Awakened and Alive

It's been over a year since my last post.  Life has a way of doing that.  It warps time and lets it somehow get away from you.  Now I know my last post was about Star Wars.  Well, guess what?  So is this one.  I took the kid the see an early showing of The Force Awakens last night.  No 3-D.  No IMAX.  No dressing up in costumes or bringing a plastic light saber.  Just old school, 2-D, Milk Duds and Coke movie goodness.  I'm going to be all over the place here but I promise you guys this, no spoilers.  I ain't that guy.

Jackass.

I'm going to get around to the new movie eventually, but I need to start at the beginning.  In 1977, I was six years old.  At that age where my mother didn't have to worry about me sticking forks into light sockets and able to basically keep myself entertained.  Until May of that year, I was all about Matchbox cars.  Always pushing them around.  Always with a car or two in pockets for trips away from home, whether it was to my cousins' house or a just a quick trip to the store.  Then spring rolled around and a little known director (That kinda looks like my Uncle Charlie) changed the way we will look at movies and pop culture forever.  And I fell in love.

For obvious reasons.

One of my earliest memories ever is waiting in line at the Senator Theater here in Baltimore.  The line stretched up York Road and around Northern Parkway.  Us locals will get that.  I remember walking through the lobby and sitting down to what would become (Borrowing Kevin Smith's words, because they're perfect) "a life long love affair" that would continue into my forties and beyond.  To me Episode IV was a perfect movie.  Why?  Because it changed my life.  Maybe it was the timing.  Maybe I was getting bored with Matchbox cars.  Maybe it was the lightsabers.  But no other movie since has done that.  And the last fifteen minutes during that trench run?  The best fifteen minutes in the history of cinema.  And nothing will ever change my mind.

"I can't shake him!"

After I left the theater, that was it.  All Star Wars, all the time.  The figures.  The ships.  (That X-wing of mine put on more miles than my Mom's old Pinto)  Walking around the house breathing like Darth Vader.  Proudly taking my lunch box to school every day.  Begging my Mom to take me to see it every weekend.  It was all there was.  And it was perfect.  Replacing the Matchbox cars in my pocket were now Luke and Ben (Obi-Wan) Kenobi.  Even after the tips of their lightsabers broke off.  Impromptu battles erupted in the back of the car on the way to school.  Countless batteries met their end due to the "Real Laser Lights and Sounds" of my X-Wing and TIE fighter.  I even remember losing my Ben Kenobi action figure and digging through a dumpster in our apartment complex looking for him.  I still have him by the way.

This is fairly accurate, but with more tears.

 A few years later the unbelievable happened, there was another Star Wars movie.  What?  Is that possible?  I couldn't believe it.  But there it was.  The Empire Strikes Back came out three years later and dropped the biggest bombshell a nine year old could handle.  Darth Vader was Luke's father?  How is that possible?  They don't even look alike.  (I was nine and stupid.)  Plus it introduced the coolest Stormtrooper ever, the Snowtrooper.  Those figures were the best Imperials ever created.  We saw new planets, new ships, and the first real lightsaber battle.  All of the boys my age had figures with them at all times in case there was an opportunity to play, risks to health be damned.  My cousin almost got crushed by a giant stone birdbath when we were playing with our Star Wars figures at our baby cousin's baptism party.  After we got screamed at by our parents and he had his wounds treated, we went straight back to playing Star Wars.  It's what we did.  It's all we did.  That year I met my friend Mark Lane who lived across the street from my Grandmother on Northway Road.  He was the same age as I was and just as into the movies too.  We also discovered the best lightsaber ever for nine year old boys world wide...

 

Still hasn't been topped.

  

After watching Empire, we all knew there was going to be another one.  Mark and I still played Star Wars every day.  Whether it was with our figures, bashing each other with our "lightsabers" or having dogfights on our bikes.  The only thing we had to do was wait three years for the next one.  Three years.  Now imagine being a nine year old boy and having to wait for Christmas, your birthday and summer vacation combined for three years.  In 1983 when Jedi came out, my Star Wars journey felt complete.  Luke was always my favorite, so seeing him become a full fledged Jedi made my life then.  There was closure to the movies, so I was satisfied.  The playing of Star Wars started to wane.  Like most things in life, Star Wars came to an end of sorts.  I was getting older.  And girls were getting breasts.

Priorities.

