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A joyous holiday.

I heard she held a cat and she liked it.

Despite e-mail warnings from my boss to wait for iPhone 2.0/3G to stabilize, and then perhaps buy one through our work i.t. (so I can transfer my blackberry’s phone number, and align through our corporate AT&T cellular plan), I went out today to buy an iPhone 3G to help ease the pain of not having an apple product to buy a month ago after WWDC. It didn’t go well.

This is my story, which was mostly written via email into my blackberry, hence the thumb-esque conan-speak, thumb-spelling and general lack of definite articles. Liberties were taken, but not many. thank you to juan for inspiring me to get back in the game. See you next year!

2:54pm

Sitting outside (not on line; on bench) apple store in clarendon va. Appx 50-60 people in line to buy the iPhone 3G. Looks to be the feel-good hit of the Summer.

Riot about to break out; Apple citizens in line shouting at hired line security thugs re: ‘line not moving in over two hours’. Wish blackberry world edition had camera / video, because I think I could get famous. I think it’s about to be set off, football hooligan-style. People are baking in the sun and not happy. Boiling heat, summer stench. Plus every third person that walks by starts laughing / taking camera phone pictures of people in line, taunting, irritating. this is what happens when an apple store is between a williams sonoma and some boutique clothery. like most apple stores aren’t. i assume this is happening everywhere. a happening.

Family of filthy rednecks (what are they doing in Clarendon; I hope they’re reading this over their dialup connections) just walked by line and loudly proclaimed ‘hick hick why don’t those idiots just buy it from ameeezon dot com hick?’. iPhoneists in line, so angry, shouted epithets at family of inbreeds, which included small children (both in the family, and doing the shouting from the line). The apple user backlash is full steam, bi-directional. This fun / comedy almost makes up for not having an iphone. Although these people on the ready line are my brothers, I am slightly removed… watching the game, not in the line. Too lazy. So lazy. Glad apple makes it hard to buy their products.

I’m supppoed to be at friend Steve’s birthday party in a few hours, but I don’t think I can leave this scene; previously unknown journalistic impulses surfacing. Plus, if the line trickles to zero, I’m in there to win.

surly Line-dwellers just yelled at secuirity ‘get us some cokes or something!!!’. Security: ‘you get back in line! You get back in line!’. I couldn’t make this up. Keep an eye on cnn — I swear there is going to be a riot. Let’s kick it off. I can’t report the truth[1].

3:30pm

Just saw 20-something 9 month pregnant woman on line. Should she be there? Does she have to be there? Is the iphone for the fetus? What if she calves right here? My god, as if the situation wasn’t bad enough, we could have a mucus plug, amniotic fluid, and a new life (undoubtedly apple-supporting, as it should be) to deal with in realtime. Maybe that would help her get forward in the line, which is not moving.

This apple store is in a fake ‘fancy towne‘ that is retail below, apartments directly above. People are sitting on balconies, drinking sangria and cold beer, spectating, taunting. That’s the way to do it.

Line is _not_ moving. Has not moved in the 46 minutes I’ve been sitting here. Sun was behind a cloud for a few minutes, but now bacl with a vengence. They’re burning, burning! Ow! - a goddamn bird bit me on the ankle! What the fuck? The woman next to me is throwing bread to the birds, and also watching the Apple iPhone people. My ankle is not bread, budgie, although it may be pastey and doughy! I should stamp you down like a pigeon, yet I am merciful.

3:50pm

Amusement: person walks up to iGoons claiming to want to purchase a mac book pro (ie something apple isn’t losing money on today, like the iPhone). igoon points legitimate man to end of the line. “But I’m not buying an iphone!’. Pointed to end of the line. Then, other line security guy seems to understand ramification and runs inside, presumable to get orders from manager / Jon Ives and Steve Jobs personally. If those guys don’t have the 60’s style red Batphone set up today, I don’t know when they do. Which means: they never do.

