261 items found for your search. If no results were found please broaden your search.
(06/05/08 1:29pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>By the time musicians are recording albums for prominent independent labels and touring nationally, they’ve generally spent years moving in and out of bands, gigging at local clubs, doing short tours of the surrounding area and so on. This is not so for Michael Carreira, percussionist for California indie-pop trio Cryptacize. With a background in classical and traditional Brazilian music, Carreira was working as a volunteer elementary school music teacher when he followed a whim and found himself suddenly thrust into the world of popular music.“It’s a fascinating world; I’m shocked that there are fans,” Carreira said, noting that his previous experience was with music produced in an academic setting, and often for his own sake.Performing Saturday night at the Bloomington Playwright’s Project, located at 107 W. Ninth St., with support from local acts The Coke Dares and Mike Bushman of The Alarmists (Calm Down), Cryptacize’s origins are as unusual as its sound. Starting as the brainchild of former Deerhoof guitarist Chris Cohen and singer-songwriter Nedelle Torrisi (who have also played together in The Curtains), the group finally materialized when, after hearing about the project from a friend, Carreira sent Cohen and Torrisi a link to a YouTube video of himself performing a highly sophisticated tune using only a cowbell. Carreira’s preference for small percussion instruments has since become one of the many elements making Cryptacize’s music truly distinctive. “They’re so unique,” Cryptacize fan and IU alumna Lauren Moore said, “Their MySpace (profile) used to have them labeled as indie/showtunes, and, honestly, you can hear some sort of showtune/musical-esque quality to their music. … Their instrumentals are almost as lyrical as their lyrics … if that makes sense.”Another quality that has been attributed to Cryptacize’s music is a sense of optimism. For example, in “Cosmic Sing-a-Long” from the band’s debut album Dig That Treasure, Cohen sings “We’re all in a cosmic sing-a-long/ ’til the day is done/ We’re all in a cosmic sing-a-long/ ’til the world is gone.” However, Carreira expressed doubt that a tendency toward optimism made Cryptacize all that different from other musicians.“Generally, in the worst situations, the ones making music are the most optimistic,” he said. “Even the most tragic-sounding music is optimistic.”Whether Cryptacize’s music is particularly upbeat or not, Carreira expressed enthusiasm for the band’s recently launched second tour, for playing in Bloomington and for working with Cohen and Torrisi (going so far as to call playing with his bandmates “an honor”).And despite being new to the rigors of touring, and the fact that Cohen and Torrisi are a romantic couple, Carreira reported that life on the road had been about as harmonious as could be expected for any three band members trapped in a car together.“We’re doing pretty well in terms of how miserable we make each other,” he said, jokingly.Carreira has also managed to conquer his stage fright. When Cryptacize performed its first show at San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall in front of a crowd of 700 people, he was so scared that he lost the beat for five to 10 minutes.“I was just looking around with my mouth open, in awe,” he said. “But it’s the kind of thing that the second time (at Great American Music Hall) was just like playing in a coffee shop.”Carreira credits his experience in teaching music with helping him learn how to make music both with and for other people–even though his students made for one of his tougher crowds, as when Cryptacize performed five shows for five different classes at his school.“They thought I was awesome for seven minutes,” he said. “(After that) they can’t sit still for that long. They want to play it themselves.”
(05/28/08 10:38pm)
Just over a week ago, the Senate Banking Committee approved a bill that seeks to prevent foreclosures among at-risk homeowners and provide greater government oversight of the mortgage and real-estate industries. Sounds dull, right? \nBut recently it emerged that one of the bill’s new provisions is a federal database collecting the fingerprints of anyone involved with the process of providing home loans – including lenders, mortgage brokers and any real estate agents who are compensated in the course of the transaction. The definition of who exactly will have to provide their fingerprints is very broad, and could involve thousands of people in the housing industry.\nAnd it’s about time! Forget murderers, terrorists, drug dealers and practitioners of mail fraud – it is the mortgage industry that is the greatest national-security threat facing these United States today! Even now they could be scheming about adjustable-rate mortgages and two-bedroom townhouses with one-and-a-half baths and parking adjacent.\nOh sure, those namby-pamby privacy and civil liberties advocates might cry “Big Brother” over this – but they’ve never lost a loved one to a drive-by interest rate! They’ve never seen families torn apart by a loan application!\nWe’ve all heard the story before. A young kid from a broken home, with no education and no prospects, sees the opportunity to make a little extra money – so he starts providing six percent, 30-year ARMs to his friends. But the money’s too good, and he starts making riskier and riskier loans and he expands his territory, all to keep himself in Hugo Boss ties and Lexuses and those swinging-ball desk toys. As Scarface taught us, with the money comes the power – and with the power, the women. Soon he’s awash in pretty, young things drawn in by the danger and the romance of the loan-provider lifestyle. And then there’s the respect – going from nothing to the most feared source of sub-prime mortgages in the entire county – that is, until the housing bubble bursts, and debtors start defaulting – and soon he has to write off $379 billion in loans and the financial carnage gets so bad that Federal Reserve has to lower their discount rate and collateralize government securities to provide short-term loans in order to prevent a credit crunch. And in the end, looking down the barrel of a government bailout plan, the young kid realizes that the glamour, the hoochies, the tabletop air purifier from Sharper Image – none of it was worth it. But by then it’s too late.\nFor too long, the authorities have sat idly by, letting chaos and anarchy reign. But now, a bright new day of government monitoring of (not-actually) criminals has dawned! We can only hope that this fingerprint database will grow to encompass providers of car loans, boat loans, business loans, personal loans – and recipients, too. And how about anyone who owns stocks or bonds, or starts a savings account or changes a $5 bill for five $1s? Because only by controlling every last, little aspect of our lives can the government ensure our freedom.
