How the mighty have fallen: Director Richard Linklater, once the darling of the indie film scene, has signed on to shoot the remake of The Bad News Bears starring Billy Bob Thornton. At least Matthau had old age as an excuse, what’s Thornton’s? And Linklater’s.

Springsteen Tribute CD: Light of Day

A benefit for two reasonably worthwhile charities, I got a copy of this 2003 CD the other day when TS1 wanted a book on how to prepare for puppies from Amazon. Wide variety of performers and groups represented on the two disk set, some more familiar to me than others. The same organization also hosts an annual benefit concert in New Jersey.

Here are my short takes on the contributions:

Disk 1

  1. Elliot Murphy – Better Days: Bland
  2. Valentine’s Day – Lucky 7: Nice C&W (alt country?) interpretation
  3. Crazysloth – Candy’s Room: First song on the album that really reached out and struck me by adding to the original. Who are these guys? The website says it’s the side project of Cracker leader Johnny Hickman. Really like it a lot.
  4. The Mystic Knights – Johnny 99: Nice rockabilly reading, very different than the Nebraska version, the guitar is really strong and reminds me of the nasty tone used in a lot of late ’70s/early ’80s LA area neo-rockabilly players
  5. Nils Lofgren – Man at the Top: Acoustic treat and the only contribution from a member of the E Street Band, very much in Nils’ style
  6. Cindy Bullens – If I Should Fall Behind: Bland C&W reading
  7. Matthew Ryan – Something in the Night: Umm, not really my taste but very interesting, ethereal version, closer to Eno than Bruce; really, really brings a complete focus to the lyrics, that’s for sure.
  8. Mike Rimbaud – Atlantic City: Really like the slap standup bass on this high energy take, singer nicely adds just a hint of the anger the lyrics express
  9. Sid Griffin – Highway Patrolman: Folkie, not my taste, nothing special to my ears
  10. Billy Bragg – Mansion on the Hill: Different than Springsteen in pace and instrumental tension, reminds me of the old post-Elvis Sun Records sound, and Bragg’s voice is one that invites you in.
  11. Joe D’Urso & Stone Caravan – Badlands: Lighter, semi-ska beat, too pop and upbeat for this dark tune
  12. Steve Wynn – State Trooper: Electronica without the dance beat, or at least twisted in that direction
  13. Gary Lucas’ Gods & Monsters – Ain’t Got You: Similarly odd as the Wynn take on the previous song, does nothing for me except the brush stroke drumming
  14. Jennifer Glass – Bobby Jean: I liked this fresh-voiced, uptempo country interpretation
  15. The Clarks – The River: A ’90s alt rocker mixing jangly electric and acoustic guitars, slightly off vocals and a much stronger beat. Nice.
  16. Marc Broussard – Back in Your Arms: First out and out R&B reading by this young Louisiana singer
  17. John Cafferty & the Beaver Brown Band – E Street Shuffle: These guys almost broke big behind Bruce on the success of their work on Eddie and the Cruisers but couldn’t quite reach the level lyrically (IMO) and sadly just came off as another imitation. Anyway, about the song. Cafferty still has a great voice and this is a terrific tune but the band doesn’t add too much here past a nice sax solo.

