Schmidtty Says Good-Bye

20 years ago today! Hard to believe...

Alternate Reality Football

We have a way to go before football season but I always get the fever about this time of year. It's a month after the draft, almost four months after the Super Bowl, and preseason is just over two tantalizing months away. I thought I'd take a look at the history of the league, and how only a few games could change everything.

Since 1966 -- the beginning of the Super Bowl era -- there have been a total of 14,134 regular season games, played, plus hundreds of playoff games. But when you think about it, if you reversed the decisions of just 43 of those games (less than 0.003%), the entire league would look completely different.

But it doesn't seem so unusual if you just reverse the fortunes of the 43 Super Bowl games that have been played over the last ... well, 43 years. Remember, we've still had fewer Super Bowls than we have presidents! That will change, of course, when the Bills win Super Bowl 44.

In the real world, the NFC has won 22 Super Bowls, and the AFC has won 21. (The Patriots could have tipped the balance in the AFC's favor had they stopped planning Disney World speeches and beaten the Giants, but such is life.)

Let's look at the first four Super Bowls, when the National Football League and the American Football League still had yet to officially merge. Here are the bizarro results (I am going to use Arabic numerals instead of Roman numerals for ease of reading):

Super Bowl 1: KANSAS CITY CHIEFS defeat Green Bay Packers
Super Bowl 2: OAKLAND RAIDERS defeat Green Bay Packers
Super Bowl 3: BALTIMORE COLTS defeat New York Jets
Super Bowl 4: MINNESOTA VIKINGS defeat Kansas City Chiefs

Since the AFL and NFL each won two games in these initial contests, it doesn't change the league dynamics all that much, other than making Kansas City the winners of the inaugural game, the Packers choking away two consecutive games (wonder what that might be like) and the Vikings beginning their soon-to-be decade of dominance. In the most exciting game of the first four, Joe Namath valiantly attempted to upset the heavily-favored Colts, but Johnny Unitas had one more miracle left in him, leading the Baltimore to their last football title ever to date.

Now, onto the 1970s!

Super Bowl 5: DALLAS COWBOYS defeat Baltimore Colts
Super Bowl 6: MIAMI DOLPHINS defeat Dallas Cowboys
Super Bowl 7: WASHINGTON REDSKINS defeat Miami Dolphins
Super Bowl 8: MINNESOTA VIKINGS defeat Miami Dolphins
Super Bowl 9: MINNESOTA VIKINGS defeat Pittsburgh Steelers
Super Bowl 10: DALLAS COWBOYS defeat Pittsburgh Steelers
Super Bowl 11: MINNESOTA VIKINGS defeat Oakland Raiders
Super Bowl 12: DENVER BRONCOS defeat Dallas Cowboys
Super Bowl 13: DALLAS COWBOYS defeat Pittsburgh Steelers
Super Bowl 14: LOS ANGELES RAMS defeat Pittsburgh Steelers

Oh, those poor Steelers of the '70s. They made the game an unprecedented four times in six seasons, and lost all of them. I wonder what that's like.

The bizarro 1970s were clearly dominated by the NFC, who won eight out of ten Super Bowls. The Cowboys and Vikings tie the decade with three each, but the Vikings get the edge for "Team of the '70s" because of their Super Bowl Four win, which technically took place in January 1970. However, the Cowboys get special consideration by making it to exactly half the Super Bowls of the 1970s (true in both the bizarro and real world).

Amazing that the '72 Dolphins came THIS close to having the NFL's first perfect season since the merger, until Garo Yepremien botched a field goal to allow the Redskins to score late in the game, take the momentum and win the game. Cowboys tight end Jackie Smith's clutch catch in the endzone of Super Bowl Thirteen gave Dallas the lead and the momentum over the star-crossed Steelers. The then-all-time passing leader Fran Tarkenton got his crowning third Super Bowl ring in four years in Super Bowl Eleven.

On to the 1980s!