(05/14/08 11:29pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>What do you do after playing in one of the greatest punk bands of all time? Over the course of 15 years, Fugazi became an underground legend both for its unique sound and rigorous code of professional ethics — but when the band went on hiatus in 2002, bassist Joe Lally was faced with an uncertain future. After brief stints in the bands Decahedron and Ataxia (the latter a one-shot collaboration with Red Hot Chili Peppers’ John Frusciante), as well as the birth and demise of his label Tolotta Records, Lally struck out on his own as a solo artist.“Forcing myself to get out there on my own was not the easiest thing to do,” Lally said, “but it’s something I enjoy doing.”Currently living in Italy with his family, Lally has returned to tour the northeastern quarter of the United States (from Chicago to Baltimore) throughout the rest of May, including a performance on Monday, May 19 at Bloomington’s Art Hospital. And despite having already released two positively reviewed solo albums, the bassist sees his music very much as a work in progress. Fugazi’s long-term break, if not official dissolution, has meant that Lally has had to craft his own approach to songwriting. This process has been shaped both by his individual preferences (his songs evince a particularly strong emphasis on groove and rhythm, for example) and by pragmatic considerations.“Fugazi always got all the music out, then the singing went over the final product,” he said. “Since there isn’t a band playing with me, it might be that a bass line comes first, or just as often lyrics can come first or a melody — then it is rather a different thing to be putting the music to that.”For his first album, 2006’s There to Here, Lally wrote the music largely on his own, first performing his songs with other people only during recording — while his second album, 2007’s Nothing Is Underrated, was informed by his experiences performing live while on tour with supporting musicians. However, for his next record, he’s seeking an even closer partnership.“I wish I had someone to collaborate with,” he said, and expressed his desire to set up a permanent supporting band. This has been complicated, though, by the expense and challenge of forging a group that can work together on a transatlantic basis. It’s not only tough to afford the cost of flying a trio across the ocean, but difficult to find members who aren’t tied up with commitments to other acts as well. The result of this has been the rotation of supporting musicians according to who’s available and where. For instance, while Lally’s last U.S. tour saw support from drummer Ricardo Lagomasino of Seattle (formerly Philadelphia) band Capillary Action and Italian guitarist Andrea Moscianese, his current tour will be backed by Lagomasino and guitarist Jonathan Morris (stage name Jonathan Matis) of Washington, D.C.’s DC Improvisers Collective. But while this system of rotating band members has challenged Lally’s songwriting, it has also pushed him to create songs that can be adapted to the talents of his supporting musicians. “Over the last few years, Joe has been playing with lots of different people, all over the world,” Morris said. “He’s had the chance to work out his songs in all of these different contexts with so many contributors. It’s both exciting and a little intimidating to step into those songs now.”This view was echoed by Lagomasino: “Each member put a lot of their own character into the music,” he said. “But if it’s anything like the previous tours it should definitely be good.”And while Lally has worked a great deal with Lagomasino, the bassist expressed a hope that whoever the third (non-drums) member of the band happens to be at any given time, he/she will bring a new element to the mix. Lally went on to say that the third musician ought to bring a knack for experimentation to give him and the music a chance to evolve.Indeed, to an extent, Lally seems more concerned with the future than the past or present. Asked whether he heard Fugazi’s legacy in the music of current acts, he confessed that he has not paid them much attention.“I don’t think about the legacy of Fugazi in those terms,” he said. “Still, traveling around, you meet people who are younger who want to tell me that my bass playing influenced them to play or how much the band meant to them. That’s an important and wonderful thing.”This reaction comes down to Lally’s view of music as a force for uniting people through a sense of shared community.“It’s more about not being separate,” he said. “There’s no sense of separation anymore. That’s the wonderful thing about music."
(05/12/08 5:55pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>It’s the first summer session, and most of IU’s roughly 30,000 undergraduates have left Bloomington to return to their families, go on internships, travel, work summer jobs, tend crops and so on. Parking has become available, and traffic ... well ... isn’t quite as bad. During the day, Bloomington is sleepy and quiet, with only a few summer students shuffling from place to place. But at night: The grad students rule.Not literally, of course. But loads of us are still here, and our workloads are reduced. And like a mighty machine abandoned for lack of fuel, an entire local industry based around the mass production of intoxicated undergrads lies at our disposal. But much as an engine needs to be converted from regular gas to diesel, the Bloomington bar scene could use some changes to help it smash grad students at the most efficient rate possible:• Make good beers affordable, rather than making cheap beers super-cheap. Grad students aren’t rich, but we do tend to have more rarified tastes – and few things are as disappointing as going to the pub and finding that the only special is on Bud Light. Also, we no longer have 21-year-old (or, considering cheap beer’s consumers, more likely 18- or 19-year-old) digestive tracts. I’m sure that serving mass quantities of super-cheap beer is profitable during the school year – but since you can’t sell mass quantities during the summer, maybe another approach is warranted.• The music: “If it’s too loud, you’re too old,” goes the sneer. Well, all right jerk, maybe we are – but we’re the ones at the bar with the folding money; and we’re there to visit with friends and chat each other up, not be pummeled by the bass line to the latest glorified ringtone limping up Billboard’s pop charts. And while yours truly would be happier with newer music – I suspect many of my colleagues would appreciate it if you made an effort to work in some hits from 5, 10 or 15 years ago.• Studying. Probably the greatest barrier holding back grad students from going out is the need to study or the guilt of not studying – but why does study have to be divorced from the consumption of (moderate amounts of) beer? Check out all the people hanging out at the local bookstores and coffee shops sometime and ask yourself: Why couldn’t a pub do that?• Trivia night. Alcohol and competition have a well-established relationship, of course; as do academics and efforts to establish intellectual superiority. So why not combine the two? Let us form teams and settle our long-standing intra- and inter-disciplinary grudges somewhere other than in the letters sections of journals. And make it hard – we don’t need no wussies answering trivia.• Card us. Yes, we might have gray hair, crow’s feet, bald spots and bifocals – card us anyway. At the end of August, the undergrads will return, and Bloomington’s watering holes can return to business as usual. But for now, you’ve got us, and we’re gonna be thirsty.
(05/12/08 1:45am)
It’s the first summer session, and most of IU’s roughly 30,000 undergraduates have left Bloomington to return to their families, go on internships, travel, work summer jobs, tend crops and so on. Parking has become available, and traffic ... well ... isn’t quite as bad. During the day, Bloomington is sleepy and quiet, with only a few summer students shuffling from place to place. \nBut at night: The grad students rule.\nNot literally, of course. But loads of us are still here, and our workloads are reduced. And like a mighty machine abandoned for lack of fuel, an entire local industry based around the mass production of intoxicated undergrads lies at our disposal. But much as an engine needs to be converted from regular gas to diesel, the Bloomington bar scene could use some changes to help it smash grad students at the most efficient rate possible:\n• Make good beers affordable, rather than making cheap beers super-cheap. Grad students aren’t rich, but we do tend to have more rarified tastes – and few things are as disappointing as going to the pub and finding that the only special is on Bud Light. Also, we no longer have 21-year-old (or, considering cheap beer’s consumers, more likely 18- or 19-year-old) digestive tracts. I’m sure that serving mass quantities of super-cheap beer is profitable during the school year – but since you can’t sell mass quantities during the summer, maybe another approach is warranted.\n• The music: “If it’s too loud, you’re too old,” goes the sneer. Well, all right jerk, maybe we are – but we’re the ones at the bar with the folding money; and we’re there to visit with friends and chat each other up, not be pummeled by the bass line to the latest glorified ringtone limping up Billboard’s pop charts. And while yours truly would be happier with newer music – I suspect many of my colleagues would appreciate it if you made an effort to work in some hits from 5, 10 or 15 years ago.\n• Studying. Probably the greatest barrier holding back grad students from going out is the need to study or the guilt of not studying – but why does study have to be divorced from the consumption of (moderate amounts of) beer? Check out all the people hanging out at the local bookstores and coffee shops sometime and ask yourself: Why couldn’t a pub do that?\n• Trivia night. Alcohol and competition have a well-established relationship, of course; as do academics and efforts to establish intellectual superiority. So why not combine the two? Let us form teams and settle our long-standing intra- and inter-disciplinary grudges somewhere other than in the letters sections of journals. And make it hard – we don’t need no wussies answering trivia.\n• Card us. Yes, we might have gray hair, crow’s feet, bald spots and bifocals – card us anyway. \nAt the end of August, the undergrads will return, and Bloomington’s watering holes can return to business as usual. But for now, you’ve got us, and we’re gonna be thirsty.
