Not allowed to Delicious Strawberry

Gum: it pretty much sells itself, so whatcha gonna do with yer advertising budget?



(If I keep this up, I'll need to start a new tag for "favorite gum commercials". Maybe even a tag for 'Trident commercials', specifically.)

There's just something about the advertising industry. Gum, by its nature, isn't really all that exciting, and everybody who was on board with this commercial knows that.
So instead, they made a commercial about commercials. And I am the target audience for this sort of thing.

That ridiculous extreme close-up of the babysitter on the line, "Of course you can pay me with gum!", where her irises actually start to gleam with zeal. Then, the unheralded arrival of various workmen.
And that little easter egg again- for people like me: I had to go back several times to verify that the little girl acutally said the line, "We weren't allowed to delicious strawberry!"

If one were to watch this on teevee, it begins so abruptly that you can't even quite tell what's happening at first. Mom's laughter sounds like screams or cries, and that babysitter sure does seem like she was surprised in the midst of doing something she should not have been: "Mis-ter Jo-nes..."

So it's this weird, perverse, thirty-second thrill ride. Awesome, Trident. I wanna go again.

** ** **

Uh, I have started a blog just for pictures, with no captions or talking about it at all, which is strange for me. It is called Photeaux, and features completely out of order, out of context shots from the digital era in my life. Earlier (analog) shots will be scanned in eventually, and Oh What Fun we'll have then.
For instance, I may very well take a month and just upload all the portraiture I was once so fond of doing. In everyone's case, that'll be pictures of you that are at least ten years old. Prepare to be boarded.

Yeah, another thing that has changed for me is that I no longer wish to title my photographs clever things. Other people do that, and frankly, they can have it. These days I let the image do the talking for me, in general.

My flickr account is flickr.com/photos/richbachelor, and many things can be seen there.

Next time, that Ronnie Milsap show needs discussin', as will the Gladys Knight show tomorrow. Ta.

Makin' it Safe, Keepin' It Better

The unsung, unmissed early '90's ABC show "Cop Rock" episode titles include:

'A Three-Corpse Meal'
'The Cocaine Mutiny'
'Oil of Ol' Lay'
'Cop-a-Feeliac'

Oh, man! Wouldn't you love to see a full-length movie called "The Cocaine Mutiny"? Anyway, it also famously included this sequence:



How could anything be called The Foundation For A Better Life be bad? And its domain name Values.com...It just sounds like a combination of wholesale bargains and unmitigated goodness.

So The Foundation For A Better Life, with that vaguest of names, what is it that they do? Well, they were responsible for billboards like this...

I have always recommended that one read this billboard with a different inflection:
"Quadri-plegic. A minus, Harvard!" As though to say, she was perfectly fine when she got here...

They do have a wonderful feature on their site that allows you to make your own billboard suggestions. Not unlike the church sign generator sites out there, you could just put whatever you want onto a blank template. So I went and uploaded my pic of Dean Martin, and -well...


(I had to take a picture of this with my camera. They won't let you export anything from their site, strangely. Just like the Scientology site won't let you copy and paste the results of your personality test.)

Other people's ideas in this category include:

"YOU CAN DO IT!", accompanied by a screenshot of what I believe is a test...It's the Unit Test Cover Sheet, which is Mandatory...Then, "ACHIEVEMENT"! Pass It On.

An entry from something named Jennaaa, who lives in Michigan, with a picture of her and her friend...I don't know, Brrrennndaaaaa? Sitting in a bathtub with big, striped socks on. The legend reads, "How Fun," and has a smily emoticon next to it. The value there being espoused was 'LAUGHTER', apparently.

One I really don't understand from a Laura Bunten of Washington, D.C. has a picture of her, looking drunk or something, with the legend, "Adds the Sway-eh, eh-eh, eh-eh's on a daily basis." The value is 'LIVE LIFE', because it could scarcely be anything else.

And one that I would normally assume was a joke, but I'm pretty sure isn't, from one Zhane Fulp (see?) from King, N.C., with a picture of a woman, and based on the past-tense wording, you would assume she's dead. But no, 'Thank You Jessica, You Made All Our Days Good' is followed up with this:
"I HAVE TO SAY THAT JESSICA KUMARI IS MY HERO BECAUSE SHE HAS HELPED CHANNEL ONE NEWS ENTERTAIN THE HEARTS OF MILLIONS. I WATCH CHANNEL ONE NEWS EVERY MORNING AT CHESTNUT GROVE MIDDLE SCHOOL AFTER BREAKFAST AT THE SCHOOL CAFETERIA MONDAY THROUGH FRIDAY. CONGRATULATIONS, JESSICA. CONGRATULATIONS. "

Value itself sort of gets lost here. There's one with a picture of Abraham Lincoln, and the legend is 'Was A Good President'. 'INTEGRITY'. Pass It On. Another with a picture of a spooky forest at night, and the puzzling message 'Stand up for what you believe even if you are', which exemplifies 'BELIEVE IN YOURSELF', for some reason. A picture of three girls with their arms around each other translates out to 'Be a leader not a follower', which is intrinsic to 'CARING'.

It doesn't help that the treasured half-truths that Americans live by are here utilized in what has to be some class project somewhere, which then fail to actually inspire. Two in a row about Positivity lack the veritas to pull off even the simplest of ideas:

"You will learn in life that if you don't have a Positive attitude life will be hard but if you have a Positive attitude life will be easy."

(is followed by)

"If you will have a good attitude, and not get in a bad mood you can or will have a good day and noting will maybe go wrong for you ."

Both of these are from Rockingham, North Carolina, and both of these epigrammists are, I suspect, in for a big shock one of these days.


