Moronic Stunt Goes Terribly Wrong

Alright so I put a poll up on the blog last week and I kinda accidentally posted it with only two options for an answer, thus making it seem that there are only two possible answers to the question. When I did it, I kinda chuckled to myself about it, and decided to leave it because that was funny. I failed to realize that there was probably other answers/opinions held on the group by my readers, but I felt that by only giving two options to choose from, albeit accidentally, would give me a laugh. It was a success, because I actually forgot that I did that. So the unanimous opinion held by my readers as to you're feelings on the band Chicago are "meh, they're okay." But apparently, no one is allowed to have an opinion higher than that. So, yeah...but anyway....

Every so often, I like to grab the attention of my followers on Twitter, because sometimes, I like to be paid attention to. I often to this by pulling publicity stunts that take a series of posts to complete, like chronicling my attempt to quit smoking back in November or running Twitter polls about what is you're favorite candy bar. Well this past weekend, especially on Monday, I did a bad job of checking my Twitter, and when I finally did, I had something like 200 new posts in my feed that I had to go through, and I knew it would take hours to read them all. I like to read them all because I like all of the people I follow. I feel that the people that I follow all post something interesting, and I like to read things that are interesting. Well, I didn't exactly have enough time to get through all of the tweets, and I felt bad about it. I realized that I was following entirely too many people and I needed to get rid of some of them. The problem was trying to figure out whom to unfollow. So I told my followers that whoever annoyed me the most over the next 24 hour period, I would choose the five most annoying to ax. I called it the Chopping Block. Well, it didn't work out as planned, because there is a particular person in Canada named Navin Vaswani that goes by the name "Eyebeleaf" that is a writer and sports enthusiast. He was going on and on about Jose Bautista and the Toronto Blue Jays and it was bothering me, yet I couldn't bring myself to unfollow him. He did a trip around the country visiting every Major League ballpark, and coincidentally, he happened to be at the game I went to in Atlanta on May 16th. We almost met there, but I couldn't find him. He is usually pretty funny and gives prospective from north of the boarder, which is nice/interesting. So even though he was annoying during the said 24 hour period, I could not ax him.

So when it came time to do the chopping, I chose obvious people that wouldn't take it personally if I had done so. In fact, I chose people that probably wouldn't even notice. I chose Lebron James and Chris Bosh of the Miami Heat. I started following them when all of the NBA free agent stuff was going on, and now that it's over, they were not giving me any useful information anymore. I also chose to unfollow HONashville. I started following them (Hands On Nashville) during the Nashville flood back in May because they were organizing the flood recovery efforts and I wanted to help. Lately, they just tweet inspirational quotes, and give no information on how to volunteer, so I axed them. I axed BPGlobalPR because it was a joke account designed to give fake public relations from BP in the wake of the oil spill. Well, the joke was getting old so they went out too.

The final person who got the ax was a local all-ages music and arts venue here in Nashville called Rocketown. Number one, I have never been to Rocketown, even though they often have bands play there that are quality. Number two, as an all-ages venue, they tend to cater to the youth of Nashville, and I'm not really all that youthful anymore. So I decided that I could unfollow them as they fill my feed up with all kinds of things about stuff that I'm not all that interested in. Well, when I Tweeted who I was axing, they noticed, and retweeted it, making me look like an asshole. So then I felt bad, and sent out an apology tweet and refollowed them, because I'm not an asshole. I instead unfollowed Horatio Sanz, because he tries to be funny on Twitter, but just isn't.

I felt guilty telling someone I didn't want to be their friend.

That's when I realized the whole thing was totally misguided. I should have never made a game out of me unfollowing people, because by unfollowing someone, it shows that you don't care about them, and it's a bit personal. If I had quietly unfollowed them, they would not have noticed and we would have both just gone on with out lives and all be better off. But when I point out that I'm possibly ditching you, it makes me sound like an asshole, weather I axed you or not. I just got angry about having my twitter feed full of stuff, obscuring the good stuff that was posted by people I actually care a lot about and I took out my frustrations on people I don't know. I hope I entertained anyone that watched the whole thing go down, as that was my plan, but I felt bad for Rocketown, who were just trying to be promotional and have good intentions. I have no reason to publicly tell everyone that follows me that they are useless, because that makes me an asshole.

