Flowers in the attic

The Killers frontman Brandon Flowers claims his band's new album is one of the best in the past two decades. Upon speaking with the NME, Flowers stated: We just have to make the best album that we can. And we're doing it. This album is one of the best albums in the past 20 years. There's nothing that touches this album. And that sounds like I'm being cocky, but I'm just so excited.
My special friend made me a copy of this album recently and I hadn't really given it a good enough listen to make a solid judgement, until this weekend, that is.
It's been said that The Killers show themselves as potential heirs to U2, with an album packed with soaring guitars and driving basslines. In as much as it's easy to hear the U2 comparisons on certain tracks, it sounded much more like Queen were an influence here. Someone, somewhere, made a comment that this time round the Killers were channeling Bruce Springsteen. This made me shudder at the thought. I couldn't hear a single note that supported this opinion, thank god.
I agree with Mr. Flowers, this album will long be remembered as a classic.

I predict a riot

The last two days have been a veritable whirlwind, a blur at best. It was filled with great music, good food, lots of love, shopping, endless laughs and all in the best of company. Most outstanding feature of the weekend, ANIMAL. He has come into our lives and has decided to take up permanent residence with My Special Friend. We couldn't be happier.
Now we just have to hide the pills.

A different pace

If you're looking for some brilliant escapism, I can recommend one the best and most entertaining books I've read in a long time. It's the latest offering by Alison Pace, my new favorite.
Pug Hill is a book that will make you smile, laugh aloud and teach you that life really is full of endless surprises and possibilities.
During the course of my reading affair, getting utterly lost in the pages of this story, I came to realize early on that she might be writing this just for me. I could predict with utter certainty (and joy) what she was going to say and what she was going to experience throughout her journey.
Our author has such a tremendous ability to describe our four legged friends. My heart is so full from having read her words.
The book isn't only about dogs mind you, it's also about life's little (and big) struggles, interpersonal relationships and all that come with them, overcoming fears and following your dreams. I, for one, am inspired.

Democracy Rules

Donald Rumsfeld has resigned.
There is a god.

Mental Fundalism

Upon seeing Borat on The Daily Show this week, it occured to me that this character is nothing more than an annoying hybrid of Father Guido Sarducci, Balki from Perfect Strangers and The Wild and Crazy Guys- The Frestrunk Brothers from SNL of old. In a nutshell, this fake Kazakh reporter - aka Ali G comedian Sacha Baron Cohen - is expected to score a box office hit by offending and humiliating real Americans in his new movie. The British comedian has perfected his act as the apparently naive reporter whose enthusiastic offensiveness either leaves his interviewees in shock or persuades them to reveal a little too much of their own prejudices. Although there is no mention of that fact that the character is Muslim, he is portrayed ironically by a jew and it would seem that Borat's comical anti-semiticism (which seems to be his only religion) is covered under that special provision of the Geneva Convention known as "the clause of the Fool." The Fool, when clearly marked as such, can do and say practically anything and be protected from abuse simply by virtue of being The Fool. Until, that is, he ceases to be funny, in which eventually he is summarily culturally executed. You all remember Andy Kaufman, right?

Downward spiral

Two distinct stories that will convince even the most hardened of people that our civilization is in serious decline:
Earlier this month, Britain's public health minister said she had been warned by school counselors that some pregnant teenagers were purposely smoking in order to make their babies smaller so that childbirth would be less painful.
Australia's Herald Sun reported last month that a Target store in Melbourne was selling padded bralettes from the child clothing and doll manufacturer Bratz Babyz, aimed at children aged 6 to 10.
That's it, I officially give up.

Out of synch

If I didn't know it before, I know it now...Jimmy Kimmel is a big nerd!
I just caught a few minutes of this seriously lame talk show and he was interviewing Justin Timberlake. Jimmy admitted the following: A few years ago I took my kids to see you in concert, when you were with N'Sync. After 4 songs, my kids looked at me and complained that it was too loud, I was so into it, I didn't want to leave! Needless to say, I didn't speak to them the entire way home from the concert. I mean, it wasn't like we were at a Led Zeppelin concert (I wish you could have heard him pronounce the band name. It was something like this: Ze-pa-lyn. Like an OLD MAN!)
WOW!

Pit Bull

Rush Limbaugh is widely known as the poster child for conservative politics. He's famous for his bully pulpit style radio show which is one of the biggest in the United States. Fans of his show are called "dittoheads" because they tend to blindly follow their beloved host, no matter what he spews out. Anyone who's ever listened to him knows what a loud mouth he can be and how overbearing his opinions are, but this week he really crossed the line into indecency and bad taste. In response to an advertisement Michael J. Fox filmed in support of stem cell research, Limbaugh accused him of not taking his medication before filming to show extreme symptoms in the video. Limbaugh even implied that the beloved actor was faking his symptoms altogether.
From the Washington Post:
"Possibly worse than making fun of someone’s disability is saying that it’s imaginary. That is not to mock someone’s body, but to challenge a person’s guts, integrity, sanity."
Only an idiot would imply that Fox was faking his symptoms to garner sympathy for himself and his cause. I guess Al Franken is right, Limbaugh is A Big Fat Idiot.

Shoot me now, kill me later

I've always known that television is a succubus, but being home sick today, I now know it's much worse than that.
The Greg Behrendt show is on right now. He's the guy that was a consultant for two 2001 episodes of Sex and the City, and co-wrote the books He's Just Not That Into You and It's Called a Breakup Because It's Broken.
I can appreciate that this guy had some insight for women (and men) into dating and what the pitfalls and upsides were to relationships. After all, he'd been there and his experiences were interesting and valid, at the time. However, what I can't fathom is the need for every author-come-lately or personality with a catch-phrase to get their own talk show. We get it, you have an opinion, but why does everyone in the free world have to hear it?
Today's show is focusing on couples who are facing tough times in the first year of their marriage. His guest speakers today: Christopher Knight and Adrianne Curry. They were invited on to share their newlywed secrets. WTF? Who gives a rats ass what two has beens are going through? These are the same people that wed after meeting on a staged and quite insanely mundane reality show, VH1's fourth season of The Surreal Life. Give me a break!

Grenades in the kitchen

Rose Rock, comedian Chris Rock's mom, claims she was racially discriminated against when she was seated but ignored for a half hour at a Cracker Barrel restaurant along the South Carolina coast. Cracker Barrel has in the past faced numerous lawsuits and a federal inquiry over complaints of refusing to serve black customers, discriminating against minority workers and firing gay employees. The company has taken steps to rebuild its folksy image and reach out to minorities.
A Cracker Barrel spokesperson said the company doesn't "tolerate any form of discrimination."
The Reverend Al Sharpton will join Rock on Wednesday in South Carolina to announce that Sharpton's Action Network will finance the planned lawsuit.
Is it just me, or is there incredible irony here for an establishment that calls itself Cracker Barrel?!

Kickin' it K-Rob style

You know it's fall season when the Dew Action Sports Tour kicks it into the final round, after a year of batlling it out in the extreme sports domaine.
Kevin Robinson's, Double Flair won the PlayStation Trick of the Year! On top of bragging rights for throwing THE overall sickest trick of the year, Robinson wins $10,000 in cash, as well as other PlayStation prizes. He nailed his trick at the Toyota Challenge in San Jose, Cali. He went up against some tough competition this year. Ryan Nyquist's Barspin No-footed Can-Can, Keith McElhinney's Front Flip Flair, Scotty Cranmer's Tailwhip 360 to Tailwhip in. These athletes were selected by their fans as having the best trick at each of the first four Dew Action Sports Tour events of the 2006 season. For their performance they each earned PlayStation Trick of the Week honors, $5,000, a PSP and other sweet PlayStation prizes.
Aside from all of the pomp and circumstance of the tour, some of the most memorable images came from their advertisers / sponsors.
Panasonic, Vans gear, RightGuard, Toyota and Play Station outdid themselves this year.

Rumor mill

Evesdropping is great. In the last few weeks, most people I've encountered have been preoccupied with some political story or other and I was longing to hear someting light and frivolous. Well, today was my lucky day and an anonymous jack ass delivered in spades.
I was sitting at a conference just this morning and before the seminar was filled with it's invitees, a man in the row just behind me started to regale his two colleagues with a little anecdote:
It all began when the guy was asked if he'd attended a company dinner the night before. He said he had and his colleagues asked what was served. He went on to say that he'd had a gastronomic experience and was overwhelmed by it. They asked who the chef was and to my surprise, the man knew exactly who it was. This got him talking about recipes, of all things, and he then shared some ideas for preparing stew which he'd retrieved from a recent issue of LCBO magazine.
He then went on to talk about his nephew (Dave), who had written a cook book and was a chef with his very own show on the food network. Apparently, this kid, who grew up in NewYork was, until just a few years ago, waiting tables at a well known spot in the city. He was now rich, raking it in, apparently. As an example, every time he'd endorsed a brand of beer in a recipe on his show (say Miller), he'd receive a cheque from the company for $100,000. This kid is also the personal chef for baseball star Derek Jeeter, getting paid $1000 per meal.
The most memorable part of the story was the fact that his uncle, who seemed so proud of his nephew for all of his accomplishments, said he was, in the end, quite a mediocre chef.

Spy Hard

If you're a Republican, watch out! The Democrats are gonna crush you.
With the mid term elections coming up in less than four weeks time, focus on the Mark Foley scandal couldn't have come at a worse time. Then again, how do you prepare for sleaze of massive proportions or spin pedophilia?
You can't!
Foley, a fellow Republican congressman, resigned late last week after e-mails and instant messages surfaced where he blatantly asked teenaged male pages explicit questions and requested photographs of them. Not only did he ask the most innapropriate questions, he also masturbated in his office while it was happening. When he was confronted about this, he blamed his behavior on alcoholism.
The pages in question were under age and it's also alleged that this misconduct goes well beyond this year. It's been suggested, by a new witness, that he's been up to no good with minors on capital hill for years.
No kidding?!
Sickest irony of all:
Foley chaired the House caucus on missing and exploited children and was credited with writing the sexual-predator provisions of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act of 2006, which Bush signed in July. A photo on the White House Web site shows Foley among those attending the signing ceremony.
The house of representatives' ethics committee has launched an investigation into the scandal and approved four dozen subpoenas for documents and testimony.
So, there will be a trial and all this ugliness will come out in court, but clearly they can't tell us anything we haven't already heard a million times before. The man's a preditor of the worst kind and sadly, there are likely to be countless others just like him hiding behind their precious titles in Washington. Spare us...Please!

