Jake’s Blogamajig.

Living in Northeastern Ohio means that I live somewhat close a GM factory. This, of course, means that every day I’m bombarded with the news that GM is laying off tons of workers because they just don’t have the money to keep them going. And this, of course, is moderatly depressing. Thinking of all of those families who are now struggling to get by because the company that they used to work for needs to reduce their costs in order to keep profits up, an understandable point from their point of view, but there’s something even more depressing at the core of the problem.

American car companies like GM, Ford, and ect. are under a massive amount of pressure to change. Japanese car companies are steadily taking away profits and jobs from companies like GM, and change is the only way that GM can compete. And GM refuses to change. GM could increase profits easily: reduce the amount of SUV’s made each year, increase the number of fuel efficient cars, and stop resisting necessary change while hammering the “BUY AMERICAN!” slogans that haven’t been relevent in years.

“BUY AMERICAN” is a type of mindset that I don’t particularly understand. The whole slogan is based around this idea that, as an American, you should really have to buy only American products, despite your actual preferences or the quality of the product being made. Yet capitalism, a major part of Americana, is all about free choice. So why am I some kind of traitor for wanting to buy a car that gets better gas mileage, especially since it’s my right as an American consumer to make that choice?

Capitalism is a free market regulated by the choices of the consumer. It’s probably the most simple definition anyone can ask for, yet it seems that the American definition of capitalism is “free choice, as long as America is doing better than everyone else”. Which is not the definition at all, obviously. America is not above other countries, especially in a system so defined by consumer choice. If the consumer does not like what America is doing, then they have the right to go elsewhere for products.

This is when the debate over the falling profits of American car companies gets to be annoying. Folks who claim to be defenders of capitalism will contradict themselves and claim that there should be protection for domestic companies. This simply does not make sense, and it stands as being contrary to what capitalism is about.

Yes, it does suck when you hear the news that thousands of GM employees are going to have to struggle to find work, pay their bills, and feed their families. But giving domestic companies an unfair advantage just gives them an excuse to keep making sub-par products and then using the excuse of “well, people should be buying American, and the government isn’t helping us like they should be”. In turn, this means that Americans will keep paying more at the pump because we’d be forced into buying gas guzzlers.

It is also pretty amusing to see conservatives, who by definition are supposed to be opposed to the government getting involved in the private sector, clamering for more government regulations over businesses, when years before they would have been outraged by such a thought. Yes, time changes beliefs as the world changes, but selling out such a core belief just for the sake of hating anything foriegn is pretty pathetic.

However, I do admit that I believe that the government should have more of an ability to regulate business than they do. Not that they should offer protection for businesses just because they make a sub-par product, but because I do believe the government should be able to take down those businesses that make use of unfair, unethical, and just plain amoral business practices. And once again, the same group of folks who want protection against foreign companies are usually outraged at the idea of prosecuting CEO’s, because “that’s how business works,” even though they themselves want to change the way business works in favor of helping companies that resist change all for the sake of stubborness.

Now listening to: Destroyer- Streethawk: A Seduction.

As I often do, I spent some time this morning before work reading John Darnielle’s blog Last Plane to Jakarta, a blog about a little bit of everything. One of those everything’s that John likes to write about is music, and John is an unapologetic metal fan, which is odd considering the fact that John is a folk music icon, not metal.

I always feel out of place reading these because, frankly, I am not a metal fan at all. Call me dumb, but I just do not get it, despite trying my best to get into just about every form of metal created. Countless times, on a whim, I’ve downloaded entire Cannibal Corpse, Frostmoon, or Nile albums and found myself trying to force myself to listen and understand why so many people I know are obsessed with these bands, and every time I end up either confused, annoyed, or forced to listen to an Apples in Stereo album to clense my palate.

Honestly though, I do respect metal for the most part. While I dislike, I realize that most of the bands are technical talents, even if they all sound like emotionless robots to me. And I do happen to enjoy stoner metal, mainly based on my love of psychadelic rock and blues music.

And I do understand the purpose of metal: who doesn’t need some really pissed off, angry music every now and then? Or when you’re a teenager, music to piss off your parents. All of these are legit, despite what some critics say. And it’s why I listen to hardcore punk, at least the pissed off music part. Plus, as a fan of neofolk, I realize that most of those neofolk bands I like are incredibly influenced by metal, and some of them even influence folk metal bands.

What the whole point of this is, is to say that while it’s okay to dislike certain genres of music, I do think that you should at least be able to respect stuff that you don’t like. Metal isn’t my cup of tea, but I do give it credit for what it does right. It’s one of the things that sticks in my craw about being a fan of both “indie” music and “punk” music, that fans of both are snobbish assholes that won’t listen to anything that doesn’t give them enough street cred. Any time I express my love of a mainstream rock band like Zwan or Ben Folds, some smug asshole wearing clothes bought exclusively at thrift stores, and headphones that are 4 sizes too big, will feel the need to chime in about how anything that gets radio play inherently sucks.

It’s not just the indie world that does it, though. Most fans of rock music will scream bloody murder if someone tells them that rap really is a legitimate genre of music, and while I don’t listen to it, I agree that it is. I mean, you’ll never see me listening to a Tupac album, but I realize the brilliance of the man. And fans of mainstream pop music would never be caught dead listening to even a Ted Leo and the Pharmacists album, all because they’ve never used a Ted Leo song on Rob and Big.

However, there is one genre that I will flatout attack and refuse it’s worthiness as music, and that is modern mainstream country. Do not misunderstand what I am saying here, I have no qualms with country, and not just in the “well, I like Johnny Cash” way. There’s a lot of great country out there today, but not the garbage being played on the radio. I love Julie Holland, The Watson Twins, William Elliott Whitmore, and others. But modern mainstream country like Toby Keith, Kenny Chesny, and whatever else is just pure crap. And I say this because I work on a farm and am forced to listen to this shit all day.

It’s basically just mainstream pop music with banjos, and without the self-awareness of how unbelievably shitty it is. At least most mainstream pop acts realize how trite and dull their music is, and that it’s only being made for shitty parties and bar sluts. But mainstream country has a horrible sense of self-importance, and a fake sense of macho, which makes no sense given the fact that it may be the whiniest genre I’ve ever heard, and I listen to sadcore. To put it thusly, any music that sounds like it should be in a Ford commercial? Not worth your time.