But all of their billboards and commercials are like that. They're in favor of controversial values like 'SPORTSMANSHIP'. Another homemade one lets you know that 'There is "Value" in valuable friendships.' Are you making fun of friendship? Are you making fun of Value?
There is one in which I am -I think warned- that 'You might just start a chain reaction'. And the value is 'COMPASSION', but in small print it looks like 'COMPULSION'. Another, I'm pretty sure, is encouraging me toward 'OVERREACTION'. Pass It On.

So yes; with all this benign fatousity and generalized sententiousness, one may wonder, So what then is the mission of this great Foundation? Behind all this bland goodness and basic Hooray For Everything-ism, who wants us to spend all this time polishin' the ol' apple?
Oh my god. It's this guy, who owns a company that recently bought a company that regularly provides me with work. He's a conservative christian, too, surprise surprise. His underwriting of The Discovery Institute certainly doesn't make me view him in a positive light. Doesn't seem t' like the queers, either.

In a basic Google search, one either finds people who immediately hate the whole thing because Conservatives Are Bad, or people who want to give money to this thing (which doesn't accept donations, actually) because they find it refreshing that someone is sticking up for things like 'integrity' and 'hope'. Both of those have been under strenuous attack, you know.

So yeah, it's probably a tax dodge/money laundering thing.


Oh, but how could anything called Keep America Safe be bad? Well, let's see...

What if Liz Cheney was the first name on their board? What if they chose to publish the thoughts of one Gordon Cucullu (because his birth name, 'Chthulu', has such negative connotations?), a worse-than-crank whose background with Special Forces I'm sure warms the part of every conservative that loves a Stern Father. To say nothing of being the current home of the man who was famous for being wrong about everything-Bill Kristol!
The site is a jumping-off point for the written content of every nutbag that currently strides, knuckles down, across the greensward. Charles Krauthammer. Robert Spencer.

I dunno. I'm having a hard time actually being amused at how fucking dumb pretty much all of my countrymen are. But hey.


All of these are fun, but lack the overwhelming awesomeness of Oregon's own The Foundation of Human Understanding. I first encountered the utterly insane Roy Masters in the heyday of talk radio -which I actually date to the late '80's, early '90's, shortly before it got too polarized.
And I hear this vaguely British sounding jackass talking about what a bunch of awful people his audience are, only to have it stated not long after that he represents something with the phrase 'human understanding' in it.

The basic thesis- "if you were all good and moral and having the same vision as I do," as he too tellingly puts it- is basically that the socialists are gonna come kill us all. He's been selling that same line for a long, long time, so I suspect that it's only gotten more intense.
I see on his website now that he has a whole bunch of books and so on that promise to make you more sexy, or something. In the great tradition of all scams, when you try to go to 'preview' on the book page, it tells you that that action is 'not allowed'.

Well, it's certainly no The Association If The Enhancement of Mallard Rubles.

Also too the one

Not sure why I put that thing up there. Something new. Its actual name is 'subpage event wave', and is part of the layout on the Spirit Mountain Casino 'events' page. It's not even big enough -when reproduced- to be a decent header image here. So it sits there, looking like some sort of sparkly abstract whale-thing. Depressing.

Last night, I was running a spotlight at the Portland Erotic Ball. Let's get the obvious joke out of the way: boy, a whole lotta people sure did decide to dress up as "fat chick in a bustier and fishnets" this year! HAW! Anyway...

Anyway, amidst all the sexy nurse/cop/satans, there was one lady who decided to go really simple with her costume: a pair of jeans and no shirt. She had paint all over her chest in some sort of design, and was accompanied by a gentleman in jeans and a t-shirt that read, I think, I LOVE TO BANG WOMEN. I think; they were kinda far away.
Strangest thing about it? She just kinda hung out at the merch table looking uncomfortable while he ran around with a camera, either trying to get people to take a picture of him and his topless girlfriend, or perhaps trying to get pictures of other people. Again; they were far away. I decided that his costume was Shitty Boyfriend.

It sort of felt like a junior-high dance, but with way higher unrealistic expectations. My bulb blew -that's right- halfway through the first band, and there was no replacement bulb, nor would they have allowed me to get into the guts of the spot because it was a rental. A rental from a boss of mine, but a rental all the same. You could hear the broken glass inside, rolling around in the fan.
So my evening ended early.

The night before, it had been Rascal Flatts, with Darius Rucker opening up. Yes, The Artist Formerly Known As 'Hootie' has been trying to re-image himself as someone who plays country...Or 'country' in as much as Rascal Flatts plays country, anyway.
This led him to cover Hank Williams Jr.'s "Family Tradition", which he shouldn't have done for a plethora of reasons, but most of all for the chorus, with its cascade of "Hank, why do you..."(s). Even more curiously, he closed with Prince's "Purple Rain". The world, I have decided, no longer makes sense.

While sitting around waiting for this show to be over, I got news that Elton John has postponed his tour due to illness. E-coli, one person told me: I have no idea whether or not this is true. This effects my life because I was going to go up to Seattle tomorrow and begin what was probably going to be several days of tech-ing on the show, then do the actual show on Sunday, then turn around again and do it here.
Meanwhile, Billy Joel, who was co-headlining, certainly could have done the show himself, I guess, but isn't. I'm told by those who know that these days, he has a constantly filled glass of vodka and ice only, on his piano.

So for those keeping score, the drunk Long Island Jewish homeboy will not be appearing with the middle-aged gay cartoon character, at least not immediately.