It's a bloody chicken!

In watching the classically hilarous film Withnail and I, it would be a great injustice not to share one of the funniest cinematic exchanges of all time:

[Back inside I has left the chicken on the table. It is alive and
looks round questioningly. He nudges Withnail to wake him.]

I:
Oye! Oye! Parkin's been. There's the supper!
Withnail:
What are we supposed to do with that?
I:
Eat it
Withnail:
Eat it!? Fucker's alive
I:
Yeah, you've got to kill it.
Withnail:
Me!? I'm the firelighter and fuel collecter.
I:
Yeah I know but I got the logs in. It takes away your appitite just
looking at it.
Withnail:
No it doesn't I'm starving. How can we make it die?
I:
You've got to throttle them. Withnail, I think you ought to kill it
instantly in case it starts trying to make friends with us.
Withnail:
Alright, you get hold of ir. I'll strangle it.
I:
I can't. Those dreadful, beady eyes! They stare you out!
Withnail:
It's a bloody chicken. Just think of it with bacon across its back!
Right, I'll deal with this. You'll have to get its guts out.

The Black Night

Best Rant all week...

When I saw the headline in the newspaper I swear to God I heard angels sing. “Conrad Black wants Canadian Citizenship back”. Cue the trumpets – it just doesn’t get much better than this.
Seeing that headline made me so excited I couldn’t even read the bloody thing. I picked up the paper and brought it home like it was a box of chocolates. I didn’t even glance at the first sentence until everything was perfect. The coffee was brewed, my feet were up the pillow behind my neck was just so. This was a moment to be savoured.

And it was a great moment. As I read that story I don’t think I ever felt more Canadian, because I knew that for the first time in perhaps our nation’s entire history, everyone in Canada was on the same page. Every man woman and child in this nation was united and together. We were gloating as one.

And what a story – Conrad Black, a man who once had more than any of us could ever imagine, gladly gives up the one thing we all share and hold dear, a Canadian citizenship. And why? So he could go to England and become Lord Black of Cross dresser. And now after telling the entire country to shove it he wants back in.

I have to admit, the idea of Conrad Black down at some god awful immigration office stuck in the back of a line behind some poor Somali dude with a bullet in his leg fills my heart with joy.

The Schadenfreude is on bust here. Conrad is basically at the front door of Canada saying to every one of us “I’m sorry baby, I didn’t mean it; let me back in the house.”

And personally, like most Canadians, part of me wants to barricade the door, run up the stairs and start pouring hot bubbly oil out of the top window all over his little Lord costume – the red one with the big white fur neck.

But unfortunately that’s not the Canadian way. I hate to admit it but I think we have to take the high road. We shouldn’t humiliate the guy any more no matter how much we want to. Bottom line is it’s fun to “kick up,” but it is unseemly to kick a guy when he’s down. Granted Conrad Black’s version of being down is slightly different than for the rest of us. His assets are frozen and he must somehow get by on a measly $45,000 dollars a month. There are rumours he might sell the Bentley.

And besides, seeing Conrad fighting for his life in the American courts makes me root for the guy. As it stands now he insists he will fight to the death in court and that there will be no plea bargain. He has even described himself, without a hint of irony, as a “freedom fighter.” Now it’s too soon to be said whether future generations of university students and skateboarders will take down the pictures of Che Guevara and replace them with woodcut prints of Lord Black but stranger things have happened.

Now just to be clear I’m not suggesting Conrad get special treatment – I’m suggesting he get treated like a Canadian.

Because regardless of what was said, or what papers were signed in the heat of the moment, that’s exactly what he is. Conrad Black was born in Canada, he grew up here and he built his business here. In fact Conrad became the giant poncy tool that he is today in Canada. Yes he denied us, yes we all heard the cock crow, but that had more to do with his getting into a peeing match with Jean Chrétien than anything else. That was then this is now. I suggest we have to do the right thing, the Canadian thing and give him the citizenship back – and then, being Canadian, we never ever let him forget it. We lord it over the lord forever. Amen

--Rick Mercer

Art Attack

Here's a weird one: On this day in history, Laszlo Toth, a 33-year-old Australian geologist, slipped into St. Peter's Basilica in Rome, part of the crowd attending a mass. As the faithful waited for the Pope's blessing, Toth dashed past the guards, vaulted a marble balustrade, and attacked Michelangelo's Vatican Pieta with a sledgehammer, shouting "I am Jesus Christ!"
With fifteen blows (one for each minute of his fame?), he removed the Virgin's arm at the elbow, knocked off a chunk of her nose, and chipped one of her eyelids. Although art historians wept over the damage, and the media decried Toth as a cultural terrorist, radicals hailed his "gentle hammer" with cries of "No more masterpieces!" (WTF?)
Toth was apprehended, and charged with crimes that would have brought a nine-year prison sentence, had he been convicted. In the end, though, the court found him insane. After two years in an Italian asylum,Toth was deported back to Australia, where he faded into obscurity.

Simon says

I am always in awe of my friends and the way they manage to express themselves.
It would seem there is a theme this week, given yesterdays entry.
This offering comes from Simon. (I am still laughing out loud):
I've put my car up for sale, I've bought a new smaller bed for the flat in a veiled attempt to make the bedroom look bigger for prospective buyers (Taking this logic one step futher, I'm thinking of hiring two dwarves to show people around when they come to view).

Faith Some More

Best line heard all weekend:
I wear v-neck shirts, this is a v-neck I got on. My neck is so fragile man, I can't wear a regular neck shirt, it hurts. And I especially hate turtle necks. Wearing a turtle neck is like being strangled by a really weak guy, all day. Like if you wear a turtle neck and a backpack it's like a weak midget is trying to bring you down.
-Mitch Hedberg

Absolute Critic

Jeffrey Anderson said it best: I'm sure many cineastes had the same reaction to this week's box office list: cinema is now officially dead. The day Jackass: Number Two -- isn't it clever how the title is a reference to fecal matter? -- becomes the most popular film in America is the day each of us ought to give up and become plumbers. I'm talking all film critics, as well as Martin Scorsese, Quentin Tarantino, David Cronenberg, Steven Spielberg, Hou Hsiao-hsien, Wong Kar-wai, Robert De Niro, Meryl Streep, Charlie Kaufman, etc. Throw in the towel, guys. It's over. It doesn't matter anymore. I'll meet you at the bar, and I'm buying the first round.

Pickle me 'ead

Some say Oasis and The Stone Roses created Britpop. Some say they destroyed it. The brothers Gallagher and Ian Brown became legends given their infamous behavior and their unwillingness to remain mainstream in the eyes of their fans. They were irreverent and broke the mold from all accounts for the new generation of rockers to come. In comes Kasabian, the new lads on the block. Guitarist/singer Sergio Pizzorno and singer Tom Meighan have already been touted as the new team Gallagher and the ones to fear. My special friend and I caught their act this week at a local cabaret club, this being the second time they've performed at this venue. They played to a crowd that were obviously die hard fans and thankfully, they delivered the goods well beyond anyone's expectations. Tom definitely knows how to ignite a crowd and engage them in such a way that you instantly feel a strong connection. This band clearly loves all who support them. This is one of the first times ever we have heard a show that sounded better live than it does on the cd. As my special friend put it, it makes the recorded versions sound boring.

Milk and Cookies

It seems that there was a popular predecessor to South Park's Mr. Hanky.
Ugo Ugo Ruga, a Japanese children's television show were the first creators of a lovable little character called Dr. Shit.
Yep, that's right, he's a piece of poop in a toilet. The Japanese toy company, Kubrick, came out with a plush toy and it sold like crazy. The title of the show: "ugo ugo ruga", which was an anagram "gou gou garu", actually means: go go girl. The TV show looked like it was for children. But clearly was intended for adults.
(Japan's Kubrick Toys are so avant-guard, they are also responsible for creating limited edition collector dolls of the Sex Pistols).

Going Postal

So, I was sat in the waiting room this morning of one my fave clients thumbing through the summer issue of SBC Skateboarding magazine, when I came across some letters to the editor. It was clearly a slow day and the editor decided to rag on some SPAM emails that came into his inbox more than a few times. He went to town on those people who wrote testimonials for the miracle pill Hoodia 920+.
The newest and most exciting fat loss product available. I was originally amazed that the first two pills I took made my cravings go away. Four weeks and three belt holes later, I have become an advocate of this awesomely powerful and natural supplement. I was so amazed by it's effects, that I started to exercise and get out more too. Now I don't even look like the same man and friends I haven't seen in a long time claim to not even recognize me anymore.
What had me cracking up was the brilliantly sarcastic answer the editor gave to this letter:
You have to be a special breed of lazy fat fuck to wait to take a pill to lose weight. Hell, I'm a lazy fat fuck who wanted to lose weight and even I didn't resort to bullshit pills. Try not eating shit food and getting off the couch once in a while, tubby. It does wonders. I swear, North America is going to sink under the weight of all these fat asses who are too stupid to stop eating. Like on TLC, they had some show about a 750-pound man. Dude was so huge, he couldn't move out of the hospital bed he was in. He looked like a redneck Jabba the Hutt. Know what? Fucker still ate junk food. The second you can't see your dick when you piss, you start working the fuck out-- it's an easy rule to remember. It should be the motto of every youth fitness initiative across the globe.
In Spain: El segundo usted no puede ver a su dick cuando usted piss, usted comienza a trabajar la cogida hacia fuera.
In Dutchland or Holland: De tweede u kan uw dick zien niet wanneer u piss, u begint fuck uit te werken.
What a retarded language Dutch is. No wonder they're all such douchebags...Anyhow, that was hilarious, and it took up enough space...Moving on now...