Super Bowl 15: PHILADELPHIA EAGLES defeat Oakland Raiders
Super Bowl 16: CINCINNATI BENGALS defeat San Francisco 49ers
Super Bowl 17: MIAMI DOLPHINS defeat Washington Redskins
Super Bowl 18: WASHINGTON REDSKINS defeat Los Angeles Raiders
Super Bowl 19: MIAMI DOLPHINS defeat San Francisco 49ers
Super Bowl 20: NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS defeat Chicago Bears
Super Bowl 21: DENVER BRONCOS defeat New York Giants
Super Bowl 22: DENVER BRONCOS defeat Washington Redskins
Super Bowl 23: CINCINNATI BENGALS defeat San Francisco 49ers
Super Bowl 24: DENVER BRONCOS defeat San Francisco 49ers

In four attempts, the pesky 49ers couldn't quite get over the hump, making Joe Montana possibly the greatest QB that ever lived who never won a championship. The Patriots performed the upset of the decade, toppling the mighty 15-1 Bears. But it was the Denver Broncos, led by John Elway, who dominated the second half of the decade, winning three out of four Super Bowls. The Miami Dolphins and Cincinnati Bengals -- the two AFC expansion teams of the 1960s -- showed a lot of toughness as well, with two wins each. Amazingly, the Washington Redskins would be the last NFC team to win a Super Bowl for fourteen long years.

The 1990s weren't just the advent of the internet and the Bedazzler! It was the decade of change ... and going back to the future!

Super Bowl 25: BUFFALO BILLS defeat New York Giants
Super Bowl 26: BUFFALO BILLS defeat Washington Redskins
Super Bowl 27: BUFFALO BILLS defeat Dallas Cowboys
Super Bowl 28: BUFFALO BILLS defeat Dallas Cowboys
Super Bowl 29: SAN DIEGO CHARGERS defeat San Francisco 49ers
Super Bowl 30: PITTSBURGH STEELERS defeat Dallas Cowboys
Super Bowl 31: NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS defeat Green Bay Packers
Super Bowl 32: GREEN BAY PACKERS defeat Denver Broncos
Super Bowl 33: ATLANTA FALCONS defeat Denver Broncos
Super Bowl 34: TENNESSEE TITANS defeat ST. LOUIS RAMS

Clearly, the Team of the Bizarro '90s was the Buffalo Bills, run by the K-Gun offense, they started their good-karma with a clutch 47-yard Scott Norwood field goal to win Super Bowl Twenty-Five by a score of 22-20. Many compare them to the (real-life) New York Islanders of the early 1980s. The rest of the Decade shows a second Super Bowl win for the Patriots, and the first taste of victory for the Steelers and Packers, who had each been to the big game multiple times prior, but never able to win. Two major Super Bowl upsets in a row happened, with Atlanta defeating the 15-1 Broncos, and the Titans beating the high-flying Rams. (Note: the Titans got to the Bizarro-world Super Bowl by performing a completely legal lateral pass in a playoff game against Buffalo. In Bizarro-world, the play was 100% legit, and Phil Luckett was named head of officiating instead of being tortured in my dreams.)

Last but not least, the turn of the Millennium, with a couple surprises along the way!

Super Bowl 35: ST. LOUIS RAMS defeat New England Patriots
Super Bowl 36: NEW YORK GIANTS defeat Baltimore Ravens
Super Bowl 37: OAKLAND RAIDERS defeat Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Super Bowl 38: CAROLINA PANTHERS defeat New England Patriots
Super Bowl 39: PHILADELPHIA EAGLES defeat New England Patriots
Super Bowl 40: SEATTLE SEAHAWKS defeat Pittsburgh Steelers
Super Bowl 41: CHICAGO BEARS defeat Indianapolis Colts
Super Bowl 42: NEW ENGLAND PATRIOTS defeat New York Giants
Super Bowl 43: ARIZONA CARDINALS defeat Pittsburgh Steelers

Once again, the Steelers have a tough decade, losing two Super Bowls in four years, mostly because they got very little help from the officials in both games. The Patriots looked to be having a bad go of it as well, losing three of four games, before finally capping off their perfect 2007 season by defeating the Giants.

So to recap:

Bizarro Team of the 1970s: MINNESOTA VIKINGS
Bizarro Team of the 1980s: DENVER BRONCOS
Bizarro Team of the 1990s: BUFFALO BILLS
Bizarro Team of the 2000s: ????

