Random Nonsense

Segways are for the lazy.

Bicycles are for the environmentally conscious.

Hybrids are for the economically insane.

Gas-guzzlers are for those who think everyone else must be environmentally conscious.

Unicycles are for clowns and show-offs.

Helicopters are for the obscenely rich.

Teleportation is for sci-fi nerds.

Tanks are how real men get around.

The big Megadeth announcement

...means that I can no longer refer to it as "the solo project that Dave Mustaine insists on calling Megadeth."

Here is my full, honest opinion of David Ellefson: He is a talented bassist who sued Mustaine for eighteen and a half million dollars when the band broke up in 2002 (he lost). Mustaine forgave him a while ago, but I never in a million years thought he'd actually let Junior back in the band.

Here is my full, honest opinion of James LoMenzo: Dude got shafted.

I think this is the first time Dave chucked someone out to get someone else back. AC/DC did this to Chris Slade back in the early 90s, because Phil Rudd clicks with them more I guess, even though Phil was originally fired in 83 because he got in a fistfight with Malcolm Young (and possibly did something else, which I've only heard about from one source and thus won't print here). In an interview back from before 2002, Dave said Junior was the only one other than him who ever really had his finger on the pulse of the band, so it's probably a similar situation to the AC/DC example.

It's ironic that Dave, the guy Metallica said (way back in the day) was "just filling in" until Kirk showed up, seems to treat everyone other than Ellefson and (possibly) Broderick as "just filling in." (And a certain more professional blog refers to Broderick as "the latest guitarist who is not Marty Friedman.")

Still, this is pretty cool. Let's hope it lasts longer than the reunion with Chris Poland.

Edit: this would seem to indicate that LoMenzo's leaving opened the door for Ellefson's return instead of what I'd assumed, which was that Dave decided that Ellefson was coming back, which meant that LoMenzo had to go. Of course, the article doesn't quote Mustaine or LoMenzo, so it's still unclear to me what really happened.

Google Wars

Yesterday a friend and I invented Google Wars. It is something to do if you are completely bored, so come back and read this when you have literally nothing to do.

Wow, that only took, what, 30 seconds? Tops?

Anyway go to Google, click image search, and then type in 2 items (eg Tree Frog and Elephant). No "and" between them. Just "Item 1 Item 2." Then view the first page of results. If Item 2 has more hits than Item 1, Item 2 is the winner. If Item 1 has more hits, go back and type "Item 2 Item 1." If Item 2 now has more hits, it's a tie. If Item 1 still has more hits, Item 1 wins.

With this in mind I have created a tournament:

Elephant
Tree Frog

Tennis Balls
French Fries

Chicago Skyline
New York Skyline

Blue
Red

Round 1:
Elephant: 8
Tree Frog: 11

French Fries: 6
Tennis Balls: 8 plus this, which I link you to only because of its crazy name.

New York Skyline: 5 + 1 that's actually London
Chicago Skyline: 8

Blue vs Red: a result I should have predicted. (I originally had "iPod vs Cell Phone" as one of the entries, which should show how little thought I put into this.)

Subsequent attempts to find a replacement for Blue and Red:
Sprite vs Coke (tie)
Apple vs Orange (results showed apple-oranges)
Apple vs Banana (finally!)

Apple: 1 + 5 pictures with a banana
Banana: 9 + 5 pictures with an apple + 1 banana with "apple" written on it

Round 2:
Tennis Balls: 7
Tree Frog: 9 + 1 tree frog being eaten. By a person.

Banana: 0
Chicago Skyline: 19

Final Round
Tree Frog: 4
Chicago Skyline: 8

Congratulations, Chicago! You're more popular that pictures of tree frogs, New York, and bananas!

Also, congratulations Blogger spellcheck on not recognizing "iPod!"

100th Post! In Which Yours Truly Saw some Bands

The names of the bands have been withheld to protect the guilty but also because I just can't remember them. Their names, that is.

Now, this was a triple bill. This sort of thing makes it kind of hard to be objective, because if the first two bands are awful and the third is only mediocre, you're going to remember the third one as being a lot better than the first two, aren't you?

Yeah, pretty much. That's actually pretty much how it went.

The first band had five people up on stage; two guitarists, a bassist, a keyboardist and a drummer. There was no singer; one of the guitarists and the bassist shouted into the microphones a bit but because the mix was so godawful no one could make out what they were saying. It was punk with bits of musical talent showing through; three bars of power chords, one bar of synchronized single-note licks. I was less than impressed.