Now listening to: The Moon Lay Hidden Beneath a Cloud- A Night in Fear

It was announced earlier this summer that Hollywood would once again be granting mankind another piece of cinematic brilliance; a movie that will eventually lift humanity up into a new plane of existance and understanding, but giving us revolutionary insight into our own being. This movie, of course, is Disaster Movie.

Disaster Movie is the latest installment in a series of annual pop-culture montages that are effectivly cinematic versions of VH1’s Best Week Ever. Movies that forget pointless movie cliches like original plots, characters, or jokes that are actually funny. In a way, they’re the Melt-Banana of movies, only instead of breaking the established norms of a form of art for the purpose of creating a unique piece of creative art, it just doesn’t have a plot because the writers are lazy idiots.

I first saw the trailer for Disaster Movie in a thread on the website www.nohomers.net. In the trailer, I saw Iron Man have a plush cow fall on his head, Hannah Montana being killed by something, Hancock hitting his head on something, and Juno beating up a guy dressed up as Sarah Jessica Parker’s character from Sex In The City. This leads me to a few questions, the most important being the relevence of disaster movies here, because it appears that there wasn’t a single disaster movie reference in the whole trailer. But the other question, and the one I shall be discussing today, is why the fuck do people keep making these movies?

Now, I have to admit that I haven’t watched a parody movie all the way through since Scary Movie 3. I did watch about 20 minutes of Epic Movie in CinaMax a month or two ago, but stopped watching once I lost the will to live and had to be talked out of jumping off of a bridge by several police officers. But, from the clips I have seen, I can’t imagine why anyone over the age of 12 would want to see these movies, and why any parents would actually let their kids watch this crap.

These movies do amazing at the box office, but I’ve yet to meet a single person who thinks they’re actually funny. Which leads me to seriously wonder who’s going to see these movies. Could it be people going and not admitting to it? This is the only reasonable answer, as I wouldn’t want to admit to it either.

From what I’ve seen, the formula of these movies are pretty simple: taking one movie, then throwing in lame sex puns, random celebrity appearances, and then references to other movies, and throwing it all in a blender filled with bad actors, drinking it, pooping it out, and then packaging it with a not-so-clever title. And I think I could do that if I tried. In fact, I think the 12 year old kid I was puke then walk away at the mall a few days ago probably could write the same movie too.

Now listening to- The Tallest Man on Earth- Shallow Grave.

Part I: The History.  

R.E.M.’s 14th studio album Accelerate may be the most crucial album of their career. To understand the importance of this album, you must understand a little history first: in 1997, R.E.M.’s drummer Bill Berry announced that he was leaving the band. The rest of the band decided to go on as a three-piece, mostly on the insistane of Berry himself. Naturally, this news was met with some confusion from the audience.

And the first post-Berry album, Up, was met with the same type of confusion. Rather than the jangly guitars or shining folk-pop of R.E.M.’s previous albums, Up was a dark, ambient, experimental album made up mostly of electronic instruments. Fan reaction was and still is conflicted: some view the album as a beautifully dark masterpiece, while others view it as a brooding mess. But either way, one thing was certain: post-Berry R.E.M. would be a completely different R.E.M. than the public had come to know.

In 2001, the band released Reveal, the follow-up to Up. Reveal still contained most of the electronic elements of the previous album, but used them to create a warm, summer-ish atmosphere and make an album that Michael Stipe referred to as “our summer record”. While the album does an excellent job accomplishing that goal, the album still had some detractors. Critics and fans alike were slightly bothered by R.E.M.’s newfound similarities to adult-contemporary radio pop. The band’s influence was started to wane, despite the fact that just a few years earlier they were elder-statesmen with a legendary status.

But luckily, the band’s fanbase and critics were divided. Despite some negative feedback, enough of the fanbase still supported them that they weren’t completely written off. At most, they were in a slump. But then a few things happened: The band released a greatest hits compilation that turned them into a nostalgia act for the general public, as well as brought more of a spotlight on their upcoming new album: Around the Sun.

Around the Sun has, as most music fans know, gones down in history as a pretty bad album. Most of the negtive criticism was universal: R.E.M. was essentially finished. They were now becoming the Rolling Stones of alternative rock, based more on greatest hits compilations and setlists that revolve soley around the hits, while releasing medocre albums of new material that sounds exactly like the kind of the thing that the band would have used to avoid. In the span of a few years, the band would also release another greatest hits compilation and a live album, two things that did nothing but prove the naysayers correct. R.E.M.’s career and legacy were getting tarnished fast.

Part II: The Return of R.E.M. in Dublin.

In 2007, R.E.M. was inducted into the Rock ‘N Roll Hall of Fame, despite the detractors of the last few albums. This, some speculate, was a turning point for the band. Soon after, word came out that the band was writing new songs together as a group. Then, around May, the band announced a 5 night working reheasal where they would play through new songs for an audience in Dublin.

These shows turned the music world on it’s head. The new songs had a kick to them that R.E.M. hadn’t put in their music since 1996’s New Adventures in Hi Fi and the band sounded more enthusiastic than they had in almost 10 years. In addition to that, the band played older songs from their days as an indie band for the first time since the late 80’s/early 90’s, one song in particular (Harborcoat) hadn’t been played live since 1985. The band was telling the world that they were back.

News spread quick, and soon the internet was in a massive state of buzz over the shows. The cellphone videos of the new and old songs became some of the most-watched videos on Youtube that summer, and critics everywhere were hailing that R.E.M. was back on top as one of the best bands in the world. R.E.M. quickly recorded the songs in 3 one week long studio sessons, in order to keep the album feeling raw and immediate.

Then on January 1st, 2008, the band announced to the world that on April 1st, the new album Accelerate would hit shelves. Anticipation for the album was the most R.E.M. had seen in years. News sources everywhere begged for any kind of tidbit on the album.