Last weekend, it was 'You Who', which is a thing for hipsters with children, actually. It was the dream of The Decemberists' drummer (I think) and his baby mama (again, I think). It combines people in costumes doing skits -people dressed like giant owls, and I would have liked to include a picture of that here, but I think all the images belong to McMenamins, and you can't. That hyperlink up there takes you to their Flickr page- and your hip young local bands doing that thing that they do.

So, the twee factor backstage was pushed to near toxic levels, but above all else I think it is a very nice thing. I would very much have liked to have a place to go like this back when I had a young kid in the house: your friends say they'll babysit for you while you go out and have a good time, but they won't. So to be around a buncha other painfully hip people who are learning the usual eternal lessons of child-rearing? Yeah, that woulda been okay, I guess.

Up n' comin': Ozomatli at the Crystal, and Ronnie Milsap/Lorrie Morgan at Spirit Mtn. The image of Ronnie that they use on the billboards for this evening of '80's country is a prime example of the I'm So Happy To Be Blind (tm)! photo that I was making fun of in my last post.




There she is.

"Ha! Ha Ha! This also does double duty as my 'So Happy 'Cuz I'm Saved By The Lord (patent pending)' photo! HA!"

I mean, Ray Charles and Stevie Wonder did it too, and I don't necessarily feel like it's only a blind fashion thing, but still...

Covered

One may learn a great deal from album covers. I spend way, wayyy too much of my time looking at them, since I spend wayyy too much of my time shopping for used vinyl. This has led to the place where the ones you always see have a ritualized sort of joke vocabulary to them.

But also, returning like long-lost friends, I see the ones I saw as a kid, and could not make heads or tails of. I see now that there was good reason for this.


The duo of Hall and Oates have a spaceship. Maybe you'd like to take a ride in what we around here like to call the Halloatesamaship.

Along the way, we'll have some good times, maybe write a song or two, enjoy the upholstery on these couches, and be forever thankful that we stocked up on the proper supplies.

And what would those be? Oh, I don't know...Would you like a RITZ (tm) Brand Cracker? If you are going to be exploring in the Halloatesamaship, you're going to need nutrition, and there's no way to get as much nutrition as the nutrition in a RITZ (tm) Brand Cracker!

I now see that the Halloatesamaship actually is tiny. It's exploring a mixing console, or a series of them. Tiny Hall, Tiny Oates, and the tiniest box of RITZ (tm) Brand Crackers I've ever seen in my life.


You know, it never once occurred to me as a child that possibly this duo's name could have come from their last names. I looked at this record, and it seemed pretty clear to me that they were describing the harmonious blend of two very different types of people who could, under certain circumstances, get together and make music.

Because the guy on the left is very clearly trying to pantomime being a seal, right? And that means therefore that the guy on the right is a 'croft', right?

And what -just going on what little information I have here- do crofts do? They rock out, that's what. That guy is totally fucking rocking out.

Seals, on the other hand, are religious, or something.


Gordon Lightfoot's albums all have a big picture of Gordon Lightfoot on them. This is comforting, lest one were to suddenly forget whether or not one was listening to an album by Gordon Lightfoot.

It being the '70's and all, I became pretty fluent in the vocabulary of Gordon Lightfoot album cover art. Summertime Dream has a dreamy, blurry picture-that-is-made-to-look-like-a-drawing on it, of Gord, looking pensive; smoking. It looks like the logo on a bottle of Lightfoot: The Cologne. Sundown's picture features a somewhat surprised-looking Gord, seated casually on the floor of a barn.

But here, image and word fit perfectly side by side. Well, I mean, just look at him: he is gold, isn't he? Good God, it's Gold Gord!


This one always bothered me. Still does.

Is Billy thinking, man, where'd that stranger go? Is he thinking and how come strangers always leave masks? too? And beds. And boxing gloves.

Or is Billy the stranger? Is he strange because he sleeps with a mask? He looks like he's talking to it, and perhaps he is: "Hey what's happening, mask? Are you a stranger?"

Along with the rest of these ruminations, it occurred to my young mind that maybe Billy Joel had a very boring life, and seemed to have a nightlife about as exciting as my own.

If this was what being an adult was all about, I wanted no part of it.


In keeping with the singer-songwriter thing here, let us consider the case of Kenny. Man, does that guy love livin'!

He is completely ecstatic to be doin' what he's doin', ala all blind artists, who must be consistently photographed with beatific smiles on their faces, since it's so much fun being blind. But on the other hand, this is casual Kenny, just kinda, y'know, what the hell? Let's go put on a multimillion dollar road tour, what with the fireworks, and me looming impossibly tall over my fans! I'll bring my guitar penis!

This photo is possibly inaccurate in how willing or likely your average concert goer is in wanting to touch Kenny. Possibly that is a file photo taken at some other concert.

(By the way, that image of Kenny was found at Dagnabbitstubbs.com, which is a weird little site about what certainly seems to be a Ween-esque joke band. They suggest that perhaps they will attend a symposium on how to pose for an album cover hosted by Kenny!)


There have been more embarrassing pictures taken of Rod Stewart than pretty much any other person on earth, I think. Not just on his album covers, but pretty much every time I've seen his image captured on film.

And it doesn't help his case at all that these are pictures of Rod Stewart, if you follow me. It's just not much of a jump to go from "he just looks like he got caught doing something disgusting" to "Rod just got caught doing something disgusting again." His reputation has always preceded him.

If it were anyone else, you'd be like, 'hm. He looks odd. Probably just an awkward time for him.' But this isn't anyone else. This is Rod, and the whole thing just feels wrong.


Ah, mysticism and symbolic imagery. It says so little but means so much, you know? And when you're a little kid walking around Bi-Mart, and you encounter such deep symbolism that you'll never really truly ever figure it out, the first thing your mind goes to is that little kid is gonna poop.