(04/27/08 10:23pm)
Today, the federal government is due to start mailing checks to taxpayers in its stimulus package to help boost economic growth.\nAnd let me tell you: I’m going to stimulate the hell out of this economy.\nWhy, I’ve been working on plans for months – new, bold plans to tackle the big issues dogging our economy’s future. The types of plans that small minds might dismiss as mad but that geniuses will hail as ... uh ... genius!\nFor starters, I’m developing a super-light, super-fast wind-powered land craft that could revolutionize the U.S. transportation system. By relying on a freely available, non-polluting, renewable source of power, it will help to break our dependence on finite natural resources. But I know what you are thinking: What if there is no wind? Well, under those conditions it will feature powerful, hand-cranked fans driven by galley slaves endowed with inhuman strength through daily consumption of anabolic steroids and controlled via pin-sized explosive devices attached at the bases of their medulla oblongatas. And to further our leap into sustainable fuel, my crew and I shall employ this mighty craft to prey upon the slow, vulnerable, petroleum-driven vehicles that wend up and down North America’s miles and miles of land-based shipping routes. The result will be that people will either turn to wind power, or stay home. And I will be hailed as both a savior of the environment and the most feared pirate in the history of the interstate highway system.\nOr there’s my idea for saving the U.S. housing market. Like many of the best-laid plans, it starts with a giant robot: A 100-story high, nuclear-powered, titanium-armored, state-of-the-art killbot, to be precise. See, the values of homes have been falling – and what is the simplest way to increase the value of something? Why, decrease the supply. Thus, with my trusty killbot, I will provide a public service by traveling around the country employing its 2,000-ton feet to gleefully crush all the excess homes. Oh, don’t worry: I won’t crush them with people inside. I’m not a monster. I’ll install a loudspeaker in the killbot’s cockpit, so that my maniacal laughter will warn people of my approach.\nThen there is the need to create new jobs. And not just new jobs – jobs that can not only employ those who lack a college education, but that also cannot be outsourced. This means locally based service jobs – like exterminators, for example. Well, I have just the thing: With chemicals bought using my stimulus check, I’ll unleash a plague of flesh-eating zombies, thereby creating an opportunity for brave souls willing to cull the ranks of the undead horde. The training is simple (“aim for the head!”), and the demand for recruits will stay constant or growing. After all, if you’re not good at hunting zombies, you’ll simply end up joining them. Eat your heart out, Lou Dobbs!\nYes indeed, a brave new day is beginning for the U.S. economy, and ... What?\nOh, we’re only getting $600? I guess I’ll just spend it on groceries, then.
(04/23/08 2:03am)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Asia is back with all four original band members!Who? You know: Asia! Not the guys who play “Don’t Stop Believin’”! That’s Journey. No, these are the guys behind “Heat Of The Moment.” You know: “Do you reMEMber whennn we USED to-dance? / And inciDENCE arose from CIR-cum-stance / One thing led to an-OTHER, WE-were-young / And we would scream to-GETHER, SONGS unsung! / It was the heeeat of the mo-ment ... ” Yeah, you know who I’m talking about.Well, not only is Asia back – they apparently never quite went away. Various permutations involving about two-dozen different musicians have been cranking out stadium-friendly progressive rock since the founding members’ first split in 1983. In 2006, the original lineup launched a reunion tour to celebrate (read: “cash in on”) the band’s 25th anniversary. As there was already an Asia touring, this has led to a world with two Asias: “Asia” (with the initial four) and “Asia Featuring John Payne” (made up of later members, including replacement front man Payne).Thus, Phoenix is the new studio album by the Asia without qualifiers – and, to both its credit and detriment, Phoenix sounds like it has been locked in a hermetically-sealed canister since Reagan proposed “Star Wars.” On the plus side, this means that the album is everything an Asia fan could ask for. The band has lost none of their musicianship; the songs are meticulously, skillfully arranged. Asia maintains their balance between arty bombast and pop hooks, and there are no embarrassing attempts to “modernize” the band’s sound.On the minus side, this means Phoenix has little to offer anyone else. Asia are just as dull as they were 25 years ago – with broad, cliched lyrics, glossy overproduction and plodding songs that sound like they were written by the Insta-Chart 3000 automated pop-hit generator. Asia’s output is called “progressive rock,” but they have never been terribly progressive (in the sense of advancing popular music), and only sometimes rock. Time has only made these problems worse.But if you’re currently screaming “No way man, Asia rules!” – you’ll love this album. Just don’t expect the rest of us to.
(04/21/08 1:40am)
It’s more than understandable that Friday’s earthquake would set people buzzing. After all, it’s not every day that folks in Bloomington awake to feel the world shaking around them (that is, without having done tequila shots the night before). But seeing as there was no serious damage or injuries, I think it’s time we put this incident behind us. Earthquakes happen – we don’t need to look into it any further. And we definitely don’t need to go around trying to determine if anyone was to blame (especially since, even if anyone was to blame, it was almost certainly an accident).\nYes, it seems unusual that a 5.2-magnitude earthquake would occur in southwestern Illinois, along the Wabash fault zone, far from where tectonic plates collide (in more quake-prone places, such as California). But stranger things have happened. Who among us, even with strongest of constitutions, hasn’t experienced the occasional hiccup? The Earth is the same way. It’s full of strange and wonderful phenomena that will never be completely understood by humans. And it’s not like there are a lot of quakes happening around here – just one itty, bitty one (and, OK, an aftershock). Thus, there’s no reason to send teams of geologists and investigators and, possibly, federal authorities to West Salem, Ill., to look into this little “Earth hiccup.” They won’t find anything there, anyway. Oh, sure, they might hear a few stories about strange noises, or late-night deliveries of unusual equipment or the disappearance of a couple heads of cattle – but what small community is without such tales? Rural America is rich in folklore, and that’s something to be celebrated rather than scrutinized.\nFurthermore, there’s no real reason to go bothering the hardworking people in the mining industry about who might have purchased unusual pieces of specialized commercial drilling technology – or, for that matter, about whether they happen to have lost any such pieces. Just because someone might have acquired a few things that might, theoretically, be used to construct a sonic drill capable of generating 600 hertz of vibrational energy, it does not mean they were up to no good. They could have collected things such as diamond-tipped augers and titanium reinforcing struts purely for their aesthetic qualities. Indeed, it will be a dark day when paranoia regarding who might burrow 1,500 miles down into the Earth’s mantle and why leads the authorities to violate individuals’ privacy.\nLastly, it must be said that there is no evidence whatsoever to connect Friday’s earthquake to former president Jimmy Carter’s recent trip to Syria to talk with the exiled leader of the terrorist group Hamas. In fact, the very suggestion is absurd. The timing between the two is merely an odd coincidence, and couldn’t possibly be the product of a complex global conspiracy centuries in the making. Next thing, you’ll be suggesting that Bigfoot is involved. Which is laughable, as there is no way that Bigfoot could pilot a state-of-the-art digging machine into the Earth’s core.\nNot without six to eight weeks of training, anyway.
