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Got comments?
Want to buy me something, because I'm just so goddamn nice?
Bitching continued...
Just scrap the stupid thing!
I've mentioned before my total disdain for the ISS or International Space STation, but now it's becoming a complete farce. News reports say now that NASA is officially planning to stop all research aboard the thing. This isn't really news to anyone who's been following this for a while, research had pretty much been stopped anyway, but now it's apparently the official policy. So, what are we spending hundreds of millions of dollars on? A big floating can in space where astronauts get sent to live for a few cramped miserable months, before being replaced. Whoop-dee-doo. Just scrap the damn thing already and put the money back into unmanned probes, they are what create real science and real exploration, the space shuttle and station are just so much astro-mastubation
Pimp My Tax Bill
Two of the TV
shows still on the air that I can watch without projectile vomiting
are Pimp My Ride and Overhaulin. Both shows share the same basic premise.
They take some loser's car and rebuild it into some amazing showpiece
on wheels that usually has all kinds of TVs and DVD players and bling
bling bling baby! At the beginning of each show, they usually make
a point of showing the car, which is generally one step from getting
crushed and remade into soda cans. They also make a point of saying
how this poor person is so poor that they can't even afford to replace
the gas cap, which is now a wet soaked tampon or something equally
creative. Somewhere in the process it's usually mentioned that the
person in question is deserving of this because they spend all their
free time training seeing eye dogs for the mute or helping old ladies
set the clocks on their VCR or something equally noble and selfless.
The two shows only really differ in the style that they infuse into
the cars in question. Overhaulin generally seems to deal with older,
more "classic" cars and tends to rebuild them from the ground
up, including new engines, frame, brakes, wheels, interior, amazing
paint job etc. Pimp My Ride is more skin deep in that most of their
show revolves around paint job, wheels and how many weird ass electronic
gadgets they can shoehorn into the car (most of which consist of idiotic
things like TV monitors in the headlights, and make absolutely no
sense).
When complete, these cars have increased in value by orders of magnitude.
If you remove the value of them being a one off custom and just factor
the cost of labor and materials, each car is probably well into the
multiple tens of thousands. So, my question is... How many of the
people who apply to be on these shows take into account who's going
to pay the taxes on all this stuff? By the time these cars are done,
somebody is going to owe the guvmint thousands and thousands of dollars.
Then there is the appraisal and the incredible increase in insurance
rates too. I have often wondered how many people, after seeing their
new "ride" for the first time and shitting themselves with
glee and after the cameras have gone off, suddenly realize that "Gee,
you know? I couldn't afford to get this friggin car a tune up, and
now I have to shell out 15 grand in taxes? Ummm... hello Ebay?".
Do they have someone on staff ready to get them a second mortgage
so they can pay for all this? I read the application from Overhaulin
online last week and it says in itty bitty teeny tiny print that all
those taxes have to be paid before you even get the car back. Congratulations,
you've just been Overhauled... Sucker!
Just as an aside, I've also noticed that a lot of those cars end up ugly as all hell too, I wonder if anyone has ever shown up to see it for the first time and just went "What the hell did you do? Jesus, that's uglier than Madonna without make-up! Put it back the way it was, are you guys all color blind or what? What the hell were you thinking?!!"
Guest
Rant I
was flinking around the TV last night with the remote. The Red
Sox had already lost their afternoon game, and there was literally
nothing on, save for the new wave of “your five minutes
of fame” TV shows. On every major network…within
the same hour, were the inane choices of shows with names I
can’t even remember. But - they all look exactly the same,
and try to build mind numbing tension by having so called celebrity
judges pick off the lowest common denominator and ridicule them
before sending them packing. |
Editor's note: I would just like to add, that I too find the Ford ad featuring this no talent hack from American Idol to be extremely annoying. So they go out and hire this guy because he wins a game show, and have him sing, what? Not a jingle, not a song, not a hit, just a few disconnected words. All the while dancing around in a circle like a homeless guy in a bus station looking for used soda cans. Way to tap into the cultural zeitgiest Ford, but his 15 seconds are already up, and were before your ad even hit the airways.
Diet Progress
Yes, I'm on a diet again. Seems like I say that a lot, but I really am right now. A lot of people ask me which diet I'm on, Atkins? South Beach? Weight Watchers? Nope, none of those. I'm on what I call the Pornography Diet. No, it doesn't involve watching pornography (though, of course, that doesn't hurt). No, I just use the "Justice Potter Stewart " standard, who famously said while ruling on obscenity on the Supreme Court in 1964 "I can't define it, but I know it when I see it" (OK, that's not an exact quote, but you get the idea). What I can eat or not eat is hard to define, but when it comes to what I CAN'T eat, umm... I know it when I see it. So, how am I doing? Well, I started on June 10th, mostly because we had a gig on June 9th, and by the end of it, I felt like I needed to be put on life support. Since then, I've lost roughly 23 lbs. I'm not keeping super accurate track, because I can get obsessive about that, and I'll go bonkers if it looks like I'm not losing enough. It's not easy to be a food addict in this culture. For example, I go to Burger King almost every day, since it's right down the street from where I work. When the diet began, I tried to switch to getting their ceasar salad instead of the usual pile of grease. So naturally, two things happened almost immediately, they stopped selling a ceasar salad, and they started selling a Quad-Stacker, a quadruple bacon cheesburger. No, I haven't had one, but if you think it's not a major battle every day to say no to it, you are not a fatty like me. I hate salad. I hate vegetables. I hate fruit. I'm a dedicated carnivore. I'm almost the opposite of a vegetarian. So, this isn't easy for me. The only thing that really keeps me on it is that I feel better already. I had really reached the point where things like walking were becoming dicey, and so the fact that I can go to Best Buy and get from one side of the store to the other without feeling like I just completed a marathon is something of a minor triumph. So, how far can I go? Who knows. It's a daily battle. There is no magic that happens where I'm suddenly free of the pull of hamburger helper. Just like the AA mantra, one day at a time (or was that a cheesy TV show with Valerie Bertinelli?). I do know that if I stop, I will gain the weight I've lost back so fast that I'll end up like one of those people you see on TV who can't get out of bed and end up on Maury Povich. Anyway, I'll report back here when I have more progress, or anti-progress. Till then, Mangia
Fixin a hole
A week or two ago, a woman was crushed to death when a ceiling panel collapsed in one of the new tunnels in Boston. Since then, there's been an unnending streasm of news stories about how they keep finding more problems with the bolts holding the cieling together and how it's going to cost a fortune to fix etc etc. My question is, why is there a ceiling there in the first place? If you look at the part of the tunnel where the panel collapsed, it looks exactly the same as the part with the ceiling, except it's a couple of feet higher. As far as I can tell, the celining is simply cosmetic, and not especially attractive anyway, so why not just get rid of it entirely? Does anyone driving through the tunnel ever stop and say "WHy, what a gorgeous ceiling, I wish I had that im my living room"? Nobody cares about the ceiling except to the extent that they don't want to be crushed to death by it. Remove it, and the problem is solved, at least until the tunnel itself collapses and the tunnels fill with Boston Harbor.
This space is my space, this space is your space
I joined myspace.com
the other day. I had never really thought much about it, but a friend
of mine is on it and she suggested it, so I figured, hey, what the
hell. My page is
here, if you're curious. Myspace is this sort of social networking
website where people can look up others with similar interests and
become "friends". Up to now I have 6 "friends"
on there. I knew all but 1 before I joined the thing. Apparently not
everyone has the same interest in strippers and naked women that I
do, though I always thought that was more universal.
Of course, the first thing I did when I signed up was to write a 700
word discourse on all my interests and all that crap on there. Then
after visiting a few other people's pages, I realized that nobody
really does that, so I deleted everything and just put the important
things. Like "I like beautiful women" and "Beautiful
women are good". Anyone who wants to know more about me that
that is probably selling something anyway. Every week or so, I get
a flood of "friend requests", usually from incredibly beautiful
girls who all happen to work for the same porno site. This would be
flattering if I didn't know it was all BS, still I'm impressed by
the tenacity of people who insist on using absolutely every opportunity
to get more porn on the internet. Not enough of that on there, lord
knows (by the way, I'm still trying to get my friend's porn site back
online, if anyone wants to volunteer to host it).
What amazes me are the people who have thousands of "friends"
on myspace. Do they actually correspond with them all? Have they ever
done anything more than hit the "add friend" button with
them? I don't know the answer. I found a couple of people I knew back
in the day on there and sent friend requests, but they never wrote
back, so I guess somebody is screening this crap.
Overall, I'm not real impressed by what is now the most heavily visited
site on the entire internet. Most of it is just bizarre inanity. I've
also noticed most people get some kind of custom coding for their
pages to make them look better. Trouble is, the coding almost never
seems to work right, so their pages end up looking like someone puked
text and graphics all over the place. But hey, we're not all HTML
experts and most of them are just there to get laid or find other
people who want to get laid anyway, so no great loss. As for me, I
think the whole thing is a little dopey, but that doesn't stop me
from reflexively checking my page every 2 minutes to see if anybody
has sent me a message. Hey, I have as much of a right to want 300,000
friends as anybody else, and on Myspace, nobody knows your surly.
P.S., I made a MySPace page for the band too. If you come see us, leave a comment on the show or whatever. I'll put some audio up on there when I finish mixing some of the songs we're working on in the Machine SHop right now.
You better fucking stop that goddamn swearing shit!!
The president said shit the other day. That's not to say that he said something bad about someone else, as in "He talked shit about", or that he made something up, as in "He's full of shit", or that he made a charming if somewhat coarse colloquialism, as in "He don't know shit from shinola". No, he said shit, as in the expletive, while referring to the situation in the middle east right now. So naturally the news reports since then have been all about what a filthy mouth Commander Cuckoo Bananas has. I find it interesting that this same news media could give a shit less that this idiot has lied about everything he's ever said since taking office, and taken this country into an illegal quagmire that's cost us almost 3000 troops and who knows how many civilians, who cares about that stuff? But Shit? He said shit? Holy shit!! The bumbling pseudo cowpoke from Texas by way of Connecticut has a dirty mouth, Egad!! Who'd have guessed that? Frankly, I'm surprised it hasn't come up before. If it hadn't been for the earpiece feeding him answers during the debates, I suspect his answer to every question would have been "Well Shit Senator Kerry, I just think you're a fucking dickhead". This is a guy who would have been at home living in Delta House when he was in college and has never left fratville behind. A day or so after uttering The Shit Heard Round The World, he walked into a room and grabbed the female chancellor of Germany by the shoulders and started giving her a brisk rubdown. I'm sure George Washington and Lincoln routinely did the same thing with female heads of state (well, they would have, had there been any). Isn't that what we want from the man who is the leader of the free world? The Commander in Chief of the largest military in the world? Weren't we told that all Americans want is a President that they'd like to have a beer with? Doesn't it make you proud when you see our shitkicker in residence aw shucks his way around the world and answer all the important questions given to him like a 14 year old making up excuses for why he doesn't have his math homework done? The sad thing is that half this country IS proud of this bumbling moron. Me? I don't give a shit.
Loss
A few of you have
inquired as to why I haven't been writing much lately. I do try to
make this page funny, at least, funny according to my own sense of
humor, which is admittedly pretty fucked. However, over the last 3
months or so I've had something happen in my life that has made it
difficult to think in any real humorous way. I won't bore you with
specifics, but the general story is that I've lost my closest friend.
I don't mean lost in the sense that she's dead, I mean lost in the
sense that she no longer is speaking to me. The really strange thing
about it though, is that I don't know why. Since she isn't talking
to me, she won't tell me, and I'll be damned if I can figure it out.
Like I said, the details aren't important, but it's made me do a lot
of thinking over the past few weeks.
Today, a woman was killed going through a tunnel in Boston. One minute
she was riding to the airport, the next minute, she was crushed under
3 tons of cement. All of us live from moment to moment and it can
all end literally at any second. This person I speak of was very important
to me, and the thought of going the rest of my life without her friendship
is hard to take. She was like my family in many ways. We weren't dating,
we weren't a "couple" in any sense of the word, we were
just very close friends. The idea that something could happen to her
or to me while we are estranged like this is something I don't like
to contemplate. I've done everything I can think of to try to save
the friendship, but I guess it's too late. If you've read this far,
I suspect you're wondering why I'm even writing it. I guess the answer
is... I don't know... I just feel like I need to say it out loud,
and this is as good a place as any. I hope none of you take relationships
like this for granted, because they can end in an instant, and that
may be all you ever get.
And, if my friend should ever read this (I don't think she does, but you never know)... I don't want this to be the end. It's been ten years, and we've been through so much together. Whatever it is that's caused this can be worked out, just talk to me. I miss you and I love you.
For the rest of you, I promise to start writing more when I feel like I can be in the least bit amusing again.
That's all.
Study: Fat people not more jolly
This was an actual headline on the CNN website. What this demonstrates is that someone out there in this great big world of ours was paid money to find this out. I could have saved them the effort, all they had to do is ask me. I've been fat most of my life, and I've been a miserable prick almost the entire time.The fact that someone thought that this was a topic worth studying in detail gives some idea into the decline of the sciences over the last decade or so. WHat, they've cured cancer? Heart disease? They've discovered a way to feed the starving billions? They must have if somebody couldn't come up with anything better to study than this. Of course fat people aren't jolly, that's like asking if people who've had their legs amputated miss ballroom dancing. Fat people are one of the few social groups that it's still OK to relentlessly mock and discriminate against. Does anyone really believe that fat folks wake up every morning thinking "Baby, I'm so happy, I think I'm going to order up an extra pizza today just because I want to be EVEN FATTER, because then I'll really hit nirvana. WHat I really want to know is, where can I sign up to get paid to do an idiotic study like this one. I could get a grant, take a year or two off from work and study the effects of pornography on erections, or on whether or not spreading oil over the surface of a highway will cause accidents. How about a study of whether using a flashlight makes it easier to see in the dark? Oh wait! I know, how about discovering the ratio of how many people stand in front of a speeding train to the number who get crushed into a bloody pulp? That should be worth a few grand. Do I sound jolly to you? Well, this is as jolly as it gets. Have a nice day dickwad!
Diver Down
I don't go swimming too often. This is due in part to the fact that
anytime I approach a body of water, Greenpeace and the New England
Aquarium show up in a vain attempt to "rescue me" and get
me back out to sea. You don't even want to know what they do to my
blowhole. Anyway, my mother has a swimming pool that I spend most
of the summer avoiding. I'm not a big fan of the water in general,
and I'm especially unfond of little round pools, where there is just
enough space to walk around and around in circles like a depressed
inmate at an asylum. The pool recently sprang a small leak however
and my mother asked if I could dive down and apply a patch. This would
have been problematic under any circumstances, since I have the bouyancy
of a mini marshmallow in hot chocolate, but I figured, what the hell,
I'll give it a shot. Imagine my surprise when I put on a mask (not
enough room in the pool for flippers) and tried to dive in.
What I discovered is that I'm no longer able to go under water. I
can't remember the last time I actually tried to swim under water,
but it's been years. I had never thought much about it though, and
assumed I'd just be able to hold my breath and instantly transform
into a pudgy Jaques Cousteau "I see ze leetle spot on ze battum
of ze pule and I aim eenstantly make myself as one vith ze feeshes
in zeese watery univeerse zat ees so unlike ze sea..."
Anyway, I took a breath, put my face in the water and almost immediately
tried to breath. No Wrong, you can't breath underwater. Pull my head
out, take another breath, put my face in, and immediately try to breath,
What the hell is going on? As soon as my head was under, for some
reason I'd immediately try to take a breath. I spent several minutes
trying to remember how in the hell I used to hold my breath, but I
just couldn't do it. Now, even at my best I could never hold my breath
for long, but this was different, I have completely lost the ability
to hold my breath. I guess I have to hope I'm never in a smoky building
or a leaky cruise ship. I had always assumed that holding your breath
and swimming in general was like riding a bike. But then I remembered
that I haven't been on a bike since I was 15 and for all I know, were
I to try to ride one, I'd immediately crash into the nearest large
oncoming truck.
So, I guess swimming underwater is just another one of those abilities
I've lost with age, along with combing my hair, fitting into a shirt
that didn't come from the Big and Tall store, and being able to ask
a pretty girl out without her laughing convulsively and then hitting
me. Oh well, as long as I can still play bass, stick a buck in a garter,
and have enough lap to make a good dance floor, life is worth living.