Ok… There are now two lines, coming from opposite directions, one short, one long. Maybe there is a batphone! Maybe short one is for non-iphone purchases (goons maybe snapped out of it). Maybe I should buy a macbook too so I can get in the short line…seems reasonable. Don’t need a macbook. still seems reasonable. Tiring of this scene.

4:00pm

Got sick of that scene, now walking back to my car, evaluating plan B. Need to be at steve’s in about two hours. Two girls walking through garage, overhear them: “I can’t believe those idiots are standing in line to give Apple their $300, then AT&T their $130 a month.” I want to tell these wenches to shut their watering holes, because we’re talking about the iPhone. Show respect. But it would do no good. They don’t understand. A Plan is formulating. I could still have justice today.

4:30pm

Now driving in concentric circles (ever-widening) around northern virginia hitting “legitimate” at&t retail stores (since the resellers don’t have them), hoping to score, licking my lips, ready to win.

First one I hit was in fairfax at the corner of 29 and 50. There was iphone 3g material and banners in the windows. It was packed, and there was a guy at the door with a clipboard of names and a pen. I figured these were good omens, but the feeling didn’t last.

‘Hello dere!’ Handing me pen. ‘Are you here for non-iphone-related-blah-blah-woof-woof-promotion-for-some-crappy-non-iphone?’. This was bad, but I’m not an asshole. ‘Hi! No! I’m here for an iphone. Do you have any?’ Confused look. ‘No, we don’t have those..’

Yes, of course. After all, why would you? Its not like you work for one of the only two retail outlets selling them, and its not like its the biggest retail event of the year. My bad for asking. I hand him his pen back without stabbing him in the eye with it.

Now in chantilly va at a mega strip-mall. Did you know that best buy (this one, anyway) now sells apple computers and musical instruments? Huh. No iPhones. Hungry like the wolf.

Have learned that if you send a text to googl (no e), with a search string, it sms’s you back with data. Thanks, Mike. 2% safer than googling on blackberry while driving on route 66…

5:30pm

Hit AT&T stores all over hell and gone (Chantilly, Centreville, Fairfax, etc etc etc), no joy. Consider going to Apple Store at Fair Oaks mall, but am now 30 minutes away from steve’s, and need to be there in 30 or so. Fair Oaks is probably a mess anyway. That place is a shit-hole.

Get email from my boss, who is begging me to hold off / buy a unit through our i.t. when we’re ready. He’s a good man. He’s trying to do the right thing. unfortunately his message has a legitimacy issue due to the fact he already owns a first gen iphone. But he’s still full of ideas:

omg. how about if you buy an ipod touch to hold you over? 97.946% of all iphone time is consumed by things that don’t involve a phone (these stats are conservative). the app store, omg, is the sigle-most dangerous thing to have at your fingertips. btw, mobileme/push functions are just now starting to work occasionally. IPOD TOUCH!!

response:

My issue with the touch is the distinct lack of phone.

I don’t have disposable income for hold-overs. I need the real thing. Kelley (ed. my wife) has cleared me for iphone purchase.

But thanks for trying to help.

after which i’m mocked for my married-ish behavior.

6:00pm

Arrive at Steve’s. He has downloaded iPhone 2.0 for his first gen, and shows me Super Monkey Ball (irritating), Pandora (awesome XM-radio killer), and an app that makes lightsaber sounds when you whip your phone around (like a lightsaber). I almost leave immediately (five minutes after arrival) to go back to clarendon and get online. But unfortunately Boss Tom has called me again and firmly asked me to promise not to get an iPhone until I can get it through i.t. / switch my cell number over. I cave. I feel so worthless.

Another apple nerd at Steve’s party, “Dan”, tells me that he and his wife were are Fair Oaks Mall (the Shit-Hole) earlier in the day to check out the Apple Store scene / potentially breathe on an iphone 3g. He indicated that line was over 200 Apple iDiots long (how quickly I turn to eat my own when failure is complete and I’m awaft in an gaseos ocean of my own shame), and ran from the store itself into the center part of the mall, where disney-style rope line-controllers had been set up. Awesome. Damn them all.