Disk 2

  1. Elvis Costello – Brilliant Disguise: Costello in his country jacket, if you like the fit you’ll like this track
  2. Pete Yorn – New York City Serenade: Have to say Yorn respects the semi-folkie style of some of Bruce’s early recorded work but this has never been a favorite of mine and this doesn’t change my opinion
  3. Graham Parker – Pink Cadillac: GP was definitely a singer I liked back in the day, the high school day, and I used to think of Local Girls as “my song” since I never dated girls from my own school. Here he gives us a barebones acoustic guitar and vocal take that shows his voice nicely.
  4. Garland Jeffreys – Streets of Philadelphia: Could be a karaoke recording of Jeffreys’ voice over the original Springsteen track.
  5. Jason Ringenberg – My Hometown: One of the leaders of the alt-country scene and that’s what he does here. Lots of accordian, horns and warbling vocals.
  6. Joe Grushecky and the Houserockers – Light of Day: These guys were big when I spent my freshman year at Carnegie Mellon—Have a Good Time but Get Out Alive was a personal favorite–but never broke out from the local scene, though Joe is a close friend of Bruce’s and they have made a lot of music together in the last few years. Nothing here to prefer over the Bruce or original soundtrack versions.
  7. Rosie Flores – Lucky Town: Another female country singer, nice but no excitement though the song can certainly go there
  8. Willie Nile – I’m on Fire: This guy almost popped out of the Elvis Costello/John Hiatt/Marshall Crenshaw school of nerdy folk-pop guitarist/singers 20-odd years ago. Almost. Very nice originalreverby guitar treatment of this short but dark tune.
  9. Kirk Kelly – Downbound Train: Ukelele! This is one of my favorite less-popular Bruce tunes and yet I cannot listen to Kelly’s version. Worse even than the nasty ukelele opening McCartney did to Something on Concert for George!
  10. Patty Griffin – Stolen Car: Sweet and sad, changing the original’s piano instrumentation for acoustic underpinning and some sort of electric/slide atmospheric add-on. Nice!
  11. Paradise Brothers – Souls of the Departed: Nice hard rock reading of a very obscure slow Bruce tune. Big surprise: Paradise Brothers are ScottKempner, ex-Dictators/Del-Lords and Neil Giraldo, guitarist, producer, songwriter, and husband of Pat Benatar. Does not sound like a Benatar song.
  12. Mark Wright – Two Hearts: English singer who’s opened a few times for Grushecky. Nothing interesting which is too bad because this is a beautiful song. Love to hear, say, the Finn Brothers give it a go.
  13. Graziani Romano – The Promise: A tough looking Italian guy, he does justice to this mid-70s concert favorite that prefigured Thunder Road and the Darkness album.
  14. Format – For You: Misses the urgency of the original, turned into a pop sweet
  15. Jesse Malin – Hungry Heart: A glam rocker whose vocals remind me of Terry Jacks on top of a cheap drum machine
  16. Tom Cochrane and Damhnait Doyle – Secret Garden: Cochrane was the lead singer of Canadian band Red Rider (Lunatic Fringe), Doyle is a young pretty with a sweet voice. Nice interpretation.
  17. Cowboy Mouth – Born to Run: New Orleans Punkers! Me likee!
  18. Joe Ely – Working on the Highway: Good choice for Ely, fits his style, but I missed the bass mixed too low most of the time.

The charities, by the way, are the Kristen Ann Carr Fund, which provides grants for cancer research and seeks to improve all aspects of cancer patient life with an emphasis on adolescents and young adults, and the Parkinson’s Disease Foundation, a national non-profit organization devoted to education, advocacy, and the funding of research.

World Cup Qualifier:: Panama 1-1 USA

Talk about pulling it out of your ass! That’s surely what the American team did tonight in grabbing a point in the match at Panama City, with Cobi Jones scoring the equalizer in the 92nd minute from what was most likely an offside position. The Panamanians’ score was completely legit, to be fair. We played like pure crap tonight while the other side had plenty of energy and dominated the second half; other than our goal, we barely troubled Donaldo Gonzalez the entire 48 minutes.

Combined with Jamaica’s win at El Salvador, that leaves us in control of our qualifying group at five points, Jamaica ahead of Panama on goal differential, and El Salvador trailing with three points. Pretty much leaves everything up in the air midway through the round, though USA has a slight edge with two home matches and only El Salvador away.

Watch what you ask for

Don’t you find it amusing that the Yankees, who asked for a forfeit of the first game of a scheduled doubleheader on Monday when the Devil Rays didn’t arrive in time because of a hurricane (instantly denied) and then protested against having to have the doubleheader today instead, finally ended the mess when both of today’s games were erased by rain? The teams have no more scheduled meetings this season after tomorrow though I doubt we’ll see a tripleheader to catch up. The only day they can make up the missed game–assuming two can be played tomorrow–is the day after the end of the season and that’ll only happen if the Yankees and Red Sox continue playing the way they have the last few weeks to make it meaningful.

Bushinations: Truth doesn’t matter

Last night and this morning I was reading about the latest revelations on GWB’s National Guard service (an appropriate context for using such a Biblical term) and then Garret pointed to Michael Lynch’s essay Who Cares About the Truth? in The Chronicle and I said to myself, you know, there’s definitely a connection here.

Sure our verbally-challenged Prez comes from a long line of politicians. Sure he’s a tall, good looking guy, a big advantage in our media-driven age. Sure he’s good at standing and delivering a message.

But why–and I’m talking about years ago, long before 9/11–were the Texas and later national Republicans so enamored of him that they disregarded all the negatives of his personal history? Why would they go to such lengths to cover up the truth to propel him to political success? This is one of the more difficult points for me to understand in the whole Bush story.

