Tag Team: Danielle and Steve on Butters, South Park and Disney

Butters - Greatest character ever, or just the best one?

To rip-off the disclaimer for Bill Simmons' BS Report, Tag Team is a free flowing discussion between two adults that sometimes touches on mature subjects. Today's correspondent (I haven't thought of a good term for it yet) is Danielle Membrino, a photographer, Corcoran College and Rogers High School alum, and a friend of a friend from college. Also, her mom apparently loved reading my police reports when I wrote for The Newport Daily News. Topics this week include how awesome Butters on South Park is, the best worst Cartman moments, Disney's slide and possible redemption, and the success of Pixar. Want to do your own Tag Team with me? Send me an e-mail or leave a comment.

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Steve: Butters is probably my favorite South Park character, because he's really the only naive and innocent person on the show. The four lead characters are all super-aware for their ages, and Butters is kind of the innocent counter to them all, especially Cartman.

The difference is especially profound in "AWESOM-O." You know, the one where Cartman pretends to be a robot. It was after South Park had made the switch from a straight-up "gross out" show (the first couple seasons) to its current style, which is to mock trends getting headlines. It is also one of the few episodes where someone really does get the better of Cartman, although it takes forever to get to that point.

Also a strong episode from that season - "Woodland Critter Christmas," another Cartman creation, revealed at the end. The reveal in the middle of the episode probably makes it my favorite South Park episode of all-time, just narrowly beating out "The Jeffersons." Both of these, and "AWESOM-O," are from season eight, probably the best of all the seasons. Also in that season - "Good Times With Weapons," "Douche and Turd," and the Paris Hilton episode, another strong Butters' episode.

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Danielle: I remember the first time I saw a glimpse of South Park was when I was like maybe about 13. My dad was watching it and I walked in the room, and I don't know what episode it is, but they're in class and Kenny tells Mr. Garrison (this is pre-sex change) that he has to go to the bathroom. So he lets him, and the bathroom door is in the classroom and Kenny goes in and you can hear him having REALLY bad diarrhea.

Then my dad noticed me in the room and changed the channel, saying, "You're too young for this." I was just like, whatever, looked pretty gross to me anyway, so what did I care?

I didn't get into South Park until my sophomore year of college. We only got like 20 channels in our dorms and one of them was Comedy Central. One weekend they were doing a south park marathon, so I watched it. And it was the episode I was telling you about before [on Facebook], where Cartman thinks he's a ghost. I fell in love with the show after that.

Butters is definitely my favorite character as well. He's the most innocent and child-like, and I love him for it. Even when an episode isn't about him, if he just has like one or two lines, it's hilarious.

There was the episode where Cartman tries to run away from home, and when he asks the other boys if he can stay with him, they keep saying no. So Cartman's like, "FIIIINE. I'LL JUST STAY WITH BUTTERS THEN!" and Butters replies, "No. My mom says I'm not allowed to bring homeless people home anymore."

I can't get over the adorableness of Butters. He tries so hard to do what he thinks he's suppose to do. Like when Cartman ends up getting him sent to that camp where they make kids "not gay" and Butters has no idea what's going on and admits he is "confused" but was really only confused about why everyone thought he was confused. Or when they take a class field trip to the 1800's town but Cartman wants to go to the amusement park next door and Butters is his field trip buddy, so Butters refuses to let go of his hand the ENTIRE time until they're back on the bus.

I love the naivety of all the characters sometimes too. It helps you remember that they're only suppose to be 4th graders. Like in season four when Cartman tries making "mature" friends online and ends up bringing his friends along to a NAMBLA convention. Amazing.

I'm also partial to season 10. I have it on my iTunes and I'm looking through it and I love so many of the episodes. "Make Love, Not Warcraft," "ManBearPig" ("I'M SUPER SERIAL!!!") and "Tsst" (the one where the dog whisperer comes to train Cartman, so good!), and of course, "A Million Little Fibers." Who doesn't love Towelie? "Don't call me shoeless, you're shoeless!" The episode involves one of my favorite characters and makes fun of that ridiculous incident of the guy who wrote the book that wasn't 100 percent true and people freaked out.

I also like how a couple times the creators have predicted things that would happen in pop culture. There was the episode with Britney Spears, like a season ago I think it was, and the media is OBSESSED with her, even after she blows half her head off. And then at the end the paparazzi explain to the south park kids that they don't want to harass Britney, they have to. It had something to do with they had to have one sacrifice every year in order for the crops to grow, or something ridiculous like that.

So then at the end after Britney dies, all the paparazzi are at a grocery store and the news comes on about Miley Cyrus being the next big thing, and the paparazzi are all ominously looking at it going "oooooo." And I found this funny because the episode came out only days before Miley was all over the media for that "scandalous" photo of her in a bra, and then she was in the news all the time for a while for stupid little things that no one really cared about. I thought it was pretty funny South Park put that episode out and then it actually happened.

Going back to Butters... Did you see the episode about vampires in the new season? I saw most of it, but I enjoyed it because Butters thinks he is a vampire and sneaks into Cartman's room to "bite" him and Cartman wakes up with Butters on him and shouts out, "Mooooooooooom (although it's really more like maaaaaaaaam) Butters is in my room trying to kiiiiiiisssss meeeee cause he's realized his sexualllllllity!" And when Cartman's mom comes in, Butters hisses at her and goes back out the window. I was laughing so hard.

I feel like I'm not making any points here really... Just kinda talking about how awesome Butters is, haha. But I definitely loved "Awesome-O" too. I loved it every time Cartman had to do something he didn't want to do, or something bad happened, and he would just say "weeak." And Butters is just SOOO excited for his robot; jumping up and down and clapping. I want Butters as my child.

Hahaha, probably one of the most memorable episodes for me, is when Cartman is (I think) getting revenge on some bully or something, and is pulling pranks on him. The last prank he does to this kid is to invite him to a chili cookout and after the kid eats it, Cartman tells him he killed the boys parents and made them into the chili. It's so funny, but so incredibly wrong at the same time.

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Steve: Okay, sorry about the slight delay in responding to this. To switch gears for a second, I saw The Hangover earlier tonight, and it was as awesome as everyone else is proclaiming it to be. What are your thoughts on it? We seem to skew scarily close in terms of pop culture taste, so it wouldn't surprise me if you liked it a lot, but it is more of a "guy" movie in the vein of Old School as opposed to something like The 40-Year-Old Virgin, which both sexes seem to like equally.

But getting back to South Park, I vaguely recall seeing the first
season as it was broadcasting. Even at the time, I recognized that this was something weird, bizarre and special, and the first couple seasons were nothing but the kids acting like assholes toward one another. The social commentary didn't come until later, once they exhausted most of the "Cartman's mom is a slut" jokes. Also shocking - Mystery Science Theatre 3000 came on after South Park, within a few hours on Sci-Fi, so that was always a solid block of television for me
growing up.

As far as favorite episodes go, as you point out by naming several, there are just so many great ones that deserve to be mentioned. It might be easier to name ones that aren't that great. For example, I thought the April Fool's Joke, "Terrance and Phillip: Not Without My Anus," was pretty bad. While I loved the fact that Trey Parker and Matt Stone gave the shaft to their own fans, the episode itself stunk. The same goes with this season's episode about the Queef Sisters.

Standout episodes that we haven't mentioned yet: "Deathcamp of Tolerance" features the triumphant debut of Lemmiwinks. Right before "AWESOM-O" they hinted that another Lemmiwinks episode was coming in some promos, but we're several seasons past that point and still nothing. "Cartoon Wars" is interesting and unique with its criticism and defense of Family Guy, which I found spot on. Yeah, Family Guy is full of ridiculous non sequitors, but sometimes it is good to just laugh instead of having to watch a show that gets all deep and preachy.

