Buckcherry

I saw this video at Monte's the other night and I couldn't get over poor the ratio of tattoos to perceived toughness on the lead singer of Buckcherry. I've never really heard of them and this is the only song I know so maybe its just a poor song to judge them on, but honestly this guy looks and sounds like a total puss, but for whatever reason has a hundred tattoos. And he looks like Willem Dafoe. I am wrong for wanting to just punch him in the face and tell him to put a shirt on because he's singing a mediocre pop song? He thinks he's rocking out. By the way the song is called "Crazy B*tch", so it may be considered NSFW.

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Monte's

So lately I have been going out to a dance club with some friends of mine which isn't really big news, except that I pretty much spent the last year or two mocking them for it and completely hated the idea of ever going myself. So what has changed? Not much really, I just decided to give it another shot and realized it really wasn't all that different from a regular bar. So here are my survival tips for your average non-dancer for a night at Montes:

1. This according to Dan: Friday nights at Monte's are generally less crowded, but people start showing up a lot earlier. People will start really showing up around 11pm and the dance floor will fill up around 11:30pm. Saturdays are generally more crowded but a fair amount of people show up around midnight after they've been out to other bars on account of having all day Saturday to make other plans and meet up with friends that have no interest in Monte's.

2. Regardless of which night, if you show up between 10-10:30pm you should be able to find a good spot to snag a bartender and start a tab. You may even be able to get a table. If you are looking for a table, don't bother with the east side of the bar. That seems to be the route everyone takes from front door to the bathroom/dance floor. The west side of the bar is where people pretty much stand and order drinks. This is pretty much key to the whole night. Order your complicated drinks early so that you don't have to shout your order because later on you may not be close enough to the bar for them to hear you. My gameplan in this situation is to pretty much stick to Miller Lite bottles, and try to order from the same bartender every time. That way I just have to indicate that I'd like another and after one or two trips he and I will have our routine down.

3. Make sure to bring $5 with you. Sometimes they charge a cover and other times they don't. I can't figure out any rhyme or reason. Of the last three times I have been, one time it was guys only pay the cover, the second time it was no cover and the third time it was everyone pays the cover. So be prepared for that.

4. Now handling the crowds and all the other people in the bar is a bit of a challenge, but here is an easy way to deal with it: pretend like you own the place. Avoid eye contact as if the other people in the bar are beneath you. Act like you're a regular they're all just tourists. It sounds like a dickish move, but it is literally the only way to maneuver through the traffic to the bar or the bathroom.

5. If you're a guy and you get a seat at the bar, let the chicks talk to you first. You don't want to be that creepy guy that talks to everyone that comes within 3 feet of you. That will scare them off. Sit tight and mind your own business, they'll be drunk enough to talk you soon enough.

6. Wear comfortable shoes. Because you're going to be on your feet a lot and you're probably not going to go home before 2am.

7. And since I didn't mention it before, start a tab. Even if you plan on paying cash. Miller Lite bottles are $3, so it leaves you in that awkward "does the bartender know I am going to tip him all at once? Should I just tip him a dollar everytime? Or should I randomly tip on some drinks and not others.

8. The last thing I almost forgot to mention is that they play a lot of guilty pleasure music, like Pussycat Dolls and such. As a guy, just keep a drink handy so you can keep your mouth occupied during those songs. You don't want to be the dude standing their singing "loosen up my buttons baby". There are plenty of girls there that will be dancing around, letting loose their inner burlesque house skank, so let them sing about it. Save if for one of the privacy of your own car on your way home from work or something.

I am probably not telling you something you couldn't figure out on your own, but I just thought I should share. Because sooner or later I am going to try to get you to come along with us.

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The Other Cingular Commercial

Thanks to whomever just left me this link. It just said anonymous, but I am happy to give this commercial its rightful place on this blog. Seriously, I smile/smirk/laugh every single time I see it.

And not to be missed, Seth Green in a Nerf slingshot commercial. 1992? Is that a good guess?

