Bob’s Blog

One of the greatest drinks ever? Yes, yes it is. Arguably even top 3.  Drinking this was the highlight of the day during grade school for sure.

You want to know what the problem with kids these days? It’s lack of appreciation for what’s given to them. I’ve been blessed with great parents. I couldn’t ask for better parents. They’re amazing, in a word. And they’ve done a great job raising me.

For those that don’t know, I’ve spent a decent portion of my life poor. And I’m not talking the typical saying of, “Oh, I’m broke” that we all use on a regular basis. I am talking poor. Growing up, we never had anything. My mom and dad barely could afford anything, and we were barely able to keep our apartment(s) and live. And because of that, I’ve always been humble about things in life, whether it is people or money.

Kids these days don’t appreciate a lot of things. Especially free tuition to colleges. Or parents paying their college tuition. Only instead to throw it all away for drunken binges that result in you laying down on your back and puking like a garden hose and then fucking someone until it hurts.

I would kill to walk away from this whole experience debt free, let alone to even have the shot at a free college tuition.

I’m way too young to be saying that stuff.

It’s The End Of The World as We Know It and I Feel Fine.

You have to give credit to the History Channel for giving us Armageddeon Week right during the week between Christmas and New Years. It really gets you in the mood for the holidays. As if we all don’t lead busy and stressful lives, we must now burden ourselves with the fact that we, as a human race, will be wiped out. It’s inevitable. But how? An asteroid? Typhoon? Nuclear War? The sun blowing up? The Anti-Christ? Life is full of surprises.

Our extinction is coming as it is – I don’t need the History Channel to remind me of it.

But, just to let you know (seeing as I’m a caring friend): Mark it down on your calenders now, kids. The Mayan’s are going to be laying a giant turd on our Christmas in 2012. Grab the sunscreen, pull out the kiddie pool, grab a cold glass of iced tea, sit on a rooftop and be ready to watch our world come to an end.

In the end, us white folk thought we got the last laugh with the Mayans and other primitive cultures by wiping them out with our small box, swords, and muskets. Nope.

Eat it, Mel Gibson.

Last Caress

It’s the end of the year, and you know what that means, kids: No, no. Not resolutions, or drunken parties. But rather, The Annual Darwin Awards!

According to the official site, this is the number one story this year:

August 2006, Brazil) August brings us a winner from Brazil, who tried to disassemble a Rocket Propelled Grenade (RPG) by driving back and forth over it with a car. This technique was ineffective, so he escalated to pounding the RPG with a sledgehammer. The second try worked–in a sense. The explosion proved fatal to one man, six cars, and the repair shop wherein the efforts took place.14 more RPG grenades were found in a car parked nearby. Police believe the ammunition was being scavenged to sell as scrap metal. If it wasn’t scrap then, it certainly is now!

Hard to top that one.

“Things change. Sometimes you change with them and sometimes you chose to hold on to the memory of something better…the hole in society that seems to keep growing, championed by a new generation whose emptiness identifies with it. The world shrinks and yet people get more distant and confused. The world shrinks and a plastic, neon soul is sent to redeem the masses that, in the dark, grope for wet matches and candle ends.” – M. Good

After watching USA’s show on kids playing in a Halo tournament (this is how bad TV has gotten) the other day with my brother, I have a new plan to make money:

Step 1: Buy an X-Box 360, X-Box Live, and Gears Of War
Step 2: Join tournaments and beat up 15 year old nerds.
Step 3: Collect paychecks from said tournament.

This plan is full-proof. I can sit around all day on my bed and play video games, do very little work, and beat up little kids. It’s everything I could ever want in a job.

And if all else fails and some how these kids beat me, I can physically force them to hand over the money. Their precious video games won’t protect them from real life forever.

Kerrang! Recently did their “50 Best Punk Rock Albums” list. And this list is, in a word, garbage. Now, I love punk. It’s my favorite genre of music and is something I grew up on. This list actually irritated me with some of the stuff they put on here. I mean, c’mon, The Get Up Kids? Look. I love that album and that band -but that album has no place on this list.

For the sake of space, and not making your eyes bleed, here is their Top 10:

1. Sex Pistols Never Mind the Bollocks, Here’s the Sex Pistols (1977)
2. Green Day Dookie (1994)
3. Dead Kennedys Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables (1980)
4. Nirvana Nevermind (1991)
5. The Offspring Smash (1994)
6. Rancid …And Out Come the Wolves (1995)
7. Discharge Hear Nothing, See Nothing, Say Nothing (1982)
8. The Clash The Clash (1977)
9. The Damned Machine Gun Etiquette (1979)
10. Ramones Ramones (1976)

The rest can be found here.

I don’t even know where to start with this. So, I’ll just give you THE top 10 definitive list for punk rock. I would do 50, but I don’t have a writing staff to half ass a music list for me:

Bob’s Definitive Top 10 Punk Rawk List

1) The Ramones – The Ramones
2) The Sex Pistols – Nevermind The Bollocks
3) The Clash – London Calling
4) Green Day – Dookie
5) The Misfits – Static Age
6) The Talking Heads – Remain In Light
7) Rancid – …And Out Come The Wolves
8 ) Dead Kennedies – Fresh Fruit For Rotting Vegetables
9) Social Distortion – White Light, White Heat, White Trash
10) The Offspring – Smash

Now, look at that list. How The Ramones can’t be number one is absurd. Their debut album is what defines punk rock. The sound, the look, everything. Everything that punk rock is came from that album. They arethe Black Sabbath of punk rock. Plain and simple.

The Clash? Enough said.

