TOBY PETZOLD

By way of a link from Glenn Reynolds, read this New York Times account of one of my favorite corporate citizens:

In March 2007, Circuit City came up with a plan to confront softening sales and competition from online and offline retailers: fire the most talented, experienced employees.

Of course, those workers were the retail chain’s single most important point of difference from the legion of Internet retailers and general merchandisers, but in a single stroke, Philip J. Schoonover, the chief executive of Circuit City, wiped out that future.

As a pal of mine used to say when I described a particularly boneheaded course of action I had pursued, “How’d that work out for you, buddy?”

For Circuit City, not so great. The “wage management initiative” erased morale, both for employees and the folks who shopped there. Sales sank after the one-time gain from the layoffs. And last week, the company sought bankruptcy protection.

I strongly approve of Circuit City’s imminent journey down the crapper. That company is a lot of thieving bastards. That’s a fact in your Library of Congress. They sold me a cassette adapter for a portable CD player in my old Honda probably a decade ago and —long story short— it completely disabled my car stereo. Did I have any recourse? Fuck no. Did I fantasize about choking me some bitches like Wayne Brady? Yes. Yes, I did.

Retailers who don’t stand behind what they sell are nothing but thieves.

I am pleased to say that I have never since that incident gone into a Circuit City. I shred or toss their mailers as soon as I see them and I immediately flip the channel when one of their ads comes on. They are dead to me and, soon enough, to us all.

Man, I cannot get rid of this song! I love it, but it’s been owning my ass all day.

Could be worse, though. Could be like the time I had “Gypsies, Tramps, and Thieves” in my head for like a couple of days. Jesus!

I’ve had Bow Wow Wow’s “I Want Candy” in my head all day.

It must be some measure of Ellas McDaniel’s power that he actually owns a particular beat. Thank you, sir. You are an American treasure.

I’m starting to notice that I don’t know who the hell a lot of these people in show business are. Amy Winehouse? Hannah Montana? The last dozen or more people who have won some reality/talent show? This is an age of such artistic vapidity and turdliness that it can only be understood as a manifestation of my own personal psychosis.

Or do these things exist outside of me? Have I penetrated some existential frontier where other human beings give a monkey-flung handful of poo about Amy Winehouse and her drug abuse? When I know more about you as a fucked-up loser than as a maker of music, I’m not going to regret my indifference to either.

I’m done with hearing about shit I don’t care about in places online where I have no choice but to go. Fuck nonsense.

I am very sorry to hear of the too-early death of Dan Fogelberg.

His music helped to define a certain period of my life that was pretty painful, but I would never hold that against him, of course. I was a kid and he was a sad, but thoughtful, singer of some very beautiful songs. His music definitely had a big impact on my brother Jimmy, I recall. And one of the prettiest girls I knew in high school once told me that “Longer” was her most favorite song. It’s nice that I never forget to remember that whenever I hear it.

The horns from “The Leader of the Band” were the first strains of music to enter my mind when I heard the sad news tonight, so I should think that’s the power of art, my friends. Something noble and beautiful that survives and even justifies you.

What a good fate!

I didn’t like Ben Harper’s interpretation of the “Star-Spangled Banner” at the start of tonight’s basketball game in Cleveland. It sounded almost untalented, although I understand how that might just be me expecting to hear Jimi Hendrix’s version of it from the morning of Monday, 18 August 1969.

Dang! It sure gets quiet when the Spurs score a basket!

One of the best aspects of The Sopranos is the soundtrack of each episode. This past week’s episode ended with this sort of rapid-fire, Mancunian-accented rap-hop track called —I now know— “Evidently Chicken Town.”

I knew I had heard something very like this song before, but couldn’t quite place it. But as soon as I googled up the lyrics to it and saw a picture of their author —John Cooper Clarke— I remembered that he is the guy walking around in the intro to the 1979 Joy Division video “Transmission.”

Check it out. It’s great stuff.

I like this bit from Jody Rosen’s obituary of James Brown at Slate:

Listen closely, with a good pair of headphones, and the thousand pointillist details of Brown’s genius open up to you: the shifting accents and registers, the variations in dynamics and attack, the disconcerting spaces and silences, the beats piled atop beats. But, of course, that genius is never more apparent than when the headphones come off and you lose yourself in the steamy blur of a packed dance floor.

I have always been fascinated by James Brown. Either because I enjoyed his music or because his personal life was so damned weird. But, like all truly great American artists, Brown’ s contribution to his culture is beyond question. His music is beautiful (dig the cavernous sounds of “It’s a Man’s World”) and fun (”Sex Machine” is actually infectious). Sometimes, you’ve got to —as the once-great Eddie Murphy knew— jump back and kiss yourself.

The incoherent poet. The Mercury on rims, flinging sparks, rubber, and mad grooves. The outsized motor and the overboard man of passion, motion, and funk. Thank you for making the engagement, James Brown, and so to make the bridge.

I can’t believe that Dr Pepper is using “Turning Japanese” by The Vapours in its latest TV ad. Is it so old a song that, not only is it new again, but is exempt from the charge of both vulgarity and racism?

I think that’s a good thing —and am sorry that there would be a reason why I should ever have thought otherwise.

As is well known, my personal discovery of any popular piece of art officially marks the beginning of its demise and relegation to unhipness, but I still must say that I am absolutely smitten with the song “Catastrophe” by the group Rainer Maria. I only know new music through the medium of the recently-introduced music video channel we have here on Austin cable, and that is how I found this song (as I also found Gnarls Barkley’s song “Crazy” not too long ago).

“Catastrophe” is a wonderful moment of songwriting genius. I don’t know if the two dark-haired girls in the video are just actresses playing out the lyrics, but the singer of the song is a beautiful young woman with a very rich and feminine voice.

I hope she is the writer of the song, too.