Wednesday, May 30, 2012

I give up.

I don't know. I guess I'm naive. But I wonder how presidential it would be for Mitt to say, "You know, Donald, you're an attention-whoring boob. The President was born in an American State, not Sri Lanka. So save your money and your support for someone who needs it. You're living proof that patriotism really is the last refuge of a scoundrel. Good day, sir. I said good day." Any minute now...

Maybe it's this: While Mitt was punching long-haired faggots in the head at prep school and Donald was banging hookers in Vegas coming down from a 9-day diet pill binge, Doc Watson was unwittingly putting Appalachian music on the music history map* where it belongs (somewhere in Appalachia**). I say unwittingly because Doc thought playing and listening to music could help you get through the tougher times in life.

I don't know. This probably won't get me many karma points, but it makes me sad that Doc is dead and Donald isn't.

But, again, I find music important in sublime ways that passeth understanding.***

*Actually, some would suggest (and by "some" I mean "me") that the reason Appalachian music is so compelling is because it's folk songs brought to The New World by Druids, Celts and Wodes (aka, Woads) married with ancient hymns brought to The New World by Goths and Teutons.

**There's a video of Robin And Linda Williams singing "Across The Blue Mountains" somewhere on the internets which, as usual, I can't find.

***An ongoing theme, I guess.

Monday, May 28, 2012

1-Day Diary Of A Scatterbrained Procrastinating Drunk

Not to be confused with Dr. Phil's "Confessions Of A Morbidly Obese Bridezilla", or Anderson Cooper's "Profiles In Courage Of Men In Love With Blow Up Sex Dolls", or "Uh-Oh Hoda And Kathy Lee In Their Cups Yet Again Whilst Making Kristen Wiig's Departure From SNL All About Them [Indecipherable Journal Entries]". At least not right away. But the whole thing is just so Memorial Day.

Hot. That's what it is. Hot. But Today's list:

1. procrastinate some more on putting up the corner post
2. plywood exterior siding experiment

Join me, won't you?!?!? You might not hate my iTunes ultimate party mix and profanity-drowning-out music fest. E.g., "Clearly I remember/Pickin' on the boy/Seemed a harmless little fuck."

Sunday, May 27, 2012

Almost Famous

So it's about 3, I've been puddering all day, and it's hotter than Atlanta asphalt, and on comes my favorite Cam Crowe movie. His best in my opinion. Though Singles is good. So think I'll take a couple hours off and watch it, siesta style, and pick back up when the sun gets a little lower.

Friday, May 25, 2012

Tenacious D Week: Big Finish

Well it's three pm, time to lug the gear,
Gotta get it on the stage.
My muscles flex, my f!ckin' sweat will save the day.

When I check the mic, I f@ckin' check the mic,
I f#ckin' checka-checka one, two, three.
I plug it in, I make a sound as good as can be.

Cause the rockers rock, but the roadies roll.
Gotta take the mic because I take control.
Gotta get that $hit up on that f%ckin' stage.

Because the roadie knows what the roadie knows,
And the roadie knows that he wears black clothes,
And he hides off in the shadows off the stage.

Because the roadie
Looks a thousand miles with his eyes.
And when the crowd roars --
--Brings a tear drop to the roadie's eyes.
Tears of pride.

Because he brought you the show,
But you will never know.
He's changing the strings
While hiding in the wings.
No matter how hard, the show must go on.

Then a beautiful girl come to me.
She say, "Hey, can I s^cka your d&ck?"
I say, "Yays, I am in love."
Then she quickly say, "I s!cked your d@ck.
Now give me [sic] that backstage pass.
I do not want you roadie; I want KG's ch#de."

I'm standing at the threshold of your dream$;
Without me there'd be no sound from those @mps;
Without me there'd be no !ights on the stage.
But you don^t applaud for me.

No, I am the r*adie:
Lonesome warrior searc#ing for his soul.
No, ! am the roadie;
I make the roc# go.

Roadi3... Roa9ie... R0adie...


End of story. (Punctuation mine.)

Anyways, I hope you've enjoyed The 2nd Annual Tenacious D Week as much as I have, though I find that hard to fathom.

