Redemption Song

When Pop Music lets you know you're getting old

2010-07-20T18:31:00.000-07:00

There is a longstanding cliche that your parents didn't care much for your music, but what the hell did they know? On the other hand, the stuff your kids listen to is crap. Kids today. Get off my lawn!

But it is different when the cliche happens to you. I just got back from a long road trip where my daughter insisted we listen to Top 40 radio all across the South. And I can tell you, the stuff they play now isn't that great. Worse still, it honestly sounds just the same. Here is an example:

This is one of those homemade YouTube videos. It is just a still photo and a Mashup of "Tik Tok" by Ke$ha and "California Gurls" by Katy Perry. The problem is, Mashups are really cool when you can hear how much skill the DJ used to combine the two tracks and play them off each other. In this case, it appears they are honestly just the same song, with two different cute girls singing over the identical backing track.

Adam Sterbergh seems to know why. This is a link to an article he wrote about Dr. Luke, who produced both songs. I think the clear bottom line is, no one really cares if they take the time to make them sound very different.

Kids today.

The 100 Worst Movies of the last 10 Years

2009-09-27T06:25:00.000-07:00

Rotten Tomatoes is sort of a meta-critic file review site. The gather up the ratings given by hundreds of film reviewers and create a composite score. This link will take you to the 100 lowest ratings they have produced in the last decade.

The sad part is the huge number of these films I have seen. We go to Blockbuster every week and often pick movies to rent based on the number of them on the shelf and what the box graphics look like. This has led me to watch at least 15 of the 40 worst rated films.

This is a great indicator that I might want to be a little better prepared when I make my movie selections in the future.

Wordless

2009-07-29T04:36:00.000-07:00

My Top Ten Movies from 1984

2009-07-26T06:27:00.000-07:00

There is a brilliant article up on Entertainment Weekly called "Was 1984 the greatest year in movies ever?" Having been alive then, it surprised me to see the movies on this list. Here is my personal Top Ten list of movies I saw in the theater in 1984. These are listed in the order they were released, because ranking these is too big of a job.

1 - Spinal Tap
2 - The Natural
3 - Stark Trek III - Search for Spock
4 - Bachelor Party
5 - The Pope of Greenwich Village
6 - Ghostbusters
7 - Repo Man
8 - Purple Rain
9 - Amadeus
10 - The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai
11 - Stop Making Sense
12 - Blood Simple
13 - The Terminator
14 - Beverly Hills Cop
15 - Dune

Look, did you see what I did there? I called it a top ten list, but then I included a whopping fifteen movies! So your job is to pick five you would leave out. There might be one or two, but I doubt anyone is going to find five.

New Music Friday - TV on the Radio

2009-06-11T19:06:00.000-07:00

Everything old is new again.

Years ago, when I was in a band, my Dad gave me some unusually great advice. He suggested that I search through all of his vinyl music for a sound that I liked, but had never heard before. He reasoned that if I hadn't heard it, most other people my age would also be unfamiliar with it. His theory was, since that sound had been popular before, there was no reason it couldn't be popular again. And this way, people would might think I was some sort of talented musician who had created this new sound.

When I sat down to write about TV On the Radio, I thought of this. They join a growing list of current music that has strong roots in the sounds of the 1970's. Have you heard Wolfmother? They are pretty much a Big Dumb Rawk band, straight from 1975.. Do you like 70's era Southern Rock? Then you might want to check out Kings of Leon or The Eagles of Death Metal. My current favorite band, The Fratellis, follow a path that was first laid down for them by David Bowie and T Rex. And it is certainly not a stretch to compare the tight vocal harmonies of Fleet Foxes to CSNY.

TV On the Radio

So where does TV On the Radio fit in? I have included some of their new songs in the box above, including the one they played on the David Letterman show. While they may not exactly “sound like” Genesis, that is all I can think of when I listen to them. The good Genesis, with Peter Gabriel, before someone made the dreadful mistake of turning on Phil Collins' microphone. So either you have heard early period Genesis and will have an opinion on this, or you have never heard it before, so this will sound terribly innovative.

