I follow about a dozen comic strips online. Most of them are web-only strips, but I read a few newspaper comics online, since I never see an actual printed newspaper other than in the recycling box at the gym. Well, I also see the paper when visiting my dad in San Diego, since he's old school (as well as old) and subscribes to the print edition.
I have to admit that came in quite handy this week, since he knew I was looking to get a cheap laptop, and when he saw huge sales going on at Staples, he alerted me. Check out
the back page specials; I got the HP on page 3; was $850, now $500. Dual core processor, 3gig RAM, 250g HD, newest wifi, etc. It's an upgrade on my current desktop at everything but screen size and OS (Vista! :( and was a great deal.
Ironically, dad not only notified me about it, he went to pick it up at a Staples in San Diego, since when I went to find it locally, I discovered that that model was not available at any Bay Area Staples. All of the laptops on big sale are on sale since they're discontinued models, and the stores are limited to stock on hand. Two stores in the SF area had just their display model left, but since that one has, by definition, been pawed at by the sort of greasy-fingered reprobates who shop at Staples, I wanted a new one. So I played around with the few remaining display models at my local Staples for a bit, and then called Dad, who called a Staples in San Diego, and found that at the 19th closest store to him, down in National City, they still had one new one in stock. He reserved it and went out into the cold and rainy night to pick it up. Merry Xmas to me!
Ordinarily a new laptop in San Diego wouldn't do me much good, since I'm like, 500 miles north. But since I'm going to be down there next week, it's not a problem.
So yeah, the printed newspaper can be useful, if only for the ads. Which I probably wouldn't bother looking through if actually had a newspaper, since I don't look through the ones I get in the mail. I'm less sure of the utility of the comics in the paper. It's nice since there are a whole bunch of them every day, but on the downside... there are a whole bunch of them every day. When I last checked, the San Diego paper had about 50 or 60 comics. They covered two full pages on weekdays. I never actually ranked them all, but if I did I think Garfield would be in the top 10. And since that strip hasn't been worth reading since oh... 1987? I think you get my point. Most of the rest aren't even good (or bad) enough to be worth reading on
the Comics Curmudgeon.
Another benefit of reading them online (other than not having to read all the shitty ones) is that you can go through several weeks at a time. This is irrelevant for daily gag type strips, but it's nice for strips that carry on storylines. One I usually remember to check every 3 or 4 weeks is
Doonesbury, and while going through the past few weeks of it yesterday, I was reminded of a topic upon which I'd meant to blog... a few weeks ago.
Guns n' Roses new album,
Chinese Democracy. One of the ongoing storylines in Doonsebury features BD, a long-time character who lost a leg in Iraq and has suffered with a lot of post-combat psychological issues. Part of what got him through it was helping out a metal-obsessed private from his unit who took severe injuries from shrapnel in a separate incident in Iraq. The kid got head injuries and lost an eye, and he's been struggling with aphasia ever since. However, as related in
a recent week of strips, he's hugely excited about the new Guns and Roses album. Ignoring the fact that his description of the music (shredding, hard, face-melting, etc) bears no connection to the actual album... how is the actual album? First, what is the actual album?
Fourteen years (or whatever) in the making,
Chinese Democracy it finally appeared last month, and was most noteworthy for earning everyone in the US
a free Dr. Pepper (if you were quick/persistent enough to sign up for it on their
Blizzcon-ticket-rush-like website during the 24 hours they allowed). I wasn't anticipating it.
I was a huge GnR fan back in the day, and I still occasionally populate my play list with the best songs from
Appetite and
Illusion. But the current GnR has nothing to do with the original other than Axl's screechy vocals, nothing any of the other ex-GnR members had done since then was better than okay, and none of the various "new" GnR singles or leaks had caught my ear. As far as I knew, Axl's in-name-only vanity project
Chinese Democracy was going to be more of the in sub-NIN quality electronic/industrial stuff that he'd pushed to incorporate into their work back in the glory days.