Thursday, May 24, 2012

Tenacious D Week: A Closer Look At "Roadie", And Kelly Clarkson

I think we can all agree it's in E, and it pulls that old bit where it flirts and flips between E major, E minor and, of course, the old open E. Examples of this flirting and flipping can be found in "Behind Blue Eyes", "Seasons", "Summer Breeze" (Hippies!), and much of the music of Paul Hindemith. (Hugo gave me a copy of the full orchestration of Mathis Der Maler in Paul's own hand. Turns out the Nazis weren't fond of his unpatriotic music and his hatred of Nazis' hatred of Jews, so he had to write it out himself without the benefit of a publisher.)

So, long story short, no measure notation: E D/F# E D/F# and on; but then a really nice progression that's nothing more than C to A to E, then C to A back to C back to A to E. But the cool thing is, the C is a Cmajor7, and the A is an open A9, which means the B natural in the Cmajor7 becomes the 9 in the open A.

Lyrics: amplifiers, sweat, something about a blowjob, and, of course, a young man's love of music. And blowjobs. We'll talk more about this tomorrow.

As for Kelly, it really is all about singing the right note, and singing it right in the middle of the note. And pipes. Hope this doesn't hurt anyone's feelings, but Kelly was and has always been the real deal. I'm still convinced that Justin was a cardboard cutout prop the whole first season. That is until From Justin To Kelly, one of the most misunderstood works of genius in the history of the art of the taking of pot. Watching that sober must be akin to that waterboarding next-level shit Tricky Dick Torture Ticker Cheney was so fond of watching whilst bathing in the afterbirths of aborted anti-freedom haters. (Just spitballing here.)

Wednesday, May 23, 2012

Tenacious D Week: Wait Wait Don't Kill Me

Peter doesn't necessarily buy it, but because he thinks there's not much there he knows that that's precisely the point, which means everything.

At first listen, the lyrics seem banal and gratuitously hate driven, so one may retreat to the music, which really is first rate. But then something happens with regard to the lyrics, and they become neither hate-driven nor banal. Not exactly funny, per se, but, rather, honest in a way that's both ridiculous and upsetting. So, well, real.

Let's just get something straight right now: Kyle is an above average guitar player, and gets a sound out of his acoustic that's almost enviable.

I think it's fair to say that Tenacious D is congruent artistically with Spinal Tap. Christopher and Michael are very good musicians. But Jack is a really good musician, and is more invested in Tenacious D than Chris and Mike were in Tap, or The Folksman, for that matter. And though Spinal Tap is more sophisticated, Tenacious D, at least for me, ends up being more authentic, for better or worse.

No, Jack. Metal never died. It just went gay for awhile there.

Tuesday, May 22, 2012

Tenacious D Week: Fresh Air On The G String Of Rock

Terry loves it but doesn't get why or how there's nothing there.

I first noticed the entity that I'm currently talking about inside of Jack Black in a little movie called Bob Roberts, a Tim Robbins movie about a guitar-wielding asshole-savant whose most famous song is "The Times They Are A-Changing Back", at a small art house movie theater in Hardwick, Vermont, with one Tia, in the winter of '92 or so. (It was Hardwick, wasn't it?) Jack plays a closeted psychotic Young Republican bent on the total destruction of all things not Bob Roberts. You can't help but notice him in the movie despite the relatively small role because it seems he could almost kill you with nothing but his thousand mile stare of death. Almost an anti-Bruno before Bruno was even born. (It's worth noting here at this point that Bob Roberts' campaign manager is also Laura Palmer's father!)

I can live without most Jack Black-driven movies; he has what I call "The Brad Pitt Syndrome", namely, that Jack and Brad are better in movies when their roles are supporting rather than starring. The one exception that proves the condition is Richard Linklater's head-banging love note to those of us who still own all our vinyl. Which makes it nothing short of a coincidence that Jack stars in animated features also starring Brad's future wife. [cue massive head-spinning brought on by euphoric moment of realization]

Got off the bean pole a little bit there. Which only proves that when Jack Black acts, he does better when he plays some twisted version of himself as opposed to some version of somebody else's notion of "Jack Black".

Which begs the question: Just exactly who is Jack Black?

Man. Anyways, Jack Black is what all the lead-singing closeted faggots from the 80's hair bands wish they had been, namely, an Ozzie that can actually sing. Well.*

Casting against a certain type of vocal flexing

*I.e., David Bowie-esque

Monday, May 21, 2012

Tenacious D Week: "Roadie" On Letterman

Dave doesn't really get it, but he knows something's there. And it might or might not be worthwhile to research the family-unfriendly version from the actual album.