And finally, you can't go wrong with the ultimate Professor Chaos
episode - "Simpsons Already Did It" from the sixth season. I'm also a
big fan of The Simpsons, so seeing South Park skewer them a bit was
hilarious, and Butters being involved made it all the better. And in
the words of Cartman, Sea-people + Sea-men = Sea-ciety.

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Danielle: You know, to tell the truth, I'm not all that interested in seeing The Hangover. It doesn't look like something I'd find as hilarious as everyone else does. Wouldn't pay to go see it, but I'll probably add it to my Netflix. Even though they're completely different movies, the hype around this movie was the same for Anchorman - Everyone thought it was soooooo funny. And I hate Anchorman. I wanted to see Anchorman, I was excited to see it, my dad and I went to go see it in the theaters, and I think I laughed like twice.

I honestly don't think Will Ferrell is all that funny. I liked Stranger Than Fiction, and Kicking and Screaming. That's about it. And really I only liked him as Alex Trebek on SNL. So, as for The Hangover, I will reserve final judgment til I see it months from now on Netflix.

I did go see Up yesterday though. I loved it. It also is as good as everyone says it is. I always have to commend Pixar for getting emotions across in non-speaking scenes. There's a montage in the beginning of the movie of the life of the old man and his wife that is just heart-wrenching. And the freakin' huge ass bird in the movie doesn't speak but is hilarious. And the talking dogs are really funny.

I love almost every Pixar movie. The only two I can say I was only meh about were Cars and Ratatouille. Cars was cute, but didn't really do anything for me. Maybe a little too kiddish? And Ratatouille just lacked the normal spark their movies usually have. It wasn't bad, just not as endearing to me. I also always love their film shorts they put before the movies. Did you ever see the Jackalope one? My family went to go see The Incredibles, and my mom and I were hysterical with laughter watching this short. We were pretty much the only ones laughing, which was slightly embarrassing because we were laughing pretty loud. Finding Nemo is definitely my favorite of all Pixar movies, but Monsters Inc. is up there too.

I also saw an interesting preview before Up that got me excited. Disney is making another actual cartoon movie! The Princess and The Frog. Now I'm super excited for another animated film. I'm kind of in love with classic Disney, if you weren't aware. I liked the computer animated movies, but it's just not the same. There's just so many memories attached to the classic Disney movies for me. Plus I do love my Disney songs.

I do like how Disney is trying to update their image though with this cartoon movie by not having it be just another white girl princess and white boy prince. Although they did have Jasmine and Mulan. But who are most famous? Ariel, Snow White, Sleeping Beauty (Aurora) and Cinderella. But anyway, for this movie they have a black princess and the frog, who is a cursed prince, that I believe is supposed to be Spanish.

... Wow, none of that had anything to do with South Park, but I don't think I have much else to say about it. You're right that there are fewer bad episodes; I can't even really recall any because I generally forget things I don't like! I'm glad they're keeping up the good work though and keeping Butters as cute and naive as ever.

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Steve: Well, ideally, the conversation should kind of ramble and get random, and not talk about just South Park, so we're doing well so far.

As far as The Hangover goes, yeah, if you weren't into Anchorman and Old School, then this probably wouldn't appeal to you. It is that sort of behavior, straight down to a performance by The Dan Band . I am a bit shocked that you hated Anchorman though - No love for Steve Carrell either? You don't love lamp? I haven't seen Stranger Than Fiction - I've wanted to, but never gotten around to it - but Kicking and Screaming, really? I saw that and was pretty bored throughout. There were only a couple laughs for me. A lot of Will Ferrell's films are hit or miss, yes.

The Bruno movie is coming out soon, yay or nay to that? While I liked Borat, it did make me cringe in so many parts that I never re-watched it.

Up looks awesome, and it has gotten awesome reviews, so I wouldn't have minded seeing that either. All the Pixar movies are good, although I admittedly have been slacking with my viewings of them; I haven't seen Cars or Ratatouille. For some reason, I only seem to get the urge to watch them as date movies, and normally watch other things before I get to them - North by Northwest, This Is Spinal Tap for the 40th time, The Brak Show and Space Ghost: Coast to Coast.

I'm glad that Disney is getting back into the traditional animation game, though. As great as the Pixar films are, there is just something about the classic Disney animation that is timeless. One of
my "writer's block" entries is a comparison of the shitty Rugrats in Paris vs. the awesome Pinocchio, both of which I had to watch while substitute teaching. Even though Pinocchio was in Spanish, it was still much more watchable than Rugrats, which already seems horrible and dated.

I will hold my judgment for the new film until I see it, although I'll add the qualifier that Disney stopped with the whole animation thing because they had made so many clunkers. Even with this one, you should be fearful that they'll do something stupid like cast Miley Cyrus or Raven the Cosby Girl as the black princess, instead of a real voiceover artist.

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Danielle: Well, Steve Carrell was the only person I found amusing in Anchorman. The few times I did laugh usually involved scenes he was in. I know Kicking and Screaming isn't a very good movie, but they showed it on TBS so much when I was in college, and that was one of few channels I had, so it grew on me. Plus, since I've worked with kids a lot, I get a lot of that humor. I don't really have any interest in Bruno either. I saw like the first 10 minutes of Borat and that was enough for me.

Pixar movies are great date movies, I have to agree with you there. In the theater for Up, there were actually almost no children. Mostly adult couples. Or a group of teenage friends. Or me.

Rugrats in Paris was pretty lame. I did use to like that show though. Nickelodeon was soooo freakin' awesome! I still enjoy a couple of their shows; SpongeBob Squarepants I still find amusing, and the little girl I nanny loves it, so it's a show I can watch with her and tolerate. I also find Drake and Josh fairly amusing at times too.

Don't worry about the new Disney cartoon - they've got some random people doing voices, not anyone too famous. Only name I recognized was Oprah Winfrey. What were the animated flops? Hmm, Atlantis was only OK. So was Treasure Planet. I did really like The Emperor's New Groove though. I think they don't do so well because there are no good songs! But The Emperor's New Groove was funny enough it was okay without songs.

Ok, I'm tired, so I'm done. Hope this was good enough!

iTunes Running Diary – June 14, 2009

This week's artists.

Since it got a good response last week judging from the hit numbers, and because someone from Twitter and Blogger found me specifically because I mentioned Collective Soul, I thought I would make this a weekly feature. I also enjoyed making that weird cover graphic. So, every Sunday, expect to see an iTunes running diary, unless I get very bored with this or too busy one week.

1) "Just Like Heaven" by The Cure... or Goldfinger. Yeah, that's right, the guys who did "Here In Your Bedroom" and "Superman" and "I Really Missed You" covered "Just Like Heaven," and it was shockingly good, at least to my ear. They are pop punk, so it kind of makes sense that "Just Like Heaven" would be a good song for them to cover. The original lyrics by The Cure are evocative of longing and wanting, which is always a good pop punk subject.

That being said, the original is clearly the superior song, and one that I can always listen to. It strikes a great tempo balance, allowing it to feel like a ballad and just a good song in general. I remember being upset at some point because it was 22 on a VH1 1980s countdown, behind iffy songs by Hall and Oates, and "Come On Eileen". I think songs should get extra points if they are still being listened to 20 years later without irony, and "Just Like Heaven" fits the bill for me.