Bitter Afterword — stop reading now

Thank you, Apple, for making it impossible to buy your product. In this case, it wound being for the better. Still, I hate you for it, since I could, at this moment, be using an iPhone I paid $300-out-of-pocket for, as opposed to the hypothetical one I’ll be getting (maybe for less, who knows what I can negotiate) in the future. Too tired to be filled with rage. Beer will help ease the pain.

But I want to make sure, not that anyone at apple (or anyone at all) is actually reading this, that I make something clear. This experience, no matter how negative, is not going to keep me from buying an iphone. It’s not like there’s another option I’m interested in. It was easy to hold off on the gen one due the price, lack of Exchange integration, and the certainty of apple gen-1-technology-itis. I’m not going to be childish and go buy a zune or some other piece of shit just because apple decided the iphone had to be activated in-store, then didn’t remotely have the infrastructure ready to handle it. I’m going to get an iphone, just like I’m going to keep buying macs, because I am a nerd and I like the way apple products make me feel about myself. I’ve owned a current mac since my dad bought me a mac 512k when i was a young punk playing Deja Vu and Falcon. Clearly there’s no illusion re: what I’m writing this on. say my name, bleyotch.

I’m just going to bitch about it, as I have here, and leave off with an open question to whoever at apple, in some parallel universe, reads this: does it make you feel good to irritate your loyal customers, or even your first time ones? I’m also a shareholder (2002 was a good year to buy apple stock), so if there is some secret sauce in the formula that directly/positively impacts shareholder value, I’d love to hear about it.

If I wanted to wait in lines, I’d go back to russia… which I’ve never been to. Get it?

[1] While this somewhat orbits the truth, it’s not quote so. But still somewhat. I want to avoid slander-lawsuits. Oh no:

“No. We would never do that.”

David Sedaris May Sometimes Exaggerate For Effect - Gawker

I can grasp the hubub over A Million Little Pieces and this chick, to a degree. Although I haven’t read either one’s work (and probably never will, LIARS!), I doubt either volume features a 20-page forward attempting to convince the reader that every word is the non-embellished truth. But I really don’t know, to be honest. And it’s not the point.

But when Gawker goes after David Sedaris, who is basically a comedian, and I don’t think makes any real pretense that what he’s saying is completely (or even remotely) true, what hope is there for anyone who wants to write anything another human would want to read, given that if we are to “write what we know”, we would only write a series of facts so mundane as to literally and instantly vaporize the reader[1]?

Is the assumption that writing about family/work life implies strict adherence to the truth, and that there shouldn’t be fiction that has vague roots in a “typical” and some might say “boring” everyday situations? If so, I missed that day of… whatever class I didn’t take that would have discussed this topic.

If so, the potential global pool of potential authors would be reduced to Noam Chomsky, and him… only maybe. I’m reading Hegemony or Survival right now, and who else has ever heard of this so-called “Cuban Missle Crisis”? You’re not Tom Clancy, Noam — stick to the facts.

What, you say? Gawker is a highly ironic, metrosexually-oriented “news” site, primarily focused on the discussion of people (like, ehr, David Sedaris) that most of non-metrosexual America has never heard of? And that this exaggerated “outing” of Sedaris’s lies is, itself, meant to be ironic? I might, like Alanis Morrissette, have a problem with the whole irony concept.

[1] There, I exaggerated. Did it kill you?

Kelley and I are in agreement regarding the current state: those were twelve people who had to go. Too bad the twelve remaining all f****ng suck.

Where is the Elliot Yamin, where is the Katherine McPhee, where is the Iron Man of this competition?

Hey, elia: Way to step forward and tentatively complain re: Wolverine’s “cheating”, for a gain of zero yards, seconds before your head rolled.

Elia: [Vague references to Wolverine's cheating][1]

Judge that is indistinguishable from Billy Joel’s child bride from season 1:
[You mean there was cheating] today?