Guest
Column GREAT CONCERTS I was perusing the Valves website recently to kill some time, and headed to my favorite section, “What’s Joe Bitchin’ About Now”. Joe writes some pretty cool observations and really funny rants. I decided to scroll down to some of his earlier stuff, (I was REALLY really bored…) and came across a rant entitled “crappy concerts”. This piece started me to thinking about some of the GREAT shows I’ve seen in my day, and how long ago some of them actually were. Nowhere, no place….are there shows like this anymore that I’m aware of, and the youth of today is sadly lacking in good live musical experiences. . The money making corporate machines that are out there now can’t hold a candle to what went on before, and much of this stuff left lasting marks on me and my musical psyche. Please allow me to elaborate - 1. SANTANA – Carlos Santana may have been the first “big time” performer I’d ever seen live. My mom had a cousin who lived in New York, and “Aunt Pat” got our whole family tickets to a taping of the Ed Sullivan Show. I’d love to research the actual date somehow, but I think it was in the late 1960’s. I know I was pretty young. Anyway, sandwiched between mouse puppet Topo Gigio and some Borscht Belt Jewish comedian, (Alan King?) was SANTANA. I doubt we’d ever actually heard of him at the time, but he was the MUSICAL TALENT portion of the show. Later on I knew who we’d seen, and I recall I’d watched Santana perform “Soul Sacrifice” with all the blazing timbale and percussion work going on behind some loud and firey fretwork by Carlos himself. I remember someone playing the record years after, and actually remembering, “that’s the thing they played on Ed Sullivan!” The Joshua Light Show was set up as the backdrop, into which colored oil drops were splashed into water and shown with an overhead projector or something. It was Psychedelia at its absolute best. Santana came on again at the end of the show, and I’m not sure but think they may have played “Oye Como Va”. At the time, I had NO idea who we’d just watched. But I knew I’d seen something supremely magical, FAR beyond even the spectacle of Ed Sullivan himself. 2. JONI MITCHELL - My older brother John used to go to a lot of shows before I was old enough to, and I think my Mom actually made him take me along to a Joni Mitchell show in Providence. John had probably just gotten his drivers license, and dragged me down to the Providence Civic Center like a dutiful big brother. This was probably in 1973 or 1974. I remember being sort of clueless as to who Joni Mitchell actually was, and being bored silly through two other opening acts. I kept asking John, “Is that her?” Is THAT Joni Mitchell? Well, when she finally came on, there was a HUGE difference in the tone of the show. The lights were better, the sound was suddenly incrementally better, and you could tell that a “star” had just hit the stage. Of course I knew NONE of her songs, but recall a pleasant sounding “jingly-jangly” acoustic type set. She was a pretty little blonde with long hair that looked nice under the bright lights. I remember “Free Man In Paris”, and “Raised Paradise and Put Up A Parking Lot” of which I thought the lyrics were cute. I just remember the huge PA system, all the bright lights of a great light show, and the magic that permeates a huge arena before a concert. 3. BEACH BOYS/CHICAGO – I think it was in the summer of 1975, just after my brother John graduated from high school, that I once again was allowed to tag along with him and his friends to a concert. This time it was a huge outdoor show in Foxboro, at Schafer Stadium, where the New England Patriots used to play. The newspapers later said that over 70,000 attended that show. It was general admission, and we sat at about the 50 yard line of the field, with the huge stage in the end zone. We had our own cooler, full of beers (sorry mom) and the fragrance of pot was ripe in the air, and hung in a cloud. The stage seemed miles away, high in the air, and flanked with piles of big black speakers in what had to be the biggest PA system I’d ever seen. Huge trusses of lights hung above the stage. The setup was just massive and very impressive. Chicago played first, and of course I loved watching their horn section. I had at least heard of Chicago, but really didn’t know much of their music. I recall John and his friends talking about the guitarist who had shot himself, and how the guy on stage was new, and that he didn’t sound as good..or something…Anyway, the Beach Boys came on, and of course I knew who they were, and many of their songs. That was pretty cool. At the end of their set, the two bands combined for an all out Jam on a bunch of Rock & Roll standards. I recall an extended Jam on Johnny B. Goode, and a bunch of other Chuck Berry tunes. There was just this..amazing, well..POWER. The place went wild, the two bands kicked it up a notch and performed for what seemed like an eternity. 70,000 people rockin’ to a spontaneous two band jam of classics. That etched pretty permanently in my mind as the way to end a show. Wow! 4. ALLMAN BROTHERS – The first time I ever saw the Allman Brothers was along sometime in 1975 or 1976. Again, at the Providence Civic Center. That was the place to go for the big shows in the 1970’s. My guitar playing friend Ronny Smith an I drove down in Ron’s bright yellow 1974 Plymouth Duster. Again, I remember the huge stage and production. We sat, general admission, on the floor of the arena, maybe 40 feet from the stage, and on the same side as Greg Allman. Greg and that wonderful Hammond B3 organ. I knew what a Hammond was by then, and was awed by the double stack of twin Leslie 122’s right behind Greg. They had a LOT of gear on that stage. Those were the days of huge Ampeg bass amps, big Marshall stacks, and piles of Fender twin reverb amps. And of course the TWO drum kits. The weirdest part of the show was when the lights went down, and all the matches and lighters were lit, and then this one little guy in a suit came out to the stage front in the spotlight, like he was going to introduce the band. He launched into some little bit of political drivel that we were too stoned to get. But then he closed with, “I’m Jimmy Carter from Georgia. I’m running for president of These United States, and I need your help.” Nobody knew who he was yet, or perhaps didn’t care. He was met with an ambivalent chorus of boos, and “bring on the brothers!” before he said “Ladies and Gentlemen, The ALLMAN BROTHERS!” and that Hammond intro followed by Dickie Betts wailing slide guitar on “Statesboro Blues” erupted. Later in the show, I remember really tripping at the end of “Hot ‘Lanta”, when the band held that dominant 7#9 chord at the end, and the entire stage was awash in deep blue light, and thinking I’d seen god. 5. EDGAR WINTER/LYNYRD SKYNYRD – Later that same summer of 1975, Ron Smith (whom I formed my first bands with) and I ventured down to Providence again, this time to catch Edgar Winter & Lynard Skynard together. By then I’d graduated to becoming a full fledged music aficionado and knew who both these acts were, and much of their catalog. Edgar Winter opened the show. This was the tour that spawned the Edgar & Johnny Winter/Together Again Live album, one of my all time favorites. They performed all the old Rock & Roll classics, which we surmised was material THEY must have played while growing up together in Texas. Lots of great covers. Ron & I watched the set change over (being band geeks, we got into all the equipment type stuff) Skynard’s stage was all decked out in white, including Billy Powell’s big white grand piano, and an all white Hammond B3. It looked really cool! Of course they had the big confederate flag up behind the stage. They did all the 3 guitar hero material, and for the show’s encore, brought out Edgar & Johnny and their band, and the TWO bands jammed on into the night. I forget what material they did together, but it shook the rafters. Probably one of the best big live shows, strictly energy wise that I’ve seen. 6. KISS - in 1976 or’77 my guitar buddy Ron & I went to see Kiss, again at the famous Providence Civic Center. We had of course heard of Kiss, and the spectacle that their show was. “Over the freakin’ top” is all In can say. Fireworks, fake blood, the makeup, the whole rock star thing taken to an entirely new level. And the music was actually catchy. In retrospect, I truly believe those guys could write a good hook. Perhaps they were not as technically proficient as others, but their stuff sure was Rock & Roll for the masses. We saw them again on their next tour, and it was even MORE over the top. The costumes had evolved, It just kept getting bigger and bigger. Great show, great theater. One of the classic eras of arena rock & roll. 7. COUNT BASIE - I attended University of Lowell from the fall of 1977 through 1981. When I was a junior I believe, I was fortunate enough to belong to the elite “big band” ensemble of the school. We were tapped to perform at the Lowell Auditorium, opening for Ramsey Lewis, as well as The Count Basie Orchestra. The “Count” was still alive in those days, and we got to met him and the band backstage before the show. They were the sweetest, most down to earth yet classy guys you’d ever want to meet. They were totally encouraging to us collegiate musicians. But man, when THEY hit the stage, you knew you were watching the best in the world. The dynamics, the energy, heart and soul that poured forth from that band was absolutely astounding. They could stop on a dime, roar like the throttle had been stomped on, and drop to a whisper. We stood in the wings, stage left of the huge auditorium stage, and were right there as the Count’s little motorized “handicapped” scooter carried him out to the piano. He looked old and ancient, but once on the piano stool, came to life and played his ass off. That band was there to ENTERTAIN, and played their hearts out. The sheer energy and joy is probably STILL hanging in that room. 8. TINA TURNER - at Great Woods, sometime in the early 1990’s I think. I’d always been a fan of Tina’s, and always wanted to catch one of her shows. My wife Joy & I made an evening of it, and rented a limo to take us down to Great Woods, or the Tweeter Center of whatever that outdoor place in Mansfield is called. There was an opening act whom I forget. But Tina and the band exploded onto the stage in huge fashion. The band (complete with hot twin dancers) did a couple of numbers before Tina herself came out, coming down a set of stairs, in high heels, on those FANTASTIC legs. She was pushing 60 years of age, but dances like she’s 20-something. Ollie Marland was just fantastic on piano and as musical director. That band must have played “Proud Mary” a gazillion times, but ripped through it like it was a proud new tune off their latest album. I remember it was played like the pinnacle of a tent show revival. The stage was bathed with an intense white light, which reflected off everything almost like a heat wave. Tina took the audience higher and higher, whipping the band into a sweaty frenzy. Increadible energy, musicianship and the comsumate showmanship. MAN, can that gal work a crowd! I
just re read some of the stuff in my guest rant where perhaps
I sounded a tad clueless. Actually, amazingly, I WAS quite clueless
until I was perhaps a sophomore in High School. Sure, I listened
to Beatles stuff prior to that, and whatever “white Donnie
& Marie” type crap spewed forth from the radio. But
a seminal event happened in 1975 that forever turned me on to
music. We got a new music teacher at the school, who was casual,
easy going, pot smoking Steve Gould. Mr Gould was the musical
director for the school play, Bye Bye Birdie that year, and
he decided to put together a real rock band from amongst the
high school students as the pit orchestra. Up till then, they’d
always had some old fart play the piano. |
Joe here. Steve sent me this quite a while ago, but I forgot about it till today. I decided to weed out some of my older posts, especially the ones related to specific events. I saw my crappy concerts post and it reminded me of this.So, I apologize to Steve for the delay. Of course, since he posted this, I feel obligated now to mention a few of my own favorite concerts. So, here we go:
1.Aerosmith/
Pat Travers-
I've seen Aerosmith several times, including last year, but the first
time I saw them was the most interesting, however it wasn't interesting
because they played particularly well. This would have been in approx.
1978. Joe Perry and Brad Whitford were no longer in the band, which
really sucked, since I had waited literally for years to see them
live. They had two opening acts, I cant remember who the first one
was (Mike was with me, if I remember right, he might know) but the
second act was the Pat Travers band, and they absolutely KICKED ASS!.
Good thing too, since that was that ended up being most of the concert.
When Aerosmith went on, it was apparent immediately;y that something
was wrong. Steve Tyler walked onstage and was leaning on the mike
stand pretty heavily. They only made it through a couple of songs
before he collapsed. He managed to get up and walk off stage, and
then walk back on a few minutes later. I seem to remember that they
did manage to got a couple of songs out. I also clearly remember the
intro to Back in the Saddle being played with Tyler offstage. He staggered
out and grabbed hold of a very tall fan on top of this big pole and
collapsed again taking the fan down with him. He was carried offstage
and within a few seconds, the band simply stopped playing. I remember
Joey Kramer throwing his sticks into the crowd and that was it, show
over.
Now, you may be asking "Joe, if this show sucked so much, why
is it one of your favorites?" Well, the answer is that I later
learned that this was the show that finally convinced Tyler and the
rest to get their shit together. There is an entire chapter about
this show in the Aerosmith autobiography. Joe Perry was backstage,
also wasted out of his mind. If not for this show and it's ultimate
failure, Aerosmith may never have sobered up and gotten their shit
together, and I might never have gotten to see them, back together
and playing incredibly a few years later.
2. Rush-
My very first concert ever. I've mentioned before that I was a huge
Rush fan growing up (it was tough being a young bass player in the
late 70's to not be into Rush. Rush was one of the "Standard
candles" of bass playing, if you could play 2112, you knew your
shit). I was only 15 at this time and had just joined Chimera within
a few months of this. I heard about the concert but had no way to
get to Providence, where it was happening. I asked some friends and
finally I got Lance Vardis to agree to drive me down there if I'd
pay for his ticket, I did, we went. Before the show started, people
were throwing frisbees around the hall, and I kept hoping I'd get
one. Well, I did, and immediately threw it again, and it's a good
thing I did, since some ass had stuck a firecracker in it and it blew
up in mid air about 5 feet away from me.
This was the Moving Pictures tour, and it was great. Rush is an amazing
band to watch live. They are not loose in the sense that they improvise
or jam a lot, but the three of them do an amazing amount between keyboards,
guitars, pedals, and Pearts 500 piece drumset. It's almost like watching
a choreographed dance, but they did it, flawlessly.
3. ZZ Top- I can honestly say I wasn't even a ZZ Top fan when I saw this show. The ticket was given to me by Chimera's manager Brad in partial exchange for a car I had sold him. When we walked into the centrum, I was even less impressed, because they had a tiny stage and it just looked like it would be really dull. Man, was I wrong. By this time, the Eliminator album had come out and they were in full long beard mode and they were just amazing. The stage was designed to look like a dashboard, with gauges and everything, for the last song, the fur guitars made their appearance. At the very end, Dusty and Billy walked from either side up to the top of the dashboard alongside the drummer and on the last n otes, fog shot up around them. When the fog stopped, they were gone and only the fur guitars remained, spinning in mid air. You really had to see it, but it stands as the coolest exit from any band I've ever seen anywhere.
4. Ladysmith Black Mambazo - I love a capella music, and I've seen several a capella bands, including the Bobs (who are also great), the Velvets and Rockapella, but I think the best of them live was Ladysmith Black Mambazo. If the name doesn't ring a bell, I point you towards Paul Simon's Graceland album, where they sang the intro to Diamonds on the soles of my shoes, and Homeless. Anyway, the group is made up of a bunch of guys (I'm not sure how many) and they have a unique style of vocalizing and harmony. The would also get into a half circle and in some songs would take turns moving to the center and dancing. This was in Mechanic's Hall in Worcester, and they also moved all around the hall. A difficult show to describe, but if the opportunity should arise, check them out.
5. Blue Man Group- ok, I don't know if this counts as a concert per se, but I have to add it as one of the best shows I've seen anywhere. I've actually seen the show twice. It's at the Charles Playhouse in Boston's, which is a little tiny place, so there are really no bad seats, and at different points in the show, they move out into the crowd. The last time I was there, the girl I was with got her hair stepped on by one of the guys who was standing on her seat. Again, it's a difficult show to describe, but well worth the trip and the money.
6. Pink Floyd- Easily the best concert I've ever been to. Words can hardly describe the feeling of this show. It was at foxboro stadium, and I had seats around the 50 yard line, so not exactly eh best, but once the show started, I didn't care. No one can pull of a huge spectacle like Pink Floyd could. And no, Roger Waters wasn't in the band at this time. I don't care. They were amazing. The band itself was flawless, but unlike most bands who play in huge stadiums, they seem to understand that not every has great seats. The show was built to a scale that even at my distance, I could appreciate. Also unlike most bands, even though they made use of multiple giants screens, the band itself was never shown onscreen. instead, every song was given it's own theme or feel and the lights, the images shown onscreen, everything was built around reinforcing the songs. It was also mixed in surround sound, which is pretty wild when you're in a place that big. Unfortunately, they have said there will never be another tour for them, but if they did,m I would do whatever I had to do to get a ticket to see it. Absolutely amazing.
2006: A Space Idiocy
I love science.
When I was a kid, I wanted more than anything else to be a Paleontologist,
and as I got older, to be an astronomer. Unfortunately, I suck at
math and couldn't really afford to go to college anyway, so I became
neither. I do still keep tabs on what goes on in the world of science
however, and this week I've seen one of the more lunatitical stories
in recent years. The Space Shuttle Columbia disintegrated on reentry
only a few years ago, and to this day, they have not corrected the
problem that caused it. But very shortly now, they are going to launch
another shuttle, with the exact same flaw in it. The NASA engineer
in charge of safety has already said he believes the shuttle is too
dangerous to launch, but the head of NASA is launching it anyway.
Crew chances are put at 1 in 100 that they will die.
Now, if the Shuttle was somehow vital for life on earth, or even had
a chance of somehow achieving some kind of cutting edge science, it
might be thought to be worth a certain level of risk. But it isn't.
The Space Shuttle has long since become a joke in scientific circles.
It does nothing that unmanned rockets can't do. The purpose of it's
mission is supposedly to help complete the International Space Station
(Isn't that an awe inspiring name? focus group tested that one?) but
the space station is a joke unto itself. What most people don't realize
is that the space station itself was made irrelevant before it was
ever begun. It was originally intended to house all kinds of laboratories
and experimental apparatus, but the reality is it became so expensive
that, one by one, all experimental modules were removed until it became
little more than living and storage space. At this point, the purpose
of the space station is simply to remain in orbit, and the purpose
of every crew on it is just to keep it going until the next crew can
take over and fix everything that broke between parts shipments. Any
experimentation conducted on the station or the shuttle these days
mostly consists of seeing what happens to the poor bastards who have
to sit up there for 6 months at a time, but we've had people in space
for years now, it's long past the time that anything new is being
discovered along those lines. There's an episode of the Simpson's
where Homer goes on the Shuttle and the main experiment involves putting
an ant farm into orbit to see if ants can be trained to sort tiny
screws in space. That's about the level of the experimentation that's
actually going on up there.
Since the Shuttle has become nothing more than a way to get parts
and people to the station, they are now both essentially programs
with no other purpose than self perpetuation.
In the meantime, real science is being sacrificed at an alarming rate
at the alter of keeping the shuttle and the ISS going. The Hubble
Space Telescope, one of the most scientifically valuable pieces of
machinery ever launched is being allowed to die for lack of funds,
when it could easily be repaired in orbit and kept going well into
the future. The one mission the Space Shuttle could do that would
actually have some value is not being done so that more time and money
can be spent on the ISS. Every year, real scientists design experiments
and equipment whose launch into space might actually teach us something
of how the universe works (not to mention satellites that could help
prove things like global warming or other things that the administration
finds inconvenient), but these can't get funding because NASA and
the administration have decided that it's much more important to keep
a couple of people twiddling their thumbs in orbit for a year or so
. In the meantime, projects like the Mars rovers and the Cassini probe
continue to explore the solar system and show us amazing things. But
Cassini was expensive and there will not be another probe like that
launched anytime soon, because Commander Kookoo Bananas says he wants
to put people on Mars. Well, I got news for you, that is not going
to happen in my lifetime, or within the next 100 years. No country
on this planet is willing to do what it would take or spend the money
it would cost to really send humans to Mars. It's simply another way
to pretend progress is being made, while simultaneously giving companies
like Lockheed more money and the middle finger to real scientists,
who the administration hold in contempt anyway.
So, when the next shuttle launches, we can all oooh and ahh at it's
launch, and hope the hell it comes back with everyone in one piece,
but don't let anybody kid you into thinking that it's doing anything
more than public relations at this point. For centuries scientists
have said that a perpetual motion machine could not be built, but
the shuttle and the space station are pretty close.
Cell Phones Suck, there I said it
What the hell is it with people and cell phones? Is it really that
important to be in touch with everybody you know 24 hours a day? I
was waiting at an intersection for a few minutes the other day and
it occurred to me that every single car facing me going the other
way had someone in it babbling on a cell phone. I'm not generally
in favor of new laws being passed that limit personal freedom, but
if I get cut off one more time by some self absorbed waste of cytoplasm
paying so much attention to what Barbara told Ernie last night at
bob and phil's little turd's birthday party, I may just end up breaking
a few laws myself. Every single day, I see people driving with a cell
phone to their ear. Who the hell are they talking to? Well, if they
are anything like most of the people who I know who have cell phones,
they are talking to the people they will most likely be seeing at
the end of their trip. "Hi honey, just calling to let you know
I'm at the end of the driveway, did junior brush his teeth?"
I'm not that old, but I can clearly remember when everyone didn't
have their own little Star Trek communicator, and I don't recall it
being any great hardship. The world went on turning. I've actually
had friends offer to get me a cell phone as a gift. I've refused it.
I can't imagine few things I would hate more than having people able
to reach me at any time of their own convenience. Being raised in
a human household, I believe it's rude to just randomly call people
at all hours of the day and night anyway.
If you really have to have one, if your life just isn't complete without
having access to sister Sue all day long, then go ahead and get one,
but put the damn thing away while you're driving. If one of you bastards
kills me, I swear I will haunt your goddamn phone for all eternity
and you won't get reception if you're standing on top of the friggin
cell tower. I mean it.
Idiocy at the ole' Best Buy
Went to buy a
new keyboard for the computer (the very one I'm currently mashing
out this rant with) and was once again incredibly impressed with corporate
america's ability to take something simple and turn it into something
idiotic. First, the keyboards themselves. Almost all of them came
with either a mouse, or were cordless. I have a mouse, I'm quite happy
with it in fact. It does all the little mousy things that mice are
expected to do and more. By more, I mean it has a bunch of buttons
all over it that make the screen go WEEEE in all different directions,
which is how I often amuse myself when I get bored with imagining
myself having sex with Sarah Michelle Gellar (and no, I DIDN'T watch
Buffy, so there!). Anyway, I don't need another mouse, and judging
by the cost of the keyboards, the mouse was adding on a substantial
amount. I also have no need for a cordless keyboard. I'm never going
to be typing anything from across the room or down the hall. I find
it helps to be able to see the screen when I'm typing things on a
computer, but that's just me.
My choice came down to three that both had a cord, and didn't have
a mouse. One was the absolute cheapest piece of crap imaginable, so
that was out. I may be bankrupt, but I'm not cheap. That left it between
this gigantic Microsoft ergonomic monstrosity, or a "gaming"
keyboard. First, the MS keyboard was one of these things that are
split down the middle so you can use your hands more naturally or
some such garbage, but the truth is, while I can type pretty quickly,
I don't really know how to type. I'm basically self taught in typing,
and I only use 4 fingers, two on each hand. So I would never have
been able to take advantage of it's posture correcting ergonomicness.
It was also the size of one of Star Jones' maxi pads and I don't have
a large desk. That left the gaming keyboard. What is a gameing keyboard
you ask? Well, it's sort of like a regular one, except it has special
keys that are grouped together so that when you're playing a game,
all the control keys are basically right under your left hand. As
it happens, I have been known to play games on occasion, and in most
ways this was the most normal keyboard of the lot, so that's the one
I went with. So far so good...
Having spent an hour and a half making my decision (I'm a really picky
bastard when it comes to spending anything over about 5 bucks) I went
to the register where I first had to listen to Dimwit O'Registerjockey
give me a spiel about how I now qualified to have a bunch of free
magazines that I didn't want (what, no hustler?). I told him in my
usual charming and oh so sociable way to get lost and waited for my
receipt. Uh oh, the little printer is out of paper. Now, I've used
cash registers, I've changed register tape, I have a pretty good idea
of what's involved. You take out the leftover tube, stick in the new
one, put the paper through the slot and hit reprint. At least, that's
how it normally works here on earth. At Best Buy however, this involved
calling a manager of some sort to the register so that she could be
told about the amazing event that is register tape running-out-of.
Now it was little Miss Manager Trainee to first make 3 phone calls,
walk into a back room, come back out, lead me all the way across the
store to another desk, where she then had to make another two phone
calls, only to find out that she couldn't do what she needed to at
the computer she was at and had to use yet another one.
I began to feel that any moment Ashton Kutcher would appear to tell
me I had been Punk'd, but I remembered that I'm not a celebrity and
that if I was, I would be more likely to smash Ashton Kutcher in the
mouth than to be one of his buddies, but nothing happed. I stood there
like an idiot waiting for something that would have taken a roomful
of chimpanzees typing randomly into 100 typewriters to come up with
in less time.
In the end, I got my keyboard and my receipt, which I immediately
misplaced, so this damn thing had better not break or someone at Best
Buy may end up having it removed at their next colonoscopy.