2) "Everything to Everyone" by Everclear. When this song first came out, I didn't like it. I'm not sure why, but I distinctly recall not being a fan. It might have been way overplayed when it debuted, but I've softened on it, unlike "Father of Mine," which I still dislike.

If I had to guess a reason why I disliked this song besides it being overplayed, my guess would probably be its ambling feel. Sparkle and Fade, Everclear's great debut success, is in my Top 10 of all-time. This is initially surprising to people, but really, have you listened to it?

From top to bottom, there is some diversity in the offering, but the majority of the tracks are hard-driving rock. "Santa Monica," the big radio success from the album, is actually one of the more mellow songs on the album. More customary are "Heroin Girl," a song with soaring vocals and driving guitar about its obvious subject matter, and “Chemical Smile,” a chaotically-fast guitar song that still features the smooth vocals of Art Alexakis.

"Everything to Everyone" is OK, but after the greatness of Sparkle and Fade, everything else that Everclear did feels muted to me. The only songs I heard on the radio that reminded me of their debut greatness are "Volvo Driving Soccer Mom" (funny video btw) and "So Much For The Afterglow." The band definitely made more money with songs like "Father of Mine," but the casual fans that flooded to them didn't have staying power, at least in my opinion, and Art's live performances – from watching some YouTube clips, and seeing and reviewing him for the Cigar a few years ago – leave a lot to be desired.

The other part of the equation here is that Art got clean at some point, and stopped writing every song about doing smack and abandoning / being abandoned by family members. I don't think his addiction is what made him creative, but rather, that his music was probably the only thing that allowed him to eventually get clean. The Beatles were a lot better before John Lennon did nothing but heroin with his friend and my celebrity double Harry Nilsson on the West Coast. And Kurt Cobain probably lasted as long as he did before completely bottoming because he had the music outlet.

3) "Dance With Me" by The Sounds. Honestly, I can't tell you much of anything about this band by cheating and looking them up on Wikipedia, which I won't do. The only reason I have this song downloaded is because it was good bumper music for a VH1 commercial at some point. I remember a few people being happy that I identified it on my old blog, because they also wanted to download it. (Other great semi-unknown commercial hits: "Huddle Formation" by The Go! Team and "Don't Want To Hurt You" also by The Sounds and "Start!" by The Jam.)

However, this song coming up gives me a good opportunity to rant about VH1. Specifically, what the F happened to you, VH1? Once upon a time, I remember being charmed by shows like I Love and Pop-Up Video. However, their current shows just seem like a dumping ground for snark and irony by Z-list comedians, and low and non-talent celebrities (Danny Bonaduce).

For example, I Love The 80s and 90s worked because they had the bigger stars of those decades commenting seriously about their roles in that decade. Sir Mix-A-Lot talking about the best booty of the 90s works great, because he would obviously have strong opinions on the subject and he has enough personality to make it work.

The celebrity guests also made more sense, and were better cast in general. While Chris Jericho is a professional wrestler (and I obviously have a soft spot for him), he grew up in the 80s, and he's an entertaining interview, so it makes sense to ask him about the influence of hair metal. Having Bill Simmons comment on sports and pop culture for the 90s made sense, as did inviting Rich Eisen and Stu Scott, since they were both heavily involved in the defining sports program of the decade. Michael Ian Black was a relative unknown when he started the show, but he had years of experience as a stand-up and doing improv, and it showed.

I was dismayed when VH1 essentially decided, "Hey, why don't we just run this S everyday?" Hence, we now have Best Week Ever, which is just quasi-celebrities dumping on actual celebrities. It would work if most of the people involved were more likable, but instead, it feels like a snarkfest reminiscent of the “Bitch please!” blogger spoof on Saturday Night Live.

It doesn't have to be like this, VH1. Hire some decent people for your shows. If E! can successfully revive Talk Soup as The Soup by casting Joel McHale (and believe me, they have), then you can loosen up the purse strings a bit and hire some actual talent for your shows.

4) "History Repeating" by The Propellerheads. (Weird, old school video too, that juxtaposes 1960s and 1990s culture amusingly.) This band belongs on the short list of artists that have one incredible album, then never came out with anything else again. If I recall correctly, the Propellerheads big CD, Decksanddrumsandrockandroll, came out just as the big beat techno movement started by The Chemical Brothers and Fatboy Slim was cresting.

It's a shame, because this album is a strong effort from top-to-bottom whose tracks blend nicely into one another. Samples from old spy movies and Bill Cosby (seriously) create some bouncy tracks, and since its release, I've heard tracks from Decksanddrumsandrockandroll on the soundtracks for plenty of spy movies, appropriately enough.

The standout track is "History Repeating," which features the vocal work of Shirley Bassey and got some mainstream media play for a bit. I believe Bassey did some lounge singing and also was a big vocalist for the James Bond movies. Both make perfect sense when you hear her booming vocals on "History Repeating." It's not exactly techno or alternative rock or lounge, it's just good in general.

After this CD, the Propellerheads did some remixes and DJ work for various artists, but they didn't ever come out with another full-length album, which is a shame.

5) "You Get What You Give" by the New Radicals. Sticking along the lines of the previous song, although at a micro level. I don't know anyone who dislikes this song; maybe some A-hole really into Marilyn Manson or Hanson might find offense with it. But if I had to pick the pinnacle of pop rock / alternative from my formative years (1991 to 2002), this is my pick.

The odd thing is that the song didn't even sound "new" or fresh when it was first released in 1998. The first time I heard it, I thought, "Oh this song is great! I've gotta remember to download it, this is a classic, it's been a while since I've heard it..."

Well, except that the song was new. Yet there is something so familiar about the general sound of the song that instantly makes it resonate. If I was forced to give a reason for its success, I would argue that it is the ultimate refinement of the 1980s pop started by artists like Wham and Paula Abdul. While those bands were over the top gay (somewhat literal in George Michaels' case), "You Get What You Give" has a slight rock or Ben Folds feel to it that gives it some edge.

6) "Bang, Bang" by Nancy Sinatra. This song will no doubt forever be associated with Kill Bill, and for good reason. The song itself is incredibly simplistic, featuring just Sinatra's distorted voice and the somber tune of an instrument I honestly can't identify. However, when it is linked with the credits of the first volume of Kill Bill, and as you make connections on second viewing of first installment, the whole song is strengthened.

RZA from the Wu-Tang Clan did all of the music for Kill Bill, in consultation with Quentin Tarantino, I'm sure. It is probably my favorite movie soundtrack of all-time, because of how perfectly the action on-screen syncs with the inherent sound effects and tone of the music. Other standouts include "Ironside" by Quincy Jones (the robotic tone The Bride hears when she sees a target), "Crane and White Lightning" by RZA (plays as The Bride sizes up the hundred man gang standing between her and O-Ren Ishii), all of the smoky, Western-esque music during The Bride's triumphant scenes, and the general atmosphere music on the soundtrack like "Run Fay Run" by Issac Hayes.

Tarantino is a film nut, and it shows in the movies he has made. Kill Bill is a throwback to the "hero gets revenge" Westerns, and the only way it would have been better is if Eastwood had managed to sneak in somewhere.

At a certain point, Hollywood directors decided that you had to have heroes or main characters who didn't get a perfect resolution. I blame The Godfather movies somewhat; the first two were unquestionably great, but after them, every movie seemed to have some sort of nuanced, conflicted character. It wasn't OK for your film's hero to just kill and destroy without some severe consequences, unless it was some sort of mindless summer blockbuster.