The
first single off of the final version of
Chinese Democracy was released a few weeks earlier than the album, but when it failed to grab my ears I returned GnR to the low priority shelf of my memory where they'd been since 2002, when
I blogged about them a few times thanks to 1) the daily blogging schedule I kept then, and 2) the fact that GnR was trying to tour and kept canceling shows for increasingly comical reasons (all related to Axl's habitual fuckup-ery, a trait that destroyed the band in the first place).
There they might have stayed, until media coverage of the Dr. Pepper promotional debacle reminded me that the album was actually out. And that, like all things musical, I could surely find a link to download it from one or another of the various and unsavory forums I occasionally frequent where such things are exchanged. So I did (find a link), and so I did (download it) and after forgetting to unzip the file and extract the songs for a few days, I eventually got back to it, added them all to my WinAmp playlist... and put off listening to it for a few more days, since I wanted the time to be right. I had no real expectations, but I wanted to listen when I could listen, instead of the music just playing in the background while I blogged or worked on the D3 site or surfed. The right occasional finally dawned; one day while I had to do a bunch of housework that didn't involve creating enough noise (vacuuming) to drown out the music.
That was my first mistake. I got the first song cued up, turned up the volume, and listened while I was rearranging furniture, sweeping the kitchen, scooping the cat box, repotting some plants, etc. It was fortunate that such activities had me AFK, or AF Mouse at least, since I would not have been able to listen to a single song in its entirety. They weren't awful, they were just boring, and if I had been near the computer that listening session would have lasted about 5 minutes, since there's no way any song would have gotten more than 30 seconds. As it was I was in the other room, or on the back patio with my hands covered in potting soil, and so I soldiered through most of the tracks, only detouring to my desk on a couple of occasions, driven by a song that was egregiously lame.
I tried again the next day, listening while playing an old school gaming session of
Diablo (I, not II), but even that wouldn't do. I had to alt+tab out several times to skip songs that were so bad I was almost unable to spam
Chain Lightning, and after that second "listen" I deleted all of the songs from my playlist, and haven't had any desire to go back. I didn't hate it, since that would have required me to have some interest going in. I was mostly curious, wondering if there was any way it wouldn't suck, and I found out fairly quickly. I didn't even care enough to hate blog about it.
I'm not going to offer a review, since as
I've ranted in the past (damn, 6.5 years ago?), music reviews are useless. Well, general purpose ones are useless. The only useful ones compare like to like, and rate within a genre. There's no way to say if an album by Lil Wayne is better or worse than an album by Green Day, since they are entirely different types of music, appealing to different people, or at least satisfying different needs in the same person. However, since in this case I'm comparing GnR to GnR (well, sort of) I guess it's possible to do so somewhat fruitfully.
The new album doesn't sound like GnR. I'd have no idea it was the same band, if not for the distinctive vocals. Well, I suppose it's not the same band; no one now playing an instrument was playing one in the glory days. That's not necessarily a bad thing; Slash is famous and he wrote some great riffs, but it's not as if
5000 random guys webcaming themselves in their dorm rooms on You Tube can't play the opening to Sweet Child 'o Mine as well as the original top hatted
snake lover. There are plenty of competent musicians out there; what makes the difference for rock (and other types of music) is if they can write good music. And Slash contributed a lot of the sound of GnR. Much of the rest came from Izzy, and he's also long gone. That leaves Axl, who wrote some good lyrics and collaborated on most of their classic compositions, but was always his own worst enemy in terms of giving in to excess and wanting to change the band into something it wasn't meant to be. That tendency, and his egomaniac asshole personality, is what broke the band up in the first place. I don't think it's what ruined
Chinese Democracy, though it's clearly what made it take 14 years to record.
