Tumescence 4

I can’t decide for which reason I despise the band Seether more: because they sound like Nickelback or because they remade Wham’s (featuring George Michael) song “Careless Whisper.”
On the first matter, Nickelback sounds like Nickelback because that’s how they sound naturally, all sucking aside. Seether sounds like Nickelback by choice. I mean, there was a conscious decision made by the band collective to say “hey—lets sound like Nickelback.” Now you can say it’s Nickelback’s fault for spawning such suckage, but to quote a sage for our time, “who is the more foolish, the fool or the fool who follows him? ”
Now on the second matter, I didn’t think it was possible to gay up a song anymore than Careless Whisper already was, but our boys found a way. Like living through that song 25 years ago wasn’t punishment enough.
So I guess for either reason, I’d like to see Seether beaten and/or mangled by their own instruments. Something tells me though that they’re the type of guys who use vintage instruments solely for the cool “street cred” factor. In which case I’d be happy to sacrifice one of my own instruments to do the job. Better yet, how about using one of these ridiculous things?
I’ll save that for another topic.

A lot of people realize that the TV show MASH lasted almost four times as long as the Korean War. I don’t know if the creators expected the program to go on for that long or if they had a plan to deal with it if it did. I had to scratch my head over a few ways they dealt with that issue. Read the rest of this entry »

When it comes to eating fruit, you need to take a totally different approach to eating an apple versus a banana. And I mean more than, one you have to wash and the other you have to peel, or one tastes good refrigerated and one doesn’t.

With an apple, it all starts out fine: You take a bunch of chomps for a while, enjoying the sweet, crunchy goodness, until you get to that area of uncertainty where you’re pretty sure theres more good apple bits left. So you rotate the apple around, spot an area and think to yourself, “yeah, there’s another bite.” But half the time you end up biting into that part of the core that gets wedged between your front teeth.

Bananas? You know when there’s no more banana left to eat — you get to the end and you’re done. But there is the chance that you might accidentally eat the little stem and part that connects to the bottom of the peel — the part that a friend and I have termed the “bananus.”

If watermelons actually had taste, seedless ones would be at the top of my list for best fruit for easiest consumption. The design is very simple: Eat the pink part, stop when you get to the white part. If you eat through to the green part, you should probably stick to eating grapes.

I heard these guys on the radio yesterday. All I can say is that we should have stopped Nickelback while they themselves were still in the larval stage.

If you haven’t heard them, imagine the dreck pseudo-hard-rock of Nickelback combined with the songwriting of a new country band, complete with the cheesy lyrics of both elements.

Anyone remember when good bands came out of Canada?

Sometime in 1983, this conversation happened at Columbia Records (events dramatized):

Record Exec: “OK boys, we’re gonna need a video for ‘Separate Ways,’ so I called Marty in to talk concepts. He’s the best.”

Marty (Video producer): “I have a vision. I want you gentlemen to realize… my vision. That is a vision of you… the band… on a wharf.”

Anonymous member of Journey: “Uhhhm…” Read the rest of this entry »

Posting this by request, and because I feel the same way…

Men should not hug as a greeting, unless one or more of the following apply:

1. Hug recipient is a relative whom you don’t seen that often.
2. Hug recipient Is a really close friend that you haven’t seen in a VERY long time.
3. Hug recipient saved your life (literally) at some point.
4. Hug recipient just offered to pick up your bar tab.

Otherwise, let’s leave it at a handshake before things start getting out of hand, OK?

I find it very creepy to see adult scout leaders dressed like their Boy Scout Troop. The shirt and neckerchief is bad enough, but when they throw in the shorts it compounds the creepiness almost exponentially. Dude, if you’re that hard up to wear a uniform (and no, the chicks don’t dig it), join the National Guard, a hockey team, a bowling league, T.G.I.Fridays — anything that doesn’t make you look like a 6th grader with a serious pituitary issue. By donning that BSA uniform, you put yourself just below those mothers who dress like their daughters. I’ll leave that one for some other post.

One thing that I was oblivious of as a kid that now puzzles me is the concept of a cartoon laugh track. Laugh tracks are rare if non-existent in TV today, but look at shows from 25+ years ago and they were prevalent. And I’m borderline OK with that. But they were pervasive to the point of adding them to animation. (Listen to any ’70s Hanna-Barbera cartoon.) I don’t know what bothers me more about it — that the creators were so lousy that they couldn’t animate characters to be funny to the point of obvious, or that we’re expected to believe there was some ethereal audience reacting right at the point where Scooby stole Shaggy’s sandwich.