Aug 3
It’s a Tuesday after a long weekend, so it’s like a Monday, but of a 4 day week. Which would make it a week without one of its days – I think it would be a week where Wednesday is missing.
Or it’s like the Tuesday after a long weekend.
I found this on Flickr.
Apr 7
My world seems to be pretty narrow these days.
I can talk about work. I can talk about my family. That seems to be about it. I don’t want to talk about work because it’s consuming too much of my attention already. I don’t really want to talk about family because there’s too much drama going on right now.
Maybe I’ll talk about mushrooms.
Chris doesn’t like mushrooms. I think it’s just the idea of mushrooms she doesn’t like. Personally, I think mushrooms are overrated, but when combined with butter and garlic, they are very good. Of course, if you took a hockey puck and combined it with butter and garlic it would be good.
I never trust wild mushrooms. I know people who gather them and swear that they know them… but I don’t trust them. They might be 99% sure, but if they’re wrong once, the cost could be quite high.
Mushrooms go slimy in plastic bags.
That’s about all I know about mushrooms.
Oh, except that I feel like one at work.
Mar 17
When Christine told me that the Idol kids would be forced to do Stones songs, I was apprehensive.
Well, first I was hopeful. Because often the Artist Being Butchered on Idol comes and serves as a mentor and then performs at the elimination show, and I thought, whoa, how cool would it be to have Jagger be the mentor?
Because, people, that would have been cool in a trainwrecky sort of way.
I love me some Jagger. But Jagger is not a great singer (at least not in the sense that most people use this term), nor is he the sort of singer who would make a great or even a useful mentor.
Jagger is a great performer. He is a much better singer than he is generally given credit for, but he would never have made a living as an opera singer or a crooner, but Jagger knows and makes full use of the qualities of his voice. Jagger would never have made a great singer, but he is a wonderful rock’n'roll singer.
Jagger knows this. There have been few people, ever, who could sell a song as well as Jagger can.
We were watching PBS the other night, and in brief intervals between the begging sessions they were running performances from the Ed Sullivan show. The ones that stuck out were The Animals, The Doors, and the Rolling Stones. I pointed to the TV and told Chris that the Idol producers should be showing them this footage and saying things like ‘If you can do THAT, you’re good.’
The problem is, I don’t think Jagger can tell people how to do THAT. He just does THAT and it’s great. But it would have been fun to watch him try to explain THAT to 17 year olds.
Anyway, I predicted that Rolling Stones week would be 80% trainwrecks. Stones music might be derided as simple and old-fashioned, but most Stones tunes are quite a bit harder to pull off than people think. A pretty harmony or two and almost anyone with a decent voice can sound good singing a Beatles tune, but without some balls and some understanding of the roots, even good singers fall flat with the Stones.
There is a reason that there are very few copycat groups.
Anyway, I understand that the available selections were limited, and many of the songs available are old, old, old.
Michael Lynche tried ‘Some Girls’, missed it completely. MISS.
Didi Benami (I love saying that name… didibenami) sang Playing With Fire, and contrary to the judges opinion, I thought it worked. HIT.
Lacy Brown did Ruby Tuesday, and it was strictly forgettable. The original has a bouyant rough energy to it that this entirely lacked. MISS.
Casey James It’s All Over Now – a mess. MISS.
Andrew Garcia – Gimme Shelter. Oh boy, what a mess. MISS.
Lee Dewyze – Beast of Burden. Could have been worse, but still not great. A small MISS.
Katie Stevens – Wild Horses. A 17 year old Connecticut girlie makes it clear that she doesn’t get it. MISS.
Tim Urban – Under My Thumb. Biggest mess of the night. MISS.
Siobhan Magnus – Paint It Black. Pretty damn good, although I could have done without the scream at the end. HIT.
Paige Miles – Honky Tonk Women. She really tried to capture the vibe, but she changed it up to make herself a honky tonk woman and left out the honky tonk blues. MISS.
Aaron Kelly – Angie. This one surprised me. This is probably the one Stones song that Kelly could manage. I wonder how much slapfighthing there was over this particular tune? Anyway, a HIT.
Crystal Bowersox – You Can’t Always Get What You Want. Crystal claimed to be not at her best, and she didn’t do with this song what I thought she could do with it. Still, it was a HIT.
So that’s 4 HITs, 8 MISSes. I was off, the trainwreck quotient was only 66%.
Created by Oatmeal
Mar 11
I have posted a couple of times on a house in Arizona that was the subject of that obnoxious Extreme Makeover show. Originally listed at $1,300,000 last year, it went off the market for a short while and was relisted late last year at $835,000.
It dropped to 799, and it has dropped again, to $699,000. At the same time, Zillow’s estimate (which is, I understand, fairly whacked, but still) has it at $506,000.
They’re following the market down. Thing is, if they’d gone to $699k 2 years ago, they might have sold it.
Mar 2
I’ve thought of what must be the most elaborate practical joke ever.
Warning: the more sensitive among you may find this juvenile.
I don’t know why this occurred to me, but it did. And being the rational, careful human being that I am, I’m going to write it down.
Farts are just poo gas. I know that they have significance approaching the mythological among a certain segment of the population (8 year old boys) but when you get right down to it, farts are just the stinky gas that emanates from your poo.
Here’s the thing that’s funny, though. No matter who you are, how rich you are, how beautiful you are, how much silicone you have in your chest, how soft the leather on the seat of your Mercedes, you spew stinky poo gas out of your ass. In this, cars are better than we are. Sleek Ferraris and Lamborghinis, svelte Mercedes and Lexus, idle along the street with barely a trickle of noxious fumage, while a badly tuned third world bus rattles and backfires, dropping scads of vehicular air biscuits as it goes.
Somewhere, God or Evolution or the Mystery That Is The Universe is having a hell of a good laugh because Cindy Crawford, Donald Trump, Mother Teresa, every supermodel ever, the Pope, every Olympic athlete, Lady Gaga, Bill Gates… all of them, and all of us, leak poo gas like 6 billion backfiring jalopies.
Jan 26
I have posted a couple of times on a house in Arizona that was the subject of that obnoxious Extreme Makeover show. Originally listed at $1,300,000 last year, it went off the market for a short while and was relisted late last year at $835,000.
It has now dropped again, to $799,000. At the same time, Zillow’s estimate (which is, I understand, fairly whacked, but still) has dropped from $535,000 to $501,000.
It’s a 5500 sf monstrosity in a neighborhood of 2500 sf homes. The market is falling faster than their listing price is, and if they’re going to sell it, somebody is going to have to make a major move.