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It’s been three years since the release of Our Love To Admire, the majestic third album by New York’s coolest band, Interpol.  Since the conclusion of that tour (which I attended in Boston that September), the band took time off to chase other projects and the future of their collective work was uncertain.  There were doubters, but those with true faith, such as myself, knew that they still had plenty of work to do.  Tonight, I am happy to learn that the wait is coming to an end.

These gentlemen have something to show you.

If you click on Carlos, Dan, Paul, and Sam, you’ll be taken to their sparse website, and after a rather spooky new logo animation, you’ll be treated to a download link to their new song, “Lights.”  I just gave it a listen and I’m very happy with the results.  It’s very much an Interpol song; dark, brooding, and somewhat dreamy.  At nearly six minutes, it builds up over time and swells up into a beautiful denouement before fading out.  Paul is still singing about unconventional romance and traveling by waterway.  Basically, it sounds like “The Lighthouse” with a real guitar riff and a little extra muscle.  If you’ve been listening since Turn on the Bright Lights, you could see sounds like this coming.  Can’t wait to hear what the rest of these latest sessions have brought.

This gives me a good opportunity to discuss Paul Banks’ solo album, which he released last summer.  Julian Plenti Is… Skyscraper was a good album, but it’s kind of like when Dave Matthews takes a vacation from the band to record something by himself.  You sit there thinking, “This is pretty good… but I wonder what it would have sounded like if…”  In this case, you get a couple of songs that could have really used some support from the rest of the group, and other tracks that work fine on their own.  For instance, check out the video for the lead single, “Games for Days”:

The song is great.  In fact, this track actually sounds 90% like it was an Interpol song to begin with.  Meanwhile, the video is kind of like the whole Garth Brooks/Chris Gaines thing.  “Julian Plenti” is a pseudonym that Banks has used for years, and the scenario here has me thinking that Black Shirt Paul is his Interpol persona, while Hat and Glasses Paul is more like his sensitive-artist persona.  Chuck Klosterman talked about Chris Gaines in his new book (I’ll get to that some other time), but I thought of this first.

So, there you have it.  Once the new album comes out, I’m sure to pick it up and review it post-haste.  Till then, keep an eye on the wire.

I’m a big fan of Netflix.  A lot of people are.  The thing that I like the most about it is probably the fact that they’ve been trying to figure out more and more ways to get movies and TV shows to you.  The first innovation they came up with after the whole mail thing was to have movies stream right on your computer.  You don’t have instant access to their entire catalog, but they add plenty of movies all the time.  A year or two ago, they debuted the ability to stream through the XBox 360, and not long afterwards, they added the service to the Playstation 3.  That’s all well and good, but the Wii was still left out.  I realized that this was probably tough to do, seeing the technical capabilities of the Wii.  Sure, it’s capable of going online, but software restrictions make it hard to install a capable front-end program.  Also, the Wii doesn’t use the standard DVD format for its discs.  So how could they do it?

WHAT HAS SCIENCE DONE

Hey, who cares how they did it?  I got my disc in the mail and after a quick setup, I was able to pick movies from my queue that were available to stream.  You can also browse all sorts of categories for other stuff to see.  It’s not the most impressive stuff (lots of Sci-Fi Channel Original Movies™) but plenty of Criterion flicks, so it’s like when you burn the outside of your pizza rolls but the center is still frozen.  It all evens out.

So far, though, the best thing about it in my eyes is that I can watch a lot of Mystery Science Theater 3000 on it.  I’m feeling a viewing of Future War coming on…

Altogether, though, I’m pretty happy with the latest development from Netflix.  I am impressed with the quality of the streaming video (looks great on the HD TV, newer movies are close to DVD quality) and the fact that I can watch all I want at no additional cost is pretty sweet.  If you’ve got a Wii, it’s kind of stupid not to pick this up.

If you love me, you’ll get me this for Christmas or something:

Ravage, eject!

Back in the day, Ravage (as well as the likes of Laserbeak and Rumble) would spring from Soundwave’s chest as a cassette tape.  These guys were a great team for the Decepticons, and since nobody even bothers listening to CDs anymore (let alone mix tapes), Michael Bay’s new movies ended up having to pretty much skip over these characters.  But it seems logical to me that if Hasbro were looking to put them back on the market, the modern equivalent of those little tape guys would have to be USB flash drives.  Too bad Bay didn’t think this one up.  And it’s too bad that last year’s movie was such a damn train wreck.