Bloggin' rights

I was rooting through the internet (yet again) for some good readin' and came across some very insightful and most hilarious takes on what's happening in the music biz these days:

On Rockstar SuperNova:
Is it me or is Tommy......?
Is Tommy slowly morphing into 1991 era Vanilla Ice?? WTF? Plus Motley scalps their own tickets on their website. To hell with these dinosaurs. Remember when a Metallica fan would beat up a Motlety fan? Now people from both bands are together? What planet have I landed on? Puh-leaze!

Observations on bands:

If you are in a band and you do any of the following you should think about getting another job, because you suck at being a musician. The following bands anger me:
Bands who pour water on the drummer and the drum set because it looks like you rock harder when you hit the symbols and the water splashes everywhere.
Bands that play a two hour set. That is too much.
Local bands that play more than once a week. Everyone gets tired of hearing the same shit over and over again.
Local bands with a manager. I hate to tell you that your band is going nowhere.
Bands who suck and talk shit about other bands.
Bands that make silly faces when they perform solos. It doesn't make you rock harder. It makes you look like your masturbating.
Bands that talk politics and have no idea what the fuck they're talking about. I hate terrorists too. We all know you're a right wing republican nut in a metal band. Shut up already. Ted Nugent sucks.
Bands who bring other bands with them that are not on the calendar. I want to see the bands I came to see. I don't want too see a bunch of shitty bands open up for the band I want to see. That takes too long. I work during the day. I can't be in a bar all night.
Bands that use one of their girlfriends as the manager. 9 times out of 10 she's a total fucking bitch (just look at the fate of Chris Cornell and Susan Silver's marriage).
Bands that blame the sound guy for sounding like shit. You can't polish a turd.
Bands that can't play longer than a 15 minute set. Wait before you get a show. People have to pay money for that nonsense.
Bands that show up wearing "All Access" passes around their necks. You are not special. I wanted to operate a spaceship when I grew up, but you don't see me walking around wearing a spacesuit at the club.

Reality Bites

So, CBS's Survivor had a shocking reveal on The Early Show (also on CBS - Duh! I wonder how they got the scoop first?). In the upcoming season of Survivor, the four competing tribes will be divided by race.
Steve Probst (the show's host and partial creator) attempted to explain why this new theme was "OK": In interview, Harry Smith asked the host to defend the new concept: "At first glance, when you just hear the idea, it might sound like a stunt. Especially the way reality shows have gone, it wouldn't be unusual (at this point, he audibly clears his throat, perhaps nervously, not even believing his own spin on this ridiculously crass idea), but that's not what we're doing here".
Don't worry Steve, no minorities were offended by those comments. Afterall, it was the early show, so none of them were up.

Hungry Hippos

A curry house in London made an extraordinary long-distance delivery after football fans ordered a takeaway from Amsterdam of all places. The order came from Gary Chambers, a regular at the Asia restaurant, staying at a hotel in Amsterdam while watching the World Cup. In a fax to the restaurant, Mr Chambers, who dines there regularly wrote: "We have just returned from the football match and we are staying on a floating hotel as all the five-star hotels in Germany are booked. We are going to be here another ten days and frankly cannot get a good standard of curry out here anywhere."
So, the restaurant agreed to fly a meal for eight people out to Amsterdam at a cost of £463.60. However, Mr Chambers and his friends had to pay an additional £350 delivery charge for the flight and taxi to the airport.
The owners originally thought the request was nothing more than a wind-up, but soon discovered that the patron was quite serious and was happy, in the end, to oblige.
Now that's loyalty!

Bright Ideas

So, I fell ill today and thusly, stayed in and camped out on the sofa. I watched some ridiculous television and saw some very questionable commercials.
First there is the new ad campaign for Rozerem, the little magic pill that is supposed to help with insomnia. The tag line is clever enough: Your dreams miss you. There's a shot of a guy, sat at his kitchen table and while you'll immediately think he's just in there having a glass of milk at the wee hours because he can't find sleep, he's really, on closer inspection, in conversation with Abe Lincoln who's reading an old newspaper. There's a shot of an astronaut in full gear behind him at the kitchen sink, likely doing dishes and sat across from our sleepless in serta is of all things, a talking beaver, eating, with a fork mind you, a plate of bacon and eggs (which also begs the question, what's a beaver doing eatin' pig and fowl?). To make matters odder, the beaver is seriously surly. I wonder who they were fashioning this creature after.
Just when I thought creative licensing couldn't get any more strange, in comes the new ad for Yellow Pages. Tag line: Need something?
Again, we're in some random guy's apartment and he's sweeping up, with dustpan in hand, something that's fallen on the floor. But wait, he's not using a conventional broom, he's actually using a cute little, very fluffy Pomeranian dog to get the job done. As adorable and hilarious as this looks, the company was forced to place at the bottom of the screen the disclaimer reminding people to not attempt this sort of behavior and they also made it a point to state that no animals were harmed in the making of the commercial.

Roundtable Religion

There's been a long-standing debate about the appropriate lines between religion and politicking. Reverend RUSSELL JOHNSON (Senior Pastor, Fairfield Christian Church, Lancaster, OH)said in a recent interview that separation of church and state is in the Soviet constitution that the Bolsheviks wrote. Separation of church and state is not written a single time in the American Constitution. Over the past 20 years, Pastor Johnson has transformed the tiny Fairfield Christian congregation into a megachurch bigger than a Wal-Mart superstore in the cornfields outside Columbus, Ohio. Pastor Johnson is always protesting something: liberal teachers, left-wing media, leftist preachers, gay marriage, teaching evolution and so on. To many in the state of Ohio, Pastor Johnson is someone who played an important role in the close victory of President Bush in 2004. Among Christian conservatives, he is a hero. To others, he's taken the pulpit too far. In a highly unusual move, over 60 members of the clergy of a variety of Christian and Jewish denominations filed a complaint with the IRS accusing Johnson and another pastor of improperly using their churches in political activities. This begs the question, should churches be involved to the level they are in governmental affairs and political affairs? Upon further investigation by the lawyers handling this case, they intended to influence voters in the election. Pastor Johnson is accused of inviting a state candidate to church events, praising his stand against gay marriage and abortion, and not inviting his opponent who is a liberal. In an amazingly arrogant retort, this is what the pastor had to say: The Religious Left that's not really sure the Bible is true, not really sure who Jesus is, not really sure that he rose from the dead -- they're advocating homosexual marriages and advocating abortion rights. I have never gone to the IRS to try to have their nonprofit status revoked for pretending to be a church.

Bit Parade

An Orange County rock band is singing stop in the name of copyright infringement.
Supernova, perhaps best known for contributing the song "Chewbacca" to Kevin Smith's cult classic movie "Clerks," has filed for a preliminary injunction to prevent the use of its name by a new supergroup involved in the CBS TV show Rock Star Supernova.
In case you've been living without cable, Rock Star Supernova involves the search for a vocalist to join a new rock band being formed by ex-Motley Crue drummer Tommy Lee, former Metallica bassist Jason Newsted and one-time Guns N' Roses guitarist Gilby Clarke along with the seriously creepy Dave Navarro, once a member of Janes Addiction and Red Hot Chili Peppers. The real Supernova, founded in 1989 by Jodey Lawrence, Art Mitchell and David Collins, has already released three albums. Most recently, the group has been touring in California, Arizona and Nevada, with plans for a new album that's in the works. Honestly, I pray they win their case. In my opinion, anythings better than the thought of this group of has-beens putting out a cd with a less than mediocre front man. My ears are already bleeding at the thought.

Would you like wine with your foot sir?

If a seemingly respectable senator makes a racial slur without really knowing what he was saying, is it still considered malicious? Hell yeah!
Senator George Allen denied that the remark he made to describe an opponent's campaign worker was racially charged, saying in a statement that the media misunderstood his comments. The Virginia Republican called S.R. Sidarth, a volunteer on Democrat Jim Webb's campaign, "Macaca" on two occasions during an event.
Macaca is a genus of monkeys, including the rhesus monkey. The senator's campaign said that Allen did not know that "Macaca" refer to monkeys. The senator went on to say: "I also made up a nickname for the cameraman, which was in no way intended to be racially derogatory. Any insinuations to the contrary are completely false." This, coming from a guy that proudly wore a pin of the Confederate flag on his lapel for a high school picture.
Later in the week, more racially motivated insanity hit the news. Andrew Young, the American civil rights leader who was hired by Wal- Mart to improve its public image, has resigned from that post after telling an African-American newspaper that Jewish, Arab and Korean shop owners had "ripped off" urban communities for years, "selling us stale bread, and bad meat and wilted vegetables.
But wait, there's more!...
A candidate running for the congressional seat of Rep. Katherine Harris apologized for comments he made about the swimming ability of blacks.
Republican Tramm Hudson, a banker, made the comments earlier this year at a Christian Coalition political forum."I said something stupid," Hudson said in a statement released by his campaign. "I apologize for it and would apologize in person to anyone hurt by my comments." Hudson made the comments as he described efforts to rescue a black soldier who had fallen into a river while the Army Reserve company Hudson commanded was training in Panama 22 years ago. "I grew up in Alabama and I understand and I know this from my own experiences that blacks aren't the best swimmers or may not even know how to swim," Hudson said, according to a transcript released by his campaign.
WOW!

Gettin' Props

It's a new era, but one thing's for sure, in the world of music certain voices will always stand out above the crowd. Here is my top twenty-five list of all time rock male singers with the strongest and most memorable voices (in no particualr order):
1. Steven Perry (Journey)
2. Jim James (My Morning Jacket)
3. Mathhew Good (The Matthew Good Band)
4. Chris Cornell (SoundGarden)
5. Eddie Vedder (Pearl Jam)
6. Layne Staley (Alice In Chains)
7. Thom Yorke (Radiohead)
8. Ian Astbury (The Cult)
9. Meatloaf
10. Brett Anderson (Suede)
11. Axel Rose (Guns N' Roses)
12. Robert Plant (Led Zepplin)
13. Jeff Buckley
14. Sebastien Bach (Skid Row)
15. Jim Morrison (The Doors)
16. Freddy Mercury (Queen)
17. Rolland Orzabal (Tears For Fears)
18. Jay Kay (Jamiroquoi)
19. Lenny Kravitz
20. Bonn Scott (AC/DC)
21. Brad Delp (Boston)
22. Jeff Lynne (E L O)
23. John Anderson (YES)
24. Ozzy Osbourne (Black Sabbath)
25. David Lee Roth (Van Halen)

Up your nose

In a recent email delivered to my inbox from my Saturday Friend, I discovered at long last that I was not the only one on the planet that simply can't abide the smell of certain fabric deoderizers. Years ago I had a friend who did a study whilst at University that proved that some air freshener and fabric softeners were toxic to humans, making them ill and often depressed. I came across this article written brilliantly by Mark Morford at the San Francisco Gate:

The Rule of Gluttony goes like this: When a given society's needs become so ridiculously oversatisfied and oversatiated and just plain obscenely stuffed like a Bush daughter on Bud Light, it begins to invent utterly useless landfill crap no one really needs and that actually turns out to be dangerous to its health.
Enter the new Febreze ScentStories thing, an adorably insidious 40-buck appliance you actually plug into your wall and stick on a side table next to the fake flowers and the cat-shaped fringe lamp and then insert any number of $6 CD-like disks each containing five preprogrammed synthetic scents that, at the push of a button, will then "play" in sequence, just like a music CD -- only, you know, not.

