Eric saves the blog

I am presently in the midst of revising (FTYPAH: "studying") for exams, so blogging has fallen way down the priority list -- still above housecleaning but well below watching "I'd Do Anything" (a). So, I was all set to let the blog go into its usual other-things-are-happening languishing state, but now Eric has given me something to post.

Here are a few videos from a recent performance of the Secondhand Ska Kings at Minneapolis' Fine Line. It's a group of people in their 30s pretending they are still in college. But they are betrayed by the fact that they are in tune:


On this one you get to hear funky, funky Eric sing. An interesting thing to note is that Eric is always like this. Watch his mannerisms and this is pretty much how he acts all the time. No, really. Go to his house and you'll see him acting like this while he's watching TV, making food, etc. Actually, don't go to his house. His wife would not appreciate my sending a load of people over to visit.


Apparently, the fellas have taken on Markéta Irglová. What's with the chick on keyboards? Who is that? Do I know her?

One of my favourite things about Secondhand Ska Kings is that I know most of the members. Eric has been my best friend for 20 years; Matt (the guitarist who hides to the left of the screen) used to live next door to me in Ballard Hall (b); Bryce (the trumpet player) used to live across the hall from me and Matt; Scott (the other trombone player and singer on two of the songs) is the guy who always riles me up by suggesting that Welsh is really Klingon. I am hoping that I do, in fact, know the female keyboardist and that I have shagged her.


(a) Yes, I realise that every time I admit to watching these shows I fall a little further in the eyes of Chris and Jenny. By now they almost certainly regret ever having let me stay in their home.

(b) Note that this is an all-male residence hall. Trust me, it's even worse than it sounds.

You say "France," and I'll whistle

While visiting Donal and Isobel last week I was delighted to be able to introduce them to the tale of Van Morrison's famous contractual obligation album for Bang Records.

You might have heard about this. The exact details of the album aren't very clear. I can't find any reliable tales behind the recording beyond the fact that it was cynically made in 1967 to satisfy Van's contract with Bang. The contract strangely required him to come up with 36 original songs within the space of a year. In a badass move that almost makes up for the time he collaborated with Cliff Richard, Van came into the studio and made up 31 crap songs in a single session.

I have on my iPod a copy of the "best" of these tracks, "Ring Worm;" but today dug around and found a blog that posted all 31 of the tracks back in 2005. As of today, at least, all of the songs are still available.

It's probably not worth sitting and listening to 31 (short) intentionally bad pieces of music. The novelty wears off rather quickly. So, I'll tell you the five most amusing tracks:
- "Ring Worm"
- "You Say 'France' I Whistle"
- "Want a Danish?"
- "Dum Dum George"
- "Chicken Coo"

In and of themselves the tracks are funny and odd (every time I hear the tiny little half whistle in "You Say 'France' I Whistle" it makes me giggle like a hyena), but they also have a number of amusing elements.

First off, they contain more dialogue from Van Morrison than you'll hear anywhere else. He's famously unchatty. I've seen him live in concert twice and the man simply does not speak between songs. Even more unlikely is any display of emotion beyond grumpiness, which makes his burst of laughter in the middle of "Chicken Coo" extremely rare.

There is also the epic of George, played out in the songs "Hold On George," "Here Comes Dumb George," "Goodbye George" and "Dum Dum George." Clearly Van has an obsession with this George person because later, in Astral Weeks he spends 9:46 singing about "Madame George."

'In hindsight, James -- Not the best course of action'

One of the things that always made me a bad journalist was my admiration for police officers. I think they're cool. Yes, I realise the football cards they gave me as a child were just a propaganda ploy, but it was a propaganda ploy that worked.

For our friends in the Home Nations, when I was a boy, in both Houston and Bloomington, if you went up and talked to a police officer they would give you baseball cards or (NFL) football cards. I still have a few of those cards stored away, including Kirby Puckett and Nolan Ryan cards that could now probably get me enough cash for a nice dinner.

These days I tend to like police officers for all sorts of reasons: because they are underpaid and deal with all the people that I don't want to have to deal with, and because they have an understated sort of wit that always makes me smile.

The headline to this post comes from a conversation I had today with a police constable from Fairwater station. The quote was his response to my telling him that I had not run away from the woman who was waving a 3-foot katana sword at me.

