Just one more night

It's no mystery that I hate the phone. Consistent readers and friends and family know that I only answer the phone when I am expecting one of my 30 daily chicken wing deliveries. Actually, the reason why I never answer my phone isn't because I ignore specific calls, it's because I try not to keep it within a 1 mile radius of my actual person.

Reason why? I hate being bothered. I am a zen like creature. At peace in the the restings of my super intelligent brain. Pondering the creation of man, the meaning of religion, and why we drive on parkways and park on driveways and shit like that. When that terrorist technological device sounds its death tone, my tranquil state is disturbed, and when my T.S. is all messed up, you better get your heiney in the fetal position, boy.

So basically, I use a cell phone as a very tiny answering machine. Leave your pertinent info and I will get to it once I have separated the relationship between church and state. However......S.Vincent "Office Edition" v2.4 is a different entity all together. A menacing black phone is no less then 10 inches (or a "John Holmes") away from me, and I am a slave to it at all times. This being an inescapable truth, I have adapted with a set of behavioral instincts attached to it. I know a telemarketer from a mile away, I know how to navigate a touch tone menu to get to real person in under 20 seconds, I can end a conversation politely in under a minute and I know when you are reading from a script. But there is one thing that I am a sucker for..........Phil Collins Hold Music.

Go ahead, try to get frustrated, impatient, and angry when Phil is talking to ya. You can't do it, it's impossible. It's like when you are tearing into someone with the most colorful profanities imaginable and then.... a 4 year old boy with ice cream sandwich all over his face walks into the room. Suddenly, rage dissolves, impatience turns into calmness, and profanities transform into baby talk.

I know. You are thinking, "You're full of it" or "you're a pansy" or "how was that Celiene Dion concert you went to last night, you 50 year old woman!". But seriously, just try not to feel soothed by this English leprechaun.



There is evil genius at work here. Damn you Time Warner......

Oh, and the fantastic realization of the day is that if you Google Search "PoVegas", guess what the number one result is? You guessed it, YFYB......I'd like to thank you, the fans, for this incredibly small and irrelevant achievement in Internet history. See? And your mother said you'd never accomplish anything in life by surfing the net all day.

MA!!...... THE MEATLOAF!!!!! (you know you haven't seen it enough)

"I'm going to kill you.......when I find you"

Don't you hate it when you smell something bad? Don't you hate it when you smell something bad and you know it is coming from you? But......doesn't it really make your blood boil when you smell something bad, you know it is coming from you and you CAN'T FIND OUT WHERE IT IS COMING FROM!!? You spend like 5 hours sniffing every article of clothing you are wearing, sniffing your hands, sniffing your car seat, your bag, your shoes, your breath, your armpits, your crotch.......okay, too much embarassing info now, but you get the drift. Nothing you smell is the culprit, and then you stop sniffing and then THERE IT IS AGAIN.

...... maybe its the inside of my head that smells

It's still April, isn't it?

Can the weather stay like this the whole year? I could totally deal with 50 degrees in the morning and high 60's in the afternoon. I am just confused as to why we are going on 2 straight weeks of it in the middle of April. Whatever, I'll take it, but this is totally going to screw up my expectation of late May weather.

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I am going to start posting music videos of the new hotness over on the right hand side. There may be a funny non-music related clip here and there, but with the explosion of iPods and the death of MTV, I feel like the art of the music video has gone by the wayside. I love music, but I also love moving pictures with my music. I feel like I haven't seen a relevant music video in 10 years. So, maybe I call the feature SVTV? Done and Done, check her out.....I am good about comment reply, so feel free to comment or to ask who and what the artist is.

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Before we get started on album number 3, I feel I have to make a statement regarding how difficult it was to sort out number 4,3, and 2. I really feel that maybe I should just put them all in one area entitled 432. These are all stellar albums with at least 10 quality tracks a peice. Kings of Leon got 4 cause I respect pitchfork at least a little, and this next album gets 3 because although its a super high quality album, I feel they didn't take as many chances as the artist to be named in the number 2 spot. So they got the "showed some guts" boost over.....