Jack Black isn't a good singer. He's a great singer. He's also quite barely sane.

Tenacious D, for better or worse, is quickly becoming The Dan Band covering Spinal Tap, but completely devoid of anything resembling irony, were that ever to happen, which, now, can never happen, mercifully, making that particular problem "unsolvable".

(Sorry. Just finished William "Bill" Gibson's Neuromancer. I have no idea what just happened. In the book.)

Hi/Lo Fidelity All Stars

Sunday, May 20, 2012

Half Wits And Nuance

Remember when I told you guys that I told mom I'd move closer to my nieces in order to better protect them from their parents? Well, turns out not only was I not joking (too "sick" at the time to understand that), but I may have outflanked them. Unwittingly. Like there's another way for me to outflank anyone, especially without archers.

Full disclosure: I was already familiar with the link one of my nieces sent me on behalf of one of my nephews.

Wednesday, May 16, 2012

"Mom-agers"*: Dina Lohan Versus Kris Jenner

Kris sets Dina's hair on fire while Dina shoots at it, exploding. 5 killed.

First of all, Today Show writers (Oh! Good one!), if you're going to do a play on words, it has to sound like an actual word without being that word, e.g., "Linsanity", or "celebretard", or "refudiate".

So I"m watching this documentary on nomadic yak farmers in rural Tibet (somewhat redundant, I know), and it got me to thinking. When the revolution comes, and it will come, and you find yourself in a ditch fending off homophobic bigoted evangelical robot cannibals, whom do you want next to you in that ditch: Mongolian farmers who can make gunpowder from petrified clay and livestock dung, or someone who kind of sort of designed a handbag that also functions in a pinch as a birth control device that clearly doesn't work?

I SO WANT THAT HANDBAG!!!?!!!

*The hyphen really sells it.

Tuesday, May 15, 2012

In Defense Of Marriage

"The sanctity of marriage consists of one man and one woman [at a time, more or less*, void where prohibited**]."

*Though 3 continues to be a magic number.

**You know who you are!

Wednesday, May 9, 2012

2 Things I Didn't Know Until Today

1.) Mitt Romney saved Detroit and the automotive industry.

2.) There are gay persons of an homosexual persuasion who are so frustrated with President Obama's evolving understanding of same-sex marriage that they won't vote for him, which could cause him to lose the election, thereby electing a president whose unevolved notion of same-sex marriage involves opposing it adamantly [unless some of the same-sex spouses are additional wives*].







*cheap shot

(Well, I guess it's evolved after all. I blame it on living in a house with 4 women.)

Tuesday, May 8, 2012

I'll never turn 10 either.

And for the life of me I could never figure out how, after all that monstering, his supper was still warm. Amazing.

A sweet, brilliant man with a giant middle finger. We're losing them faster than I'm comfortable with.

(Hi, bright. Always comforting to see you.)

Monday, May 7, 2012

Smash Penultimate: Megan Hilty V. Christin Chesenwith

Christin Chenawith. Kirsten Posteltwaith. Chiselwhite?

Anyways, I hate to say it, but the only song I've ever heard Christen sing that didn't annoy me was when she was just another sickeningly talented nobody singing "Taylor, The Latte Boy" on Garrison.

Megan had me at "Crazy Dreams", episode 2. And then last week, her solo, on camera, not dubbed, not mixed/mastered/fucked with. Just her, singing.

"We're here to play the new news theme!"
-Marc Shaiman, Broadcast News

"Put that shit back on the shelf."
-MCA,

Friday, May 4, 2012

"MCA, where have you been?"

Man, didn't expect this, or to take it this hard. Ridiculous, I suppose. Anyways, one of his geniuses was to embrace punk rock early and then quickly think, "Man, punk rock really sucks and is pointless." He had the same smoldering timbre as Chuck D, but whereas Chuck's arose out of a kind of anger, Adam's was born out of... bemusement.

47?

Wednesday, May 2, 2012

Multitasking

You think crying, "Foul out-of-bounds ball!" on President Obama's partisan rant against your own video-taped call to inaction 5 years ago on bin Laden while sucking Rudy's 9.11 centimeter dick at the ground zero museum of short memories is easy?

Well, come to think of it, regarding a citizenry's collective attention span of the lowest common denominator and median fuckheadedness, yeah, I can it is pretty easy. Never mind.