In journalism, we call that "burying the lede." Not till the fourth paragraph have I gotten around to the fact that a crazy woman came at me with a sword today. See, most people would have started this post with something like: "As I was coming home this afternoon, a woman walking down the road with an axe and a sword started screaming at me. She then took several swipes at me with said sword, before wandering off down the street, complaining about Jews."

I didn't write it that way because members of my family read this blog and I don't want them going into a full-on panic. They are already sceptical of my picking up and relocating to this din of socialism.

Anyway, the crazy lady:

First off, why is it that crazy people always have a hang up about Jews? It's so cliché. Just once, I want to see a crazy person ranting about the Bago-bago people of Papua New Guinea. This woman wasn't, though. She was walking down the middle of the road, waving her Samurai sword in the air, a Lord-of-the-Rings-style double-headed axe slung over her shoulder.

"You Jew boys think you can terrorise children and innocent animals but we'll see how you like it when someone's got a sword in their hand," she was screaming.

Not being Jewish, or having terrorised any children or innocent animals recently, I looked around to see who she was screaming at.

"Wha?" I said.

Now this is where that whole thing of first appearances sometimes being deceptive comes into play. The woman, probably in her early- to mid-40s, didn't look all that threatening to me. Save the sword and axe, of course. She looked to me like someone's mom, and in my head I instantly built a scenario in which a few of the local chavs had bullied her child and she had decided to overreact.

"You need to put those down, love," I said to her. "You're only going to get yourself into trouble."

"Fuck off!" she screamed, walking toward me and waving the sword. "Go on! Go into your house! Go hide!"

"And you backed off, did you?" the police constable asked later as I told the story to him.

"No. I stood my ground," I said.

And that's when he came out with the line about my failing to choose the best course of action.

"I realise you don't have police trainin', and all, but, really... When that sort of thing happens, James, you want to give a person a bit of space," he said.

But, as I told him, I thought the sword was fake. Who just walks down the road with a sword and an axe? At 3 o'clock in the afternoon? In Cardiff?

Then she swung the blade within about a foot of my head and I saw the glint of metal. She swung it back up along my right side and the internal is-it-real-or-fake debate was settled with a second good look at the blade.

"What about that axe?" asked a member of the crisis management team inside my head.

I noted that it was in her left hand and slack at her side, not in a position to strike, so decided to table that question and refocus on the sword. Due to my lack of police trainin' I had allowed her to get within arm's length of me. The internal crisis management team decided at this point that turning and running was no longer a good option. It would have meant taking my eyes off her and opening myself up for unseen attack.

"OK. Establish dominance," I thought.

This is the kind of ridiculous shit that goes through my head. There is a Henry Rollins monologue in which he talks about how Los Angeles police are taught to stand and speak in such a way that subliminally communicates to people the officer is dominant. Rollins spends about 30 minutes taking the piss out of the LAPD for doing this, but I forgot that bit. I straightened up, trying to draw attention to my height/size advantage over the woman.

I stepped in toward her, reasoning that the closer I was, the harder it would be to get a good swing. I positioned my body so that if she did swing at me, I could take the blade in my ribs, step in, grab the handle and kick her away. Brilliant. I've seen shit like that in a thousand action films. No problem. Chuck Norris is ages older than me and he could pull it off easy.

"Put that down and sort yourself out," I said. "I'm calling the police."

Anyone who has ever seen me do anything physical knows that had I been required to act, I would have completely fucked up my planned Chris Mighty Protector of Radyr Way move. But the crazy lady bought it. She backed off, waving the sword at me more as if it were a wet stick than a deadly weapon.

"Call the police! Call the prime minister! Jew boy!" she screamed and started off down the road.

I had never before called the police for anything. The emergency number in the UK is 999 and if you dial it on my mobile phone big red letters flash on the screen: "YOU ARE DIALLING EMERGENCY!"

It's as if it is saying: "You are so fucked if this isn't serious."

I felt nervous and terrified when I heard the dispatcher answer. Speaking to an actual police-type person -- making an actual 999 call -- made me more jumpy than the sword-and-axe wielding nutjob I was now following through my neighbourhood.

"Hi, there's a woman walking down the middle of the road screaming and waving a sword. She also has an axe. But I don't know if the axe is real," I said.