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Lost

A few quick thoughts on the last two episodes of Lost:

Charlie redeemed himself yesterday by exercising a small amount of logical intelligence when he said: "How many of these others are we going to let go? They're trying to kill us" (or something along those lines).

Do they not have a night watchman? I know they're comfortable in their little village, but someone other than Juliet should have been on guard when she took Sun to the medical facility.

People need to start dying. Juliet first, Ben second, and (regrettably) Jack third. We've all seen Lord Of The Flies. Once you lose hope of escaping, somebody needs to go crazy and kill somebody for breaking their trust.

Where are Michael and Walt? It appears they can escape from the island.

That person that crashed on the island and said they found the plane and everyone was dead. At one time that could have been a clever "is any of this real, is the island a form of Limbo or Hell?"
deception tactic. But I think knowing what we know, we can assume it was probably a coverup from "the company" to stop people from looking for the island. Actually I am not sure what to think exactly, but I just want to mentally bookmark that whole thing because I have a feeling it either contradicts something that has already been said or will do so in the future.

Next week's episode looks amazing, but I am sure it will disappoint.

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Mac/PC In The UK

So I found out this morning that the "Hello I'm a Mac... and I'm a PC" ad campaign is also running in the UK, only they're using British actors. Not surprisingly, the ad (in my opinion) fails to work because they both sound like pretentious douche bags. Either that or its the awful writing.


Pie Chart - UK Version
This is the only one I could find that had a nearly identical script in the US and UK.

Pie Chart - American Version

I finally have an appreciation for Justin Long.

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Prank War

Prank War Continued: Streeter Bombs (April 20, 2007) on Vimeo
Let me first off by saying this is NSFW. Anyhow two of the guys from College Humor are involved in a pretty serious Prank War. I guess its been going since the start of the year. The clip above is the latest, most brutal prank. Below is some of the history. Real or fake, they're still pretty funny.

Prank War Continues...Streeter's Date on Vimeo
This is March 13 2007


The Prank War Goes On!: Andy Bloom on Vimeo
This is April 13, 2007

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Contract Riders

Free Beer and Hot Wings were discussing The Smoking Gun's collection of contract riders from famous musicians this morning. Basically a contract rider is an agreement between the performer and promoter/concert venue outlining the requirements prior to a specific event.

As you might imagine these documents expose the underlying douchebag in many of the world's most famous musical acts. Here are some examples:

John Mayer (Hospitality Rider):

1 Box of organic green tea (not loose, in tea bags please, Sencha is a good one)
1 Loaf of organic rye bread
1/2 Gallon whole milk, soy milk
Organic Fruit Bowl - Apples, Bananas, Oranges, Grapes - All organic please.
Raw, whole organic almonds
Various organic nuts
Four cases of bottled water - three cases Penta (must be found), one case Fiji. If Penta water absolutely cannot be found, all water should be Fiji. Volvic is also a substitution in lieu of Fiji (last choice though)
Two tubes of original crazy glue
Four organic lip balms (not chap stick)
Two small tubes mint flavored toothpaste (Sensedyne or Tom's Natural)
One box of a kids brand cereal - please get one from the following brands: Captain Crunch, Lucky Charms, Count Chocula, Cookie Crisp, Cinamin (sic) Toast Crunch
One box each of Organic Raisin Bran and Cheerios.

What a douche.

The riders seem to very clearly reflect the touring longevity and success of the band they're attached to. For example The Killers' rider is very, very simple. It is primarily as list of the different snacks and alcohol they'd like on hand, plus a request for local take-out menus so they can order food after the show.

As they mentioned on the show this morning, other niche entertainers have very specific promotional requirements. Dustin Diamond requires that his name, Dustin Diamond, appear first and in larger letters than any references to Screech or Saved By The Bell. Don McLean specifies that if a promoter is going to reference any of his songs ("American Pie"), he must also list at least five others along with it.

Absolutely ridiculous. Not to mention the phone calls FB&HW were getting from venue workers about unwritten provisions regarding eye contact with certain performers. I can't ever imagine getting to that point.

