I once gave Stephen Malkmus a face transplant

Thanks to Lisa for the heads up on this little gem about a pair of just-slightly-more-pretentious-than-normal record store clerks.

The Mostest Lonliest Day I've Ever Spent Alone By Myself When Nobody Else Was Around

This is the first of what will hopefully become a regular feature here at Indoor Recess: Teenage Livejournal Poetry or Middle Aged Man Rock Lyrics. It's pretty simple; I post one of each and you have to figure out which is which. Here we go.

Such a lonely day,
and it's mine
The most lonliest day of my life
Such a lonely day,
should be banned
It's a day that I can't stand

Such a lonely day,
shouldn't exist
It's a day that I'll never miss
Such a lonely day,
and it's mine
The most lonliest day of my life

And if you go,
I wanna go with you
And if you die,
I wanna die with you
Take your hand and walk away

Such a lonely day,
and its mine
It's a day that I'm glad I survived
The most lonliest day of my life


That's gotta be the Livejournal poetry, right? I mean, there's no way a record label would ever let a full grown man use the phrase "most lonliest" right? Ahh, but wait till you get a load of this next one:

bordom is a bad disease
which can lead to many things
like counting all the flowers in the hall
and makeing friends with shadows on the wall
i've got a disease
lonlyness is a bad disease
which can lead to many things
like screaming words out to the night
for someone pleaso to hold me tight
i've got a disease
love is a bad disease
which can lead to many things
like icy chills running down my spine
and pain and insanity from hells divine
i've got a disease

Gosh, you've sure got a lot of diseases buddy. I can understand how you'd forget diarrhea of the whine and a flesh-eating case of bad spelling.

As you can see, we've got a couple of really strong contenders. Check back tomorrow for the answer.

A Layman's Guide to Declaring War on the United States

If you've been looking closely at the news about the torture of prisoners in US custody, or are the type of person for whom a good linguistic debate is the equivalent of a 30 second keg stand, then you may have noticed something funny about the way these kinda-sorta-not-really-prisoners-of-war are described. They're called “unlawful combatants.” Which begs the question: what exactly is lawful combatant? What are the appropriate rules one must follow in order to wage war on the United States? If it's possible to attack the US unlawfully, it must be possible to do it lawfully. So, in the name of grammatical clarity, I've poured over the Third Geneva Convention and drafted an airtight, legally binding list of ways to declare war on the United States. This will ensure you protection under international law, the right of habeas corpus, and act as a Get Out Of Guantanamo Free Card. Pass it along to all your Islamofascist friends who aren't sure they have what it takes to spend the rest of their lives blindfolded with 120 volts coursing through their genitals.

1. Create your own state. Petition the UN for recognition. Serve in the armed forces of your state. Declare war. Have fun!

2. Join a militia that has a commander and uniforms, carry your arms openly and follow the laws of war. Moral of this is not to join some ragtag band of rebels who wear their street clothes. If my youth soccer team could afford its own t-shirts, so can you, my jihadi friend. It also means no decentralized, anarchist collective cells with consensus based decision making. Go back to the organic co-op, hippie scum; we like our enemies authoritarian and top-down structured, thankyouverymuch.

3. Profess allegiance to another country's armed forces. I'm sure Tuvalu would be thrilled to have you aboard. You wouldn't even have to serve; professing allegiance is enough. Just make sure you don't answer your phone when you see a “688” number calling.

4. Resist a US invasion of your territory. This one's a little tricky, but the best way to do it would be to announce the discovery of oil in your apartment building. Weapons of mass destruction will be discovered shortly afterwards in the area east, west, south and north of your kitchen. If you've planned ahead, you'll have a Home Alone-style set of traps awaiting US forces. Donald Rumsfeld = Daniel Stern.

That's it, kids. I've done my part; now it's time for you to get up off the couch and do something you believe in. Nobody ever destroyed the Great Satan praying to Mecca and watching Arabian Idol.

Pop Alchemy

I've never been much for talking about the technical side of music, i.e. extolling how Geddy Lee's double tracked vocal melody in the third chorus of “Tom Sawyer” just perfectly counterbalances the minor chord keyboard riff. I've always taken a layman's approach. There's a lot to be learned from an outsider perspective, someone who maybe doesn't know what kind of tree you're looking at, but can tell you things about the forest you never thought of. (Or who can bastardize an overused cliché into something mildly original. See above.)

One thing I am good at pattern recognition. It's become a little hobby to find songs that, consciously or not, ape other songs. Did you know that Modest Mouse's “Bankrupt on Selling” and Radiohead's “True Love Waits” have virtually the same guitar riff? I could make three posts worth of this per Dandy Warhols album, but I'm trying to be sporting here.

What I've stumbled upon, and will highlight for you, the hit-count-upping-ip-address, err, valued reader, is the timeless formula for a great pop song. Like smoking pot out of an apple, it's secret knowledge that's been passed down in hushed tones for generations.

It all started in 1966 with Berry Gordy and the Motown hit machine writing the stripped down soul track "You Can't Hurry Love," featuring a ridiculously bouncy bass and drum combo with a little Diana-Ross-in-her-prime thrown into the mix. Three years later The Doors released “Touch Me,” which had a sped up version of the same riff, albeit on horns and, admittedly, the shakiest inclusion on this list.

Iggy Pop's “Lust For Life,” is the most obvious song, because it a) doesn't really have a hook other than The Hook and b) it's the best known cut of the bunch, thanks in no small part to Nissan SUVs and their lusting for sex, drugs, and better than expected quarterly returns. Admission: during the years between innocent music naif and snarky indie elitist I thought this was a Rolling Stones ditty. Future biographers, start subtracting your scene points.

The Cure's “Why Can't I Be You” is one of their many should-have-been-a-hits, a single that never quite made it, but that's catchy as hell. No one besides diehard Cure fans knows this song by name, but as soon as you hear it, a certain lever in your collective unconscious is pulled and you start rocking out, even though you don't know why.

That was 1987. After that, The Hook seems to have taken a vacation, although the fact that I discovered two of the songs on this list in the past week tells me that it's far from complete. The next three tracks all came out more or less simultaneously and are a bit of an odd bunch when viewed together. Jet's contribution, “Are You Gonna Be My Girl” is particularly untoward, since they're essentially an AC/DC-Steve Miller cover band with an iPod ad. I'm more inclined to turn a blind eye to The Decemberists' “The Sporting Life” and The Arcade Fire's “Wake Up” since both bands have shown themselves capable of worthwhile fare. But I hate it when people judge a song based on what an artist has done before, so I've got to come up with a reason “Are You Gonna Be My Girl” is a shitty song based on objective, scientific metrics.

Which is impossible. Because when you steal from a song this good, you can't help but tickle something I'm not in control of, like that spot on a dog's belly that makes him scratch his ear. And that, people, is how you make a timeless pop song.

All I Need Is One Mic

Hi there.

You've stumbled upon Indoor Recess (or been cajoled by one of it's writers into clicking a link and upping our hit count). What's this blog going to be? Well, as Danger and I sip dollar drafts at The Avenue, we've basically decided not to decide. Music, certainly. Politics. Movies. Tee-vee. Culture Watching. Amusing personal anecdotes. Sports. General bitching.

For the moment it's just the two of us, but we plan on bringing in other cats with unique things to say. The idea is to create a collective of all of the most interesting people we know and bribe/blackmail them into writing for our site.

But I'm verging on mission-statement-type-speak. We might suck. We might be positively transcendent. Who knows? I sure as hell don't.

But it's gonna be fun finding out.

Please stand by...