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WHAT I COULD BE DOING TONIGHT
I could at this very moment be attending my company's Christmas party at the Hyatt Reject—sorry, Regency—hotel. Now, I'm normally not one to pass up free food and free booze, but the weather outside is a tad frightful with semi-icy roads, and I literally don't have a thing to wear to this gig that would be appropriate anyway. Anymore, these annual rituals are little more than fashion shows as the women-folk are in competition to outdress one another, anyway, and I can view the photos of the event later on. In the meantime, I'll just drink beer in the relative safety of my humble abode here and entertain y'all with my verbal bazooka instead...
SPEAKING OF CHRISTMAS AND BEER...
I wish Miller High Life would bring back this old TV commercial they used to play every year during the holidays. The scenery was just gorgeous and it was always one of my favorite holiday ads, along with this one. Surely, Miller (the beer that made Milwaukee burp) could forego a few playings of their current fancy Christmas ad with the Transsexual Siberian Orchestra and still give the "I'll Be Home For Christmas" spot a few spins each year. While I'm on beer commercials, I was reminded of an oldie but a goodie while watching History Channel's "History of beer" show today. Schlitz Malt Liquor was crappy beer, but they had great commercials. Would I BULLshit you? Sorry, bad pun...
SPEAKING OF HISTORY CHANNEL...
...at least they are what they say they are—a history channel. So many other cable channels don't live up to their names, thus I have a few suggestions to correct this problem. For instance, Lifetime should really be called Chick Flicks And/Or Disease Of The Week Network, Discovery Health Channel should be renamed the Baby-Birthing Channel, and TV Land can easily change to the Andy & Opie Network. ESPN2 should be called Poker Central and BET should switch to the more accurate moniker, Pimps R Us/The Infomercial Channel. The Weather Channel should become the Doomsday Network, and MTV should just plain be stricken from cable television, period! Oh, and one more—I think it would be more appropriate for BBC America to be called the English Channel, don't you? Get it? English Channel!!!
WE GOT DEM 'OL POWDER BLUES AGAIN
Big news out of the Kansas City Royals camp this week, as they unveiled their new retro powder blue uniforms that some fans have been clamoring for the team to bring back for years. I was never especially fond of the originals from the '70s myself—I always thought they were kinda wussy-looking. Hope everyone's happy now, but I hate to tell ya, kids—this ain't gonna help the Royals win any more games...
QUICK QUESTION HERE...
I'm curious—exactly how many pints of blood do these Ultimate Fighter dudes on Spike TV, Vs. channel, et al, have to lose before they stop these fights? Jaws was less gory than this show is...
CLASSIC MISHEARD LYRIC #63
"Saturday Night's Alright For Fighting"—ELTON JOHN (1973) "My old man's a drunkard and a barrel full of monkeys and my old lady, she don't care..." Or try it my old way as a 9-year-old with "My old man's a druggist..."
OOPS, THEY DID IT AGAIN!
The Grammy nominations were announced this week. Once again, they fail to recognize that the music business has become so fragmented that it's useless to lump so many different genres into the same award category. Prime example this year: Album of the Year, which pits Foo Fighters, Vince Gill, Herbie Hancock, Kanye West and Amy Winehouse. Thus, you have a Rock band, a Country singer, a Jazz player, a Rap singer and some tattooed no-talent skank drug addict all vying for the same award! This is all just about as pointless as waving to Stevie Wonder, wouldn't you say? In addition, my buddy Mellencamp is nominated for his shilling-for-Chevy song "Our Country" as is the Paul McCartney album that contains that gawd-awful "Nod Your Head" track. Is it just me, or are the Grammy Awards just about as obsolete as 8-track tapes, rotary-dial phones, Apple IIe computers, Pong games and MTV?
REUNITED AND IT FEELS SO GOOD? WE'LL SOON SEE...