Elia: Uh, no…

Words of advice for the future: Don’t be a puppet, especially Mark Renton’s.

Double props for Colicchio for: “I don’t care what happens in the kitchen”, perhaps the line of the season, and for Sam for kicking out while maintaining grace / not getting trapped in the puppet show.

So much for Top Chef being “the reality show where nice guys win”, as we’re down to two egomaniacs in the final round. As it should be.

[ image source ]

[1] You can see how I’ve earned my many awards for excellence in journalism.

mike, I guess your general-kitchen-incompetence factor finally outweighed the bringing-in-shocked-and- horrified-viewer-ratings factor.

Final two: Sam and Wolverine.

Words for Sam: the watermelon and cheese thing looked pretty gross. Don’t get too Marcel on us. No foams.

Words for Wolverine/Marcel: You’ve had some sort of attitude adjustment. Whether that’s because everyone ganged up on you and shocked you into reality, or the fact that your nemesis the-cheating-liar-Betty is gone, or other, I don’t know, but you’re almost likable. Keep it up.[1]

[image source]

[1] I’m somewhat aware that this show was entirely pre-recorded, so there’s really no ability for my commentary to impact the outcome/actions of the players in any way.

In my standard/excellent style of getting on “deck” with things a year or five behind the wavefront, I recently became aware of 5ives. If your A.D.D. prohibits you from getting all the way to 1 (or 3) on any given top-ten list, check it out and, at last, get your satisfaction.

That looks like fun. Let’s kick off the party right, six-style:

Six Things that Should Be Nuked from Orbit, no order, 12-16-2006:

1. Oasis albums after “Be Here Now”[1].
2. Any Fanninghive-related organism.
3. Noise-canceling headphones sold by Brookstone.
4. The xenomorph-infested atmospheric engineering facility residing on LV-426.
5. The TV Mini Series Event The Lost Room. I know life’s not f-ing fair, Peter Krause. Neither is the fact that this show sucks in a most intense and onerous way, except for the presence of Julianna Margulies… which was only a passing fancy/distraction once Kelley told me she saw JM in a sushi place in NYC once, and that (on that particular night) she has a freakishly huge head in proportion to her body. Instant downgrade from “stone fox on the career rebound distracting me from the belief that The Lost Room was being written as it was being filmed” to “new-style Burger King commecial freakism”.[0]
6. Not being able to think of six things that should be nuked from orbit, due to a general sort of malaise/torpor/vapor filling the room this evening. But wait, I got it…
6.1: Malaise vapors!
7. (bonus) The Burger King commercial Burger King.

[0] I’m all about making friends in Hollywood.
[1] Be Here Now should also possibly be nuked from orbit. If a half-yield, sort of 1 kiloton nuke is possible, I’d consider it. But then again, do you want the target destroyed or not? Of course the answer is “you want it vaporized”. Be Here Now, mon amore.

given recent rigors and distractions, i’m sad to report that only a media object with the ability to bring my ire to level Code Black Scarlet is going to get any airtime here. Milk-and-cookies/funtime/happyandorlight topics are just not going to play. Fortunately, a few participants in season 2 of bravo’s top chef have pushed me over the cliff, so it’s time to rage against the dying of the (gas stove) light.

Tom welcomes himself to the limit.

summary: top chef is a cooking-based competition reality show. so: rockstar, with food; project runway without heroin, teutonic lisping and with 2% less pretentiousness. it’s hostedit was hosted by Billy Joel’s eight or tenth wife (and is now hosted by Idon’tknowwho) but most importantly features celebrity chef/badass Tom Colicchio[1] (of Craft-restaurant fame) as head judge. Every episode, the contestants (who are allegedly cooking “pros” in some way shape or form but who routinely manage to burn water not let the souffle rise with sufficient airiness) have challenges (solo for immunity, in teams for the 2nd round) and there’s winners and losers. Someone goes home every episode, generally. It’s good fun — doubly so with a wine bottle in hand, quadruply so with a “double” in tum. Top Chef!

