Category: Music

  • ODDS and ENDS: Time for Some Trust Busting, Vacation, and a Cigar

    ODDS and ENDS: Time for Some Trust Busting, Vacation, and a Cigar

    (Something Clever Goes Here…)

    Looks like Paramount is about the buy Warner Bros./Discovery, which means there will be five companies that control 51% of the media. If what the Ellison’s did to CBS is any indication of what they’ll do to WB/Discovery, then we are about to enter into a dark age. Prices will go up, coverage will be pro-conservative, service will decrease, and market share will continue to be concentrated. The good news is that this has happened before in America, and we have the tools to break all these trusts up. And I mean all the trusts; media, social media, airlines, online shopping, web services, and banking. The only thing stopping it is the will of the people. The laws are on the books, but they’ll only be enforced if we elect the right people to do it. I’m telling you, we gotta get involved before its too late, and we are getting very close to it being too late.

    I think I might vacation in West Virginia this year. Somewhere up in the Appalachian Mountains. Maybe along a river or a creek. Nothing crazy, but a cabin away from everyone and it should also be a place where it gets cool at night, like low 60’s or high 50’s. This is Summer after all. Just a thought I have been having of late.

    I haven’t smoked a cigar since college; it was after a cast party and I was feeling on top of the world. I don’t particularly like cigars or the smell, but the idea of sitting on a porch as the sun sets, smoking a cigar with a glass of bourbon in my hand sounds wonderful at this point. This might be tied in with the West Virginia vacation thing from above… but it’s on my mind.

  • Earworm Wednesday: If You Look Past the Haircut and the Butterfly Collar, This Song is Awesome!

    As a kid from the 80’s and a teenager in the 90’s, any song that slightly resembled 70’s disco or adult contempory music was just the worst. And for that reason, this song got thrown onto my own personal dustbin of awful music.

    I can now admit that was a mistake when it comes to Michael McDonald’s “I Keep Forgettin.’” This song has a way better grove and flow to it than I gave it credit for. (I mean, Warren G did sample the hell out of it for “Regulate.”) The part that gets stuck in my head is just the first line of the song, and the way McDonald just breaks up the words; a little in front, then behind the beat.

    The video is cheesy as hell, though. If you like teased and feathered hair; than have I got a video for you!

  • Earworm Wednesday: It Took A While But I Came Around to This Song and Video

    The true problem here is that I heard this song when I was a little little kid, and it just seemed so weird. The video didn’t help my understanding either, it also seemed sooo weird, too. But now that I am older, I can now see how Gary Numan was way ahead of his time in both this song’s sound and the video as well.

    What gets stuck in my head is the way Numan sings the words, “In cars…” That little inflection he does is hard to mimic, so his cadence gets stuck on replay in my brain.

  • ODDS and ENDS: The Cold That Won’t Die, Writing in a Blazer, and Tottenham Woes

    (Cryin’ never did nobody no good…)

    So, I’ve had this cold for almost a week now, but it’s not a normal cold. Stuffy nose, post-nasal drip, coughing, but I don’t feel run down like I normally do when I have a cold. Also, this cold only seems to come alive for the first two hours of my day, and then all night when I try to sleep. Other than that, I feel rather normal. But the damn thing won’t go away. It won’t get worse, and it won’t get better. It just exists in a perpetual state of being… Neither gaining nor losing energy.

    I am sitting and writing in a blazer today. No real reason to be this formal, other than I want to sit on the couch, my computer on my lap, trying to think up three jokes to write about, with a blazer on. It’s not cold in the house, and I have no one to impress, just felt like something I should do. Like, how I should put jazz on, get a glass of wine, and catch up on some reading. Hell, here’s a picture to prove that this is really happening.

    So, Thomas Frank got sacked as manager for Tottenham Hotspur this week. I think it was a mistake, yet I also freely admit that things can and will get worse for this team. They just can’t get out of their own way, and with the injuries piling up, there seems like little chance of hope. Relegation is a very real possibility. I won’t blame Frank for this, as it seems like he just has had the worst luck for a first-year manager. I put the blame for this situation on Daniel Levy and Peter Charrington. Levy created an untenable situation where the expectation is that managers are interchangeable. Honestly, the team hasn’t been the same since Mauricio Pochettino was at the helm, and he was fired for a stupid reason like not being successful enough. Sure, do wish we could go back to those days when we were in the Champions League Final and at the top of the table in the Premier League. Honestly, I don’t put it past West Ham to get enough of their act together and make a run to get out of the bottom three, and kick either Nottingham Forest or Spurs down the ladder. I don’t want to see Tottenham in the Championship, but if that’s what it will take for the owners to get their heads out of their respective asses, then so be it.

  • Earworm Wednesday: So Much Silence

    No one talks about Depeche Mode anymore. I mean, they were huge, and a big part of the early 80’s British New Wave Invasion. And then they seemed to seamlessly fit into Alt Rock early 90’s. In my group of friends, everybody loved them. This song especially was on heavy rotation with all of us. The chorus is the hook that gets in my head. No real surprise.