Tag: music

Stuff White People Like

Random Thoughts

This is a pretty funny site.  And being that I am, in fact, a white person, I decided to go on a journey of self discovery and find out exactly how “white” I am by comparing to their list from 1 to 90 (the latest at the time of writing).

  1. Coffee – No, I hate coffee in pretty much all its forms.
  2. Religions their parents don’t belong to – I suppose this could be correct since I don’t ascribe to any religion currently and my parents did, even if they hadn’t gone to church in nearly twenty years.
  3. Film Festivals – Okay, I do like film festivals, but I think its important to note that I hate most independent films.
  4. Assists – Not much of a sports guy, so I have no opinion on assists.
  5. Farmer’s Markets – Nope.  Not a big Farmer’s Market guy.
  6. Organic Food – Nah… processed food is A-okay with me.
  7. Diversity – Ehh… not so much.
  8. Barack Obama – While I would choose Mr. Obama over Mrs. Clinton if those were my choices, I’m currently supporting McCain for President, so, this one doesn’t apply to me.
  9. Making you feel bad about not going outside – I’m a computer geek… outside? Why?
  10. Wes Anderson Movies – I have watched, and not really enjoyed, most of his films.  I don’t really get it.
  11. Asian Girls – Not entirely my cup of tea… wait, does saying “not my cup of tea” make me “white”?
  12. Non-Profit Organizations – Not I.
  13. Tea – Shit.  Although, I really only drink tea at Chinese restaurants, which I go to maybe once a year, and sometimes at family dinners, because my parents are from the South and Sweet Iced Tea is required at the table.
  14. Having Black Friends – I currently have no black friends, only a couple black friends of friends, this isn’t because I avoid black people, but instead because my life just doesn’t happen to have any black people in it, and I don’t feel any need to seek out black people specifically so I can befriend them.
  15. Yoga – No.
  16. Gifted Children – If I ever decide to have children, I’ll be happy if my kid only eats the FDA daily recommended amounts of paste.
  17. Hating their Parents – I can’t really say I ever hated my parents.  I mean, I did move out of the house at 18, but that was more because I wanted to have more sex than I was able to sneak past them, not because of any dislike of them.
  18. Awareness – Largely, I am aware of only that I could be doing more, none of which involves making other people aware.
  19. Traveling – I apparently missed my requisite trip to Europe. 🙁
  20. Being an expert on YOUR culture – While I will admit to trying (in vain) to learn Spanish and Japanese, I really haven’t spent much time worrying about learning other people’s cultures.
  21. Writers Workshops – Okay, fine, yes, I have gone to a Writer’s Workshop, but in my defense (I hope) it was only 2 days and at Dragon*Con.  No, I guess that really didn’t help.
  22. Having Two Last Names – I am not particularly fond of people who do this.
  23. Microbreweries – Not so big on the beers, I like liquor.
  24. Wine – People, white people, keep insisting I try wines.  Haven’t liked one yet.
  25. David Sedaris – Who?
  26. Manhattan (now Brooklyn too!) – I have so little interest in New York that I almost didn’t write this sentence.
  27. Marathons – “Do you run?” “Only when chased.”  And that pretty much sums up my interest in marathons.
  28. Not having a TV – Not only do I have a TV, I have 4, and 1 is actually a PC with 6 tuners so I can record everything and watch it later.
  29. 80s Night – This is really unfair, because being born in ’74, the 80’s are a huge part of my development as a human being.  So, I guess they get me on this one.
  30. Wrigley Field – If I was in Chicago, and I got tickets, I’d go, but more because about the only way I can stand watching baseball is at the field with a couple of beers and a footlong hotdog.
  31. Snowboarding – Have I ever mentioned how much I am not a fan of cold?
  32. Vegan/Vegetarianism – I am a card carrying member of PETA… People for the Eating of Tasty Animals.
  33. Marijuana – The only time I ever got high was during the 8th grade when my parents let my older brother and I go to see David Bowie on his Glass Spider tour.  Shortly after the concert began a haze rose from the crowd, the air was filled with the smell of a wet down jacket and I got a headache.
  34. Architecture – Got me on another one, I do like architecture, however there isn’t any particular style or era that I like, I just don’t like when strip malls are built looking like bland boxes.  I would prefer they all put at least a little effort into it.
  35. The Daily Show/Colbert Report – I have been told I would love these shows if I watched them, but as of yet I haven’t bothered watching.
  36. Breakfast Places – Breakfast is my least favorite meal of the day, largely because every breakfast place known to man seems to insist that eggs are required and I hate eggs.  Then they go and make me order a side of bacon, a side of ham, a side of sausages, a side of toast, a side of hashbrowns… it seems my penalty for disliking eggs is that my breakfast is going to cost $47.83.
  37. Renovations – *sigh* I am renovating a house, but only because I bought a foreclosure and the previous owner took everything not nailed down (and some things that were, if you’ve ever seen the Richard Pryor movie Moving you know what I mean), and they had horrible taste (every room in the house is a shade of brown).
  38. Arrested Development – Still have not seen it, but I’ll be sure to add it to my Netflix queue.
  39. Netflix – Fuck.  Although, allow me to reiterate how much I dislike most independent films… and foreign films.
