I Can Kill You With My Brain

I really enjoy the “Rock Band” series of video games.  One of the things I really enjoy about the series isn’t even the game itself, but the exposure to a pile of new music.  For every well known Bon Jovi song there is a song you’ve never heard of before, possibly by an artist or a group you’ve never heard of before.  The track list from the original “Rock Band” game lead to me picking up several CDs by groups I had never heard of before and so far “Rock Band 2″ is not any different.  My favorite music “discovery” thanks to “Rock Band 2″ has to be Silversun Pickups.

Their song “Lazy Eye” is featured in the game and I enjoyed it instantly.  I remember playing the song for the first time with my friend Ted and remarking to him upon completion that it was “a good one.”  The more I played the song in the game the more I liked it.  The next thing I know I’m trying to learn parts of the song on the real guitar, feeling a need to promote my experience with it to an instrument that was not made of plastic.  This was not enough, though.

As I found myself waking up in the morning with the song in my head and having it run through my subconscious more and more frequently, I knew it was time to pick up the full album.  I needed to know if the rest of the songs on it were as infectious as “Lazy Eye”.  I picked up Carnavas, the one and only release from Silversun Pickups, and fell hard for it.  The melodies and guitars are lush and practically hypnotic.  The lyrics are just the right combination of metaphor and story-telling, allowing the listener to know what the song is about, but still make their own connections with it.  Brian Aubert’s voice is quite unique, but it meshes wonderfully with the other instruments, while Nikki Monninger’s stunningly beautiful background vocals perfectly complement Aubert.

Silversun Pickups are especially on my mind right now because their second album, Swoon, is released tomorrow.  I wanted to do one of my Gut Reaction Reviews for it, but I’m not sure I’ll be able to stick to my own rules.  Gut Reaction Reviews are supposed to be written immediately after seeing or hearing something for the first time.  If Swoon is anything like Carnavas, I will be listening to it again immediately after hearing it, thereby disqualifying it for a GRR.  We’ll see.  Maybe I’ll be able to control the urge for a second listen until after I’ve written a GRR or maybe the album will be bad.  Somehow I think the latter is unlikely.

A log in the lion’s home at the Henry Vilas Zoo in Madison, Wisconsin.

Last week I began my next run through all of the “Buffy the Vampire Slayer” episodes by watching the 2-part pilot, “Welcome to the Hellmouth” and “The Harvest”.  It has been several years since I have been through the episodes from front to back and I haven’t seen the first two episodes since that last run through.  I was also introducing my girl, Susie, to the initial episodes for the first time.  She has seen episodes of the show, but never the pilot and never in order.  This situation afforded me the opportunity to view those first two episodes in a very different way.  I saw them both as the nostalgic fan who can cheer no louder for his favorite show and as an overly critical fan who now sees flaws he never saw before because he’s afraid his favorite show won’t hold up to a new viewer.

We talked a bit after the episodes and basically came to the same conclusion.  The first few episodes demonstrated potential, but they were not the show that we both knew it would eventually become.  Most of the actors didn’t seem comfortable with their characters, reading their lines more than acting their lines.  The episodes were also a little slow, with the majority of the 2 hours spent setting up the world, letting the viewer know the rules for this type of vampire, and explaining that a Hellmouth will give us week after week of new baddies to deal with.  The wonderful character progression, demons as metaphors for life’s challenges, and incredible Buffy mythology were not there, yet.  It’s wrong to even think that these things would be there in episodes one and two, but it does lead to the episodes falling a little flat when you know they’re coming eventually.

There were plenty of bright spots, though.  While most of the actors were struggling with them, Alyson Hannigan and Anthony Stewart Head both seemed to get their respective characters right from the start.  The distinctive vampire dusting sound and digital effect were both there from the start, just as you’ll hear and see them in the series finale.  And, of course, the trademark Joss Whedon dialog was in effect right from the start.  One of the first scenes has Xander asking about the library and Willow quickly and casually responding, “Yes, the library. Where the books live.”  It’s these simple one-liners that dance effortlessly in the Scooby gang’s vernacular, without even garnering a questioning glance from anyone else, that have had such an effect on my own speech.  It’s things like that that make the fanboy in me proud even as the critical eye is hard at work.

In like a lion.
Also out like a lion.
March was a bad cat.

This is Giles. She is guarding a power brick for a MacBook Pro. She’s very protective of our technology.