In the run up to the release, R.E.M. talked at length about the promises that they had made for the new album. While they refused to talk about the material itself in detail, in order to not create false hopes, they did say that they were more excited about this than any album they’ve released in 10 years, and even admitted to that Around the Sun was a poor, uneven album.

Not only did they talk of their new changes in the press, but they proved them onstage. At their show at the South By Southwest festival, the first show since the release date announcement, the band performed a revealing setlist: gone were set staples “Losing My Religion” and “The One I Love”,  two of the band’s biggest singles, and in their place came obscure goodies like “Auctioneer (Another Engine)”, “Second Guessing,” alongside classic hits like “Fall on Me” that haven’t been played live in years. With this show, R.E.M. announced that they’re back and ready to show the world what they’re made of. But, this of course hinges on the new album itself…

 Part III: The Review.

Accelerate does indeed live up to much of it’s hype. It is a cohesive return to form for R.E.M., with songs that sound spirited and truly energetic in a way no R.E.M. album has in the past 10 years. But unlike much of the hype states, it’s not a mind blowing album that will change music in 2008.

The modesty of the album is half of it’s strength. It’s not a band trying to show off it’s chops, but instead a band doing it’s thing the best they can and taking the listener along for the ride. Modesty was always one of R.E.M.’s original selling points, that they were a band that made music because they wanted to make it, not to get famous or to make points. They’re back to being a band of guys rather than a band of superstars. They’ve returned to their roots in an honest, respectable way.

Of course one of the biggest concerns was if the album would just be a simple throwback to the band’s glory days rather than a legitimate artistic statement. And yes, there are a few reminders of yesteryear, such as the jangly guitar on songs like “Supernatural Superserious” or “Hollowman,” but as a whole the album is much more than simply a nostalgia trip. The album expands upon R.E.M.’s classic sound while at the same time embracing it. “Hollowman” sounds like a cross between Reckoning era jangle pop and New Adventures in Hi Fi mainstream rock, while “Mr. Richards” has much in common with Document’s “Finest Worksong” without sounding like a re-tread.

Even the folk numbers on the album sound much more organic and fiery. “Houston” is a dissedent policial piece that features some of the murky atmosphere of earlier R.E.M. records, while “Until the Day is Done” is a perfect example of a classic R.E.M. folk number. They don’t sound overproduced like the folk numbers on the band’s past 3 albums, but instead sound organic and real, something that had been lacking from R.E.M.’s music for a number of years.

Overall, Accelerate is a strong record that’s worthy of most of the praise and attention it’s gotten. While not perfect, it works as a cohesive piece of energetic art that’s able to celebrate itself without being cocky. It’s fun and intelligent at the same time, and a breath of fresh air to the mainstream rock scene. Essentially, it’s exactly what an R.E.M. album should be.

Now listening to: Woodie Guthrie- Dust Bowl Ballads.

One thing that I enjoy doing is reading music reviews. Bands I love, hate, am indifferent to, it doesn’t matter because I just like seeing people share their opinions on music. Allmusic.com, Metacritic, and a variety of other sites are bookmarked on my computer for easy access. When I’m listening to an album, I might think “hey, I wonder what critics have to say about this,” and go check it out.

Yesterday I did that once again, this time with the Vaselines’ The Way of the Vaselines, a compilation that collects the Vaselines’ entire discography onto one disc. It’s a handy little collection by one of the best pop bands of the last 25 years, so I figured I’d like to see what the reviews said. And behold, every single one of them spent more time talking about Nirvana rather than talking about the Vaselines.

This has been a pretty annoying trend. I’ve yet to come across a Pixies, Meat Puppets, Mudhoney, post-Daydream Nation Sonic Youth, or early 90’s Weezer review that didn’t spend 50% of the review talking about how importnant Nirvana was, and why these bands would be nothing without them. I’d like to read a review of Surfer Rosa that doesn’t include at least a paragraph talking about how Nirvana is just as good as the Pixies, or how Kurt Cobain listened to the Pixies a few times. I’d like to read a review of Meat Puppets II that doesn’t reference Nirvana’s overrated cover of “Lake of Fire”. Just once, can’t a boy dream?

I don’t have a huge problem with Nirvana, to be honest. 2 years ago I would have said otherwise, and attacked them viciously. 3 years before that I would have kissed their ass relentlessly. But as of now, since I’ve matured from both, my opinion on Nirvana is that, while they don’t deserve a lot of the praise that they get, they also don’t really deserve a lot of the shit they get either. They were a decent band when it comes to mainstream music, nothing more, nothing less. And I’ll have to admit that in the last year or so, I’ve grown to start really liking In Utero again, even if the stuff about it being a completely uncompromising, challenging record is complete bullshit.

But there’s this idea that everything in music today can be tied back to Nirvana in some way, and it’s pretty stupid, to put it bluntly. Nirvana were influential in inspiring lots of today’s most generic, uninteresting rock bands, such as Nickleback, the Vines, and Puddle of Mudd. But that doesn’t mean that you need to spend an entire review of a Vaselines album talking about how amazing Nirvana was, and how Kurt Cobain was so talented that he immediately knew what bands were awesome and no one else can do that.

Most of this stems from the fact that Kurt, like Alexander Hamilton, is dead. Dead rock stars get more praise than Jesus, regardless of talent or legacy that they had before they died. I can understand wanting to respect the dead, but eventually this respect turns into something that usually borders on necrophilia, especially in the case of Nirvana fans. One of my favorite examples of this odd phenomina comes from the death of Pennywise bassist Jason Matthew Thirsk. Pennywise was and still is just a generic punk rock band that never really grew out of being bland and dull. As far as musicianship, they were regarded the same way: pretty standard, uninteresting punk musicianship that sounded exactly like every punk band that rippedo ff Bad Religion in the 90’s.

Then in 1996 there was a miraculous event: Jason killed himself. While this is obviously a sad thing, as is the loss of any human life other than Jerry Fallwell, the funny thing is that suddenly Jason started becoming known as “one of the greatest punk rock bassists of all time” in the music press, the same press that once made fun of Pennywise for being bland and dull. What the fuck? Just because the guy is dead doesn’t mean that you need to start taking back your opinions on him. You could just as easily say that “Jason was a good guy” or something rather than hold him up as a God of some sort.

