Don’t Get Sentimental

And I’m not just talking about this made-for-blogs (not this blog, I mean real blogs) number right here. As a side note, when I first saw the headline and link that read “Mexican beauty queen, 7 men arrested,” I was certainly not anticipating reading about a drug cartel. I had only hours earlier watched Clerks 2, so I naturally assumed that this beauty queen and the dudes with her were somehow involved in a traveling donkey show. Are all donkey shows of the traveling variety? I don’t think it would make sense to keep them in one spot. Honestly, how quickly does that market become saturated, in more ways than one? And how quickly will the fuzz get on that, in more ways than I care to count?

Back to the point of this post. Now, I rarely read this blog. It’s one of those not wanting anything to do with a club that would have you as a member. I don’t want to look up the quote. And there’s more proof about me being a shitty blogger, in no more ways than one.

Tonight was different. I browsed the DGS offerings, if for nothing else than to distract myself from the writing I was supposed to be doing for work, and to bask in a little schadenfreude. That’s my new favorite word, by the way. In my browsing, I came across Marcelo’s little stitch-up on Wild n’ Out and Lil’ John. I know I’m missing some apostrophes in there, but hey, don’t they know there’s a recession on? I can’t go throwing those things out there all willy-nilly. I’m not here to defend my TV-watching habits. I partook in more than my share of “starring Nick Cannon” offerings. Drumline marathon on VH1? Awrite awrite. My concerns concern the comments Marcelo so ungraciously (unconcernedly?) threw out concerning Food Network personalities. Yes, Paula Dean is quite loathsome, y’all. But, the “bobble-head Italian food chick” you speak of, dear Marcelo, I do hope you aren’t referring one Ms. Giada De Laurentis, meow. Not only is she gorgeous and talented (in more ways than one), she runs a mean cooking show. How do you thumb your nose at Everyday Italian, Behind the Bash, Giada’s Weekend Getaways, Giada in Paradise and Giada at Home? What have you ever done with your life that’s so great? Where’s your line-up of hit cooking shows? Where’s your mouth so big that it looks like that monster that almost ate the Millenium Falcon in The Empire Strikes Back?

Look what you did, Marcelo. You made her try to eat her own finger. Apparently, she’s a bleeder. But, seriously, what crazy asshole authorized this photo shoot?

I believe the following is actually an artist’s rendering of Giada crushing Nick Cannon’s arrhythmic and untalented, yet wholly entertaining, heart.

And I know below this post it urges you to subscribe to the RSS feed. I can’t change that. Don’t sign up. It’s only a ticket to disappointment when we don’t post for weeks on end (during Nick Cannon marathons), and then even more biting disappointment when our posts show up in your feeder of choice and aren’t worth the bytes they’re printed on.

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There comes a time in every man’s life when he looks across the crowd at a packed casino bar with a shitty cover band playing “I will survive” and sees John Adams wearing a neck brace, sitting on a stool in the corner of the room, gazing menacingly around the room.

At that moment, I knew I had to post on this sweet blog. It was a watershed moment, a seminal moment, a moment when I realized “shit, if John Adams lived in the 21st century and for some reason wore a neck brace, he’d look like an angry assassin who had just sprained his neck while being foiled in his latest attempt at sniping whomever John Cusack was supposed to kill in Grosse Pointe Blank.”

Anyways, for some reason it inspired me to post this little snippet that I’ve been sitting on for a while…

I stopped at the Sheetz gas station on my way home from work this evening for the bare essentials (the simple bear necessities) — fierce grape gatorade, orange-strawberry gatorade, trashbags, windshield wiper fluid.

The purchases were unrelated, mostly.

I was standing in line, trying to act very cool and casual while listening to my ipod. (You may be thinking, hey, here’s the tenuous music connection. Wrong, sucker. It was a Bloomberg economics podcast I downloaded that morning. Who’s the nerd now?)

I was understandably exhausted after avoiding work for most of the time I spent at the office on Monday, and certainly all of the time I spent at various coffee shops outside of it. I spaced out, waiting for the cashier to handle this woman’s purchase of a $198 money order, paid in cash; ice cream for her kids, paid with a credit card; and $5 in gas, paid for with a different credit card.

It was then I saw a hooded figure in the doorway. Black hood, black mask. I tensed. Stephen Roach chairman and acting chief executive of Morgan Stanely, Asia, was talking about the the bailout plan on the podcast.

I dropped my fierce grape gatorade. The cap broke. It spilled. Tragedy. But, I was more worried about what my sleep-deprived mind thought was a ninja about to bust through to door. In one of those split-second slivers of time where your mind can make dozens of illogical leaps from synapse to synapse, I thought “which would better deflect a throwing star, wiper fluid or gatorade AM? The wiper fluid bottle is bigger, and the gatorade would probably make a better return volley than a shield, I figured.

I shifted my feet - left foot forward, right back slightly, putting myself in position to throw the gatorade, if the need should arise, or box with my dominant hand in the preferable cross position.

