…as I sit here waiting for a phone call, I thought I’d check in and put my two cents in the fountain…

DAMN Daylight Savings… Though the cloudcover has been stubborn and persistent for months now, today was the first day where I actually wondered aloud whether or not I might have a mild case of Seasonal Affective Disorder (which I then wondered silently about; did they name that it so it’d have SAD as its acronym??)…… Then I wondered silently about what other environmental conditions could be linked to being clinically bummed… Like too-much-of-this or too-little-of-that; fill in the blanks… Then I got distracted, probably by someone calling me……….

……………….still waiting for the call…. “Stylo” is playing on the radio…. The Gorillaz album really is as good as I’ve been saying… At a certain point we’re gonna have to recognize that Damon Albarn is really one of the best musicians we’ve had these last 20 years… Check out “Rhinestone Eyes”, “Superfast Jellyfish” and “Empire Ants”… “White Flag”, too… The album’s long, and I keep cycling through the first half…… Saving up the rest… Like when you’ve got a dixie cup, and you don’t eat the half you like better first…

………….no call yet, I am giving this guy 10 more minutes…… someone else called, and I ignored it, shaking my head in disbelief…

……..saw “Alice in Wonderland” the other weekend… And what I’m gonna remember is the experience of being smothered by the trailers beforehand… Every once in awhile I see a movie that the film industry thinks is aesthetically and functionally equivalent to other movies, ones targetted to a teen audience, I guess… Each movie looked more outrageously cliche and insipid than the last… After about the 3rd or 4th one (out of 7 or 8), I started imagining what it’d be like if every one of these movies had the same title…. You’d see the whole trailer, hear the “in-a-world” narration, and then you would wind up seeing the same title at the end: “SAME OLD HAPPY”, for instance…………….. What level of weirdness like that would people need to start wondering…….?

OK… I’ve given him 12 minutes…. Fella better leave a voicemail or email…..

Until the next time I share my little pseudo-twilight zone minis….

I played another round of Spammer Than Fiction today… Someone guessed incorrectly that an email in my inbox with the subject line “Drunken Ewoks” was spam…. In fact, it was a link to this:

(No pic here)

…no one’s foolin’ no one here… We’re all well aware of the fact that we live in a culture of nastiness…. This is well-trod turf… I, too, am part of the turf… Hard not to be… When you talk to as many people as I do in a day, you are bound to encounter the ones that spread the most seeds of hate… Eventually, your hands get full of seeds, until you can’t use your hands for anything more except carrying the freakin’ seeds…

…so sometimes I start throwing the seeds… I’d rather throw them at the planters than finish their jobs by putting the seeds in the earth… Today was one of those days… I asked you to call in with a reason why I wouldn’t hate you, in exchange for a spot on the Cranberries list… An easy game, one that did not require you to know TV trivia, put gross things in your mouth, or walk around in just your underwear…

…one guy called, and I barely remember what he said in the first place… It was what was going on in the background that interested me… Because sometimes it’s easy to get isolated in Alternative world… In the heat of the workday, I often forget about the other worlds… Most of which I hate to little pieces…

radioonradio

…the question sometimes comes up… “What do you do while the songs are playing?”… And sometimes, if the mood and circumstances are right, I can get a little goofy… Or punchy… Today, while the Bosstones “Someday I Suppose” was playing, I shouted along… But instead “some-DAY!!”, I did “oy-VEY!!”

….which got me thinking of ways I could make every song more in sync with the Jewish traditions I was raised with… Foo Fighters “Darling Nikki” came up… And I knew right away what the answer was… I was curious to see how you would do it…. Click below to hear some good suggestions, and also what I was thinking (I did not air that part)…

matzoball

…and here’s a little background about my early experiences with Prince’s original version of that song…

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So the city of Philadelphia is broke enough that they’re *this* close to closing down their public library system…….. And to me, that’s a bit of a frightening prospect……..