Seafood Sucks
I just ate a few
pieces of Alaskan King Crab. Before eating it, I had tasted a few
kinds of seafood in my life, Lobster, scallops, shrimp, etc, and I
have come to the conclusion that it all tastes the same. But, Alaskan
King Crab (Not to be confused with the Alaskan Bull Worm)
is the stuff they catch on "The Deadliest Catch", on the
Discovery channel, I mean, these poor bastards are risking life and
limb to bring me this crap, so it can't possibly taste like vaguely
fish flavored silicone rubber, right? Well, imagine my shock to discover
that it tastes just like... vaguely fish flavored silicone rubber.
Let me just say again, there are people, probably as I write this,
who are out on some little boat out in the frozen arctic, risking
their one and only life on this world, in order to sully the world
with really expensive fish rubber. Now, far be it for me to tell anybody
how they should live their lives, but it's not worth it. It's really
not worth it. Get a job testing rollercoasters or something, at least
if you're gonna die at work, it would be for something more useful
than increasing the world supply of spongy fish rubber.
More amazing to me than this is that there is a whole seafood industry
out there dedicated to bringing us a huge variety of ever so similar
tasting sea denizens, but i don't care how many lemons you bake it
with, how many chips you fry it with, how many chowders you clam it
with, it's all got that same crap ass fish taste that makes you feel
like you've spent the afternoon sucking fumes under the docks at the
Charlestown Navy Yard.
While on the topic of overpriced, overrated food products, Wine is
in exactly the same category as seafood, in the sense that it's really
not very good, and sometimes even actively sucks, but because sometime
in the distant past, some self appointed prophet of the galactic zeitgeist
who supposedly knows these things declared it to be the breakfast
of champions or some such thing. The great unwashed heathens eat and
drink it like it's supplied directly from the anus of Zeus because
they don't want to look stupid and/or uncultured. So people today
happily shell out hundreds of dollars a bottle to drink crushed grapes
that have been left sitting so long that they've actually rotted into
a completely different substance, one that oh by the way just happens
to make you drunk off your ass. Yay team! Now, if you really must
get drunk off your ass, by all means do so. Getting some girl completely
cross eyed blotto is probably my only hope of ever losing my virginity
(which still desperately clings to me like a hydrophobic clinging
to a lifeguard in the deep end of the pool) but if you want to get
Snockered, you can do so much more quickly and cheaply than by wasting
good money on a bottle of some mediterranean foot stompings. Ah, but
wine is seen as somehow morally and culturally superior to Jack Daniel's,
White Lightin, or heaven forfend, BEER. I mean, having budweiser on
board the yacht would just be so, so... bourgeois. Don't kid yourself,
you just want to stagger around and boost yourself esteem in the eyes
of... well, you.
Let's face it, Seafood tastes like the bikini area of a homeless prostitute
and wine is alcoholic grape juice two steps away from having the friggin
kool-aide pitcher guy smash through your wall screaming "Oh Yeah!"
two seconds before puking all over your new couch.
Who thinks of these things?
So we have started
yet another in a long line of military operations in Iraq, and as
always it's been given an idiotic macho yet strangely homo-erotic
sounding name. This time it's "Mountain Thrust".... or it
could be "Mount And Thrust", it's not clear. I really have
to think that the person who names these is a victim of the military's
"don't ask-don't tell" policy, and that he comes up with
these names as a sort of inside joke to get back at the utter morons
running the war and keeping him in the closet. You can just sort of
imagine him sitting at his PC at the Pentagon...
"Hmmmm.... let's see.... I could call it "Operation Insertion
Force"... no, that's too obvious... ummm... maybe "Operation
Tushy Invasion", ha ha ha... no way, even Rumsfeld would figure
that one out... ummm... lets see.. "Operation Thrusting Iron
Fist"? ha ha, no, but I like thrust.. let's see.. thrust, thrust...
"Operation Thrusting Shaft?"... ummm... no... "Fisting"..
oh geeze no, ha ha... ummm... what's another word for... oh wait,
mount... mounting... umm "Operation Mounting Fist"... no
no no... Oh "Operation Mounting Thrust"... OOOH! Mount and
Thrust!! No "Operation Mountain Thrust"! Bingo!!! Oh man,
can't wait to see Rumsfeld say THAT with a straight face..."
And so, 24 hours later, the leader of the free world goes on TV and
announces to the world that's we've begun Operation Mount and Thrust,
and some guy is in the Pentagon laughing his ass off along with the
rest of the world who have long since stopped taking any of this seriously
anyway. Ahh, good times...
Pornography?
I had someone
who had seen this site for the first time recently ask me why I thought
it was necessary to have softcore pornography on it. I have to say
that this floored me. I love my pictures, and was deeply offended
that anyone could consider them pornographic in any way. I started
putting them here because as I was building this website, I wanted
there to be reasons for people to come back. Almost every "band
website" I've ever seen is little more than a picture, a list
of dates and maybe some audio or pictures of the band live. They never
really change except for the schedule and they are ugly and boring.
I wanted the Valves site to be different. I wanted it to be a place
people would check once a week or a month or even once a day, so I
tried to think of things that would bring them here. This page is
one of those things. Now, I have no clue why anyone would really gives
a rat's ass as to what I think about much of anything, so it's always
been surprising to me that anyone actually comes here and reads this
crap, and so I felt it would be good to have an alternate reason to
come here. Hence was born the hot chick of the week (which has now
become more like the Hot Chick of the Month because I haven't been
doing enough new shoots to change it every week). Up to now, I've
not heard a single complaint from anyone, and in fact have gotten
mail from people requesting more of a certain model now and then.
The models too are all aware that they are on here and all have taken
it as a sort of honor and will tell their friends to come here and
check it out. Medusa, who is the Hot Chick of the Month as I write
this loves being on here, in fact I just saw her yesterday, and she
is honestly thrilled that she would be featured. So, to hear this
person accuse me of creating a porn site here was an unwelcome shock.
His complaint seemed to rest on two levels, one that some people would
be offended by it, and two that somehow children would see it. (He
also seemed to think that there were naked pictures here and that
they were somehow right on the home page, which is just loopy)
Well, to the first part: In order to get to this page, you have to
click on the link on the homepage, which says pretty clearly:
featuring
Joe's
of the month
Then
again at the top of this page in large blinking letters it says "Hot
Chick of the Week". Then in order to get to the archive page,
where all the older HCotM pictures are requires yet
another click on another very clearly marked link. As far as I'm concerned,
if you can read all that and still come here, then you've made a conscious
decision to do so. I have not forced or tricked you in any way into
coming to this page.
As to the second point, I can only say this. The Valves is an adult
rhythm and blues band. The average age of the members of this band
as well as most of our target audience are probably in their 30s and
40s. this is not Sesame Street. I can think of no reason why anyone
under age would want to come to this site for any reason, but if they
did I can only say that it's the parents responsibility to keep their
kids from going to age inappropriate sites. I refuse to dumb this
site down to the level where it's safe for all ages. When I join the
friggin Disneyland band, I'll rethink that policy. This site is for
a Rock and rhythm and blues band. Pretty girls and music go back a
long way together, there is nothing odd about this combination.
Finally, as to nudity. I've just checked through the archive page
again and I can find no explicit nudity anywhere on it. Unless you
find the site of Medusa's tush to be somehow blatantly graphic, I
can't see how anyone can find any of these images to be pornographic,
and in my opinion, anyone who does so needs to seriously think about
their own attitudes about sex and sexuality. Believe me when I tell
you, if I wanted to post porn here, I could do it pretty easily.
I'm extremely proud of my pictures, taking them is one of the great
loves of my life. I consider every one of those women to be a living
work of art (see my art post below) and I feel honored to have been
allowed the opportunity to photograph them. Softcore porn? You've
got to be kidding
Attention Morons
Today is 6/6/06. What is the significance of this date? NOTHING!! If I have to hear again that today is supposed to be somehow evil, I may just have to go on a violent killing spree myself, just to make it all worthwhile. For what it's worth, NOWHERE in the bible is the number 666 mentioned. Not once. There is a reference to the mark of the beast, but what that mark is is never said, EVER. For the people who really really study this stuff (no doubt through the use of extremely scientific and scholarly research, can you tell I'm being sarcastic here?), the actual "evil" number they come up with is 616, not 666. 666 is entirely a product of old horror novels and hollywood movies, so please, can we just stop with this nonsense? It's bad enough I have to hear this religious claptrap being used to justify war, hate, poverty, disease, violence, bigotry, misogyny, racism, terrorism, patricide, matricide, suicide, genocide and every other evil the world has produced, but to have this idiotic mythology within a mythology being pushed and pushed like it's some kind of new TV show makes me want to just go out and randomly smack people for being so gullible.
Picking your fights
Can anyone explain to my how it is that Bill Murray won't do another Ghostbusters, but WILL do Garfield 2? That's just wrong on so many levels...
Play that whitey music funk boy.
I went to see
the Carl Palmer band last night. He's best known as one third of Emerson
Lake and Palmer, a pretty heavy duty progressive rock band from the
70s. It was a pretty amazing show on the musicianship front, but it
got me thinking about so called "progressive rock" and whatever
became of it. Of course, the very definition of progressive rock tends
to vary a bit, but for the purposes of this rant, I'm talking about
bands who wrote complex arrangements, often using multiple time signatures
and long form solos of all kinds. When I was growing up, I was very
influenced by some of those bands, but starting in the late 70s, with
the introduction of Punk, there was a huge backlash against the idea
that you could be a great "technical" musician and also
play rock music. That has held true by and large right to the present.
There are still a few of these bands kicking around, but they are
a dying breed, and their shows usually are attended by people like
me, looking for a form of rock that's largely unavailable now. Some
of my favorite bands who I would put under that umbrella would be
Rush, Genesis, ELP, Jeff Beck, Kansas, Yes, King Crimson, and while
not really thought of as progressive bands, I would also add Pink
Floyd, Deep Purple, Blood Sweat & Tears, Allman Brothers and early
Chicago. There are more, and I'm sure some would question some of
my own list. While many of these bands still exist in some form and
many can still pull a good crowd, my question is, where are the new
bands? I can't imagine a band like Emerson Lake & Palmer being
able to even get a start nowadays. They would certainly have nowhere
to play. Most clubs seem to only want super heavy goth metal hardcore
speedcore metalcore bands.
I know that even within the Valves, there are some who hear that stuff
and insist that it's not "real" rock & roll. I disagree,
I think Rock music should be a collection of styles and genres. In
the late 60s, early 70s, a concert might consist of several bands
and the only thing they might have in common was hair length. People
were willing to listen though, to give those bands a chance to play
in their own style, to try to find a new way to do things. Now everything
is about how much can we sound like everyone else. While sitting in
the ole strip club I would hear song after song like this. I knew
that bands with names like POD, Blink 182, Stained, and Godsmack were
being played, but I'll be damned if I could tell who was who or even
tell the songs apart. Maybe that just means I'm old, but I suspect
it has more to do with homogeneity in what is released today than
anything else.
OK, So maybe I'm just an old fogey, but I'll go to my grave listening
to Neil Peart play a ten minute drum solo and actually enjoying it.
and I know I wont be alone. There is still space for extended jams
and long technically complex pieces to be played and judging by the
crowd last night, there will still be a lot of old fogeys who want
to hear it.
Art is Hard
As some of you
know, I was "mostly" responsible for the design of the Robert
Goddard memorial in Worcester. I say mostly because there were a few
changes made when they actually built the thing, and the original
design was, let's say, a little less... ummm... phallocentric...
Anyway, I bring it up because in a newspaper article about it, it
mentions the "artist" who designed it. I have to say for
the record that I do not now, nor have I ever thought of myself as
an artist.
I've had the "A" word directed at me in relation to the
photography I do too, but taking pictures of a beautiful woman isn't
art, what's IN the photographs is art. I've been priviledged to take
pictures of some extremely beautiful women, and they are art in it's
purist form. All I do is make sure there's enough light, set a few
knobs and push a button, but it's the women themselves who are beautiful.
I can't take someone who isn't gorgeous and make them that way. At
my best, I'm just capturing an image of a split second in the life
of a beautiful but always changing image.
Now THAT'S Art!
What is art anyway? It always seems to me that art is whatever you
can get enough people to say it is. Is a picture of a can of Campbell's
soup art? of course not, only an idiot would think so, but enough
people who should know better proclaimed it so and Andy Warhol became
an artist. I have no answer to this, but I know that far too many
people call themselves artists without merit. On the other hand, when
I was in Jr. High, I had a so called "art teacher" see how
I signed my name (Which at the time was pretty elaborate, mostly because
I have a long name that I find annoying to write) and scold me in
front of the class, because I had apparently not earned the right
to have a fancy signature at such a young age. Way to encourage creativity,
Mrs. Nitwit. It's because of her that I didn't take art in high school
or go to any kind of art or design schools. No one should have what
little creativity they possess taken from them at an early age. It's
when they grow up and start trying to pass off ludicrous crap and
self aggrandizing visual or auditory pap that they should be smacked
upside the head.
Anyone who does almost anything that doesn't involve mopping floors
or fixing cars is called an artist these days. How often have you
heard Brittney Spears called a recording artist? She's not an artist.
At best, the person who wrote the crap she sings "might"
be called an artist, but it doesn't take an artist to sit in a booth
and sing words off a sheet in front of you while a producer someplace
tells you what notes to sing and then uses Auto Tune to fix the ones
you didn't get right. Almost everyone who is on the top 40, or top
100 or even top 1000 out there today got where they are because they
were very, very lucky, look good in a short skirt or both.
Art transcends time, it makes you feel something inside, and will
continue to for ages. Michelangelo was an artist, Leonardo was an
artist, Frank Sinatra was an artist, John Lennon was an artist, Marvin
Gaye was an artist, Miles Davis was an artist, Chuck Jones was an
artist. These people created things, either with their hands, or their
voices, that moved entire generations of people, and will transcend
time. You want to tell me again how Hootie and the goddamn blowfish
are artists? I'm waiting...
So, am I an artist? No, I'm a technician. I know how to do a few things
and can mix them together and maybe a nice photo will come out, or
a good bass part or a decent recording, but I have not, nor will I
ever do anything that will move anyone to do much of anything aside
from maybe turn the volume down or masturbate (I take naked pictures
of hot chicks, remember? No one will masturbate to my bass playing.
On the other hand, if any of you ladies are "Playing along"
so to speak, drop me a line, we'll talk(I said LADIES!)). The difference
between me and the other dumbasses out there doing what I do and calling
themselves artists is that I know where my limitations are and I don't
need the delusions of grandeur that Eminem surrounds himself with
to get on with it.
Bonus: Want to see some genuine artists at work? Watch this
Back to the Neighborhood
I didn't watch Mr. Rodgers much when I was a kid, I preferred Sesame Street. I could never quite get past the fact that the mouths of the puppets in the land of make believe didn't move when they talked. Even as a 4 year old, I found that extremely unsettling. Anyway, last week I happened across a clip of Fred Rogers testifying before the senate. That's the U.S. Senate. Seems Nixon wanted to cut funding drastically because of PBS' supposed liberal agenda (sound familiar?). Anyway, I watched this clip and found myself mesmerized by it. I've mentioned before how I think the term Hero is used too loosely, and that there really are not many true heroes in the world. But Fred Rogers was a true hero. He was a minister, but he never ever pushed that faith on children or anyone else. His show was simple, had very few ingredients, but the core of the show was that every child is unique and should feel good about themselves just for being who they are, and that core never changed. Watch this clip and I think you'll agree. The world was a better place with him here and we could use a few more like him today.
Talent skips a generation
As I write this Angelina Jolie is sitting in Africa with a new baby, and her and her boyfriend Studhunk McBuffmanly can look forward to making somewhere around 5 million bucks for a single picture of the living breathing product of the most perfect womb slurpy since Mr. Mona screwed Miss Lisa. As I'm reading this, I see on the TV an ad for a movie called "Karate Dog". The ad makes this movie look so stupid that I'm expecting to see some guy pop on any minute showing the movie to be a fake and how I could save by switching to Geico or to drink Pepsi or something, anything, Please! But no, it's a real movie alright, and the star of said debacle is none other than John Voight, the father to Miss Jolie. I suspect that if he's making "Karate Dog", that Mr. Voight has not made a decent paycheck in quite some time. Must be a little humiliating to think that a picture of the grandkid from your Oh-so-hot-daughter-who-wants -nothing-to-do-with-you is worth more money than you've made your whole life. Wonder if she'll ever let him see the kid without charging him admission.
Speaking of Vacuous Space Wasting
it would seem that Paris Hilton, the World's most famous person who's famous for being the world's most famous person who's famous for being famous is getting paid up to a million dollars to simply attend parties given by rich people. She goes, stands around, gets drunk, probably screws a few cabana boys and collects more than the combined manufacturing output of the city of Cleveland for a day. And they say she's a dumb blonde. All you girls thinking of getting fake boobs, take note, cuz she aint got nothin. In a semi related note, I happened to catch a little tiny bit of a show called Cribs today. I'd heard about this, but had never seen it. It's basically where people who are really rich show their zillion dollar homes to the rest of us low life's, and as far as I can tell, the sole purpose of the show is so that we peons can feel really shitty about ourselves and the lives we lead. The clip I caught involved the daughter of Rod Stewart. Mind you, it wasn't Rod Stewart, it was his daughter. What did she do exactly to earn the huge, beautiful mansion she lives in? Ummm... She was born to Rod Stewart. That's it. I think if I were born into huge wealth, I'd have better taste than to rub into the faces of the rabble, but then again, maybe not.
Cotton Candy for the soul
So, despite my best efforts, I know who the winner of American Idol is. Not because I watch the show, but because for some reason the idiot media (local AND national) seem to feel that this is headline news. Even the station I watch in the morning (which is not a Fox affiliate) had a story about it. That's pretty adept marketing when you can get your competing networks to do stories about your show. In any case, the winner was some pudgy guy with grayish hair who won out over some brunette country chick clone. They keep referring to him as a soul singer, but it seems to me that a soul singer is someone who sings from the "soul", as opposed to someone who does crappy karaoke versions of someone else's soul music at the direction of a pile of producers and focus group driven marketing execs. Putting this guy into the same category as Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, and Percy Sledge seems a bit like putting me into the same category as Arnold Shwarzennegar in terms of my physical fitness... sure, we both have a head, two arms, two legs and some form of genitalia, but I think the similarities end there. They say 63 million votes were cast to vote on the winner, more than any presidential election in history. Next time someone tells you that the United States is the most advanced society on earth, mention that little statistic. I personally believe that who has access to the magic "World War III" button is a bit more important than who sang the best version of "You light up my life", but I guess that's just me. So, now this guy (who's irony free name is apparently Taylor Hicks, I wonder what the odds are that the next American Idol might have a name like Hershfeld Shlaggenhoople) will be given a million dollars and a recording contract where he can be spoon fed a bunch of lowest common denominator tuneless tripe and sell a whole bunch of records. Congratulations, you made it. I wish I could say I thought the same was true of the survival of what passes for art in culture in this country.
This post is the best in it's class
Have you ever noticed (you can do this in your own best Seinfeld impression if you want) that every time you see an ad on TV for a truck, it's always the "Best in it's class"? How many classes of trucks are there? It would seem that every truck seems to have it's very own class. "The Ford F-150, rated best in the Ford F-150 Class". Just sayin...
My Commencement Speech
Being the celebrity that I am, every year, I'm asked by dozens of colleges and universities to give their commencement address (or to clean up afterwards, the letters are not that specific). I never have time, being the ultra busy mover and shaker that I am (Mike tells me that mover and shaker doesn't mean what I think it does, but screw him). In any case, I thought I'd give my speech here and each school can apply it as they see fit.
To those about to graduate, I salute you. Parents, teachers,
janitors, groundskeepers, cheerleaders, especially cheerleaders, I
welcome you. I know some of you are asking "Who is this man dressed
as a globe, and sweating profusely?". Think of my sweat as the
arctic polar ice cap melting down over the earth due to global warming.
Just be glad you can't see what's happening in "Antarctica"
right now, if you know what I mean. It's not pretty. As for who I
am? I am the hand of fate, here to whup you upside the head with the
sharp spiked two by four of reality. (And I'm not dressed as a globe,
it's just a blue and green sweater smartass)
Global warming is just one of the many challenges you will face as
you graduate today. Having beachfront property in Denver is not necessarily
a bad thing after all. And it's a dry heat.
