“THOSE CROCODILE TEARS I WATCH YOU CRY…”
And what a Croc(k) disgraced Olympian Marion Jones truly is, too! After years of Rafael Palmeiro-style denial that she used illegal performance-enhancing substances, she decides to come clean the nanosecond she gets caught with the goods and give a half-hearted tear-filled apology during which she vowed to help make other people’s lives better from here on out. Yeah, right, whatever. I never have liked this woman anyway, almost from the beginning when she did those Nike TV ads where she pretended to be a talk radio host and said, “Alright, all you suckas out there…” and sat there trash-talking about how good she was. In the words of my man Lemmy in his Motorhead classic “Traitor”, “You are abomination—you that betray the nation…” Enjoy your time in the pokey with your bitches there, Marion…AND NOW FOR SOMETHING COMPLETELY DIFFERENT…
On the opposite end of the sports spectrum, a tip of da hat to the Colorado Rockies, who decided as a team to donate a full playoff share to the family of Mike Coolbaugh, the first base coach of the Tulsa Drillers who was tragically struck and killed by a line drive earlier this season. Tulsa is the AA minor league affiliate of the Rockies, and most of the Colorado players didn’t even know the man, but the team voted to help assist Coolbaugh’s widow (who is pregnant with the couple’s third child) with the full playoff share, which is no small chunk of change, especially if they win the World Series. Bravo, gentlemen, bravo!
MIZZOU-RAH!
Congratulations to my Missouri Tigers for stomping the living caca out of Nebraska in Columbia on Saturday night. Expectations have been at an all-time high for MU’s football team this year, and so far, they’ve lived up to them. Next week’s game at Oklahoma will be an even bigger test of their collective mettle, and a win there would exorcise a demon or two for the program. Congrats also to Kansas for picking off K-State in their own house on Saturday. And a tongue-in-cheek congrats to Notre Dame for finally getting off the schnide and winning a game, 20-6 at UCLA, who’ve brought shame and disgrace upon themselves for life.
While I’m on football, is there anyone else besides me who’s finding the college game more fun to watch this year than the pros? I love the NFL, but for some reason, their games are getting rather boring and predictable to me this year, while the colleges are more exciting and energetic.
THE END OF AN ERA (FOR NOW)
Saturday night was the final gig for one of the better bar bands you’ll ever see, a group called Headz Up. Guitarist R.D. Snow, keyboardist John Gutierrez and bassist Michael Nitro have been traipsing around K.C. for over ten years playing everything from Johnny Cash to Black Sabbath in this band that once included my good friend and home improvement guru Phil Alvarez on drums, and Mr. Nitro has decided to “retire”. One of the highlights of their set for me was always their nearly note-perfect rendition of Joe Cocker’s arrangement of “With A Little Help From My Friends” during which if you closed your eyes, you’d almost swear you were back at Woodstock with Nitro’s dead-on bluesy Cocker growl (minus all the epileptic-fit histrionics, that is). My gut feeling is Mikey’s “retirement” is a temporary thing, and like Ozzy Osbourne, he’ll soon discover that retirement sucks!
THE DEVILS DO WEAR PRADA?
I often chuckle when I see photos like this one in the paper, featuring the latest runway fashions, and I have to ask the following: Do these fashion designer people actually expect ordinary everyday women to wear this crap?!? I haven’t seen pants like that since my Sears Toughskins that Mom made me wear in first grade! They call this fashion? This shit looks like it was designed by Krusty The Clown…A MOMENT OF SILENCE, PLEASE
For the second time in a month, one of my home improvement projects has claimed the life of a member of the animal kingdom. Last month, it was the fleeing snake who committed suicide by diving headfirst into toxic sewer water during my sewer drain repair, and this past weekend as Phil and I repaired the back wall of my house, Chippy The Chipmunk, a tenant of mine who lived under my patio, bit the dust. Evidently, Chippy snuck in underneath the scraps of wood and paneling that I had piled up on the patio and one of the heavier pieces slipped and crushed him to death, as I found him flattened not unlike Chicago Cubs were in the playoffs this weekend. This is the second chipmunk fatality related to my back door area in the last ten years, as another bodacious rodent dared to enter my humble abode through a hole in the wall and met his maker in a rather unpleasant manner…
NOT-SO-HOT 100
My good friend Randy Raley posted this link on his blog last week featuring AudioVideo Revolution’s Top 100 Rock albums of all-time, a subject that makes for great debate, indeed. This is just me, but I think this list was created by a bunch of crack-smokers and Rolling Stone critics (same thing). First off, they have Jimi Hendrix’ Electric Ladyland at #3 all-time, and that’s not even the best Hendrix album (Are You Experienced? blows it away). Led Zeppelin III ahead of Led Zeppelin IV?!? The Beatles’ half-assed Let It Be album ahead of Revolver and Abbey Road doesn’t even make the list?!? This Is Spinal Tap soundtrack—an album by a group that didn’t really exist?!? Tattoo You is the only Stones album to make the cut—where’s Sticky Fingers? The Who doesn’t even crack the Top 60, and Who’s Next doesn’t make the list at all? Elton John’s Goodbye Yellow Brick Road nowhere to be found here? Whatchutalkinbout, Willis?!? There’s also a lot of other stuff that doesn’t even belong on this list, like the Beastie Boys, Bob Marley and Lyle Lovett—not Rock ‘N’ Roll to me, sorry—and way too many Metallica albums for my liking.
I’ve been toying with the idea of putting together my own Top 100 albums list for some time now, but I always have trouble compiling it once I get past the Top five to ten albums. Ranking favorite albums is such a subjective thing, and I have trouble with what criteria to base my list on—do I go with my heart or with my head? To me, the way an album impacts you when it first comes out has a lot to do with how much you like it. For instance, I’d have to say that ZZ Top’s best album is probably Eliminator or maybe even Fandango!, but my personal favorite is El Loco because of where I was personally and what was going on in my life at the time it came out. Fair Warning is my favorite Van Halen album, but clearly their first one is their best. Another good example is Paul Revere & The Raiders’ 1969 release Hard ‘n’ Heavy (with Marshmallow) that I listened to incessantly when I was all of five years old. Is it one of the greatest albums of all-time? Probably not, but it makes my Top 5 all the same. Food for thought, and to each his/her own…
Just for shits and hoots, here’s my Top 10 albums of all-time (the other 90 are subject to debate):
10) Quadrophenia—THE WHO (1973)
9) Destroyer—KISS (1976)
8) Abbey Road—THE BEATLES (1969)
7) Black Oak Arkansas—BLACK OAK ARKANSAS (1971)
6) Led Zeppelin IV—LED ZEPPELIN (1971)
5) Hard ‘n’ Heavy (With Marshmallow)—P. REVERE & THE RAIDERS (1969)
4) Orgasmatron—MOTORHEAD (1986)
3) Who’s Next—THE WHO (1971)
2) Alive!—KISS (1975)
1) Goodbye Yellow Brick Road—ELTON JOHN (1973)
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