Bill and Cathy went rollerblading in the park last Saturday. Bill liked the speed, and Cathy liked the workout. They both got tan! What great exercise! "And honey, it's low-impact," Bill said. "Dr. Vishkneeofski said low-impact sports are easier on your knees." That day, they decided to take up the sport more seriously. "Why don't you look into that, Cath?"

"Ooh! The Gravity Games are this weekend!" Cathy signed the two of them up for the aggressive Men's and Women's Street and Vert competition, an inline skating tournament. The entrants skate around the course, executing jumps, grabs and grinds. Vert skaters drop into the half-pipe and launch themselves into a series of sick spins and flips.

Meanwhile, in the vert wing of Innerstate Memorial Hospital, Dr. Vishkneeofski shook his head as he looked out the window at the trail of knotted bedsheets. He'd have to send Bill and Cathy the fact sheet on low-impact activities. Quasi's Featuring "Birds" was left playing on the boombox.

Later that evening, Dr. Vishkneeofski and his wife, Dr. Vishkneeofski, were engaged in a lovers' quarrel when Dr. Vishkneeofski brought out Featuring "Birds". "You'll like this-- Sleater-Kinney's Janet Weiss drums with her ex-husband, Sam Coomes of Heatmiser!" The quirky Northwestern keyboard-driven pop made them forget all about the Blue Cross-Blue Shield advisory panel's split on both Viagra coverage and the "laser surgery situation." Dr. Vishkneeofski asked Dr. Vishkneeofski to look into this Quasi, and Dr. Vishkneeofski promptly left to purchase more Coomes-related material. He came home with the Donner Party's Complete Recordings 1987-1989. Dr. Vishkneeofski was always thorough.

The two-disc anthology was stuffed with Sam Coomes' pre-Quasi work. Its uplifting and naive vert-folk-pop made for good drinking music, but it lacked the sparseness and lyrical focus of Quasi's work. By the end of the first disc, the Vishkneeofskis craved the audibly witty lyrics Coomes penned in later years. On the Donner Party's recordings, vocals were swallowed by matching keyboard melodies, and after 30 or 40 tracks it all sounded the same.

The fact is, this compilation includes 53 tracks. Yes, 53. That's a non-divisible number. It was released because fans of Sam Coomes' more current work asked for it. But even if these songs genuinely sounded different from each other-- and they don't-- 53 would still be too many. It would still be indivisible. Scraps of Bill, Cathy and Dr. Vishkneeofski dirtied the room. The Donner Party album continued.

Dr. Vishkneeofski thought the record might be the perfect soundtrack for a typical night at the neighborhood pub, or any place you listened more to each other than to the background music. Sure, you might miss classic lyrics like, "First like take your shin and you cram it down your throat/ Then you shove your head up your ass till you choke/ Then you fuck yourself up your nose/ And bleed to death in your puke." But Bill, Cathy and Dr. Vishkneeofski did not speak. They lay still on the floor (in the Andes), decked out in hot rugby outfits, as simple rock anthems with funny titles like "Nutty Booty" and "Blue Starch Acid for Baby's New Tooth" persevered through the carnage. Still, it was virtually impossible to remain interested after more than two straight hours of unvarying late-'80s folk-pop, and they soon forgot about rollerblading altogether.

-Kristin Sage Rockermann