To be able to say "Noggle," you first must be able to say "Nah."
Attention country and western singers:
I understand the lure of the Christmas album, and that backlist sales for such can go on for years and years, providing you with a steady, albeit low, income even once your waning popularity relegates you to performing at state fairs and store openings.
However, in your zeal to cash in on the reason for the season, note that steel guitars do not belong in Christmas songs.
I am talking to you, Alan Jackson and Trace Adkins.
Thank you, that is all.
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Ladies and gentlemen, up and coming country and western singer Zac Brown is a metrosexual.
Let’s look at the textual evidence within his paean to all things country, "Chicken Fried":
Jeans that fit just right? Ladies and gentlemen, real men do not understand the concept of jeans that fit just right. Women’s jeans, apparently, have 132 different variables in cut, shape, and jib. Women worry about jeans fitting just right. A man worries about jeans merely fitting, which means the button closes and not too much sock shows. Fitting just right sounds an awful lot like Zac Brown has spent time in trendy urban outfitters, getting custom denim cut for him. He probably uses body wash, too.
And that’s just not manly. Know your inseam and your waist and take the one off of the top of the stack at Walmart, you sissy.
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A smooth jazz rendition of “Knockin’ on Heaven’s Door”:
That’s rolling a 1 on a d20.
And, sadly, that is the version on the Lethal Weapon 2 soundtrack. You know, from the very end where Riggs is shot by the South African diplomat on the freighter.
If you don’t know the exact scene, you haven’t watched it enough.
UPDATE: You know what I really could have lived without? Researching it and finding out who else did the song. Roger Waters? Are you freaking kidding me?
This is an unholy aberration.
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I bought this book because when I flipped through it, I landed pretty quickly on the beginning narration for the original Battlestar Galactica, so I thought I’d do pretty well. As it turns out, I got about 10% of the questions, maybe less. Because, let’s face it, the popular television seasons spanned a large bloc of years, so the theme songs you remember represent a very small percentage of television shows. The book is rife with answers based on short-running shows from fifty years of television, including four or so decades where I didn’t watch television.
As a result, I didn’t get many questions right about 1960s cartoons, 1940s detective shows, 1970s meaningful sitcoms, or 1950s westerns. I didn’t even get the chance to answer the question about the inexecrable Buck Rogers in the 25th Century theme song lyrics, which the producers fortunately turned into a science fiction march after the pilot. So I knew something that this author might not, which is the best I can do.
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Remember the band Color Me Badd?
Me, either.
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You may now confuse the Primitive Radio Gods (“Standing Outside A Broken Phonebooth With Money In My Hand”) with The New Radicals (“You Get What You Give”).
If you ever happen to think of either, that is.
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The Bangles “An Eternal Flame”, their biggest hit, released in 1988:
By 2008, the poet-narrator’s “eternal flame,” whom she married in 1990, has left her after succeeding at his career (success being a district manager in a repair-shop-directed auto parts chain) for a 24-year-old whom he met at a coffeeshop in Indianapolis, IN, during a national sales meeting and who “rocked his world.” In 2008, our poet-narrator has been single for 6 years and has begun dealing with empty-nest syndrome as the only child from her “eternal flame” relationship (born ahead of the marriage) has left to go to school in San Francisco.
She’s got nothing left, just a mother nearby who has given up trying to console her daughter and a couple of people whom she calls every couple of months, trying not to impose upon them but ultimately proving too morbid for a return to their early friendship, which she sacrificed to her husbands’ interests (now, they’re married and raising children and don’t want to relate to her experience).
Pleasant dreams.
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The Pat Sajak Assassins. The very name inspires me to purchase one of their CDs.
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The only thing nearly as cool as Ript doing “Suspicious Minds”, we have a metal tribute to the Bee Gees:
(Link seen on The Sniper. Finally, that blog is good for sumpthin.)
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You know the song “Love Machine” by Smokey Robinson and the Miracles?
It just doesn’t sound right to me without sighing hens.