Well folks, it has been a wild, wild ride. I hope you enjoyed this trip down a twisted path. And think, if just 43 games -- out of the 14,000+ that have been played in the Super Bowl era -- had had different results, this wouldn't have been bizarro at all, but real!!!!

How's your mind? Blown? I'm sure it is. Of course, to the kids in third world countries, this is how it really happened anyway.

R.I.P. Dane Cook

No, he's not actually dead, but my love for him certainly is. It seems that early on, you fell into one of two camps: either "Dane Cook is the Greatest Comedian That Has Ever Lived In This or Any Era," or "Dane Cook is a Fucking Piece of Shit Who Only Is Popular Because of College Co-Eds." I was somewhere between these two frames of mind, in that I always found him funny, but I could tell there was trouble a-brewin'.

[Note: I'm noticing that I'm referring to Dane Cook as "Dane" throughout this post, as if I know him. I don't know him, but referring to him as "Cook" is probably even more douchey.]

Dane Cook's first album -- Harmful If Swallowed -- was an unexpected masterpiece of observational humor and unusual wordplay. He would mine mundane situations for universal nod-your-head-in-agreement truths, such was what everyone says when they get cut off on the highway ("Umm... hello???") and when you are standing around at the scene of a night-time accident (where everybody acts like they are cold). It had some profanity and some bawdy moments, but they were always within the context of his observations. It was a real charmer of an album because not that many people knew who he was back then, and you could introduce someone to it without looking like you were already on some kind of bandwagon.

His second release, a double album called Retaliation, was very entertaining, if imperfect. Everyone remembers "somebody shit on the coats" line, and there is enough laugh-out-loud material on this one to be considered a good buy. Interestingly, the second disc is a lot of dirty stuff, notably the "where's the handle" portion, which is amusing but incredibly filthy.

At this point, you were solidly pro-Dane or anti-Dane. And it seemed that reactions on both sides were wayyy over the top. There are people who refuse to acknowledge that there has been a single funny syllable that has ever fallen from his lips. Note some comments on Dane from his entry at RateYourMusic.com:

There are 24 tracks on this CD but where are the jokes? This is nothing more than some pretty boy comic talking about his everyday boring life in a room full of people that would laugh at anything. ... HIFS was the comedy album that rotated a lot in many various kiddy circles when it came out. Who didn't listen to this? But come on, this guy was a sham. I really hope that no one over the age of twenty actually bought into this stuff and laughed, because it is all very stupid. ... Dane Cook is NOT FUNNY. Seriously. I was heavy into stand up so i got Wright, Carlin, Hicks and Hedberg. ... I could listen to this all the way through without even cracking a smile. I would only do that to prove a point. After the point was proven, I would never listen to this unfunny shit ever again.

Okay first off, don't get me started about these hipster fucks who constantly cite George Carlin and Mitch Hedberg. Carlin hasn't been funny in two decades; in fact his funeral was probably funnier than his last ten albums. And Hedberg had a brilliantly brief streak as the "hot" comic, but by the end of his young life he was so drugged out that he could barely perform. Joe Piscopo had more longevity than poor Mitch.

But you can't tell me that you never laughed at Dane Cook. I just don't buy it. I feel that these people probably had a pre-conceived notion about Dane and that probably colored their reaction to his comedy. Not your thing? Fair enough. I find it very hard to believe you never found him funny once.

The flip-side to that is the equally irritating Cult of Dane, which basically amounts to a collection of college age girls (all due respect young ladies) who wouldn't know Bob Newhart from Jim "The Anvil" Neidhardt, and suddenly are experts on the History of American Comedy. These are the people who scream at Dane's every concert ... you know, rather than actually laughing. God forbid Dane would throw out one of his catchphrases, you'd think you were at a fucking Jonas Brothers concert.

I never really blamed Dane himself for this; why wouldn't he try to get the crowd as amped up as he could. (David Cross certainly knows what's up!) And it wasn't his fault that (what I thought was) his relatively smart humor was being co-opted by a bunch of neophytes who just thought he was hot.

Dane's HBO special, Vicious Circle, wasn't bad, but it seemed that he couldn't help but fall victim to believing the accolades. He might have been drafted into the Cult of Dane, but now he was the willing ringleader. (Think: Gaius Baltar, fellow nerds.)

