Here’s how busy I am: I didn’t even have time to mention that Blizzard has confirmed the rumors that there will be a Blizzcon convention in Anaheim this October.
I will be going, and Jenn is planning on going as well. Kids under 3 aren’t allowed, so some sort of grandparenting will be involved as well.
We both attended Blizzcon in 2005 and my dad and I went to the 2007 one. While it gets to be a bit much by the end of the second day, the first day is always a lot of fun, and even the second is, so long as you sit well away from the audience members at the panel who are just a little too excited that the Anaheim Convention Center sells beer.
(I know, I haven’t been posting a lot lately: I’ve been busy at work and busy at home. More soon, I promise.)
Although I’ve been subscribing to Coverville for several years now, it can be a somewhat lightweight podcast at times, particularly when host Brian Ibbott goes with requests instead of his own musical tastes.
That said, this week’s track-by-track set of covers of the Beach Boys’ Pet Sounds album is an amazing show and more than the sum of its parts. I’ve heard of Pet Sounds and was familiar with it in theory, but hearing even the non-hits covered on this show just let me focus on the songs themselves, and Brian Wilson’s songs just absolutely shine.
Even if you don’t normally listen to podcasts or care about the Beach Boys, just listen to this show. Great, great stuff. If there was a Grammy for a single podcast episode, this show would be a lock for a nomination.
As always, it was surprising to see what won, and what didn’t. The wildfires of last spring were popular at the awards, and my piece, Smoke-Out, won a third place award in the Breaking News Category. I don’t think the piece is as strong as my story about a Hesperia sheriff’s deputy being shot, but that’s how it goes.
My earlier guess was wrong: I did win an award about an infamous necrophiliac finally getting prison time in connection with his earlier violation of a child’s corpse. I was thrown off the scent because the award wasn’t listed as a Daily Press win, despite the story appearing in that paper. This also marks the fourth year in a row that I’ve won a Law Enforcement/Legal Affairs award (first time getting a first place award, and only my second first place award from the SPJs ever), which I worry will misrepresent what I was covering in Hesperia these years in future job interviews. No awards for my school board coverage or my California Charter Academy coverage, for instance, which dominated much of 2007 for me. Go figure.
Overall, the Freedom High Desert papers cleaned up, with the Barstow Desert Dispatch in particular doing well — I’m ashamed to admit I haven’t been reading their multiple award-winning blog, but I clearly need to, especially since Peter wants one added to the Star’s site ASAP.
As always, it was a (reasonably) good time, although it almost feels like a Riverside Press-Enterprise recruiting event, between the ton of awards the PE and its associated papers get, and how happy everyone from the paper always looks (especially given the number of non-award-winning PE staffers who show up just to show support).
Peter got two awards as well: One was an editorial piece about founding father Val Shearer leaving Hesperia and the other was an entertainment piece about swing band Phat Cat Swinger. Peter always excels when writing about music, and it’s nice to see that recognized.
The full list of awards, and judges’ comments for many of them, will appear in the next day or so at the SPJ blog.
You can tell the reissue is close at hand: Liz is making the media circuit. (I’ll figure out a way to write about her for the Star or CBR if you call, publicist!)
This time up, it’s Rolling Stone, the magazine that first introduced me to her back in the 1990s, when I lived in Egypt.
It seems like the music you’ve made in the past few years doesn’t have much of a relationship to the music on Exile in Guyville. What’s your relationship to that record now?
It’s coming back around again, and I don’t think it’s an accident. For the first time in 15 years, I’m not on a major, and the forces around you are different. If you asked me to do this reissue five years ago, I don’t think I could have. For a while, Exile in Guyville was something that I was running away from. When I got bashed for my pop period, it was almost like that album belonged to critics and not me anymore. They used it against me, in a weird way. I couldn’t figure out how I felt about it or how I should feel about it. Now because I feel a tremendous sense of freedom for the first time in a long time, I said, “I’m going to find these people and bring that moment back.” If you told me five years ago that I was going to hunt down [Feel Good All Over label head] John Henderson, I would have laughed in your face. No fucking way! But I did. I found Steve Albini and all these people I had issues with in the past. It was so good for me. I was able to remember who I am — not just who I was. If you don’t ever deal with your past, you don’t even know half of who you are, and that’s what I was suffering under.
You’ve been critically attacked for most everything you’ve done since Exile in Guyville. How have you dealt with it?
It did bother me. I stopped reading press because I couldn’t write. I couldn’t deal with reading about what people thought about me all the time. But how could I escape it? Everyone was like, “You suck! You don’t just suck, you really suck!” They were so angry, and I couldn’t understand what made them so angry. I reserve fits of anger for people that I know who might have done something mean to me personally. I got into it with one writer who was like, “Do you know how personal that record was to everyone?” And I was like, “Do you know how personal it was to me?”
I’m not sure why, but this has been my decompress-after-a-bad-day song for a few years now, having replaced Steve Winwood’s “Back in the High Life” at some point after I moved to California.I have never been to Lake Charles. I don’t think I’ve even been through Louisiana, or even driven through it. Still, it speaks to me for some reason.
Here’s how busy I am: I didn’t even have time to mention that Blizzard has confirmed the rumors that there will be a Blizzcon convention in Anaheim this October.
