punk, bitch

Late 90's comp I made, mainly highlighting favorite tracks from other comps. It made life easier not having to keep a bunch of comp CD's in the car for the two or three tracks I liked. The CD did not hold up these 15+ years, so I had to recreate it. I used MP3Gain to try and get some sort of levelling between tracks, but there's always going to be issues. I also had trouble tracking some stuff down, most notably "Everlast" by Shoegazer, which was on the "Two T.O.N. Comp". I used a ripped version from the "Hey Turkey" 7", but if anyone happens to have the comp, please share. Tangent: T.O.N. was a weird label. Shoegazer and Wingnut Supreme two of the best unknown bands, but I don't like a single other band on the label.

01 - Wingnut Supreme  -  Chicken Killer
02 - Pinhead Circus  -  Too Bad She Won't Live
03 - Black Fork  -  Mathilda
04 - Shoegazer  -  Everlast
05 - Neighbors  -  Sometimes
06 - Sofa Glue  -  Locked Up
07 - Rickets  -  Diet Punk
08 - Eveready  -  I Hate You
09 - Rhythm Collision  -  Underground
10 - Overlap  -  Song #9
11 - Various  -  Chickenhead - Young Fidel
12 - Bristle  -  Officer Right
13 - F.Y.P  -  2000 A.D.
14 - Nimrods  -  I Don't Really Care
15 - Mr. T Experience  -  Unpack Your Adjectives
16 - Spazz  -  Climate Best
17 - His Hero Is Gone  -  Leash
18 - Peechees  -  Maintenance Free
19 - Cockney Rejects  -  Flares N Slippers
20 - Falling Sickness  -  Seein' Stars
21 - Dag Nasty  -  Trying
22 - Crumbs  -  Scott And Jane
23 - Ejected  -  East End Kids
24 - 88 Fingers Louie  -  Something I Don't Know
25 - Anti Nowhere League  -  For You
26 - Crucial Youth  -  Shave Clean
27 - Boris The Sprinkler  -  West of The East
28 - Smears  -  Honey Jar
29 - Nobodys  -  Fuck You Too
30 - Chron Gen  -  Jet Boy Jet Girl

 Punk, Bitch

the twisted geography of #truedetective

True Detective Season 2 was an unmitigated disaster. A riveting one, but still, a disaster. With the benefit of hindsight, I tried to recap the season for Wifey. I got two sentences in before I confused myself and had to abort mission. I've been told  by the internet that it reached the "so-bad-it's-good" threshold, but I maintain it motored right past that marker and did a full 360 back to simply bad. It did have some redeeming qualities, primarily the unintentionally (maybe?) hilarious dialogue (the unanimous winner = “It’s like blue balls, in your heart.”

But the main problem I had, the thing that had me shouting at my TV, was not the ludicrous, unintelligible plot. It was Nic Pizzolatto's weird geography of the West Coast.

1. The story acts like it's totally no big deal to travel from Ventura County to southern Los Angeles. It's an hour fifteen from Oxnard to Vernon with Google painting the route blue. With traffic? You're looking at at least two hours. If you want to argue they were working from closer in Ventura County, fine, but I distinctly remember there being coastline involved, and the distance from there is virtually identical. But the show acts like these places are just down the road from each other.

2. At one point during the whole "environmentally damaged properties near the high speed rail route" storyline, they visit Fresno. Now aside from the fact that Fresno is a good three hours from Fresno on a good day, the picture they paint of Fresno is some bucolic mountainside farming area.

This is not what Fresno County farmland looks like:

This is what Fresno County farmland looks like:

Are there areas of Fresno county out in the foothills that could look like the first picture? Sure. But that's not where any proposed high speed rail line would go.

3. One of the crimes in the story takes place in the hippy enclave of Guerneville. Officers show up there immediately. Except Guerneville is 7 hours away by car and 2 hours by plane (plus renting a car and driving a few more hours). The show doesn't necessarily need to mention all this travel, but someone from the east coast must be assuming this is all in the same area, since travel is not mentioned at all.

4. There's also a lot of casual mentions of heading to Oregon. Sounds nice. Except that's an 11 hour drive. If you want to get out of the state quick, head east! You can make Nevada and Arizona in a few hours.

5. Possibly the most baffling case of geographical confusion occurred in the finale. Velcoro finds a tracker on his car, in Los Angeles. He drives to plan his confrontation, and ends up in a grove of what look to me to be redwoods, where he meets his ultimate demise. The news reports of his death indicate Porterville. Well, there are no redwoods in Porterville. But if you head east into the mountains, there are. From Los Angeles to the Trail of 100 Giants in Kern County, it's 3.5 hours. Am I supposed to assume Velcoro just so happened to have a full tank of gas (though the Dodge Charger does get pretty good freeway mileage) and they just yada yada yada's a three and a half hour drive? Well they yada yada yada'd longer drives, so I guess I answered my own question.

All in all, the show treated the enormous state of California like it was Rhode Island. Geography - the most ridiculous aspect of a ridiculous show.