(04/15/08 9:26pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Starting at noon this Saturday, April 19, serene indie popsters Beach House, techno-primitivists Mahjongg, retro-metal monsters Dead Child and off-kilter folkies The Dodos, as well as 11 other musical acts, will play a daylong concert in Dunn Meadow – all for free, as part of the 23rd annual Culture Shock festival hosted by IU student-run radio station WIUX.Since the festival was founded by WIUS (pre-FM WIUX) staffers Jim Kerns and John Pollock in 1986, Culture Shock has grown, shrunk and grown again; seen boom and bust periods; experienced good and bad weather; advocated causes ranging from the abolition of South African apartheid to environmental awareness; and evolved from a loose gathering of creative individuals to a full-on rock concert. In the process, Culture Shock audiences have been privy to performances by Yo La Tengo, Spoon, Alkaline Trio, Early Day Miners, The Verve Pipe, Bunnygrunt, Damien Jurado, Scout Niblett, Koufax, Harry and the Potters – and, most recently: Xiu Xiu, Sunset Rubdown, Catfish Haven, Black Moth Super Rainbow and David Vandervelde.For this year’s edition of the festival, the process of bringing the bands to Bloomington all started with a bulletin board in the hallway of the WIUX headquarters on Eighth Street, affectionately called the WIUX Mansion. “We try to make (the lineup’s selection) as democratic as possible,” festival organizer and WIUX Special Events Director Jon Coombs said. “So, this year, on the bulletin board out there, we just put a list, and anyone could write anything.” WIUX DJs, bands playing live shows for the station, and casual passersby were all invited to contribute suggestions as to who should play at Culture Shock. Armed with this inventory, Coombs, with the help of local promoters Spirit of ’68 Promotions, went about seeing which bands happened to be available. They also had to find bands that were affordable – the concert might be free to the public, but someone had to pick up the tab.“(Some bands) wanted way too much money,” Coombs said. “They think we’re Union Board, whose pockets are, like, infinitely deep – and ours are very, very, very limited.” For some bands, the expense of traveling to Bloomington was simply too great – as it was for The Explorers Club, who were forced to bow out of this year’s festival. (They have, however, promised to play next year’s Culture Shock, and WIUX is finding a replacement for them at this year’s festival.) In the end, the price tag for this year’s Culture Shock was just more than $7,000 – the money coming from a mix of University funding, an on-air telethon, sponsorships and support from Union Board. This represents a bargain, Coombs said, compared to last year when the headliners alone, Sunset Rubdown and Xiu Xiu, cost $6,000.“The two bands were way out of the way, and they could have played Chicago, they could have played a much bigger market on a Saturday night,” Coombs said. ”So, if you want the bigger bands, you’re going to have to pay a lot more money to come to the middle of nowhereland, practically. We learned that the hard way last year.”The investment, however, appears to be paying off. The recruitment of nationally known indie bands for 2007’s Culture Shock not only drew sizable crowds, but garnered this year’s festival the attention of influential publication Pitchforkmedia.com – which the organizers hope will draw even more people to Dunn Meadow. However, Coombs was quick to note that Culture Shock offers more than indie rock.“Indie rock is our bread and butter, but it’s called ‘Culture Shock’ for a reason,” he said. “We don’t just want some run-of-the-mill indie rock bands one after another. We’ve got a jazz quintet this year, we’ve got hip-hop, we’ve got world music, we’ve got some post rock, some instrumental rock on top of our basic indie rock stuff. ... There is a definite emphasis on making it not just indie rock.”In this, there is a reflection of the festival’s original stated purpose as a showcase for not just rock, but performances originating from foreign cultures and countercultural scenes. (The first Culture Shock even went beyond the world of music, to feature dance troupes, puppet theater, mime and displays of fencing and medieval combat.) And, also true to Culture Shock’s roots, this year’s festival will feature Bloomington acts alongside nationally-touring artists. One band that merges both these traditions is local group Impure Jazz.“Some find it hard to pinpoint a specific genre, but I’d say (the way we sound is like) if jazz punched math rock in the face, and then experimental rock’s crazy uncle tried to break the fight up by putting on a Paula Abdul record,” group drummer and IU freshman Joshua Morrow said.For Morrow, the appeal of Culture Shock was the potential for public exposure and fun of playing for a crowd.But for Josh Hinton of Nire, a gently melodic acoustic duo from Portland, Ore., a major draw was simply the opportunity to play at an outside festival.“We’re excited to be playing in a different type of environment,” Hinton said. “Our shows are often in small, dark spaces, so playing in a meadow and potentially at high noon will be kind of surreal.”This sentiment was echoed by Ryan Holladay of Brooklyn, N.Y.’s The Epochs.“The only other show we played outside was at Columbia University with the Walkmen,” Holladay said. “I borrowed their tambourine and completely destroyed it during ‘Thunder & Lightning.’ I felt pretty terrible. But if that one outdoor show was any indication, expect some serious instrumental carnage.”Besides instrumental carnage, bands varied widely in their claims of what audiences should expect from this year’s performances. Answers ranged from the biological (“A sing-a-long with two very sweaty dudes,” said Chris Ward of two-man chamber-pop group Pattern Is Movement) to the financial (“It’s a free show so the audience should expect to get their money’s worth,” said guitarist David Pajo of Dead Child). However, when asked what the Culture Shock crowd could look forward to, singer Casey Dienel of jazz-influenced indie pop act White Hinterland offered the most, while using the least words.“Magic!” she said.