 Death does not and should not give you some kind of immortality. In fact, it kind of gives you the exact opposite since death is, you know, the end of life. Death does not make you a deity to be worshipped. I’m sure some guy working at a box factory who dies doesn’t get held up as “the best damn assembly line worker in the history of assembly lines”. When I die, you won’t see a picture of me masturbating on a t-shirt, even though I’m sure I’m better at it than most (feel free to challenge. You will fail).

 The other thing about this that bothers me is that most of the musicians held up as heros due to this actually shouldn’t be for other reasons. Cobain, Morrison, Hendrix, Joplin, the guy from Sublime, and others are drug addicts, alcoholics, egomaniacs, or idiots. And while these negative traits are exactly what fueled their music and made it good, these traits make it a little hard for me to believe a lot of the hype. Jim Morrison, while an incredibly talented songwriter, was a notable dickhead while he was alive, and abused more drugs in a week than most humans are capable of in a year. Is this really the kind of person you want to put a black-and-white picture of on your t-shirts? Yes, all humans have falts and shortcomings, but most people would get called out and criticised for it. These guys do not.

I guess the core argument here is that rock stars, especially dead ones, are humans too. Humans are fallabe creatures that shouldn’t be held up as heros just because they’ve passed on. And rock stars, being humans themselves, fall into that category as well. This is where I should end on a joke. Too bad for you guys, eh?

Now listening to: Yo La Tengo- I Am Not Afraid of You and I Will Beat Your Ass.

Mainstream rock is an area of music that often gets overlooked by critics, music snobs, and basically everyone outside high school students and those people that write “I like just about everything” in the music section of their Facebook pages. And usually for good reason, since mainstream rock has been associated with plain awful acts such as Boston, the Scorpions, Third Eye Blind, Alice in Chains, and modernly speaking, bands like System of a Down and Nickleback. There’s a lot there to dislike, and no one will blame you for completely writing it off as a whole and sticking to the independent section of your local music stores.

But writing off all mainstream rock as being horrible is like a mainstream rock fan writing off anything that isn’t on MTV just because it’s not popular. The ignorance can go both ways, like a drunken girl who needs some money. I mean, bands like Pink Floyd, Led Zeppelin, and the Beatles were and are mainstream rock bands, and the same group that will refuse to listen to anything modern that’s popular worships them.

And that is why I’ve decided to compile a list of mainstream rock albums that don’t suck. I’ve decided to not include bands such as Sonic Youth, R.E.M., Radiohead, or most bands that started out as underground icons before gaining mainstream popularity, because usually these bands ignore most mainstream rock trappings.

1.) Foo Fighters- There’s Nothing Left to Lose.

The Foo Fighters are one of those strange bands that are able to write some really good songs and then somehow be content with sandwiching them between forgettable filler crap. This is why the Foo Fighters only have one truly great album, despite having a handful of great songs that pepper every album they have.

There’s Nothing Left to Lose may not be as celebrated as the band’s self-titled debut, or the blockbuster The Colour and the Shape, but when it comes down to it, it’s the strongest of the three. Self-titled sounds like a bunch of leftover table scraps, despite occasional brilliance, and Colour’s flamboyant and unnecessary production kills the otherwise well-written songs on it by turning the whole thing into a generic post-grunge record.

But Nothing manages to avoid both of these frills, with a strong set of songs given minimal excessive production that keeps the album sounding grounded and natural. The songwriting itself is incredibly tight, with songs like “This Year,” “Aurora,” and “Generator” ranking as some of the best songs the Foo Fighters ever recorded. The natural feeling of the album makes even the harder rock songs like “Stacked Actors” and “MIA” sound somewhat peaceful and relaxing, making this a great album to listen to on a warm summer night, a kind of atmosphere that most mainstream rock albums would be lucky to have.

2.) A Perfect Circle- The 13th Step.

A Perfect Circle came around during what is possibly the darkest period that mainstream music has ever experienced. If you were a pop fan, you had nothing but boy bands and novelty rap songs. If you liked rock, you have nothing but nu-metal, which was essentially a bunch of privileged white kids who assumed that not getting to party last weekend, is the worst thing that could ever happen to them, not to mention what seemed like a contest to see which band could include the line “I don’t want to be what you want me to be” in the most songs possible. So far, Linkin Park has been in the lead.

So A Perfect Circle came out with their debut album, Mer De Noms, which sadly got lumped in with the other trash of the day despite the fact that outside of one of the singles, the album had little in common with the garbage that was on the radio. So it kind of makes sense that A Perfect Circle’s next album would be such a step in a new direction. 13th Step is a much darker, more atmospheric album that worked more heavily with soundscapes than it did catchy melodies and crunching guitars. And with that, they have us one of the few mainstream rock albums of that era to actually be worth a listen. Songs here range from gritty (The Package) to pretty (The Noose), with a unifying theme of addiction that is as emotional as it is difficult.

3.) Weezer- Weezer (The Blue Album)

Choosing between the Blue Album and Pinkerton is a difficult choice. Personally, I find Pinkerton to be the better album, but Blue fits better with the theme of the list. Pinkerton has much more in common with gritty underground alternative bands like Pavement and the Pixies than it does with the mainstream rockers of it’s day, but Blue fits nicely into the mainstream rock canon.

Blue is a lot like the first two or three Beatles albums. Nothing here is really that innovative, edgy, or deep, but there’s a real enthusiasm and raw talent driving it that makes it seem different than everything else around it. Blue’s giddy cuteness is exactly what makes it so good, it doesn’t take itself overly serious and it realizes that it’s just a damn good pop-rock album. That kind of self-awareness lets the songs breathe and allows the listener to sit back and have some fun. And having fun while listening to music isn’t a bad thing, despite what Pitchfork Media has been telling you.

4.) Green Day- Warning.

Most critics will tell you that Dookie is Green Day’s greatest accomplishment, and it is a good album. But Warning is, simply put, the best document of Green Day’s talent of any album they’ve released.