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Rod Allen

A nice little treat for Tigers fans. I'll now patiently await the day Mario Impemba rolls this footage during a broadcast. Thats Rod Allen, current Detroit Tigers color commentary broadcaster.

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Lionel Messi

Gol de Messi al Getafe 18/04/07
Uploaded by futbloguista

Since YouTube is eating sh*t from all sides on just about every video posted, I had to go to DailyMotion for this post. You can thank Audiovisual Sport for that. They are laying claim to every copy of Lionel Messi's goal against Barca Getafe last night. Anyhow this was last night in the King's Cup (Copa del Rey) in Spain. Not exactly the World Cup stage, but still the resemblance between this and Maradona's "Goal Of The Centry" in the '86 World Cup is absolutely amazing.

Best goal of ever(Maradona 86')
Uploaded by crisn

And here is a side-by-side comparsion:

Comparativa gol de Messi y Maradona
Uploaded by cariacolov

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Cingular Dropped Calls

I just love these ads. Not the campaign, just these two ads specifically. Well I can't find the video of the other one, but it always makes me laugh. Its the office setting where the lady says "Well I guess you'll just have to promote me to manager!... wel- There's a new sheriff in town!" in that weird Minnesota type accent.

This one is absolutely brilliant too. I remember having a rehearsed spiel back in high school or middle school if I ever called a girl. I'd probably have one now too, if I could stop stealing their business cards out of the "win a free lunch" fish bowls, then calling and breathing heavily into the phone.

Nah, I don't actually do that, do I?

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The Killers

I don't know what it is, but I have been fixated on The Killers for more than a week now, and I hate it. Well to be more clear, I hate that I am not moving past it more quickly. I like their music, but every time I see the lead singer I just think "that guy is probably a pretentious douche". I think it may be all the Bruce Springsteen stuff he and music critics keep referencing. Bruce Springsteen is alright but his music and his act haven't aged any better than John Mellencamp. I just flat out don't like Bruce Springsteen aside from that video with Courtney Cox and the songs he had that got used in Philadelphia and Jerry Maguire. I think it must be the comments from this Brandon Flowers interview:

This album (Sam's Town) is one of the best albums in the past 20 years. There's nothing that touches this album. And that sounds like I'm being cocky, but I'm just so excited."

The singer has now revealed more about his love for The Boss and said that he feels 'reborn' after discovering his music.

"I prefer to call it my rebirth," he told MTV News. "I had something happen that I didn't ever think could happen.

Flowers explained: "And that was kind of sad, but then I had another one of those 12-year-old experiences when I was 23, but this time with Bruce Springsteen. And it was just - it was elation... He's a gift, and I didn't know. There was something in his music that touched what I was going through, the process of falling back in love with my America."

"Springsteen touches on the American dream, and that's everybody's dream. And it's such a great idea - whether or not it's still happening today," he said. "Most of the songs are about getting to that place, of making it to the promised land. And that idea runs through the record. It's very optimistic."


Worse yet, while watching this video for "Read My Mind" I can't shake the idea that its being sung by a young Tobias Funke. I am not sure that a mustache has ever been more distracting.

But still I like them, and that bothers me for some reason. Also being frequently played on my iPod are: We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank from Modest Mouse, Aha Shake Heartbreak from Kings Of Leon, The Crane Wife and Castaways and Cutouts from The Decemberists, Plans from Death Cab for Cutie and Black Holes and Revelations from Muse.

Help me bust out and move on to something different. I know there is a new Linkin Park album coming in May, but I need something sooner.

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Your Dog Is Stupid

Here is a tip: When shark fishing, leave the dog at home. It wasn''t such a problem this time, but this dog clearly didn't realize who might have had the upper ground if that hook came loose.

And just for something random, check out the polite obedience instilled in Japanese pedestrians. Even on the escalator.

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Reporter Gets Jacked

As you might remember, local news disasters are one my favorite things about the YouTube era. Whether it is a reporter getting attacked, getting/causing injuries or mixing in some profanity, its all good to me. Top clip is a snow report in the UK, the bottom is a motorcycle stunt on live television.

