Saturday, November 28, 2009

Ridiculous Music for Your Listen Pleasure?

I made this CD a while back, but I figured I would make it public and give you all a chance to judge and mock me (as well as possibly download these songs and enjoy their ridiculousness). There are 4 basic rules to make it onto this CD: a) the song has to be ridiculous, I think this is self-explanatory, and if you know any of these songs, you know what I am talking about, b) only one song per artist, c) the artist was serious when they wrote the song…yes, many Tenacious D songs are ridiculous, but Jack Black meant them to be that way, so they don’t count!, and d) at some level or in some particular mood, I enjoy the song, I realize that probably none of these songs are musically good, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a time or place when they can be enjoyed. That’s it, hope you enjoy and agree. Also, this is not a ranking of the songs, just all the songs that made the cut to be on this playlist, and the particular order I decided to put them in for listening purposes.

1. Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up: White dude, deep voice, trench coat…how can you go wrong?!?! Special shout out to Greg, Xtina, and Rossi for this song’s involvement in one of the craziest nights/mornings we have ever known!

2. Billy Ocean - Get Outta My Dreams, Get Into My Car: Sure, could have gone with ‘When the Going Get Tough’, but this song is just more fun.

3. Night Ranger – Don’t Tell Me You Love Me: That’s right, the OTHER Night Ranger song!

4. Starship – Nothing’s Gonna Stop Us Now: That’s right, the OTHER Starship song.

5. Styx – Mr. Roboto – “Domo Arigoto, Mr. Roboto”

6. Toto – Africa: Forget being ridiculous and good, this song is just downright good! It has strangely survived the passage of time…and I have no idea how or why.

7. Paperboy – Ditty: A classic 90s “rap” song, which makes me long for the days when rap had a real beat, true rhymes, and quality lyrics, and didn’t just yell “ho”, “bitch”, and “yeah” for 3 and a half minutes.

8. Bel Biv Devoe – Poison: This song invokes very vivid memories of grade school “skating parties”. If you don’t know what one of those is, I am sad for you and whatever sad town you grew up in.

9. Color Me Badd – I Wanna Sex You Up: Another 90s classic.

10. Corey Hart – I Wear My Sunglasses at Night: Now forever associated with “My New Haircut”, but nonetheless, makes me smile whenever I hear it.

11. Poison – Cry Tough: There had to be a Bret Michaels song on here somewhere, this one is about as ridiculous as it gets.

12. Richie Sambora – Rosie: Who you might ask? This is the guitarist from Bon Jovi during his brief, and not very illustrious, solo career.

13. Steve Perry – Oh Sherrie: “Steeeevveee Perry!..Dude, I said no more Journey psycho-outs!” Speaking of random solo careers, the lead singer of Journey really belts out his only “hit”.

14. Mr. Mister – Broken Wings: “What? I can’t flex the golden pipes? It’s inspirational.” “This isn’t the venue.”

15. Cutting Crew – (I Just) Died In Your Arms Tonight: “…it must have been something you said, I just died in your arms tonight!” Oh yeah!

16. TQ – Westside: This is about as sappy a tribute to 90s gangsta rap as you could possibly imagine.

17. Gerard McCann – Cry Little Sister: A ridiculous song in its own right, but also the theme song for one of the most ridiculous movies of all time: Lost Boys. (You may be asking yourself, is that the Corey's I see below, looking all sexy and awesome [and relatively not coked-out] in all of their 80's glory?!?! You're goddamn right it is!)

18. Wham –Last Christmas: I love this song, and I listen to it year round. I don’t care who knows it!

19. Foreigner – I Want To Know What Love Is: “…I want you to show me!”

20. Air Supply – Making Love Out of Nothing At All: If you’ve heard this song, you know why.

21. Barry Manilow – Ready to Take a Chance Again: “So if you want to be with him, you get back on that phone and you call Barry Manilow, and you tell him how you feel!”

Tuesday, November 17, 2009

Dorm Daze

The other day I was jogging through campus, and I had a nostalgic moment I never thought I would have. I was looking at the dorm rooms, and I realized I would never live in that environment again. Here I am, finally living in my own apartment (which I still love!), about to really set out on my own, and I am reminiscing about being cramped into a 10’ x 6’ room with another person?!? But if you really think about it, they were simpler times. You had to worry about getting grades, getting alcohol, getting chicks (or dudes, depending on your sex and persuasion), and occasionally getting sleep. That was it! I could list the things most of us have to worry about these days, but it would push all of the posts below this one off of the page and into the archives! So, as a tribute to dorm living, here are the best parts that I remember (and trust me, at this point, I just barely remember them) from living in a college dorm. For the sake of nostalgia, we will only be mentioning the fun parts of dorm living, and completely ignoring the tedious, annoying, and sometimes horrific parts of it. If you’d like, please add your own glorious memories in the comments section!

-When you were hungry, you didn’t go to the grocery store or have to figure out what to cook, you walked to the nearest dining hall and likely ordered something fried. Often times it was in your very own dorm!

