Have I stated this yet?

Yes, I know that the Heat winning the championship last year was, in many ways, bad:

*it was a stolen championship by the refs
*it was a coughed-up championship by the more deserving and more root-for-able Mavs
*it put a self-satisfied ring on the Glove
*it put a self-satisfied ring on Alonsowhat's hand and spare kidney
*and Jason Williams
*and Antoine
*etc.

Yes, I know all that. But when we look back on that championship, I'll still have a good degree of pleasure because, legitimate or no, the insinuation wil be that those Lakers titles in the last decade were much more about O'Neal than Bryant.

At that thought, I lean back, cross my legs, and throw my thatched hands behind my head. And I smile.

Yes, that's schadenfreude you're smelling, but it's honest.

I haven't the will to fight

Okay, readers, I'm sorry:

My friend Cardinalzen just posted about the new Thom Yorke album, and you can click on the title of his post if you want to read his thoughts. I have a reply, but the Blogger machine is acting up and I just can't be bothered so I'm posting my comment here. That's a weird way to go, maybe, but it's the world we live in.

70 RUN

Jess, you amaze me with your patience.

First of all, I agree with you and completely applaud Mr. Yorke in the way he approaches his work. This is terrific and I wish musicians that don't think like that were wiped from the map. I'd like to qualify that statement with something, but that's actually how I feel.


I'd disagree with you, of course, regarding Mr. Dylan, who probably thinks he's a gumdrop corn cob in a Red Rider wagon world. The guy's story is relevant, and he at one point had something to say, but he's completely unaware of his place in music history or anywhere else. Completely unaware.

Bullet point: I don't care to hear anyone's nightmares.


I love your TWO. point. This is meaningful and is certainly what keeps the yous and Peepees going through all the musical squalor this man has produced (I watched the video. As a short film it's effective but morbid, like much of Chris Cunningham's work. The music is, natch, unintelligible nonsense: sound effects and blurred rhythms. Great for a soundtrack, but I can't imagine listening to that in my car.) and I aspire to holding up that same contrast. Your invoking religion in all this stuff is absolutely a 1:1 ratio. I've just been ranting around here lately that we build a structure around the church and then call the structure the church, and that is JUST like hooking a kid up to some de-childing machine and calling what oozes out KID. Not acceptable.

So hooray for Mr. Yorke's musical ethics!

And best of luck for those of you who listen to his music!


This is Cardzen and Peepee about to go wading together.


PS- boy do I take the crap for liking John Mayer's music. He is the photonegative to Mr. Yorke. John's music comes across as thoughful, honest, and good-hearted, but this boy's heart and life are a degenerating mess. Sad to see. One day his life will catch up to his music and he'll go the way of George Michael and Michael Jackson. Ugh. Where's my Rich Mullins album again?

Product Reviews

I failed to report a few weeks back (I've been rather busy as of late) that Jiff and I had the pleausure of being together for a long weekend, with our wives, in the joy of a snowy Colorado winter. With all the wonder of nature and possibility around us, we took the opportunity to jettison all that and play video games. Well, I say video gameS: really, we gave ourselves to One Game. This game embarrassingly records the amount of time you spend playing it, and it told us that over three days, with our (occasionally) patient wives standing by, we invested over 15 HOURS to this game.

That's good livin'.

The game was the Lego version of Star Wars.


It's called Star Wars II because they also released a game to memorialize the awful later trilogy, for which neither Jiff nor myself hold any loyalty or compassion. But those first three films, well, come on. Sure, sure, we were all shaped by those films early on, feeling like maybe WE were destined for greatness like Luke, but felt like we were moisture farmers. So what could be more fun than to actually make your way through the plot of the stories and actually PLAY THEM OUT? Ha HA! What if you get to BE R2-D2 and give the whole team access through the bowels of that Imperial ship? What if you get to BE Obi-Wan when it's time to get rough with the Tusken Raiders? What if you can BE Jedi Luke against Darth and then against the Emperor? WooOOooo. Neato.


How the Lego people got involved in this maniacal marketing opportunity is beyond me, but I tell ya that it's pretty fun to build stuff with all the lego bits strewn across the little landscape. You can make all manner of funness: turret guns and landspeeders and trampolines for jumping to higher levels, etc. Boy it was good times, and you find that you have so much emotion sitting waiting there in reserve while you play this game. We have GOT to get C3PO out of the Jawa's possesion. You really want to stick it to Boba and Jabba and those darned pig-faced guards of his.