In the late nineties rumors were starting to fly around that Lucas was going to give us Darth Vader's story.  I was genuinely psyched for the films to come out.  New Star Wars flicks?  Hell yes!  I'm not going to spend a lot of time on the prequels because they don't really need them.  But I won't lie, I liked them.  If you don't think the Darth Maul saber battle was awesome, you're a moron.  If you don't think the ground battles and dozens of Jedi running around with lightsabers in Attack of the Clones was fun, you're lying.  I won't even pick on Jar Jar Binks.  The floppy eared dude was fine.  Let it go people.  Even General Grievous made a great villain.  The favorite prequel story of mine is when Episode II came out.  My neighbor was a manager at the local theater and told me they were getting the film in Wednesday night and were going to watch it as they spliced the reels together.  I could come watch it, but it was going to be after closing around midnight or so.  I said, "I'll be there."  Well, that morning at 6:00 AM I had to help unload an 18-wheeler full of cabinets.  Then I had to put in a full day's work in at the office.  After work I had to referee four hockey games.  After the games were finished I went home and took a shower and waited for the call to come up to the theater.  I got the call at 12:30 AM Thursday morning and started watching the film with maybe eight other people at one o'clock in the morning.  After it was over, I went home, got my pregnant wife and drove to the airport for a flight to Arizona.  On the way out to the Grand Canyon State, I read the Attack of the Clones novelization.  So I stayed up for roughly 30 hours straight and put my health in jeopardy for Star Wars.

Totally worth it.

That brings us to now.  For the past year, I've spent my time watching trailers on Youtube.  Catching little snippets here and there on the web.  All the while, trying not to learn too much.  All of that came to a head last night at 7:00 PM in White Marsh, Maryland.  After I picked up the kid from school, we went to Taco Bell and scarfed down a couple of soft shells and hit the theater.  People were dressed up in costume.  Full grown adolescents, like myself, were there with friends and family.  Parents, again like me, were bringing their children hoping they would see the film like we did long ago.  Well, here's all of the review you'll get from me.  From the opening crawl to the final screen wipe, I wasn't a 44 year old man.  I wasn't a cynical geezer that had "been there" and "done that".  I was Sean Salisbury, Sacred Heart first grader.  I was the same awkward blonde kid that got spanked by Sister Sara Marie in the middle of class, and embarrassed for weeks after.  I was six years old and falling in love again for the first time like only a six year old boy can.  There were parts where I laughed out loud.  Parts where I cheered and clapped.  When was the last time you did that in a theater?  And there were parts where I started to well up with tears, the memories of Red Five and the old Senator Theater rushing back like a tidal wave.  Like Darth Vader himself said in Field of Dreams: It was like I had been dipped in magic waters.  Just see it.  Just go.   Fall in love again.

Going back to the well...

I first started this blog because I missed writing them on my Myspace page.  I had a few of them up.  They ranged from Volkswagen commercial complaints, to making fun of American Idol and goofing on soccer.  But it wasn't all bitching and moaning.  I had some fun with football super fans, posted hot beach volleyball chicks for the guys (and girls if some of you ladies are so inclined) and talked about Star Wars.  I was looking on my old Myspace page and all of the blogs were gone.  The site doesn't even look the same.  I think it's become a radio website now.  I'm not even sure.  But even though Myspace is gone, for the most part, I'm going to re-hash and update an old blog that only a few of you have probably read, thanks to Myspace's demise.

"Let me tell you about Blingees and layout generators."

But back to the topic at hand, Star Wars.  Ahh, Star Wars.  To guys my age, from 1977 to 1983 Star Wars was life.  Nearly every day there was Star Wars to be played.  Running around the neighborhood with X-Wing fighters.  Lightsaber duels with whiffle ball bats.  Waiting for winter to break out the Snowspeeders and AT-AT's.  The first spring lawn mowing where the old Toro mower finds that Snowtrooper left in the snowbank before you do.  Such good times.  And everyone had their favorites.  Most guys dug Han Solo, the few girls who would play were into the Leia of course and a select few, like me, were Luke fans.  I always heard "Han is so cool", "Han has the best lines", "Solo gets the girl" along with "Luke's a whiner" and "Luke wishes he was Han Solo."  Well folks, here's the deal, Han Solo was a total fuck up and Luke and his friends were lucky to survive him.

"Who, me?"

I know it's coming.  The fanboys are losing their shit as these words sink into their frontal lobes.  "Are you kidding?"  "Luke's a fucking pussy!"  "Star Trek fan!"  I've heard it all before.  It doesn't make me any less right though.  During the first movie it was easy to be the Luke fan.  Luke was the hero by a long shot.  Luke blew up the Death Star.  Luke got a lightsaber.  Luke flew an X-wing instead of Han Solo's stupid station wagon of a  ship and blew up TIE fighters.  Being a Luke fan was easy.  But then came 'Empire', and everybody jumped ship and hopped on the Han Solo train.  Han got a ton more screen time, the coolest lines and the girl.  But I had faith.  I knew Luke was destined for greater things.  Man, was I ever right.

