My Month of Entertainment - July 2006

June 2006
May 2006

Okay, if June was the DVD's month (thanks to B&N's Buy-Two-Get-One-Free sale), then July was Either 'One Last Splurge' Month, thanks to the fact that I quit B&N and had to take complete and total advantage of the employee discount I'd never be getting again...or it was Oklahoma Month, thanks to the inordinately high number of Oklahoma musician-related products on the list. So without further adieu...

Books

Staring at Sound: The True Story of Oklahoma's Fabulous Flaming Lips, Jim DeRogatis
The Mysteries of Pittsburgh and The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay, Michael Chabon
Mind Game: How the Boston Red Sox Got Smart and Finally Won a World Series, Baseball Prospectus "Team of Experts"
Promethea (Books 1-4) and Top 10 (Books 1-2), Alan Moore

I'd resisted the call of the Flaming Lips for as long as possible. I knew they were entertaining and quirky, but I'd never really thought about purchasing any of their cd's until May, when At War With the Mystics came out (see review here). There's a review coming on both this book and the DVD listed below, so I won't say too much here, but what a rewarding trek it has been discovering the Lips. You find role models in strange places, but that’s all I’ll say for now.

As for the others, I've been looking to incorporate more fiction into my book rotation, and I randomly came across Chabon when I saw that a) Mysteries of Pittsburgh is to be made into a film, and b) he wrote Wonder Boys, which ended up being one of the quirkiest and best movies I've seen in the last decade. So I'm giving these a shot. But the waiting list is huge...I haven't even gotten started on any of the three Hornby books I bought last month.

Meanwhile, Mind Game just continues my pursuit of deeper and more meaningful baseball nerddom. In hiring Bill James as a consultant and hiring a young, non-“old school” GM, they became the organization I most wish the Pirates would become. They’re not afraid to think outside the box, and that’s lovely. Meanwhile, thanks to the amazingly putrid trading-deadline efforts, this blog tomorrow will be taken up by one of the more epic Tuesday Pirates Rants™ of all-time.

As for the Alan Moore books, as I've said before, I finally (at age 27) began to dip my toe into the waters of graphic novels recently, and I've been pretty impressed so far. It'll be a while before I get to them, but with the B&N discount, I figured I might as well snatch up all the books (sans Vol. 5 of Promethea) at once. It’s what I do.

DVDs

The Fearless Freaks: The Wondrously Improbable Story of the Flaming Lips

As I've said before, I go through phases with musicians...I discover them at random times and don't stop until I own all their albums...and possibly an impressive collection of live recordings too. While finishing Staring at Sound, I couldn't pass up this lovely 2004 documentary...where I'd basically get to listen to and watch all the things I've been reading about for the last couple of weeks. And it's a strong, stirring documentary. Again, more to come later this week (hopefully).

CDs

Feedback, Jurassic 5
Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots, Flaming Lips
Drowaton, Built on Squares, Dreams that Stuff Was Made Of, Starlight Mints
One Afternoon, Striving Toward Harmony, Hannah Wolff Band

There is also a review of Feedback coming soon, hopefully before I leave for Chicago. Jurassic 5 (as I mentioned here) change shape every few years, going further back in time for their song stylings, and what they do always seems to work nicely. A highly recommended cd.

Yoshimi continues the buy-one-a-month trend of Lips cd's I have going recently. It also began another trend this month. Six of this month’s seven cd's come from Oklahoma artists. Which is interesting since, in the 16 years I lived in Oklahoma, I officially bought 1 album from an Oklahoma artist (Garth Brooks’ No Fences...I guess it would be 2 albums if you count Color Me Badd...yeah, shut up).

You can check out my initial review of the Mints' cd's here, and I will take this opportunity to say a couple of words about the Hannah Wolff Band as well. Hannah's an old high school friend of mine, and The Butterfly and I had the opportunity to see her play when we were in OK a few weeks ago. Think Jewel with a rock band, though I might only be comparing her to Jewel because I saw her sing "Who Will Save Your Soul?" in a hotel ballroom about 9-10 years ago. Damn, it's been 9-10 years. Ouch. Anyway, you can check her out at MySpace or at her official website. It's a shame that the venue at which she was performing was pretty shoddy (absolutely dreadful acoustics), but she's a strong performer. And her bass player is really really crazy.

So there you go. I actually didn’t do as much damage this month as I thought I had. Most of it was Lips-related, which proves that when I get into a band...I really get into a band.