"Ready the bonewax, get that cat out of here..."

Steve got married again. Great. I really don't care much about that, but I am incensed that they don't list "Man with Two Brains" in his brief filmography. Mw/2B's ranks amongst the top five funniest movies ever made. Disagree? You haven't watched it then. Was fortunate to meet a bunch of fellow Mw/2B's fans at a party recently and our wives were all aghast that there were others like their husband's who laugh at this flick everytime it comes on TBS or something.

Women...

"Was that you out on the lake kissing that brain in a jar?"

"No, it must have been somebody else...."


I must go buy a copy right now...

Retroactive Blogging...

I just read this in the most recent Lefsetz Letter. It's one of many random e-mails from readers he publishes every now and again...

Did you happen to catch "The World Series of Pop Culture" on VH-1? I watched theentire run on Saturday, testing my own knowledge. They had a category, "partylike it's 2006." The idea was the host would read some lyrics to "hit songs"from just last year and the contestants had to name the song. Six questions,back and forth. Neither contestant could answer any of them. Neither could I. By the 5th question's end, which means two people said "I have no idea"/"I don'tknow" ten times, the host said, "doesn't anyone listen to radio anymore?"" I almost jumped off my couch, screaming, "NO!!! They don't!!!" It was kind of an amazing moment, though, and apparently the only time a category - where people of all ages know the most obscure and random pop culture information - has been shut out 0 to 0 in this event. It speaks volumes, and I thought you'd find that interesting, since it relates to so much of what you write about.

Pixie Kruczynski

I saw this very episode (if my wife and I were contestants on this show we'd smoke all those other pretenders to the trivia throne) and I thought the exact same thing. Couldn't identify a single contemporary lyric and I'm a guy that listens and memorizes lyrics like a tape recorder. There are three reasons we all couldn't indentify the songs those lyrics came from: Broadcast radio blows, today's pop music and modern hip hop blows, and lastly, the undeniable fact that rock is dead.

Rock is dead, long live rock!

How cool is this..?

I've been at my new job for about three and half months now. Long before my first day, I mentally prepared myself for the hour long commute and was surprised to find I actually enjoyed the hour to myself listening recorded music. Today's commute was the first real frustrating ride in though, and completely not unexpected. It was an hour and forty five minutes plus because some dumb ass's wouldn't move their minor fender bender off to the side until the cops got there and as a result backed everything up for miles. It could have really spoiled my mood for the rest of the if it hadn't been for this beauty that arrived in my mailbox yesterday:

Fully remastered, Japanese lyrics, liner notes and all. I know, most won't give two craps about this record, but I know Jackson will be impressed. It's hard to believe George Martin produced this. I think it's the first without Micheal Schenker, but Paul Chapman kicks total ass in his place. The next album after this is perhaps the worst thing ever recorded next to Kiss "Music From The Elder" (yes, they have remastered it for some reason) and marked the end of what was good and holy about UFO, but back then this album provided us fans hope that there might actually be life after Schenker for them. I'm reacquainting myself with "No Place to Run" after more than twenty years, but of course immediately skipped over to "Mystery Train" and then to "Any Day" for my immediate fix. These two tracks I KNOW rock the house hard.

Why do we have to go to Japan to find these discs (without stealing them P2P that is)? Oh yeah, the record companies and technologists have ruined everything, I forgot.

Bad Newport Newz...

I’m sure everyone has been eagerly anticipating my post on the latest Mike Vick indictment news (okay, maybe not). Nonetheless, I’ll give you this Atlanta guys take on the situation in a series of random thoughts:

- Mike Vick has proved himself to be not such a bright guy on and off the field. His inability to mature into even a competent passer during his career here in Atlanta given the fact that the guy’s got a rocket like arm is proof positive that he’s not smart enough to run complex offensive schemes effectively. Let’s face it: Being a QB in the NFL is not for the stupid of mind. Instinct will only carry you so far. He would have been better off at receiver or running back. Arthur Blank made a huge mistake keeping him and dealing fellow Virginia Tech QB Matt Schuab this year BEFORE all this dog fighting mess came up.

- Mike Vick and many other “college” players were never really smart enough to actually go to college in the first place and the cheating that schools are doing to get academically challenged players on the field is coming to bare on both the NCAA and the NFL that is using Div 1A collegiate programs as a minor league. Locally here in Atlanta this summer, there’s been nothing but bad news out in Athens with the UGA players running afoul of the law. The entitlement mentality reigns supreme in big time college football. It’s time to right this situation. These players are getting scholarship money that others would kill to have and if they can’t appreciate the gift that has been given them, get’em the hell out of there.

