GNR: At Last?

That's right folks, the impossible has happened... after 17 years, a handful of failed launch dates, and 6 or 7 communist countries becoming democracies... the fabled Chinese Democracy album was released.

Remember when it was going to be released in 2000? And then again in 2003? And maybe a few other times? Like... a baker's dozen? Well, the day finally came, despite the doubting words of a good doctor:

Although, in all fairness, it's not really a "Guns N' Roses" album. A "Guns N' Roses" album would feature the work of Guns N' Roses. This album features the work of Axl Rose, who conveniently owned the rights to the band's name. Yes, after 17 years, we are given an Axl Rose solo album (which features a (large) handful of other musicians, most of which have been fired). You don't see Mick Jagger calling his solo albums "The Rolling Stones" (which is a good thing, because they're usually terrible), but that's essensially what this is.

So, after all that time, all that hype, how is the epic masterpiece? Meh. No, I haven't bought it, but their MySpace page streamed the full album in the days leading up to its release (about half of it is still there), and I listened to it a few times over.

Really, it's hit and miss. The whole thing is an over-produced garble of wannabe epic music that never really delivers. The title track, which is the album's first single, really exemplifies that fact. It wants to be something great, and it keeps coming close to a catchy corus, but it never really delivers. This was my first taste of the album, and I was ready to call it quits from the get-go.

But, in all fariness, it's not all terrible. There were several songs that caught my attention and made me willing to give Axl a second chance. Better, for example, proved to be a pretty decent cut, and I was willing to spend the $.99 to add it to my Ipod. However, the $8.99 to "complete the album" was gonna have to wait. Heck, times are tough these days.

Is it worth buying (EXCLUSIVELY at Best Buy)? No. It's not Guns N' Roses. They're dead and gone. However, I will say that my "17 years for this?!" reaction was dulled a bit once I actually heard the album, but it really doesn't offer anything that shouldn't have been finished by the year 2000. If you've got a hankerin for some good hard rock, spend the money on the Rick Ruben produced Metallica album, Death Magnetic. If you haven't heard it yet, check out Cyanide and Broken Beat & Scarred... In my professional opinion, it can be classified among some of their best, and it doesn't take two decades to get.

Thanks, Sarah!

As Thanksgiving approaches, we must all take time to reflect on what we are thankful for in our lives. If you happen to be the Our Country Deserves Better PAC, then you would be thankful for Sarah Palin's contributions to the 2008 election. So much so, that you raised donations to produce a commercial thanking Sarah for her efforts, and broadcasting it around the country.

I would also like to thank Sarah Palin for her contributions during this historic election. In what was already a bizarre, twisted sideshow of American politics, she managed to slip in as the grand finale and take the whole brouhaha to an unprecedented level. Thank you for the introductory Charlie Gibson interview, as well as its follow-up, the endlessly entertaining Katie Couric interview. Thank you for your use of gimicky catch phrases, such as "Drill baby drill" and "Paling around with terrorists" that got everyone at your rallies so excited. Thanks for bringing SNL back from the dead, for ironically promoting abstanance-only education while "paling around" with an unwed pregnant teenage daughter, and for talking about whatever the heck you wanted to during the VP debate rather than answer the questions of the "media elite". And wow, she's the woman that just keeps on giving... just last week she saved a turkey's life days before Thanksgiving, then offered an interview right in front of a guy sliting the throats of turkeys. Wow... so much.

From myself and anyone else who payed attention this election season, thank you Sarah Palin. We're sad to see you go, as late night comedy is sure to enter a recession of its own.

Player Mayor on Colbert

"My guest is Kevin Johnson, former NBA star and newly elected mayor of Sacramento. He'd better do a good job, or they'll trade his ass to Fresno."

That's how the show began... KJ appeared on The Colbert Report just days after winning the mayoral election in Sacramento (although he announced his appearance weeks before the election). If you missed it, take a look below, and we'll disect it from there.

Alright, first of all, let me be clear: I'm willing to give the guy a chance. He has some good ideas for the city. Whether or not he knows how to carry any of them out is questionable, but his mailers have at least been intriguing. Sacramento has troubled schools and violent crime rates that rival Oakland. Something needs to be done, and KJ is offering a new course, which is what got him elected. That being said, let's take a look at the interview:

First off, I have never heard him be referred to as "Little Barack". In fact, the only nickname I remember hearing from the campaign trail is "Slum Lord". He may have tried to mirror Obama's campaign through similar looking fliers and the promotion of "change", but "Little Barack"? Not sure about that one.