Most Green Day albums get bogged down by either taking themselves too seriously (Insomniac, American Idiot) or not taking themselves seriously enough (Dookie, Nimrod). Warning manages to find a delicate balance between fun and maturity and highlight the fact that at its core, Green Day is really just a good pop band.

On Warning, Green Day toss out the pop-punk that they’re known for and make a good old fashioned jangle-pop album, and album that sounds spirited and carefree while remaining intelligent. Songs like “Waiting” and “Fashion Victim” prove that Green Day are just a catchy band, while fun experiments in Beatles-esque rock ‘n roll (Hold On), Greek dinner party music (Misery), and a folk ballad (Macy’s Day Parade) keep it from getting redundant.

5.) Saves the Day- Stay What You Are

Emo is one of those genres that has become so diluted from its original form that you can barely tell that Rites of Spring and modern emo have anything at all in common. And most modern emo is tolerable at best. But every genre has its exception to the rule, and Stay What You Are is the qualifier for this genre.

Stay What You Are does at times fall into the lyrical trappings of modern emo, but luckily for the band, the songs have good enough music to make that fact irrelevant, while many of the other songs contain some really well-written lyrics to make up for the bad ones. Songs like “At Your Funeral,” “Cars and Calories,” and the beautiful “This Is Not An Exit” are easily some of the best modern day emo songs ever written, not that I’m saying they have stiff competition or anything. But be warned: despite the brilliance of this album, the rest of the band’s catalogue, minus In Reverie, is pretty unlistenable.

6.) U2- The Joshua Tree.

Say whatever you want about Bono being a prick, or  about U2’s recent albums being trash, but denying that The Joshua Tree is one of the best albums of the 80’s is like denying that pants are good to wear when it’s cold out. The Joshua Tree is everything that mainstream rock can be when it’s done right. It uses it big sound to create moods and feelings rather than just fist pumping anthems, it uses it’s lyrics to explain political messages and real emotions rather than just cheesy love songs. It shares things in common with the underground rock scene just as much as it does the mainstream scene. It seamlessly mixes genres like folk, blues, post-punk, new wave, and gospel into one blend of rock goodness.

Now listening to: Codeine- The White Burch.

Last weekend, we got a lot of snow here. So much that all of the roads here were closed down, and people that live in dorms were basically forced to be stuck in their rooms for the entire day, because it was impossible to drive or walk anywhere. This was a pretty big hassle in of itself. As someone who lives on take out food, I didn’t get to eat anything other than potato chips and other vending machine goodies. However, this wasn’t the worst part.

The majority of the people that I talked to this weekend made the following joke: “man, look at all the snow! Al Gore sure was right! Thanks a lot, global warming!” or some variation of the such. Aside from the fact that it gets annoying when people make the same joke that I’ve heard 5 times already that day, the whole joke is annoying for the attempted political statement there.

Global warming and climate change is one of those issues that gets polarized for reasons that I honestly don’t understand. There is an overwhelming amount of evidence that suggests that global warming does exist, such as a slight rise in sea levels, melted ice caps, and air current temperatures that seem to be warming year after year. Yet people want to ignore the clear facts for the simple fact that Al Gore, a liberal, believes in them, and therefore, they are not allowed.  Yep. I’m glad people in this country can think for themselves and get educated.

Let’s dissect the criticism here a little bit, just for fun:  the main argument being given is that even if there is climate change, it’s probably natural since the Earth goes through different weather cycles all the time. Yes, this one is very true. But regardless of whether or not the weather changes are caused by man, the steps taken to prevent man-made climate change will still be beneficial. Any progress in terms of being more environmentally conscious is a good thing. Every step being taken will positively effect the Earth, regardless of whether or not it actually fixes the climate change issues.

Secondly, much of the opposition in made due to a fear that businesses will lose money once they make an attempt at being more thoughtful of the environmental issues that are being discussed. This is just flat out wrong. One of the biggest news stories of 2007 was that Toyota beat Ford in overall automobile sales, and that this trend of foreign car manufacturers having better sales than American companies doesn’t seem to be slowing down. One of the reasons for this is that by making their cars more environmentally sound, they also made cars that are more fuel efficient and that cost less at the pump. Obviously, this kind of fuel efficiency is a huge selling point that stubborn American car companies don’t have. It’s a winning situation for everyone involved: the customer gets more miles for the gallon and spends less on gas, the company makes higher profits, and carbon emissions are cut down. So as for an economic impact, it’s mostly positive. The transition may cost a little money, but as soon as that’s dealt with, other costs are decreased. So what’s the big deal here?

Another major issue with the non-global warming people comes from this idea that it’s still cold in winter, therefore global warming must not exist. This one stems mainly from a huge misunderstanding about what global warming actually is. Global warming is not an overnight thing that will suddenly effect temperatures everywhere. Warming begins at the poles, then starts to hit ocean air currents. These currents then start to warm air in other places. But this happens over a period of hundreds of years. Expecting it to be 60 degrees in January is just plain stupidity.

Lastly is a point that goes back to the Al Gore thing. I can’t count how many times I’ve heard “but Al Gore flies a jet and wastes gas and etc.” So what? Yeah, there’s a level of hypocrisy there, but pegging Gore as the main person in the movement is just dumb. There are a lot of hypocrites out there advocating right-wing issues, but you don’t see the conservatives giving them the same bashing. Rush Limbaugh being a drug addict didn’t make conservatives, or even liberals, say that the war on drugs was stupid just because Rush is a hypocrite. No conservative jumped on Newt Gingrich’s ass for being a total hypocrite for attacking Clinton over an affair while he himself was cheating on a dieing wife. Why should a whole subject of scientific study be considered obsolete just because of one person being a hypocrite? I’m sure a lot of legitimate areas of scientific studies have been filled with perverts, hypocrites, and assholes. Who’s to say that some of the guys on Thomas Edison’s team helping him with the light bulb weren’t jerking off while imagining being banged by a sheep? That doesn’t mean that the light bulb is stupid.

Mainly the reason this whole issue bothers me is that people that are against global warming research really need to realize that simply researching something isn’t saying that it exists.  Scientific research is intended to either prove or disprove something. If anything, you’d think that conservatives would want to see a lot of research being done so that they can be proven correct. But instead they hide and deflect from the issue because they can’t even pretend to be open to the idea of something that they disagree with being right.