I had to get this off my chest. Thank you for reading

Just Another Lazy Day Afternoon

So I'm sitting on my couch, right? And I'm downloading a massive update for a video game I got called Burnout Paradise for the Playstation 3, which is a racing game in the series that involves racing, but also wrecking other cars as spectacularly as possible. I bought the game pretty much when I got the system, but when I hooked the system up to the internet, it required a massive update in order to play it. In other words, I never felt like waiting around for that update to happen, so I haven't played the game since November. I'm also streaming some weird hipster indie music from this site. Pretty neat. Well, I didn't know what else to do on the internet while this stupid update downloads so I figured I'd stop by and say hey.

Try THIS LINK and if it works, that's specifically what I'm listening to.

So the Music City Brewfest is this weekend and I'm not going. I'm not going not because I don't want to. I love beer, but it sold the fuck out real quick, therefore, I am out. Nonetheless, I will drink beer in Music City this weekend, just not in a festival atmosphere.

Useless information? Check.

Anyhow, there are times when I want to be preachy and high and mighty, smart, and educated. There are other days when I want to listen to music and play video games. Today is a day where I want to do the latter. I try to focus on one or the other, without knowing it, but on a day like today, it's a day I wish I did more often, even though I'm being pretty lazy and unproductive. Ya know what? It's my day off. I'm going to relax. That's what it's for.

The Business of Music

Today I want to talk about a man named Mark Andrews. Mark Andrews is better known by his stage name, Sisqo. According to Sisqo's Wikipedia page, he is best known as the lead singer of the singing group Dru Hill. I would tend to disagree, as most people only know him because of the "Thong Song." A dude with silver hair griped this nation approximately ten years ago, singing about a particular piece of women's clothing, and we were all a little bit dumber afterwards for it. Here's the thing, if Thong Song hadn't been such a huge hit, I probably wouldn't hate that song, it would just be some other novelty song from the late 90's that was a gimmick, but didn't work. Well, that's the problem, this was a gimmick that actually worked. There were (are) a lot of gimmicks in modern music. How else do you think stupid shit sticks?

What got me to think about Sisqo this morning? I was reading my book "All you need to know about the music business" and they were talking about music videos. I always thought music videos are self-funded, but that's apparently not true. Well anyway, it reminded me of a music video that was shot in the year 2000, that was deemed so bad, it wasn't even released. The problem with it is that they spent an ungodly amount of money producing the thing. But it was a cheese-ball video that didn't even get released. It just goes to show that the industry was quite the monster back then that it certainly is not now.

MTV stopped playing videos, and that's okay with me. I understand that that is a business, and the way to make money is to cut things that don't make money and keep the things that do. Music videos, even though people claim is what they really want out of MTV, apparently doesn't make MTV any money. Snooki makes MTV money. You can't argue with that. If you don't like what's on, don't fucking watch it. MTV created a market for the music video as the premise of their channel, and killed the music video when they decided to stop playing them, even though the channel remained successful. The music video is irrelevant now, even though most bands still make them, and you can find them on the internet. I haven't really watched videos in quite a while, because I just don't care. If you were going to play me a block of videos on a screen in front of me and I have no control over the content, I would likely watch them. If I get to choose the videos, I'm probably not going to watch. Don't ask me why, that's just how it is. But anyway, Sisqo made a terrible and yet very expensive music video that few people ever saw. (one being me, they eventually played it on MTV telling people that this video was never released because it sucks, so since it was on MTV, I'm probably not the only one who's seen it.) Why mention it to you? Because it's an example of industry excess that those executives figured would never end and would only increase. Oh, how the businessmen and women of America are so short-sighted.

I read an amazing book a while back called "Appetite for Self-Destruction: The Spectacular Crash of The Record Industry in the Digital Age." It basically talked about how the entire industry collapsed after Shawn Fanning created Napster. If Fanning had never created Napster, someone else would have, because this thing was bound to happen. That book, coupled with the book I'm currently reading, it looks like a career as a musician just ain't what it used to be. Oh, how I wish I was making music ten years ago. This all would have been so easy.