Yup, him and all the rest of those naked children are crawling up those cold rocks, and god knows why, it probably means something about angels or something, and...I'm sorry, but that little pink kid is gonna take a shit!

Well, you try being a big shot designer some time. It's really hard, man...You want people to be happy, but not too happy, you know? You kind of want them to walk away going, "what the fuck was that?" a little bit, secretly, to themselves. And then feeling bad that they didn't get it.

And here, I think, is the very first album cover I ever came to truly know and love. Paul Simon tries out the first of many ways of calling attention away from his male pattern baldness, while caressing a shiny knob. Art Garfunkel's baldness, which was much, much more excruciating based on how his hair is/was, has not yet begun.

Even better though, is the fact that they were encouraged to smile on this cover, which they pretty much never did otherwise. Here, they trotted out those blazers that they owned but could never wear because kids would have thought them "uncool".

Here, we see how rock n' roll is for grown-ups and kids alike! These aren't gritty folk-rockers, these are the two nicest boys in debate club! The finest our school has to offer! Won't you please buy?


And of course, I took this picture one hundred per cent literally. How the hell'd they do that? How the hell didn't everybody die?

I was also obsessed with the name of this band, and thought it the most badass thing ever, leading me to attempt to form a street gang: The Daredevils. We were...In second grade, I believe, and had no idea what sort of things street gangs did. Mayhem, I guess.

We got in some trouble, though, for smashing a bunch of berries onto the across-the-street neighbor's bright, white garage door. We disbanded shortly thereafter.

About the cover, though? Well, it strongly resembles both Lynyrd Skynyrd's Street Survivors and Chicago's Greatest Hits. I like too, how you cannot mistake the goofiness. The goofy just won't let you go, and it's entirely because of the over-the-top mugging. As if to say, We're Joking! Ha! Ha Ha! Look at us Joke!

There's about twelve thousand more of these, of course. I just can't think of them all right now. Get back to this after my next visit to a record store.

Rotten, Rotten People

Another winner from Donna Barstow. I really must ask: who the hell is she blowing?
I mean, this fails the Humorousness test by failing to be funny...It fails the Topicality test by not actually saying anything, though strangely including some up-to-date cultural buzz themes, which seem to make it be about something.

But even if we are to continue with the pretense of this being in some way a humorous observation about Life In These Here United States, what even would the observation be?

A) Gay men have iPhones and Houses? Lots of people do, in L.A. and elsewhere.
B) 'Gay' and 'Republican' are mutually contradictory? Well, I think so too, but what's with the rest of the padding in the 'joke'?
C) People in Los Angeles are a strange lot, and what they find important is alien to the rest of us. Although most people would be pretty strongly impacted by losing their house. And how did he 'lose' it? In a gay fire? Gay foreclosure?
D) Someone, somewhere pointed out to Donna that jokes take place in bars. Hence; in a bar=joke. This is the closest thing to an answer that I have.

But to return to the original question, whose polska kielbasa is she snacking on? I mean, to be this unfunny, surreally adrift in a world where there are familiar catchphrases and not much else...Artistically under-talented to boot, means that you must be at least very-close-friends with someone at the Syndicate.

On the other hand, here is her picture.

Is this, or is this not a picture of someone who has just noticed that look in the eyes of her friends at the barbecue? Oblivious to the idea that not only are her jokes tanking, but she's actually crossed over into something specifically unfunny, she has noticed that nobody's actually laughing anymore, not even courteously.

So this is the shot where she's saying, "C'MON, you guyyys! Doncha get it?" Because clearly they just don't understand you.

Meanwhile, fresh from his recent triumph over Chicago, Rush Limbaugh has encountered an Unfair Obstacle to his Completely Reasonable Wishes.

Let's step back a bit. You may recall that Rush was sort of disproportionately pleased in public recently when a city in the United States failed to get the nod to host the next Summer Olympics. This was because the main proponent of this idea was a person who Rush holds as an enemy of all good folks everywhere, the President of the United States.
So he -as well as a good many other childish morons- celebrated this games-not-getting. His personal political vision was demonstrated to be more important than his (you'd think) enthusiasm for a chance for some place in the United States to do something right.

Flash forward to yesterday, though, when he was told more or less to fuck off by the NFL. Rush had felt that the next best step was to purchase a football team. (Interestingly, the un-named protagonist of the Pink Floyd song "Money" had a similar thought process. They're actually ideological buddies, he and Rush.) The NFL, upon hearing this, said that they felt they could get along just fine without any of that. The right wing bullshit engine, of course, saw this for what it is.

"Tonight Rush became the metaphor for all of us… every man woman and child in this great nation of ours.

The enemy of this great nation, the enemy of you and me, Rush’s enemy… those on the left, inside and outside of this nation abhor success… and when faced with it will destroy it… by any and all means possible.

We all have our dreams in life… such as they might be. Rush dreamed of being an owner in the NFL.

Tonight the left proved that they will stop at nothing to end our dreams. Our dreams of success and happiness devastate their need to dominate and control you and me… and well everything and everyone."

What can I say? I love showbiz! This sounds like the beginning of a very bad documentary. Or the prelude to a pogrom. I like the unnecessary ellipsis before 'such as they might be'. Whose voice is reading that? Ah. Yes. Tom Selleck.

So...Yeah, when one of the first commenters asked the obvious question -are you joking?- the response he got was;

"You bailout whore, death panel loving, racist jerk. I would also like to point out that you have been accused of child molestation, and we would like to get your response to that before you post further."