Yet another pet peeve over this issue comes from pundits. Pundits usually tend to make every potentially interesting discussion go sour, but in this case it’s worse than gay marriage and abortion combined. If I had a nickel for every time some jerk like ‘O Reilly, Hannity, and Limbaugh, guys who have no scientific background at all, claiming that they’re experts on science to a point that they know more than people who have dedicated their whole lives to an area of study. Rush Limbaugh is not qualified to say that he’s an expert in any area of scientific study other than pharmaceuticals, an area in which he actually does happen to be an amateur enthusiast.

My point is this: disagree with the concept of global warming all you want. That’s fine, you’re obviously allowed to so. But closing your mind off so completely that you refuse to accept any other viewpoint but your own. Not only does this make you come off as less of an asshole when you’re in a conversation over the issue with someone, but it also helps take the sting away if you’re proven to be wrong.

Now listening to: The Wrens- The Meadowlands

When I was about 12, I got to extend my bedtime on the weekends to being as late as I wanted it to be, as long as I wasn’t doing anything I wasn’t supposed to. So since my parents didn’t know about the porn I was watching on CinaMax, I made pretty good use of this time. One of thise first things I did was start making use of the radio that was in my room and listened to shitty music all night.

One night, I got antsy. The porn wasn’t very good, and I was getting tired of hearing the same 5 songs played ad nasuem. So I switched to AM to see what AM actually was. Turns out, AM is mostly Garrison Keillor and fat conversatives talking about how smart they are. One of the first things that I heard was a cranky conspiracy theorist talking about 2012, when apparently, we are all going to die. The entire theory was based around the fact that the Mayan calander was going to end on December 21st, 2012. Then we were, in scientific terms, totally boned.

As the little 12 year old that I was, this scared the hell out of me. I didn’t want to die, and really, I still don’t, surprising as that may be. But some guy on the radio said it, and he had evidence to back it up, so it must be true. Then I remembered that this was not the first time that the entire world was going to die off in a mass exstinction event. On January 1st, 2000, the world was supposed to descend into chaos, or Jesus was supposed to come back and kill people or something. It was one or the other, depending on who you asked.

The Mayan calander one, unlike the 2000 thing, has been around a lot longer and has a lot more speculation. Plus, the 2000 scare was base much less on actual death than it was based on computers shutting down. So this does make the 2012 talk a tad more interesting, a little more respectable. Until you learn that the main thing driving the entire theory is actually wrong.

See, like I mentioned above, the entire theory is based upon the idea that the Mayan calander mysteriously ends on December 21st, 2012. People speculate that this happens because the Mayan people knew something that we do not. That they were more spiritually aware of the world around us. But once you actually educate yourself, you find that the calander does not actually end in 2012.

What does end in 2012 is a Baktun cycle, a 400 year cycle that simply flips over to a new Baktun cycle when one ends. As of now, we are currently in the 12th cycle. All that will happen in 2012 is that we will proceed to enter the 13th cycle. No fuss, no muss, friends. Cycles like this have flipped over for thousands of years, with no problem. What makes this one so special and unique? I can’t figure it out, since every website, author, and TV pundit that talks about it ignores the fact that we’re only ending a cycle, not the calender itself.

Why this belief has spread falsely, I don’t understand. My theory is that one guy got it wrong, but it sounded really good, so it spread, like gossip in a high school cafeteria. Now it’s become a commonly held belief, even by people who disagree with the “end of the world” part. Which really bugs me. It’s cool if you think we’re all gonna die, but at least base it in real facts and not in something that was made up just to make a point. Like the Bible. Hmm…blasphemy.

Humans seem to have a weird obsession with trying to put a date on our demise. One of the most well-known parts of the Bible deals with our death as a species, a gigantic bulk of fiction has been based on human exstinction, and most of our well-loved wacky cult leaders use their visions of some sort of end-times to gain membership to their Kool-Aid parties.

I can understand it to a point. Imagining all of the possible ways that the entire human race can die out is a fun way to spend a sunny afternoon, on par with golfing, vollyball, and grave-robbing. But what starts out as funny theories by right-wing nutjobs and stupid hippies, or in rare cases, right-wing hippies (hippies that hate gays and poor people), gets annoying pretty quickly. After a while, it’s easy to get sick of people being so sure that they’re going to be the ones to predict the death of the human race, despite the fact that people have been sure of themselves for thousands of years now. The odds aren’t looking good for you, so unless you’ve created some kind of super-virus, I’d reccommend against trying to predict the end of the world.

Religious people especially like to tell everyone that we’re living in the end times. In fact, if Christians had been right, no one reading this would have ever existed because jazz musicians and women voting would have actually been what caused Jesus to come back and kill us all. I understand this. When Jesus and if Jesus comes back, religious people all over the world will be proven correct. And who wouldn’t love to run around like a self-important jerk and laugh in everyone’s face? Sure, Jesus will disapprove of your gloating, but Jesus has no real place in religion.

When I was in 5th grade, during 1999, I got to watch first hand as people got the shit scared out of them due to the 2000 scare. Tabloids in supermarkers carried pictures of Jesus pointing angrily at various celebrities, making sure that they knew there time was up. People were panicking everywhere, and my little 10 year old self was freaking the fuck out. I was convinced that at the stroke of midnight that year, I would suddenly see fire spring up around me, while demons jumped around stabbing everyone. When midnight hit and none of that happened, I grew up a little. I would never be duped into thinking that I was going to die just because of a bunch of ill-informed hype.

Yet adults everywhere, after being duped time after time, still keep believing it every single time. How can you buy into panic to turn out to be wrong time and time again and not start questioning the validity of these claims? Being a skeptic is a bad thing when you’re not leaving your mind open at all, but at least being a little cynical when people are trying to scare you into a panic for no reason but to sell books about their little theories.

It’s not that I don’t have some spiritual leanings. Since I first heard the 2012 theories, I’ve looked into them quite a bit, and through that have learned about a lot of things that I know belief in, such as some sort of spirit dimension, astral projection, and EVP. But at the same time, I can’t believe something that’s based in a blatantly wrong fact. Something that’s being sold as a way to scare people by people on websites that also link to webcams of girls with penises having sex with dogs.