(04/14/08 1:27am)
I'm not one for boasting, but I cannot hold it back any longer. I must say it:\nI am going to dominate this year’s Little 500.\nYes, I realize this is a bold claim, but I know that I can back it up. For when victory comes for my team and I – and it will, inevitably – I will truly be able to say that I’ve earned it. It has been an entire year of getting up every day at dawn to train; of eating nothing but wheat germ and raw egg smoothies; of cycling for hours in the burning heat, the freezing cold and the soaking rain; of dodging traffic and potholes; of blisters and chafing and strained muscles; of having no time for friends or family; and of abstaining from any and all substances that might pollute the highly efficient racing machine that is my body. But this weekend, when the team and I blow past our competitors, when the crowd roars to the heavens to proclaim us their champions, it will all prove to be worth it.\nYes, indeed, we will show our competition – especially those arrogant prima donnas, the Cutters. Sure, they might have won last year, but their victory has made them overconfident, soft even. Ever since the race’s move to Bill Armstrong Stadium, no team has won the Little 500 twice in a row – for she is a harsh mistress who punishes hubris with crushing defeat. And while the Cutters meander along, blissfully unaware, we shall blow past them – a tempest in spandex, furies on Schwinns. This year it will be our turn to bask in the glory.\nBut it is not for glory alone that the team and I race. No, we race for greater reasons. My teammate Ronaldo races to prove to his strict grandfather, a past champion, that he is heir to his family’s fine heritage. Baker, on the other hand, races to prove that one can defeat the demons of alcoholism and paint-huffing and show the world that even a two-time loser can be worth a damn. Me, I seek to win back my lost love, to convince her that all that time spent in training instead of with her was not wasted. And we all race to honor the memory of our late teammate Edgar, who recently succumbed to his injuries months after a tragic bus collision left him in the hospital, paralyzed. Finally, there is little Timmy, whose family has wagered its life savings on our victory so that they might finally afford the liver transplant that could save his life. We’re racing for you, buddy.\nYes, certainly I have the lung capacity, steely nerves and muscle tone for this race. But, most importantly, I have the heart. It might have been a year filled with sweat, blood and tears – but my victory lap shall wash it all away. No force in heaven or earth can stop me now!\nWhat? \nNo, I haven’t read today’s paper. Why do you ask?
(04/09/08 4:48pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The Monster’s Revenge!If only R.E.M. had chosen that title for its latest album Accelerate. I have long contended that the band’s 1994 album Monster, while not one of the group’s best, is nevertheless grossly underrated – an experiment in grunge and glam with big, loud riffs and sleazy sexual innuendo. Critics dismissed Monster as an attempt to cash in on the “Seattle sound” and as a letdown following the melancholy and oh-so-painfully-serious masterpiece Automatic For The People. The result: R.E.M.’s albums following Monster were progressively slower, duller and more indulgent – as far from rocking as they could get (the loss of original drummer Bill Berry kicked this trend into overdrive). Thus, it’s a sweet bit of irony that now that R.E.M. has cranked its amps back up, critics are hailing the result as a glorious return to form.Not that Accelerate is a Monster rehash. Rather, it represents sort of a hybrid between Monster’s aggression and R.E.M.’s upbeat, bouncy rock from its ’80s heyday. As an artistic statement, it’s not as bold as Monster – but it is generally better. Sadly, the sleaze has been replaced by somewhat pedestrian political sloganeering – can’t have everything, I guess.Accelerate boasts a roughly 2:1 killer-to-filler ratio with most of the filler being not too bad, and some of the killer being absolutely stunning. The songs “Living Well Is The Best Revenge,” “Supernatural Superserious” and “Hollow Man” are R.E.M.’s signature jangle pop on speed – its hooks and choruses sweeping the listener up into sing-along Nirvana. Meanwhile, on the weaker end of the spectrum, the album loses gas in its second half with the tepid trio of “Until The Day Is Done,” “Mr. Richards” and “Sing For The Submarine” – and suffers its only serious embarrassment with the final track “I’m Gonna DJ” (opening lyrics: “Death is pretty final / I’m collectin’ vinyl / I’m gonna DJ at the end of the world!”). The rest is solid and enjoyable, if unspectacular.Still, Accelerate is the most fun R.E.M. release in 20 years. While it won’t displace the band’s ’80s classics, fans should welcome this new monster with open arms.
(04/06/08 11:23pm)
This has been a good couple of weeks for us here at the paper: a new basketball coach, a crooked IU Student Association election, the run-up to Little 500 ... \nBut there are only about three weeks left in this semester’s edition of the Indiana Daily Student (our last Spring ’08 issue is on Monday of exam week), and you know what would really cap things off? What would make this the best semester ever? If we could close it with a sex scandal.\nLook, for example, at the coverage of not just former New York Gov. Eliot Spitzer’s resignation following the exposure of his patronage of high-price call girls, but also the dirt dug up about his replacement David Paterson’s affairs – not to mention the allegations that former New Jersey Gov. James McGreevey and his wife had a ménage-a-trois with their driver. If we just applied ourselves here in Bloomington, we could share in this excitement!\nNow, I know this is IU. Sometimes – say, while reading the “Overheard at IU ...” Facebook group – it seems like it would be difficult to still scandalize the campus community. But we’ve managed it in the past. Take, for instance, the furor last year that stopped “Girls Gone Wild” from sponsoring an event at Jake’s Nightclub. Or the 2004 controversy over the IU student who posted on her Web site semi-nude pictures of herself in her dorm room and the Briscoe-Shoemaker showers. Or the brouhaha over the porn film shot in Teter Quad six years ago. And, if I might say so, all these were pretty lame – we can certainly do better.\nBringing Former President Bill Clinton to campus last week was a good start – sort of a prologue, perhaps, a nod to the past. But we need to come up with something original. The idea of the student-professor affair is pretty tired, as is the fraternity-sorority orgy. No, we need something that will get pundits roiling. Something that incites water cooler debate. Something that touches upon hot-button issues in American society. Something that will get the resultant IDS article linked to the Drudge Report. \nWhile, for reasons of preserving journalistic distance, I can’t determine what shape this scandal will take, I have faith in the vast stock of imaginative minds populating IU’s campus. I would, however, note that the past scandals have been rather tacky and sexist, whereas we have the potential to come up with something tawdry and titillating. This scandal needs to be as much about high ideas as nether regions. \nBut see here: This isn’t just about helping the newspaper move copy or pushing the envelope on societal mores. At present, IU rests at number 75 in the U.S. News and World Report College Rankings; the Hoosiers were beaten in the first round of the NCAA tournament; and we didn’t even make the Princeton Review’s top five party schools. At the present, we have to ask ourselves: If not for a big dirty sex scandal, what will we be notable for?