  40. Apple Products – I’m just going to say that I simply do not have enough time or diskspace to explain to the lengths that I loathe Apple Products.
  41. Indie Music – I like music, pretty much any kind except hardcore gangsta rap (all the bitches and hoes and drugs and guns and that stuff, just does not strike a chord with me), so I suppose I like indie music, but I don’t believe it is to the degree intended here.
  42. Sushi – Hate.
  43. Plays – I like the idea of plays, its the execution of most of them that I dislike.
  44. Public Radio – Talk radio, I am certain, is one of the signs of the Apocalypse.
  45. Asian Fusion Food – No.
  46. The Sunday New York Times – I don’t read any newspapers anymore.
  47. Arts Degrees – Bachelor’s in Computer Science.
  48. Whole Foods and Grocery Co-ops – I do shop at one of those membership store, but its a warehouse style shop and I go there because it allows me to buy the crap I eat in bulk and save money.  Why pay $9 at the regular store for a small box of Stoffer’s French Bread Pizzas when I can go to BJ’s and get the giant box with four times the pizzas for $12?
  49. Vintage – Not really.
  50. Irony – I do, indeed, love me some irony, but not really in the fashion they describe it here.
  51. Living by the Water – Guilty.  I do want to live on a beach.
  52. Sarah Silverman – She’s funny sometimes.  And sometimes not.
  53. Dogs – Much better than cats.
  54. Kitchen Gadgets – I buy the gadgets not for me but for my wife.
  55. Apologies – I apologize alot, but then, I am a chronic procrastinator, so I often have things to apologize for.
  56. Lawyers – I respect the need for there to be people who spend the time to understand the nuances of law, but most lawyers are scum.
  57. Juno – I loved this movie.
  58. Japan - I do want to go to Japan someday, but I really hate anime.
  59. Natural Medicine – While I’m all for exploring natural solutions for things, I fully believe in the pharmaceutical industry’s ability to cure diseases.
  60. Toyota Prius – I do want a hybrid, but less for the environmental impact than for the savings in gas.
  61. Bicycles – I do like bicycles, although I have not owned one since mine was stolen almost 15 years ago.  If I ever bought another one, I could not see myself spending more than $200 on one, so no specialty bikes for me.
  62. Knowing What’s Best for Poor People – I care, somewhat, about poor people, but I care more about not becoming a poor person.
  63. Expensive Sandwiches – Wheat bread, meat slices, mustard, maybe occasionally throw in some lettuce or a tomato, or some pickles.  What I make at home often is so much better than what a restaurant will make.
  64. Recycling – I do recycle, but I also work on reducing the amount of garbage I produce as well.
  65. Co-Ed Sports – Again, computer geek… outside?
  66. Divorce – Divorce sucks.
  67. Standing Still at Concerts – I am confused by this one, do people who are not “white” go to concerts and ballroom dance?  I don’t stand “still” at concerts, I do move around to the music and what not, but it never occurred to me to break out the foxtrot or boxstep.
  68. Michel Gondry – He does some interesting stuff, but I wouldn’t exactly say that I love him.
  69. Mos Def – I do like Mos Def.
  70. Difficult Breakups – I don’t believe I’ve had a difficult break up yet.  Relationships just sort of end, and that’s it.
  71. Being the only white person around – Can’t say as I have ever sought this situation out.
  72. Study Abroad – Might have been nice.
  73. Gentrification – I suppose it is a thing that I like, because I would rather see inner city areas looking good than to see them looking like crap.
  74. Oscar Parties – I have gone to Oscar parties, but thus far, much like our State of the Union parties, they are more about hanging out and drinking than the program on the TV.
  75. Threatening to Move to Canada – Hell no.  Did I mention that I don’t like cold? or hockey? or French?
  76. Bottles of Water – I don’t buy bottles of water unless I have to, but I do buy bottle of orange juice which I keep and reuse as water bottles.
  77. Musical Comedy – Yeah, I admit, I do find it entertaining.
  78. Multilingual Children – I want to be multilingual myself, and looking to the future, being multilingual is probably going to be advantageous.
  79. Modern Furniture – No.
  80. The Idea of Soccer – Not much into any sports.  Computer geek.
  81. Graduate School – I wouldn’t mind going back to school and studying stuff, but I really don’t have an interest in grad school.
  82. Hating Corporations – I don’t hate all corporations, however I do dislike the disassociation of responsibility of people who work for them, the “I just do my job, and I had no part in the overall heartless money grubbing of this company” defense.  There is much more to it than that, but not for here, not now.
  83. Bad Memories of High School – I don’t really have bad memories, or good memories.  High school was neither the best nor worst years of my life.
  84. T-Shirts – While I do like T-Shirts with cool stuff on them, and I do wear T-Shirts whenever I can get away with it, but it doesn’t really go beyond that.
  85. The Wire – I do want to see it… Netflix.
  86. Shorts – Did I mention how much I hate the cold?
  87. Outdoor Performance Clothes – I do not believe I own any Outdoor Performance Clothes.
  88. Having Gay Friends – Much like the black friends up at number 14, its not something I seek out, if it happens, then it happens.
  89. St. Patrick’s Day – Yeah, well, I do like this particular holiday.
  90. Dinner Parties – I’ve had people over for dinner, but not by choice.  My wife is “whiter” than I am apparently.