I know I sorta already wrote this blog before, and I hope you don't mind me talking about some more. The only person making great music videos anymore is Lady Gaga. She has done an amazing job of capturing the internet audience, while other haven't. I honestly can't cite numbers of examples, but I just know. The one figure I know is that her videos have been collectively viewed over a billion times. I heard that like, a month ago, so it's probably like 1.5 billion now. Fucking amazing. In the age of industry turmoil, Lady Gaga is the only shining star to come out of it. She hasn't managed to replicate the album sales of the industries' past, but she certainly has figured out how to be successful without the old business model. The last artist to sell 10,000,000 copies of an album was Usher...in 2004. The best selling album of 2009 was Taylor Swift, and that only sold 6 million. Lil Wayne sold 3.2 million in 2008. By contrast, the best selling album in 2001 was (I just found this out, by the way) Hybrid Theory by Linkin Park. That sold 9.6 million albums in the U.S. alone to date. (can't find figures from 2001 alone) Those numbers will probably never come back. How do musicians make money in the future? Not sure anyone really knows the answer to that. All I know that you'll have to change the culture of the listener again, and that will probably involve telling them to pay up, and they will probably not like it at first. It took iTunes a year to sell 50 million songs. iTunes has sold 11 billion songs since it's launch in 2003. Impressive, but it's a very small fraction of the songs downloaded illegally. Here's the stat blowin' my mind right now: 40 Billion songs were "shared" illegally in 2008. Holy fuck. I guess I didn't realize how bad it got. It's good if you simply want you're song to be heard by people, because that's obviously happening, but you're not getting paid for it. I guess I understand the defeatism that musicians express when talking about illegal downloads. They know there's nothing they can do about it anymore. This stat has just changed everything for me.

This stat might kill the dream a little. It's not possible anymore. And that makes me pretty sad.

So to tie things together from beginning to end, you used to be able to put out a music video and sell 10 million albums. Now, you make a record, it gets stolen, and you try to make a buck some other way. You could also argue that music videos sold records, and they don't play videos on MTV anymore. But illegal downloads killed the industry as we knew it, yet artists still make records and videos. I guess it shows that it's not always about the money as it was starting to become. I don't see a reason for an artist to make a music video anymore, honestly. And I really didn't know at the time when all these illegal downloading sites started popping up what impact they really would have on the industry. Lars Ulrich of Metallica was absolutely correct back then, and he was hung out to dry by people that felt they were entitled to getting things for free. I'd like to hear your opinion on illegal downloads if you would like to share them.

Live Life To The ULTRA

It's amazing to me how often people fall for Michelob Ultra's advertising campaign. I've been out to bars, restaurants, casinos and stores that sell beer and I have noticed it a number of times. Usually it's a lady, usually in her 30's or 40's, and she appears to be in shape. She has seen the ads in her magazines or on television about the beer you can drink when having a good time, but you can also be an athlete. When I think of beer and athletics, it usually involves watching sports, not actually playing. Also there are the amateur men playing golf or softball. Not exactly world class athletes, even if they are talented at what they do. The point being, they usually aren't too particular in the calorie content of the beer they choose, because they aren't usually trying to maintain a form. They just like to get a little tipsy while doing something active that they enjoy. It's leisure time, not workout time.

For example of what I'm talking about with Michelob Ultra, there is an ad in this Sports Illustrated that I'm reading that made me stop in my tracks to blog for the first time in forever. It features Lance Armstrong, Seven-time Tour de France champion and all-around well respected athlete, intensely riding a bike, clearly in the lead of the "race" he's involved in. Perhaps it's not a race at all, as he is just kinda riding a bike, but nonetheless, it's intense, serious. As if to say, you can be a serious workout-a-holic, and still drink beer in you're leisure time. Let's face it, beer isn't good for you. I don't care how good it tastes or how good it makes you feel. It has calories and what not that, as you know if you know anyone that drinks a lot of it, will put pounds on you. I've known plenty of people that used to be skinny and healthy that started drinking a lot of beer all the time and suddenly, you start to ask yourself how they let themselves go. Those people must not be drinking Michelob Ultra, obviously, because if they were, they would be like Lance Armstrong, intensely riding their bike, winning seven Tours de France.

The problem I have with Michelob Ultra is that it tastes like water. Now I know that lots of people don't drink light beer because light beer tastes like water and they want a beer that tastes like beer, but Michelob Ultra really does have very little taste to it. The other problem is that it boasts being better for you by having 2.6 grams of carbohydrates and 95 calories. By contrast, Miller Lite, Busch Light and fucking Natty Light all have 3.2 grams of carbs and 96 calories. That is a difference of one calorie, and 0.6 grams of carbs. I'm no health expert, but that seems pretty minute. And if you want to drink beer, chances are you like the taste of it. If not, Michelob is you're choice because it tastes like water. The alcohol content is basically the same for all four beers, but the taste is significantly different. Not all people like the taste of Busch light or Natty light, and the fact that they are Anheuser-Busch products make me not want to purchase them, because that company sucks, but they certainly taste better than Michelob Ultra. Fuck that beer, man.