""You do know this Sean guy is full of shit, farm boy?"

I'll start with the first movie, 'A New Hope'.  It wasn't real obvious at first.  Luke was doing all of the hero shit, blowing up space stations and enemy fighters by the bunch.  He was the guy who had the inside track to the Force.  He was given a sword made of pure energy and every kid in the world wanted one.  Han, for the most part, just complained. Complained about the trip to Alderaan.  Complained about the tractor beam.  Complained about the rescuing the princess.  Complained about the attack on the Death Star.  Bitch bitch bitch bitch bitch.  Luke on the other hand, Aunt and Uncle killed?  No sweat, let's save the Princess.  Han doesn't want to go to Alderaan?  Fuck him, I can fly a ship.  Found the Princess' cell block?  Get me a rifle.  Giant space station?  Give me a  god-damned fighter!  Dude was getting shit done.

"And this is just my first day on the job."

"But Sean, if Han doesn't come back during the trench run Luke is toast."  Guess what?  Bullshit.  Follow me on this one.  Han is flying above the trench with a perfect view of Luke being chased down by Vader and his two wingmen.  No one is near him.  He has time to line up the perfect shot.  Han leads his target perfectly.  He pulls the trigger and blows up ONE OF THE FUCKING WINGMEN?  This dude is supposed to be some savvy space pirate.  A bad ass in a daddy vest. But he doesn't shoot the lead TIE fighter with the slick custom wing job, the one doing all of the shooting?  He decides "Maybe I'll work my way up to the guy blowing up all of the rebel ships."  If not for an edgy second wingman shitting his pants and clipping Vader's ship, Luke is space dust.

"Alright, so one little mistake."

Now 'Empire' is where the Han Solo camp exploded.  It was hard to argue as to why.  Leia was all over him.  He had the funniest lines in the whole trilogy.  He drew a gun on Vader.  All pretty solid stuff.  Luke even needed Han to come to his rescue and turn him into a tauntaun burrito.  But after thawing out, taking a dip in power steering fluid and getting a kiss that turned out to be very awkward at the closing credits Luke manages to take out a seven story tank with only his lightsaber, a grenade and his brass balls.  The rest of the movie Luke was basically relegated to being bossed around by a Muppet Show cast off, sweating in a tank top and playing in the mud. But in true Han Solo fashion, he fucks things up again.

"The Empire has a thing for weak points."

After successfully navigating an asteroid field, he makes a pit stop in the belly of a giant worm.  He doesn't know this, and that's okay.  But upon inspection of the soft, squishy rock he landed in, he gets a weird feeling that something may not be quite right.  He knows it's not a rock he's landed on.  Safest thing to do is take off and get somewhere safer.  So what does he do?  He fires a blaster bolt into the 'ground' and they almost become lunch.  Then the one guy he decides to go to for help is a guy that has an axe to grind for a perceived ship theft.  What kind of moron goes to a known hustler for help, especially if that hustler has the same set of scruples as the aforementioned moron?  Han Solo, that's the kind of moron.  Thankfully he was frozen solid before he could find a way to blow Bespin up from the inside slaughtering all of the city's inhabitants.  So here we go again.  Luke uses the force to find out his friends are in trouble, goes to face Vader unprepared, loses his hand and nearly his life.  Nice work Solo.

"No one's perfect, right?" 

The last movie of the trilogy cements Solo's status as 'King of the Screw-Ups' for the Star Wars universe.  While hanging in Jabba the Hutt's throne room as a wall decoration, the safest place for every other character in the movie, we find Luke has become a full fledged bad ass, mind controlling, laser sword wielding Jedi Knight.  Not sure if it's the Yoda Summer School/ Jedi GED equivalent, but he's got the sheepskin apparently.  Luke, playing chess while everyone around him is playing checkers, strolls into Jabba's palace like he owns the joint.  No lightsaber, no blaster, just some ninja pajamas and a burlap bathrobe.  He pulls the old Jedi mind trick on the crime lord's right hand man, kills  a fucking dinosaur with a bleached femur and skull and frees everybody on Jabba's sand barge while hardly breaking a sweat.  Han on the other hand is bumbling around like an extra in a Buster Keaton film doing everything but helping.  He does kill Boba Fett, but even the staunchest Han Solo supporter feels that one of the coolest characters in the entire Star Wars universe deserved a better death than the Wile E. Coyote demise he got from Solo.

