Candy Ramadan: Day 1

So I started off this most tasty of holy holidays with a candy I'd never tried before, a Mallo Cup. Mallo Cups are like peanut butter cups but instead of a gritty, oily center these had marshmallow fluff and chunks of dessicated coconut. At first I was wary of any candy that had fruit in it, because I didn't want to fill up on empty vitamins, but the coconut was practically at the end of the ingredients list and it was completely drenched in sugar and corn syrup, so I figured it was good. Plus I like the word 'dessicated'.

I bought these at Jo-Ann Fabrics today while I was looking for some mosaic tiles to glue all over my fireplace (security deposit be damned). I got out to the car and bit into one immediately, wanting to eat it before it got all hot and gooey. The first bite was so face-meltingly sweet that my teeth ached until I bought a Diet Coke and rinsed my mouth out.

Needless to say, it was AWESOME. There aren't that many candies that are so purely devoted to the unencumbered delivery of sugar in all of its wonderful forms. They always want to put some kind of organic dark chocolate or protein-rich nuts or fruit flavors in there and fuck up the sugar. But not Mallo Cups! It was super-sweet chocolate covering fluffy sugar goo and sugar-soaked coconut flakes. This was a really awesome way to start off Candy Ramadan.

Countdown to 30: Candy Ramadan

It is now less than two months until my 30th birthday, and I'm bummed as hell. I don't want to be 30. I don't want any more people to tell me that 30 isn't that bad. I swear to Flying Spaghetti Monster that I noticed a wrinkle today on the side of my mouth. To make it worse it was only on the left side of my mouth so not only am I quickly on my way to looking like the Crypt Keeper I am doing so asymmetrically. Super.

So, as the sun sets on my 20s, it occurs to me that my time to do incredibly stupid things with no social repercussions is soon coming to an end. With that in mind, I plan on spending the last 57 days doing whatever fun and immature things I want. To kick it all off, I decided I'm going to observe Candy Ramadan.

I got the idea of Candy Ramadan from a Candy Addict article about the pitiful dearth of mid-year candy-related holidays. It's like actual Ramadan, only, you know, the total opposite. I originally wanted to eat nothing but candy from sunup to sundown, but all-night vomiting and eventually getting rickets is just not what Candy Ramadan is all about. So here are the rules I came up with for Candy Ramadan:

1. Candy must be eaten every day for thirty days.

2. A different kind of candy must be eaten each day.

3. If candy is consumed with another food item (such as cake, ice cream, etc.) the candy must constitute at least 50% of the dish to be counted as the daily candy.

4. Breath mints, gums, or any other item approved by the American Dental Association are not candy. Also, anything that is "nature's candy" is not actual candy but fruit in disguise (your parents lied to you).

5. Keep track of which candy is eaten every day and post it here.

Really, does anything say immaturity better telling the Food Pyramid to go fuck itself? Tomorrow the fun begins!


By the way... don't do a Google image search of the word 'candy' at work. Trust me.

Weird.

I've had the theme from "Welcome Back, Kotter" stuck in my head for no good reason. I was getting a paper clip from a drawer in my office when it just started up in my brain on a continual loop all day long.

No, I'm not dead (again)

I moved. It sucked. Do you know how exhausting it is to have to touch every single thing you own and decide if you want to keep it or which box to put it in? Next time I'm just going to set my shit on fire and start over. Except for my Decemberists posters. And my collection of gnomes. Oh, and my books. Probably should save my computer while I'm at it, and my juice glass with the dinosaurs on it. And my magnet collection. And my huge collection of free postcard and flyers I have hanging up in the bathroom (do you know how long it took to hang 63 individually-framed postcards up?). And my good knives, not those crappy rust-riddled ones I stole from Outback. I have a lot of beer in the fridge, too, so I can't let that go to waste. Oh man, and my Simpsons DVDs, no way I'm letting those suckers burn. Or Futurama. Or Red Dwarf. Or Firefly...

This is about where someone offers up that quote from 'Fight Club' about your stuff owning you. (That reminds me, I shouldn't let my copies of the book or the DVD burn up either).