In walked the Muslim woman, wearing her black robe, hood and veil, and three little kids. No throwing stars, no gatorades in return. But it took me a moment to wipe the idioticly tense look from my face, and I got a disgusted look from the woman in return. It was all in the eyes.

So that’s the story about how I got fierce grape gatorade all over Sheetz. Also, I don’t mean to diminish the amount of bigotry and insensitivity in this country. But, couldn’t some of it be chalked up to misunderstandings like this one?

Misunderstood

PS - I was just making up annoying tags for this article and, through the auto complete feature, realized I had already used the “gatorade” and “lots of gatorade” tags. Sad, sad business.

PPS - How sweet is that “Gloria” song by Patti Smith? G-L-O-R-I-A. Woooo.

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A wise, bearded man once told me that I’m responsible for less than 7 percent of the posts on this blog. And as one of three contributors, that struck me as a tad low. So I’m back to juke the stats and pad my own numbers.

I have two things I want to address today. One is music-related, though I’ll not offer any original insight into any music of any kind. And the second is a matter of life, death and prosperity in the face of both.

The music.

A wise, mutton-chopped bartender told me the other night about The Music Genome Project at pandora.com. I’m probably way behind on this revelation. And if you already know about the site, skip this part of the post and check out the second topic below.

It’s basically a personalized radio station. You start out with one artist and it will pull up songs from that artist and then experiment with similar-sounding stuff. You give it the thumbs up or thumbs down and it redefines your palette, for lack of a better term. You can throw in your own artists to further shape your profile.

I’ve been tooling around with it for just under a half hour and it’s already pulled up half a dozen artists I would have entered (The Mountain Goats), aren’t at the top of my list about but really like (Brother Ali), or had never heard before, but enjoy (Copperpot).

The problem I’ve come across is that my bizarre, minute-by-minute swings in musical taste lead me to adding a lot of weird artists and giving the OK to far too many questionable songs. Cake anyone?

A word of warning - you can only skip so many songs in an hour.

It’s an interesting way to expand your library, kill time at work and pretend like you’re connected to the music scene. It is a little creepy, Big Brother-esque though.

Example: My station pulled up “Just What I Needed” by The Cars. Why, you ask? Pandora supplies this answer:

Based on what you’ve told us so far, we’re playing this track because it features electric guitar wall-o-sound, call and answer vocal harmony (antiphony), extensive vamping, major key tonality and electric guitar riffs.

I had no idea I like major keys as opposed to minor. I always liked to play minor scales back in my musical days. They sounded Egyptian. I guess I don’t like to listen to them. What the hell is wall-o-sound?

Adding artists to my personalized station has quickly turned into a game for me, where I try to outsmart the station and make it melt down. I got a few rap songs in a row, which were all good, but I then decided to add Johnny Cash, The Kinks and Elliott Smith to my artist list to see what it would do.

I got DJ Krush. Thumbs down. Boring as hell but since I had already skipped through a few songs I couldn’t get rid of it. I guess I could have just muted it, but I didn’t think of that until The Remains came up next. (Girl… I want … to be with you.)

Don’t fuck with the machines.

Now for the serious stuff. This is a scary time we live in. From terrorism to nuclear proliferation to stock market fluctuations to Sarah Palin, we could very well be on the brink of disaster.

So, do as the Boy Scouts do and be prepared.

Come up with a good looting plan. Have a multi-purpose weapon/smashing tool (7 iron) to fight off the hordes of panicked idiots fleeing the cities and crack open the front of your nearest Best Buy.

But don’t just fill up on flat screens. There may not be power at your house/lair. Stop by Home Depot and grab some generators. Pick up some tools and hardware to fortify your place.

And don’t forget the booze.

It’s nice to be in the rarified air above 8 percent. Feels good. Feels right.

My genome just spit out Crazy by Gnarls Barkley.

Based on what you’ve told us so far, we’re playing this track because it features gospel influences, classical influences, electronica influences, an emotional male vocal and a heavily embellished melody.

I think my genome thinks I’m gay.

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This post is a little late in making the internets, but I spent a fair amount of time piecing it all together.

But first, just a few quick asides.

I have a lot of respect for the writers of Tailspin. How many practical uses for cloudsurfing can one team of writers come up with? That takes real skill to keep Kit Cloudkicker relevant in that day and age.

And this question has been making the rounds in the NEPA speakeasies. What’s the tougher sell: In the butt or on the face? Take that femenisim, eat 1950.

Now, for my tale of Wal-Mart and woe.

I woke up Sunday afternoon on an air mattress in my sun room. The sun room is really the link between the fire escape/back stairs and my kitchen. It’s airy and pretty open to the public. There’s no lock on the door that leads to the outside. Lots of windows.

My ironing board, which is usually set up in my living room, was upside-down in my regular bed. My TV was on, but tuned to some random input setting that you only use if you have an uplink to Soviet spy satellites. Ahh, Natasha. My desk chair was on my couch. And I was joined in bed by Haynes Johnson’s latest book “Age of Anxiety.” It’s a good read. Haynes is a ridiculous dude — Pulitzer winner at The Washington Post and journo prof at UMD. He used to look like the dude from Office Space. Now he’s old and has one insane eyebrow and one slightly less insane eyebrow.