So, that’s it.  Assuming this website is discussing a particular variant of “white”, largely registered Democrats and yuppies, it appears that I am not very “white” after all.  Well, now I’ve got to go figure out how to waste the rest of my day.

Enjoy!

The Donnas

Reviews

Over the weekend, I went to another concert. Its getting weird here, as this makes like the sixth or seventh concert I’ve been to this year, and I think there is at least one more before year’s end. I don’t think I’ve gone to this many concerts in a year before.

Anyhooble, this time around it was to go see The Donnas down at the Earl.

First off, I’d never been to the Earl before, but its a pretty cool place. The front is this little dive bar/restaurant, you can get a beer and some eats, and then in the back they’ve got a room with a bar and a stage, probably holds a max capacity of a couple hundred, maybe less. Definitely worth going there if a band you want to see is playing.

There were actually three bands that night… the first was American Bang, who I didn’t think I had heard of but it turns out one of their songs is currently being used in a commercial or something, somewhere that I didn’t recognize it right away but when the chorus hit I had one of those “I’ve heard this song before!” moments. But that wouldn’t have mattered. While I was apprehensive at first as they took to the stage looking like a band from the 70’s that fell through a time rift, their music rocked. And frankly, you know an opening band has something when the headlining band all comes out into the crowd to watch them play.

Next up was Donita Sparks and the Stellar Moments. Its Donita and Dee Plakas from the band L7 with a few guys. Not bad, not 100% to my music taste, but it did not suck.