Second, he says that he opposed Prop 8, yet he stated in several debates that he "believes marriage is between a man and a woman", and was embraced by the Yes on 8 clan. I don't know how he voted, but I had to raise an eyebrow on that point.

Third, the St. Hope charitable organization that is proudly touted has been under a federal investigation, which "found evidence that Johnson himself personally benefited from fraudulent activities". That part was left out of the interview.

Finally, while I can certainly appreciate his attempt to bring Sacramento into the national spotlight and stepping up to the challenge of taking the city in a new direction, I can't help but point out that Johnson had never been into the city counsel chambers until taking a "questionable" after-hours tour offered by a security guard a few weeks ago. It seems to me that if you want to be the mayor of a city, maybe you should go to a city counsel meeting and see what the mayor actually does. I've been to several, and I can say that they are incredibly boring and have steered me away from any desire to work in public service. Being a staunch Obama supporter, I hate to use the "experience" argument... but I can't help but wonder how the city counsel meetings will be going from here on out. Hey, maybe this'll make them a little more interesting.

In the end, we come away with Sacramento being "incredibly boring" and unable of providing a sandwich beyond 10 PM, but it has also been thrown into the national spotlight. That's what KJ wanted, so I hope he's able to deliver. I'd love to see a Sacramento that's cleaner and less crime-ridden, and the occasional media-overblown scandal doesn't necessarily mean the charges are true, or that the man is unfit to lead. He's just gonna have to step up and prove himself.

Like I said, I'm willing to give the guy a chance. I'm not planning on sticking around this town forever, and he's certainly the more interesting of the two candidates. So now that the country's attention is turned to the city with the NBA mayor, we can kick back and see how he does.

Kings and Warriors

I've never been a huge fan of the NBA (aside from Shaq's long and illustrious career), but when I heard the Sacramento Kings were hocking tickets for a measly $10, I figured I'd be stupid not to go. So I rounded up a posse of Bay Area natives and we headed out to Arco Arena to watch them take on our equally sub-par home team, the Golden State Warriors.

To my surprise, $10 didn't quite get me courtside, but it was still cheaper than going to the movies.

With the Warriors down a few key players, the Kings made themselves look half-way decent. It was difficult choosing sides, between my hometown team and my newly adopted team, but since I didn't really feel too attached to either, I decided to tell myself that I wanted whichever team was winning to win, in order to avoid the difficult post-loss depression. Hey, as long as everybody has fun, that's what the game should really be about.

However, despite jumping from team to team throughout the game, I couldn't help but feel like a failure as I continued to purchase beers that cost about as much as the ticket. Next time I'll just pick up a keg and dress it in a baby outfit. That ticket would only cost $10.

Following a rough loss by the Warriors, Don Peso tended to his wounds the only way he knew how: pumpkin froyo.

Basketball just isn't what it used to be. I remember back in the 70's when the Warriors were actually a good team. They could take on any of the top challengers: The Furies, The Orphans, The Punks... I hardly even recognize basketball today.

Free Breakfast (& Gay Marriage)

Following a successful evening of football watching (Oregon up! Cal down!), the Craw for a Cure gang re-amassed to cash in on a "free breakfast" coupon given out at one of the stops. The coupon proved to be fruitful, even if it refused to cover drinks and alcohol. Guess you gotta take what you can get.

Following the leisurely dining experience provided complements of Bistro 33, the crew decided to stroll down to the Capitol and take a glance at the day's "No on 8" rally. Following last month's Prop 8 adventure, I figured it'd prove to be an interesting outing.

Proposition 8, an effort to ban gay marriage in California, passed on election night by a few percentage points. Every day since, anti-8 rallies have been held at the Capitol and around the state. Today's provided a much larger effort than in the past days, with people busing in from as far away as Orange County. It was an impressive showing, far outdoing the "Yes on 8" clan, both in size and sign cleverness.

Too bad these rallies didn't reach this size before the election passed the proposition. We strolled the crowd, appreciating signs such as "I think the Pope is hot" and "I can't legally marry my lover but I can marry my cousin". As it turns out, no beer garden was set up and no kettle corn was being sold, but it was still an impressive showing.

After denying an interview to the local media, we left the masses to their protesting. Many people around the state have felt split on the election's results... Obama's win was a big victory, but amending the state's constitution to take rights away from people is a real letdown.

At least one thing's clear in this city: if you're bored, just take a walk, and you're certain to stumble upon something to occupy your time with.

UPDATE

The always entertaining and often times intelligent Kieth Olbermann summed up Prop 8 quite well on last night's Countdown:

Change Has Come

I was about to start packing last week, getting ready to move to New Zealand to become some sort of tour guide or something. Then, to my shock and awe, Obama was elected president. Oprah cried. Jesse Jackson cried. Sean Hannity cried (for a different reason). Guess I'll stick around for another year or four.

