Extreme Waiting For The Punchline Cd

[Camie Fons]

In1995, Extreme might not have been seen as the "hip" band thatscored a hit with "Hole Hearted"; their next effort, III Sides To Every Story was seen as a bit of a commercialdisappointment. Gary Cherone and crew had two choices: Go thecommercial route and aim for the next hit single, or continuemaking concept albums and hope for the best.

With new drummer Mike Mangini in tow, Extreme chose the secondroad and made what turned out to be their most challenging album oftheir career, Waiting For The Punchline. While this is not the easiestalbum to get through (especially if you're paying attention to thelyrics), there are moments on this album that demonstrate how goodthe band was.

I don't claim to have perfect knowledge of the plot, but thealbum seems to be the tale of an atheist who comes to discover Godin his life, yet still has difficulty accepting what he has nowseen. Right there, you know this isn't an album aimed for radio -not with tracks titled "There Is No God," a song guaranteed to makePat Robertson cringe.

What might be lost in the "controversy" of the material is thefact that Extreme sound funkier than they had in a long time.Former drummer Paul Geary makes his final appearances with the bandon Waiting For The Punchline, and his drumming finally movedaway from the robotic beat he seemed to be keeping on III Sides To Every Story. Guitarist Nuno Bettencourtcontinues to prove that he knows how to shred when the moment callsfor it (though I did find myself wishing I heard a rhythm guitarduring some of his solos), bassist Pat Badger acts as the backbonefor the band's rhythm section. And Cherone? His vocals are aspowerful as ever; no surprise there.

What is surprising on Waiting For The Punchline is that it does seem difficult tofollow the story line. "Cynical" obviously seems to be people'scriticism of the protagonist for his agnostic ways, while "HipToday" and "Midnight Express," despite the latter featuring some ofBettencourt's best guitar work, don't really seem to fit in withthe story.

Be this as it may, most of the music contained therein is strongenough to keep your interest. Cuts like "Tell Me Something I Don'tKnow," "Leave Me Alone" and "Shadow Boxing" all demonstrate whyExtreme gained so many fans in their career. Still, others, like"Unconditionally" and "Evilangelist" don't live up to theirpotential.

This brings us to the hidden title track - the final, confusingpiece in the puzzle. Does the song mean to suggest that theprotagonist's "revelation" scenes have all been a cruel joke? Or isthe reason it was uncredited was because it didn't fit with thestory?

Whatever the case, many fans found themselves waiting for thepunchline; the album hardly set the charts on fire. After months ofrumors, Extreme finally was laid to rest after this album, withBettencourt pursuing a solo career and Cherone making the leap intothe lead singer/ejector seat in Van Halen.

For a moment, let's cast away the story that intertwines thesongs on Waiting For The Punchline. What you're left with is acollection of songs that, more often than not, hit the target, andhit it hard.

If you're a fan of Extreme, Waiting For The Punchline is probably already in yourcollections. If it isn't, it's still worth picking up. Just beprepared to give it several listens in order for everything to sinkin.

Whether Tiger Woods has hit rock bottom in his personal life nobody knows. Even if he never fouls up again, there's a good chance the tabloid press has been stockpiling and saving juicy tidbits from months past to dole out in accordance with the public appetite for scandal.

Bottom line, only three players outscored him over 72 holes. That's fairly astonishing, considering Tiger's Sunday tee shots were travelling as erratically as his Escalade did on the night that golf's greatest player first became a punch line.

Worse and worse, yet all the while Tiger climbed the leader board higher and higher, all the way up to a fourth-place tie with K.J. Choi, who was tied for the lead with eventual champion Phil Mickelson going into Amen Corner but couldn't keep it going.

The final-round scorecard that Tiger could barely stand to sign without holding his nose? It had a three-under 69 on it, which was two shots better than 54-hole leader Lee Westwood could manage on his pressure-packed trudge through the pines.

Fact is, Mickelson, with all that brilliant scrambling, bettered Tiger by just two strokes in Sunday's round alone. Two strokes isn't much of an edge considering one superstar was at something approaching peak performance and the other, thoroughly confused and disgusted, seemed ready to ditch his swing altogether and take a swat at playing left-handed.

What's more, the awkward house-of-mirrors atmosphere created by his own foul behavior off the course can't help but improve the next time he plays at the Quail Hollow Championship or the Players Championship or wherever it may be.