And so we are back where we started.

Wordless Wednesday

2009-06-10T15:15:00.001-07:00

Breaking Poker News

2009-06-09T20:22:00.000-07:00

US Government freezes bank accounts of online poker sites, halts payouts. Read more here.

Bottom line is the US Justice Department believes poker is a game of chance. The great State of California believes it is a game of skill. Where you come down on that issue tells you if it is gambling or not.

I will say that even though I think when played properly, Poker can be a game of skill, it can also have the corrosive effect of any addiction. So in that sense, it is at least very similar to gambling. However, the websites involved are large and have money, so this may be the final showdown on skill vs. chance. Even so, it will take years for this decision to play out in the courts.

Another poker thought

2009-06-02T08:26:00.000-07:00

When I play poker online, I play tournaments, and not cash games. The big difference is that it is not "real money". Sure, your entry fee is real money, but each individual hand is just played for chips, and the value of those chips increases as people drop out. If you are curious, I can say more about that concept another time.

This means that you can be much more aggressive in the early hands, because the chips aren't worth as much. While you don't want to be reckless, and get put out, as long as you are playing properly, the early results are not crucial.

So "proper play" would be a tight aggressive style. Tight being that you are not in on every hand, but just on hands with a good chance to win (any pair, any suited connector, any two cards ten or higher) and you decline to enter the pot on anything else. Aggressive then means that when you are in a pot, you control the betting. If you hit the flop (say you pair one of your face cards, or wind up with four cards to your flush) then you allow no "free cards". If the bet checks around to you, you are betting at least two big blinds, so that everyone sees they have to pay to play a hand you are in. If you only do this with a premium holding on the deal, the other players (if they are properly observant) will learn you only play good cards, and they will get out of your way.

Today I was in tournament where I was short stacked when we got down to eight players from the original ten. I commented on my status at the short stack, and several other players agreed it was too early to matter. I had been playing tight aggressive, and I wasn't getting the cards. Then all of a sudden, I was. And by the time we got to five players left I had the tall stack. I wound up finishing second, and getting a nice share of the prize money.

The point is, if you have a plan, and stick to it, good things usually happen. You are playing cards, and you never know how they will fall, but most times, tight aggressive beats any loose or passive player.

Poker tournament update

2009-05-23T08:53:00.000-07:00

I like to play online poker. Mostly Hold 'em, and pretty much just Sit and Go tournaments. That means a group of ten players pay an entry fee, and the top three people split the fee. So the bottom seven lose everything.

The psychology of the middle game is pretty straight forward. Once you are down to about five people, everyone tightens up, because no one wants to go out there, and just miss finishing in the money. So when everyone is playing conservatively is the best time to get aggressive.

Today, this worked out great. We were down to five, one player was way out front, around $12k, I was second at $2,500 and the other three were under $2k. I was the dealer, the tall stack was Under the Gun (the first seat after the blinds). The blinds were 320/640 and the tall stack folded. The guy between us folded, so now it is to me, in a perfect opportunity to steal the blinds. I had nothing, I think 10, 7 off suit. But I pushed all in, and the blinds folded to me, conceding the 960 chips in the middle of the table. Everyone who understood poker at all knew that was a pure steal.

So the very next hand, now tall stack in on the big blind, the guy between us folds again, I push again. The dealer and the small blind fold, so now we are back to the tall stack. I have $3,500 now, but it is easy for him to call me with his $12k. Plus, he knows I just stole the blinds, so he probably figures I am doing it again. So he calls me, but this time I had a hand, and I turn over a pair of 10's. We draw out and I win, so now I have $7k and he is down to $8,500.

I fold everything while he clears out the other three, and now we are head to head. I am around $8k and he is back up to $12k. On the first hand of head to head, I get dealt a pair of Aces, so I push all in again, he calls, I win, and now I am up $16k to $4k.