"A sword?" the dispatcher said, a little more calmly than I was expecting.

"Yeah. Like a ninja sword."

"A real sword?"

"Yeah, she swung at me. I got a good look at it. I'm pretty sure it's real. Like I say, I'm not sure about the axe, though."

"Do you know this woman?"

"No."

"Why was she swingin' a sword at you?"

"I forgot to ask."

I followed the crazy lady to her house, then stepped out of sight and ended my call with the dispatcher. I walked to my house and then back, not really knowing the correct procedure for dealing with mêlée-weapon-laden neighbours. Standing again at the intersection to the close ("cul-de-sac," for those of you playing along at home) where the woman lives, a police car came tearing up and I pointed out the house.

In the United States police would have come with sirens a-blarin' and probably shoved me out of the way. In this case it was two affable blokes in an SUV ("jeep" for our friends in the Home Nations).

"Which house is it, mate?"

"That one there, with the dog in front."

"Right. From the States are you?"

"Yeah."

"What part?"

"Minnesota."

"Hmm, never been there. She's got a sword, has she? A real sword?"

"Yeah she swung it at me. She's got an axe, too. Not sure if that's real."

"Do you know her?"

"No."

"Why's she swingin' a sword at you?"

The officers stepped out and suddenly seemed a little less approachable. They were the type of solid blokes they build in these parts -- not huge, but clearly not the sort whose mother you'd want to insult.

Police officers in this country have to deal with a lot of shit without the benefit of the tools U.S. officers would use, so they learn to carry themselves with an admirable confidence. It's all they've got in some cases. These two chaps had it, but they also had side arms. I instinctively decided to move across the road from them.

"I'll just head home, shall I?" I asked.

"Na, mate. Hang on there a bit. We'll probably need to talk to you."

From the back of the SUV, one of the officers produced an MP5 and dropped in a clip. The other officer loaded an MP7, strapped it to his side and then picked up what appeared to be a tear gas launcher or baton round gun.

"Jesus Joseph and Mary," I thought. "This poor woman is fucked."

Another SUV came tearing up and out popped two more dudes, geared up and wearing helmets. They tossed a helmet to the bloke with the tear gas launcher thing. I love that he hadn't been all that arsed about the helmet. Something about that action stood out and drew attention to how differently things were being handled than they would be in the United States. Still no one was yelling at me to get away. They weren't acting in a military manner. Even though they were armed to the teeth, you got a real sense that they had absolutely no interest in actually using the weapons.

Then another police car, and then another -- this with a dog in the back that sounded to have been one of Cerbrus' litter. Thankfully it was never produced. Then another police car and another and another. And soon the police constable that would eventually speak to me had set up an "inner cordon" and an "outer cordon."

"It's the police, love," I heard an armed officer shout. He was standing directly in front of the house, in the street, the MP5 held steady. Next to him, three other armed officers and, strangely, the dog handler who had no weapon but one of those dog-catcher lasso-on-a-pole things.

"Come on out. We don't want to hurt you" the MP5 officer shouted. Hearing him say it, you really felt he meant it.

"Is it an American thing, not getting out of the way of swords?" the PC was asking. "Do you know her? Why was she swingin' a sword at you?"

"She's crazy is my guess."

The PC looked at me with a slight frown, suggesting he didn't approve of my judgmental tone. Who was I to be calling people crazy?

"Yeah, well. Might have in infection. That happens sometimes. They go toxic. It unsettles them somehow. Not 'them' women,' you know, but 'them,' people. What's this sword look like?"

"Well... it looks like that sword, actually," I said, pointing to the tear gas officer, who was now carrying to his SUV the sword and the axe. The axe was real.

"Ah, that's good. Probably means we've sorted things out," the PC said. "Or at least got them stable."

"I didn't hear any shots fired. That's a good thing," I said.

"Yeah. We generally try to avoid that in this country."

As it turned out, the woman is crazy. Her neighbours have phoned the police on her before. She is receiving mental help, but it is on a voluntary basis. After threatening an officer with the sword she was Tasered and arrested under the Mental Health Act.

That information was provided to me by the PC, who called me an hour or so after the incident. It's another positive about the way things are done here. He didn't give names or unnecessary specifics, but showed the courtesy of letting me know what was going on in my neighbourhood. He told me that if I wanted, I could see the woman brought up on charges of assault, but suggested that it might not go far "'cause she's unfit, you see."

