Pluggage and Meetings

hout Out

Want to start off by giving "mad props" (I believe they are called) to my buddy Dav, who pimped the site in his Live Journal. His pimpage was given in good faith and completely without solicitation. No, there were absolutely no large sacks of money in the deal anywhere. Seriously. If I had large sacks of money, I would not be giving them away. Well, perhaps to OU, but only because they currently own my soul. Cursed grad school.

Meet Me in St. Louis

It's time for yet another of Chuck's Real Life Misadventures! So sit back and listen to a tale of...well, not exactly woe, but of random chance and circumstances. It has a happy ending, thankfully. Read on.

So I made a trip to St. Louis this weekend to visit one of the potential colleges for my PhD. The trip seemed almost doomed from the beginning: the three friends who were originally going to join me were unable to go at the last minute (through no fault of their own--work and last-minute group projects are a bitch). So my mother kindly offered to join me instead, for which I was very thankful (it meant I got to sleep in the car some instead of driving the entire time).

Anyway, things sorta went downhill from the get-go. It took me longer than anticipated Thursday night to leave Norman to get home, which didn't put me in a great mood. Friday amazingly went off without a hitch, which I guess I should have taken to be the calm before the real storm. The only bump on the proverbial road (aside from the ridiculous road construction we encountered just outside of St. Louis) was that Mom didn't want to listen to most of the CDs I brought with me. I made her listen to Bruce Springsteen anyway.

Then came Saturday, the day of reckoning...or something. We wandered around the St. Louis History Museum for a few hours around midday (they had some rather nifty exhibits there, too), then we drove to the Washington University campus. We arrived around 2:15, puttered around the gorgeous campus for an hour or so (the place looks like Cambridge, and with good reason--it was consciously modeled after Cambridge and Oxford), and then settled in the pre-appointed meeting place to wait for Dr. Hirst, the Chair of the Graduate Program in History and the guy I'd be working with. He was supposed to arrive at 4:00. At 4:30, there was still no sign of him, so I called his home. I got an answering machine, and left a message. Five o'clock rolled around, and still no sign of the man. At this point, I'm understandably frustrated--not only had my friends not been able to join me for a road trip, but the whole reason for coming out here (meeting with the professor) was turning out to be a wash, too. I call his house again, and again get the answering machine. I inform him that I waited as long as I could, but we had to leave (we had hotel reservations in Cuba, a little town an hour down the road and that much closer to home). We left, got to the hotel, had dinner, and were sitting in the room relaxing. I was also feeling rather sorry for myself, but that's secondary. Dad called on my cell, and I was sitting there chatting briefly with him about the day's events when the call waiting beeped. I looked, and it was the professor. So I quickly switched over, and the man started apologizing profusely. To make a long story short, he actually drove out all the way to Cuba, MO to visit with me for an hour at 9:30 at night. Needless to say, I think he and I both made an impression upon one another.

"The Test Begins...Now!"

A piece of musical advice that I could not merely consign to a quiet existence in the Music Thread of the Forum. You all need to go out and pick up the album "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots" by the Flaming Lips. If nothing else, you need to download their tune "Fight Test." These guys are--if you'll pardon the overused, cliched term--pure genius. They write warm, tuneful pop songs very much in the tradition of the Beatles and Pink Floyd. Think Sgt. Pepper's era Lennon or Roger Waters without the exceptionally dark tone. If I had to try and place their style more specifically, I'd say they sound like a latter-day Electric Light Orchestra. Strummed, full-bodied acoustic guitars, gently whispering strings in the background, strong bass lines and drumming, and a plethora of tape loops and electronic effects make their work sound like "Time"-era ELO. Which is a good thing, since the Flaming Lips do it even better than Jeff Lynne and Co. did.

"Fight Test" is the album opener and one of the most emotive songs I've heard since George Harrison's swansong "Brainwashed" album. "Fight Test" features the aforementioned instrumentation and evocative vocals that sound like a young, melodic Neil Young (in the same way that Donovan sounded like a melodic, slightly more in-key Bob Dylan). The song is uplifting and emotional. It makes you want to smile and cry and shout and dance and just hold someone close. All at once. It's a song about a man losing his woman, and realizing that he had lost her and should have fought for her. Thematically, I place it as a sort of sequel to the Sting song "Seven Days," which is a tune about deciding whether or not to commit to his girlfriend. "Fight Test" is essentially what happened to the type of character in Sting's song if he didn't choose at all, but rather decided not to choose.

So do yourself a favor--get their album, or download some of their tunes. Don't let the trippy album title (or band name) throw you off or make you think they're weird. These guys are great, and you'll be glad you took my advice. C'mon, have I ever led any of you astray? In music, that is?

"The test is over...now."