Kelley got me into the show late last season, at a time when there were probably only six competitors left. By then, much of the chafe had already failed to follow the core rule[2] and had boiled off into the stratosphere, and it was basically a speed trial / power grind to the finish. This season I got in at episode two, and I’m still neck-deep in the knuckleheads. And it’s depressing.

Take this all-American Reject, who I’ll call “the Reject”.

I know people come in all sorts of IQ-related shapes and sizes, and God bless us all or whatever, right? There are truly brilliant people in the world, and there are people smart enough[3] to know they are idiots and are humbled by it. There’s a vast mass of people who are of average intelligence and don’t really have any innate sense of their own self-intelligence-awareness, and just sort of float through life without being overly offensive.

Then there are people who are so profoundly stupid that they have no idea they’re stupid. They have awareness of the concept of stupidity, but don’t think they’re that way. In fact, in the worst cases, they may think they’re of average intelligence. In the most tragic case, the fools may consider themselves clever or even smart.

The Reject is a dumb dumb-person, yet fooled-into-self-cagery.

Calling Reject a mongoloid would be an insult to mongoloids, not because of my bothering to use the analogy of “mongoloid” to “person of sub-average intelligence”, but because of this guy’s IQ in relation to the average mongoloid IQ would insult the mongoloid; that is to say, the mongoloid would look at the Reject and say (or more likely howl, via the mongoloid rage-attack): “doo, I’m na’ da’ dumb!”

In every episode I’ve seen, the Reject schleps around, whines about missing his family, and makes round after round of nauseating-looking (and tasting, per the judges) food. When the judges are in private quarters, they make comments to each other like “I just don’t get the sense [the Reject] is serious about this.” When Reject is on the spot, they’re all: “Are you serious about this show? No one kidnapped you to put you here, you know…”, and the Reject invariably acts shocked and somewhat offended. Like, what, my appetizer featuring a phallic-looking cheet-oh imbedded into a mashed up mess of bbq corn nuts wasn’t appetizing, wasn’t somehow legitimate?”

The Reject would have been voted off by now (the third or fourth episode), except a few other truly criminally insane individuals needed to burn off in the first few rounds… people with even less sympathy-building potential than the Reject. However, after one of reject’s friends was voted off in episode 3, Reject announced aloud, “…man… me and Colicchio are going to come to blows before this is all over.”

I’d like to step in, Deus Ex Machina-style, like Kant’s wisdom parting the cloudcover and waking whoever (Hume, maybe?) from his dogmatic slumbers. I want to share this moment of insight with the Reject, because I know he’s out there and I don’t think the Top Chef contestants live in the total black vault lockdown of American Idol stylings, so he can be reading this. And I implore you: Read this, Reject, because it may save your soul:

You are not going to come to blows with Tom Colicchio, Reject. He’s the star of the show Top Chef, the show you are on. Like a lot of celebrities / chefs (artists, basically), he’s maybe a little arrogant [4] because of his constant suggestion to use morels, but not excessively so. He’s written books; I know this, because I’ve bought them and read them. Someone else may have actually written the book, or he may have, but it doesn’t matter - because Colicchio’s name and image is on the cover. He has like two dozen restaurants around the world. He’s the hetero, chef-version Bob Mould.

Finally - you persist on the show (we’re now post episode 4) because someone (my next object of scorn for next time around) cheated last episode and got caught, and Tom (and I didn’t agree with this move, but it’s not my show either[5]) decided to send no one home that round.

Reject: your day is done, your hour has passed. There is no turning the boat around. Eject, Reject. Eject, Reject, Eject.

rds

[1] At least half the reason I like the show is Colicchio, who is cool and direct without being over the top. He’s cooking’s Bob Mould, and he looks it… just slightly less gay.

[2] DON’T GET ELIMINATED.

[3] My category.

