Posts may be few and far between this week. My grandmother passed away last Wednesday, and I’m just not in the mood.
I started to write a little something here in her memory, but I just can’t. If you’re interested, here’s the eulogy I read at her funeral.
A special thanks goes out to Leigh and Tank for helping me proof that doc.
George Carlin “passed away” on Sunday. I spent most of yesterday listening to his CDs, laughing through my tears.
There’s no way I’ll ever be able to describe the impact George had on me, so I won’t even try. I’ll just say that this whole blog, nearly the entire damn thing, is my pale imitation of George.
Here’s Seinfeld’s NYT Op-Ed about George.
And I would literally crash my server if I attempted to post my “favorite” George bits (give me a call and I’ll just recite them from memory). So, I’ll just post the beginning of his special “Back in Town.” This isn’t George at his most offensive, but it’s close. The odd thing about George was that even when he was offending you, he usually made you think, “Dammit. That kinda made sense.” Also, this special has the best beginning line I’ve ever heard.
1999 was a good year for music, and I probably bought more CDs in 1999 and 2000 than at any other time in my life. Part of the reason for my excitement in music stemmed from my age and where I was at that time in my life, but the other, probably larger, reason came from Napster. Napster created a social environment built around music that made it easy to listen to new things, connect with like-minded people, and access out-of-print music.
One of the misconceptions that people had and continue to have of Napster, is that everyone on it simply stopped buying music and downloaded everything for free. That is patently false. True, Napster made me a more discerning consumer of music. I could sample all the tracks from an upcoming CD, instead of relying on the one or two tracks on the radio. Consequently, I didn’t end up buying a CD that had only one good song, but I probably bought more music on a whole because I was able to find new things quickly, and I wasn’t wasting my money on shitty CDs with one decent track (Jimmy Ray, I’m looking at you).
Also, the tracks available on Napster were usually of poor quality, and there’s simply something cool about owning the physical disc and album artwork. Things I liked I bought. iTunes, Amazon MP3, and Last.fm have proven that this model is still viable. Offer free music or high quality samples as an incentive and as a goodwill effort, and if the price is reasonable, people will actually buy more music.
Napster originally started as a place for fans to trade live recordings of their favorite bands, and until its demise, Napster was the best place in the world to find live or out-of-print material. I had a good number of MP3s that were from concerts, or international recordings that are difficult or impossible to find now. Sadly, I suffered a hard drive crash in 2001 and lost all those files (yes, I back up now). So, if anyone knows where I can get ALT and the Lost Civilization’s version of “Tequilla,” or Candyman’s “Who Shakes the Best II,” please email me.
And then Metallica got all pissy and decided to start issuing lawsuits all willy-nilly because their song “I Disappear” appeared on the Napster network. They had yet to release the song, and they were mad that fans had it before it went on sale. I still wonder why they got mad at the fans. It’s not like a big group of us broke into the studio, stole the masters, and then ripped them into MP3s. Someone who worked for Metallica had to leak the song onto Napster, but instead of finding that one guy and dealing with him, Metallica starting suing people. Colleges. College students. Napster. Sean Fanning. Sue everybody. And Napster slowly died.
Now, I’m not saying that illegal stuff wasn’t taking place on Napster. It most certainly was. But Napster was a work in progress. A brand new way for people to deal with digital music, and it could have been cultivated and reigned in to become responsible. Instead, Metallica showed the RIAA that it payed to sue people for downloading music, and they single-handedly created the litigious and antagonistic attitude that is now part and parcel of the RIAA’s attitude towards the internet. Sue them. Shut it down. Alienate.
And now guess what? Metallica hasn’t been relevant for more than ten years, and they suddenly realized that the internet might very well be a good location for them to gain fans. So now they’re going to offer music for free. Because you know, their last album, “St. Anger,” had softer sales than pulled pork sandwiches at an Eid ul-Fitr party.
