The Annotated Beukemix 2012, belatedly

Here are liner notes for this last year's mix! Better late than never, I suppose, and I gotta get this out of the way as I finish up the 2013 mix.

(2021 Edit: This list is on Spotify! You can probably bail on Track 5 (a LONG version of Do Ya Thing by the Gorillaz) after about 4:24 -- this is a kludge for that track not being on that service.)


1. Shoo-Be-Doo-Be-Doo-Da-Day - Stevie Wonder
A Wonder song I was unfamiliar with, instantly liked. This song fits into a genre that was new in 2012: songs I'd love to have been able to play as part of the Robinson Caruso Organization. The RCO played its last gig at our trobonist's wedding in March, but every now and then I hear a song that would be right in our wheelhouse in terms of style and instrumentation.

2. Heartaches And Pain - Charles Bradley
Another song I want to play the trumpet part for. Like Sharon Jones, Bradley is one of the throwback R&B singers who's still knocking out amazing late 60s/early 70s style songs decades later.

3. Nightcall - Kavinsky & Lovefoxxx
Ridiculous and fantastic 80s soundtrack throwback from the opening credits of "Drive," following by far the best scene in that film, the tense robbery getaway drive through a downtown LA evening.

4. Somebody That I Used To Know – Gotye ft. Kimbra
I know, ok. But despite being run into the ground by top 40 radio, this is a really-well crafted pop song, and a rare example of an unreliable narrator in current pop music: listen to Kimbra's response in the back half, and it becomes apparent that Gotye's protagonist is full of shit. Also, xylophone.

5. DoYaThing - Gorillaz ft. Andre3000 & James Murphy
You got Outkast in my Gorillaz. Something about the wordless lines in James Murphy's choruses reminds me of the song Jabba the Hutt's band plays (Lapti Nek) in the original version of Return of the Jedi.

6. Truth - Alexander The only pop song I know of with a bass clarinet solo. FYI, Alexander [Ebert] is the lead singer of Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros. This was featured at the end of "Box Cutter," the 4th season premiere of Breaking Bad.

7. To Love Somebody - Nina Simone
Heard this in "I Love You, Philip Morris," the decent Jim Carrey / Ewan McGregor vehicle. Much better than the original.

8. The Police & The Private - Metric
I'd heard a bit of Metric before Ta-Nehisi Coates' enthusiasm really spurred me to pay more attention when he linked to an interesting live version of this one on his blog. The restless cymbal and noodling keyboard lick throughout sold me on the band.

9. The Killing Moon - Echo & The Bunnymen
First heard it in the opening scene of "Donnie Darko" years ago. Noticed it with more enthusiasm during my seemingly annual Rock Band 3 kick. The opening guitar line and echoing piano figures creep me out in a good way.

10. Surgeon - St. Vincent
Liked this song on the radio, though my first impression was that it was another song swiping the melody of "You Only Live Twice." St. Vincent's AV Club interview about the song was interesting: the titular line comes from Marilyn Monroe's diary, which referred to acting teacher (/Hyman Roth) Lee Strasberg as the "best, finest surgeon to come cut me open."

11. Night & Day - Hot Chip
A goofily menacing dance pop tune with a goofily menacing dance pop video, the style of which reminds me somehow of The Handmaid's Tale. You know, without all the forced birth.

12. Stop the Press - Brother Ali
I had the privilege of improvising scenes to go with Brother Ali's stories in Show X last year. Around the same time, I heard this on the radio during one of Max's lunch times (Max enjoyed dancing to it). It's an autobiographical rhyme about the previous few years of Ali's life, and the crap that's gone down while his career blew up.

13. Till the End of the Day - The Kinks
I read someone recently saying that although they love every Kinks song they know, they wouldn't consider the Kinks a favorite band. Let's let the Kinks into our hearts, people. Wes Anderson's been doing too much of the Kinks-loving heavy lifting.

14. For Tomorrow - Blur
Damon Albarn makes another appearance with a song brought to my attention by an AV Club piece about "Songs we want to live inside." Claire Zulkey picked this one for its romantic optimism in a cold, gray world.

15. Crystal Blue Persuasion - Tommy James & The Shondells
That Vince Gilligan and his Breaking Bad crew managed to hold off on using this on-the-nose musical cue until their last mid-season-finale is a pretty impressive show of restraint. The montage they used it in was great, but also made me notice the song's greatness. I tend to lump the Shondells with The Association and The Turtles as popular 60s bands who I don't think get enough credit for their musical excellence.

16. Michael Praytor, Five Years Later - Ben Folds Five
Having been mixed on the last few Ben Folds solo albums, I was happy that the band's return sounded like it could have come out 2 years after 1999's "The Unauthorized Biography of Reinhold Messner," instead of 13.

17. The Horror - RJD2
Someone (Huge Theater tech Josh Kuehn, I think) included this in the pre-show music for "Creature Feature," the improved monster movie, which was in its 9th year in 2012. Apt. Lot of creepy songs on this year's mix. In my mind the guys in the white masks at the end of the video are a bunch of off-season Edgar Allen Poe toasters.

18. Weep Themselves to Sleep - Jack White
My favorite song off of White's first solo album.

19. Tell Me A Tale - Michael Kiwanuka
I love it when songs play with time signature, and this one keeps a steady 4/4 beat throughout, but the emphasis in the verses sounds like a compound 3/8-5/8 signature. So I'll call this the Brahms' 4th Symphony of 2010s soul songs.