Of course, you also have the Sex Pistols. And despite them being nothing more than a punk rock boy band – they’re still important. Green Day’s “Dookie” more or less brought punk music back to life. What kid in high school doesn’t have that album, or can’t relate to it? That album defines an entire generation.

And, to round out the top 5 are the Misfits. Without Glen Danzig and his Misfits, you wouldn’t have AFI, My Chemical Romance, Metallica, Rob Zombie, Alkaline Trio, and literally, hundreds of other bands both punk and metal. They are too often underappreciated, I think.

The Talking Heads being absent on Kerrang’s list is absolutely criminal. They might not be the typical “play 3 chords as hard and as fast as possible”, but they’re still important to the punk movement. They were more sophisticated, more mature, and more creative than any other bands on this list. They deserve a spot, at least, much more so than say – Sublime. Who doesn’t even deserve a spot anywhere on this list.

Now of course, I could go on days on end with this. Velvet Underground, Black Flag, Jawbreaker, The Stooges, Devo, Blondie, Discharge, Bad Religion…the list can go on and on. But, I think the above list pretty much names off all the important, genre-altering, “must have’s” of the genre.

Eat it, Kerrang! And take your Nirvana with you.

I just want to an extend a very Happy Chrismahanukwanzakah to all of you. I hope you all have a great holiday. And a safe one. Don’t drink too much egg nog.

And I just want to extend a special thank you for my friends and family, especially those that have been with me through this past year. It’s been a rollercoaster year. So, thank you for being there for me – it means a lot. I don’t know what I’d do without you all.

Over the past day or so, I’ve re-learned why I don’t engage people in political debate on a regular basis anymore. All it leads to is frustration, headaches, and annoyance. There are people in their 30’s who act like they are 12 years old. It’s embaressing, to be honest.

And I’m not sure if that speaks more about them or our current political climate inside this country.

I suppose I’ll just keep most of my political ideas and thoughts in this stupid thing from here on out. At least with blogs, people can simply click that little X on the top and move on with their immediate lives.

There is this one idea I have though. I would love to have my own radio talk show (among many, many other ideas and things I would love to try and do). This idea struck me the other day as I was listening to Rush Limbaugh for 3 hours in a UPS truck. I, much like Al Franken, Bill O’Reilly or Rush himself, can sit around for a couple hours and spew out the most one sided bullshit ever.

And the best part? People will listen to me. And they’ll call in and agree with me and tell me how dead on I am. And then I can go off on more tangents about things I really don’t know anything about – but that’s my job. I can be a hypocrite and people will excuse me for it. I’ll pass my show off as “fair and balanced” and give both sides a shot, but not really. I’ll be much nicer to the side I agree with and not really bury them. I’ll agree with my favorite musicians. And I’ll do my damndest to make things as black and white as possible.

Because, really. In the end, isn’t life pretty much cut and dry?

Beware The Water

I need to go to the mall sometime between now and Sunday. I am dreading this. It’s not like I don’t like going to malls. But around this time of the year? We can all agree that it is Hell on Earth. Old women will bat you off with their purses in order to get that last gift. Small, hideous children will bite your ankles. You will stand in line for what seems like eternity. And inept folks will stand in your way as you try to get out of the mall as soon as you can.

True story: Two weekends ago when I was back in Cleveland, we forgot where we parked. These malls are so big, and the parking lots are even bigger. And let’s not forget to mention how many damned cars there were in the lot. We walked around for a good 20 minutes trying to find our car.

I probably should’ve taken care of this sooner…like when I was at the mall two weekends ago. But, then again – slackers like me really don’t differentiate between Monday’s and Saturday’s when they’ve got nothing else going on in their lives. My thinking?

“Meh. I’ll get it later. The crowds are going to be bad either way. Might as well hold off on it as long as I can.”

Speaking of Christmas, it’s not going to snow. And I, for one, could not be more pleased with this. My idea of Christmas is laying on a beach, while wearing a santa hat, a bathing suit, and tanning (or in my case – burning. But, still).

The Only Prediction I Have for this Fight is…Pain.

The new Rocky movie is out. And I couldn’t be more ecstatic. I need to see this. Sly Stallone has given us the best Christmas gift ever in a new Rocky film. It is the gift that keeps on giving. I’m not reading any reviews for it. I’m going in and just going to watch it.

It’s times like this where we need Rocky. We live in a dark age, friends. As we all know, Rocky single handedly ended the Cold War by fighting that steroid Russian monster. It was not Ronald Reagan who ended the Cold War. It was not our vast arsenal of nukes, or a crumbling Russian economic system. But rather, Rocky.

Perhaps, Rocky needs to take on a boxer with terrorist ties.

This year’s Time Person Of The Year? It’s You:

To be sure, there are individuals we could blame for the many painful and disturbing things that happened in 2006. The conflict in Iraq only got bloodier and more entrenched. A vicious skirmish erupted between Israel and Lebanon. A war dragged on in Sudan. A tin-pot dictator in North Korea got the bomb, and the president of Iran wants to go nuclear too. Meanwhile nobody fixed global warming, and Sony didn’t make enough PlayStation3s.

But look at 2006 through a different lens and you’ll see another story, one that isn’t about conflict or great men. It’s a story about community and collaboration on a scale never seen before. It’s about the cosmic compendium of knowledge Wikipedia and the million-channel people’s network YouTube and the online metropolis MySpace. It’s about the many wresting power from the few and helping one another for nothing and how that will not only change the world, but also change the way the world changes.

People are taking power back. And many of the mass media giants simply don’t know what to do. It really is great to be alive right now.

Old man trying to fight off his youth? Old man angry at small babies? Babies trying to pile onto old man and take his life?

Discuss.