Saturday was a day like any other, excepting two events - one great and the other mediocre.
The first, and mediocre, was participating in the Michigan Democratic Caucus. It was mostly comical in a sad, postmodern sort of way. I have more about this, but I took pictures and the camera isn't agreeing with the computer right now, so when I get them, I'll explain.
The second, and spectactularly fortuitous event was triggerred by my boredom. Having only one computer - when Amber needs it, I scan the TiVo guide for upcoming shows. Today, I flipped past MTV2 and saw a long lost friend. This weekend, MTV2 is airing old animated shows - including Beavis and Butthead!!! The hilarious show is currently available on DVD, but the discs do not contain the duo mocking music videos, the heart of the show.
Although the travails of Beavis and Butthead are hilarious in themselves, the mid 90's zeitgeist was only captured by their music video commentary. Apparently, due to music licensing issues, they will never be able to release the scenes with B and B sitting on the couch destroying bad videos on DVD. However, since MTV and MTV2 pay the licensing fees to air videos anyway, there is no cost to air these parts again. Thus, this weekend is an extremely rare chance to catch Mike Judge's masterpiece in it's full splendor.
P.S. Read no further if you still plan on catching the finale of Ed. (It aired Friday. This is for fellow TiVo owners.)
Ed, a show that started out terrifically, but then petered out into boring sappy-land, managed to pull it together for a pretty decent finale. Nothing too sappy or out of the ordinary. Too often, series writers and producers try to radically change characters' lives to help 'end' the story. It seemed like that was going to be the case as Phil Stubbs and Eli got involved in an attempt to win the lottery.
Clearly, anyone who has watched TV before knows that if a show spends 10 minutes of an episode, especially the final episode, setting up a potential conflict between two friends over a lottery ticket if they won (The ticket agent gave Phil the wrong final number, so Eli bought it off from him. Phil then bought the numbers he wanted.) then they are going to win, and the show will send them off in style. But not Ed. The episode builds up until Eli and Phil sneak out to watch the lotto drawing - only five minutes before the end. As they pull out their respective tickets, Phil repeats his numbers (including the one he didn't want, and Eli had) and they stare in. The question is, who will win and how will the other one react?
Then the numbers are called out. Not one of them is on either ticket. They shrug their shoulders and rejoin the party. Great job avoiding the goofy ending to everyone involved.
Side note: The two friends that Ed puts his arms around near the end for a picture were the executive producers. I'm willing to bet most of the wedding party was made up of crew members as well. A true lesson of television. In the last episode, make sure you get on screen as you may never again have the chance. Even if you're just the guy sitting next to the door as it opens and everyone screams "NORM!!!!", you at least have to chance to play the episode back to your kids and grandkids and point at yourself for your fleeting half-second of fame.
For the first time in about four years, I bought a music CD.
For a long time, I've been content to not seek out music and it hasn't been a particularly large part of my life. Then I met Amber. My beautiful girlfriend is borderline obsessed with music and after forcing me to listen to many of her CDs, she has turned me around. I thought that I just didn't like music as much as everybody else. It turns out that I just didn't like CRAPPY music. Ah-hah!
However, as my thirst for good tunes grew, she was always there. She always got the CD before I did, negating my need to buy one myself. Until...
THE DARKNESS !!!!!
Combining everything that was right about glam rock and Queen with the fact that they are about 20 years late to the dance, The Darkness are unapologetically rockin'. If you turn on MTV, they're one of the buzzworthy videos right now. Try to catch it, as it is a wonderful return to the beginning of music videos, filled with awful special effects and some barely coherent storyline where the band fights off aliens with beams that fire out of -- OH YES! -- THEIR GUITARS!! The music literally saves the day. Clearly, the pre-production meetings for this video (and the band in much the same way) were filled with one repeated suggestion: make that bigger and more over-the-top!
Hopefully, you've begun to hear "I Believe in a Thing Called Love" before, but if you haven't, visit their site for the video and song. It is Queen times two - if that's possible. I'm going to be seeing them when they come to St. Andrews Hall in a few weeks, rockin' it hard. I'd have to say the most interesting aspect of the band that I hope to investigate deeper at the concert is - I'm not particulary sure if they are approaching this with the same grasp of irony that I am. Nevertheless, the music is good and I own the CD. And Amber hates it.
The Darkness - "Permission to Land"
For reasons I shall not go into, in addition to the whole server thing / helping out MotorCityRocks.com with web design, etc / learning how to get rich by trading stock options - I have been listening to old DATs of The Rocky Allen Show, including days in which I appeared often. I say "appeared" because I lack the word necessary to describe the audio version of "appear".
It turns out that when you cut down a few days worth of utterances to a short minute or two, it can be made to sound as if I am actually funny. This comes as a shocking surprise to me, because one would think that "radio funny" would not equal "often unemployed", and yet... here we are.
To those that are hanging on my every utterance and have wondered whether or not I have been hit by any interesting epiphinanies over the past week - rest assured. I have about a half-dozen things I want to sit down and write, but I lack the time to do them properly. Sound familiar? Now that the previous hectic week of preparing for our ESPN Radio show is over, at least a few of them should get done. Until then, simply revel in the knowledge that Gilmore Girls is now available in High Defintion in the broadcast area of Detroit. Next week looks like it should be good. Tuesdays at 8PM on the WB.
I feel like a friggin broken record here... somehow I have managed to turn nothing to do every day into something that takes up so much time that I don't have time to do the things that I want. I swear that I am justthisclose to making this site all new and fancy and pretty, but then my TiVo croaks again (probably having to do with me leaving the fan unplugged and reducing it to a hot, pulsating mess). It takes all day to get it running again - I just finished at 3 something in the morning. In the process, I had to rip the HD out of my hacked XBox because I have no spare HDs for the TiVo. Now I do have a working TiVo, but also 3 spare HDs lying around with old TV shows that I want to pull off them before I reuse them.
On the good side, I've been actually trading options after 3 months of research. My first trade looks pretty good so far. I'm up 30% and just have to wait until March 19th to collect. I'll explain more about this later, but for now - just be happy that my IRA is up about $450. Good times. If you're wondering if this type of return on investment is good, if I am able to repeat this every month, I'll be a millionaire in four years and a billionaire in nine. Again, good times.
Yeah, so that's gonna take a little precedence over a web site.
