Mountain of Judgment

I listened to "I Was Born In A Laundromat" by Camper Van Beethoven 4 times in a row on my headphones.

I finished every last one of my writing assignments, at work and home.

A client approved an ad I liked.

Matt and I are maybe a week away from mailing out the first monthly volume of the 24+ CD early 90s altrock complilation series we've been working on for months.

My three-year-old spends all day dressed as Superman, yelling "Wex Wuta" when he punches me.

My seven-year-old is a decent violinist and a great dancer.

I have two new issues of Grant Morrison's Seven Soldiers waiting for me at the comics store.

Anne and I are going to watch at least 3 episodes of Battlestar Galactica tonight. And she's more excited about it than I am.

DP World sounds like the name of a web site you should never visit from the office.

This just makes me anxious and upset. I adore the Kinks. Ray Davies and the rest of the band can do what they want, and they obviously have the right to some financial security after what they contributed to rock and roll (especially Ray, who after getting shot stopping a mugging, certainly deserves a pass) but man do I wish they didn't want to sell their music to TV commericals.

The Doors may suck, oh God how they may suck, but I have to credit Doors drummer John Densmore for being so steadfast in his refusal to sell out. Whatever cash the Kinks are getting for selling their music to ads, it doesn't make up for how much their tunes are devalued in the process. The companies who co-opt these memories, converting pop art into commerce, invariably justify the practice by saying that their ad teams are sincere fans, that it's cool for a song like "Picture Book" to finally find an audience 35 years after being unjustly neglected. Yes and no (except for the yes part.) The Hewlett-Packard commercial rendered "Picture Book" meaningless (Davies' thoughts on photography circa 1968 were pretty clear—see "People Take Pictures Of Each Other" from the same album as the similarly depressing "Picture Book") The bubbly pop music bed is an ironic counterpoint to the bleak central lyric, "Picture book/when you were just a baby/those days when you were happy/a long time ago." In the commercial it's flattened out into a mindless pitch to buy a computer printer.

"The song captured the overall spirit of the spot," says Eric Korte, VP/music director of Saatchi & Saatchi in New York.

Yes, and "Born in the USA" is the perfect GOP campaign song. Damn it, Ray. You've sold the right for some asshole ad fuck at Saatchi & Saatchi to tell the world what your song is about.

In the wake of the new book that seemingly proves Barry Bonds' heavy steroid use from at least 1998 to 2002, ESPN's Tim Kurkjian says the slugger "will be labelled a cheater and a liar for the rest of his career, and the rest of his life." So how does this affect Bonds' Hall of Fame vote from Kurkjian?

...if he did five years of rampant steroid use out of jealosy for Mark McGuire as opposed to staying healthy so he could help his team win, then he's very very close to losing my vote.

So bottom line, while Bonds is a cheater and a liar who betrayed his team, cheapened the game and sold out his fans for phony personal glory, by Kurkjian's own admission, and despite the overheated language, the sportscaster would still vote him into the Hall. I mean, dude, look at his numbers!

Just don't get a parking ticket, Barry, or you could be very, very, very close to losing your vote with Kurkjian.