Yay. Rejoice. Weep with a renewed sense of hope for humankind, because if there's one thing we in America desperately need, it's another goddamn appliance to do something a simple candle will do 10 times better for a fraction of the cost and a sliver of the insidiousness and none of the noxious petrochemical landfill.

You know Febreze. You have seen the ads, even if you haven't. Febreze is that frightening Procter & Gamble air freshener whose commercials feature perky sexually denuded khaki-pantsed housewives and cutesy overweight dads running around the house with a can or three of the heavily scented aerosol and spraying huge fogs of it into every room in some ecstatic fit of orgiastic bliss, and then immediately inhaling the misty cloud as deeply as possible into their happily toxified American lungs and smiling like they just discovered heroin and Cheez-Whiz and anal sex, all at once.

What happened? What vile marketing decision was made, and by whom, that said we must now progress from static mute little tabletop chemical-bomb air fresheners to more sinister, electronically activated Glade plug-in thingies with silly little built-in fans to full-fledged toaster-size appliances that require huge amounts of plastic and massive marketing campaigns and full AC power and interchangeable chemical-soaked disks?

This is the marketing strategy: each disc is apparently designed to somehow lift you out of your sanitized tract-home suburban kids-'n'-dogs-'n'-minivans dystopia and transport you straight to the Misty Mountains or the sultry Bahamas or the Brazilian rain forest or whatever, and, according to the Prozacian pastels-'n'-blue-sky ScentStories Web site, it all has something to do with Shania Twain, somehow, inexplicably, because there she is, her photo splashed on the pages for no apparent reason whatsoever and smelling very much like mediocrity and commercial bloat and fast saccharine death, and if her hollow endorsement's not a surefire sign of the apocalypse, baby, nothing is.

And, of course, it's all carefully marketed directly at gullible and slightly narcotized women, housewives and soccer moms and chronic Banana Republic catalog shoppers who dream of escaping their husbands and their suburban stasis and their white luxury carpeting, with its perfectly symmetrical vacuum-cleaner track marks, and running off to the tropics and lying on a hammock or strolling on the beach or hiking in the mountains and numbing their senses to the point of sweet-smelling comatose bliss.

Which of course makes you wonder why P&G just doesn't cut to the marketing chase and be honest about the whole thing and release more apropos scent adventures, like Desperate Affair in a Cheap Motel Room, or Whatever Happened to My Dreams of Opening a Small Business, or Mommy's Valium/Gin Headrush Chocolate Cake. What, too bitter? Naw.

Because then you may also think, hey wait, why aren't there similar scent bombs marketed to men? Why isn't Black & Decker hocking up a similar gizmo and creating discs like I Like to Lick My SUV, or Hey Baby Dig My Pleated Dockers or Sometimes I Wish I Was a Female Mountain Gorilla? Honesty in advertising is all I ask.

Saturation has been reached. Every new household product is now just a silly mutation, a gross plasticized landfill-clogging exaggeration of something simple and functional that came before, brooms to blenders to bread machines to the Swiffer WetJet to Scrubbing Bubbles™ Fresh Brush™ Toilet Cleaning System. You're choking on it.

And it is now no longer a race for which product can offer your life more ease and convenience, what gizmo will reduce stress and calm your exhausted body and actually pretend to be innocuous and fresher and cleaner. Rather, it appears to be a mad race for which product will cause what part of your increasingly toxified American body what virulent strain of cancer first.

Dibs on the lungs! screams the ScentStories appliance. Dibs on the heart! screams that double-cheese McMuffin. Dibs on the brain! screams your cell phone. Dibs on the bloodstream! claim any number of major pharmaceuticals. Dibs on your bone marrow! claims the case of Diet Coke. Dibs on your very soul! screams your television.

See, there is this line. There is this boundary separating logic and common sense and acceptable karmic/environmental damage from utterly laughable and debilitating pain, and it comes into play as we recognize how there are gizmos that are incredibly fun and that add a whole new dimension to the coolness of life and that make your days more interesting and your nights more juicy and your vibrator more waterproof and that can carry 20,000 of your favorite songs on one little machine the size of a deck of cards.

And for the existence of those devices, well, we make some sort of deal with the devil. We know they're toxic and hurtful and will last 5 million years in a landfill, but we make the trade-off, claiming the value they add is worth the effort and if we're careful and maybe just a little more conscious maybe we can minimize the damage and the karmic toll and, besides, 20,000 songs! Dude!

There are bearable and acceptable trade-offs and there are epically bad and deleterious trade-offs, and then there are trade-offs that just make you sad and ill and that you just know with every fiber of your being are simply useless and small minded and point up everything that's wrong with the American mind-set and that infect your home with synthetic scents that poison your dog.

Look at it this way: much like white zinfandel or "Cathy" cartoons or the George W. Bush presidency, ScentStories could vanish tomorrow and no sentient being anywhere on the planet would miss it, ever. And that, verily, is the scent of true perspective.

Hack Backs

As mockumentaries go, Pauly Shore Is Dead is possibly the most entertaining one I've seen in a long time. Most of us who were in touch in the 90's will remember the guy for his brief lay over in posthumous popularity (or for most, better known as fifteen minutes of fame, which for the weasel, seemed to last a hell of a lot longer). In a nutshell, he fakes his own death to revitalize interest in, well, himself and his all but dead in water career. The story is comically sound and gives you accurate insight into the lowest levels of Hollywood and all who dwell in it. We experience, through his eyes, the fickle beast that makes up your street cred, tinsel town style.
Sam Kinison plays Pauly's guardian angel of sorts and during a stint in prison as a result of his fraudulent demise, he shares a cell with Todd Bridges and befriends a host of other famous neredowells. Making genius appearances in the film (amongst many) are Ben Stiller, Chris Rock, Vince Vaughn, Fred Durst and the ever entertaining Bill Maher. Way to go, Buuuudddddyyyyyyy!

Dialing it down

At what point do all British bands begin to sound alike?
My special friend recently surprised me with a copy of the new Keane album, Under the iron sea. Upon listening, it was evident that U2, Coldplay, Radiohead and even Robbie Williams were the primary influences here. The opening track was exciting, pretty, even soaring. Sadly, this enthusiasm could not be sustained throughout. There was a lot of hype in the music press about this albums' release, as it was meant to be a departure for the lads, treading on a darker side, more introspective and political. Wrong! It's somewhat reminiscent of their debut, but without the strong melodies and anchoring of a piano, that Hopes & Fears had managed at the time. I found it frustrating how it's completely over produced. There are only (in my opinion) three stand out tracks on this cd. The opener (which I mentioned already) called Atlantic, track three Nothing in my way and six, Hamburg Song. These aside, the songs this time round, as my Saturday friend put it, are OTT beyond belief. They lack emotion and lyrically struggle to find words that rhyme. We're forced to listen to tracks like Leaving So Soon and Crystal Ball, that are horribly sickly sweet and kind of leave you feeling queasy. I felt like I was listening to Jack Wild of H R Pufn' Stuff.

This offering is mostly dreadful, mostly.

Headless fowl and other considerations

I love this big city and all the weirdness that comes with living in it. This week I made a couple of strange observations without even trying. Whilst driving on the highway, I spotted a decapitated pigeon. A very fat pigeon at that. It was lying flat on it's back on the median, chest up, feathers to the wind and no head. It was clean off. Not sat nearby or rolled onto the pavement below...it was gone. Where did it go? When I told my brother this story he said, funny, I thought Madonna was in town, not Ozzy Osbourne?! This made me laugh. As odd as that observation was, I was stuck in traffic later that day and idle, in front of my car, was a motorcyclist in a pair of stone washed cut offs and burley black boots. I didn't give it much thought (though the image was making me slightly ill) until I changed lanes and glanced over at the driver. You know when you see something so unbelievable you shake your head in disbelief and look again, making sure it's real? Well, I did and what I saw was indeed confirmed. The person driving the bike was a man in his 70's. It was as if Daisy Duke and Wilfred Brimley had morphed into one. Old ass hanging out on the back of a moto...well, no one needs to see that.

Shits and Giggles

Funniest fact of the day:
The Transport Minister in the UK is called Mr. Alistair Darling (who looks suspiciously like a badger).
He's recently appointed a Minister of Road Safety who's name is Dr. Stephen Ladyman.
So, this means that their Transport Department is now being run by Darling and Ladyman.

Insane in the membrane

As is forever entertaining, the McLaughlin Group recently had a discussion on road rage. It would seem that road rage drivers are not just angry, they're crazy. So says research from Harvard and from the University of Chicago. The new sickness is called IED or intermittent explosive disorder. IED sufferers have abnormal areas of the brain that are supposed to control anger. Researchers estimate that up to 16 million Americans suffer from intermittent explosive disorder. With this in mind, it begged the question of the round table Should states require brain scans before issuing driver's licenses? (This got some mighty laughter.) Pat Buchanan responds: Well, look, those are the same guys that get in fist fights in bars. The continuing had me cracking up , read on:

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Here comes Buchanan in his --

MR. BUCHANAN: Navigator.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: -- Lexus tank.

MR. BUCHANAN: Navigator. MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Navigator.

