Put this in your earhole

Fire up your iPods, kids!  My very talented and dear friend David Zaidain has a new album titled "The Art of Forgetting."  It is for sale at Amazon RIGHT NOW for a whopping $6.99 so go buy it.  All the cool kids are doing it.  Even me!  That's right, Dave is making me buy it so it's not like I have totally whored myself out.

I love this album.  You will like it.  I'm totally biased but it rocks.  So far my favorite tracks are "Shedding Skin" and "The Man Next to Me."  

Need more reasons other than "Kayteadee told me to do it?"  Well, look at this cool cover art by Paul Jutton.  

 

Do you still need more reasons?  Ya'll are a tough sell.  Okay, then, you should know that Dave self-produced this album.  Paid out of his own pocket to make it.  That's pretty fucking respectable.  In fact Dave is such an all-around great guy that when he moved to DC he stayed with the LSH and I when he was trying to find a apartment and HE IS STILL SPEAKING TO US.

So go buy the album, and if you are in the DC area, you can catch him live at Asylum on April 28.  

 

Sons of Anarchy 2.13 Na Triobloidi Recap

Before the recap begins, let’s have a moment of silence to mark the passing of Half-Sack Sack Half-Sack. …….  We’ll remember you for the MILF chubby Gemma gave you, your boxing prowess, your ability to remove a deer from a BMW with a chainsaw, and your fortitude for cleaning up a toilet defiled by Piney at the club house.  Now, who wants the job of informing Cherry of the news? {…. crickets…}

Half_Sac Pic Source Here 

On with the recap of Na Triobloidi!  In which, Kurt Sutter cuts out my heart with a rusty grapefruit spoon and I am smiling the entire time.  Watching Na Triobloidi is sort of like reading Crime and Punishment. OMG I’m such an ass kisser.  I just compared Sons of Anarchy to Crime and Punishment. WTF?  You know it is really, really good.  Brilliant, in fact.  But at the end you feel like the dog that got drug behind the car in National Lampoon’s Vacation.  Just without the whole being dead part.  And this is not to say that I am bitching and moaning.  Not. At. All.  I have a huge amount of respect for any show/book/movie  that can create amazing characters that you care deeply and then put them through these awful ordeals so we can see how they make it through.  To do anything less is cheating.  This is why I don’t watch CBS.      

Okay, before I digress any further…  The finale of Sons of Anarchy opens up with three rats eating away at a crow set to the tune of Burn This Town by Battleme you can get it here.  In my mind, the rats are the Principal Zobelle and affiliates, the ATF Bitch, and the Irish. The thing about all three of these rats eating away at SAMCRO is that they are all interrelated.  They aren’t isolated to one particular thing.  Zobelle was in bed with the Feds and the Irish.  The ATF was in bed with the Irish trying to get Zobelle.  They all picked over SAMCRO’s carcass while the boys were fighting amongst themselves about whether Clay or Jax had the bigger dick.  By my scorecard that leaves us with:  The World 1, SAMCRO 0.    

Rat Photo from @high_score 

Was anyone actually surprised that Zobelle was in cahoots with the FBI?  He has been walking around like his shit doesn’t stink all season long.  He had the trump card in his pocket the entire time but it proved ineffective by the way SAMCRO swiftly removed his layers of insulation.  And OMFG what an amazing sequence of the Sons going to war, Unser’s truck opening up with Piney yelling Ye-Haw! and then opening fire.  It was brazen and satisfying.  However, Zobelle still slipped away.  That’s okay, Budapest can have him.  It will give him a nice place to adapt and adjust.  Really, Budapest is incredibly nice even though Zobelle really deserves a cave in Kandahar.  Zobelle’s escape is Darwin’s theory of evolution at work.  The strong survive.  The weak are shot to death on the shitter in a tattoo parlor.  You know, like Westin was.  A quick question:  who, when about to disappear gets their kid out of child services to go get some more ink?  Like, has Westin ever heard of getting an ice cream cone?  Jax does the deed.  Happy is proud (which gives me the creepers) and Jax seems less than satisfied.  Maybe he built it up in his head too much?  Maybe doing bad things doesn’t feel so good?