I don't believe you mean it

Lonely Little Sea Hag

Am I the only person in the world who hates the dry, scratchy feel of a Q-Tip? People talk about how they kinda dig having their ear canal molested by a cotton swab, going so far as to refer to it as an "ear-gasm", but to me it's one of the most cringe-inducing activities around, akin to accidentally scraping a steak knife across a dinner plate or watching "Sex And The City." Don't get me wrong, I keep my ears wax-free... but I pretty much have to sneak up on myself and catch my ears unawares after a shower in order to do this. I hope everyone appreciates this.

I also don't like touching ice with my bare hands. But I do enjoy eating fruitcake. I'm alone on these three things, aren't I?

I survived Tornado '08!

We got tornadoed on in Atlanta last night! But I am OK.

Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!

My girl Diablo Cody won tonight!

My honor student is now the boss of your punk kid

I was reading "The Astonishing Adventures Of Fanboy And Goth Girl" a few days ago and... it's not the best book (though I love me some fanboys), but there was a part where one of the characters was talking about how this country hates smart people, and he used the example of those 'My Kid Beat Up Your Honor Student' bumper stickers.

Now, I could have told you back in kindergarten that there is a huge anti-intellectual feeling in this country, especially if you are a girl. There are two things that intimidate most men in the world, and those are brains and money, which, of course, pretty much go together like Han Solo and Princess Leia. I was never really harassed in school about it (possibly because I have awesome boobs) but I can't tell you how many times I've been on a date and had some guy say something like "Were you like one of those nerd kids in school?" I've never understood what tipped them off about that, it's not like I walk around with my SAT scores stapled to my forehead and I have an Erlenmeyer flask hanging out of my back pocket, but somehow these particular guys caught on pretty quick. I think it's because a lot of men have an idea of what a girlfriend should be like and 'smart' isn't on that list, so when I don't have a 45-minute conversation about how awesome "High School The Musical' is they must know. And then I would think about the kids I hung out with in high school, and what careers they have now: chemical engineer, doctor, people working on their doctorates at Emory and Georgia Tech. And then I would say with great pride: "yeah, I was a nerd and I still am." And then they never got another date with me.

I never thought about those damn bumper stickers that way before, though. It celebrates bullies while dismissing us geeks as people who need to be abused because we dare to be smart and apply ourselves in school. This bumper sticker says "my kid might be functionally illiterate, guaranteeing him a lifetime full of the sweatiest and noisiest jobs, but I'm proud that he commits assault and battery." It's totally messed up.

... and now for something completely different.

Testicles.


That is all.

Sea Hag's Ultra Fabulous 2007 Music Review : Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!

Clap Your Hands Say Yeah!

Some Loud Thunder

I really, really, really, really, really liked CYHSY's last album from the first time I heard it, so I was pretty excited about their new one, but I was a little cautious too, because this was one of those 'sophomore albums' that could cement them as an awesome band or exile them to 'their first album was a fluke' status. Also, CYHSY gained their fanbase for their first album via the internet instead of a record company (they were unsigned and produced it themselves. Actually, they even mailed out orders for their CDs to customers themselves), so it was going to be interesting to see what happened after I learned that they had finally signed with a record label.

The verdict is: well, the jury's still out on this one. It's not that I don't like it, but of the few times I have listened to it, it didn't grab me like their first album did. That's OK though, some of my favorite albums are ones that grew on me as times passed and I listened to them more and I think this one probably will too. It's a little quieter and doesn't have some of the fun, happy pop stuff that the last one did, but that's not necessarily a bad thing either. Eventually I will just have to work it into my rotation of stuff I listen to on my iPod and see what I feel about it.

Recommended songs:

Ask me again later

Sea Hag's Ultra Fabulous 2007 Music Review : Wilco

Wilco

Sky Blue Sky

Even if you don't know who Wilco is, you've probably heard most of the music from this album already- they played it on the new Volkswagen commercials:

I liked this album. They ditched a lot of the twangy country flavor and all of the experimental noise-thing that they tried on some of their previous work and produced an album that is very mellow and melodic. It's a great album to put on when you're hanging out on the couch and reading a book. Wilco's lead singer Jeff Tweedy went on a solo tour earlier this year and Noochie and I went to see him. I really dug the stripped-down acoustic thing he did, and I think this album is a reflection of that.

Recommended songs:

"Sky Blue Sky"

"On And On"

Sea Hag's Ultra Fabulous 2007 Music Review : Handsome Furs

Handsome Furs

Plague Park

I first heard of Handsome Furs on that fateful night that I went to Steak 'N' Shake with Michael and we were listening to Album 88. Makes me wish I had kept listening all night long.