It was the mid-game aggression that set me up to win the tournament.

American Idol

2009-05-23T06:20:00.000-07:00

I very much enjoyed the last season of Idol. They let the contestants play their own instruments for the first time and it made it more fun. This year, I didn't get into it at all. I honestly didn't watch a single episode.

But not watching it doesn't mean you can evade the hype machine. So I am among the millions of people who are aware of the Adam Lambert Phenomenon. I picked up a copy of Entertainment Weekly in a waiting room somewhere, and he was on the cover.

And so, shockingly, the voters didn't pick him. They picked the clean-cut All American kid instead.

Since I love being late to the trend, after this was all over, I looked up Mr. Lambert on YouTube. So watch this clip.

I can only echo what someone wrote about him in Rolling Stone. This is Lady Stardust in the 21st century. The surprise is not that he didn't win, the surprise is the American Idol audience put him through as far as they did.

Facebook is Magic

2009-03-22T07:16:00.000-07:00

I am sure you have heard Arthur C Clarke's famous quote “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.” I recently signed up for Facebook, and received a powerful demonstration of this principle at work.

When you first sign up, it asks you for an email address. I gave it my Gmail account, and so it went into my address book and found eveyone I had ever sent an email to who used that email address for their Facebook account. Then it prompted me with a list of about 50 people I might want to add as friends. So I choose from this list, then went on with the sign up. I told it were I worked and where I graduated from school, and it gave me another round of recommendations for friends I might want to add.

Then the magic part happened. It seems like it looked at all the people I wanted wanted to add, and looked at all their friends, to search for friends they had in common. Then it started kicking out recommendations from that list. This is where I started to see the names of people I hadn't thought about in 20 years. For example, I was in a band in High School. Of the four other guys in that band, I had only stayed in contact with one of them. A week after I joined Facebook I was back in contact with two more, and they each know how to reach the fourth one. And so we are seriously discussing getting the band back together for a one time reunion show.

This is very interesting to me. Sometimes I feel as though I have worked hard to distance myself from my past, but then Facebook works to bridge the gap I built. There is a sort of almost artificial nostalgia to seeing photographs of yourself and your friends from decades past. It is almost an instinctual reaction to be attracted to the beautiful youths shown in the photos, and it is charming to see yourself among them. But at the same time, not all of the memories from that time are particularly happy. Sometimes you get friend requests from people, and you take a long while deciding what to do.

I am not as good about expressing these mixed feelings as I would like to be, so I am linking to an article by Lissa Soep at NPR called “Facebook And The Over-30 Crowd. If you would like to read more about this, her article is a great place to start.

How I keep up with the Global Financial Crisis – Part 1

2009-03-21T06:38:00.001-07:00

So, the borderline economic emergency we were facing in the fall is now a full-blown Global Financial Crisis (GFC). You might ask, “how can I stay informed during a GFC? The people on TV seem more confused about it than I am, so they really are no help at all.”

What works for me is podcasts. I have three that I follow now that do a great job of explaining the GFC in an understandable way. The first one I will cover is The Wall Street Journal This Morning.

This is a daily, one hour news show based on business and financial news. It is put together by the good people at the Wall Street Journal, so you know going in it will be pretty conservative. This show really resonates with my and it has become an essential part of my daily routine. In my area, it is broadcast on the radio, but the show wraps up just before I get in the car each day. So instead, I download the podcast and listen to it that way. One cool thing is, by about the time I am halfway to work, their timechecks pretty much sync up with real time, so you lose the feeling that you are listening to a recording and it starts to feel real-time.

Another interesting thing about this show is the way I am right in their target demographic. As you get older, you start to notice that people stop aiming the full force of their marketing at people like you, and start hunting for younger people, you like things that don't really interest you. Not so with The Wall Street Journal This Morning.