I'm more than a little curious how Monday night's Led Zeppelin reunion concert in London will turn out. Messers. Robert Plant, Jimmy Page and John Paul Jones are hooking up with the late John Bonham's son Jason for this one-off show in tribute to late Atlantic Records co-founder Ahmet "Don't Call Me Omelet" Ertegun. Word has it that if things go well, a lengthy tour may well ensue. I love Zeppelin on record, but I've never been terribly impressed with their live recordings—Page's guitar always sounded woefully out of tune, and they would often go off on these tangents right in the middle of a song and never come back to it. Now, I'm not saying anyone should reproduce their songs note-for-note in concert, but lawdy Miss Clawdy, do we really need 25 minutes of "Dazed And Confused"? Oh well, for what it's worth, Plant was still in good voice when I saw him open for The Who five years ago, especially on Zep classics like "Babe, I'm Gonna Leave You", so hopefully he can still bring it now. You can bet if there is indeed a subsequent tour after Monday's show, it'll be the Motherlode of all reunion tours.
Enough celebrating, it's time to rant again!
HAPPINESS IS A WARM GUN, REVISITED
Nine dead in an Omaha shopping mall, thanks to some 19-year-old high school dropout loser with an assault rifle. Okay, explain this to me one more time like I'm a four-year-old: what the fuck does any ordinary citizen need with an assault rifle? And don't give me all that NRA mantra about the right to protect one's family, either! Hell, these NRA fuckers care more about their damn guns than they do about their own familes anyway.
THEY NEVER LEARN, DO THEY?—PART I
Per his usual, Dubya still insists on stirring up some shit with Iran, even after reports came out this week that new intelligence info indicates that Iran abandoned its nuclear program four years ago. Just once, can't this misguided moron admit he's wrong about something?
THEY NEVER LEARN, DO THEY?—PART II
The religious right are once again getting their collective panties in a wad over yet another movie, The Golden Compass, claiming that it promotes atheism. Okay, I'm going to play my it's-just-a-movie card one more time, here. Just as they did with Da Vinci Code, Last Temptation of Christ and Passion of The Christ, the God Squadders are drawing tons of undue attention and publicity to a movie that could just as easily fade away without a trace if they'd just keep their yaps shut...
YOU CALL THIS NEWS?
It snowed in Baltimore last night! Three whole inches!! That was one of the big stories on CNN this morning, complete with footage of a snow plow clearing an airport runway. Why is this even considered newsworthy? Now, if it snows in Baltimore on the 4th of July, that's worth mentioning! If it snows in Miami or Honolulu, then fine, tell us all about it, but I don't wanna hear about minor snowfall anywhere north of North Carolina on network TV news...
SPEAKING OF SNOW...
We got about an inch or so of it today (not newsworthy). And naturally, as part of the on-going pussification of American school kids, several school districts closed early today, never mind that there wasn't even enough snow to cover the grass and some of it was actually melting off the roads by late afternoon...
THE PIANO MAN COMETH
Billy Joel should be taking the stage as I type this as the Sprint Center. I've always wanted to see him in concert, and thought about going tonight, but I just couldn't stomach forking over 60 bucks just to sit behind the stage. Oh well, there are plenty of other good concerts coming to Kansas City soon, like Kid Rock, Wayne Newton and Air Supply. I think I'm going to cry...
GREAT BAND NAME
VHS Or Beta—I read about them in the paper today. I'm sure there's a band out there called Paper or Plastic too. By the way, I will defend the Beta videotape format to my death vs. the overrated VHS...
MORE GREAT BAND NAMES
Top 5 names of tribute bands for '80s group The Outfield:
1) The Infield
2) Third Base Line
3) On-Deck Circle
4) Dugout
5) Pitcher's Rubber
MAN OR MACHINE?
I heard the 1986 song "Human" by The Human League the other day, and it reminded me of a funny story from my radio days. The Transtar satellite folks (who provided us with the bulk of our programming day) often played these "drop-ins" between songs to promote the station ("your home for the greatest hits", for example). One of them included a snippet from "Human", but for some reason the tape was really slow on that one, thus making the vocals sound most decidedly un-human during the "I'm only human" chrous! "Iiiiii'mmmmm oooonnnllyy huuuuuuumannnnnnn..."
CLASSIC MISHEARD LYRIC #62
"School's Out"--ALICE COOPER (1972) "School's been blown to pieces" Not me this time, but rather the band Krokus in their totally unnecessary 1986 cover version of Big Al's classic when they sang "School is closed for recess."