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Summer Of The Sequel

I thought I'd post a reminder for anyone planning to see a movie between May and September. This is the summer of the sequel. If you remember my Sequel Theory, this works well within those guidelines. I might be completely wrong, but I am thinking this will be the "bust" year for sequels. The past couple of years the monthly story out of Hollywood has been the decline of the box office. But this summer, something has to give. There just isn't going to be enough money to go around. Here is the list:

May 4
Spider-man 3

May 11
28 Weeks Later

May 18
Shrek The Third

May 25
Pirates Of The Caribbean: At Worlds End

June 8
Hostel: Part II
Ocean's 13

June 15
Fantastic Four: Rise Of The Silver Surfer

June 22
Evan Almighty (yeah, a sequel to Bruce Almighty)

June 27
Live Free Or Die Hard (aka Die Hard 4)

July 13
Harry Potter And The Order Of The Phoenix

August 3
The Bourne Ultimatum

August 10
Rush Hour 3

Basically we get one break over the 4th of July to allow Transformers to open, and a second one between Harry Potter and Rush Hour 3. Aside from that its like 12 weeks of sequels. I can't imagine this is a good thing.

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300 & South Park

If you missed it this past week, this episode of South Park titled "D-Yikes" was phenomenal. It perfectly captured every reason I had for not watching 300. Phenomenal. Highly recommend it. Also, its an episode of South Park so you should take the appropriate caution if you're at work. The clip above is pretty much the middle of episode. The first part had embedding disabled, but here is a link to it. Here are Part 2 and Part 3.

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Champions League Second Leg

Last week I posted about the Champions League home and home series between Manchester United and AS Roma. That match, at Roma, was plagued by fan and police violence but ended in a 2-1 victory for Roma. Yesterday they played the second leg of that series at Manchester United at Old Trafford Stadium. The result somewhat unexpected. Manchester United beat AS Roma 7-1 to advance to the Champions League semi-finals. The highlights from yesterday's game is above. I always enjoy a good embarassment of Italian football.

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Dice-K vs. Ichiro

This is up over at Deadspin, but its worth mentioning again. Tomorrow night Boston's $100 million man, Japanese pitcher Daisuke Matsuzaka is making his home debut at Fenway, and as luck would have it the Ichiro Suzuki and the Mariners are in town. I don't know what the Q ratings are for these guys back in Japan, but as I understand it this is going to be a pretty significant deal. But as Deadspin points out its not exactly the first time they've faced each other. The clip above is about 8 years old, when Dice-K was 18 and Ichiro was 26 and killing Japanese baseball. The following season Ichiro left to play for the Mariners and Dice-K eventually became Japan's most dominant pitcher. Even more interesting is that in these clips Ichiro looks about as bad swinging his bat as we've ever seen him with Mariners. So Wednesday night, 7:05pm Eastern on ESPN2 we'll get to see how much has changed in 8 years.

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Absolutely Brilliant

What do you get when you cross Southwest Airlines with Dateline's To Catch A Predator? A faux-mercial better than 50% of the tripe on SNL.

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GTA IV

Last week the trailer for Grand Theft Auto IV debuted around the internet. The game is set in New York, only they refer to it as Liberty City. New York's politicians are getting all pissed off about it because (a) they're not making any licensing money like they do when a movie needs to film in New York and (b) the game is generally known for its glamorization of criminal behavior. Of course those politicians were made to look like asses when a massive GTA IV billboard, which had to be approved by someone in the city government, went up in NYC just a few days later.

Over the weekend someone recreated the GTA IV trailer using real life clips of NYC tourist videos found on YouTube. Pretty neat.

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BJ Novak On Conan

Here is a great interview about Cadbury Creme Eggs with BJ Novak by Conan O'Brien. I can't find any proof of his claims about the Cadbury website.

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More Police Stunts

I may have posted this a while back, but it fits in this week's unintentional theme of "How to effectively police cities without using guns".