There is a long list of little things this show does that help me bond to it. First, the music. It is all music I recognize, mostly from the 80's. Their theme music is Golden Earring, “When the Bullet Hits the Bone.” You may not think you know this song, but when the show starts up, you will recognize it. Coming in and out of commercials, you hear Devo, the Cranberries, Van Halen, all kinds of songs that you know. Second, the show's host, Gordon Deal, is extremely likeable, and pretty much like me. If you look at my older posts here, you will see I am completely self absorbed and view everything through the lens of my own experience. Mr. Deal is a man about my age, with a daughter about my daughter's age. He uses Firefox, is on Twitter, loves the NBA, and is in many ways a down to earth, regular guy. If we must have a GFC, this is the kind of person I want to get my news from.

So go to Itunes and give it a try. I am to the point now where my day doesn't start off right if I don't get to begin it with Gordon and Gina.

Five and a half months!

2009-03-20T13:22:00.000-07:00

Wow! That's a pretty long time.

It is fair to say that I have been doing other things. Mainly, I was writing here as an outlet for my frustration and anxiety leading up to the election. When that turned out the way I had hoped, I didn't need that outlet as much.

Then I gave in to the Siren's call of Facebook, and it sucked up all my free time. But I have noticed that I have things I want to say or share, and Facebook isn't the right place for it. So I am back, and this time I am probably back for good.

Just for good measure, here is a left over picture.

Our Redemption

2008-11-08T07:17:00.001-08:00

I have a young daughter. She is four and a half years old. That's the same age I was on the day Dr. King was killed.

I was young, but I do have specific memories of that day and that time. I remember my father sitting me down to try to explain how some people could hate others based on the color of their skin. He told me that racism and ignorance were pretty much the same thing. Since I knew that the only thing my father hated was willful ignorance, I understood from a very young age that there was this bad thing in our world called racism.

Growing up in the South, in the late 60's, I have a clear memory of seeing signs that said “Whites Only”. It wasn't so much that they were still enforced, but that they spoke to nostalgia for an earlier time. This is the world in which I grew up, and it shaped the man I am today.

My daughter will grow up in a very different world. If Barak Obama will be like most US presidents, he will serve two terms. So my daughter will be 12 years old when the election to replace him is going on, and he will be the only president that she ever knew. She will have no first hand knowledge of a world in which people wondered if an African American could ever be elected President. It may be as hard for her to understand the mindset of people who thought the color of your skin had anything to do with what job you could have, as it is hard for us to understand the idea that you could own another person.

I am overjoyed and completely excited about this new world we have made for her.

Here's another Mashup

2008-11-02T14:38:00.000-08:00

With the election so soon, I just want to turn off by mind. This helps.

I read one time that "Hollaback" is the perfect song for mashups, because it's not really in any one specific key.

The Cute Girl Phenomena

2008-10-21T08:41:00.000-07:00

Here are two videos, then a discussion:

The first video is from a Cute Girl named Robyn. The second one is by Teddybears featuring Mad Cobra, the people who wrote the song. This is from their live performance at the Coachella Music Festival in 2007.

I just think it is interesting to think about which one is the bigger hit. I think it is interesting that you can jumpstart your career by covering a song which is still currently popular, if you are a pretty blond girl. But that's just me, I could be wrong.

Wordless

2008-10-10T09:15:00.001-07:00

Mashup = Obama + Jay Z

2008-10-06T04:04:00.000-07:00

29 days to Change

Wordless Wednesday - late

2008-09-25T04:45:00.001-07:00

Genius Movie Mashup!

2008-09-21T06:58:00.000-07:00

I have always loved music mashups, but this one is from two different movie trailers.

It probably works best if you have seen "Superbad" and "No Country for Old Men".

If you like it, follow it back to Youtube and give the guy a nice comment.

Web Comics Friday

2008-09-19T12:58:00.001-07:00

Do you see what I'm doing here? I am trying to start a sort of "theme of the day" thing with "New Music Monday" and all.