The one beer out of the four I have mentioned above that I do have a tendency to purchase is Miller Lite. Miller Lite tastes good. It tastes like beer. The problem is that I was informed by an anonymous friend whom was working for a company that was doing tests on Miller Lite's artificial hop flavoring. So you're telling me that it tastes great, but is also less filling because it's not real? I'm not sure if this information is well-known or if I'm supposed to even know this information, but I do, and that makes me question everything these companies are doing. In the spirit of selling "healthy" beer, they're probably all adding bullshit to the beer to make it taste better. Maybe Michelob Ultra doesn't add artificial hops flavoring? Maybe that's why it tastes like water? I do not know the extent of the artificial flavoring going on in the mass-market beer world, but I do know that I've tried my best to swear off the big guys as much as possible. This is possible here in Nashville because they have a wonderful brewery here called Yazoo that makes real, local beer that tastes way better than any mass-marketed beer you could ever find. In fact, all over the country there are microbreweries and craft brewers that would greatly appreciate you're business. Not that I'm totally against big corporations, but most of them suck, and we all know it. Beer companies are no different. Because they sneak in artificial hops flavoring into their beers. I'm sorry but that just sounds wrong to me.

So Michelob Ultra (an Anheuser-Busch product, might I add) wants you to know that if you drink their beer, you can be like Lance Armstrong and be an athlete. And people believe that. Advertising pisses me off...Unless it's Old Spice.

Fuck, Shit, Piss. (offended?)

This is the first time in a while that a newspaper article has instantly inspired me. This is a good thing.

There is an article on the front page of today's Tennessean, where they talk about tossing out the FCC's near-zero-tolerance policy on broadcasting expletives. Now, while you don't have to swear when you speak, in fact some say it makes you sound less educated, but in my opinion, there is nothing funnier than a well timed swear word. No one was better at this art than Mr. Gould back home. A very close runner-up is these guys. It got me thinking though. We've all been taught from a very young age that we shouldn't say certain words because they are bad. We all accepted that and didn't say those words until we all got older and felt rebellious enough to let our inner sailor out into the world. Even to this day as an adult, I try to censor myself around my mother. Swear words, don't say 'em.

But why though? It's just weird. You can get away with saying "crap" all you want, but make it "shit" and you are in big trouble mister. "Dang" as apposed to "Damn" as well. Now, I know there is a religious reasons for Damn to be a swear word, and that's fine. But shit, fuck, piss, ass, bitch and cock-satchel are all no-no words. You can say "frick" and it's okay. You can say pee, and that's alright. It means the same thing, and even sounds close to the same thing, yet when you put those specific letters in order and write them down or speak them, you can get fined. How is this possible? It is literally just a word. No one knows why they are forbidden words, but we all know that they just are. Well, actually I'm sure someone knows, and I have been reading a bit about the origins of swear words here, but the general public doesn't know. I know that fuck can defiantly refer to having sex, or "fucking," and we sure don't want the youth of america to know what that is. Then they might do it, and that's wrong. Shit, well that's gross. You take a shit, and it's smelly, and you do it in private. No one likes to have their private stuff talked about. But it's really funny when someone uses it to describe how they feel about a statue.

"You like that statue?"

"naw, it's shitty."

"lol"

Swear words just make phrases have more power. You know someone is serious, because they make it perfectly fucking clear their opinion on the matter. (see what I did there?) Example:

"I love summer because I can lay by the pool for hours and relax."

"I fucking love summer because I can lay by the pool for hours and fucking relax."

The second example shows how much passion the person feels about summer, and how much it seems he or she needs the relaxation.

I get the fact that we were raised to not say those words, and to not accept those words in society. I get it. But the fact that the average person on the street (i.e. me) can't explain why we don't say those words is odd to me. It's ingrained into our society at this point, and that's not changing soon. I'm not rallying for the proliferation of the use of the word shit on NBC prime time television, it just struck me as odd, and the fact that it just now struck me as odd, at age 27, is also odd.

Weird world, this is.

Another Music Post

Last night, me and my band had a band meeting to discuss the future of the band. We're changing the name, our guitar player Andy has left the band and we got this new guy. His name is Kaveh and he's only 19. He is 8 years younger than me, which means I'm old, but I'm not worried about it. Well, I gave him a ride to his car from the Mexican restaurant we ate at and when we got in my car, I had the latest AP podcast playing, which is an interview with Good Charlotte. As it started to play, he asked what it was, and I told him. He asked if I like Good Charlotte, and I quickly answered that I didn't, but I like the podcasts, no matter who the guest is. I put on a different song and we drove to his car.

