You Can't Have Meme without ME...

Darth Kel updated her blog today with an interesting concept that she stole from someone else who undoubtedly stole it from another. So I decided to steal it for myself. Partially because it's kind of a cool concept and partially because it gets me out of trouble for not posting for a while.

The concept is that you use your Ipod as a Magic 8 Ball, asking it questions and then shuffling to get the song title answer. Unfortunately, I suffer from technology envy and don't own an Ipod so, in the interest of full disclosure, this is the same concept using a copy of Winamp and the 33 gigs of mp3 files I have on my portable HD.

Anyhow, on to the questions.

Q: Will I Ever Update my Blog Enough to Satisfy Kate?
A: "Right Now" by Van Halen
Oddly Enough, this is when Kate usually wants me to update...

Q: What Should I Do With My Life?
A: "Save Me" by Queen
I'm not sure what to make of this one... I say this sometimes when I'm at work. Of course, Save Me could me encouraging me to enter the medical profession (or begin a career as a flamboyantly homosexual lead vocalist, I'm not sure which...)

Q: Will I Ever Be Happy With My Career?
A: Savatage "Living For the Night"
Apparently I should have stuck with third shift...

Q: Will I Ever Have Children?
A: Dee Snider's SMFs "Stay Hungry"
Um... Ok... I think my 8-ball has mental health problems.

Q: What Song Will They Play at my Funeral?
A: "Joanie the Jehovah Witness Stripper" by Paul Thorn
Heh, and my grandma thought my plan to play Led Zeppelin's "Ramble On" was bad...

Q: What is my musical theme song?
A: "Act III- Manhunt" by Shadow Gallery
Obscure Prog Metal. Not the song I'd have used but close enough.

Q: What do other people think my musical theme song is?
A: Robert Earl Keen "Famous Words"
Hmmm... Not too bad.

Q: What type of woman do I like?
A: "Stuck in the 90's" by Moxy Fruvous
Hmmm... Was never into grunge chicks...

Q: What advice do you have for me?
A: "Addicted to Spuds" by Weird Al Yankovic
Damn... This thing knows my trouble resisting french fries...

Q: What type of music do I prefer?
A: "Here in my Heart" by The Scorpions
80's arena metal? Well, there was a time...

Q: What type of music will I listen to in the future?
A: "Get Off my Cloud" by Union
Hmmm... 90's arena metal. At least I'm moving...

Q: How can I make myself happy?
A: "Those Memories of You" by Dick Dale
"I'm so lonely I could die..." Well, that's depressing...

Q: What's my biggest fear?
A: "My Bologna" by Weird Al Yankovic
Hmmm... Better check the expiration date on that...

Q: Should I go ahead and end this column now?
A: "Minarets" by Dave Matthews and Tim Reynolds
A seven minute song in answer to this? I'll take that as a no...

Q: Can I end it now?
A: "Sweet Revenge" by John Prine
Ah, vengeful eh? Well to hell with you! I'm ending it whether you like it or not!
A: "Love Mistake" by Nancy Wilson
Oh, dragging my personal life into it, eh? You stupid little...
A: "DysFUNKtional" by The Trailer Park Troubadours
What? Who you calling dysfunctional you stupid machine!
A: "Dance With Me" by Tuck and Patti
No sense trying to make nice now... The damage has been done.
A: "Utne Wire Man" by Blue Man Group
Oooohh... Soothing... *lull* No! You won't sedate me you evil program! I'm uninstalling you!
A: "Quiet Man" by John Prine
That's more like it! I'll do the talking.
A: "Hey You" by Pink Floyd
What?
A: "Bedrock Anthem" by Weird Al Yankovic
What is your fascination with Weird Al anyway?
A: "Talk Soup" by Weird Al Yankovic
Seriously, I don't own that much Weird Al. Why do you keep selecting it?
A: "When the Levee Breaks" by Led Zeppelin
That's more like it. I can forgive anyone who's a Zep fan. Peace?
A: "Waco Moon" by Todd Snider
Another good one! You're ok there Winamp. I'm ending the column now, ok?
A: "Spiritual" by Johnny Cash
"Jesus... I don't wanna die alone..."

Pretty fitting end for this column, wouldn't you say so Winamp?
A: "I Can't Complain" by Todd Snider

Glad you agree...

-Gryph

All That and a Pack of Gum

My wayward editor, Darth Kel, has been posting semi-regularly recently about the silliness she's seen on various commercials. It's always nice to hear that the left coasters have dumb spots too between their episodes of Springer. But I've got her beat. One of the local car dealerships was running a commercial tonight. One of those super-amateurish deals where the owner stumbles over his lines and brings his kids out, all of whom look embarassed to be there.
Let me start by saying,as an old radio vet, I can tell you we pretty much all HATE sponsor records. Once you've done the radio bit long enough you can nail a spot in one take, two at most. Run the music, live to tape, usually straight to the cart. 10 minutes in the production room tops. Owner records though, often require 10, 15, I've even seen 30 or more takes, all on the reel to reel so you can (hopefully) splice bits of all of them together to make one 30 second ad that doesn't make your sponsor sound like a complete moron. An hour or so in the booth and another 30 minutes or so putting it all together.