Those who want Tiger to win every event he plays will be out there cheering for him like always. Those who wanted him to suffer some sort of withering punishment were treated to exactly that on Sunday, and thus should be ready to move on a bit.

The contrast couldn't have been more extreme as Lefty and his loving family provided a scene worthy of the Hallmark Channel behind the 18th green. Nobody was waiting to give Tiger a hug, who until getting caught apparently lived his life like an audition for the Playboy Channel instead.

Someone in the group said there's only one way this comeback could have gone better, and that's if Tiger won the Masters. They know the truth, that their man can't possibly beat Mickelson off the course when it comes to presenting an admirable, family-man image. On the course, however, it won't be long before it's not even a fair fight again.

The stage is still set for a return to dominance, with the U.S. Open at Pebble Beach, where Tiger won by 15 strokes in 2000, and the British Open at St. Andrews, where he added two more of his 14 major titles.

The latest HiRISE images of the Phoenix polar lander, taken near Mars' northern summer solstice, show why we haven't heard from the spacecraft since it fell silent on November 2, 2008: it appears the solar panels have collapsed. No solar panels means no power; Phoenix is now silent forever.

In a previous post, I showed views of the Phoenix landing site taken during the active mission and also right after the mission ended; in addition, I showed two pictures taken just as spring's first sunlight was arriving at the landing site. Those pictures were very difficult to interpret because of the extremely low angle of the sunlight. Now I have two more pictures to add, taken as spring was giving way to summer; with better lighting, the changes that have come to the landing site are obvious and surprising. To give away the punch line, I'll quote Peter Smith from this week's Planetary Radio interview with Mat Kaplan: the spacecraft parts "are now turned into a Martian red. Mars is taking back the spacecraft."

Seen at low resolution, the most obvious features of the lander are the brilliant white parachute and the dark splat of the heat shield, as well as a subtler dark spray left behind by the retrorockets on the lander and backshell. Now look at the same area in January of this year, before the seasonal carbon dioxide frost had completely sublimated away:

I was only able to locate the spacecraft in this view using the distinctive pattern of the large east-west trough located just to the north of the lander -- that is, I had to know where it was in order to find it. Now look at the same site on May 7, just before the summer solstice:

The change from last Mars year is really quite shocking. The parachute and dark backshell splat seem to be totally gone. Now, the most distinctive things about the site seen at low resolution are the shadows thrown by the spacecraft and backshell. While they are not hard to see against the background plains, they are much smaller than the parachute and heat shield splat were, so it was much harder to spot the landing site location at low resolution.

The changes to the heat shield, backshell, and parachute are just as stark. The lesson that Mars enthusiasts should take away from this comparison is that it will be exceedingly difficult indeed to locate the missing Mars Polar Lander, even with the incredible eyesight of HiRISE. Even if Mars Polar Lander's entry, descent, and landing worked almost flawlessly, leaving it fairly intact on the surface with a heat shield, backshell, and parachute nearby, the intervening Martian polar winters may well have acted quickly to hide the spacecraft and its associated hardware from view.

I'm a little surprised I cannot make something out even as a texture change. A tau=4.4 dust storm in there would collapse to about a 6 micron thick layer of dust, give or take, and be almost as hard to see through. Remember that one of the most predictable types of dust storms on Mars is the receding-cap storm. As that CO2 goes away, a lot of dust is kicked up locally, and settles back down without going very far.

I'm curious if [the parachute] rotated around the backshell downwind, and maybe a purely textural feature could be found. However, the dust coating is most plausible if it has been immobilized, as it seemed to be during the mission.

So the Phoenix spacecraft really has sent its last data to Earth. But that doesn't mean that Phoenix has finished teaching us about Mars; far from it. Peer-reviewed science results are only beginning to be published from the mission. The things that Phoenix' instruments uncovered -- like the perchlorate salts just below the surface -- are stimulating research into the possibility for Martian life. And Phoenix' experiences -- both the successes and the challenges -- are informing the development of the next Mars mission, the Curiosity rover. Phoenix was the first of the new, low-cost "Scout" line of Mars missions, and it did its job, exploring a previously unexplored landscape, using previously untried methods (untried, at least, on Mars), succeeding at many things, failing at a few, developing valuable lessons to help us move forward in our exploration of the most Earthlike of alien worlds.

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