As I look out into the sea of faces before me, I see all have one
thing in common. The bright red eyes of people who either partied
way too late last night or started way too early this morning. But
your bright red eyes are also the color of the dawn, the start of
a new day. Instead of imagining the literally trillions of irreplaceable
neurons that were flushed away in the last 24 hours, I prefer to imagine
the lives of promise and hope that will be flushed away in the next
24 years. I'm sure that some of you will leave here and go on to lives
of great success, becoming millionaires. To you I say, don't forget
me. I'm your friend, I'm fun to be with. The rest of you will soon
realize that waking up every day at 11 is no longer an option. The
better looking women, who could have become a stripper at 18 and made
more money in a year than they will probably make in the next ten
will begin to wonder if it's too late (by the way, to those women,
I'm also a photographer, so if you'd like a decent picture to replace
that one of you with the red eye, standing in the kitchen with the
vomit stains on the wall to put on your Myspace page, talk to me afterwards).
The rest of you look forward to spending your lives in tiny cubicles,
listening to stories told by your loquacious cubicle mate about how
his two year old threw up in the car again and boy wasn't it damn
cute.
Yes, it's true. You've been conned. You've spent $30,000.00 a year
to learn boatloads of stuff that will have no bearing on your ability
to enter data into a terminal. Maybe I should say that your parent's
have spent $30,000.00. hey Mom and Dad, I'll bet you can't wait for
the day your son tells you he's decided to skip that job at Goldman
Sachs to work in the music store, because let's face it, music is
his life, or for your daughter, the one with the Phd in neurophysics
that you had to take out 4 mortgages to get her tells you she's quitting
the workforce to be a stay at home mom. Yup, money well spent.
Yes, the real world sucks. What's important is that you don't lose
sight of the important things in life. It's true that from now on
a bong becomes the sound of your alarm clock waking you for another
day of dreary repetition. It's also true that people in the real world
don't generally drink beer with the use of a funnel or get T-shirts
made to commemorate every idiotic event in your otherwise empty lives.
You must remember who you are and that to live life means living by
the rules of society, and the most important rule "Do unto other's
as you would have them do unto you" unless you are really sure
you can get away with it. As we've seen, not all sins are equal. Lying
about getting a little on the side will result in hysterics unimagined,
while lying about things that jeopardize actual world stability isn't
even frowned on and can even make some consider you a hero. Things
are never quite as they seem my friends.
So, as you sit before me, wearing those ridiculous clown suits that
they make you wear, not to mention your little square hat, you can
begin to see a glimpse of your future. Living in total conformity
(except on casual friday, where you can wear a polo shirt and khakis)
and trying desperately to keep yourself from sinking into the mire
of the gray lifeless void. It's not all bad, and someday you will
be sitting out there on the lawn, watching your own offspring in their
ridiculous clown suit and square hat as their bright red eyes open
wide in terror as they realize that they too have just entered the
real world and life for them has ended and you can look inside yourself,
smile with glee and think "Yes! Finally rid of that little bastard".
And so the cycle repeats and the community goes on in a sort of communal
blissful ignorance as corporate america expects.
Congratulations to you all, good luck and good day. Now go out and
get as wasted as you possibly can, because god only knows if you'll
ever get the chance again.
Thank you.
ABC
There is a meme going around the net called the ABC meme, which is basically a list of questions, each starting with a letter of the alphabet. So I figured I'd give it a shot here.
Accent: Worcester accent, though I think toned down from the real extreme "I'm goin ta Wistah to buy a toastah"
Booze: None, ever. I've never had a drink in my life.
Chore I Hate: Cleaning, anything, at any time. I like clean areas, but the actual cleaning process always seems like a total waste of time to me.
Dog or Cat: Dog, I don't currently have a dog, but I love dogs. I'm also known among some friends as having an uncanny ability to have even the most unfriendly dogs become instantly like my best pal whenever I'm around.
Essential Electronics: Computer, between work, digital photography, website building, watching DVDs, I'm on a computer probably 14 hours a day.
Favorite Cologne: I don't have a favorite, but I sometimes use this stuff I think is called Heat by Jovan which the ladies seem to like.
Gold or Silver: Neither, jewelry is a waste of money imho.
Hometown: Born in Worcester MA
Insomnia: Constantly. I don't sleep much.
Job Title: Graphic Designer, Glamour Photographer
Kids: None
Living arrangements: Hell, but the posh section
Most admirable traits: I'm incredibly, amazingly, superlatively, almost astoshingly modest
Not going to cop to: What does this even mean?
Overnight hospital stays: When I was very young, I was in the hospital 3 times for about a week each, and more recently I spent the night there because they thought I'd had a mild heart attack (I hadn't)
Phobias: I can be claustrophobic under certain conditions. Ironically, I also get very uncomfortable in large wide open spaces. I could never live out west where it's very flat and open, I need trees, hills, things around me.
Quote: "We ice skate."
- George Harrison, 1964, when asked by a reporter "What do you
do when you're cooped up in a hotel room between shows?"
Religion: None, You're born, you live, you die.
Siblings: One sister and one friend who is like a sister
Time I wake up: 6am without fail. I haven't used an alarm clock in over 20 years.
Unusual talent or skill: The ability to get beautiful women who wouldn't normally give me the time of day to take their clothes off and let me photograph them
Vegetable I love: Corn is pretty much the only vegetable I like
Worst habit: overeating
X-rays: No appendix. I've never broken a bone
Yummy foods I make: I'm a lousy cook, I hate cooking. Anything that takes longer to cook than to eat is a waste of time.
Zodiac sign: Sagittarius, though I don't believe in any of this stuff either.
Paula Abdul is the Antichrist
While I'm using
my computer, I routinely have a TV on in the background. This is often
true even while watching DVDs, since my only DVD player is in my computer.
A strange juxtaposition happened last night, on my computer I was
watching the Beatles Anthology DVD (Episode 2), while at the same
time American Idol was on TV. Of course, I had the volume down on
the TV, and I wasn't really watching it, but I could see what was
sort of going on whenever I bothered to look at it. It made me consider
how far the music industry has fallen over the years. In 1964, the
biggest thing in "pop" music was the Beatles. The Beatles
were a real band, not something assembled by a producer using 15 year
old girl focus groups. By 1964, they had already been together for
several years, playing 10 hours a night without breaks in Germany,
and then touring England almost non stop, driving from gig to gig
in a beat up small van. They developed their skills as musician's
and their sound as a band through countless hours of playing, working
together and developing the unique chemistry that made them who they
were. The Beatles were not "the Greatest Rock Band of All Time"
by accident. They paid for it, as George Harrison observed "with
their nervous system". Not everything they did was great, but
I suspect most people would agree that a hell of a lot of it was.
And they did it all themselves, with the help of George Martin, they
didn't only rise to the top of the pop music field, they defined it,
from then until now.
Contrast that to the music business of today. Almost everything considered
"pop" music now consists of off the shelf songs written
by people with all the soul of a tub of cool whip, based almost entirely
on commercial decisions of how many adolescents will shell out 15
bucks for a CD. The primary arbiter of taste is now American Idol.
Millions of people tune in every week to hear people they really don't
know sing what amounts to cover song karaoke and then giggle while
a trio of equally talentless nobodies sits in judgment. The harsher
the judgment, the more likely fans of the show are to remember it,
and of course, it's the really harsh judgments that keep them tuned
in in the first place. No one ever goes to a Nascar race to watch
cars crash, in exactly the same way that no one watches American Idol
to watch Simon rip some talent challenged nobody a new asshole. As
I was watching early Beatles talk about how they couldn't wait to
get to America, to finally be in the land that had spawned all of
their idols, Chuck Berry, Fats Domino, Carl Perkins, Elvis, I happened
to glance at the TV and see Paula Abdul no doubt finding fault in
the performance of some poor schmuck. From Little Richard and Aretha
Franklin to Paula Abdul, my, how American music has fallen. It seems
to me that being judged as a musical performer by Paula Abdul is a
lot like being judged as a photographer by Stevie Wonder. She did
what exactly? Remind me? As I recall, her entire career lasted about
6 minutes and had one "hit" of any consequence, consisting
mostly of her god only knows how many times overtracked vocals bathed
in Auto-Tune, matched up with a video resembling an Aerobics instruction
tape. I have no idea who Randy Jackson is, some kind of producer I
guess, can't say I've ever heard anything he's ever done, or if I
have, it certainly didn't make me look up and think "Wow, That's
great, I wonder who produced that?". As for Simon, the nasty
ass responsible for this farce, why would anyone get on a stage and
put themselves in the hands of a man who's sole purpose in life is
to find new and exciting ways of tearing people down? He's not a talent
scout, he has no interest in people succeeding. He is there specifically
to be the nasty asshole that he is, because that's what people tune
in to watch.
There used to be a show on TV here when I was a kid called Community
Auditions. It too was a "talent" show. Why do 6 million
people tune in to American Idol while more like 6 tuned into Community
Auditions? Because Dave Maynard didn't rip into the contestants on
Community Auditions like a lion tearing into it's breakfast antelope.
This is the genesis of today's music. People have grown convinced
that all it takes to be a great performer is a microphone, some generic
backing track to a song that consists primarily of cliches, both lyrical
and musical and the ability to make your voice move up and down a
range of as many notes and octaves as you an fit into every word.
There will never be another Beatles, but I can only hope that someday,
the value of musicianship and real talent will once again be considered
important to the people who make decisions about what gets put on
the radio and released on CD. I have no doubt that somewhere out there
are some honest, real bands, with people in them working their asses
off to be heard. One can only hope that one of them somehow breaks
through. Of course, if that happens, you would soon hear some nitwit
on American Idol singing their song, properly watered down and sanitized
for mass consumption while Simon thought long and hard about just
what witty cutting remark would most effectively reduce the performer
to tears.
Mixed Blessings
• I saw a woman today eating a slice of pizza with a knife and fork. I found it vaguely disturbing. Sign of the apocalypse? You tell me.
•
The jingle used in the new Dunkin Donuts ad could be the most irritating
commercial jingle ever written. "Doing things is what I like
to do, YES!".
Beating the hell out of idiots who write crap like that is what I
like to do.
• I have a bunch of Christmas songs mixed in with all my other music on my PC, and every so often one will pop on. There is nothing that makes your skin crawl worse than a Christmas song coming on when it's not Christmas.
• Today, on a baseball broadcast, they mentioned that Manny Ramirez is second only to some other guy in home runs WHILE WEARING THE NUMBER 32. If you are keeping statistics that detailed, you've gone beyond being a baseball fan and become certifiable.
• Massachusetts is trying to pass a health care bill giving health care to everyone in the state. That's a great idea in principle, but if it goes through the way they want it, every employer will have to either give employees healthcare, OR they will have to pay something like 300 dollars per employee to the state. Given that health insurance costs a lot more than 300 dollars, I suspect that all this will do is get a lot of employers to dump their people from the health plan and opt to give the state the 300 bucks.
• I've been playing a game called Battlefield 2 online since I got high speed internet access (finally) and I've come to the conclusion that very few people will work as a team when given a chance and instead will just run around blowing the hell out of anything or anyone, whether they're on their team or not.
• The Chairman or CEO or whatever the hell he is of Exxon is going to make $150 million dollars this year. Roughly $190,000 dollars a day, including weekends. Enough to buy one or two very nice houses in the country every single week. Enough to buy several not so nice houses in the city every single week. enough to feed a small town. enough to pay the annual salary of more than 5 teachers. That's everyday! Think about that for a moment. Try to get your head around that concept. It's funny, but when you ask people of his ilk what are the answers to the problems facing the country, and they will say things like, abortion, pornography, taxes, public schools, unions, minorities, immigrants, and any other weak, powerless scapegoat they can think of. I think a lot of the problems in our society come from people who can even begin to imagine that they are somehow worth making more in one year than everyone I know combined multiple times over.
Radio Killed the Radio Star
Where I work,
I'm subjected to listening to some crap ass soft rock/ classic hits
station all day. Now, as a rule, I have no issues with "classic
rock", but a quick look at my own CD collection is enough to
tell me that there are more than 50 Goddamn songs out there!
I'm only at work for 8 hours a day, and yet somehow I hear the same
damn songs over and over and over. How can any radio station have
a song catalog so limited that you hear the same songs repeated more
persistently than the snooze button on an alarm clock? Can't they
play more than one song from the same album? Is it really necessary
to play Dancing Queen by ABBA every single time you play an ABBA song?
The fact that I have to listen to ABBA is punishment enough, it has
to be the same damn song every time? Does it? Really? So, what you're
saying is, they only recorded one song? You sadistic bastards are
really so mean spirited that you are not only going to subject me
to one of the worst examples of mindless pop ever produced, but it
has to be the same one every time, eh? I hear that stupid song at
least twice a day, and that's only one example. This station is rife
with craptacular samples of mainstream gobbeldegook played with the
repetitiousness of someone swinging a hammer into your skull over
and over again. Having to listen to Celine Dion once in your lifetime
should be enough to save you from years of purgatory after death,
how much time do I get off having to listen to her whale-song like
bellow mispronouncing "Effery night een mah dream, I feel you,
I seel you, dat ees how my luf wheel ko on"?
This is apparently one of the new and improved computerized stations
too, the kind where the DJ consists of recordings of people who used
to work at the sleep clinic as inducers saying exciting things like
"The magic rolls on, here's Rod Stewart" with all the charisma
of a stick of celery. And all you hear from the radio indistry is
bitching about how so many people are switching off the radio to listen
to I-Pods or satellite now and how they will not be able to stay in
business. Oh Boo-Friggin-Hoo you stupid money grubbing ignorant MBA
weilding bastard!
I have actually heard the same song repeated within 10 minutes of
itself. Isn't there an all jackhammer channel I could listen to instead?
How about pink noise? Either would be preferable. There have been
somewhere upwards of 10,000 albums made that would qualify as "classic"
pop/rock, some better than others certainly, but more than enough
that you could have a radio station play a different song every single
time every hour of every day for weeks, if not months without ever
repeating, but instead I have to hear the goddamn pina colada song
and "Will you meet me in the middle, will you meet me on the
phone" or whatever the hell he's saying, I hate that goddamn
song so much I don't even know what the lyrics are, and if I did,
I'd have to hang myself just for having let it sink into my brain,
probably displacing something important like the date of my mother's
birthday or something. Note to radio programmers; Those of us in the
subgroup of species on this planet known as "human" do not
want to hear Orleans 25 times a day, especially not the same damn
Orleans song once an hour. It is not helping your ratings, and should
we ever meet in person, it is not improving your safety. Please, for
the love of humanity, the Queen, little bobby in the hospital, your
puppy, my puppy, all the children of the world and the common decency
of one fellow man to another,
MAKE IT STOP!
Wallace & Gromit
I think I've mentioned
here before that I love animation. At least, I love good animation.
I grew up at a time where it was almost impossible to go for any given
day without classic Warner Brothers cartoons on for at east some period
of time. They still are the gold standard in animation, both in terms
of artistry and writing as far as I'm concerned. There is other great
animation out there though, and one of the best in the world is Wallace
& Gromit.
For those of you who've not heard of them, Wallace & Gromit were
started as a set of short animations made primarily by a man named
Nick Park. They are done in stop motion, by hand, using clay (or more
accurately Plasticine) and soft materials over metal armatures. Wallace
is an englishman with a love of all things cheese and a penchant for
making Rube Goldbergish inventions, while Gromit is his faithful dog
who never speaks but has some of the best facial animation ever done
conveying his emotion and responses.
The original Wallace & gromit short films were brilliantly written
and made with a level of creative artistry not seen much these days.
I strongly encourage you to rent them if you can. Last year they made
their first feature film, "Wallace and Gromit and the curse of
the were-rabbit". I never ended up getting to see this movie
in the theater, but I was so sure it would be good that I bought the
DVD as soon as it came out. I was not disappointed. Those of you who
are used to the sort of constant pop culture references used in movies
like Shrek, or cartoons like Family Guy will be disappointed. This
movie was made in england and has more of that english humor which
I happen to love, but which others may not find as funny. It is amazing
animation however, and the story is fun and funny. It's a great family
movie, for those of you constantly bitching about the lack thereof,
there is nothing remotely offensive about it. Having said that however,
it is also not sickly sweet, or dumbed down to the level of a four
year old. It is rare these days for a movie to be appealing enough
to kids, adults, people like me, who just love the craft of animation
but who also like humor to have multiple levels of sophistication.
This movie does all of that. Check it out, you won't be disappointed.
Oh, as for the DVD, to be honest, I've only seen the movie thus far
and so can't really comment on the extras. I did watch one part of
the making of, and all I can say is, the patience required to make
one of these films is beyond most normal human's conception.
Special
Guest Editorial by Steve Recently in the news, was an article about the tragic death of a freshman girl at Clark University. What makes the news completely horrific, was that it involved an overdose of heroin. It boggles my mind that in this day and age of drug education, “just say no” culture, and “the war on drugs” that anyone is stupid enough to still try heroin. But what FURTHER boggles my mind, is the outrageously frivolous lawsuit brought by the parents of the girl against the university for “failure to keep their daughter safe”. I have the fullest and utmost sympathy for this family’s loss, but come ON!! Failure to keep their daughter SAFE?? Who made the decision to stick a needle in this girls arm? Didn’t the parents tell this girl ANYTHING?? I think the university should counter sue these PARENTS for bringing their stupidly uneducated daughter to their fine institution of higher learning and tarnishing THEIR reputation with a drug overdose! It’s unbelievable to me how quickly everyone is these days to point a finger of blame at someone else, and SUE for satisfaction. Granted, there may have been a “boyfriend” who supplied the fix. Apparently the girl got so drunk, she didn’t know that she was shooting up. So I suppose that perhaps the boyfriend had a degree of culpability. But I wonder if Clark really has upper classmen holding guns to freshmen heads so that they have to get polluted, inebriated and out of control. Heroin and hard drugs have NO place at a university, and Clark should (and hopefully does) have a zero tolerance policy. But to blame the university for a student’s stupid decision? You had eighteen years to educate that daughter, parents, and you failed her miserably….My sincere condolences. |
Worst commercial ever!
OK, I admit it, I've bitched here about commercials before, but I think I have finally seen the ultimate, the peak, the pinnacle of cheesy advertising ever inflicted upon mankind. I have to start out by saying this is a local ad, so those of you living around the world will not get the chance to experience it's incredible awfulness in all it's gory glory, so you'll just have to trust me on this. The ad is for a local nightclub, and while I'm not going to mention them by name, I suspect anyone reading this will know exactly which one I'm talking about. It starts out with four or five of the absolute worst actors in the world sitting on a couch someplace whining about how they all want to do something different. I cannot even begin to describe to you the sheer awfulness of the acting in this thing. Porn movies filmed in Uruguay have better acting than this. I can only imagine that the club's owner insisted on casting his college roommate and his drinking buddies instead of actually finding someone capable of.. you know... acting. Special mention however is reserved for one. He is the person who utters the single "punch" line, and by punch line, I don't mean, the funny line in a joke,I mean the line he states so smugly, so irritatingly, so wretchedly awfully that you want to punch him every time he says it, and yes, he says it more than once. The line is "Brilliant!". Yes it's true, this club has stolen the advertising gimmick of the Guinness brewing company. Unfortunately, when they stole the word, they forgot to steal anything about why that line is funny in the Guinness ads. Then, to have this big dumb frat boy wannabe say the line loudly, obnoxiously, while turning to look at the camera, taking away any possibility of imagining that there is anything even remotely real about the situation,makes the theft of the line even more of a crime. I can't imagine anyone wanting to spend even two minutes in the company of this guy, he is the stereotypical loud obnoxious sports freak former jock nitwit bully asshole all combined into one body and just listening to him repeatedly say any of his lines while smirking in what I have to assume is meant to be an ironic, humorous grin but comes off as an idiotic crooked blurt that's worse than hearing fingernails scrape a blackboard is a torture I had thought only Donald Rumsfeld was capable of inflicting. Please, for the love of all you hold dear, pull this ad. Every time it comes on, my skin crawls and I'm forced to leave the room. No one is going to want to go to your club if they are likely to run into any of these no talent hacks, particularly the "Brilliant" guy or anyone remotely like them. Can't you just have a normal ad like everyone else? Can't Guinness sue you or something? Anything? Please, I'm begging you!! I can't stand it anymore!
Maybe if she was missing an arm?
