Goat report, 7/28/08

Every fair should have a goat costume contest!

George Carlin, RIP

It's been a busy past month with travel and such but I wanted to say something about George Carlin's passing. He was one of the first comedians I could name as I used to hear Seven Words You Can Never Say on Television on Dr. Demento back in the late 70s and found it hilarious despite all the words in question being bleeped out. I later memorized his more radio-friendly bits IceBox Man and A Place for My Stuff, again despite half the material being over my head at the time. Around the late 80s I began to resent his more political humor, probably because it made me confront some truths I had trouble accepting. I came around to see that he was seeing things quite clearly, however, as can be seen in most of his recent work, like Consumer Capitalism. It's too bad to see him go but nice to see so much of his work is available online.

Album-a-year

Haven't done something like this in a while: via the llama, pick a favorite album for each year you've been alive. I decided to attempt to avoid artist repetition as it's tough for me to pick a single favorite and allows me some variety.

1973: Quadrophenia - The Who
1974: The Lamb Lies Down on Broadway - Genesis
1975: One Size Fits All - Frank Zappa and the Mothers Of Invention
1976: Songs in the Key of Life - Stevie Wonder
1977: "Heroes" - David Bowie
1978: Van Halen - Van Halen
1979: Exposure - Robert Fripp

1980: Gentlemen Take Polaroids - Japan
1981: Discipline - King Crimson
1982: Signals - Rush
1983: Synchronicity - Police or 90125 - Yes
1984: Double Nickels on the Dime - Minutemen
1985: White City: A Novel - Pete Townshend
1986: They Might Be Giants - They Might Be Giants
1987: Uplift Mofo Party Plan - Red Hot Chili Peppers
1988: It Takes a Nation of Millions to Hold Us Back - Public Enemy
1989: The Real Thing - Faith No More or Paul's Boutique - Beastie Boys

1990: Ritual de lo Habitual - Jane's Addiction
1991: Ask the Ages - Sonny Sharrock
1992: Angel Dust - Faith No More
1993: Give a Monkey a Brain and He'll Swear He's the Center of the Universe - Fishbone
1994: Hallucination Engine - Material
1995: Foo Fighters - Foo Fighters
1996: Fantastic Planet - Failure
1997: Vegas - The Crystal Method
1998: El Oso - Soul Coughing
1999: California - Mr. Bungle

2000: Joys and Concerns - The Negro Problem
2001: Guest Host - Stew
2002: Shy Angels - Sussan Deyhim
2003: Electric Version - The New Pornographers
2004: The Grey Album - Jay-Z, The Beatles & Danger Mouse
2005: Guero - Beck
2006: Love - The Beatles and George Martin
2007: Inamorata - Method of Defiance
2008: Vampire Weekend - Vampire Weekend

My toughest years to choose an album were the early-to-mid 90s (when I was working in a music store) and mid-70s. I found that it was also tough to pick something in the recent 5 years; while I certainly have lots of music that has been released in that period, I'm not as familiar with it as I'd like to be. Too much music.

Gas prices

Going thru receipts from a recent trip to Costa Rica and came across one from our one purchase of gasoline. We had a rental car briefly (a somewhat rattley but overall decent Daihatsu Terios) and the full tank, combined with Costa Rica's smallness, kept us from having to buy much gas. I was surprised to find that the 4 Liters (almost one gallon) cost us $4.77 (2600 colones), not that much more than what we're paying in the High Desert as $4.39 is the cheapest around us.