Anyway, that's a tangent. This spot tonight featured the owner of the dealership and his kids (one of whom was ACTIVELY trying to shuffle away from the camera so as not to be involved with this embarassment). He began like normal, fumbling his way through the Cobalts, Luminas, and Suburbans on sale. Then it got weird. He mumbled something about celebrating "fresh breath" and informed all the viewing audience that this dealership would be giving a FREE! pack of Chiclets to everyone who comes in for a test drive.

A free pack of Chiclets...

I know the local area dealerships don't have the financial capital to compete with the Nashville dealerships that offer Titans tickets, money, or sometimes even Carribean cruises to anyone who test drives. But gum? Who came up with the idea of gum? Was the owner watching one of those bigger dealerships who offered football tickets and thought "that's what I should do too." *casts about on his desk* "What should I give away? Stapler? No. Pencil? No. Copy paper? No. Too expensive. Paper clips? No. Wait! This is it! Gum! Everyone loves gum! Johnny! Get our ad agency on the phone. I want a new commercial done today! A pack of gum for every test drive! Yes, I said gum! No it's not a bad idea. You're fired!"

I admit that I'm not an advertising major. Advertising is in the same college as my major, but a different emphasis. But I do know enough through my days in radio to have a rudimentary idea of what works and doesn't work. My highly tuned senses are telling me that offering something that anyone can get for $.59 at the local Qwik Mart is not going to be a major incentive to lure people in. Maybe that's just me, I don't know...

Maybe I should learn something from this guy. He's obviously more successful than me. Maybe I can turn this around to help my wife's flagging candle and soap making business and reclaim some of my living room. I can even offer a choice. Buy a candle from Phoenix and Dragon and, for a limited time, you'll receive a free ball of lint from my dryer! Or if lint is not your cup of tea, how about a cup of tea? One free teabag for orders over $50. For orders over $100, you get a blank cd-r! You can't beat that! Come on down!

Or maybe not...

-Gryph

Oscar's Living in the Past

Despite not having my usual Oscar party to attend and bet on, I did watch the entire broadcast last night, and even managed to not fall asleep. Not even Jon Stewart, who I think is one of the funniest guys around right now, could save this snoozer. If the overnight numbers hold up, this is going to go down in history as the second least-watched Oscar broadcast since they began to keep ratings. I'm sure the Bushies will be quick to call it "America's repudiation of Hollywood's gay agenda" and the Hollywood types will probably blame it on Stewart who, like Chris Rock before him, was funnier than your average Steve Martin or Whoopi Goldberg hosting slot but didn't have the innate sense of where the "line" was between parodying the Hollywood culture and insulting their fragile little personalities. In truth, it's neither of these things. No one who is worried about Hollywood's "gay agenda" has watched the Oscars since Gone With the Wind was nominated. And, if anything, Jon Stewart probably added a couple million of his Daily Show audience, not your typical Oscar viewers, at least until they discovered the real reason why this Oscar broadcast will go down as one of the least watched ever... No one cared about the movies.

With nothing to root for that anyone had seen (I'm not even sure all of the Best Picture nominees have screened in Nashville yet), no one had a horse in the race. People tuned in to see if Lord of the Rings would sweep. All those women who saw Titanic 32 times each tuned in to see if it would win Best Picture. But this year, the question wasn't "Who will win between Brokeback Mountain and Crash" it was "Why should we care?"

Unfortunately, if last night's constant preach-fest is any indicator, the obvious answer to this problem isn't going to occur. That answer being that they run the "Oscar year" from September to September, giving all of the nominated films a chance to release widely and more importantly, in what is apparently blasphemy to the AMPAS if you believe the whining from last night, giving at least some of the nominated films time to release on DVD. Hollywood's current trend of releasing most of the "Oscar contenders" in the last couple of months of the year will guarantee the continuation of low ratings for the awards broadcasts in years where no "blockbuster" is nominated.

I know, I know. The President of AMPAS (and about 22 other presenters it seemed) made sure you understand that you HAVE to see movies at the theater. You CAN'T watch them on video, or at least you can't until you've given them your first $10 before plunking down the second $20.

But let's face it, it's just not true. Yes, you need to see King Kong on the big screen. Yes, you need to see Harry Potter in IMAX to get the full effect. But do you really get any more from "Capote" in the theater than you do at home? Do you really HAVE to see Felicity Huffman playing a dude in full THX sound? Is Eugene McCarthy any more impressive in "Good Night and Good Luck" if he's 20 feet tall?

Not really... With the exception of Brokeback Mountain, which I haven't seen but which looks very much like "A River Runs Through It" in that its story is mostly secondary to the beautiful scenery and would probably be more impressive on a big screen, none of the nominated pictures have any reason to make people see them in the theater unless they just can't wait for dvd. People go to the theater to see spectacles. FX and stunning cinematography are what drives the big screen experience. People want to see larger-than-life dinosaurs, people fighting in spaceships, and magic-wielding children. Most of the technological advances that the drones on last night's broadcast lauded as reasons to go to the theater, were invented by Industrial Light and Magic, aka Lucasfilm, aka the people who brought you Star Wars. They were invented with those films in mind and they have been designed specifically to make ILM-and-THX-driven films look and sound pretty. Multi-speaker THX-certified surround sound isn't really needed to listen to Phillip Seymour Hoffman's effete mutterings or Edward R. Murrow's anti-McCarthy tirades.