GREAT GIFT IDEA
And one of the greatest improvements to an existing product ever—it's the Dr. Laura Dartboard! Hurry, though—supplies are limited...
December 4, 2006: "A date that will live in infancy!"—A. Bunker
Well, kids, here we are on Day 366 in the life of da Comet. By dingies—352 posts and 61 misheard lyrics later, my little baby is still alive and well, and I'm a proud father (did I say that?!?). As I stated in my very first post, for reasons that are still unknown to me, I resisted starting up a blog for the longest time. But, good moogly-woogly, once I started this behemoth, the skies parted, the seas churned, the earth moved and the floodgates opened, and voila! Blogging has been a real pleasure and treasure to me—a great forum for me to rant and vent, plus an outlet for me to just plain be creative and hopefully entertain more than a few fellow humans in the process. Also in said process, I've made the acquaintance of some other fine bloggers and fellow travelers, and it's been a total hoot. About the only negative I can think of is having to learn to navigate Google's so-called "wysiwyg" publisher function, which I'm fairly certain was created by FEMA...
Thanks to anyone and everyone who takes the time to experience my bullshit. I especially want to thank Randy Raley for inspiring yours truly to finally get off his duff and start a blog, just as he inspired yours truly to pursue a career in radio—okay, one out of two ain't bad! I also want to thank my other regular commenters Ken Dillon (let me know when you wanna do lunch, buddy!), the good Dr. Sardonicus, M.D., and Sir Kilroy, proprietor of the Gonzo Papers. And as always, I welcome comments from anyone and everyone about what I say, even if we disagree—I've only rejected one comment so far, and that's only because it made about as much sense as Mr. DeFazio on "Laverne & Shirley". And rest assured, dear friends—I have plenty more good stuff up my sleeve for Year Two!
In celebration of this auspicious occasion, I present to you, gentle readers, a little best-of collection of some of my favorite posts (in fairly chronological order) from the first six months. I'll cover the remaining six months tout-de-sweet. Feel free to add any comments you like, even though the following are reruns:
--Top 10 Most Irritating Top 40 Hits of All-Time (12-13-06)
--The Dumbest Celebrity Product Endorsements of All-Time (1-3-07)
--Worst Cover Songs of All-Time (1-6-07)
--Fallen Idols (1-16-07)
--57 Channels and Nothin' On (1-31-07)
--Great Moments in Radio, Vol. V (2-8-07)
--Good Answers (2-28-07)
--It really makes you wonder... (3-17-07)
--Randy Rhoads, 1956-1982 (3-19-07)
--Great Moments in Radio, Vol. VII (3-21-07)
--Da Raidas! (3-26-07)
--Back in the saddle again... (3-26-07)
--My "Field of Dreams" (4-2-07)
--Let it Rain! (4-4-07)
--Enlighten us, oh Flatulent One! (4-18-07)
--The Greatest Album of All-Time (5-1-07)
--#200 (5-3-07)
--Whole lotta bloggin' goin' on (5-24-07)
--I know you are, but what am I? (5-27-07)
--My General Moody-ness (5-29-07)
--"They Died Young"--Volume I (of an occasional series) (5-31-07)
PURE B.(C.)S.
Once again, college football's Bowl Championship Series proved itself to be about as worthless as a bobsled in Zimbabwe by denying the University of Missouri a bid in a top-tier BCS bowl game, in spite of MU (11-2) being ranked 6th in their own poll, two spots ahead of Kansas, who received an at-large bid to the Orange Bowl to play Virginia Tech. Nice to see KU (11-1) get in a major bowl for the first time since I was in Kindergarten, but let's back up the truck a second here—MU beat KU! MU's strength of schedule (26th out of 119, I believe) was far tougher than KU's (109 out of 119, or something like that) and MU had to play an extra game that KU didn't. Can you say "politics"? Even worse, another team that MU beat this season, Illinois (9-3), got a BCS bid to the Rose Bowl. Granted, Missouri gets to play on New Year's Day for the first time since the Nixon Administration in the Cotton Bowl against Arkansas (a school I'd love to see in the Big 12, btw). It should make for a good game and it's only about an eight-hour road trip for Mizzou fans to Dallas, but after being the #1 team in the nation last week, this feels like a major demotion. I also predict that Va. Tech will kick the crap out of Kansas, and I'll be doing the "Hokie Pokey" afterwards...
