Blawg Radio is on the air.
Inspired by the likes of dack and PowerPopRadio, I took a crack at programming a Live365 broadcast. So I took three hours worth of the worst, most embarrassing mp3s I had — bad '70s AM hits, embarrassing emo, cheezy power pop, bad hesher metal, and rubberhead radio fodder — and threw it up on the Web as the blawg.com Guilty Pleasures Edition radio extravaganza.
Stay tuned for more information as it becomes available.
Live 'til you die.
If you live anywhere on the Eastern Seaboard, go to one of the Joey Ramone birthday bashes. Pay your respects to the man without whom punk would not exist. Speaking of which, Jeff Stark rightfully panned The Filth and the Fury. Julien Temple or no, avoid this movie. What a piece of garbage.
Revolver is my new favorite hard-copy music mag. They strike a nice balance between hessian rawk, urban flava, electronic stuff, and pop. With a smidgen of GQ/Maxim-type skin. A winning formula every time.
Hideo Nomo is a witch. And Rich Aurilia is currently leading the NL in batting average with a gaudy .413. But the Giants still got swept 'cuz their middle relief pitching sucks.
I discovered PowerPopRadio.com yesterday courtesy of Ideapad. It totally rocks. Guilty pleasures galore.
And now, the news.
Scoop Casey's News Roundup: Yesterday's News, Today
But does she get to keep the boobs?
Suddenly, Dubya looks a whole lot better.
Take the word "slavery" out of that headline.
If at first you don't succeed, try, try again ... jackass.
Now matter what he's saying, I can't get past the whole I'm-married-to-Sharon-Stone thing.
Scoop Casey's Bonus Porn Industry Coverage
Scoop Casey is indeed a real guy, and he files his News Roundup feature every Friday on blawg. He claims to be working on a sports weblog, but I have yet to see it. But we love him anyway. ßßß
Retail Therapy
Got stood up for another audition last night. I'm beginning to see a pattern developing here: All musicians suck. Let me rephrase that: All people suck, and, as a subset, musicians suck more than most. Too bad, 'cuz this guy sounded really cool. But if you can't even get your shit together to pick up the phone and say you're not gonna show up to meet me, how the hell are we supposed to work together?
So I went to my friendly neigborhood bookseller instead. Picked up Jonathan Lethem's Motherless Brooklyn because I enjoyed Gun, With Occasional Music so much. Also picked up Glue by Irvine Welsh on the outside chance that it doesn't suck. How could Trainspotting and The Acid House be so great and everything else he's ever written be so bad? It's a mystery. ...
UPS finally saw fit to deliver me my massive Amazon CD order yesterday. The package arrived at the Bay Area hub on Saturday morning, and it took them until Wednesday afternoon to bring it 20 miles to my work. What's that about?
The good news is that I have eight new CDs to listen to. I'm on my third listen to the new Guided by Voices, and I'm really not sure about it. The two obvious singles are fabulous, but the rest of the record is strange. I dunno. It's been steadily growing on me, so I'm gonna stick with it.
Other items from the order: the old eponymous Queens of the Stone Age, "End Is Forever" by the Ataris, Designing a Nervous Breakdown by the Anniversary, the new Old 97's, the new Creeper Lagoon, "Jersey's Best Dancers" by Lifetime, and I finally got around to purchasing Pinkerton by Weezer. Hooray for emo-pop. And indie-pop. And pop-punk. Whatever that is. ßßß
Landmine Spring
I started a new thing in the left sidebar yesterday. A little barometer of my sanity, or lack thereof. Self-indulgent? Yes. But it's a weblog, and weblogs are, by defintion, self-indulgent.
Had an audition set up for last night, but whaddya know? They flaked out. This just in: musicians are not reliable. Fuckers. I have never, ever missed a practice or a gig, and have never even missed the downbeat for a show. Get it together, people. I don't have time for this.
Instead, I got to spend an hour with the wife in our brand-new hammock. It was awesome. I need a lot more practice at that. Just lying in one place, without the chatter of a TV, radio, or my brain.
Sometimes I wonder why I do a weblog when other people say what I want to say, and say it better. Yes, Chloe Sevigny is a vile, repulsive creature, and Rickey Henderson is a self-absorbed shmuck. Come to blawg and click on the links in the right bar. Don't even read my lame commentary.
The Giants lost last night and their sellout streak ended, and now they share the division lead with the Rockies. Colorado needs to be handicapped or something. Either move them over to the Beer League, or make them play in a real crib. Coors is a joke. And yes, I'm bitter. Deal with it. ßßß
Bizarro Baseball
As of this writing, here are your MLB division leaders: Red Sox, Twins, Mariners, Phillies, Cubs, and Giants. There is something profoundly wrong with this.
I know it's still early in the season, but is it really possible that the Minnesota Twins have the second-best record in baseball? Are the standings on mlb.com somehow inverted? Don't get me wrong — I think it's awesome that the small-market teams are making a run. I just can't figure out how or why it's happening.
Apparently Peter Buck can't hold his likker. Note the Jim Romesque headline. Funny.
The blawg got a little love on ageless. The blogs are listed by their authors' birthdays; mine's 8/23/68. Yes, I am old. But now you know when my birthday is, and you can get me something from my wishlist.
One more reason Opera rules: click-and-drag commands. I discovered them by accident yesterday, but apparently you go forward and back in your browser using only the mouse. Hold down the right mouse button and move the mouse left, and you go back. Right-click and go right, go forward. Brilliant.
Take that, Microsoft-Time Warner-AOL-Viacom-NewsCorp. Simple good, complex bad. ßßß
The drugs are winning.
War on drugs + cultural imperialism = death.
Finally got around to adding a proper archive to this site. I'm not settled on the format, so if you have constructive feedback, I'm open to it.
I got quite a few responses to my solicitation for good weblogs. The standouts so far are Ideapad, which came to me courtesy of Dack, which led me to saranwarp.com. She's from Brooklyn and sells Shut up, hippie and Get out of my personal space T-shirts. You gotta love that.
Had a most excellent barbecue with some current and former coworkers yesterday. We made the most of the beautiful NoCal weather and burned some veggies, watched a fabulous episode of the Sopranos, and caught the Jon Stewart piece on 60 Minutes. If there's a smarter, funnier guy on TV, I'd like to know about it. If you're not watching The Daily Show and getting the TDS newsletter, get with the times, people. It's one of the few things worth getting out of bed for.
I was bored on Friday and created my first Amazon Listmania list, entitled Some Rekkids I Played On, in No Particular Order. It's very incomplete. But it was kinda fun. Here's my Wishlist if you, too, are very bored. ßßß
Don't miss last week's brilliant insight.
