Comic for Monday, October 24th, 2005

Posted: 7:40 am, Monday, October 24, 2005

Howdy, howdy. Not much going on at the lilypad this weekend, as the cold that has been annoying me for the last week and a half decided to settle in and kick 2.0's ass. She brought it on herself, though. After feeling a bit under the weather for one day and bouncing back, she mocked the fact that I still sounded like a Sherman tank every time I blew my nose, saying that my immune system was pathetic. My cold promptly decided not to let her off as easy as it had originally intended, came back, and destroyed her. So it's been chicken soup and Tropicana immunity defense for most of the weekend.

The Robot Genius had things humming on Saturday, that's always nice. And Clemens came up lame in a big start - what are the freaking odds?

By the way, I haven't been to Chumley's in, geez, three-plus years, I don't think. So I doubt this is what it looks like in the slightest. Meh.

I had some pumpkin ale the other day. Didn't taste a damn thing like pumpkin. My efforts to have pumpkin-flavored beverages this season have been thwarted with Byrne-like consistency. I'm going to check out the Dean and Deluca in Roc Center tomorrow and see if they have the elusive coffee flavoring syrup tomorrow on my lunch break. Between that and Katamari 2, I don't think new products are actually being allowed in the city these days.

So, there's no links today, but it's intentional for a change, since I'm actually writing this pretty early Sunday evening. No, today, I'm just going to subject you to some rambling.

It was ten years ago today that the Smashing Pumpkins released Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness, a record which could not have more profoundly affected a seventeen-year old Bullfrog suffering through his last year of high school.

My parents were relatively oppressive in the face of modern living when I was in high school. We lived in the middle of nowhere, moreso than many of my other friends who went to my high school. I mean, and 'Licia can back this up if she's reading today, we *all* lived in the middle of freaking nowhere, but my house was on the outer fringes of nowhere. Add to that that I was an only child and more or less a hopeless dork (now my collitch friends are like, 'was? wtf?'), and it took me forever to become interested in music anyway, but it wasn't until I turned 16 that I had the slightest degree of freedom of the radio (corresponding, in case you're from the midwest, with when I was first allowed to drive). All this is a long, long buildup to my saying that Mellon Collie was the first album I ever desperately anticipated. I'd read the little blurbs in the beginning of Rolling Stone for dribs and drabgs of information about the recording of the album (what with this being before the internet was used for anything other than sports and porn). My buddy Jeff (who introduced me to the Smashing Pumpkins via a mixtape he meant to make for this girl we knew but she left it in my car, sucks to be you, Jeff) and I would discuss what we thought the sound would be like, not that either of us really had much of a guess because we figured it would be pretty much like Siamese Dream (I don't think our concept of musical style evolving was that well-developed yet). I first heard Bullet with Butterfly Wings while driving up the driveway and sat in the car in the garage 'til it was done playing all the way through. I did this a lot, though, since I typically didn't want to go upstairs and be around my parents.

I can remember the exact details of purchasing the album unlike almost any other album I've ever bought. I mean, I remember hitting Cosmic with Reggie Ho back in collitch at midnight on Mondays, and I recall more or less what I picked up on those trips, and I can remember buying Beck's latest album, but I remember an uncanny amount of the process of buying Mellon Collie. 'Licia, Jeff, Neil and I had this ridiculous internship senior year that substituted for our participation in government class. It was a morning session for some reason, and I believe we hit the Shalimar for all-you-could eat Indian before trotting down the block to the Music Shack. They didn't have it out in the new releases yet, so we asked the dude, and Jeff, 'Licia and I all bought copies. Either 'Licia or I had driven, and neither of us had a CD player in our car, so Neil and I skipped a class when we got back to school and listened to most of the first disc before school was out. We had an honor society meeting after school, and I remember telling Jan! and Liz Hoover how the album was so far. I listened to all of the first disc, the second, and then the first again that night before passing out.

Why so tired? Because the night before, the Pumpkins were playing a show in the Metro in Chicago in celebration of the release of the album, and it was on the radio. I remember this, too. I was listening to ZRock and writing Anna Buday, the foreign-exchange student that had the misfortune of being assigned to Berne the year before. Some song I didn't like must've come on, and I switched over to 96.7 WDRE, which, I think, was called 'the Underground Network' in those days. Prior to that, it had been completely independent (and much better). I was there for the very end of Tonight, Tonight, I think (had never heard it before, so I wasn't too certain), and it took me a while to realize it was a concert. I hit 'record' on the tape deck of the stereo just as they launched into Zero, and then the power blew. I actually have a tape somewhere, still, of the Pumpkins making nervous small talk for about twenty minutes while the Metro tried to get the power back up. They discussed the last place the power had gone on them, naming a few backwater places before D'Arcy said, 'the place with the chainsaws,' and Billy instantly chimed in with, 'Norman, Oklahoma!' The power came back, and I was treated to Zero, Thru the Eyes of Ruby, Geek USA, and I believe Hummer and Fuck You (and Ode to No One) before I turned in.