Jill Carroll has been released after being a hostage in Iraq for several months. Now, most normal people would think this is good news. The fact that she's alive and unhurt would be considered, again, by normal people, to be even better news. A strange thing though, many people on the right wing of the media community are actually angry. At who you ask? At Jill Carroll. Why you ask? Because apparently she's a little "too" well off. Somehow, the fact that she didn't come out of her ordeal covered in bruises and looking like a survivor of a POW camp means she must be a sympathizer, or worse, a collaborator. To say that this is sick and perverted would be an understatement, but I can't help but notice that all the people doing the finger pointing are the same doughy pantloads who constantly go on and on about how wonderful things are going over there and how our Steely Eyed Missile Commander can do no wrong, and are also the same ones who wouldn't go to bahgdad if you promised them a million dollars and a naked Ann Coulter were waiting for them on the ground there. So, remember kids, should you ever be taken hostage, be sure to get your captors to beat and the crap out of you and rip out your fingernails before they release you, or you may just be considered a traitor to your country.
Rock and Roll Hall of... what?
They are about to induct more bands into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, and I was curious as to who is in there already. I went to the HoF website, but it is strangely silent about who is in it. I had to go to Wikipedia to find the list of inductees. Frankly, I'm stunned. I thought the idea of a hall of fame was to honor and showcase bands and musicians who had not just been in popular bands, but who had actually helped to create, or expand the boundaries of rock music, or who had been a major influence on other musicians and to the public and rock fans. So, what do I see? Billy Joel is in the rock and roll hall of fame? For what? Piano Man? The Bee Gees? Were they responsible for a dramatic shift into all falsetto vocals? The Pretenders? I happen to like the pretenders, but come on, there was no one in rock history more deserving? This year they are inducting Blondie, are you joking? Blondie? You may think Blondie is fantastic, mind blowing, astonishingly mesmerizing, but give me one valid reason for their inclusion to this place. What's more egregious is who is NOT in it, despite being eligible. How about Rush for example. Geddy Lee and Neil Peart were one of if not THE prime influence on 20 years of aspiring bassists and drummers. Yes is not in the hall? Jeff beck? With the exception of Pink Floyd, I don't see a single progressive rock band (and Pink Floyd isnt really a prog rock band anyway). You personally may not like progressive rock any more than I like rap, but it deserves to be represented. Kiss isn't in there? They were responsible more than anyone else for elevating the rock concert into the spectacle it is today. Again, you may not like them, you may regret the stadium spectacle, but for thousands and thousands of people, that is what Rock music is. Why are they being excluded while Blondie gets in? No Alice Cooper? He was doing Kiss before Kiss did! Where in the hell are Iggy and the Stooges? I see no sign of Chicago or Blood Sweat & Tears, No Joe Cocker. The Commodores are missing as are the Ohio Players. No Lou Reed, no Peter GabrieI. It's astonishing. I realize that more people are added every year, but to leapfrog past the bands and musician's who have truly helped to create, define and innovate what rock music is and will become in order to install mediocre bands whose primary claim to fame is how often the members attended the parties of the founders of the hall is a disgrace, and does nothing except to make the hall a useless institution with zero credibility. Not that it necessarily had credibility to begin with, but it had the potential in the beginning to really showcase and educate people as to the history and impact rock music has had on society since it first wiggled out of the sludge of the mississippi, crawled and scraped it's way out of the gutters of Chicago, London, New York and Memphis, Liverpool and San Francisco.
Gonna have to face it, I'm addicted to... cheese
I'm a big guy. Not in the sense of Arnold Shwarzengruber, or Andre
the Giant. I'm fat, overweight, obese, "Jolly", gravitationally
challenged, rotund, mashmallowesque, chair threatening, mountainous,
chunky ... and I need to do something about it. Being fat sucks, in
ways most people don't even realize. It makes almost everything you
do a little more difficult in subtle and annoying ways. Putting on
socks becomes an adventure in finding positions that Kama Sutra could
only dream of. Overeating is an addiction as strong as any other,
whether it's drinking, smoking, heroin, American Idol or shoe shopping.
Fortunately, if you're a smoker or a drinker, you can always go cold
turkey. If you're an food addict, going cold turkey means you eat
a lot more turkey (with Mashed potatoes and Gravy, and those biscuits
that peel apart in layers and... hang on, I have to go have a donut).
I know that I need to do something about it, or I probably won't be
around long enough to die in the coming nuclear holocaust. What to
do though? Dieting works, but for me dieting means no solid food,
at all. It's the only thing that works for me. I am simply incapable
of eating a normal sized plate of food. Or perhaps I should say I
am INCREDIBLY capable of eating a normal sized plate of food, and
then three more. So, liquid diets will work for me. A couple of years
ago, I did a liquid diet for 7 months and lost a hundred pounds. But
a strange thing happens if I eat anything at all while doing this.
it seems I have an imaginary bank of switches in my head, and as soon
as I eat anything, even if it's a single french fry, the little french
fry switch changes from off to on, and I will suddenly find myself
at Ronnies eating Idaho's output for the week. Before you know it,
I've gained back everything I lost at a speed so incredible, I can
almost see myself inflating in real time. Then there is exercise,
but how do you start an exercise program when just walking to the
bathroom every morning is like preparing for a marathon. I've always
hated exercise, when I was in school, I would routinely "forget"
my gym clothes. A big part of that was because I was terrified that
my sadistic bastard of a gym teacher would make me climb the ropes,
but as a rule, exercise always seemed pointless to me. The one exception
was riding a bike, I used to ride all over the place. I used to ride
from West Boylston to the Grafton Flea Market. This is no small ride.
But I haven't been on a bike probably since I got my driver's license,
because riding a bike was never something I did for fun, I did it
because it was the only way I had to get anyplace. I know they say
you never forget how to ride a bike, but is it as easy to get back
on when you're 3 feet wider than you were and exceed the bike's weight
limit by a factor of 3? Exercise is something that I simply can't
do in any significant way until I lose some weight. At this point
it would just make things worse, Catch 22.
I've looked into stomach surgery, but the more I looked at it, the
less it seemed like something I want to do. Do I really want to spend
the rest of my life eating a tablespoon of food for a meal 8 times
a day? And what if I put a Ring Ding in the tablespoon? Did you notice
they changed the name of Ding Dongs to King Dons? What the hell is
that all about? I've also noticed that a lot of people who had that
surgery a few years ago seem to be getting fat again. Have you seen
Al Roker lately? Even with a tenth of a stomach, he seems to be slowly
inflating again, same with Carnie Wilson. The fact that the mortality
rate in the first year is something like 10 percent isn't exactly
encouraging either. if I'm gonna die anyway, Id rather die with a
faceful of pizza than a cubic centimeter of broccoli.
Anyway, one way or another I have to lose weight. Maybe when I finally
get up the gumption to start I'll put my progress on here, but I doubt
it, because who the hell are you to judge my progress? Huh? Nosy bastard...
No One Cares what you're selling!
Have you ever seen the Terry Gilliam movie Brazil? In that movie, one of the main characters drives a truck, and there's a scene where the truck is driving down a highway. On either side of the highway., there are literally endless billboards forming a wall on either side of the road, most of which show blissful and idyllic scenes of parks and trees, but when the camera pulls back and up, what's behind the never ending wall of billboards appears and it's a vast empty wasteland. I bring this up because I've noticed a huge proliferation in the number of billboards being put up alongside the highways. I don't know if some new law was passed or what, but it seems the number of billboards has exploded recently. I can't help but wonder if the people who spend thousands of dollars to advertise on these things really expects to get business from it. Apart from the simple safety concern of trying to get someone to take their eyes off the road in order to read the damn things, have you ever, even once, seen a billboard and said "My God! That's just what I was looking for, let me jot down that phone number!!" A lot of advertising is stupid. I always find it a bit odd that every company that has it's own T shirts will put a phone number on it. Again, I don't know about you, but seeing some guy with a paint plastered T-Shirt on has never inspired me to grab a pen and note the number written on it. In any case, when is the billboard craze going to end? I keep seeing that scene from Brazil in my head, do I think it will ever get to that point? Unfortunately, with the current structure of corporate controlled.. well, everything, it wouldn't surprise me at all.
Let's hope this isn't the future
This is a picture of me (taken during my "Bozo the Clown" hair days) taken in about, oh, 1984ish. It was taken by my friend Chris Stanley inside Union Station. For those of you who never went inside before it was rebuilt, this will give you an idea of the condition it was in. With the death of Union Blues and the idiocy of much of the local government, I fear that the station could well end up this way again. let us all hope that it won't come back to this.
What the hell have I been eating?
OK, so those of you who know me have been asking that for years, but I just watched an ad for Arby's where the entire ad was devoted to explaining how they are now using nothing but all natural chicken. So, I guess the question then becomes, if it's all natural chicken now, what was it before? What have I been eating? I don't eat at Arby's much as it is, it's always been a little pricey but I did like the Chicken Cordon Bleu. Now I think back on it and wonder if all this time it was just some sort of chicken flavored glop that had been formed in a pattie mold and fried into "Tastes like Chicken" foodstuffs anonymity. Perhaps they ground those "Chicken in a Biscuit" crackers into a fine powder and created a kind of psuedo-chicken plaster of paris they could mold at will. While I applaud the Arby's company for deciding that serving chicken in their chicken is a worthwhile goal, I have to say that perhaps advertising it in the way they are is possibly not the best strategy. At the very least, maybe it would behoove them to say that they are now using all natural chicken INSTEAD OF the solid protein apparently unnatural chicken flavored by-product that they were using. Otherwise, the mind is free to imagine the captured alien fetuses kept in an incubator deep under the floors at Arby's corporate headquarters from whence all their food may in fact derive. Come to think of it, I have not heard them say that the roast beef comes from all natural cows... no wonder they can slice it so thin.
You heard it here first
Have you ever noticed
how many news shows and networks spend most of their advertising trying
to tell you that they are the first with every story? I happened to
catch an ad for the local Fox news channel here and it was wall to
wall with "We were the first to bring you..." over and over
again. My question is, who cares? We live in a world where information
is transmitted at the speed of light, are you really going to tune
into one channel or another because they put the story up 6 microseconds
before anyone else? For that matter, does it matter if they do? Unless
the news is "Your house is on fire, we have a reporter
on the way to wake you up and save your cat", what possible
difference does it make to you? We've gotten so used to having all
of this crap shoved down our throats that no one even questions it
anymore. How about, instead of advertising how quickly you can put
your blather on the air, you advertise how accurate it is, and then
back it up somehow? How about instead of being the first to air Bush's
latest installment of "Stay the Course" for the 6000th time,
we report on why it's just so much bullpucky? We don't need news faster,
we needs news correcter.
Media people wonder why the Daily Show is as influential as it is,
despite the fact that it's a comedy show. It's because the Daily Show
isn't interested in being first at anything, instead, they find all
of these networks rushing around to beat their competitors at slamming
up the story on how "something utterly trivial happened and we're
the first to tell you about it" and then they take the TIME to
actually analyze it and find out what part of the story is BS and
then make fun of it. In the process, they are able to also let the
rest of us know what part of the story is BS as well.
It's especially irritating when the story that they are trying so
hard to be first with, isn't even a new story anyway, but just some
dismal attempt to find a new wrinkle in it so they can pretend they
are doing something new. How many times has CNN been blazingly fast
to report that Nathalie Holoway is still missing? Chevy Chase did
that bit with Francisco Franco in 1979 and it was funnier then.
I know my writing here has massive national impact, so I just want
to tell all the producers of all the news shows out there, nobody
really cares who is first to report on the blizzard we can all see
out of our window, how about you use some of the resources you pour
into this crap and actually hire a few reporters who can get a little
beyond the highly polished turds of what is considered a news story
now and try and tell us all something important before the whole country
goes the way of Mad Max and we're out on 495 with spiked bumpers and
machine guns.
Black is white, up is down, I'm very attractive..
Ladies and Gentlemen, we have officially entered Bizzaroworld. The place where everything is the opposite of they way it should be. How do I know this? because this headline and story were just on CNN:
Shooting victim apologizes to Vice President
"The man shot
by Vice President Dick Cheney today apologized for what
Cheney and his family have had to endure since the weekend hunting
accident in Texas. Harry Whittington, 78, said: "Whatever activities
we
pursue and regardless of how experienced, careful and dedicated we
are,
accidents do and will happen." Whittington, speaking to reporters
outside the hospital where he was treated, added: "My
family and I are
deeply sorry for all that Vice President Cheney and his family have
had
to go through this week."
So, the man who
was SHOT IN THE FACE by the Vice President has now
publicly come out and APOLOGIZED TO THE VICE PRESIDENT.
For what? Apparently for being shot. Yes, Mr. Whittington did what
Mr Cheney has yet to do himself, publicly come out in front of a mass
of reporters and apologized. This is so totally ass-backwards that
I'm left to wonder what planet I awoke on this morning. A man has
been in intensive care for four days, and had a mild heart attack
as a result of a piece of shot, injected at close range and high speed
from the gun of the Vice President of the United States, and he's
apologizing for the stress the poor Vice President has had to endure.
Just a moment... I'm still trying to make this fit into some sort
of logical framework so that my head doesn't explode... just a moment...
just a moment...
Vice President get's liquored up with hunting party... hunting party
gets out of car driven up to caged birds... caged birds are released
so hunting party may commence blowing them into little birdy bits...
man in hunting party leaves briefly to check on birdy bits or perhaps
take a beer assisted leak all over the great outdoors... man walks
up behind Vice President who is apparently following a bird he wishes
to obliterate... VP hears man and spins 180 degrees from where the
bird he hopes to vaporize has been hiding and without verifying the
humanity vs. birdliness of target, and despite the difference in overall
physical mass between a 78 year old human being and a farm raised
quail, pulls trigger... Man, who is said to have been 30 yards away
is somehow sprayed with shot pattern consistent only with a gunshot
from 18 feet... man falls... VP's medical team, who are always with
VP at a cost of a million dollars a year to the rest of us treat man...
man goes to wrong hospital without concerned VP because ambulance
is too small and apparently the 15 secret service vehicles they've
been traveling in cannot follow ambulance... Concerned VP goes back
to ranch for dinner while now semi-metallic friend is treated for
extensive injuries... No one in media contacted apparently to cover
VPs beerfulness, hanging out with rarely mentioned chick huntress
or maybe both... Sheriff department turned away at gate and prevented
from talking to intrepid hunter for many many hours... Target is flown
by helicopter to correct hospital, the one with the trauma center,
the one he should have gone to immediately to begin with... Target
in hospital has over 200 shot wounds, almost none of which are removable,
one of which enters heart, man has heart attack... Press notified
next day by woman "eye witness" who proceeds to say that
she didn't actually see anything because she wasn't close enough...
Veep waits 4 days before getting rhetorical BJ from Britt Hume, who
dreams of a day when it will not just be rhetorical... VEEP tells
adoring sycophant "newsman" that target is not friend but
"aquaintence", which is apparently all you need to be in
order to be allowed within close range of the Vice President with
a loaded weapon... Man is released from hospital with permanent scarring,
heart problems and what will almost certainly be a lifelong fear of
loud noises and proceeds to face the media, apologizing to the Vice
President for the stress he has caused by accidently not screaming
and yelling and jumping up and down with a giant
"I Am Human, for the love of God Don't Shoot Me!"
sign...
That just can't be right, let me start over again at the top... Just
a moment...
This is exactly the kind of the thing that caused the HAL 9000 computer
to go berserk in 2001: A Space Odyssey. It can truly make sense only
in a world where things aren't only not as they seem, but completely
anti-logical. I consider this great news, because it means that later
today I'm going to be sexually molested by a gang of roving supermodels
who find short fat bald men to be irresistible. I'd better wash extra
carefully in the shower and wear my best undies today... Finally,
my day has come!
Daisy.. daisy... give me your answer do....
Killing me not so softly
The Valves are a cover band. I have no problem with any bands doing covers of other peoples material, I think it can result in some great songs. Train Kept a Rollin' by Aerosmith is, in my mind, the definitive version of that song, even though it's a cover of a Yardbirds song. As a rule, I think if you are going to record and release a cover song, you should try to do something to make it your own. Lately however, there have been a rash (a large painful red gaping rash) of really awful cover songs being released. Songs like "Lean on Me", which has been done inexplicably to a reggae beat, all cliche'd out to include the horrible "We Be Jammin", which is enough in and of itself to give me the screaming heebee jeebees and make me wish I had Dick Cheney's shotgun to use on the radio every time I hear it. There are so many of these abominations released these days that it's difficult to narrow things down to the worst offender, but yesterday I think I finally heard it. As part of a small side project I'm working on, I was given a CD of songs I need to learn. As I flipped my way through for the first time, I heard the stunning intro to "Killing Me Softly", the 70s Roberta Flack ballad, which has one of the most beautiful A'Capella intros ever put to vinyl. Unfortunately, as soon as the intro ended, I found myself jolted in my seat to hear some kind of cheesy sitar make a useless squeeky noise, followed by a horrendous sounding drum loop. The song officially got under way to a hip hop beat so generic that it was actually almost laughable. Then came the talking. Lots of talking, by several people. I guess it was intended to be rap, but from what I could hear, it never got beyond the "uh huh, yeah" level. Now, I would never have said that Killing me Softly was one of my favorite songs of all time, but it was and is still a beautiful ballad, and Roberta Flack had a set of pipes that could have reduced Mr. Spock into a blubbering puddle of emotional goo, so to hear this song so completely destroyed was something of a shock. When you perform a cover, you have a couple of choices. You can either try to faithfully replicate it (which is, for the most part, what you need to do when you're in a band like ours, since people in a club aren't expecting radical adventures to be taking place) or you can try to make it your own by radically altering it (the way Devo covered Satisfaction, for example), but to take a song, any song and pretend you are doing something worthwhile by slapping a drum loop on it is a waste of time and resources. The though process which would lead anyone to say "What can we do to this great old soulful ballad? I know, we can talk over it, I'll say "uh-huh yeah"" mystifies me. The really sad part about this particular song is that I think Roberta Flack may actually have been involved in it's demise. I guess that's what happens when the house payments get hard to make, but it doesn't make it any better. Do I have an answer for this trend? No, other than to encourage people to listen to the original versions of these songs, so you can hear for yourself what a great song sounds like without a drum loop or people saying "uh-huh yeah". They really did make music at one time without drum loops or people saying "uh-huh yeah". I know it's hard to believe but it's true.
Sit and Spin
I'm sick of spin. I'm sick of being lied to and of hearing english so mangled and strained in an effort to avoid responsibility. What has made me reach this point? The spin involved in the shooting of a78 year old man by the Vice President. If you listen to the way this story is being reported, the Vice President accidentally had no other option but to shoot someone who was apparently hiding in the grass and doing his best quail impersonation. The man/bird was shot at an enormous distance by the VPs "pellet gun" which sprayed the poor lawyer/avian and caused him minor damage, the type that happens to careful hunters all the time. It was, of course, the shootee's fault and there is no way the Veep could have known he was out there in the grass, especially since it's obvious that absolutely anyone could confuse a 12" bird with a 6 foot man. After the shooting took place, apparently 18 hours were spent on the scene determining whether the man's injuries were severe enough to bother to let anyone else know about them, despite their being made with a pellet gun and being a routine hunting injury. Absolutely no alcohol was involved because if there was, there is no way the secret serVice would have prevented the local law enforcement officials from speaking to the veep for an entire day, as that would have been far too obvious. As for the hunt itself, it was just your average hunt that so many sportsmen take part in every year. The hunting party drove up to the caged birds so that they could be there to happily blow away the vicious quail as soon as they were released, and before they had a chance to attack the intrepid he-men. I think most hunters drive up to their target, aren't they all penned up to make hunting less about the tracking and the hiding and the waiting and more about the shooting and the blowing away of? I'm not a hunter, but from what I'm hearing, there is nothing unusual about this.
Of course this is all utter and complete bullshit. The Vice President shot a fellow human being at extremely close range (the shot spray pattern indicates the shooter to have been no more than 20 feet away). He was using a 28 gauge shotgun, not a "pellet gun". A pellet gun is what kids used to be able to buy at Toys are Us, along with the Star Trek phasers that shot the little discs. The man was shot because the veep either wasn't paying attention or was too inebriated to care. Gun owners can tell you that you never fire a weapon if you're unsure where any member of your party is on a hunt. of course this was a hunt in name only. Hunts generally require at least some form of stalking and finding an animal through the use of clues left behind, and can take many hours. They are generally a way for someone to spend time in nature, to go back to being a predator the way our ancestors did. What these people were doing was a hunt in the same way that running over a crate full of birds with a steamroller would be a hunt. I think it really says a lot about the completely bloodthirsty nature of these people that for them, the hunt consists solely of the part where animals die, screw all that namby pamby skill and who the hell needs nature?