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NUMBER 3- The National "Boxer" Originally from CinSINnati, OH and now working out of the Brooklyn, NY music hotbed, The National is one of the few red hot indie bands. Their music is intoxicating. You start off with just a sip here and there, really just to be polite and the next thing you know you are 3 sheets to the wind, going back over and over and over again. "Boxer" is their 4th album closely following their 3rd album "Alligator" which was a critically acclaimed top 5 album when it came out in 2005.

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There isn't much to say about this album that hasn't been said about "Alligator". The National as a musical entity practically define the term "grower". Obviously meaning the music grows on you the more and more you listen to it. It takes a bit of patience however, and you have to have musical culture outside of a pop top 40, but if you got broken in on the Nationals sound from "Alligator", you are ready for "Boxer". Not as easily as you may assume.....or as I assumed. Boxer is a more smoothed out album than Alligator, its not as aggressive and its transitions between songs and melodies are more subdued. The lyrics are a little more mature and not as zaney and sexual, but still quite weird. I know I sound like I am criticizing it, and I am a little, because I do like Alligator more than Boxer, but its because it fits my personality a little bit more, not because Boxer supplies less enjoyable music than Alligator. I sing along to Alligator, I bob my head in a very approving gesture to Boxer.

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So what does The National sound like? I honestly don't know how to define their sound. It's like lounge music's evil twin brother. So much the same on its face, and yet nothing like the original. The signature of the band is lead singer Matt Berninger's deep baritone stylings. He's talking and yet he is singing. He moves you through some kind of twisted mix of emotions and imagery of a world where love is the same, but the way you get there and exist in that moment are somehow all messed up in a paranoid but educated schizophrenic blur. Read the liner notes on this album, they are always interesting to see them as a whole rather than letting Berninger feed them to you. The music moves in and out with dueling harmonic guitars and soft percussion. The guitar work is the secret to loving the National. They work togethor and apart secretly. The more you listen, the more you are sucked in to Berningers world of emotional ups and downs without being forced there by volume and tone changes. The music is what moves while berninger stay frighteningly calm, guiding you through the distractions.

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So you get the idea. The National is an undefineable sound that takes a few listens to get into and is really really good once you do. In this case, I always suggest the car stereo. The radio sucks (unless you have satellite) and the only real moments of peace are in the car by yourself to and from your meaningless destinations. You don't listen too hard, but you unconsciously listen just enough. Buy either Alligator or Boxer and if you like it, but the other immediately.

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Song Samples: Mistaken for Strangers, Slow Show, Apartment Story

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Sucked in by a tractor beam of vulgarity and immaturity

I am a potty mouth. I swear often and a good portion of it (roughly 30%?) is unneccesary. I like to think I am good at it and usually at censoring myself. Often times I'll find myself acting less than my age in the middle of a rant and then I'll just trail off my sentence and look at my feet. "this is a bunch of faahh.........". But I came to realize that I have not been counting some of my cyber-swears in with my grand total. I also find it interesting that this current generation with our e-mail/text/IM dependency have created very popular acronyms that include swears. This indicates that as a generation, we swear so much that we have built it into our primary development of the newest cyber language. WTF and OMFG are very popular phrases used since the inception of quick-type conversations. You would think we would come up with acronyms describing food, water, love, happyness. But alas, our first utterances are ones of surprised anger and cursing out our maker. The sad thing is, I am almost positive the cavemen created language using the exact same principle.

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I am going to try to get better at censoring myself. Especially since I noticed I use the awful word "effin" outloud and wayyyyyy too much. I hate that I would use such an ugly word so often, but its somehow become engrained like the delicious cinnamon flavor in Cinnamon Life cereal. YuMmmmm..........

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NUMBER 4: Kings of Leon "Because of the Times" - I bought this album on December 20th, 2007. I listened to it once, and enjoyed it a good deal, and had it penciled in the chart at number 16. As I did the reviews, this album kept getting constant rotation. It grew on me more and MOre, and MORE!

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Kings of Leon is a band of 3 brothers and cousin with the last name Followil out of Nashville, TN. The band name comes from their father and grandfather who are both name Leon. They come from an almost mormon-esque upbringing, homeschooled while following their father on his travels as a preacher in the United Pentacostal Church. Denied the education in pop music history, the brothers Followil learned to play country music first and gradually morphed into rock and roll upon signing with mega label RCA.