Now listening toSilver Ray- This is Silver Ray.

College is usually the place where most trends begin and end. Possibly because it’s mainly a gathering crowd for young people, or because of forces that you and I may ever understand, every annoying trend gets started here. North Face jackets, Chuck Norris jokes, but most significantly a “comedian” by the name of Dane Cook.

By now, everyone knows Dane Cook and already has an opinion on him. He’s become popular enough to have polarized people or for people to have decided that they don’t care about his existence either way. So I know going into this that I’m not going to chang any minds in explaining why I dislike Dane Cook. But still, my hatred of this untalented hack is so strong that I really can’t contain it, and the college-love of Cook is easily my least favorite aspect of college so far. Even walking across campus in a blizzard bothers me less than people watching horrible Youtube clips of Dane Cook talking about Burger King and bros in class.

I’ve always been under the impression that a comedian has to tell jokes. Maybe I always assumed it was a part of the job description, but it seems like a pretty important part of the job. Hell, even Bill Hicks who was more of a social critic than comedian told jokes. Even funny stories and rants from comedians like Lewis Black usually have punchlines scattered throughout so that it doesn’t just sound like some narcassist whining about stuff. But in watching various Dane Cook routines, I’ve found a massive lack of jokes.

With Dane Cook’s bits, he seems to just like to yell and scream swear words in silly voices while jumping around stage. This does not take craft or talent. It takes limbs. It does not take wit, subversion, or even puns and sarcasm. It takes basic motor functions. And even sometimes those seem off, as if he’s just stumbling around stage like a jackass. Yet people eat it up. How the fuck do people honestly get amused by someone jumping up and down and screaming “awwww shit bro, shit!” Are people that easily amused? Maybe we just need someone to stand on stage and flick the lights on and off while people giggle and clap.

I did try pretty hard to get into Dane Cook. I’ve watched half of the HBO special, as well as some various clips on Youtube and other websites. I think I have laughed a total of 0 times, but I am estimating at this point. Here are some of the brilliant things I’ve seen:

“When I’m in a relationship that’s going badly, I like to call it a relationshit!”

What? That’s clever? That’s a good joke? Seriously, come on now, that’s the kind of jokes I made when I was 13 years old and still thought the “comedy” shows on MTV were funny. And this guy is like 20 something, bro.

“The best part of dating is the makeup sex. Yeah, you dudes know about makeup sex.”

Thanks for the insight, Every Single 90’s Sitcom! I haven’t heard a joke about makeup sex since Paul Reiser was still relevent. It’s almost nostalgic in a way…in the way that a trend that you never cared about/liked before gets popular again in an ironic way and you have to grit your teeth every time someone brings it up. Yeah, like that. He should be pretty proud of himself.

“Time machine… wouldn’t you like to travel through time? I would. I’d go back..mess with people. You know what I would do? I would go back to when my mom and dad were having sex, to have me. Ya’know, come in, spank my dad on the ass *smack* I’M YOUR SON FROM THE FUTURE!! AAAAAAHAHAHHAHAHAHA! *smack* IM FROM THE FUTURE!! AHAHAHAHAHAHAH”

I want to point out that this is exactly how this was transcribed on a fan site, not a site making fun of him. He’s even fucking obnoxious in writing. 

Like, sometimes you say some shit, and you think of it like 2 hours later, and you’re like “What the fuck was I talking about?” Like I was with this girl recently, I was just totally in the zone, out of nowhere I was like “Oh, my dick feels like corn!” It sounded good at the time, right? And she didn’t even miss a beat, she was like “Give me the butter baby, give me the butter! [slap sound] Come on Orville Redenbacher, pop that pussy.”

Like fuckin’ totally brodude, I can fucking like understand that shit and stuff dude. Fuck yeah cunt shit dick ass.

“I haven’t seen a good horror movie in a long time. When we were kids movies were SCARY. They affected your brain for years. I saw “Jaws” I couldn’t take a fuckin’ bath for like 10 years. I thought that shark was coming out of the drain… I’m lathering one side at a time.”

So first Dane sounded exactly like every generic comedian from the 90’s, now he’s going for the late 70’s/early 80’s. Again, I’d give him props for being nostalgic, then I remembered that I’m not laughing.

“Dude, I hear a car.” “Yeah, the world is full of them. You’re gonna be hearing them for the rest of your life. If you hear a humpback whale, that’s pretty fuckin’ weird, tell me that shit, then I’ll stop.”

When I was a junior in high school, I took a psychology class, and our teacher brought in a pamphlet written by a schizophrenic to give us an example of the incoherent stream of words that schizophrenics come up with. The schizophrenic man believed that he was the son of Howard Hughes and that he was a logger who had to work with “dangerous trees”. This man made more sense and was about a billion times more interesting than Dane Cook with ever hope to be in his entire, generic life.

Dane Cook’s popularity probably stems from the fact that he sounds like every generic drunken party guy that thinks that the entire purpose of his life is to get wasted and hit on girls that have no clue where they’re at. To put it another way: Cook is the comedian equivolent of Blink 182: shallow, easy to understand, with the ability to talk about subjects like farts, having sex with slutty party girls, and having no actual personality of your own. People like this need someone to relate to, but since most self-respecting comedians try their best to actually have some sense of originality and wit, these guys are generally left out on their own. So here’s Dane Cook to help them out as much as he can. I’d say he’s at least doing good because he’s helping someone, then you realize who he’s helping. Fuck you, Dane Cook.

And I haven’t even addressed the joke theft yet. Dane Cook has been accused of stealing jokes from multiple comedians, and not just by Joe Rogan who’s convinced that every comedian ever has stolen jokes from him. Cook’s jokes are pretty generic, which does make it hard to tell if he’s stolen jokes or not, but I’m pretty sure that he has. And joke theft is the ultimate sign of a hack comedian. Someone who’s too untalented to come up with their own jokes should just get out of comedy as soon as possible, since the only point of being a comedian is to come up with your own jokes. If all you had to do was steal other jokes, then comedy wouldn’t be nearly as intersting as it is because there’d be no one with original voices of unique things to say. What if Bill Hicks just stole from Sam Kinesen? Or what if Richard Pryor just stole from Bill Cosby? Or if Denis Leary just stole from Bill Hi…oh, yeah. Sorry.