After he got out, I realized that I had just done something that I have been trying to avoid for quite some time, and that is not worry about listening to whatever I listen to. So I called him back over to my car, where I informed him that I am in fact a fan of Good Charlotte, because, well, I am. I have been for quite some time, and I shouldn't worry about that. What kind of music fan are you if you listen to Good Charlotte. The perception of that band is not good. I try not to, but I have a tendency to look down at people that listen to questionable modern music, and doing so, I am a hypocrite. I listen to questionable modern music as well. I had to tell him that I was a fan of Good Charlotte, because I can't lie. I can't try to make myself look cooler by only listening to the hippest and coolest new band on the block. I listen to whatever I want, and that has usually been the case for my entire adult life.

Now, I will admit that sometimes I will get into some music because it will make me look cooler and more respectable to my peers. Usually, it's genuine. Getting into MGMT back in 2008 was an example of a pop-punk kid like me trying to listen to more artsy music so that others around me would view me as knowledgeable and hip. I didn't know what to do with myself. So I got into that album, even though I didn't really like it. Since then, I have really crafted the art of sniffing out good, undergound music, and I pride myself on that fact. I swear to god, some people only listen to what they listen to because it will make them look cooler.

A lot of people don't like certain music because they don't get it, and that's okay. Some people don't like music because they don't care for that type of music. Some people just like the handful of bands they currently listen to and always will, and that's fine. I "get" MGMT, I just don't like it anymore. I "get" Dum Dum Girls, but that doesn't make it good. I can't believe an artsy indie band could possibly be formulaic, but Dum Dum Girls managed to do it. It just ain't for me, and not all music is for everyone, that's why having billions of songs by millions of bands is a good thing. There's always something out there for everyone. And for me, Good Charlotte is a band I like, and probably always will, because I like it. That's all that matters. I know it won't make me look cool, but I do it anyway, because it makes me happy.

Happy listening

Don't Have a Cow Man

Everybody knows that Tom Cruise is a Scientologist, right? As Big Dave documented last month, there are plenty of reasons to not like Tome Cruise, not entirely because of his beliefs, but that he comes across as a nut-job because of them. Sure, people can believe what they want, that's the beauty of living in America.

I really don't want to get into the details of the Church of Scientology, if you want the truth about the whole thing, visit this website. From what I have learned/heard though, is that the whole thing is just absurd. But my beliefs are not exactly in line with Christians or Jews or any other religion, so who am I to criticize the Church of Scientology anyway?

(I have to get this religion post out of the way before the next big thing happens. More on that later, I suppose?)

I got thinking about the Church of Scientology, and more specifically celebrity Scientologists this morning because I found out that Charles Crandall Finster is a Scientologist. So is Bartholomew Jojo Simpson. Two celebrities that I would not have guessed followed the beliefs. Those celebrity names not ringing a bell? Well, those are the names of cartoon characters better known as Chuckie from Rugrats and Bart Simpson. Those animated kids are voiced by Nancy Cartwright. Nancy Cartwright is a Scientologist, and has been since the late 1980's, and therefore, these cartoon kids are also. Whenever I find out that someone is a Scientologist, I immediately wonder what they're thinking about. What crazy thoughts are they thinking about? It blows me away how someone can be religious, subscribing to any religion, and also live a "normal" life. This is probably true because I am not religious. But I understand Christians, and what they believe (generally) and I don't have to wonder what they're thinking about because I've grown up in a world where Christian beliefs are the norm. But Scientology? Ive researched it a bit in the past on one of those midnight shifts at the old job where I spent a good 3 hours studying what Scientologist believe, and what they put people through, and what they expect from the believers to "advance." If I'm not mistaken, if you donate enough money, you can gain higher rank. So you buy you're way to the top? That just seems absurd. For example, Bart Simpson donated $10 million to the church in 2007, which is twice his (her) annual salary. You must really love that place to do that. So I guess I can't knock something I don't fully understand, but on the surface, to me, it just seems like a ridiculous waste of time and money. I don't know how much the people that go to church benefit from going there. Spirituality is important, and that should not be ridiculed by some Agnostic like me on a Saturday morning.

I say have fun, Scientologists, enjoy it. You obviously found something to believe in, even if it's probably a farce. Just don't go on TV and look like a moron. Jason Lee is a Scientologist, but he "doesn't want to be a spokesperson for anything." I like that. Just keep it to yourself. Enjoy what you do. After all, this is America, and you can do whatever you like.