Two great, semi-recent movies immediately spring to mind that buck this convention, the first obviously being Kill Bill. And because I mentioned Eastwood earlier, the other is Unforgiven. Yeah, Morgan Freeman dies in it. So what? At the end of that movie, Eastwood is an unquestioned bad ass, and Gene Hackman looks like a bitch.

Top Chef back on top tonight

Another Top Chef season starts tonight, although it is a spin-off show, Masters, as opposed to a proper season. Still, anything is better than nothing, since we have hit the dead zone (not The Dead Zone) of the television season. All of my favorite shows - Family Guy, Heroes, Aqua Teen Hunger Force, The Office, Life on Mars - are either on break or canceled completely. Only wrestling and baseball are on to entertain me, and both can be quite hit or miss.

Anyway - focusing. I like Top Chef because, although it is a reality show, the contestants are all professionals. The focusing is on the cooking, and as far as the meals go, what they make looks far better than almost all of the things made on the Food Network. This is surprising, since most weeks the challenge is something ridiculous. "Make a gourmet meal out of these 20 things from a convenience store!"

Sadly, the more recent seasons haven't been as good as the initial ones, as the focus has shifted subtly to the drama between contestants. The first season was special because Harold just STFU and cooked awesome food. But the lesson the producers seemed to take from it was that we needed more Stevens, the pompous wine guy who lecture incessantly. (Shockingly, Steven is the one reality show contestant ever to look at his behavior on TV, then to come back and admit that he was a gigantic tool and to completely reform his ways.)

I understand the need for some drama, since it is television and all. But the drama on a show like this should originate from the tension over what the judges will pick as the best dish, as opposed to relying on relationships between contestants and their personality traits.

I think this is an underrated aspect to American Idol's success - You don't see behind the scenes vignettes about how Kelly Clarkson hates Justin Guarini. (Timely reference, I know, but I don't really watch Idol, and their god awful movie deserves more attention.) You might see a piece or two about their home lives, but the bitterness from other reality shows isn't present. The focus is on singing and popularity and the judges, which is smart, because the judges (at least the mains) don't really change from year to year.

On a random note, Masters has different judges than the main show, which is unfortunate, because Tom is awesome. Anyway, one is Kelly Choi, who last appeared on TV in... Eat Out NY. What an unfortunate name.

iTunes Running Diary - June 7, 2009

Back in college, whenever I was a bit cramped for entertainment column ideas, or just feeling plain lazy, I would simply do a running diary of my iTunes library on shuffle. (That bastard Chuck Klostermann had the same idea in one his books that predates my column, as he comments on a straight 24 hours spent watching VH1 classic, but I'm going to pretend as if I don't realize I'm reinventing the wheel.) Anyway, from this long preamble, I imagine you know where I'm headed... The links in the entry are to the songs mentioned, when applicable.

1) “December” by Collective Soul. A pretty decent song, but Collective Soul is definitely on my list of “What the hell happened?” bands. For a period in the 1990s, every other song on radio was Collective Soul, either “December” or “Shine” or that either popular song who's name I never remember. Then, they were abruptly never heard from it again.

It wasn't an issue that was solely limited to Collective Soul, as there were a slew of bands that had a couple of hits before vanishing off the face of the Earth. It wasn't a one-hit wonder issue either – Collective Soul is clearly better than bands like Len (“Steal My Sunshine”) or King Missile (“Detachable Penis”).

But along with Toad the Wet Sprocket and Better Than Ezra, it seems like Collective Soul had a hay-day and then vanished, giving way to better bands with staying power (Green Day, The Beastie Boys) and puss rock (The Goo Goo Dolls). My theory, assuming there wasn't something like band tension at work, blames radio DJs. I think more than anyone else, they serve as “tastemakers,” and if you hear the same band or style for a couple of years, four to eight hours a shift for five days a week an entire year, you invariably want new music, even if the audience is still OK with it. It wouldn't surprise me if DJ fatigue is responsible for nuking plenty of bands.

2) “What I Got” by Sublime. Everybody I went to high school with and hung out with knew the lyrics to this song, and it's not like I ran in a crowd obsessed with the song of the moment. Half of them were in a band that's main musical influences were The Beatles, Lynyrd Skynyrd, The Band... and it was 2002.

But invariably, if this song came on, everybody knew the words. The only other CD that had that status was the blue album by Weezer, which even Mike Smith knew the words to. The lead singer of Sublime, Bradley Nowell, also pulled a Cobain and killed himself before he could make a truly bad album. Or, as I call it, before he could Pearl Jam his band, forcing them to make a bunch of inaccessible, artistic crap that isn't worth listening to.

While some people insist that 40 Oz. To Freedom is a better CD, I think that only applies if you're really into booze or weeed or flashy titles or rebelling against pop sensibilities. From start to finish, Sublime's self-entitled CD is one of the best albums of the 1990s. It is a refined ride that branches a bit into reggae, alternative and hard rock seamlessly.

3) “Smack My Bitch Up” by Prodigy (only a minute available online, unfortunately). The song itself is actually pretty mundane, the mirror opposite of a landmark, great video that was so good that MTV even caved and showed it late at night, even though it had full-frontal nudity, drug usage and vomit. The song features a rhythmic, hypnotic, grinding beat throughout, its best virtue, but the rest is primarily unimaginative techno staples – the droning chorus of “Smack My Bitch Up” and ethereal female singing.

However, like a lot of techno, it makes for a great music video, which follows the day in the life of a British hooligan. You follow the hooligan through cocaine usage, heavy drinking, a bar room fight, vomiting, a strip club and promiscious sex, only for the reveal at the end that the “hooligan” is a woman by a look into the mirror a few seconds before the video ends. A very neat concept video, with some nice touches like breaking up and muting the song with the punches in the bar fight and the effects of the drugs.

4) “What Would You Do?” by City High. Rap one-hit wonders never get as much attention in hindsight as similar rock and pop tracks; I'm not entirely sure why. During the summer of 2001, this song was ridiculously popular. Now, when I mentioned it in passing a few months ago (don't ask me the context, I have no idea), nobody had any idea what I was talking about, even though they were all the same age as me. I realize I have a good mind for pop culture and pop music, but this song probably hit #1 at some point, charted for a long time and had a chorus that was its title.

5) “Some Postman” by The Presidents of the United States of America. Outside of myself and high school and URI friend Bill Bartholomew, I don't know anyone else who loves this band. But I do. Just about any track they've ever done, I'm a big fan of.

This one comes off their ill-fated, most recent album, Love Everybody. I remember giving it a positive review as a college junior or senior, and I was surprised at the time that nobody else even wanted to review it. They were a “name” band that had sent us a free CD, when the usual crap we got was from affiliates of the Wu-Tang Clan with horrible names like Holocaust.

In the pantheon of PUSA songs, “Some Postman” is one of my favorites. It combines the usual witty, twisted lyrics – the song is about a demented postman who abducts love letters – with the usual bouncy guitar, bass and drums combination of PUSA. I realize that the band is a bit one-note, but at least that note is freakin' awesome. Always better to shoot for perfection and greatness in a single area as opposed to striving for “balance” and mediocrity.

6) “Here It Goes Again” by OK Go. And oddly enough, I'll end it for now on the band that most reminds me of PUSA. OK Go has more of a hard rock edge, and they are much more popular than PUSA ever was. But I still hear the same sort of rhythmic rock in them that I did in PUSA and other bands I enjoyed while growing up.

My 1960s and 1970s double

In high school, my friend Eric stumbled upon this album cover, Nilsson Schmilsson, from Harry Nilsson. This is notable for a reason - He looks freakishly like me when I grow my hair long and don't shave. Still, not a horrible thing to be related to a guy who hung out with John Lennon, and I kind of like his write-up on Wiki, outside of the whole hard drug usage thing. What say you, blogosphereorers?