"And I thought my lightsaber was cool looking."

We move on to Endor where we find Han is put in charge of the ground assault.  No better place for a space pirate to volunteer than for the ground mission, right?  Jesus.  Han's first chance to sneak up on some Imperials and he pulls the old 'steps on a stick' routine and the bad guys almost get away.  Who's there to mop up?  Skywalker Cleaning Services, that's who.  So while Luke and Leia are chasing down and destroying his screw-up, what's Han doing with a platoon of rebel soldiers?  Prepping for an assault?  Scouting for the bunker?  Nope, just sitting on his ass.  During the hunt for Leia the crew gets captured by a colony of teddy bears because Solo's over grown Teddy Ruxpin can't control his appetite.

"He doesn't hang out with me for my cooking."

Before before being turned into rebel burgers for the ewok village feast, Luke uses the force to persuade the tiny furballs that this meal may not be worth the trouble.  Quite literally pulling Han's fat out of the fryer.  The real hero goes off to face Darth Vader, Emperor Palpatine and an entire Death Star full of Imperials alone (again) while Han goes off into the woods with his girlfriend to play with a cadre of stunted yetis.  It must have been this moment that Solo realized that his attraction to Leia was because of some underlying furry-fetish they both shared.

"Okay, but they leave their spears outside of the bedroom."

Now the final showdown is about to take place.  Han and his plush toy army are set to take on what seem to be the worst soldiers the Emperor can drum up and Luke to face down two Sith Lords single handed.  By studying the brief history I've laid out for you, we can see this train coming down the tracks.  Luke resists the lure of untold power and defeats Darth Vader in lightsaber combat, after a brief dance with the dark side himself.  Appeals to what little good is left inside of his father and has Anakin redeem himself by destroying the Palpatine.  Drags the elder Skywalker to the hangar bay and flies them both to safety before the space station is destroyed.

"All in a day's work, bitches."

 Han on the other walks into yet another trap, locks the entire rebel platoon out of the targeted bunker and gets his girlfriend shot after she saves his skin yet again.  If it weren't for his pet/hetero-lifemate Chewbaccca and a couple of ewoks stealing a goddamned scout transport, the shield generator never gets destroyed and the rebellion dies a painful death.  The only life lessons you're going to learn from Han Solo is to not worry about the consequences because someone with more skill and conviction will be around to fix any problems you have created with your "Ignore the problem, it'll go away" attitude.  So am I uncool for being in the Luke Skywalker camp?  Maybe.  But, I'll back the guy with the lightsaber and Jedi powers over the pilot with a ship that never works and a truly deplorable skill set every time.

Problem solving 101.

I really tried to be more positive...

I can still remember the look on her face.

It was the summer of 1984.  I was taking some of my money I earned mowing Mr. Snowman's lawn and heading up to the old Record and Tape Traders in the Reisterstown Shopping Center.  My intended purchase was Twisted Sister's Stay Hungry, on cassette of course, and a new pair of AA batteries for my Walkman.  My mother gave me a ride up in her baby blue Ford Fairmont and waited outside while I went in to make my purchase.  After quickly taking a look-see at some of the Iron Maiden and Def Leppard (10 armed version) albums I snatched up the my desired tape, a pair of copper tops and headed to the glass display counter full of marijuana smoking paraphernalia and plopped down my hard earned cash.  Dee Snider and the guys were going to be making my ears melt in about 15 minutes at home.  I hopped into the front seat  and proudly showed off my newest heavy metal purchase, with Dee himself on the cover in all of his make-up covered, bone chewing, curly haired awesomeness.  This is what I got...

"Where did I go wrong?"

So I write this installment of Cut the Chatter with a full understanding that my parents didn't get my music tastes.  Just like their parents didn't understand the allure of four guys from England with matching haircuts that couldn't even spell their band name right.  I get it.  Every new generation thinks that their parents' music is dated and hokey sounding, the equivalent of black and white film compared to high definition movie making.  And to a degree, they're right.  Take Louie Louie by the Kingsmen, for example.  "Louie Louie, oh no.  Me gotta go.  Aye-Yi-Yi-Yi!"  Not exactly Stairway to Heaven or Won't Get Fooled Again.  I could have used Imagine, but as I stated in a previous post, fuck John Lennon.  What I'm trying to get at is that Louie Louie wasn't going to change the world, but it was a fun little song that had a catchy beat that eventually a fat drug addict could dance to on the silver screen.

  You can't dance to anything Yoko Ono got her mitts on.

