Of shoes and ships and ceiling wax

While Marty McFriend and Satisfied are delving into dark areas I don't have the guts to think about (mainly for fear that my impressionable and occasionally feeble mind would succumb to them), I have a few things on my mind that I'd like to air out as well.

1) Larry "Bud" Melman

Who the fuck is this guy? I have a vague notion that he has appeared on or is some kind of target/butt of jokes for a late night TV talk show host, and I'm sure I could easily find this information via Google, but I don't really want to. What I want to say is that unfortunately this man's image and persona frequently invades my thoughts. Why? Why? And is he famous for something other than being a joke?

2) I did a Google image search for "not fucking around," and this is one of the results:


Then again, so is this, and well, that's just creepy:



3) I took exception to a post from Y2 regarding music.

Y2: I would have posted all this into the comments of your blog because it is, after all, a comment, but I just have too much to say.

You're wrong when you say that there is a right opinion and a wrong opinion about music. In music, as in all of life, opinions are subjective and dependent on the experiences and aptitudes of the listener. (I don't really want to belabor the point, but I say aptitude because I don't think that everyone is on an even playing field with interest in or ability to appreciate music. Just as some people don't really care about music, I don't care about, say, how computers work.) I hate to say it, but I think you're succumbing to the limited worldview of a youngling. (And that's not to say that I'm so old and wise, but maybe slightly older and probably a lot more cynical.)

You see, there was never a time when the majority of music was good. However, there was a time when you were young and impressionable and a lot of things that you'd never heard expanded your horizons and took root in your brain. If hits from the mid to late 80s sound classic and like authentic and good music to you, it's because you hadn't been exposed to anything like them before. All modern music is derivative to some degree, and of course the same goes with visual art and literature. In any current climate there are people who are creating things that are good and will stand the test of time, and there are things that may seem good at the time but turn out to not be so great after all, and then there are things that just downright suck. (Think of what we're hearing from someone like the Killers now -- I'll be the first to say that I enjoyed that album, but I'd be naive to not realize that all they are is an updated New Order. And all New Order is is an updated Gang of Four or ELO, and so on and so forth. You can also extrapolate from the Kings of Leon if that's more your style.) So when you refer to a time that music had meaning, and then got cheesy, and then returned to having meaning again, and then turned to shit, I have to say, frankly, that I don't understand what time periods these are that you could be talking about.

When it comes down to it, good music is music that makes you feel, um, good. Music that resonates somewhere in your soul, or if you don't want to get too philosophical about things, music that, for lack of more sophisticated terms, creates a warm space in your guts. Sounds that you're drawn to. So for some it's a little more evolved than for others. Bottom line is this - you can encourage people to stop obsessively following tabloids or overindulging in burgers (ahem), but you just can't force people to listen to music they don't enjoy. It's just too personal. And besides, if we define pop music as music that is popular with the general public, it is wildly unfair to characterize all pop music as shit. Sure, pop music is Jessica Simpson. But pop music is also the Beatles, or if you want something more current, Outkast. This kind of brings me to what I hate about hipsterism, but that's not a post I'm ready to tackle tonight.

4) RAVE: Shoe shopping and finding exactly what you're looking for. It's almost better than sex.

5) As of right now: I love L.A. (But not the Randy Newman song.)

6) What is the deal with podcasting? It's getting a lot of press lately, and I just don't get it. From what I gather it's not even music, it's like talk radio shows and other spoken pieces. Is anyone actually downloading pod casts and listening to them? Who wants to listen to talk radio?

Thank you.