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"Because of the Times" was reviewed as the bands best to date (they have 2 previous albums) by the big money reviewers NME.com and Entertainment Weekly, and they were also praised by superstars Radiohead as one of their favorite modern bands.

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My go-to source Pitchfork.com gave the album a bad review. Accused them of crooning too much to the girls, ego-tripping on a fake rock star lifestyle, shallow lyrics, and copying U2's sound from the early 90's. All of which is true, pitchfork is surprisingly adept at picking apart an album and identifying trends, weaknesses, and intentions. Unfourtunatly, they are their own worst enemy in which they spend so much time analyzing the music that they often don't listen to it as well as they should. They over-rate albums that manage to do all the little things right and under-rate albums for failing to be 100% original. You get lots of audiophile high reviews for crazy sounds, and usually medium ratings for really good albums that fail to do something completely unique. So you pick and choose with pitchfork.

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This album is great start to finish. I like every single song and every single word that is said and the way it is said. It sounds GREAT in your car, and great for a workout. Thumping bass guitar makes it head-bopabble and the vocals are rock star loud, but never screaming. Except on Charmer where it somehow fits perfectly and is one of my favorites along with Ragoo, My party, and Arizona. Plus, even better, they can play live as good as in the studio. Please give this album more than one listen, it gets better and better each time.

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That said, maybe I like this album so much due to my U2 foundation. I love everything pitchfork criticizes it for. The echoey slashing guitars, the womanizing lyrics, and cheesy country-sultry vocals and the percussion work from Nathan Followil is top top top notch. Listen for it. I don't listen to enough rock because outside of Foo Fighters and The White Stripes, not too many bands play great straight rock anymore. This is a throwback album to the days when cars were loud and fast, men weren't afraid to act like their dads, jeans were dirty from actual dirt, and your girl was your girl for better or worse, not till better came along.....

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Song Samples: On Call, Charmer, black thumbnail, arizona

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Thank you DD

So I picked up my new (to me) car yesterday. Even by S.Vincent standards it was a quick sale. I am known far and wide as Mr. Impulsive Immediate Buyer, but usually you would take more than 20 minutes to purchase a new car, even if you were careless with such things. However, I threw caution, not just to the wind, but to a level 5 southern coast city hurricane. I picked it out in 10 minutes and had the 40 documents signed in 5. I walked outta the dealership with keys in my hand and a "this is my first time in prison and I weigh 140 lbs" face.

The car is more than fine. It's literally a steal by most standards of the word, I was really just amazed how quickly someone can dispatch 7 thousand dollars and walk out with a certified machine. I usually avoid such situations due to the length of time involved in such a decision and paperwork and so on and so forth. But that was so easy, I might just go trade it in next weekend for a different one cause I feel like driving red car.

It's a 2001 Nissan Altima and its the exact same color as the Grzylle's car. With tons of homosexual ambiguity already surrounding our relationship, this may not have been a smart move for me and my never ending quest for multiple ladies. However, I am going to propose that we start a interstate car gang and terrorize the eastern seaboard with our trifecta of male chauvenism, indie music knowledge, and disregard for social faupax's. We'll call ourselves the "Teal Tridents" and drag race down neighberhood streets with our 0-60 in 10 second, mid level, asain 4 door sedans. Watch out world! If you hear the ca-caw of a raven, a squeal of discount tires, and smell a delicious Old Spice underarm spray fragrance mixed with old unisuit funk. You know who it is. Move bitch, get out da way......or maybe get in the back cause I like the way your butt hangs out of the bottom of your airbrushed cotton shorts.

So I roll into Dunkin' Donuts today for a little hot beverage revival after practice and the nice lady at the counter asks me "would you like a free donut?" Now, we all know I am in a never ending quest for multiple ladies, as well as to maintain my girlish figure. Sadly, I am also weak against any fried pastry. So given that this particular donut was free, I had to say yes, Boston Creme PLEASE! Upon receiving, I took out half of that sucker with one ferrocious chomp. As I am happily paying for my coffee, I ask the nice lady "mo waf arf bees monufs wor?" which she in turn translated to be "So what are these donuts for?" and then replied with a ample amount of disgust "It's tax day"........shortly after her declaration, she was removing chewed dough, custard, and slobber from her hair sprayed directly from the mouth of a mr. S.Vincent.