MR. BUCHANAN: Yeah. (Laughs.)

MS. CLIFT: I think the treatment for road rage in case of anybody who has a Navigator would be that they would have to spend six months in community service operating out of a miniature car, a small car.

MR. ZUCKERMAN: It's a serious issue. I mean, they're doing a lot of brain work in neuroscience at Harvard, and I'm sure they have been able to trace that.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Do you think IED is due to nature or nurture?

MR. BLANKLEY: Oh, there's no doubt in my mind that, you know, 30,000 years ago the cavemen who were driving their cars down the road --

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: Do you think --

MR. BLANKLEY: -- you know, that that's where it evolved in our genes.

MR. MCLAUGHLIN: What about nurture, lack of socialization?

MR. BLANKLEY: Look, some people are angry. Others aren't.

Nice Shades, Blindy

I read this nugget this morning and had to share:

Remember last month when President Bush was in Florida and he spoke at an event and afterwards told a man in a wheelchair "You look mighty comfortable"?
Well Mr. Observant topped himself yesterday when he chided Los Angeles Times reporter Peter Wallsten about his sunglasses. Here was the exchange between Bush and Wallsten...

THE PRESIDENT: Yes, Peter. Are you going to ask that question with shades on?

W: I can take them off.

THE PRESIDENT: I’m interested in the shade look, seriously.

W: All right, I’ll keep it, then.

THE PRESIDENT: For the viewers, there’s no sun. (Laughter.)

W: I guess it depends on your perspective. (Laughter.)

THE PRESIDENT: Touche. (Laughter.)

Lots of laughter, but what's not so funny is Mr. Wallsten is afflicted with a rare hereditary disease called Stargardt's which affects both eyes, leading to variable levels of central vision loss. So... um... yeah... he sorta prefers those shades Mr. Bush, and good luck with those approval ratings. By the way Wallsten has been covering the President for quite some time, his look shouldn't have been new to the Commander-in-Chief. Doesn't anyone brief this twat anymore?

Karaoke Dog and Pony

Upon exercising today, I was listening to U2's Vertigo. I've made a strange discovery, but I could swear that Bono says the word "Chazbot" in the chorus. Either I am crazy or he's a HUGE fan of Mork and Mindy. This got me thinking. How many times have we heard a song and inadvertently sung the lyrics incorrectly? Here are a few that always make me laugh...

Journey's: Don't Stop Believin'
Misheard Lyrics:
A singer in a smokey room
Snow White and sleep with you.
Original Lyrics:
A singer in a smokey room
Smell of wine and cheap perfume.

Dylan's: Shelter From The Storm
Misheard Lyrics:
Nothing really matters much
It's do 'em alone that counts.
Original Lyrics:
Nothing really matters much
It's doom alone that counts.

Modern English': I'll Melt With You
Misheard Lyrics:
I'll stop the world and Albert Hugh.
Original Lyrics:
I'll stop the world and melt with you.

Filter's: Take A Picture
Misheard Lyrics:
Awake your Maya queen.
Original Lyrics:
Awake on my airplane.

Hands down, I think the most popular misheard lyrics in history has to go to:
Manfred Mann's Earth Band's: Blinded By The Light
Misheard Lyrics:
'N she was blinded by the light
Racked up like a douche, you know, the runner in the night.
Original Lyrics:
And she was blinded by the light
Revved up like a deuce, another runner in the night.

Employee of the month club

I wish I'd thought of this...
Stanley Bing has written a book on the 100 most ridiculous occupations (well, he really refers to them as bullshit jobs and come to think of it, I am sure we all know several people who have one). Here's just a few of from his list:
1. Cleaning aquariums for the rich (NYC Mayor Bloomberg apparently has three of these guys working for him).
2. Pet Therapist
3. Road Kill Collector (mostly because it's seasonal and doesn't give steady work. Then again, who the hell wants the job anyway?).
4. Crumb Collector (these are the guys that work in your local restaurant and do little else but come by your table to rid it of your left over food stuffs with some device made especially for this task).
5. Closet Organizer (I take offence to this one. I pride myself on being a great closet organizer and would love it if someone paid me for my services. It's a lost art, as far as I am concerned).
6. Human Billboard (There's a guy out there, who you might remember from the news, think it was last year some time, who sold the space on his forehead to some ad company. Talk about entrepreneurial!)
7. Cable News demagogue (This one had me laughing aloud, as Tucker Carlson was voted amongst those having a really bullshit job and getting paid a lot to do it...I read somewhere that he wasn't too happy about making the list).

Purple noise

Ian Astbury and Jim Morrison are alive and well and living in Myles Haskett, Chris Ross and Andrew Stockdale, also known as the super group from Aussie land, WolfMother.
Last night they appeared on Letterman's Late Show and threw down a legendary cock-rock performance.
Their sound is reminiscent of Zepplin, Sabbath, the aforementioned Cult, Doors and throw in a little AC/DC for good measure.
Air guitar enthusiasm abound when you watch and listen to this trio.
I am running out to buy this CD, today!

Truck Stop Chic

It's been an age since I tuned in to watch The Late Show with David Letterman. When I heard that My Morning Jacket was going to perform with 13 members of the Boston Pops, conducted by the infamous Keith Lockhart, I promptly set the VCR. In rehearsal prior to last night's performance, the brilliant front man for the band, Mr. Jim James, stood on the Symphony Hall stage for the first time and had one important question to ask the Boston Pops. Were you guys planning to wear standard attire for Letterman? Actually, the Pops were considering dressing down, emulating My Morning Jacket's gruffy, "truck-stop chic". But they could be persuaded to stick with the elegant concert attire. Great!, James said, because we're thinking of renting tuxedos, just to sort of class it up. And "class it up" they did!
They performed a spine-tingling version of Gideon from their much praised CD, Z.
James' voice soared and roared, as the band played on. It was as if he was channeling some divine spirit as he belted out the lyrics with his eyes closed the entire time. Drummer Patrick Hallahan looked like a veritable cross between Animal from the Muppets and Janice Joplin. It was a five minute treat I will not soon forget.

Frugal Felon

Yesterday, in broad daylight, a 34-year-old lady lawyer was kidnapped by an armed abductor in Birmingham, Alabama, forced to drive off with him. For some reason, the guy takes the woman to a Comfort Inn. He walked in alone and asked for a room. A staff member checks him in, takes a copy of his driver`s license / ID, and then gives him the room key and he takes off.
When I read this story, I thought, ok, nothing odd about this scenario (disturbing, yes, but not out of the ordinary. After all, this is America). This type of thing probably happens more often than we'd like to admit. Except here's the kicker: The guy checked in using a coupon! When the hotel clerk realized that she didn't have rooms available for that rate, she gave him the next up from the coupon rate. This had me wondering. Where did the coupon come from? Was it in the paper, a flyer, what? The kidnapper had a coupon and he was using it during a kidnapping!
With tax and all, it was $70.15 for the room. Thankfully the guy was apprehended in the end and the woman was, amazingly, unharmed. I wonder if he was a former client of hers, or worse yet, someone that she prosecuted. That part of the story is still under investigation. Bizarre!

Hair raising

The Da Vinci Code, which took in $240 Million in it's opening weekend, despite it's lack lustre reviews, wasn't enough to keep the jokes about Tom Hank's hair away. In watching The Soup, our witty host Joel McHale performed, with a silhouette of Hank's hair and had this oh so hilarious exchange:

Joel: So, creepy hair cut, what was it like making Tom Hanks look like a spooky Goth insurance adjuster?

Hair: Well, you know, I couldn't have done it alone. It took teams of people to make Tom Hanks look like he just got off a shift as a line cook at the iHop.

Joel: Any regrets in making Tom Hanks look like an elderly troll doll who just dunked his head in Wesson oil?

Hair: None whatever! It was a total pleasure making Tom Hanks look like the creepy old guy at a White Stripes concert.

Joel: Well, congratulations on making Tom Hanks look like an out of work carny.

Hair: Much love!

Harmful if swallowed

Last night was an experience in dining that I simply wish to forget. I took my special friend to a family style Vietnamese restaurant that until now, my family and I have always enjoyed. It was a rainy evening and this place is tucked away off the beaten poser path that is our respective neighborhoods. When the meals came, it took literally two seconds for us both to surmise that it just wasn't on. The soup, as starters tasted like nothing more than salty bath water. When the main meals arrived, his plate looked like it had two dirty insoles laying across a mound of rice. The last straw was when our hostess put mine down in front of me, I think my nose did an actual recoil. It smelled like the noodles had been sauteed in Vim lemon cleaner. You've never witnessed anything quite so objectionable. Well, maybe the scent of the Valerian Root pills I am now taking to calm my nerves. That my friends, smells of ass!
As my special friend put it, if this place had been reviewed by local food critic, Helen Rochester, it would have been shut down!
As a result of our disastrous meal, we left there and headed to a joint, smack in the middle between our two hoods and had the largest, most delicious burgers this city has to offer. It was a dining delight. I am now, as punishment for my heinous choice, not allowed to pick a place to eat for at least one week. Phew!

Dealing with the devil

Former Enron chiefs Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling were convicted of conspiracy to commit securities and wire fraud in one of the biggest business scandals in U.S. history. The verdict put the blame for the demise of what was once the US's seventh-largest company squarely on its top two executives. It came in the sixth day of deliberations following a trial that lasted nearly four months. Lay was also convicted of bank fraud and making false statements to banks in a separate trial related to his personal banking. Lay was convicted on all six counts against him in the trial with Skilling. Skilling was convicted on 19 of the 28 counts against him, including one count of insider trading, and acquitted on the remaining nine. The former corporate titans are now felons facing years in prison after being convicted of running an elaborate fraud that gave the company a glamorous illusion of success.
No doubt these two will waste years in the appeals process. And, in the end, their last days will be spent in Club Fed, playing racketball and taking saunas to ease their guilty consciences well into old age. Bastards!

Damage Control

In reading men's magazine Toro, I came across this little ditty and had to share:

I’ve been pursuing a woman for a while now and when I finally got her in bed I was a little too in-toxicated to perform. So I attempted to give her pleasure by other means . . . suffice to say I won’t be playing the saxophone for a while. I got really into it, and it lasted over an hour. Now I’m worried she might think I have an oral fixation. Or, worse, she may assume I’m impotent since I never explained my problems getting it up that night. I really like this girl and want to see her again but I feel like I’ve painted myself into a corner.