A few months ago, I was very excited to hear his album Rough Around the Edges on a trip from Syracuse to Rochester. I laughed for one track ("15 cents") and the rest was sex-laden material that would have sounded better coming from Jimmy Norton than Dane Cook. It was a crushing disappointment.

Later, I heard a radio interview with Dane, where the interviewer said Dane had been called "an X-rated Brian Regan," and whether Dane took that as a compliment. (If you don't know who Brian Regan is, he truly is the greatest comedian that's ever lived, next to maybe Bob Newhart and 1980s David Letterman.) Dane said "No, I don't take that as a compliment." And while he didn't insult Regan, he said it in a very dismissive way, almost like saying "Don't even compare Brian Regan to ME." He lost me for good there.

And that brings me to his latest special, ISolated INcident, a concert shot in one take and presented commercial-free for its debut. While it wasn't patently awful, it was just not that interesting. Dane went for a lot of the sexed-up humor that he's been using as a crutch lately (I had gravitated to him early on because he found a way to transcend that kind of stuff), including extended passages about web porn (not a single titter from me) and countless references to sexual exploits. It's not like I'm a prude, folks, I just don't find that kinda stuff interesting.

But the worst, new part of Dane's new act is the self-referentiality. In this special, he makes reference to his parents that died (which is fine), but then talks about how he Googled himself and saw all this hatred on the internet. (One funny thing: "When I entered my name into Google, Google came back to me and said 'Are you sure?'") But rather than acknowledge the myriad, valid reasons that some people might dislike him (his ego, the change in direction of his humor), he seems to chalk it all up to jealousy over his success. Instead, I would hope that Dane might figure out that maybe he strayed a bit from his roots. If someone had gotten to Adam Sandler early on, maybe we'd have more Billy Madisons and Happy Gilmores, and less Wedding Singers, Big Daddys and Little Nickys.

Early on, Dane had a kind of humility that any good comedian needs to have. The second a comic starts taking himself too seriously is when he will start to lose his luster. (See: Piscopo, Joe; Carrey, Jim; Murphy, Eddie; Degeneres, Ellen (since rehabbed).) I would love to see Dane act less like a superstar and more like a dumbass comic with flaws and vulnerability. When you are handsome (and suddenly buff, holy shit!), a little self-deprication goes a long way, and until he finds it again, I'm off the Dane Train.

Make Up Your Mind

Dominoes!

Awesome! A short video for the Rochester Institute of Technology's "Imagine RIT" festival.

Of the Carnal and the Catastrophic

I don't remember where I heard it, but I heard many years ago a theory that stated this: where there is lack of creativity, there is sex.

That whenever someone doesn't have an intelligent wit, creative mind or original sense of humor, they default to sex.

So when you are with a group of dudes, and EVERY SINGLE joke that goes back and forth is about gay sex -- or at least where that is always the default -- it means that you and your friends probably should raise the level of discourse.

My theory about this theory is one of reduction. When we are in a strange and foreign place, we wish to default to our homes. It's a safe place; a place we know.

The same things work when in our mental space. If you are a person who doesn't traffic in erudite discussion or highbrow humor, you probably get nervous when things get to that level, and if you aren't that bright, or just aren't that funny, you will often go to the lowest common denominator.

Ladies, let me let you in on a little secret: when guys are alone, especially if they are comfortable with each other, they will almost inevitably start talking about how they are going to have forcible homosexual sex with each other. It's just the way we operate. It actually doesn't start until college, because in high school you are way too afraid to even joke about being gay, lest the rest of the class think you are. But once you start living among other men, showering with them, and yes, having all sorts of gay sex with them, it becomes less taboo.

Anyway, I'm getting off-topic.

Because sex is one of our most base instincts, it is a sort of soft-landing pad for those of us who attempt to traffic in humorous discourse. However, I'm finding that the same is true for politicians who really have nothing to say but want to make a splash.

There has been a lot said about the relationship between sex and death, and I never really saw it. But they are similar in one way: they are probably our two most base obsessions, one we all want, one we all dread. It's easy to push the "sex" button, especially in media, with beer commercials, phone sex ads and "Two and a Half Men." Sex is something that grabs your attention and masks any lack of creativity. No one has ever watched an X-rated movie and bemoaned the lack of character arc.