20. Americanarama - Hollerado
Kid in the Hall Dave Foley did a "Theft of the Dial" segment on the Current in November, with lots of interesting tidbits: Foley realized he needed to get divorced when he heard the Barenaked Ladies' song "Break Your Heart," and Aimee Mann's Oscar-nominated "Save Me" was written about him. But this song, the video of which stars Foley as a take on American Apparel's sleazebag founder Dov Charney, is way more fun.


Coming soon to this space: 2013

Before the decade is out

It's a bad workman blames his tools, but I want to go on record: the commonly-available contemporary pumpkin carving tools are worthless pieces of crap.

Go to Walgreens or Target or some such, and you'll find kits like these from Pumpkin Masters (right). They typically come with a pulp scraper, a plastic "drill", and one or two serrated carving knives. These have slightly more cutting power than a sheet of tin foil.

I may not be a structural engineer,* but common sense suggests a 1/4" x 1/16" x 2 1/2" steel blade will buckle under the compressive load required to puncture the shell of a pumpkin. This theory is borne out by lab tests:

Ah, you say, that's why they give you the "drill"! You push that in, and make that hole the starting point for the knife to saw from. If that is true, the drill needs work, too. Mine bent and yielded at the handle the first time I stabbed the shell. And even just sawing without poking, the knife continued to deform unless I held it by the blade to shorten its unbraced length.

My pet theory is that Pumpkin Masters know that if people are able to reuse their pumpkin knives year after year, they're out of business. So they sell $4 kits that, other than the scoop (I have three now), cannot possibly survive more than a couple of pumpkins. Somehow they've cornered the retail market, and have a captive clientele.

Ridiculously, they also offer a power saw. When you load the batteries into the handle, it really emphasizes the flimsiness of the blade. When you flip the switch, the metal feebly flutters at the end of the grip. I believe mine crumpled like tinsel under atmospheric pressure as soon as I took it out of the package.


Dammit, it's the year 2013, and this is America. How have we not nailed this? We had a terrific pumpkin cutter in the late 80s. Why have we regressed?

(I miss these things. These were great. My family had two, but they went missing years back.)

These are extraordinary times, and we face an extraordinary challenge. Now it is time to take longer strides--time for a great new American enterprise--time for this nation to take a clearly leading role in pumpkin carving achievement, which in many ways may hold the key to our future on Earth!


* I am.

Toddler Video Clearinghouse

I've finally uploaded a bunch of videos of Max from my phone to YouTube. Here they all are, for those among you who are interested in videos of Max being funny. Be forewarned that a couple of these are for serious Max fans only, as not a lot happens. I don't know why I'm apologizing. Enjoy.

1. Max and the Ho-Di-Ho Hat (previously posted on Facebook)

2. Max plays in the snow

3. Maisy makes a goal

4. Swinging with Nana Debbie

5. Advice for 9-month-old cousin Lily

6. Here's an old one I found on my computer, from the Summer of '11, when Max was about 7 months old.

Max in Dad's Skechers

Max enjoys the comfort of a shoe that is larger than his head.

Dear Star Tribune Web People

Seriously, you guys. When there are related items and subheads under the main story, the paging forward goes too fast to read. Also, if I click an arrow, it should reset the page timer so it won't immediately move off of the story I was trying to look at.

That's my name, too!

The Minnesota Opera is currently running a production of Lucia di Lammermoor, Donizetti's tale of feuding Scots with Italian names. They have been promoting it on Classical Minnesota Public Radio and elsewhere with the tagline "In all of opera, there's only one Lucia." I've found this to be fairly useless, as it tells nothing of what the story is about, and is also quite generic. You could just as well say that in all of opera there is only one Aida, one Figaro (one character in three operas), or one Nixon.

I was talking about this over the weekend with my opera-buff father, and he explained that besides being silly, the phrase is also false:

• there is a Lucia in Cavalleria Rusticana (the one-act opera featured in the climax of Godfather III that tried so hard to be the climax from Godfather I)
• Mimi, the female lead in La Boheme, explains "Mi chiamano Mimi, ma il mio name e Lucia" ("They call me Mimi, but my real name is Lucia")

So not only is there not only one Lucia in all of opera, but we only need to come up with two more to create an "Operatic Lucias" Jeopardy category.


I propose that for the rest of the week, the MN Opera and MPR revise the ad copy to "In all of opera, there are no fewer than three Lucias. This is one of them." No doubt the Ordway will be standing room only next weekend in gratitude for the accuracy.

David Macaulay's "Pyramid"

I grew up on David Macaulay. His books on engineering and architecture, along with Legos, are the primary reasons I started on the path to structural engineering. All his PBS specials were great, but Pyramid is the one I watched over & over. Someone has finally put it up on Youtube.

Some notes:

1. It is my understanding that many then-widely-understood details of Egyptology have been revised since this first aired in 1988. Unfortunately, my working knowledge was sort of crystallized with this special, and I'm probably quite out-of-date.

2. I learned a couple years back that the voice cast for the cartoon story was made up mostly of prominent British actors, including the likes of Brian "Boss Nass" Blessed and John Hurt. The Pharaoh Khufu was not, however, killed by a parasitic alien explosively erupting from his chest cavity.

3. It's far more pronounced in the video, but David Macaulay now reminds me of Will Forte with a moustache.

4. Best lines of the cartoon, which became greetings between me and a high school world history classmate:

• "Yes, I think it will be."
• "My... father's... tomb..? NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!"

Anyway, please enjoy.