Let the record show, your honor, that the right winger here was the one to begin with the name-calling. "What are you talking about?" gets met with "I'LL SKULL-FUCK YOUR DAUGHTER, YOU DONKEY-PUNCHING PORTUGUESE!"
And too, this is in response to some presumed joy on the left at Rush Limbaugh failing to purchase St. Looie's team, as opposed to the actual, well-recorded mass joy at an entire city failing to get the rights to an international sporting event.

Also, it is later suggested that those football team owners are a bunch of effete, left-wing pansies, which is just fantastic. This is strangely echoed in the thoughts of a bunch of -as far as I know- unpaid weirdoes who trumpet bullshit.
J'go over there and read it yet? Well, I'd only do it a great injustice by trying to encapsulate it, but I have to ask again: where exactly did all this childlike love for corporations come about in the more tender-minded communities in our polity? I mean, ideology can certainly cause a person to utterly disappear up their own ass, god knows, but this is what remains of the Populist movement we're talking about here. Just because you've been told to hate government does not mean that you love corporations.

Yet again, this is going on a bit long. Who else? Ah. Good. Mitch Albom.

Not just content to be that place you go to read the work of clearly fictional people like Marilyn vos Savant, Dotson Rader and Lyric Wallwork Winik, this thing-that-falls-out-of-your-Sunday-paper increasingly plays home to America's Favorite Guy Who Says Vaguely Comforting Things!

To be your generation's own Edgar Guest. Who ever said that wasn't something to aspire to?

Whenever I see that cute little plucky face with its determined chin and sardonic Grin n' Bear It! grin, I try to think of accurate ways to parody the guy. His writing style is so treacly, his conclusions so nauseatingly neutral-good, you could really just sit there all day going, things really are what they are, these days, you know? and probably nail it pretty good.

But here, Mitch takes on a Big Topic: hey guys, I know that maybe all of us formerly young types might sort of need a little something to turn to when things get tough. And they sure do get tough, don't they? Heh! I KNOW, right? Well, there's this God thing I just heard about, and...

Thing is, Mitch doesn't fit here because he isn't a rotten person (probably). He's just that fatuous bore at the party that we all know and tolerate, generally because they're a relative of ours. He will go on all day about how it's the little things, you know...that make life worthwhile, and we let him at least partially because this is actually true. It just sort of cheapens and diminutizes it to constantly be reminded of this mind-blowing fact by some feeb who can't just let it go.

One of my favorite objects around the house is this little red vase I got at a garage sale. It is small enough that space for one rather small flower is pretty much it in terms of its capacity. It is clearly homemade, and has a highly abstracted painting of a flower on it.
I like it because it's a nice example of the many small ways people go about prettying-up their little corner of the world. It's a nice, mute example, though it also sort of reminds me of country music.

Now, see Mitch, he would have turned that whole thing into a book that later is made into a Lifetime Television For Women movie. That is why he is awful.

Things I Have Said on the Internet

"Oh Ed Helms, what won't you do a cameo in? He's well on his way to being the Ava Gardner of his time."

"Since we're so deep into inexplicable love of terrible bands, could someone try to explain why anybody at all likes Kings of Leon? They're so terrible they've almost wrapped around into Ironic Appreciation Land. Not yet, though."

"I mean hell, Anita Bryant's most productive years were the mid 70's, when we were all on quaaludes and cocaine while having swinging key parties."

"I'm still shopping around my own script titled, 'Unpleasantly Detained'. Try hearing the late Ed La Fontaine saying that one in your head."
(Ed LaFontaine who did every movie trailer voice-over for the last twenty years, it seems.)

"Five Dollar Footlong: Hounded out of his boy's wrestling coach job, Ray is forced to seek employment with a national fast food sandwich chain. Some mayonnaise slathering ensues (cc)."
(Each year, many hours are spent on the Internet, making up fake names for porn. In this case, a vehicle for Ray Romano.)

"I hold it as entirely feasible that my lack of appreciation in this area only confirms my lack of education on the subject. Wait, what the fuck are we talking about?"
(I'm gonna have to go back and actually see what we were talking about. Ah. Larry the Cable Guy. Of course.)

"Yeah...So true. How's the rest of your weekend going? Or am I looking at it?"
(This was in response to some asshole who took me to task at great length for not knowing the proper name of an Ethiopian dish.)

"Considering the mood of America at the time, it's amazing that a show about a trucker and his pet chimp was not universally embraced, and still on the air to this day."
(Clearly discussing NBC's 'B.J. and The Bear'.)

"Just like many non-comedic cinematic ventures could very well be improved by a stark black and white card that reads, "It was very sad, and they all died."
(Y'got me.)

"'America- it's where all my stuff is' certainly outshines the only slogan I've got for our landmass here, which is 'One nation. Inexcusable.'"

"I often refer to Idaho as 'The Albania of the Americas' for their similar love of killing tourists."

"Sure, but the thing about dreams and expectations is...Ah hell; go watch some old 'Twilight Zone' episodes. You'll get it."
(Responding to some young n' idealistic type, clearly.)

"Wouldn't 'her take' be staring at you crosseyed and bearing her two front teeth, as is her reaction to pretty much anything?"
(Referring to Anna Paquin, and her acting "abilities".)

"'Raise your game, clownshoe,' is something I'm going to start saying now. Thank you."
(Oddly, this comes from a discussion thread about the latest Dave Matthews Band release.)

"And just think: all this is happening in a world where Kings of Leon actually command respect. I think we all should die."

"(ahem) Would you describe self preservation as being the basis of existentialism? Or; what do you think of those damn kids?"
(A press conference with the Head Janitor?)

"When you were 'young with a great hook'? Songs of that 'error'?"
(Typoes, again, are comedy gold.)