The life and death and life of a small bird

Hey Snuffy, it's storytime! Let me tell you about the time some kid hit me on the way to work..."

One day I hit a bird with my car, but it lived. (That would be a one-sentence summation of a story that I'm about to make about a thousand words longer, so if you want the short version, there it is. If you want the long version, well, keep going.)

Back in high school and again during a college summer, I worked at Dunkin' Donuts, which was a mixed bag. I hated working around coffee so much - the stores are so small and the brewing almost constant, meaning the scent eventually burrows under your skin and into your nose for days at a time. I also gained a ridiculous amount of weight because of the "free" donuts and bagels ("free" because we just took them).

But the plus side was a surprisingly decent wage - minimum wage plus tips meant I would make around $150 to $450 in a week - and some good people working there. In case you forgot, this entry was originally about a miraculous bird, and I'm steering the conversation right back there with my talk of good people at Dunkin' Donuts.

One such good person was my neighbor Bethany, who also went to high school with me. She's a year or two younger, and outside of a random art class, I don't think our paths ever crossed in high school. But our parents were friendly at the time, and she started working at Dunkins, so she would often bum a ride to there and to school with me in the mornings.

At this point in time, my Car Coolness Cuotient (see what I did there?) was impossibly low. I mean, I loved my car, because it only had 37,000 miles or so on it, but absolutely no one else should have, and for good reason. It was a 1986 Plymouth / Chrysler Reliant [left]. Yes, that's right, I don't even know the make, because it would switch depending on what mechanic was looking at it. Worse, it was tan, and it had plenty of dents in it. It only had a couple redeeming qualities - bench seats in the back and front, a CD player that I installed that kind of worked before the button got jammed, and it almost never broke down. It also had a cool nickname - The Relizzy.

However, because I was slightly older than some of my other friends, we did do some riding around in it, and it meant Bethany would get a ride into work with me. As we were passing by the bus company on Switch Road, I was doing my usual 55 to 65 m.p.h. in a 35 m.p.h. zone, because as usual, it was going to be a razor thin margin between "late" and "too late" to work. ("Late" is within five minutes, "too late" is more than five.)

If I recall correctly, I didn't even see the bird - Bethany screeched out and told me to stop, because she was convinced that I hit a bird. She finally guilted me into it, saying that it could be dying on the side of the road. I am a sucker for cute animals. (Fuck cows, they're delicious.)

Anyway, I turned around and drove back to roughly where it happened, and pulled aside so that Bethany could look for the thing. I was shocked when she came back with it in her hands. It was like a bizarre spoof of the Monty Python Flying Circus parrot sketch, as Bethany said it was still alive, but barely breathing; I think it was a sparrow or something else small, since it fit in her hands, and she is a small person.

As previously mentioned, we were late for work and possibly now too late, so I had to speed off with the bird in my car, as Bethany held it. We get about five minutes down the road, on Main Street in Hope Valley by the bank and post office, when Bethany yelps and I just see a blur streak across my face. I yelped, and I believe I almost hit a car on the other side of the road, before the thoughts connected in my head - Hey, that fucking thing just flew out the window!

So, that is my story about a bird. p.s. I think the bird may have shit on my car or on Bethany's hands, but I can't remember for sure.

The death of USA tennis and crazy parents

I always hype up Slate.com on here, and it is articles like this by Huan Hsu that keep me coming back. I find his analysis of the problems of USA Tennis right on, and it ties in with others theories like the 10,000 hours principle extolled by Malcolm Gladwell in Outliers (highly recommended by me) and the dip of Seth Godin. If you just follow the established training regimens for tennis, you probably won't be a Grand Slam tournament winner, even though you'll surely be psychologically broken if you do have a nutty parent. (Example: The father of Jelena Dokic [left] claimed that her boyfriend had kidnapped her, and was so abusive he was banned from courtside at pretty much every tournament.)

It is kind of a logical supposition to make, although one that isn't always apparent. Professional athletes largely come from broken or nutty homes. How else do you practice basketball eight hours a day unless the parents are a bit absentee and you let your homework effort slide? Natural ability and aptitude do come into play, but they are only part of the equation. Insane devotion spurred by parents helps.

I imagine this is an even greater issue in individual sports like tennis, boxing and swimming. At any given time, I'll guess that only 100 to 500 adult boxers, tennis players and swimmers are good enough in the world to make their primary living from the sport. Since all of them are individual sports, there is far less opportunity to earn a living. Contrast this with baseball - Even AA and AAA players often make as much as they would in jobs they could use their degrees (assuming they have one) on, and there are hundreds of teams, plus thriving Asian and Latino leagues, all of which need roughly 20 to 30-man rosters. A rough estimate of that gets me to 3,000 players. More players means a greater opportunity for different personalities.

The Monday night Raw doldrums

Unrelated to the rest of this post but always important to mention - Chris Jericho is the man.

I shamefully enjoy professional (fake) wrestling, which normally surprises others and forces me to mount an awkward defense of my interest. Yes, it's fake, but so is everything on television. Yes, it's a bit like a soap opera, and yeah, it is kind of homoerotic that guys are clutching each other, and yes, that's weird. But there is something oddly entertaining about it to me, to the point where I've never really been able to stop, even when the programming is in a down cycle.

I think there is something primal in wrestling that gets pretty much every guy interested in it at some point. I was substituting for an elementary school gym class last week, and casually commented on a CM Punk shirt a kid was wearing. This was a bad decision from a class control standpoint, but good for me personally, because soon every kid was asking me about the wrestlers I knew and (somewhat comically, somewhat scarily) trying to put their friends into the Go To Sleep (you put the person up on your shoulders, then swing them down toward a knee to the face).

All the kids I knew growing up watched wrestling, but pretty much all of them dropped it as we got to middle school and high school. I didn't really advertise that I watched it, but it never came up in casual conversation, except for a few times when "Stone Cold" Steve Austin was fighting with The Rock and the corporation and Mick Foley (1998, 1999). From conversations in college, when I grew a little less ashamed about my habit, I found out that there weren't really many people watching it in secret like I was.

Enough with this trip down memory lane, though - The current product leaves something to be desired. The most pressing issue to me is what has happened to Monday Night Raw. This week's episode was OK, with a bloody, intense confrontation between Randy Orton and Ric Flair to hype up this Sunday's meeting between Orton and Batista. However, even the hilarious Santino Marella and a solid MVP-Kofi Kingston match couldn't keep the hour I watched from dragging a bit.

After the draft, it seemed like Raw would become the dominant brand, because of all the star power - HHH, Batista, Orton, HBK, The Big Show, John Cena - in the top tier. Oddly though, this has made most of the booking predictable. After a slight push to MVP, involving him in the Orton-HHH--Batista-McMahon family angle, he is back to the midcard, in a feud with the pedestrian William Regal and Matt Hardy. All of the big names force the WWE to book formulaically at top, since HHH and Batista and Orton aren't going to be losing often to the likes of MVP and Kofi Kingston.

Meanwhile, Smackdown and ECW lost a lot of their marquee talent, and both have been great since the draft. Because there aren't really any talent "tiers" on the shows, the only focus is on good angles and good matches. Both of the shows, and to a lesser extent Superstars, are normally my focus in a given week as opposed to the normal flagship, Raw.

