What is wrong with April Ryan?

I’ve never heard of her before but this reporter for American Urban Radio pursues a bizarre line of questioning with the tenacity of someone who thinks they may have proof that Al Gore was behind 9/11. Certainly all Press Secretaries have obnoxious, condescending moments, but in this case I think Robert Gibbs is justified.

Bad Green Day!

Whatever your feelings about Green Day, have you noticed their songs get markedly worse when the BPM dips below a certain level? “Boulevard of Broken Dreams” is one of those slow, crappy songs.

Buy this Van

Here my friend Jim offers to sell you his van.  You will enjoy his homemade commercial, I promise.

Fyi, I was not involved in this production, though in hindsight I wish that I had been.

He Must Be Doing Something Right

Obama’s speech on Afghanistan seems to have displeased everybody to some extent.

Personally, I’m proud of him. He can’t possibly have been playing politics to come up with a plan that his “base” – ie liberals – is apoplectic about. I’m not sure why anyone expected this president to give Afghanistan less attention when all he said during the campaign and after was that he was going to do the opposite and concentrate more on it. I mean, he went out of his way to say Iraq War: Bad; Afghanistan War: Good.

I certainly never got the impression of anything except that Obama was going to increase troop levels.

Pat Kiernan May Be An Elf

I love this guy. He is so strange and so smooth. He’s like a yogurt that shouldn’t be. His editorializing during the In The Papers segment often is quietly biting. Like many things Kiernan, it almost seems like he’s trying to hypnotize us: “This is my opinion, but it’s not my opinion.”

Anyway hats off to Pat Kiernan. He may be an elf.

The Muppets: Bohemian Rhapsody

You’ve probably already seen this, but just in case, I feel obliged to put it out there.

Song of the Day: Guided by Voices: Tight Globes

Mom sent me this link.

I love the “classic line-up” as much as the next guy (or less likely, gal) but dang if this didn’t make me pine for the days of dyed hair and Doug Gillard.

As the World Turns

Would network television be willing to broadcast this man performing this song alongside these standard-looking children these days?

Or would he simply be arrested?

The Pixies at Hammerstein Ballroom

I went to the Pixies show at Hammerstein Ballroom last night. I’ve seen them there once before – maybe four or five years ago – and it was great. I didn’t see them in their heyday so I can’t compare, but it was an excellent show.

I figured for more of the same. They are currently touring playing the entirety of Doolittle, their “seminal” (as the guy who bought my extra ticket described it) album (plus b-sides). This is a to my mind curious trend of late, bands playing their seminal albums, but whatever.

So last night’s show, perhaps a curiosity, but no less an attraction for being so, since I like the Pixies, they are legendary, and I’m pretty sure they’ll bring the goods.

Unfortunately, I had to leave a bit early. And thus the crux of this here story. This show was ****ing packed. I mean, it was mad crowded. I was standing on the floor, in the back sort of in the corner and as I waited there 15 minutes or so for the band to take the stage, my meager personal space rather quickly disappeared, save for a few feet in front of me – which was odd, to be honest; it was so frigging crowded in there, I wondered why that bit of floor wasn’t filled.

Sooooo … The first thing that happened was as the band started, people really started to squeeze in. Nothing unusual there. Then these two young women and a hirsute young dude moved through that space in front of me, as others had been doing – or so I thought. No, they weren’t moving through, they were moving into. Fine. However, that space had shrunk a bit so this hirsute dude stopped right the **** in front of me, blocking my already mediocre view completely. I mean he was right there in front of me. I could see his neck hair in silhouette against the stage lights. He was texting someone and I could read the goddamn text. I know to a degree this is par for the course but this was outrageous. You don’t squeeze your way right into someone else’s eye-line.

So after reading his text I decided to take action (keep in mind by this point I already knew my time at this Pixies show would soon be up; four or five songs in and I was real uncomfortable). I said “excuse me” to the gentleman next to the hirsute guy and went around and stood right in front of that shadowy bearded figure. Fronties-backsies. “How do you like that, mother****er,” I said (to myself, in my head). However the glow was not off my macho victory before a guy and a smaller guy or girl muscled their way through the crowd roughly, and planted themselves in front of me. I didn’t care too much though cause I could see over them easily. But the taller of the two was acting weird – jostling other people, looking at them funny, jumping up and down as if there was any room for dancing of any sort. … I saw him randomly talking to the man next to him; he seemed agitated as hell (and this was the second agitated fellow I’d seen. Earlier, a somewhat muscular jerk-off made a show of strength pushing his way back through the crowd, dragging his girlfriend behind him and mouthing off to any poor nerd who impeded his progress, as impossible as it was not to).