[4] I don’t know that he is. Hey, I’m arrogant sometimes. Tom certainly isn’t compared to that nightmare on Hell’s Kitchen or that squeaking, sexless Muppet on the 30 Minute Meal.

[5] Were it, there would have been a minimum two ejections last week, perhaps more — for fun.

[images]

I said some mean things about Rivers Cuomo in my other blog a few days ago, and I’m feeling guilty… or at least like my karma will drain 0.2% if I don’t amend. I can’t afford either penalty. Also, I don’t want to run the risk of him finding out and seeking me out for some sort of emoboy-v-animal-slap-fight. I know I Google myself daily, as Rivers does. The last time I Googled “Rivers Cuomo”, my sleight of his most recent work was around 1,217 entries down, at least 215 below where I’m sure he stops looking.

I never would have bought the first Weezer album as a not-starving-but-well-drunk -and-therefore-respected-college senior, despite the MTV glory of “Undone” and “Buddy Holly”[1]. I probably would have bought it for the pure-tone majesty of “Say It Ain’t So”, because that song rocks most excellent[0]. I would have missed out on the rest of the album, and probably all after, if my friend John hadn’t given me Blue or whatever it’s called on a visit, saying he bought it because Weezer sounded like “Ween” (a band we loved and still do) and he hoped the name-sound-translation would occur. It didn’t. I liked old blue a lot, and listened to it at high volume while suffering through something I hope to this day is a late-college dose of chicken pox as opposed to the syph, and have listened to if ever after. It mentions Kitty Pryde.

I sum up the power of that first album as: the premise is set up per-song, and then they hammer it in at the solo or 2nd/3rd chorus to awesome effect. Example in “The World Has Turned and Left Me Here” (solo), and “In the Garage” (chorus). Also, “Say It Ain’t So” is just a f**king great rock song. It drags and it soars. You can’t listen to it loud enough.

Second Weezer album, Pinkerton, is the rough yet perfect masterpiece. I don’t know if they tried to make a record that could stand next to Dark Side of the Moon on my best-of, but it happened. Meaning:

1. I used to snort ground-up Ritalin off the CD case while vaporizing Jim Beam and listening to the album, rarely feeling so alive before. I’d never say I haven’t felt so alive since… but Ritalin, Beam and the record can make a man feel alive
1. My wife, on our third date (three years ago), offhandedly mentioned that Pinkerton was the only Weezer album that mattered, and, also, was a great album, besides. Then we snorted some Ritalin and made the sweet love [I kid about the Ritalin]
1. My punk rock[2] friend Mark, a long-time Weezer-hater due to “Do You Want to Destroy My Sweater?”-first-impressions, recently re-discovered Pinkerton at our urging, and declared it profoundly awesome… at least on the order of “Electric Six and the Hold Steady” [sic]
1. Back in the day, I was supposed to see Pinkerton-era Weezer at the 930 club with a girl I knew, an in-town-ex-girlfriend of my out-of-town-college buddy’s[-1]. Then he came into town unexpectedly the weekend of the show, so I gave my ticket to another friend and hung out with out-of-town-college buddy and drank Jim Beam with him all weekend. Later on that year, I still had sex with that girl, despite having missed the show, which I figured was my prime opportunity. Say it ain’t so!
1. The album made numerous references to Japanese and half-Japanese girls (some underage) as objects of River’s affection. We all know the virtue of the SAB[4].
1. When you’re 23 and high on ritalin-snorting[3], how is one supposed to know what Pinkerton means? It’s mysterious! Thanks to HBO’s Deadwood, I know now: they’re detectives or something, actually I’m not sure what they are! But I was more confused then!

Overall, Pinkerton is a sexy proto-emo-punk rock album that represents my youth, which is why it’s totally awesome, much in the same way that kid in The Incredibles says “That’s was totally awsome!” at the end is totally awesome. And the fact that Rivers/Weezer made it makes him/them rock royalty to me.

When Weezer didn’t do anything for a fairly long time, I was sad, mostly because I wasn’t snorting ritalin anymore. Later, I realized I probably needed anti-depressants due to the snorting, but somehow was also content that the band went out high as angels.

