Petey Tours America, Phase II - Providence, RI

Actual view of the Rhode Island Statehouse from my swanky hotel room--hey, your tax dollars have to go somewhere. Cheers!


Ahh, now this city is more to my liking (sorry, KC denizens). Providence definitely has a major East-Coast-major-metropolis air about it... i.e. everything is in walking distance, old architecture interspersed among modern architecture, good food & drink, interesting graffiti, plenty of hipsters (I know because they had sleeve tattoos and expensive eyeglass frames).

Speaking of good food & drink, the Trinity Brewhouse served one of the best corned beef Reubens I've ever had, and more importantly, one of the best pints of beer I've EVER had (White Coffee something something Stout)...now you know I take my beer very seriously (born with a .02), so this is no off the cuff comment. I would have had six or seven more, but my supervisor was sitting next to me.

Coupling that meal experience with mid-80 temps and moderate humidity in late July and it's is easy to have Providence as early odds-on favorite for best phase of this whirlwind of business trips...next up, Nashville.

Petey Tours America, Phase I - Kansas City, MO

As part of the loosely connected menial chores I do for American currency (read: job), I have been tasked with creating and tallying evaluation forms for attendees of government-run training sessions aimed at increasing the usage of various e-health tools in communities across the US of A (read: bullshit).

Over the next several weeks, I will be spending 2 days and 2 nights in 4 different cities and upon my return, I will give my stream-of-consciousness impression and synopsis of each city.

Destination 1: Kansas City, MO

Hmm. Not much to say (or see, for that matter) here. I can't even think of any good jokes to demean this place. Nondescript architecture (although, there was a pretty big railroad running through the heart of the city right next to the highway), nondescript people, nondescript culture. I was expecting a lot more out of the city of my favorite childhood football team and favorite Nigerian fullback (anybody remember former Kansas City Chief Christian Okoye?) I'm very much used to the cultural diversity in the D.C. Metro area--I don't think there's a Chinatown in Kansas City.

K.C. supposedly has awesome barbecue, but I didn't get to taste it--my supervisor and my associates invited me out for dinner to a renowned barbecue spot (Jack Stack's, if I'm not mistaken), but the invitation seemed kinda empty since they knew I had about 4 fucking hours of snack-food-stained evaluation forms to go through at the end of the day. Not that I'm bitter or anything.

There were lots of slow-building, rollicking thunderstorms which, aside from barbecue, are the only other distinguishing things about Kansas City--three inches of rain in just under an hour meant that the hotel garage and gym flooded. Yay?

So it was a pretty uneventful first business trip for me, next time I'll remember to bring my camera so I can post some pictures to go along with my words (and I'm also gonna pack some liquor). So tune in next week for the next installment of Petey Tours America, Phase II: Providence, RI.

Drag My Naked Body Through The Town Square

Sure, I'm only 32, but it's never too early to get your estate in order. And because I won't pay for a lawyer, I figured posting my will on my blog would make it nice and legal. So, in the case of my demise, I direct my family and friends to this URL for funeral instructions and estate disbursement.

Last Will and Testament

I, Mike Bennett, residing in the town of Takoma Park, Maryland, being of sound mind and deliciously rotund body, do hereby make, publish, and declare this to be my last will and testament and do revoke any and all other wills and codicils heretofore made by me, especially the several written in the late 1990s, of which we shall never speak again.

Funeral

Three days after the date of my death, I direct all living relatives and friends to gather at my apartment and stare and my lifeless body until I rise from the dead. Persons attending must not speak or make any sound during this time, and must only listen to Neutral Milk Hotel's On Avery Island on a constant loop. If I do rise from the dead, as I believe I will, that will mean I am the immortal son of the Lord, and thus nullifies the remainder of this will. All attendees should then run for their lives, because I plan on being a vengeful god, motherfuckers! If, after twelve (12) hours of staring silent at my corpse, I fail to rise from the dead, then I direct my family and friends to perform the following activities:

1) Drag my naked body through the town square, while my brother John repeatedly shouts "Dead guy coming through! Come look at the dead guy!"

2) Lay my body on a bed of tree braches in the middle of the intersection of Carrol Ave. and Flower Ave.

3) Douse me with an entire can of lighter fluid, or if lighter fluid can not easily be procured, three gallons of 93 octane gasoline from my neighborhood Shell station will suffice.

4) Set my ass on fire! All attendees should then light a cigarette with the flames that engulf me, and dance barefoot around the bonfire while chanting "Hey hey, ho ho, your lifeless soul is free to go!"

5) When the fire has swallowed me whole and turned me to ash, I direct my brother Steve to collect my ashes in a large brown paper bag. Steve must keep this bag with him at all times, and during meals with his family, the bag must be given its own place setting and chair and must be included in the conversation.

Estate

Payment of my debts, funeral expenses, and expenses for administration of my estate shall be directed to my surviving family.

My CD collection, iMac, and music equipment should be given to Grace, my niece. She seems to the be the smartest of the bunch.

My clothing and my car should be given to Goodwill.

If my bank account has any money left in it (and I sincerely doubt it will), that money should be withdrawn in cash, taken to the nearest casino and placed entirely on number 6 of the eastern most roulette table. If it wins, let it ride on number 6. Repeat this as many times as necessary until no money remains.

Amen.

Records Recently Removed From My iPod

Yeah, it was mp3 spring cleaning day, in the middle of summer, y’all. Here are the records I got rid of for good.

Modest Mouse, The Moon and Antarctica – I have never been able to get into Modest Mouse, and I’ve tried super hard. I remember when this record came out and everyone lost their shit over it. I listened to it, but didn’t like it. Then I tried listening to an older record of theirs, The Lonesome Crowded West. That didn't work, either. Because The Moon and Antarctica is so well-regarded, I recently tried again, to no avail. Isaac Brock’s charm/talent/whatever is lost on me, I suppose. His singing voice makes me want to rip my skin off, almost as much as when I hear Ben Gibbard's voice.