The second band featured a guy with a stupid haircut playing some sort of unholy cross between a Gibson Melody Maker and a Fender Stratocaster while growling into a microphone. Backing him up were the nerdiest-looking drummer I have ever seen and a bassist who was probably too talented for that noise. Their slowest song was their best one, but the guitarist's insistence on employing the "stumble around the stage and stare like a madman" approach was less than endearing.

Before I get into the third band, I'd like briefly to comment on a phenomenon I've noticed among guitarists. I'll call it the "insecurity-pretention index theory" and it basically goes like this: the further above their waist the guitar is, the more insecure the guitarist is. The further below their waist the guitar is, the more pretentious the guitarist is. Jimmy Page is the only person who pulled off being able to play guitar at his knees, and that's because he's an actual guitar hero (license him already, people). (Okay, blah blah Slash. Not really in the same league, but he deserves mentioning just cuz.) Angus Young is the only person who pulled off being able to play guitar across his chest, and it works because he's really, really short (blah blah Beatles, shut up). Angus' and Jimmy's guitars probably both hang at the same height relative to the ground (no, just kidding. Angus would have to be three feet tall for that to actually be the case).

Anyway this last band had three girls in it, which was three more girls than the other two bands had put together. Two of them played the drums, one of the drummers also played keyboards, and the third one played what at first glance appeared to be a knockoff of a Gibson Les Paul with single-coil pickups. It looked absolutely ginormous on the girl, who wore it rather high, and my first thought was, "okay, Angus Young effect. The guitar looks huge because the player is a dwarf."

Thing was actually a six-string bass. Might have been a baritone guitar but if you read this post you know what I think of baritone guitars. And since I did not find this band to be totally awful, I'd rather imagine that it was a six-string bass than acknowledge that it was probably a baritone guitar.

Two drummers, one of whom doubles as a keyboardist, and a bassist/singer. Halfway through the second song the bassist/singer stops and yells at the sound guy to turn up the microphone and the monitors. "Wow, the girl singer has more balls than either of the two guys," I thought, because the mix was simply godawful up until this point, but neither of the previous bands had particularly decent singers- no, scratch that, both the previous singers were terrible. Still, the singer with the highest-slung guitar yelled at the sound guy. My "insecurity-pretention index theory" went out the window.

So imagine lots of drums, the occasional keyboards, basslines that all sounded like Megadeth's "Peace Sells" of all things, and wailing (but I mean it in a good way) that sounds like some mournful ghost of an Egyptian Queen. Why that particular imagery, I have no idea. Suffice it to say that this was the best band of the night by a looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong shot.

And then I went back to my room and tried to get to sleep, only to have to listen to some idiot drunk girl stumble around talking to her boyfriend on her cell phone and trying to find his room.

Orion

Metal Hammer have this brilliant idea to get the Big Four to jam on Orion, and when I say "brilliant idea" I mean "post about how it's a great idea." If you're going to celebrate thrash metal, you can't not play that song at some point.

Though frankly you'd have an easier time getting them to do the song that Metallica calls "The Four Horsemen" and Megadave calls "Mechanix," because (at least) four of the eight guitarists who will be there already know it. Though they'd argue about which set of lyrics to use...

Besides, it's not like I'll be there, but even if I was I'm not sure I'd want four bassists in a genre that is all about insanely tight playing mucking up the greatest bassline Cliff Burton ever wrote.



That thing that starts at 6:36? That's a genuine bass solo, son. That's how it's done.

New Market Enterprises #2

What follows is a work of fiction. Any resemblance blah blah blah unintentional. You can find the original NME story here.

We here at New Market Enterprises have been making tremendous breakthroughs in brain manipulation. And by "have been making tremendous breakthroughs" we actually mean "we had a visitor from the future show up, stole his time machine, and stole lots of cool stuff from the future." One of these things we're calling the "Brain Blaster," but that's because our marketing department gets all their advice from their 8-year-old sons.

The gun can alter people's state of mind (as opposed to altering their perceptions of reality, this one alters their reaction to these perceptions). Our first use of it was to get Doctor Sanderson out of his closet at long last. Once we did that, we found a secret passageway at the back, but that's a story for next week.

On a particular setting, the gun increases the subject's concentration and decreases the subject's potential to be distracted. I regret to report that three members of our team starved to death after testing the gun on themselves and then reporting the effects in such minute detail that they weren't going to let a little thing like hunger distract them. We still have a lot of bugs to work out.

Again, this is not the sort of weapon that we'd like to fall into the wrong hands. Doctor Beth Fisher has been hit with it twelve times by twelve different co-workers who all tried to make her fall in love with them. We discovered further unfortunate implications when we programmed the gun to make us not want to use it for personal gain; no-one has the slightest interest in pursuing the project anymore except me, because I was in the bathroom when this decision was made and no-one had the willpower to zap me when I came back.