Kinda, sorta professional - Monday, June 1, 2009

Just so that I can keep track of it, and to allow my readers to share in my vanity, here are some of the things I've done the past couple months:

May 27 - Review - Puzzle Kingdoms for the Wii (3.0) - Blast Magazine
May 22 - Opinion - What will happen at E3? - Blast Magazine
May 12 - Review - The Dark Spire for the DS (6.5) - Blast Magazine
April 14 - Review - Moshi Monsters for the PC (9.5) - Gamezebo
Feb. 16 - Review - MapleStory for the PC (6.0) - Gamezebo

Later this week, I'll have another Gamezebo piece done; I have no real clue why it has taken me so long to churn it out. Yes, I said churn - it needs to come back in usage outside of in connection to butter. Thanks.

A slice of everyday life

My day job is now substitute teaching, but I've resisted writing about it until now mostly out of fear. I mean, since that pays (even if it is meager) and this blog does not, there is an incentive for me to not screw it up. But, I realize it is a rather appealing topic. So let me just talk generally about the difference between age groups.

First, each school and even grade has its own sort of social hierarchy. The district I'm at has elementary, middle and high schools, and regardless of the age groups, the oldest class at each is always somewhat collected, and it all goes out the window the second they switch to their new school.

The change is almost shocking to witness. Formerly quiet and composed fourth graders become shrill, excited kids again, similar to first graders, once they hit the middle school. The same thing happens on the switch from middle to high school, with a bunch of puberty-effected freshmen bouncing off the walls. I've had a variety of different classes at each age group, and it doesn't seem to matter who their actual teacher is.

There is also a big difference between fifth and sixth grade, and ninth and 10th grade. Fifth graders still mirror elementary school students in many ways - the majority are well-behaved and open to instruction, and if they are in trouble, it's normally more hijinks than serious. (i.e. Teasing a girl vs. skipping class.)

But once they've been in the school for a year, the attitude comes, and it's like a light switch on. Most of the sixth grade classes I've had have been incredibly bratty and resistant to do anything at all, and the same thing goes with 10th graders and history. By the time they hit seventh and 11th grade respectively, they've again calmed down and work more earnestly, and get more distracted with their own social circles and what not.

Still, the change is noticeable and stark and just plain odd to me, someone without a teaching degree or a ton of classroom experience. I don't think it's an issue of just getting a "bad" group of kids, more that this is how they seem to shake out as they progress. Fascinating, in a way.

Also, to counter a commonly held belief - Today's kids don't really seem any worse to me than how I acted when I passed through the same school system seven to 19 years ago. If anything, things have gotten better, as there are more extracurricular programs offered, and more work being done to either help or separate the kids who just don't want anything to do with school.

My main issue would be the lack of accountability with parents - the most common complaint I've heard from teachers is calling home to remedy a behavior problem, and instead being accused of the one causing the issue. Of course, all teachers aren't perfect or saints, but the vast majority of the ones I've encountered do have their students best interests at heart and are qualified. Most of them aren't going to lie about Johnny F. Poopoopants not handing in their Algebra homework.

News - Thursday, May 28, 2009

This A-hole was by far the most infuriating part of the original Punch-Out for me as a kid, even if he was only on soda pop and not vodka in the NES version.

- At this point, I'm thinking of robbing someone to secure fundage to buy the new Punch-Out! It has been getting good reviews from even the traditional newspaper sources, and the game itself looks slick. Click here to see it in action.

- I've always been a PC loyalist, possibly because they are all that I know. When I was growing up and much more into computers, back in the days of multiplayer gaming on Heat.net and Quake: Team Fortress tournaments, I always viewed Macs as, well, not an option. Most good commercial games didn't get released for them, and if they did, they often came many months after.

Of course, all of that changed with the rise of the iEverything of Apple products, which probably partly explains why Dell's profit has plummeted 34 percent, beyond the bad economy. The odd thing that has surprised me about the rise of Apple has been that all of its products are basically hype. An Apple doesn't get viruses because it is a weaker machine, just like a Toyota Corolla is probably going to breakdown less than a luxury auto. (A PC isn't really a Ferrari, and while I would like to compare it to a Lexus or Audi or Benz, I have no idea how reliable any of those are, making the analogy hard.) An iPod doesn't really offer many functional advantages over the majority of MP3 players, and likewise with the iPhone vs. most other cell phones. I agree with Maddox's take on it.

... Yet despite all of that, I just bought an iPod about a month ago. In my defense, I am a consumer whore, and it was only $30 on eBay. Still, in hindsight, I wish I had just gotten an MP3 player instead.

- Piggybacking on the previous paragraphs a bit, this guy sounds like a friggin' loon, but the idea intrigues me. Too bad that the project seems to be dead, since the last blog post there was in October 2007.

Say no to stupid commercials

Axe smells horrible anyway.

Since I seem to be critiquing commercials lately, let's move on to Axe Body Spray. Shockingly, I didn't really mind their super-babe commercials, where guys spraying themselves with Axe were beset by hot women. They were so over-the-top (warning: in a foreign language because that makes it funnier to me) that they were hilarious. The people in my Women's Studies didn't share that opinion, as several would try to argue that some men seriously believed that it would work. But honestly, if you believe that Axe works like that, then I also have some pets.com stock to sell you.

Unfortunately, for some reason all of Axe's recent spots on ESPN during the NBA playoffs have been the same putrid commercial. Simple summary: Guy has armpits that shoot out sweat when he raises his arm, and Axe stops this. It is absolutely as disgusting as it sounds. What gives?

p.s. Just as I'm about to post this, I realize that it might not be an Axe commercial, and instead might be Tag. For the record, if it's tag, it sucks too. And the Right Guard shaving gel commercials with the jetpacking women.

The Philosophy of the Flying V

Uh oh, look at all these wacky kids! You know craziness will ensue!

Sometimes I forget that other people on the Internet, you know, write stuff. But by chance, I stumbled upon this blog the other day, which is really quite grand, and specifically, this post, about the top 10 selfish sports teams of the 1990s. The relevant overlap to this post I'm crafting right now would be the following paragraph about D2: The Mighty Ducks:

Question: How does a team that barely makes it to the post season in their crappy neighborhood hockey league get selected to represent our nation in the Junior Olympic Goodwill games? Coach Gordon Bombay that's how. I understand hiring Bombay as your coach. The man is an innovator, I mean the flying V? Come on, that's just good hockey. But why choose the whole Mighty Ducks team for Team USA? You're going to tell me that Goldberg was the best goalie our country had to offer?

I concur with bricksexplode (or Josh, his actual name). (And also, creepily enough, he and I have practically the same take and story about Wake Up Ron Burgandy.) Even as a 10-year-old kid, the second Mighty Ducks movie was so implausible to me that it ruined all of the good feelings created in the first one. The series morphed from a plausible story of a team of misfits to a ridiculous farce of a movie with no basis in reality. The final installment is actually somewhat realistic, but I am apparently the only person in the world who enjoys watching it.

The first movie, while no cinematic masterpiece, was a great movie of its type. Just about any kid can relate to being a sort of outcast portrayed in the movie, especially a geeky young kid like myself. Even though I never had (and still haven't) ice skated, there are obvious parallels between other sports and other movies - Little League (The Bad News Bears), Pop Warner football (Little Giants, even though it came out later), basketball (... um, I'm sure there is one I'm forgetting).

It also had a memorable cast of characters with easily-identifiable counterparts in my everyday life. While they weren't exact matches with my friends, there were shared traits: the brash-talking Jessie, the smart-alecky Averman, the fat kid no one actually wanted to hang out with (Goldberg), and the big tough guy Fulton.