You’re only playing her once an hour, so I get the point.
She’s also a young one, like Taylor Swift. What the heck is going on with country music turning into pop music with its focus on young stars? I wrote back in 2003 about how the charts were skewing younger, which meant that as I grew older, I couldn’t connect with the music since I was no longer 20 and in love for the first time.
Fortunately, country and western hasn’t gone that far yet. For every Hough and Swift, we still get some Trace Adkins, Montgomery Gentry, or oldsters like LeeAnn Rimes.
Hopefully, though, success will allow Hough to buy something to eat. She’s got blue eyes, blonde hair, pretty skin, and functional bones, but it looks like her man will have to do a lot of gratuitous lifting in their relationship.
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The lack of culture is showing:
At a recent ‘launch’ of the out-of-this world project, Edwards showed up in a space suit, complete with Moonrise Hotel flag and the theme song from 2001: A Space Odyessey blaring in the background.
If only that theme had a name and additional relevance besides inclusion in a late 20th century film.
Ah, who am I kidding? American cinema is the pinnacle of artistic expression and cultural significance.
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Craig Morgan, in the song “International Harvester“:
I’m the son of a 3rd generation farmer
I’ve been married 10 years to the farmer’s daughter
Ponder the logical implications lost on most country and western fans.
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“Lady Willpower” is my favorite song by Gary Puckett and the Union Gap. You probably don’t even have one. Because you’re a sissy.
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As some of you Atari Party attendees know, we have kept up with the Karaoke Revolutions series by Konami. I’m not a very talented singer, but I’m pleased that I have scored perfectly on two songs:
I am especially proud because of the songs.
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1: Taylor Swift. Day-um, that is a pretty girl.
I mean, I’m from Wisconsin, but this young lady has altered the geographical center of my swearing accent.
That’s the kind of girl I would have gotten stupid over at age 20. Come to think of it, she does remind me a little about my high school crush. I only went out with her twice, as I got stupid about her my senior year and didn’t get the nerve to ask her out until spring. She then went on to date a close friend, which would become a recurring theme in my younger days, and after she graduated college, I hear she married a local boy known for impregnating his step-sister, whom he’d dated before their parents married. I am from Wisconsin, but by high school, I was in Jefferson County, Missouri, where such things are not unheard of.
But back to Taylor Swift. Blonde, pretty blue eyes, and a sweet voice, ruff.
Speaking of Taylors, here’s another from back in the day, also blonde here:
2. Hey, I’ve always liked Billy Ray Cyrus.
Actually, I was fortunate to get exposure only after the whole Achy Breaky thing, so that was something I had to forgive him for after I liked him. Here’s the current video, where he looks like a fat Garth Brooks as Chris Gaines, unfortunately:
Sadly, it’s from an album of country sings Disney which isn’t as bad as a Jimmy Buffett or Def Leppard duet, but I have to think Hank would not approve.
Here’s something from the olden days, his second album entitled It Won’t Be The Last. To some of his critics’ surprise, it wasn’t. You’ll have to click through to see “Some Gave All” because Universal Music doesn’t trust me with the embedded video because if you can see the video here for free, you won’t go buy a $50 Blu-Ray Billy Ray video collection.
What, country music videos in the middle of the night? Well, after four weeks of the late shift, I’ve gotten a bit tired of SportsCenter and Hannity and Colmes or Greta repeats, and sometimes the classic movie stations are running Hope Floats marathons. Watching the country videos makes me a bit nostalgic, as you can see.
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Life is like an Eddie Money song: Short and not unpleasant when you’re listening to it, but mediocre and obscure and ultimately forgotten when it ends.
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Nine Lives by Def Leppard featuring Tim McGraw. The most disturbing thing I’ve seen in quite some time.
Somebody is dead to me now, and I cannot determine if it’s Def Leppard or Tim McGraw. Maybe both.
Far worse than Alan Jackson and Jimmy Buffett. Far worse than Uncle Kracker and Kenny Chesney. Appalling.
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