Bad music and news

I've been meaning to say something about this for a little while now, but there is a song that is everywhere that I simply cannot stand.

"Radioactive" by Imagine Dragons is playing practically everywhere, and on everything.  I've seen it attached to way too many commercials, it played after the season finale of True Blood (the wife watches it, I just heckle), and it is currently in constant loop on the local rock station here.

Wait, on a rock station?

This song does many things, but rock is not one of them.  Look, you can like the song, if you do, more power to you, but don't claim that it's rock.  This is art disguised as music at best, and that by no means is rock.  You know what else is art disguised as music?

That's right, the bitch that broke up the Beatles.   There's a lot of stuff getting play today that I do not consider music, but rather art.  While all music is art, all art is not music, and somewhere along the way the line gets blurred and instead of painting abstract imagery, people make what they call "music."

The above video is not music.  It is an attempt at vocal art.

Yoko Ono is an extreme example of this, but it helps make my point.  I consider "Radioactive" to be vocal art, and not music.  Yet I can't escape it no matter where I am, and thanks to the rediculously simple nature of the entire song, I now know most of the words.  The good news is I also recognize the "melody" instanteously and can easily minimize the amount of time I spend hearing it now.

Over the years the alternative rock music genre has become dominated by what I consider vocal art, and that has really bummed me out.  That was the genre that Pearl Jam and Soundgarden emerged from (Yeah, I know Nirvana is in there too, and while I love Nirvana, they too definitely fall in the category of vocal art).  Now we are getting Imagine Dragons and The Postal Service.  While I don't consider either of those bands to be alt rock bands, those are the channels and venues you will find them at, and that bothers me. 

I'm not yelling at the bands here, it's not their fault they get lumped together with Volbeat and Halestorm, but someone needs to know that "Hey, this isn't rock.  Let's not play it on a rock station."

Or that a very simple and bad song should be everywhere.


Finally, I leave on a piece of news I received earlier this evening.  I got a phone call from the sports editor of the Killeen Daily Herald, and he wants me to cover high school football starting this Friday!  It's by no means my ultimate sports writing goal, but it's a huge step towards it.

In case you don't realize it, high school football is HUGE in Texas, and them trusting me with covering games is a very big deal.  Remember that show Friday Night Lights?  That wasn't an exaggeration, people are crazy here when it comes to high school football.

Don't believe me?  This week the Copperas Cove Herald had an entire pull out section dedicated to the upcoming season for the Copperas Cove High School football team, complete with posed glamor shots of the players standing on tanks.  Can't make this up.  This shit is serious down here.

And I'm covering it.

A-Rod and HOLY HELL WHAT JUST HAPPENED

So I was going to take the time and write up my A-Rod post that I've been meaning to even though the whole catastrophe isn't resolved yet, and I get up this morning to see the universe buzzing about something that happened last night.

This.

Ahhhhh!

 What the hell is going on here?

And yes, this is real.  Not made up.

The mind simply boggles at this whole "performance."  Between the "costumes" and "songs" and "dancing" someone should have just been "Alright, this is rediculous."  The whole thing would have made sense if Allen Funt came out to the crowd and said "Smile, you're on candid camera!"  Then everyone would have been "Oh, it makes sense now."

Nowhere to be seen.

There were two things that made sense throughout that whole debacle - This is the VMA's, this is what they do, and the crowd reactions, oh the crowd reactions!  First, Will Smith and family:

I love the look on the son's face.  I'm also pretty sure Will Smith is about to utter something that isn't exactly family friendly.

Then, Taylor Swift:

Pure confusion.

Then finally, New Direction sitting behind Rhianna.  They look confused, she looks bored.

"Bitch please, that is NOT how you get attention.  Stick with a wife beater, then we'll talk"

Glorious!

I mean, if the goal here was shock value, mission accomplished.  But if the aim was anything else, anything else at all, horrible failure.

But I shouldn't be surprised by this.  The VMA's do something like this every single year.  There's always something weird(Madonna in 1984), crazy(Britney Spears in 2000), or douchey(Kanye in 2009) happening, it's just what they do.  They made a shitty award that has a shitty award show, so they need to do something to get people to watch.