D1 is the classic underdog tale, on ice, and you feel great when they win the championship. The story is as predictible as a Subway sandwich - what else would you expect from Disney, or from a $5 footlong? - but ultimately somewhat believable and satisfying.

The second is just pure "let's make a buck!" fuckery that made me eventually dislike all these movies from Disney. As bricksexplode brings up, the most ludicrous idea is that a team that barely made the playoffs in a Minnesota youth hockey league would represent the United States. I grew up in the woods of Rhode Island, and even our Little League all-star team that would try to qualify for the Little League World Series would be a combination of the best players from all the league's teams. (Speaking to my athletic prowess as a kid, I never came close to making one.)

Deciding to just reunite the whole team is so transparent and shitty, and the opening scenes are some of the worst of the movie. Looking back at it as a 25-year-old, there are a couple plausible ways you could do it. First, instead of setting the movie in Los Angeles, why not have these games come to Minnesota? Then it is more plausible that you'd have to use the Ducks. Or, failing that, at least have some flashback scenes with the Ducks winning a couple regional tournaments and earning their way to L.A. Or, because the kids all live in the same area, and are roughly the same age, why not just have the sequel take place (brace yourself) a year later? Because I had played Little League, D2 immediately seemed fake to me, because even as a kid I realized that shit with L.A. would never happen.

Okay though, looking past that - What the fuck did Iceland ever do to you, Disney? Like, seriously, it is bad enough that they have a horrible, false country name (according to weather.com, Iceland is roughly the same weather-wise as New England right now). Hey Mouse, why do you have to shit all over them by making them the obviously-Soviet Union inspired enemy? Either make up a fake country or leave the Icelanders alone.

Anyway, the Ducks recruit some players from other parts of the country for no good reason. I mean, non-movie, they're to include some non-white people in the cast, but in-movie, Gordon Bombay hates them and barely plays any of them. I don't think most return for the third movie, which is great, except for the Goon, who is clearly not even close to being the right age for D2 and D3. The Ducks also recruit a young, trash-talking Kenan Thompson in his film debut, and he is kind of OK despite using a preposterous shot. Also, really, he's playing street hockey out in L.A.? Not basketball? Not skateboarding? Not surfing? L.A. does have that intense hockey tradition, after all.

The whole movie is effing absurd, and if you like D2 the most out of the three, I don't know what's wrong with you. Pull yourself together! Oddly enough, I think it was too much overt zaniness even for Disney, because they went the opposite direction for D3. I actually like that movie because it is super serious and (shockingly) focuses on hockey from time to time. It is plausible (at least in terms of the movie world) that a private school would recruit the Ducks, because the dominant Rhode Island private schools mostly cherry pick their athletes from Rhode Island public schools. D3 also has some redeeming value with the introduction of their new coach. He lacks the charm of Gordon Bombay, but he is an interesting character at least.

The underground soap market

I was replacing the soap in the shower today, as I often do – I enjoy bathing, I must say. Anyway, while doing this, I noticed a curious phrase on the box: Not for individual sale. This immediately made my mind race.

First, if Dove is putting this on the box, it must mean that they've had a problem with it. I mean, otherwise they could have used that space for something more valuable, like some cheesy saying. “Fly among the heavens with Dove.” I believe David Cross or Gallagher (I've got range in the comedians I enjoy) made the same analogy with some ridiculous warning label and McDonald's coffee.

Second, I wonder if these is some elicit soap trade that I just don't know about. The only time I have ever thought about the creation of soap was when they had a few scenes about it in Fight Club, and frankly, I was too busy watching Ed Norton and Brad Pitt beat the shit out of each other to really analyze the soap scenes. (As an aside though, I find Fight Club to beat horribly overrated now. Trading a commercially-oppressive world for one that is full of anarchy and bleakly militaristic seems, at best, a push to me.)

I've never really noticed a big difference from soap brand to soap brand, although some of my ex'es only like to buy a certain kind. Then again, I'm a boy, and I don't even use chapstick, so I might not be an authority on this subject. Maybe there is a flourishing underground market and trade, where people barter five bars of Dove straight-up for three bars of Ivory and four Coasts. It is more interesting to believe that this fanciful market exists, at least in my mind.

Fat guys

For no particular reason outside of needing more books to read, I've recently been reading two biographies about fat guys. Elvis: The Final Years by Jerry Hopkins is rather self-explanatory, yet incredibly interesting to me, since I have no real knowledge of Elvis' material.

Well, actually, I shouldn't say that I'm completely ignorant of the King. My mind works like a sponge when it comes to pop culture trivia, so of course I've sucked up some bits about Elvis. Before reading this (somewhat) authorized biography, I knew he had a couple songs – “Jailhouse Rock” and “Hound Dog” that either created movies or arose out of them. I knew that when he appeared on The Ed Sullivan Show, he had to be filmed from the waist up because his dance moves were too scandalous for the audience at home. I knew that he had Colonel Parker, a flashy, entertaining promoter, who was kind of like the white Don King.

Whenever I'm reading a biography, I always look for a balanced account of a person, and Hopkins' fares pretty well in this regard. While he is very detailed about Elvis' generosity, it doesn't seem over-the-top, and it is balanced with all the pill binges and temper tantrums from his final years. Hopkins does his best to break up the cyclical nature of a music biography – go to town, perform, go to next town, perform, rest, etc. – with stories about Elvis' early days and his excess.

For example, instead of starting out with mundane details about Elvis' life growing up and military service, Hopkins gives the background and sets the scene for the King's famous meeting with the nastiest U.S. President of all-time, Richard Nixon. (For more on Nixon, read anything by Hunter S. Thompson from the 1970s. Nixon will always be my famous president because of all the sleazy things he did; there is sort of a sad humor to it all.) Elvis arranged the meeting with Nixon to offer his services as a sort of double-agent, able to infiltrate the music industry to help curb rampant illegal drug usage and anti-Americanism. The irony is that Elvis was almost surely on quite the drug cocktail himself at the time, albeit a vaguely-legal one, since his many uppers and downers were all prescribed.

The Elvis book really shines when it tells these sorts of stories, and I also enjoyed how it sprinkled in little tidbits and anecdotes in the context of the times. Whenever Elvis performed, janitors would have to deal with hundreds of pairs of soiled underwear left behind by the female audience members, which is hilarious to the seven-year-old part of my humor. Also interesting was the description of an Elvis “record” production. On any given record in the 1970s, only a few songs would be true originals, and almost none would feature just Elvis singing. Almost every record was comprised primarily of material first recorded by other artists, or featured songs that Elvis had already recorded decades ago. The money-making schemes by artists of today are nothing compared to Elvis and Colonel Parker.

The other biography is a bit more by the numbers and traditional, but since the topic is Alfred Hitchcock, it is still an engrossing read. It is more than 600 pages though, densely packed with information in standard type, so it is slow going through it. I've finished about 200 pages in two days, a slow pace for me, and Hitch still hasn't made it to America, so there has been no reference to the films I actually know of – The Birds, Psycho and North by Northwest. Reading about his British films is interesting – I now want to check out The Man Who Knew Too Much, for example – but I still do have a sense of “When do I get to the good stuff?” hanging over my reading. I'm willing to stick with it for now, primarily because the remaining library books I have out are kind of fluffy books about some of the worst films of all-time.

Channel surfing and geekdom

- The other night I was watching the Kill Bill marathon on TNT, and I thought, "This is so unrealistic, there is no way they'd let her carry that samurai sword on the plane!" Then I pondered and thought about of all the things in the movie that are ridiculous, yet I seemingly keyed in on that one.