Later in the evening I also received a phone call from a superintendent, who asked if I had any questions about what had happened and thanked me for calling the police.

"You did the right thing calling us," he said. "That is exactly what you should have done. We really appreciate when members of the community cooperate with us like this."

I felt a little sad that he had to make that phone call. People in Britain seem to dislike the police force to such an extent that they often won't call to report things, simply because they themselves don't want to have to deal with police.

After the whole thing was done, I happened to be checking the internet to make sure that a katana was indeed the kind of blade I was threatened with. It turns out the swords have been used in some 80 attacks and five killings in recent years; they will be banned this April. Anyone breaching the ban will face six months in jail and a £5,000 fine.

A time to sip an eggnog martini

This is Paul Simon and Steve Martin performing a sort of Christmas monologue. Reportedly the track comes from a "Saturday Night Live" rehearsal, but never made it to air for some reason.

For our friends in the Home Nations, "Saturday Night Live" (or simply "SNL") is a long-running television programme that has served as the starting point for most of America's comedy catchphrases. Americans always struggle with the fact that SNL doesn't exist in Britain. We'll say something like, "It was better than 'Cats,'" and you will just sit there and stare at us in that way you always do.

One thing I find interesting is that I can hear my own comedic timing in this. That's not surprising, I guess -- when I was a boy, I listened to Steve Martin records over and over and over (perhaps a questionable decision on my parents' part, but there you go).

My favourite part comes at 03:20.

In many ways, this is a picture of my soul

This is a picture of Jett, photogenic front man for under-appreciated Atlanta rock band Rock City Dropouts, found via the Flickr page of Lopez1.

If somehow my soul were able to jump out of my body, I would very much like to think it would look like this chap.

I am at once amusing and disturbing, scary and laughable. It's difficult to tell whether I'm taking myself seriously, whether I'm in on the joke, whether I should be befriended or avoided. From the quiet middle finger, to the bike that is flamboyant but not in particularly good condition, to the fact that he is roaming around in the daytime when all the normal people are at work: that's pretty much everything I feel inside.

Of course, if it were actually my soul, it wouldn't be so adept as to ever ride the bicycle -- it was just do that thing of of walk-rolling all over the place, yelling at pretty women. It also wouldn't be able to handle Jett's Pabst intake.

If it's not a picture of my soul, it is at least the physical representation of my ambition. In a philosophical sense, this is all I strive to be in life. It is all any man should strive to be.

Oh Frenchy. Oh Lieutenant Steve

This video is so stupid it almost makes me wish I knew French.

What you're missing

For those of you playing along at home, or even those of you on this side of the water with better things to do than watch television all day*, this is my favourite advert at the moment.

*In fairness, I'm watching rugby.

Precious moments

I added a link to it a few days ago, but I want to draw your attention to my favourite blog at the moment: Overheard in Minneapolis.

It's actually a collection of things overheard in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metro area, but that probably wouldn't have as nice a ring to it.

The quote that had me laughing this morning was this one, which I imagine is the sort of thing that Eric's wife, Kristin, would say if she had children.

Fire Hydrants 1 - Bulls 0

Man, bulls are so stupid.

Simultaneously the best and worst thing you'll hear today

100 mp3s of music inspired by the Tijuana Brass sound. You'll laugh, you'll cry, you'll hurt deep inside, and then you'll laugh again.

What the hell?

News travels slow to these parts, but what the hell?!

They're the posture posse

Here's a clip I found on YouTube that's pretty much for Eric exclusively. Do they still teach posture in schools? I remember Mrs. Turner constantly yelling at me to keep my feet on the floor.

Reminder

For those of you living in the Minneapolis-St. Paul metropolitan area, remember that the mighty 3 Minute Hero will be performing tonight (Friday) at Bunkers and Saturday at Fine Line. If you don't go see their show the terrorists win.

Another broken heart for Siân Lloyd

This video just about made me wet my pants with laughter. It is taken from a segment in the programme about me that aired Tuesday (and will air again Saturday at 21:15 on S4C). It was put together by consistently brilliant fellow Welsh blogger Dafydd. For the most part it's pretty self explanatory, but if you don't speak Welsh, "Pwy ydy hi?" means "Who is she?"