Of course, I’m about a year behind on this sort of thing, so I imagine that these suckers are sold out already.  But it’s a real working drive, 2GB and it goes for ~$40.  Not too shabby, all things considered.

You ever have one of those days?  You know what I’m talking about, we all do.  It’s just a cliche.  But when you have one of those days, you likely have one thing on your mind when you get home: turn on the TV.  Unless you’re an alcoholic.

If you’re like most people, you get home in the evening.  I feel as if I’ve been conditioned to expect certain shows to be on from 5 to 7, but I’ve been pretty disappointed with my choices lately.  For example, at one point there are two channels playing The Office at the same time.  What’s the point of having two stations play the same show in the same time slot?  Maybe so that people can skip the episode on one channel because they didn’t like it or something, but it’s still a stupid idea as far as I’m concerned.  I don’t like The Office, myself.  I told people that I liked it, but I had only seen something like three episodes in the first couple of seasons, and on two of those occasions, I was watching it in a bar and couldn’t hear what was going on.  Besides, I don’t see why I would want to come home from work and watch a show about being at work.  Another problem I often have is deciding which show I’m not tired of watching.  I love The King of Queens and Everybody Loves Raymond equally.  If you asked me what the best sitcoms of the Aughts were, those might be numbers One and Two, although I haven’t seen all of Arrested Development.  Thing is, I typically find myself watching one of these shows night after night before getting tired of it after three or four months, and then I switch to the other.

What I’m really in the mood for is to have a lineup of the three shows I know I’ll never get tired of watching:  Seinfeld, The Simpsons, and Star Trek: The Next Generation. A nice three hour block of those shows is what I could really use to unwind after a long day.  Seinfeld, thankfully, has aged very well.  I remember people saying that they were afraid that it would become dated in this post-9/11 world, but if anything, I laugh harder at the jokes now than I did when they first aired.  Of course, I was a teenager when the series ended, but you know what I mean.  I appreciate Seinfeld more now.  I love how the show takes on its own little universe, a Bizzaro World, if you will, like most great shows do, but theirs is quite distinct.  There’s no New York like the one Jerry lives in.  I have also come to really appreciate Julia Louis-Dreyfus’s performance throughout the series.  There hasn’t been another woman in comedy who’s pulled off such a lovable and funny character since Elaine.

"Now where's my giant foam hat and air horn?"

I never shy away from The Simpsons, even the “newer” episodes.  To me, “new” episodes are anything from the last ten years.  Kids who will be graduating from high school this June never knew a world without the show.  Imagine that.  Even though I am one of the grumpier fans who thinks that the show lost its true comedic edge around the same time Phil Hartman died, I will still watch no matter how crappy the episode is.  After Seinfeld, there is no better show to have an entire conversation with coworkers purely using its dialogue.

And of course, you can’t forget Star Trek: The Next Generation.  I can still remember seeing the premiere of “Encounter at Farpoint” when I was four years old.  When people talk about shows they grew up on, this is what they mean.  Thanks to reruns, I’ve probably watched the show in its entirety at least three times through by now, and every time I see it, I enjoy it more and more.  Mostly because it just gets funnier to me, which is what Star Trek does to people.  Any show with a great cast of characters will do that.

Maybe for you it’s a little different.  Maybe you prefer The A Team.  I dig that.  Or maybe you still love M*A*S*H.  That’s understandable.

So come on, syndicated television stations of America.  You know what we want.  We want laughs.  We want escapism.  Then at 8, we want to change the channel to whatever the real channels are showing.  Don’t feel bad, that’s what you do.  It’s your lot in life.

My friend Neal seemingly does nothing but consume the Internet all day.  Every day, he adds peculiar links on his Facebook page, be they strange articles, photos, or YouTube videos.  The other day he managed to introduce me to a YouTube channel that consists of mostly casting videos from a studio in Chicago.  I initially thought that the videos were all a part of some elaborate joke.  Then again, that’s what we all thought about After Last Season.