The bottom line is, a man is lying in the hospital where he has so far spent 3 days in intensive care. You don't go into the ICU because you have a few skin deep blemishes. At least one "pellet" has gotten as far as the man's heart. This doesn't happen with a pellet gun from 30 yards away. What started this little rant was spin, and I will end it with spin as well. These people lie. They lie reflexively, the way an 8 year old might lie about breaking dishes. They lie about everything, whether it needs to be lied about or not. They lie and then they try to cover it up. The more they try to cover it up, the more dribbles out and the more defensive they get. It sickens me to hear the straining lies being put out one after another, and then to hear the media pick up the lies and report them all, uncritically drives me even battier. Just once, I would like to hear some member of this godawful administration say "Ooops, wow, we really made a mistake here, sorry bout that" but it will never happen. I just wonder how many others have been sacrificed on the alter of infallibility that these idiots seem to think they need.
Live Nude Girls !!!
Over the last couple of days, I have seen essentially the same headline repeated on every news source online. "Movie Stars Bare All". Now, being that I have an abiding interest in glamour photography in all it's forms, and being that I'm also a human male with an interest in all things female and nude, I went to see what the fuss was about. Turns out Vanity Fair has a cover this month featuring Kiera Knightley and Scarlett Johansson nude. Well, sort of nude. My gripe is simply this, if you say someone "bares all", that means they bare ALL... That means you should see something that you wouldn't normally see in any episode of the Man Show or while getting chicken wings at Hooters. In the picture in question, Ms. Johansson is lying on her stomach, while Ms Knightley is sitting up, her arms strategically covering anything of interest she might have had to contribute to the debate. There's also this goofy guy in the picture, who was apparently "the stylist" at the shoot who is taking advantage of the opportunity to get closer to two nude women than he really has any right to be, and boy, don't they look happy about it. All you see on vanity fair is a couple of relatively hot chicks showing less than you would see at the average city pool. At most, it could be said that we can see Johansson's surprisingly flat and pasty buttocks, but that's hardly something worth alerting the media about. This is not "Baring All" people. Maybe the photographer saw them naked, but no one else will. I work with women every week who bare all, and are damn good at it, we don't need no stinkin celebrities doing another faux nudity scam. If you want to bare it all, then for the sake of the memory of Betty Page, just take it off and let it all hang out. If it's going to make headline news (and why exactly did this story make news at all in the first place?) I expect to see at the very least everything their doctor saw at their last comprehensive physical. Otherwise don't even bother, it just makes those of us who take their nude glamour seriously aggravated, and the prudes of the world get one more thing to whine about.
The Death of Union Blues
Well, another club
has come and gone in Worcester. As of the 28th of February, Union
Blues will be no more. UB was the first club The Valves ever played
in, and for a while we were there once a month. We had mixed results
there for a while as we tried to build a name for ourselves and the
club did the same. Unfortunately, the club never seemed to get into
the public consciousness of the city. I think this can be blamed in
part on it's location, Union Station is a beautiful place (as a side
note, I was a member of the Union Station Alliance, the group who
spearheaded the drive to rebuild the station) and I love it in there,
but the club itself was in sort of an odd place. I had friends on
more than one occasion tell me they had wandered through the station
trying to figure out where the music was coming from, but there was
never a big sign downstairs telling people where to go. I also suspect
most people assumed that it cost money to park there even though it
didn't. Beyond that though, did Union Blues ever have a chance in
this city? I don't really know, but I suspect the answer is no.
What I find sad is the death of not only Union Blues, but the live
music club scene in general here. Steve and I were discussing this
topic not long ago. We were both in bands in the mid 1980s, and we
both played pretty consistently within the boundaries of the city,
or at most within a few miles of it. Chimera had a club circuit that
consisted in part of Tad's, Rick's, The Office Lounge, J.C's, Ralph's,
The Cove, and Tammany Hall and those were only the clubs who were
either on Main Street or within a mile or two of it. The really amazing
thing was in talking with Steve to see that Tornado Alley also played
a steady stream of local clubs and with the exception of J.C's, their
circuit was almost entirely separate from ours. There was that much
of a live music scene in this city that two bands playing different,
but not radically different styles of music could play a different
club every single weekend and not even be playing in the same clubs.
That's how much this scene has changed.
The few clubs left where live music is "tolerated" has shrunk,
and most of the remaining clubs cater only to specific audiences.
Those seem to be limited to either metal or thrash bands playing at
the Lucky Dog or Ralph's or the few small coffee houses where She's
Busy and Chuck and Mud find their audience. There are also a few all
original bands eeking out an existance at Ralph's or maybe Tammany
Hall, some even do pretty well but without the wide range of diversity
there once was. With so many colleges here, you would think there
would be an outcry for more live music and certainly more diversity
in what music scene there is, but it seems that most of the college
kids go away on weekends, or go to Boston or even Providence.
Of course, Chimera and Tornado Alley also used to do our share of
proms, school functions, etc. but now they, like most clubs, prefer
a DJ. I've never understood this myself. If anyone had even suggested
a DJ when it was my prom in 1982, they would have been laughed out
of the room. Who the hell wants to go to a special once in a lifetime
event like that and hear the same records they could hear at home?
Now the poles have reversed and I suspect any student suggesting live
music for a school dance would be the one getting the wedgie and being
told to shut the hell up.
Worcester has always been home to some great musicians. J.Giels got
thier start here. Aerosmith played here before anyone knew who they
were, Joe Cocker picked his entire touring band here at one time,
some of them are still with him. Some are still here, and I have the
unique privilege to be friends with and perform with many of them.
It's truly unfortunate that one of the few remaining venues where
they could be seen and heard is going to close it's doors for good.
There have to be people here who love good live music, I only wish
they would stay here and see what they're missing before they get
in the car and head east.
News Bimbos
Just happen to have the news on this AM. They are talking about the man who walked into a gay bar and opened fire because, well, because it's a gay bar. This is a pretty disturbing story, but Karen Andersen, the talking head on the case is standing outside under an umbrella and she has a smile on her face. It's been there the entire time she's been talking, as if she were reporting on how the circus just came to town and boy aren't those elephants cute. On a somewhat related note, why do they even have her outside to report this story at all? Do they think that another bigot whackjob is going to pull up with a gun and an axe while she's out there and start attacking more gays? Is this really something that requires a live shot? I don't know that I blame the reporter, she's typical of the general cute but vaccous "reporter" made popular originally on fox news, but someone needs to explain to her that attempted murder and neo nazis are probably not the kind of story you really wanting to be smirking through.
Reading between the lines
Has there been an unannounced change in the rule that says to park your car between the lines in a parking lot? Maybe rule is too strong a word, perhaps it's just supposed to be common sense, but for some reason I've noticed lately that everywhere I go, people seem to take the lines on the parking lot as some kind of loose suggestion to be ignored at will. At the Greendale Mall recently, literally every car in the lot was parked some amount over the lines. It was bad enough to result in two cars parked in roughly every 3 spaces. That's ridiculous. It reflects a kind of institutional selfishness that is pretty pervasive nowadays. "My car is wonderful, my car is special, so I can park anywhere and anyway I want, and screw the rest of you, you can walk". Just one more indicator of the way society has become the All for One self-love fest so glaringly demonstrated on reality TV.
E! True Hollywood Story: Frankenstein's Monster
By the
start of his sophomore year in college, Frankenstein's Monster was
beginning to show signs of stress and anti-social behavior that made
his friends and family feel concern for his safety.
"He told me once that he got tired of always being "Frankenstein's
Monster", he wanted to be known for who he was. The fact that
he had no name didn't help any" said his college roommate Brian
Sweeney.
According to a biology lab partner, this manifested itself in strange
ways. "He would always pick a name from whatever movie he had
seen most recently, and then he would get really upset if you didn't
call him by that name. One day he was Clint, the next day he was Indy.
I remember after he saw 'My Cousin Vinnie' that he wanted to be called
Marissa, that lasted a whole week".
Brian Sweeney:" Oh hell yeah, the movie thing, he'd be lying
on the couch watching something on AMC and suddenly say something
like "Me Steve McQueen" and you'd just go, oh Jesus, now
he's Steve". One night Young Frankenstein was on, and he kept
saying "That's Frahnkensteen" and we're all like, "yeah,
right, whatever you say man".
His behavior ran to the more seedy side as well. "He was hung
like a horse, and I mean, literally, I think they found a horse dick
and sewed it on" recalls Sweeney.
Former girlfriend Kelly Brosnihan remembers it well "Yeah, he
was huge, he didn't walk like that for nothing. Trouble is, what good
was it? He couldn't get it up. He would leave it hanging over the
side of the bed". Whether or not it was functional is a matter
of some debate, according to a one time blind date who asked not to
be named "It was prehensile, I'm sitting across from him at Denny's
and suddenly I can feel this thing climbing up my leg. I screamed
bloody murder and jumped up. I swear it was like an elephant's trunk
or something, it might have even had it's own eyes. Christ, I'm freaked
out just thinking about it"
His huge phallus became a hot topic on campus, and soon made it impossible
for him to date. "Oh yeah, nobody wanted to go out with him.
I mean, what were you supposed to do? His thing was so big you had
to date him and his dick on alternate nights". According to people
living in his dorm, he would sometimes sit on a bench on the campus
and leave it laying across the path to see if someone would trip over
it.
His dependency on electricity was also becoming more of an issue.
"He would really get excited whenever he saw lightning"
remembers classmate Lincoln Washington. "He had this thing in
his room that would somehow attract the lightning and would plug into
these bolts on his neck? I mean, what the hell was that? Anyway, the
campus fire department made him take it out, I mean, like, it was
going to light the whole damn house on fire. Oh man, he got so pissed
off. I thought he was going to rip the whole house down. After that,
he was always trying to plug into any power source he could find.
I remember coming home one night and there he was, on the couch practically
blubbering, with this 9 volt adapter thing that was supposed to power
his portable CD player attached to his bolts. It was pretty sad in
a way. How do you help somebody like that?, not a lot of 12 step programs
for people addicted to getting struck by lightning, you know?".
Coming up: Frankenstein's Monster
gets expelled and has to find a job.
Next, on True Hollywood Stories.
Skankers Away!
I just read that
Paris Hilton has turned down a lot of money to appear in Playboy.
Like most of you, I got sick of this scrawny little tart some time
ago, but the idea that she would turn down a paycheck for just about
anything boggles the mind. Especially since all she would have to
do would be to show the world once again what every pimple faced teenager
has already downloaded for free 6 million times. All I can think is
that perhaps the last few years of non stop partying have left her
little luv muffins a bit on the saggy side, what other explanation
could there be? "Sorry hef, I've decided that I don't want my
eventual grandchildren to see any "Classy" photos of granny's
titties, only the ones shot in nightvision with a camcorder like everyone
else". Ironically, Playboy employs some of the best glamour photographers
in the world, and they could have been the first pictures of her that
let her show her golden bozos with some taste.
To be honest, what annoys me most about this, apart from the typical
aggravation with rich stuck up twats who are famous because they're
famous, is that a lot of the women who model for me would kill to
be in Playboy. As much as the more feminist among you cringe to hear
it, the truth is that being in Playboy is the dream of a great many
young women out there. Almost every woman I've photographed has told
me they would love to do it. Unfortunately, I doubt many women could
even get a shot at Playboy, since Hef long ago decided that every
centerfold should be a clone of the last one with slight differences
in hair color. Still, it bothers me that a drunken bimbo like Paris
Hilton is given the option to pose and says no while so many beautiful
women, for whom being in Playboy could actually be a positive and
helpful experience, or at the very least, a dream come true for them,
will never get the chance.
Just Askin'
Why isn't it called a "Hersterectomy"?
(PS, I can't imagine that I'm the first person ever
to notice this, but I did actually think of it on my own. If you've
heard it someplace else before, well, what can I say, a great mind
thinks alike)
Dating Services Pt 2
The other thing
I noticed while perusing some of the ads online is how phony most
of them seem. While it is of course difficult to tell who is being
honest and who is not, the general tone of them is obviously trying
to keep things at the level of lowest common denominator in an apparent
effort to keep the playing field as large as possible. I say this
is asinine. If you are really there to try to find someone compatible,
wouldn't it make more sense to just be honest and put it all out there?
Are you only attracted to girls with big gazongas? Put it down! Only
want a guy who will buy you a Mercedes on the first date? Put it down!
Lying or even fudging your ad is only going to force you to wade through
a bunch of people you won't be interested in, so why bother? I've
never put much thought into a personal ad, but if I were to write
one, I think it would go something like this:
Short, Fat, Bald male seeks Hot Chick with exhibitionistic
tendencies and low standards to swap bodily fluids. Must be submissive
by nature, unopposed to exploitation, willing to wear whatever crazy
outfit I can dream up and not have any phobias involving handcuffs,
cucumbers or candle wax. I have no money, and will probably end up
moving in with you, so you should have a decent house with a large
TV so we can cuddle and watch the new Battlestar Galactica and porn.
I'm sober, drug and disease free, you be too unless you are SMOKIN
HOT, then anything goes. I like to read, watch movies, spend hours
and hours in strip clubs and photographing naked women. If you are
also into those things (whether watching naked women or being a naked
woman who likes to be photographed), have small pert breasts, long
straight hair, and are attracted to large hairy men with questionable
hygiene, then send me an e-mail with a picture (see "dating serVices
pt. 1).
Now, doesn't that seem like I would be more likely to get what I'm
looking for than pretending I'm a sensitive male who only wants to
learn the ways of the Goddess and share tips on scrapbooking? Honesty,
still the best policy!
Dating Services Pt. 1
A friend of mine who is somewhat less than computer literate decided last week that she was going to sign up for some online dating services, and she asked me if I would upload some pictures for her, since she couldn't quite get the hang of it. So, being the Super Friend that I am, I proceeded to four different singles sites and commenced uploading. While there, I took a quick look through some of the ads, and what I noticed first about them were the photos. The vast majority of ads had pictures on them that were hideous to the point that you had to wonder if it were actually some kind of social satire being demonstrated through the site. I couldn't help but be stunned at the idea that these people looked through all their photos and thought "Yeah, that's definitely the one that shows me best, I look hot in that". What kind of person decides that the best way to get a date is to put up that photo of herself taken at Aunt Mae's summer cookout, you know, the one where she has red-eye and just got hit in the face with the beach ball thrown by little cousin bobby? I saw more soft focus that an issue of Penthouse. Did you really think it would impress Mr or Miss available to put up that picture where you stood in front of the mirror and shot yourself with the flash on the disposable camera, so you look like the girl in the Blair Witch Project? I realize not everyone has the money or the inclination to go to Olan Mills once a year and have formal portraits done, but how hard is it to ask a friend to take a picture of you while you actually look your best (whatever that is), and that is in focus, doesn't look like it was taken in a mine or on the surface of the sun, and where you are actually looking at the camera with a pleasant facial expression instead of appearing to have just been caught picking your nose or scowling at the person who forgot to use the Lysol when you went to the bathroom. If you don't have a decent picture, and for some reason all your friends refuse you your request, perhaps it's best not to use one at all. At least leaving some room for doubt amongst potential mates. Putting up that photo of yourself in the Quasimodo costume (real or imagined) isn't likely to help you score any points.
The missing Rolling Stone
The Rolling Stones began life as a 5 piece band. When Brian Jones died, they replaced him with Mick Taylor, and when he quit, they replaced him with Ron Wood. Each of these replacements was immediately considered a member of the band. They were in all the publicity photos, all the album credits listed them as a member of the band and are featured in videos and films, documentaries etc. The reason I bring this up, I saw a recent promo photo of the Stones the other day and I noticed an absence. Does anyone but me find it strange that more than ten years after Bill Wyman quit the band, Daryl Jones is still not considered an actual member of the Rolling Stones? As far as I know, he's been playing with them ever since. Daryl Jones is a great player, started off playing mostly jazz, and played on Sting's first solo album and tour. I'm not sure how he hooked up with the Stones, but to my knowledge he has now been playing with them, in concert and record for well over ten years. But he is still apparently considered an outsider. He is not in the promo materials the rest of the band is in, he is marginilized in videos I've seen, even when I saw them live, he never seemed to be treated equally with other band members. Maybe it's because I'm a bass player that this irritates me. The idea that perhaps the band simply doesn't think of bass as important enough to elevate Mr. Jones to the level of actual band member. Then again, I couldn't help but notice that Daryl Jones is black. Coincidence? Maybe. I have no grand conspiracy theories, it's just something I noticed and that I find irritating. Now, one could say that the Stones have used other instruments for years and not made them members of the band. But none of those other instruments was there at the beginning, none of them involve replacing someone who was actually considered a band member before he left. Is this an important issue? No, but this is my bitch and moan page, and it's something I felt like bitching about. So there!
My locker room rant
Yes, I belong to
a gym. You can stop laughing. I go to this gym several times a week,
and I see these guys who come into the locker room and basically move
in. They have gym bags the size of a Subaru, and proceed to unload
it, the entire contents into a locker. 3 different outfits, 4 kinds
of soap, conditioner, shampoo, pictures of the wife and kids, mirrors,
sneakers, dress shoes, towels (large and small). About a hundred pounds
of crap roughly, and they put all this crap in there, and then lock
it up and go into the gym and do whatever it is they do there for
an hour. When finished, they come back, take a shower, and unload
the locker back into the Subaru. I simply don't understand this. I'm
tempted to ask if they think that maybe in the event of nuclear attack,
this will give them a refuge for when their home is destroyed, but
I never do. I just watch in amazement as a hundred items go in, then
a hundred items come back out.
Then there are the bench claimers. There are three small benches in
the locker room of the gym I belong to, and more often than not, at
least one of them has someone's crap all over it. Now, if said someone
were standing next to the bench, or better yet sitting on the bench,
it would be ok, but no, they are either in the gym, in the shower,
in the sauna, in the toilet or god knows where, but that have that
bench MARKED. it's THEIRS and no one is going to take it from them
dammit! The mentality of Dirk McStudly "I don't care that there
are 50 lockers in here and 20 people at any given time trying to use
them, MY gymbag is going to be on that bench, waiting for me when
I decide I've had enough squat thrusts for the day" irritates
the hell out of me. I've been tempted more than once to just take
their junk and fling it across the room, or to hide it in the sauna
so all his cottons will shrink, but I don't, because I'm in a gym
and he could probably snap my neck like a carrot. My only hope is
that these inconsiderate bastards find this screed and stop their
evil ways.
Could you say that again?
There are few things
more annoying than a really terribly made commercial but my pet peeve
in commercialworld are ads that are acted out by people who are supposed
to sound real, but who are saying things that no one in their right
mind would ever say. I think the worst offender in this department
has to be for Ovaltine. I hear these radio ads for Ovaltine all the
time, and I've never heard more unrealistic and annoying ad copy anywhere.
A typical ad goes something like:
Mom 1: "Well Sharon, it's almost snack time for the kids,
time to make them Rich Chocolate Ovaltine! "
(you have to have the exclamation point, because they are
always just SO excited)
Mom 2: "Gee Carol, I've been feeding my poor bastards Nesquick
Powder! Should I have been giving them Rich Chocolate Ovaltine!?"
Meanwhile down at the playground:
Kid 1: "Hey gang, Mom will be making Rich Chocolate Ovaltine!
Kid 2: "I love Rich Chocolate Ovaltine!
kid 3": My mom says Rich Chocolate Ovaltine! is the BEST!!
kid 4: "Isn't Nesquick as good as Rich Chocolate Ovaltine!"
kid 1: "That's crazy, are you some kind of total idiot? Nesquick
is chemical filled sludge suitable only for paving roads in indonesia,
only Rich Chocolate Ovaltine! makes me feel like a whole emotionally
complete human being, ready to fulfill a life of achievment and elevated
social status!"
Back home:
Mom 1:"Well, I can hear the kids coming down the street, looking
for their Rich Chocolate Ovaltine!"
Mom 2:"In that case, we'd better drink OUR Rich Chocolate
Ovaltine! and then make more Rich Chocolate Ovaltine!"