The same goes with our survival instinct. So deeply ingrained in us is it that we will often act irrationally out of fear for our own survival. (We will certainly act irrationally because of the sex-instinct.) So when we feel our survival threatened, we will throw a lot of our rational thought out the window. This is why murder in self-defense is often not even a crime; anyone can identify with the survival instinct.

So now we have the Swine Flu, a disease that is sweeping Mexico and creeping up into the United States. And of course, a lot of politicians have decided to use this outbreak to scare up fear of Mexicans. ("Not only are they brown, but they are diseased!") Now I'm not saying Mexicans are bringing it into the U.S., and I'm not saying they're not, but as far as I can tell, most of the people who are getting it are people who have gone TO Mexico, and come back with it. There isn't a lot of data to support that Mexican immigrants are causing a pandemic here, at least not yet. If that changes, it changes.

But right now, we are seeing a bunch of people on Fox News TV saying that we need to tighten up border security due to this disease. So by that token, the U.S. citizens who brought the disease back should have been refused entry and left to get sick in Mexico, right?

And seeing all this, it occurred to me that people who prey on fear are not necessarily the most power-hungry or evil ... they are simply the most bereft of ideas. When former Pres. Bush couldn't push the PATRIOT Act through, he preyed on our fears. When Dick Cheney talks about Obama making the nation less safe, he does it because he has no alternatives that will make him relevant.

It is a natural instinct to want to be safe, and when our fear is impressed upon, it often makes our ears perk up to listen a little closer. But remember to question the guy promising doomsday scenarios just as you would question the snake-oil salesman promising miracles. It's ironic that we often reject hope out of cynicism, but take a big ole bite out of the fear sandwich without questioning who made it.

Biiiitch Pleeeease

It took a little longer than I thought for the privileged, assholish movement of the so-called "left wing" to rear it's queer head. I used to be indifferent about Perez Hilton, and now I hope this no-talent shitdick dies in a bucket of AIDS.





I am all for gay marriage and would be completely against any kind of constitutional amendment against it. But this attention-seeking disease-receptacle is the reason that people in the United States hate gays. And Perez Hilton trying to teach people about "state vs. federal" would be laughable if it were funny at all.

The left-wing took a big hit today courtesy of a fascist who actually said he supports things that are "politically correct."

Go sketch some more drawings of ejaculate and penises on celebrities' faces like the good stereotype you are Perez. Gay marriage is now probably further away than it was this time last week. Hope you're happy.

Apophis (Rhymes with "Office")

Have you heard of Apophis? Chances are you haven't. And chances are, you probably won't have to worry about it for at least another 20 years. But when the shit goes down, you better be ready kid.

Apophis (official name: 99942 Apophis) is an asteroid -- technically a "Near-Earth Object (NEO) -- that NASA had predicted had a small chance (2.7%) of hitting the earth in year of our lord 2029. (I'm sure Miley Cyrus will still be a major star by then, so an asteroid hitting us might not be so bad.) It turns out that NASA has projected a zero-percent chance of this asteroid hitting us in 2029. But there is a loophole.

Or should I say, a "keyhole." Wikipedia defines "gravitational keyhole" thusly:

A gravitational keyhole, or resonance keyhole, is a small region of space that if an asteroid were to pass through it, its course would be altered due to Earth's gravity in a way that could cause such an asteroid to collide with the Earth on its next orbital pass.

It turns out that there is a small window that exists, whereby even though the asteroid will miss earth in 2029, if it passes through this gravitational keyhole, the asteroid will return to possibly hit earth in 2036. (On, yes that's right, Friday, April 13th.) And if THAT misses, it still might come back to hit us in 2037.

So here's what the nerds at NASA tells us...

• The chances of this meteor hitting us in 2036 is actually 1 in 45,000. Plenty of lottery winners have beaten those odds. We'll actually know these odds better when we get a better look at it in 2013.
  
• If it misses in 2036, it's odds of hitting us the following year is 1 in 12.3 million.
  