That's your Tuesday evening sorted...

If you've got access to S4C next Tuesday, here's what you should be watching at 9 p.m. One of the stranger aspects of my Welsh-learning experience has been the low-level and mostly unprofitable fame that's come with it.

I'm stretching the definition of "fame" here, of course. I am not actually famous. But I am well-known enough here that if there were such a thing as Welsh-language Celebrity Brother, I would probably get the call*.

I'm not the first American to learn Welsh. But I am the first one to do so totally on my own, using free stuff I found on the Internet, and then dedicate countless meg of web space to bigging myself up over it on two blogs. I can't help thinking that I am "famous" not because I am unique, but because I have no shame.

Whatever the reason, I found myself being followed by cameras, written about, and interviewed on radio. When I first moved to Wales, I had no phone or Internet but people were getting in touch with me by calling the BBC.

Next Tuesday's programme is the culmination of the BBC's following me around for 10 months, from before I left to the United States to the start of this semester. I got a chance to view the programme a few weeks ago and it was interesting to see all that time squeezed into about 50 minutes. I can only hope that when I die and my life flashes before me, it is as well-edited and treats me as kind.

My only complaint about the programme is that I'm in it. I am so skinny. I am sure people will lose track of what I'm saying in interviews because they will be too busy thinking: "Does he not eat? He says he's struggling financially, but surely he could go out and beg for enough change to get some chips or something."

Fortunately, my lanky frame wandering about is interrupted by intelligent things being said by Rachel, funny things being said (loudly) by Eric, quick YouTube clips that make it look as if I am not as boring as I actually am, and lovely scenic shots of the Twin Cities and Cardiff metro areas.

*This is a lie, by the way. I'm not that well-known, but I wanted to work in a Celebrity Big Brother joke.

Japanese boy in plenty hot water

Ahh, what passed for humour 60 years ago. I found this video (right) today on YouTube: a Popeye short called "You're a Sap, Mr. Jap." It is so, so, so, so, so wrong.

There are so many painful moments in this cartoon, I can't decide which is the worst. Obviously the bucktoothed portrayal of the Japanese ranks right up there. Along with the representation of Japanese music as nothing more than clanging pots and a car horn, and Popeye referring to them as "Jap-pansies." It's that sort of thing that's so terrible it's funny in that "Great googly-moogly I should not be laughing at this but I am and I hope no one can hear me because it's so very, very wrong" way.

For me, the most cringeworthy moment comes at the very beginning of the short, when a chorus sings:
"You're a sap, Mr. Jap;
You make a Yankee cranky.
You're a sap, Mr. Jap;
Uncle Sam is gonna spank ye.
Wait and see, before we're done,
The A,B,C and D* will sink your rising sun."

Spank ye?

Truly one of the finer moments in American cinema.

*Short for "America, Britain, China and Dutch" -- the powers the songwriters felt the Japanese should be concerned about. Personally, it strikes me as shoehorned to fit the rhyme scheme. The Dutch?

I say spider, you say monkey

Sometimes the world is not fair. We all know that, but sometimes it is more glaringly obvious. Sometimes the unfairness of this life looks you square in the eye and doesn't even flinch when it stabs you in the gut.

Such is the case that 3 Minute Hero never became famous.

They were good. I mean really, really good. Originally formed as yet another ska band, their horn section was just too powerful for such staid musical confines. In its prime (1997-2000), the horn section was fronted by two trombones -- instruments that, when played right, produce a brutal sound; a sound that punches and leaves you standing dumb like Peter Manfredo Jr. against Joe Calzaghe. This was supported by trumpet and sax and keys that swirled around the jabs and pulled you in. The whole thing fell together so perfectly that you found yourself not really hearing the different instruments, just this immense, immense sound. It was a sound that you could feel in your chest, a sound that felt too large for your head.

Fuelling the immensity was the sort of if-Animal-were-real-and-angry-and-100-feet-tall drumming you would expect from a guy who taught himself to play by listening to Kiss records. Atop it all was a larger-than-life frontman who stood as ringmaster, wailing and bellowing through the songs.