Guess who forgot to do their taxes? No worries though, I banged it out in 30 mins online and had the paltry ~400 dollar return direct deposited into my account. Which explains why I am here online, blabbering on about myself.

I hate me too

No, I am not dead or seriously injured, but I was almost killed, by salmonella. I have had food poisening one other time and it was the worst experience I have ever been through over 7 days. This time it took just as long, but it didn't feel like my insides were getting roto-rootered by steel coated pipe cleaner. The lesson is....don't eat stadium food for the first time and the second time is to make sure you cook your poultry to 180 degrees in the center, not just till its white. March and April are the busiest months in my schedule, so be prepared for more sparse posting, but I won't let you down for too long. Like an ugly lover, I am only a disappointment to you when you really think about it, not in the heat of sweet ugg-o love.......okay when you think about it, and when we're in public holding hands....
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That said, we are moving on. I am going to finish these album reviews if I have to take till 2009, and then we can all get on with our miserable lives which by that point may or may not include reading my miserable blog. I have no more motivation to write them, and you probably have even less to read them, but gosh darnit I have to finish something sometime? There has to be some kind of order in cyber space and I'm going to do my part.

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Alright here we go, onto the TOP 5 now.....hahaha this really is a joke of how long this is taking me compared to how long I thought it would. Didn't this start as a before the end of January mission? Kind of like how iTunes takes 30 minutes to download and update the software and month after month, nothing changes. What's up with that? What alien technology are you installing on my computer 15 times a year? iTunes hasn't changed in 4 years and its on like version 1004.5. It's a fear campaign really. I am so scared of what could happen to my music if I don't update, I diligently upgrade with urgency and without question. Damn you Steve Jobs.
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The good news is, I am firmly on my way to a new set of wheels. It will certainly be murdered out if I can, once I figure out the cost of tastefully doing such a thing and if it is feesable.
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NUMBER 5: Jimmy Eat World "Chase this Light" Jimmy eat World is one of my favorite, non-favorite bands. I have all their albums, love to listen to their songs at anytime, but I can't seem to put them in the top level of my pantheon. I have no idea why, but maybe its because their songs are so simple-minded and so easy to listen to. The same thing happens with me with every album they make. I buy it, listen to the whole thing over and over again about 20 times, then sparsely listen again.

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To me, they are like the food equivalent of Pizza. You love pizza, you could eat pizza anytime, and you like lots of different toppings, shapes and sizes (albums) of pizza. You know exactly what pizza entails no matter where you order it from. When someone says, "lets go out for pizza" you are definitly in. But are you thinking about pizza day in and day out? No. When you are looking for a special meal, is pizza involved? No.

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But great pizza is great pizza, and there is nothing more clutch after a hard day. Safe, reliable, and easy to make, pizza is your consistent meal no matter what time of day. Even for breakfast!

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That said, Jimmy does not disappoint on this album. Its all good from track 1 to track 11. There isn't much exploring in sound done on this album, just a fresh version of the same jimmy sound. It's pizza right? Get the basics down, explore a little bit with the toppings and spices to give a fresh look and taste, and whammy everyone is happy. The weird thing about this particular album, is that I am not super happy with the way that any of the songs start. But somehow about 30-45 seconds in, every single track develops into a fantastic classic Jimmy song.

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The lyrics are always good. The most under-rated part about this band that makes them a signature favorite is the way in which lead singer Jim Adkins backgrounds his own voice with the backup vocals of his own band, and manages to pump them out at different volumes to match perfectly with the instrumentation. Aggressive yearning is his specialty and he has many layers of his voice to make it work perfectly with the fast strumming punkish guitar. Combined they create a really pleasing punk light or heavy emo. You take your pick.

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Song Samples: Big Casino, Like She'll Always Be, Carry You

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