Unfortunately, your approach falls prey to a number of common misconceptions: 1) That sex, to be good, should go on a long, long time. (I don’t blame you for this one, I blame Sting.) But I think the opposite is, in fact, true: Anything over ten minutes probably isn’t savage enough to be hot; 2) People should be “unself-ish” in bed. Wrong again. The best sex, in my opinion, is characterized by selfishness and greed; 3) Women, like men, find oral sex an acceptable substitute for the real thing. Wrong again. She craves steak and you’re giving her tofu. You were limp, but you overcompensated. When confronted with this problem, far better to do what legendary boozer Charles Bukowski always did: roll over, facing the wall, and say, “Sorry, baby, too much to drink.” Then spring a “morning glory” upon her the next day. Oh, and if the problem persists – like, even when you’re sober or only a little drunk – see a doctor.

Reveling in magic

What can I say, I am in love!
Jim James is his name and he fronts the wondrous band, My Morning Jacket.
I am forever stuck in the beauty of his gifted voice and their love of reverb. As far as I can hear, no one does it better. Their live act has been touted as "blistering". Although I've only had the pleasure of seeing them perform on Austin City Limits earlier this year, I would have to agree. It was simply brilliant. Recently, I had the supreme pleasure of hearing Mr. James sing Steam Engine, which he performed at the Rolling Stone studios, solo. It was, as my special friend would say, "H.M." (hauntingly melodic).
Two more reasons to love Jim James are based solely on his views of religion and his love of all things, The Muppet Show. The one thing that struck me about Jim is his vision. He lives in this world of nonstop creativity where he can take everyday experiences and make them into something magical. Take his passion for the Muppets and the fact that he truly believes that it was much deeper than just for entertainment value. It's widely known now, from interviews he's given, that James found an early musical influence by watching Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem on The Muppet Show. Listen closely, you'll hear the similarities all over his music (not to mention the fact that he sometimes even sounds like a Muppet himself, in this case, it's not a bad thing at all). Nearly every interview he's ever given about My Morning Jacket has included some earnest reference to Jim Henson. "The Muppet Show was a really musical thing. Music was the thread that tied it all together. It was all about comedy and acting, but it still had heart and it was sad sometimes. There never has and there never will be anything like it. Somebody asked me what my goal was and what my dreams were. My ultimate dream would be to reach some kind of pinnacle of perfection like Jim Henson did of melding sound with vision and art. Something that can appeal to kids and adults and everybody alike to have that much of a positive impact. I think that show radiated so much mystery and positivity all at once and I want to feel like we are that kind of force on earth too. I love music and I love what we are doing, and I am very proud of it and I hope that it can grow into something more powerful for different kinds of people. Jim Henson really knew what he was doing." One of the things that James loves about Henson is that he never made a distinction between appealing to an adult and appealing to a child. He's oft been known to get lost in the emotion of writing songs. He's been known to say that he lives for those moments. It is when, in his opinion, the presence of God passes through him. "I think that force, for me, is religion. It's why I play music. We'll play some shows and most of them are pretty good and then some of those shows are the greatest thing that ever happened to us. And that is God. It's the same force that made the Rolling Stones good for so long and then made them start sucking." James' spirituality is to a point where prayer is part of his daily routine. He usually does this in the shower. Though he was raised Catholic, James gave up on organized religion right around the time he began playing music. He refuses to put a name on his beliefs, but whenever he's asked in interviews if he believes in God, the answer he usually provides is one word: absolutely. While their songs aren't specifically about this sort of divinity-as-discovered-through-rock-music, there is a remarkable sense of enlightenment to them. They make soul music in the most literal sense. It's both uplifting and unautobiographical with that same innocence you find in every character on the Muppet Show. Anyone who's philosophies come close to matching that of my own, well, what's not to love?

Lust for life

So, after what I can only consider the most hellish week at work, I did a little soothing of the soul with friends last night over dinner. I sat with the wonderboys at King Marketing and my Saturday Friend in a booth that soon filled with all manner of Asian delights, along with a little vino to seal the deal. The conversation ranged through a veritable hodge podge of topics and my head was spinning from the stimulation. Hanging with these friends was just the medicine I needed. At the end of the night, our gracious host brought us our fortunes all wrapped in shiny cellophane. Number one rule: when reading your little white ribbon of paper, from the sweet hardened shell, you must end it with these two words "in bed".
Here is what ours said:

1. Your own path is best (in bed).
2. A thrilling time is in your immediate future (in bed).
3. People find it difficult to resist your persuasive manner (in bed).

finally...and I swear I am not making this up...

4. You will be fortunate in everything you put your hands to (in bed).

Ah! The glories of humor.

American Dreamz

Top ten reasons I am happy NOT to be an American:

1. Dubya will be President until 2008, giving him just enough time to seal the fate of all Americans against the Middle East and Korea.

2. I couldn't live in a country where the Vice President is able to shoot someone in the face, NOT serve any time for it...and the victim apologizes to HIM!

3. The NSA can wire tap law abiding citizens phones and it's ok.

4. The average age of a soldier / marine is 19.

5. Inadequate healthcare.

6. 65% of Americans are Obese.

7. 25% of the homeless in America are between the ages of 25 and 34 years old.

8. The INS are completely antiquated and the national guardsmen are used to patrol the borders for illigal and dangerous immigrants... from Mexico?

9. Miami ranked highest amongst all the states in the US for illiteracy, an incredible 63% and there is no plan in the works to rectify this.

10. The national debt is $40 Trillion plus and the Chinese are their number one financiers.

I could go on, but you get the point.

The slur of talent

Tom Hanks played host for the 8th time last night on SNL.
Most of the monologue was meant to showcase his newest film, The Da Vinci Code.
Best moment of the night, when Fred Armesen (playing a priest) asks the question "what's with your hair?". I nearly fell off my chair. Since the Oscars, that's pretty much been the only thing I wanted to ask as well. Hanks actually said he'd grown it out for the movie. That he quite liked it. To which Fred responded "Really?".
Hanks later in the show plays a sweaty, overbearing, out of shape, loser that attends a yoga class, wearing big sweat pants, a ratty tee and fro that's straight out of the 70's. During the course of the session, he's paired with a horrified Rachel Dratch and they are, along with the class, instructed to part take in the most uncomfortable and ridiculous positions. As his sweat seems to spread, he eventually drips onto his partner, making the skit side splittingly hilarious.
Worst moment of the night, having to watch the Red Hot Chili Peppers. It was, in a word, embarrassing.

Drowning Glory

So, as is the insanity of celebrity, we are now being subjected to illusionist David Blaine (more like David Lame) submerging himself in water, encased in a spherical orb outside Manhattan's Lincoln Center.
WTF? WHY? WHO CARES? He's already irritated us with his myriad of other stunts, such as climbing into a glass coffin to be buried alive or enclosing himself in a chunk of ice for 60 hours or my personal fave, hanging himself over the Thames in the UK for 44 days. Oh, how I wished the cables had given way on that one. He actually prefaced this latest asinine stunt to the public and press by stating: failure means I will drown and you all will see something pretty insane.
What's that they say about self fulfilling prophecies?

Off their tacos

Mexican President Vicente Fox will sign a bill that would legalize the use of nearly every drug and narcotic sold by the same Mexican cartels he's vowed to fight during his five years in office. The list of illegal drugs approved for personal consumption by Mexico's Congress last week is enough to make one dizzy — or worse.
Cocaine. Heroin. LSD. Marijuana. PCP. Opium. Synthetic opiates. Mescaline. Peyote. Psilocybin mushrooms. Amphetamines. Methamphetamines. And the per-person amounts approved for possession by anyone 18 or older could easily turn any college party into an all-nighter: half a gram of coke, a couple of Ecstasy pills, several doses of LSD, a few marijuana joints, a spoonful of heroin, 5 grams of opium and more than 2 pounds of peyote, the hallucinogenic cactus.
In the immortal words of Jon Stewart: Spring break will never be the same!

Pentecostal Power

Tens of thousands of Christians from around the world have flooded into Los Angeles to celebrate the 100th anniversary of the Azusa Street revivals, a series of prayer meetings that helped launch the modern Pentecostal movement. Until about two years ago, I knew virtually nothing about this Catholic based faith. As I've written several times before, I am a huge fan of Joel Osteen, the young charismatic orator at Lakewood Church. He too is a Pentecostal. No, not the speaking in tongues fanatic type, nor does he part take in the stereotypical touch on the head and fainting theatrics (and there are many among this sect). Amazingly enough, today, it's estimated that nearly one quarter of all the Christians in the world are part of the Pentecostal movement, which emphasizes the power of the Holy Spirit. Pentecostal talk about what Jesus does for them, they talk about how he can bless them. It's clear that kind of message can sometimes be perverted to become a very selfish one. There is great controversy around the teaching of a prosperity gospel that says God will give health and wealth to the faithful. Rightfully so. No one wants to hear about a religion that is based on greed and self importance. This is why many Bishops and evangelicals, upon this anniversary, are gathering to discuss the need to lose that grasp of the past, address the misconceptions, and ultimately concentrate on improvements that would lead to the continuing success of their movement.

Zionists at the gate

Earlier this week, three nearly simultaneous explosions rocked the Egyptian resort city of Dahab on Monday, killing at least 23 people and wounding more than 150.
Michael Scheuer, an expert on Middle East terrorism, told CBS Evening News anchor Bob Schieffer, in commenting on the attack deployed at the height of the tourist season in Egypt, that this would seriously set back Egypts economy, as the only sources of money that Egypt has is from tourism and the billions of dollars that the US gives them to pretend that they don't hate the Israelis.
Terrorist attacks have killed nearly 100 people at several tourist resorts of Egypt's Sinai region in the past two years.