Anyway, Handsome Furs. This is apparently a side project of some guy from Wolf Parade and his fiance. I've never heard of Wolf Parade (or any of their fiances) but I did really like this album a lot. It's hard for me to describe their sound, it's not mellow or lush like I've described nearly everything that I've reviewed. Pitchfork calls it 'sparse and minimal' but I think it's got a lot more going on than that. I think 'minimal' and I think of some guy standing on a street corner who made a kazoo with a piece of waxed paper wrapped over a comb. That's minimal. Handsome Furs use synthesizers and drum machines. I guess there's a whiff of... um... industrial-ness to their songs. Grindy. Gloomy. Gray. I don't know. But it's worth checking out, at least as an antidote to all the mellow, laid-back stuff that came out this year.

Recommended songs:

"Handsome Furs Hate This City"

"Dead + Rural"

"Hearts of Iron"

Sea Hag's Ultra Fabulous 2007 Music Review : Blonde Redhead

Blonde Redhead

23

Pitchfork Media says of this album: "Somewhere underneath all the high-gloss, ornamental swirlies and lacquered doilies are haphazardly camouflaged well-written songs." To this I say (as I usually say about Pitchfork) : shut up, you bunch of tools. This is a good album, and one of the reasons I like it is because it is so totally and lushly hyper-produced. Its true that most of the vocals are pushed back to the point that you can't understand what they're saying, but I like music where the voice isn't predominant but is utilized as another instrument. The Changelings and My Bloody Valentine do this too, and they are both excellent.

I just discovered Blonde Redhead this year when Michael and I made a run on Steak 'N' Shake one night and had Album 88 on while we waited at the drive-thru. (Album 88, or WRAS-FM, is Georgia State University's radio station. I just got into listening to them about a year ago.) A song came on that I didn't recognize but I liked instantly, and it turned out to be "Spring and by Summer Fall" by Blonde Redhead, so I went ahead and got their CD. I haven't heard any of their older stuff so I don't know how this CD stacks up to their previous work, but I'm definintely going to check it out some time.

Recommended songs:

"23"

"Dr. Strangeluv"

"Silently"

"Spring and by Summer Fall"

Sea Hag's Ultra Fabulous 2007 Music Review : Let's Go Sailing

Let's Go Sailing

The Chaos In Order

Sometimes you can't help but like a band simply based on the way you discovered them: your best friend told you about them, you saw them play in a bar before they hit it big, you randomly bought a CD based solely on the cool cover art. I found Let's Go Sailing through Gil The Crab.




One day I watched all of the Honda Element commercials online and I totally geeked out over the Gil The Crab ones. ("I pinch" is still a popular catchphrase in the Sea Hag household.) So later on that day I scoured the internet for more about my new pinchy friend and came across his MySpace page. The song he had on his page was "Sideways" by Let's Go Sailing. Sideways? Crab? Get it? Heh heh, clever little crustacean. Anyway, I really liked this song so I bought their entire album.

This album turned out to be pretty good. Shana Levy's sweet, breathy voice adds a poignant, fragile quality to some of the quieter songs on this album, and a cheerful, girly kick to the more upbeat ones. Lyrically it's a little uneven, going from the bare-but-brilliant:

And all I want from you is love
And all I want from you is love

(Does she mean it as though it's the easiest thing to give or receive? The simplest? The hardest?)

To the clunky:

It hurts like a splinter stuck in your foot
And you've tried, but can't get it out.
And of course, you walk in the heat for miles.
You forget the pain, but it comes back after a while.

But in all, this is a great, solid indie-pop CD, and I think they'll just get better.

Recommended songs:
"Sideways"
"All I Want From You Is Love"
"Come Home Safely"

Sea Hag's Ultra Fabulous 2007 Music Review : Modest Mouse

Modest Mouse

We Were Dead Before The Ship Even Sank

Like the rest of the world, I started listening to Modest Mouse when their last CD "Good News For People Who Love Bad News" started being played all the time (I seem to remember that they had a TV commercial hawking their CD at Target). I listened to some of their older stuff after that, and I've come to the conclusion that this is one of those bands where I either LOOOOOVE a song or hate it with everything in me.