I have hidden the weapon. I tried to use it on Doctor Cribbins, to make him want to use the gun for humanity's greatest benefit; his head exploded. I have not endeavored to repeat the experiment, I and I would offer condolences to his family but our NME contracts clearly state that this sort of thing is expected to happen all the time. At any rate, we have more than enough tissue to put a clone together and I confidently expect Doctor Cribbins to return to us within a year. And, as I said, I hid the gun. Its capacity for good is undeniable; we can force people to vote Democrat, for example (hey, we need more federal funding. What else would you do with that money, start a war?), but we suspect that someone else may have beaten us to that one. However its capacity for evil is far greater, and every time it is used, someone's right to make up their own mind is violated.

No, just kidding, we're scientists. We're geniuses, of course we know what's better for you than you do. Now... forget you read this, and give me a raise.

(c) 2010

My very first ever radio gig was last night and I've already lied once in this post!

Because my very first radio gig was 2 years ago when we did "A Christmas Carol" live in the studio. I was Young Scrooge, a role I was born to play. And that was just my first live radio gig. Before that, in Halloween 07, we recorded "The War of the Worlds" beforehand. I was Crazy DaResistance guy near the end.

But last night was the very first time that I hosted my own radio program and had to push buttons to switch the microphones off and the music on and so forth. It went rather smoothly as first gigs go, I didn't swear on the air and I didn't insult current music too much (because I can be very generous when I want to, even going so far as to not call out artistic rot the instant I'm given a pulpit from which to do so). I had to play a current song, so I played Muse's "Uprising," it being the only thing on the new music shelf I was at all familiar with. It sounds pretty much like everything else they've done only with slighly lower vocals and a blatant ripoff of the Doctor Who theme going on in the background. But AC/DC have made a career out of making the same album over and over again, and Pink Floyd put the Doctor Who theme in "One of These Days," (2:17-2:31 in the video) so I can't complain much. Muse are one of the better bands playing today, and I wish that were saying more than it is because they do actually have serious chops. They probably would even have gotten airplay back when standards were higher, if they'd been around then. What I'm trying to say is Muse is better than most other current music acts and that's good enough for me.

The setlist was your standard classic-rock fare; there was Zeppelin and Queen, AC/DC and Pink Floyd, unabashed use of "Sympathy for the Devil" and "Hotel California" as 6-minute fillers, and an offhand comment on Aerosmith's current state after I played "Toys in the Attic." The radio we had set up in the studio to let us know how it sounded had absolutely no bass, but there was bass coming out of the monitors so I have to assume that this is because the radio in the studio was as cheap as the actual value of your average current music album.

It was kinda fun.

Rant #67043

You may have noticed that the average age of the things that I talk about on this blog is approximately twenty-one, and no that's not a number I picked out entirely at random, that number happens to represent the number of years I've been forced to endure existence on a planet that seems to lack any sort of quality control, and without giving the game away, I blame the internet primarily for this. But as for the number representing the true average age of things I talk about (not counting curent politics), I'm probably off by the same amount as the President whenever he talks about the number of jobs he "created or saved."

You see, there's more crap out there now than there ever was before, and by crap I mean both "stuff" and "stuff of bad quality." This blog, which will turn one year old at the end of the month, is one such piece of crap. Nobody reads it, nobody replies to any of the posts, and nobody points out that every one of my opinions are horribly biased against either the Democrat Party or just about anything younger than I am that's not Nu Who or part of the collective output of Joss Whedon or Quentin Tarantino. And frankly they don't get a free pass either because they've all had clunkers too. Oh, and if the Democrats ever want a kind word on this blog they can all go take Econ 101 and then run a small business for a few years. And frankly most Republicans should do that too. They're not in power at the moment so slagging them seems kind of pointless.

I love AC/DC, a fact that every day gets harder and harder to reconcile with my insistance on originality and quality; the Thunder from Down Under have made the same album sixteen times now (note: number does not include box sets like Bonfire or Backtracks, compilations like '74 Jailbreak, or live albums), and only about half of them are worth owning. Nevertheless, there's something to be said for a band that's never written a heartfelt ballad or a song about how the world sucks and how the singer wants to die. And there's comfort to be had in this consistency; you know you're about to listen to 40 minutes of 3-chord rock songs about the fun of sex and the greatness of rock and roll whenever you stick something with "AC/DC" printed on it in your CD player.

