Truckin'

On a multi-day, multi-town business trip for the first time in a long while. I did the whole "wake-up-and-have-no-clue-where-I-am-panic" this morning. Always good to get the blood pumping. Another thing that gets the blood pumping are good workout tunes. Here are some of my favorites in no particular order:

Common People by Pulp


Bloodclot by Rancid


Don't Bring Me Down by E.L.O.


Timebomb by Beck


Anything by Troublemaker. His mixes were made for sweating your balls off.

Being 8 Again

Today, I got a familiar feeling that I haven't had in a while; bleary eyes. It was because I picked up Super Mario Galaxy 2 this afternoon. I have been playing Mario games for over 25 years now, however this is the first time that my son and daughter were sitting next to me and asking me where Yoshi was.

My biggest issue with big games like this, is the time factor. However, this game can be broken up in to bite size pieces and it may take me a while, but I will be able to finish most, if not all of it. #2 is very similar to the first Galaxy game and that is not a bad thing. The first one was fun, but c'mon you get to jump on your green buddy with the new version.

With this new game, maybe the boys in Redmond can help pay for their new digs.

The Adventures of Ryan and Alex

There were many games that sucked hours away from my life when I was a younger mammal. Several Zelda titles and the Diablo games were huge digital vampires, but one of the most overlooked titles of the 80's was River City Ransom. This was a brawler game with and RPG element and it also had great stylized graphics. I was all about getting Texas Boots and Dragon Feet and then I became pretty much unstoppable.

This is available as a download on the Wii now. If you missed it the first time, I suggest you bruise up your thumbs for a few hours. I know that my friend Mitch and I did and because of that we were single a lot longer in Jr. High.

Dan the Man

One of my favorite musicians for the last few years is actually a producer and no he does not have an auto-tuner app. Dan Nakamura or better known as Dan the Automator has been working on albums since the late 80's. He produced the original Gorillaz album (which, I still think is the best of the three) however there are a lot of other projects that he has had his hand in. Here are my two favorite Dan the Automator projects:

Deltron 3030 - This is a concept album about a post-apocalyptic future in which rappers do battle throughout the solar system. Yes, it is bat-shit insane but it is amazingly good. Del the Funky Homosapien (Teren Delvon Jones or the Cousin of Ice Cube) is Deltron and it alsways hits me as an animated movie waiting to be created every time I hear it. 

Lovage - The quest for the ultimate make out album is the tongue in (other people's) cheek concept for this record but they succeed. Mike Patton (from countless projects, but best known from Faith No More) and Jennifer Charles (of Elysian Fields) are amazingly funny and sexy at the same time. Next time you want to get freaky, put that on the old Hi-Fi stereo.

Update on Flowers

Here is the latest from FTD. They are great on marketing but not customer service. 

Send in the Clones

Every once in a while you will hear a song that sounds incredibly familiar, even if you have never heard that song before. Miss American Idol is running into that with her most recent tune.

Here are some of my favorite copy cats:

The Doves "Hit the Ground Running" is a dead ringer for Warren Zevon's "Werewolves of London".

Oasis' "Step Out" takes liberty with Stevie Wonders' "Uptight".

Of course there are people that sampled without giving credit, I am looking at you Vanilla Ice and The Verve.

Quick Rant

I try and stay positive and not get too down on this forum, but something really bugged me this weekend. As you all know, it is mother's day today and ordered flowers through FTD.com to be delivered on Saturday. At 6PM on Saturday, I was emailed by FTD and this is what they said.

Please accept our sincere apologies. Despite our best efforts, due to exceptionally high seasonal demand
we regret we were unable to fill your order as requested.  We have issued a full refund to your payment method.

We very much appreciate your business and would like to offer you $20 dollars off any of our beautiful florist delivered arrangements and plants, still available for delivery in time for Mothers Day.
Please visit our website to place your order and receive your $20 discount by visiting www.ftd.com/smithsonian1

We truly understand how important each order is to our customers, and sincerely apologize for any inconvenience this may cause.

Aimee Baldassaro
VP Customer Care

So, instead of delivering on Monday (which would have been bad, but it still would have been delivered) they canceled it the night it was supposed to be dropped off. I love that they are offering be 20 bucks off my next order that they do not deliver. So, if you do not want your flowers delivered go with FTD. Very disappointing.

On to our regularly scheduled rambling.

Distracted

It is very difficult to write anything when Flight of the Conchords is on. However I will try to soldier on. I was telling a coworker about Neutral Milk Hotel today and this savvy music lover had never heard of them. It also made me think of another looked-over band that is a favorite of mine, Possum Dixon.

I was in high school when I first heard them and they were incredibly different from anything I had heard at the time. The history of the band is very interesting and you can check it out here, but they only ended up coming out with three albums before they split up. The lead singer is now an accomplished magician, which is a very interesting twist.

Here are some of their best songs:

Emergency's About to End

Radio Comets

Not too many links out there, but if you stumble upon one of their albums you will enjoy.


By the way, the best line of the night is, "Are you anti-AIDS or pro-AIDS?"

The Rebirth of Video

Growing up, one of my favorite things was staying up late on Sundays to watch the only show worth watching on MTV. 120 Minutes not only did a novel thing and play videos, but they also showcased "alternative music" videos. In fact, that show introduced me to the Pixies.

As time moved on, MTV began replacing music videos with more scripted and unscripted shows. As a result, the music video universe started to go away. However that has been changing in the last few years (just like vinyl) and now we are in a mini-renaissance of music videos. In the last few weeks, there have been some amazing things hitting the web and it has been giving these artists more exposure than anything else in the music industry could at this point.

Here are some must see videos.

M.I.A.'s Born Free is violent and very engaging.

LCD Soundsystem's Drunk Girls is insane and funny.

Erykah Badu's Window Seat is just ballsy.

OKGO's This Too Shall Pass proves that this band is the new Peter Gabriel in terms of their impact to the world of videos.

The implosion of MTV and the rise of YouTube has allowed bands to come up with more creative and controversial videos. Expect more goodness to come to your local screen.

Cigarette Burn

My new favorite site is a guilty pleasure of sorts. It is about hollywood gossip, which I could care less about. I do like entertainment news, but this is about trashy stuff. The reason why this site rocks, is because the guy writing it is a total dick, but a very funny dick. Brendan Donnelly is Jack's angry uvula and he has written some of the funniest things I have read in a long time.

There is sex and there is a lot of profanity. Also, there is a lot of humor.