As you've probably noticed from the 24 hour coverage over the last two years, elections are considered goldmines for the news industry. Election night itself is like the Super Bowl, Christmas and Fat Tuesday rolled into one. It's chaotic, it's stressful, and in the end everybody is thankful that it only comes once every few years.

So now the country's on a new course. Well, almost. Come January 20 (the day after my birthday... couldn't ask for a better present), Bush is (finally) out and the new guy's in. With a sense of relief, I retired my bumper sticker on November 5th.

For once we can say "mission accomplished" in this country without everybody laughing. Our apologies to McCain, a close friend to the Photocalypse.

Goodbye to Crichton

Aside from all the hubbub and hullabaloo going on yesterday, I was saddened to see that author Michael Crichton passed away.

I might be dating myself by saying this, but when I was starting sixth grade, the first "grown-up" book that I picked up was a beat-up paperback copy of Jurassic Park that my mom found at a garage sale. Having seen the movie not long before, I decided to tackle the 399-page monster, which was three times larger than any book I had faced before. I decided that I was going to finish it, in addition to my daily schoolwork, and it was the first book that I ever became enthralled with. The ragged book still sits proudly on my bookshelf.

The following year, I trudged through the seventh grade, scraggly and pimple-faced. I wasn't the best student back then, as many subjects, primarily anything relating to math or science, seemed completely incomprehensible. It was, indeed, a difficult time. But come Christmas, my parents gave me the hottest commodity of the year: the recently released sequel to Jurassic Park. I was once again sucked into a world where egotistical scientists try to control nature, only to find that man can never successfully play God. Call him a modern day Mary Shelly. From there, I was hooked.

Any time an English class would call for a book report to be done on a book of our choosing, I'd reach for another Crichton. The Great Train Robbery, Sphere, and Congo made up a good portion of my early literary exposure. As I got caught up with his back catalog, he'd release a new book every few years, which would be given to me as a Christmas present from the parents. I remember starting Timeline by a fire on Christmas Day in 1999 and not being able to put it down until I'd blown through the first hundred pages, even if I was neglecting visiting relatives.

Perhaps this is one of the nerdier elements that has followed me into my adult life, but I have read all of his fiction books as well as some of his nonfiction, and as I look over the collection of his books that have gathered on my bookshelf, I see flashes of times in my life associated with each of his books... While the family took a car trip to Tahoe, I sat on the floor of the Toyota Previa reading The Andromida Strain, getting carsick from reading in the car but not wanting to stop until I finished the chapter... While I was in an SAT prep course in high school, the teacher said we should always be reading in order to build our vocabulary, so I found a used hardback copy of The Terminal Man on Ebay... During my senior year of college, I sat in my girlfriend's bedroom reading his nonfiction Five Patients, a brief history of the modern hospital, while she watched Gray's Anatomy in the living room. After the show, I tried to relate to her interests by explaining Crichton's retelling of the evolution of surgery, which she interrupted to extatically tell me that the blonde nurse hooked up with that scruffy doctor.

While there is certainly better literature out there, Crichton's books always connected with me. Beign a graduate of Harvard Medical School, he brought a scientific background to his adrenalin-infused brand of science fiction. He would create a bizarre science fiction nightmare, whether it be dinosaurs, super-monkeys or alien ships, and explain scientifically how it could all actually happen. It wasn't just space wars or monsters, it was a textbook in nanotechnology, or gene patentening, or Japanese business culture in America. Many of his books ended witn a long annotated bibliography, directing the reader to further works on the topics that he had covered in the book. Too often, his books were turned into sub-par summer blockbusters, which really took away from the essence of his books: a science lesson made cool.

Every other Christmas or so, my parents would get me his newest book and I'd read it over the holliday. Most recently was Christmas 2006: his book Next, an exploration into the world of genetic experimentation, both in the labratory and in the courtroom. I read it as I moved into my new apartment in Sacramento, moving to a new city for the first time by myself. A few weeks ago, I realized Christmas was approaching and checked out his website to see if there was a new book I should be asking my parents to get me. The site provided no details into his latest work, and I wondered, "What's the deal?"

On Tuesday, Michael Crichton died of cancer at the age of 66. Appropriately, I found out through my mom, who sent me an email this morning. It wasn't until then that I realized how I could trace my growth, from the age of 12 to 25, by simply glancing at my bookshelf. I'm sad to see that I'll no longer be able to carry on this small tradition, and that the world has lost one of its great creative minds.