So no, the album isn't any good and none of the songs are memorable. But I don't think that's due to the quality of the musicians. It's due to the songs just not being very good. Plenty of songs off of
Illusion, and even a couple on
Appetite, were clunkers, and those are two (well, three, if you count the double album) of the best hard rock albums ever recorded. I will single out Axl for some criticism, since his vocals are just absurd on this new album. Way, way, way too screechy. To the point of distraction. That crazy scream that opens
Welcome to the Jungle is one of the more memorable bits of vocalizing in all of rock and roll, but in the glory days Axl used the scream and screeches for emphasis and impact. His usual singing voice was more often raspy, and he was almost doing spoken word quite a bit of the time, with many of the lyrics rap-like in the pace of delivery and tone of voice. On
Chinese Democracy he sounds (and looks) inflated, and is almost a falsetto in a number of songs. That tendency, unameliorated by the uncatchy nature of the tracks, is what defeated my efforts to enjoy, or tolerate, the album.
In a month or two I'll hear some other news about GnR and that will cause me to remember that I have the new album, and by then I'll have forgotten most of what and why I didn't enjoy it, and I'll throw it back onto my play list... and will almost certainly remove it as or more quickly than I did the first time, when I was determined to give the songs a fair chance. It's a bit tragic, really, but at least we've had plenty of time to adjust to the fact that GnR is no more. It's not like they put out this album in 1995, when we'd all have been hoping for a return to greatness.
It's a shame though, since old bands who were great in the 80s don't have to suck. Case in point, Metallica. I really should talk about
Death Magnetic in its own post, but I'm not going to say much. Just that as most of the critics and fans have said, it's an awesome album. Maybe the best Metallica album ever; definitely the best since 1988's
Justice for All, which is my personal favorite.
Mixing quality issues aside.
The Black Album's songs were too simplified and generic and only a couple stuck with me,
Load and
Reload were a mess, and while
St. Anger tried to return to their long-form, crunching-yet-melodic hardness, it was so poorly produced I can hardly listen to it. I literally get a headache from the flat, empty-can sounding drums and the vocals are harsh to the point of grating. I have
Some Kind of Monster on my gym playlist of Metallica songs, and it's the only song off that album I can take, though even it's only really good for the first two minutes. (The
YouTube quality doesn't help the flat, hollow, breaking-rocks-in-an-aircraft-hanger sound of all the percussion on that album, but it's something to link to.)
I don't love every song on Death Magnetic, and it took me a few listens to get into, but I've been really enjoying it for weeks. I have all the tracks but the slower instrumental on my gym playlist, and they rock for that.
Cyanide was my first favorite song from the album, I can cardio (or play a destructive video game) like a madman to
Broken, Beat and Scarred, and the way James
sings howls the album title in
My Apocalypse has been popping into my head at random for weeks. (It's at 1:24 and again at on that linked version. As is always the case, sound quality via YouTube is shit; so don't judge the album by the tiny, tinny, clanking, YouTube version.)
I don't know the last time I recommended an album, but I'm recommending this one. To, sticking with my own "cross-genre music reviews suck" guideline, anyone who likes metal, old Metallica, or hard rock.
Incidentally, I do not prefer the "Shorter" version
that got in the news when a Swedish reviewer, who must have been astonishingly, blissfully ignorant of copyright laws and Metallica's past history with online file sharing, discussed the fan-made, shorter version, recommended it over the actual album, and told readers just how to get it via Pirate Bay. I gave it a listen out of curiosity, and it's better... if you think The Black Album (or perhaps the punk covers on Garage Days Revisted) was the best Metallica album. "Shorter"
Death Magnetic isn't a hack job; it retains the essential nature of the songs, but removes all the musical flourishes, tempo changes, and symphonic compositional qualities that make people like me so cherish everything on
Justice, and other classic Metallica songs like (off the top of my head)
Master of Puppets,
Breadfan,
For Whom the Bell Tolls,
Orion,
The Prince,
The Four Horsemen,
Sanitarium, and others.
Flux = do not recommend.
Shorter guts everything that makes this album so special.
Labels: comics, computers, garfield, music