I read that Rivers Cuomo went to Harvard to study, and I thought that was cool. Follow the dream! In my salad foolery, I would have figured that having a lot of unprotected sex with girls that were at least half-Japanese and the process (even if by accident) of founding “emo”-rock would have filled one man’s lifetime of yearning, but it only goes to show that I had much to learn. Or Rivers got tired of sex.

Matt Sharp did the rentals, whose first two (only two?) albums are awesome and featured Maya Rudolph of later Saturday Night Live fame, and is also hot. It’s the Prince Show! Then Matt found heroin or perhaps an unlimited supply of ground-up ritalin and made like twelve albums and imploded. I hope he comes back.

Then there was nothing, I graduated from college, and listened to a lot of Radiohead and worked hard to avoid the self-hatred it taught me in my mid-20s.

Some age passed.

Then Weezer did a third album, Green or Weezer or something, and it had a lot of short, sweet songs. It was like Blue or the FIrst album, Weezer!, except with more punk punch, and I liked it.

Will Farrell appeared with Weezer on SNL doing “Island in the Sun”. and I liked that.

I liked it when I was single and dating on the internet, and drove on the Beltway at rush hour to meet, on a whim[6] some inter-girrrl for dinner in Alexandria, and listened to it twice on the way, getting pumped up. It gave me hope for finding a girlfriend, and maybe a life-mate… hopes quickly dashed upon the meeting and said dinner, where grrrl jumped me and offered instant sex. The only problem was that she was very, very ugly and I didn’t want sex with her, which was… I have to say a first: I had never turned sex down before. I listened to Green on the way home, and it was then I knew I was an adult, for turning down sex. Then I immediately went to the store and rented Blake Edwards’ Skin Deep, and enjoyed it.

Many of the songs on Greenish were just a good-sounding compliment to the anti-depressants I had settled on, and this phase of my late adolescence.

Fourth album Maladroit was also good, but I think a little rushed out. Good for Rivers for working the juices, but, if you’re reading, realize “Across the Sea” plus “Say It Ain’t So” is your “Stairway to Heaven”. A little too much noise, but “Take Control” is totally solid. But too much like a rock song. Perhaps listening to too much Kiss.

By then I’d met my wife, so I was past all this sh*te, which is to say: Weezer’s music is truly for adolescents, no matter the age or relative level of chemical imbalance. That is good, generally speaking. It’s good to feel like a teen when you’re 20, 30… I hope 40 and 50 (which is as far as I expect to go), and re-activate hormones and go with the flow.

So, back to my mean comment on the other blog, Make Believe, which came out about 18 months ago, is not just sub-standard Weezer, it’s just bad, boring rock music. “Beverly Hills” hints at original greatness. Everything else is static.

why are you so far away from me?

The central thesis is: Is it possible for Weezer ne Rivers Cuomo to match the greatness of Pinkerton?

Hard to say. I’m sure that record was done under some difficult emotional circumstances, as all great art is.

I hope so, because I’d pay a minimum of $10 and a maximum of unknown for a fifth real and truthful adolesence.

I will continue to listen to all Weezer music reverently… except Make Believe. Maybe in time. I would prefer for it to be a black hole in uninterrupted extended teenhood.

rds

[-1] Ultimate bad idea for long-term friendship preservation.
[0] The son is drowning in the flooooooooooooooooooood! Yeah! YEAAAAH!
[1] Despite the fact the song appears on the bootleg album Kelley and I made as party favors at our wedding. Sorry, RC!

[2] He works a full time job excellent-well at an aggregate clock-in of probably 30 hours a week, goes to shows four-seven nights a week, owns a dwelling and looks good without a shirt on.

[3] which is awesome
[4] Sexy Asian [woman].
[6] Normally it would take me approximately ten weeks and 135 emails to build up the nerve to see an inter-girrrl. This one took only two weeks and 20 emails.