None of these brief “video headshots” features good acting.  And of course, this is something that I hate to be critical of.  Acting is something I’ve loved to do for years, so I’d hate to say something disparaging when they believe themselves to be good at it.  Then again, I have rarely worked with anyone this bad, even at my community theater level.  I don’t know if these people have enrolled in these classes because they want to have a career in acting or if they just want to feel more comfortable interacting with people.  What’s more, I don’t know what type of instruction these people were given.  Still, you’re always bound to find a diamond in the rough.  Take, for example, the great Bill Dollear:

I absolutely love how the guy can’t keep from laughing when his partner tells him she’s pregnant.  Whether that scene was supposed to be funny or full of tension, that’s likely the one reaction that he wasn’t supposed to come up with.  He also does a killer Scottish accent.

This channel is full of other little nuggets, such as a guy who robotically delivers Rutger Hauer’s classic death scene from Blade Runner, or some bozo who drains a Simpsons reference of humor.

With sites like Awkward Family Photos and sexypeople popping up so much these days, videos like this seem like a logical progression to me.  What is with our fascination with odd people?  I think it kind of plays into the voyeuristic tendencies we all have.  We want to see people in their natural state;  sites like this satisfy that desire, and it’s all in the presentation.  These glimpses of people are submitted and they never expected anyone to do so.  I think that’s why we love it.

I could go on and on about that, I guess.  Maybe another time.

Larry Hasenfus is a former North Brookfield selectman and someone I am always proud to call a friend.  So imagine how excited I was to see this ESPN article posted via Facebook tonight.

Click on Larry to see him at ESPN.com!

It’s a great article with some video, too.  Go give it a look!

Do not test The Bear.

I guess that I’m a lucky guy, being someone who has two beloved hockey teams that are both in the playoffs.  The Bruins have managed to stumble up to sixth place in the conference.  This is good stuff.  I guess it gives us a chance of at least getting to the second round, although Buffalo seems to be blessed once again with an otherworldly goalkeeper in the form of Ryan Miller.  The series should be a good one, but the rest of the conference competition is pretty steep.  Should be just another bad springtime trip for the Black and Gold.  At least we should get a killer draft pick, that’s all I really think the team needs.

Oh, yeah, I mentioned that I had two teams in the race.  Well, that wouldn’t be the same race, really, seeing as how it’s the Worcester Sharks.  I saw them clinch the division in person on Saturday night.  They played damn well; the defense was tight and there was nothing but hustle on offense.  It was a real flip from the only other game I saw this year, which was the home opener.  They played pretty badly that night.  I’m thinking they’re headed for the finals if Alex Stalock can build on his 40 wins.

I forget where else I was going with this.  Lost is coming on soon, so I’m a little distracted.  I guess I was just looking for an excuse to post that video… so sue me.

It’s Easter and decent weather is finally upon us.  I guess we can consider ourselves lucky, of course.  Recently, we were hit by tons of rain, so much that if it had been colder, we would have had about five feet of snow in a few days.  I’ve seen much worse than this in early April, so I won’t complain.

Friday was the first truly nice day we’ve seen in a long time.  We’ve had a taste or two, but nothing quite like this.  I’d say that it was so nice that it was distracting.  Take the way events unfolded right out in front of the bank.  I was at lunch when one of my coworkers came out back and said that someone had come in asking for our first aid kit.  Turns out that there was an old lady cruising along on her brand new Jazzy scooter and took a dive in it on the sidewalk, possibly caused by someone driving too close to the sidewalk, freaking her out and causing her to flip it over.

The instrument of your destruction

Seeing as how our first aid kit only consists of band aids, we weren’t of much help.  At one point, the kid came back and said, “We’re all set with ice but they think her liver’s broken.”   So we got a front-row seat to the fire and ambulance hold up traffic and a ton of listless youths standing around watching.  She got loaded into the ambulance and it seemed like the excitement was done for the day.

Then I looked up from my work about an hour later and noticed that a couple of cars were pulled over in the same spot and a couple of dudes were gesticulating and pointing in various directions.  Cars tried their best to squeeze by – this is Park Ave, mind you.  I thought it was funny that two incidents took place one after another.  It’s downright hysterical when a third accident happens about an hour after that, and cops going by (two cruisers, mind you) pull over to see what’s going on, traffic stopping once again.

I realized two things:  For one, I should just go home via Salisbury St. and through Holden.  Secondly, after a long and crummy winter, the biggest driving distraction is simply seeing blue sky and being warm enough to roll down your windows.