The Last Candle

For my 24^th Day o’ Birthday on this fine 31^st of Mai, I decided a little indulgence was order. “A little” was the plan, at least…but when the menu includes a Donut Sundae from Zingerman’s Roadhouse, the involved consumer has left Littleville far behind, blown straight through Middlesex, and finally finding a tidy parking spot within a Lardtown lot.

The assailant at large:

Looks fairly nondescript, really. It sure didn’t taste that way, as the Donut Sundae included:

• Roasted peanuts. Freshly roasted, I think, or at least warmed up a bit, as the meats were still hot when I was putting the thing together. That’s why I order from Zingerman’s, of course: they keep the nuts hot.
• JACK DANIELS’ LIQUOR SAUCE. No, really — it’s the golden stuff. Okay, I’m probably not fooling anyone: There wasn’t any alcohol in the sauce, but it really was purported to be chez Jack D. Still, the last time I tried bourbon, it didn’t taste like sugar mixed with honey mixed with cinnamon and butter and maybe powdered seahorse. Then again, I’ve never had Jack Daniels.
• Whipped cream. Good whipped cream, too, not that fake stuff they give you at Big Boy, which is probably closer to whipped margarine with a touch of water.
• Vanilla gelato. Oh, it’s in there, colluding with the cream and the Jack sauce. For those who don’t know what gelato is, it has the texture of ice cream with none of that subtle slightly-crunchy milk/water crystal feel that ice cream has. And more creamy, but that’s probably Old Man Zingerman’s doing, as he was never one to skimp on the cream.
• A donut. In a deft move to coordinate with the heated peanuts, the donut was warm, too, and deep-fried, if the crunchy quarter-thick crust was any indication. And yeasty and buttery and migod.

But you know what’s missing? The fargin’ cherry! No wonder the dish looks a little drab — it’s missing that essential aesthetic red button on the spire. The lack is a little sad: Zingerman’s will preheat the peanuts, but completely whiff on the cherry, a staple of ice cream-style desserts since the Battle of Sundae, Rome, 500 BC. Truly.

• The FTC finds that gas prices after Katrina were due to the market and not price gouging. Besides this (relatively) good reality check, I’m spurred to going back to reading that Sowell book I’ve picked up and put back down about five times.

  (Link courtesy of the National Association of Manufacturers blog, who have an agenda worth following.)

• The Mega Man Effect is a small application for Mac OS X that grabs the icon and title of a launching application and displays them in a Mega Man-esque boss fight banner. That is, it was previously only for OS X: A Windows version is now available. Great fun while it lasts, which was about after launching Notepad five times. For great comedy, Mega Man Effect even Effects the uninstaller!
• Currently Netflix’d: this one, brought to you by that guy who brought you this other one. Both excellent, although both are a bit disturbing (the excellence and the disturbing-ness are mostly exclusive — mostly).

It is Tuesday. Therefore, I will now gripe.

The Bards have released the name and album art for the upcoming album: A Twist in the Myth. This is good, because pretty much anything new Blind Guardian is good.

…Except maybe that name. And that album art.

Regarding the title, it’s the “Twist” that bothers me. Yes, fantasy embellishment and fun and all that. But what, if not exactly, even remotely, does it mean? The myth part fits in with Guardian’s geek metal, super-storyteller history, but I cannot for the life of me figure out how to imagine what a myth with a twist is supposed to be.

Are we talking about a twisted myth? That sounds a little bit better — I’d say Blind Guardian’s made plenty of songs with myths twisted (or distorted, warped, whatever).

But a twist in a myth? I can’t see it. Grabbing ahold of two extremes of a story and rotating them doesn’t make the middle clear — still a myth in there somewhere, but I can’t see where the twist fits in.

Or maybe the title is a discrete message from the Bards’ indicating that the middle songs on the album were recorded when they were tripping on acid. Prepare thyself for progression!

Or something.

And that album art is just plain…ordinary. It’s part Imaginations From the Other Side, and a little Somewhere Far Beyond, with the palette filtered through a festering prehistoric bog and throwing in the classic dragon for good measure. Not a very strong showing — A Night at the Opera’s insane orchestra pit was better than Twist’s art. Additionally, the title at the bottom of the art appears at first look as “A Twist in the Muth,” until you notice that little tail on the Y hangin’ out quietly below.

Nonetheless, I’m absolutely confident that the new album will be another excellent outing by the Bards. Even after lead Hansi proclaimed that the new stuff was going to be “exciting!” and “fresh!”, sowing doubts among the Circle of Bards that the frontman had lost it and gone over to the dark side of Pop, the single Fly dispelled those ill words and winds.

Next to be brought by the winds — favorable winds, of course: the release date. And the release!

The post Tarja phase of Nightwish, as Tuomas and the rest of the boys have yet to replace the diva with a new set of pipes. The downside of the lack of a frontwoman is, of course, that there’s no ETA in sight for the next album.

One upside is a thread on the Nightwish forums of many a fine lass (and few a fine, uh, laddy), while covertly auditioning for the Finnish front-spot for the band behind the scenes, exhibiting their various splendid talents for the rest of the forum-goers and us vocally-challenged to enjoy. Here’s a lovely lot, complete with referenced Nighwish covers:

• Representin’ Sweden is Once There Was with arrangements of Passion of the Opera and the (supposedly) difficult Stargazers.
• Blue Copper with a beautiful version of Bless the Child (and some dorsal nudity in the “album art” — that’s fair-enough warning)
• Meliesa, crooning a vaguely country but nonetheless comely acoustic rendition of Nemo. I like the slight arrangement changes in this one, especially in the vocals at the bridge towards the end of the song.

Enjoy!

…Yeah, that’s it. Give me a break — I’m coming off of a two-week vacation from the blog.