By comparison, music today is god-awful. This PC insistence on tolerating everyone else's artistic expression means that no matter how ear-splittingly terrible you are, you'll find at least a hundred idiots who "like" your "music" and thus give you a sense of self-importance, and speaking as one egoist to the most self-centered generation in modern history, it's not all about you. These hundred idiots will be idiotic because their music libraries are full of "free" stuff they stole. The average quality of the songs in those libraries will be comparable to the average Nirvana song, and because they don't know any better they won't realize that that's an insult. So, let me be clear in a way our President never will be: if you down-tune past either E-flat or Drop-D, if you complain about how mommy doesn't love you, if your solo doesn't last longer than one bar (I really don't care if you only know one scale, you can make something decent out of that), if you can't actually sing, if you can't write lyrics without using the words "oh" or "yeah" or "hey" to fill out the rhythm, or if you have to rely on sampling other songs to get any recognition at all, then please get out of the road if you want to grow old.

"But," says Dylan, the completely fictional reader of this blog who I in no way named after the first rockstar with no discernable performing talent (guy could write songs, I'll give him that with pleasure no matter how wrong the phrase "I'll give him that with pleasure" sounds), "if you're for originality, why won't you let us experiment at all? For example, isn't a song in baritone tuning an example of at least some deviation from the norm?"

Ah, I say, Dylan, old boy, in your haste to call me a stupid hypocrite (I am suddenly reminded of the hilarity of rock "stars" who are so obviously in it for the money and sex railing against "the rich"), you forgot to read my words more carefully. I require both originality and quality from my entertainment. Hence, I will not accept a song written in a tuning that makes it easier to bend notes or sing along.

"Then defend your admiration of AC/DC, since by your own admission they repeat themselves on every album and only half of them are worth owning," says Dylan, ignorant of the fact that I can barely hear him because I'm listening to Jimi Hendrix sing about a joker and a thief.

I believe I already have, I say, but in case you'd like me to elaborate: AC/DC were a refreshing gasp of fresh air when they pillaged England in 75 and 76 and America in 77. Led Zeppelin and Pink Floyd were both getting overblown and punk was defiling all that was sacred about rock music. AC/DC did exactly what punk was supposed to do, strip rock back down to its essentials. I've got nothing against Zeppelin or Floyd, they're also two of my favorite bands and they both did a lot more experimentation than AC/DC did, but neither really did a lot for straight-up hard rock. (Blah blah "Black Dog" blah blah "Rock and Roll." Blah blah "Achilles Last Stand," which was probably the first song with thrash metal elements in it but don't quote me on that. Other than those three songs, the Zep were more blues-rock than hard rock.)

"But isn't straight-up hard rock itself fairly unoriginal?" Dylan asked, and by this point I realized that my imagination had conjured up a troll, and if there's one thing I hate more than every Cobain wannabe and rapper, it's a troll who thinks my opinion actually means anything. And for that, I especially blame the internet.

In Which the President is Agreed with by this Blogger

I wholeheartedly approve of one thing and, to the best of my knowledge, only one thing in President Obama's budget: it would appear that he's going to give our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq enough money to do their jobs effectively.

I could go on the offensive about everything that's wrong with the budget (i.e. most of the rest of it), but a) that would be too easy, and b) that would diminish the fact that the man finally got something right. So I'll leave it at that.

...And Another Thing

Eoin Colfer is not Douglas Adams, and he knows it. Aside from an overdose of continuity references in a book that will forever stand apart from the first five books in the Hitchhiker's trilogy, he does an admirable job of carrying on the legacy of lunacy.

First and foremost, Zaphod finally returned. So Long and Thanks for All the Fish is my least favorite book in the series because Ford doesn't do anything important until the end and Zaphod's not in it at all. Colfer pulls a wacky stunt at the beginning, letting characters live out their lives in a virtual reality thing for a while before plopping them back into the real world. This handwaves away any inconsistencies between the way Colfer portrays characters and the way Adams did, but aside from Random's er, random interest in politics, he does a fairly decent job of getting them right, and Zaphod's no exception (Zaph wasn't in the VR world, but he wasn't in the last two books either). He's lost one of his heads - please tell me that's not a reference to That Bloody Movie - but other than that he's still crazy.

The plot is wonky and Adamsesque, very reminiscent of Mostly Harmless in that everything fits together very neatly at the end, only this time we get a happier ending. Wowbagger the not-entirely-Infinitely-Prolonged-anymore-once-the-story-ends plays a rather prominent part, and what goes on with Trillian seems kinda odd, but weirder stuff has happened in this series and God knows she and Arthur were never actually going to be an item. Arthur is clueless as ever, and I really must give Colfer credit for creating the best and loopiest Ford Prefect since the original (I wasn't particularly impressed with his portrayal in either the TV series or That Bloody Movie).

