Soda Jerk

I guess us all listening to the same albums would result in several reviews of the same album, which would be no fun to read. Perhaps just picking an album from our own collections that we've not paid much attention to in a while and give a week of non stop attention sounds cool, and certainly combats the anxiety caused by the overwhelming selection you have available on Spotify, YouTube etc. But it will still die, because there's only about 5 of us left. I dig the idea though. I've got 130gb of music on my Mp3 player, and I find myself listening to 2 or 3 songs on the way to work, and then putting something else on, again and again. I get annoyed with myself just constantly scrolling through, picking something and then quickly losing interest.

Rain, grey clouds and a cool breeze after five consecutive days of a sticky and uncomfortable 33 degrees. It's been gruesome. Fuck the south.

That shred in the middle is totally triumphant.

Make like a GCSE exam and show your work. Here's mine. Blue has no bad songs, that's not even up for debate. Pinkerton has a few - Butterfly and El Scorcho namely, and if you disagree on El Scorcho, can you really listen to a song that has "I'll bring home the turkey if you bring home the bacon" as a lyric and think "Yeah, this is a good jam"? Naaaah. Awful. It was the beginning of Rivers' sing/rap thing, though it's quite subtle, and that fast punk bit in the middle is totally weird, and bad. Mostly bad. Pinkerton is supposedly Rivers' total breakdown of an album, but no song on that album comes close to the genuine sadness that comes through on the Blue Album. It just comes off as creepy. First 3 tracks - solid and as good as anything on Blue. Why Bother, Good Life, average. Across The Sea, really creepy and weird. El Scorcho, awful. Pink Triangle similarly weird as Across The Sea. Falling For You, not bad. Butterfly, acoustic closers are wack. If they did it as a full band, it could be good. But they didn't. The drums sounding like cereal boxes gives it all a massive thumbs down. I listen to those first 3 and rock out, then get a little bored, skip over El Scorcho and to avoid the cringing, realise that I've only got 3 songs left and there's only 1 worth listening to, and it's not even that good. It got totally panned when it was released. Opinions seemed to change years after. Those gut instincts were the right ones, not the romantic revisionism. Pinkerton stinks. Stinkerton.

That's a pretty cool idea. And listening to Maladroit every day for a week sounds like a great week. Slave, Slob and Love Explosion are probably my 3 favourites from Maladroit. The latter especially. I'd be surprised if you don't dig those after a week of repeated listens. They are poptastic. If we had more people actually posting on here, your one album a week idea would be a pretty cool thing to chatter about. Alas, it would just be me and you, arguing about Maladroit.

Though I did think me not putting Pinkerton in the top 2 would be controversial, but apparently not. I did used to love Pinkerton, in my teens (which should be no barometer of quality, as I also liked ska-punk in my teens). Then I went through a long period of not listening to any Weezer. Coming back to them, I find Pinkerton hard to sit through. First 3 tracks are glorious. It goes downhill quick after those 3. There's some pretty awful lyrics on that thing, and everything just sounds so... bad. Even on the good songs. I've never listened to False Metal, Raditude and Hurley all the way through. I've heard most of the songs, and usually turned it off at somepoint. I don't feel so bad about it now knowing they're at the bottom of your table.

Maladroit 7th? FAKE NEWS.

I don't think they've ever come close to returning to form after the 1st 4 albums. Plenty of good tracks scattered across each one, but so much crap surrounding it.

Southampton release new kit, in a cartoon depicting Ronald Koeman as an evil supervillain This is, like, real. A real thing that happened.

Bayern have gone all Juventus and switched up their club crest: Warmer reds, Arial Bold to Helvetica, and 5 degree shift of the Bavarian lozenge? Nothing is sacred.

It's summer, so I've been listening to Weezer, a lot. So here is the new definitive order of Weezer greatness, as decided by me: 1. Blue. Obviously 2. Maladroit. Riffs. 3. Green. Joyous pop. 4. Pinkerton. Not as good as people say it is, apart from Tired of Sex. 5. Everything else, because everything else is worse than everything named above. Come at me.

True. It was a standard "this is all the characters" script, but still better than most. Especially as none of the characters dramatically changed after 6 episodes, like a lot of sitcoms. They jump right into the weirdness in Episode 2. The Jeff/Pierce montage in Spanish class is probably in my top 5 favourite bits from the whole show.

I felt a bit sorry for Moyes in the end, even though I probably shouldn't have, as he was daft to go for that job to begin with, as there was no chance he would succeed. Glad he didn't just roll over and stay with them. It sounded like he was going to, but then ended up giving them the two fingers. Good on him. He probably needs some time out for a while. Since leaving Everton, Moyes has had the look of a man who won the lottery, bet it all on one horse - the staggeringly obviously wrong horse - and lost. He bet it all on Fellaini, spiralled downwards in emphatic fashion, followed by disastrous campaigns with Sociedad and Sunderland. Two jobs he never should have touched. Who would even give him a job now? Probably Sunderland. He should have done what Brendan Rodgers is doing now, as he was linked with the Celtic job numerous times after he got binned by United. Rodgers is Football Manager personified, space-barring his way through the season with about 40% of his attention, fielding whoever is above 90% fitness and sticking to one tactic. The 'being better at football' tactic that he downloaded from another manager. That could have been poor, sorry Moyesy. Rebuilding his shattered managerial rep by reigning in the easiest of trophies, whilst having one or two gutsy performances in the Champions League against the big boys. That's what he needed, but instead he walked the proverbial plank. Going to a country where he couldn't speak to his own players, and then taking the job nobody else wanted. In a few years, Rodgers will waltz back in to an top job in England or perhaps abroad (he might even be considered for an NT) with several medals around his neck, I'm sure, whilst Moyes will be slugging away at some relegation fodder in the Championship, continually reeling off his bemused "I don't know what we have to do to win" line, as his side just hopelessly hammer crosses in to the box.