Anyway this guy in front of me was looking around, looking for trouble or something. He turned to me and said “Do you want this?” showing me a half drained cup with a mixed drink in it. I scrunched up my face and shook my head, though only after giving the contents of the cup a good look – you know, to see if I wanted it.

At that point I decided to pack it in. It was just getting weird in there, and like I say it was real crowded. I made my way to the closest edge of the crowd, then through the lightest spots I could find through the perimeter to the large, maybe 40 foot wide, three- or four-step staircase nearest me. These stairs were the only way out and they were crammed full of people, I assume trying to take advantage of the height increase.

I more or less had to guess where these stairs were, because the crowd was as thick – or thicker – there as anywhere else. A guy coming toward me from the bar beyond the stairs with a beer pushed his way through; rock show etiquette tells us that that is now a pathway, apologies to those in that pathway (we’ve all been there and yes it’s a drag). I went right for the spot he’d just come through, between two young women. Now, a quick note: This show perhaps unsurprisingly was probably 2 or 3 to 1 male/female ratio. But these stairs were full of women, and for whatever reason, most of them large women. And though the guy with the beer had just come through, the hole he’d temporarily created was apparently now closed for business.

It was too late, though – I was on the move, I couldn’t just stand there anyway. “Excuse me, ladies” I said. The one to my left said, reasonably, “There’s a railing over here so I don’t know what to tell you”, ie, she could move no further. I said “Sorry,” and ever-so-gently pushed on through. They really were not giving any ground. Then, I shit you not, one of these women pinched me, on the arm. Not like, “hey how you doin’”, but as punishment for jostling her and ruining her entitled rock moment, there on the stairs, where she had strategically set up even though there was as much if not more room on the floor, so she could see better – and I should say I was doing as little jostling as possible, but these people would not budge and, for pete’s sake they were all mashed together on the stairs – again, the only way out.

I don’t know which one pinched me, except it came from my right. Then the young woman immediately to my right (perhaps the pincher!) said after trying to bounce-dance me back into the floor “Wait until between songs!” with an angrily indignant, and may I say unappealing look on her face. To this I replied “Believe it or not, I did” – which I did, I waited to leave until between songs, but you know, they only stop for about 20 seconds and if I only moved for 20 seconds between songs, I’d never have made it out of there at all.

Well from there it got a bit easier; I guess they were the forward guard and resistance was far less entrenched after that. I popped out to find myself at the bar, and started to pull some money out of my wallet. Now’s the time for a drink, I thought. Then I thought of the prices, and giving money to this place that for the last 45 minutes had seemed to devolve into some kind of troll and devil gathering and put my wallet away. I looked at those “no re-entry” signs on the doors and thought for a moment. The show wasn’t half over, but who was I kidding? I felt like I just had endured the Battle of Helm’s Deep. I stepped out into the night, feeling a twinge of guilt but an even greater sense of relief.

Adam Lambert at the AMAs

This was a truly legendary performance.

First of all, American Idol is all-powerful, as the neophyte Adam Lambert was the grand finale of the American Music Awards last night. I was laughing and crying all at once as his performance kicked in and he jammed one of his male dancers’ face into his crotch – or was it vice-versa? Anyway very quickly they cut away to a shot of the audience but there was more crotch-face action (both male and female) to be had and soon the camera gave up and just went along with the shenanigans.

I was pleased to see such “outrageous behavior” but then Lambert raised the stakes by tripping, falling, rolling around and then going straight back to sexual-menace mode. He even grabbed one of the “musicians” and mashed face with him.

There’s something ridiculous about the “tough” sexual approach and yet it is ubiquitous, so much so that when Shakira is shaking her ass and smiling it’s somewhat unnerving. But Lambert’s raunchiness and gayness and falling on his faceness really took it to a welcome new level of ridiculousness.