I'm Gonna Be a Famous E-Mail Checker

No, not me. Strong Bad. Of all the neat things to be found on this tangled world-wide-web, Strong Bad ranks near the top, specifically Strong Bad emails. A brand-new one was posted today, Origins, not a classic (try Crying or Kid's Book), but where else can you hear someone singing the praises of pumpernickle? Watch them all (you can find the complete email index here), then buy the DVD.

Oh, and I forgot one thing. Nearly all Strong Bad emails have "easter eggs" in them, usually hidden in the text of the closing scene, but not exclusively. Just hover your cursor over various part of the screen and if it changes, click & enjoy.

(And for the record, I'm in no way affiliated with the geniuses there. I'm just some schmo who appreciates good subversive humor.)

Knowledge is Power and So Are Plastic Beads

I still don't get what people see in collecting the previously mentioned plastic bead necklaces during my towns annual festival, but I do know one thing: Today, I had the power.

As our float rolled down the parade route, some of my associates, who seemed to have a greater bead budget, winged theirs into the crowd pell-mell. On the other hand, I had to pick and chose my targets. And in the end, that was far more satisfying. I wouldn't just look for the cutest chick in the crowd or the guy who was jumping the highest. I also wanted those who stood back a ways, unable or unwilling to enter the front lines. Maybe it was a parent with a child, an older person, someone who wore the expression "They'll never toss me one.", or simply a desperate one.

Having found that person, I would point directly at them and lock eyes with them, to say "I choose you." My intended recipient would react - their eyes widen, a look of Me? Yes! Please please please! crawls over their face and they literally wait in anticipation as I wind up like Peyton Manning and launch that worthless bead necklace in a high arc from my hand into theirs. (And if I do say so myself, I'm actually a pretty accurate thrower, though I expect my shoulder to have words with me about it tomorrow.) Having caught it, they would almost always show gratitude: wave back, jump in excitement, yell "Thank you!", point back in kind, mouth the words "You're the man!"

And, after a day of deciding who was worthy of my beads, I realized that I finally understood what it must be like to be a rock star or DJ standing before a throng. People were screaming and begging for my attention. My arms would spread, beads dangled from my fingers. The vibe hit and I would flick my wrists ever so slightly, asking them "Who wants some?", and people would go nuts. I could feel their energy rise in response, wanting becoming needing. At some level, I was commanding their emotions. Then, when I deliver to them that which they so crave, they would unleash an intoxicating (albeit supremely shallow) kind of adoration in return.

Did I like it? Of course, I did. Wouldn't you? (Only if you were completely anti-social or immune to the most human of needs - attention, wanting, approval - could you say no.)

By most accounts, today was about a party and a good time, which I had. But I never would have imagined that englightenment had stepped aboard that float with me.

Belated Birthday Tidings

Before retiring to my evening repose, I wish to bestow Belated Birthday tidings to my little Butterbean, firstborn daughter of my best friend (of the female persuasion) Dudette and her husband TheBigGuy. Hopefully Amazon.com has come through with her gift and she has not found it wonting.

Beads and Boobs (both kinds)

This weekend is my little burg's 101st occassion to throw its own knockoff version of Mardi Gras, which is in turn a knockoff of Carnival. (At 101 years, it's been around for a while I guess, but still... You want to really party? Go to Rio.) Part of the gala is the obligatory parade where people like me will walk alongside a float and toss tacky plastic beads into a crowd of people in various stages of inebriation.

Just what people find so fascinating about the damnable little things is absolutely beyond me. I know people do odd things when they're drunk, but I've never seen people so, well, eager to collect them. Toss one overhead and watch them pile into a scrum in a mad-dash effort to lay a beer-soaked paw on it. (And those are just the guys. Gals... well, I don't want to get crude, but it makes me stop and ponder whether I've been wasting good money on the whole dinner/flowers/show thing.) Not only that, some will get rather rude if you don't hurl one their way. I suppose they're some sort of badge of honor or rite of passage, but at least Mistress Prynne got something to show for her scarlett letter.

Of course, the real crooks are the bead makers. This has to be one of the biggest scams going since someone decided to bottle tap water and call it Perrier. Never mind the complete waste of petrolium product gone into making them. I suppose I'm really just annoyed that I hadn't thought of it first, but give me time. At some point, I'll think of something that'll let me collect gobs of money from unsuspecting rubes before someone finally has an attack of sense and goes, "I'm paying good money for this?"

By then I'll be long gone...