But I was buzzing through the radio stations out on the road last week and I came across this lump of coal.  I would say little gem, but even a jaded prick like me can't convey enough sarcasm to get the point across of how insulting that reference would be.

If you decided not to listen to it by judging the thumbnail, I understand.  But go back and take a listen.  Done?  Good.  I can continue.  WHAT THE FUCK IS THAT?  Okay, that's out of my system.  The first time I heard the song, it was half way through the first verse.  I guess you could say verse.  I should say the first set of self absorbed, inane, childish, borderline evil whining.  I didn't think it was a real song at first.  I thought it was one of those pop radio station versions of the old 98 Rock twisted tunes.  No way it could be real.  A couple of quick things.  If you have ever said any of those things that the girl was saying in this song, punch yourself in the face.  No, I'm serious.  Right in the face and get some help.  And get Darth Vader the fuck off of that video.  I know he's just a movie character, but I'm pretty sure the Dark Lord of the Sith would lay waste to that entire room and turn these two "DJ" jokers into Sarlacc food.  I truly hope my kid isn't lumped in to the worst generation this planet has ever seen.  These club-going, Instagram addicted, hipster douches have got to be the worst thing this planet has hosted since small pox.  Maybe I'm overstating a bit, but I would rather the worst parts of every zombie film come to fruition than to have this sub-culture of me first, narcissistic, infantile pseudo-adults get any larger.  At least you're allowed to shoot zombies in the face.

Thank God they aren't playing any dubstep.

So what I'm going to do is show you some alternatives to some real shit that's out there keeping our ears from hearing some very beautiful music.  The first suggestion I'm going to give you over the non-sense I just presented is going to prove  me to be a bit of  a hypocrite.  I don't know if I have mentioned it before, but I really don't like TV talent shows.  I find American Idol, The Voice, X-Factor and their ilk completely reprehensible.  A while ago I posted on my Facebook page a picture of currently the greatest rocker on two feet today, Mr. Dave Grohl, and  a quote that was attributed to him denouncing these cruddy talent shows.  I guess it's as reliable as anything else on the internet.

 Simon Cowell just shit himself.

All of that being said, I found myself in a YouTube wormhole that started out with learning the opening guitar riff for The Sword's Maiden, Mother and Crone, and came across this gem.  And no sarcastic inference should be applied here.  This young lady is brilliant and funny and can make you care about her songs and their subjects with the simple strum of her guitar.  Have a listen to Ms. Lucy Spraggan...

I know there is a more polished and well produced version of this song out there, but just listening to her alone with her acoustic gives the song more power and emotion.  She is talent personified.  If you get  a chance, hop over to YouTube and listen to a few of her other songs.  I highly recommend Last Night and Mountains.  The kid's a genius.

And back over on the shit pile I found this...

I know it's a little easy to pick on Miley "I have more daddy issues than the cast of Debbie Does Dallas" Cyrus, but an easy target is still a target.  So back to the song.  Let us go in order. Clubbing, percocet, shoes, clubbing, shoes, weed, shoes, percocet, blowjobs, shoes and shoes.  Jam Master Jay would be turning over in his grave if he could see what happened to the music he helped pioneer.  I'll take My Adidas all day long over this non-sense.  Instead, give this a try...

Say what you want, this guy still fucking gets it.  That, and Rick Rubin is a genius.  The last real good rap song I heard before this was Jay-Z's 99 Problems.  And Rubin had his paws all over that one too.  Just good old fashioned rap music.  It's got a wonderfully sampled music selection, ballsy lyrics and a unique style that screams good hip-hop.

And to show that I'm not just picking on rap and dance tunes, how about this that is somehow passing as alternative rock these days...

Is it bad?  I don't know.  Is it good?  Not particularly.  It isn't anything actually.  It's vanilla ice cream, one scoop, in a cake cone.  It's a rice cake.  Not even one of those new rice cakes that taste like caramel or jalapeno peppers.  Just a plain old rice cake.  It's just there, on the middle shelf, waiting for you to finish the Utz salt and vinegar chips and anything else with some flavor before you get to it.  Now this though...

Bluesy guitar riffs, screaming vocals and some good time honored beating the shit out of some drums?  Check, check and check.  I don't know when indie-rock went from Bullet with Butterfly Wings to Little Talks, but it's nice to see some bands out there trying to rectify the situation.

I tried.  I really tried.  I wanted to go the year without complaining about stuff that doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things.  But man, that fucking Selfie song.  (No, I'm not putting the hash-tag in front of it.)  It was just taunting me,  sitting there mocking me.  Maybe my next post will be more positive.  Something about the camaraderie we witnessed in Sochi during the past Olympics or the upcoming season and how our world will go from a dreary winter's gray to a vibrant spring's green.  Just don't bet on it.

