Daisy

The walls of sound that Brand New had built and drenched with noise during their last outing have been forgone in Daisy, replaced instead with small hurdles. The last records stray sounds, echo laden acoustics, and swells of guitars and voices have left, and in their stead are the constant screaming, double-bass drumming, exacting formulaic riffs that make up the new album. It's not that it's bad, it's just that it feels off.

What made The Devil and God Are Raging Inside Me tick was such a balancing act of so many factors that every listen reveals some small detail that I didn't catch the last time. Like Stanley Kubrick's The Shining, so much went on that it's impossible to keep track of what is there to surprise the audience and what is there just by incident. Trying to recreate all that over again with Daisy proved impossible in spirit and in practice. They just couldn't topple the monster that they had had created.

The first point against it is that Daisy comes off as too aggressive too fast. Vices, the first track, hits you so hard with so much that after it's three-and-a-half minutes are up, you are left with no payoff. "You Stole" is so mired in it's own melancholy that I couldn't really be bothered by the time the song opens up and gets good.

Point two: The album's lyrics are weak and non-cohesive. Vague references to trains abound and some verses are just silly such as the bridge of "Sink" where "bony" is rhymed with "phony," which could work when pulled off properly, but it just sounds childish.

It's musically very tight and well done, and there are some exciting ideas and concepts within, but as a whole, it just doesn't, and can't, live up to the tightrope walk of their last release.

That's not to say that every band should live up to my exacting expectations, but Brand New has exceeded them with every new album, which leaves me in a rough spot.

The more I listen to it, the more I hate it, the more I want to point out what would be better, what they could of changed, but it's futile because this band means a lot to me, and I love this album anyway. I think I just had too much invested in it that I was bound to be let down.

Cereal and Star Wars

Back when my family first moved to Vegas, we bought Chex cereal for the first time just because it had a computer game in it. That computer game was "Chex Quest" and it blew my fucking mind.

It's a total rip-off of Doom (which I had never played), where you play as a giant piece of Chex cereal and use weapons called Zorchers to send goo blobs back to wherever the fuck goo blobs come to Chex-man's turf from.

I could not, as hard as I tried, ever get past the first level.

Thirteen years later it exists as freeware and can be run on Windows XP (although it originates as a DOS program and could be run on Windows 3.1!)

I beat it in two hours. It's still fun as shit, and now I can actually play it properly. The original creator has even made sequels, which is awesome and I will probably hang out with those too (next time I'm bored at work).

Nostalgia achieved. And a big up to 1up.com for listing "Chex Quest 3" as one of the top 101 Free Games of 2009. I never would of remembered "Chex Quest" without this article.

P.S. Dark Forces also rocked my world back in the day. I still have the original disc for this! Check out the wiki after the jump.

So Tired of This Shit

I did not grow up with Michael Jackson. The first time I ever saw him was when I was at Disneyworld watching Captain Neo, thinking,

"That is one manly, badass chick."

It took 10 minutes of convincing from my Dad that this was, in fact, a male performer adored by fans worldwide. I was obviously disappointed and confused.

The next time I heard anything about him was the whole sleepover business at his house/themepark-specifically-for-children-even-though-he-doesn't-have-any/ranch.

A case of mistaken gender and a reintroduction as someone who might want to touch my 11 year old penis made it really difficult for me to love Michael Jackson.

Some of his songs are super. I was obsessed with Smooth Criminal in ninth grade, and thats great! His music was influential enough that it should be remembered, but just his music please.

I'm tired of the general public vibe being that Michael Jackson was a great person.

His music made him a legend. His influential song writing and dancing made him a legend. The legend that no one is focusing on is that he was a secretive kid toucher. He secretively touched kids until he got in real adult trouble!

Everyone knows O.J. murdered his wife. It's common knowledge. It's also common knowledge that he got away with it because he had good money for good lawyers.

Having hit after hit song does not excuse child molestation and murder, but I guess it makes you enough money to. Is it so easy to forget Jackson did no jail time whatsoever for the crimes I'm pretty sure he committed?

"Oh, he didn't go to jail for touching little boys? Whatever man, that Thriller music video was fucking awesome!"

I better not be hearing anyone say, "Come on man, he played great football" when O.J. dies.