Cracks in the surface

I read some place that Pearl Jam will soon hit the road to support the forthcoming release of their self-titled 8th album. The tour's first leg will kickoff May 9th in Toronto and continue until June 3rd in NJ. This got me thinking. Will little Eddie Mueller (bet you didn't know that was Mister Vedders real name...thank you Rolling Stone for revealing that little nugget so many years ago...I am still laughing) and company be capable of keeping up their energy levels for the duration? After catching the brothers grunge performance on SNL a few weeks back, it seriously begged the question. I must say, Eddie still provides on many levels, the essentials visually speaking, though he's clearly looking a little older in the face (aren't we all). This aside, the strains and pains that were being emitted from his face and voice whilst singing had me wincing with every passing lyric from his lips. The boy has pipes (no, not in the same manner as his friend Chris Cornell), but it was, nonetheless, painful to watch. The boys don't move like they used to either and the requisite jumping up and down with guitar in hand and runners on feet just didn't look quite right. The spring in their step has now been reduced to a charlie-horse in the leg. The music itself was pitiful, I couldn't listen at all. The new album has 13 songs, which makes me very weary. I've always thought of Eddie's voice as memorably muscular and the groups songwriting consistently strong, creating songs with big echoey sounds. They always gave impassioned performances and if Ten were the only album they'd ever made or sang live, I'd still be satisfied. Some prefer to think of them as legends of the alternative grunge scene and I am inclined to leave it that way.

Jesus Quarterly

It's Easter Sunday, the papers and the airwaves are filled with images of Jesus.
I turn on the tv and there before me, is Jesus Christ Superstar, the smash musical from 1973. At the time, I was only 8 years old, so I didn't really pay that close attention to it or it's lead. Now that I am grown, I can take a moment to make an observation or ask a question or two. In this version, Jesus is characterized as a stunning but discontented hippie, prone to strong emotions and outbursts of passion. In Gibson's Passion, our Jesus was above average in looks with piercing blue eyes and a shock of black hair, a toned carpenters body, wreaking of masculinity and power.
It occurred to me the other day that every portrayal we have ever seen, whether in print, stained glass or film, Jesus is always viewed as "hot". Why? Is there any proof of this in the bible? (Old or New Testament) Was he really that good looking? Is this a ridiculous question? Are we once again putting too much emphasis on looks? Is this what influences people over words? I did some checking and here's what I found:
Our earliest written source, the New Testament, tells us nothing about Jesus' appearance: It never mentions the color of Jesus' eyes, the length of his hair or his beard, his height, his weight or any other physical attribute. So some early Christians turned to the Old Testament to find clues to how the messiah should look. The contrasting descriptions they found might be the source for the belief that Jesus should be depicted two distinct ways. The second-century church fathers Justin Martyr and Origen point to Isaiah 53 as evidence that Jesus was unattractive: "He [the messiah] has no form nor glory, nor beauty when we beheld him, but his appearance was without honor and inferior to that of the sons of men." At the same time, Origen and others cite the portrayal of God in Psalm 45 as testimony that Jesus was the "most handsome of men" (Psalm 45:2).Additionally: He grew up before him like a tender shoot, and like a root out of dry ground. He had no beauty or majesty to attract us to him, nothing in his appearance that we should desire him.
Isaiah 53:2 (New International Version)
I look at it this way, it's possible that it's easier to believe that Jesus was above average in looks and this is what endeared him to his followers. It's widely agreed that attractive people have a broader influence on society. Christian artists appropriated pagan figure types (Gods)in their portayals of Jesus, therefore transforming their meaning and how we have come to view him. In his beardless portraits (this is not widely how we see him), Jesus bears a striking physical resemblance to certain junior or transitional pagan gods, including Apollo, Dionysus, Hercules, the sons of Jupiter and other semi-divine heroes who are associated with working wonders, shepherding souls through the underworld, bringing light from the darkness, being born through miraculous or divine conception, or dying and then rising again. The resemblance is so strong that art historians have at times been unsure whether an image depicts Jesus or a pagan deity.
So, in image and text we find two contrasting images of Jesus: youthful/mature and handsome/ugly. But what do they mean?
One possibility, as art historian Thomas Mathews of New York University's Institute of Fine Arts, puts it, is that the two images show Jesus as winner in a clash between the pagan and Christian gods. By subsuming the attributes of the young and old pagan gods, Jesus triumphs over both. He is everything they are, but more and all rolled into one divine being. Therefore, the art presents Jesus as both Jupiter and Apollo, both Serapis and Dionysus and greater than them all.
Augustine suggested a second possibility, that everyone has a different image of Jesus. He wrote: The physical face of the Lord is pictured with infinite variety by countless imaginations, though whatever it was like he certainly had only one. Nor as regards the faith we have in the Lord Jesus Christ is it in the least relevant to salvation what our imaginations picture him like. What does matter is that we think of him as a man.
Perhaps it's true then, people saw in him exactly what they wanted to, in that, he represented everything they were not and therefore, his word had greater influence over them. Afterall, he brought salvation and healing into peoples lives. Was it the color of his eyes that accomplished this? Could it have been the muscles in his arms? The tan of his skin? His chiseled features? Were his disciples so drawn to him simply because of his gaze? Perhaps for all of these reasons, perhaps none. If thinking of him as good looking helps, then I am all for it. Afterall, if we were to be repulsed by the divine, that would be the perfect definition of irony.

The great escape

If you ever needed solid proof that heaven exists on earth, you need look no further than Gorillaz.
I have watched, a record number of times now, the Demon Days Live DVD and I simply can't get enough. As you all know from reading my many praises for this ensemble project, it really doesn't get any better than this. Their performance at the Manchester Opera House can only be described in one way: awe inspiring.
Every song is exploited in the best possible sense of the word. The visual effects that accompany every track are works of art and if ever there was an album that sounded better live, it's this one. The cast of guest singers and performers are a sight to behold and a treat for the ears. Stand out moments are brought to us by the kids choir from Parkland & Newall Green School's of Manchester with their expert funky rendition of Dirty Harry and by far, the best part of the evening is when the gospel choir from Manchester sing Don't get lost in heaven. Oh! but you will! And, close to the end of the evenings performance, Damon finally comes out of the dark and accompanies the brilliant chinese zither player, Zeng-Zhen to sing the beautiful Hong Kong.
With that, you'll have to excuse me whilst I go watch it again...

Crushing perspective

In discussing the devastating earthquake in Kashmir, privatisation Minister Altaf Saleem has stated the following:
There is a unique opportunity to rebuild a region and improve standards of living within the area. Six thousand schools need to be rebuilt. Eight hundred medical facilities, including basic health units, bigger hospitals and there are two universities that need rebuilding. A lot of money will also go to the transportation sector. We have to rebuild some bridges, some roads and some water works. In all of this, you have to realize that this infrastructure was built in some 58 year time frame and collapsed in something like 58 seconds and people expect that it would all be rebuilt in 58 days! It has to take longer.
This statement smacks so harshly of sobering perspective that suddenly, any problem that I thought was insurmountable, well, you know...

Cut of the jib

Top Gear was in fine form this weekend.
In reviewing Honda's answer to a mini four by four, the Element (which is currently not available for sale in the UK, because, apparently, the UK has more than enough good cars to choose from), our host, the brilliant James May, dubbed this vehicle in the exact same manner as me, it's a love child of the Range Rover and a Nike trainer (running shoe).
So, to get a true opinion, James decides to take it to a place for a tough test, as Honda's, by and large, aren't considered very cool within the UK and the average age of a Honda driver is well (as he hesitates) OLD!.
He takes the Element to the British epicenter of old, in Eastbourne to the Guildredge Park Bowling Club, which was founded in 1920 by Sir Frances Drake.
Most of it's members do actually drive Honda's and he wanted to see if they'd deem this thing "cool" or "uncool" (secretly he wanted them to hate the thing, therefore making it perfectly salable within the UK).
After several observations and comments were given on the over all look and feel of the vehicle, he chimes in with this prize winner:
Moment of truth: would the Element be a car for the people who like hip-hop or for people waiting for a hip-op?
The consensus was a resounding: yes. It was official, it's a COOL HONDA!

Picadilly Palare

It's been precisely 24 years since I was introduced to Steven Patrick Morrissey.
I remember it so clearly, as I thought my heart would explode when I first heard his lovelorn voice between my ears. Fast forward to 2006 and we still have the supreme pleasure of listening to a now noted god-father of alternative rock. I love the idea that he's still singing with the same level of torment and despair he did all those years ago. His latest offering is Ringleader of the Tormentors. Eight albums into his renaissance and we find our Moz still at the top of his lyrical game. Fittingly, this entire cd is much more orchestral than past projects. The second track: Dear God, Please Help Me is totally self pitying. The albums centerpiece, Life is a Pigsty (which no doubt mirrors quite aptly how our orator really feels about the state of being), begins with obvious reminders of How Soon Is Now, when it sooner rather than later, plummets into a spellbinding Prozac-comedown to the orchestra pit, with bruises as evidence. This time round, the emotions feel that much rawer. This likely speaks to his recent experiences in both love and life (we'll never really know from where he draws his inspirations). Here we have a showcase of a more familiar Morrissey turf, laid out within the titles themselves. In my mind, he will be forever thought of as the master of the once-heard-never-forgotten persuasion. If ever there was a writer who managed to sing his life, while remaining resolutely out of reach, it is Morrissey. You Have Killed Me adds new layers of both clarity and opacity to that particular glass onion. Perfectly fitting.

Morons at the gate

A mobile phone salesman was hauled off a plane and questioned for three hours as a terror suspect - because he listened to songs by The Clash and Led Zeppelin.
Harraj Mann, 24, played the punk anthem London Calling and classic rock track Immigrant Song in a taxi before a flight to London. The lyrics to both tracks made the driver fear his passenger was a terrorist.
The words of the Clash track begin: "London calling to the faraway towns, now war is declared and battle come down." And Led Zep's Immigrant Song goes: "The hammer of the gods will drive our ships to new lands, to fight the horde, singing and crying: Valhalla, I am coming!"
He said he was told he was being questioned under the Terrorism Act and his choice of music had aroused suspicions. He was 'frog-marched off the plane in front of everyone, had his bags searched and was asked 'every question you can think of'.
What the feck is wrong with people?