There have been issues with work. There was a hurricane, maybe you heard about it. But I am trying to serious about writing here.

This is the first in a series of posts about the webcomics I love. So let's start with one of my very favorites - Ctrl+Alt+Del - If you are not familiar with this, please check it out. Tim Buckley is really funny, and he is a dedicated gamer.

If you love video games (and who doesn't in this, the 21st century?), then you will appreciate this.

Been busy

2008-09-17T16:51:00.000-07:00

Haven't had time to write. Just putting up Star Wars pics. Pretty lame, I know.

But there may be another rock concert review in your future, so hang on for that!

2008-09-14T05:57:00.001-07:00

I wasn't sure what I wanted to follow that last post with.

And then I found this.

9 - 11

2008-09-11T18:49:00.000-07:00

I feel like I have to put something up here. And I feel completely insignificant doing it. I was going to let it go, but I was just now flipping channels on the box, and I stopped for a moment on the History Channel. And they had a documentary on, you know...

So I came to the computer to write something, and I couldn't get started. And out of the blue, the lyrics to an ancient punk rock song by Richard Hell got stuck in my head. So I looked him up on the intertubes, and on his official website he had reposted something he put up there on 9/11/01. I would like it if you followed this link to see it there, because I think it will be a more powerful experience that reading the quotes here. But I also want to share the quotes, because you may not follow the link:

I am fine and so is every one immediately around me. The only people I can think of that I know who live or work in the district around the attack site are some of Sonic Youth and Thurston Moore's sent out email explaining that all of them are accounted for and o.k.

What it's like here: the smoke outside, huge expanses of it blowing east from that crater downtown; the disruption of everything in the city and weird amputation feeling when you look and the towers are missing. The whole city re-organized by the police and National Guard into clear emergency routes. Continuous streams of emergency vehicles and unmarked official cars going back and forth on the main routes. No one in the Post Office. No in the bank. Long lines at the supermarkets.

Already the idea of the site is scary. You can see how places seem haunted...

I think the great majority of people in history have lived through wars.

Anyway, I feel better because I was able to share that with you.

Peace, I really mean it.

Wordless Wednesday

2008-09-10T19:00:00.001-07:00

Close enough for Government Work

Coming Soon!

2008-09-06T16:48:00.001-07:00

Heroes returns 9/22/08

Something Fun

2008-09-05T03:49:00.001-07:00

Sabbath

2008-09-02T18:22:00.000-07:00

Yesterday was New Music Monday. Here is something that is unimaginably old. It is 38 year old concert footage of Black Sabbath opening a 1970 concert in Paris with Iron Man. I brought this here from YouTube, but you can follow these links to see “War Pigs” and “Fairies Wear Boots” from that same concert.

Then try to reconcile the photo of modern day Ozzy with the young man in the video, and fear the ravages of age.

Regular readers of this blog know that I am self-absorbed, and often try to make everything about me. So here is my Ozzy story. Back in the 80's I worked at a job sort of tangentially related to the concert business. One of my bosses had previously worked as a tour manager. He worked with Andy Gibb and then Eric Clapton.

After his last Clapton tour, he went into semi-retirement. Then Randy Rhodes (Ozzy's guitar player) crashed a private plane into the tour caravan, threatening to end Ozzy's mega comeback tour. So the record label called my boss out of retirement to manage what was left of Ozzy's tour.

The main story that he told me and that I can share here was about their dwarf. Ozzy wanted a dwarf on the tour (think Spinal Tap), but the dwarf was a nasty drunk. One evening, after a show in L.A., my boss found himself helping to carry this drunken dwarf through the lobby of the Wilshire Hotel, while he was screaming vile, and very sexually detailed curses at everyone in the lobby. That was when he began to have second thoughts about coming out of retirement.

So enjoy the music, and don't try to think about what the dwarf might have said to you, if you had been in that hotel lobby that night.