One National Guard officer who served at the same time as GWB says that even if the latest information to come out is correct and that GWB did simply not show up for duty, so what, that was something hundreds or thousands of other young men did at the time. Why single out one man? My answer is that those other men aren’t running for the highest office in the land. And if any of them were to run for an election I was voting in I’d certainly take this as a point against. The White House spokesman, of course, refused to give a straight answer to reporters.

There is, though, at least one living person who knows the truth about whether or not George W. Bush snorted coke, helped (if that’s the correct word) a girlfriend get an abortion, and fulfilled his duty in the National Guard. And that person is of course GWB himself. But apparently he doesn’t have the same perspective on truth as people like myself do.

New toy: Ximeta 160GB NAS drive

Yesterday was one of those holidays that makes people love Fry’s. Bunch of one day specials, like a free Belkin 802.11g wireless router (in store $30 with $30 rebate) and five DVDs for $13 (although the selections all came from a pool of truly horrid movies). I was hoping to get one of the routers but they were gone by the time we got there around 11:30. I did get an Olympia 5.8GHz phone that was also free on the $30 upfront with a $30 rebate.

I also picked up a really cool network attached drive from Ximeta; price was $179 with $70 in rebates (I’ve seen it today on the web priced at $149). That is, the thing lives on the network and attaches directly to the router meaning that, unlike our printer, the files on it are accessible to either computer even if the other is turned off. The device also sports a USB connection so that if I need to take it on the road I can connect it to the laptop and still have simple connectivity.

After the recent upset with my laptop losing its hard drive, I’ve been working on a strong, practical backup scheme for LittleSteven and Twiggy. I’m giving Eazy Backup a good workout in anticipation of some very nice features (particularly synchronization) in the version due very soon. The stuff is simple, works well and the developer is very responsive–a definite plus to patronizing small developers.

When I saw the deal on this drive, the attraction was instant. I had been using TS1’s Twiggy as my backup drive, with mine as her’s, but this seems like a better choice especially if there’s a need for taking the files away. A little bit of an issue with the removal of some adware on her PC and older drivers on the Ximeta CD which needed replacement by one found on their support pages and that was that. Very nice.

In the dirt

In many classic tales, going back to the Book of Job, a man is put under intense pressure. Events simply pile bad results, hurt and injury atop each other so much that a break is unavoidable. In Job, of course, the man follows God’s word and is saved. In American revenge movies that are so popular these days, the man fights back and destroys those responsible.

In movies the hero rarely pays a cost beyond that which draws him into the fight. In Collateral Damage, Arnold’s character loses his wife and child but after that he pays no cost beyond a few bruises and utterly destroys the drug lord who took them. Real life rarely seems so clean; most fights do not leave the true fighter unscathed.

One wonders, pondering events, if one’s nature can reach the other end of a descent into depths, to match one’s opponent tit for tat, will leave one unsullied and still capable of better things.

World Cup Qualifier: USA 2-0 El Salvador

For details on the match, check reports from FoxSportsWorld or SoccerNet, or the US Men’s site. My commentary is an email I sent to FoxSportsWorld’s MLS Wrap, since they broadcast the match and John Harkes is the host of that show:

Guys,

I was really disappointed with John Harkes commentary on the match. Great that we won, and points for calling out the pitiful referee (this guy has to get a lesson from CONCACAF!), but the homerism was unnecessary and not even useful. The US players started out great, until a minute or two after the first goal, then sat back with sloppy and lazy play most of the rest of the way.

Such an effort will do against El Salvador, Panama and Jamaica but will really hurt us in the final qualifying round and fir sure in Germany. You think teams like Czech Republic, Korea, Turkey, Argentina will be so kind as to get silly send-offs and expend zero energy on offense against us?

From just after the red card until Donovan’s goal, the team had almost 100% possession but barely a single decent shot on frame. How is that good play? Better to be honest, fans can see for themselves what’s happening. Be critical, these are professionals, and such honesty would be a breath of fresh air in American soccer television, that’s for sure.

The late comments on how Clint Mathis and his Row Z first touch shots were “opening up opportunities” for us are, at the least, confusing to me. Once or twice, perhaps, would make some space in the back but if a player keeps doing it then there never is such an opportunity. If anything, he wasted most of our late chances for a third goal which, as you pointed out, might be very relevant in the final accounting.

