Bramble Tamble

On the front page of MSN.com yesterday was a subhead that read "8 hot new Canadian pop acts."

And, lo and behold, one of the "hot new ... pop acts" from Canada was Bramble Tamble's favorite active band, Sloan.

I don't have to tell you that that entire subhead, save for the "Canadian act" part, was wrong.

Funny nonetheless. (Another note about the article: isn't Ron Sexsmith, like, 70? Seems like he's been around forever too.)

Here's the article. Of course, it doesn't have the headline that I referenced above, making me look delusional. But I swear that MSN.com had that subhead on its front page.

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Hair.

I used to have it down to my ass till I started losing it on top, and there's nothing tackier, save for wet paint. So I got it cut, short. (It didn't help that people who saw me from back in a store kept calling me "ma'am," and the security sweeps in stores when I'd come through were also a blow to my fragile self-esteem.) Now I try to keep it shaved clean, a dodgy proposition at times thanks to my laziness; when it grows back in, I have what I like to call "pedophile hair."

Mrs. Tamble had long stringy sloppy dark brown hair when I met her. After we had Son, she decided that long hair was for pain junkies, since Son treated her hair as a handle for pulling himself up. So she got "mom hair" – short, off the shoulders. Not bad.

She's taken the next step in her hair evolution, getting it colored a deep red/burgundy. I believe the proper term is "cinnamon." I dig it.

I still have pedophile hair because I haven't shaved my head in a month or so.

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Speaking of my favorite Canadian popsters (ha), Ruby Tuesday's has got to be the coolest restaurant chain in the world because I was there the other night and – what the hell? – heard a Sloan song there. I checked outside to see if I saw pigs flying or other signs of the world ending.

The song in question was "False Alarm," from their sadly lackluster Action Pact album. Well, "sadly lackluster" was my initial and ongoing reaction to it. I revisited the album after hearing "False Alarm" at Ruby Tuesday's, and I have to say: It strikes a different vibe from other Sloan albums; the songcraft is still a little weaker, but the vibe it strikes is what I like to call a "homemade highballs/Very Best of Foghat/getting drunk at a party and giving blowjobs to complete strangers on a burgundy vinyl couch" vibe.

(Funny how my spellchecker didn't alert me about "blowjobs" there, but it complained about "handjobs" in my original edit of this piece.)

But you know exactly what I mean. Don't pretend that you don't.

(Editor's note: Isn't it funny how I've abandoned every pretense of this being a family-friendly blog?)

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Now playing: Sloan - False Alarm
via FoxyTunes