New Music Monday – The Silversun Pickups

2008-09-01T17:33:00.000-07:00

I will continue to acknowledge that just because music is new to me, doesn't necessarily make it “new”. In fact, the tracks I have included in the imeem box are from an album that was released in 2006. But I think this is good music, and it is much newer than what I normally listen to, and they are new to me. Maybe they are new to you as well.

From Wikipedia – “The Silversun Pickups (also simply known as SSPU) is an American Indie Rock band from Los Angeles, California.” So right there, you know we are on the right track. For some reason, I don't really hear to much about Indie bands from L.A. but these guys are on a label called Dangerbird Records (ultra-cool name) and represent a L.A. scene I had never heard about. Where Wiki lists their genres, we have – Indie Rock, Dream Pop, Post-Shoegaze (I think of The Jesus and Mary Chain as being the founders of Shoegaze, but I may be wrong) and the always popular Alt Rock.

From the band's official site - “Silversun Pickups, you see, rather than being just another fiercely determined young band willing to claw and scrap their way to the top of the rock heap, genuinely appear to be far more like a gang of real, true friends who happened, quite fortuitously, to meet as a result of their mutual love of - SHOCK HORROR! - music.”

I don't know why, but that sounds cool to me. Take a listen and see if you agree.

Silversun Pickups

My Top Entrecard Droppers for August

2008-09-01T06:44:00.000-07:00

I started this Blog early in the year, but I haven't done much with it and I just added the Entrecard widget during this month. So, while these totals are low, they don't represent a full month.

And I wanted to give a shout out to the people who were dropping on me. My theory is, if they drop on me, they will drop on you, so check them out.

Dropper # of drops
The Matthias Chronicles 25
Steven Video 21
Prove Me Wrong 19
Matt-Speak 18
OC Golf Course 16
The Traveling Pants 16
Multiply themes 15
Metallman's Reverie 15
Coastal Commentaries 15
Life With Kim 15

Ok, so now I see it didn't embed the links to their sites. I will come back and fix that later.

Big Amazon MP3 Giveaway!!!

2008-08-17T14:20:00.000-07:00

I know they had this in the past, but I had thought it went away.

Click this link to get to Free MP3s on Amazon.com - Just scroll down to the bottom, it is for pay downloads on the top, but then a good selection of free content is at the very bottom.

I used to download these religiously, and you will find cool new music there. When I just looked, they had Bob Mould (formerly of Husker Du), and The Lo Fidelity Allstars.

So check it out.

Exciting Concert Review!!!

2008-08-11T15:07:00.000-07:00

Last night I went to a rock show. Sort of unusual for a Sunday night, but it was really cool. We went to the Granada Theater, here in Dallas, to see The Honorary Title. I had never heard of them before, but one of my friends was going, and she invited us.

I studied up for the show by looking up their videos on YouTube. I have posted one I particularly liked above.

They are interesting. Like the other two bands that played with them, it may be that they listen to Coldplay too much. And it may be that they don't make the most healthy possible lifestyle choices. But I really enjoyed the music. Their singer, Jarrod Gorbel, seems to be a huge star in the making. Most of the audience was female, and they were clearly all there just to see him. The band was really solid, but he was such the exclusive center of attention that they sort of faded into the background much of the time.

Jarrod Gorbel is sort of a scrawny little guy, but he has full sleeves of tattoos on each arm. His music sounds like he would be the most sensitive guy in the world, literally, like he couldn't wear a scratchy sweater. But then you see his ink and it changes your mind about him. Like I said, they are interesting, if for no other reason than for the way they play with your pre-conceptions. Also, their videos are much softer and more acoustic, but live it seems like they made the decision to have a stronger, more rock and roll sound. I am curious to see if their next album explores this direction.

So watch the video, maybe buy a CD. But if you never heard of them, you will, so remember that you heard about them here first.