ATF Bitch.  (Sigh)  This is the second time this season where someone has been given the chance to off her and hasn’t.  Let’s face it.  She is a bad cop but a smart bitch.  Hale, who got all righteous about saying that he is a cop who is actually bound by the law but he also turned Zobelle out so I don’t think he’s going to qualify for law enforcement sainthood anytime soon.   Anywhoo…  ATF Bitch sets up Eddie the Weasel and then kills him when he tries to run away.  When Gemma offs Polly, motivated because God put the girl in her path to kill (um, paging megalomania and delusions of grandeur) ATF Bitch puts both killings on Gemma.  Once again we see ATF Bitch acting the way a president of an MC would.  I don’t really think we can consider the ATF as anything but another gang—unless Stahl is replaced.  So you’ve had two murders pinned on your, WWGD?  Go on the lam with Unser, of course.  I kinda like the thought of Gemma and Unser on the run in a police cruiser.  Warm and fuzzy, yes.  Inconspicuous, not exactly.

 Finally, the Irish.  Cameron Hayes mistakenly thinks that Gemma has killed Eddie the Weasel (oh yeah, we have you to thank for that too Stahl).  In a gut-wrenching sequence, he kills Half-Sack, terrifies Tara, and makes off with Able.  A son for a son.  Good lord.  I get why he was crying—holding that baby boy probably made him think of his own son as an infant and all that has been lost.  People do crazy shit when they are grief-stricken and can blame someone.  You know, like kidnapping a baby.  Jax’s baby.   Yeah, that’s gonna end well for Cameron.  Season 3, here we come!  You know in like 9 months. 

Loose Ends

• Luanne’s murder hasn’t been dealt with yet and Georgie Caruso is at large prowling the red light district in Bangkok for talent
• Whatever happened to those outstanding gun charges from the raid on the dinner of the faithful?
• Um.  So what the fuck happened to Darby
• Tara tried to talk Gemma out of killing Polly.  Pot, Kettle, meet Black. 
• Opie seems to have traded up for a bandana. 
• SAMCRO is all about family.  Too bad their antagonists aren’t. 
• My only minor complaint:  there was no humor in this episode.  It was all heavy.  It needed just one little scene with Juice.  Just one. 
• Oh, and last but not least Otto got his revenge.  But man, he is never, ever going to sit at the table in Church again.   Maybe at his wake.  

Sons of Anarchy 2.09 Fa Guan, Recap

Please stay tuned while kayteadee finishes singing along and clapping her hands to the song at the end of Fa Guan, “Since I Lay My Burden Down”

Glory glory, hallelujah


Since I lay my burden down
…

All my sickness will be over


When I lay my burden down…


All my troubles will be over


When I lay my burden down...
.

Lord, I'm feeling so much better


Since I lay my burden down…


And now we join your recap of Sons of Anarchy, already in progress…. previously on As The Harley Rumbles, Luanne was killed, SAMCRO was unraveling, and Chibs was recuperating in the hospital with the “help” from his estranged wife.  So, this episode was all about laying down the burdens that some of the characters have been carrying around this season:  Opie and the loss of Donna, Jax’s isolation from the club and guilt over Luanne’s death, and Gemma’s rape.  Some burdens are still brewing though, and I’m talking to you, Tig.

            So, under the auspices of putting some not-so-gentle pressure on the judge overseeing the INS case against a Hamas gunrunner, Opie, Jax, Bobby Elvis, and Tig pay a visit to the presiding judge as a favor to Lin’s crew (and now we all know that fa guan means judge in Chinese).  When the boys in SAMCRO discover that their emotional leverage has gone down the tubes along with the judge’s son’s drug problem they are confronted with a bigger task than they realized.  Opie, who is on point, presses ahead using the junkie son as leverage and it is Opie’s undoing—in a completely good way.  Opie has a full on release/breakdown after coming to the realization that not everyone can/will protect their family from the evils that exist in the world.  And that whole exchange is all about Opie—it isn’t about the judge.  It is simultaneously liberating and heartbreaking. And just like great sex, Opie needs a cigarette afterwards.  And we see the burden of Donna’s death and his anger lifted off of his shoulders at the end when he lays one on Lyla while his daughter nearly does a faceplant on the breakfast table.  BTW, can I just say that Lyla is really growing on me?  She doesn’t want to be taken care of, likes Opie and his kids, puts up with that bitchace snob doctor, and seems very sweet you know inspite of being a Prius-driving porn queen with a coke habit but hey, nobody’s perfect.