The day Captain Chesapeake broke my heart...

It's 1976.  I'm heading home from Mrs. McAuliffe's (I think that was her name, I was five) afternoon kindergarten class to my grandmother's house.  Every day was exactly the same.  In the door, grab a snack and hit the couch.  Why?

Fuckin' right.

Ultraman!  Defender of justice, helper of the weak, and scourge of men in giant rubber monster suits.  To a five year old boy, this was as good as it got.  Never mind the voice dubbing.  Never mind the little, obviously plastic toy sets.  Never mind the one time you saw the actor's tennis shoe peek through his monster costume.  This was bigger than life monster brawl action right on the magic box in front of my face!  Wooooo!

About six or seven years before boobs existed.

After kindergarten, summer came and went.  There wasn't much Ultraman during the summer.  Me and the kids on Northway Road were usually outside playing.  Watches were for grown-ups so we went in when the sun went down, or when Mrs. Blimline started yelling for Mark to come in for dinner.  But first grade was right around the corner and my afternoons with Ultraman were back on.  Or so I thought.

First day of first grade goes by with Sister Sara Marie.  I go to the private car line, get a ride home from my grandmother, take off my navy blue tie and plant my ass in front of Captain Chesapeake ready for another half hour of monster crushing, laser blasting goodness.  And staring me in the face is this smug prick...

"I've got your Ultraman right here."

What. The.  Fuck.  Let's go over this real fast.  I'm something like six years old.  I don't know about television ratings or new fall seasons or even that TV shows even ended.  This is a major mind screw and there's nothing I could do about it.  All I know is that Ultraman should be here waiting for me and he isn't.  I've got this asshole blonde kid whose father has no regard for his safety while he orders around this Indian kid in a turban.  What the fuck is going on?  The kid's got a rifle and no parental supervision whatsoever.  I'm not even allowed to have a BB gun yet.  Fuck this spoiled globe-traveling brat.  But I have faith.  Ultraman should be on next, right?  Maybe first grade ends at a different time than kindergarten.  Keep it together, man...

But, no.  I sat there all afternoon, frozen.  I didn't eat dinner.  I watched every stupid commercial just in case Ultraman sneaked on between the Count Chocula and Slinky.  Nothing.  "First grade is bullshit!" kept running through my mind.  Maybe not the word bullshit, but the post toddler/pre pre-teen equivalent.  I hated Captain Chesapeake.  I really did.  How could he and Mondy betray me like this?  Stupid sea monster.  Looked like a shiny trash bag with half a fake alligator head.  Needless to say, I was a little salty.

But hey, maybe Captain Chesapeake just forgot.  He was getting old and talking to puppets all day.  I know it would get to me, and I was a child.  Let's just wait until after my second day of first grade.  I go through the whole day on edge.  Math, art, PB&J and cheese curls.  Maybe gym, I don't know.  I had important shit on my mind.  All I can think about is getting home to my beloved Ultraman show.  In the car, out of the car, right to the couch and...

"I ate Ultraman's soul while you were out."

That's it.  I can't trust Captain Chesapeake ever again.  It was over, and life went on.  I did a lot of growing up in those two days.  I even tried to do the mature thing.  I gave Jonny Quest a try.  It replaced Ultraman.  Maybe it's pretty good.  Well the short answer to that was, 'not even remotely'.  What the hell is going on here?  This kid doesn't have to go to school and gets to fight criminals or terrorists or jewel thieves?  Horseshit!  I even saw they had monsters or something like a monster once.  Let me ask you this.  What would you rather watch?  This...

Angry jelly?

Or would you rather watch this?

It's like a modern day rap battle with creatures that can crush entire towns under their feet by accident.  Ultraman even gives the little Bruce Lee 'Bring It' taunt at the end.  No contest.

Plus, Jonny Quest was a racist.  He forced his Indian friend to wear a turban even if they were of in the Amazon chasing flying piranha monster bank robbers or some shit.  Don't you think Hadji would have liked to wear a tee shirt and some cargo pants to keep cool in a tropical jungle?  I'm pretty sure he didn't even want to be there.  Just because one lunatic family has some kind of death wish doesn't mean he does.

"It's okay, he likes when I treat him like this."

The father is absolutely insane.  And he has an unhealthy predilection to sun bathing with young children.  Especially one in a diaper.  Jonny's mother isn't dead, she's hiding.
 

"No Hadji, they don't have any pants in your size."