Kids en masse: "More Ovaltine Please"
All: "ha ha ha ha ha ha ha ha"
I cannot imagine anything sounding more forced and full of complete
BS and it makes my hair stand on end every time I hear it. Note to
copywriters... people are not stupid (Well, OK, I will grant you that
many many people are stupid, but not all of us), how about we try
and write something that actually demonstrates some redeeming value
in your product instead of just hammering your brand name as many
times as possible in 30 seconds? Just a thought. Otherwise, I may
just have to blow up my radio in a fit of Rich Chocolate Ovaltine!
psychosis!
Nine Questions
Tom Tomorrow sent around a meme asking bloggers to answer these questions. Not sure why anyone would want to know this about me, but here goes:
Four jobs you’ve had in your life: Making fiberoptic decorative lamps (the ones that have the little fibers that change color), Distribution manager, certified auto mechanic, Graphic and website designer
Four movies
you could watch over and over: Star Wars, 2001: A Space Odyssey,
Monty Python and the Holy Grail, Blazing Saddles
Four places you’ve lived: This is not possible, I've only lived in two places in my life, here and on the second floor of a 3 decker in Worcester, MA
Four TV shows you love to watch: Battlestar Galactica (the new one, not the old one), Family Guy, The Simpsons, Spongebob Squarepants (yes, I love animation). if we were to go to shows that are no longer on the air: Carl Sagan's Cosmos, Kevin Burn's The Civil War, The original Star Trek, Monty Python's Flying Circus
Four places you’ve been on vacation: This is also tough, I don't really go on vacation as such. When I was very young, I went to Niagra Falls and to Quebec. For a while about 15 years ago, I spent a lot of time in northern Maine. When I go anyplace at all nowadays, it tends to be museums. I love the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard University
Four websites you visit daily: Tbogg, Ain't it Cool News, gorillamask.net, Pharyngula
Four of your favorite foods: Pizza with either extra cheese or bacon, KFC Original recipe, Kayem small bologna and cheese sandwich, Very rare steak
Four places you’d rather be: Mario's Showplace, Rangely Lake Maine, Anywhere on the coast except a crowded beach, Castle Island Boston
Four albums
you can’t live without: Dark Side of the Moon, Abbey
Road,
Led Zeppelin III, the White Album
Christmas Specials
What happened to all the great Christmas Specials. When I was a kid, there would be a different show on every night leading up to Christmas. I'm a great fan of A Christmas Carol, and I've made a sort of tradition of reading it every year at christmas eve. I always looked forward to seeing the movie versions, there are a whole bunch and I loved to see all the different ways it was interpreted. The Alastair Sim version, the musical version, the Muppet version, the Henry Winkler version (yes there is a Henry Winkler version, called "An American Christmas Carol", and it's actually very good). So far this year, I've only seen one version, the rest seem to have gone away. I watched Rudolph again this year. I believe I have seen that show every year since I was a baby (it was released the year I was born). It's one of the few things I can recall that connect me in a direct way to my childhood. I missed Charlie Brown's special though, the second best of the specials after Rudolph. I do have the soundtrack though, by the Vince Guaraldi Trio, and it's still my favorite christmas music, I only wish it were longer. After that though, where is the rest? Where is the Patrick Stewart version of a christmas carol? I used to watch "The day they saved christmas", a hopelessly corny movie with Jacklyn Smith and the most annoying child actor in history, but it was still a fun show to watch. Where is Blackadder's Christmas? The funniest christmas show ever made? Every night I flip through the channels hoping to find one of these great old shows and the many more that used to exist. Strange that when there were only 3 networks, they managed to get these all on, but now with 700 channels, all those great shows have vanished. It's a pity. If I had kids, I would regret not being able to share those old shows with them, but all they have is some variation on a Pokemon christmas or some other crap intended solely as a marketing vehicle for some cheap crap. At this point in my life, christmas doesn't mean a whole lot anymore, somehow those old shows were the one thing that made the connection to my childhood, back to when christmas eve was the biggest event in my life. back to when I would wake up at 5 am and wait, sometimes for 4 hours or more for my family to wake up, looking at the tree, and the lights and the presents underneath wondering what they were. Obviously nothing can bring that back, but those old shows helped a lot to bring back that simple feeling of joy and wonder that existed in me back when I still thought there was a Santa.
Aerosmith, breakfast of champions
Went to see Aerosmith on Monday night. If my seat wasn't the absolute
worst in the place,it was definitely high on the list, I was sitting
directly across from one of the guys who run the spotlights.
The opening act was Lenny Kravitz. I've never been a big fan of his,
and after seeing him Monday, I'm stil lnot a fan of his. Every song
he does is in the same key, with the same tempo. His drummer plays
every single song exactly the same way. By the 5th song, I was convinced
he was playing something he had already played. Oh well, I didn't
go there to see him anyway, I went to see Aerosmith.
As I'm sure I've mentioned here before, I'm a big fan or Aerosmith.
I learned how to play initially in large part by learning and playing
along to Get Your Wings, Rocks, Toys in the Attic etc. I've seen them
several times before, in fact I was at the show in Worcester where
Steve Tyler passed out on stage, but nowadays, they are on their game
and in top form. It occured to me at some point that they must have
been playing some of these songs now for 30 years. You might think
that they would outwardly betray some boredom with playing train Kept
a Rollin for the 6 thousandth time, but no. Everything they did was
done at 100%. They either really love playing this stuff, or they
put on a good act. They didn't play a lot of new stuff (thank god)
but they did play some songs I never expected to hear live, the main
one being Seasons of Wither, which, along with Uncle Salty are probably
my favorite Aerosmith songs. It's always cool to see Tom Hamilton
live, as I owe a lot to him. When I first picked up a bass, I had
no real interest in it. I wanted to be a drummer, but we couldn't
afford a set. if I had not found an 8-track tape of Toys in the Attic
and started working out the bass parts, I might have given up on playing
completely. Unfortunately, his bass was pretty much non existant in
the mix. The rest of the mix was pretty good, they've come a long
way with live sound. At one point in the show, a woman jumped on stage
and started hanging all over Steven Tyler. At first it was sort of
funny, but when she didn't get back down and started trying to follow
him all over the stage you wanted to just kick her in the head. It
took surprisingly long for security to get her off, but they were
a little quicker with the next 2.
During a slower song (I don't remember exactly which song it was,
maybe Jaded) Tyler knelt in front of a woman in the crown and leaned
forward, basically singing directly to her. They had video monitors
and cameras everywhere, so the camera was zoomed in on the two of
them. Now, let's say you're in the audience and the singer singles
you out to sing to, what would your reaction be? Her reaction was
to yell out "Hell's Angels" and start whipping her tits
out.
I do have to report that the low point in the show was when Joe Perry
decided to do a song from his new solo album. I'm not sure who keeps
telling him that he can sing, but he can't, at all. For that one song,
the entire show was reduced to amateur hour. it wasn't a good song,
and even having the rest of the band to back him up didn't help, it
was simply horrendous. Thankfully he only did one.
All in all, it was a great show. In my opinion, Aerosmith is the greatest
pure rock band this country has ever produced, and while they are
getting up there in age, they still manage to play their asses off
without dipping into self parody the way the Stones have. It was inspirational
in a way, as a musician myself, to see 5 guys put on a great show,
and obviously enjoying it. See them if you get the chance, you won't
be dissapointed.
The Great Pumpkin
There are certain holiday specials that I try to watch every year. In some cases, I can remember watching them when I was 5 or 6 years old, and watching them now creates a thread that ties together each year from then till now. Last night was "It's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown". While I would not put this on the same level as "Merry Christmas Charlie Brown", it's still an amazing piece of work. I was noticing things in it for the first time as I watched, and was struck by what a great piece of art it is. The surrealistic watercolor backgrounds, Vince Gauraldi's music (the soundtrack to the Charlie Brown Christmas special is still my favorite Christmas music, I only wish it were longer) and while it's the Guaraldi trio on the Christmas soundtrack, here a few other instruments, most notably flute, were added. There is something about the hand drawn animation and the jerky, uncertain way the voice cast performs the parts that I think adds rather than takes away from the show. I have always loved animation, and this rates as among the best. It's become so commonplace to have cheesy animation shows nowadays, from pikachu to tekken or whatever other crap they're putting out, but no one makes anything like this anymore, and that's unfortunate. That's not to say there is no good animation anymore, there is, but there is nothing quite comparable to these sort of hand made shows that get mass release. I especially found it interesting to see the end credits, there aren't a lot of them. Almost any animated TV show you see now will have 50 pages of credits. This had about 4. These were small groups of people who did everything themselves and took a great deal of pride in it. It shows.
Post Game
The Patriots just lost a somewhat close game, and as always, the media has to do a post game interview. Can someone tell me the point of this? Has even a single iota of new information ever been gleaned from one of these things? They lost the game. asking the coach and the players "What happened out there" is so stupid and pointless I find it irritating in the extreme. Every week the answer is the same "We didn't execute, they had their running game, we couldn't make the plays when we had to" etc etc. Same crap, every week. Please make it stop! I would love to one day see the pissed off player who dropped the pass just punch the hell out of some idiot who asks him "How does it feel". How do you think it feels, moron...
Weis uses play called by 10-year-old boy dying of inoperable brain tumor
By TOM COYNE, AP Sports Writer
September 25, 2005
SOUTH BEND, Ind. (AP) -- Charlie Weis doesn't usually let anyone else call plays on offense. He made an exception for 10-year-old Montana Mazurkiewicz.
The Notre Dame coach met last week with Montana, who had been told by doctors weeks earlier that there was nothing more they could do to stop the spread of his inoperable brain tumor.
``He was a big Notre Dame fan in general, but football especially,'' said his mother, Cathy Mazurkiewicz.
Weis showed up at the Mazurkiewicz home in Mishawaka, just east of
South Bend, and talked with Montana about his tumor and about Weis'
10-year-old daughter, Hannah, who has global development delay, a
rare disorder similar to autism.
He told Montana about some pranks he played on Joe Montana -- whom Montana was named after -- while they were roommates at Notre Dame.
``I gave him a chance to hammer me on the Michigan State loss, which he did very well. He reminded me of my son,'' said Weis, whose son, Charlie Jr., is 12 years old.
Weis said the meeting was touching.
``He told me about his love for Notre Dame football and how he just wanted to make it through this game this week,'' Weis said. ``He just wanted to be able to live through this game because he knew he wasn't going to live very much longer.''
As Weis talked to the boy, Cathy Mazurkiewicz rubbed her son's shoulder trying to ease his pain. Weis said he could tell the boy was trying not to show he was in pain.
His mother told Montana, who had just become paralyzed from the waist down a day earlier because of the tumor, to toss her a football Weis had given him. Montana tried to throw the football, put could barely lift it. So Weis climbed into the reclining chair with him and helped him complete the pass to his mother.
Before leaving, Weis signed the football.
``He wrote, 'Live for today for tomorrow is always another day,''' Mazurkiewicz said.
``He told him: 'You can't worry about tomorrow. Just live today for everything it has and everything you can appreciate,'' she said. ``He said: 'If you're (in pain) today you might not necessarily be in pain tomorrow, or it might be worse. But there's always another day.''
Weis asked Montana if there was something he could do for him. He agreed to let Montana call the first play against Washington on Saturday. He called ``pass right.''
Montana never got to see the play. He died Friday at his home.
Weis heard about the death and called Mazurkiewicz on Friday night to assure her he would still call Montana's play.
``He said, 'This game is for Montana, and the play still stands,''' she said.
Weis said he told the team about the visit. He said it wasn't a ``Win one for the Gipper'' speech, because he doesn't believe in using individuals as inspiration. He just wanted the team to know people like Montana are out there.
``That they represent a lot of people that they don't even realize they're representing,'' Weis said.
When the Irish started on their own 1-yard-line following a fumble recovery, Mazurkiewicz wasn't sure Notre Dame would be able to throw a pass. Weis was concerned about that, too. So was quarterback Brady Quinn.
``He said what are we going to do?'' Weis said. ``I said we have no choice. We're throwing it to the right.''
Weis called a play where most of the Irish went left, Quinn ran right and looked for tight end Anthony Fasano on the right.
Mazurkiewicz watched with her family.
``I just closed my eyes. I thought, 'There's no way he's going to be able to make that pass. Not from where they're at. He's going to get sacked and Washington's going to get two points,''' she said.
Fasano caught the pass and leapt over a defender for a 13-yard gain.
``It's almost like Montana was willing him to beat that defender and take it to the house,'' Weis said.
Mazurkiewicz was happy.
``It was an amazing play. Montana would have been very pleased. I was very pleased,'' she said. ``I was just so overwhelmed. I couldn't watch much more.''
Weis called her again after the game, a 36-17 victory by the 13th-ranked Fighting Irish, and said he had a game ball signed by the team that he wanted to bring to the family on Sunday.
``He's a very neat man. Very compassionate,'' she said. ``I just thanked him for using that play, no matter the circumstances.''
RIP Gilligan
With all the bad
news, death and destruction, maybe it seems odd to single out a TV
actor from the 60s, but Gilligan's Island was no ordinary show. It
was on virtually every week for as long as I can remember, and even
today if I catch it on a weekend or something, it still gives an odd
sense of well being. It belongs in that strange world of old shows
like McHale's Navy, F-Troop, and The Monkees in that they never really
age and they are always sort of fun to watch, certainly a hell of
a lot more fun than the newest reality "How can we humiliate
some idiot hick" show of the week.
They just don't make'em like that anymore.
Camo
Every time I've seen a military official on TV since the hurricane, I notice they've all been wearing camoflage, and it's not the same desert camo you see in Iraq. It's sort of a bluish color and you almost get the feeling it was designed just for this occasion. My question is, what exactly are they hiding from? Isn't camo supposed to make you blend in to your surroundings? Wouldn't it make more sense in this type of operation to have some kind of bright distinctive uniform that says "Hey, I'm with the military!" instead?
This administration sucks
On NPR today, there
was an interview with Michael Chertoff, the head of Homeland Security.
During the interview, the NPR reporter said there was another reporter
live on the phone in New orleans saying there were thousands of people
at the convention center who had been ignored, and were without food,
water, medicine and were literally dying. Bodies were being put outside.
This idiot from the government went on to say that he couldn't respond
to "rumors and innuendo". This is the same complete asshole
who originally said that the people who were trapped and dying have
themselves to blame because they didn't leave when told to. Apparently
he believes that we all have cars and summer homes to go to, or unlimited
credit cards with which to buy transportation and a hotel room for
an indeterminate amount of time. Course, when told that some people
might not have a car, he responded that they should have started walking
(now remember, this was within hours BEFORE the storm). This is the
head of the fucking Homeland Security agency. Is this idiot serious?
What the hell do they think is going on? This is almost exactly the
same scenario that would happen with a dirty bomb, with waterborne
disease instead of radiation. What have these people been doing since
9/11? This is the plan they have to evacuate a major city and deal
with thousands of refugees? Next I see Bush on TV talking about the
loss of life and the devastation and had the balls to say that
no one ever expected the levees to break, despite the
fact that the Army Corps of Engineers has said exactly that many times.
The entire time he had that imbecilic half grinning smirk on his face.
Never in my life have I so wanted to just slam someone in the mouth
as I did watching that. I would like to take Bush, Chertoff, Condeleeze
Rice (who
was out today spending thousands of dollars on shoes)
and the rest of these rich snotty privileged assholes and drop them
at the New Orleans Convention Center for 5 days with no food, water,
toilets, electricity or hope and let them explain to the people who
are sweltering there how they can't respond to rumor and innuendo.
These idiots have lied us into a war and gotten away with it, they
have taken the greatest surplus in history and turned into into the
deepest debt in 5 years and gotten away with it, they have devastated
the military and gotten away with it, they have destroyed the environment
and turned back the clock on civil rights in this country and gotten
away with it, one can only hope that their luck has run out, and the
people of this country finally realize that the people they've put
in charge care about no one but themselves and their rich friends
and benefactors and vote them all the hell out at the first opportunity,
if unable to impeach them first.
Crappy Concerts Redux
Michael took me
to task for not explaining the story behind my going to see the Grateful
Dead. This took place in the early 1980's, and Mike and I got into
a bit of an argument about who put on a better concert, the Dead or
Journey. Now, it's important to put that into context. This is around
the time Escape came out, and Journey were the Big Thing at that time.
I saw Journey about 6 times I think, almost got blown up at one of
them (thats a whole other story...). The main reason from my perspective
was to see Steve Smith, who was and still is, one of the world's best
drummers, and it also was a good way to score points with the honey.
Anyway, we made a deal that I'd see the Dead if he saw Journey. Thus
it came to pass. Nothing was solved of course, I still think Journey
was better (At that point in time anyway) and he thought they sucked,
and of course, Vice versa.
None of this has any bearing whatsoever on his ability to dance...
The Rolling Stones just played in Boston and it got me thinking about
some of the crappier concerts I've seen.
#1. The Rolling Stones - I saw the Stones on the
Bridges to babylon tour and I was pretty underwhelmed. They may have
been the "greatest rock band in the world" at one time,
but it wasn't recently. I had amazing seats (and I got the ticket
for free), in fact I was so close, I could hear the drums acoustically
before the sound came out of the sound system. I was literally within
spitting distance of the band. It didn't help though. They had a gigantic
stage but almost all of it was wasted space. The band itself stayed
pretty much right in the middle of it. I kept thinking the rest of
the stage would come into play eventually, but it never did. The biggest
disappointment was the band itself. Keith Richards is sort of fun
to watch in a "I wonder if he can stay vertical all the way through
this" way, but Mick just did his shtick like he always does.
Charlie Watts was the biggest disappointment He may have been a great
drummer once, but now he just plays the same part, at the same speed,
for every song. It doesn't matter if the song was originally slow
or fast, if it had a straight 4 or a samba beat, now it's the same
part, same tempo. They could plug in a casio drum machine from 1980
and get the same result. He also does this annoying thing where he
doesn't hit the high hat at the same time he hits the snare, so every
single part is tick-tick-tick-crack tick-tick-tick-crack over and
over. They had a keyboardist and a horn section, but I can't remember
them doing anything memorable. I have to confess to never having been
much of a Stones fan in general, they did some amazing things early
on, but I could live without pretty much everything they've done since
about 1974. To hear songs like Paint it Black or Sympathy for the
Devil reduced to the Charlie Watts semi-disco beat was just embarrassing.
- D
#2 The Grateful Dead - I saw the Dead in about 1982 at the
urging of none other than Mike Ladd. He's been a Deadhead since way
back when. So, I took my then girlfriend (yes it's true, I've had
girlfriends in my life) down to the Providence Civic Center and sat
through one of the more mind numbing events in my life. At first,
it was sort of interesting to watch the perpetual flower children
traipsing through the crowd wearing bedsheets and dancing to music
that was as much in their own heads as coming from the stage, but
once the lights went down, I was forced to start paying attention
to the band itself. What I can remember of that night is essentially
watching a bunch of guys onstage drone on endlessly without ever making
an attempt to do anything even remotely interesting. I can appreciate
a good jam as much as anyone, but even a good jam will attempt to
change and evolve and build itself into something. Here was just a
bunch of 50 something guys who seemed to have no interest in doing
anything more than group navel gazing. The requisite drum solo was
sort of interesting, but by the time they got into the "Space"
part of the set (which they apparently do all the time) my girlfriend
had long since dozed off. At some point, Mike somehow found us from
his own seats across the auditorium and came slowly grooving up the
stairs (and Mike dances in a way not too dissimilar to the way Elaine
on Sienfeld does, only with the timing off kilter by about a beat
and three quarters. He does it even now, watch him while he's playing
sometime. He can be playing perfectly in time, but somehow his body
is still moving to some bizarre east indian rhythm that only he can
hear.) and said something along the lines of "Man, is this f-ing
great or what" to which I could respond in no real way due to
the impending coma that the band was inducing in me. - D-
#3 Jackson Brown - This was the result of the above mentioned
girlfriend. She loved this kind of pap and convinced me to go. I've
never understood the appeal of jackson Brown, his songs are boring,
his voice is monotonous and he's about as charismatic as broccoli.
But I hitched down to the Worcester Centrum and sat through 2 hours
of it. The interesting thing about this show for me was that, I had
gone to see Dan Fogelberg a few months earlier (also for said girlfriend,
amazin the things you do for love) and he was actually really great
(in fact I've seen him twice, and he was better the other time, but
that's another story). Anyway, I noticed that the band Jackson Brown
had was almost exactly the same guys. Russ Kunkel was on drums, I
can't remember the rest, but I know it was the same keyboard player,
bass player, guitarist etc. These are all LA studio guys and are some
of the best in the field. What I found fascinating was how Jackson
Brown managed to turn this band into a boring mundane lounge band.