What I’m saying is that what makes a comedian a good comedian is the ability to stand out from the group of generic comedians that are all telling the same relationship jokes or the same “what the fuck is the deal with airline food?” schtick that has made stand up comedy become a joke within itself. People like Dane Cook who steal jokes then get famous only make it harder because they take up space from the truly talented comedians who actually work at creating their own voice rather than just rip off others around them.

Jokes, or at least good ones, are not easy to come up with. Even the semi-unfunny jokes that I write here took some thought to come up with. Sure, I could have pulled an eBaum’s World and just stole jokes from other websites, but unlike hacks like the assholes as eBaum’s World and Dane Cook, I like to know that people reading this are seeing something that I wrote, something that I created. Something that is unique to my voice, not something that I read somewhere else that I really liked.

This is the main reason I have a problem with Dane Cook. He’s not giving you anything new. Even the jokes he came up with are ideas that have been done a thousand times before, ideas that reek of the same “brodude” mentality that has been giving college a bad name for years. He teaches people that mediocrity is okay, as long as you ad “bro” to it. Bro, shit, dude. Fuck.

Now listening to: Tom Waits- Rain Dogs.

One of my favorite bands over the past 2-3 years has been Pedro the Lion. From the first time that I heard It’s Hard to Find a Friend, I was in love. The laid back style, the brilliantly descriptive lyrics, and the dreamy vocals all appealed to me in ways that few bands have before and since.

But after listening to them for a while, a lot of people starting mentioning to me things like “yeah, they’re that Christian band. Fuck that,” and other things of the like. Now, I’m not a Christian. I’m fairly agnostic, leaning towards atheism. I have a lot of problems with the way Christianity works, as do a lot of people who grow up in small church towns where everybody there hates each other and gossips as if it’s their job to do so. But the music of Pedro the Lion never really struck me as Christian music, despite the fact that Bazan is a strict Christian and that there are many religious allusions in his music.

To me, Christian music is something that sets out to convert people. Music that constantly needs to invoke the word of God similarly to the way that Ian MacKaye sets out to invoke the word of sobriety. Nothing wrong with either one, but to those that drink or smoke pot, straight edge music may not appeal to others, just like Christian music won’t appeal to those that aren’t Christians. Christian music is much more obedient to Christianity. It’s not about asking questions. It’s about following.

And Pedro the Lion/David Bazan is not about that. In fact, I’d say that David Bazan does a better job at explaining the downfalls of Christianity in a way that few others have been able to do. He does it with a clarity and knowledge that even bands like Bad Religion, whose frontman has a PH.D and wrote his thesis on atheism, have trouble doing. My theory is that because religion is so close to Bazan’s heart that he has an intimate knowledge that others may not have. Look at it this way: a democrat criticizing the Democratic party would have much more bite to it because it’s coming from an insider, right? So a Christian criticizing Christianity means more than an atheist doing so.

One Pedro the Lion song that hit me extra hard in terms of the way it took on religion was “Suspect Fled the Scene” off of It’s Hard to Find a Friend:

Old friend
Your horse is ready to ride when morning comes
From this church town
Where damning rumors drip from holy tongues

And it won’t go away
It won’t go away
It won’t go away

Fever to find the scapegoat fast and fix the blame
I know you never meant to leave the way you came

And it won’t go away
It won’t go away
It won’t go away

Looking down from that stain glass steeple
They’ll never know why you had to run

Ride as fast as you can
They’re shooting to kill

I’ve always seen this song as an attack on exactly the thing that caused me to start questioning religion. In a small church town, everyone that goes to said church knows everything about each other. Because of this, people begin to judge, gossip, and generally treat others like dirt because they feel that they aren’t nearly pious enough to be allowed to worship with them. Rather than helping others to become better people, they talk about them behind their backs. All the good, moral churchwives convene and inform the others of who that they should look down at, who they should ignore, and who is undeserving of going to their church. People don’t take the time to understand why someone isn’t as faithful as everyone else, or take the time to understand why they may be questioning their beliefs. Because to the types of people that fill these churches, all that matters is whether or not you’re as good as they are.

Being in an environment like that is more or less what drove me away from religion. You can only sit and watch so many sermons about brotherly love and helping those among you fall onto deaf ears, speeches given to those that have no desire in actually listening to them because outside of that little room, the actual teaching of the Bible do not matter, only who looks like they follow the teachings the best.

Of course, I’d have to be an idiot if I thought all religious people and churches worked this way. Assuming that a small subgroup of people represent the motives of an entire movement is wrong. I’m really not anti-Christian, but when you’re brought up in a church that didn’t stand by it’s own beliefs, having the kind of adverse reaction that I had is expected.

Pedro the Lion articulate that in a way that even the most famously atheistic bands can’t do. Being an insider bashing the same institution or group that they’re inside gives it an extra bite, an extra umph. This is why I really don’t think you can call Pedro the Lion a Christian band. A Christian band wouldn’t attack Christianity in such a poignant way, would it? A Christian band would probably try their best to avoid such an attack, and focus on the positive aspects of faith.

That doesn’t mean a Chrisitan band might not deal with a personal struggle over faith. In fact, I’m willing to bet that plays a significant part in Christian rock lyrics. Every Christian, no matter how devoted they are, will go through a period of questioning their own faith, and music is usually and outlet for those kinds of personal crises.

I’m not bashing Christian rock. Personally, I don’t like most of it, but it does have benefits and positive aspects to it, especially to those that have some sort of faith. But at the same time, calling a band a Christian band usually has pretty big significance to it. Calling a band a Christian band is a way to kill off 50% of the band’s fanbase and then add another 50% of peole that used to hate them. Which is exactly why people like myself discuss which bands are Christian and which aren’t, or which bands discuss faith and which don’t. It’s an important issue in life and in music.

Now listening to: The Minutemen- What Makes a Man Start Fires