My iPod crapped out on me yesterday. Plugged it into the office computer…and next thing I know, all my songs and documents are corrupted. Out of 6,000 songs…only about 100 or so were salvageable. Said “screw it” and reformatted it.
Absolutely irritating, to say the least. Especially considering how great of care I treat the thing. But, I’ve had it for almost a year and this is the first problem I’ve ever had with it. So, I guess that’s not too bad, right?
We take technology for granted too much these days.
I get a lot of flack for who I listen to by some of my friends. I, admittedly, like Nickelback, Panic! At The Disco and Fall Out Boy. Bands that are typically the scourge of the hipsters and the elites. And the plague to those that are “educated” about music. And while I love the writing of the likes of Jeff Tweedy and Bob Dyland, the crushing and innovative riffs of Mastodon and Metallica, the social conscience of the Gang of Four and The Clash, the unpredictibility of Glassjaw and Primus, and the soul of Death Cab For Cute and U2…I also love the fun that Fall Ouy Boy and Panic! At The Disco offer.
I take a pop music class and people thumb their noses at some of the music that gets talked about. And I often frequent this message board called the Velvet Rope. It’s a place that music industry insiders, execs and musicians come to talk about music, the music business, sales, etc. The place is more or less comes off as a joke because nothing passed 1979 seems to get praised and there are a lot of people there who don’t consider hip-hop music as real music (which is laughable in and of itself). Most people who post there are wickedly out of touch. But I go anyways whenever I need a laugh because of the hypocrisy of it all.
The people that post there cry and complain about the “dying” music business and how it’s all falling apart. Yet, these very same bands that they hate are the same ones that are still giving many of those people jobs and are more or less keeping their business alive (for better or for worse).
If we were to look at the history of pop music, we can see that nothing in its history has changed. Starting from the 1800’s going through the 20’s, 60’s, and up to today.. It’s always been simple, melodic, catchy music that can be pretty shallow – but you’re not into the music for any deep meanings, just to have fun. It’s always been mass produced and had a targeted demograph.
You know, I find it interesting that a lot of people my age will praise a lot of 60’s music and how much of a fan they are of the Oldies (and in the same breath trash the very bands mentioned previously), but when in reality – the same thing that’s happening now was happening then. The songs were all very similar, very formulaic, all ran together and dominated the radio and tv.
Listen to The Ronnette’s “Be My Baby” and The Four Seasons “Rag Doll” (and you can even hear this through some of the Beach Boys songs). They’re ridiculously similiar. And people give Nickelback a hard time for having similiar hooks throughout their music. Yeesh.
Bands like FOB, Panic! At The Disco, Nickelback, Britney Spears, *NYSNC, or any other band people want to bash are not the end of music. It’s rather quite the opposite if you look really think about it.
Not only that but I think people are just straight up too afraid to even be associated with some of the bands. Why? Because it’s catchy? Because of the fan base? Because it’s infectious? Because the lyrics aren’t Bob Dylan status? Because of what they wear? What they do on stage? Fuck all of that. At the end of the day – it’s about the actual music. And if you hate bands because of what they wear, their fan base, or anything like that then you’re listening to music for all the wrong reasons.
Anybody that knows me, knows that I love to listen to music. I’m always up for new artists or bands regardless of genre. But, lately it’s not very often I come across an artist that I truly love. And it’s not very often that I just become blown away by an artist or band anymore it seems. But, just yesterday – I came across a man by the name of John Ritter who is, in a word, amazing.
Often times, his music is incredibly simple, but at the same time incredibly powerful. Lyrically one of the best artists I’ve ever heard. Truly a great, great artist.
My favorite lines from Thin Blue Flame. And really, if this doesn’t sum up the past 6 years of our world, then I don’t know what does:
Borders soft with refugees
Streets a’swimming with amputees
It’s a Bible or a bullet they put over your heart
It’s getting harder and harder to tell them apart
Days are nights and the nights are long
Beating hearts blossom into walking bombs
And those still looking in the clear blue sky for a sign
Get missiles from so high they might as well be divine
Now the wolves are howling at our door
Singing bout vengeance like it’s the joy of the Lord
Bringing justice to the enemies not the other way round
They’re guilty when killed and they’re killed where they’re found
If what’s loosed on earth will be loosed up on high
It’s a Hell of a Heaven we must go to when we die
Here’s the thing about the system of news coverage we have today. If the Walton family, or Lee Raymond, or the heirs to the Mars fortune actually needed the news media to work better than it does now, believe me, it would work better. But they have no such need, because the system is working just fine for them as is. The people it’s failing are the rest of us, and most of the rest of us, apparently, would rather sniff Anna Nicole Smith’s corpse or watch Britney Spears hump a fire hydrant than find out what our tax dollars are actually paying for.
Shit, when you think about it that way, why not steal from us? People that dumb don’t deserve to have money.
Such a great article. I think, whether you’re on the left or right it raises such a great point that more people need to hear. God. I am so tired of Britney Spears bald head and Anna Nicole Smith.
Last night, I was flipping through channels, and I about threw up all over my tv. Why, you ask? Because CNN, CNN Headline News, MSNBC and FOX News were all covering the Anna Nicole Smith story…at the same damn time. I didn’t bother to check Court TV because it’s more or less a given that this story would be covered there.
Now. It’s been over a week now since this story broke out. And there is still that much coverage on it. Who watches this shit, seriously? Who out there cares that much about Anna Nicole Smith’s death to warrant 4 major news networks to dedicate countless hours of airtime to this while pushing away important issues like, say Iran?
