A Holiday Message From Ricky Gervais: Why I'm An Atheist

I'm sure anyone who reads this also follows what I do on Facebook to some extent, but this is so good that I also had to post it here.

http://blogs.wsj.com/speakeasy/2010/12/19/a-holiday-message-from-ricky-gervais-why-im-an-atheist/

success!

My beer is moderately drinkable!

Beeeeeer!

Two posts in one day? No one can live at that speed!

So, I brewed my first batch of beer two weeks ago, thanks to a great deal on Groupon that finally kicked my butt into gear. $40 for a complete brew kit and a recipe kit was too much to pass up, given that the beginner equipment kt is usually $80 and a recipe kit usually runs ~$30 for a five gallon batch. It's an Irish Stout, which I'm led to believe is more or less a Guinness clone. It's been sitting in fermentation for 2 weeks and smells like beer. I'm bottling it tomorrow. It appears I haven't entirely ruined everything yet, so keep your fingers crossed. You may have a sixer of moderately drinkable homebrew in your Christmas stocking.

I have to say, for as much as I read leading up to doing the brewing, it didn't really click for me until I actually did it. Now it makes total sense. Next up, I'm planning on doing a strong Belgian witbier, with two-stage fermentation and everything. Here's hoping I don't blow up the apartment - I don't think my $300 deposit will cover it.

New City vs. Old City

Music Scene (you knew I was going to start with this, right?)

New City takes this one handily. I mean come on, Prince and Bob Dylan, enough said. Well, ok, not enough said, because this city's music scene is out of this world. I miss 4 or 5 shows a week here that I probably would have gone to in KC. The First Ave Club is great. There is a great collection of local musicians here as well. Of them, I've only seen Cloud Cult so far, but they are lovely. Doomtree, Jeremy Messersmith, and Mason Jennings are probably next up.

Art Scene

This one goes to KC. Granted, I haven't explored this much yet in Minneapolis, but there's no real companion to KC's Crossroads neighborhood and the associated First Fridays, which are really incredible.

Politics

Minneapolis takes this one. Minneapolis is pretty reliably leftie. Not being split across a state border makes it a lot easier to get civic-y stuff done (see: light rail), and as far as I have seen, there's no poaching of businesses between cities, at least not on the level of KC. Other than that, I don't know too much about the politics here yet.

Weather

Kansas City's too hot. Minneapolis is too cold. Minneapolis gets the slight edge here, because I deal with the cold better than extreme heat.

Dining

Kansas City has world class barbecue, and a pretty good food scene. Minneapolis restaurants in general have a remarkable selection of vegetarian entrees - not that I'm vegetarian, but it's striking in comparison to KC. Every hole in the wall place has something like vegan chicken nuggest or mock duck tacos or something. It's kind of great to explore this stuff, which is widely off the menu in KC. Haven't tried a ton of places yet, for fear of offending my poor wallet, but I like what I've seen so far.

Transit

See the aforementioned light rail, add buses that people actually take, and Minneapolis wins this one by a landslide.

Downtown

While Minneapolis lacks anything like the Power and Light District or the Crossroads, Nicollet Mall and the surrounding area are kind of amazing. Tons of cool restaurants and music venues. And everything is clean and there are always tons of people out at all hours. I have to call this one a draw...

Living Conditions

Well, housing is a lot more expensive here. We live in an apartment in the burbs, which is certainly an adjustment from our house in the thick of it in KC, but we are adjusting. Having light rail to take into the city is great (no driving or paying for parking), but there really isn't a lot to do in Burnsville. We're certainly not roughly a mile from two happening neighborhoods like we were in KC, but we're not near the crime either. I love the old house in KC, but I have to give the nod to Minneapolis here. The crime was a rough thing to deal with in KC. Living in an apartment has its ups and downs. Our management is pretty incompetent, but hey, getting all the laundry done in parallel is great. And we have a pretty large apartment for the price up here.

Public Radio

I love KCUR, but MPR is here. That means The Current in addition to a classical station and a regular NPR news station. Despite A Prairie Home Companion being recorded here, I have to give this one to Minneapolis, mostly on the greatness of The Current.

Job

My job here pays marginally more and has, on balance, slightly better benefits. It's pretty boring, and there's too much bureaucracy and process and 20 ways of doing the same thing, and my coworkers were totally way cooler at the old job (and I'm not just saying that because some of them read this). I have to give the nod to the old job. My Modern Warfare skills have totally gotten rusty. Everyone still says "the tire company?" when I tell them where I work.

Miscellaneous

Like I said, it generally seems a lot cleaner here than in KC. It's not total panic on the roads when snow falls. They actually have smartly planned bike lanes and buses take the shoulder in rush hour. I miss my group of friends in KC, and I know it will take time to build something similar here. It's still a little weird to live in the burbs again, but driving (a lot) less is really nice. I still like KC a lot, and I am having trouble distancing myself from it, but I guess that will come in time.

Only Shallow

There are relatively few songs that, when they come up on random, force me to listen to the entire associated album immediately. Only Shallow by My Bloody Valentine is one of those songs. That riff is simply ridiculous. Amorphous and interesting and ass-kicking and catchy all at the same time... who cares if you can't make out the vocals? That's kind of the shoegazer thing.

Forgive the laughable early 90s video.

Watch. Listen.

One for every year he's away

Ok, because it's Tom Waits, and it's amazing, and I live in Minneapolis now (and have been to 9th and Hennepin a number of times), I have to post this.