…….before you tell me “DUUUHHHH!!! You don’t HAVE to go to the library anymore becauseof the INTERNET!!!”, just read this article, and then read all the comments…….

…it’s not so much about hard copies vs. electronic copies… it’s not even so much about the politics of budgeting… For me, this is about public space and community vs. even MORE atomization…

(i always liked that word)

read, leave a comment, discuss…

….that’s pretty much how I felt inside for at least half of my youth…. ESPECIALLY when I’d try to share with my parents some of the music I was really into and then they’d just turn around and say “….kinda sounds like The Beatles…”

Sorry, but EFF the Beatles already….. For ME it all goes back to The Who… If you really wanna play that game…

Anyway… I got sick of EVERYTHING being reduced to a Beatles comparison… I stopped bothering when I was playing stuff from U2’s Zooropa album and they STILL were continuing with the Beatles comparisons….

……Phony Beatlemania bit the dust, as The Clash said…. But every 5 years or so the dust gathers again………. Click below for today’s round of Punker Than Thou….

punkthanthou0909

…I’ve thought a lot about how cliches have overrun our  popular culture to the point where they’ve become the DEFAULT, not the groan-inducing exception…. I’ve also thought about trying to do an entire show using nothing but tried-and-true tested cliches… I’ve thought about letting you go thru the Prize Kitchen only if you speak in cliches as well…
These people have given the cliche virus a bit of thought, too…
I do not agree with everything they say….. Check it out, leave a comment, add to the blacklist of pseudo-creativity……

What can you say?? I thought that Gates guy was all ENLIGHTENED… Then again he probably had nothing to do with this… I know a guy who’s spent a couple years in Poland, I’ll have to ask him if they REALLY have enough of a problem with black people that they’d all ditch any and all Microsoft products… Click on either image to read more about this smack-your-own-head story…

…you may have missed it, but I went ahead and shared my idea for a slogan not only for my Beach Ball VIP tent, but also just a phrase I can use however I like, moving forward… Here it is:

MUSIC NEVER LIES.

It came to me years ago… I remember being in a bar with some people, and I forget what song was playing… Doesn’t matter… But I remembered saying that whatever was coming out of the speakers was the most honest thing we were liable to hear all night… And I extended that to this: Music is the ONLY form of human communication that is resistant to lying… Music CANNOT lie…

…I put this out there in the 2pm hour today… And of course got lots of calls, responses, texts, emails, etc… Plenty of you tried to debate me on this… Some on flimsy grounds, others on some more substantial grounds… Because I don’t have all that much time to play with, I’ll just invite all discussion on the matter to take place here….

In the meantime… I’m gonna plan on using the slogan…

***NEXT SHOW FOR MY BAND (The Belated), THIS SAT. NITE @ DAVEY’S UPTOWN, AROUND 10PM…BE AN AMIGO, SHOW YO FACE…***

The place you’re looking at is Almaty, the former capital of Kazakhstan… And that’s a place you only know about because of Borat, in all likelihood… Me, I’ve always felt a pull to the remote places, especially in Asia… Couple that with the fact that I watched something over the weekend on the Travel Channel about the places that have been most insulated from modern Western culture, and Central Asia ranked #1… Mongolia and Bhutan in particular…

Without the internet, I would’ve had to satisfy my curiosity and wanderlust at a bookstore, listening to their awful piped-in muzak… But thank God for making Al Gore grow up strong and wise……… So last nite I started my surfing by just wondering what the biggest city in Kazakhstan looked like… An innocent little Google image search……….. In NO way intended to take me into a long session of reading about occult influences on modern architecture and culture….. But that’s what happened anyway… Here’s how (just follow the links):

…ok, I forget the first one, but I discovered that Almaty was not the capital… This was news to me… They’ve got a new capital… Astana… And this is where it gets interesting…..

Google Image for Astana

Unexpected Link #1

…until I eventually found myself watching a YouTube doc on, you guessed it, conspiracy theories… And then one on the occult influence on governments…