And I suppose now it makes sense.  For a network that was originally called "Music Television," they haven't stuck to that idea for decades now.  I don't know what the M stands for now, but music clearly isn't it.  They churn out sensationalist garbage instead of their original goal of being a home for music videos.  Hell, when I was a kid I remember thinking "why don't they play more music?"  Ah well.

If nothing else, they got people talking about them - again, and when next year's VMA's roll around, something else will happen, and we'll go through this spiel again.

Yippie.

And actually, I want to add one last thing.  It's always mind blowing to me when things like this happen because what they are at their core is the young celebrity saying to the world "I'm all grown up now, don't look at me like a kid."

Yeah... no.

Grown ups don't think having a plushy orgy and grinding on Bettlejuice on national television is a good idea.  You want to break the mold of the child star?  Do something an adult would do.  Not something a teenage looking to piss off daddy would do.  You want to break out of the mold correctly, there's a great and super successful example of how to do it.

Fucking N Fucking P Fucking H

Neil Patrick Harris.  NPH.  I want to be him.  I could live with the whole sex with guys thing if I was NPH.  This guy will ALWAYS be known as "the Doog" to his peers, but there is an entire generation that know him as Barney, or Dr. Horrible, or as NEIL PATRICK HARRIS.  He didn't act like a stripper.  He didn't degrade himself on television.  He just... grew up.  And acted like it.

I'm SO glad I could end this on a picture of NPH.  That makes me happy.

The subtle art of racism

I've been wanting to do a piece on this absolutely insane A-Rod situation for a little while now, and I kept saying "Oh, it will be resolved soon, I'll comment on it then."

That was 3 weeks ago.

So in light of the fact that it doesn't seem to be going anywhere right now, I want to talk about something else that happened that bugged me a great deal.

This.

This is Riley Cooper, a wide receiver for the Eagles.  He is at a Kenny Chesney concert, and drunk as hell. 

This should not have become as big of a story as it did.

Seriously, check out this, this, and this.  That took me 3 seconds to find all these talking points on what he said.

As far as I'm concerned, this is not news.

I don't agree with anything Riley Cooper said, but it also shouldn't of resulted in the massive media lambasting he received, or in the fine he received from the Eagles (exact amount currently undisclosed, but the Eagles has said it is "substantial")

"My bad."

 I'm a very firm believer of freedom of speech, and that exists solely to protect that which we DON'T want to hear.  This clearly falls into that category.  Hell, the dude is hammered.  If I got held over the fire for every insensitive thing I said while drunk... hoo boy.  Now I'll give props to Riley Cooper here, he came out and said that yes he was drunk, but that "it was no excuse for what I said."

I would agree with that statement if he said "it was no excuse for what I did."  He didn't DO anything wrong, he said something stupid.  Move along with your lives.

There is someone else who disagrees with that sentiment.  Herm Edwards.

Yes, he is black.

Herm Edwards came out and said "He was drunk.  Everybody says stupid things when they're drunk."  Herm Edwards didn't care, because he saw this as what it is, a guy saying something stupid.  That's it.  I honestly think this became as big of a story as it did because it happened during the summer sports/news doldrums that always seem to happen.  Something had to be news worthy, it might as well be this.

 Because of this story though, I believe it led to this being a story as well.

A Missouri rodeo clown wore an Obama mask, and the announcers poked fun at Obama while he was in the ring.  As a result, the rodeo clown was banned for life from the Missouri rodeo circuit, and the announcers resigned in disgrace.

WHAT THE HELL IS GOING ON HERE?

Jesus tap dancing christ people, take a god damn joke.  You don't have to like it, but then again, NOBODY FORCED YOU TO SEE IT.  Hell, I voted for Obama and I think this is funny.  They're simply playing to their audience.  That's it.  Seriously, is anyone shocked that a rodeo crowd in Missouri is predominatly Republican?  Hell, I live in Texas and am pretty left wing on most issues, and I see and hear stuff like this all the time.  But - shocker - I remember that we live in a country that allows people to have differeing viewpoints, and even one that allows us to say really stupid things, and I go on my merry way.

Is racism bad?  You bet.  But for the love of God, stop making everything a damn crusade.