             While trying to find another avenue to sway the judge, Jax turns to an incredibly distraught Tig (more on Tig in a bit) and dispatches Bobby Elvis to find some leverage to use against the judge.  I can’t decide whether Jax’s burden is the MC, Clay, guilt over Luanne’s death, emoangst over Donna’s death, or the burden of being the anointed son to bring change to SAMCRO.  Maybe it is all of them.  Only Kurt Sutter sitting on top of Mount Outlaw knows for sure.  Here’s the thing though, for all of Hamlet’s Jax’s talk about seeing the big picture, he is so blind with rage that he can’t see the Ima/Darby set up or the fire at Caracara is caused by anyone other than Clay.  This boy is too far into the forrest to see the trees.  For all of Jax’s earnestness about the big picture, he can’t see the one that Zobelle is using to stymy SAMCRO at every turn.  But man, does that boy have a fine, fine ass.  I knew it was going to be a good episode when I saw the nudity warning.   But ultimately Jax lays his complicated mix of burdens when he decides to go Nomad.  Yeah, we’ll see how well that works. 

            And last but certainly not least, Gemma lays the burden of her rape down at the end of the episode with the help of Unser, some good gospel revival music, and a curious homeless woman we have seen before.  Her name?  I shit you not:  It is “Homeless Woman.”  We saw her in the graveyard with Jax—apparently she had given him a blanket and he gave her a hoodie, touching; we saw her begging in Charming when Gemma may have misheard her say “Able will provide for us.”  And this time when she enigmatically while wearing Jax's hoodie said, “Everyone knows me,” to Gemma outside of the church.  Who/what is she?  My theory goes like this…  You know Hamlet is the overarching superstructure for Sons of Anarchy.  Well, my take on Hamlet—in addition to being a classic tragedy— is that it is a fantastic ghost story.  All of the characters are haunted, in one way or another, by King Hamlet’s ambiguous ghost.  Hell, the ghost scares the shit out of Horatio aka Opie, Bernardo, and Marceuls in the opening scene.  Anyways…before this becomes a 10^th grade English class.  I think that the homeless woman is a ghost.  And she is ambiguous.  And she will be ambiguous for the rest of the series.  I think it is a nod to Shaeskpeare. Just my opinion.  And ya’ll know what those are like, right?

            So let’s look at the burden still being carried.  AND I AM LOOKING AT YOU TIG.  My, my, my.  Tig is not handling killing Donna well.  At all.  Clay is cutting him out. Tig seems to want to protect Opie from the abyss. Our poor Tigger lost it when Opie had his meltdown.  Like the dude is weeping uncontrollably in his ski mask and can’t step up.  He is falling apart.   Not exactly the creepy sociopath who fucks livestock and corpses any more, is he?  How does Tig lay his burden down?  I have no earthly clue.  But it will be interesting television that is for sure. 

Remainders

• Chibs who I can’t understand a word that comes out of his mouth and all of my inlaws are Irish (even though Chibs is Scotish) and I deal with thick accents on a regular basis, the estranged wife and the ominous Jimmy O.  I smell the IRA coming and it doesn’t smell like Boby Elvis’ bannana bread baking
• When in the hell is Bobby Elvis going to connect the dots and put the dead wife stuff together?  Come on, man.
• Clay wants to do gun deals with Hamas?  ATF will be the least of his law enforcement problems.
• Will Darby and Chucky survive the fire at Caracara?  Only time will tell...  

And let’s roll out on Furry Lewis playing “Lay my Burden Down.” Why?  Well, because I’m partial to the old school blues and it is a damn good song.