Too Cool to Live

Mentioning Lost brings another point to mind.

Mr. Locke is Too Cool to Live.

He is, really. Locke is operating on a wholly different plane than the others. He literally stared down The Beast on that island and it flinched. Now he's some sort of Bohidisattva version of Colonel Kurtz, parsing out nuggets of sage advice while at the same time cracking you on the skull and smearing hallucination-inducing goo into the wound so you can have an "epiphany".

All this means he's due to get snuffed at the worse possible moment.

"Jack! The secret of the island is..." *gurk*

The coolness of a character is directly proportional to his/her likelihood of being aced. This is practically a rule in anime, presumably to let the heretofore underachieving hero finally reach a new level via the trauma of having his mentor/friend/rival get whacked, usually at the peak of their coolness. This isn't as common here since we're dealing with live Hollyweird actors with contracts, agents and lawyers, but if Locke gets any cooler, I foresee the Grim Reaper sharpening his scythe.

The Best Show You're Probably Not Watching

I pretty much watch everything courtesy of my DVR (the last ReplayTV model with the oh-so-nifty commercial skip feature, before Hollyweird sued it out of existance... Don't get me started on what I think of that bunch.). Last night was my chance to watch "24", my 2nd favorite show currently airing (My top 5: Lost, 24, Alias, MI-5 and Ghost in the Shell:SAC)

Which brings me to #4, MI-5. It's probably one of the best shows you're not watching. MI-5 is the UK's counter-intelligence bunch, which I suppose parallels our Homeland Security. (I'll leave it to you to decide how well). It's sort of a thinking man's 24. Where 24 goes for the more visceral thrill, MI-5 likes setting up tension and letting it play out slowly. It's in a bit of flux as the original lead actor is leaving and a new character is stepping in, but it's earned enough brownie points with me to give it the benefit of the doubt. So far the new guy seems up for it, but I'm still recovering from the trauma of the downward spiral of "Robin of Sherwood" from HTV (when the brilliantly cast Michael Praed pulled a David Caruso and was replaced by Jason "Son-of-Sean" Connery who proved that the apple can and does fall far from the tree).

At any rate, MI-5 is very well done and is worthy of a look. Find it on A&E on Sat night at 10pm.

P.S. To the writers of 24: I fully expected a mole character in CTU, but did you have to telegraph it like that?

Club Schizophrenia

Tonight, my DJ friend (let's call him DJS) was canned from his residency at a local club. I won't say name of the club, not because I'm particularily concerned with what they'd think of my thoughts on this, but, to misquote Paul Harvey, they would want me to mention their name. (Really. They would. They need publicity).

DJS is one of the best trance DJ's in the area, state and, frankly, I'd put him up against just about anyone in the US. This cat has opened for Tiesto, has his own streaming radio program, you get the idea. So when a few months ago, this club hired him for a Sat night residency, those in my little group of trance fans were rather excited. (We've been in dire need of a good EDM scene ever since the local media ran wild with the "Raves=Drugs!" story that got all the city mothers and fathers all lathered up, who promptly decided that the best way to deal with it was to try to kill the nightlife as a whole.) The club even got some good press from a columnist from the local media who covers the nightlife scene. They claimed they were going for a Vegas look and a Miami sound (Club Space, anyone?). House upstairs, trance & progressive downstairs. A higher-end clientele. It seemed to be just what the doctor ordered.

By Dr. Giggles maybe.

Now I understand, hip-hop isn't just popular, it's freaking pandemic. (Though how anyone can get into a musical genre that routinely refers to women as b*tches and ho's is beyond me, but hey, free country, whatever floats your boat.) Our little 7th Ave strip alone has no less than 7 hip-hop clubs and I'm not counting the surrounding metro area. There are 2 radio stations slamming out the latest rap/hip-hop (3, really, one just won't admit it) . Only one major club here spins any sort of EDM and that's hard hard breaks, which can get really monotonous, even for dance music. So I figured it was a discriminator. Why compete with all the hip-hop clubs when you can be one of the few spots for true EDM? It might take a while because word has to spread, an audience has to build. Just about any new club takes time to gather a following. Patience is a virture. Right?

Wrong.

