Sunday, August 31, 2014

24: Live Another Year

I turned 24 back in early July and haven't had time to blog yet.  Here are 24 random thoughts I have on just about anything.  Enjoy

1. Let's get the sad one out of the way first.  It sucks about Robin Williams.  I don't want to get all depressing here to kick things off, but he is certainly going to be missed.  What amazed me the most after the news broke is how many different movies people mentioned calling their favorite of his.  Most movie stars are usually mostly known for one work, but certainly not Robin Williams.  I'm missing a bunch here but off the top of my head I remember people on Twitter/Facebook mentioning Jumanji, Flubber, Good Will Hunting, Dead Poets Society, Aladdin, Hook, Mrs. Doubtfire and Patch Adams.  The world is a less funny place without Robin Williams.

2.  The Ice Bucket Challenge took over the planet for a few weeks recently.  Pretty interesting seeing all these celebs calling each other out and getting involved.  In one of the more bizarre callouts, WWE Chairman Vince McMahon called out Kermit the Frog, and somehow that actually took place.  What I love about the ice bucket challenge is the assholes on social media who post things like "uhhhh u kno dat dumpin a bucket of ice on ur head doesn't do nothing, right?"  How the hell you can be ignorant to the fact that the donation is involved is mind blowing to me.  I was nominated a few weeks ago, and haven't done it yet (I know, I know) but my plan is to bring it back around in maybe 3 years and just call out a bunch of random people who I don't know why I'm friends with on Facebook.  Can't go wrong, right?  I mean after all, it's for charity.


3.  I need to voice my opinion on something.  Ladies: stop wearing those goddamn rompers.  Why do you want to wear something that is mostly associated with toddlers?  It's kind of weird.  When I see a girl in a romper I want to throw up.  They're not really attracted.  They are awkward looking.  At the very least can they just have a different name than a 'romper'?  I don't want to associate you with goddamn Tommy Pickles when I see you struttin' yourself on some highend fancy street in a major North American city.  Get with it.  Even Kate Upton can't look good in a romper.
Nice PJ's ya slob.

4.  So there are rumors of a Laguna Beach 10 year high school reunion special in the works, yet it seems that basically no one are interested in this.  For the love of everything that is sacred, don't let this happen.  MTV will be giving the world it's most desperate cry for help yet if they make this happen.  I really don't mind most of the cast, but Heidi and Spencer make me want to go play in traffic.  Don't let these idiots get any more minutes of fame than they already had.  That being said, it would be really easy for them to play the "I wonder what they've been up to" game that people do at reunions.  "I heard Heidi got some work done" will be the understatement of the century on that night.

5.  Remember that band Jet?  Like, the 'Are You Gonna Be My Girl?' and 'Cold Hard Bitch' guys?  What the hell happened to them?  They should come back.  Get an opening slot for the Arctic Monkeys on their next tour, play the hits and get back into the groove of things.  They were too good to go away, especially when the world needs more actual musicians instead of shitty pop acts who don't even have to sing themselves to sell records to a bunch of idiots who don't understand what good music really is.

6.  Speaking of which, time to rant about MTV.  The final dagger in MTV's claim that they still care about music was at the VMA's last week when Lorde won best rock video.  Lorde is not rock.  She is pop.  Just because she wears dark clothing, desperately needs a tan and looks bored does not make it 'rock'.  This is a fucking travesty in my opinion.  The fact that the Arctic Monkeys or Black Keys did not win this award is preposterous.  I would've been okay with Imagine Dragons even winning!  Okay, Linkin Park was somehow nominated too.  I think I would rather take Lorde over Linkin Park but anyways, this is not okay.  I don't mind Lorde at all as a performer.  I actually like her more than most of the other idiots who are famous right now (lookin' at you Miley Cyrus you talentless wench), but she should never have been nominated for rock.  Somewhere out there, members of Guns 'N Roses, Motley Crue and Van Halen are weeping at what has become of their beloved 'Best Rock Video' category.  MTV, you suck.
Ohhhh I get it.  Lorde Voldemort!!!!!

7. JK Rowling gave billions of her fans a surprise by releasing a short story under the guise of hated reporter Rita Skeeter about what Harry and his magical pals have been up to at a Quidditch tournament or something like that.  Nerds everywhere hyperventilated thinking this might lead to more stories, but let's all agree that after 7 books, things are pretty much wrapped up.  Unless JK Rowling blows all her earnings on drugs and gambling debts and desperately needs some cash, I highly doubt we will get anymore wizardry from her.  Plus, how many fake words are left for her to use as spells?  It's a shame she didn't use 'tweet' as a spell that makes people give their opinions when no one else wants to hear it.

8. Is the chick from the Wendy's commercials hot or not?  I have been debating this for a while now.  What do you guys think?  I might have to make this into a full length blog.  Also, bad choice naming her 'Red'.  I think I speak for us all when the only person named Red that matters is Red Forman from That 70's Show fame.