Now the big question: Would Douglas Adams approve? I think he would have enjoyed its madcap insanity, but it does lack his signature style. It is not, thankfully, Artemis Fowl in space (nothing against that series, but that having been all Colfer wrote before this, I worried a bit that silly acronyms and super-geniuses were going to suddenly pop up everywhere).

So as I said, Colfer doesn't try to imitate Adams precisely, which is probably for the best, and just gets on telling an Adamsesque story in his own words. Frankly this is the best possible outcome.

Personal Code of Storytelling

Ford Prefect had a moral code in The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy's fifth and until very recently final book, Mostly Harmless. (Rant tomorrow on ...And Another Thing.) The code goes something like this.

1. Never pay for your own drinks.
2. Never be cruel to any animal except geese.
3. Never bite the hand that feeds you (gentle nibbling okay).

I have a code about fiction.

1. Perfect heroes are boring.

2. Flawed heroes cannot obtain perfectly happy endings.

3. Perfectly happy endings are boring.

4. I would rather have a Bolivian Army Ending than a Deus Ex Machina.

5. Villains must die at the end of their first appearance (Big Bads of TV and book series are exempt from this rule. Leaving a film villain or minor villain alive at the end is obvious sequel-milking and must stop at once. Besides, Luke could have gotten some serious pathos if he found out Vader was his father after he already killed him).

6. Villains may defect and fight for good, but they may not become capital-H Heroes.

7. "Destroy the enemy superweapon" is not an acceptable plot line. They'll just build a new one.

8. "Destroy the enemy's mysical power source" is only acceptable as a plot line if you are JRR Tolkein.

9. You are not JRR Tolkein. (Hello, Mrs. Rowling)

10. You are not Joss Whedon. Nor are you Quentin Tarantino. Therefore you cannot write brilliant dialogue. And you will not have a rabid and devout geek/slacker following who swear that you can do no wrong.

11. You are not George Lucas. This is a good thing. (See #2, 3, 5 and 7.)

12. Making the same movie again and marketing it as a sequel is wrong. (Looking at Lucas again.)

13. Making the same movie again and marketing it as something completely different is very wrong. (Hello, Mr. Cameron.)

14. A sequel, in the very rare event that one is allowed to be made, must actually advance the plot. (Hello, Mr. Bond.)

15. Homages are okay. A story full of homages to different things is okay. A story that is nothing but homages to one other story is fanfiction.

16. Anyone who charges for fanfiction must be put to death.

17. No-one who gets their start writing fanfiction may write for the official continuation of the story about which they wrote their fanfiction. (Naming no names, I'm sure at least one of the Nu Who writers is guilty of this.)

18. No-one who gets their start directing music videos may direct anything but Art movies. "Style over substance" is not a good thing in drama (Hello Zack Snyder, I'm sure we'll meet again).

19. No, you may not reboot a franchise. That's called "cashing in on someone else's idea." It's also called "making the fanboys suffer continuity attacks." Come up with an original idea. (The Dark Knight was awesome. I just wish it didn't have to rely so much on already-established characters.)

20. Picking up an abandoned franchise where it left off is more acceptable, if only because Doctor Who did it so well.

21. No film series may last longer than three films. This means we wouldn't have Star Trek VI, but it also means no Star Wars prequels. We would have Star Trek: First Contact because of rule #23.

22. No television show/novel series may last longer than five seasons/books.

23. Exception to rules 21 and 22: if it changes scope dramatically (i.e. new writers, directors, cast, or focus) every three films/five years/books, it may continue indefinitely.

24. Any character who kills scores of innocents (innocents here meaning a faceless crowd of characters who are not actively evil), even for the greater good, is not a Hero. (Alan Moore you are guilty as hell of this.)

25. Blowing up New York before 9/11 was funny (Independence Day). Blowing up New York after 9/11 (and displaying the World Trade Center prominently in the skyline) is wrong. (Hello Zack Snyder. And no, I don't care that Watchmen is set in 1985. You made the movie after 9/11.)

26. And if you do nuke an American city, the guy who does it sure as hell doesn't walk (Hello Snyder/Moore again).

27. And if you do include the line "I did it thirty-five minutes ago" in your story, set it up right! (Moore did it right, Snyder not by a long shot.)

28. Slow-motion fighting was clever in The Matrix. But there was a purpose to it (for the lunkheads: to show that we're not in normal reality. This is why we never saw bullet-time outside of the Matrix). Way to devalue it, every single action flick since.

29. Vampires are not (healthy) romantic interests.

30. Unresolved sexual tension is not an acceptable main plot. Especially for a sequel.