NP: CMJ New Music Monthly - Volume 035 - July 1996 (CD)

If you're wondering why magazine comps from 1996 keep popping up in my "now playing" field, I'm making an effort to go through all of my CMJ New Music Monthly disks and rip the good songs. I've clearly got a ways to go, but it's amazing how much good stuff has caught their editorial ear. Unfortunately, I think the magazine may be in trouble, as I just got the December issue. In mid-February.

Now that I'm mobile again, there seems to be an awfully direct correlation between having a vehicle and spending perhaps more money than I should. Although yesterday's initial trip to Guitar Center was via the train, so maybe there's a hole in that theory. I drove back today, after some other errands, because they were actually $20 cheaper on a Yamaha hi-hat stand than even Musician's Friend. It's a single-braced stand with rotating legs to accomodate a double bass drum pedal, and I'm slowly embarking on an effort to lighten up my hardware load. So I had to buy it. Really, I had no choice.

Last night's Diver gig was a bit weird. Anto was, by his own admission, barely there, to the point where he told the crowd we were called "Drive" two or three times before we corrected him. Tony was having all the bad luck typically associated with Friday the 13th. And Avi was fending off short drunk women. If we needed any proof of how strange the night was, we actually got "Song 2" right, which almost never happens. Meanwhile, there were some nearly spectacular train wrecks, but it was still a good crowd, and we actually started up our mailing list.

Oh, and I'd be remiss if I didn't throw out some blatant Googlebaiting. The Orlando Sentinel's Kathleen Parker is a moron. The Week quoted her defense of Dubya's Russert appearance by invoking that old conservative standby, the "blame Clinton" maneuver. Her claim was that Clinton "let" Osama bin Laden and al Queda flourish while he was in office. Correct my memory, but didn't Clinton order an airstrike that only missed him by two hours? And didn't the right-wing media hang him out to dry for doing so, claiming he was simply trying to divert attention from Monica Lewinsky?

This is the kind of bullshit that really bothers me about politics and the media. On the one hand, you have to allow for people to have their opinions, and to voice them. On the other, have I mentioned, that Kathleen Parker is a moron? It should come as no surprise that she's a somewhat recent addition to the Chicago Tribune op-ed rotation. They called to try to get me to subscribe, so I very nicely explained that their editorial slant and attention to soccer were not worthy of my newspaper-buying dollar, and likely wouldn't be any time soon. The guy on the phone didn't really have much to come back with. I can get out of most telemarketing calls in similar fashion by just explaining that, no, I can't give you any money, because I'm a victim of the jobless recovery.

Works every time. Except maybe with debt consolidation services, but I don't get very many of those calls. Yet.