I mean. Seriously. What the hell? Quite frankly, Nancy Grace – I don’t give two fucking shits if her will is released or not. Get a real job, you hack.
Speaking of Hacks…
I’m sure most of you, at this point, have seen the video of comedian Joe Rogan calling out Carlos Mencia on his stealing of jokes. A few points of interest:
1) Carlos Mencia’s real name is “Ned”. No, seriously. It is. I never knew that until watching this video. Ned is such a cracker name.
2) Mencia is not even Mexican. He’s half German and Venezuelan.
3) Maybe those two points are old to most people. But I can’t stand Carlos Mencia and try to avoid anything and everything about him. Except this stuff with Joe Rogan.
4) I’ve heard comics tell similiar jokes at different shows. Example, I once saw comedian Eliot Chang tell a joke that was similiar to one I saw Dane Cook tell a year prior. Stealing? I don’t know (but given Dane Cook has very similiar jokes to Louis CK, who knows) There’s no doubt that telling jokes is hard and trying to come up with something that is new or fresh isn’t easy. However, what Mencia is doing seems pretty blatant.
Either way. Mencia gets destroyed in this video. And hopefully – it’ll put an end to his God awful show. A show in which I’ve never, ever have laughed at.
So, here it is:
While Still on the Topic of Hacks…
I’m going to make a real, honest effort to not read Liberal blogs anymore (except this one, of course!) I don’t read Conservative ones, and the more I read stuff from places like AMERICABlog, the more pissed off I get at the immaturity, irrationality and the absurdness of what many people on the left have to say. These guys have attended college and have worked in politics before? And how old are they again? Yeesh. Embaressing. And these are the people trying to represent me when talking about the Bush Administration, and conservative policies in general.
Hackity McHackerson
Thank you, World Series champion reliever Keith Foulke. Thank you for signing with the Indians, and then retiring 2 days before Spring Training Starts. Typical Cleveland sports.
We have Barack Obama, Hilary Clinton, Rudy Guliani, and John McCain all running for president and battling it out for the presidential nomination for their respective party.
But you know what? I have no interest in any of them. If there was one guy who is running that I would probably vote for – it would be John McCain. I think he, at one point, had a lot of integrity.But the man has completely sold his soul in the past year and as a supporter, I feel more or less backstabbed by him as a supporter and what he’s been doing and saying as of late.
I think, as it stands now, I’ll be voting for myself in 08. Or maybe Mickey Mouse. Either one of us can do a better job of running this country than the people fighting over the position and running it now.
For the past month, I’ve been getting a lot of crap by a certain friend who shall remain nameless over my dislike for Abraham Lincoln and my preferance for the outstanding George Washington.
Abraham Lincoln. Two words that conjur up images of the freeing of slaves, reunifcation of the United States, and strong leadership. He is regarded as one of, if not the, most important president ever. Most people happen to think he was a great guy. I, however, argue otherwise. I don’t think Lincoln should be as idolized as he often is.
He’s been referred to as “King Lincoln” and “The American Stalin”. I think the “American Stalin” name is a bit much, and to even put Lincoln in the same breath as Stalin in terms of dictatorships and how he treated people is a bit much (ex. Killing over 20 million people), but the term “King Lincoln” isn’t too far off at times.
My biggest problem with the Lincoln presidency is how he basically disregarded the Constitution. Now, granted – during wartime, Presidents are known to expand their powers. FDR, Woodrow Wilson, Lyndon Johnson, and our current president, have all expanded their powers during wartime. It’s nothing new in American history. And sometimes, it’s not really that bad of a thing.
However, there is a bit of a problem when you arrest anti-war protestors and newspaper editors for writing against the war, and shut them down. There were literally, thousands of people arrested and put in jail because they disagreed with the war. The problem doesn’t end there with the absurd arrestings and the suspension of the writ of habeaus corpus, but also with the entire Civil War itself.
It can be very well argued that the Civil War itself, the war that Lincoln waged, was not Constitutional given the fact that he didn’t even have consent given to him by Congress in order to carry it out. It’s arguable that it was never even a legal war.
And on a final note: we can also thank President Lincoln for the draft.
I play this game with a friend of mine where we come up with the worst scenarios imaginable, and you have to make your friend choose which scenario they would prefer and they have to give some type of reasoning why they chose that particular one. And they have to pick one. They sometimes are incredibly digusting but always completely absurd and hilarious. Just to give you an idea, here’s an example.
Play along, and pick one!
1. You spend the rest of your life with a brown paper bag over your head, having no hands (arms are still there, but no actual hands) and you cannot speak or utter a single word ever again to anyone. The bag cannot be removed (no matter what the reason), and it is water resistant so it will never get moldy or gross or anything like that. It just has two eye slits, no painted or drawn faces allowed.
2. You have to eat nothing but macaroni and cheese for the rest of your life. 3 times a day. Breakfast, lunch and dinner. And have to even eat it as a snack. And this is the Easy Mac stuff, not homemade, Stouffer’s, or anything like that. Pepper, butter, and milk (the three things that make Easy Mac edible) are forbidden. And you cannot make different variations of it. Has to be made how the box tells you how to make it sans the extra milk, butter, etc.
3. A terrorist holds you hostage. He has a nuclear weapon that will blow up half of the Western world (including all of the US). The only way to stop this from ever blowing up is to sleep with him for the rest of your life (3 times a day, as a matter of fact). However, he is not well endowed, he lives in the caves of Afghanistan and so obviously he will also be smelly, hairy, and gross. However, he is disease free. But you cannot ever go back to see your family or friends ever again.