Notice the little tyrant is still making Hadji wear his turban, ON THE FUCKING BEACH!  And what is going on here?  Why is Benton Quest crushing that dog's neck?  Where are their towels?  That beach is way too secluded for what is going on in this picture.  Plus check this out...

"Just a couple of dudes being secret agents.  That's all."

Notice the unmade bed  And before I hear a bunch of shit, this has nothing to do with being gay.  You want to be gay?  Go crazy.  Be gay squared, whatever you want.  But don't lie to me and sell me a bill of goods about being secret agents with all of this technology and hardware but we can't afford two rooms in some godforsaken third world backwater hotel.

"Why are we all going to share a bath?"

Hadji should get the hell away from these guys as fast as possible. 

Ladies and gentlemen, rock and roll.

What the hell happened?

I try to make a little blog about everyday bullshit in January and here it is, August.  I think it was John Lennon that said "Life is what happens to you while you're busy making other plans."  But fuck that hippie.  Any one that goes from her:

 

to this:

on purpose is out of his god damned mind.  I don't care how many hits he wrote.

There were a lot of things I could have written about over the past few months.  Trayvon Martin, Obamacare, piles of poop on the decks of the Carnival Triumph and the new prince of Wales/Sheffield/Suffolk/England all seemed to beg for attention.  But Jesus, haven't we all heard enough.  Plus, I didn't want my first real post to be all that inflammatory.  I'll save that for post number two.

I was buzzing around Youtube  at work listening to music the other day and I came across this little gem.

 

I'll say it.  I like Limp Bizkit.  I'm pretty sure it's uncool to admit that.  But I know I'm not the only one that's plunked down hard earned (and not so hard earned) cash for one or more of their cd's.  You don't sell 40,000,000 albums all over the world without being a little good at what you do.  Now I know what you're going to say.  "Jesus Sean, miss 1998 much?"  "These guys have always sucked."  "Misogynist bastards!"  and so on.   Guess what, it's really not that bad.  It's pretty fucking good actually.  It also has what's been missing from music for the past three or four years.  Anger.

Rewind to the late 1970's and early 1980's.  The punk revolution was in full swing due to the disco era and every time you changed the radio station, the friggin' Bee Gees were on.  Some of those shitty garage bands broke into the mainstream.  The reason, anger.  I'm not talking 1960's sitting in the mud, smoking a bong, staring at a lava lamp, trying to interpret Bob Dylan's incoherent mumbling, peace and love anger.  I'm talking power chord driven, bar room brawl, slam dancing, heavy distortion, smash you in the face with my Fender Precision bass guitar anger.

This then led to the Golden Age of heavy metal.  Bruce Dickinson screaming his face off, lead guitarists on Gibson Flying V's in leather pants and elaborate stage shows that used to cost you $20.00 plus the Ticket Master service charge to head down to the old Cap Center's Liberty Bell parking lot.  Such good music.  Songs that told a story.  Kind of like the ballads of the early to mid 70's, but with balls.  Album artwork with pictures of zombies, war machines, demonic overtones and over the top sexual imagery.  Remember this stuff?

And to show I'm being fair, this is for the women in the audience.

Keep it together ladies...

But like a package of Oreos, all good things must come to an end.  Bands like Poison, Cinderella and Warrant dilute the metal gene pool.  All five pairs of Def Leppard's testicles are ripped off in Rick Allen's car wreck along with his arm and we get Hysteria.  The power chord is replaced by the power ballad on every single friggin' album and we all knew that the end was near.  There was no anger, no rage.  There was a lot of lipstick and spandex, but what gave rock and metal its edge was gone.  It was as sharp as a bag of wet hair.

But out of the ashes of mascara bottles and microphone stand bandanas, a bunch of asshole kids form the Pacific northwest got out of their garages and started playing in coffee houses and dive bars around town.  They were raised on good old fashioned rock and roll and they saw what had become of it.  And they were pissed.  Bands like Tool, Alice in Chains, Soundgarden and Pearl Jam were now leading a new rock revolution and I was all in.  (I was going to put Nirvana, but I was never a fan and the only good thing to come out of that band fronts a much better band in the Foo Fighters)  Grinding guitar riffs, bombastic vocals, something to say besides where the party is spoke to a whole generation.  My generation.  It was the decade of festival concerts and flannel shirts.  Spending all day at a venue getting dirty and sunburned while listening to bands that looked like us.  They were our age.  They weren't exceptionally pretty or polished.  Exept for maybe Nicole Fiorentino from Veruca Salt.

Very pretty, very polished.