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Well it's Ninth and Hennepin
All the doughnuts have names that sound like prostitutes
And the moon's teeth marks are on the sky
Like a tarp thrown all over this
And the broken umbrellas like dead birds
And the steam comes out of the grill
Like the whole goddamn town's ready to blow...
And the bricks are all scarred with jailhouse tattoos
And everyone is behaving like dogs
And the horses are coming down Violin Road
And Dutch is dead on his feet
And all the rooms they smell like diesel
And you take on the dreams of the ones who have slept here
And I'm lost in the window, and I hide in the stairway
And I hang in the curtain, and I sleep in your hat...
And no one brings anything small into a bar around here
They all started out with bad directions
And the girl behind the counter has a tattooed tear
"One for every year he's away", she said
Such a crumbling beauty, ah
There's nothing wrong with her that a hundred dollars won't fix
She has that razor sadness that only gets worse
With the clang and the thunder of the Southern Pacific going by
And the clock ticks out like a dripping faucet
'til you're full of rag water and bitters and blue ruin
And you spill out over the side to anyone who will listen...
And I've seen it all, I've seen it all
Through the yellow windows of the evening train...

I am not my father, or an extended blog post title in honor of Sufjan Stevens, who I saw in concert last night, and who has a preponderance for long s

....ong titles. I blew past the Blogger post title limit!

Last night, I spent a couple of hours walking up and down Nicollet Mall and Hennepin downtown before the Sufjan Stevens concert. It's a really cool area. It seems like the most conventional of businesses are there (Target, Walgreens, etc), but they did an excellent job of using the existing urban fabric for their buildings, which is not something those businesses tend to do. I know that Target, being headquartered here, has an impetus to look cool and invest in downtown, but I was really impressed with their store that was shoehorned into this odd two-story space. A two-story Target. How about that?

My grey Fedora made its Minneapolis debut last night. While I was walking around, the cutest little girl ever (maybe 6 or 7) said to me "man, you looking' REAL fancy!", and started imitating my walk. It was really the cutest thing I could possibly imagine. The actual amount of my fanciness is a topic up for debate.

The Orpheum Theatre is nothing short of amazing. It was built in the 1920s and very obviously taken care of very carefully. I love old theaters like this, especially for concerts, and this one is in impeccable shape. The acoustics were also excellent.

Once I got in, I wandered around for a while admiring the architecture of the place, ordered a gin and tonic, and took my seat. I was sitting next to the cousin of the girl who I bought the ticket from, and she struck up a conversation. It was nice to talk to a new person who's into the same random stuff I am, but it did make me (once again) realize that I am a terribly awkward conversationalist. These things happen, I suppose. She had just moved to town too, so we talked about getting lost, where we were from, and Asthmatic Kitty records and other artists we liked on that label. It's really the first time I've had a conversation with a random stranger at a show, and it was nice.

The above is deceptive. I was thinking, oh, hey, Sufjan Stevens is touring solo. That's cool. his arrangements are fairly complex, but hey, maybe he's got backing tracks or something. Oh, how wrong I was. This was the setup for the opener, who was a dude with an acoustic guitar whose name escapes me. He played about 4 songs, and that was it. It was a nice opening set, for sure. After a short wait, Sufjan came on, and I realized how wrong I had been about the night's setup.

He had a backing band of ten people, I shit you not. Two singers, two brass players, two drummers, a pianist, another keyboard/sampler guy, a bass guitarist, and a rhythm guitarist. All those instruments that show up on his arrangements? Played live, by real people. It's sad that I have to point out and be impressed by this fact, but there you have it. Also, and this is a weird thing to point out, but the sound mix at this show was amazing. There were 11 musicians on stage, and no one ever clobbered the other in the mix. Everything was crisp and nice and audible. It honestly sounded like a studio mix or something, but it was being performed live in front of me. Along those lines, Sufjan's vocals were crystal clear, and not muddied in the mix or anything. It was really important to get this right, and they nailed it. Sufjan is one of those vocalists where you have to be able to take the nuances of his performance to really appreciate it, and in this regard, this show knocked it out of the park.

Most of the show's set came from his new album, The Age of Adz, and the accompanying EP, All Delighted People. I hadn't had much exposure to this material yet, but it blew me away. He has (re-)introduced a lot of interesting skronky electronics to his music, and you know I eat that shit up, so it was totally great. The set was very light on Illinois material (just Chicago and Casimir Pulaski Day), and there was nothing at all from Michigan. He did open with a song from Seven Swans, though, which was great. It was a talky set. Who'd have thought that Sufjan would like to yammer on a bit, given song titles like "The Black Hawk War, or, How to Demolish an Entire Civilization and Still Feel Good About Yourself in the Morning, or, We Apologize for the Inconvenience but You're Going to Have to Leave Now, or, 'I Have Fought the Big Knives and Will Continue to Fight Them Until They Are Off Our Lands!'"? (editors note: that song is a whopping two minutes long)

It was mostly banter, but one of his longer conversational interludes was a discussion about Royal Robertson, an outsider artist who inspired The Age of Adz's artwork, much of its material, and most of the visuals for the show. I guess he was a schizophrenic who perceived all of these apocalyptic events unfolding around him, and turned them into art. He had a huge, loving family, and he eventually kicked them out of his life and lived in a tiny trailer making this art for decades, hardly seeing anyone the entire time. It's kind of an amazing tragic story, and his work is really interesting as well. I hadn't heard of him before this, and I'm intrigued to look into his work further. I'm very curious about outsider art and music, so it was great to learn a little something aligned with my interests in between instances of face-rocking. Some of his work can be found here.

Sufjan Stevens and company played for about three hours total, including encore. It was really a great show, probably among my top five ever. Anyway, I've gone on about this long enough, don't you think?