Getting sunburned and mashed on warm, flat, strong as fuck cider in the garden to mental electronica 32 muhfucking degrees!

Agree on the Office. Parks & Rec 1st season is awful too. Leslie is just Michael Scott in the first few episodes. They seemed to have a "hang on, this is shit, let's do it totally different" moment around the start of S2. However, I think Community gets off to a solid start, and does it better than most sitcoms. Definitely one of my favourite 1st episodes, along with Scrubs. Solid pilots.

Their last totally emo record, before they went all car-advert rock-band. The vocals sound terrible. So terrible that they're good. Banger. Why did they stop doing the dual-vocal thing? Their last 2 albums might as well be Foo Fighters records. They used to be so good. Took me ages to 'get' RTJ. I didn't get why they were so hyped. Every time I played RTJ1 & 2, I thought "nah. this is weird, and everyone is stupid". False. I was stupid. One day it just clicked, and I realised RTJ2 might be a Top 10 record of all time. It's just stupid good. STUPID GOOD.

I was reading some Tweets from Mackems earlier in the week, being annoyed that their 'big' club can't attract anyone of a higher calibre than McInnes, yet their supposedly smaller, inferior neighbouring club have a manager like Benitez, how they're doomed and destined for a consecutive relegation and that McInnes will be gone by Christmas. The same folk are now all raging that the McInnes deal has gone to pot. That does please my irrational and rather baseless dislike of Sunderland. Shit club with shit fans who leave in droves as soon as they concede a goal. I hope they're right. A consecutive relegation would be a right laugh.

Peeling bananas from the non-stem end is far easier. I'd heard about it a long time, that monkeys peel from that end, and those internet articles titled "OMG you've been doing this wrong your whole life" which I strongly dislike and tend to ignore just to rebel against them. Unfortunately, they were right on bananas.

More sunshine soundtracks from this morning's walk through the Somerset countryside: Opening track is pretty much all Doom ever written. I don't care for re-masters normally, but this is spot on. You Fail Me is probably my favourite of theirs, but it did sound a bit thin compared to the albums either side of it. So Ballou just Ballous the hell out of it, so it sounds more Ballou. Yuge.

Went for a walk in the sun, accompanied by this: It has aged well. Those basslines are buttery smoove.

I had a haircut that was pretty terrible, but didn't realise just how bad it was until I got home and washed it. The unevenness became more apparent when it was wet, and then I noticed chunks missing all over the place. Went back the next day, and they sorted it out for free, though it ended up being much shorter than I'd like. If I spotted something right away, I'd definitely ask them to sort it before I left. Not sure what I'd do if it was so bad that it can't really be fixed without shaving my whole head. I've never had a haircut that bad. I did refuse to pay for food in Jimmy Chungs once. My own fault for going to Jimmy Chungs I suppose. Bit into a piece of chicken, and it was pink and jelly-like in the middle. They tried to convince me it was marinade. Marinade in the CENTRE of a chunk of chicken breast. A marinade that has no discernable taste, but matches the texture of raw chicken. Sounds plausible. It was undercooked, and not even just a little bit. Started to walk out, they demanded that we pay. I was having none of it, not for undercooked and potentially poisonous food. They then said "well you at least have to pay for your drinks" which we had barely even touched anyway, by which point we were already out the door. I probably would have paid for drinks if they had admitted their negligence. Lying about it made me not want to give them anything at all.

F is for Family is a weird one. There's some great lines here and there, but overall it's not great. It has a pretty crummy animation style too, which doesn't make it aesthetically pleasing. I hammered through S2 of it just after binging on all of Rick & Morty, which is an ill-advised order to do that, as everything about Rick & Morty is significantly better. There's some better stories in S2, which seemed to be lacking in S1, so it is better, but it's a 6 out of 10 show at best.

Have any cartoons been on as long as Simpsons, Family Guy, South Park? I consider 5+ Seasons reasonably long-running as far as comedy and cartoons go, so Bobs Burgers makes the cut. 7 seasons of solid consistency with no wild changes in character development is pretty good going. Aqua Teen Hunger Force was great right until the end. The Regular Show is still good too. Might be hard to find, but Space Ghost Coast to Coast was excellent. I got them all from torrents a few years ago. It took months because nobody was ever seeding.

Truth. Trendy barbers can do one. They kit it out with some retro decor, and then charge £30+ for a trim. Nah. I'd rather go to a grotty one in one of the units at the end of a bus station. It's just a hair cut. Walked in to one the other week in Bath. Looked at the price list and quickly walked out. No need to pay that amount for a no.6 up the back and sides and a bit of a scissor on top. Went around the corner to a less kitschy sort of place, payed a third of the price for the same job, whilst talking about holidays and why I'm not at work - standard. If I stayed at the other place, they'd have probably wanted to talk about craft beer, vinyl, and cats. Urgh.

I'm not big in to Family Guy but I do like how they've made Brian a total douchebag. I don't think he was originally, but it's definitely very obvious in later seasons. It works because I don't think you're not really supposed to like Brian as a total poseur, where as I don't think that is the case with Lisa. Brian/Stewie episodes are generally very good, but I can do without the rest. American Dad has aged well. It's generally gotten a lot better as they moved away from the very rigid original premise. They took that as far as it could go, and now it's just anything-goes whilst not really being about what it used to be about. Characters who were very unlikeable have been developed and made very good, Steve especially. It's significantly better than Family Guy. Bobs Burgers is great too. No noticeable dip in quality yet.