stuff

So my son Daxton Drake Reid was born on April 15, 2008, at 9:12 PM. He's pretty cool.
Here is a link to some pictures:
http://picasaweb.google.com/rev.colreid/DaxtonDrakeReid
I don't want to be one of those gushy new parents that can't stop talking about their kid... but I will say that while many people claim their kid is the cutest baby in the world, they are all wrong because mine actually is the cutest baby in the whole world.

Anyway, I came here to talk about the new Donnas album, titled "Bitchin'". I have been listening to it lately, and while it doesn't quite reach the glorious heights of some past efforts such as, oh, "Skintight" or "Spend the Night" (OK, let's just go ahead and say it: all their albums except for the self-titled one and "Gold Medal" rock like crazy.... sit down and listen to "American Teenage Rock 'N' Roll Machine" and tell me you don't grin during the while thing) I am finding that I am really enjoying it quite a bit. The urge to try to "be serious" was expunged with the "Gold Medal" album and "Bitchin'" has the girls back to doing what they do best: turning cock rock on its head and having fun. Where "Spend the Night" explored cock rock of the late seventies, "Bitchin'" does the same with the same genre in the mid-eighties. I have read a lot of reviews that point out the obvious references to Motley Crue (um, the album cover is basically a purple version of "Too Fast for Love"), Def Leppard, and Joan Jett, but they all miss what I feel is the strongest similarity of them all: this album sounds like Judas Priest's "Turbo" album with less synth noises. And there is nothing wrong with this. The polish, the cheese, and the unapologetic straight-up dumb fun of "Turbo" suits the Donnas well. The lyrics aren't as entertaining as they were on earlier albums, but the songs are incredibly catchy and are full of musical
allusions to familiar songs, artists, and sounds of the mid-eighties ("Wasted", for example, has some distinct Billy Idol/Steve Stevens sounds in it). The only oddball track in the formula is the opener - the title track that opens feeling like "War Pigs" with some kind of back masking in it before pounding into something from "Love Gun" and then exploding into an all-too-short ball of ass-kicking fury. Anyway, if you like fun, dumb rock music, then I recommend this. I am finding this album incredibly addictive.