Odds and Ends

So I've got a real post in the works, but I don't feel like writing it right now, so I'm just going to share some things:

I've gone into detail before on my love of shitty political cartoons that I disagree with. In the midst of a bunch of fawning cartoons about Obama at Slate, there was this:



All the reasons that this cartoon is stupid are so numerous and obvious I won't go into them. I'll just let you soak it in. Really, cartoons that unintentionally mimic The Onion's intentionally awful editorials like the one below make me laugh. I love it when reality outdoes parody for ridiculousness. Also, no matter what, editorial cartoons are never really funny, but they can become transcendentally greatly awful when they apparently come from some paranoid, misanthropic crank who's scared of change and knows his way around a pen. I wish I could see what the artist of the above cartoon would have written about Lincoln's victory if he'd been alive then.



Today I went into city center to pick up some Xmas gifts. I got my mom some earrings and myself some CDs - among them Death Cab For Cutie's Narrow Stairs. I've always been put off by Death Cab's extreme blandness coupled with Ben Gibbard's irritatingly writerly lyrics. It's the same mixture that has always kept me away from the Decemberists as well. I took a writing class once where the teacher talked about how distracting it is to the reader when they can "hear the writing," and that's what I feel about the lyrics of both bands. The lyrics that "She can't relax with his hand on the small of her back/ and as the flashbulbs burst, she holds a smile/ like someone would hold a crying child" are beautiful and evocative but they seem too calculated and unnatural to me. There's a coat of self-satisfaction on the whole thing.

Regardless, I was won over by the feeling and hooks of songs like "Cath..." and "I Will Possess Your Heart." At least, won over enough to plop down a few pounds for a used copy. All that's a backhanded way of saying that a band that I've always rolled my eyes at put out some songs that I think are really affecting. The rest of the album still sounds a bit like the soundtrack to an indie waiting room to me, but, you know...

What does it do for my mixed feelings about the album that Ben Gibbard looks kind of like Rainn Wilson mixed with a Hobbit in this video? I haven't decided yet.



The other CDs I picked up were Exile in Guyville and Portishead's Dummy, two albums that get blessed with the "classic" label a lot but I've never really given much time. I also got Under the Big Black Sun by X, The Ink Spots' Greatest Hits and an album called The Magic Wurlitzer that I was really excited about, but I kind of underestimated the annoyingness of the Wurlitzer as an instrument. It's pretty interminable. But it was cheap and I guess if I ever buy a skating rink and can't hire my own organ player I'm set.