I'm just here to say, boy oh boy is it fun. I may even venture into the dreaded Episode One territory just to get more fun Lego gaming action. So there. If you get the chance, follow me and Jiff and play some Lego.


ALSO



I've been listening again the last few days to Switchfoot's latest album, which has been out maybe a year now. I tell ya, it's a good 'un. It's good rock music, well produced in a pop vein. Good songs, good messages, just fun-sounding. Good records, to me, take good songs (meaning: you'd enjoy it if the band just played it straight ahead, and you'd be piqued by the thoughts therein, or you'd spark to the truth in them) then futz with them. They splice them up, introduce odd instruments, time signatures, interludes, breakdowns, harmonies, etc. etc. I like that. Give me not only music that's well-written, but it's well-produced and well-engineered (Hello, Joshua Tree?). EVERYBODY is giving creative excellence to the project. Every step of the way (even in the packaging. Hello, Coldplay?), somebody's giving their best, wildest, most imaginative stuff. And, dare I say it? I like this album in that vein.

ALSO

I've been wondering how many calories you burn by making a poo. I don't know how to find out this kind of information.

I Make Clothes

And this is how I do it:

Step One, and this is a really important one: have a friend like Ben who has friends like Chris and Mike who have a big warehouse full of professional t-shirt making equipment and paint and screens and photographic chemicals and all that stuff.



Step Two: Go out to their place and use all their stuff at no charge.

Step Three: Have a friend like Dval who will design you something kickassy like my t-shirt design for my album.

Step Four: Take Dval's design and have Ben's friends be interested in teaching you all about t-shirt screening and let you screw around on muti-thousand dollar screeners, dryers, light machines, and cleaners.

Step Five: Presto! You made a shirt ALL BY YOURSELF!

Das-HINEY!

I have never liked the Coca-Company. They're one of those monoliths that profits even in third world countries, giving Eskimos and Russians and Cambodians alike the same cavities without nutrition. I'm the kind of guy that wants the big boys to fall, I guess, so whaddaya gonna do.

I'm here today, though, to blast that Dasani, the vaguely foreign-named brand that purveys tap water in packaging that almost promises that this will be a spiritual experience. It has that strange S on its logo as well... didn't Safeway claim that S years ago? Anyhow, my beefs with Dasani are many:


*It doesn't taste good. I'm not usually one of those people who ABHOR tap water in some places (say, College Station, Texas), and simply RAVE about it in others (Colorado). These people are Water Snobs. Drink the damn tap water and smile. But I'm here to tell you, behind that smug label of theirs, Dasani tastes like PlasticMan's urine. Like drinking rocks. It tastes like cyborg blood. Their new age label touts "enhanced with minerals"- do kidney stones count as minerals? And why did you MAKE it taste this way? Why not just leave it tasting like WATER?


*According to my research (= a quick skim over Wikipedia), Dasani throws salt into my water. STOP PUTTING SALT IN MY WATER. I DIDN'T LIKE THE SYRUPY CONCOCTION THEY GAVE ME DURING TWO-A-DAYS IN NINTH GRADE, AND I DON'T LIKE DRINKING SALTY LIQUIDS.

*You could also find out that last factoid on the label of the bottle.

*My research also suggests that carcinogens (bromate. For non-chemist readers, this is a compound that will eventually make your pancreas melt into wax and your spleen glow) were discovered in the UK supply of Dasani, thus ending its run in that part of the world. Western Europe and Ireland will also not touch this product with a ten-foot cattle prod.

*the website is makeyourmouthwater.com. I find this tagline confusing since they're presumably advertising WATER, not jambalaya. So drinking this water will make my mouth water? If I produce enough saliva, I won't NEED your product. Or are you somehow suggesting that you bottle saliva? I don't much like the sound of that. How does it make my mouth water again?

*In the description on the package, it reads, "...enhanced with minerals [we've heard this before] for a pure [besides magnesium sulfate, potassium chloride, and SALT], clean [like saliva!] taste that can't be beat" CAN'T BE BEAT? Are we still using that slogan? Really? Can't be beat? I'd have thought that went out about the time you guys taught the world to sing, prior to your teaching the world to drink corn syrup out of plastic bags.


Lickety split! This succotash can't be beat, by cracky!


So pucker up Dasani. You can make bajillions off the world's uninformed, but the VertChew Patrol is hip to your jive. You can MySpace up your advertising, you can position yourself right there in the checkout aisle, but you ain't gonna have my fitty cent. No sir.



I would also like to throw in here that, much to my own surprise, I rather like Aquafina's grape flavored water. I know it's not real grapes.