In a lot of ways, Mellon Collie and the Infinite Sadness was the perfect high school album, especially for the completely overly dramatic and angsty li'l ol' me. The nihilism of Zero and Tales of a Scorched Earth complemented the apathetic angst of Stumbleine and wistful lovelornness of In the Arms of Sleep very nicely. Porcelina of the Vast Oceans is still one of my favorite songs, and an unexpectedly triumphant one amidst the rest of the songs. I can't tell you how many times I doodled some random lyric from Mellon Collie in the margins of my physics notes. God knows I wasn't paying attention to physics...

Anyway, I guess that's all I really have to say. I'm not going to look at the various songs of the album, since I can't really be objective about this one. I can only say, very safely, that no album before or after, has ever meant so much to me. It was the soundtrack for about a year and a half of my life, and whenever I randomly found myself singing to pass the time, it was either Muzzle or Blackhole Sun for quite some time. I don't listen to it much these days, although I did earlier today, and I suppose I wouldn't rate it my favorite album of all time anymore, although you never know, I may. But I always feel like a teenager around October or so. I don't know if it's because Mellon Collie was released then, or if I just happen to think about Mellon Collie when I feel like a teenager.

I *do* know that this can't possibly be of interest to too many of you, so I'll be going now.

bullfrog

Though, I am not a raving lunatic of a smashings pumpkin bootleg trading nutball fan, Mellon Collie is the only album from high school that I still listen to.

Twas a gift from the girl I was dating at the time for my birthday.

Movies in church? with blow-em-up scenes? Weird. I assume the Catholic church would never stoop so low.

http://money.cnn.com/2005/10/21/news/midcaps/l eftbehind/index.htm

See now, as an older person my Pumpkins album will always be Siamese Dream. However Grafe I suggest revisiting Nevermind. It rocks many times harder than you may remember.

J. honey...Lou's "n" seems to be sticking.

SO WEIRD! Didn't remember the anniversary in particular, but did put Mellon collie into my CD book to bring to lab this morning. Haven't listened to it in years. Ah, memories. Definitely remember buying this one -my first double album & had to borrow cash from my little brother! And yeah, totally on the fringes of nowhere. Moo.

I actually didn't buy nevermind until I was in college, I stopped at bleach in high school. I never liked "smells like teen spirit" and to me nevermind was always sort of uneven. However, in the spirit of rocking harder than I remember, I will give it a listen when I return home. I will terr0rize my neighbors with a lithium sing-a-long if nothing else. And possibly, I will drop the E to a D on my guitar and shatter some noise ordinances trying to play along with drain you.

on a side note, if anyone hasn't seen the documentary "fog of war", go rent it.

I too recommend Fog of War

I just got one of those ridiculous internet poll questions (of the "Is this Jessica Simpsons?" or "Does Bush suck ass?" variety) that I finally didn't know the answer to. "Who is Ciara engaged to?" The choices were Kanye West, Bow Wow and someone named Omarion. I don't even know who Ciara is. This is a great day for me personally - the LCD is now so low that I am unaware of it. Whoo!

Our video store never had Fog of War in stock while 2.0 was in her documentary class last year, and we've never gotten around to it, but I've heard excellent things. Is that the one where McNamara says we were wrong in 'Nam, or something to that effect?

Is Ciara the girl from Pirates of the Carribean (and Bend it like Beckham)?

No, that's Keira Knightley, currently starring in Domino, unless it already got yanked from theaters for sucking.

Ciara, according to mtv.com, is the first lady of Crunk n' B. Whatever the bloody hell that means. I stopped short of looking up who she's engaged to. I am happy to be stumped by those stupid polls promising me a gift certificate to Red Lobster.

yeah, 'fog of war' is the mcnamara one.

I didn't buy nevermind either, in fact I didn't buy the album (er...CD...well actually MP3) mostly because I was making minimum wage at the time...which was 5.15...which i believe is what it is to this day. Wow, from the retrospective position of today's minimum wager I was doing quite well. I had a tape deck until I was a soph in college. Currently I'm in a three ipod household, so I guess I have come a long way.

I hear that a lot...the not likeing of SLTS. I don't get it. I mean, barring the overplayedness of its debut it's still a good song. Really, one of the best coming out of that period I think. Popularity kills I guess. At any rate...do let me know how the neigbors liked the album.

Did you know this is the first time EVER that they have run out of names for tropical storms and they had to name them greek letters? Also, look out for 2006 & 2007 - there are some scary looking names on the lists (Grafe & E...) http://www.nhc.noaa.gov/aboutnames.shtml

there's a hurricane Grafe??? awesome! what are the odds?

Yes, my name was actually a hurricane the summer before I graduated from high school - it hit the FLA panhandle.