- Mike Vick has displayed some suspect behavior prior to this latest drama, the most suspicious being the Miami Airport incident with the fake water bottle. I’m not sure if he was hide weed in his bottle or not, but I’m inclined to believe that he was up to no good. I frankly don’t care if people smoke weed or not, but if your employer says refraining is a contingency of your employment and you partake, you have decided not to be employed. Arthur Blank and other league officials like Mike personally (I liked the guy myself) and took him for his word that it was nothing. Arthur seemed to have trusted Mike when he told him that nothing more would ever place him and the Falcons organization in a bad light again.

- Mike Vick had better know what kind of trouble he’s in right now. He better know that he should be taking these charges very seriously.

- Fighting dogs for sport is disgusting and shows deep moral depravity. I don’t think the Atlanta Falcons and the NFL will tolerate any association with it whatsoever.

I have to admit that I’m a little gun shy about condemning Mike Vick too quickly after the Duke lacrosse thing, but there is a correlation with both cases. Yes, the four defendants in the Duke Lacrosse case did NOT rape or sexually assault anyone, but let’s not forget what WAS going on there: Meathead varsity athletes hosting an off campus party, serving minors booze, with strippers invited as entertainment. That’s why the coach rightfully resigned and nobody at Duke was clamoring to get him back. He lost control of his team and the players, while not rapists, clearly showed a penchant for poor decision making and it was a systemic problem with the lacrosse program as a whole.

Mike Vick may somehow avoid being convicted of the crimes he’s been charged with, but he has proven time after time that he is a poor decision maker in his off field life. At a minimum, he knew what was going on and more than likely was an instrumental figure in the whole Bad Newz Kennel racket. The Fed’s are NOT DA Nifong and would never bring these charges in such a high profile case if they didn’t think they had enough to make it stick. I suspect that others have flipped on poor Mike knowing that they don’t have millions to put up an expensive top shelf defense. Mike Vick will need to dedicate himself to his defense if he’s got any chance of being cleared, and for that reason alone he should resign from the team. If I was a betting man, He’ll definitely owe Arthur Blank an apology at a minimum.

Rocks Requieum Part IVXIII v2...

Tossed a new post up at Newcritics and then discovered this story at CNN verifying what we already know; New music has no staying power and rock as we once knew is a cold dying neutron star spinning inside the remnants of it's own super nova. It sucks to be right, but it's also cool that records and bands that we were into and were slagged off in lieu of trendy bullshit pop music are the ones still moving catalog units at a decent click:

AC/DC's "Back in Black" 156,000

Metallica 275,000

Appetite for Destruction 113,000

Nevermind 143,000

While...

Ace of Base's "The Sign" 5,000

Bobby Brown's "Don't Be Cruel" 5,000

Spice Girl's "Spice." 5,000

Mariah Carey's self-titled debut 5,000

The Backstreet Boys' "Millennium" 9,000

Rock and roll was/is the greatest music ever made. Too bad labels, technologists, and the assholes who run the big three radio conglomerates don't know this, or can't make the correlation.

Rock is dead, long live rock!

Troop Build Up...

That's right, I won't call it a "surge", but this is not the first story I've read that reports successes with the recent Operation Arrowhead Ripper offensive. My main man Micheal Yon has been tear-assing around the Anbar providence and tells similar stories of Sunni's, having grown fed up with Al Queda, joining coalition and Iraqi forces in running them out. The NYT's embed reported that Arrowhead Ripper is working in all the areas he's tagged along into (can't link since the NYT is a pay site). Yon says that the Iraqi citizens of these towns have told stories of a gradual turn against Al Queda after the terrorist group began fazing in Shira and began killing folks who resisted. Yon relates a story told to him by a town mayor an elder, his wife, and 11-year old boy being invited to dine with an Al Queda Sheik. When they arrived at the Sheik's house, the boy was requested to go with some Al Queda guards. The next time his parents saw their child, he was sitting prostrate on a serving platter with an apple in his mouth and roasted like a pig. The Al Queda Sheik had served the boy as lunch to send a message. Yon also details the recovery of recently decapitated children's corpses discovered following combat operations, a clear sign Al Queda had been decapitating children in front of their parents.

Running Al Queda out of Iraq is not the end of our problems there by any stretch, but the Iraqi people are finally starting to get on board with the idea that these assholes are NOT their friends. The Sunni's have discovered this the hard way unfortunately, but are coming around.

We need to get out of Iraq that is for sure, but we ARE fighting Al Queda there and until we know that they are unwelcome there and can not use the place as their next home base, we need to be there to kill ever last one of the worthless pieces of shit.

Decapitating kids. Is there anything more repulsive than that?