Thing is, while I'm sure that there are some really good tunes on this album (along with some shitty ones) I just haven't gotten around to listening to it yet. I think it's mostly because Isaac Brock's yelpy-bark of a voice isn't something you can listen to for extended periods of time without your brain melting out of your ears. Also, sometimes you're just not in the mood to listen to something, and that applies here.

Recommended songs:

"Dashboard"

Sea Hag's Ultra Fabulous 2007 Music Review : Blackfield

Blackfield
Blackfield II

It's highly possible that you've never heard of these people, because it's a side project of Porcupine Tree's lead singer Steven Wilson and some Israeli guy named Aviv Geffen. He's supposed to be big over there. Anyway, before the new album came out I would have said wow, you need to listen to these guys because they're really fucking good.

And then they released "Blackfield II".

Wow, is their new CD is a total and utter pile of steaming monkey boogers. Blackfield's first CD "Blackfield" is a favorite of mine, so I was super disappointed in how totally craptacular this one was. I should have known it would be awful just from the incredibly clever and creative title of the new CD.

For this release they tried to do more storytelling with their songs and... well, not everyone has mastered the art of telling a story in song without sounding like a bunch of morons. Ryan Adams? Colin Meloy? Bruce Springsteen? Billy Joel? They can. Blackfield guys? Puking guinea pigs could have done a better job. The songs are - Flying Spaghetti Monster help us - full of rhyming lyrics that are completely forced and clunky. And nothing kills a song for me faster than lyrics that rhyme for the sake of rhyming, or angsty songs that sound like they're straight from a 14-year-old's diary. Usually such a big change in music is a result of something like a change in labels or producers or rampant sobriety, but honestly this album sucked so hard that I don't even care to look it up online.

Recommended songs:

Their other album. For the love of everything that's good and holy.

Sea Hag's Ultra Fabulous 2007 Music Review : Ryan Adams

Ryan Adams

Easy Tiger

Oh, Ryan Adams, how I want to jump your crazy-ass bones and then dump you just so you'd write a song about it the next day.

So it came as a surprise to... well, no one that Ryan Adams had been doing heroin and coke and drinking heavily for a long time, and that he went through rehab or some shit and was now sober. I know this is going to sound awful, but I always cringe a little on the inside when I hear that a favorite musician of mine has decided to get married/have a baby/clean up because generally their music always changes for the worst. I don't want you to be happy, damn it! I want you to be strung out and writing songs about that one girl who broke your heart!

One of the reasons I like Ryan Adams, besides the fact he's a nutty, bratty larger-than-life genius, is that he's not afraid to wallow around in his own misery and produce some incredibly dark work, such as my favorites "The Shadowlands", "Blue Sky Blues", "Elizabeth, You Were Born To Play That Part", "La Cienega Just Smiled" or "Peaceful Valley", which has these cheerful lyrics:

All my life I've loved for forgiveness
But I can never seem to get enough
All my life I've been rocked into the darkness
With a gun to my head
Trying to find a peaceful song
Trying to find a peaceful song
To sing when everything goes wrong
Till the peaceful valley calls me home

But Ryan Adams' new album isn't full of the funeral-dirge ballads that I like the best, but it's not a bad album either. He's certainly put the 'country' back in 'alt-country' for this one, and though it's mostly good I'm just not a huge fan of the twangy stuff. But his vocals are very silky and pretty, his lyrics are always good, and the production quality of the album is fucking amazing.

The first single that was released off of this was "Two" which I think had Sheryl Crow doing background vocals. Why do people like her so much? She's an average singer and songwriter at best. Yeah, I know she just had breast cancer but my sympathy does not make her any more talented to my ears. Anyway, it's an OK song, it does smack of someone trying to garner playtime on an adult contemporary listening station though. There's much better stuff on the album, and if you dig country music I think you'd like this one a lot.

Recommended songs:

"Oh My God, Whatever, Etc."

"Off Broadway"

"Everybody Knows"

Sea Hag's Ultra Fabulous 2007 Music Review : The Decemberists

The Decemberists

The Crane Wife

Yes, I know it came out in 2006 but The Decemberists are THE! BEST! BAND! EVER! so I'm totally going to whore them out right now. Plus I saw them two times on tour this year so that should count for something, right? Anyway, 'The Crane Wife' is an incredible album and I am particularly in love with the title track, which is actually a 3-part song that takes on a Japanese folk tale. One reason I love The Decemberists so much is that they can do shit like this or do an 18-minute homage to Irish folk hero Cuchulain or songs about pirates and whores and it doesn't sound like they're trying overly hard to be cute or smart or gain some sort of nerdy indie-cred. They do what they do because that's what they like, and even though this is their first release on a major label they haven't lost any of their Decemberists-ness, which is a feat in and of itself. LOVE THEM!!!! LOVE!!!!