RIP - Isaac Hayes

2008-08-10T16:42:00.000-07:00

This is sad, yesterday it was Bernie Mac, today it is Isaac Hayes.

I was young, maybe 6 or 7 when the movie Shaft came out and the theme song was on the radio, LITERALLY ALL THE TIME! I lived in the south, and popular radio, at least the radio my parents listened to, was still pretty much segregated. But this song was a huge crossover hit and began my lifelong love of Soul Music.

Then he became Chef on South Park, and already high esteem for Mr Hayes continued to grow.

It sounds like he had a sudden heart attack while working out on a treadmill at home. He had worked out the contracts and was getting ready to record a new album. Just like I said yesterday, it is really sad when an artist still has great work left inside them when they go.

RIP - Bernie Mac

2008-08-09T18:54:00.000-07:00

Actor Comedian Bernie Mac passed away today at the age of 50. That used to seem like an old age to me. Now, not so much.

My impression of him was that he was a very gifted comedian, who happened to be black, rather than a "black comedian." On his own TV show, and in many of the characters he played, he was a middle aged, middle class family man, who seemed surprised when people noticed his race and acted like it was important.

I remember he was on the King of the Hill, and the Hill family dog didn't like him, and everyone got upset because it seemed like a racial issue. It was a small part, a tiny footnote to a proud career. But to me, that was sort of who Bernie Mac was, he was a guy who lived in a world that was past racism, and was always taken aback by those who were still behind the times.

He had much more left to share with us.

New Favorite Bands

2008-08-08T19:02:00.000-07:00

These are not my favorite new bands, because they have been around for a while. There is a long, possibly interesting, story here, but I first heard both of these band for the first time yesterday.

And I was blown completely away. So I am sharing them with you. There is an Imeem widget at the bottom of this post and I encourage you to grab your headphones and give the tracks I put together for you a listen.

The bands are - The Eagles of Death Metal and The Kings of Leon.

Shockingly, The Eagles of Death Metal are not a death metal band, they are more of a hardcore southern rock project. One of the founding was trying to turn the other one on to Death Metal, and he was playing a song he thought might be accessible to a new listener. So he described the band as being like the Eagles of Death Metal (in the sense that they were commercial and easy to listen to, like the Hotel California Eagles). So after thinking about that for a while, the two guys decided to write some songs that would belong to the Eagles of Death Metal. And here it is for you to enjoy.

The Kings of Leon are more famous, and I probably am showing how out of touch I am by yesterday being when I first heard them. They have a song that I think was on an IPOD commercial, because I recognized it.

Anyway, take the time to listen. Maybe it will change your life. I know it has changed mine.

New Stuff

Wordless Wednesday

2008-07-30T20:36:00.001-07:00

RIP - Bo Diddley

2008-06-02T18:34:00.000-07:00

I only seem interested in things that I have some kind of personal connection to. Maybe because I am a completely self-absorbed gen-x spare.

You may ask, "who was he?" Well, he is the man who wrote these lyrics:
"I walked forty-seven miles of barbed wire,
I got a cobra snake for a necktie
I got a A brand new house on the road side,
and it's made out of rattlesnake hide
Got a band new chimney put on top, and it's a-made out of human skulls
Come on take a little walk with me baby, and tell me who do you love?"

Anyway, I saw Bo Diddley live in a small club in the 80's. This picture was probably taken around that time, because this is what I remember him looking like.

He was the perfect example of someone who can just do one thing, but do it extraordinarily well. After about six songs, my buddy Tom Foote said to me, "are all his songs just the same?" After another six, we decided he only knew the one song, but it was damn good.