And in what's becoming an annual holiday tradition, this whole situation just screams out for a playoff system in college football, but the old-boy network of powers-that-be won't allow change. They claim it would ruin the tradition of the bowl games. Bullshit! Hell, they've already done that by adding the extra game for the championship. A playoff system would only make the bowl games that much more inviting to watch. Does anyone really give a rat's uvula about the Outback Bowl, anyway? The Chick-Fil-A Peach Bowl? Come on, people, this is a fucking joke!
SPEAKING OF JOKES...
I watched those Va. Tech Hokies beat Boston College the other day in the ACC Champeenship Game in Jacksonville, and was floored when they showed a blimp shot of the stadium, and there couldn't have been more than 20,000 people there. Come on, J-ville, you can do better than that! Just because Florida State or Georgia Tech wasn't in this game is no excuse for such a paltry crowd. Y'all missed a damn good game, too. K.C. packs Arrowhead for the Big 12 title game (usually in cold weather), even when local favorites don't participate. Shit, Jacksonville can't even pack the place for the Jaguars—a pretty good team, btw—and they cover up several sections of seats in their stadium with tarps to create contrived "sellout" crowds.
CALL THE GUINNESS PEOPLE...
...and tell them to have their erasers ready. Tonight was the big Hannah Montana concert at the Sprint Center, and it's quite possible a world record was set for the most pre-pubescent girls wearing cheap-quality long blonde wigs ever assembled in one place at the same time! What's really funny with all the hysteria this thing has caused, a year from now it'll all be forgotten and replaced by the next crappy pre-teen sensation rip-off artist...
FIRE ON ICE
Literally! Thanks, but I really wanted a Bud Light!
SAY IT AIN'T SO!
CNN's sensation-izer machine was in rare form today, as they had some shocking footage this morning of a rare weather phenomenon—it snowed in Minnesota! Can you believe that? A whole two inches, too! Could the Yukon be next? Tune in tonight for our investigative report...
AFTER FURTHER REVIEW...
I was listening to one of my homemade '80s compilation CDs today, and came across Elton John's "Wrap Her Up" from 1986, which features George Michael guesting on vocals. Hmmm, two openly-gay men paying homage to women—what's wrong with this picture? Love Elton to death (in the loosest sense, that is), but this song wasn't one of his more stellar career moments. The album it came from, Leather Jackets, was a major dud too, and strangely enough was the only EJ studio album that did not include printed lyrics—just as well, it sucked...
HOUSTON, WE HAVE A PROBLEM
Don't mean to give out free advertising here, but I have a bone to pick with one of my favorite KC eateries, the Westport Flea Market Bar & Grill. They've put out these buy-one/get-one free lunch or dinner coupons for years, but recently changed the rules to include "Maximum value $5.00". Just one little problem—there are no entrees on their menu less than five bucks! Therefore, how can anything be "free"? Awfully misleading, folks. I can also do without this new e-mail address bullshit at the bottom—what, I have to give personal info just to use a coupon, now? This K.C. institution was recently spared the wrecking ball and ignominy of being replaced with a Hooters after a major outcry from Flea customers, and this is how the owners thank us? Great burgers, but these coupons are pure hooey!
THE "SHOE" IS FITTING
If you don't read "Shoe" on a daily basis, your life is not complete!
Regarding Missouri's blowout loss to Oklahoma tonight in the Big 12 title game: At least they didn't step on their own collective winkies this time—they were thoroughly outplayed by a better team tonight. And they can at least say they didn't get beat by Pittsburgh (and we ain't talkin' Steelers here) in their own house like West "Virgina" did! And that's all I have to say about that...
Big news out of the Kansas City Royals camp this week, as they unveiled their new retro powder blue uniforms that some fans have been clamoring for the team to bring back for years. I was never especially fond of the originals from the '70s myself—I always thought they were kinda wussy-looking. Hope everyone's happy now, but I hate to tell ya, kids—this ain't gonna help the Royals win any more games...