(04/02/08 7:19pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Reading the reviews accompanying each Raconteurs album, it’s hard not to feel a bit sorry for Brendan Benson. A fairly successful solo artist in his own right, Benson is half of the Raconteurs’ songwriting team. Based on both interviews of the band and a familiarity with its musical family tree (that is, the work of Benson, co-writer Jack White’s White Stripes, as well as rhythm section Patrick Keeler and Jack Lawrence’s Greenhornes) – it’s clear that his input is essential to the band’s sound. And yet, every Raconteurs album, critics ask: “What does this say about Jack White?”While it would be fruitless to try to break any given Raconteurs release down into how much came from Benson compared with White, this fixation on White has skewed critics’ perceptions away from what’s actually on the record. As with the Raconteurs’ debut, the line on Consolers has been “it’s the crazy ideas that White couldn’t do with the White Stripes.” But a comparison of Consolers to the last two Stripes albums shows that this simply isn’t true. Consolers’ “out there” moments – the Ennio Morricone/Led Zeppelin fusion “The Switch and the Spur” and the Southern gothic murder ballad “Carolina Drama” – aren’t nearly as far a break from their sound as, for example, the Stripes’ mariachi-influenced “Conquest” or ill-considered psychedelic bagpipe experiment “St. Andrews (This Battle Is In The Air)” on Icky Thump.This brings us back to Benson. In his solo career, Benson made a name for himself as a power-pop traditionalist – a craftsman more than an innovator; his albums are more about polished hooks and carefully structured songs than new musical ideas. And this carries over to Consolers, which is more a loving homage to Zeppelin, The Who, The Rolling Stones, The Beatles and Big Star than a bold artistic statement.But, for what it lacks in originality, Consolers generally makes up for in quality. The band is in top form, White and Benson’s songs are solid; after all, they’re stealing from the very best. The Raconteurs’ album is basically “Guitar Hero” for actual guitar heroes – and it’s hard not to get swept up in the fun.
(04/02/08 5:13pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>Okkervil River’s breakthrough album, 2005’s Black Sheep Boy, is based on a dark tale of violence, heartbreak, alienation and bleak depression. Fittingly, the band’s singer-songwriter Will Sheff wrote it while spending a particularly cold winter in Bloomington.“The first gig we ever played outside Texas was at Bloomingtonfest (in 2002),” Sheff said. “I know Bloomington really well. I’m really looking forward to coming back.”Okkervil River is due to make its return on Monday, April 7, to play the Buskirk-Chumley Theater. However, in the years since the band first came to town as new signees to local record label Jagjaguwar, things have changed a bit. Okkervil River’s latest album, 2007’s The Stage Names, went beyond the success of Black Sheep Boy, garnering widespread critical acclaim and becoming the best-selling album in Jagjaguwar’s history. Not too bad for a band whose frontman has proclaimed that, to pursue his artistic goals, he must become “a professional failure.”Formed in Austin, Texas, in 1998, Okkervil River began when Sheff reunited with bassist Zach Thomas and drummer Seth Warren, who he had first met while all three were kids in Meridian, N.H. Taking their name from a short story by Tatyana Tolstaya about a bureaucrat’s quest to track down a forgotten singer, the band has released five albums and undergone numerous personnel changes in the past 10 years. The current lineup features Sheff (vocals/guitar), Scott Brackett (coronet/keyboards), Jonathan Meiburg (vocals/various instruments), Travis Nelsen (drums), Patrick Pestorius (bass) and Charles Bissell (guitar).But in the course of all this change, Sheff has remained the band’s constant – his lyrics gaining a reputation for their vivid, empathetic portrayals of characters both real and imagined (and sometimes a mixture of both).“There’s no song that I’ve ever written that’s true in terms of everything applying to Will Sheff,” he said. “I’m 100 percent eager to lie, change how I felt about things, change details, facts, put another person into the situation. ... The only thing I care about is the song being good. I don’t feel I have any responsibility to tell things the way they happened.”In this, Sheff draws inspiration from books, movies, music and personal experiences – some of which prove surprising. Stage Names features songs about both the suicide of poet John Berryman (cited by his real name in “John Allyn Smith Sails”) and that of groupie-turned-porn-star Shannon Wilsey (cited by her stage name in “Savannah Smiles”). Meanwhile, other influences include the reality show “Breaking Bonaduce” and the literary work of Ed Sanders, author and former front man for underground ’60s rock group The Fugs.Likewise, concepts carried by the lyrics stretch and interweave across each album. For instance, in Black Sheep Boy, a bitter misfit antihero appears throughout the album, railing against the world and himself. Stage Names, on the other hand, addresses questions of how entertainment (particularly, but not exclusively, rock music) affects those who produce and consume it – although Sheff declines from assigning the album a single overarching theme.“I handle that stuff with kid gloves,” he said. “I feel like if I’m just lining up the album in my brain with a theme previously decided in a clean-cut way, it feels like paint by numbers or designing something to be picked apart.”But rock is not merely about brains – and all the complex ideas behind Okkervil River’s lyrics might amount to little were it not for the emotional punch of Sheff’s voice.“His feelings come through loud and clear when he sings, whether he’s pissed off or hopeful or wanting to die, you know it as soon as he opens his mouth,” IU sophomore and Okkervil River fan Britani Hutchinson said. “His passion for what he’s singing floods the entire room.” In the past, this intense, heart-on-sleeve approach has cost Sheff his voice (he now rests it when he’s not onstage) – but he claims it has more to do with how he loves to sing than his being a particularly dramatic person.“There’s an emotional quality to the way I do music,” he said. “I really like soul music that feels very raw, very invested in going on ... (However) I don’t want people to think there is a quivering delicate soul emoting and spilling his guts in diary entries.”But while he may not be the emo type, it doesn’t take much digging to find Sheff’s personal investment in his work. In talking about Stage Names’ “You Can’t Hold The Hand Of A Rock And Roll Man,” the tale of a down-and-out rock star whose pitiful state runs in satirical contrast to his ex-wife’s portrait of rock ’n’ roll excess, Sheff suddenly switched gears.“Something like that deserves to be made fun of,” he said. “On the other hand, you’re not supposed to let go of your dreams. What do you do if the response is ‘no one cares’?”Fortunately, Okkervil River doesn’t have to answer that question.