9.  I hope the Beyonce and Jay-Z divorce rumors are true.  Finally the world will see that Beyonce isn't, in fact, perfect.  She bugs me.  I've seen her Super Bowl halftime show and the majority of her VMA performance, and I honestly think people just like her because they believe the hype.  They don't want to be 'different' by being realistic and saying "eh she's okay" or "it was alright"  or even "it was pretty good!".  Our society has this fucked up notion that everything she does is like some sort of law.  And don't even get me started on Blue Ivy.  She's a baby.  Get over it.  We were all babies at once too.  Katy Perry never tweeted about me waving to her when I was 3 years old or whatever.  Wait, am I younger than Katy Perry?  Hang on, I gotta look into this.

10.  I'm sick of Shark Week.  It was kind of funny the first 2-3  years it was held, but it's a bit much now. There can only be so many sharkumentaries (that was pretty good, wasn't it?)  made, and making more Sharknado movies certainly isn't going to help.  Sharknado 2 was made solely because the first one was so ridiculously bad that people watched it in hopes of seeing a trainwreck, which they did.  This is like the movie equivalent of when everyone picks the weirdo reclusive kid in high school to be prom king.  Sharks aren't that exciting to me.  If I see one up close and personal, it'll probably be the last thing I see.  Ever.

11.  Here are my top 5 favorite flags of all time: 5. Canada
It just works.

4. California
Look a bear.

3. South Carolina
Scenic.

2. Rhode Island
Hope as a motto?  Kinda ironic.

1. United States of America.
America!

Would anything even come closet to topping that 1-2 punch of the US and RI?  No chance in hell.

12.  I like wrestling and will be started a wrestling blog in the near future.  This officially means that I have stopped trying at life.

13. This is a music video for a song called 'Cheap Beer' by a band called FIDLAR (Fuck it dog, life's a risk).  It is entertaining and is what a music video should be:


14.  This is a music video for a song called "Shake It Off" by a singer named Taylor Swift.  It sucks and is a blatant ripoff.  It is uncreative and the song is annoying as all hell and I will save it for a video breakdown at some point in the near future:


15.  Actress Megan Fox has a pretty strange career.  She is only good in reboots.  Think about it, her most marketed feature film that wasn't a reboot was Jennifer's Body, which didn't do so hot.  She also starred in Transformers and the newly released Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles movie, which have done very well respectively.  Is there anyone else out there who can say the same about being successful in two different reboot franchises?  Anyone who can think of another person, let me know and I will gladly pay for a drink of your choosing.  If Megan Fox could just go out there and buy herself a personality I think she would be a much bigger star, even without being in the inevitable Back to the Future or Breakfast Club reboot.

16.  There is one pretty big band out there who I want to call out:  MGMT.  I have decided that you guys are assholes.  You come out on the scene with a huge album with 3 hugely popular singles (Time to Pretend, Electric Feel, Kids) and make it big. You go on tour and the world finds out your quirky and such, which is okay since you make good music.  Your second album, Congratulations, comes out and people buy it thinking it'd be good, and maybe half of it is, being generous.  You guys went weirder with that album, but there are some okay songs on it, so all is forgiven, maybe even chalked up to a sophomore slump.  Then your 3rd album comes out and it's absolute weird garbage.  You stop playing 'Kids' at your shows even though everyone there chants for it at the end of each show/encore, but you guys are too cool to play it.  Not only that, you hardly interact with your fans and your shows are disappointing, which I learned at Lupo's in Providence about a year ago.  Also, you guys are such hipster douches that when your 3rd album 'MGMT' came out, you decided to celebrate Record Store Day by not releasing the vinyl version of your album, but you released your first single 'Alien Days' on CASSETTE.  CASSETTE TAPES.  NOT EVEN HIPSTERS LIKE CASSETTE TAPES!  THEY SUCK!  AT LEAST VINYL HAS BEEN PROVEN TO SOUND BETTER THAN AUDIO AND IT'S COOL HAVING A PHYSICAL RECORD AND ARTWORK YOU CAN FRAME AND STUFF LIKE THAT.  CASSETTES WERE AWFUL TO BEGIN WITH AND THERE IS A REASON WE DON'T USE THEM.  You guys suck.  Stop being overly weird, make some good music, play your hits at concerts and be thankful you're even somewhat relevant still.

17.  In what was probably the most girly fight between two dudes ever, Orlando Bloom and Justin Bieber got into a scrum at some club or something.  This is the only time that I would root for Orlando Bloom in anything.  The only fight I would spend money on to order on Pay-Per-View would be this battle, with the loser guaranteed to go back to their country and stay there for good.
No one wins, or we all win?