• If it hit us, it would be like being hit by 65,000 nuclear bombs. [source]
  
• Impact would be equivalent to 880 megatons of TNT. The largest man-made explosion was created by Tsar Bomba (aka the Emperor's Bomb), detonated by Kruschev's Russia in 1961. Its impact: 50 megatons. The Tunguska Event -- the worst asteroid catastrophe in the last century -- was 5 megatons. The eruption of Krakatoa was 200 megatons.
  
• Apophis is the ancient Egyptian god of destruction. But the geeks who named it got it from the bad guy on "Stargate SG-1." Nerds. They couldn't have called it Cylon?
  
• The asteroid -- when it does approach us in 2029 -- will actually be closer to the earth than most satellites that broadcast TV shows and space radio.

So where would it hit?

The result is a narrow corridor a few miles wide, called the path of risk, and it includes most of southern Russia, across the north Pacific (relatively close to the coastlines of California and Mexico), then right between Nicaragua and Costa Rica, crossing northern Colombia and Venezuela, ending in the Atlantic, just before reaching Africa. Using the computer simulation tool NEOSim, it was estimated that the hypothetical impact of Apophis in countries such as Colombia and Venezuela, which are in the path of risk, would have had more than 10 million casualties.

Believe it or not, the nerds at NASA are actually trying to come up with "Armageddon"/"Deep Impact" scenarios to knock the asteroid off target with man-made methods. Some of them include (and I swear I'm not making these up):

• Using a nuclear bomb to destroy the asteroid (which would actually be the worst plan because it would create shrapnel-like smaller asteroids that collectively would have a much higher risk of hitting earth).
  
• Commandeering another no-risk asteroid to "bump" it out of the way, like curling.
  
• Creating a space ship with "lasers" and then using these "lasers" to force the trajectory of the asteroid out of harm's way.
  
• Using "solar sails" which would use light -- LIGHT! -- to change the asteroid's orbit.
  
• Set off a nuclear bomb close to the asteroid, so that it does not make direct impact, but does push the asteroid off course.
  
• Send up a fleet of laser-wielding ships that can stay up in space at all times and deflect asteroids on an ad hoc basis.
  
• The most well-liked by some scientists: a "gravity tractor," which is basically putting a ship up in space, whose gravitational pull will yank the asteroid out of harm's way. (This would be used AFTER a kinetic impact, where a spacecraft of some kind bangs into the asteroid).

Part of the problem, of course, is the question of WHO is going to take the lead on something like this? I'm guessing even if the U.S. sent a spacecraft up in the air, Hugo Chavez would still be a total dick to us.

Anyway, long story short, we're all gonna be dead in 2036. God bless!

The Five Worst Movies I've Ever Seen

Trailers included...

5) American Dreamz (2006)

4) Natural Born Killers (1994)

3) Atanarjuat (aka The Fast Runner) (2002)

2) Heavy Traffic (1973)

1) I'm Bout It (1997) [Trailer doesn't exist, here is a clip of the movie itself]

The Great Firewall of China

If you want to know what it's like to surf the web with the censorship of the Chinese Government, click the logo below, for Firefox's "China Channel" add-on.
And then praise the Lord that you don't live there.

If The Office Had Been On In the '70s

OMG Enough Blessing America Already

Apparently at Yankee Stadium the other day, the douchily named Bradford Campeau-Laurion was apparently escorted out of Yankee Stadium when the song "God Bless America" was being played, and he refused to honor it because he had to go to the bathroom. I'm not sure how true this story is so I'll keep my comments brief.

It's not often that I agree with the out-of-touch ACLU, but this enrages me ... but probably not for the reason that you might think.

I don't think that it was right by any means for the officers to kick the man out of the game for not observing the song. It sounds to me like a couple cops on a power trip. And the cops' story that they "observed a male cursing, using inappropriate language and acting in a disorderly manner while reeking of alcohol"? Have they ever BEEN to Yankee Stadium?!?! Or any sporting event in the last decade?

But that thing that infuriates me the most is that this wasn't even a flap over our national anthem. This was over "God Bless Fucking America," a song that is not our national anthem, wasn't observed in any way at ballgames or any other sporting events before 9/11, and -- here's the kicker -- is one of the shittiest songs ever written.