Aaaaaaanyways, I was parched. As you have probably guessed by this point, I spent a fair amount of time drinking Saturday night, and cheering for Michael Phelps in a bar. And watching a chick get her ass hit with a stripper belt (no buckle for easy release) in a bar. It’s a weird bar. Swimming is cool though.

So I rolled off the air mattress and made my way to the kitchen to find means of hydration. There’s usually not anything in my fridge except for two half-filled egg cartons that have been floating around there for at least eight months, some apples and individually wrapped American cheese slices, but I checked anyways. Lo and behold, I scrounge up an orange Gatorade. 32 ouncer. Good find. A most pleasant surprise. Sports beverage transaction benefits me today.

‘Rade in hand, I stagger through the hallway to my living room, still not entirely sure how I ended up on an air mattress in my sun room, and I discover shopping bags full of 32 oz. Gatorades in assorted flavors. There were about 30 full ones and five or six half-full ones.

After searching the bags I found the receipt from a self-checkout line in Wal-Mart. I paid 98 cents for each Gatorade. And then I apparently bought a bunch of other shit. Toilet paper (found in my trunk). Paper towels (still missing). Headphones (somehow found their way into my work bag). A few frozen pizzas (in the fridge, of course). Two pounds of potatoes (missing until later in the story). Another ironing board (still missing, presumed captured).

Best I can figure, I went to the 24-hour Wal-Mart after boozing, which I’ve been known to do, in order to pick up some toilet paper, which my apartment had been sorely lacking. Along the way, I picked up some other essentials and was easily suckered in by the swell Gatorade pricing at my favorite bargain retailer. And then I bought other shit.

Determined to find the toilet paper (two-ply, for her pleasure), I wandered out to my car and searched for about 15 minutes before I remembered I had a trunk. That’s where I found the 36 rolls of toilet paper that I was sure were hiding somewhere else in the passenger cabin. TP in hand, I hit up the bathroom, where the final aftershocks of my night were in full view. The toilet seat was ripped from its hinges and sitting in the sink. Those potatoes I mentioned earlier were on the back of the toilet, just in case I should need a raw potato while on the commode.

So, what does this have to do with music? Nothing. But while I was trying to clean up from this madness I heard two songs that I knew I had to share.

The Two Gallants are on Saddle Creek. Two dudes. Not sure if it’s Gallants as in Goofus and Gallant, or Gallant like the car. This little ditty is called Nothing to You

I first heard the song while driving around during one of my work avoidance periods last week. It was pretty sweet.

And I followed you into the party/That no one invited me to

Alone I made I made to my 40/And played make believe it was you

It’s less depressing when they sing it.

And then The Redwalls. They have this sometimes odd combination of the Beatles and The Strokes or The Killers. Lots of The’s. Kono wa They Are Among Us

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That boom you just heard was this guy breaking the blogging barrier by finally posting to this musical love fest. I don’t know much about music that you don’t already know. I do, however, have lots of time to kill at work that I sometimes spend pondering mythical blog posts. Side note: I spent most of one work day earlier this week boring three holes through a golf ball using only a thumb tack and a pair of metal scissors. I also took a two hour lunch and made a few work calls.

Anyways, forget top 10 Radiohead playlists (though I do love Radiohead) and updates on bands you’ve never heard of. I’m bringing you U.S. Census Bureau-y goodness.

I stumbled across a statistic they keep based on decennial census data called the “geographic center of the U.S. population.” Basically, if you flattened the U.S., placed equally heavy weights where every person lives and got rid of all the other garbage (buildings, mountains, etc.), the geographic center is where you could perfectly balance the map.

Expanding on this with my very limited math prowess (hardly a prowess, or even basic understanding), I figured you could draw a line through that point in any direction and exactly half the population would be on one side and half on the other.

Naturally, the thought drifted to which side would win in different scenarios, and then to which side I would pick.

My question to you readers (Dave, Marcelo) in true Risk style, is how do you orient the line and which side do you pick in a fight?

I go diagonal from the upper left hand corner to lower right and take the Northeastern side. Com sa.

(That’s me in the sweet Napoleon hat. Not to scale, except for my head.)

Rationale:

1. The Pacific Northwest is for pussies.

2. The Rockies, while scenic, really make logistics a nightmare.

3. Better transportation network in the Northeast.

4. Texas blows.

5. The Northeast holds the perfect combination of downtrodden working poor and rich intelligista to create the ultimate war machine.

6. Alaska, except for most of the Aleutian Islands, are mine. And Alaskans are bad ass.

Here’s how it looks on a map of the oldest Jewish congregations by state:

So, grab this map and do it yourself.

http://www.nightscaping.com/dealerselect1/select_images/usa_map.gif

My one musical ref, straight outta nicktpwn, on the ‘tunes: LCD Soundsystem, Someone Great

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