I shall offer my reaction to Metallica’s latest internet effort in visual form:
I also read that Gene Simmons thinks the internet is the reason that music sales are down. He claims that:
“The record industry is dead. It’s six feet underground and unfortunately the fans have done this…They’ve decided to download and file share. There is no record industry around so we’re going to wait until everybody settles down and becomes civilized. As soon as the record industry pops its head up we’ll record new material.”
So, P2P and file-sharing is single-handedly responsible for stopping the release of another “album” like “Psycho Circus” or “Carnival of Souls”?
Thank God for file-sharing.
Today while reading the comments in a forum about the “Transformers” sequel, I ran across one poster who seemed to think that the mere fact that Megan Fox would appear in the new movie justified actually paying for, and sitting through, another Micheal Bay atrocity. This guy wasn’t alone, either. There were many other posters that indicated that they, too, would watch the film, no matter how awful, simply because they liked looking at Megan Fox.
Now, before I start bashing the ever-living shit out of Megan Fox, let me say that I don’t find her unattractive. She’s easy to look at, I suppose, but take away the makeup team, the designer cloths, the cadre of hairdressers, the personal trainers, the nutritionists, the Photoshop experts, and she’s no different than the half-drunk, junior college girl on “Ladies Night” that tries to con guys into buying her free drinks in exchange for a little dry-humping while dancing to Nelly’s “E.I.”
I question the sanity of people that seem perfectly content to sit through a movie simply because one or more of the actors or actresses are sexy. Salma Hayek and Lita Ford notwithstanding, I can stare at a beautiful woman for about three and a half minutes before she has to do something remotely interesting that does not involve her beauty, or I’m gone. The woman needs to be able to act or sing or dance or do something for God’s sake. Just standing there looking pretty? Shit, even a mannequin can do that.
In the interest of full disclosure, I’d like to reveal that on my first draft of this post I tried to make a list of Hollywood starlets that are only famous because they’re beautiful, but frankly, I find them so boring and vacuous that I couldn’t even make a list off the top of my head. I had to resort to Google, and I eventually figured “why bother?”. And I also would like to acknowledge that I know this happens with male actors, too. Shia LaBeouf is a one trick pony himself.
The only good thing about actors or actresses in this vein is that they typically have a very short shelf life. And then, thankfully, something bad usually happens to them, which, as I’ve said time and time and time and time and time and time again, puts a big old smile on my face.
“I don’t have kids, but if I did I’d never allow them to….”
“I seriously can’t believe Bush is President. I mean, I don’t vote, but he’s the absolute worst…”
“You see that lady? Yeah, her. She’s got a dog, and it’s the most ill-behaved creature I’ve ever seen. Well, I don’t have dogs, but I watch “The Dog Whisperer” and that woman definitely…”
I know some people who would claim that statements like those are invalid because the person making them doesn’t have any first-hand knowledge about the situation on which he or she is commenting. I’m sure you’ve heard the saying “Well, if you don’t vote, you don’t have any room to complain.” Poppy-cock I say. There’s no better place to comment from positions of ignorance and non-involvement.
Even Leigh and I don’t have any children, I have no problem criticizing and deriding parents for their poor parenting skills. In fact, I’m convinced my judgements about their parenting are in fact more valid than their self-assessments. I can hear my readers retreating. Look, their love for the fruit of their loins (why doesn’t anyone ever say loin-fruit?) has obviously corrupted their ability to proffer non-biased judgments, so I’d argue that they need someone like me to skillfully critique their children.
Likewise with politics–a Republican or a Democrat is far too invested in his or her own particular party to fairly judge the party’s actions as a whole, so someone like me needs to come in and call bullshit on all the bullshit.
So the next time someone tells you that you have no idea what you’re talking about, simply look that person in the eye and tell the buttinski, “Oh yeah? Well, my ignorance of your child’s chemical imbalance makes me far more qualified to categorize him as a ‘mop-headed little spaz’ than your so-called empirical ‘knowledge’ of his medical history. And by the by, who did you vote for?”
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