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Champions League

Yesterday all hell broke loose in the Champions League Quarter-Finals between Manchester United and AS Roma. In the 44th minute Roma took the lead on this goal (above) and shortly thereafter Roma fans began taunting the Manchester United fans on the opposite side of the glass partition. What you can't see in this clip is the Roma fans on their side of the glass taunting and in some cases throwing flares onto the Manchester United side. So from this viewpoint it pretty much looks like what it was, Italian police beating the hell out of Manchester fans. I don't want to stereotype or anything, but its always the Italian teams and fans that lose control in these stories. I think its time for FIFA to step in and ban them for a couple of years.

The worst part about all of this is that Cristiano Ronaldo was not harmed. Manchester United came back to tie the game on this pretty awesome goal from Wayne Rooney, but eventually lost 2-1 in the first leg of the series.

Here is another, longer video where you can see that the police only have interest in beating people with clubs, and not calming the Roma fans that are clearly trying to escalate the situation.

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Dude...WTF?

I always thought this was an urban legend. I don't care what people did 1200 years ago or what examples hippie womyn can pull from human herstory. Not cool.

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Trashy News

A little celebrity news. LC (Lauren Conrad) from Laguna Beach and The Hills will have her sex tape stolen and uploaded to the internet for profit in the coming weeks. The tape was made with that d-bag that looks like Joey Fatone (Jason). Before you ask yourself why ladies, remember you're the one that gave her the taste of fame by tuning in to that bullcrap. I've washed my hands of that whole crew since day one.

The other news I read today is that Britney Spears has found a new romantic interest in rehab. The lucky guy? Howie Day. Howie Day!? WTF was he doing in rehab? He must have gone off the deep end after the money from all those WB shows and promos dried up. That might be the weakest rehab participant I have ever heard of.

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Royal Canadian Mounted Police

Since nobody can carry guns in Canada, look at the tactics the the cops have to resort to when confronted by a knife wielding pedestrian. Is that not infinitely more dangerous for everyone involved? Props to the pedestrian for proving that you can just jump onto the hood of a moving vehicle like in the movies.

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Lost

I want to discuss last night's episode of Lost. Not a great episode by any means, but certainly a very good one. So we learned a little more about Kate's background, and found out that she wound up being friends with one of Sawyer's victims. Jack and Saayid got gassed and left behind just like Kate and Juliet, but apparently The Others had planned on the two of them getting killed by the smoke monster.

We also found out that The Others knew all about the smoke monster and had that fence designed to keep it at bay. So here's the thing: We know the smoke monster can tell who is in the jungle, and it clearly hates The Others more than the crash survivors. I say that based on the number of people we've seen run through the jungle since Eko died, without getting chased by the smoke monster. Also worth mentioning is that old man Locke and his irrational, detrimental behavior are gone for the foreseeable future.

The last thing about the episode is the Jack & Juliet connection and the fact that they left the compound. That was really annoying. They have houses with beds, showers (presumably) and yards to play in and they really want to trek across the jungle to the beach to live off the occassional boar, some fish and some tree fruit? Not to mention they'd have smoke monster protection, which now that I think about it shouldn't exist. The "anomaly" (the emp) at the end of season 2 allegedly knocked out pretty much every piece of electronics on that island. But it didn't knock out the electronic keypad on the side of the sonic defense wall? WTF is that?

Anyhow back to my point, they have a pretty great shelter available to them and they're going to continue to stick it out on the beach. Can we at least see some debate over this in the next episode? Please? Lastly, with The Others "gone" for now, I can't figure out if the storyline for the remainder of this season is going to progress faster or slower. My hope is that any flashbacks they do from here through the end of the season will tie characters together (like Kate and Sawyer) before they went got on the plane.

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Snoop Dogg On Bill O'Reilly

Its not often that you get to hear celebrities speak honestly and truthfully about how they feel about other celebrities. Today we have Snoop Dogg delivering his personal opinion of Bill O'Reilly on a German talk show. NSFW Language

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Prison Break Season 2

Last night was the season two finale for Prison Break. In my opinion season two was pretty terrible compared to the first, but I repeatedly gave it a chance to turn things around and last night it sort of did and it didn't.