-If you were really hungry, you microwaved some Easy Mac or Ramen Noodles. Vitamins and actual Nutritional Content be damned!

-Girls who didn’t eat enough to use up the entire minimum meal plan. They would be left with $200 at the end of the semester that had to be spent on food, and they would take you to buy a year's supply of Gatorade, Protein Bars, and Moon Pies…ok, maybe not Moon Pies, no one actually eats those.

-Coed dorms. ‘Nuff said.

-Ok, not ‘nuff said. The occasional sight of a girl in a towel walking from the bathroom to her room. Call me a perv if you want, but if you were a guy, you looked, and you enjoyed it too. And if you were girl, you know a part of you liked that we were looking. I don’t remember there being any rule against bringing your clothes or pajamas into the bathroom to change into afterwards, but I could be mistaken. (Completely unnecessary and gratuitous picture of cute girl in towel directly below.)

-Shower shoes…don’t know why, just miss them.

-The walk of shame. If you didn’t make at least one of these, you didn’t really attend college, despite what your diploma might say.

-Being able to walk down the hall to the common area, courtyard, wherever and find a conversation, a game of euchre, or whatever.

-The recruiting and organizing of a volleyball/football/drinking game was the matter of maybe 5 minutes.

-Being 5 feet away from one of your best friends, even he was messy, annoying, and typically slept with a noisy knee-mover contraption because he couldn’t seem to stop blowing out his ACL (you know who you are).

-Typing AIM (can’t believe we used ever used that antiquated technology) messages to said roommate when he was directly behind me and talking for 2 hours before going to sleep because we had the same wacky and random sense of humor and, as previously mentioned, sleep was a luxury, not a necessity.

-The male equivalent to an air freshener: Window open, fan pointed in, drier sheet on the back of the fan.

-Setting up your room to maximize that 10’ x 6’ space. I typically took control of this, and I think I was actually pretty damn good at it.

-Playing “how many beers can fit in a mini-fridge”…our record was 150, it looked like a Dr. Dre video in there!

-Drinking as much as you could before going to the bars because we did not have the legal ability and/or financial means to purchase any alcohol at the bar.

-College! I love teaching class, and I know its easy to be nostalgic about tests and lectures now that I am on the other side. But trust me, its easier to take a test than to write a fair one, not to mention making sure that you effectively teach everything that is going to be on it.

Wednesday, November 11, 2009

You Know What Really Grinds My Gears...

With apologies to the episode of Family Guy that I borrowed this from, as well as both Mark Barlow and Andy Rooney, whom they stole the concept from in the first place, I thought it would be fun to vent some random (and hopefully funny) people, places, and things that annoy me. If you personally do or are responsible for anything that shows up on this list, cut it the f*ck out!

1. People who wear sandals/flip-flops to the gym. Seriously, how much can you really accomplish anything with something other than tennis shoes. I usually spend much of the time they are there hoping that they severely twist an ankle or drop a heavy weight on their foot.

2. People who wear any/way to much cologne/perfume to the gym. Who are you trying to impress? It’s a gym! If you are doing it correctly (which would lead to you looking and feeling better, and then being able to impress people when it might matter), you are going to be sweaty and stink. Sorry, it’s the nature of a good workout. Meanwhile, I have to spend my entire workout trying to hold my breath, kind of hard to do when you are working out hard.

3. Female stand-up comedians. I’m sorry, but with very limited exceptions, they are not very funny. I have no explanation for this phenomenon. (FYI, the person pictured below is NOT one of those exceptions).

4. Poorly timed traffic lights. If you want me to follow traffic laws, you need to create a left turn arrow at a busy intersection that allows more than 2 cars to go through legally!

5. Camera-enforced lights. While we are on the subject, if I try to sneak through a red light, and a cop has been sitting there, and I get tagged, I’m alright with that. Kudos to him, he won a most excellent game of hide-n-seek. However, if I am able to make it through said intersection, and no such officer is there to immediately punish me, there is no way in hell they should have the right to cowardly send me a ticket several weeks later.

6. The general lack of turn signals used these days. When did common courtesy and safety go out of style? I didn’t get that memo. Apparently nowadays, you can just go ahead and start a slow turn in front of me, and its my responsibility to determine that this is what you are doing before we collide, and you sue me for whiplash that didn’t actually occur.

7. Shady ambulance chasing lawyers. I saw a commercial the other day where a lawyer says “just because you didn’t report an injury at the scene, doesn’t mean you can’t get the compensation you deserve.” Translation: “Just because you weren’t shady enough to make up an injury right after your accident, its not too late to swindle someone out of their hard earned money!”

8. People who take more than their allotted amount of seat or armrest on a plane. When I pay for a seat, I am entitled to at least one armrest and all the hypothetical space in front of and above my seat. Which means there is no reason your elbows should be 3 inches past what I am graciously calling your armrest.