Lastly, The Donnas took the stage. It is unfortunate that you don’t really see a lot of girl bands that play hard rock music. I’ve been a fan for a while, even before they hit it big with that Take It Off song from their Spend The Night album, so its a safe bet to say that I thought they rocked. Worth it at twice the price (tickets were only $13).

Poison in Concert

Reviews

I am a giant 80’s music whore. So it should be no surprise at all that I went to the Poison/Cinderella show last night, and it was awesome.

I have seen Poison in concert three or four times now, and they put on a great show every time. They take the stage, play all the hits you love, and thank you for being fans. This being the 20th Anniversary of the release of their debut album ‘Look What the Cat Dragged In’, there was more thanking than usual.

Cinderella gave a similar performance, taking the stage and laying out the hits.

I still think its surprising that these guys still put on such a great show. Twenty years of Rock and Roll and these bands seem genuinely grateful that people still come out to see them, unlike some newer bands I’ve seen. Poison is a band that I will go see in concert again and again.

A Hundred Highways

Reviews

If you are like me, and I’m told that there are few like me, despite a general dislike for country music you still hold certain singers and songwriters in high regard, and Johnny Cash is one of those. I’ll admit I lost touch with Johnny as a young man, but with American Recordings, Mr. Cash returned to the mainstream and began to truely influence other musicians all over again.

If you are like me, when you heard about American V: A Hundred Highways, being his last recordings, you were excited. Well, its not coming out for a few days yet, but over at MySpace you can listen to the entire album right now.

If you are like me, you’ll listen to the whole thing a number of times, and then buy the CD to complete your American collection, and deep down you’ll miss Johnny Cash, but you’ll still smile because of all the wonderful songs he left for us to listen to.

Perfect Inefficiency

Random Thoughts

I dropped by the local branch of Bank of America last week to do some banking. While I was waiting for them to open at 9 AM, I sat in my car and listened to music and watched the road crew continue to work along side Satellite Blvd.

They’ve been digging up the side of the road for a while now, either laying some new cable or preparing to widen the road or something, I’m not sure. So there is a crew of six guys there. Five of the men are literally leaning on their shovels, while the sixth man operating a mini-backhoe is thrashing around trying to align himself correctly in order to use this machine to put dirt into a two foot hole. It took him over thirty minutes to complete the task… a task which the five guys with shovels could have completed in under two minutes.

I just don’t understand why people would want to deliberately work so inefficiently. The gasoline alone that it must have taken to operate that thing for over a half hour… It hurts to see my tax dollars wasted.

Blipverts

Random Thoughts

One of the things I used to enjoy most about going to see a movie at the theater was the pre-show entertainment. Long ago it was simply some piped in music. Then they upgraded to those movie network things where they would actually play selections from movie soundtracks and on the screen they would project slides with ads for the candy counter, upcoming movies, local businesses where you could take your ticket stub for a discount, and trivia.

The trivia was the clincher for me. Either it was actual questions or those ones where they show you the high school yearbook picture of someone famous and you had to guess who it is. Sometimes they weren’t even entertainment questions.

At the Delk 10 cinema, my theater of choice for a couple of years, one of their auditoriums had the slides mixed up. My younger brother and I went and memorized the mixed up order, and at later visits we would confound the other audience members by yelling out the correct incorrect answers. “Who is the top money winner in professional golf?” “Cooperstown.” What movie is the most recent to sweep the top oscars?” “Tom Kite.” “What city is the location of the baseball Hall of Fame?” “Silence of the Lambs.”

This week I went to see Cars at the theater (I’ll review that later), and noticed that there was no trivia anymore. In fact, their slideshow had been cut down to about maybe twenty slides at most (it is actually a Power Point presentation these days, no more slides). And the music wasn’t real music anymore, it was fifteen to twenty second clips of songs, not even enough to decide if its worth going to the music store to check out the rest of the album. Even worse is that they only had about four of these clips with introductions, so the whole loop only took about ninety seconds to play. Having gotten to the theater with about twenty minutes to spare, it was fairly maddening to hear the same clips over and over, all with a backdrop of the same repeating images.