Obviously, with such a dynamic sound they were difficult to categorize. They were sort of a cross between stadium rock, Barenaked Ladies, Mighty Mighty Bosstones (circa Let's Face It), Parliament, and the first time a girl let you put your hand up her shirt. The lyrics were rapid-fire funny and brilliant, the music was incredible, and their shows were explosive in energy. They remain my favourite band of all time.

OK, true, I went to high school with three of the band members, one of whom has been my best friend for 19 years*, and I wrote the lyrics to one of their songs. I am biased. Even in the face of this they were good. In my mind, they had everything they needed to be big and I very seriously believed that one day everything would drop into gear and they would be touring around the world.

That never happened, of course. They played in bars in forgettable towns in forgettable states, bounded across North Dakota, South Dakota, Nebraska, Iowa, Minnesota and Wisconsin in an old school bus that they had won in a battle of the bands competition, until growing up became inevitable. The band split in 2000 and the members became husbands, fathers, home owners, teachers. A few of them joined other bands and achieved equal levels of success (most notably Jack Brass Band, where the two-trombones-kicking-your-ass-with-sound format was again used), but the 3MH experience remains wholly unique in my eyes.

The story of 3 Minute Hero is an almost bittersweet tale; evidence that incredible talent can exist and go unnoticed. It forces you to realise that there are authors more brilliant than Shakespeare who will never be published, songs being sung that would fill your soul but that you will never hear. It's unfair.

But there is hope: They're back, bitches!

Well at least for two performances. One will be in St. Peter, Minn., which became a sort of spiritual home for the band, and the other will be at Minneapolis' Fine Line. Their meteoric rise to fame will still probably never occur but at least a few more people will get a chance to finally hear the greatest band they never knew existed.

3 Minute Hero's Fine Line show is June 9, so you can expect to see me going on about this for a while. I am very serious that when I got the e-mail from Eric today I spent about half an hour trying to figure out if it would be at all possible for me to fly back to the U.S. to see the show (sadly, ignoring the $1,500 cost of a flight, I still have exams at that time).

There are a goodly number of Upper Midwesterners who read this blog, though, and I would encourage them to make the trip. No, really. This is a band worth driving several hours to see. Tickets are only $11, so you should have some extra money to buy Eric a beer.

*19 years, Eric. We are old.

Guapisimo

Continuing the Chris-is-too-lazy-to-post-anything-other-than-YouTube-videos theme, but with the twist of it being a video that I actually produced, I give you this. It's a video I made for my Spanish conversation course on how I use the Internet. If you don't speak Spanish, don't worry -- neither do I. It's potentially worth watching, though, just for the part when I shout "¡guapisimo!"

My apologies for the sound quality. Some day I will buy a cool microphone and all my videos will have really slick voiceovers.

For people like Beth, who can actually speak Spanish, I would be interested to know how close I've come to being understandable here.

Already known as the cultural capital of the Midwest

University work is kicking me in the face and then making fun of me at the moment, so I continue to involuntarily abstain from blogging. All I am capable of is posting links to videos that you can and probably already have found for yourself.

I know that the bread and butter of* blogging is simply linking to other things, or, ideally, linking to someone else's linking of other things, but it seems a bit 2004, doesn't it? I feel this need to produce original content.

Despite that, the whole point of this post is to link to this video. I don't know why, but I really think that Jenny and Chris will enjoy this video the most.

My dad sent me the link**. It's 4:30 of joy over the wonderful land that is the Twin Cities Metro Area. What I love about it are the random conditional facts, like, "Valley Fair is the largest amusement park in the Upper Midwest." That style of making something sound impressive by reducing its perimeters is a popular tactic in tourism -- "Pen y Fan is the highest peak in south Wales." "Arriva Trains service is the most reliable amongst train services that begin and end in Cardiff." "I am the strongest man in my house."

My favourite conditional fact comes at 3:30.

*FTYPAAH: The British love to describe things as "the bread and butter of" something. For example, failing to live up to expectations is the bread and butter of the England football (FTYPAAH: soccer) team.

**He described it as the "cheesiest voice-over since the death of filmstrips."

Thank you United States, thank you America, thank you dinosaurs

I haven't seen this video until just now. It reminds me of the first time that I heard that one Toby Keith song. Then I found out that Toby Keith wasn't being satirical and I decided it was time to leave the country.