"Well, both seem to be corpse-fucking of the worst sort, but what do I know?"
(Probably referring to remakes of something near and dear to us all.)

"I always kinda thought "Hangin' With Mr. Cooper" was an okay euphemism for shitting."

"Shana, that sound you heard a few minutes ago was the collective tumescing of the members of each n' every tortured geek in this here room."

"I would so totally watch a movie called 'Crimes and BURNING TO DEATH'."

"The point here isn't semantic; it's literal. You have rather stunningly missed the point now several times, and maybe someone else would like to take a crack at it."
(From a discussion about how 'not guilty' is not the same thing as being innocent.)

"Dick Cheney still walks the earth as well. And you know what? People will overstate his achievements and downplay his egregious missteps when he dies, too."
(This was from that firestorm couple of weeks in which lots of celebrities, for manifold reasons, suddenly died.)

"Good lord. Sorry I offended you. I keep forgetting how tender some of you are."
(So was that. I had been inadequately reverent in the passing of Farrah Fawcett.)

"Hey everybody come down here! Scrotum Jones is suddenly making sense!"
(He came, stayed briefly on the 'AV Club' blog, and left as suddenly as he'd come.)

"I'm trying to bring back use of the word 'scintilla', and the usage of the word 'queer' to denote 'odd'."

"Oh, and of course; being upper middle class in no way means you're not an ignorant, vapid piece of shit. Wealth ain't taste, folks."

"I heartily applaud the arrival of 'so I'm cautiously' as our new thing to say around here."
(People's inability to type is the source of many a cheap laugh.)

"Yeah, but it's pretty amazing that we live in a world where Ashton Kutcher is considered to be worth a shit, too."
(One may apply this line to so many discussions.)

"Yeah hell; I haven't done anything in earnest since 1992."
(In response to the usual cry of 'oh you hipsters are too cynical to actually care about anything...' that one tends to hear from tortured geeks.)

"But hey- we keep straying from the main point: this movie sounds really boring."
(Referring to the movie 'Humpday', which was filmed in Portland.)

"But not a one of you defends the magic that is Mexican Pepsi. In a glass bottle, cane-sugared...Also a fictional sexual position."
(I'm always amazed when someone actually starts up the old Coke v. Pepsi discussion.)

"Well yeah; the only thing more sad than sitting here all day discussing your opinions about movies and shit is cultivating this weirdly misplaced rage against those who do so. I mean really, sister; why all the sand in yer oyster?"
(In any truly long discussion thread, some brave soul will eventually wander in and do the whole 'WHYYY ARE WE EVEN TALKING ABOUT THIIIS?' number, in which it is pointed out that there's so many more important things we could be discussing, like topics the brave soul cares about, for instance. They achieve this important end by trolling discussion boards on entertainment websites.)

"'Golden Corral' as a metaphor for 'death'?"
(Popular steakhouse, as well as uncomfortable imagery-producer.)

"Or for that matter, when did the standards for ass-busting get so damn low?"
(Internet trolls are also very likely to view themselves in a strangely heroic light for doing things like interrupting discussions about some damn movie or something. They just gotta bust asses; cocking snooks at We, The Establishment, i.e. people who sit around all day talking on the Internet about relatively pointless things.)

"Fowler's Modern English Usage: Full Tilt Boogie"
("What you would title the sequel to various things that will never have sequels.")

"In a better world, there would have been Pointlessly Vindictive Spice."
(Spice Girls jokes never really go out of style.)

"As is the case with lots of arena rock, the music's pretty damn good, and the lyrics are the product of an abject moron."
(Journey, I believe, we were discussing?)

"Back when I was a young 'un who admitted to enjoying -say- The Jefferson Airplane or something, and some wanna-be clever Boomer would say, 'Bit before your time, isn't it?', my stock reply was, 'You like Mozart at all?'"

"No no; a schooner is the little glass that looks kinda like the cooling tower at a nuclear power plant. Beer comes in it."

"Oh, being raised in Texas makes you not exactly American as far as I'm concerned..."
(For some reason, that one really pissed people off. I'm not sure why. God knows, if you talk to your average Texan long enough, they'll bring up the whole 'We could secede at any time!' thing, so I always say, 'Let 'em!')

"The protective demon of cosmetology!"
(The word verification word someone had had to enter was 'noslipra'.)

"Oh, they're thinking of children all right..."
(Joke about the FCC being a bunch of pedophiles.)

"Mad Magazine always held that the proper sound effect for a boob slipping out was, 'poit'."

"Better still, naming yourself 'Yusuf Islam' is more or less literally naming yourself 'Joe Surrender'."
(Cat Stevens under discussion here.)

"Somebody get this man to a Chinese restaurant!"
(A callback to an old Woody Allen line about where old Jewish people go when they die.)

"A lot of musical artists whose work I love are indeed crap human beings, as far as I've noticed."
(Someone else talking about Cat Stevens.)

"You fucking misspelled 'typo'."
(After a lengthy screed about how all of the rest of us are such grammar/spelling nazis, and we should all just relax.)

"Commonly Used Phrase: The Movie"
(Or, 'Adjective Noun' movie titles, as I often refer to them.)

"Shit Fucker IV: Double Pits to Chesty"
(Someone had noted that the crew on the video-game movie 'Street Fighter' referred to the film as 'Shit Fucker', and we were coming up with awful sequel names. I chose the most gratingly awful [and I think purposely awful] phrase used in recent advertising, which comes from an ad for an awful product: Axe Body Spray.)

"This convention sucks!"
(Someone had referred to our discussion thread as 'Cynics Con '09'.)