(03/31/08 2:42am)
An Indiana state law due to take effect July 1 will require any new bookstores selling sexually explicit content to pay a $250 fee and register on a list that will be passed to local officials who can then scrutinize the bookstores for any violations of their obscenity codes. According to IU law professor Henry Karlson, who spoke to the Indianapolis Star for its Mar. 25 story on the new law, the state definition of “sexually explicit” includes anything that “appeals to the prurient interest in sex of minors” – that is, anything that could get a youngster hot and bothered.\nNow, granted, the Indiana Daily Student is given away by bookstores rather than sold, but just in case, I figure you local merchants should know: I’m about to quote a rather racy bit of poetry. If you don’t want to rankle the authorities, you might want to toss this issue out. OK, here goes – don’t say I didn’t warn you:\nHow beautiful are thy steps in sandals, O prince’s daughter! The roundings of thy thighs are like the links of a chain, the work of the hands of a skilled workman.\nThy navel is like a round goblet, wherein no mingled wine is wanting; thy belly is like a heap of wheat set about with lilies.\nThy two breasts are like two fawns that are twins of a gazelle.\nThy neck is as a tower of ivory; thine eyes as the pools in Heshbon, by the gate of Bath-rabbim; thy nose is like the tower of Lebanon which looketh toward Damascus.\nThy head upon thee is like Carmel, and the hair of thy head like purple; the king is held captive in the tresses thereof.\nHow fair and how pleasant art thou, O love, for delights!\nThis thy stature is like to a palm-tree, and thy breasts to clusters of grapes.\nI said: ‘I will climb up into the palm-tree, I will take hold of the branches thereof; and let thy breasts be as clusters of the vine, and the smell of thy countenance like apples;\nAnd the roof of thy mouth like the best wine, that glideth down smoothly for my beloved, moving gently the lips of those that are asleep.’\nI am my beloved’s, and his desire is toward me.\nCome, my beloved, let us go forth into the field; let us lodge in the villages.\nLet us get up early to the vineyards; let us see whether the vine hath budded, whether the vine-blossom be opened, and the pomegranates be in flower; there will I give thee my love.\nOof – did it suddenly get hot in here? \nOf course, if the Biblical Song of Songs doesn’t do it for you, there’s always Shakespeare’s sonnets (and the naughty jokes spread throughout his plays), Ovid’s “Metamorphoses” or ... well, pretty much countless works dating back to the dawn of writing. This is why we leave such questions to the wisdom of parents rather than government apparatchiks – and why this absurd and unconstitutional law must be repealed.
(03/26/08 7:12pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>The rhythmic chant is an ancient and potent musical element – one that erodes the barrier between audience and musician, forming a larger, unified whole. Starting from the earliest days when humans first started making music, this simple tool has come to be used in everything from religious ceremonies to sporting events – at any time when there is a diverse crowd in search of a common connection.In Midnight Boom, The Kills have built almost an entire album around the power of the chant. The band’s members, Alison Mosshart and Jamie Hince, claim they were inspired by “Pizza Pizza Daddy-O,” a 1967 documentary about the playground chants sung by children in a black ghetto of Los Angeles. The result is practically a study in the strengths and limitations of this aspect of music.On the plus side, Midnight Boom is accessible and fun – indeed, the blues-rock duo has succeeded in casting off its cloak of “self-conscious cool” in favor of simply cool. While still plenty dark, sleazy and sexy, the adoption of (sometimes nonsensical) playground rhymes has made The Kills warmer and more likeable.On the minus side, the embrace of such a repetitive technique leads to a feel of uniformity across the album. From track to track, the formula becomes clear: Here’s the drum machine, here’s Mosshart’s vocals and here’s the phrase that we’re going to hear several times over the course of the next couple of minutes.But the chant nevertheless works its magic, and song after song from Midnight Boom hooks deeply into one’s brain, leading the listener to want not only to sing along, but to want to sing along even while the music’s off – whether that takes the form of “You are a fever / you are a fever / you ain’t born typical” from “U.R.A. Fever” or “I’m the only sour cherry on your fruit stand, right / Am I the only sour cherry on your fruit stand?” from “Sour Cherry.” The fact that its beats tempt one to clap and/or stomp along makes the album even more winning.So, c’mon, chant along.
(03/24/08 1:04am)
There may be more than four months yet to go until the Beijing Olympics, but the big game has already gotten under way. No, not basketball or track or swimming – this is really a game with only one contestant, a test to see whether an established benchmark can be surpassed, then whether a new benchmark can itself be overcome. \nThe name of this game? “What awful thing will China do next?” \nAnd, thus far, the Chinese authorities’ progress in making themselves progressively more detestable has been nothing short of stunning. What’s remarkable is not so much the fact that the regime does awful things, but rather the sheer number and variety of those awful things. For example, it comes as no surprise that the Chinese government cracked down brutally on protests in Tibet. And its support for the genocidal regime in Sudan is nothing new (although the recent allegations that it is not merely buying oil from Sudan, but also selling the government weapons and providing training on them, managed – incredibly – to make its role look even worse). But then there are all the extraordinarily ugly little things that have come out about China’s Olympic preparations.\nTake, for example, the government’s massacre of cats throughout Beijing (the cats are rounded up and left to die in government pounds). Or how about its ban on live broadcasts from Tiananmen Square during the Olympics? Or its shutdown of several of the country’s video-sharing Web sites? Or the U.S. State Department’s recent warning that visitors to the Beijing Olympics should expect their hotel rooms to be bugged? Or how about the accusations by Human Rights Watch that the government is exploiting the migrant workers employed in its Olympic construction projects? (Funny thing for a “workers’ paradise...” ) They even managed to find a non-evil thing to do that is, nevertheless, rather lame: The Beijing Municipal Tourism Bureau is currently employing linguists to correct the city’s hilariously mistranslated English-language signs.\nThus, the question becomes: What can the Chinese government do to top all this? Turn a blind eye to toxic Olympics souvenirs? Ban any athletes who criticize it publicly? Pave over the entire region surrounding Beijing to provide a super-sized Olympics parking lot? Ban cheering? Nothing seems out of the realm of possibility.\nNow, in the wake of the Tibet violence, there have been some calls for countries to boycott the Olympics in protest – but while this idea is noble, I think it’s a mistake. No, countries need to have their athletes there in Beijing because otherwise, their citizens won’t pay attention to what happens there. And the world should be watching when the Chinese government commits every act of brutality and every petty cruelty because the world needs to see what authoritarian regimes do to get what they want. And because much of the world seems eager to think that China will supplant the United States as the global superpower. \nSo, to the countless individuals around the globe tuning in to the Beijing games, I say take a nice, close look: there’s the future.