 

Then, one of  the darkest times of rock started to evolve.  The Grateful Dead resurgence.  Let me preface this paragraph by saying I hate the Grateful Dead.  I hate the sound, the fans, the lyrics, the fans, the look, the fans, the frisbees, and the fans.  I'm only slightly happier that Hitler and Bin Laden are dead than Garcia is.  But like a dirty, smelly dreadlocked phoenix, rose the Deadhead sound-a-likes.  Bands like the The Spin Doctors, Phish, Blind Melon and Dave Matthews came along in their giant microbus of soft pleasant sounds and neutered rock.  The only thing they were angry at was anyone harshing their mellow.  Pussies.

Now, I've left rap out of most of this missive because it truly is its own genre.  But like rock has its roots in the blues of the black musicians of the American south, rap has a lot of its roots in the hard rock and metal of the 80's.  Run DMC brought rap into the mainstream on Walk this Way with Aerosmith.  The Beastie Boys were a hardcore punk band before tapping into the New York rap scene and expanding their sound.  And my favorite collaboration of all was when Public Enemy paired up with Anthrax for this.

Anyone who can picture Dave Matthews doing this has a better imagination than Tolkien.

Unreal.  Now the same kids that grew up listening to these groups started to play music together.  The birth of a new sound was here.  Rap metal or nu metal gave us bands like Rage Against the Machine, Korn, Kid Rock and Limp Bizkit.  But most importantly their sound was angry.  It gave their music some heart, some passion.  And say what you will, Limp Bizkit was very good at this.  Fred Durst, whether you think he's an asshole or not, was and still is a great front man.  Personally I think Wes Borland is the metaphorical straw that stirs the Limp Bizkit drink, but that's just me.  There was a bit of a backlash against bands like this in the early 2000's.  I know Durst took some flack for performing with Christina Aguilera at an awards show.

 I have no idea why he would have done that.

Maybe because they were deemed to have "sold out".  I'm not sure, but I think Tool said it best:

Not to be sung in church.

Now the biggest thing in rock music seems to be Mumford and Sons, Of Monsters and Men and The Lumineers.  What.  The.  Shit?  Hearing these bands played on 98 rock and DC 101 breaks my metal bone and all of our souls die a little inside with each mandolin strum.  Don't get me wrong, I like Mumford and Sons.  Little Lion Man is fantastic song.  But on a rock station?  No way, no how.  Maybe this new song from Limp Bizkit is a chink in the armor of the most recent barrage of soft, easy listening pseudo-rock.  I hope so, anger sounds better on guitar.

On a somewhat related side note, yes I know there were women in the video used exclusively as eye candy.  I also get that I have a daughter and how can I look at those women being degraded by those jerks.  Here's the deal, these women have the ability to say no to the video makers and the band. No one forced them to show off their near flawless bodies for money or fame.  You can't have it both ways.  Either women are strong enough and smart enough to make their own decisions and live with the consequences or they are weak willed and need the NOW protecting them at every turn.  Sometimes I think I have a higher opinion of women than feminists do.

This is what a feminist looks like.

Together again, for the very first time...

I'm going to say something that hardly anyone will agree with.  I kind of miss MySpace.  I didn't enjoy going to a person's page and waiting for 10 minutes for their 301 pictures of some lame musician to load or getting blasted with spam e-mail upon spam e-mail.  But, I had fun adjusting the page and adding music that I liked to listen to.  But my favorite thing to do was write blogs.  Some of my current Facebook friends were MySpace friends of mine and read and commented on my blogs.  I usually complained.  It was mostly about inane crap like American Idol or Volkswagen commercials.  Sometimes it was about politics or something important, but even then I usually insulted someone with an off color joke and it turned into a flame war.  But it was fun.

When I respond to Facebook posts, I like to keep my barbs more in keeping with laconic speech; short, quick and disarming.  But when talking or writing about something I enjoy such as (my family/Star Wars/hockey)  or something I disdain(politicians/reality TV/anything Pittsburgh-centric), I can be quite verbose.  Ask my wife.  She'll back that up 100%.  The old MySpace blogs gave me a perfect outlet for that.  Plus I could insert pictures in the appropriate places and banter back and forth with those that liked or didn't like what I wrote.

I'm not exactly sure if Facebook has a function like the old MySpace blog, but so far I haven't found it.  One of my favorite blogs I put up was a series of fan photos and comments for football teams around the NFL.  It took about two weeks to complete, but when it was done there was a little bit of pride there.  I was looking back over my page a couple of weeks ago and I realized I missed writing.  So I decided to do this.  I hope  you enjoy it, and that you interact with me here.  Tell me it's funny, tell me it sucks.  Doesn't matter to me, just enjoy your stay.