Washed Out, High Times EP – I’m all for reverb and haze and shit, but this record sounds like you’re listening to someone else listening to a boombox playing mid-80s dance songs. Annoying. And just because you throw around some easy identifiers of a certain period of popular music to hit the nostalgia/irony button for a roomful of dancing hipsters, doesn’t mean you’re making anything worthwhile. I'm looking at you, too, Girl Talk.

Broken Bells, Broken Bells - Danger Mouse and James Mercer combine their forces to... put everyone to sleep. This record cured my insomnia, no lie. Unfortunately, I was driving to work when it did so. If you want the perfect middle-of-the-road modern rock soundtrack for your naps, by all means, get this record. Expect Grammy nominations for this bad boy.

Fever Ray, Fever Ray - I wrote this before in a comments section discussion with Pete, but this record makes me feel like somebody is sneeking up from behind me, poised to stab me in the face with a Rambo knife already stained with the blood of innocent women and children. Paranoia may be the music-derived emotion I least appreciate. I'm about to get rid of The Knife's Deep Cuts, too, if it doesn't start playing nice with my psyche.

I was about to delete Plastic Beach by Gorillaz, but I was stopped by hearing “On Melancholy Hill.” I’ve had this record for a couple of months, and that was the first time I liked any of the songs. It now gets a two-month reprieve to prove its merit.

Bonus List! - Records I've Most Enjoyed So Far This Year

Medications, Completely Removed - The dudes from Faraquet make a beautiful record of, um... complex pop music? Post-pop? I can't describe it, except that it's awesome.

The Radio Dept., Clinging to a Scheme - Goddamn, another terrific pop record from Sweden! What's up with that place?

LCD Soundsystem, This Is Happening - Such a great record, despite the fact that all the energy and urgency gets sucked out on the second half. But, that slow half leads up to "Home," maybe the song of the year.

Built to Spill, There Is No Enemy - When I first got this, I was just happy to have a new Built to Spill record, even if it didn't totally win me over. Over time, though, this record gets better and better, and now I love it. I play "Things Fall Apart" at least once a day.

Bachelorette, The End of Things EP, My Electric Family, Isolation Loops - I saw Annabel Alpers open for Beach House a few months back and instantly loved her. These records are great, though I don't think any of them actually came out this year.

I haven't gotten the new Robyn record yet, but I fully expect it to be near the top of this list soon.

A Businessman Moves to Miami

There’s this part of The Insider where Al Pacino, playing a “60 Minutes” producer and pissed that his network isn’t running an important story, turns to his boss and asks, “Are you a newsman, or are you a businessman?” The disdainful way he pronounces “businessman” makes the question about his boss’s ethics and morality. I tend to do the same thing. To me, people either try to make something (whether it’s art or homes or bridges), or they try to make money, and I have only contempt and pity for the latter.

I don’t care about LeBron James. Who wouldn’t rather live in Miami than Cleveland? I hate hot weather and douchebags, but even I would pick Miami over Cleveland. However, the distasteful way in which James made this decision re-illustrates what we already know about him. He is, above everything else, a businessman. Like Michael Jordan and Tiger Woods before him, he has built a corporation out of his athletic prowess, and switching teams only allows his business to continually grow. Miami is a bigger and more media-friendly market. Florida has no state income tax. Sounds like a solid business decision. Having an hour-long infomercial broadcast by ESPN just furthers his brand and stokes the coals of his “importance”. It allows the fawning Stuart Scott and Michael Wilbon to make this decision (which honestly, has no real bearing on anyone’s life other than James and his family) seem actually newsworthy.

So, LeBron James will move to Miami to play for the Heat. Also, the sun will rise, people will be born, people will die, and two bullshit wars will continue forever. But seriously, can LeBron and D-Wade peacefully coexist?

Yawn.

On Being Territorial About Music..

I came across this good read recently, interesting take on the sociology of music.. if you know, you happen to enjoy that sort of thing.

A sample:

"As fans we happily create a rogue's gallery of imaginary audiences for all kinds of music, and the more we keep real audiences at arms length the easier that is to do. Fandoms seem to require an Other, something to differentiate themselves against. So we're rhetorically hostile to fellow music listeners. We bundle up fans of particular acts, of course. But we also create stereotypes of people who listen too intensely (audiophiles, obsessive fans) and too casually (people for whom music is "just background noise"). We construct listeners who are too into music-- hoarders and novelty-seekers-- and the 10-albums-a-year buyer who's not into music enough. We project ideas of not listening the right way or for the right reasons-- calling into being the "hipster," the "rockist," the "fangirl." The implied contrast is to our own, naturally superior, modes of consumption. After all it's easier to suggest people fit into some kind of straw man category-- posers, ideologues, undiscerning bobbleheads-- than to risk ourselves by empathizing with what they hear or don't hear in the music...

...There's a kind of experience I think every music fan has had. I call it the "bad ears": It's a kind of one-on-one Wyatting, and it's what happens when the assumptions you make flip over and leave you the one vulnerable. It's when you're with a friend, and you play them some music you like and you want them to like too. They don't say anything. And suddenly you're hearing it with the bad ears: Every pretension, every flaw in the music becomes utterly obvious to you. The lines you thought were terrific are revealed as facile. The lines you thought were lovably dumb are chasms of embarrassment. The song ends. You want to vanish. And your friend smiles and says "Yeah, that was good," and then it's their turn."
--Tom Ewing @ Pitchfork