Yes, I was upset about 9/11. Yes, I love this country more than any other. No, I don't think that a song with numerous awkward pauses, a crappy melody, half-baked lyrics and a climax of "white with foam" should have replaced "Take Me Out to the Ballgame" just because some people are still trying to look patriotic 7.5 years after the fact. Just because Rudy Giuliani and Sloth from the Goonies Ronan Tynan have tried to turn it into our de facto battle cry, that doesn't make it fucking so. Even Woody Guthrie thought "GBA" was shit, which is why he responded by writing "This Land Is Your Land."

If we were really going to replace or supplant our national anthem, we'd be much better off doing it with "America the Beautiful," a song much more skillfully written, more beautifully melodic, and with a fifty-times more swelling and dramatic crescendo.

In fact, check this, the third and eerily-prescient verse of "AtB":

O beautiful, for heroes proved
In liberating strife,
Who more than self their country loved
And mercy more than life!
America! America! May God thy gold refine,
Till all success be nobleness, and ev'ry gain divine!

You aren't finding anything close to this in Irving Berlin's crapsterpiece.

"God Bless America" is nothing. Not a patriotic anthem, not proof that you are a good American, nothing. And if you don't like it, then get the fuck out of the country, traitor.

Marshall Blathers

I had a discussion the other day with a dear, dear friend about Eminem, and his value as a rapper and as a musician. She finds him to be great, I countered with the argument that I always have, which is that his being white has a lot to do with his popularity. (If G. Rap Giancana and Pharaohe Monch were white boys, they would have been on the cover of Rolling Stone years ago.)

So anyway, Eminem released a new video, and here it is. (By the way Em, quit being a bitch and disabling embedding of your videos):

I liked it the first two times I saw it, when it was called "My Name Is" and "The Real Slim Shady." Once again, Marshall decides that he wants to be "controversial," directing his ire this time toward such ripe targets as Brett Michaels, Sarah Palin, Amy Winehouse, Jessica Simpson and other personalities that were edgy fodder a year and a half ago. There is a "Jailhouse Rock" parody and a "Star Trek" spoof! Was this video directed by Weird Al? (May his name be praised.)

Not only does the song kind of blow, it shows Em at his most desperate.

There are two sides to Eminem: the serious martyr side, and the goofy celebrity-hating side. When he was a younger rapper in the mid-1990s, he was a pretty typical freestyle battler. He would show up on mixtapes every once in a while to drop a few hot verses, but his freestyles were seldom better than anything from Big L or Madd Skillz. But with a little help from Dr. Dre, he got enough exposure to become arguably the most well-known rapper of the decade. (Apologize to Kanye and Lil Weezy.)

But the song with which he broke through was a crude -- if clever -- harangue against basically anyone who was popular at the time. He speaks of having mammary-related relations with Pamela Anderson (Lee at the time), impregnating Spice Girls and stapling his high school English teacher's scrotum to his leg. This apparently was the "Slim Shady" persona that we were all supposed to find naughty and incorrigible!

Given the novelty nature of this first single, Eminem by all rights should have been relegated to the nerd-rap category next to MC Paul Barman. But Em did a smart thing and immediately positioned himself as not just a nasally blonde jokester, but rather as a tortured and self-reflective storyteller. He ceded his cartoony voice for one of deep rage on songs such as "The Way I Am" and "Stan." In these songs, the pressure of overnight success clearly has gotten to him, driving him and his fans to extreme measures. Ironically, he blames the same media that contributed to his meteoric rise for his torment at that time.

To me, it's this Eminem (is it the "real Marshall Mathers"?) that is the most tiresome. Not only is there something terribly annoying about the meta-nature of rappers making videos for MTV about how the media gives them no respect, but this Eminem is humorless, not clever and woefully uninteresting to me. The delusions of persecution -- whether by Eminem, Rush Limbaugh or Howard Stern -- are disingenuous at best and fraudulent at worst. Personalities like this thrive on being seen as dangerous, and use it as a bullet-proof shield against any criticism; basically someone can put out a bullshit album, and when the media takes a dump on it, the artist will say that people are "haters" and are out to get them. It's all very phony and annoying.