John, if you want to be a homer and use your words to support the team, make sure Bruce gets this kind of message. Be honest with him, I’m sure you get the opportunities.

Book: The Graveyard Game

Some combination of mood and music lead me to wolf down a, the fourth book in Kage Baker’s series about that mysterious future Company, between last night and today. No good soccer matches to watch I suppose. Ha! Though tomorrow our Men take on El Salvador in Foxboro in a World Cup qualifier which’ll be shown live on FoxSportsWorld…

[Baker has a Company short story, Standing in His Light, available on the SciFi website if you’d like a little taste of her writing.]

The Graveyard Game focuses again on Joseph, working with another cyborg, Lewis, a literary recovery specialist who also holds the now missing Botanist Mendoza in a special place in his heart. (The third Company book, Mendoza In Hollywood, is next on my list to read but the gist of her plight is discussed thoroughly in this story.) Joseph and Lewis travel all over the globe and through several hundred years of real time to pursue her, careful all the while to hide their interest and activity from their bosses. Quite dangerous.

Baker also inserts several mysterious little interludes of Joseph talking to Budu, the enormous and even more ancient Enforcer, explaining the basics of what’s going on in ways she couldn’t contrive to fit in the normal flow. That’s another part of the plot, Joseph’s attempt to find Budu and the other Enforcers who he hadn’t scene in a millenia.

There’s also the building tension, not resolved here, of what will happen in the climactic year of 2355. Several factions are now clear and which of them, if any, will prevail then is clearly driving the series’ overal arc. Baker is a really good writer, though her non-Company oevre seems to be mostly fantasy, stuff I don’t care for, but I need to keep my eye out for the remaining volumes.

(I also decided I had to have the first book, In the Garden of Iden, and so popped $5.60–shipping included–to get it from a seller on eBay.)

recommended

Books: Sky Coyote and Black Projects, White Nights

Kage Baker has created an interesting series of novels and stories about a 24th century company called Dr. Zeus Incorporated. These future humans have figured out two key technological innovations–immortality and time travel–and set out to capitalize on them. Unfortunately, neither is simple or all that desirable, so the (mostly unseen, in what I’ve read) executives create a group of slaves to reach their ends instead.

[For the interested, becoming immortal is a lengthy, painful process, so much so that only infants can truly tolerate it, while time travel is also painful and generally not worth the expense and trouble. The company set up a base in deep prehistory, some 30,000 years ago, and created immortals then who could operate in the shadows of recorded history to take the materials desired in the 24th century.]

Sky Coyote is the series’ second book though the main character, one of those original prehistoric immortals named Joseph, was also the protagonist of In the Garden of Iden (which I do want to read). Anyway, this story is set in 1699 into 1700 whence Joseph has been assigned to take the guise of a deity called Sky Coyote and convince an entire village of native Americans, the Chumash of Humaship, to cross the rainbow bridge of their myths to escape the coming predations of the White Man.

Since the workers of Dr. Zeus have 24th centhnology, there’s no trouble transforming Joseph into a convincing Coyote, tail, paws and all, and he’s able to use his millenia of human understanding to get everyone’s agreement. There really isn’t much doubt of success, the only challenge being a missionary from another native religion who pops up late and is quickly dispatched; the charm here is Baker’s creation of Joseph and the Chumash with their now-disappeared way of life and the wistful knowledge that, agree or not, they’ll be gone.

I also recently read Black Projects, White Knights, a collection of short stories set in the same milleau. This is actually the fifth book in the series by publication order and probably a mistake to have read it first 😉 as I’d have understood it much better after reading the earlier stuff. The stories are generally short and varied, half set in the past, mainly California, and half telling the story of a special 24th century English boy named Alec Checkerfield.

A pair of enjoyable reads!

Charlatans

Why do scientists hate Atkins? Once again researchers, with ties to Weight Watchers this time, denigrate the best eating plan I’ve found (second anniversary was yesterday, have lost 60 pounds with no sign of gaining back) with no evidence.

Wildlife against Bush

Added a link (over there on the right side bar) to Defender Bear, “a cartoon developed by Defenders of Wildlife Action Fund to assist its project to defeat George W. Bush and to elect John Kerry as president of the United States. DefenderBear.org is the Website created to feature the cartoons and related subjects. Defenders Action Fund is working to oppose George Bush’s re-election because it considers him the most anti-conservation U.S. president in history, and because it sees John Kerry as likely to be one of the most pro-conservation presidents in history.”