Recommended songs:

"The Crane Wife 1-3"

"Yankee Bayonet (I Will Be Home Then)"

"Sons and Daughters"

"The Island"

Sea Hag's Ultra Fabulous 2007 Music Review : Tori Amos

Tori Amos

American Girl Posse

I should probably put a disclaimer here that Tori Amos will always be one of my favorite musicians even when she releases such huge gorilla turds as "The Beekeeper" or "Strange Little Girls". "American Girl Posse" isn't as bad as some of her previous albums but it's still lacking something that her earlier work just hummed with.

Tori Amos released her first album "Little Earthquakes" over 15 years ago, and she filled it with songs about the anger, sadness and disillusionment that came with leaving your childhood behind and entering a world your parents didn't (and couldn't) prepare you for; a place where you were no longer protected by your father's love but were victim to men's cruel hearts and your own unintentionally hurtful whims and relationships. So you just can imagine the effect an album such as this had on me when I was 19 years old and heard it for the first time. It was more than an album, it was my anthem and my religion then (and in a way, it still is). So is it fair to hold up Tori Amos' later works (or anyone else's, for that matter) to one that set an impossible standard? Of course not. To do so would be to experience suicidal disappointment in every single song you'll ever hear for the rest of your life.

But Tori Amos continued to release wonderful things after "Little Earthquakes" for several years, and she experimented and tried new things musically and continued to put this incredible emotional edge to everything she did. Her lyrics have always been odd and cryptic, but they could create a feeling that would be otherwise impossible to get if you analyzed them literally. But her last few albums have really lacked that raw anger and cynicism that made her earlier stuff so damn good. What little outrage she has now isn't directed towards her own little world but out at the world at large, and there's where it falls in to the Boring Protest Songs Category which I despise. The other songs she's done have been just way too boring and lame. Here's what I mean:

This is from her song "Silent All These Years" from "Little Earthquakes":
So you found a girl who thinks really deep thoughts-

What's so amazing about really deep thoughts?

Boy, you'd best pray that I bleed real soon

How's that thought for you?

This is from "Precious Things", also from "Little Earthquakes":

So you can make me come

That doesn't make you Jesus.

See what I mean? Coy, flip, hurt, confused and angry angry angry.

And now here's some lyrics from "Yo George" on "American Doll Posse":

I salute to you Commander
and I sneeze.
'Cause I have, now,
An allergy
To your policies, it seems.
Where have we gone wrong, America?

And this is from "Original Sinsuality" on "The Beekeeper":

Original sin?
No, I don't think so
Original sinsuality
Original sin?
No, it should be
Original sinsuality
Original sin?
No, I don't think so
Original sinsuality

... yeah.

Music critics love to throw around the word 'accessible' when describing some albums, as in 'it was their most accessible album to date'. Most of the time I think they just like saying that because they're being pretentious asshats, but with Tori Amos her albums have stopped being accessible to me. I imagine that after years and years of songwriting that exposed her most vulnerable, personal thoughts it might have gotten exhausting for her, or maybe she's done with that time in her life now and wants to sing about other things. Maybe it's because she's married and a mother now, and she's singing about a place in her life that I can't relate to because I haven't experienced it yet and maybe never will. I don't know. But when I hear her new stuff I don't get the sense that's she's singing about things that come from her deep well of personal experience anymore. It all seems like she's one step removed now, like she's singing about something she saw on TV.

But I can tell you that "American Doll Posse" is supposed to be yet another conceptual album in which she sings songs as one of five alter personalities (she did something similar in "Strange Little Girls", her all-covers album, where every song was reworked and sung as a different 'character', and "Scarlet's Walk" where she took on the persona of Scarlet) but of course it all is just vaguely different shades of Tori Amos, and I'm not sure exactly why she continues to feel the need to try on other costumes when her own personality is so much more interesting.

But I will still keep buying her albums.

Recommended songs:

"Beauty Of Speed"

... you know what? Just buy "Little Earthquakes". Seriously.