When Fogelberg played with them, they had energy, were tight, interesting
and seemed to be having a good time. With Brown however, these guys
may as well have been playing at the Armada Room with Murph and the
Magictones. He sucked the energy out of the band like a vampire and
had pretty much the same effect on the crowd. I've never seen a more
sedate crowd at a concert in my life (Well, the Dead crowd was pretty
sedate too, but that's probably because they were actually sedated).
I can't remember a single song he did, as they all melded into one
another in a haze of semi-folk adult contemporary AOR audio fog. -
F
Honorary Mention - I have to single out two shows by bands
that I have seen more than once, and who are normally great. First
is Deep Purple. I've seen DP 4 times with the original (best) line
up, and they have been great 3 of those times. On one evening however,
things just weren't going well for them. Richie Blackmore seemed to
be having some kind of trouble playing and was obviously pissed off
because of it. At one point late in the show, he just took his guitar
off and handed it to Roger Glover, he took Glover's bass and they
traded instruments. Not long afterwards however something even stranger
happened. We (I was with Mike Ladd again, if I remember correctly)
noticed the band were having trouble playing and seemed distracted
by something in the crowd. Then the house lights came up and when
we turned to look at the back of the Centrum, for the first time we
noticed most of the crowd had been cleared out and the fire dept was
there trying to get some kid down who had climbed into the rafters.
That was pretty much the end of that show.
Second would be the first time I saw Aerosmith. Now, I should mention
that I am a huge Aerosmith fan. They were the first real rock records
I ever owned, and I learned to play bass originally by playing along
with Aerosmith records daily after school. So, I was pretty excited
to finally see them live (though this was during the time that both
Joe Perry and Brad Whitford had left the group, so it wasn't exactly
like seeing the "real" Aerosmith). This show in particular
has been immortalized in Aerosmith's own autobiography and has also
been featured on VH1s Behind the Music, but I can always say that
I was there the night Steve Tyler hit rock bottom. I think it was
about the 3rd or 4th song (Back in the Saddle I believe) when it became
obvious that he just wasn't right. He was forgetting words, kept falling
to his knees and at one point knocked over this really tall fan at
the side of the stage. He left the stage completely for a bit, came
back out, then just fell on the floor. The band stopped playing and
left. That was that. It was pretty amazing to watch. I should mention
that Pat Travers opened for them that night and absolutely kicked
ass. I have seen Aerosmith a couple of times since, and they have
been incredible, but as someone who waited since puberty to see them
live, that first show was pretty disappointing.
I think I'll leave it at that. Maybe when I get some initiative, I'll talk about the BEST shows I've been to...
Now let's play Hide the hot dog!
James Dobson, the
ultra right wing homophobe nutjob and complete and utter moron who
recently compared stem cell research to the nazi holocaust, has posted
a list of ways to tell if your kid is gonna be gay (the list includes
"A strong preference to spend time in the company of girls"
which I do every weekend and would seem to me to be pretty much the
best thing to do if your straight, but I digress). I refuse to link
to his bigoted crap, but you can find it if you're so inclined. Of
course, it's absolute lunacy, and I pity the child of anyone who reads
this inane blather and believes it, but one of the most bizzarre items
he includes on his list of ways to "Cure" boys of this dreaded
affliction (and make no mistake, to these dundering nitwits, homosexuality
is a "disease" which can be cured) long before the poor
kid even knows he has it, is to, and I'm not making this up:
" ...take his son with him into the shower, where the boy cannot
help but notice that Dad has a penis, just like his, only bigger."
Now, I suspect that, were your wife or girlfriend to
come home finding you in the shower comparing the size of your penis
with your 6 year old son, the first thing she is likely to do would
be to call the police and you would soon find yourself comparing your
penis to Rocko in cell block D. Introducing your pre-adolescent to
the joys of seeing adult male cock would also seem to be the last
thing one would want to do if you're really worried that your kid
is starting to notice bulges in slacks in between watching Barney
and Blue's Clues. There is no mention of what you should do if your
toddler has a bigger dick than you do, which was probably the case
in Dr Dobson's family (boy, that would explain a few things...). There
is also no mention of what potential lesbians should be checking in
the shower. why should they get left out? Should they also be getting
a gander at dear ol' dad's dick while being told of the fun that can
be had with it and a bottle of astroglide? Am I the only one who thinks
that whoever came up with this little nugget of wisdom is more likely
to be a danger to society than any of the gays he evidently fears?
This is sociopathic stuff here, these people are certifiably insane.
The really frightening thing is that "these people" are
also in charge of this country right now. So, along with serial prevarication
and treason, we can add child abuse and pedophilia to the list. Always
remember, these are the people who claim, more loudly than anyone
else, to be the moral conscience of America.
The Iron Giant
Was just on TV a couple of times over the weekend. This is a great movie, and probably should rank among the best animated movies of all time. It's intelligent and has some depth to it, will make you care about the people in it, but is never sappy or manipulative. Check it out if you've never seen it, it's a hidden classic.
Jessica Simpson's Ass
In line at the store the other day, I was confronted with a Star magazine on the rack in front of me. "What's happened to Jess's Butt" was the glaring headline, along with two photos of Jessica Simpson. One photo showed her in her Daisy Duke costume showing a nice round firm looking ass with "before" and the other showed her in similar shorts looking somewhat flatter with "After". I was sort of awestruck in a way. I know that we as a country tend to be attracted to idiotic celebrity trivia and small bright shiny things, but the idea that someone at a multimillion dollar magazine felt that there was a cover story in whether or not jessica Simpson's ass isn't suffuciently round is a tribute to assinineinitty that boggles the mind. That wasn't the end of it however, just below the headline was a more sinister "What REALLY Happened!" as if there had been some grand conspiracy to con the world into believing there was some innocent cause for Jessica's flat ass that people have been having earnest discussions about for weeks, only to find out we were LIED TO as a nation and a planet and that the cause of her less than ample behind were the result of some conspiracy involving space aliens and Karl Rove. Now, I happen to think jessica Simpson is very beautiful. She belongs right up there with Gwen Stephani, Christina Aguilera, Mariah Carey and even Brittney Spears (before she stopped showering) on the list of girls I would really like to have sex with or even just see naked just as long as I never ever have to hear them sing ever again. But the idea that the fat cell density of her buttocks calls for national press coverage goes a long way to explaining how we managed to get into a war based on lies and re-elect the nitwit who put us there. There are so many vitally important issues facing american's today and the world as a whole, but as long as the majority of us can be distracted by nonsense such as this, nothing will change.
Fat Man in the Bathtub
I'm on a diet.... again....
A couple of years ago, I managed to lose about 100 lbs within a year. I felt a lot better, was able to do more and thought losing another 100 would be easy (At the moment, for those of you keeping score at home, I weigh just under 400 lbs). Then Thanksgiving came, and I thought "Hey, it's a holiday, go for it".. and I did.. Then Christmas came and I thought "Hey, It's a holiday, go for it"... and I did. I don't know if any of you have ever had to lose weight.. a LOT of weight.. but it's a strange thing. For me, it's an addiction, like smoking, alcohol, heroin, whatever. The difference is that with every other addiction, you can just stop. Not saying it's easy, but that it's possible. You can quit smoking and never have another cigarette, ever. You can't quit eating however. Going cold turkey on a diet means you start eating a lot of cold turkey because it's low in fat. For me, it's like flipping a switch. If I stop eating almost completely, I can literally go for weeks, even months living on very little, but one real meal, one taste of pizza, a hamburger, a twinkie, whatever, and it's like someone flips a little switch in my head and I'm off to the all you can eat buffet. In any case, after losing 100 lbs fairly easily, the switch was flicked. I started eating again. Nothing extravagant, just normally... for me... which is probably more than the average person, but I don't think ridiculously more. I kept thinking I could just stop again at any time. Instead, every time I went to the gym (yes, I belong to a gym) I would get on the scale and see a pound back on, two pounds back on.... The weight it took almost a year to lose was back so fast, even I couldn't believe it. So, here I am again, starting over. I don't know how long I can stay on it. Like I said, it's an addiction, and between watching other people eat, seeing streams of advertising on TV, and being exposed to food in stores, on streets, virtually everywhere I look, it won't be easy. If I don't do it though, pretty soon I won't be able to walk anymore, let alone play in a band. The next step after this is surgery, which I really don't want. I hate this, I hate being gigantic, but I hate dieting too. They can make a pill that will give you a hard on for 4 hours, but they can't come up with something that stops your body from absorbing fat (I know, there is something like that, but it doesn't really work, and the side effects are worse than being overweight). In any case, I'm not happy either way, so...
Here goes nothing...
Idiots
So, there's a device that I want to try out. It's a type of effects pedal for bass guitars. I have two choices, I can either order one without ever trying it and return it if it's sucktastic, or I can find a store that carries them. Being the internet type, I went to the manufacturer's website and found my closest dealer. Turns out, my closest dealer is about 40 minutes away. I drove out there, walked in and approached a salesman. I should point out, that this was at Guitar Center, one of the new giant retail stores that has so succesfully put smaller local stores out of business. I asked the guy if they carried Sansamp products. "Sassap"? he asked. No, Sansamp. "Sansap"? No, Sanssssss Ammmmp. Now mind you, Sansamp products have been around for a while, they are not exactly new to the music world. "We don't carry those here". Well, according to the sansamp website, you do. "Let me check (picks up the phone) Tony, do we carry sassapp here?.... uh huh... uh huh... oh SANSAMP!... oh yeah right... ummm.. ok... ok... (hangs up the phone) We do carry it, but we don't stock it. We can order one for you". Now, If you have never been in a Guitar Center, I should point out that they stock every single piece of musically related crap you can imagine. For some reason however, they have apparently decided that, even though they carry the sansamp line, they're just not gonna stock any of it. Could someone explain to me the logic of this position? This is a music store, people want to hear things, see things, try things out. If I'm going to buy something without seeing and hearing it first, I can get it online, most likely for less money. In any case, I ended up buying a used Ampeg pre-amp instead, which is what I originally wanted anyway but couldn't afford. So, if anyone from Sansamp is out there, you lost what probably would have been a sale. You might want to check with your dealers and see if they actually carry any of your stuff, I suspect your sales might bump up a bit if they did.
UPDATE: I did end up getting a Sansamp programmable pedal. It sucks. Don't get one...
Too Much Bass?
I was sitting in a club last week, the kind that has a typcial sound system where they pump 3000 watts through subwoofers all over the place. I happened to be sitting right next to one of the subwoofers and I noticed something. The newer the song, the more bass it had in it. There was a time when the heaviest bands in the world were bands like Led Zeppelin, Deep Purple, AC/DC and Black Sabbath, but when songs were played by any of these bands, there was essentially nothing coming out of these subwoofers. But when newer music was played, that cabinet would start thumping and shaking and bouncing all over the floor. Not just dance music either. The song "Save Me" by Evenesence has bass notes (tones? groans?) during the intro that are enough to shatter glass. Why are they there? Who the hell knows, they are not directly part of the song. Sounds like a truck is going by during the intro. I have nothing against a lot of bass, lord knows, but I guess the problem I have is that it's not being mixed within the song any more. It's a special effect. It's being added, not because it sounds good, or because it helps the song, but so that people who have 15" subwoofers mounted in the trunk of their Toyota Carolla have something to use as a demo for their friends. It obliterates the rest of the mix, turning it into the equivalent of pressing your ear to the side of a locomotive climbing a large hill. It's a spiraling trend as well, as more music comes out, the people at the faders seem to feel the need to increase low end more and more. In the meantime, people hearing the greatest mixes of all time in songs by artists like the Beatles, Zeppelin, Pink Floyd, etc. are wondering why they were ever popular to begine with, since in comparison to today's Rumble rumble boom, they sound completely anemic. Let's hope this fad goes the way sensurround did in movie theaters.
Playing to the crowd
There was a show
on A&E over the weekend about Aerosmith. I love Aerosmith. I learned
to play bass originally by playing along to Aerosmith records, and
to this day I credit Tom Hamilton as being my primary inspiration
and teacher (I'm self taught, so my teachers were the bass players
whose records I would learn one note at a time way back when).
Anyway, they showed them in concert a few times, and at one point
they played Dream On. It dawned on me that those guys must have had
to play that song about 10,000 times since it was originally written
in 1971. They must HATE that song by now, but they just played the
hell out of it. They even seemed to be enjoying it. Of course, the
audience loved it, singing along, screaming and yelling. When you
play in a band, you play the same songs over and over again to the
point that they just become sort of abstract sounds and you can really
get to hate them, recording is even worse, because you hear the same
song over and over again for hours and even days at a time. That show
reminded me that the audience isn't there for the 500th time you play
a song, they may be hearing you play it for the first time, or if
you've been around a while, they may be there hoping to hear it, so
it should always be played as well as you're capable. An obvious thing,
but an idea I had not really put much thought into. Something to keep
in mind the next time I have to "Play That Funky Music"...
Pseudo-bands
I watch Nickelodeon sometimes, mostly for Spongebob, but I've noticed something on that channel I find annoying. There are constant ads for CDs from "bands" that exist nowhere outside of Nickelodeon It's bizarre, there are entire compilation CDs of song after song done by supposed "artists" that are entirely manufactured by Nickelodeon specifically to put on these CDs. I pity kids growing up today and the music they get. To be bombarded by brittney spears is bad enough, but to then be convinced through endless advertising that this music that exists solely as a marketing exercise by a TV conglomerate is what rock music, or any music for that matter, is all about.
Last Christmas, I bought my best friend's 10 year old son a double live CD by AC/DC. I encourage all of you to do the same. Introduce your kids, your sibling's kids, your neighbors kids, anybody you can get a handle on, to real music. Buy them a CD, Aerosmith, Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, the Clash, The Ramones, or even newer bands like Green Day, just get them some real honest rock music (Or blues or R&B or almost anything as long as it's made by real musician's and not a computer) to listen to before it's too late. I was in Daddys Junkie Music one day near Christmas, and this kid came in with his mother. The kid was about 14 and he was picking out his christmas present. Looking around the store, you couldn't miss the wall of guitars, beautiful, multicolored, inlaid wood, chrome. Did this kid look at the guitars? The basses? The drums? No. He bypassed all of it and pointed to the DJ turntable he wanted. It just sort of saddened me. This is the next generation, and most of them have no concept of what it mean to create music from scratch instead of ripping off music from others through scratching on a turntable. To them, Aerosmith or Zeppelin are just loops to repeat endlessly. If we can't reach some kids today and get them interested in playing real instruments, then Rock and Roll will really be dead.
A Guide to Strippers
OK, so a lot of you know that I do "glamour" photography (See my photo of the week for an example). It's also no secret that a lot of the girls I photograph make a living as exotic dancers. Over the years, I've gotten to be quite close to a lot of dancers, and I see what they go through every week, so I thought I'd put together a little guide to the right way to approach and deal with strippers.
1. Always remember that these women are human beings. They have feelings and they can be hurt, same as you. It takes a lot of guts to do what they do, and the fact that they're on a stage in front of you does not give you the right to insult them or discuss them like they don't exist. Yes, they can hear you. If you think a girl is not attractive, no one is forcing you to sit at her stage (and if you are sitting at the stage, put some money up. It's not a free show. I've seen guys actually get pissed if a girl walks past him when has no money on the stage, for the life of me, I can't figure out the level of stupidity involved to sit there and not expect to tip). Clubs hire all types, and your type will be along soon enough, in the meantime, saying you think a girl is too fat, or flat or old, or has stretch marks or whatever isn't going to make you any friends. Everyone has flaws. Let's strip you naked and see what the assholes will say about you!
2. Stripping is a job. They are there to make money, not to listen to you drone on for an hour about how much your job / wife / girlfriend / truck / motorcycle / etc sucks. Most girls will be happy to spend time with you, and get to know you, but make no mistake, they are expecting to get paid for their time. If you have no money, be honest about it, but don't lead a girl on for an hour and then just leave. Their time is valuable. Dancers are not paid by the hour, in fact they are paying the club to work there, and every minute spent sitting with you is time they could be making money with someone else. It's not a personal insult to you if she gets up and leaves, she needs to make money. She is also not looking for a boyfriend. If she seems interested, always remember that that's part of their job. They are a fantasy, they are there so that you can spend some time with a beautiful woman and enjoy yourself, but don't ever make the mistake of thinking it's more than that. Sure, occasionally a dancer may end up dating a customer, but it's rare and in any case, it's not going to happen the first time she meets you.
3. They are not doing anything wrong. One of the more misunderstood aspects of a dancer's life (believed in large part due to the media, which always seems to portray them as victims) is that most people assume that they all hate what they do. This is not true. Sure some do, there are always people in any job who hate it, but the vast majority of dancers are there because they enjoy it. They like the exercise, the music, the attention and of course, the money. It's actually a pretty good job if you can handle it. They set their own hours, get paid in cash and on a good day can earn a hell of a lot of money. The reason I bring this up is to deter what some girls call "White Knights". These are guys who will come in and start saying things like "You're too good for this place" and "You don't have to do this" or worse, and will try to get them to leave the club for some other job (Some will try the "you're degrading yourself" route too, as if sitting in an office, typing numbers into a computer for 8 hours for 6 bucks an hour isn't degrading in it's own way). These kinds of remarks are usually taken as an insult. The implication is that dancers are too stupid to understand what an "awful" situation they are in and need some help to get out. I know dancers who are making over 50K a year at 19, 20, and 21 years old. They work when they want, leaving time to be with their children (yes, many of them are mothers) or go to school or just live a life while the rest of us are trapped in the 40 hour grind. They do not want or need you to be telling them that they are so beautiful that they should be sitting in a cubicle someplace. Think about it...
4. Don't Touch! At least not without an explicit OK. Some clubs allow contact, some don't, but even if they do, it is up to the dancer to decide what her boundaries are. Every girl is different, some will allow more than others, but it is up to them to make the choice. You'll figure it out pretty quickly, but in the meantime, don't just go sticking your fingers all over the place, and for God's sake, keep your pants zipped! If she pushes your hands away, keep them away. Inappropriate contact is one of the quickest way to get a girl to blacklist you. At the very least, it will piss her off and she'll back out of reach, at worst, it will get you thrown out of the club.
5. Don't be a stinky slob. Dancers by the nature of their job have to get closer to other people than what would generally be considered normal. As a result, most dancers (ok, not all, but MOST) are almost preternaturally clean. While they don't expect you to be "Just Got Out of the Shower Springtime Fresh", it wouldn't hurt you to take the time to wash up before you go there. If you've just finished doing that valve job on the Jeep, don't show up at a club covered in grime, wearing grease and oil covered pants and a sweaty T-shirt expecting all the girls to give you a big hug and hop in your lap. Keeping a supply of something to help your breath isn't a bad idea either. One last thing about appearance and clothing. This may sound stupid to you but if you're going to a club that allows lap dances, try to wear soft pants. No corduroys or rough jeans. Sweat pants work well for this. You'll get a better dance out of it, and she'll be a lot happier to not be sitting naked on something a step above sandpaper.
I've met literally hundreds of dancers since I started my photography 7 years ago, and what I've come to learn is that they are like everyone else. They come in all sizes, flavors and colors, but they are normal, down to earth people with lives doing a job for which they get little respect and a great deal of grief. To become a dancer takes a lot of courage. and many of the biggest detractors are people who would never have the guts, much less the ability, charisma or appearance to do what they do. They also take a toll outside of work in dealing with the stigma society puts on exotic dancing in general. How sex and nudity came to be considered such an evil thing in this society is something I will never understand, especially when violence is fetishized into a high art. It's my opinion that they actually perform a public serVice, there are a lot of very lonely people in the world, and sex is one of the strongest drives humans have. If the rabid moralists of this country had their way and eliminated all the strip clubs and porn the way they wish, I believe there would be an increase in violence that would boggle the mind. All you need to do is look at countries where it is banned, and you will see misogyny and repression on a level that women here couldn't even comprehend.
Bottom line: Be good to them and they will return your kindness. Treat them with respect, they deserve it, but don't kid yourself into believing that you are the center of their universe. Play along with the fantasy, help them out financially and you'll both have a great time.
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