to feel important.) 

I really loved the way the movie looked, and I loved the score. I thought the performances were all fantastic, and the movie was truly scary and suspenseful . . . but when they got to the whole thing with the soldiers, I felt like the story took an unexpected turn, jumped onto a different track, and became and entirely different movie. Actually, now that I think about it, I suppose it could be an additional examination of how different people reacted to the epidemic . . . but it didn’t feel right to me in the context of the film. I watched all the alternative endings, and I really liked the one that ends with the two girls walking down the hospital corridor, without the coda.