So am I saying that Oscar should only nominate big-effects blockbusters? Not at all. I would have stopped watching altogether if FX-laden stinkers like Pearl Harbor or XXX: State of the Union had gotten nominated. But save me the holier-than-thou attitude, the talking-down-to, and the sermon. Quit acting like people who watch your films on dvd are some kind of hillbilly scum who are ruining your careers. And quit using the Oscar ceremony as a pulpit to preach about the evils of piracy. The people who are stealing your movies aren't watching the show and, even if they are, they aren't suddenly going to say "oh wow, George Clooney says I shouldn't download movies. I feel so guilty!" The Oscars are already 4 hours long. Keep the preaching to a minimum.

Now that I've gotten my rant out of the way for tonight, some other random Oscar thoughts:

Hooray for Wallace and Gromit, the best movie released in 2005, for winning Best Animated Feature. Corpse Bride was really good and, while I haven't seen Howl's Moving Castle, Miyazaki always delivers, but Wallace and Gromit made me laugh harder than I have at a movie in a long time.

What was up with those songs nominated this year? Travelin' Thru was bad (with the exception of waiting to see if the bust of Dolly Parton's gown was going to explode from the pressure of those things that they obviously took a shoe-horn to get inside it), that song from Crash was BORING, and "It's Hard Out Here for a Pimp" was indistinguishable from every other rap tune released this year. I guess it was time for Oscar to finally discover rap music, but it's a shame they couldn't do it when New Jack City was released since that movie had a track from Ice-T, who has more talent in his pinky than the Whatever-Mafia does between them.

I've already mentioned that I thought Jon Stewart did a much better job than he'll get credit for because he bruised some Hollywood egos. Specifically, the campaign-style ads were a nice touch and Stewart had the line of the night with "some of the women in this audience could barely afford enough fabric to cover their breasts..."

It's official... The most beautiful woman in history, Lauren Bacall, has gotten old enough to need to be kept off TV. The woman who played so many characters with perfect poise and cunning intelligence stumbled, fumbled, and bumbled her way through presenting a subject she was once an expert on (film-noir, having starred in many of the best of them). I was embarassed for her and it made me sad. We'll always have "The Big Sleep" Ms. Bacall...

I'm not a religious man but I do believe in a creator and Ziyi Zhang is my proof that he exists. Nothing that stunning could have been created by accident.

I know a lot of people hold animosity toward the Star Wars prequels (I've been known to wish for a few tomatoes to lob at Jar Jar Binks myself) but not nominating Revenge of the Sith for best Special Effects is a crime. The climactic scene on the lava planet alone was as good as all of the effects in Chronicles of Narnia combined. The only movie that was even in the same category was King Kong, with WETA Workshop proving once again that they've become a force that can match anything put out by ILM, the long-time best out there.

That's all I've got for today. A post this long should buy me another month before I'm expected to post again, right Kate?

Yeah, Yeah...

One of the three people who actually read this thing (and there are only three, I've counted) has officially fussed at me, in e-mail no less, about my lack of updates recently. I know. I've been awful. So anyway, to fill space and provide as much non-entertaining content as possible to my faithful (and probably sleepy by now) readers, I figured I'd steal from the rarely funny and always overrated David Letterman and present my Top Ten Excuses Why I Haven't Blogged in a Month. Some are true, some no so much. You figure which is which...

10. Joan's uncle died last week so it's been in a haze of crying, packing, going to Ohio, returning from Ohio, etc for the last week or so. Road tripping drains me more than exercising so I've been too pooped, emotionally and physically, to do much that requires thought.

9. The dog ate my column... (I tried to use this on my editor once when I actually had a column with a deadline. She was not amused.)

8. Joan and I have joined a gym to try and help us with our weight loss in addition to the Atkins. I get home at 6, rush to get dinner made and eaten by 7, when we join our friends at the gym. Around 8:30 we come home tired, sweaty, and devoid of column ideas...

7. I was in the hospital recovering from a hunting trip with Dick Cheney.

6. I caught the last bit of Elektra on Showtime, fell asleep and banged my head, giving me a limited form of amnesia that only makes me forget column ideas (and Valentine's Day. Really honey, that's why I forgot...)

5. I was planning to blog, but Iron Chef had Battle Octopus and I GOTTA see that honey (this one, much to my wife's chagrin, is all too true).

4. I was waiting to see if Kate would really come break my legs aka Annie Wilkes. Turns out she would...

3. I'm doing my part for the environment by not using up the valuable electrons usually wasted with my drivel.

2. If JK Rowling can take two years between published works, so can I...

and the #1 reason why I haven't blogged in a while is...

1. I'm really not interesting enough to sustain one.

There you go Kate. You can put the axe down. Really. Put down the axe. Aaaaaargh!