"Well, redneck fashion and gay fashion overlap at many points. They both tuck in their shirts, wear pleated shorts and feel that Tommy Hilfiger isn't embarrassing. So there y'go."
(Both redneck and gay: please excuse the gross generalization.)

"Well, at least you still have your poetry career to fall back on."
(Responding to a poster whose screen name was 'Rilke'.)

"Triumph is the even-more-Canadian Rush!"

"I always held that The Buzzcocks were what The Beatles would have sounded like had they made it to the late '70's."
(I actually believe this.)

"Well, Garth (Brooks) fits here because like it or not, there's a lot more of his type of country than the other kind, and this has always been true. Much as you may enjoy all those old country songs about drinking, fighting and fucking, murder and so on, the majority of them always were heavy on God, The Flag, the importance of Family, the Work of Your Days. Garth is the rule, Jerry Jeff Walker (say) is the exception."

"I don't think I'm being unfair when I say that there's no surer way to doom yourself to looking like a douchebag for the rest of your life than getting your fucking face tattooed.
For extra douchebag points, make sure to complain about the discrimination you receive for your tattooed face. Eeersh."

"Excuse me, but was the fictional band in that movie named 'Low Shoulder'?
If so, clever! That is all."
(In re: the movie 'Jennifer's Body'.)

"Oh dear NonServiam: way to be completely irrelevant to the central discussion and occupy the easiest space of unearned moral high ground simultaneously. You sound like a Reed student trying to get laid."
(In which sanctimonious douchebag gets all superior to Portland, which as we all know is racist. Then, content with themselves, offer no solid ideas as to solving said problem.)

"The dirty little secret of lots of hipsters is that they spent their early twenties/late teens following some jam band. I have endless anecdotal evidence for this.

Thing is, I've often been annoyed by the central argument here that entire genres just plain old cannot be enjoyed, when actually a true music nerd likes a little of everything.

So really the dichotomy isn't hippie music vs. cool music, it's simple vs. elaborate, ripping off The Clash vs. ripping off Frank Zappa."
(In response to Carrie Brownstein's 'Phish Project'.)

"I'm pleased to note that if you Google the phrase "Lars Larson is a cheap little punk", the only thing you'll find is a blog post of mine."
(Remember that one?)

"I believe I shall start a blog called 'Your Blog on the Internet'. It will be about Everything."
(In response to some asshole who wrote Wonkette about how 'ignorant your blog on the internet' was.)

More Lip Impressions

Wayne Coyne apparently begins each show by crowd surfing in a big, transparent hamster ball. He seems to enjoy it immensely, and god knows the fans enjoy it. Here it is in test mode.

Again, there's this highly egalitarian thing going on (or at least great pains are taken to make it appear that this is the case) where they say again and again: we recognize that there's no difference between you and us, really.

Interestingly, the best song by far was 'Convinced of the Hex', which has the insistent chorus, "The difference between us...", and sounds like P. Floyd's 'Set the Controls for the Heart of the Sun'.

That's something too; the music. I've never thought that their music was all that great, and this show left me feeling that they're still kinda lightweights. But that doesn't matter nearly so much when they have such a compelling live show. In that context, a song like the "Yeah Yeah Yeah Song" makes all the sense in the world. Listening to that many people affirming something is really powerful.

Speaking of powerful affirmations, later in their set, the frenzy cooled down for a few as a lengthy piece was spoken. It concerned how...Well, I'm not sure how to summarize it. It kind of had to do with the idea that, while one may not necessarily agree with our various (and constant) wars around the world, one does need to accept that those are your brothers and sisters out there serving in -and dying in- them. Now, credit to Coyne for not making it into that terrible 'they're just doin' their jobs!' thing that everybody seems to make it into: it was a reminder of the human factor.

And how they chose to memorialize was this: as 'taps' was played on a single trumpet, all of us raised our hands in a 'peace' sign. Nothing but a sea of upraised fingers, for as far as the eye could see. Suspension of critical thinking required? A little, but it was surprisingly un-schmaltzy, this moment, and no more manipulative than any emotional event is.

The confetti. God, all that fucking confetti. Yesterday, as we tore down the stage at Edgefield, the further we got into the guts of the stage, the more orange and yellow slips of paper we found.
On top of the four confetti cannons, there was repeated use of the homemade balloon-inflation-device to blow up -first to size, then to explosion- enormous balloons that were also filled with confetti. The fans onstage were blowing all this around (along with the still-returning balloons, which were starting to either explode dramatically in the blackberry bushes, or lodge there where they would stay for weeks thereafter). Toward the end, there was so much floating paper in the air that I had to close my eyes. I was getting paper in my eyes, and was sort of fearing catastrophic amounts of paper cuts, yes.

This was chaos. It was good chaos, though, and much is to be said there, I guess, for the confluence of hipster and hippie. There's plenty of places where they flow together and don't mutually dislike and distrust each other. The Flaming Lips may not seem like an obvious example, but they do have that special place in The Middle firmly occupied.

The Lips have a mythos that they've been building for a while now, with stories and characters, songs that are easily sung-along-to with li'l life lessons that you might just go ahead and take home with you. The song "Do You Realize" is a dead ringer for The Dead's "Eyes of the World", in terms of lyrical content.

But they still have hipster cache leftover from those many, many years that they toiled in obscurity and didn't sound like they currently sound at all. I myself felt like being a pest and requesting that they play their stunningly gritty cover of Sonic Youth's "Death Valley '69". "She Don't Use Jelly"? Well, both hippie and hipster alike enjoy a song that is easy to sing along to, has a not-especially-concealed in-joke, is prima facie absurd...Something for everyone.