This place had the patience of a 5 year old. Within an hour of DJS going on the decks, "management" (including some accountant, who didn't even know what a breakdown in a song was) were screaming at him to play hip-hop. Going from trance to hip-hop is like cruising at 70 and deciding to throw your car into reverse. The tempo's different, the vibe, everything. I'm out there dancing (as well as a rhythmless white man can) to something like "Find" and some "tootsie roll" type up song blares up, going from about 130bpm down to maybe 90. My back still smarts over that one. An hour of hip-hop goes by, then 30 minutes of trance, then hip-hop... you get the idea. The crowd, of course, doesn't know what to think of this transmission-grinding behavior. I mean, could you listen to a radio station that switched between smooth jazz and speed metal at the drop of a hat? Me thinks not. I had people I had talked into coming out later give me grief to the effect of "If we wanted to hear hip-hop, we would have gone across the street".

And Club Schizophrenia (as I'd started to call it, no disrespect intended to the poor souls actually afflicted with the malady) kept at this for weeks. Not surprisingly, no following builds because EDM and hip-hop tend to be mutually exclusive. It's really rare for someone to be heavy into both. (P. Diddy being an notable exception - I've seen him twice at EDM events. Once at a Paul van Dyk set at Space, another at Ultra Music Festival with Oakenfold). Meanwhile, us trance fans are grumbling - we were promised EDM, not hip-hop. Even ColumnBoy (who'd become a friend of mine by then) felt he'd been led on a bit. And, naturally, DJS is going bonkers. He can and does spin hip-hop on Friday nights at another venue, but trance is a passion of his and he was desperate to be free to let a set go. (I'm telling you, the guy can blow up a club.)

At one point ColumnBoy, myself and a mutual friend 24HourMan (because he's always "working", if you know what I mean) go upstairs and eavesdrop on the managment stroking their beards, clucking their tongues and talking about what's to be done with the club. One suggestion?

Booty-calls.

Um, yeah. There's nothing like a good ol' booty-call to get those high end types out to a club. ColumnBoy nearly fell into a chair when he'd heard this. So flabbergasted were we that after the evening was over, we found the general manager NitWitGM and expressed our concerns. Politely. With support, saying we liked the look of the club, thought they had a major talent in DJS on their hand, we really really wanted to get an EDM scene going and were willing to help. NitWitGM, with all the oil and grease of a used car salesman, was "Oh, yeah, I want your inputs" and "We should get together and talk about this more." and "Call me, we'll set up something."

Do I really have to tell you where that went? (ColumnBoy did in fact meet with NitWitGM later. I had submitted a few sure-fire draws like Ferry Corsten or Armin van Buuren. NitWitGM instead gleefully showed ColumnBoy a list of hip-hop whodats and hazbeens. They also added a cage for girls to dance in, because, you know, a cage is the hallmark of a great club. The folks from Godskitchen these people are not...)

Long story short, DJS got increasingly frustrated. He asked if he could move upstairs and spin progressive/trance there and let hip-hop reign supreme downstairs. But no, they had some house DJ going on there (who was ok, but I have to assume he had some choice bit of dirt on someone there to be so firmly ensconsed). Until finally, DJS simply refused to spin hip-hop, especially last Sat when a few celebs rolled into Club Schizo, took over upstairs and turned said so-so house vibe into their own personal version Death Row Records studio. By that point, DJS said "Screw it. They hired me as an EDM DJ and by cracky, that's what I'm going to spin."

And he did.

And they fired him for it.

He hasn't said outright, but I wouldn't be surprised if he told them "You can't fire me, I quit!" The loss of a steady gig isn't a good thing, but losing your mind is even worse. DJS will find another residence, I'm sure of it. He's too damn talented.

So to Club Schizo, as they say in France, buh-bye. I'll never set foot in your place again. You can have your cage, your booty calls, your hip-hop and your idiotic managment. I'll look for your obituary in a few months.

PS To one of Club Schizo's patrons: If you wanna dress up like that, all the power to you. But a fashion tip: Try not to wear a wig that looks like it's been stolen off the set of a Poison or Ratt video. Big Hair went out with the 80's...

Good Night to The King

So, um, yeah. This is my first blog entry. I was going to do the obligatory first entry. You know, a little bit about me, my surprise at actually blogging because I was never one to read blogs, much less put my thoughts out there for the anonymous world to read. What you'll read and won't read here. Yada yada yada maybe next time. Instead, I'm going to say something else:

Rest in peace, Johnny Carson.

I'm not so old that I can start lamenting about "back in my day" stuff, not totally. But I was lucky enough to watch Carson grace us all with his presence on The Tonight Show. Leno and Letterman are good, but frankly, they can't hold Carson's pencil box. He did with the ease you and I draw breath and we'll not likely see his type again for a long long time. So let this night be to the king of late night.

God? Here's Johnny!