Saturday Night’s Alright For Commenting: June 9, 2018

“Can’t you believe it’s already June?” said a woman at a Safeway in the Mojave desert.

“I know, we’ll be dead so soon!” I replied. She didn’t like that very much.

Well, here we are again. Halfway through the year. Time wasted scrolling through screens. All those Twitter outrages from February are already forgotten. New Year’s resolutions are now absolutions. The Warriors won again. All that pop culture has been consumed to enrich life, letting us look inside at it a little bit. Of the media I’ve chomped down on, these have been my favorites this year.

Albums

5. Bruce Springsteen-Darkness At The Edge Of Town

I know this came out before the parts of me were put together on some fetid day, and that, no, it did not come out in 2018. But through the Celebration Rock podcast, I followed along and listened to every Springsteen album. I knew Born To Run; my father got me a copy from Half Price Books on CD, and every Texas Rangers’ radio broadcast cranks off with it, but I had no clue about how much some of this rocks. I love Darkness At The Edge of Town. Bruce crooning, crying aaaaooooooooahhhhh, and driving with the radio off, those poor men going in and out of the factory, and that promised land out there in some rattlesnake infested desert.

4. Lord Huron-Vide Noir

This is a fun album. It’s like the first album but slightly darker. It suffers from some of the same Baby, I don’t want to die but I gotta die and I really don’t want to die but we gotta die sort of lyrics, but I dig it. I really like that song where it’s a lot of mumbling and you have no idea what he’s saying. But it’s fast and it rocks some.

3. Jeff Rosenstock-Post

Did you know this is is the first album in a Post-Trump world. Wow! Crazy? Every review of this album is going to be looked at through this light. Yeah, sure, that’s part of it. But really, it’s fast, and it shreds, and its my favorite album to run to.

2. The Sidekicks-Happiness Hours

Every year we need some sort of bouncy spring/summer album that bumps and makes you feel hopeful. Some good music to fall in love to. The melodies are airy. All I see are flowers and pinks and yellows. I love the lyrics because it’s a bunch of little scenes stretched out like a cotton ball, up to the point where it completely falls apart.

1. Turnstile-Time And Space

I was a boy until I listened to this album, and now I’m a man. My biceps are swollen, my back is a turtle shell, my quads are a farm-raised turkey, my shoulders are softballs, my triceps are Andre Iguodala’s. It’s 27 straight minutes of loud and fast music. Now, a lot of loud and fast music is impossible to enjoy because it’s all bass and screaming and makes your brain clatter around the boundaries of the skull. This is different. This has melody. It’s actually enjoyable. It was also one of the best LIVE shows I’ve ever seen. This band has more energy than the sun. It set the kids in the front row on fire. Ever since then, I haven’t slept or worn a shirt with sleeves. Hell, yeah.

Books

1. Miguel Cervantes-Don Quixote

I’ve read other books this year, I think. I finished reading all of Cormac McCarthy’s Appalachia novels and that crappy Sapiens book that just gave me Wikipedia articles to read through that were more interesting, but I don’t really remember any of them. I only remember reading this book. I started reading it in March. I finished it in June. I didn’t really enjoy reading it. It was too long, I didn’t understand the satire behind it, but I appreciated it. I like the idea of someone, no matter what stage they are of their life, leaving to pursue something, even if its nonsensical. Don’s pure and idealistic. Also, the book is funny. I’m for anyone wandering around the countryside on some dying old horse and sad lumpy donkey.

Anyways, that’s all I got. Have fun doing whatever it is that you do. The rest is yours to talk about whatever you want, Texans-related or not. Just remember the standard commenting rules apply.