(03/19/08 5:02pm)
____simple_html_dom__voku__html_wrapper____>George A. Romero’s “Diary of the Dead,” his fifth and latest zombie tale, opens from the viewpoint of a TV-news cameraman filming raw footage of a reporter at the scene of a murder-suicide. The audience already knows it’s raw footage because the reporter is checking her makeup while cops in the background make callous remarks about the murderer and victims being immigrants. But, in case you couldn’t figure it out, an ominous voice-over informs you that this is, indeed, raw TV news footage. Then the voice-over tells you that this is where the trouble started – just as the corpses rise up and start biting people.And thus, not five minutes in, viewers have already uncovered the fundamental flaw of “Diary of the Dead.” Romero has forgotten that maxim of Creative Writing 101: Show, don’t tell. And as he launches the plot – a group of film students, learning of the walking dead, abandon shooting their cheesy horror movie and rush home to join their loved ones, recording all the way – he will tell, and tell and tell you exactly what you’re supposed to think, whether via voice-over, or from characters with dialogue as portentous as Old Testament prophets.As with all Romero’s “Dead” films (except 1968’s “Night of the Living Dead”), “Diary” has a message. This time, it’s about the information overload from amateur online media and the distance one feels when viewing the world through a camera. But while he has never been subtle about such messages, Romero’s constant, clumsy hectoring crushes the film’s fun. In 1978’s “Dawn of the Dead,” Romero brilliantly and hilariously satirized consumerism by showing zombies wandering around a mall with Muzak playing in the background. No voice-over needed.The tragedy is that “Diary” shows unrealized potential. The visual restrictions of the first-person viewpoint create a tension ideal for suspense, and many moments (running over zombies with a Winnebago, melting a zombie with acid, a deaf-mute Amish man who’s a zombie-destroying badass) should cause an audience to cheer. “Diary” could easily deliver humor and horror while providing a trenchant social critique – if Romero would just save the lecture for the DVD commentary.
(03/17/08 12:01am)
While you’re distracted by the joy of returning for another seven weeks of school, a menace from abroad is slowly infiltrating our society. A mysterious cabal, working secretly towards who knows what end, amassing resources, quietly monitoring us from the fringes of our perception ... an ancient and dangerous group known for its sly cunning and its skill in crafting quality footwear.\nI speak, of course, of leprechauns.\nOh, but you say, leprechauns are a myth – a trumped-up folk legend used to boost Irish tourism and sell millions of tiny, brightly-colored marshmallows! Ha! I was once like you: blissfully unaware of the storm gathering in the nation’s verdant glens and rings of mushrooms (called “fairy circles” by top national security experts). But now I have seen the face of evil. And it has wee hat with a buckle on it!\nThis revelation came when I was in the midst of celebrating my Irish heritage via the rich and wholesome tradition of drinking assorted green liquids. This year, March 17 falls during Holy Week, so the Catholic Church officially held St. Patrick’s Day on Saturday, March 15, but some secular authorities are celebrating it today, as usual. Thus, not wishing to offend anyone, I have simply commemorated St. Pat’s for the last three days – and, therefore, have consumed a very great quantity and variety of green liquids: green beer, green tea, green soda, absinthe, industrial-grade disinfectant, Chicago River water ... I had imbibed one of these many potables when I saw him, standing on the curb of the street, smug as could be. He was out in broad daylight, but no one seemed to notice him. That is their way – to hide in plain sight. Like ninjas.\n“Hello, leprechaun,” I said. “Are you having a good day?”\n“Sure am,” he said. “I just brought down the value of the dollar another 5 percent.”\n“What?” I said.\n“Oh, just part of our scheme to bring about a global economic depression, so we can conquer the world.”\n“But why?”\n“You humans keep screwing up – violence, pollution, Uwe Boll movies. And if we don’t take over, the unicorns will.”\n“Yeah, right,” I said. “And just how do you plan to do that?”\n“Do you have any idea what the profit margin on shoes is? We pay Indonesian kids about 20 cents an hour and sell them for $150 a pair,” he said. “Collectively, we have the single largest gold holdings on the planet. Ted Turner is really one leprechaun standing on another’s shoulders.”\n“Why are you telling me?”\n“You were just drinking peppermint schnapps mixed with floor polish – who’s going to believe you?”\n“Well, I’ll stop you!” And with that, I picked up a loose paving stone and hit him. But he had turned into a fire hydrant. I got doused with water and arrested for damaging public property.\nBut that has not prevented me from informing the world. We must stop these radical extremists! Pots of gold coins cannot silence the free press! And as long as I’m alive, I’ll ...
(03/17/08 12:00am)
While you’re distracted by the joy of returning for another seven weeks of school, a menace from abroad is slowly infiltrating our society. A mysterious cabal, working secretly towards who knows what end, amassing resources, quietly monitoring us from the fringes of our perception ... an ancient and dangerous group known for its sly cunning and its skill in crafting quality footwear.\nI speak, of course, of leprechauns.\nOh, but you say, leprechauns are a myth – a trumped-up folk legend used to boost Irish tourism and sell millions of tiny, brightly-colored marshmallows! Ha! I was once like you: blissfully unaware of the storm gathering in the nation’s verdant glens and rings of mushrooms (called “fairy circles” by top national security experts). But now I have seen the face of evil. And it has wee hat with a buckle on it!\nThis revelation came when I was in the midst of celebrating my Irish heritage via the rich and wholesome tradition of drinking assorted green liquids. This year, March 17 falls during Holy Week, so the Catholic Church officially held St. Patrick’s Day on Saturday, March 15, but some secular authorities are celebrating it today, as usual. Thus, not wishing to offend anyone, I have simply commemorated St. Pat’s for the last three days – and, therefore, have consumed a very great quantity and variety of green liquids: green beer, green tea, green soda, absinthe, industrial-grade disinfectant, Chicago River water ... I had imbibed one of these many potables when I saw him, standing on the curb of the street, smug as could be. He was out in broad daylight, but no one seemed to notice him. That is their way – to hide in plain sight. Like ninjas.\n“Hello, leprechaun,” I said. “Are you having a good day?”\n“Sure am,” he said. “I just brought down the value of the dollar another 5 percent.”\n“What?” I said.\n“Oh, just part of our scheme to bring about a global economic depression, so we can conquer the world.”\n“But why?”\n“You humans keep screwing up – violence, pollution, Uwe Boll movies. And if we don’t take over, the unicorns will.”\n“Yeah, right,” I said. “And just how do you plan to do that?”\n“Do you have any idea what the profit margin on shoes is? We pay Indonesian kids about 20 cents an hour and sell them for $150 a pair,” he said. “Collectively, we have the single largest gold holdings on the planet. Ted Turner is really one leprechaun standing on another’s shoulders.”\n“Why are you telling me?”\n“You were just drinking peppermint schnapps mixed with floor polish – who’s going to believe you?”\n“Well, I’ll stop you!” And with that, I picked up a loose paving stone and hit him. But he had turned into a fire hydrant. I got doused with water and arrested for damaging public property.\nBut that has not prevented me from informing the world. We must stop these radical extremists! Pots of gold coins cannot silence the free press! And as long as I’m alive, I’ll ...