Above all else, I guess that the whole thing has a tribal aspect that I officially deem Nice. What I specifically mean by that is how rare and wonderful this particular tour is for this industry in particular. How they interact with their audience is great; how they interact with other people who put on shows for a living is fucking unheard of.
And dare I say that they seem to have actually meant all their utopian crap? I mean, even if it's a pose, what a great pose to have, as opposed to what recording artists generally say.

That they see a hole in the market that could be filled with, hey life's a funny thing, and there's songs and stories to be made out of all of us, and perhaps we could all be a bit braver, and nicer to each other, and it's not too late to halt this here decline shows an interesting prescience, at least.

Top Moments o.' the '09 summer concert season:
1. The Decembrists doing "July, July!" at the end of July, also their cover of "Crazy On You".
(Lesser equivalent: Actually watching Heart do "Crazy On You".)

2. Being thanked by Bonnie Raitt and Taj Mahal for doing our jobs.
(Much lesser equivalent: Carlos Mencia coming outta his dressing room after running two hours over time, with his cronies [with a midget, which is idiot shorthand for 'funny'] and saying, "Let's get a picture with the people who do the hard work and never get any of the credit." Then more or less forcing all of us to stand there grinning while a picture is taken.

Again, motherfucker was already keeping us there late. Secondly, this was just wasting more time, and besides, I hate the guy. He isn't funny, which is all that he need be to be a comic.
Lastly, all the credit I require for doing my fucking job is a paycheck, you asshole. )

3. Best show start to finish: Al Green.
(Wayyy lesser equivalent: Keith Sweat.)

4. Most visually stunning show: The Flaming Lips.
Runner up: The Decemberists.

5. Best in-between-song banter: Lyle Lovett.
(Worst: Sugarland. I had to watch two nights of that bitch pretending to be more southern than she actually is.)

6. Most difficult load-in: Miley Cyrus, as it was Day One of her tour.
(Simplest load-in: The T-Mobile tent outside the Blink 182 show. No really; The Pretenders.)

7. Coolest piece of swag: Hand painted, hand pulled poster for The Decemberists, Andrew Bird and Blind Pilot. Not many people got these. I'm noticing an increase in the practice of making a thousand kinda ho-hum posters that get distributed everywhere and about ten really cool posters that only friends of the band get.
(Weirdest piece of swag: A tiny piece of paper saying "feed me", with the Jonas Bros. seal on it. This was my meal ticket, and I suspect one day it'll be a collector's item.)

8. Best and worst crew shirt: The Flaming Lips are famous for this kind of thing. The shirt this year had an enormous pot leaf on the front, with the words 'FUCK YOU' above it, and the words 'I DO WHAT I LIKE' beneath.
On the back of the shirt, four vaginas with legs with the word 'band', and an arrow pointing to them. And in much larger letters, 'CREW', with an arrow pointing to this big neanderthal-looking guy wearing a shirt with a big pot leaf on it that says, 'FUCK YOU, I DO WHAT I LIKE'. Beneath all this, the legend reads, 'I LOADED IN WITH THE FLAMING LIPS, AND THEY WERE A BUNCH OF PUSSIES'. And beneath that, 'Thanks to all the great load-in/load-out crews of the world'.
All of the foregoing is in glow-in-the-dark material. I will probably never wear it in public.

(There is a partial picture of this, from the Flaming Lips naked video shoot up on Mount Tabor the other day. Said shirt is on the guy standing next to Wayne here. For some reason, I can't just reprint it here. Possibly due to Terms Of Service.)

9. Weirdest brush with fame: being waved at by Nicole Kidman. I was leaving the Keith Urban show for a few hours, and I see the runner van arriving. The van is driven by a woman I know, so I wave at her. But I notice that this thing with reddish-blondish kinky hair in the back seat thinks that I was waving at it, and...Well I can even see the whole thought process:
"Oh, yes yes...I still need to do this whole thing, don't I? I have to smile and wave to these people even when I'm just riding in a van with my husband. Ho ho; well, let's do this thing one more time for my adoring fans...Wave wave, smiiile...Yes. Ah, stardom."

At least I imagine that's what happened. That's what it suddenly appeared to be.

(Weirdest brush with fame not happening to me: Corey was standing backstage watching the Heart show, when Ann Wilson comes offstage briefly, blows a kiss at him. That was okay, but then she took a swig of dong kwai (or however we spell that) "for the throat", and threw the bottle at him, narrowly missing his head. The chief electrician shouted, "What the hell was that?" There was no explanation offered for this.)

(Heart, as viewed from the spot tower, September 25th, Edgefield)

10. Worst crowd moments: Heart (five brawls at Heart, causing me to say, "That kind of music just brings out the bad element, y'know?") and The Gipsy Kings, where...It's a long story, but those people sucked...

A list of all the shows I did, June to September, as taken from the notebook where I write down all such things:

Il Divo
Dionne Warwick
Jazz Attack
Jonas Brothers
American Idol
Steve Miller
Anita Baker
Decemberists (x2)
Sugarland (x2)
Lyle Lovett
The Fray
En Vogue
The Flaming Lips
Dave Koz & Brian Culbertson, with Peabo Bryson
The Pretenders
Al Green
Chris Isaak
Bonnie Raitt and Taj Mahal
Keith Sweat and Teena Marie
Gipsy Kings
Blink 182
Keith Urban
Miley Cyrus
Gov't Mule
Carlos Mencia
The Killers
Heart
Jason Mraz

[*(x2) denotes two nights of show]

Also, Microsoft Tech Ready, Nike Fall Sales, Portland Opera's production of 'La Boheme' and some band/performance art thing from Ireland that I did for PICA. I'm lucky I work so much. Hell, I'm lucky in general.