Just saw a hilarious article about some streakers at a Polo match in England (attended by no less than Prince Charles himself).

The best quote is the club manager justifying the event:

"I think it is the hot weather and the Pimms to blame. These things happen."

Yes, the Pimms.* I see.

*Pimms is a family of British liquors.

Some might say I listen to Radiohead too much. Maybe they're right.

So I was pleased when I heard Radiohead finally came out with their new album, but even more pleased that they let me pay whatever I wanted for it. Really, not making that part up. Head on over to their website (www.inrainbows.com) and download it.

I have to say I'm pleased with it. My journey to Radiohead appreciation started with OK Computer and progressed through The Bends, Kid A, Pablo Honey, and Hail to the Thief. The last album by them I bought is perhaps their most abstract and certainly not their most popular (hence my only coming to it later), but now might be my favorite: Amnesiac. You and Who's Army anyone?

There was even a class in college where a certain A. Neff and I tried to bandy about Amnesiac's song titles and stanzas (which are pretty bizarre) as classroom interjections. I don't think we got past "Holy Roman Empire".

When I first turned on In Rainbows I was somewhat concerned. From the beginning it seemed a little short on the atmospheric, ghostly quality that was prevalent through their last three albums, which in my view have been stellar. But at the same time it didn't feel like a rock album either. I had a tough time seeing what they were shooting for. But after several listens I can honestly say that Radiohead has once again done something completely different, and done it well: they have simplified their music without just falling back on their rock roots. It's their rock roots plus their distinctiveness developed especially in Kid A left to simmer.

And how many years did it simmer? Hail to the Thief was released in 2003. It's about time, guys.

In Rainbows somehow does what Kid A did atmospherically except primarily by using normal drum beats and guitar licks. "Arpeggi/Wierd Fishes" reminds me of Kid A's "How to Disappear Completely" but does so primarily through looping, undistorted guitar licks. The closing song, "Videotape", reminds me of other highlight album closers "Street Spirit (Fade Out)" (The Bends) and "Motion Picture Soundtrack" (Kid A). Highlight songs "All I Need" and "Reckoner" are some of the best on the album, but are certainly very new and different.

If you haven't downloaded this thing yet, go do it, and listen to it three times straight. Like all Radiohead, it is a cohesive album, and not intended to be single after single. It is stronger together than separately.

Tracks/Rating
15 Step : 7/10
Bodysnatchers : 6/10
Nude: 6/10
Weird Fishes/Arpeggi: 9/10
All I Need: 9/10
Faust Arp: 5/10
Recknoner : 8/10
House Of Cards: 5/10
Jigsaw Falling Into Place : 5/10
Videotape : 8/10

Overall: 7/10.

I know I haven't posted in a long time, and this is out of character for standard fare here. Read the following.

"It is the highest and holiest of the paradoxes that the man who really knows he cannot pay his debt will be for ever paying it. He will be forever giving back what he cannot give back, and cannot be expected to give back. He will be always throwing things away into a bottomless pit of unfathomable thanks. Men who think they are too modern to understand this are in fact too mean to understand it; we are most of us too mean to practise it. We are not generous enough to be ascetics."

"As soon as ever he had been unhorsed by the glorious humiliation of his vision of dependence on the divine love, he flung himself into fasting and vigil exactly as he had flung himself furiously into battle. He had wheeled his charger clean round, but there was no halt or check in the thundering impetuosity of his charge. There was nothing negative about it; it was not a regimen or a stoical simplicity of life. It was not self-denial merely in the sense of self-control. It was as positive as a passion; it had all the air of being as positive as a pleasure. He devoured fasting as a man devours food. He plunged into poverty as men have dug madly for gold. And it is precisely the positive and passionate quality of this part of his personality that is a challenge to the modern mind in the whole problem of the pursuit of pleasure... It is certain that he held on this heroic or unnatural course from the moment when he went forth in his hair shirt into the winter woods to the moment when he desired even in his death agony to lie bare upon the bare ground, to prove that he had and that he was nothing. And we can say, with almost as deep a certainty, that the stars which passed above that gaunt and wasted corpse stark upon the rocky floor had for once, in all their shining cycles around the world of labouring humanity, looked down upon a happy man."

G.K. Chesterton, Saint Francis of Assisi.

I want to photoblog very badly.

I've just spent all afternoon and some of this morning whipping a template into shape (which is good in theory). But the added code from blogger that should make things "work" is so terribly arcane that I cannot integrate it with my template without everything breaking. I do not want a photoblog with all the excess. I just want a blog title, a picture, and a title of the picture. Sounds easy, eh? Not really. Simple is surprisingly counterintuitive in blogger's template-driven setup.

I am now looking for other free hosting solutions for a decent photoblog. If I can't come up with anything too easy it might not happen since I simply don't have the time to mess around with this anymore. If you have any recommendations please email me.

Excites the inner prospector in you, doesn't it?