18. Singer Lana Del Rey admitted that she basically slept with people to get to the top of the music industry, which I'm sure thrilled the top executives at her record label.  Lana Del Rey might be able to sing well enough, but she is such a fraud it's unreal.  I hate how she went for her retro Hollywood glamour look when she first started and was shrouded in secrecy, only until she was found to be a rich LA kid who always got money from her Daddy and I'm guessing got bored and gave singing a try.  Then she got in trouble by saying that she wishes she were dead like Kurt Cobain, which pissed off a lot of people, including Kurt Cobain's daughter.  Now that she's top level famous she decides to just admit that sleeps with people to get ahead in life?  Must be nice.  Lana Del Rey embraces the seedy part of music deals and just proves that hard work doesn't always pay off, just being hot and easy does.  What a country. UPDATE: It has been pointed out to me that I guess Lana Del Rey grew up in Connecticut, meaning she's even faker than I thought.

19. I enjoy me some good ol' fashioned obstacle course TV shows.  If you remember a few years back, Spike would show Most Extreme Elimination Challenge which took some insane Japanese obstacle course show and they dubbed over the voices with ridiculous and actually funny dialogue.  Besides the humor, it was an entertaining show with absurd courses.  One new show along these lines is Stone Cold Steve Austin's Broken Skull Ranch.  Basically Stone Cold owns some huge ranch in Texas and developed an obstacle course that guys who love Crossfit drool over.  It may not be as funny as MXC but it's so nice to listen to one of my idols smacktalkin' these people as they climb over rocks and up hills and such.  There's no one quite like Stone Cold Steve Austin and whoever came up with the premise for this show is a genius.

20.  Jesse Lacey, frontman for Brand New is trying too hard to be this generations Morrissey.  Obviously, Jesse is not cheery person.  If he were then Brand New would never have become famous for heartfelt songs about girls treating him cruelly and friends backstabbing him.  This being said though, Jesse needs to cheer up.  I saw Brand New open for Modest Mouse in Queens at some ping-pong stadium a few weeks ago and Jesse Lacey was depressing on stage.  Weirdly interacting with the crowd who showed so much love and support for the band.  It's like he just doesn't care at all, even at what should be a hometown show for the Long Island native.  As most people familiar with the band know, their first real hit was Seventy Times 7 from the first album.  It resonates with fans and hits the angsty strings in peoples minds and hearts, and it is one of the most beloved songs from the emo movement of the early 00's.  After playing Seventy Times 7 at this show (they don't always play this song at shows, by the way) he muttered on his microphone something along the lines of "Thank God that song is over with".  I am a huge fan of his, but shut up Jesse.  That song made you guys.  Don't complain about something that got you huge.  Seriously, with some of the mediocre setlists you give your longtime fans, that 4 minutes of 70x7 was the highlight for many people.  Cheer up and work on that damn 5th album.  It's been 5 years since Daisy came out, and we all know that that album was a huge flop.

21. So the longtime voice of Saturday Night Live passed away recently.  Don Pardo was the guy behind the introduction of the cast before each show along with various cameos in skits and such, and he had one of the most distinctive voices on TV.  In fact, he is in my top 5 of distinctive voices, along with the AOL 'You've Got Mail' Guy, the guy who does the Monster Jam commercials (SUNDAY, SUNDAY SUNDAAAY!), H. John Benjamin who voices Sterling Archer on...well, Archer, and the Moviefone directory guy.

22.  Somehow, Limp Bizkit is playing Boston this fall.  Even more amazing is the fact that Fred Durst and Co. are charging 50$+ for tickets.  Are you serious?  The Chocolate Starfish and Hot Dog Flavored Water came out about 14 years ago, and you haven't done anything good since.  You ruined a perfectly good song by The Who when you "covered" Behind Blue Eyes and had Halle Berry in the video for it (that is so early 00's it's not even funny), and even that happened about 12 years ago.  This being said, I may look into going to this show, because the 11 year old me would be begging my poor mother for permission to go to this show.  Imagine the crowd of people this show would attract?  So many degenerates.  Also, who is opening up for them?  Korn?  Disturbed?  So many washed up rap-rock groups are probably available for this position.
Keep on rollin'

23. It has been reported that the NFL wants performers to pay up to be the halftime show at the Super Bowl, which has disaster written all over it.  First of all, this will definitely not help the Super Bowl get any good acts.  I don't even know who the last good Super Bowl halftime show was, maybe U2 back in 01?  Most people disappoint and the added stipulation of giving up a portion of the performer's earnings on the following tour just means that we'll get someone lame like Coldplay this year and then probably Katy Perry and then Rihanna, because they can afford it.  Leave it to the NFL to take a thing like paying performers to show up and turn it around by having performers pay them to play.  This crushes my dream of ever having Carly Rae Jepsen play the Super Bowl :-/ thanks a lot NFL.  Greedy bastards.

24.  I find it utterly amazing that I did a joke interview with a friend on the topic of wigs and it has gained 58,000+ views since April and is my most read blogpost by far.  I don't know what that says about the world today, but I'll take it.