9. The BCS system. If I was TCU, I would be pissed that I might go undefeated against a solid schedule and have absolutely zero chance of making the national championship. If I was Boise State, I would be pissed that I could go undefeated and not even make a BCS bowl, especially after beating Oklahoma the only time they were granted such a “privildege’!

10. People who don’t agree with me on these issues! I stayed with pretty safe subjects this time around; just wait until next time I pull out this theme! J

Wednesday, November 4, 2009

Top 15 Long Songs

So I really am trying to post more, but I have been busy as hell! One of the things I have been busy with is preparing for a conference in Puerto Rico, and I will be leaving for said conference very very early Thursday morning. This is actually one of the busiest conferences I’ve ever had (of course that happens when its in PR!), but rest assured I will find some time to enjoy the weather, area, and the country. But, nonetheless, I owe all of you a good post, and I’ve been working on this post of the best 15 long songs for awhile. I am qualifying long as being at least 7:25 long, as the iTunes flies, and should not have a shorter, more popular version available. Enjoy! J

15. Cartel – A (9:45): From Cartel’s amazing CD, “Chroma”. It is kind of mash-up of all the songs on the album, so if you don’t want to listen to the whole album (which you should!), you could just listen to this.

14. Crazy Game of Poker – O.A.R. (8:43): A pretty good and entertaining song, that has special meaning because O.A.R. is from Ohio, and they were just getting known locally when I was a freshman in college. This song was also a popular party song in Bowling Green, leading to my friends and I to laugh and look down on the underclassmen when were seniors, “Look at them, they think this song just came out!”

13. Lynyrd Skynyrd – Free Bird (9:11): Besides being an incredible song that is both critically and popularly loved, it is played during a pivotal scene in “Forrest Gump”, definitely a top 50 movie.

12. Don McLean – American Pie (8:32): Not even necessarily one of my favorite song, and definitely not my favorite Don McLean song. But it has great lyrics, and who hear hasn’t sung this song while drunk with like 15 other people.

11. Oasis – D’you Know What I Mean (7:43): A very underappreciated song by Oasis because it was on the album after “What’s the Story, Morning Glory?”. Nonetheless, great song, and not a second wasted throughout the 7+ minutes.

10. Tool – Lateralus (9:24): There were less Tool songs to choose from than I thought (my favorites tended to be in the 5-6 minutes range). That doesn’t make this song any less deserving, as it is one of their best will never cease to pump me up and mess with my head (as do most Tool songs)

9. Metallica – One (7:25): A classic, and the shortest song on the list. Thought about getting rid of it just to make the requirement higher, but just couldn’t do it. Too classic, too awesome, and has probably one of the best guitar solos ever (which was the bane of my existence when I played Guitar Hero!)

8. Something Corporate – Konstantine (9:36): Great lyrics for the entire 9+ minutes; it reads more like a poem than a song. “This is because I can spell confusion with a ‘k’ and I can like it.” “And I was thinkin’, what I was thinkin’, we’ve been drinking and it doesn’t get me anywhere.”

7. Bob Dylan – Hurricane (8:32): I love songs that tell a story, and special bonus for telling the story of one of the great racial injustices of our time.

6. Oasis – Champagne Supernova (7:28): I didn’t realize how long Oasis’s songs were until I did this! What can say about Champagne Supernova except that it is an absolute classic…especially for us 90’s brats. So where were you while we getting high?

5. Guns N’ Roses – November Rain (8:57): Should it not make the list because its really two great songs in one, or should it be more exalted for having two separate but both amazing intertwined sections. I go with the latter, and not much gets as excited musically then when that rhythms switches to the 2nd half.

4. Pink Floyd – Us & Them (7:50): Again, surprised to not find more Pink Floyd songs on the list, but I think it just seems that all their songs are long because their albums all flow into one coherent song. This is one of my favorites, off a nostalgic album for me (Dark Side of the Moon), which always brings back great memories and one funny but bad one.

3. Green Day – Jesus of Suburbia/City of the Damned (9:08): A testament to the fact that not only is the rock opera not dead, but that Green Day can do it as well as anyone! “I read the graffiti in the bathroom stalls, like the holy scripture of the shopping malls.”

2. Led Zeppelin – Stairway to Heaven (8:02): Really not a whole lot I can say here, simply one of the best songs of all-time, and is slowly chipping away at “Going to California” as my favorite Led Zeppelin song. Pretty sure I could listen to song on loop for a few hours and enjoy every minute of it.

1. Relient K - Deathbed (11:05): I have already extolled the virtues of this song. Somehow, it is fun, depressing, profound, and nonsensical, all at the same time. And if you are into Christianity, its got the extra bonus of being about God! In this song, it’s even a nice touch for us heathens. I could put up all the lyrics, its that good, but I’ll use this gem: “By ‘47, I was 14. I developed a taste for liquor and nicotine. I smoked until I threw up, yet I still l lit them up for 30 more years, like a machine. So right there you have it, that one filthy habit, is what got me where I am today.”