So usually, when Em comes back to the fanciful whimsy of celebrity-skewering, it's a guilty pleasure. But this one is just so lazy. He talks about Kim Kardashian's fanny (that's American "fanny," not British "fanny"), Lindsay Lohan's lesbianism, Ellen and Portia, and even John Mayer (he whom, although it seems everyone thinks is a douche, actually seems kind of like a relatively cool guy to me). There is no insight here that you wouldn't already find in a Perez Hilton post, and no target that he would have to be afraid would bite back. (Em has yet to talk smack about anyone with any kind of rhetorical savvy.) Even the video is subpar, substituting extravagance, porn stars and special effects for satire.

So I fear that Eminem has leaped above the proverbial shark, and if this is what he's become, we may have already seen his best days. It's too bad, really, because there was a time that he was at least interesting, even if just sporadically so.

UPDATE:

I came across an article at Passion of the Weiss, where he ranks the 10 best rappers of all time. They are listed as such, with my own approval/disapproval:

[Note: missing are Sage Francis, LMNO, Brother Ali, Sole (kinda), Sixtoo and yes, MC Paul Barman, who is kind of annoying, but you can't deny the multi-syllabic technique.]

10. Eyedea (yes, he looks like Eric Devendorf, but he's probably the best battle MC of the bunch)

09. Cage (possibly)

08. 3rd Bass (MC Serch yes, Pete Nice no)

07. The Beastie Boys (no, no and hell no)

06. Slug from Atmosphere (terrible freestyler, decent studio rapper, makes a heck of a song)

05. The Streets (no, but I'm not really into that UK Grime stuff; still he's cool as hell)

04. Edan (fuuuuuuck yes)

03. Aesop Rock (good sweet lord yes, probably should be #1; the only guy out right now whose lyrics actually give me chills)

02. Eminem (for technique, I'd probably put him top 10, but my reservations are listed above)

01. El-P (there is no better lyrical display by anyone of any race than Funcrusher Plus)

Don't believe what Rolling Stone and Spin tell you, babies. Let Unkie Herb lead you in the right direction.

The Man Who Brought You Citizen Kane, Ladies and Gentlemen...

St. Sanders Shreds!

My new favorite YouTube thing. Listen to these "amazing" solos from guitar legends...

Eddie Van Halen


Toto


Eric Clapton


Carlos Santana (his keyboard player at the 1:12 mark is INCREDIBLE)


Zeppelin!


G-N-R, with vocals!


Metallica's "One"!


and of course, KISS


BONUS! AC/DC


Yngwie Malmstein

A Dozen Things I Learned About My Face

I got new glasses the other day, and I found out the following things about my face ... and about life ...

1. My head is wide
   
2. My eyes are very close together, especially for the width of my head.
   
3. Numbing eye drops work great! Bring on the Lasik!
   
4. My nose "wanders"
   
5. It's better for me to have darker glasses because they hide the fact that I have no eyebrows.
   
6. The screws that held my old pair of rimless glasses together were far too long, to the point that they were actually illegal! I could have sustained a pretty severe eye injury if I had had the wrong kind of facial accident.
   
7. I have a mild astigmatism. I also used to think it was "a stigmatism," and that it meant that you had a bad reputation that followed you around. And this was only a couple years ago. And I'm not kidding.
   
8. You have all sorts of little arteries in your eyes that are actually in front of your vision, but that your brain ignores. How cool is that!
   
9. My eyes dilate like a mutha***ka.
   
10. It's true that people with blue eyes are more sensitive to light.
    
11. Darker glasses make my hair look darker (and at this point I need all the help I can get).
    
12. I'm too chicken to pursue the trendy "European" look just yet.

Rap

In case you care, I have listed my top hip hop albums at Rate Your Music. I have split them up into "Golden Age" hip hop albums (roughly 1988-1996) and "Post-Golden Age" (1997-present).

Take a look and tell me what I'm missing or what I have wrong. (They are still in progress so they might change by the time you read this.)

The Furor...

...of Der Furher.

2500 Albums

From hublog.hubmed.org/



Click on the image for a closer look. How many of them do you have?

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NO NO NO NO NO NO NO NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NO! NOO! NOO! NOO! NOO! NOO! NOO! NOOOO! NOOO!!! NOOOOOO! NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!! NOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!! NOOOOOOOOO!!!!!