Guitar Hero: Aerosmith

2008-05-23T04:16:00.000-07:00

Rumored Guitar Hero Aerosmith Song List:

Nipmuc

* “All the Young Dudes” - Mott the Hoople
* “Dream Police” - Cheap Trick
* “Make it” - Aerosmith
* “Uncle Salty” - Aerosmith
* “Draw the Line” - Aerosmith

Max’s KC

* “I Hate Myself for Loving You” - Joan Jett
* “All Day and All of the Night” - The Kinks
* “Movin’ Out” - Aerosmith
* “No Surprize” - Aerosmith
* “Sweet Emotion” - Aerosmith

The Orpheum

* “Complete Control” - The Clash
* “Personality Crisis” - New York Dolls
* “Livin’ on the Edge” - Aerosmith
* “Rag Doll” - Aerosmith
* “Love in an Elevator” - Aerosmith

Half-Time Show

* “Always On The Run” - Lenny Kravitz
* “Hard to Handle” - The Black Crowes
* “Back in the Saddle” - Aerosmith
* “Beyond Beautiful” - Aerosmith
* “Dream On” - Aerosmith

Other songs said to be featured in the game include:

* “Kings and Queens” - Aerosmith
* “Mama Kin” - Aerosmith
* “Walk This Way” - Aerosmith
* “Combination” - Aerosmith

This is 25 of the 40 songs. It makes sense, as it is a good mix of Aerosmith and other artists. I particularly like the third set with Aerosmith, The Clash and The Dolls.

So lets try this -
Guitar Hero:Aerosmith

A quick primer on Iran Contra

2008-05-17T13:11:00.000-07:00

The other day, our president made some unfortunate remarks while in Israel. Then John McCain said something even worse, because he doesn't get to use the excuse that most people already think he is an idiot.

A very detailed analysis of this is available on Old Man McCain.

I just wanted to take the time to add a little more context on Iran/Contra for some of the younger readers who may not have a first hand recollection of it.

I could try to sort out the complicated details of this complicated mess. Or I could just let Seth MacFarlane do it for me. This is the American Dad take on Iran/Contra

Best line = "But Congress stopped the Contra money flow, just because they moved teeny bit of blow."

As you can see, something bad happened, it looked like it was so bad that it would get on the President, and a fall guy stepped up to take the heat. The words "plausible deniability" were thrown around, and nothing ever really stuck to Reagan.

Here is the Saturday Night Live classic - Reagan the Mastermind
(Please excuse the ad at the beginning. I couldn't find this on YouTube, so this comes from Hulu.)

Best exchange = Reporter - Some may wonder what was worse, your knowing, or your not knowing.

Reagan - Well, all I can say is, I didn't know. And, well, we're trying to find out what happened, because none of us know.

Two reasons why this matters now, in 2008.

1 - Reagan claimed he didn't know about Iran/Contra. He got away with it. Bush claims he didn't know the pretext for the invasion of Iraq was based on lies. He has been getting away with this. It should stop.

2 - McCain believes he can say nonsense like "[Reagan] didn’t sit down in a negotiation with the religious extremists in Iran" and those of us who know better will give him a pass. This should also stop.

So now that you are armed with a brief education on Iran/Contra, it is time to start calling McCain out on this B.S.

The Begining

2008-01-31T20:36:00.000-08:00

Everything has one. We can begin here.

I saw a Bob Marley tribute band the other day. It was really amazing to hear all of those songs I had known for so long in a live setting. Somehow it made almost like hearing them for the first time.

"Won't you help me sing,
these songs of freedom?"

It is interesting to look back at the beginning of your life from someplace close to the middle. Some things you thought were really significant were actually just nothing. Other things that you took for granted had real genius in them.

"Emancipate yourselves from mental slavery;
None but ourselves can free our minds."

All times are interesting, at least to the people who live them. I think these times are more interesting than others, and I am going to try to write some things. I know you are not supposed to talk about religion or politics in polite conversation, so we will see how that works out for me.

When I was younger, people (well, hippies actually) would sign off conversations with the single word "peace." By the late 70's, it was cool to mock them for this. Maybe that was because the war was over by then, and we were young and had really short memories. I think it would be nice to bring the word back in to common usage, but I would be surprised if that works out for me either. But I will try anyway.

Peace