- They have been playing commercials for some Chipmunks CD every five minutes on ESPN. Like, seriously? I can't imagine there is that much overlap between demographics.

- I played through the Chrono Trigger remake for the DS recently, and it really was splendid. If you have a DS, you need to get it, because it is worth the $40. The extra features, like FMV and four more dungeons, are neat enough, and it's cheaper to get this version than the original SNES. Oh, and the PSX version sucks compared to this one.

- My feet have been killing me because of the court I've played basketball on lately. It's indoors, at an old elementary school near me, and the floor is made out of this 60-year-old rubber. It's so springy that you sink in just a bit when you try to jump or come to a stop, and as a result, my calves have also been killing me. It also means I shoot even worse than normal, but on the plus side, it forces me to focus on the defensive end, since I can't play offense as well.

Guilty Pleasures - TV Funhouse, Home Movies and Lookwell

The always classy Wonderman.

Lately, I've had three TV shows / shorts in heavy rotation on my computer / DVD player.

1) TV Funhouse, both the SNL skit and the standalone show that ran on Comedy Central for a year. Both are primarily created and voiced by Robert Smigel, aka Triumph the Insult Comic Dog. The SNL version is normally more political and related to current events, and generally of much higher quality. My favorite would be Conspiracy Theory Rock, which has an added level of ironic humor because it *was* edited out of future broadcasts by NBC / General Electric.

The Comedy Central show doesn't hit the highs of the SNL version, which is to be expected because it stretched Smigel to half-hour segments. The show is a combination of a crude mockery of Blue's Clues, with an incredibly docile host interacting with Truimph-like animal puppets, and Smigel's cartoons. The mock host segments are very hit-or-miss, and go so over-the-top with vomit and drug and animal testing jokes that they're hard to stomach at times. But the cartoons are consistently funny - Wonderman is a good example of the funnier cartoons.

2) Home Movies, which I've been putting in my away message like crazy. This actually lasted about four seasons, and focuses on Brendan, an eight-year-old making movies with his friends Jason and Melissa.

A lot of their skits are hit-or-miss, so Coach McGuirk (H. Jon Benjamin) really makes the show. Click here for his take on swearing, losing, women, prison and drugs.

3) Lookwell, a failed TV pilot by Smigel and Conan O'Brien, starring Adam West as a washed-up TV actor. A shocking stretch, I know. Only one episode was ever made, and it's on a lot of trackers and on YouTube. If you like Adam West on Family Guy, then imagine that for 22 minutes. I'll end with some good Lookwell quotes:

Ty Lookwell to a police officer: Perhaps if you watched a little bit more television you'd be better at your job.

Ty Lookwell: The working class mind is strange and unpredictable.

Ty Lookwell, as he's being arrested: I'm not a car thief I'm an actor!

Uncharmed

Short on talent, large on... something else.

The bad thing about the WB / UPN / CW / future Sucky Network is that their continual lack of programming means shows that are just OK survive for years, to the point where their crappy producers can then package up 100 episodes and spread their stink to TNT.

Please TNT, give me anything besides Charmed, which is like a second-rate cheesy magic show. Just splurge and buy Buffy (another show I'm not crazy about but clearly better than Charmed) or show more Law and Order. Yes, I realize they already show Law and Order two to four times a day, but they do have about 400 to chose from (about 22 per year for 18 years).

My two main critiques of Charmed would be 1) it arbitrarily makes up characters and rules and powers for its characters, even more so than normal for a show of its nature and 2) the characters have the personality of this chair I'm sitting on. Shannon Doherty was the lone interesting one, and she probably knifed someone backstage, explaining why she left. I would too if my co-stars' main "acting" abilities were the knee-jerk whine (Holly Marie Combs), and being short and hot (Alyssa Milano).

R-r-r-random!

- Almost no one has seen the "second" Anchorman movie, Wake Up Ron Burgundy, which is cobbled together from unused footage to create an entirely new movie. It really is fantastic, and certain parts of it, like the bank robbery scene, are as good as the best scenes in the original movie. Click here to see another great scene, when Champ confesses his true feelings for Ron.

The whole movie is split into various parts on YouTube, and also available on pretty much every major pirate movie tracker. I would encourage you to buy it instead, but Will Ferrell doesn't need any more money, and I have no idea what DVD it is actually on.

- Keeping up with my trend of kind-of writing about music, lately I've been into Pavement. Yeah, this isn't 1993, so what? "Cut Your Hair" is in heavy rotation. Maybe because I need to shave. My facial hair is getting very itchy.

Other songs near the top of my iTunes playlist, meaning I've added them recently: "Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots" by the Flaming Lips. "It's Hella Good Without Me" by Eminem vs. No Doubt. "How Far We've Come" by Matchbox Twenty. "Use Your Love" by Katy Perry. "Don't Want To Hurt You" by the Sounds. "All These Things I've Done" by the Killers. "Life on Mars" and "Sound and Vision" by David Bowie.

I have ridiculously bad taste at times.

- When I type entries like this, I feel like Larry King.

- I sent out two job applications today. Scanning copies of my old newspaper clippings was a much harder chore than I imagined, and it makes me want to quit newspaperin' for the simple pleasure of never having to do it again. My hands still smell like shitty newsprint, even though I've washed them like three times.

- "Girls Are Fucking Evil" by the Ataris just popped up on my iTunes. I didn't even know I had *this* emo of a song on there, I swear. Luckily, I skipped ahead to the next song, and it's "I Wish" by Skeelo. Now there is a song a white guy can properly appreciate.

- Spellcheck is telling me I didn't typo at all. Score.

Snobbery

At a certain point, it became very cool to hate things that are popular. I have no idea when this started - I imagine that at some point, people were shitting all over Socrates, clowning him with remarks like, "My life is better unexamined and mysterious, gawd, loser." But in contemporary fashion, it seems to come up most often when discussing musical taste.

Specifically, I was at a party this weekend where some dude was all like, "Third Eye Blind sucks!" I took great offense, because I like Third Eye Blind, and also, it seems like a kind of random band to attribute sucking to. Are they Zeppelin? No, but they make pretty reasonable, popular music, which was this dude's main arguing point - that they're fine if you like popular music. At which point I rightly guessed that he liked Rancid, the Ramones and some other fringe punk band that's very popular with people who don't like popular music, but that for the life of me I can't remember right now. (I was drinking at the time, which helps certain parts of my memory.)

I can trace my firsthand experience with this type of "Popularity sucks!" attitude back to high school, when various factions of friends and acquaintances and not-friends would like and dislike a variety of music for reasons that had little to do with music. The list of the most maligned bands that I can remember probably isn't that surprising - Britney Spears, Eminem, N'Sync.

I also recall joining in without hesitation, but as a result, it meant I covered up my own embarassing musical tastes. For example, it was fine to like Ace of Base because it was ironically cool, but it wasn't cool to admit liking Billy Joel or Alanis Morrisette. The first CD I ever owned was Dookie by Green Day, which is certainly cool and acceptable, but the second was Jagged Little Pill, which isn't, and before Green Day I listened primarily to my relatives' copies of Billy Joel's greatest hits, the Counting Crows and the B-52s.

As I've grown up and matured (I think!), I've come to like my "uncool" musical roots. And, to detest music snobs. It's something I share with Chuck Klosterman, who angrily dismisses people who hate metal in Fargo Rock City. Billy Joel and Alanis are my metal, and as a result, I tend to be more willing to back bands without a lot of critical acclaim than others, I've noticed.

So with all of that as background - Third Eye Blind is fucking great. And I'd rather listen to them than Radiohead or Coldplay any day of the week.