In case you have stopped watching, here is a quick rundown of season 2: After already escaping on foot and missing their plane to Utah, everyone went their separate ways, reconvened to find D.B. Sweeney's $5 million and lost it. Then there were some betrayals and more pursuit, but eventually they found the guy that framed Lincoln for murder, her killed himself, the President resigned, everyone fled to Panama in pursuit of the Bagwell and the $5 million and at the beginning of last night's episode we found out that Lincoln had been exonerated by one of the lead conspirators in the whole ordeal.

So Michael was still wanted for his escape, and he figured out a nifty little setup to take down both of the FBI/Secret Service guys still on his case. Of course things didn't go quite as planned and he wound up being held at gunpoint just seconds before he, Sarah and Lincoln were supposed to set sail towards some unknown destination to star a new life. Despite all the faults of the second season they had a solid, respectable series (not just season) finale in their grasp. Bagwell and Bellick were in jail, Sucre was pretty much out of the picture and so was C-Note. All the characters that inexplicably slowed the storyline to a weekly crawl were taken care of. Lincoln, Michael and Sarah could have sailed away and the show could have had a decent ending. But it they just had to have a third season.

So Bill Kim has them at gunpoint and has already called the cops, which makes no sense because he isn't there to arrest them, he's there to kill them. Sarah ends up shooting him from offscreen with the gun Lincoln left inside the boat's cabin before Bill Kim showed up. Of course as soon as he's been shot the cops drive up and they're back on the run. Lincoln splits up and escapes, while Michael and Sarah run together and Michael get cornered by the police. Michael takes Sarah hostage, confesses to the shooting so that she can go free and ends up getting transported to a Panamanian Federal Penitentiary. On his way in he sees FBI Agent Mahone, whom he just framed for cocaine trafficking in the nifty setup I mentioned before. On Michael's way in he slowly walks down the hall and take careful notice of the distance from doorway to doorway, surveys the pitfalls and nuances of this prison atmosphere (heroin addicts) which they've created to look like the dorm from hell. The cops even dropped him off at the door and said "this is as far as we go" and threw him to the wolves.

The last few shots were of the head conspirator and his sidekick discussing Michael's imprisonment, with the lackey saying "what should we do? you know Scoffield is going to try to escape" and the head honcho countering with "yes, I know. Thats exactly what we want him to do". To me that didn't make any sense whatsoever, but not much does on the show anymore. The very last shot is of Michael going from the main hallway of the prison into an unseen room that is infinitely louder and more dangerous than the current one, before the camera faded to a blank screen.

So looking ahead to season three there are number of ways this show could go. The best way in my opinion is to leave everyone but Michael out of it. Maybe Mahone could be in it since he's supposed to be in that prison too, but recenter the show around a prison escape just like season one. In the season premiere have Michael be about a year into his prison sentence, already adjusted to Panamanian life and having made friends on the inside. It will save both writers and viewers from the more tedious parts of a new storyline and allow everyone to dive right into a moving storyline. And please let season three be the last one.

Anything short of that and I won't be watching.

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X-Files

In what I consider to be awesome news, David Duchovny and Gillian Anderson finalized plans for another X-Files movie this week. Yeah its a little late, but I really feel like without a network and the continuity of the future of a series looming large, that a really great movie could be produced. Chris Carter, series creator, is signed on to the project is bringing with him a storyline he had worked out a few years ago.

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Modest Mouse - "Dashboard"

Since MTV sucks and nobody has really filled in the gaping void, it is pretty hard to randomly come across great music videos. I came across this one on Friday night out at Monte's. In the quieter hours before everyone showed up, got hammered and started grinding each other, they were playing some music videos. And that is how I came across the video for Modest Mouse's latest single "Dashboard". I was actually pretty surprised that anyone still puts this much effort into making music videos, considering the circumstances of where and when people might see them now compared to 10-15 years ago. By the way the new album, We Were All Dead Before The Ship Even Sank, is awesome.

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