Faithful Minions

From the offical Demon Days Live press release:

All tickets for all five nights of Gorillaz in NYC: Demon Days Live at the Apollo sold out in less than an hour Friday morning!!!
Following a rapturously received run at the Manchester Opera House last November ( truly unbelievable, buy it, now!), the musical collaborators behind the Grammy-winning Gorillaz' album Demon Days will reconvene at Harlem's legendary Apollo Theater for five nights April 2-6 (Now I really wish I lived there). Confirmed to join Demon Days producer/Gorillaz co-creator Damon Albarn at press time are De La Soul, Ike Turner, Bootie Brown of the Pharcyde, Neneh Cherry, Happy Mondays' Shaun Ryder, UK rapper Roots Manuva, with others to be announced. Lucky lucky!

Unmentionables

So, I am sat in the lounge of my favorite client, who just happen to be in the menswear business and I am face to face with the March issue of Gentlemans Queerly, erm, I mean, Quarterly, with one outrageously handsome Matthew Fox on the cover. I started to make my way through the pages and came upon the adverts for Dolce & Gabbana. I did the comic double take, squinted my eyes down to a size that would better help me to adjust to what I was now being confronted with. A few sobering seconds later and I finally realized that what I was seeing was in fact real and not something my sick twisted perverted mind had made up. I spotted several full page ads that had many beautiful dudes, sat around in their homo-erotic habitat, wearing all manner of the designer gear.

It starts with a suited model clearly pulling down his zipper behind a table. As the oiled up guy with his hand down his pants undoubtedly undresses the reader with his eyes on the next page, the last setting showcases a man with his pants down to the ground. Did I mention that the photo is from the thigh down? But not low enough, as the photographer makes sure we catch a glimpse of his under carriage. Oh, and the guy behind him in his underwear is just an innocent bystander.
Now that you've been verbally provoked to go out and purchase this month's issue, I merely question the purpose. Though GQ is viewed by men, women, hetero and homosexual alike, isn't there a universal line for tasteless? A few months ago it was pubic hair greeting the reader out of the D&G underwear, so what's next for April?

Perhaps these guys were all sitting around waiting for their next orgasm, I don't know. I lost the plot after about two minutes of looking at these ads. As my special friend would likely say: "cheque please!"

Parried Opinions

As is my usual Sunday ritual, I tuned in to some political programming on public television, after a long hiatus. The McLaughlin Group was on in full form today. In discussing Donald Rumsfeld, there are rumors that he may be on the way out. Maureen Dowd at the NY Times had this to say, Rummy does not hold the same sway in meetings anymore. He's treated as an eccentric old uncle who is ignored!
When asked about Dowd, Rummy dismissed her with a sneer when being interviewed at a White House Press conference, if you believe everything you read in Maureen Dowd, you better get a life!
In viewing this, John McLaughlin waited to comment on the actual remark, as something else was weighing on his mind. He quipped this nugget (which really cracked me up) "Do you think that Rumsfeld has new teeth? Did you see that? That wasn't a smile! That was a ricktus!". As is the case each Sunday, he was surrounded by his political posse, including invited guest Edward Luce of the London Financial Times who had this to say in response: "I don't know him well enough to make that judgment and as a British person, I'm told I am not allowed to comment on American teeth". Brilliant!

Audio Pumping

This is so cool: Pump Audio is a Hudson Valley, New York-based company that helps independent musicians and artists who are on small labels, or no label, get paid for their art. The company provides hard drives full of music to harried production teams at networks such as MTV and Spike TV.
Steve Ellis, Pump Audio's CEO, started the company in 2001, after a development deal as a musician with Columbia Records convinced him he would never make enough money to raise a family. After he licensed one of his band's songs for a commercial and made "a couple grand," Ellis began representing friends who had music but mostly weren't signed to labels. Check it out.

Answers to everything unnecessary

Another blogger posted these "meme's" on my comments page, so I'll do my best to answer them:

01) Someone who is likely to sue or someone who is likely to be sued?
Answer: We live in the most litigious times in history. Ambulance chasing lawyers are a dime a dozen and there are more reality law/ court shows on TV than ever before. I'd much rather see the taxpayers money go to a useful cause than for it to be tied up in the legal system's mumbo-jumbo and lining fat lawyers/judges pockets.

02) Apt to see David Hasselhoff in concert or apt to see John Tesh in concert?
Answer: Apt to kill myself first.

03) Likely to wait for an opportunity to say 'no thanks' to a telemarketer or likely to just hang up on them?
Answer: Hanging up on them assumes that I would answer in the first place. Call display has it's merits.

04) Apt to see Madonna in concert or apt to see Celine Dion in concert?
Answer: See question 02.

05) Green beer or corned beef?
Answer: If I knew what "green beer" was, I'd be better equipped to reply to this one.

06) Apt to see Bryan Adams in concert or apt to see Billy Joel in concert?
Answer: I've got to be a sarky bitch on this one in replying to the person that posed these queries to me in the first place: do us all a favor, throw out your record collection and start over.

07) Loving home made pizza (for the cost savings) or loving delivery pizza (for the professional taste)?
Answer: The only place to eat pizza is in an authentic Italian restaurant, prepared by someone named Luigi. Otherwise, it's all dogfood.

08) Apt to see Duran Duran in concert or apt to see INXS in concert?
Answer: Duran Duran used to get me wet! Now they'd be more likely to cause a desert storm. INXS is useless without Michael and seeing them on TV last year in their reality show was like a smack in the face. Now we know what happens to washed up rockers...They get old before your eyes, they puff up beyond recognition and they sell out in the saddest ways possible.

09) One who believes that the RIAA/MPAA are properly and rightfully protecting their content or one who believes they are scum-sucking, litigation-happy bastards?
Answer: File sharing and downloading music off the net shouldn't be considered a criminal offence. Once the music is out there in the ether, we should be able to do with it what we like. Cary Sherman is seriously unreasonable. He'll never catch everyone for piracy and making an example of a few zit faced teeny-boppers isn't going to change a damn thing.

10) Apt to see Bono in concert or apt to see Sting in concert?
Answer: Bono is too busy traveling in his political soap box and handing off his signature sunglasses to Popes and other dignitaries. As for Sting, let him and Trudy keep the kamasutra going and his gob shut.

Penny for your thoughts

What is a meme?
People often ask, "What is a Meme?" so here's more than a little information on that. I pronounce it so it's rhymes with dream; some pronounce it so it sounds like mem (from mem-ory).
In the context of web logs / 'blogs / blogging and other kinds of personal web sites it's some kind of list of questions that you saw somewhere else and you decided to answer the questions. Then someone else sees them and does them and so on and so on. I generally consider these to be actual questions and not some multiple choice quizzes that determine some result at the end (what color you are most like, what cartoon character are you, what 80s movie are you...YAWN!)

Are you more...

01) A harsher critic of others or a harsher critic of yourself?
Answer: Definitely a much harsher critic of myself. I'm painfully self-aware.

02) One who thinks stealing is the bigger sin or one who thinks lying is the bigger sin?
Answer: Stealing? Well, it's all material, and we all know, material things are meaningless when you look at the big picture. It's what the stealing represents. Lying is always a huge motzah ball. Deception is probably the hardest thing to overcome, whether in a deep seeded relationship, work or otherwise. If you lie to someone, no matter how great or small the lie usually becomes bigger than you can imagine and if you're found out, it's an awful feeling knowing that you've let the other person down (that's if you've a conscience, then you most certainly know how it feels).

03) Fond of crayons for coloring or fond of paint for coloring?
Answer: Crayons are so strongly connected to my childhood. Paint just wouldn't cut the mustard. I still draw and I still color (inside the lines of course, I'm not a psycho!)

04) Someone who thinks they have all the tools they could need or someone who thinks you barely have the minimum number of tools to get by?
Answers: The one thing I know for sure, I've barely scratched the surface of my human potential.

05) McDonald's or Burger King?
Answer: Burger King = Creepy. McDonalds = My theory: Hamburgler and Mayor McCheese were in cahoots.

06) Obsessive compulsive or whatever happens, happens?
Answer: A little from column A and a little from column B.

07) One who enjoys the company of small children (playing with blocks) or one who enjoys the company of senior citizens (playing bridge)?
Answer: Only my special friend and my Saturday friend know the answer to this for sure.

08) Someone who will vacuum-seal food before putting it in the freezer or someone who will just put it in the freezer?
Answer: There is nothing more disgusting than freezer burned food. Just ask my mother.

09) More proud of your belches or more proud of your flatulence?
Answer: This question is just wrong on so many levels.

10) Possessed of a soothing voice or possessed or an order-barking voice?
Answer: No, just possessed.

Highway Supernova

Richard Hammond of Top Gear had this to say about a new service offered in the UK: "Spending time in traffic, we all have to do it at some point. It's no fun, we know that. However, there is this new service called Motor Flirting.
Essentially, it boils down to this: members display a discrete (yes, discrete) sticker in the back window of their car with the Motor Flirting logo on it and when they spot another member (they'll likely say "Oh! He or she looks nice") and they can contact this service, they can give them the drivers registration number so they can send text messages to that person (this no doubt means a load of FAT, UGLY blokes will be sending texts to one another without even realizing it!). I can straightaway see another use for this service: it means you can FINALLY contact people in other cars around you, on the motorway...Say, it's not foggy...Say, and somebody in front of you (or more than likely in back of you) has, let's imagine, their fog lights on...You can send them a playful little text message to the effect of "TURN THE DAMN THINGS OFF! (to the 123 year old man in the next car)..."

Insalubrious Associations

It's being reported that Tom Cruise has used his star power to influence Viacom to yank a repeat episode of South Park and their brilliant send up of Scientology (Trapped in the closet). Although Cruises people deny his involvement, Trey and Matt have already struck back in a fashion only they could come up with: "So, Scientology, you may have won THIS battle, but the million-year war for earth has just begun! Temporarily anozinizing our episode will NOT stop us from keeping Thetans forever trapped in your pitiful man-bodies. Curses and drat! You have obstructed us for now, but your feeble bid to save humanity will fail! Hail Xenu!!!"
The episode was already the center of controversy earlier this week when Isaac Hayes (Chef), a Scientologist, quit the show, decrying its religious bigotry.
It's amazing how all of this attention will do nothing more than attract people to the show. I love convenient controversy.