Did they do this because people’s attention spans have gotten so short?

The movie theater isn’t the only place I’ve noticed the shorter, rapid fire, less involved advertising going on, and it all makes me fear the possible real introduction of blipverts. Fight the power people… demand slower, demand quality, demand better. Faster and shorter isn’t always best, just ask any woman.

Love Monkey

Reviews

While the show Love Monkey was on, I praised it. I dug the show and its stars, I even dug the music they put on it. It was a fun quirky show that I just could not get enough of. I found out that it was based on a book by the same name, so after the show got canned, I saw the book in the bookstore and decided to pick it up.

A while back I reviewed “On The Road” by Jack Kerouac. Basically, I thought it sucked. Sadly, I feel pretty much the same about Love Monkey. The TV show was great, but this book is… its rambling diatribe on things that just aren’t particularly funny to anyone but the author.

In the show, Tom Farrell worked in the music industry, had a tight group of friends, and was smitten by a woman he worked with. In the book, Tom works for a tabloid, has a loose group of acquaintences, and is completely obsessed with a woman who works for the same tabloid but rarely actually sees.

Much like my trip through “On The Road” gave me a few personal insights and new outlooks, “Love Monkey” gave me a dozen of laughs. At 368 pages, a dozen of laughs is pitiful. This book just… it… I… ah… jeez, I’m drawing a blank and I just keep coming back to “sucks”.

My Playlist

Site News

I decided to start keeping a list of what I’ve got jammed in my MP3 player. So, over on the right you should see a link entitled “My Playlist”. Basically, I’ve got a ridiculous amount of CDs, many many hundreds, possibly over a thousand, which isn’t much for someone who works in the music industry or at a music store, but its quite a bit for someone who has never worked in either.

Anyway, there you have it.

Enjoy!

Zombies on Mass Transit

Random Thoughts

Ever seen the movie ‘Shaun of the Dead’? The scenes in the beginning when he’s riding the bus and all the people around him have this eyes-glazed-over look to them? That’s what my ride to work is like every day. More than ninety percent of the people just sort of sit there, lost in their own thoughts, or perhaps not having any thoughts at all. That means that less than ten percent of the people, less than one in ten, is listening to music or reading or talking. Even then, some of the people who listen to music do what I call “listening to secret music” … see, on my MP3 player, I have only songs that I like, songs that make me smile, tap my foot, bob my head, mouth the words… good music. Lots of these other people, they either have only music that they don’t like, or they’ve been socially shamed into not drawing any attention to themselves or showing any emotion at all. Except for the tinny sound escaping their headphones, you’d mistake them for the one who are just sitting there lost in their lack of thoughts.

This all leads me to another issue… I’ve been having dreams lately, pretty much every night… Zombies. Running through zombie infested cities, holding off the horde from a mall or a Wal-Mart, surviving against the odds. In my conscious life I find myself wondering, if it really happened, if zombies really did start to emerge and the world went to hell, would I survive as well as I do in my dreams? Would I be the movie hero, or would I end up being another mindless creature prowling for flesh? I’d like to think I’d be a survivor.

So I find myself wondering as I ride the bus, if these people, the ones with no emotion, eyes unfocused and slack-jawed, were to suddenly turn and begin the tell-tale zombie moan, how would the story end? My daydreams echo my night, and I stand on the MARTA train, never sitting, never letting myself get lazy, and I imagine a disturbance at the far end of the car, screams, blood, and I pull the emegency brake cable and I open the door and drop to the ground running, or I yank hard on the loose hand rail and lay in with skull crushing blows on the ‘infected’. And I smile, and the music plays a soundtrack to the destruction, and I tap my foot and I bob my head and I mouth the words, and I rejoice that I’m not one of those people… the living dead, slack-jawed and mindless, shuffling off to work the grind, shuffling home to rest up for the next day.